Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

This blog will pay for itself.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

We still have time to mess this up!

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

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

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

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

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

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Saturday Morning Open Thread: How I Loathe This “Retro” Faddism

Saturday Morning Open Thread: How I Loathe This “Retro” Faddism

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Not The Onion — actually, the Washington Post:

President Trump on Friday assured the governor of Guam that the White House is “with you 1,000 percent” in the face of a threat from North Korea — and then told the governor that he’s becoming famous and predicted the attention would boost tourism “tenfold” in the U.S. territory.

Guam Gov. Eddie Baza Calvo (R) posted a video of his end of the call on Facebook, offering a candid glimpse of the dynamic between the two leaders…


.

Needless to say, I blame the Republicans.
***********

Apart from bad reboots (poor Charlottesville), what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

229Comments

  1. 1.

    PaulWartenberg

    Agenda:

    8 AM – Weight Watchers weigh-in
    8:30 AM – Uncontrollable weeping over the fate of humanity
    9 AM – Laundry
    10 AM – Auto shop for a recall
    1 PM – Writers group
    2-5 PM – Raging against my own terrible efforts at a coherent story
    6 PM – Dinner
    6:30-Evening – Uncontrollable weeping over the fate of humanity

  2. 2.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    #nazitinder is the funniest thing on the internet today.

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Agenda? Work on the campers landing spot. When I get tired of that, finish the reroute of the bypass stack on the smoker. When I get that done, clean out the meat birds side of the coop and put down fresh litter for them. When I get that done, go to town and get more RR ties. After that I need to modify the smoker barrel. When that is done I have to make and can Zucchini relish. When that is done I have to….

    Wait a minute, I’m already into Monday.

  14. 14.

    Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.

    @PaulWartenberg: ugh. The Weight Watchers weigh in. There seems to be some good evidence that WW works overall, but the weigh in* is something I can’t get on board with. Your body weight naturally fluctuates day to day, and they take full advantage.

    * for anyone who doesn’t know, before the WW meeting, you are weighed, and if your weight isn’t within IIRC 1 lb (over or under) of your goal weight for that week, have to pay a fine.

  15. 15.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Yeah, we’ll see how far I actually get. The camper pad has to get done this wkend tho. (wrestling and setting 2-300# ties, just so much fun!) I’ve got a skid loader coming for 2 days on Wednesday. Just imagine all the things I am going to do with that little toy. $1000 but I have several years backlog of projects waiting on that baby.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    OT: I’ve never really read The Nation, but I also hadn’t placed them in the discredited category. But I can’t get past their foray into Seth Rich trutherism. It’s really evil what they allowed to be published.

  19. 19.

    Jeffro

    @Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.:

    for anyone who doesn’t know, before the WW meeting, you are weighed, and if your weight isn’t within IIRC 1 lb (over or under) of your goal weight for that week, have to pay a fine.

    Why don’t they just go with what works for Quitters, Inc? “It seems to have a pretty good success rate!”, he typed with nine fingers.

  20. 20.

    Original Lee

    Already checked off morning walk, breakfast, and dishes. Still to do: erect bedding fence around roses, help install new medicine cabinet in kids’ bathroom, fix loose boards in backyard fence, and go to a crab feast.

  21. 21.

    Jeffro

    On another note, looking forward to the president’s* vehement condemnation of the human toilet scuzz that paraded through Charlottesville last night. Look for the ‘wink’ and ‘nod’ emojis in his tweets later today…

  24. 24.

    Jeffro

    Also, I see that someone ELSE won MegaMillions last night, what the hell??!? I bought THREE tickets…rigged, totally rigged.

  27. 27.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: Never heard anything like that, and we’ve been in WW on and off for years.

    Closest thing to the “fine” I’ve ever heard is that you can get free membership if you meet and maintain certain goals, but you have to pay the normal membership fee if you aren’t maintaining.

    I’ve never heard of a goal weight for the week. There’s no timetable for weight loss in WW.

  29. 29.

    Aimai

    @Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: no thats ridiculously untrue. If you are a lifetime member and at your chosen goal weight and you go over that weight you pay the weekly fee and go off the maintenance plan and back on the weight loss plan until you hit gosl again. Its not a fine. And no one pays more than the weekly or monthly fee while their weight fluctuates.

  32. 32.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Some people actually wonder why I hate rich people.

    There is one problem, however. At 220m long Quintessentially One will be so big it won’t fit into Monaco’s harbour, or many others on its global itinerary, and will have to weigh anchor out at sea with guests ferried to land in launches. Ports of call listed for its first few voyages include the Bahamas, Ibiza and Miami.

    It is not the first yacht to provide a floating home for billionaires. In 2002, the wealthy were able to buy homes on The World, the largest residential yacht on Earth at 196.5m long, which claims residents can “travel the globe without ever leaving home”.

    The World, on which 142 families reside in 165 apartments, is constantly on the move and circumnavigates the globe every two-to-three years. A 200-strong crew cater to residents, some of whom spend most of the year on board while others join for specific expeditions. The boat has recently returned from a trip to Antarctica, where it broke the record for the most southerly navigation, reaching a point within the Bay of Whales in the Ross Sea.

  35. 35.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @Baud: The owners, Katrina vanden Heuvel and her krack-pot husband, are long time russian apologists.

    Sad.

  37. 37.

    Central Planning

    Haircut, mowing the lawn, and prepping for a drive to Atlanta. Passing through Kentucky and Tennessee, two states I’ve never been to/through.

