Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Republicans don’t trust women.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Not all heroes wear capes.

This blog will pay for itself.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

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

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

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

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Second rate reporter says what?

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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Saturday Night Open Thread

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Howdy!

Another day spent in sweltering Connecticut, and I observed today that the corn is taller here than in West by God Virginny. ABC is putting the wee ones to bed, and I am sitting in the living room with a fan at my feet.

Ate at a new Thai restaurant tonight, which, unlike the one I had up here a couple weeks ago, actually serves spicy dishes. However, I was so convinced that every restaurant up here served everything bland that I ordered my dinner at 5 of 5 on the spicy scale, and was in for an adventure. Had a solid case of hiccups, cleared my sinuses, and had a very solid sweat going. It was delicious.

I’ve been on a very weird music kick lately- lot of Portishead, Massive Attack etc., health doses of the Ween jackasses, and other random stuff. I’m completely convinced if this Ween song existed in the 80’s John Hughes would have used it in every single movie:

It would have been as iconic as Yello’s Oh Yeah.

I listened to AC/DC Back in Blaxck today and was surprised how every song was good and still held up. Did you all know it is the #2 best selling rock album of all time? Me either.

I have to end this post because Marmalade has decided to sit on my chest with her ass in my face.

Reader Interactions

107Comments

  4. 4.

    NobodySpecial

    Back in Black was great because the band was working on sheer terror that the ride was over with Bon’s death. You can hear the effort.

  6. 6.

    Eric U.

    wife and I are trying to find our shot records because someone showed up in her building with measles. She is going to be quarantined for 20 days if she’s not immune, but it looks like she’s going to go have to get blood drawn and take the week off because she can’t find her records.

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    I thank my stars that I never had to spend a summer in Connecticut. The winters were bad enough.

  11. 11.

    Mnemosyne

    @Eric U.:

    Yikes! I’ve been immunized for measles at least twice, and possibly three times — there was a big outbreak at my college in the late 1980s and I had to get re-immunized then. Thanks, anti-vaxx assholes! ?

    @Brachiator:

    Places that are nasty in the winter can be quite nice in the summer. Chicago summers are lovely, if a bit humid, but their winters are a dealbreaker for me.

  12. 12.

    HAL

    Nailed it…

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/07/21/why-trump-and-the-conservative-media-are-still-obsessed-with-hillary-clinton/?utm_term=.9058a8151422

    For the conservative media, there’s a slightly different motivation at work. If you’re Fox News or a conservative talk radio show, the fact that Trump squeaked out an electoral-college victory laid waste to the plans you had for the next four years. It was going to be such fun! A Clinton presidency would have been a glorious time, filled with purpose and professional success. Now you find yourself defending a dreadful health-care plan, but if she were president, you would have been luxuriating in constant congressional investigations, innumerable phony scandals and an endless supply of things to get outraged about. And outrage is the fuel of conservative media — it’s what provides the content, engages the viewers and listeners, and keeps the audience coming back. Getting people mad is much easier than persuading them to feel happy or hopeful or excited about what the administration is doing.

  16. 16.

    Yarrow

    @Eric U.: That’s terrible! I hope your wife is okay. I wouldn’t know where to look for records like that. It’s not like we have a vaccine booster schedule we get as adults. My doctor has never mentioned vaccine boosters to me. I had to ask for the tetanus booster. I’m outdoors a lot and it was after a natural disaster and I wasn’t sure I was up to date so I asked for one and got it.

  17. 17.

    seaboogie

    @Gvg: Reminds me that one’s *stripper name* is the name of your first pet + the street you lived on as a child. Mine is Puss Jefferson, which I think holds up well, and sounds a bit Presidential also…?

  19. 19.

    Joeg

    Portishead is very good summer music. I was surprised. I have a PH pandora station. Tits!

  27. 27.

    gene108

    @HAL:

    Right-wing media is doing a pretty good job of keeping their viewers all raged up, because they focus in on how unfair everyone is to Trump, how Democrats rammed Obamacare down our throats and now they are being hypocrites about the Republicans take on healthcare, and the list goes on.

    They aren’t trying to sell any hope, with regards to Trump or the Republican controlled Congress.

