Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Their freedom requires your slavery.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Come on, man.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.

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

You can’t love your country only when you win.

No one could have predicted…

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

After roe, women are no longer free.

In my day, never was longer.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

I really should read my own blog.

Let there be snark.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / There are tons of dolphins in this photo…

There are tons of dolphins in this photo…

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They just dove underwater every fucking time I took a picture. Seriously, so many dolphins!

As far as I can tell, the crew on that boat are the only working folks in this town today, aside from bartenders, cooks and wait staff, who are VERY busy.

Earlier, we were at a tavern populated almost exclusively by folks a decade or two our senior, which happens less and less these days since we’re no spring chickens ourselves.

There was a jukebox that I was controlling via an app, and I realized from the surrounding conversations that none of the other patrons knew this was possible, because they kept questioning each other about who played what song with their quarters.

It never occurred to them it could be us, since we never got near the jukebox. We acted totally innocent.

Before we left, I considered queuing up a solid hour of “Delta Dawn,” but I was afraid it might cause actual bloodshed.

It’s the little things, friends.

We’re heading home from our long weekend tomorrow. I’m a little sad about that, but I can’t wait to see the doggies. Their sitter sent this photo:

What a handsome boy!

Other news: Big, fat liar Trump called Justin Trudeau “dishonest” and had a general hissy-fit over the way his bullshit was received at the G7 summit.

Hubby and I were talking about it, and I wondered if we (America) could ever come back from this. Even if Trump proves to be a fart in a whirlwind, the rest of the world now knows we’re dumb enough to elect such a pariah — or at least lax enough to let a 3rd-rate power like Russia sleaze such a destructive moron into office.

Hubby pointed out that some of the aghast parties — namely Germany and Japan — came back from a lot worse. Good point!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  2. 2.

    Corner Stone

    Hubby pointed out that some of the aghast parties — namely Germany and Japan — came back from a lot worse. Good point!

    They were both virtually destroyed first.

  3. 3.

    debbie

    According to Trump, Canada puts a 270% tariff on American milk. I find that unpossible.

  4. 4.

    rikyrah

    Grudge
    ‏ @grudging1

    Grudge Retweeted Melissa McEwan

    Manafort not only chose Pence. He grounded Trump’s plane to make sure it happened. Pence was very important to *Paul Manafort*. Wonder what that guy is up to.

  5. 5.

    TaMara (HFG)

    So glad you’re having fun.

    True story – I was walking down Santa Monica beach one morning and there was a pod of dolphins moving along with me. I was enjoying them and thought it would be nice to point them out to others on the beach as I walked along. But every time I went to do it – they went under. I started to think I must be hallucinating them. LOL

  7. 7.

    rikyrah

    How bad is it?

    Stonekettle
    ‏ @Stonekettle

    Stonekettle Retweeted GOP

    Welp, here’s the harsh truth: There’s not one damned thing you can do and it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. And then, we’re going to have DECADES rebuilding.

    I warned you sons of bitches. When you said “BURN IT ALL DOWN,” I fucking warned you.

  8. 8.

    Corner Stone

    Other news: Big, fat liar Trump called Justin Trudeau “dishonest” and had a general hissy-fit over the way his bullshit was received at the G7 summit.

    At some point, don’t other world leaders just have to start speaking plainly? Call Trump an irrational liar and that he is a danger to the free world and there’s nothing he says that is true or can be trusted.

  10. 10.

    Corner Stone

    The repeated jabs at the US press before Trump left Canada were also priceless.

  11. 11.

    rikyrah

    UH HUH
    UH HUH

    Vanita Gupta
    ‏Verified account @vanitaguptaCR

    Vanita Gupta Retweeted Hansi Lo Wang

    BREAKING: DOJ docs prove that Kobach and Bannon are behind Census citizenship Q. Kobach emails say he talked to Sec Ross “at the direction of Steve Bannon.” In email, Kobach proposes specific language for the citizenship Q, says it’s essential” and “needs to be added to census.”

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Hubby pointed out that some of the aghast parties — namely Germany and Japan — came back from a lot worse. Good point!

    Indeed.

  17. 17.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    Glad you’re having fun on your trip! And what a cute dog too!

    Hubby and I were talking about it, and I wondered if we (America) could ever come back from this. Even if Trump proves to be a fart in a whirlwind, the rest of the world now knows we’re dumb enough to elect such a pariah — or at least lax enough to let a 3rd-rate power like Russia sleaze such a destructive moron into office.

