Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Tick tock motherfuckers!

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

T R E 4 5 O N

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

“woke” is the new caravan.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Faunasphere / Monday Morning Open Thread: Pets Get to Come into the House!

Monday Morning Open Thread: Pets Get to Come into the House!

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shit the goat

Or so the goat would tell you. From “occasional commenter” Isobel:

This is Shit the Goat. He is named Shit because we are constantly saying “Oh shit, the goat’s in the house!”. The puns truly write themselves with that name.

He is a six-month-old male goat who is very friendly and likes to lay on the porch and eat with our dogs. Over the last two months, he has become a part of the pack. He loves to eat beans and corn from my hands. He also loves table scraps, specifically ramen noodles.

***********
The late great Molly Ivins once had a dog named Shit (for reasons, but not the same reason).

And if you need another pick-me-up for a Monday morning, the “Chewbacca Lady” [warning: autoplay] really does have the most infectious laugh…

What’s on the agenda as we start another week?

shit the goat 2

shit the goat 3

Reader Interactions

125Comments

  5. 5.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Ben Rhodes ‏@rhodes44

    Great crowds welcoming POTUS along the route on the way to first meetings in Vietnam

    134 retweets 218 likes

    “It is in your interest to engage the people you disagree with, rather than shutting them out or shutting them up.” — Samantha Power

    29 retweets 32 likes

    (photo #3)

    (photo #4)

    (photo #5)

    All that unnecessary fighting and dying.

  6. 6.

    satby

    I love Shit the goat! I need to borrow a couple of goats to graze down the fenced dog yard, because the grass is way over knee high. It got away from me over the rainy days, by the time it was sunny and nice this weekend we were busy. Now I just need to meet someone who has loaner goats.

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    SSDW. Today will be nice weatherwise. Then it’s thunderstorms everyday thru Saturday. Won’t be able to work on the barn. Won’t be able to work in the garden. Could work in the shop. Screw that.

    A longtime running buddy of mine is headed for Shannon County and the Blair Creek today, gonna be there thru the wkend. He and I used to do just about anything and everything together, shared more than a few adventures. A couple we were lucky to see the other side of. Then I moved out here and we kind of drifted apart. Plus we’ve slowed down. C’est la vie.

    Think I’ll join him for a couple days.

  10. 10.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: Do it! Saw some friends that came to my mom’s service I hadn’t seen in 6 years and we used to be pretty close. One guy had lost lots of weight and he was never fat to begin with, diabetes. Another friend survived breast cancer. It’s better to hang out while you can than wish you had after they’re gone.

  11. 11.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    To quote Cake, sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell…

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: Better to get sheep for that job. Sheep are grazers, goats are browsers, the difference being sheep like to eat things from the knees down (grass) while goats are more fond of things from the knees up (shrubs etc).

  13. 13.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Losing track of old friends is one of the downers in adult life. Getting to see them again can be disappointing if all you have to talk about are glory days but if the bond is still there it really is a joy.

    I get to go back to my job this week after a 12 week reeducation camp. But I am not allowed to do my job yet. I have to observe how all the contractors that have been brought in are doing the job now for the next two weeks. After that I am to spend a week reflecting on all I have learned of the proceeding 14 weeks and make rough drafts of proposals for how to improve security. Yes, I am serious, these are the instructions we all have received.

  14. 14.

    Schlemazel Khan

    BTW – the much beloved Jake Tapper is doing the artwork for Dilbert today. The results will be auctioned off for charity supposedly. That Jake & Adams are friends might explain a bit about both.

    The cartoon itself (Scott Adams still did the dialog) is depressingly accurate for me given my previous comment here

  15. 15.

    bemused

    Catching up on the posts from last night, thanks to those who brought back glorious memories of 2012 White People Mourning Romney which got me grinning and laughing. Definitely a great way to start out another week of campaign insanity. I’m betting on White Racist Morons Mourning Trump in Nov.

    Also, too, who could forget Karl Rove looking like he was about to vomit on Fox News election night. Haven’t seen or heard much of him this time around.

  19. 19.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I love graveyards and all the stories they hold, both told and untold:

    Many rich men who profited from war have been buried under beautiful monuments. But Eliza Haycraft, who used the Civil War to become wealthy, remains unmarked at Bellefontaine Cemetery.

