Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Democrats are back in array!

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

You cannot shame the shameless.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

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

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

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

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

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

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Not Everyone’s From Boston, John*

Not Everyone’s From Boston, John*

by | 46 Comments

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I was listening to NPR and they said that Rob Wasserman had died. I had no idea who he was, but a song caught my ear, so I went to Youtube and found this, Bob Weir’s Ratdog band. I liked it and it looked like we could use an open thread.

I’m off to spruce up the garden at the new house. The roses were looking ragged when I was watering a few days ago.

*Watching 1776 the other day, I was struck by how much some things haven’t changed in the fight for Democracy.

Reader Interactions

46Comments

  3. 3.

    lollipopguild

    1776 is great musical and a very good history lesson. Nixon was so nuts he thought that the song “Cool Conservative Men” was an attack on him. Nixon and Trump everything is always about them.

  5. 5.

    Viva BrisVegas

    Counting in the Oz election still ongoing.

    The Liberal (conservative) government looks like it has lost a lot of seats, but may just scrape in with a tiny majority.

    Labor has come back from a landslide loss in 2010, but not enough to gain government.

    Interest now in whether PM Malcolm Turnbull, the relatively liberal leader of the not so liberal Liberal Party, can hold off a revolt by his far right wing over the poor result.

  6. 6.

    MomSense

    What about Medfuh???

    I was asked to be on the garden tour this year. Does this mean that if I agree my garden has to be all weeded and perfect?

    I planted a cottage garden which means there is so much chaotic, flowery goodness the weeds are supposed to be overlooked.

  9. 9.

    satby

    Love Bob Weir, loved the Dead, liking this clip. But a little freaked out how much he looks (now) like a guy I dated 20 years ago.

  12. 12.

    Gelfling545

    @MomSense: both my daughter and I have been in our respective local garden walks for years. Perfection is not necessary. Fullness, variety and interesting features generally are valued. Since our city garden walk has been taken over by the high dollar set whose main connection to the garden is writing the check to the landscaper, I’m toying with the idea of an alternative ” homemade” garden walk.

  15. 15.

    Felonius Monk

    @satby:

    So both Baud and AL are MIA this morning. Hmmmm….

    Baud – Yes. AL did make an appearance.

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @dr. bloor:

    Well, everyone that matters is.

    Welcome to good old Boston,
    Home of the bean and the cod,
    Where the the Lowells speak only to Cabots
    And the Cabots speak only to God.

  19. 19.

    rikyrah

    Obama After Dark: The Precious Hours Alone
    By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
    JULY 2, 2016

    WASHINGTON — “Are you up?”

    The emails arrive late, often after 1 a.m., tapped out on a secure BlackBerry from an email address known only to a few. The weary recipients know that once again, the boss has not yet gone to bed.

    The late-night interruptions from President Obama might be sharply worded questions about memos he has read. Sometimes they are taunts because the recipient’s sports team just lost.

    Last month it was a 12:30 a.m. email to Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, and Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, telling them he had finished reworking a speechwriter’s draft of presidential remarks for later that morning. Mr. Obama had spent three hours scrawling in longhand on a yellow legal pad an angry condemnation of Donald J. Trump’s response to the attack in Orlando, Fla., and told his aides they could pick up his rewrite at the White House usher’s office when they came in for work.

    Mr. Obama calls himself a “night guy,” and as president, he has come to consider the long, solitary hours after dark as essential as his time in the Oval Office. Almost every night that he is in the White House, Mr. Obama has dinner at 6:30 with his wife and daughters and then withdraws to the Treaty Room, his private office down the hall from his bedroom on the second floor of the White House residence.

    There, his closest aides say, he spends four or five hours largely by himself.

    He works on speeches. He reads the stack of briefing papers delivered at 8 p.m. by the National Security Council staff secretary. He reads 10 letters from Americans chosen each day by his staff. “How can we allow private citizens to buy automatic weapons? They are weapons of war,” Liz O’Connor, a Connecticut middle school teacher, wrote in a letter Mr. Obama read on the night of June 13.

  21. 21.

    Bex

    Could Alain look into that miserable veggie drizzle ad? It’s making the site unreadable for me. Thanks.

  22. 22.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: Your cottage garden sounds delightful. Photos for a garden chat, please!

    Around here, it’s super stressful if you are on the garden walk. Everything looks perfect, no weeds in sight. If they asked me, I would say “no”. Gardening is supposed to be fun, not stressful. My neighbors across the street were on it last year, and they worked like dogs and were stressed with preparations starting in April. It would be wonderful to be asked, but if they asked me if my garden could be on the garden walk, I would say no. I’d take the honor of being asked, and skip the stress. :-)

    But maybe it’s not like that in Maine?

  23. 23.

    rikyrah

    uh huh
    uh huh

    Inside the Six Weeks Donald Trump Was a Nonstop ‘Birther
    By ASHLEY PARKER and STEVE EDER
    JULY 2, 2016
    Joseph Farah, a 61-year-old author, had long labored on the fringes of political life, publishing a six-part series claiming that soybeans caused homosexuality and fretting that “cultural Marxists” were plotting to destroy the country.

    But in early 2011, he received the first of several calls from a Manhattan real estate developer who wanted to take one of his theories mainstream.

    That developer, Donald J. Trump, told Mr. Farah that he shared his suspicion that President Obama might have been born outside the United States and that he was looking for a way to prove it.

