Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Books are my comfort food!

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

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

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

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

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

No one could have predicted…

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

You cannot shame the shameless.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

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

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Friday Morning Open Thread: Good Reads

Friday Morning Open Thread: Good Reads

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(Signe Wilkinson via GoComics.com)
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Since there’s not much point in talking about yesterday’s MAH WALL I WAAAAHNNIT!!!(tm) Trumpstunting — even Chris ‘Mad Bitcher’ Cillizza panned the performance — figured I’d share a couple of my favorite online political essayists, while we’re waiting for the Friday news dump.

Tom Scocca is currently the editor of Hmm Daily, and producer of a series of brilliant rants under the subtitle “The Worst Thing We Read Yesterday™”. Sample from January 9th, “The Fact-Checkers Are Tools”:

… Apparently, the Washington bureau of the New York Times doesn’t know many people who use federal government assistance in their daily lives. Less fraught with class conflict, but still fundamental to its understanding of the entire subject it covers, the Times bureau also seems not to know how much federal spending goes to outside contractors, who use that money to pay their own employees…

If the Times needs more information on the many things the federal government does, and on the millions of people who depend on the government doing them, CBS put together a nice brief roundup of shutdown effects in advance of the speech. It’s never too late to learn!

But it is too late to redeem the whole fact-checking project. The Associated Press made its own contribution, with a tweet fact-checking the notion that the shutdown is Trump’s fault:

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats put the blame for the shutdown on Trump. But it takes two to tango. Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for his border wall is one reason for the budget impasse. The Democrats refusal to approve the money is another.

It was a tremendously stupid argument—the president’s extraordinary demand for a wall and the Democrats’ response to the demand aren’t two opposing reasons, they’re the same reason, which originated with the president—but it was also not a fact-check at all. It was what conventional politics reporting would call a piece of news analysis: Who is to blame for the shutdown? Only it had been reduced to a true-false question, or a true/some-might-say-not-necessarily-true question…

 
Also a reliable source of solace, for us cynics, is Bess Levin’s daily business report for Vanity Fair. Thursday, “Become a Dog Walker, Sell Your Stuff: Helpful Government Offers Furloughed Workers Shutdown Advice”:

At midnight on Thursday, the government shutdown will reach its 20th day; if it continues through Saturday, it’ll be the longest in history. At present, the White House and Congress are not even close to cutting a deal, with Donald Trump rejecting every offer proposed to him, including one from Republican Lindsey Graham who told reporters Thursday, “I have never been more depressed about moving forward than I am right now. I just don’t see a pathway forward.” Happily for Graham, he’s still being paid during the shutdown, while some 800,000 federal employees have either been furloughed or forced to work without pay. For many who live paycheck to paycheck, the prospect of not being able to put food on the table, access crucial medicine, or pay their mortgage or rent, is a very real concern. Luckily, the government has advice!…

… Just knock on doors and ask if anyone has spare dogs or kids lying around, or churn out some scarves for Etsy, and you’ll be back in the black in no time! While we would never suggest that the above is largely unhelpful, tone-deaf advice, a furloughed Forest Service crew member told The New Yorker, “No one wants to hire me because they know once the shutdown is over I’ll have to quit,” adding that temp agencies are “overflowed” with people in the same position. Meanwhile, and apparently this may come as a shock to the government, the employees who are being forced to work without pay—2,100 at the Coast Guard—don’t have time for second jobs… Elsewhere, workers are told that “yes, your credit score may suffer during this time” if you miss payments, but to “keep things in perspective.”…

Also, on the “saddening news” that Lord Smallgloves is “respectfully cancelling [his] very important trip to Davos”

Presumably, this announcement came after the report that the administration was still planning to send a large delegation to the annual billionaire confab at a cost of millions of dollars to taxpayers—money that will still be spent even if the president stays home, owing to “Davos’s tight cancellation policies around the conference.”…

Reader Interactions

141Comments

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    John Belushi, a nice remembrance.

    “The first night I saw him improvising on stage, I thought, ‘God, I will never take chances like that. I don’t have that kind of courage.’ But there was always something safer and more comfortable about being me than there was about being him,”

    -Harold Ramis,

  12. 12.

