Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Not all heroes wear capes.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

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

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

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

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

He really is that stupid.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

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Open Thread

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Sorry for being AWOL. Just a metric ton of stuff going on. Feels like I spend half my life on the phone making arrangements, and now this weekend is homecoming so I am going to have a bunch of middle aged drunks to deal with.

Lemme just say that Maggie the pooch below is right in my wheelhouse for the kind of little dog that punches all my buttons. And I feel like hiding under a couch whenever I go to a big city, too.

Reader Interactions

52Comments

  1. 1.

    Mary G

    House rehab is a major time suck.

    ETA: If you go to thatmexicanthing dot com, you are redirected to Hillary’s website.

  2. 2.

    Mnemosyne

    And I feel like hiding under a couch whenever I go to a big city, too.

    LAO said it took Maggie about an hour to decide that NYC is, in fact, the greatest city in the world (TM).

    Except for the whole “peeing on concrete” thing.

  6. 6.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mary G: I was looking at a site of LA historical landmarks and one entry was this house in San Pedro. I looked at and said to myself “I’ve been in that house”. Read down further in the post and it was owned by the parents of a guy I used to work with.

  7. 7.

    Mike in NC

    Neighbors visiting their daughter in Australia emailed us with concerns about damage from the hurricane. Told them no worries since it is pushing offshore and will probably just leave us with a few inches of rain on Saturday.

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    Just a metric ton of stuff going on.

    Thought it was “metric shit ton.”

    “Metric ton” doesn’t sound very impressive at all.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    I think I’m going to go see “Kubo and the Two Strings” tonight. I love stop-motion animation and I’ve heard great things about it.

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    It’s WV. Wouldn’t “a hogshead of stuff going on” be more culturally appropriate?

    ;)

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    now this weekend is homecoming so I am going to have a bunch of middle aged drunks to deal with.

    You can always half-fill a flask with iced tea/club soda & use it as a prop, if you get tired explaining to the drunks you don’t know why you’re not having fun like a real man.

    And speaking of tiresome, big props to you for coping so well with the Homeowning Adult thing!

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Closing date is 10 days away. Now I have to start packing.

    Tip from someone who’s been there: If you’ve been living in your current abode for more than three years, you may want to rent a dumpster before you start triaging… or at least check the local waste disposal restrictions. (We’re allowed ‘one piece of furniture’ on the curb per weekly pickup, and some companies are pickier than others about how many boxes of old paper you put out, etc.)

  23. 23.

    Mary G

    (Warning: Politico link) We HAVE to get her elected:

    If Donald Trump is elected president and Republicans hold onto Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan is bluntly promising to ram a partisan agenda through Capitol Hill next year, with Obamacare repeal and trillion-dollar tax cuts likely at the top of the list. And Democrats would be utterly defenseless to stop them.

    Typically, party leaders offer at least the pretense of seeking bipartisanship when discussing their policy plans. But Ryan is saying frankly that Republicans would use budget reconciliation — a powerful procedural tool — to bypass Democrats entirely. It’s the same tool Republicans slammed Democrats for using to pass the 2010 health care law over their objections.

    While GOP leaders have made empty threats to use reconciliation to repeal Obamacare in the past, Ryan is making it clear that this time he plans to use it when it counts. And he would likely have support from a Trump White House. Larry Kudlow, an economic adviser to the GOP presidential nominee, said he is also strongly urging Trump to embrace reconciliation in order to pass sweeping tax cuts.

    I’m also pretty sure that if Democratic filibusters become a problem for Republicans, Mitch McConnell will change Senate rules to eliminate them.

    They will turn the whole country into Kansas if we don’t stop them.

  24. 24.

    Anne Laurie

    @redshirt:

    Did you change post times Cole?

    No, I did that. Didn’t realize until too late that I’d bigfooted him, because we hit the publish button simultaneously.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    Fer corn’s sake, MSNBC, the storm is approaching. There’s other things going on. Wall-to-wall storm coverage is premature.

    (And having reporters and their crews standing out in the open in wind and rain is stupid; always has been.)

  27. 27.