    Doing a college visit and then a visit with my dad. Something like 35 hours in the car over 6 days. Good thing I like to drive, and too bad my daughter got her permit only a few weeks ago… She’s not quite ready for highway driving.

  39. 39.

    Central Planning

    @Jeffro: yeah, brown tree snakes. My college roommate was from Guam. Horror stories about the snakes… Gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it

  41. 41.

    Immanentize

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    I have a kinda funny story about the “any publicity is good.publicity” thing. When I was a P.D. in Miami, I had a friend who had gone into a private defense firm from our office. A big Judge bribing scandal hit, and the picture of one of his partners ended up on the front page of the Miami Herald along with the Judges involved after they were all arrested on federal bribery and corruption charges. About a week later at the weekly case call in my court, I saw my friend and told him how sorry I was about his partner and the situation and asked if he was sorry to have gone into private practice. “Are you kidding me?” He laughed — the phones had been wringing off the hook with clients since that article ran.

  42. 42.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Many, many people are saying Guam has the best, classiest beaches – they glow at night. It’s true, it’s true.

  46. 46.

    germy

    @Jeffro:

    On another note, looking forward to the president’s* vehement condemnation of the human toilet scuzz that paraded through Charlottesville last night. Look for the ‘wink’ and ‘nod’ emojis in his tweets later today…

    gorka will say they’re probably liberals in disguise.

  47. 47.

    Peale

    @Baud: lol. What udder horseshit. I’m sure the next article will be about how they’re disrupting the cruise industry. Ride sharing for billionaires who don’t have enough friends to be invited to parties. It’s really what they are offiering. It’s not a yacht. They don’t know the first thing about running a cruise ship. I’m going to bet that the first voyage will end in a bunch of billionaires with food poisoning from the caviar.

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I’m not a “sea lover” by and large, but that is probably due to my very limited experiences with it (sitting on a beach) (BORING) Some day I’d like to find the time for a Ravenesque experience and I really wish I lived near a suitable body of water as my one experience of sailing was just too f’n cool (i’d buy a boat in a NY second if I did), but my personal tastes go more to the mountains.

    All that being said, I have a # of friends who sail the 7 seas from time to time and if I ever got an invite I’d certainly join them.

  51. 51.

    Peale

    It’s nice to know Trump isn’t going to cut Guam loose. I mean, unlike those Liberals who’d probably cave to NoKo Loco, Trump actually favors keeping a long time US territory. I bet Trump thought he was talking to a foreign leader. Like Trump has an option to defend them from attack. He’s behind them 1,000 percent, which is how you know he was contemplating trying to extort protection money from them. Get them to pay up like he does Germany.

  55. 55.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jeffro:
    Ah, but if you’d bought no tickets at all, you could have daydreamed about spending the winnings for free. And your chances of winning would not have been significantly worse.

  58. 58.

    germy

    @Baud: Here’s the first line on Milbank’s wikipedia page:

    Dana Timothy Milbank (born April 27, 1968) is an American author, political shill, and columnist for The Washington Post.

  60. 60.

    Spanky

    On today’s agenda? Finish building a box, dig a hole.

    Our green-eyed baby boy, Archie, will have his final interview with the vet tomorrow, ending a four month long ordeal that started with extreme retching a couple of times a day. Every either-or possibility went against him. Either Irritable Bowel Disease or cancer. Either localized cancer or lymphoma. Either manageable small-cell lymphoma or the ravaging large cell.

    So here we are. A cat that’s only 10 years old, and the sweetheart of our shrinking tribe. He’s a really big cat, and then he got fat (25 lbs), and now he’s not. More like a deflated blimp. So I’m pondering whether the 14X22 box is big enough. Dark thoughts for a rainy day.

  66. 66.

    Spanky

    @Immanentize: I haven’t been keeping up, but knowing the backstory up until about a week ago, I see things have gotten worse. I’ve been there with my mother. I’m sorry you have to travel through this. Take strength from those around you, including here.

  67. 67.

    Immanentize

    @Spanky:
    I’m so sorry. If we lost our cat, Toast, right now, we would be utterly ruined.
    “So much depends on an orange tiger cat.”

  68. 68.

    A Ghost to Most

    @Amir Khalid: I’ve always considered lotteries a mathematics tax – if you can’t do the math, you get to pay the tax.

    Today I start to install the electronics for the second battery in the mountain assault vehicle, and hook up the on-board compressor. Then test the portable solar panels, and figure out how to store them in the back of the MAV.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    I love how wacky Trumpology is, how the Trump Administration lying constantly leads to all this guessing about 1. what happened and 2. what these people might possibly think. It’s like some sort of sickness spreading. They lie, which forces people to parse what they say and guess, which leads to pieces like this one:

    It seems possible that Bannon may have consciously or subconsciously transposed the non-Muslim crowd he saw in Hong Kong and turned it into a Muslim crowd he did not see in Karachi. This raises the question of whether Bannon’s underlying anxiety arises less from a threat purportedly presented by Muslims and more from a general anxiety about non-white foreigners, whether Muslim or Buddhist or any religion.

    There should be a standard disclaimer on all Trump Administration analysis: “this analysis is based on what they say, so may be grounded in absolutely nothing, so probably means nothing anyway”.

    During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about the country forced Western analysts to “read between the lines” and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the removal of portraits, the rearranging of chairs, positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square, the choice of capital or small initial letters in phrases such as “First Secretary”, the arrangement of articles on the pages of the party newspaper Pravda and other indirect signs to try to understand what was happening in internal Soviet politics.