    “She was the leading madam of the time, and she became a very rich woman because of it,” said Dan Fuller, the cemetery’s events and volunteer coordinator. “I like to say that she serviced both sides of the conflict.” Fuller said after Haycraft became rich — one newspaper estimated her estate at $250,000 ($4.7 million today) — she also became philanthropic, “especially when it came to the widows and orphans of Civil War veterans,” Fuller said. “She admitted she made her money because of the war,” Fuller said. “I think it was her way of giving something back.”

    Not only was she rich, she was famous. More than 5,000 people attended her funeral, and more than a few newspapers covered it. An obituary in the Daily Democrat praised her success, especially in light of her arriving in St. Louis by canoe in 1840, fleeing her home in Callaway County after she “fell prey to the arts of a seducer and became an outcast from home and society.”

    ….

    With all that money and charity behind her name, Haycraft may have been surprised when Bellefontaine’s board of directors flatly refused to sell her a burial plot in the cemetery, which had become the preferred eternal resting place for St. Louis’ elite.

    But Haycraft, the story goes, did not take the refusal as the final word. She suggested it might be better if she met with some of the directors’ wives to discuss the matter. Lo and behold, the board relented — but only after she agreed not to erect a monument or headstone. And they would only offer her a spot at back end of the cemetery.

    Still, Haycraft went ahead and bought one of the cemetery’s premium lots, large enough to accommodate 20 bodies. “You’ll see (such plots) around the cemetery,” Fuller said. “Usually a family would erect a large monument in the middle and then inter the bodies around it in a circle.” There is a marker of sorts at the site, a “Civil War 27” signpost put up to help visitors on guided tours.

    …

    So Haycraft lies still unmarked and alone, the only body in a plot set aside for many more. But at least the passing of time corrected the slight in regards to the plot’s location. “In the 1930s, the main entrance to the cemetery switched from being off Broadway to being off West Florissant,” Fuller said.

    “So she ended up near the front anyway.”

    Heh.

  20. 20.

    Mustang Bobby

    Greetings from South Florida.

    Speaking of wildlife, I was awakened Saturday morning by something falling off a bookshelf in my study. I thought I was dreaming, but when I got up I found that indeed a couple of small items had been knocked to the floor. Poltergeists? Then I saw a small (perhaps four inches long) frog in the hallway. I slowly chased it to a corner and released it into the front yard. Now I’m curious as to how the little croaker got in the house.

  24. 24.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    And Goldman Sachs is buying a bunch of nonperforming Fannie Mae mortgages. Déja vu all over again?

  26. 26.

    Baud

    @debbie:

    Déja vu all over again?

    Not sure. Mortgage origination practices were a bigger issue than nonperforming loan sales leading up to the crisis.

  27. 27.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    Except that I’d bet that most of the nonperformers started out as originations scams. I’m more worried about G-S stepping back into the industry.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @debbie:

    Remind me what did GS do before that precipitated the crisis. Was it securitization? My understanding is that the three main problems before were origination scams, bad ratings practices, and bad risk practices through derivatives and swaps.

  32. 32.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    Well, they weren’t the only ones, but they batched good and bad mortgages, bought AAA ratings for them, and sold them off. Then they created and sold insurance policies for the mislabeled mortgages which had nothing backing them up.

    Others would recap much more intelligently than I, but that’s basically it.

  35. 35.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: My understanding was that it was precipitated by the greedy corrupt practices of a bunch of soul sucking psychopaths.

  39. 39.

    Germy Shoemangler

    Mutiny on the “Bounty”

    If we had a goat,” I said to Mr. MacGregor, “it would solve all our problems.”

    “A what?” he asked, without looking up.

    “A goat,” I repeated.

    “It would solve what?” he asked again, still marking down figures.

    “All our problems.” (He evidently hadn’t heard anything I said the first time except the words “would solve.”)

    There was quite a long silence during which Mr. MacGregor went out and bought some sport shirts. I tended shop.

    When he came back he walked straight through the office with his bundle and into the planetarium.

    “Who would take care of the goat?” he finally asked, from the other room.

    “Well,” I replied, “technically it would come in your department—Public Works. I would take it over, however, on any day when you might be sick or nervous. You would find me very willing to help, I assure you.”

    He said no more, but I heard a sound of clicking once, like suitcase snaps being snapped. It seemed a little odd that MacGregor should be in there snapping suitcase snaps, so I dismissed it as an improbability. “It is most likely just the wind,” I thought.

    * * * * *

    However, hearing nothing for several hours after that, I went into the planetarium. It was empty. Mr. MacGregor had left by the door leading into the Rose Bowl.

    On the table was a note. “I am running away from home,” it read, “to go to sea.” The old Navy urge had been too strong for him.

