Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

White supremacy is terrorism.

So many bastards, so little time.

Petty moves from a petty man.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

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

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

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

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

We will not go back.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

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Wednesday Afternoon Open Thread

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I stayed up into the wee hours binge-watching the latest season of “Orange Is the New Black,” and now I’m almost as cranky and depressed as an elderly socialist from Vermont who just got an ass-kicking from an erstwhile Goldwater Girl.

I know we must have “Orange” watchers in the group…anyone else all caught up and dying to discuss the show? If so, maybe use Google Translate to render your thoughts in Croatian before posting a comment to prevent spoilers?

Otherwise, open thread — discuss whatever!

Reader Interactions

182Comments

  2. 2.

    MomSense

    I once saw a stand up comedy skit where the pair did a jeopardy skit with audience members. The wrinkle was that they took the original question and kept putting it through google translate in various languages and then back to English. It was very amusing.

  3. 3.

    Miss Bianca

    I read the book that the series is based on – been thinking it might be cool to watch the series!

  4. 4.

    ? Martin

    Moja supruga i kći gledaju, ali ja ne, tako da nemam ništa značajnije pridonijeti. U stvari, ne gledajte sve popularne emisije tako da sam prilično beskorisni u bilo kojoj društvenoj situaciji.

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    @Miss Bianca: It’s really well done, IMO — fabulous acting and writing. No idea how closely it tracks with the book, but from what I’ve read, the book is just a jumping off point. It tackles some really sensitive issues (race, rape culture, transphobia, etc.) with uncommon honesty.

  8. 8.

    rikyrah

    Has Justice Kennedy Left the Conservative Movement?
    by BooMan
    Wed Jun 29th, 2016 at 09:50:48 AM EST

    I love this piece in the Atlantic by Garrett Epps. I particularly love the way he concludes it:

    And then came Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. In its aftermath, the Senate Republican leadership dropped once and for all any pretense that law is anything but the crassest of partisan politics. Senate Judiciary Chair Charles Grassley told the world that no justice would be confirmed who did not toe the line—a line that the chief justice, a confirmed Reaganite, was now too “moderate” to be trusted with. The Court, Grassley and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the Republican base, was and would remain the GOP firewall; its job is to strike down Democratic programs and rubber-stamp Republican ones—nothing more and nothing less. Justices are in effect elected at the polls; Donald Trump could possibly select the next name.

    How did this cynicism sound to Kennedy, who considers the majesty of the Court the defining virtue of the American system? O’Connor was once a loyal GOP foot soldier, who did her duty in Bush v. Gore. By the time she left the Court, according to Jeffery Toobin’s book, The Oath, she told a colleague, “It’s my party that’s destroying the country.”

    Has that same realization begun to insinuate itself into Kennedy’s opaque mind? Has he had an O’Connor moment? This is just speculation on my part. But Kennedy really has shifted. In Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage case, the states opposing marriage equality discovered that it is unwise to question Kennedy’s central dogma of “dignity” as the aim of constitutional law. Perhaps McConnell, Grassley, et al., should now resolve never again to treat the Sphinx of Sacramento as if he were Reince Priebus’s errand boy.

  10. 10.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    I dropped out halfway through S2 – enough lesbian sex for a lifetime, but YMMV. I can’t wait for Rectify to start again – it’s the best show on TV, and it’s the last season. [[sad face]]

  11. 11.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: I used to avoid series because I refused to commit to a television show’s time schedule. But streaming technology has turned me into a TV watcher. I never saw a single episode of The West Wing until a few years ago, and now I understand why everyone was raving about it back in the W era.

  14. 14.

    rikyrah

    Sotomayor Shows Us What it Means to Have a Wise Latina on the Court
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    June 29, 2016 8:55 AM

    With the conclusion of the Supreme Court’s 2015-2016 term, the New York Times has provided a helpful infographic on how things shaped up. The title provides the kicker: When the Eight-Member Supreme Court Avoids Deadlocks, It Leans Left. Essentially what we have is a solid 4-person liberal majority with Justice Kennedy occasionally joining them.

    One move that has shown up during this term is that Justice Sonia Sotomayor has now inched into being the most liberal member of the Court. She is now just slightly to the left of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (with Justice Elena Kagan right on her heels).

  16. 16.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    The dog yakked all over the house this morning – huge piles. The final yak before I put him out was a lovely shade of golden beige.

    I feed him Iams minichunks, and he supplements by stealing a few bites of whatever the cat leaves in his bedtime bowl and, of course, the odd tasty nugget of cat shit covered in urine sprinkles (as a dessert with piquant aftertaste, I guess).

    Anyway, I can’t find any recall data on the Iams, and am simply going to replace the bag with maybe a gentle digesting food type.

  18. 18.

    Gin & Tonic

    @? Martin: I’d never intentionally tried to read Croatian before, but I’m a little surprised at how much of that I got.

