Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Let’s finish the job.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

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

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

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

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Evening Open Thread: Cruise Ship of Certified Fools

Friday Evening Open Thread: Cruise Ship of Certified Fools

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Fortunately for the crew — and boy howdy do I feel sorry for those poor folk! — Beck’s target audience is almost certainly old enough to be outside the measles-susceptible anti-vaxxer demographic. Unlike the wretched Scientologists on the Seastead earlier this year…

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141Comments

  2. 2.

    oatler.

    Touring the countries that have decent affordable healthcare while hosting seminars that curse the evil commies who want to take away our freedom.

  3. 3.

    MattF

    Not to mention David Barton– who claims (you can look it up) to be a scholar who can prove that separation of church and state in the US is just so much liberal tosh.

  4. 4.

    chris

    “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

    ― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: First Series

    Metaphorically speaking, of course.

  5. 5.

    Anne Laurie

    @MattF:

    David Barton– who claims (you can look it up)

    … in David Barton’s many other grift-for-profit books, IIRC.

    Endlessly repackaged the same lies rearranged into shiny new meme-able paragraphs is pretty much the cash cow for all three of these ‘headliners’.

  6. 6.

    Guy Newlan

    Maybe Somali pirates (the sea-faring kind) will hijack it..but I digress, that would be terrible!

  7. 7.

    Amir Khalid

    OMG!! Glenn Beck has grown a beard!!
    (Idle question: whatever happened to his designer jeans business?)

  8. 8.

    trollhattan

    But those boys will be trapped on a big boat being run by nothing but furriners! How they gonna cope with that?

  13. 13.

    grandmaBear

    In the good news department, my granddaughter littleBear, went through her last chemo cycle earlier this month and went back to first grade most of this last week. A couple more appointments and tests and she’s all done with her lymphoma and really back to everyday life. Yay! Many thanks to Harry and his faithful servant BellaQ for their cheerful cards – kind souls. LittleBear’s away for the weekend, so I’m sitting with the 2 dogs, 4 ducklings and the guinea pig. And just enjoyed some yummy leftover Kitchen Tablecloth Stainer (à la Lambert Ortiz’s cookbook). Maybe I’ll do a little weeding in the garden later if the thunderstorm doesn’t happen but it cools down a bit. Life can be better sometimes. Back to the wine.

  16. 16.

    chopper

    Imagine this Gilligan’s Island.

    can it be like gilligan’s island only where the boat sinks and everyone dies?

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    @chopper:
    It’s at the very least Gilligan’s Island without Ginger, Maryanne and the Professor.

    “In this week’s episode, Gilligan and the Skipper get in a fight over which Howell to eat first.”

  20. 20.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @grandmaBear:

    Oh, this is just wonderful news! I’m all happy-teary now. Thank you for sharing, and all the best to littleBear and everyone who loves her.

  23. 23.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ruviana:

    Please to be adding Donny Jr., who’s acquired one as well (three men enter, one man leaves?).

    Did not know that. Am still rooting for the Meteor.

  35. 35.

    Amir Khalid

    @grandmaBear:
    That is happy news indeed. I wish your granddaughter a long and healthy life.

    @debbie:

    When did Glenn Beck turn into Colonel Sanders?

    Glenn Beck’s Fried Chicken? Um, no thanks.

  41. 41.

    Suzanne

    I don’t know why anyone goes on cruises. They seem like they are essentially like taking a vacation in a toilet.

  42. 42.

    Millard Filmore

    @Suzanne:

    I don’t know why anyone goes on cruises.

    Before I was married, I also never saw the value of taking a vacation cruise. As a father … its a time when parents can lovingly tell their kids “Go get lost.”

  44. 44.

    trollhattan

    @Suzanne:
    Same. “Let’s build a boat so fvcking big everybody forgets they’re on a boat and we’ll provide food and entertainment while charging 5x on drinks and that’s a captive crowd of thousands, in international waters.”

    Sounds great, sign me up.

  49. 49.

    Keith P.

    Perv boat. O’Reilly thinks he’ll get laid on the cruise…because of the implication.

  50. 50.

    germy

    They’re celebrating the roots of WESTERN civilization.

    I can just imagine the conversations on that boat. How much misinformation will be spilled?

  53. 53.