    So that’s the root problem here- the source for the Trump Administration is the Trump Administration and they all lie constantly. There’s a lack of reliable information.

  71. 71.

    Elizabelle

    @Immanentize: You and your family are in my thoughts. Didn’t catch the original news, but a turn for the worse? So sorry.

    @Spanky: My condolences. Archie had a good life with you.

  73. 73.

    GregB

    Even more discredited than The Nation is Anti-War.Com.

    This week the world learned that the Trump was plotting with Eric Prince to turn over Sfghanistan to a mercenary army.

    Trump threatens North Korea with nuclear destruction.

    Trump threatens military action on Venezuela.

    Anti-War.com, a jaunt by and in the face of all of this warmongering is in finest “But Hillary” mode.

    Zero Hedge is a swamp filled with Nazis.

    Don’t get me going on The Intercept.

  74. 74.

    Amir Khalid

    Haven’t seen the video yet. Did the Governor roll his eyes at anything the President said? I’m pretty sure I would have.

  76. 76.

    Gelfling 545

    Put in a load of wash when I got up. Oh, the joy of second floor laundry equipment. Fed & walked the dog. Fed cat who seems to believe I didn’t. Looked at pictures from family who are in Disney World. Had morning pug snuggle. I need to sand the newly patched cracks & nail holes before painting. I hate painting because the up and down from the ladder is not as comfortable as it once was but $600 for a room that is mostly doors and windows seemed like more than I’d care to pay. Stlii, there’s all that taping of door and window frames. Sigh. Then I need to go stare at the east side of my back garden because I’m pretty sure the shrubs I planted yesterday are not where I really want them. I also have a sweet autumn clematis that needs planting.
    Tomorrow though: brunch at Niagara on the Lake followed by The Madness of King George at the Shaw Festival. A present from my daughter for my birthday last month. ?

  77. 77.

    Chris

    @Peale:

    Yeah, that’s the same thing I thought when reading that. Trump wasn’t sounding like a president reassuring one of his constituencies, he was sounding like the leader of one country giving reassurances to the leader of another, allied, one. That you would defend Guam if it’s attacked isn’t something that should need to be brought up at all – it’s a no-brainer, it’s literally his job.

  79. 79.

    Baud

    @GregB: For me, those other places didn’t have the credibility of the Nation going in, and I’ve never even heard of those websites.

    @Amir Khalid: The governor is a Trumpster.

  80. 80.

    gene108

    @Jeffro:

    Also, I see that someone ELSE won MegaMillions last night, what the hell??!? I bought THREE tickets…rigged, totally rigged.

    I hate those people. I hate them so much. Is it too much to ask for me to win $380 million just once in my lifetime? I don’t think so, but I guess the universe doesn’t agree. ???

  87. 87.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I don’t watch cable news anymore because it’s too fake but when I did I always thought Katrina vanden Heuvel was a terrible spokesperson for Lefties. She has that scolding thing they seem to fall into so easily. I just think it’s off-putting to lecture and be so smug about your position. Not everyone has to be an organizer so maybe that’s not her role- maybe she’s the “ideas” person or whatever- but your political movement should at least seem welcoming or approachable to people who don’t read political shit constantly and theirs doesn’t- they almost seem to revel in exclusivity- that they “know” but very few others “know”. Great! Except that’s a club not a political position.

  90. 90.

    Denali

    @Ozark Hillbilly,

    I see you are in the market for RR ties- we have hundreds that we are getting rid of, and that you are welcome to have. Only problem is location – upstate New York. But it is lovely here this time of year- the corn is the sweetest you have ever tasted, and we have a spare room. Just give us a heads up when you are arriving!

  92. 92.

    p.a.

    From the looks of it, coupons for Denny’s baconfried baconbattered bacon will be at a premium in Charlottesville.

    Q: is it legal for those tools to ask their kids for help if the drop their EPoD? Most look like they’d need traction if they tried to pick it up themselves.

  93. 93.

    A Ghost to Most

    The League of the South wants to secede again and restore the Confederate States of America, potentially triggering a second Civil War.

    The group has erected billboards that said “SECEDE” in several states, and it even has its own banner — a black and white version of the familiar Confederate battle flag, minus the stars,” the Associated Press reports. “Secession also finds support on some websites that support white nationalism, including Occidental Dissent, run by a Hill associate, and the openly racist, anti-Semitic Daily Stormer.”

    Because of family connections, I was recruited by these assholes about 94 in Middletown, MD. That dinner ended quickly.

    rawstory

  98. 98.

    Amir Khalid

    Liverpool are hanging on to a 2-3 lead as they play five minutes of injury time at Watford. I am on tenterhooks.

    ETA: Watford equalise from a corner. Damn.

  102. 102.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @debbie:

    They’re TOTALLY nice guys. Bitches just don’t want to fuck them – they’re too into bad boys and exploring outside their race. It can’t be because of pathetic racist assholism and mediocrity.

    Clearly, girls want committed guys who are brave enough to chant “Blood and Soil” and “White Power”.

    /sarc

  105. 105.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @debbie:

    And I wonder how many of them have touched a real-life, not a RealDoll girl outside of some roofied victim or paid companion?