  20. 20.

    rikyrah

    With Blacks, Trump is as Unpopular as Obama is Popular
    by Martin Longman
    June 29, 2016 12:44 PM

    Back in April 2011, Donald Trump went on Talk Radio 1300 in Albany, New York. He told the host that he was mulling a presidential bid, but he was disappointed that the black community was so supportive of the Kenyan Muslim usurper despite the fact that his birth certificate was clearly a fraud. “I have a great relationship with the blacks,” Trump said. “I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”

    Contemporary polling in the Empire State showed that 95% of “the blacks” there were behind President Obama, but Trump thought it was more about racial solidarity than job performance.

    ……………………………….

    It’s also interesting that Obama had a 95% job approval rating with New York state blacks in 2011 and that Trump currently has a 94% unfavorable rating from blacks nationally.

    A recent Washington Post poll highlights the Achilles’ heel of Donald Trump’s campaign: Minority voters, namely blacks and Hispanics, don’t support him.

    The poll, released Wednesday, only shows the problem is evolving for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. A staggering 94 percent of black adults surveyed view Trump negatively, a 13 percent increase since the same poll was conducted in May.

    While Trump’s likely general election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, is boasting a 79 percent favorability rating among black Americans, Trump is fighting claims of racism after launching attacks on a U.S.-born judge of Mexican descent.

  25. 25.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @rikyrah:

    Like Propane Jane says, does anyone really think that the people who elected Obama, are going to stay home and let Trump take over that same space? It’s not going to happen, no matter what that asshat Sanders chooses to do.

  26. 26.

    Hillary Rettig

    Season 2 was kind of meh, but Season 3 was superb I thought. And super relevant.

  27. 27.

    rikyrah

    @Betty Cracker:

    Ah…the West Wing.

    For its first 4 seasons, pretty much some of the best drama for television ever written. Brilliant.

    sigh……

    And, even when it lagged….WW was still better than 70% of the rest of stuff on tv…it just had the misfortune of being compared to those first four years.

    I feel the same about the first 3 seasons of Mad Men – absolute perfection…then, 4 (eh), 5 (blech) 6 (shudder), and somewhere in between 6 and 7, the writers found that depth. Season 7 was as close to the first 3 seasons that he could get.

  28. 28.

    hueyplong

    I’ve been ignoring Sanders for a while and have yet to discern the approach of Horrific Consequences. Probably going to stay the course.

  30. 30.

    rikyrah

    @Mnemosyne:

    For those who didn’t know, OITNB star Uzo Aduba is a trained opera singer and does a pretty good job with Broadway classics, too.

    She was also Glenda, the Good Witch , in the LIVE Remake of The Wiz.

  32. 32.

    Hillary Rettig

    I couldn’t get past the sexism of West Wing. I stopped watching it right after the episode where Alison Janney’s character did a press conference minus pants.

  33. 33.

    JPL

    After a few seasons, I realized that I didn’t really like Piper, so stopped watching.
    Mediate has an article about a trailer that was shown before the Finding Dory movie. The movie is titled Sausage Party and is not safe for work.
    What would you do if you were with your children, and that happened?

  34. 34.

    Hillary Rettig

    Oh, wait – I have a GREAT Orange story!

    In one episode, one of the inmates refers to Judy King, the southern celebrity chef inmate, as “Betty Cracker.”

    At which point my partner – who hears all my Balloon Juice stories – turns to me and says, “Hey, you know her!”

    :-)

  36. 36.

    JordanRules

    @rikyrah: Ha! I am the same way about prison shows and movies no matter if it’s drama, comedy or whatever. All my friends rave about it and I don’t plan to ever watch.

  37. 37.

    Mike J

    Warren will NOT be veep candidate. She has a higher calling:

    The Boston GlobeVerified account @BostonGlobe
    New “Harry Potter” story tells the story of a Witchcraft & Wizardry school in Massachusetts

    Elizabeth Warren ‏@elizabethforma 49 minutes agoElizabeth Warren Retweeted The Boston Globe
    Looking for a Defense Against the Dark Arts prof, @jk_rowling? Where do I apply? Trump, Death Eaters – I got this!

  39. 39.

    LAO

    @Mike J: I liked her before — but this election has made me love her! Go Liz, Go! She had become a one woman (Trump) wrecking machine, a job that she clearly embraces with glee.

  40. 40.

    SFAW

    @rikyrah:

    The title provides the kicker: When the Eight-Member Supreme Court Avoids Deadlocks, It Leans Left. Essentially what we have is a solid 4-person liberal majority with Justice Kennedy occasionally joining them.

    Except when Breyer decides that “Show us your papers!” need not be restricted to movies about Nazis. What the fuck was he thinking? Oh, right, as long as the cops are “acting in good faith.” That’s kind of like Hobby Lobby’s “sincerely held religious beliefs,” I guess.

    So I guess all the NYC stop-and-frisk stuff was just peachy-keen, after all.

  41. 41.

    Paul in KY

    @Mike J: Little known fact, recording artist Grace Potter is a distant muggle cousin of Harry Potter.

