Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Peak wingnut was a lie.

This blog will pay for itself.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

I really should read my own blog.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

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

The revolution will be supervised.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

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

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

The willow is too close to the house.

Everybody saw this coming.

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

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

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

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Open Thread: Tweaking the Oval Office Squatter

Open Thread: Tweaking the Oval Office Squatter

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WELL PLAYED, Senator Professor Warren!

(You know Dumbfvck-in-Chief thinks this is *his* day now, and he’s extremely disgruntled that the rest of us keep talking about those other dudes… )

Over the weekend…

Reader Interactions

149Comments

  3. 3.

    Another Scott

    I’m glad that she sees the value in trying to reach out personally to everyone who takes the trouble to show up. She probably can’t keep it up with 50,000, but these small crowds will multiply their effectiveness.

    Godspeed, SPW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  4. 4.

    Jerzy Russian

    How is President Carter doing these days? He does more good things every 5 minutes than the current occupant has done in his entire life.

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    It’s twue!

    But Steadman is wrong. I’m pretty sure she came GA last fall to campaign for Stacey Abrams.

    (But it was her first time here as a Presidential candidate, and a lot of us are pretty chuffed that she chose to come here so early in the proceedings.)

  10. 10.

    Kay

    We’re still working nailing down precisely what was said. But there were some pretty dramatic developments this morning in the probe into the absentee ballot tampering scandal in North Carolina.
    One of the key people accused, Lisa Britt, appears to have turned completely on McCrae Dowless, the ringleader. She basically told investigators how he instructed her and others to assist his cover-up. “As long as we all stick together we’ll all be fine, because they don’t have anything on us,” she said Dowless told her and her coworkers after the initial probe. Last week he told her to take the 5th and even gave her a letter telling her how to testify falsely. She brought in a copy of that letter. So his goose appears to be quite cooked.

    The clip of the testimony is just wild. She admits to filling in ballots. She seems to be saying that if the ballot was unsealed they would bring it back to the office and fill it in. I just don’t think “unsealed” means anything in this context. I mean, a completely fraudulent ballot would be “unsealed” too- filling on one part of it is the same as creating a ballot from a blank one. It’s completely fraudulent as to the races they added votes to, even if they’re telling the truth about “unsealed”, which they probably aren’t.

  11. 11.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jerzy Russian: Did you see the Carters on the “kiss cam”? Rosalyn looks a bit nonplussed, I think. I’m guessing proper young ladies of her generation weren’t taught that PDAs were appropriate. One of the clips I saw talking about this, they said the Carters are just a couple of weeks away from breaking the Bush’s record as longest married First Couple

  12. 12.

    prostratedragon

    [ahem] Catfish sandwiches should never be mentioned around dinner time within the hearing of people who only have frozen salmon in the house.

  14. 14.

    BC in Illinois

    As I sit here, I can see three books, arranged so that they are always visible, in the bookshelf across the room:
    —This Fight Is Our Fight, by Elizabeth Warren
    —The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
    —Know Your Power, by Nancy Pelosi
    I recommend them all.
    Inspirational reading for the year to come.

    Speaking of the year to come. I expect:
    –that the ground under the current occupant of the White House . . . [ Mr. Donald “I don’t care, I believe Putin” Trump ] . . . will shift within this year.
    –that by the end of this year the Democratic Party will be standing tall with several great candidates.
    –that any Republican left standing will (or at least should) be greeted with a constant question of “And just what did YOU do, while Trump and McConnell were working to debase the Republic?”

  15. 15.

    dexwood

    This old white guy’s feelings would not be hurt if the primaries eliminated all the male candidates. The time has come and we’d be left with some great choices.

  16. 16.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Jerzy Russian:

    I’m not in any way a friend of the Carters, though I have met them both on numerous occasions — but I have a friend who lives in Plains and is a close friend of both Jimmy and Rosalynn, and she reports that both of these lovely nonagenarians are in good health and high spirits. I didn’t see it, but I understand the Carters were on the Today Show (?) recently.