    The obvious rebuttal is that it can happen anywhere and to anyone, eventually. It’s also happened in Italy, the UK, and almost in France; Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, etc are also experiencing a resurgence of right-wing authoritarianism. I hope the rest of the world is watching the special elections here in the US to know that we are the majority and will start the process of locking out the far-right from power, just as was done in France: by outvoting them.

  18. 18.

    Sab

    So what happens if I don’t answer the census citizenship question? Am I not counted, or am I in trouble, or what?

  20. 20.

    Mike R

    You could have played “what’s new Psystar” for an hour or so, heard a comedy routine with that as the vehicle of misery. Mrs R and I are looking forward to the opportunity.

  21. 21.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @rikyrah:
    Half of the comments on that thread (tbf, there’s currently only 4) are awful.

    “Justice will be served and Jose here will be deported.”

    “Why is it on hold? Ridiculous.”

  23. 23.

    rikyrah

    John Harwood
    ‏Verified account @JohnJHarwood

    ex-Obama UN ambassador Samantha Power after Trump, while fighting allies, asks for Russia to rejoin G-7: “He doesn’t even try not to seem like the Manchurian candidate”

  27. 27.

    chris

    @debbie: It’s a real number, yesterday Trump was saying 300%. The reason for it is that there are large American Dairy operations who could supply all of Canada’s needs. Surprisingly our dairy farmers don’t like that idea.

  28. 28.

    Another Scott

    @Van Buren: Things can change very, very quickly.

    Remember the 2001 Hainan Island Incident.

    The incident took place ten weeks after the inauguration of George W. Bush as president and was his first foreign policy crisis. Both sides were criticized following the event; the Chinese for making a bluff which was called without any real concessions from the American side other than the “Letter of the two sorries,” and the U.S. first for being insensitive immediately after the event and later for issuing the letter rather than taking a harder line.[35]

    Following the collision, China’s monitoring of reconnaissance flights became less aggressive for a period of time.[36] As of 2011, flights of U.S. surveillance aircraft near the Chinese coastline continued as before the incident.[37][38]

    Things were very tense between the US and China immediately after that, but then 9/11 happened.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  29. 29.

    scottinnj

    Sheila Broflovski was right: Blame Canada. It’s all Terrance and Philips fault

  30. 30.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @scottinnj:
    They aren’t even a real country anyway!

    /I absolutey despise anything South Park related otherwise

  33. 33.

    Mike R

    Correction on comment #20 meant What’s new Pussy cat. Tried using kindle auto correct got me then the darn thing froze.

  35. 35.

    Baud

    Whether America comes back from this or not seems like a purely academic question to me. It really doesn’t change what we need to do.

  39. 39.

    jl

    @Baud: I apologize for saying mean tings to Baud 2020! last week. It was the night before the election, or maybe it was election day, and I was nervous about the fate of the nation. I issued myself a punch in the neck but didn’t do it because it was too much trouble it might hurt.

  41. 41.

    chris

    Heh. This is the president of Canada’s auto parts industry association replying to Agent Orange.

    So…. you’re suggesting using a National Security regulation to charge $8B in tariffs to *American* consumers who buy 1 million cars made by American automakers, containing 60% American parts content, because of the price of milk in Windsor? Where do I start? https://t.co/AxVLVEGEBn— Flavio Volpe (@FlavioVolpe1) 10 June 2018

  42. 42.

    TS (the original)

    @debbie:

    According to Trump,

    That’s where the disbelief comes in. To call other people dishonest when he disavows anything signed by the US before he was elected is beyond compare. Self delusion, he reflects himself in his speech – a dishonest liar is the president* of the USA.

  44. 44.

    jl

    So, according to wiki, the average bottle nose dolphin weighs around 700 pounds. So, a ton of dolphins is about 3 dolphins. If the Crackerpic shows 10 tons of dolphin under the water that would be around 30 dolphins. So, that is pic of up to 30 dolphins?

    Thanks to Lady Cracker for an epic dolphinpic! One I will never forget.

  48. 48.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @debbie: And the Milki industry is already hurting. But hey they voted for Trump Don I’ll, so let them enjoy ruination the the bastards

  49. 49.

    Morzer

    Trump is probably the end of the idea that America is the indispensable super power, although the rise of the EU and China had already made it increasingly questionable. Whether he also manages to be the end of the Republic seems like a more important question to me.

  53. 53.