    You heard it here first.

  43. 43.

    Josie

    Since my son fixed up my television with a firestick, I have binge watched several series that I had never seen. The Wire and House of Cards were both fantastic, and I am loving Justified. I am going to be sad if I run out of good stuff. These are so much better than watching regular tv.

  46. 46.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    Today I am 5.46 fountain pens

    Mazel tov! Freuliche Geburtstag!

    ETA: I guess you telling us that you’re 5.46 men would have sounded Trump-like. Which would have been Classy and Yuuuge.

  47. 47.

    LAO

    @efgoldman: Horrible, reformed Jew here — happy 71st birthday (?). [Math is hard].

    ETA: According to MikeJ — my math appears correct, whew!

  50. 50.

    negative 1

    @Mike J: And yet she remains second in the odds (+325). Tim Kaine is first (+225). Julian Castro is third (+550). All odds from oddshark.com.

    I’m thinking of putting one hundred on Castro. I like the idea of betting on politics; normally I don’t really care about VP picks but this is awesome.

  51. 51.

    singfoom

    Ive caught a couple of Orange episodes with the Mrs. Its ok but not my cup of tea. Started going through Daredevil S1 on Netflix, enjoying it so far.

    Waiting impatiently for the next Season of The Expanse.

  52. 52.

    nutella

    I read Orange is the New Black and it’s a pretty amazing picture of huge privilege and how people who have it can be stunningly oblivious . There are some interesting details about prison life, too.

  54. 54.

    jl

    Hilarious series of posts at Talkingpointsmemo blog today on Mr.Orange plastering, apparently, several whole democratic parliaments around the world with fundraising solicitations. Complaints already filed with FEC, but I don’t see it in main news aggregators yet.

    What I see in those is more ominous, Trump has moved on to the ‘rich populist savior of the common man from the billionaire class’ strand of his political fugue state. HRC better not answer that with center-right establishment GOP talking points. Hope she pals around a little more with Warren in response.

  55. 55.

    negative 1

    @jl: Personally I hope she just laughs and walks away. Or starts soliciting ideas for her rotisserie baseball league team from the lectern. I’m pretty sure she couldn’t possibly lose this election if she tried. It is kind of funny in a sad way watching the press try and pretend it isn’t a foregone conclusion though.

  57. 57.

    LAO

    @efgoldman: fair enough — I realize I could have just said Happy Birthday and left out your age — and then I wouldn’t have been forced to admit that my math skills are weak. Sad!

  59. 59.

    Shana

    @efgoldman: Happy 71st Birthday EFG!

    @MomSense: Several years ago (over 10 IIRC) someone with WAY too much time on their hands took the P.G. Wodehouse story The Great Sermon Handicap and translated it into many languages, including Esperanto, Chaucerian English and Yiddish, and then published it in 6 volumes. I think they may also have translated it back in to English from one or more translations. I saw a used copy a few years ago and thought briefly about buying it. I’m something of a completist about the stuff I like, but that was a bit much even for me.

  60. 60.

    gindy51

    @Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: As the owner of two sensitive tummy pups (Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs) use canned pumpkin, Gas-x (or generic simethicone) and feed a bland diet. No dog food for 24 hours. Then upgrade your feed to something like Fromm adult. It is more expensive but it goes down more easily. Elevate the cat food bowl too.

  61. 61.

    Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class

    @JPL:

    After a few seasons, I realized that I didn’t really like Piper, so stopped watching.

    I hated Piper and that mewling milquetoast fiance from the middle of Season 1 forward. Was really irritated in the way backstories were constructed to put people with obvious state court crimes into a Federal facility. Still stuck with it for a while.

    Wound up really losing my passion for the thing with the death of Vee, although I liked the “mean old ladies” angle.

    My favorite characters were Suzanne, Captain Mulgrew, Vee, That 70s Girl (mainly for the idea of all the lesbian sex) and the chick with the weird damned accent. The guys in the series were interchangeable.

  62. 62.

    bemused

    Laura Ingraham has totally freaked out. She is so anti-equal access bathrooms, she is sure people are going to be wearing adult diapers so they won’t have to enter one. Go ahead Laura, you be first to poop in your pants.

  64. 64.

    Kay

    @jl:

    Trump had another scam edu-venture:

    But Mr. Trump also lent his name, and his credibility, to a seminar business he did not own, which was branded the Trump Institute. Its operators rented out hotel ballrooms across the country and invited people to pay up to $2,000 to come hear Mr. Trump’s “wealth-creating secrets and strategies.”
    And its customers had ample reason to ask whether they, too, had been deceived.
    As with Trump University, the Trump Institute promised falsely that its teachers would be handpicked by Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump did little, interviews show, besides appear in an infomercial — one that promised customers access to his vast accumulated knowledge. “I put all of my concepts that have worked so well for me, new and old, into our seminar,” he said in the 2005 video, adding, “I’m teaching what I’ve learned.”