    Barb 2

    So trump discounts we the majority and is putting on this act for his cult members??

    People going without money to live — oh who cares — they are damn dems anyway. Zero empathy and understanding of how our government works.

    This whole show is like watching the slowest train wreck.

    The fight or flight response — eventually that becomes almost a non response if triggered too often. Outrage and shock shifts to — oh hell what did the MOFO do now? And the cult members just smile.

    Perhaps Trump can get his wall money by not paying the farmers the 12 billion that they lost due to his tariffs? Shifting money around is how he ran his casinos. The US government is just a big ‘ole casino to him.

    So, we knew he was going to be bad. If the dems give in — he will play the same game again — his word is worthless. We know this.

  14. 14.

    Aleta

    Daniel Dale, Toronto Star

    …
    Trump’s Thursday dishonesty began even before he left Washington. He told reporters that, when he had promised during his campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall, he had never said this would be a direct payment.
    “Obviously, I never said this, and I never meant, ‘they’re going to write out a cheque,’ ” he said, adding: “When I said ‘Mexico will pay for the wall,’ in front of thousands and thousands of people, obviously they’re not going to write a cheque. They are paying for the wall indirectly.”
    He had not promised a “cheque” during the campaign, although he explicitly said “they may even write us a cheque,” but he had, in fact, made clear he was talking about a direct payment; a document still on his campaign website promised he would threaten Mexico with financial harm until it made an “easy” decision: “make a one-time payment of $5-10 billion.”
    Trump claimed that the indirect payment he is now talking about would effectively be made by Mexico through the new North American trade agreement he has negotiated with Canada and Mexico.
    But even if the agreement is eventually approved — Congress might take years before voting on it — it will never create a funding stream that can be allocated to an infrastructure project.
    When he arrived in McAllen, Texas for an immigration roundtable at a Border Patrol station, Trump derided critics who dismiss walls as outdated and ineffective.
    He said some old technology, such as the wheel, is timeless.
    “A wheel is older than a wall,” he said.
    He repeated it a few seconds later: “The wheel is older than the wall.
    “Do you know that?”
    Defensive walls predate wheels by thousands of years. (Jericho’s famous wall existed around 8,000 BC; the wheel is thought to have been invented around 3,500 BC.)
    …

    etc.

  15. 15.

    JoyceH

    I had to roll my eyes at Trump walking or storming out of the meeting with Chuck and Nancy. Geez, every small town bank Vice President walks out of his first car dickering session down at the dealership, and fancies himself the wiliest haggler in the souks of old Baghdad. After his second drink down at the country club, he’ll tell you all about it.

  16. 16.

    JDM

    @Baud: interesting that the AP “correction” didn’t give a percentage for the corrected tweet to match the original tweet. The original said “more than half”, the second said “many of”. But the second also mentioned, in a throwaway phrase with no context, that this was (very slightly) “more than half” of a number that didn’t “make up the bulk of her” meetings. So what’s the percentage for the 85 meetings compared to all meetings? They don’t say.

  17. 17.

    JDM

    @Baud: continuing:

    If you dig you find it’s 85 out of some 1,700, or 1/20th. And that there were perfectly sensible reasons the Secretary of State met with some people who were also donors to a foundation. So off by ten times, plus no context.

  19. 19.

    Lapassionara

    @JDM: I managed to get a “discretionary” meeting with a senator once. Did not achieve what I had hoped. So purpose of meeting and resulting action taken by HRC, if any, also germane. In other words, a nothingburger.

    If the planet survives, historians of the future will have a field day, explaining how the most powerful country in the world lost it’s standing, within just a few months of electing a reality show host as its president.

  25. 25.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @oatler.: A morning blech without a little piss is like… like… like orange juice without clouds in it. Or something.

    eta @satby: Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrppp.

  34. 34.

    satby

    I’m disgusted by our news media, half of our countrymen, and the cretin in the White House. And I’m at that inevitable point in trip preparations where I wonder why I even thought it was a good idea to take a trip with so many animals to take care of. I love being away, but I hate preparing for it.

  36. 36.

    Immanentize

    My Blech story of the moment — tore a muscle in my right arm, had an MRI in the most painful possible position they could concoct for 40 minutes of no moving, which provoked a massive migraine the night before last, which effects I continue to enjoy today!

