Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Infrastructure week. at last.

“But what about the lurkers?”

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

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

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

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

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Hot air and ill-informed banter

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

No one could have predicted…

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

You cannot shame the shameless.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / I Am Left Panda (Open Thread)

I Am Left Panda (Open Thread)

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Left Red Panda here exemplifies my approach to life these days:

“OMFG, what fresh hell is thiiiiiis?!?”

Just expecting the worst all the time. That’s no good. I’ve got to get back to being more like chill Right Red Panda.

Got a wretched spring cold, so I’ve been piled up on the sofa watching baseball and cooking shows all weekend. Hope you’re having a more active and productive Sunday.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  1. 1.

    Nicole

    Productive, yes. Active, no. I’m reading a chapter in a textbook about the environment as it relates to sociology. So, I’m also getting really, really depressed. Though I look forward to learning about how environmental issues became so partisan in the USA.

    On the bright side, Westworld is back on tonight.

  2. 2.

    Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)

    I drafted a couple of blog posts and my April newsletter. I started reading a series about book marketing, got overwhelmed, and played spider solitaire on my computer instead. Now I’m reading Fonda Lee’s JADE CITY, which is fabulous but violent, so I have to take breaks.

    All of this is in service of not looking at a book draft I finished this week. I can’t. I’ll throw up.

  3. 3.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    Sorry about your cold, Betty. I got it three weeks ago and I’m still snotty, although the misery went away after a week. Hope you feel better quickly.

    In theory, I’m attending a conference in New Orleans. In practice, I’m lying on a purple velvet chaise longue in my hotel room, drinking icewater and admiring the view and the skull-patterned wallpaper. This town is fabulous (first visit ever, why did I wait so long?!), and I need to keep my head and my feet in good shape for another evening of wandering from bar to restaurant to bar to nightclub. I could live like this. Not for long, but for a while.

  6. 6.

    HinTN

    It’s a big Earth Day rainy day here. My FB (and since childhood) friend ACB posted something about gin and tonic being the cure for seasonal allergies. Perhaps also for the common cold?

  7. 7.

    satby

    Got home from clean-up day at the market, where a whole 8 of us showed up (there are about 80 booths). Our small crowd got quite a lot done anyway, and they made us lunch. But it went on an hour longer than scheduled, so my plans for getting stuff done around the house have been derailed. I did water all my new my planted apple trees though.

  12. 12.

    HinTN

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I declined an offer for an engineering job in the NOLA area at 1.5 x what I started for in Chattanooga because I damn sure knew I’d be fat and dead quick living there. Love to visit!!! Let the good times roll.

  13. 13.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    There’s no cure for congenital gunshitery: Waffle House shooting: 4 dead in Antioch shooting; suspect could be at large with two guns

    “Four of Reinking’s guns, including the AR-15 rifle police said he used Sunday, were seized after he was arrested by the U.S. Secret Service in July 2017 on charges that he was in an authorized area outside the White House.

    Following the arrest, Reinking was interviewed by local and federal authorities and his Illinois firearms authorization was revoked.

    Reinking’s four guns were given to his father, who has said he gave them back to his son, according to the authorities.”

  15. 15.

    MattF

    I’ve been trying out my new rice cooker. It’s ‘version 2.0’ of my old rice cooker (which I had for six years)– it includes menu settings for steel-cut oatmeal and quinoa, and has a somewhat different display interface. I suspect it’s at least partly a ‘give the Americans what they want’ design.

    Works very nicely. The quinoa setting uses very little water, fwiw.

  17. 17.

    zhena gogolia

    I just watched that ten times in a row. Yes, that is me every time I look at the WaPo.

  18. 18.

    Mandalay

    A Bill Maher joke from his show last Friday:

    What happened was two African American gentlemen were at Starbucks meeting a white guy….waiting on HIM!

    That’s the first interesting thing here: the WHITE GUY was running late! …eh-heh-heh

    It’s 2018 and Maher is still pushing negative stereotypes about women, gays and people of color. He clutches his pearls over Trump normalizing bad behavior, yet feels entitled to keep spewing his bile to demonstrate that he is proudly defending the First Amendment against “fucking liberals”.

  21. 21.

    seaboogie

    In other animal/Twitter news, I discovered that I am blocked by Paul Bronks @BoringEnormous, the discovery of which was much like left panda. Damn shame – was one of my favorite Twitter accounts (present company notwithstanding). Checked my tweets, and I don’t get it.

  22. 22.

    Phylllis

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I was there for a conference in 2005 (about 3 weeks before Katrina). I knew I was in trouble when our waiter at breakfast the first morning asked if I wanted a Bourbon Milk Punch with my meal. Yes please. My late husband swore it took me two weeks to sober up after coming home.