  32. 32.

    smintheus

    Every year or two I go back and reread this classic post at Fafblog, “mistakes were made”. I half expect it to start seeming dated, but if anything it keeps getting more timely. It starts this way…

    “If you had to do it all over again what would you do different?” says me.
    “Nothing!” says Giblets. “Giblets has no regrets!”
    “I think I’d travel more or go back to art school or maybe not drive the car off that cliff back when you said ‘Hey Fafnir let’s drive this car off that cliff’,” says me.
    “Oh, so we’re back to this again!” says Giblets. “That was like, eight whole seconds ago. Let it go already! You’re livin in the past!”
    “Or at least maybe I’d pick a smaller cliff,” says me.”This’s been a really long cliff.”
    “Y’know what your problem is?” says Giblets. “You’re always looking back. ‘Oh boo hoo, remember the Good Ol’ Days, back when we lived on the ground and we weren’t on fire.’ Well Giblets lives for today, and we’re air people now! We live in the air! At least for the next several seconds.”
    “Of course when you think about it I guess you can’t really blame this on any one decision,” says me. “Driving off the cliff, running off the cliff, falling off the cliff – it’s a pretty complicated tangle of factors there.”
    “I mean if we made any mistake it was not falling enough,” says Giblets. “Because obviously we should’ve started out falling sideways, where there’s just a ton more room. Giblets assumes future generations will develop the relevant technology.”
    “Maybe I just shoulda stayed home today,” says me. “Maybe I shoulda stayed in last year. Last year wasn’t a bad year, I coulda stayed in last year for a couple more years.”

  34. 34.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @seaboogie: We were on a corner and, if I can edit to most beloved pet from childhood and the other street, we get Beau Stevens.

  36. 36.

    RobertDSC-iPhone 6

    I must be one of the few people in this world who has no interest in AC/DC. I just can’t listen to them.

    I know their hit songs but they are not pleasant to my ears.

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne

    @seaboogie:

    I always heard that one as being your drag queen name. But maybe that’s because I come up with Choo-Choo Clifton.

    Weirdest group I played that game with included the Big Cheese at my company. And he may have initiated it! ?

  41. 41.

    janelle

    Back in Black isn’t just the second highest selling rock album of all time, it’s the second highest selling album of ANY genre. Only Michael Jackson’s Thriller has sold more copies than AC/DC’s Back in Black.

  42. 42.

    John Revolta

    I heard it was your Porn Star name, which works for me because I ain’t no kind of a dancer. Anyway, I would’ve been Rocky Crain.

  43. 43.

    seaboogie

    @Mnemosyne: It is a fun game, especially as it involves favorite childhood memories. Played it with my nephews, and one was Earle Drury (sorry dude, that’s an accountant), and his brother Schenley Egremont (obvious theater critic).

  45. 45.

    smintheus

    Missed this when it appeared a couple days ago:

    Walter M. Shaub Jr., the recently departed director of the Office of Government Ethics, offered a startling revelation on CNN this morning. He recounted that a few months into President Trump’s term, the president’s lawyer asked Shaub if Trump could file his federal financial disclosure forms without signing them. The signature certifies that the list of financial holdings, assets and liabilities disclosed in the form is “true, complete and correct to the best of my knowledge,” and Trump’s lawyer apparently sought to find out whether Trump could avoid certifying that.

    More evidence that the money trail is where it’s at with all the Trump scandals.

  46. 46.

    Lavocat

    Just think: in another few weeks, we will all be debating whether or not a sitting president can pardon himself AND his family members in the event they are all charged with high treason.

    Just when I think we’ve hit bottom as a nation, we daily wake up to a new nightmare. It’s like “Groundhog Day” meets “The Manchurian Candidate”.

    Which means Donny Boy will probably be starting a new war soon, maybe throwing a few nukes into the mix. Who the fuck knows?

  47. 47.

    Lyrebird

    @seaboogie: Definitely funny! Had not heard of it before…

    I guess folks who are election officials and/or at all traceable to their IRL identities shouldn’t play it online, though, or only if they don’t use those for security questions. I once worked near where Cheryl Rofer works, & I guess some of the training on how to be ultra easily made twitchy stuck with me…

  48. 48.

    Ruckus

    @Eric U.:
    You guys have records? There was a vaccination?
    All I ever got was the measles. Followed by encephalitis. It was fun being a kid in the 50s.

  50. 50.

    Eric U.

    @Barbara: thanks, that’s worth a try, our family doc didn’t have any records. I think she used to keep her shot record at work, but doesn’t remember where

  53. 53.

    MoxieM

    Which beach? (New Haven native here…old enough to remember going to the beach there when it wasn’t heinously polluted). Spent the most of my childhood summers in Madison on LI Sound. There were horseshoe crabs and similar marine creatures aplenty, and the Bruni clan one house over (Frankie is a 1/2 gen younger than me. His grandmother was a slammin’ cook!). Idyllic.