    Reality fell far short. In fact, the institute was run by a couple who had run afoul of regulators in dozens of states and been dogged by accusations of deceptive business practices and fraud for decades. Similar complaints soon emerged about the Trump Institute.
    Yet there was an even more fundamental deceit to the business, unreported until now: Extensive portions of the materials that students received after forking over their seminar fees, supposedly containing Mr. Trump’s special wisdom, had been plagiarized from an obscure real estate manual published a decade earlier.

    This entire family business is built on fraud. We have a scammer “rich” family like this here- the Carlins- but they aren’t running for President. They stay below the radar! Like sensible crooks!

  65. 65.

    Seanly

    @singfoom:

    My wife love OINTB Season 1 then watched a couple of the 2nd and dropped it.
    I’ve been told by a couple of people to watch Daredevil, but haven’t yet.
    I did finally get around to finishing Jessica Jones which is very good. It had weird trajectory for me – liked Ep 1, then watched 2 & 3 and was meh. But then I decided to go back to it after my brother mentioned he had to get through the first few. Then I watched the rest in a few nights.
    Also looking forward to The Expanse Season 2 on Syfy. Been missing good sci-fi shows.

  67. 67.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    I don’t do prison dramas, comedies or movies.

    @rikyrah: I don’t either. Prison, at the very best, as we run it today destroys lives and souls. And that’s the best-case scenario.

    It’s usually far worse.

    I took a class on psychology and the law in college, taught by someone who actually knew what was up. We got to go to Soledad prison. Simply feeding all those people into a woodchipper would be kinder in the long run, I suspect. Desperate miserable people who then run afoul of the law and find out the hard way that their lives can really get so much worse.

    Not a subject for dramatic treatment, or far worse, laughs.

  69. 69.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: Agree about “TWW” and “Mad Men.” “Six Feet Under” was another series that was even more wildly inconsistent — great for a few seasons and then faltering. But they managed to redeem it all in the last 10 minutes of the series finale, IMO.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    Ms. Parker, a lawyer and legal writer in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., said that far from being handpicked by Mr. Trump, she had been hired to write the book after responding to a Craigslist ad. She said she never spoke to Mr. Trump, let alone received guidance from him on what to write. She said she drew on her own knowledge of real estate and a speed-reading of Mr. Trump’s books.
    Ms. Parker said she did venture to one of the Trump Institute seminars — and was appalled: The speakers came off like used-car salesmen, she said, and their advice was nothing but banalities. “It was like I was in sleaze America,” she said. “It was all smoke and mirrors.”

    “Sleaze America” is the best.

  72. 72.

    negative 1

    @bemused: Here’s food for some fun thought. Which will be the more fun election night watching on Fox — the Romney meltdown where they were sure they were going to win and then you got to watch it slowly dawn on them, or this year where they will know ahead of time they’re going to get killed and you get to watch them get rolled like no other candidate has been rolled before?

  73. 73.

    LAO

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    Not a subject for dramatic treatment, or far worse, laughs.

    While I agree and earlier in the thread, declared that I too do not what prison movies or shows — I did recently watch the documentary “The Fear of 13” on Netflix and it was incredible. I can’t recommend it enough.

  74. 74.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @bemused: She needs to get out more. I first ran into unisex bathrooms (not counting the ones in every house I ever went into) when I traveled in Europe during the summer of 1970. Nothing terrifying happened.

  75. 75.

    Betty Cracker

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: FWIW, the last couple of seasons of OITNB absolutely hammer the for-profit prison concept, dramatizing how money-grubbing corporate worms casually destroy lives to save a buck and enrich their greedhead overlords. Not saying you should watch if prison dramas aren’t your thing; just pointing out that the show’s not exploiting the situation for cheap laffs or drama.

  76. 76.

    MomSense

    @Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:

    Not only does my dog try to kill me on a regular basis, but for a pound dog she has expensive taste. Taste of the Wild Bison/Venison kibble with a bit of roasted lamb wet food mixed in. I ran out and tried to feed her Iams. Let’s just say it was ugly and impossible to pick up. So we are back to the ridiculously expensive food but she is much happier and healthier.

  79. 79.

    Mary G

    @efgoldman: Happy fountain pen day!

    I think Liz Warren has raised Hillary’s game by demonstrating that it’s OK to loosen up a little. Hillz had a huge, genuine smile on her face that I don’t think I’ve ever seen from her – relaxed and happy. She still had it today even without Liz.

  81. 81.

    Mnemosyne

    @JPL:

    Heh. Given the statement from the theater, it sounds like Disney’s distribution office came down on them like the wrath of God. I bet their ears are still ringing.

  82. 82.

    TOP123

    @FlyingToaster: meme?!? Ha! I believe that was a hoary old saw back when my stepdad, who taught it to me, was first able to apply it to himself in the late Roosevelt administration. ;)

  84. 84.