    “What can we do to get to the bottom of this?” Mr. Trump asked him. “What can we do to turn the tide?”

    Mr. Farah recalled that Mr. Trump even proposed dispatching private investigators to Hawaii, Mr. Obama’s birthplace, to resolve the debate.

  24. 24.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @rikyrah: great short read. Thanks

    Teri Bridget Oklahoma City 4 minutes ago

    Best president in my lifetime. I appreciate the thoughtfulness and dignity he has brought to the office. I will miss him and imagine the country will miss him when he is gone. I anticipate he will go on to do great things. Thank you Mr President.

  29. 29.

    reality-based (the original, not the troll)

    well, many gardens contain spiders – feeble segue, I know – so

    hey? Anybody ever had a brown recluse spider bite? at least, that’s what we think it is.

    I was cutting Rhubarb Wed afternoon, thought I had a mosquito bite. Looked at my hand two hours later, my left index finger and down my hand is amazingly bright neon black and blue – doc says, hm, those look like puncture marks, we’ll have to wait & see what happens. Other than mild nausea for a couple of days, nothing systemic happened – but it’s doing the classic red mark/white circle/bruisey purple exterior thing.

    so far – been soaking hand in strong warm epsom salt solution, putting neosporin and a bandage on it – last night put baking soda paste and a bandage on it over night – evidently, antibiotics don’t really do much good, so not beating up the doc to give me some –

    Dr. Google says, bentonite clay and colloidal silver poultices – or slices of garlic – ‘also plantain leaf, which i can go find in the yard – (have to drive 60 miles to get clay)

    anyway – anybody ever had a brown recluse bite? what did you use? this is my left index finger here – I need this!

  30. 30.

    eclare

    Have no idea, I would call my nearest zoo and ask them…actually I would call any zoo that has spiders. Wow, good luck. Sounds like you are doing the right things, but I would get a second opinion.

    ETA: what debbie said, you don’t want to be known as “stump”

  32. 32.

    Felonius Monk

    We are in the midst of 3 days of Phish just a mile up the road. Have to plan a detour around it so we can get to where we need to be.

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    @reality-based (the original, not the troll)

    Several days later may be too late for poultices to do their best, but won’t hurt to try.

    Old standby for bee and wasp stings is to moisten some tobacco with saliva and apply that. Can’t say yea or nay to efficacy when it comes to spiders, however have had success with centipede bites. Change the tobacco poultice at frequent intervals, if needed. Non-smokers can keep a pack of ciggies (non-menthol) or small cigars (the filtered ones that look like cigarettes are very inexpensive – again, go with a non-flavored variety) in an airtight plastic bag in the freezer to have tobacco on hand for just such uses.

    Might try some cortisone cream with aloe as well.

  34. 34.

    reality-based (the original, not the troll)

    @debbie:

    well, i went to the only doctor in our one-horse town -(he’d also be the ER doc! ) he’s usually pretty good – then i did the research, there’s not a lot they usually do – prophylactic antibiotics don’t work, cutting at the thing before it breaks open and tries to heal actually makes it worse – if it won’t heal, THEN they start cutting, trying to get a clean margin – – Australian docs (where they know from venemous spider bites! ) say the bentonite clay seems to work better than anything – so here’s hoping!

  36. 36.

    Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter

    @kindness: I’ve enjoyed what Otiel Burbridge and John Meyer (a self-described “recovered ego addict”) have brought to the group. And Bob seems happy & healthy, which was not so much the case a couple of years ago… Keep searching for that sound, everyone!

  39. 39.

    aimai

    @rikyrah: thank you for posting this rikyrah. I read it out loud to Mr. Aimai and the 17 year old. We all practically burst into tears at the thought that he is leaving. Its almost unimaginable to me what he has accomplished, and the grace and fortitude he has shown while doing it. But even more energizing and enraging is the thought of what he could have accomplished with a Democratic Senate and House and no right flank blocking his every move.

  40. 40.

    kindness

    @Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter: I wasn’t sure what to expect from John Mayer but he’s exceeded every thing I had. He does Jerry’s stuff without trying to be Jerry but still makes the songs kick ass. Real good gestalt between ’em all. I wasn’t worried about Otiel at all because of his Allman Bros legacy. The streaming will be on The Dead’s Sirrus Channel and I think a couple others. Me, I’ll listen if I’m around. Otherwise I have tickets for the N. California shows.

  42. 42.

    Robin G.

    Side note: one of my favorite moments in Hamilton is the hat-tip to 1776: “Sit down, John– you fat motherfvcker!”

  44. 44.

    Mnemosyne

    We will be watching “1776” on Monday, because we always watch “1776” on the 4th of July. Having to do things that aren’t your favorite thing to do but don’t actively dislike is one of the perils of being married, but it could be so much worse than “1776,” especially with the new director’s cut.

    The film is directed by the Broadway director, who came very close to recasting the part of Benjamin Franklin because Howard da Silva was such a raging asshole during the Broadway run. But da Silva apologized to the director and basically begged to be allowed to do the movie version so his grandkids could see it. According to the director, da Silva was an angel on the movie set, or at least no crankier than normal.

    (It turned out later that da Silva had been promised a chance to direct the Broadway version that the producer later reneged on, so that was why he was such an ass to the final director. They worked it out.)

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Also too, The Devils’ Disciple on the 4th at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. It’s clear while watching that Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and particularly Burt Lancaster were having such a good time playing their roles that it’s infectious.

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