    I was a little hurt, but disgust was predominant in my mind. Loyalty to me, the amassing of a great fortune from the business, his brown hat (which he had left in the front office), all these meant nothing to him. Obviously the man was incompetent.

    Within two hours private detectives (paid out of my own pocket) had him back in the office again. They had found him just as he was enlisting.

    I thought it best not to say anything about his escapade. He seemed a little subdued.

    “About that goat,” I said. “When we get it ——”

    “I bought a goat on the way home from the recruiting station,” said Mr. MacGregor. “He’s out in the car.”

    So everything worked out all right.

    (Robert Benchley, “My Ten Years in a Quandary (And How They Grew”)

  40. 40.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    However, hearing nothing for several hours after that, I went into the planetarium. It was empty. Mr. MacGregor had left by the door leading into the Rose Bowl.

    I’ve been to the Rose Bowl many times, I seemed to have missed the planetarium; I blame the copious consumption of alcohol.

  41. 41.

    Johannes

    Love the Benchley excerpt–haven’t read him since I was a kid (sorry!), but he wouldn’t be so unkind as to name the goat “Shit.”

  43. 43.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Germy Shoemangler: Then I guess that means I should welcome my friend on Time Warner to the Charter family.

    (Charter has the franchise here in Glendale.)

  44. 44.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Keep It Simple Stupid. The details are beside the point.

    “First thing we do, kill all the hedge fund managers.”

  45. 45.

    donnah

    My dad was a Marine in Korea and he and his buddies had a dog named Dammit. Come here, Dammit! Lie down, Dammit!

  47. 47.

    Old Dan and Little Anne

    I watched “The Witch” on Friday. I thought it was a pretty good movie. There was killer goat that looked just like Shit.

  48. 48.

    Immanentize

    Hi All. I had an eventful.weekend. Literally. The bad.news was that I had to sit through three straight graduations yesterday. The better news was that all three speakers were.good. The good news was that two of them.were Elizabeth Warren (my senior Senator) and Elain Jones (former head of the NAACP Legal. defense Fund).

    Warren totally rocked her speech AND THEN she stood next to the University President and shook very graduate’s hand as they received their diploma. Amazing.

  51. 51.

    Immanentize

    There was a very short-lived cartoon show called “Randy and Go-Go.”. And Go-Go was a goat. On one episode I remember that Go-Go was running for President — had a great catchy campaign song and the slogan: “Vote Goat!”

    Baud can, I am.sure, work that into his campaign.

  53. 53.

    greennotGreen

    @Baud: My opinion of Bayer was permanently tainted when I was in Quito almost twenty years ago. I had walked up a hill and found that it offered a great view of the city, so I stopped to take a picture. A private security guard would not let me take a photograph of the vista, and in fact, insisted that I go away. My American sense of rights was offended – I was on a public sidewalk! – but I wasn’t in the U.S., so I did as he said. The building he was guarding? Bayer. How paranoid do you have to be to not let a gringa tourist take a picture of distant buildings (not YOUR building) from the sidewalk near your office? Weird.

  54. 54.

    MattF

    Missed this, via Steve Benen, a couple of days ago:

    Asked about concerns Trump wouldn’t honor list, Grassley says he has “heard a lot of misstatements and corrections by Trump” but has “never heard him accused of being a liar.”

    Benen goes on to quote about a dozen famous people who have said, specifically and repeatedly and on the record, that Trump is a liar… But what caught my attention is that Benen never suggests that Grassley was lying. Why is that? It’s a subtle bias in favor of the powers-that-be, but there it is.

  56. 56.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @greennotGreen:

    A private security guard would not let me take a photograph of the vista, and in fact, insisted that I go away. My American sense of rights was offended – I was on a public sidewalk! – but I wasn’t in the U.S., so I did as he said. The building he was guarding? Bayer. How paranoid do you have to be to not let a gringa tourist take a picture of distant buildings (not YOUR building) from the sidewalk near your office?

    They’re guard dogs. They really don’t know how to make valid judgements. They’re like a dog someone puts in their yard to bark at potential burglars. But the dog also barks at neighbors, the mail man, children, squirrels. A bird. A falling leaf.

  59. 59.

    D58826

    @donnah: and then there was the generation of kids in the 30’s and 40’s who thought FDR’s first nam was god-d**m

  60. 60.

    magurakurin

    @greennotGreen: How weird. I was living in Quito 20 years ago. I often saw home guarded with guardmen with shotguns. Once I remarked about it to the family I was living with. I was told not to worry at all. The guns don’t have bullets they said…not enough money for that.