    This atheist is thinking of driving to Plains one of these Saturdays. Spend the night in the (reputedly haunted) Plains Inn, and getting a
    nice dose of Jimmy Carter Sunday School at Maranatha Baptist Church on Sunday morning. Then spend a pleasant afternoon at Andersonville hanging out with my multiple-great grandfathers who were imprisoned there.

  18. 18.

    debbie

    What does “MFA” mean in this tweet?

    Warren:

    – Fight to preserve ACA against Republicans. “That’s job #1.”

    – Job #2: Make the changes we can make fast. lower drug pricing/level private insurance playing field

    — long term: MFA

  23. 23.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    Are you in that video?

    I’m not — probably a relief for all of us — but that long line of people was literally smack-dab in front of me.

    So when is the Baud! 2020! campaign coming to Georgia, hmm?

  26. 26.

    hilts

    Kudos to Elizabeth Warren.

    Meanwhile, CBS News Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan has lost her goddamn mind

    In a recent interview, Lara Logan critiqued the international “liberal” media while holding up outlets like Breitbart as the opposite side of the coin. Logan spoke to retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland about a variety of topics on Friday for his Mike Drop podcast (h/t Breitbart), and the conversation eventually turned towards her agreement with Ritland that “the media everywhere is mostly liberal, not just the U.S.”

    h/t https://www.mediaite.com/online/cbss-lara-logan-calls-media-mostly-liberal-in-scorched-earth-interview-im-committing-professional-suicide

  27. 27.

    Bill Arnold

    That “photo line” video is impressive.
    Just watched (finally) Elizabeth Warren Launches Exploratory Committee for President. (Warning not https.)
    Pretty good. A couple of off-key bits (e.g. breaking down wealth inequality in American by black/white is something proxies should do (in a society more heterogeneous than just black/white), not her, IMO, but could be wrong. It’s correct but an invitation for attacks.), and she needs to work on her hand gestures with a mirror a bit, but overall quite strong. (And she’s quite clearly smart; that attracts me personally so probably a bit biased.)

  28. 28.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @hilts: IIRC she went squirrelly in Iraq, became convinced the US had an obligation to keep bombing till peace broke out. Maybe Hitchens’ ghost overtook her body

  32. 32.

    Bill Arnold

    @BC in Illinois:

    —This Fight Is Our Fight, by Elizabeth Warren
    —The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
    —Know Your Power, by Nancy Pelosi,

    Haven’t read them, but the lineup has been inspiring. All three have significant political skill (N. Pelosi i would rank near (or perhaps at) the top in a history of US legislative leaders.)

  34. 34.

    Martin

    Josh noted the other day how aggressive the Harris campaign is being, grabbing key endorsements this far out.

    I don’t think people outside of CA understand just how utterly incensed Californians are right now. I think it’s probably fair to say that CA doesn’t have a lot of faith in the other 49 states to not fuck this up. We needed Dems to turn out in 2016, and they didn’t. Meanwhile, CA went from a D+23 state to a D+31 state from 2012 to 2016. We turned out again in 2018, flipping 7 house seats. So yeah, we’re going into 2020 in a pretty stabby mood, and while we like Warren and Booker and others, we trust Harris to bring that sense of urgency.

    To Jerry Brown’s almost solitary credit, he positioned CA as the state that is willing to take on big challenges. We’ve managed the immigration challenge pretty well. It wasn’t always pretty, but we’ve gotten there. We’re leading on climate. Brown wasn’t ranting when he said ‘We’ll launch our own damn satellite’. We are. Sure we fuck up, but we aren’t afraid to try.

    We trust Harris to bring that thinking to DC. That’s a difficult thing to measure relative to other candidates. Having the policy goals is one thing. How relentless you are willing to be to get those done is something else. You want a real green new deal – put a Californian in charge.

  35. 35.

