Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

He really is that stupid.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

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

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

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

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

Republicans in disarray!

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

I really should read my own blog.

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Late Night Open Thread: Challenge

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Here’s to a quiet weekend, for once, irregardless…

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98Comments

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Anne Laurie, you might want to get rid of the “ir” in “irregardless” before Steeplejack shows up.

  5. 5.

    Mnemosyne

    Cats do that, too, but are more willing to use sharp teeth and unsheathed claws to enforce their will.

    It’s almost time for our nightly time to chase Annie around the apartment to pill her. We actually only have to give her the pill every other day now, but she was so disappointed to not be chased that now we chase her and give her snuggles and attention on the nights she doesn’t get a pill. It’s weird, but it works for us.

  9. 9.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Sure, lay it on me! What am I, your pedant beard?

    ETA: Did anyone else pick up on that “starting my eighth decade” thing? I had to leave that thread and later couldn’t remember which one it was.

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    ETA: Did anyone else pick up on that “starting my eighth decade” thing? I had to leave that thread and later couldn’t remember which one it was.

    Don’t think so, but I can’t remember the thread either. (Alain the Site Magician should make it easier for us to find things like that.)

  21. 21.

    Kay

    Chris Murphy‏Verified account @ChrisMurphyCT 6h6 hours ago
    Just got the phone totals this week. 387 calls opposed to GOP health bill. 0 call in support.
    Zero.
    Never seen anything like this.

    Good job! I call Rob Portman although Rob Portman is not someone I would ever want to call.

    I would prefer to call Chris Murphy! Just saying. Some of you have easier jobs :)

    Other people have to call Mitch McConnell. Ugh. Think how horrible that is.

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    “irregardless”

    Nay, nay, a thousand times nay.

    (Shakes head, frowns, stashes box of gold stars in the back of the bottom drawer.)

  25. 25.

    Morzer

    When all of this is over, I hope Bob Mueller can get his own soap opera as the kindly old doctor who solves family crises with folksy observations.

  26. 26.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    Well, while I was still checking that thread — whichever one it was — nobody challenged me, to the best of my recollection. So I shall retire victorious, in the sure and certain glow of being correct.

  27. 27.

    Morzer

    @NotMax:

    Neigh, neigh, a thousand times neigh. Because, as we all know…

    Neighbors, everybody needs good neighbors
    With a little understanding…

  28. 28.

    Morzer

    talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/kobach-sanctioned-deceptive

    The Republican state official tapped by President Trump to lead his sketchy voter fraud commission was sanctioned by a federal judge Friday for his “deceptive conduct and lack of candor” in a voting rights case brought against him.

    Kansas Secretary of Kris Kobach will have to pay the court a $1,000 fine as punishment for “patently misleading representations” during the litigation over the proof-of-citizenship voter registration requirement Kobach is seeking to implement in his state.

    Tasty, I sez to myself. Tasty.

  29. 29.

    efgoldman

    @Ben from Virginia:

    The last time I actually read print newsweeklies, I was in high school.

    The barber shop i go to, and one of my doctor’s offices, still get the print edition of Time. That’s the only time I read them.

  31. 31.

    efgoldman

    @Morzer:

    Tasty, I sez to myself. Tasty.

    I don’t remember the details, but t’ain’t the first time, either, for that fraud, is it?

  32. 32.

    Ben from Virginia

    @efgoldman:

    My dentist has them in the waiting room, but I’d rather be on my phone than read six-month old editions of TIME.

    It’s astounding that the print newsweeklies haven’t yet gone the way of Blockbuster.

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    Was hoping for a Friday foodie thread, but looks like that’s not to be.

    Regardless, stumbled across this concoction (hesitate to give it the respect of using the word recipe) while poking around the ‘net. Coin toss as to which is more unfortunate, the name or the dish.

    Sufficient to have one excommunicated from church potluck suppers.

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    The Kraft website was trying to give me grocery deals in Winnetka, IL, which sounds about right for that salad.

    (Full disclosure — I went to Catholic school in Hubbard Woods for a brief time.)

  42. 42.

    Lyrebird

    @NotMax: Oh my oh my!

    The title,
    the ingredients,
    the instructions!!!

    I guess the instructions are only funny because there’s some pleased commenter boasting about how [s]he has made this so many times she doesn’t even need to look at the recipe any more…

    Am also a little sad, bc the person I know who would like this the most, a friend’s mom, passed away — partly thanks to her unwillingness to follow dietary recommendations from her doctor.

    Am also selfishly happy or at least relieved that we are now moving away from a marshmallows-in-salad region to a lettuce-in-salad region of the country.

  45. 45.

    Lyrebird

    @Amir Khalid: Hiya, not sure if you saw my late reply in an earlier thread – I got to eat some WONDERFUL food and look at the sun set near your country though probably not your hometown. Restaurant at a marina on the Sing. side, near Tuas. Amazing.
    Thought of you and waved in your vague direction! Salaam Aleikum and all that!

