Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

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

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

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

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

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

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

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

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

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

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Saturday Late Night Open Thread: Bad Omens

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Serene cluelessness alert!

Some kind of as-yet-unknown ‘massive power surge’ blew out the surge protector, the power bar, and probably the widescreen monitor on my computer yesterday. Ended August having to cancel our planned mini-vacation. My expiring credit card’s replacement got hacked before it reached me. And the drain blockage we’ve dumped a couple thou into diagnosing is now labelled as a pipe collapse where it enters the main sewer under the public road — our responsibility, “normal wear & tear”, insurance won’t cover it — so we’ll be tapping the home equity credit line as soon as we can hire a city-approved contractor. How was your week?

Should’ve known bad craziness would be coming down…

Reader Interactions

112Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    James Oliphant @ jamesoliphant
    The Democrats, Cruz tells the crowd, want to turn Texas into California with their “tofu, silicon, and dyed hair.”

    silicon and dyed hair… I’m betting Cruz said that in front of a lot of Texas new money…. toupees…. trophy wives….

  3. 3.

    Ohio Mom

    Sorry to hear all that, Anne Laurie. On my best days, I am ambivalent about home ownership, but most of the time I think it’s a scam. We are bamboozled into maintaining our property so that the next time it goes up for sale, the bank can make even more money off of the new owners than they did off of us.

  10. 10.

    Origuy

    San Jose Water keeps sending me letters trying to get me to buy insurance for the water and sewer lines. I’ve always ignored them, but I wonder if it’s worth doing. The townhouse complex is 33 year old, so stuff is starting to fall apart.

  12. 12.

    pk

    @The Dangerman:

    OK, dyed hair I get, but how on earth does tofu or silicon poll badly?

    Tofu: eaten only by effeminate men. Silicon: only promiscuous harpies get silicon implants. Or maybe he meant silicon valley. Who knows what crazy right wingers think anyway?

  13. 13.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    the dyed hair thing is yet another clip Beto can use to troll when The Beast comes to campaign for the Stoat.

  14. 14.

    trollhattan

    @Origuy:
    Do you have an association that you pay fees to? That should cover everything leading to your unit, at a minimum. The water company is responsible for everything to the meter and the sewer (city?) is responsible for the main and property owner responsible for the lateral.

    Piping inside the unit, not sure. I’d check with your insurance co and association before shelling out for any further coverage.

  15. 15.

    Chetan Murthy

    @The Dangerman: silicon is prolly code (with the rubes) for “those new-money assholes in CA with their liberal elite thinkin'”. tofu is simpler: the only legit protein in TX is *beef*. *Beef*. Mooo cow!

  16. 16.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Daniel W. Drezner Retweeted Raw Story
    Now I want Lyle Lovett to write a song called “Tofu, Silicon, and Dyed Hair.”

  19. 19.

    NotMax

    If Cruz is railing against dyed hair, the sallow specter of Ronaldus Magnus is a-gonna haunt him but good. //

  21. 21.

    burnspbesq

    Dems fucked up badly today here in OC. Obama’s appearance was thrown together so quickly and haphazardly that thousands of people who would have liked to go didn’t know the time or location until after it was over.

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    @pk:
    A wee quibblette: promiscous harpies (and women who have reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy) get silicone implants. Silicon at standard temperature and pressure is a hard and shiny metalloid element.

  28. 28.

    Jay

    Yoose guys have some really cray-cray property laws.

    Here in Canada, the City has an easement on each side of the roadway, that extends about on average, 2-4 past the sidewalk onto the front lawn. Or ditto if the services are in an alley.

    Everything past that “line”, ususally marked by a water shutoff valve is your responsibility, everything on the other side’s the city. For gas and electricity, everything on the consumer side of the meter is your responsibility, from the meter out is the Companies responsibility.

    Cable and phone is all “theirs” not yours.

    Title, Liens and Morgages are registered by the Provincial Registry.