    Adam L Silverman

    @hilts: She lost it long before:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/27/business/media/leave-of-absence-for-lara-logan-after-flawed-benghazi-report.html

    The CBS News correspondent Lara Logan and her producer, Max McClellan, made serious errors in an Oct. 27 report on the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, and will take leaves of absence, the network announced on Tuesday. Four Americans died in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

    The moves come after weeks of criticism directed at a “60 Minutes” report which was based on an interview with a hired security agent, Dylan Davies, whose comments to CBS News were later discredited.

    CBS did not specify the length of the leave of absence for its two staff members, nor whether they would continue to be paid. In general, television correspondents do not lose salary unless they are suspended.

    The review of the Benghazi segment, conducted by CBS News’s executive director of standards and practices, Al Ortiz, was unstinting in its evaluation of the report, which Mr. Ortiz called “deficient in several respects.”

    Perhaps chief among the deficiencies, according to Mr. Ortiz’s review, was that the account Mr. Davies gave to Ms. Logan and Mr. McClellan differed from versions he had provided both to his employer, Blue Mountain, and to the F.B.I. This discrepancy, Mr. Ortiz writes, “was knowable before the piece aired.”

    In a previous interview with The New York Times, Mr. Fager said CBS had tried talking to the F.B.I. in advance of the report in an effort to determine what Mr. Davies had told the agency. The network’s sources led the program to believe that the account given to the F.B.I. was “in sync” with the interview Mr. Davies gave to “60 Minutes,” Mr. Fager said.

    In defense of its report, CBS said earlier that it had been duped by Mr. Davies. Mr. Ortiz contradicted that by saying CBS could have, and should have, been able to verify Mr. Davies’s account before presenting him as a reliable source.

    “The wider reporting resources of CBS News were not employed in an effort to confirm his account,” Mr. Ortiz wrote. He concluded: “Logan and producer Max McClellan told me they found no reason to doubt Davies’s account and found no holes in his story. But the team did not sufficiently vet Davies’s account of his own actions and whereabouts that night.”

    The report also criticizes Ms. Logan for not adequately substantiating her conclusion that Al Qaeda took part in the attack and for making a speech in October 2012 that took a position on the attack, and then participating in a story in which she would have been expected to be objective about the facts of the attack.

    “From a CBS News standards perspective, there is a conflict in taking a public position on the government’s handling of Benghazi and Al Qaeda, while continuing to report on the story,” Mr. Ortiz wrote. The report also took “60 Minutes” to task for not disclosing on the air that a book written by Mr. Davies about the incident was published by one of the company’s units.

    Both Ms. Logan and Mr. Fager initially said that it was an oversight not to mention the connection between the book and CBS.

  38. 38.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @hilts:
    Wow. And I thought places like FTFNYT were deranged in their worship of ‘both sides’ reporting. This woman literally believes that because exactly half the media does not report the same way FOX and Brietbart do is proof that the media is very, very liberal. Content is irrelevant. She claims she doesn’t even like conservative content, but by definition the media is only fair if half of it meets that standard.

  40. 40.

    Kent

    @dexwood:

    This old white guy’s feelings would not be hurt if the primaries eliminated all the male candidates. The time has come and we’d be left with some great choices.

    I’d happy vote for the next Barack Obama if I thought there was one. But I don’t see him anywhere. My top tier candidates are Warren and Harris at this point. I think they are both a step ahead of both Gillibrand and Klobuchar at this point in terms of energy and organization. Booker is too deep in the charter school movement and wall street to ever gain this HS teacher’s vote. Castro seems more like a logical VP candidate. Beto campaigned for GOP congressional candidates along the border and has a mixed voting record at best. I’m too tired of the rust belt white working class nonsense to ever vote for a candidate designed to appeal to them which is what Brown seems to be. And don’t get me started on…what do we call him now? Wilmer.

    I think things will sort out and we’ll probably be down to the few top women candidates and maybe one token male once the primary season starts.

  41. 41.