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    At the LA Times Festival of Books. It is over 80 degrees, as always. I am grumpy because this year they decided not to have a romance panel at all, because who reads romance novels, amirite? I mean, romance being 1/3rd of the genre market — bigger than mystery and sci-fi combined, both of which have multiple author panels — must be some kind of weird fluke.

    So I’m here with an attitude.

  24. 24.

    bystander

    I accidentally read some of the trailing comments. I was sad cursive writing isn’t being taught anymore. Evidently, English isn’t either.

  25. 25.

    Gin & Tonic

    Since it is a gorgeous day here in southern New England, I just went for a nice long bike ride (as in bicycle, Ms Cracker.) Because, this spring, I can. Active, yes. Productive, well, the jury’s out.

  30. 30.

    trollhattan

    @seaboogie:
    You know what you did.

    –Paul Bronks

    Perfect spring Sunday. Took the kid to a work gig with the ‘vert top down then back home to deploy some of Monsanto’s finest to drive away the Bermuda grass probing the new lawnless landscape for the best invasion routes. Die Bermuda grass, die!

  31. 31.

    raven

    We just finished moving my new (habitat) desk into our old bedroom downstairs as the march toward retirement continues on. I’ve been in the upstairs space for almost 14 years so this is going to be a big change. I told her a minute ago that it was a small price to pay for not having to have been in a cube farm all these years.

  33. 33.

    Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)

    Picked up three new chew toys for Iggy and Muppet — one to give to Muppet, one to give Iggy, then one more to sneak to Iggy when Muppet steals the first one I gave him.

    I should be editing 25 images and creating a slide show for a photography class final project that’s due Tuesday, but, well, I don’t wanna.

  36. 36.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne: I just got back from the Festival, with a bag full of books. Some for me, some for gifts for family. It was a good way to spend a day.

  39. 39.

    cain

    So no thread on the shooting in Tennessee and how a brave young man tackled the racist asshole with the AR-15 and saved everyone?

    Also, I got a insta-pot, I’m figuring out a lot of things, including how to make pulao which is my first foray into cooking with this thing.

    Next week, I’m going back to Portland, and get to stay with my ex-wife and her boyfriend.. fun fun.

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    @Nicole:

    On the bright side, Westworld is back on tonight.

    I never watched season one. If I jump into season 2, will it make any sense?

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    @HinTN:

    And … it was an unarmed black kid that stopped the mayhem. Take that NRA and all your enablers.

    Had the black kid been armed, the NRA and white conservatives would have lost their shit. They would not know how to process it.

  50. 50.

    Calouste

    @Nicole:

    Though I look forward to learning about how environmental issues became so partisan in the USA.

    Cleek’s law: Republicans are against anything and everything Democrats are for.

  51. 51.

    evodevo

    @Brachiator: NO! it doesn’t even make sense if you saw Season One lol – going to have to binge watch or find a synopsis, ’cause I don’t recall all the plot points …

  53. 53.

    Brachiator

    @evodevo:

    NO! it doesn’t even make sense if you saw Season One lol – going to have to binge watch or find a synopsis, ’cause I don’t recall all the plot points

    I think there is a video synopsis, had an email from HBO about it. Maybe I’ll check to see if it is still available.

  56. 56.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Brachiator:

    On many cable systems (including mine, Cox), all the Season 1 episodes are available for free in the “on demand” section. (There is also a two-minute “Season 1 Recap,” I notice.)

  58. 58.

    seaboogie

    @Steeplejack (phone): Thank you. It just feels so absurd to have been blocked by this account that I think I’ll give it a miss.

    ETA: the link takes me to the “you’ve been blocked by this account” screen.

  61. 61.

    Aleta

    @seaboogie:
    He is clearly misguided. His loss.

    Could it be that if someone is getting bombarded by trools they don’t take time to look at individuals? Block lots of followers indiscriminately, just to save time, make fewer decisions?

  62. 62.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @seaboogie:

    There are some auto-blocking extensions on Twitter that allow you (BoringEnormous, say) to block everyone blocked by some other (presumably trusted) person or everyone who follows some (presumably malevolent) person, etc. It’s a perhaps crude way to deal with armies of bots and nuts. You probably got snagged by something like that.

    I doubt that BoringEnormous has some personal grudge against you.

  65. 65.

    workworkwork

    This thread might be dead already but….

    With the warm weather coming on, I decided to make a concerted effort to not use my oven. So I’m trying three new Instant Pot recipes this week:
    – Chicken Marinara
    – Sesame Chicken
    – Glazed Carrots

    I’ll be adjusting the recipes to be low-carb as well.

    Wish me luck!

  66. 66.

    mainmata

    Just back from a 26 hour journey back to MD and am now fighting a cold probably from the plane. Hope you get well quickly, Betty, we need your deadly wit, political commentary and your local nature observations. Are you still keeping chickens?

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