    There is no such thing as “escrow”.

  29. 29.

    MagdaInBlack

    During his stump speech, the allegedly unlikeable Republican took on dyed hair—his own wife, Heidi, having presumably developed naturally blonde hair following college.

    Ouch.
    From Rawstory

  31. 31.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Richard Nixon should have gone to prison for his crimes.

    Gerald Ford prevented that.

    Thus emboldening Rethuglicans to operate above and outside the law in the 80’s.

  32. 32.

    jl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: ” new money…. toupees…. trophy wives…. ”

    California has plenty of those too, thank you very much, and good day, Sir.
    I’ve read several places that Cruz got some unexpected breaks in his first election (though I won’t bother to find out the details), and has never had a hard close race since, due to fact that he could ride on popularity of GOP in TX. So, now that he has a hard, close, campaign, his first moves indicate he is a lousy campaigner. If he can’t ride a wave of CW GOP electoral talking points, he can’t come up with anything. He’s got nothing to say.

    “tofu, silicon, and dyed hair.”? Really, what does that even mean? And ‘silicon’? Some of the :(I think the more commie pinko) parts of TX have been bragging about their success in building high-tech industry, their mini ‘Silican Valleys’.

    But if Ted wants to issue campaign slogans that get Texans saying “WTF does that mean?’, that is just fine with me.

  34. 34.

    Doug R

    @Ohio Mom:

    Sorry to hear all that, Anne Laurie. On my best days, I am ambivalent about home ownership, but most of the time I think it’s a scam. We are bamboozled into maintaining our property so that the next time it goes up for sale, the bank can make even more money off of the new owners than they did off of us

    As a late boomer/Gen X I have been a lifetime renter and that seems more than a little true to me.

  36. 36.

    Doug R

    @Jay:

    Didn’t there used to be this little company called Texas Instruments even back in Canada Cruz’s day?

    He was born in the home of Nortel, once Canada’s telecommunication giant.
    Isn’t Dell based out of Dallas and American/Delta with their SABER reservation system?

  40. 40.

    jl

    @Jay: @Doug R: Thanks for reminders.
    Ted not only has nothing to say, he has zero ideas on what to say. The GOP thought they could sell some of their recent swindles, like the tax cut, but they have become so deranged and arrogant, they blew it because they are now too greedy to strew any crumbs around for the lesser people that are visible to the naked eye.

    Ted can’t reissue GOP propaganda machine BS, since that machine is broke down right now. He can’t even think of a three word string of buzzword insults that make any sense. Let’s see what he tries next. He can go Rubio and start quoting the Bible:

    ‘What shall I do, if my job is taken away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.’

    But he can’t even quote that, since he has no shame and therefore he will beg.

  42. 42.

    Millard Filmore

    An open thread! This is interesting:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1038219887913590786

    “11/ It makes sense that Kavanaugh, like Rove and the 80 or so Bush White House staffers, would have used Smartech for his emails. pic.twitter.com/tJ34nVQvnS”

    “12/ Meanwhile, the New York Times has confirmed that Russia DID hack the RNC. Per Comey, the hacked emails were supposedly just some “OLD STUFF” hosted by …. wait for it… SMARTECH!!!! nytimes.com/2017/01/10/us/… pic.twitter.com/KDr15DWYrM”

    “13/ So Democrats really need to ask #Kavanaugh NOW whether he used Smartech for his emails and, if so, demand to see all of them on the basis that we cannot have a SCOTUS judge subject to potential blackmail by Russia.”

    (found through https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211112430)

  43. 43.

    frosty

    @Amir Khalid: Thank you!!!11!!11!! Silcon is the element that makes up glass and sand. Silcone is an artificial rubber-type compound. I can’t believe nobody mentioned it before you did.

    Although Cruz might have meant it that way. Maybe he wants to send Texas Instruments and Dell to California so all the silicon is in the same place?

  44. 44.