    Ladyraxterinok

    Depressing, unnerving to read replies to Sen Warren’s tweet praising Obama. So many hate him. Many attack him for what RW media claim he did–zero evidence for claims! Just disgusting!

  42. 42.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Frankensteinbeck: Yet again, you give way too much credit to these people. As the saying goes, they’re not criminal masterminds. They’re not Lex Luthor. They’re shitlords. Anything else that might result is an accident, good or bad.

  43. 43.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ladyraxterinok: Many attack him for what RW media claim he did–zero evidence for claims! Just disgusting!

    Right wing media just gave them talking points so they don’t have to admit the real reason they hate him

  46. 46.

    trollhattan

    Have liked Warren since she was first advocating for CFPB after the Bush market collapse. Should she make it through the next grueling year and get the nomination, I’m all in.

  47. 47.

    JPL

    @Ladyraxterinok: Don’t read the comments. Most folks don’t hate Obama. Think about the trolls that come out in force when the name of the senator of VT who ran for president is mentioned.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m leaning towards Harris, but I’m not letting myself get too emotionally attached to any candidate until January of 2020.

    And I will repeat that my dream job for Elizabeth Warren would be Secretary of the Treasury so we could watch all of the banksters shit themselves in fear. ?

  52. 52.

    Roger Moore

    @Martin:

    To Jerry Brown’s almost solitary credit, he positioned CA as the state that is willing to take on big challenges. We’ve managed the immigration challenge pretty well.

    Housing, not so much. I really appreciate that Gov. Newsome is working hard on housing, but I really wish Gov. Brown had done more about it during his term. Housing prices are completely out of control, and it’s going to take heroic measures to fix them.

  54. 54.

    Kent

    Lara Logan used to be an interesting reporter during the early days of the Afganistan and Iraq wars. I think she probably spent too many years embedded with the military hierarchy and eventually just absorbed all of their kool-aid. According to Wikipedia she is now married to a guy who is some sort of private military contractor https://www.newsweek.com/lara-logans-mystery-man-162631 so probably a lot more people around her serving kool-aid.

    The story of her assault in Egypt is one of the most horrifying things I have ever read.

  55. 55.

    Steve in the ATL

    So…am I at the wrong place? I seem to be the only jackal at the Stroudsburg, PA meetup tonight.

    Steve in (duh) Stroudsburg, PA

  56. 56.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Steve in the ATL: So…am I at the wrong place? I seem to be the only jackal at the Stroudsburg, PA meetup tonight.

    Is it in a working class diner? report back!

  59. 59.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t think so, because Joe Biden isn’t here

    It’s pretty downscale in appearance but the menu was good and the wine list was longer than “wine—$3 a glass”. I ordered a bottle of the 2015 Ripple.

  60. 60.

    Jeffro

    OT (but then again this is an OT): I think I’m going to take the kiddos downtown midday Wednesday for a quick sled run on Capitol Hill. Might be the last good storm we get this year (I use the term ‘good’ advisedly)

    I bet if we get there around 11, we can sled for an hour before we head home ahead of the sleet and icing-up that’s expected.

    And there might have to be a taco pick-up on the way home. Am I the only grown-up who loves a good snow day here? ;)

  61. 61.

    Jeffro

    @Roger Moore:

    Housing prices are completely out of control, and it’s going to take heroic measures to fix them.

    It’s that way in a lot of metro areas around the country. It’ll be interesting to see which states and cities embark upon their own crash building programs (or commercial property conversions?) in order to try and alleviate the issue. Unfortunately, the people most affected don’t vote as much as those profiting off of high house prices.

  63. 63.

    rk

    @Martin:

    while we like Warren and Booker and others, we trust Harris to bring that sense of urgency.

    I’m with you with this. I like Warren’s policies and her ideas and of course will vote for her without hesitation and with enthusiasm. But I very upset with her for the DNA test thing (the same as I was unhappy with Obama for releasing his birth certificate). I’ve never been one to say that I have to vote for a woman. But this time my vote is going to the best woman. I want a woman who will crush the orange baboon’s testicles with one heel and his face with the other. A Nancy pelosi on steroids so to speak. Kamala seems upto the job. He screeched Pocahontas at Warren and she got a DNA test. It’s such a weak move. You never give in or even acknowledge bullies. Treat him like the useless punk that he is.