    Blech!

  38. 38.

    Immanentize

    @satby: thank you, Satby. The migraine is almost gone, but they may have to stitch this muscle back together. Part is now bunched up near my elbow, part in my forearm. Leaving a divot in between. Quite creepy looking but not too painful luckily.

  39. 39.

    Aziz, light!

    I have no federal paycheck coming today and shoulder replacement surgery coming up on Tuesday. My expenses will be significant. But I hear that Mexico will cover them.

    Most Americans are not affected by the shutdown and barely know that it is happening (among citizens who pay any attention to current events, a much smaller number than we politics junkies imagine).

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: The day before yesterday I ran a 4 inch treated yellow pine splinter thru my hand. Ever see a man go from stone cold carpenter to complete and utter pu$$y in 0.03 seconds? That’ll do it every time.

  42. 42.

    satby

    @Aziz, light!: I hope your surgery goes well and that by the time you’re awake again the shutdown is over.
    The whole situation is just insane: a nation held hostage by a senile idiot and a party of traitors.

  44. 44.

    debbie

    @JoyceH:

    I’ve heard he’s started talking about another huge caravan forming in Honduras. He must be getting very nervous about Mueller!

  47. 47.

    trnc

    I am compiling a handy list of past actual emergencies that took many days to decide whether or not they were emergencies. This is what I have found:

    Please refer back to the list above as needed.

  48. 48.

    SFAW

    @JoyceH:

    Geez, every small town bank Vice President walks out of his first car dickering session down at the dealership,

    Great analogy.

    And part of me thinks that’s how Speaker Pelosi (not “Miss Pelosi,” Ted Yoho, you moronic fuck), could have played it: “Tantrum Boy made a big show of walking out of the meeting, saying he had to ask his dealership owner, Vladi Putin, if Putin could ‘come down a little’ on the price.”

    Of course, then the FTFTFNYT and the AP would have whined about Speaker Pelosi insulting those jaaahb creators at car dealerships. But the rest of non-insane America would have gotten the point.

  52. 52.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The day before yesterday I ran a 4 inch treated yellow pine splinter thru my hand. Ever see a man go from stone cold carpenter to complete and utter pu$$y in 0.03 seconds? That’ll do it every time.

    Oh, piffle. Why, when I was a kid …

    Sorry to hear about your travail. Sounds like a much-blechier-than-usual kind of day. I hope you heal up OK.

  53. 53.

    SFAW

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Are there Coles in your family tree?

    Although I am disinclined to research the topic in depth, I am guessing/hoping that Ozark was at least wearing pants when it happened. So, I’m guessing “No.”

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: Nice. Here’s hoping yours is a match of my wife’s. Or at least edible. ;-) The best thing about that kind of dish is that the more you make it, the better it gets, and just when you think you have reached perfection, something happens or you do something a little different and you reach a different sort of perfection. Good luck.

  61. 61.

    debbie

    Just listened to an interview with a GOP Sen/Rep from Alabama who insists lots of the $5.7 billion for the Wall will actually be going to humanitarian aid. Hope someone questions Trump on this today; we all know how apoplectic he gets at the mention of anything humanitarian-related!

  63. 63.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: I was swapping out screens for storm windows on my three season porch and lifting this 5′ window kinda in front of me but also high. I’ve done this twice a year for 18 years. This year — rrrriiippp. Inside my arm.

  64. 64.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Aziz, light!: Most Americans are affected, they just don’t know it yet.

    I’m swagging the acting president has two more weeks to get the government working before everyone feels pain from the shutdown. Pain for a lot of people is baked in the cake but because most is secondary he can deflect blame if the root cause is fixed. If it’s not fixed, the pain will be significantly greater and the connection and cause will be obvious. Not that 27% will see it that way, of course.

  66. 66.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: and all others: As it turned out it’s no big deal really. I was lucky in that when I yanked it out (so I could take off my glove) the only part that was left was the part sticking out the other end. My body really doesn’t like the chems they treat the wood with and always reacts badly with lots of swelling, but a night of ice packs and a couple hours more in the morn and I was able to do stuff by noon. Today I can almost make a fist again.

  69. 69.