    VincentN

    @JPL:

    Yeah, Piper got less interesting as the series progressed. Fortunately, there is less focus on Piper as the series goes on and more focus on other prisoners and guards who tend to have more interesting stories.

  85. 85.

    FlyingToaster

    @TOP123: Like you, my dad got to that age during the 1st Roosevelt admin, and joined up during his 3rd (Army Air Corp).

    Fortunately, he didn’t make his kids go through it, though we went to all our friends and learned all the jokes.

  88. 88.

    jl

    @Kay: Thanks. I knew that Trump Institute was the scam Mr. Orange went with to replace his bogus university scam. I didn’t know it plagiarized reams of stuff verbatim from other courses and textbooks. Interesting, but maybe should have been expected.

  89. 89.

    TOP123

    @FlyingToaster:Haha, i can relate, though the relevant service was Navy and the war the Korean Emergency.

    Which he tended to cynically describe as a designation designed to ding everyone out of their wartime pay rate.

  90. 90.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @MomSense: My cats are the exact opposite. Whenever I try to give them the expensive food, I end up having to scrape half of it out of their bowls before it collects mold. Unfortunately, this is also proving true of the prescription kidney diet food that two of them should really be eating at this point.

  92. 92.

    jl

    @Kay: I dunno. If The Great Orange Winner was the one who personally clicked the button to respond to the Craigslist ad, she could be considered ‘hand picked’. Maybe all these stories against Mr. Trump are just cheap smears? Designed to prevent him from making America great and independent again.

    Trump’s new fundraising approach is to get the $ from the Iceland, Australian, Canadian and sundry other parliaments. How effing disinterested and high minded is that? Hope he includes some other Nordic, and Estonian parliamentary lists, they have some very good public finance expertise, now that Trump is for the little man. Though I wonder if that schtick will leak through to his billionaire friendly tax plan?

  94. 94.

    germy

    I’m almost as cranky and depressed as an elderly socialist from Vermont who just got an ass-kicking from an erstwhile Goldwater Girl.

    I guess politics (like beauty) really is in the eye of the beholder.

    I saw this on boingboing.net:

    In a powerful op-ed in the NYT, Bernie Sanders warns the Democratic Party that Brexit shows that many of the left’s traditional supporters justifiably feel abandoned by the neoliberal establishments of the “progressive” parties, and will use any opportunity to show their displeasure.

    There’s a classic behavioral economics experiment called the ultimatum game in which one subject is asked to divide a pool of money, and the other subject can choose to take whatever the first one offers (no matter how little that is), or reject the offer and both of them get none. The “economically rational” approach is to take whatever you’re given, even if it’s just one penny, because one penny is more than you’d get if you rejected the offer. But in experiments, subjects confronted with “unfair” splits overwhelmingly choose to punish themselves in order to punish the person making the unfair offer.

    Neoliberal politics have been a long-term, iterated form of the ultimatum game: the capital class arrogates more wealth to itself while it offers less and less to working people, with fewer prospects for advancement, but points to an opposition that would give workers even less, and expects that they’ll go on winning as the lesser of two evils.

    Brexit shows that in such a circumstance, table-flipping is a viable alternative to playing the game at all.

    Meanwhile, Clinton is signalling that she’ll give the world’s biggest corporate tax cheats a tax-holiday if they want to repatriate their offshore money.

  96. 96.

    germy

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym:

    My cats are the exact opposite. Whenever I try to give them the expensive food, I end up having to scrape half of it out of their bowls before it collects mold. Unfortunately, this is also proving true of the prescription kidney diet food that two of them should really be eating at this point.

    That’s been my experience as well. I proudly bring home the highly-rated, high protein all natural cat food, and she does the “this is shit” pantomime. (Scratches around the food dish as if she were in her litter box).

    So I end up opening a can of the feast of the fancy (probably too much salt and not enough protein). And she gobbles it and yells for more.

  97. 97.

    burnspbesq

    The Berniacs who infest my FB feed are going berserk over a handful of Dem primary wins by Bernie-endorsed candidates.

    Let’s be clear at the outset: it is totally famtastic that trans people feel comfortable in the Democratic party, and I’m happy that the two Misties won. However, one is running for the Senate in Utah against Mike Lee, and the other is running for the House in a Colorado Springs area district that Cook rates R+16. Hard to imagine good outcomes here.

    And then there is Zephyr Teachout, carpetbagging her way up the Hudson to NY-19 …

  98. 98.

    germy

    @Iowa Old Lady: They’re upper-class (although they’d never admit it) white guys with no children. It’s a chess game to them.

    They’ll inherit a shit-load of money from their parents, no matter who wins the white house.

  99. 99.

    rikyrah

    @SFAW:

    The title provides the kicker: When the Eight-Member Supreme Court Avoids Deadlocks, It Leans Left. Essentially what we have is a solid 4-person liberal majority with Justice Kennedy occasionally joining them.

    Someone on another blog said it was a not-so-subtle way to make an 8 person court ‘ normal’, thus no need to point out the absolute obstruction on the GOP.