  65. 65.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ladyraxterinok:

    Depressing, unnerving to read replies to Sen Warren’s tweet praising Obama.

    The “Fauxgressive” stuff (wilmer related) is just depressing. It’s targeted (not sure if intentionally) at low-information lefties. I was much better informed by wikipedia in a quick skim of this:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Elizabeth_Warren
    And this warmed my heart; Mitch McConnell ordered her to shut up. It takes some skill to get McConnell to do something with so much potential for blowback.
    Senate votes to shut up Elizabeth Warren

    Now, she can no longer talk until the floor fight over Sessions’ nomination is over. His confirmation vote is expected Wednesday evening.
    “Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech,” McConnell said. “She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

    (Still need to carefully watch/listen to a few more of her speeches to be sure of her, FWIW.)

  66. 66.

    hilts

    @Ladyraxterinok: As several other commenters have noted, she was sexually assaulted while covering the Egyptian revolution.

    @Kent:

    I think she probably spent too many years embedded with the military hierarchy and eventually just absorbed all of their kool-aid.

    I agree that this is probably what best explains her idiotic line of reasoning.

  68. 68.

    cain

    Y’all – Malia Obama is trending on twitter because of some secret FB where she says she hates Trump. I expect Republicans react violently and ask her resignation as first daughter.

  70. 70.

    hilts

    @rk:

    I want a woman who will crush the orange baboon’s testicles with one heel and his face with the other. A Nancy Pelosi on steroids so to speak. Kamala seems up to the job.

    I agree with you about Warren and the DNA test. In addition to Kamala Harris, I’m confident that Kirsten Gillibrand could satisfy your request.

    And FUCK Steve Kornacki for his goddamn commentary speculating about whether or not Biden will run.

  74. 74.

    hilts

    @cain:

    Malia Obama is trending on twitter because of some secret FB where she says she hates Trump.

    Can’t say I blame her given that Donald Trump is the most profoundly hateable politician of the last 30 years.

  76. 76.

    Roger Moore

    @Jeffro:
    I think it’s less important to do a crash building program than it is to undo the problems created by bad zoning policies. Building programs are doomed to expensive failure if there simply isn’t enough land zoned for multi-family dwellings. A big part of the solution, and one that will come with many cries of anguish, will be to rezone large areas currently devoted to single family homes to allow either accessory dwellings or small multi-unit housing. We won’t fix our housing problems until we’re willing to tell middle class homeowners that their neighborhood character is less important than other people’s ability to find a place to live.

  77. 77.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I would like to take this moment to make a sarcastic Pelosi clap for Donald Trump for making me miss GW Bush. Way to go Trump.

  80. 80.

    plato

    bbc

    A coalition of 16 US states led by California is suing President Donald Trump’s administration over his decision to declare an emergency to build a wall on the Mexican border.

    The lawsuit was filed in the court for the Northern District of California.

    It comes days after Mr Trump invoked emergency powers to bypass Congress and secure funding for the project.

    Democrats have described it as a “gross abuse of power” and vowed to contest it “using every remedy available”.

    Who gives a shit about lara logan and her ‘views’?

  81. 81.

    Roger Moore

    @hilts:

    I agree that this is probably what best explains her idiotic line of reasoning.

    I also wonder how much might be because of her upbringing in Apartheid era South Africa.

  82. 82.

    jc

    It’s a great approach for Warren to backhand Trump by praising Obama. But The Don also needs to be front-handed. Do what he does, and bluntly say: his incompetence and corruption knows no bounds. Don’t hold back … give it to him right in the chops. Lord knows he richly deserves it.