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I decided I can’t do anything about the factions and the fighting so I’m ignoring it. I also think the obsession with the DNC is just dumb. Obsessing on the DNC to me is a “tell” that they’re too insulated because “the DNC” doesn’t matter that much to finding candidates, etc. They should matter, I guess. That’s part of their job. But they don’t.

  110. 110.

    gene108

    @debbie:

    I’d bet the ghosts of the Third Reich would be appalled to see that those folks think themselves to be the master race.

    Considering half these folks, including fuckheads like Seb Gorka, have enough Slavic or non-Aryan (per the Nazi definition, not the people, who overran India thousands of years ago) blood in them that the Schutzstaffel would’ve rounded them up for the camps, as a matter of principle.

  111. 111.

    Juice Box

    @Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: No, that’s not the way WW works at all. As long as you aren’t more than two pounds over your goal weight at your monthly weigh-in, it’s free for the month. Otherwise, you pay the regular meeting price. It’s a pretty good little incentive. It is a business and they do have to pay the employees, the rent, and the shareholders.

    There are zillions of free calorie counting apps, but many people find that “free” leads to procrastination.

  112. 112.

    gene108

    @Kay:

    Unlike Parlimentary systems, the Party system in the USA is very decentralized by design. There is no overarching Party center that chooses candidates, doles out campaign funds, etc. Otherwise things like a primary battle for a seat or against an incumbent would never happen.

  113. 113.

    Kay

    @A Ghost to Most:

    I saw more confederate flags in Ohio after Obama was elected than in all the years prior to his election. That flag, like all flags, is a symbol and you don’t have to be a genius to figure out what it’s a symbol of.

  115. 115.

    gene108

    I wish Weight Watchers or BeachBody or someone would figure out how to get a workout in, without gettting out of bed, which you can do all by yourself.

    I would exercise a lot more, if that were a thing.

  116. 116.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    Right. For low profile races no one even mentions the national Party. In my experience the people who “pick” candidates (recruit them to run) are elected officials. Every single House candidate we have had for the last 10 years was recruited by Marcy Kaptur. They don’t know it because they just run the one race where I listen to each candidate over a period of years, but they tell me the story of how they got in and it’s always Marcy Kaptur. They all have the same story.

    If they want to influence that more they should find out which Democrats recruit candidates and influence them.

  120. 120.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    The Marcy Kaptur factor is why I question the idea that we would would win races in R areas if we ran populists. Kaptur is a populist. She recruits House candidates here. They aren’t people chosen by the DNC. They are people Marcy Kaptur badgered and flattered into running. That’s what happened.

  122. 122.

    otmar

    Just arrived on Mallorca for a two week vacation with the family.

    Finally. It was high time for a getaway.

  123. 123.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay: Katrina vanden Heuvel has had money and access her whole damn life. Her mother’s Manhattan luxury apartment was the kind of scene Tom Wolfe wrote about in “Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers”.

    Her mother was more interesting. Jean Stein, daughter of the founder of the Music Corporation of America ($$$$), raised in Beverly Hills, author of at least two well-reviewed books, committed suicide earlier this year at age 83 by jumping from her 15th floor apartment (weirdly enough, the very same building that Anderson Cooper’s brother jumped from years ago). I would like to read Stein’s “West of Eden” (oral history of prominent Los Angeles and Hollywood families); she also wrote a popular book about Edie Sedgwick, who hung out with Andy Warhol. Last husband was a Nobel Prize winning neurophysiologist.

    Links: kind of snarky obit from the Hollywood Reporter.

    And Fuck the Fucking New York Times has a roundup with literary and NYC cultural icons remembering Jean Stein. Joan Didion, etc.
    That Voice, Those Parties: Remembering Jean Stein

    Although her obituaries noted her books, her stewardship of the literary magazine Grand Street and the arts patronage she underwrote with a fortune inherited from her father, Jules Stein, a founder of the Music Corporation of America, in the private reminiscences of friends, it was her role as connector and collector of people that formed a leitmotif.

    Nowhere was this more evident than at the parties she gave, first at her parents’ Beverly Hills estate, Misty Mountain, in later decades at a rambling Upper West Side apartment overlooking Central Park and, finally, at a terraced triplex on the East River. [From which she leapt, at age 83.]

    At these parties one was as likely to encounter Warren Beatty as the Russian dissident poet Andrei Voznesensky….

  125. 125.

    A Ghost to Most

    @Baud:
    I say that anyone trying to divide the Democratic party at this time is a splitter at best, to a false flag operative at worst.

  128. 128.

    TS

    Seems trump has found the solution to his falling popularity. Rant and rave at NK, generate panic & then ride in on the white horse and solve it all. Then explain how easy all this foreign stuff is – don’t even need any staff – he can do it all.

  131. 131.

    GregB

    @Baud:

    I agree. I was a frequent reader if The Nation but no more.

    The other people and sites used to have some interesting ideas but yhey have become such transparent pro-Putin shills they deserve to have covfefe thrown in their faces.

  132. 132.

    zhena gogolia

    I idolize Obama, but damn do I wish he had made the Russia thing public before the election. Let them say what they want about his “politicizing.” The American public deserved to know about it, and no one else was about to tell us. Now we’re having to worry about a madman with his finger on the nuclear button — for nothing.

  135. 135.

    gene108

    @Kay:

    The Marcy Kaptur factor is why I question the idea that we would would win races in R areas if we ran populists.

    The Sanders crew assumes Republicans vote against their self-interest or at least their economic self-interest and if they were shown the light of democratic soc$alism, they would switch their political allegiance in a heartbeat.