    Mike in NC

    @Suzanne: River cruises are great, with usually fewer than 150 or so people onboard. They usually feature local cuisine, too. Nothing like the often awful ocean cruises where you rub elbows with 4000+ of your closest friends.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

  58. 58.

    Suzanne

    @Mike in NC: I have seen commercials for those and they do look less awful.

    I just don’t get flying or cruising thousands of miles to sit by a pool and drink. When I want to do that, I book a special at the Valley Ho or the Biltmore down the street. When I go somewhere, I’m going to see the shit I can’t see at home. Not a boat, not a bunch of trashy Americans, and not a bunch of fucken germs. SO GROSS.

  60. 60.

    J R in WV

    We took a Nat Geographic / Lindblad cruise… more like summer camp afloat, under a 100 passengers, whales came right into the zodiak boats to be petted and kissed. Baja in Feb-March, the calving time for whales.

    It really was wonderful. Hoping to do more of them, they also do Galapagos, Arctic, Antarctic. river cruises. Adventure cruises with good food. Not like Carnivale trips at all, so far as I can tell.

  61. 61.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: I get the watery impulse…..but a CRUISE SHIP? They’re like a floating version of Vegas.

  62. 62.

    TheOtherHank

    I’ll make a note to ask my dad how the cruise was. He tends to go on the national review cruises. He’ll probably go on this one.

    I figure the money he wastes on these cruises, means he has less money to spend on guns.

  63. 63.

    Patricia Kayden

    @zhena gogolia: Or a huge glacier. That’s a lot of money to pay out just to hear Beck and O’Reilly pontificate for hours on end. I’d rather be waterboarded.

  64. 64.

    Gravenstone

    @grandmaBear: Such wonderful news! Best wishes to littleBear for a long, rambunctious and adventure filled journey through life.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    Not really. I love cruising and don’t like Vegas. They are relaxing and don’t feel crowded usually. But I love the sea. If you don’t like being on the ocean, it’s a different matter.

  67. 67.

    germy

    Thread:

    While I worked for @Tesla the waste of money I saw there was incredible. And it flows right from the top. The idea that cutting back on safety glasses is going to save Tesla is interesting. The idea that the CEO needs to personally monitor is a warning.— Russell Frost (@russellfrost) May 17, 2019

  73. 73.

    JPL

    @Suzanne: The only cruise I took was the Alaskan one, and it truly didn’t seem like thousands of people. Since I had a limited budget, I didn’t do the fancy stuff, but took smaller tours and hikes which were smaller. Nothing like a bus tour through the Yukon with a jackass asking why we couldn’t get out of the bus to get closer to the grizzly. .

  76. 76.

    Gravenstone

    @JPL: Tell them it’s abusive to feed the wildlife with fat and unhealthy American tourists. Bonus points for being true too.

  78. 78.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: I like the water. I don’t like people. I don’t like brief ports-of-call in the places I really want to see. I’ve done some really great boat trips on vacations (loved the Greek island one), but cruising on a giant floating germ factory is just a hard pass for me.

    Of course, my ideal vacation day is spent walking around a world-class city, eating and drinking the local flava, stopping in at cool local shops, and watching the pigeons.

  79. 79.

    banditqueen

    @grandmaBear: so happy for all of you–the little bear is growing up now and that is truly wonderful–many, many, many years of joy to all of you.

  83. 83.

    banditqueen

    @lamh36: you’ll show those repub morons how to do health the best way, can’t wait until you’re kicking their butts!

  85. 85.

    Barbara

    @Suzanne: I go on cruises! Well, we usually tack on additional days at the front and back end. Itinerary is everything.

  86. 86.

    Barbara

    @trollhattan: We go on smaller ships (300 passengers), though we also went on larger ones at first. I am not criticizing anyone who doesn’t like them, but I can only roll my eyes at those who piously claim that they aren’t like other tourists for whatever reason. Yeah sure. And if you use AirBnB, frankly, you might even be the worst kind of tourist, depending on where you go.

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    @chopper:
    Would it matter? I seem to recall that no one got off the island. And these assholes probably couldn’t even make a coconut radio.
    Just imagine, all those conservative asswipes stranded on a desert island with no food, no way off, and having to put up with each other for the rest of their lives.