    Did you ride the buses in Quito. How about those crazy Populares that cost about a nickle, eh? I almost always took the 25 cent buses but if I was late (I know not really possible to be that there) I would take an Executivo for 50 cents. I never was even able to get on the Populares, though, they were always packed with people hanging out the doors. I thought for awhile how incredibly cheap transport was there until I realized the reality of life there. Those nickle buses were packed because the people riding could only dream of riding the 25 cent ones. And the truth was the people on the nickle buses were pretty well off, because the average worker couldn’t afford even that and would walk to work with a lunch satchel that would have in it little more than a banana or two and maybe some rice. Brutal poverty there was. No idea what it is like now.

  61. 61.

    magurakurin

    A decent cure for Trump blues. While it is by no means a lock, Clinton has a much easier path to 270 than Trump does. This map puts Clinton in the White House and in it, NC, VA, PA and OH are all red.

  62. 62.

    D58826

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Yep. it was to prevent the red Chinese from expanding in to SE Asia. With our typical lack of knowledge we did not know that the Vietnamese and Chinese had been mortal enemies for 1500 years. We could have tried to use Ho as an Asian Tito. Now Vietnam is a sorta ally and China is the other end of the Walmart supply chain.

  63. 63.

    rikyrah

    So, in public, he’s all ‘ No, they shouldn’t be let into the country.’

    But now, he’s talking to them on the side?

    Yeah, ok with that.

    …………………..

    Trump camp quietly courts Muslims
    Jonathan Easley

    Donald Trump’s top foreign policy adviser has quietly opened backchannels within Muslim and Middle Eastern communities in the U.S. in an attempt to win over a small but increasingly important voting bloc.

    Walid Phares, a top national security adviser for Trump, has been courting prominent Muslim Republicans and conservative Middle Eastern activists in the U.S.

    Some Muslim Republicans and conservative Middle Eastern activists have also engaged with other top campaign officials about furthering Trump’s outreach to those communities.

    In a Friday phone interview with The Hill, Phares said Trump campaign officials had not directed him to engage with the groups. Rather, he described the talks as a natural extension of the relationships he’s built over decades of policy work on Middle Eastern affairs.

    Phares said that he initiated contact with several individuals and groups to ask them to organize for Trump or to sell them on Trump’s positions in hopes that they’d at some point support the likely GOP nominee.

    But the bulk of the discussions, Phares said, were initiated by curious Muslim Republicans or Middle Eastern conservatives seeking additional information on Trump’s views or hoping to influence his policies – particularly as they pertain to the temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

    “Most of those who reached out said they want to support Mr. Trump, but they’re not clear about some of the statements he’s made,” Phares said.

  64. 64.

    D58826

    From the daily beast

    Murphy argues it would be good for Sanders to come back and, if Democrats can recapture control of the Senate, represent the party as the Chairman of Budget Committee.

    “That would be a super platform for him to talk about the need to scale up, rather than scale down, Social Security. It would be a great platform for him to talk about democratic principles around the idea of reducing the cost of college and prescription medicine,” Murphy said. “For his Independent label Bernie has always been a pretty good member of the caucus.”

    .

    Other senators expressed the same view. But there was a caveat:

    Other Democrats are highlighting that Sanders, much like Trump on the Republican side of the aisle, is a new addition to the party. They say they let him into their exclusive playground and that a rule for admission is no sand throwing from him or his supporters.
    “You know he’s been an Independent, we welcomed him, but now that he’s finally gotten around to becoming a member of the Democratic Party, you sign up for the rules and we want Bernie to go by the rules that he’s signed up for,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) told The Daily Beast. “That is up to him, to get his supporters to calm down. Bernie has to be in charge of what he, himself has unleashed.”

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/23/bernie-sanders-risks-berning-bridges-in-senate.html

  65. 65.

    Another Holocene Human

    OT for Richard Mayhew

    I did send in a request through the contact form but I didn’t want it to get lost in the shuffle. I know Richard has been doing a guest series on hospice care that looks great, but as someone who just paid $$$ out of pocket for gender-related surgery I am desperate to know how this new federal ruling affects my hormone therapy and related care and any future surgery I might need as a result of this transsexual condition I was born with and have no control over. Right now my health coverage has an exclusion clause and I pay for doctor visits, hormones, and needles out of pocket. I live in Florida so the state gov’t is no help whatsoever.

  68. 68.