    I think we have to accept that Republicans voting for Republicans are by and large voting in what they perceive are their interests, such as lower taxes, increased authority for their church to influence politics, and so on.

    There’s no way to get them to change their thinking.

    They are getting what they want from Republicans.

  136. 136.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @TS:
    It won’t work. It hasn’t so far. He gets a very short improvement from wavering Republicans, then a few more abandon him for good when it’s over. The guy has actually failed to exploit terrorist attacks on American soil, that’s how bad he is at this. And the process runs fast, since he’s too chickenshit to act on his threats.

  137. 137.

    Elizabelle

    @zhena gogolia: I agree. I wonder how Obama will handle that in his autobiography.

    Reverence for a system that, as Kay has pointed out on numerous occasions, had already rotted from within. The rot was just not as evident.

    Zhena: I feel the same way about living through current events. Why I’m not here as much anymore; don’t want to hyperfocus on it. I don’t find Trump that interesting, except as a marker for decline. And maybe he will take the Republican party and its enabling institutions down. Including Big Both Sides Media.

  139. 139.

    schrodingers_cat

    BS actions have been shown again and again to be beneficial to Putin’s interests. Wonder what is in those tax returns that he is hiding. He also voted against the most recent Russia sanctions. He is the T of the left.

    Some similarities:

    Putin sympathies
    Crazy hair
    New Yawk accent
    Shoutiness
    Paper thin policy agenda
    Belief that saying something makes it so.
    Antipathy towards immigrants

    I can go on.

  142. 142.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia: Like I said, I’m not a regular reader. But to me there is a category difference between having even a terribly wrong point of view and catering to conspiracy theory.

  145. 145.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @gene108:
    The Sanders crew are fools. The primary proved eloquently that there is no revolution waiting for the call. I think he can’t forgive Democrats for showing the heart of his philosophy to be a lie. Everyone who votes their economic self-interest, including the rich, voted for Clinton. Republican voters have different values and core beliefs. They are not going to switch in any significant numbers, because the Republican Party gives them what they want. Trump’s election just showed how extreme this is.

    And yes, it’s in the rich’s economic interest to vote for the party that offers stable growth. Republicans offer them the privilege of pulling the ladder up after themselves, feeling like they can act on their whims, and grinding down the poor. A lot of them prefer that to economic security.

  147. 147.

    bemused

    @debbie:

    Read somewhere on the twitter:
    If these guys are worried they’ll be replaced by another race they shouldn’t have a movement that is 99% male.

  149. 149.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: You’re sweet. I am not so much missed. You, though, are irreplaceable, and not just for being our very own Harold Stassen, of the digital age.

    You keep things light, and we sometimes focus on some very grim (Grimm quality actually) topics.

  151. 151.

    Yarrow

    @Elizabelle:

    Reverence for a system that, as Kay has pointed out on numerous occasions, had already rotted from within. The rot was just not as evident.

    One thing Trump seems to have done is to highlight the rot that was there all along but we were either ignoring it or didn’t see it. In general some parts of our system seem to have held up better than others, but many are not strong. Maybe if we get through this time it we can fix some of those problems.

  154. 154.

    Betty Cracker

    @germy: CNN had a similar article here with more on the Nina Turner angle. I’m hoping Turner’s recent histrionics discredit her with folks who haven’t paid much attention to the infighting until now. She comes off as such a crybaby.

  156. 156.

    Elizabelle

    @Yarrow: Yes. I hope there will be a good outcome, ultimately. Not a moment to lose, either.

    And time to plug Josh Marshall’s incredible (and brief) post: The Darkness and the Rot. In part:

    …. But Trump is able to take people of some apparent substance and attainment and destroy them as well. The key though is that he doesn’t destroy them. In his orbit, under some kind of spell, he makes them destroy themselves. It is always a self-destruction. He’s like a black hole. But for this there’s no ready explanation. Because what is the power? The force?

    I puzzled over this for some time. Eventually I sensed that Trump wasn’t inducing people’s self-destruction so much as he was acting like a divining rod, revealing rot that existed already but was not apparent. It may seem like an odd comparison. But I’m reminded of the effect in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series where the cursed pirates appear to be flesh and blood bodies. But the moonlight reveals them as desiccated skeletons, animated but undead. The rot was there but hidden. Trump is the moonlight. Perhaps better to say, to invert our metaphor, Trump is the darkness.

  159. 159.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Elizabelle: You are very much missed, I have missed you. I have also gotten tired of being called an asshole, emotional etc for bringing up topics that are close to my heart, calling out the crap pulled by St Sanders, not being worshipful enough of the 3 musketeers (generals) in the T circle, accused of being naive and worse for calling out on the excessive negativity etc. I may just follow your example because I too don’t find Twittler’s tweets and actions and the analysis thereof endlessly fascinating.

  160. 160.

    gene108

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    The primary proved eloquently that there is no revolution waiting for the call. I think he can’t forgive Democrats for showing the heart of his philosophy to be a lie.

    All the primary showed was how the DNC, Obama, Donna Brazille, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz rigged the election for Hillary Clinton, who is the worst candidate in American history, and if they were fair and honest Bernie would have won all 50 states by 100% of the vote and crushed Trump and elevated Democrats into winning 435 House seats, and 33 more Senate seats on his coat tails.

    This is why the DNC and the Democratic Party must be destroyed.