  55. 55.

    Major Major Major Major

    I think I oversaw on the twittertubes today that Cole went underwear shopping.

    In more important news, MY FINAL DAY AT THE CONFERENCE HAS BEEN CANCELED! I get a weekend, or at least one day of it! Going to sleep all the sleep tonight!

  56. 56.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @smintheus: Which means that’s where Mueller will go. The crimes uncovered will be numerous and spectacular.

    Donnie’s going to jail, assuming he lives long enough to frog march.

  59. 59.

    seaboogie

    @Major Major Major Major: Congrats to you.

    I saw the Cole underwear tweet too, and am remembering him posting that his family feels that he has tended to operate on a “need to know” basis, and I was all “Whaaaaa…” – do they not follow the blog?

    His post about getting in the car and realizing that he was still in his skivvies and waiting for no humans to be around so he could duck back into the house for shorts…heh. I actually know more about Cole’s (and OO’s) underwear preferences than I know about any of my acquaintance IRL.

  61. 61.

    NickM

    “You Were the Fool” is great. “Spirit of 76” is the best Prince imitation I can think of.

  62. 62.

    TriassicSands

    John Cole: I learned a lesson once when I ordered a Chinese meal too spicy. It completely ruined the meal — as well as burning a hole through my stomach and the back of the booth I was sitting in. After that, in new Asian restaurants, I would order a lower star rating and a side of one or more hot sauces or peppers depending on what they had. Then, I could upgrade the heat to my own taste.

  66. 66.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Mike J: Lol!! Laughing so hard I can hardly type. But I was wondering who Marmalade was too so you had me going.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @TriassicSands

    Not to be confused with a somewhat different sugar cube rampant in the late 60s.

    @TriassicSands

    Friend who also liked spicy and I once went to a quite good Ethiopian restaurant in NYC. They brought out a small saucer with a powdery substance on it along with the meal, explaining it was a traditional Ethiopian spice and to be careful, as it was HOT HOT HOT.

    After the 4th time we called over the waiter for a refill on the stuff, he brought it out in a salad bowl.

  71. 71.

    Schlemazel

    @TriassicSands:
    We have a Caribbean place here, Marla’s” fantastic food but they do not kid around with the heat. I love hot food and have experience real dining pain there when I overextended myself. In my defense I am used to places warning Minnesotans the food is hot and then being disappointed that a 4 of 5 is hardly biting at all. There was a Chinese place near the University where we got to know the staff & they understood exactly what I wanted. Sadly, it got redeveloped out of existence.

  73. 73.

    Schlemazel

    @Wag:
    I went to that place & asked for 5 of 10, had to argue with the waitress & finally told her it would be my fault & I wouldn’t complain. The stuff was bland & when I commented the waitress said “oh, that was only a 3, I didn’t think you would want it hotter.” I replied, “Oh, I thought you wanted a tip but I guess not”

  74. 74.

    TriassicSands

    @Wag:

    Spiciness is good, but too little and the meal is bland; too much and it’s inedible. Much too much and you end up like I was — lying in a booth in a bar across from the restaurant in agony — possibly the worst gas pains I’ve ever experienced.

  75. 75.

    Roger Moore

    @smintheus:
    It’s not as if it’s been a huge secret that there’s something lurking in Trump’s finances that he doesn’t want people to know. If there weren’t he would have been willing to share his taxes, the same as every other candidate (except Wilbur) has been willing to do since Nixon. That’s actually one more grudge I hold against Wilmer: his refusal to release his taxes normalized Trump’s.

  80. 80.

    TriassicSands

    @Schlemazel:

    In (weak) defense of the waitress, she had probably had lots of experience with diners ordering meals that were too hot. I’m a fan of being able to adjust the heat with side orders of spices — some restaurants I’ve been in have spice trays on every table. I like that.

  83. 83.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    I apparently scared the living crap out of my parents by getting whooping cough when I was about 6 weeks old. Obviously, I have no memory of it, but my parents always made sure I got every vaccine in sight.

  84. 84.

    Bill Arnold

    By way of Rude Pundit: Bonfire of the Inanities: Observations on Trump’s Interview With the New York Times
    finally read through the NY Times interview with Trump: Excerpts From The Times’s Interview With Trump and it is terrifying. The amount of incompetent bullshit[1] is saddening evidence that the US is very very far from being a meritocracy. A few excerpts:
    Weirdness:

    TRUMP: He’s[President Emmanuel Macron of France] a great guy. Smart. Strong. Loves holding my hand.
    HABERMAN: I’ve noticed.
    TRUMP: People don’t realize he loves holding my hand. And that’s good, as far as that goes.