  100. 100.

    germy

    @burnspbesq: I don’t know much about Teachout. She’s not a force for good in NY? All I know is she made Cuomo sweat a little, which is a good thing in my book…

  101. 101.

    rikyrah

    @Josie:

    If you have the Firestick, does this mean you have Amazon Prime and Netflix?

    If you have Amazon Prime, you can watch Downtown Abbey.

    If you have Netflix, try The Fall, Sherlock, Luther, among others.

  102. 102.

    Calouste

    @Iowa Old Lady: “Cory Efram Doctorow (/ˈkɒri ˈdɒktəroʊ/; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author”

  107. 107.

    Calouste

    @germy: I don’t think having children matters in this regard, but indeed every pro-Sanders screed I have seen bandied around was written by a white guy who had been to an Ivy League or thereabouts university.

  110. 110.

    germy

    @rikyrah:

    I don’t do prison dramas, comedies or movies.

    My father was a POW during WWII, captured by the Nazis.

    It fucked him up for life, and by extension, it fucked up our family.

    I never watch Hogan’s Heroes.

  111. 111.

    burnspbesq

    @germy:

    She’s definitely a progressive, but she made a lot of enemies within the NY Dem Party with the way she conducted herself in her primary run against Cuomo. She’s going to be facing a lot of disadvantages in running against a well-funded R in a R+3 district.

  112. 112.

    germy

    @Calouste: My children are entering the workforce, and already they have horror stories to share. I worry about their future.

  113. 113.

    Mike in NC

    Trump University, Trump Institute. What’s his next pseudo-educational scam: Trump Medical School, Trump Auto Body Repair, Trump Nails, or Trump Funeral Parlor?

  116. 116.

    PaulWartenberg2016

    How far is Pulse from the Orange County convention center?

    I’m going to be over at the convention center tomorrow for a Florida Associations of Counties conference for the morning, and I figured I might want to swing by to pay respects.

  117. 117.

    Mike in NC

    Blair Brown is a fine addition to the new season of Orange, playing a southern celebrity chef loosely based on Paula Deen.

  119. 119.

    negative 1

    @germy: She’s phenomenal. She’s a very good progressive and (pet cause alert!) gets very good ratings from my fellow education unions in New York. Additionally she’s found a way to bring a progressive message to local farms, which I think is an underserved population in the democratic message. We’d do well to try her message in the midwest, for instance.

  121. 121.

    Miss Bianca

    @burnspbesq: Oh, I met the one running in Doug Lamborns district when I was at the CO state convention. Bernie Sis. All about trashing the corrupt DNC and the superdelegate system. Good luck to her and all that, but… : /

  124. 124.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    @negative 1:

    She’s got a weird name, is hyperleft, and has a history of opposing actual democrats. Plus Sanders supports her, which means she needs kneecapping like Nancy Kerrigan.

    I’m not happy unless some fucking Mumia loving progressive is getting kicked in the teeth…

  125. 125.

    germy

    @MomSense:

    My cats loved the “kitty crack” and would never touch the good food.

    I always tried to feed our girl the healthy, high-protein stuff, but she insists on the feast of the fancy. I felt so guilty about that, but limited her to “paté” which doesn’t have all that starchy gravy. One day the vet made a housecall, saw the cans and admitted it’s what she feeds her cat.

    Also, when I research some of the so-called healthy brands, I see quite a few of them were under recall at one time or another.

  126. 126.

    Jay C

    @efgoldman: @efgoldman:

    I knew what you meant, and tried to work the math out without a calculator.
    So Happy 137th, efg!!

    PS: gave in and used the machine: Mazel Tov! In any case….

  127. 127.

    Aleta

    Last Thursday, the Obama Administration selected sixty-seven colleges and universities across twenty-seven states to participate in the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program, which aims to “create a fairer, more effective criminal justice system, reduce recidivism, and combat the impact of mass incarceration on communities.” The new initiative could make Pell Grants available to as many as twelve thousand people behind bars.

    … the executive action by the Obama Administration is a progressive step forward on correctional education, especially given that legislation like the Restoring Education and Learning (real) Act—which would eliminate the provision in the crime bill barring prisoners in state or federal institutions from Pell Grant eligibility—remains stalled in Congress.

  128. 128.

    raven

    @Miss Bianca: So do we, we’re prime candidates with no kids, just did a big renovation and like our neighborhood and community. We’d never really heard about them except those bullshit Fred Thompson ads.

  131. 131.

    Josie

    @rikyrah: Yes, I have Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu – Jackpot! And in August, when my Uverse contract is up, I will cut the cable cord and go with Sling for my sports, which is the only thing I still want to watch on cable. Thanks for the recommendations for shows to watch. I will make a note of those series, none of which I have seen.

  132. 132.

    Emma

    Since this is an open thread, can I scream now?