  162. 162.

    zhena gogolia

    How do you search the site for a commenter? I don’t know what’s going on with Immanentize, and when I search the site I only get a mention of him in a front-page post.

  165. 165.

    gene108

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    And yes, it’s in the rich’s economic interest to vote for the party that offers stable growth.

    The way the stock market shut up after Trump won, I think the rich are more interested in speculative bubbles, where some of them at least, can make above normal profits.

  169. 169.

    Amir Khalid

    Help! My clip-on tuner is acting strangely. I’ve managed to tune four of the strings I put on The Girl today. But when I try to tune the D string, it skips from hearing a C straight to hearing an E; when I try to tune the B string, it skips from hearing an A to hearing a C. How do I work around this? Do I need a new battery in the tuner, which only arrived a couple of weeks ago? Or is the tuner a dud that I need to replace?

  172. 172.

    Yarrow

    @schrodingers_cat: OT – have you ever made something along the lines of this dish? I am growing black-eyed peas and am inundated with them at the moment. I’m looking for ways to use them outside of the standard Hoppin’ John’ style dish. It sounds good. I’d welcome any thoughts you might have.

  176. 176.

    Yarrow

    @zhena gogolia: It does.

    Re: the search function, I don’t use the Balloon Juice built in one. It doesn’t work well. I used to go to Google and search that way but they seem to have stopped indexing comments. I went to Bing to search for a comment and it seems they still index comments. The string I entered in the search box was: site:balloon-juice.com [search word or words]. Then you can narrow by date if that helps. Maybe there’s a better way but that worked for me.

  179. 179.

    realbtl

    @Amir Khalid: New battery a good idea, you don’t know how long yours was sitting in the box. It could also be faulty, new battery should tell you. Also make sure you haven’t bumped any switches if your tuner has them.
    You might try ear tuning (G string on 4th = B, B on 5th = E etc). It’s always nice to have an analog plan B.

  180. 180.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Yarrow: I usually don’t cook beans/legumes with yogurt (or any diary for that matter) or use curry powder either, and the 1/3 cup oil seems rather excessive.
    This is the kinda of recipe I would use if I were making black eyed peas. You can replace gud ( unprocessed sugarcane, with turbinado sugar or sugar in the raw, or you could even omit it)

    ETA: Curry powder and garam masala are not substitutes for each other. That recipe is a hot mess.

  182. 182.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @germy: Bernie Sanders’s advisers are promoting a “litmus test” under which Democrats who don’t swear to implement single-payer health care would be booted from the party in primaries. Sanders pollster Ben Tulchin penned an op-ed with a colleague under the headline “Universal health care is the new litmus test for Democrats.” Nina Turner, head of the Sanders group Our Revolution, told Politico this week that “there’s something wrong with” Democrats who won’t “unequivocally” embrace “Medicare-for-all.”

    I don’t know if it’s Milbank or Tulchin (edited, not Turner) who doesn’t get that “UHC” and “single-payer” are not synonyms. I find it entirely plausible that the answer is “yes”. I don’t find it that difficult.
    and Turner is still talking about the donuts.

  184. 184.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Immanentize: I wish you strength for this difficult time.

    @Spanky: That’s hard. I adopted a cat toward the end of last year, and a similar situation ensued. I can’t believe how hard I cried when the end came. I had him only three months. He was about ten years old too.

  186. 186.

    Yarrow

    @schrodingers_cat: Thanks for the tips. I was just searching black-eyed peas recipes and it was outside the typical recipes I found so I thought I’d ask. I thought the yogurt sounded a bit odd with it too.

    They are fresh black-eyed peas so I have to adjust most recipes because they don’t take as long to cook as dried and aren’t ready to eat like canned.

  187. 187.

    sukabi

    @Jeffro: nope. He won’t acknowledge it at all. He’ll tweet about everything but that….like he did with the attack on the mosque 2 weeks ago.

  188. 188.

    Redshift

    I am at Worldcon in Helsinki! So I am paying much less attention to news than usual. Though it is the first foreign trip I’ve ever taken when I feel the need to check in on whether we’re likely to have a functioning government by the time we return…

  192. 192.

    gene108

    @Yarrow:

    I think a 1/3 cup of oil and 1/3 cup of ghee (clarified butter) is also odd. That’s way too much oil and ghee to just sautée anything.

  194. 194.

    Redshift

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I don’t know if it’s Milbank or Tulchin (edited, not Turner) who doesn’t get that “UHC” and “single-payer” are not synonyms.

    I’ve found that many Berners shift effortlessly between using single payer to mean any sort of UHC and treating anything other than actual single payer as heresy.

    For example, a Facebook post from a friend (who’s a Berner but not a hardcore “everyone else is evil” type) began “all other industrialized countries have single payer, broadly speaking.” Not being in the mood for an argument, I refrained from pointing out that by that standard, Obamacare is “single payer, broadly speaking,” and you guys savaged Hillary and Obama for wanting to build on that.

  196. 196.

    CaseyL

    @Immanentize: From active therapy straight into hospice? My god. You and your family are in my thoughts.

    Either I’m at the age where my peer cohort is more likely to develop the disease or what, but it seems every day more people I know in person or on-line are having to deal with cancer.

  198. 198.

    StringOnAStick

    Once BS starts to really force this litmus test, every Dem he targets needs to push back HARD on universal health care vs single payer. The 70% of people who get health insurance through their jobs are not likely to see that being taken away and replaced with a lower actuarial value plan like Medicare as something they want. His being fast and loose with facts and terms is going to screw us in 2018 if this isn’t slapped back immediately. Every bbro I’ve encountered does not know the difference or the implications, especially that of losing the insured through employment voters, who they probably see as sellouts to The Man anyway. I’m so dine with BS and Nina Turner is a whiny, spot light loving idiot.