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mike J:

    Okay, that makes more sense. I’m not surprised that someone named Crosby would be singing about Winnetka — it’s been Irish Catholic for a long time. The Murray family (as in Bill and Brian Doyle) is from there.

  47. 47.

    Felonius Monk

    Probably already noted but Mr+Mrs Wilmer have lawyered up because bank fraud.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    Also speaking of Winnetka — one of the ways that people on the North Shore know that Rick Santorum is dumb is that his family sent him to Carmel High School in Mundelein instead of Loyola Academy in Winnetka. If it was the 1950s-1980s and your Catholic boy was smart, you sent him to Loyola even if it was a long commute. If he wasn’t that bright, you sent him to whatever was nearby — in the Santorums’ case, that was Carmel.

    (There wasn’t a Catholic girls’ school that had the same reputation for academics because sexism.)

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    It seems like half the towns in the Valley are named after towns on the North Shore Chicago’s suburbs: Winnetka, Oak Park, Highland Park.

    ETA: Had to correct myself before Oak Park native SD yelled at me. ?

  52. 52.

    Lyrebird

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Thanks, I figured as much…

    FWIW if you haven’t tried Malaysian or Indonesian food, do! It’s amazing and should never be compared with disturbing chemical concoctions like that Cool Whip “salad”. Didn’t know they still made Cool Whip.

  60. 60.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The person who’s not telling the truth?

    His initials are Fuckface von Clownstick.

  61. 61.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:
    Oddly shaped but still attached to me, as I mentioned in another thread. I’m hoping it won’t affect my ability to learn the ee-leck-trickle gittar, which I hope to take up soon.

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    @Amir Khalid

    Lived on the same property (different houses) for a couple of years with a guy who at one time played guitar with Hank Williams. Missing two fingers on one hand and could still make a guitar purr.

  63. 63.

    mai naem mobile

    Does anybody else see ads on their phone based on phone conversations or background noise(car radio/tv) they’ve had? Not texts. Not google searhes. Not online browsing. My sister said this was happening to her and I think it is to me. It’s kind of creepy.

  68. 68.

    Major Major Major Major

    @mai naem mobile: most likely it’s pattern recognition on overdrive (cf some version of the Barnum effect) combined with the fact that ads on media you’re around are tied to time and location, much like your phone is. And the fact that you probably only actually talk about a few things, as do we all.

    ETA: former life as white-hat personal phone data data miner.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    Now you’re taxing the memory, as this was around 1977. Gonna say right hand but could be mistaken. Seem to also remember he lost the fingers sometime after leaving the touring band.

  71. 71.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    ETA: Had to correct myself before Oak Park native SD yelled at me. ?

    I wouldn’t yell at you. I should merely remind you, ever so gently, that Oak Park is due west of the Loop.

    Anyhow, aren’t you married to an Oak Park native? Can’t he yell at you?

  72. 72.

    Elizabelle

    David Anderson, our very own bjdick, gets another shout out from Pulitzer-Prize winning LA Times business columnist, Michael Hiltzik. The Senate GOP hid the meanest things very deeply in its Obamacare repeal bill. We found them

    The Affordable Care Act repeal bill unveiled Thursday by Senate Republicans has aptly drawn universal scorn from healthcare experts, hospital and physician groups and advocates for patients and the needy. That’s because the bill is a poorly-disguised massive tax cut for the wealthy, paid for by cutting Medicaid — which serves the middle class and the poor — to the bone.

    Yet some of the measure’s most egregious, harshest provisions are well-disguised. They’re hidden deep in its underbrush or in the maze of legislative verbiage. We’ve ferreted out some of them and present them here in all their malevolent glory. In this effort we’ve built on ace detective work by Adrianna McIntyre, Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan, David Anderson of Duke University and balloon-juice.com, Andy Slavitt, the former head of Medicare and Medicaid in the Obama administration, and others.

    Hiltzik’s points (and please read the column; he explains very well; well enough that you could paraphrase to your rebel yell brother in law).

    1) States will have more authority to reimpose lifetime and annual benefit caps and eliminate essential health benefits. [1332 waivers]

    2) Protection for people with preexisting conditions is destroyed.

    3) Older Americans would get socked with much higher premiums and costs.

    4) The biggest tax cut for the rich is retroactive [to January 1 of this year].

    5) Salaries for health insurance chief executives can go through the roof.

  73. 73.

    Elizabelle

    @SiubhanDuinne: Hello there. You are up late.

    Have already had my coffee, and gonna head to the beach for the morning, before it gets too sunny and hot.

  77. 77.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elizabelle:

    Congratulations to David! And those points will also be useful for next week’s phone calls to Senators’ offices.

  81. 81.

    Elizabelle

    I left out a major point by Hiltzik: there should be a total of 6 bullet points. Left out “opioid addiction” treatment.

