Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

I really should read my own blog.

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

No one could have predicted…

Infrastructure week. at last.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

This really is a full service blog.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You are here: Home / Music / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Eid Mubarak!

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Eid Mubarak!

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Per al Jazeera, Eid al-Fitr, the celebration at the end of Ramadan, starts today (started last night at sunset) in the US, UK, Canada, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

According to the British Independent:

… On the first morning of the celebration, many gather in local mosques or open-air locations for special prayers called Salat al-Eid, and have breakfast.

Muslims put on their finest clothes for what will be their first daylight meal in a month. Some will exchange gifts, greeting cards and prepare special foods. Eid al-Fitr is to celebrate “the happiness which man feels after successfully completing an important task,” according to Al-Islam.

Gatherings will take place to mark the festival across the UK, including an event hosted by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan in Trafalgar Square on 9 July. Highlights include prayers, a food festival, and Arabic arts.

Last year, a record-breaking 60,000 Muslims turned up in a Birmingham park to celebrate the end of Ramadan…

Speaking of London’s Mayor, here’s a mid-May anecdote from The Economist:

EVENTUALLY, every senior politician in Britain is invited to Buckingham Palace to join the Privy Council, the body that notionally advises the queen. In 2009 Sadiq Khan, then transport minister, was asked on which version of the Bible he wanted to swear his oath. He replied that, as a Muslim, he would like to use a Koran. Buckingham Palace had none, so he brought his own. Afterwards, when the palace tried to return it, he asked: “Can I leave it here for the next person?”

On May 5th Londoners voted to make Mr Khan their mayor. Except for the direct vote for the Portuguese and French presidents, he thus holds the biggest personal mandate in Europe. His landslide over the Conservatives (he took 57% of the vote to 43% for Zac Goldsmith, his posh Tory rival) was a rebuke to hardliners of all sorts. At a stroke it became harder for Islamic State’s recruiters to tour public housing estates in Europe and convince young Muslims from immigrant backgrounds that they have no place in the liberal West. The de facto capital of that liberal West had just entrusted its future to a mosque-going, gay-marriage-supporting, proudly Muslim family man with precisely such a hinterland…

The Brexit vote was a speedbump, not a wall.

Apart from celebrating, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

115Comments

  13. 13.

    Amir Khalid

    @rikyrah:
    Just visits with family. The food is always excellent if you’re into Javanese/Singaporean Malay cuisine; culinary standards in my family are quite high.

  14. 14.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @raven:
    the etymological of that word is that it combines two words and more or less mean worn out from being a blowhard. So I am sure it is appropriate.

  17. 17.

    bemused

    Steve Rattner: Comey is unimpeachable. Remember two Bush staffers going to Ashcroft’s hospital bed while he was very ill and medicated?
    Mika: That wasn’t the only thing Comey said about Hillary.
    Joe: Comey indicted a guy for doing much less.

  21. 21.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Amir Khalid:
    We have a halal restaurant near us and the feast they put on every year smells amazing. I’m unconvinced it is worth the previous month ;) but it is something else. Enjoy!

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @bemused:

    Comey indicted a guy for doing much less

    If Comey is going about indicting people, then that’s the real scandal.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Trump Says AG Lynch Accepted Bribe From Hilary Clinton

    What he’s really upset about is the fact that she turned down his bribe to indict Hillary.

  24. 24.

    Culture of Truth

    “many gather in local mosques or open-air locations for special prayers called Salat al-Eid, and have breakfast.”

    If it were me, I’d be makin’ waffles! and pancakes.
    and bacon and eggs. and a fruit bowl. and then more waffles!

  29. 29.

    Culture of Truth

    a “privy” is a toilet or outhouse. So the “Privy Council” is….um…

  33. 33.

    Culture of Truth

    Seriously although peeps are freaking out over Trump, who’s won nothing that matters the biggest country on earth has twice elected progressive Barack Hussein Obama, and London has a liberal Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan. Things aren’t all terrible.

  34. 34.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid: This is America. You can libel any one you want and get away with it. Unless they are rich. Then you’d better get ready for the SLAPP lawsuits.

  35. 35.

    raven

    Ari Melber is laying out the case for what Comey did and did not do. And Joe brushes it off.

  43. 43.

    Amir Khalid

    @Culture of Truth:
    “Privy” is used here in its older sense of having access, e.g. as in being “privy” to certain information. Although I understand that in Britain a few centuries ago, being the King’s toilet attendant was indeed a stepping stone to a career in the corridors of power.

