Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

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

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

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Republicans in disarray!

This blog will pay for itself.

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

Let’s finish the job.

He really is that stupid.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

White supremacy is terrorism.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

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

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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

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

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Friday Night Open Thread- MOAR STEVE

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127Comments

  3. 3.

    ArchTeryx

    Cats are completely irresistibly drawn to boxes. The amateur ethologist in me says it’s the instinct to den; when surrounded by walls, it makes for easier defense, so they can kick back and relax. Instinctively, they know if anything comes at them it will have to be from the front, which is full of pointy things, rather then the vulnerable back or sides.

    I’ve noticed my ginger tabby derp cat quit running to boxes in my room when he got so trusting he didn’t think he needed a defensible position any more. At that point, he just gravitated to the softest blankets in the room. ^.^

  5. 5.

    RedDirtGirl

    Reposted from below:
    New York City area Balloon Juicers: in observance of my birthday week I’m throwing myself a surprise party!
    It’s at Sunny’s Bar in Redhook (link below). The weekly bluegrass jam starts at 9pm and it’s beautiful space. So…
    You are invited to my
    Surprise*
    Potluck**
    52nd Birthday
    Party
    this Saturday,
    the 24th
    at sunnysredhook.com.

    * I’ll be there for the weekly bluegrass jam that starts at 9pm. If you are in the tri-state area/general vicinity, please come by!

    ** bring a SMALL, shareable treat.

    Now don’t spoil the surprise by RSVPing!

  6. 6.

    Shana

    @JPL: You are in for hours of joy. Listening to Marshall Crenshaw for the first time, what a lovely start to a weekend.

  9. 9.

    Kathleen

    My brother the cat owner posted this article about a firm which hires cats
    to help workers deal with stress:

    https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/reduce-work-stress-firm-hires-office-cats/#.WS2OIaNJ4nM.facebook

    This was my brother’s Facebook comment:

    Does anyone know why Fluffy isn’t on the call? I sent her an invite. We really need her input if we’re going to move forward on this issue. She needs this flow down and and I don’t see her dialed in on the Webex. The paradigm is not effective without her buy-in.
    I guess we’re going to have reschedule this meeting for a time when the sun isn’t shining on the windowsills on her side of the office. Maybe then we can be more pro-active and vertical. We’ll reposture ourselves at a later time.

  11. 11.

    MomSense

    I ❤️ Steve.

    I’m taking a mental health night and avoiding the political mess. If anyone wants to see something truly lovely, episode 4 of World of Dance has a beautiful performance by a modern dance couple Keone and Mari. Hard to describe them except to say that they tell a story through dance and radiate beauty and sweetness. I think these dance competitions tend to be too focused on tricks for my taste, but these two are artists.

    It’s near the end of the episode if you want to skip to it but the rest of the show is fun to watch, too.

  14. 14.

    Morzer

    A word of advice to optimists about he future: don’t think that you can get rid of Trump and just go back to normal:

    http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2017/06/james_mcgill_buchanan_s_terrifying_vision_of_society_is_the_intellectual.html

    The reality is that they are gerrymandering with a vengeance, to a degree we’ve never seen before in our history; they’re practicing voter suppression in a way we’ve not seen since Reconstruction; they are smashing up labor unions under fake pretenses, not telling people that they actually do want to destroy workers’ ability to organize collectively … I could go on and on.
    …
    We are at a crucial moment in our history, and we will not get another chance, by this cause’s own telling. They say again and again that this is going to be permanent, and they’re very close to victory. So I think we need to be really clear-eyed about understanding this and reaching out to one another without panic.
    The most important thing I want readers to take from this book is an understanding that the Koch network and all of these people are doing what they’re doing because they understand that their ideas make them a permanent minority. They cannot win if they are honest about what they’re doing. That’s why they’re doing things in the deceitful and frightening ways that they are.

  19. 19.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Morzer:

    don’t think that you can get rid of Trump and just go back to normal:

    Who the fuck thinks that?

  20. 20.

    d58826

    @ArchTeryx:

    I’ve noticed my ginger tabby derp cat quit running to boxes in my room when he got so trusting he didn’t think he needed a defensible position any more. At that point, he just gravitated to the softest blankets in the room. ^.^

    Hmmm that may not be progress. At least you weren’t going to try and share the box.

  22. 22.