    His language:

    The fight against opioid addiction is crippled. Opioid addiction has emerged as perhaps the worst public health crisis in America. But as much as 40% of the cost of treatment of addicts has been paid by Medicaid. The harsh cuts in that program imposed by the Senate bill would force more of that expense onto states that simply can’t afford it. Meanwhile, the projected loss of medical coverage by as many as 23 million Americans under repeal will keep many victims of the epidemic from finding treatment.

    The Senate measure substitutes a frayed Band-Aid to cover that loss. Despite estimates of as much as $183 billion over 10 years to fight the epidemic and treat its victims — and a request from GOP Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia that $45 billion be added to the Senate measure for the purpose — the bill offers only a risible one-year appropriation of $2 billion.

    To your phones, Buckeyes and Mountaineers.

    It’s a great article. Everyone should read it.

  82. 82.

    Elizabelle

    Being a micromanager sometimes [ :-(] ] here are Hiltzik’s SIX bullet points, correcting my comment #72:

    1) States will have more authority to reimpose lifetime and annual benefit caps and eliminate essential health benefits. [1332 waivers]

    2) Protection for people with preexisting conditions is destroyed.

    3) Older Americans would get socked with much higher premiums and costs.

    4) The biggest tax cut for the rich is retroactive [to January 1 of this year].

    5) The fight against opioid addiction is crippled. [Medicaid pays as much as 40% of the cost of addiction treatment.]

    6) Salaries for health insurance chief executives can go through the roof.

  87. 87.

    Ruckus

    @Lyrebird:

    Didn’t know they still made Cool Whip.

    Why wouldn’t they? There’s still plenty of industrial waste available.

  89. 89.

    JR in WV

    IN somnia!

    Wife woke me up by shouting from her dream. I was dreaming that we were asleep on the floor in a Parisian cathedral, surrounded by nuns singing on the late night shift.

    Then suddenly we were sleeping on the Paris street, still comfy, but I was being weirded out by passersby. Plus there was a Chinese restaurant across the street with strange neon signs about the animals they were prepared to stir-fry for your noshing entertainment.

    If her dream was worse than mine . . . Anyways glad to be awake for a few minutes.

    It rained really hard here early in the evening, killed our network connection deader than dead, so read a paper book.

    Next time we go to Paris, there will be a nice hotel room, no floor of cathedral, no sidewalk, delux room with hot and cold running room service!!!

  90. 90.

    opiejeanne

    @Mnemosyne: My grandparents moved to Hollywood from Downers Grove, Ill around 1920. There used to be a big annual picnic in one of the parks in LA for people from Downers Grove. I have a photo from one of the local newspapers, probably the Tribune.

    Annual Downers Grove Picnic

    This was shot August 4, 1923. My father and his brother and a cousin are sitting with the children in front, my grandmother and my great grandparents are standing with the adults. My grandfather was behind the camera.

  92. 92.

    Elizabelle

    @Spanky: Great question. Spanish is and isn’t coming. I can read it more easily, but still shy about speaking it much. Quite slow, brain to tongue, in middle age.** That would change with practice, agreed.

    Highly recommend the USO gramatica books, available at Amazon. I’m 80% through the “elementary” set of exercises, and I find it much better designed than any previous workbook. Enough repetition to actually learn the grammar. It’s fun to write out the lessons; a puzzle. Even the instructions are in Spanish. Going to work through the intermediate version when I get back to the States.

    I took Spanish language classes last summer; those and the USO book are a great refresher. Not worrying too much about missing my opportunities to speak Spanish here, because we have oodles of Spanish speakers in the US, and television where I can practice my listening skills. (No TV in this apartment — yet another glory. Just fast internet here, and I don’t watch netflix, etc. — too much fun being out and about.) It’s actually kind of soothing, hearing discussions out in the street (5 floors below) and they’re just background noise because I don’t hear the content.

    Missed my morning opportunity for the beach (Badalona, beach about 25 minutes above Barcelona on the coast; easy Metro ride); so gonna go later this afternoon. The sun here will burn you. Also gives me opportunity to buy a beach umbrella at one of the Chinese shops here (don’t open until mid-morning). Jonesing for a swim in that gorgeous green sea.

    Check out Norwegian Air. They have marvelous fares to Barcelona and other European cities. You should come check this city out!

    ====

    ** It’s much harder to learn a language in middle age, at least IMHO. I have new respect for the immigrants who must learn a new language, sometimes at an advanced age. Also, one’s comprehension and ability to speak are often not matched. Have to bear that in mind.

  96. 96.

    weaselone

    @Elizabelle:

    I’m fairly certain that Senator Casey tweeted out most, if not all of these points well before this article was written complete with the relevant sections circled.

  98. 98.

    gammyjill

    @Mnemosyne: I live in Highland Park, but had a store for years on Green Bay Road in Hubbard Woods. Very near the school you’re referring to. I used to love to see the kids play in the Hubbard Woods park. I think maybe they took gym class in the park. By the way, the park has really become upscale; new buildings and equipment and greenery.

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