  84. 84.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: It’s wrong to post that and give it publicity. It’s wrong that someone leaked it. She should be allowed to have some privacy and live a normal life. She’s not a public figure by choice. If it’s one of her “friends” who leaked it, she needs better friends.

  85. 85.

    Baud

    @cain:

    Malia Obama is trending on twitter because of some secret FB where she says she hates Trump.

    Oh, she’s running.

  89. 89.

    Felanius Kootea

    @Roger Moore: It surprises me that many don’t seem to think Lara Logan growing up white in apartheid-era South Africa has any bearing on her conservative views.

  90. 90.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Leto: Recent apartment architecture around here is awful, boxy and then they put some bright paint on a part and think it looks good. This is Southern California, that paint is going to fade and look like shit in a couple of years.

  91. 91.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @cain:
    It shouldn’t be much of a surprise if true. I mean, Trump pushed the racist birther bullshit against her father for years. I wouldn’t blame her at all for despising Trump

  93. 93.

    Leto

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: We have the same issue here right outside Philly, though the paint might last a while longer. I don’t mind the sameness (I’m used to military housing so YMMV), I just worry about shoddy construction (again, same with privatized military housing) and fire hazards. We need quality mass construction.

  97. 97.

    Leto

    @Yarrow: Agreed, she’s not a public figure and deserves her privacy. I’m sure she, or the Secret Service, will find out who did it. I hope this doesn’t make her less trusting of people, but at the same time I wouldn’t be surprised if that outcome happened.

  99. 99.

    PsiFighter37

    Not going to start paying really close attention until the debates. I’m going to take the approach that the Obamas have taken – I suspect that the field will weed itself down until it’s time to make a call. That being said, I really do hope that we avoid a brokered convention. Because of the stink that the Berniebros raised over superdelegates, I think it’s quite a bit more likely that this contest gets dragged out until the bitter end, and potentially without a decisive winner.

  102. 102.

    RedDirtGirl

    What can people tell me about Warren’s history as a republican? I was so surprised when I heard about it, and it just doesn’t square with any of her positions today. And I’m not concern trolling…I’m truly interested in jackals’ thoughts.

  103. 103.

    wvng

    I saw Warren in Pittsburg as she campaigned (and I) for Hillary. Great speaker, and I got a picture with her – as did everyone who asked. The more things change.

  105. 105.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    Just as soon as I take care of the outstanding warrants.

    I agree that Elizabeth Warrant is outstanding, but not sure what you would have to “take care” of.

  106. 106.

    Roger Moore

    @Leto:
    They do point out that the fires only seem to be a problem during construction. Once the drywall and fire sprinklers are installed, they don’t seem to be particularly fire prone. It’s almost as if the engineers who test for fire protection know what they’re doing.

  107. 107.

    joel hanes

    @Roger Moore:

    In Silicon Valley, I can count six projects within ten miles that are converting land formerly zoned commercial or light industrial to four or five story high-density housing with ground-floor retail. They’re ripping out old strip malls with huge parking lots and old low-density tip-up office buildings from the 1970s buildout to do so.

    It won’t bring housing prices down even a little, of course, and probably won’t slow their rise.
    It’s like building freeways to reduce traffic: as soon as more housing is available, people will come to fill it at whatever price the owners care to charge.

    No matter what Newsom does, housing prices in Silicon Valley will never be anything but astronomical.

  108. 108.

    trollhattan

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:
    We have a crapton of infill apartment construction at present in the downtown and midtown areas with a preponderance of eightish story designs. IIUC with our particular seismic codes that’s as high as one can go without steel frame construction and a commensurate jump in price per ft/sq.

    They do take on a certain similarity, but are scattered so it’s nothing like a suburban interstate interchange development of a thousand delightfully beige apartments.

  109. 109.

    Jeffro

    @Roger Moore: It’s one of those problems where we need to move on all fronts, not just fixing zoning. #1 issue with a shortage is to increase supply, and changing zoning won’t solve this by itself.