  45. 45.

    bystander

    @Baud: Aren’t we forgetting our own Muslim-in-chief?

    Moanin’ Joe even went so far as to say that Bill met with Lynch to dangle a job in front of her. Pure fabrication with no basis in any fact.

  46. 46.

    MrSnrub

    I have a guy at work who insists that Hillary deleted public record documents like her schedule. I’ve never heard this in any of the coverage over the “scandal”. Is this actually a thing (however minor), or just a product of the fox news bubble?

  50. 50.

    MrSnrub

    @Culture of Truth: My wife makes turkey bacon on occasion. The kind she gets is rilly good, but should never be confused with bacon. I’m not even sure if bacon should be part of the name.

  51. 51.

    MattF

    @Amir Khalid: It’s nearly impossible to libel a public figure. Trump could argue that ‘bribe’ in this case means offering Lynch a job in the new administration.

  53. 53.

    satby

    Big storms rolling in here for the next several hours. I’m awaiting visitors from Amsterdam who intend to camp in my back yard today or tomorrow. I think I need to make room on the covered deck for them to pitch the tent there instead.

  55. 55.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MrSnrub:

    Is this actually a thing (however minor), or just a product of the fox news bubble?

    It is actually a thing because FOX insists it is.

    @MattF: That is exactly what he is saying. Because you know, as a smart black woman she could never get a job on her own merits.

  56. 56.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud: It’s actually two shots, the sunset was shot 3 days before about 400 years west of the other shot.

  57. 57.

    Aimai

    @MrSnrub: no its a new non scandal. Paper copies of her schedule were disposed of properly while electrinic copies were preserved. Same schedule. Different formats. Treated appropriately.

  58. 58.

    MomSense

    Now they are comparing this to Petreaus. Oh brother. As if the two situations are exactly the same. No mention of the outdated technology and attempts by Clinton and her staff to get a government issued mobile device.

    Now the idea that Lynch might just continue to serve as Attorney General is called “dangling a job”. I can’t even with these fuckers. They are goose stepping around the fact that the GOP presumptive nominee has ties to neo nazis and has actually called for rounding people up.

  59. 59.

    wenchacha

    @MrSnrub: Sounds like the paper copy of her daily schedules were burned. Huma Abedin testified to putting some of those papers in the ‘burn bag.” Paper copies of electronic files, so I don’t know what the problem is with that.

  61. 61.

    MomSense

    Now they think Comey coordinated with Obama so POTUS could hold the event with Clinton. If I recall correctly, the rally was postponed because it was too close to Orlando.

  69. 69.

    rikyrah

    @MrSnrub:
    I gave turkey bacon a chance.
    Big mistake.
    Big mistake. ???
    You need to just accept that you can’t eat bacon, if the alternative is
    “You can have turkey bacon. “

  72. 72.

    rikyrah

    @MomSense:
    Patreus?
    You mean Hillary has a Boo on the side that she shared classified material with?
    How come nobody told me?
    I would actually be interested in that.

  80. 80.

    MomSense

    Oh dear. I just saw “America’s Mayor” waiting in the wings for his entry.

  81. 81.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Bottom line, the Republicans got nuthin’ on Hillary and it’s driving them batshit crazy. And just wait until the Democrats Murderer’s Row of Warren, Biden, the future First Gentleman, and President Obama start whomping on Mr. Trump’s ass.

  85. 85.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: You mean the guy who endorsed Bernard Kerik as Director of Homeland Security? That guy?

    Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush appointed Kerik as the interior minister of the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority. In 2004, Bush nominated Kerik to be the head of the Department of Homeland Security. However, Kerik soon withdrew his candidacy, explaining that he had employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny. His withdrawal resulted in state and federal investigations as a result of which in 2006 Kerik pleaded guilty in Bronx Supreme Court to two unrelated ethics violations (unclassified misdemeanors) and was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines. Kerik then pleaded guilty in 2009 in the Southern District of New York to 8 federal charges, including tax fraud and false statements, and on February 18, 2010, was sentenced to four years in federal prison.[1]

    from Kerik’s wiki page

  92. 92.

    Immanentize

    @Joel: but Hillary’s emails are so much more important that lying nations into disastrous wars!!

  93. 93.

    MomSense

    Fortunately I skipped Mayor noun-verb-911. Since she is without all her boys, my pup has taken to trying to prevent me from going to work by stealing my clothes one piece at a time.

  94. 94.

    satby

    @rikyrah: Well, it’s out of the rain! I don’t know them, I signed up with “Camp in my garden”, which is like an air-bnb for campers.