    Suzanne

    @pk:

    Silicon: only promiscuous harpies get silicon implants.

    Dallas is, like, ground zero for fake boobs.
    And hair dye? …….has he seen his wife’s hair?
    It’s dyed.
    I promise.

  45. 45.

    Juice Box

    @Doug R: I’ve owned various houses for 35 years or so. It’s a scam promoted by the banking and real estate industries. Houses are luxury goods, They’re lousy, illiquid investments.

  46. 46.

    Aleta

    (The NYT anonymous) essay which detailed efforts to sideline Donald Trump from government was “just an obvious attempt to distract attention from this booming economy and [the president’s] record of success”, vice-president Mike Pence has said.

    The Guardian
    You’ll be dust in an obvious crater in two years max.

  47. 47.

    frosty

    @Jay: Canada’s not so different from the US. Municipal ROW is usually to the back of sidewalk; however that doesn’t stop them from requiring homeowners to repair sidewalks if necessary. Utilities are same. Muni is responsible for water on the main side of the meter, homeowner for the house side. Cable gas and electric are to the entrance or the meter. Sewer to the connection with the main.

    This house is almost 100 years old and my next door neighbor had his sewer lateral fail. Maybe I’d better look into it. :-)

  50. 50.

    Amir Khalid

    @Aleta:
    I wonder what the impact on the US economy will be from the consequences of Trump’s biggest economic move, the retaliatory tariffs on its manufactured and agricultural exports.

  51. 51.

    Duane

    Maggie has a helluva time saying “Trump lied,” or “Trump cheated.” She must get paid per word. Twain should get a load of her dribble. McMegan too since he’s back alive now. It’s comedy gold.

  52. 52.

    Jay

    @frosty:

    In Canada sewer’s never to the main. It’s only from the house, to the easement, ditto for water, house to shut off valve. Sidewalk’s the cities.

    Now that many cities have gone to metered water, the law says they are responsible up to where the water leaves the meter, which ups their liability big time.

    Some cities have smartly installed Superpex lines from the shutoff through the foundation wall to limit potential liabilities.

  53. 53.

    Roger Moore

    @frosty:

    Silcon is the element that makes up glass and sand.

    Extreme pedantry alert!

    Three points:

    1) Silica, the material commonly found in sand and glass, is not made up of silicon. It’s made of silicon dioxide, which is actually more oxygen than silicon by mass.

    2) Sand is defined by particle size, not by chemical composition. Much sand is made of silica but you can also find sand made from other minerals, e.g. feldspar, calcium carbonate, and even more exotic things like garnet and zircon.

    3) Like sand, not all glass is made from silica. It’s a common ingredient, but pure silica melts at too high a temperature to be used for common applications. Almost all glass is made by mixing silica with a variety of other materials that lower the melting point and otherwise improve the working properties. Common window glass uses calcium and sodium salts (soda/lime glass), but other kinds of glass use boron, aluminum, titanium, lead, and other metal oxides. Some exotic glass types used for photographic lenses contain no silica at all.

  57. 57.

    frosty

    @Roger Moore: Pedant defense! I said it was the element, not the compound. Of course I knew silicon dioxide was glass and sand, not pure silicon.

    I’ll let you slide on the others. :-)

  58. 58.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ohio Mom:

    On my best days, I am ambivalent about home ownership, but most of the time I think it’s a scam.

    Thanks for the sympathy!

    I (we) wanted to live with dogs — even our first, small, mostly very well-behaved dog convinced us that renting would no longer work for us. Not to mention, we were getting too prosperous to move all our belongings in a rental truck, but not prosperous enough to pay younger fitter people to move some 15,000 books & magazines. I have qualms about ownership occasionally myself, but it’s nice not having to consider anyone’s schedule but mine, the Spousal Unit’s, and the pets’ (currently 3 ‘difficult’ rescue dogs & 2 cats, at least two more than we’d be able to find a rental to share in this area).