  110. 110.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud:

    Malia Obama is trending on twitter because of some secret FB where she says she hates Trump.
    Oh, she’s running.

    : applause :

  111. 111.

    Mnemosyne

    @plato:

    I have a feeling that Stone’s attorneys repeatedly shouted, “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO, YOU FUCKING MORON!?!” as they frantically typed out the apology.

  112. 112.

    Leto

    @PsiFighter37: Fuck the Burnout Bros. We had a decisive winner last time except Cranky Grandpa didn’t want to accept that the grift was over, so he dragged out the process as well as continued to slag the candidate.

  113. 113.

    Adam L Silverman

    @RedDirtGirl: When the aliens abducted her, they removed her brain and inverted her political leanings. Unlike Bob Gephardt, they did remember to put her eyebrows back on when they reattached the top of her head.

  115. 115.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    And Hillary posted a photo on Instagram of Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton standing arm and arm with the caption Happy President’s Day. Was she trying to hint at something?

  116. 116.

    Amir Khalid

    @hilts:
    I’m impressed that Amrica’s generally right-leaning corporate news media has managed to convince so many that it leans to the left.

  117. 117.

    Mnemosyne

    @Roger Moore:

    They just built a ton of new apartments in Glendale and Burbank, but since they’re all “luxury” buildings, all they seem to have done is encouraged the surrounding landlords to jack up their own prices that were already barely affordable for most people. ?

  118. 118.

    Leto

    @Roger Moore: I dont doubt that the engineers have designed good systems. I just know too many shoddy construction firms, looking to wring every last buck they can, who cut a little here, cut a little there. Again, I think about all the problems that privatized military housing has and just want better. Not just for my military brethren, but for everyone that just wants a good, safe place to live.

  120. 120.

    plato

    The US sailor famously photographed kissing a stranger in New York’s Times Square to celebrate the end of World War Two has died aged 95.

    The picture of George Mendonsa bending over and kissing 21-year-old Greta Zimmer Friedman on VJ Day (Victory over Japan) became one of the most enduring images of the period.

    It was one of four photographs taken by Alfred Eisenstadt as a round-up of celebration pictures for Life magazine.

    Ms Friedman died in 2016 aged 92.

  122. 122.

    hilts

    RIP Ken Nordine

    Voice artist Ken Nordine, the creator of Word Jazz, died Saturday at the age of 98.

    As successful as Nordine’s announcing and commercial work was, he was creatively restless and drawn to more adventurous vocal avenues. One night in 1956, he was reciting the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Edgar Allan Poe for musicians Johnny Frigo and Dick Marx at a Wilson Avenue club called the Lei Aloha. He ran out of poems and started to improvise. Thus was born what he called “word jazz,” a concept that would go on to spawn a dozen record albums, a syndicated radio show and make him a legend.

    In 1990, Nordine accepted an invitation from Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead to perform with them at a New Year’s Eve concert. He would also collaborate with David Bowie, Tom Waits and many others in a late-life career that compelled one writer to call him “an underground hipster for the ages.”

    h/t https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ent-ken-nordine-dead-0217-story.html

  123. 123.

    Ken

    @Baud:

    Just as soon as I take care of the outstanding warrants.

    No problem, once you’re President you can pardon yourself.

  124. 124.

    Roger Moore

    @joel hanes:
    We could bring down the price of housing, but it would require way more than six projects within ten miles. The biggest thing is that we need regional solutions rather than counting on any single city fixing the problem by itself. If one city changes its zoning to be more development friendly, it won’t do much. But if every city in the Bay Area or in Southern California did the same thing, it would have a major impact.

  125. 125.

    trollhattan

    @hilts:
    Genius and a voice one cannot forget. Have one of his voice jazz collections on LP around somewhere–I need to dig it out in his honor.

    Fare thee well Ken, you are a treasure.

  128. 128.

    Kent

    @Felanius Kootea:

    @Roger Moore: It surprises me that many don’t seem to think Lara Logan growing up white in apartheid-era South Africa has any bearing on her conservative views.