    Jeffro

    @Morzer:Re: when Randians try to keep people of color and young people from voting

    We make a mistake when we think these are just reactionary prejudices, and we need to see them as shrewd calculations to keep people who would oppose this vision away from the polls.

    Chilling.

    Also just a note that the Koch-funded centers and what not at Mason are pretty openly detested by the entire rest of Mason.

  23. 23.

    Morzer

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    The Democratic party seems to be skipping merrily down that path. They have no credible platform beyond not being Trump and no shred of a plan that might win back the Senate any time soon.

    You’d think they’d learned something from their parade of losses, but apparently not.

  25. 25.

    Jeffro

    More from Yates:

    Sessions’s new directive essentially reverses that progress, limiting prosecutors’ ability to use their judgment to ensure the punishment fits the crime.

    That’s a problem for several reasons. First, it’s fiscally irresponsible and undermines public safety. Since 1980, the U.S. prison population has exploded from 500,000 to more than 2.2 million, resulting in the highest incarceration rate in the world and costing more than $80 billion a year. The federal prison population has grown 700 percent, with the Federal Bureau of Prisons budget now accounting for more than 25 percent of the entire Justice Department budget. That has serious public safety consequences: Every dollar spent imprisoning a low-level nonviolent drug offender for longer than necessary is a dollar we don’t have to investigate and prosecute serious threats, from child predators to terrorists. It’s a dollar we don’t have to support state and local law enforcement for cops on the street, who are the first lines of defense against violent crime. And it’s a dollar we don’t have for crime prevention or recidivism reduction within our prison system, essential components of building safe communities.

    But just as significant are the human costs. More than 2 million children are growing up with a parent behind bars, including 1 in 9 African American children. Huge numbers of Americans are being housed in prisons far from their home communities, creating precisely the sort of community instability where violent crime takes root. Indiscriminate use of mandatory minimum sentencing has caused many Americans to lose faith in the criminal-justice system, undermining the type of police-community relationships that are so crucial to making our streets safer.

  26. 26.

    Morzer

    @Jeffro:

    Cue Trump screeching that she was an Obama loyalist and he cunningly deployed the travel ban to smoke her out etc etc.

  29. 29.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Morzer: @Omnes Omnibus: As I’ve said in more briefings, operational planning teams, working groups, war games, and meetings than I can count, a society never get to reset back to normal before whatever happened happened. Rather a new normal will eventually emerge. Usually this is in the context of talking about Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan or the Palestinians.

    Even when we emerge from what is going on now we will not be returning to how things were on the morning of election day 2016. Rather we will move to a new normal. Whatever that normal will be.

  30. 30.

    Jeffro

    And while we’re at it, a long-time Foreign Service staffer notes why he’s leaving after 27 years:

    Why I Resigned From the U.S. Foreign Service

    I worry about the denigration of expertise at a time when a complex world demands it more than ever. The scientific consensus on climate change is rock-solid, and yet, at a national level, we remain unable to act. Until recently, we used science to persuade others to take responsible action. Now, we muzzle science as the world wonders if we value empirical evidence at all. Saying “I am not a scientist” has become a way to avoid making hard choices. Even if you do not share my views on the moral requirement for action or on our obligation to our children, our inability to address climate change at the national level should concern you from the perspective of national security. The Defense Department has identified climate change as an “urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water.” In other words, an enemy that must be addressed.

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    @Morzer:

    They have no credible platform beyond not being Trump and no shred of a plan that might win back the Senate any time soon.

    What color is the sky in your country? Because if I recall correctly from the recent UK vote, you are not an American and don’t live in the US.

  33. 33.

    Jeffro

    @Morzer: I’m ok with Trumpov screeching…that’s basically all he does.

    I’m glad to see her putting such an appealing, fact-based, compassionate message out there. It’s brave. She could have stayed under the radar, she could even go ‘consult’…but she’s chosen to be one of the public faces of an important fight.

  36. 36.

    Jeffro

    @MomSense:

    We are going to need some kind of truth and reconciliation process if and when we get ourselves through this mess.

    Agreed. I have been advocating for this ever since the election night shock wore off (especially after pounding the table all last summer and fall about Trumpov & Co’s Russia connections). Unfortunately, I think there will be the ‘truth’ without the ‘reconciliation’…but then again, that’s mostly on the heads of the guilty, and their enablers & supporters.