  200. 200.

    lamh36

    Minute Maid Mao is a racist, vile bag of human waste, but those white supremacists with Hitler white dreams are not new, or their acts, old.

    That doesn’t diminish the coverage on their lil’ rally, but what is mostly frustrating is many are offering same poor coverage.

    You shouldn’t have to see a bunch of Robert Lee dick riders hollering to speak on pervasiveness of American racism.

    But enough of them. White folks, get your dads, brothers, sons, uncles and cousins — and all the women standing right beside them.
    https://twitter.com/youngsinick/status/896393565747769345

  201. 201.

    Amir Khalid

    @realbtl:
    Thanks for reminding this newbie to tune D and B by ear. I think I’ve now got The Girl sounding right, or close it. The tuner is a wee thing with just the one on/off button. I will check the battery, as you suggest. If it is indeed the tuner that’s gone bananas after only a couple of weeks — ah well, at least I can replace it for under RM20.

  202. 202.

    Another Scott

    @Redshift: Even Wilmer does it. RutlandHerald:

    Sanders is stepping into the breach to provide one — a Medicare-for-all singlepayer health care system. It’s not an original concept, and certainly not a new proposal for Sanders. Since joining the House in 1991, where he served prior to his election to the Senate in 2006, Sanders has introduced or co-sponsored 12 bills seeking a single-payer system.

    “This is not a new idea for me. I’ve been an advocate for a Medicare-for-all single payer system my whole career,” he said. “Right now, we are kind of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.”

    Aides say the legislation will be unveiled when senators return to Washington in September. It’s part of a three-part act, with the immediate goal of saving the ACA from Republican efforts to undermine it, then patching the system in the short-term and, finally, implementing Sanders’ panacea.

    “You look at the moment and you also look at the future. At the moment, what we had to do is defeat those disastrous proposals. Hopefully, that will not resurface,” Sanders said. “It really did in the past few months make me almost physically sick to think that there was a possibility that 23 million Americans could be thrown off of health insurance. It really did make me sick, and it propelled me to work as hard as I could.”

    With repeal efforts on the back burner, at least for now, Sanders and other Democrats want to address “some serious and acute problems” with the ACA.

    For Sanders, that means “seeing if it’s possible to put together a coalition in Congress who are prepared to take on the pharmaceutical industry and lower the cost of prescriptions.” It also means finding insurance solutions for parts of the country where people cannot obtain private insurance plans. For the latter shortterm dilemma, Sanders said he hopes Congress will embrace lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to 55.

    [ yet he refused to be a co-sponsor on an actual recent bill to reduce the eligibility age to 55 ]

    He is likely to find broad support within the Democratic caucus for his short-term proposals. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has voiced support for lowering the age of eligibility, and some Republicans have acknowledged the need to shore up the health care system.

    Sanders’ ultimate goal, however, will require massive changes in Washington.

    […]

    Sanders said “the job right now is to energize millions of people across the country.” For Sanders, that means traveling the country, as he has continued to do since ending his presidential campaign in July 2016. It means getting doctors, nurses, unions and “ordinary working people” on board “who understand that health care is a right and not a commodity.”

    There will be fierce opposition. Sanders said he expects insurance companies, drug companies, “the entire political and media establishment” and “parts of the Democratic Party” to mobilize against the proposal.

    (emphasis added)

    Remember:

    And then you know what I say? I’d say, “Hey, Mitch, take a look out the window. There’s a million young people out there who don’t want to be in debt for half their life for the crime of going to college. If you want to antagonize those million people and lose your job, Mitch, if you don’t want to lose your job, you better start listening to what we have to say.” That’s the point. That’s how change takes place.

    It’s nonsense.

    Medicare isn’t single-payer. Medicare doesn’t cover everything. People have to have supplemental insurance to cover gaps in Medicare coverage. The UK has private health insurance (supposedly with participation of about 10% of the population) in addition to the NHS.

    It’s the same old same old. He’s still just recycling his campaign speeches.

    He still apparently thinks, or wants people to think, that rallies are how change happens.

    Rallies and marches aren’t how change happens. They’re just a small part of the process of change.

    Change happens by voting in enough like-minded people so that they have the majority and thus control the levers of power and thus can implement their policies. And implementing policies isn’t some sort of purity battle, it’s about compromise and incremental progress.

    Until he understands that, and acts as if he understands that, and stops demonizing anyone who doesn’t turn over their brain to him, I’m going to continue to think that he’s just continuing to run his grift.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  203. 203.

    Another Scott

    @Amir Khalid: I tried to take violin lessons for a while as a kid decades ago. My only tuning instrument was a pitch pipe, and I didn’t find out until I’d gotten frustrated beyond measure that the pitch-pipe wasn’t close to being in tune. Needless to say, it made it pretty hard to figure out what I was doing, when I also didn’t recognize what the tunes were supposed to sound like…

    Don’t skimp on getting something that works correctly!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  204. 204.

    Original Lee

    Putting this on this thread instead of the heavy-duty one upstairs: My son burned rice in the microwave on Thursday. It still reeks of burned carbohydrates every time we use it and also spews out the odor into the rest of the house. Is it possible to deodorize the microwave, or should we just throw it out and get a new one?