  65. 65.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Gravenstone:

    go hand in hand in our ignorant country.

    Republican politicians are required to show at least as much ignorance and stupidity as their voting base.

    Anything else is elitism.

  67. 67.

    Ninedragonspot

    @NotMax: Stinky tofu is delicious.

    (Especially, as i’ve said before, with toothsome slices of fatty intestine, cooked duck’s blood, some pickled vegetables, and lashings of spicy sauce.)

  68. 68.

    Roger Moore

    @Amir Khalid:

    I’ve heard that the crisp outside of a french fry is technically a kind of glass.

    I haven’t heard that one. I know that some kinds of hard candy are glass in the technical sense, and they’re actually used to make movie props where they want to break glass without the risk of hurting people with the sharp pieces. When a movie actor gets thrown through a plate glass window, it’s often made of hard candy!

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @Ninedragonspot

    Hope you’re not referring to natto, which emits a stink all its own.

    Uncooked soybeans are toxic if ingested by people. While they say cooking and processing removes the toxins, there must be something that persists – eating tofu makes me sick as a dog. No, sicker.

  73. 73.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @jl:

    California has plenty of those too, thank you very much, and good day, Sir.
    I’ve read several places that Cruz got some unexpected breaks in his first election (though I won’t bother to find out the details), and has never had a hard close race since, due to fact that he could ride on popularity of GOP in TX. So, now that he has a hard, close, campaign, his first moves indicate he is a lousy campaigner. If he can’t ride a wave of CW GOP electoral talking points, he can’t come up with anything. He’s got nothing to say.

    Considering the way Cruz rolled over for Trump in the GOP primary I would agree.

  75. 75.

    magurakurin

    Tofu in Japan is so absolutely wonderful. It’s made everyday down the street somewhere, delivered to the supermarkets in the morning, and all sold out by evening. Then the whole process starts again. Fresh, fresh, fresh. And it is just an ordinary, everyday food. Nothing fuu fuu, fancy, or hippieish about it. It’s just, tofu.

  76. 76.

    Millard Filmore

    @Anne Laurie: In defense of home ownership, and I am not in that club right now … outright ownership is a big plus. Getting out from under rents and mortgage takes a huge burden out of your life. When you get old and cranky, retired, that constant drain on finances is not there. Own your home, even if it is tiny.

  77. 77.

    Aleta

    posted in wrong thread …
    President Ford’s press secretary writes him to resign in protest over Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, this week 1974: https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1037818810655485958
    He doesn’t know how he could defend the pardon of Nixon even before he’d been charged, in the absence of pardons for men who evaded service as a matter of conscience during the Vietnam War and for Nixon’s associates.

  81. 81.

    SectionH

    AL: jfc, I’m nearly wordless about your sucky concatenation of house shit. *Of course* all the shit happens at once at the worst time. Hang in there.

  85. 85.

    Matt McIrvin

    I’m guessing he means hair dyed colors not found in nature, which seems to be a trait associated with feminists and for some reason intensely terrifying and enraging to sexist dudebros. It’s bleached-blonde or nothing for them.

  87. 87.

    Matt McIrvin

    …also, soy products make real men into SOY BOYS, who are also enraging and terrifying to sexist dudebros for some reason.

  90. 90.

    Doug R

    @Juice Box:

    I’ve owned various houses for 35 years or so. It’s a scam promoted by the banking and real estate industries. Houses are luxury goods, They’re lousy, illiquid investments.

    They should be like cars-a steadily depreciating asset that you need.
    Instead around here they’re mostly empty boxes traded and sold among millionaires like collectibles or tulips.

  92. 92.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I am mildly allergic to mold, which is probably why I get a skin rash from penicillin. I’m apparently kind of a freak because I have asthma and rhinitis but no allergies. They even did the skin test where the prick your arms with dozens of different potential allergens and the biggest bump was from the control. ?

  94. 94.