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    You only agree not to prosecute them if they make a full and detailed confession. If you find out later that they withheld information or lied about anything, they are still subject to prosecution. At least, that’s how it worked in South Africa.

  42. 42.

    MomSense

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    No Im not ok with it and yet I cannot see a peaceful way forward ( assuming our democracy endures ). I also think that it will be an incredibly painful process if it is a truly honest process.

  44. 44.

    Major Major Major Major

    @RedDirtGirl: happy birthday!!!! Not going, 2500 miles away.

    It’s pride weekend here but I don’t really do pride stuff lately… Symphony tonight, peeking my head in at a couple parties, then video games and drawing. This week took FOREVER. Looking forward to the sleep.

  48. 48.

    Jeffro

    @Steve in the ATL: is it okay to agree with a Republican when they note actual facts, note that a policy is wasteful and cruel and counterproductive, and that the current AG is completely wrong in what he’s trying to do to our country?

  49. 49.

    MomSense

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Work with me here, Mr ATL. I’m thinking a unity ticket (again assuming we survive this constitutional crisis) and she at least respects the constitution. I think we are heading toward violence if we don’t figure out what comes after this that the sane-ish 67% can accept.

  54. 54.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Jeffro:

    is it okay to agree with a Republican when they note actual facts, note that a policy is wasteful and cruel and counterproductive, and that the current AG is completely wrong in what he’s trying to do to our country?

    Agree, yes. Support for president, no.

  56. 56.

    Sab

    Why would you put a box out, intending to pack it, without an alternative box for the cat. More importantly, why don’t you already have a box for the cat sitting out awaiting his supreme feline ness.

    My spouse has had a lamp pushed onto his head at 5 am by a hungry cat. Not a starving cat, just a bored cat wanting fed.

  58. 58.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steve in the ATL: Didn’t Obama appoint her as US Attorney for the N.D. GA? And didn’t he bring her into the DoJ? Would he do that with GOPer? You are closer to the action than I am.

  59. 59.

    Sab

    @RedDirtGirl: I’d love to be there but I am in Ohio so I can’t make it. Plus I am incredibly boring so count yourself lucky I am staying home.

  60. 60.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Omnes Omnibus: he appointed many republicans. Why, i don’t know. Though she at least has a reputation for sterling integrity. And has demonstrated that far more than Mr. Comey.

  63. 63.

    Jeffro

    @Steve in the ATL: Just on a side note: it’s interesting to see how the ‘sterling integrity’ of folks up and down the chain has been serving as a last line of defense for the Republic…and how opposed to integrity Trumpov, Ryan, McConnell, & Co. have been.

    It’s almost like one party has principles, and the other party has ‘a’ principle: the opposite of whatever that first party wants.

  66. 66.

    MomSense

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Sterling integrity sounds like a big step up to me. Have to give her props for refusing to defend the travel ban and her op-ed tells me that she has a strong sense of fairness and recognizes the human cost of mass incarceration.

  68. 68.

    Steve in the ATL

    @MomSense: indeed. She’s a career prosecutor, so law and order stuff is big to her. We don’t know where she stands on anything else, such as social and economic issues.

  70. 70.

    Steeplejack

    Hint—it’s not the asshole who gets out of bed at 5 am every morning to feed Steve.

    He’s crepuscular!

  71. 71.

    Sab

    @Morzer: Suddenly you are here a lot. New to all of us. Secretive about where you come from (lots of us are secretive about our identities but none of are secretive about our regional locations).Americans are very regional. If you won’t identify with a region, or explain why you can’t, then we will justifiably view you as foreign and probably hostile.. All of us know that if you are secretive about your regional location you will be branded a troll. Probably Russian.

  72. 72.

    Steve in the ATL

    @MomSense: I’d sure vote for her, but would prefer not to have a prosecutor/prosecutor ticket. If LAO and Bella Q were here, they would agree!

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Sab: He was here long before you were. He was gone for a while and now is back. That is not a viable attack.

  78. 78.

    debbie

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It’s late. I left out “on the radio.” I’ve never heard any other cuts from that CD on the radio.

    ETA: Why do my fingers keep trying to type “album”?

  88. 88.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think he’s a troll. Just was trying to clarify he wasn’t from Russia (not that there is anything wrong with being from Russia). Or a bot. Or a bot from Russia. Or a Russian bot.