    Another Holocene Human

    @D58826: Never a big fan of Mikulski (yes I did live in MD for a while) but she’s right. He loves to lob rocks from the sidelines and pretend he’s above the fray. AFAIC Bernie needs to sit down and shut up. He isn’t advancing the conversation or the Overton window with his policy ignorance and his tendencies towards left-cannibalism.

  71. 71.

    Another Holocene Human

    @MattF:

    Benen goes on to quote about a dozen famous people who have said, specifically and repeatedly and on the record, that Trump is a liar… But what caught my attention is that Benen never suggests that Grassley was lying. Why is that? It’s a subtle bias in favor of the powers-that-be, but there it is.

    Because it’s more effective to hang him with his own words?

    It’s satisfying to call someone out. But the science of persuasion tells us that letting the other party draw their own conclusions is much more effective.

  72. 72.

    rikyrah

    What is this bullshyt about him PHONING IN to programs?

    I don’t think Hillary PHONES IN to programs, does she?

    …………………………………………………

    Stage set for historic 2016 showdown over guns
    05/23/16 08:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Over the last generation or so, presidential elections have generally followed a predictable trajectory when it comes to guns: Republicans have partnered with the NRA, warning voters that Democrats are going to pursue dramatic changes to gun laws, while Democrats, feeling defensive, have insisted that little, if anything, will change.

    Indeed, about a year ago, the Washington Post explained, “For at least the past several decades, Democrats seeking national office have often been timid on the issue of guns for fear of alienating firearms owners.” It was an observation rooted in fact: guns have served as a powerful wedge issue, drawing lines Dems were afraid to cross.

    This year is poised to be very different.

    On the Republican ticket, Donald Trump has abandoned some of his previous positions and sworn fealty to a right-wing vision on gun policy. Late Friday, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee spoke at the National Rifle Association’s annual gathering and condemned, of all things, gun-free school zones. Yesterday, Trump went just a little further.

    Phoning in to “Fox & Friends” Sunday, Trump contradicted himself multiple times when asked to respond to [Hillary] Clinton, saying, “I don’t want to have guns in classrooms, although in some cases teachers should have guns in classrooms, frankly,” because “the things that are going on in our schools are unbelievable.” Then, he said, “I’m not advocating guns in classrooms, but remember in some cases … trained teachers should be able to have guns in classrooms.”

    Hmm. So the GOP’s 2016 candidate doesn’t want guns in the classrooms, except for all the guns brought into classrooms by teachers.

    Not surprisingly, Trump has also spent a fair amount of time condemning Hillary Clinton for advocating progressive gun reforms, but instead of getting into a defense crouch and pretending to love the status quo, Clinton has largely responded by bragging about her support for progressive gun reforms.

  75. 75.

    MattF

    Interesting quote from Viktor Orban, Hungarian PM (via Bloomberg):

    “Checks and balances are a U.S. invention that for some reason of intellectual mediocrity Europe decided to adopt,” Orban told Bloomberg in 2014, after the U.S. barred entry to the head of his tax service on corruption grounds.

    So, is Trump copying the Europeans, or v.v.?

  76. 76.

    rikyrah

    Uh huh
    Uh huh

    Donald Trump’s ‘shady’ support for veterans
    05/23/16 09:20 AM
    By Steve Benen

    …………………..

    Making matters much worse are new questions about Trump and veterans-related fundraising.

    In January, the New York Republican skipped a debate in Iowa to instead hold a fundraiser for veterans. Trump repeatedly boasted at the time that, thanks to his bold leadership, he’s raised $6 million for vets. Trump added that he’d contributed $1 million out of his own pocket.

    Whatever happened to all of that money? The Washington Post took a closer look.

    Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said the fundraiser actually netted about $4.5 million, or 75 percent of the total that Trump announced.

    Lewandowski blamed the shortfall on Trump’s own wealthy acquaintances. He said some of them had promised big donations that Trump was counting on when he said he had raised $6 million. But Lewandowski said those donors backed out and gave nothing. […]

    Lewandowski also said he did not know whether a $1 million pledge from Trump himself was counted as part of the $4.5 million total. He said Trump has given that amount, but he declined to identify any recipients.

    The number of questions, which the campaign does not want to answer, represents a real problem. Exactly how much did Trump raise for veterans? His campaign doesn’t know. How much of it has been allocated? His campaign doesn’t know that, either. Who were the beneficiaries of Trump’s $1 million contribution? The campaign doesn’t want to talk about it.

  77. 77.