    Perhaps it is because they seem to have evolved in front of our eyes. She wasn’t always a “winger”. During her early coverage of the Afganistan war she seemed pretty on point. The winger stuff seems to have evolved later. Or maybe it was always there and she just used to be much better at hiding it.

  129. 129.

    hilts

    @Amir Khalid:

    I’m impressed that Amrica’s generally right-leaning corporate news media has managed to convince so many that it leans to the left.

    It says that we’re a profoundly fucked up nation.

    Even if Trump is defeated in 2020, defeating Trumpism will take much longer. That being said, I look forward to seeing Trump defeated in 2020 and I hope that defeat is as humiliating as humanly possible for this distant relative of Jabba the Hutt.

  130. 130.

    Chyron HR

    @cain:

    They’re going to be REALLY surprised when they find out what Donald Trump’s been saying on his Twitter account.

  131. 131.

    hilts

    @trollhattan:

    Nordine certainly had an unforgettable voice and I’m glad he had the chance to collaborate with the Grateful Dead, David Bowie, and Tom Waits.

  132. 132.

    J R in WV

    “It was one of four photographs taken by Alfred Eisenstadt as a round-up of celebration pictures for Life magazine.”

    One of the world’s best photographers, ever. Esp. at street photography, which that photo was one of the best examples, ever.

    Think of it, that event lasted a few seconds in a crowd of people celebrating the end of a war that could have ended civilization without FDR, for one example of a critical person. Amazing.

    Sad both people are gone, glad they both lasted into their 90s!

  136. 136.

    Keith P.

    @Mary G: They probably said “Clean this up or you need to find new legal representation. Also, you left your cock-ring in the restroom the last time you were here.”

  138. 138.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @RedDirtGirl: Warren’s erstwhile Republicanism doesn’t bother me. If she switched parties in the late 80s, that would suggest that even if she voted for Reagan, she became disenchanted. Hell, our own beloved blog host voted for Bush twice. People change. And at a time when there were Republicans like Jeffords, Roth and Heinz, and Democrats like John Breaux, Phil Gramm and Zell Miller….

  139. 139.

    Shana

    @Jeffro: Sounds like a fun plan. I’ll probably be shoveling snow by myself again since Hubby is out of town when it snows, as he usually manages to do. And, to add insult to injury, he’s in Florida at a meeting at Marco Island all week.

  140. 140.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @plato:

    It makes me ridiculously happy to know that those two iconic, anonymous people both lived well into their 90s.

    May both of them rest in a well-earned peace. And even though I’m an atheist and don’t really believe in Heaven, I confess to a sneaking wish that when Mendonsa arrived through the Pearly Gates, the first person … er, angel … he saw was Friedman, and that he grabbed her and kissed her the way he did 73+ years ago.

  144. 144.

    piratedan

    @B.B.A.: to beat the proverbial dead horse, thee Dems not have lost the election…. still entirely plausible and possible that this election was stolen/altered

  145. 145.

    Lyrebird

    @Kent: I hope that Andrew Yang guy gets enough contributions to be in a debate. I don’t think he’ll get elected nationwide with his basic income plan, but it would be pretty cool to even watch the idea get air time on a presidential primary debate stage.

    So many awesome candidates! And so many willing at least when on camera to tip their hats to each other and keep discussions open.

    Balm to the soul compared to the R primary… appendage-measuring contests in a presidential contest? whose turn to grovel next after being slimed? ugh. So yeah, what a great slate!

  148. 148.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks for deleting it. It’s not about it upsetting me. It’s just wrong to post the whole tweet with the pictures and all that. It’s nothing but clickbait at Malia Obama’s expense and it puts more eyeballs on the Daily Mail’s garbage. We don’t need the tweet in the thread to clarify the issue. If people want to google the issue they can do that. I’m with Chelsea Clinton on this issue:

    Malia Obama is a private citizen. No part of her life should be anyone’s clickbait.— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) February 19, 2019

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