  90. 90.

    Peale

    @Morzer: yep. If they could, they’d set up something like Orban has going for him in Hungary, where as long as everyone won’t gel to get him out, he only needs 33% of the vote to have a super majority. He’ll be there for Another 30 years. The number 2 party is actually neo-Nazi, as in “give us the names of threatening Jews and round up the Roma”, so it’s not like there’s a whole lot of wiggle room for other parties to squabble. They can’t squabble. They need to cease to exist and form a single party. Good luck with that.

    The good news is that at least we don’t have more parties than we already have. The bad news is the setbacks will be huge.

  91. 91.

    Peale

    @MomSense: some of us are still here after 8 years. I actually started coming here because it was the last safe obot space I could find in 2009.

  92. 92.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Yeah, I didn’t meant to imply that Morzer is a Russian troll or anything like that — if I gave that impression, I apologize.

    But during the UK election returns, s/he said multiple things about living in the UK and how people outside the UK didn’t understand the intricacies of their politics, so it seemed a bit rich to me for that same person to be criticizing the Democrats as though s/he had some special understanding.

    Many Brits have made the mistake of thinking they understand America and Americans better than Americans do, and they’re almost always wrong. Yes, Andrew Sullivan, Nick Broomfield, and Piers Morgan, I am looking at you.

  96. 96.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: He is being a dipshit, IMO. Calling him a troll is flat out wrong. And having people who showed up in the last year calling a long time commeter a troll is not something I like.

  99. 99.

    PJ

    @MomSense: I honestly feel that actual trials under the rule of law where people are judged for their actions and punished accordingly is going to be much more salutary than a truth and reconciliation committee. That would be well and good for generational crimes, like slavery, Jim Crow, and the extermination and theft of rights and property from Native Americans, but I feel it is a little blunted for specific crimes. Since Iran/Contra, the Republicans have gotten away with nary a slap on the wrist for their many violations of the Constitution, treaties, and the law of the land, and until they pay the price set forth in the law, they will continue doing it.

  101. 101.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: He’s not been out of the US all that long maybe 3 years or so. His wife is Korean, I don’t think he is. I mean who’d think a non-Korean would marry a Korean, eh?

    ETA: I just spent a hour of my life I’ll never get back, tried to go downtown and take pics of the Wilshire Grand tower’s light show. Who knew it’d be impossible to find parking on a Friday night?

  103. 103.

    Jeffro

    Can we get back to talking about what this ‘truth and reconciliation committee’ would look like and what it would take to make it happen? I’m trying to write a futile op-ed here…

  107. 107.

    The Golux

    The thing that kills me about Marshall Crenshaw is that, when you’re in the middle of listening to one of his songs that has already had two outrageously excellent hooks, he tops it with a third, even more outrageously excellent hook.

    If you’ve ever had any ambition to write popular music, it’s almost perverse.

  108. 108.

    Sab

    @Omnes Omnibus: I have been here for about ten years. Never noticed him/her before.Not saying you are wrong about morzer. But you are very wrong about me. Jerk.

  109. 109.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: Universal City is closer and $3 and Red Line, next time. Lesson learned. It’s a bit of a hassle to lug a camera bag and a tripod on the subway.

    Now I’m debating on whether to go to Eagle Rock and get a Tommy Burger. Decisions, decisions.

  110. 110.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Peale: I’m in my late 50’s, so yeah.

    ETA: Today was the grand opening of the Wilshire Grand, it’s the tallest building west of Chicago. The exterior has leds on it and they light up the building.

  111. 111.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Gold Line is faster from where you are — it takes the Red Line a good 90 minutes to get to Downtown. It only takes about 20 minutes on the Gold Line, if that, so it’s still faster even with a 15-20 minute drive to Pasadena.

    Also, you now have to pay for parking at North Hollywood — $3 for 24 hours.

  112. 112.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Sab: Odd. I knew Morzer, but not you – until recently, Do you want to fight about this? He has been here before. I am sorry that you have an issue with me.

  113. 113.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: Red Line 90 minutes to downtown? Huh, more like 30 from Universal City. Also, if I took the Gold Line, I’d have to transfer to the Red Line at Union Station to get to where I want to go in downtown(probably 7th Street).

  114. 114.