    Elizabelle

    Hello, all. Darling goat in the spotlight.

    Frontpagers: FWIW, looks like a commenter or two put up some GoThrones spoilers in the thread below. It’s being complained about. Lot of folks haven’t had a chance to watch the episode yet. Over to you, if you’d like to delete the spoiler posts.

    (So we have a good goat in this thread, and a bad one or two down below.)

  78. 78.

    D58826

    @Another Holocene Human: I put this suggestion out yesterday and didn’t get any response from the Bernie Bros but I’ll summarize it here.

    Bernie says his revolution is based on mobilizing grass roots supporters. The only tool he has mentioned is million person marches on Washington to scare the GOP into behaving. I am skeptical that it will work but he can take it out for a test drive w/o ever winning an election

    Schedule a million person march to push for a vote on the Garland nomination. 4th of July weekend seemed like a good time to start the revolution. Seemed like a many win situation. Tip the balance on SCOTUS, show you are a team player and show the effectiveness of thew march strategy. From the Bernie Bros – crickets. I did get one comment, that Bernie doesn’t think Garland is sufficiently progress and he wants Obama to pull the nomination if Bernie is elected. Which shows Bernie is still into the purity pony mind set. Bernie did say he would vote for Garland if it comes to the floor.

    This is playing Turtle’s game. He validates the idea that Obama does not have the authority to pick a SCOTUS candidate. He also runs the risk that a President Trump will fill that seat with a Scalia/Alito clone on. And even if it is President Sanders making the choice, there is no way the GOP is going to allow a vote on someone who satisfies Bernie’s progressive test.

  79. 79.

    Mary G

    Thanks for the lulz, Isobel and Amir. Nice start to Monday .

    Last week I came down with vertigo. Every time I turned over in bed, it felt like I was in a clothes dryer . I almost barfed a couple of times. With medication it’s starting to go away, and I am grateful.

  80. 80.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    I love goats – when my daughters were young and we lived in a rural community we raised three Nubians, joined the local 4H club and showed goats at the fall agricultural fairs. They’re wonderful sweet animals, but they denude trees up to as high as they can reach and love ornamental shrubbery, so satby, you really want to borrow sheep, not goats. Unless your problem is poison ivy, which they love. They’ll also eat fallen oak leaves, which sounds like they’re eating potato chips, but shouldn’t really be a consistent part of their diet.

    @D58826: If Sanders acts like a responsible leader with an agenda bigger than himself, it will be his first time.

  82. 82.

    ruemara

    @D58826: why would anyone put a guy who didn’t even cap his consultant’s pay & blew through being the top fundraiser, in charge of the budget committee?

    My day is SSD. Have to figure out where the website is at, explain it to the overeager technoimpaired , gently remind the leader responsible for content I am not the editor nor the ghostwriter for her work as I have my own to do, plus I sent her the edited, ghostwriter article with her name on it last week. But, Fanime Con starts Friday.

  83. 83.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    BTW – the much beloved Jake Tapper is doing the artwork for Dilbert today. The results will be auctioned off for charity supposedly. That Jake & Adams are friends might explain a bit about both.

    @Schlemazel Khan: Huh, how about that. Tapper’s a fellow traveler with an MRA asshole. I look forward to them both having strokes the day Hillary’s sworn in.

  85. 85.

    Dmbeaster

    @Baud: They were all part of the same thing. The market to sell mortgage backed securities drove the whole thing. That created huge demand for mortgages to stuff into them, which made origination the whole point. Which resulted in lowering underwriting standards to a ridiculous degree. And AIG became instrumental in marketing the ever more wobbly looking mortgage backed securities because it backstopped the downside with credit default swaps. A potentially weak security was now AAA because AIG, the largest insurer in the world, stood behind it. And unregulated derivatives further fueled the speculative bubble. All that cheap money for mortgages drove up real estate prices which created a feedback loop that further inflated the bubble.

    Goldman Sachs was a small player in the whole thing, but earned itself a half billion dollar fine for fraud concerning one of its offerings. It also got in on the short early, and was fined by making money for being paid to let shorts stuff its offerings with the crappiest loans, without telling its clients who were buying those offerings.

  86. 86.

    greennotGreen

    @magurakurin: Nope, never rode a public bus in Qutio. We were there as ecotourists, so pretty much overnight then hightail it out of town for the boonies. Our plants don’t grow in the cities except in pots.