    JPL

    @debbie: A Facebook post announced the formation of another caravan, but as of now there is not further information.
    @Aziz, light!: I hope that the surgery goes well. I hope that Nancy pushes through a vote which prevents federal employees going without pay You should be able to count on a paycheck.

  70. 70.

    opiejeanne

    Blech. I haven’t been able to sleep tonight and it’s after 4:30. I feel exhausted but I just can’t sleep. None of my usual tricks is working, so I’m now hanging out with you.
    And you guys have to stop hurting yourselves. Yikes!

  78. 78.

    satby

    Anyone see this? Any confirmation that it’s accurate?
    Scott Dworkin@funder 14h
    BREAKING: Three Republican sources tell me even if Democrats did give Trump wall funding, he wouldn’t reopen the government. He apparently is thrilled about the shutdown. Likes how FBI agents & other federal workers have been furloughed. Truly thinks all federal workers are Dems

  85. 85.

    satby

    @Baud: but isn’t Dworkin a Dem? And wouldn’t that undercut any idea that if he was given his money he’d stick to his side of a deal? If this is true it should weaken the Republican side because the bad faith is clearer.

  86. 86.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: Funny you should mention this. I did get a foot “nailed” when a cub forgot to remove the nails from some used bracing he threw on the ground and I stepped on it. And I did shoot a nail thru my left hand once. And I do have a scar on the right side of my chest between the 7th and 8th ribs where they inserted a tube after I collapsed a lung. So I’m 3/5ths of the way there. (this splinter was also in the left hand so it doesn’t add to my stigmata count)

    @Immanentize:

    I’ve done this twice a year for 18 years. This year — rrrriiippp. Inside my arm.

    Heh. I can laugh now but when I tore my rotator cuff while tightening a screw I wasn’t laughing.

  87. 87.

    Baud

    @rikyrah:

    The other reason they are afraid of her is because she’s pretty and telegenic and they don’t want their Fox News-watching old farts who are attracted to pretty young women to accidentally hear what she’s saying while they are ogling her.

  88. 88.

    Baud

    @satby:

    His sources aren’t Dems. In any event, it’s not like Trump has a choice. He either signs the package Congress passes or vetoes.

  93. 93.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Baud: Or it can sit on his desk long enough to pass without his signature. I’m beginning to believe people either don’t know or have forgotten that path.

  94. 94.

    Baud

    @Kirk Spencer:

    I mentioned that when this first started. It’s a possibility, but then it leaves government shut down for an extra 10 days while the bill sits on his desk. I imagine Trump’s advisors at least know that would be an idiotic thing to do

  98. 98.

    Citizen_X

    I have never been more depressed about moving forward than I am right now. I just don’t see a pathway forward.

    Oh, poor Lindsey! Hey, I know a pathway forward: Override his veto with the same resolution you passed unanimously last month, you fucking cowards!

  103. 103.

    Baud

    Speaking of AOC, she didn’t get the spot she wanted on the Ways and Means committee because freshman congresscritters don’t get on that committee. And instead of railing against the Establishment and calling the system rigged, she said:

    Ocasio-Cortez, at 29 the youngest member of Congress, took the defeat in stride. Asked if she felt slighted by leadership, her spokesman Corbin Trent said “certainly not.”

    “She hoped to be on it, but we’re excited to see what committees she does get,” Trent said.

    https://nypost.com/2019/01/10/ocasio-cortez-passed-over-for-influential-house-committee/

    Good news.

  106. 106.

    Amir Khalid

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Apparently those aren’t just any maggots, but hygienically bred blowfly maggots that have been disinfected for medical use. The Guardian even reminds us that using maggots to clean dead tissue from wounds is a centuries-old medical technique. What will they think of next?

  108. 108.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:
    AOC had better watch her step. Behaving like a grown-up could cost her support from allies on the left.

  111. 111.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    They have a sign on the door of lour local Lowes: “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service. No pants? Get the fuck out of here.”

    Right. As if I believe that yore hillbilly brethren could write something so cogent and coherent.

  112. 112.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW: Well, I did correct their misspellings. The sign actually said, “No Shit, No Shots, No Cervical. No pints? Get the fuck out of here.”

    Come to think of it, maybe those weren’t misspellings at all?