    Dorothy Winsor

    @chris: The guy might as well give up on explaining because first he’d have to explain to Trump who actually pays the tariff/tax. Hint: It’s not the Canadian company.

  54. 54.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: You never responded to my comment that contained a proof, using strict geometrical logic, that you are from Simi Valley.

    And, why can’t you be nice, like the Baud 2020! boy?

  55. 55.

    jl

    @Sab: I told Cracker to be careful with those damn motorcycles. I think this trip has affected her mind. Sad to see.

  57. 57.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Sab:
    Do you think King Donald or his goons are going to let inconvenient facts like that get in the way?

    //I’m joking in case you couldn’t tell

  58. 58.

    Corner Stone

    @Mr Stagger Lee:

    And the Milki industry is already hurting.

    The price of milk around my parts has dropped by about half over the last year or so.

  59. 59.

    Sab

    I am old, and I have never had to answer a citizenship question. It pisses me off. If I don’t answer, what happens? Do I not count? Am I breaking some law?

    I do not mind breaking some law. I do mind not counting.

  61. 61.

    CarolPW

    @Sab: Pisses me off too, and I plan on saying I am not a citizen (despite family going back to before the Mayflower). Because why would someone want to admit they are a citizen in a country that would elect this administration? Fuck it.

  65. 65.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Sab:
    Serious answer: Not unless the survey says it’s mandatory:

    7. Do I have to participate in the survey?
    The Census Bureau will always tell you whether your participation is mandatory or voluntary, and we encourage you to answer all questions asked. To learn more about which surveys require mandatory participation, please find your survey – List of All Surveys.

  69. 69.

    Brachiator

    @Corner Stone:

    At some point, don’t other world leaders just have to start speaking plainly? Call Trump an irrational liar and that he is a danger to the free world and there’s nothing he says that is true or can be trusted.

    It may happen slowly, but it’s going to happen. Trump is escalating his insults of Trudeau, calling him “meek and mild” before he supposedly turned on Dear Leader.

    Also, Trump is now going to have to call the foreign press fake news, since they are calling him on his bullshit.

    It’s sickening.

    The crazy thing is, Trump believes that he is going to roll into Singapore and take Kim’s lunch money.

  70. 70.

    Another Scott

    @CarolPW: FactCheck from 2010:

    Q: Do I have to answer Census questions? Isn’t this an invasion of privacy and a violation of the Fourth Amendment?

    A: A widely circulated anti-Census commentary makes several false claims. The law requires truthful answers and states that they will be kept confidential. Courts have upheld its constitutionality.

    The thing we should do is support everyone who is trying to make sure that the citizenship question isn’t on the 2020 Census.

    NPR from April:

    The legal fight against the citizenship question planned for the 2020 census is mounting with more lawsuits, including one filed Tuesday in San Francisco federal court on behalf of the city of San Jose, Calif., and Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a California-based immigrant rights group led by Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi.

    The lawsuit comes less than a week after a group of individuals from Maryland and Arizona, represented by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s law firm Covington & Burling, filed a similar legal challenge against officials at the U.S. Census Bureau and the Commerce Department, which oversees the census, to try to get the citizenship question removed from questionnaires for the upcoming national headcount. More than two dozen other cities and states have already filed two separate lawsuits.

    […]

    See the original for embedded links.

    Eric Holder at NDRC:

    “We will litigate to stop the Administration from moving forward with this irresponsible decision. The addition of a citizenship question to the census questionnaire is a direct attack on our representative democracy. This question will lower the response rate and undermine the accuracy of the count, leading to devastating, decade-long impacts on voting rights and the distribution of billions of dollars in federal funding. By asking this question, states will not have accurate representation and individuals in impacted communities will lose out on state and federal funding for health care, education, and infrastructure.

    “Contrary to the Administration’s stated rationale, asking the citizenship question on the census is not critical to enforcing the Voting Rights Act. As attorney general, I did not—nor did my predecessors—request the addition of a citizenship question to the decennial census to enforce the VRA. We did not need to: Data derived from the existing census process was perfectly adequate for any voting litigation that arose.

    “Make no mistake – this decision is motivated purely by politics. In deciding to add this question without even testing its effects, the Administration is departing from decades of census policy and ignoring the warnings of census experts.”

    There have been citizenship questions on the Census in the past, but it was never tied to VRA. It’s clearly tied to an effort to disenfranchise even people (because (as we know) it’s the only way the GOP can win elections going forward). TPM:

    Multiple witnesses appeared in front of a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Friday to testify in favor or against the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census — a Trump administration move that is roiling the civil rights community and prompting numerous lawsuits.