    In the low lands some areas were pretty bleak but in the highlands in general, although families may not have a big income, they seemed to have enough. Tidy homes, a cow, a goat, chickens, a garden. Always temperate weather so you don’t need heating and cooling. I loved it there. Unfortunately, the people aren’t learning from our (bad) example, so deforestation continues apace.

  87. 87.

    MattF

    @Mary G: I had some episodes of vertigo several years ago. My PCP ignored it and it eventually went away by itself. It was probably classic BPPV– try googling ‘vertigo otolith’ for the details– and could have been treated by an ENT. The lesson I draw is that you should see an ENT if you haven’t.

  88. 88.

    Gin & Tonic

    BBC is reporting that Norbert Hofer has lost the presidential election in Austria. He was the candidate of their equivalent of the National Front.

  89. 89.

    SRW1

    Can someone gently inform the local troll srv that Norbert Hofer, the far-right candidate whose win in Austria’s presidential election srv announced so triumphantly in a comment yesterday has actually lost the election after the absentee votes were counted.

    But, as I said, please be gentle.

  90. 90.

    D58826

    @Dmbeaster: And GS only applied to commercial banks. At that point Goldman, Bear Stearns, Lehman, etc were investment banks and outside the purview of GS. It doesn’t mean repealing GS was a good idea but much of what happened would have happened anyway

  92. 92.

    Germy Shoemangler

    Should Draymond Green be suspended for kicking Steven Adams in the groin?

  94. 94.

    D58826

    @Steve in the ATL: On balance Trump may still be a loser but it looks more and more like he really does have a ‘plan’. And part of that plan is the wild man image that we have been seeing on TV. Hill/Bernie underestimate him at the county’s peril.

  97. 97.

    rikyrah

    @D58826:

    On balance Trump may still be a loser but it looks more and more like he really does have a ‘plan’. And part of that plan is the wild man image that we have been seeing on TV.

    Explain the ‘plan.’

  98. 98.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    How weird. I was living in Quito 20 years ago. I often saw home guarded with guardmen with shotguns. Once I remarked about it to the family I was living with. I was told not to worry at all. The guns don’t have bullets they said…not enough money for that.

    @magurakurin: They do, actually. Each neighborhood has these guys. And you need them; the police won’t come if there’s actual crime happening and wouldn’t do anything anyway.

    When I first ran into this back in the day I was appalled. These days, I’m thinking it might be a better model than what we have now. They’re no worse trained than our cops (who are not trained at all except in how to cover their asses), they know everyone in the neighborhood and who is and who shouldn’t be there, and they have every incentive to treat you, the people directly paying them, well.

  100. 100.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @rikyrah:

    Nut graf:

    This ends up resulting in the amusing proposition that white men are the backbone of the political revolution against income inequality and are carrying this out by supporting the candidacy of a white man, and all these people of color who haven’t Felt the Bern just don’t get it. Amusing, because I think most white left progressives have a huge blind spot when it comes to the reality of race and inequality.

    America isn’t Russia or any European country; American income inequality is specifically rooted in American racism. It isn’t something that will resolve itself once you address income inequality. It is part and parcel and has to be addressed before there is any hope of a “political revolution” against inequality.

    From the website The Orbit. “D. Frederick Sparks is a member of Black Skeptics Los Angeles (BSLA) and the point person for the Black Skeptics Blog. His main areas of focus are politics, law, and social justice.”

  101. 101.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @D58826: I’m not particularly interested in sports. I don’t care if it’s baseball, basketball, football… it just doesn’t interest me. But it sort of bugs me the way athletes are put on a pedestal. As if they are role models for our youth. I have two sons. Because of my particular indifference to sports we never had games on TV. My sons ran track, and I was there to support them, but that was the extent of sports in my house.

    And so many times I’d have male inlaws express their outrage that I wasn’t passing down to my sons an obsession with sports and teams and all the rest of the bullshit. And then I’d turn on the TV and see two millionaire hockey players or baseball players taking swings at each other. These people aren’t my fucking heroes.

  102. 102.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    they know everyone in the neighborhood and who is and who shouldn’t be there

    But who shouldn’t be there in a public neighborhood? Is it a neighborhood closed to the outside world, where only official residents are allowed?

  103. 103.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steve in the ATL:
    Strange as it may sound nowadays, American Muslims are socially conservative as a rule and tended to be Republican. Then 9/11 happened, and you know the rest.

  105. 105.

    D58826

    @rikyrah: outreach to Muslims and Latino’s, etc. Getting the GOPERS to consolidate behind him. I still think he is a loser but the running around like a headless chicken is just an act that he knows the rubes (and The MSM) will fall for

  106. 106.