  95. 95.

    Baud

    @satby:

    I signed up with “Camp in my garden”, which is like an air-bnb for campers.

    You are such a good soul. That is not how I would have interpreted the name of that service.

  96. 96.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: Looks interesting. I’ve been thinking about building a roofed platform out in my woods for friends and family to use when they stay. Had thought I might make a few $s with it too.

  97. 97.

    satby

    @Baud: But I love how your mind works!
    @OzarkHillbilly: I’ve only had 5 contacts in 2 years, but then I’m only 15 miles away from the campgrounds at the state parks anyway. Of those 5 two changed plans, and two I didn’t respond to fast enough because they were last minute requests; so these will be the only people staying out of the deal before my little rescue farmette moves to a more city-like area.

    Edited to add: they need sites where you are Ozark! And if you look on there, you can see pictures of my late soon to be lamented house before tree.

  100. 100.

    rikyrah

    Michelle Obama is Spreading Ripples of Hope
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    July 5, 2016 4:11 PM

    Perhaps some of you remember that on Michelle Obama’s first trip abroad in 2009 she visited the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school in England. It produced a pretty emotional moment that is partially captured in this video.
    ………………………………………….

    I say all of that because today there is some interesting news that surfaced about the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson school.

    Professor Simon Burgess, from Bristol University, has now studied the impact of her association with the schools on the girls’ exam results.

    He analyzed the GCSE scores – taken when students are 16 years-old – from over the past decade, compared to London state secondary schools. He found a slight rise in scores from 2009 to 2010, while the 2012 score was substantially above 2011.

    Professor Burgess said: “Those results focus on the overall effect, but since Michelle Obama was encouraging very high performance and aspirations it is important to look specifically at high performance too.”

    He found a “very striking” rise in the number of top grades relative to the rest of London in 2012. “If this is really a result of Michelle Obama’s interventions, then it is a big effect,” he said.

    “In general terms: ‘I did this; you could too’, can be a very powerful message if delivered by the ‘right’ person. Michelle Obama was that person, and her words had an effect – you only need to watch the news videos to see that the pupils were genuinely inspired.”

    I believe that it was Michelle Obama’s experience with the students at this school that led her to initiate the Let Girls Learn project. Her work on this will continue long after her husband’s term as president is over, so we can expect these kinds of results to multiply.

    That might seem like a small item in the scheme of things. But I disagree, because I remember something Robert Kennedy said 50 years ago:

    Each time a (wo)man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, s/he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

  101. 101.

    Cat48

    Good morning, maybe. I wish I knew how many,more fits the media was going to throw over emails & when they were scheduled so I could avoid all the Lies. Frankly, it’s time for,Joe,to take his butt to Fox so he can die on air of a stroke.

    Petraeus wishes his case were like Hillary’s. There would be no fit throwing if it were. I know all these fits & lies are done to make sure Hillary is never president. I hope it doesn’t work. The media cannot lead the people of color around by the nose the way they do the typical non-liberal white person. I frankly just have to check everything bc the NYT & WashPost have hired folks from Politico in their politics section.

    I’m just tired of the screaming press threatening Hillz.

  102. 102.

    rikyrah

    Trump Mishandles Clinton Email Controversy
    by BooMan
    Tue Jul 5th, 2016 at 01:34:33 PM EST

    …………………………..

    There’s been a lot of hype about these damn emails, but Clinton deserves some criticism. She did not get a clean bill of health here, and the subject will be a legitimate issue during the campaign. That doesn’t mean that Donald Trump has handled the controversy with any deftness. By insisting repeatedly that the investigation was rigged, he undermined the case he should be making now, which is that the FBI is credible and should be taken seriously. But, instead, he’s still saying that the investigation was rigged.

    That’s basically taking a weak, contentious and conspiratorial case in place of one that is backed up by the investigators. It’s particularly stupid because, now that we know that no charges will be filed, this is an entirely political controversy. And the object, for Trump, should be to get the maximum possible political mileage out of it. He could be making the case that Clinton shouldn’t be trusted to handle the nation’s national security because she did a poor job of safeguarding its secrets when she served in the Obama administration, but he’s instead saying that the FBI engaged in a coverup.

    Consider that James Comey was confirmed by the Senate on July 29, 2013 as the director of the FBI for a term of ten years. If Donald Trump becomes president and serves for two full terms, his presidency will end on January 20th, 2025. In other words, Comey would be the FBI Director for all but the final 18 months of a Trump presidency. And, yet, Trump’s reaction to Comey’s statement today is to question his integrity and independence and to run down the organization that Comey heads.