    PJ

    @Omnes Omnibus: My understanding comes from reading articles about the South African process, where (please correct me if I’m wrong), amnesty was granted in exchange for testimony (i.e., punishment was not the goal of the process). Some/many people felt this did not adequately address the crimes committed under apartheid. From wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_(South_Africa):

    A 1998 study by South Africa’s Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation & the Khulumani Support Group,[10][11] which surveyed several hundred victims of human rights abuse during the Apartheid era, found that most felt that the TRC had failed to achieve reconciliation between the black and white communities. Most believed that justice was a prerequisite for reconciliation rather than an alternative to it, and that the TRC had been weighted in favour of the perpetrators of abuse.[12][13] As a result of the TRC’s shortcomings and the unaddressed injuries of many victims, victims’ groups, together with NGOs and lawyers, took various TRC-related matters to South African and US courts in the early 2000s. [14

    While former president F.W. de Klerk appeared before the commission and reiterated his apology for the suffering caused by apartheid, many black South Africans were angered at amnesty being granted for human rights abuses committed by the apartheid government. The BBC described such criticisms as stemming from a “basic misunderstanding” about the TRC’s mandate,[16] which was to uncover the truth about past abuse, using amnesty as a mechanism, rather than to punish past crimes.

    Among the highest-profile of these objections were the criticisms levelled by the family of prominent anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who was killed by the security police, and whose story was featured in the film Cry Freedom.[17] Biko’s family described the TRC as a “vehicle for political expediency”, which “robbed” them of their right to justice.[18] The family opposed amnesty for his killers on these grounds and brought a legal action in South Africa’s highest court, arguing that the TRC was unconstitutional.

    On the other side of the spectrum, former apartheid State President P.W. Botha defied a subpoena to appear before the commission, calling it a “circus”. His defiance resulted in a fine and suspended sentence, but these were overturned on appeal.[

  117. 117.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I remember looking at the Metro site and having it tell me it would take 90 minutes to get to where I wanted to be downtown (south of Union Station) if I took the Red Line, but only 20 minutes by car. Understandably, I took the car.

    We’ve been taking the Red Line to the Pantages for our theater tickets and it’s freakin’ perfect for that. The Hollywood & Vine station is directly across the street from the theater.

  119. 119.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: That station’s also good to catch the Griffith Observatory shuttle, though I usually park at the Greek and catch it there. The Vine Station is also my favorite station, so cool looking. OTOH, Hollywood and Highland sucks.

  123. 123.

    Morzer

    @Adam L Silverman:

    My concern is that the right wing have been planning their new normal – and winning in terms of implementing it – in ways that the Democrats have not. I don’t see anything like a realistic strategy from the Democrats. In too many cases, I see people who are fooling themselves into thinking that Trump is a special case, a one off, an orange swan, whatever term they may choose to employ,

  124. 124.

    Mnemosyne

    @Morzer:

    I’ll put it this way: anyone who claims that they knew prior to 2016 that the Republicans would actively conspire with a hostile foreign power to steal the presidential election is lying. Yes, in retrospect, we can look at all of the clues and see what happened, but there’s no automatic Well, of course the Republicans were willing to turn us into a Russian client state! We knew it all along!

    Everything else is the usual ALEC/Koch brothers/Mercer bullshit we’ve been fighting for years. But, yes, I think most Americans have been caught flat-footed by the revelations that Putin specifically meddled to put Trump in the Oval Office and defeat Hillary.

  125. 125.

    Morzer

    @Mnemosyne:

    True, but not relevant to the way in which the GOP have systematically gamed the political system within the US. They didn’t need any external help to do that – although they did get a generous assist from the fecklessness of the Democrats. Sure, Putin’s interference is a major warning, but it only mattered because the GOP have succeeded in tilting things their way to a point where a new system has effectively replaced the one we all thought we were working with.

  127. 127.

    JR in WV

    @Mnemosyne:

    You’re right in a way. Surprised that Republicans were helped by Russian dirty tricks, kind of. But I’m not shocked that Republicans would be grateful for Russian dirty tricks. and repay the Russians two-fold for their assistance. Because there is nothing Republicans won’t do to retain power in the government.

    The Republicans are full of praise for small government, but that’s all bullshit. They want all-powerful government, with them in charge. Put opponents in prison? Love to.

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