  116. 116.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Well, I did correct their misspellings.

    Sure you did. I’m starting to question whether you’re a real hillbilly, or actually a Russki bot/troll.

    Blechski?

    ETA: Or did I already question that a few months back? Who can remember?

  118. 118.

    SFAW

    @Amir Khalid:

    Apparently those aren’t just any maggots, but hygienically bred blowfly maggots that have been disinfected for medical use.

    In Horatio Hornblower, a French doctor treats William Bush’s infected leg using maggots. In the story, that treatment apparently worked quite well. I was a little creeped out reading about the initial application of them, but got over it.

  122. 122.

    geg6

    @SFAW:

    In the Outlander series, Claire Fraser uses maggots to treat wounds all the time. Kinda gross, but effective.

  126. 126.

    Yarrow

    That cartoon made me wonder if Trump has been golfing since the shutdown started? I think he canceled his trip to Mar-a-lago over the holidays but what about last weekend or this upcoming weekend? If he’s not getting to golf, he’s definitely going to be crankier than usual.

  127. 127.

    Quiltingfool

    Good morning everyone! Going to get snow here today and tomorrow. I knew it might be a lot because Walmart was packed to the gills yesterday at 2 pm. Old people were filling baskets as though Snowmeggadan was coming! The only reason this old person was even at Walmart was because I was in town to get steroid shots in my knee and decided to do my weekly shopping right then instead of making a trip to town a day or so later. I hate going to town. Anyway, I’m so sick of reading about Mr. Stupid President* and stupid Republican Congresspeople, I’m going to go into my Quilt Cave and work on some more projects. While watching Grimm. Sewing keeps me sane, I’ve become quite obsessed about it. I’m afraid one day I’ll be featured on a Hoarders program, my house bursting with quilts stacked to the ceilings, with only small walkways. No, just kidding, I believe my better half would have some “words” about that, heh.

  128. 128.

    BroD

    Become a Dog-Walker is a great meme, bumper-sticker, poster.
    I’m thinking we need to fill the DC Mall with dogwalkers.

  132. 132.

    Yarrow

    @geg6: I heard a piece on the radio several years ago about using maggots for wound care. I think it was in Kenya. They talked about it being cheaper and more effective and it doesn’t increase antibiotic resistance. I’d be all for it being used here more regularly.

  134. 134.

    WaterGirl

    @BroD: Anyone in the DC area that is furloughed or being forced to work with no pay needs to contact every single congress critter asking if they can walk their dogs.

    No, make that EVERYONE. Every single person who is doing that should call every single member of congress. Every single day. And then report the results of their calls to the media.

  135. 135.

    Elizabelle

    @WaterGirl: Oh, I like that idea. And offer to mow Mitch McConnell’s lawn, too.

    Have cameras or iPhones along as they make the contacts.

  137. 137.

    J R in WV

    @Elizabelle:

    And offer to mow Mitch McConnell’s lawn, too.

    I would treat his lawn with Brush Killer, the 3 am treatment, for free. Instant redo the landscaping therapy.

  139. 139.

    WaterGirl

    @J R in WV: Do you think “Statesman, my ass!” could be written in brush killer on the lawn? Or is that too many letters?

    “Reopen the government, or all congressional lawns gets this treatment” is definitely too long.

    edit: Or my all-time favorite: ” Jump, You Fuckers!”

  140. 140.

    Fair Economist

    @SFAW:

    In Horatio Hornblower, a French doctor treats William Bush’s infected leg using maggots. In the story, that treatment apparently worked quite well. I was a little creeped out reading about the initial application of them, but got over it.

    You’re not the only one. Maggot therapy has been well understood for 2 centuries but so often freaks out patients it’s rarely used. They could have saved thousands of limbs during the civil war, but the doctors didn’t like to use it because patients could literally go into hysterics when the flies started hatching and crawling out of the wound. I imagine it’s like something out of a horror movie, plus they get to *feel* it.

  141. 141.

    C Stars

    @WaterGirl: Just talked to a friend who has family in DC. She said all the schoolkids are getting free lunch/afterschool care and meals this week, because so many of their parents just don’t have money right now. Imagine how this all feels and looks to a kid.

    Heartbreaking.

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