    Health care is like variable universal life insurance:

    Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, and by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan.

    (Note Iowa Old Lady quoted this in a comment).
    For the techies among us, this delightful bit of gormlessness:

    I mean, I was talking about, she deleted and bleached, which nobody does because of the cost.

    (No. Don’t know what was done and don’t care enough to look, but tools that do this sort of thing are for the most part free. The only costs are time and a few minutes in google when doing it for the first time. If encryption is involved, simply forgetting the key will time-lock the contents so that only Moore’s law (or maybe quantum computers, depending) can pick the lock.)

    [1] Competent bullshit is a fine sport, and Americans can be good at it when motivated. I once had a friend who’s job with a venture capital/incubator firm was (self-described) “bullshit detector”.
    (In this respect the NY Times interview was sly. “Would you like another bowl of Soupe à corde, Mr. Trump?”)
    (Please pardon my French. :-)

  90. 90.

    TriassicSands

    I just saw a bit on the NY Times site that argues that a sitting president can be indicted for serious crimes committed while in office.

    “It is proper, constitutional, and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting president for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to, the president’s official duties. In this country, no one, even President Clinton, is above the law.”

    The author, as you may have guessed, is Kenneth Starr. I never thought I’d welcome any opinion of Starr’s with such enthusiasm. I doubt anyone will convince Neil Gorsuch or the other agenda-driven Republican allies on the SCOTUS that this opinion is correct, but we can hope. Maybe, if “POS” were substituted for “president” it would fare better. Want to guarantee success? Substitute the name Barack Obama and watch Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas fall all over themselves and each other to support that opinion.

  92. 92.

    seaboogie

    @Mel: You win in the Porn Star category, and may I introduce you to @John Revolta: Rocky Crain? Hope your memories earned mad royalties before free internet porn. I’m talking ’70’s full-bush-sticky-theater action.

    Was pondering whether that was appropriate, and then I remembered who is our president….

  93. 93.

    Olivia

    @Eric U.: Wow! I am so old that I actually had measles and I was the most popular kid in our tiny town for a week or two. Parents sent their kids over to spend an afternoon with me to expose them and get exposed. So horrible that it disrupts your life like that. That is something I never imagined would be an issue.

  94. 94.

    Olivia

    @Mnemosyne: I am sure it scared your parents nearly to death. It is a horrible disease. They don’t tell you that you need to keep up with the whooping cough vaccinations as an adult. It went through the office I worked in a few years ago. Several of us were sick with it for months. It was so awful for us as adults, I can’t imagine how horrific it would be for a child.

  97. 97.

    Mnemosyne

    @Olivia:

    You can get it as a combination booster with tetanus and diphtheria, called T-DAP. We’ve had a bunch of nasty outbreaks here in California because people weren’t vaccinating their kids, until voters got fed up and made our legislature pass a law mandating vaccinations for everyone who is medically able to get them. No more “philosophical objections.”

    I think the breaking point was the big measles outbreak at Disneyland a couple of years ago that affected both employees and guests. I’m guessing that the legislature got quite a few phone calls from Disney, Knott’s Berry Farm, Universal Studios, and Legoland demanding action after that.

  104. 104.

    Daddio7

    Some people are wired weird. People walk around with various pieces of metal embedded in the skin, something that would have me rushing to the emergency room. The there is fire food. How is chewing food that feels like a hot coal in your mouth delicious? I tried a Thai chicken salad. I left over half of it in the bowl, my taste buds seared.

    The only spicy food I ever ate that was delicious was a Spicy Chick sandwich from Wendy’s that someone gave me. I was in pain for a hour after that and not willing to suffer that again.

    I remember how worried my parents were when I had the measles. At my elementary school we had two boys wore leg braces and needed crutches because they had had polio. Having been in the military I was vaccinated for everything, three times.

  106. 106.

    maurinsky

    If you’re not doing anything special at 1pm today, my political action group, Action Together CT Hartford Co., has a meeting in Windsor, CT. We have a training on canvassing and phone banking, data on vulnerable races in our area, one of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates, Chris Mattei, will be speaking, as well as Rep. Matt Lesser, who is exploring a run for Secretary of State. It’s at Get Baked Bakery, 25 Central Street.

  107. 107.

    GrueBleen

    I cannot understand why ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ would be number three when ‘Wish You Were Here” was Pink Floyd’s all time best – the finest symphonic rock session ever played ! And two of the very best tracks: Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar.

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