    What is wrong with people’s brains? So Michelle Obama went to Morocco and had iftar dinner with the wife of the King of Morocco. What the bloody hell was she supposed to do, refuse to eat and say the rosary? And she wore long sleeves!

    Gah.

  136. 136.

    Cermet

    Boy, does 538 put Hillary’s chances from 75 – 80% to win and with 353 electoral votes. The swing states just aren’t as close as any previous election. Yes, things will change and the race can and must tighten but she is the hands down favorite no question. It is her’s to lose.

    And Kain still appears to be the most likely VP choice …

  138. 138.

    raven

    @Prescott Cactus: We took a line of credit and the principle actually grows! Up until two years ago only a person over 62 could take one and, when they died, the surviving spouse was SOL and could lose the house. The feds changed that.

  140. 140.

    germy

    RawStory headline:

    Mike Ditka surprised to read that he’ll be at GOP convention with Trump

  141. 141.

    Iowa Old Lady

    Wasn’t Clinton’s interview with the FBI supposed to take place this month? Is it scheduled? I want them to get on with things so one line of attack is at least blunted.

  146. 146.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @p.a.: That’s . . . a bizarre trade. After this coming season, Weber’s cap hit is going to be larger than his actual salary, which is the kind of player you’d think that cash-strapped Nashville would want to keep. Montreal, on the other hand, is the kind of team that would spend above the cap if they could, so you’d think that want to trade for players whose contracts are backloaded, and so have a cap hit lower than what you’re paying them.

    Talent-wise, it seems close to a push.

  147. 147.

    Daulnay

    @germy:

    Here’s another take on that theme, this time at The Atlantic.

    In this one, it’s Trump who’s the table-flipper’s choice, not Bernie. Whichever, the fundamental point is accurate; many people see the moderate Democratic and moderate Republican candidates as elitists who won’t cooperate and are happy to perpetuate an unfair system. That unfairness is fueling the Bernie backers, the far-right no compromise types, and Trump supporters, as well as the Brexit voters.

    Is the unfairness real? You see, here and elsewhere, comments that the people complaining are just dethroned elites (males, whites) now dealing with a fair system. But the reality is that all the economic gains of the last 30 years have been hoovered up by the top 15+%, almost all going to the top 1%. Our system no longer deals almost everyone a share of the bounty, instead it goes almost entirely to the corporate and political elites.

    Some of the people complaining believe that getting dethroned is their problem, which does confuse things. It shouldn’t be a surprise that some of the formerly privileged confuse correlation with causation, and blame their loss of privilege for their current problems. Just because they’re wrong about its source doesn’t make their pain less real.

    Ordinary moderate Democrats and Republicans also come across as elitists who won’t cooperate and are content to perpetuate the unfair system; the comments to ‘suck it up’, the facile dismissal of the concerns and problems, the genuine lack of sympathy. It shows up here in the disdainful comments about Bernie supporters — people who should become allies and would if you centrist Clintonites weren’t being smug idiots.

    This election is yours to lose. Brexit is a canary, pay attention.

  148. 148.

    Cermet

    @Iowa Old Lady: Frankly, who cares? As a right-wing ex-prosecutor said on FOX NEWS – Hillary didn’t do anything criminal with the e-mail stuff – period; he’d never touch this case since even an indictment is impossible.

  150. 150.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Cermet: Chuck Todd even said all their experts said there was nothing criminal there. I just want it off the table.

    Though I suppose, given the example of Benghazi, it will never be off the table.

  153. 153.

    satby

    @germy: I feed all of my rescues Purina Chow (whichever is appropriate for the species). Never recalled, never had tainting scares, seems to agree with all of the animals I’ve had, and lots have lived beyond their expected life spans. Only dry food too, especially for the cats, that limits tooth and gum issues. Wet food is for hiding medicine in.

    I’m not at all a believer in the current trend of blaming the food first when a pet medical condition pops up. I had people solemnly swear that one dog’s skin problem was food allergies. It was mange.

  154. 154.

    Daulnay

    @Calouste:

    I don’t think having children matters in this regard, but indeed every pro-Sanders screed I have seen bandied around was written by a white guy who had been to an Ivy League or thereabouts university.

    This is classic ad hominem. After all, most of the pro-Clinton screeds you see were also written by whites who’ve gone to Ivy League or thereabouts schools.

  155. 155.

    satby

    @germy: the nightly dinner after sundown, to be specific. Eid al Fitr is the big feast that ends the Ramadan month, this year on July 5.

  157. 157.

    negative 1

    @germy: So what’s the problem? That she ate dinner? I have to admit I didn’t even hear about this, so are you sure it’s not an infection localized to red areas?

  159. 159.

    Randy P

    @Elizabelle: Bought it and skimmed it when it was a new thing. I have it at home somewhere with its bright orange cover.

    I was skeptical at the time and time has proven him too pessimistic about the ability of humans to adapt to new inventions. Even us older humans (most of us) were fine transitioning to cell phones, email, microwave ovens, the internet, social media, and the complete revolution in how entertainment of all forms is delivered to us (which, more than anything, makes me frequency remark that “we are living in science fiction times”).