    It’s not hard to see that this isn’t the beginning of a good working relationship, and at least some voters will notice this and be concerned about it.

    Trump will rile up some people who were already convinced that Clinton is a she-devil, but he won’t get much else out of this if he continues to shift the focus off of where it can help him make a case against his opponent.

    The truth is, she should not have been indicted and most people will agree that the correct decision was made. So, focusing on the decision is actually doing her a giant favor.

  103. 103.

    Loviatar

    As said up thread this really deserves a Front page post.

    Corbyn says parliament should act against Blair after inquiry says case for Iraq war exaggerated

    Gordon Gentle was 19 when he was killed

    Pauline Graham, Gordon Gentle’s grandmother and Rose Gentle’s mother, said: “Now we know where we stand and what we can do. Tony Blair should betaken to court for trial for murder. He can’t get away with this any more.”

    Kevin Thompson, was killed in 2007

    Mark Thompson, father of Kevin Thompson, who was killed in 2007, said he also blamed Blair. “He’s destroyed families. We have lost grandchildren. We have lost a daughter-in-law. He’s got everything. He should be stripped of everything he has for what he’s done. It was an illegal war. My son died in vain. He died for no reason.”

  106. 106.

    Elizabelle

    @Cat48: I know. Just checked in on the shitshow that is the NY Times homepage. Excoriating Hillary, but tingle time over Comey. He “speaks truth to power.”. I bet they wish he was the GOP frontrunner.

    I wish all these mean girls and boys in the Village would get replaced by government reporters who have covered city hall and state politics and corruption, and can recognize its actual presence. Why aren’t we hearing about the underfunded, antiquated IT systems? That should be a rallying cry. Government on the cheap can end up noticeably less effective and cost efficient.

  107. 107.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Amir Khalid: Let me be the most recent among many in this thread to wish you Eid Mubarak. Does you family take western guests for the feasts? Asking for a friend.

  108. 108.

    rikyrah

    @Cat48:

    I know all these fits & lies are done to make sure Hillary is never president. I hope it doesn’t work. The media cannot lead the people of color around by the nose the way they do the typical non-liberal white person.

    Which is why they (the MSM) can’t stand us.

  109. 109.

    Technocrat

    @rikyrah:

    It’s nice to see a reasonable take from Booman, but still disappointing to see him fall into the “both sides have a point” trap. As far as I can tell, the “criticism” Clinton deserves is for forgetting that the rules are different for her.

  110. 110.

    The Lodger

    @Technocrat: I’m still snorting over the concept that Trump cares what kind of working relationship he has with a potential underling.

  111. 111.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid:

    You can actually get bacon made with beef, or even turkey. It isn’t exactly the same, of course, but since it is cured the same way it can be pretty close.

    Here we make a sandwich in the summertime, when fresh from the garden tomatoes are ripe everywhere, the B-L-T; Bacon, lettuce and tomato, usually with mayo on good plain bread.

    I could live for several weeks on just that, with ice cold milk. Or iced tea, if that’s what’s being served. And potato salad, if that’s around too.

  112. 112.

    Shana

    @J R in WV: Since we’re kosher we use beef fry. There are several companies that make it but hubby’s favorite lately is one called Facon. I personally like bacon or nothing so I don’t eat it, but he needs something bacony or sausagey for his weekend breakfasts.

    Moving to kosher from kosher-style over the last few years has been “interesting.”

  113. 113.

    Uncle Cosmo

    In 15 years the GOP has evolved (8^O) from noun, verb, 9/11 to noun, verb, Chapter 11. Darwin wept.

  114. 114.

    PurpleGirl

    Amir: May you and your family enjoy your feast.

    About a half hour ago I was re-entering my building and there were several women coming in and couldn’t the apartment number they were looking for on the bell system. I let them in. They were dressed in silk skirts and sari wraps. So as we walked down the hallway to the elevators, I wished them a good feast. One of the women acknowledged it. Their clothes were beautiful and very sumptuous.

  115. 115.

    PurpleGirl

    @Elizabelle:

    Why aren’t we hearing about the underfunded, antiquated IT systems? That should be a rallying cry. Government on the cheap can end up noticeably less effective and cost efficient.

    That’s it. That’s the only excuse you liberals ever use. Buy new and up to date computers and systems. Just throw money at the problem. Only solution ever mentioned… throw money at everything. /// snark

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