    But the Republican lawmakers who showed up to participate in the hearing seemed most interested in speaking to Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who is bringing a lawsuit seeking to alter how the U.S. congressional map is drawn to diminish the political power of immigrant-friendly states.

    His lawsuit is parallel to the push for a census citizenship question, but if successful, could have just as drastic of an effect, if not more. Whereas the Trump administration has claimed it needs census citizenship data for Voting Rights Act enforcement (a claim viewed skeptically by voting rights activists), the Alabama lawsuit explicitly seeks to exclude undocumented immigrants from how U.S. congressional seats are apportioned.

    To do so, it would require the Census Bureau adding another question seeking to know immigrants’ legal status, beyond the citizenship question, which civil right rights groups fear will chill immigrant participation on the survey.

    “Not only would we want to know your citizenship, but also whether or not, if you’re here illegally, have you overstayed your welcome, in essence the status you were granted? Or if you’ve ever been granted [legal status] in the first place,” Marshall said Friday. “And by having that information, it would allow us to do an appropriate apportionment of those congressional representatives and the Electoral College.”

    We need to be fighting them over this now, not when we get the forms in 2020.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  71. 71.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Sab:
    I’ve been kind of busy and honestly kind of forgot I was going to do it. I start school again in 2 months as well, So that will limit my time. I was looking into Vote Riders or Sherrod Brown’s campaign

  72. 72.

    Mayim

    @catclub: @Sab:

    Citizenship questions have been asked before ~ definitely from 1900 to 1940. Answers allowed for anyone of foreign birth were AL (alien), PA (papers pending/intention filed), and NA (naturalized).

    Before 1922, women and minor children were naturalized when their husband/father were. And, for a while in the early 20th century, U.S. born women lost their citizenship if they married a non-citizen…. so you can find WWI era alien registrations for women had never left Kansas or Nebraska in their lives, but who had married a German immigrant.

  73. 73.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    A widely circulated anti-Census commentary makes several false claims. The law requires truthful answers and states that they will be kept confidential. Courts have upheld its constitutionality.

    Right now, today, undocumented persons would be fools to believe that the law or past precedent will protect them.

    Yeah, voting these bastards out is essential

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    @Another Scott

    Gotta have the most precise info available. Don’t want to fritter away money that could be used for tax cuts to the wealthy by overbuilding the detention camps! //

  75. 75.

    J R in WV

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I’ve been kind of busy and honestly kind of forgot …

    Yet you have the brass to put an american flag emoti in your nym? Just wow. Way to beat the Nazis, dude!!!!!!

    I’m “kinda busy… forgot…” ! Way to go.

  78. 78.

    catclub

    @CarolPW:

    Because why would someone want to admit they are a citizen in a country that would elect this administration?

    Because the GOP will use that to [try to] reduce representation for your state in proportion to the number of non-citizens.

    So instead, whether citizen or not, say you ARE a US citizen.

  79. 79.

    catclub

    @Chet Murthy: No doubt. But how many people have ever been prosecuted for doing so? I suspect very few.

    Aren’t there also laws that limit the census department from making referrals to other government agencies? Like no IRS referrals?Certainly it is known they cannot share info with other agencies.

  80. 80.

    Tehanu

    @Morzer:

    Whether he also manages to be the end of the Republic seems like a more important question to me.

    I have a theory that the Kennedys were the Gracchi, Dick Cheney was Sulla, and Dump is (obviously) Crassus. With any luck, he’ll end up the same way as Crassus: slaughtered in the Middle East, but preferably without taking a whole army with him. Don’t even want to think about who’ll be Pompey and Julius.

  81. 81.

    dww44

    @Another Scott: In what ways do we support them now? Send the ACLU money in support of its suit to block the question from being added to the census? What else?

  82. 82.

    Another Scott

    @dww44: Money helps, of course. So does paying attention to what they’re doing, and helping to spread the word.

    Otherwise, I dunno. Unless someone calls a rally and 500,000 people show up, it’s hard to get the press’ attention. :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  85. 85.

    Cookie monster

    @catclub: This is a very bad idea. False claims to citizenship, if exposed, can get you deported with a permanent re-entry ban.

    One of the questions when you apply for citizenship is if you’ve ever misrepresented yourself as a citizen. (I went thru that process).

  86. 86.

    suilebhan

    Delta Dawn?!? I love your sense of humor, but now I’ll have this earworm all day.

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