    Mike J

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Soy allergies are neither necessary or sufficient for a person to matter.

    So now I’m picturing a guy climbing to a mountain top where he approaches the wise man. “Why do I exist?”, he asks. “As a vessel for a soy allergy, my son.”

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Exactly! I was their most boring patient ever, because the only real bump I got was from the histamine. Even the mold was like, “Ehhh, I guess there’s kind of a reaction there …”

    My poor coworker is allergic to quite a few common things, but has a really severe allergy to grasses that extends to some odd things in that family like oatmeal and sorghum. When she ate something that had sorghum flour in it, she had to use her EpiPen. I felt a little sheepish coming back to the office and saying I had no real allergies, but she was happy for me.

  97. 97.

    Anne Laurie

    @magurakurin:

    And it is just an ordinary, everyday food. Nothing fuu fuu, fancy, or hippieish about it. It’s just, tofu.

    In America, that’s how we treat french fries! (/snark)

  100. 100.

    MattF

    Cruz is tryihg to evoke an emotional reaction, other than ‘He needs a punch in the face’. What he says is a mystery to us because it’s a mystery to him.

  101. 101.

    Chris T.

    @Ohio Mom: Over the very long haul, owning a house has been a wash, economically. Essentially they just keep up with inflation. But there are wild swings in the various housing markets, and if you get the timing right, the leverage really works well. For instance, if you bought a house in the Bay Area in 1993 for $200k with 10% down (= $20k of your own money) and sold it in 2007 for $700k, you earned $500k on it. But you actually put in $20k (down payment) plus $10k (misc closing costs), plus $1450/mo (mortgage @ 9% in 1993) plus whatever taxes and insurance every year, plus some maintenance, minus tax benefit. That comes to:

    $30k purchase
    $25k/yr payments x 14 years = 350k

    So you put in $380k, minus a tax offset of maybe $70k, call it $300k even just for ease of calculation: your $300k cash in became $500k over 14 years. Had you rented an equivalent house, it would have started at $1.2k/mo and ended at $3k/mo over those 14 years, for a rental expense of roughly $350k, with no tax break. Clearly buying was better … as long as you picked the exact right times!

    (If you’re married, the 500k profit is the magic number where you did not pay taxes. I was not, and did not pick the exact right years, so I made half that in profit, which worked out just as well.)

    You could buy that same house back in 2010 or 2011 for $450k and it’s now worth $900k. Buying it now is a bad idea! At some point the market will come back down, or rentals will rise, and it might become a good idea again.

  103. 103.

    Barbara

    @clay: Heidi Cruz and 2/3 of female Republican voters dye their hair. And silicon – is that silicon valley or silicon implants? Lots of the latter in Texas as well.

  104. 104.

    Barbara

    @Chris T.: For most areas of the country a house is like a piggy bank. Whether it appreciates or not the money is still there after 20 or 30 years, unless you keep trading up or take money out. You could probably do better with financial instruments but you would also face fees, and be subject to fraud and asymmetric information.

  105. 105.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Holy crap, Anne. That list of woes is a bad one.

    Also re a house being a piggy bank, the offer we recently accepted on our is over 10% below what we paid 20 years ago, and that’s in Waterloo, Iowa, where there never was a boom.

  106. 106.

    Another Scott

    @Barbara: Yup.

    A huge plus is peace of mind. Don’t have to worry that the landlord is going to sell out to someone who will double your rent for the hell of it (or condo-ize the place). Or that you’re a very light sleeper and will get an upstairs neighbor who stomps around like an elephant at all hours. A huge minus is that, yes, it’s a store of value (“they’re not making any more land close to important employment centers!”), but it can be expensive and risky to get the money out – e.g., whoops, the local housing market crashed and you just got laid off. What now??