    What’s kind of amusing is to recall the mood of the 1960s “atomic age” / “space age”. We all thought we were ALREADY living like the Jetsons and we were impossibly modern, and our flying cars were just around the corner. Every other ad described its product as “space age fabric” or “atomic age cleaning power”.

    I used to marvel at the thought of people who had seen the introduction of the automobile or the home telephone or the television. But when I write down the list of things which have appeared in my life time and been absorbed seamlessly into our lives, I realize maybe it wasn’t such a revolutionary change in their lives either.

  160. 160.

    negative 1

    @Daulnay: The important thing left out of that article is that most polls had the Brexit vote as ‘too close to call’ the night before. Most polls have the presidential contest as ‘too laughable to bother with’ right now, with Trump trending down.

  161. 161.

    p.a.

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Subban criticized the organization. The team that traded Roy for complaining did the same to Subban. Don’t know the contract implications, both are very talented, but Subban is 4 years younger (and Weber has lots of wear on the tread) and Subban just drives opponents nuts. Habs in effect picked their half-assed coach over PK Subban.
    Time will tell…

  162. 162.

    Betty Cracker

    @Daulnay: Any critique that implicates both parties in exploding wealth inequality is bullshit. In fact, it is the Republican Party that has relentlessly tried to criminalize tax collection and delegitimize the very notion of government. Are the Dems perfect? Nope! But “both sides” is bull-fucking-shit, and anyone who peddles that load of flaming crap deserves disdain.

  163. 163.

    Aleta

    @Emma: What conclusion exactly is their objection? That it was a Muslim ritual? (or do they suspect a satanic initiation rite and they do not want her as a member of their group)?

  166. 166.

    Daulnay

    @Betty Cracker:
    Both sides don’t do it; the Republicans, nearly all of them, and the 3rd Way neo-liberal moderate Democrats do it. Together. That’s where Hilary is vulnerable as a candidate, like it or not.

  167. 167.

    Miss Bianca

    @Daulnay: Yeah, and if Brexit is the canary, the gas that’s threatening to swamp us is *precisely* the sort of “moderates are elitists! bullshit that is going to end up killing off the UK. For everyone gleeful at the prospect of fat cats losing their shirts as the pound plummets, and every Little Englander who “wants my country back!”, there are a lot of ordinary men and women absolutely petrified and distraught. As one of my British friends said, “good luck with fighting Trump!”

  168. 168.

    Betty Cracker

    @Daulnay: How’s the weather in 1992? A bit cooler? If you ever make it back to 2016, can you bring me a Radiohead tour t-shirt? Kthxbai!

  169. 169.

    burnspbesq

    @negative 1:

    You say that first sentence like it’s a bad thing.

    Got no beef with progressives per se. I don’t like crackpot theories that ignore history and economics, I don’t like people who can’t count to 218, and I don’t like people who espouse policy ideas that depend for their success on the sudden appearance of unicorns that piss Pilsner Urquell and shit New York Super Fudge Chunk.

  172. 172.

    negative 1

    @burnspbesq: No, I meant more that she got crossways of Cuomo and Cohorts. He’s a bad person. He may be a democrat, but that doesn’t make him less bad. The party would be better off without him, as at this point people only hear the name and they assume the news is about an ongoing corruption probe.

  173. 173.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elizabelle:

    Saw that book [Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock] all over the place. Did any of you ever read it?

    Oh lord, yes. I probably still have a paperback copy kicking around somewhere. It was assigned reading in one of my university classes (psych or soc, can’t remember), and I vaguely recall writing a review/summary/essay thing on it. A very big deal in the ’70s.

  175. 175.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Randy P:

    Bought it and skimmed it when it was a new thing. I have it at home somewhere with its bright orange cover.

    The thing about the paperback press run of Future Shock is that it was the first big title to have differently-colored covers. It’s pretty commonplace today for books and magazines to have a variety of covers, but in 1970 or thereabouts it was a brand-new thing, and truly shocking to see on the book racks — your orange, but also bright yellow, electric blue, acid green, and neon red.

    Edit: So by shocking the consumer/reader with different colors on the cover, it hauled us into the future. It was a brilliant, brilliant marketing ploy.

  176. 176.

    Emma

    @Aleta: Sorry it took so long. Had a drop-it-and-run emergency. It implied that she was “breaking fast”. In other words, that she’s a Muslim.

  177. 177.

    No One You Know

    Fountain Pen Day is a Thing?!

    I have had a Parker, a Waterman Phileas, two Namiki Vanishing Points, a Cross, and a Chinese pen promised to be “as good as many more expensive pens” (no, it wasn’t).

    I love my Vanishing Points best of all. They’re my daily pens.

  178. 178.

    Paul in KY

    @SFAW: He would be damned lucky to have her as a relative. Also, I guess he could ardavra kedavra a nasty record producer, if needed.

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