    Mike J

    @Amir Khalid: Religious people[1] are often authoritarians. As long as they don’t feel like they’re the people who are being kept down, they’ll flock to an authoritarian party. Doesn’t matter what religion, doesn’t matter what political party. As long as the message is we are the only arbiters of right and wrong and we will make you do what we say.

    [1]narp

  107. 107.

    rikyrah

    @D58826:

    outreach to Muslims and Latinos.

    See, the ‘ outreach’ doesn’t match what he previously said. We aren’t talking about a 1 degree separation.

    For him to be palatable to Muslims and Latinos would make what the GOPers that voted for him be appalled. OF COURSE, I know this isn’t about Muslims, and Latinos, and it’s about appealing to WHITE people, the ones who take comfort in the dogwhistles while pretending not to.

    we shall see.

  108. 108.

    D58826

    @rikyrah: Oh I think it is mostly smoke and mirrors but it’s not being done in some purely random way. Maybe ‘plan’ would have been a better way to put it. But this serves as a lead in to what I was just about to post.

    Notr sure if this has been linked to before. An article by the admittedly neo-con Robert kagan:

    This is how fascism comes to America

    Republican politicians marvel at how (Trump) has “tapped into” a hitherto unknown swath of the voting public. But what he has tapped into is what the founders most feared when they established the democratic republic: the popular passions unleashed, the “mobocracy.” Conservatives have been warning for decades about government suffocating liberty. But here is the other threat to liberty that Alexis de Tocqueville and the ancient philosophers warned about: that the people in a democracy, excited, angry and unconstrained, might run roughshod over even the institutions created to preserve their freedoms. As Alexander Hamilton watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw play out in France – that the unleashing of popular passions would lead not to greater democracy but to the arrival of a tyrant, riding to power on the shoulders of the people.

    ….This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party – out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear – falling into line behind him.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-how-fascism-comes-to-america/2016/05/17/c4e32c58-1c47-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html

  110. 110.

    D58826

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    But it sort of bugs me the way athletes are put on a pedestal.

    Agreed. but they are celebrities. Athletes behaving badly by brawling on court or Kim K breaking the internet with selfies of her butt. All the same thing

  111. 111.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    But who shouldn’t be there in a public neighborhood? Is it a neighborhood closed to the outside world, where only official residents are allowed?

    @Germy Shoemangler: Latin America is not the United States of America, that’s all I can say. Run into this same thing in Peru, the DR, parts of Mexico, Belize…get the picture? Yeah, legally it’s a public neighborhood. In practice, it isn’t. This is what happens when you have a huge, desperate underclass and “law enforcement” that is not hired to actually enforce laws. Or help. Every block becomes its own gated community, except there’s no gates, just hired dudes with shotguns.

  112. 112.

    D58826

    CNN political analyst and former presidential adviser David Gergen called for the repeal of North Carolina’s anti-trans law, known as HB 2, while giving a commencement speech at Elon University.

    When you have lost David gergan…….

  113. 113.

    Origuy

    @rikyrah: Walid Phares is not a Muslim.

    But Phares is not Muslim. In fact, he is about as far from being a Muslim as one can get. As Adam Serwer reported five years ago, Phares was once a top political official in a sectarian Christian militia in Lebanon that targeted Muslims:
    During the 1980s, Phares, a Maronite Christian, trained Lebanese militants in ideological beliefs justifying the war against Lebanon’s Muslim and Druze factions, according to former colleagues. Phares, they say, advocated the hard-line view that Lebanon’s Christians should work toward creating a separate, independent Christian enclave.

  114. 114.

    PaulWartenberg2016

    If there are any hackers I can bribe with a bottle of rum that can help, I need a copyright thief taken down. The guy is mocking me on twitter and the DCMA is no goddamn help at the moment.

  117. 117.

    Seanly

    @donnah:

    All dogs have the middle name ‘dammit’. We’ve got numbers 4 & 5 and they both are named dammit though the vet & city think they are named Maggie & Cricket.

  118. 118.

    magurakurin

    @Germy Shoemangler: more or less. It is an old saying from the colonial days to describe the way colonies were actually governed locally in regard to laws given by the Peninsular government. But it goes a long way to explain how things still work there. The law is obeyed but not complied with.

  120. 120.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    la ley se obedece pero no se cumple

    I’ve always loved that saying. It’s doesn’t really translate into English literally, as is true of so much of Spanish. Your explanation to Germy is quite good.

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