    We paid off our mortgage about 10 years early and enjoy the peace of mind. I’ve seen some financial types argue that one should never do that – one should always have a mortgage (because of the difficulty and risk in getting money out of the house when one needs it; being able to have more available cash using Other People’s Money and leverage, etc.), but I don’t agree. There’s more to life than numbers.

    I have no idea how thirty-somethings are able afford to buy a house now. It’s horrible. :-( We were very lucky to be able to buy when we did (the late ’90s). If/when we sell it may be a wash (since one has to live somewhere else after all and other places have risen in price too), but peace of mind is huge.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  107. 107.

    Matt McIrvin

    Silicon or silicone, Texas hasn’t lacked for either one. Tandy and Texas Instruments were pretty historically important computer tech firms, and of course there’s its rich history with the space program and related tech industries.

  108. 108.

    Doug R

    Forgotten in the lottery that is the housing market around here is that every expanding market needs new buyers to keep it expanding. Prices are so high new buyers are priced out of the market. I know there’s a lot of offshore money laundering money coming in and an even hotter market in China but the labor pool making $1 an hour assembling phones won’t be able to afford those million dollar houses. There’s going to be a reckoning in the Chinese market and when their prices drop, the leveraged “owners” of multiple houses out here are going to have to decide what to keep and where to stay. I use owners in quotes because the bank is the real owner of “your” house until you pay back the mortgage.

  109. 109.

    J R in WV

    Regarding house ownership, wife had one of those hectic and uncertain upbringings with landlords that were at the lowest level of business. Her father was a civil engineer who was a binge drinker, so they moved a lot, sometimes late at night, into terrible houses with termites, no heat, etc. Her mom was upper class snob, French teacher, who hated all that…

    So she grew up with the slogan “Neither Landlord NOR Tenant be!” seriously imposed in her mind. After we got home from the US Navy, she was on finding a small house to buy with a VA loan like a dog on a dropped steak. $17K for a tiny two bedroom, which wasn’t crowded even after we gained a roommate.

    That migrated into 110 acres with a big house and a big shop / garage across the hollow. The shop was my compulsion, not that I work out there any more, but it contains the books and collected stuff overflow. I gotta start dis-accumulating that stuff before I die and someone else has to deal with it. Some of it is good stuff that shouldn’t be pitched just because someone doesn’t know what it is…

    I own hundreds of feet of utility service lines, thousands, actually. Fortunately, I also have a backhoe… which is how the last 800 feet of water line was laid. We have wells and a connection to “city” (aka public service district) water service, which we would prefer not to use, but since this is an oil and gas area, our aquifer could be ruined in an instant one day, so we can technically open and close some valves and turn off a pump and be on “city” water, with the regular boil water notices… when the line breaks somewhere and they dig it up.

  110. 110.

    katep

    My daughter, in her mid-thirties and working in pubic education, was able to buy herself a very nice small gut-rehabbed home. Of course she is in St Louis, not one of high demand markets. Payment including taxes and insurance comes within $1of what she was paying in rent. Bank of Mom only had to pitch in a few thousand. And they passed a proposition 20 years ago for lateral sewer lines. For only $28 a year, added to property taxes, they are covered for repair or replacement. Sounds like deal when you have some very old pipes.

  111. 111.

    JimV

    I would like to help out (I have some spare money), if there is a PayPal account or something I could loan to. (I only ever loan on the basis that I don’t care if I ever get the money back, preferably not.)

  112. 112.

    But her emails!!!

    @jl:

    I’ve read several places that Cruz got some unexpected breaks in his first election (though I won’t bother to find out the details), and has never had a hard close race since, due to fact that he could ride on popularity of GOP in TX. So, now that he has a hard, close, campaign, his first moves indicate he is a lousy campaigner. If he can’t ride a wave of CW GOP electoral talking points, he can’t come up with anything. He’s got nothing to say.

    It’s not just Cruz who appears to be flailing against Beto, but the entire allied GOP apparatus. My assumption is that they’ll just start ditching the half truths and go with 100% lies eventually.

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