    Mart

    You could at least have called it a proper Make America Great Again “short Ton of stuff going on”; versus the commie “Metric Ton of stuff” (or did you mean “long Tonne”?, hippie). We gave the world the finger concerning this in the 70’s, and we ain’t gonna back down now dammit. Look what the metrics did to Canada!!! Or are you such a special old snowflake you think your stuff has 204 more pounds to bear than an ordinary American’s stuff?

    Fun metric story probably from around 1995 – 2000 – Observed giant steel plates being fitted at the bases of giant mill stands from Germany. Asked, what’s up with the plates?, they don’t belong there do they? Answer – Uh, we kinda screwed up the English to metric measurements…

  28. 28.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    Jon Ralston@RalstonReports

    Trump was talking about his Vegas stop, the Hispanics who love him here (um, no), then busted out how they like to be called “Latinos.”

    Trump has left the building. I don’t know what Hillary has in store for the next debate, but maybe just letting Trump be Trump is all she needs to do – just stand back and watch him implode.

  32. 32.

    Anne Laurie

    @redshirt: No, I put up the early-morning threads before I go to bed. FYWP’s scheduling function isn’t working right now, at least on this site, although it has in the past & may yet in the future. (I’ll admit I have “forced” someone else’s post that’s flagged MISSED SCHEDULE on the dashboard on occasion, and I think others may have done the same for mine as well.)

    As far as coordinating with the other front-pagers, you overestimate my (our?) level of organization. I think we all make a good-faith effort not to stomp on each other’s fresh posts, barring breaking news, but accidental dual posts are hardly a matter of great import on this blog.

  33. 33.

    max

    @SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch: Thought it was “metric shit ton.”

    No, it’s a metric fuckton. Or to be most accurate, a metric fucktonne.

    “Metric ton” doesn’t sound very impressive at all.

    Well, it’s a Metric tonne, because it was 1000 kilos or 2200 pound in the UK back in the day (the 70’s) which is where I picked it before I turned it into a ‘Metric fuckton’.

    max
    [‘He said.’]

  34. 34.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mart:

    Didn’t NASA lose a Mars rover that way? One team was using metric, the other team was using Imperial, and next thing you know, your expensive rover is a crater on the surface of Mars.

  36. 36.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Is this the thread for unserious political nonsense?

    Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s daughter says she’s backing Hillary Clinton despite her father’s fascination with Donald Trump.
    “I can confirm that I do support Hillary Clinton for President,” Caroline Giuliani told the Daily News. “Enthusiastically.”

  39. 39.

    Mart

    @Mnemosyne: Yes NASA lost a Mars probe around the time of the mills mishap. Recall it cost $100M or so and was lost in space. Reason was Imperial / metric error. I am sure it was the Metrics fault, Imperial is way simpler. Who gets this fancy-pants Euro base 10 stuff anyway?

    Computers are way better now so do not think it is an issue. If Mathew has it way, we will not have to worry about another NASA mishap. We will not be able to re-build the space center ’cause our nation is broke, ’cause Trump won’t pay his damn taxes.

  40. 40.

    Mart

    Famous English/Metric conversion error maths problems on the internet: href=”http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/6Page53.pdf”>

    Story 3: On 23 July 1983, Air Canada Flight 143 ran completely out of fuel about halfway through its flight from Montreal to Edmonton. Fuel loading was miscalculated through misunderstanding of the recently adopted metric system. For the trip, the pilot calculated a fuel requirement of 22,300 kilograms. There were 7,682 liters already in the tanks.

    Problem 3 – If a liter of jet fuel has a mass of 0.803 kilograms, how much fuel needed to be added for the trip?

    Answers provided at the site!

  42. 42.

    Felonius Monk

    @efgoldman:

    [Waste of perfectly good pixels.]

    But this is a pixel wasting thread, that’s why it is here. The only good pixel is a used pixel. After all, who wants “blue screen”?

  50. 50.

    Jay Noble

    No one has mentioned one of the worst/best metric/English f-ups – The Hubble Space Telescope!
    Worst – the mix up in measurements made it nearsighted (IIRC)
    Best – Led to one of the best optometrist house calls in history!

  51. 51.

    Mart

    Forgot all about that. Five days of amazing walks in space and the space shuttle arm fixes. Saved a fuckton of Congressional funding for NASA.

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