  208. 208.

    Firebert

    @Amir Khalid: Try moving the tuner to a different spot on the peghead. The way vibrations move through an object can have stronger and weaker spots.

  209. 209.

    J R in WV

    @Yarrow:

    Here’s an African recipe, with tuna, Black-eyed peas, some tomato and red pepper flakes. I always use some garlic as well, and any other spice you like from that part of the globe. Like mace or coriander seed. I like fresh cilantro with most things as a garnish as well.

    Here is West African Tuna casserole:
    2 cups black-eyed peas
    1/2 cup minced onions
    3 tbsp peanut or olive oil
    1 large chopped tomato
    2 tsp crushed hot red peppers
    2 cans flaked tuna: 7 oz. each
    2 tbsp tomato sauce
    1/2 tsp salt
    cheesy bread crumbs on top

    Saute the onions, put it all in a casserole dish but the topping, cook it long enough for your fresh peas, add the topping and brown. That’s a lot of red peppers, if yours are fresh and really hot, taper that down a little till you see how hot you like it. I use a shallow dish to have more surface to brown and get it to thicken up.

  210. 210.

    Yarrow

    @schrodingers_cat: I’ve figured out they take about 30 minutes more or less to cook. Depends at what point I harvest them. I learned with the first batch that I had harvested some too early and they were hard to get out of the pods. Can’t leave them too late, though, or the pods turn brown and they start to dry so would take longer to cook. It’s a learning experience.

    @gene108: Yes, that sounds like a lot. Oh well, at least the recipe got me thinking about other ways to use the black-eyed peas, so that’s good!

  211. 211.

    Amir Khalid

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    I’m sorry for your loss. I have no idea why cats are so fond of humans, but like a lot of people here I am very grateful that they are.

  213. 213.

    tybee

    cook the peas, drain.
    put an equal amount of white shoepeg corn in a bowl and add the peas.
    dice onion, tomatoes, celery, sweet bell peppers (red and green) and some hot peppers – try to dice everything into the approximate size of the peas/corn.
    add some red wine vinegar.
    stir well. refrigerate for a bit (a day works best but i can never wait that long)
    get large bag of corn chips and chow down.
    when you’ve finished with the veggies, the juice in the bottom of the bowl is very tasty, too.

  215. 215.

    Yarrow

    @tybee: Thanks! I’ve seen similar black-eyed pea salads as I’ve perused online. I’m thinking about making something like that tomorrow. It’s so hot right now that a cool salad sounds really good. It’s fun having so much of something that I’m exploring new recipes!.Gets me out of a rut.

  216. 216.

    henqiguai

    @schrodingers_cat(#159):

    I have also gotten tired of being called an asshole, emotional etc for bringing up topics that are close to my heart, calling out the crap pulled by St Sanders, not being worshipful enough of the 3 musketeers (generals) in the T circle, accused of being naive and worse for calling out on the excessive negativity etc.

    Be honest, S_C — you’ve also called out others for doing the same, in their own right.

  217. 217.

    Amir Khalid

    @Firebert:
    I don’t think it was a dead spot on the headstock. I put the tuner where I always do, at the farthest end (past the high-E tuner) and it was always able to pick up D and B before.

  218. 218.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Anytime you want applause, dump on Sanders with me and we can both applaud. And no one can have excess negativity when the world appears to be on the brink of nuclear combat. So anyone calling you out for excess negativity is just deluded about current events and where they may lead.

  222. 222.

    Mnemosyne

    @Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.:

    Former Weight Watchers employee here: you remember incorrectly. Here’s how it works:

    While you’re still working towards your goal weight, you pay a weekly fee for the meeting and weigh-in — no fine. There’s now an option to pay monthly instead of week-to-week.

    When you get to your goal weight, you then go into maintenance mode for a minimum of 6 weeks. You still pay the weekly fee for those 6 weeks. If you are still within 2 pounds +/- of your goal weight, you then become a Lifetime Member, which means you can then attend meetings for free.

    Once you get to Lifetime, that’s when you need to be within 2 pounds of your goal weight when you weigh in, and you’re supposed to weigh in once a month. If you’re more than 2 pounds over your goal weight or you miss your monthly weigh-in, you pay the meeting fee.

    Clear as mud? ? They give you incentives to stay within 2 pounds of your goal once you get there, but there’s no “fine.”

  225. 225.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @Elizabelle: THAT JEAN STEIN!?

    I had no idea she was Katrina’s mom. She wrote that famous book on Edie Sedwick and I’ve seen her interviewed numerous times. She was perfectly normal and erudite, unlike her kooky propagandist daughter.

  227. 227.

    No One You Know

    @Immanentize: I missed the post about your wife…I’m sorry. You have support, right?

    Someone from my former choir got herself certified as a musical thanatologist. Suzanne plays her harp for the dying. She says very many of them like the music; it’s timed to their breathing, acts like a companion and a bridge. Guitars are also becoming popular. The art lends itself to ad hoc chording for those of us who aren’t musicians.

  228. 228.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: Funny — I saw that at the time and took it for the snark it was. So, went right over my head. You wuz worried for nothing. And I would miss you all too much to be gone forever.

    Shall endeavor not to pick up any other Trump mannerisms, even the best and most classy.

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Yup. That Jean Stein. Haven’t read the Edie book, but saw it all over the place.

    I do want to read the West of Eden book. Fascinated by the City of Angels and the moving pictures.

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