  92. 92.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:
    I like the ocean.
    So I got to spend 2 yrs living in pure shit aboard a navy destroyer. Shitty food, it’s always noisy, once got to go 6 weeks without a shower, along with 300 of my friends, in the summer, in the Caribbean, sleeping 80 to a crowed room. Did get to see Gitmo. It’s charming, in a prison camp sort of way.
    I still like the ocean.
    I really don’t want to pay to sail around on it with all those people, at least half of whom I’d probably want to throw overboard.

  93. 93.

    NotMax

    Awakened to a world class cramp in the calf of one leg (the already dodgy one). Today’s to-do list has been duly edited and shortened to a single item:

    Limp slowly to the kitchen or the bathroom and back when necessary.

    More power to those who enjoy cruises and the like. Personally, activities on, under or adjacent to water hold scant interest or delight. Our distant ancestors made a decision to leave the oceans eons ago and I see no reason for me to go back in.

    ;)

  94. 94.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Suzanne:
    Pretty much my favorite way to vacation. Because I like to explore, I generally take road trips just to see whats there. Same with cities…I explore neighborhoods……..discovering little gems is the best part ?
    A cruise would be pure torture.

  99. 99.

    Ruckus

    @schrodingers_cat (HectoringBully):
    Actually worked on a WWII sub when I was stationed at San Diego for navy electronics school. It was still a commissioned ship, one crew member – a lifer who was listed as the captain. It was fun giving tours of the boat because the compartment at the base of the ladder was emptied of all gear so that 5 or 6 people could stand there sort of comfortably. People would remark how roomy it was, totally not what they expected. Then I’d take them to other parts of the boat. They shut up real quick when they saw how much room there really was. I’m 5’11” and weighed about 150 then and it was tough going for me. So no, I’m glad I never made it to subs, although the nuke boats were much better on space. Not so much on how long you stayed under. I do have to say though that when you were working, sailing, you got into a routine that made things go by so that once I went 3 weeks on the destroyer without seeing the outside and until I’d realized that by once going outside, it didn’t bother me.

  100. 100.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    Awakened to a world class cramp in the calf of one leg

    Doesn’t happen often (mercifully!), but frequently enough that I can well sympathise. And sometimes the toes cramp up and go all galleywampus. Hate that.

    “First you shuffle,
    Then you stoop.
    Growing old
    Is pigeon poop.”
    — Sandra Boynton

  101. 101.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    Whoo-hoo! Great job! It’s always a good feeling when your hard work pays off.

    Everyone needs to stop by the blog next Thursday 5/23 because longtime commenter Darkrose is getting her master’s degree and Adam is going to put up a front page post so everyone can congratulate her. (Don’t worry, I checked with her first to make sure she’s good with the special attention, and she is.)

  102. 102.

    Ruckus

    @schrodingers_cat (HectoringBully):
    I can answer that. If you have enough water it’s not bad. Nuke boats make plenty of fresh water so that wouldn’t be a problem. If your ship can’t make enough water, which the destroyer could not, it smells like old socks and BO. But everyone smells the same so it isn’t as bad as one might imagine. After that 6 weeks Caribbean training mission, and we got back to port with fresh water and steam hookups I took a hot shower for 1 1/2 hrs and still felt dirty….. Good times.

  103. 103.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    We used to really enjoy traveling on our own. Soon after we were married, we spent two months taking trains around Europe armed with a copy of “$5 a Day.” I was like a more interesting version of Outward Bound. But we don’t have the stamina any more, so the river cruises are nice. The ships are small and it’s easy.

  115. 115.

    Jay

    @rikyrah:

    There’s a bunch of smaller sailing boats that offer Alaskan Cruises.

    A Captain, a Cook, wonderful meals, local seafood and an intimate connection to the Coastline, by staying out of the shipping lanes and going the path less traveled.

  116. 116.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    RIP Grumpy Cat

    Grumpy Cat, the ubiquitous internet celebrity whose permanent scowl spoke for all of us in our darkest moments, died in the arms of her “mommy” on Tuesday, her family said on Friday. She was 7.

    The cat, whose actual name is Tardar Sauce and who hailed from Arizona, died after complications arose from a urinary tract infection. (link)

  117. 117.

    NotMax

    Strictly for grins, went and looked up who is registered with the FEC as a presidential candidate for 2020.

    As of May 13, 2019, there are 716 candidates who filed to run, including:

    · 244 Democratic candidates
    · 91 Republican candidates
    · 26 Libertarian candidates
    · 14 Green candidates
      Source

    Among the many listed at the link whom you likely have not heard about (yet):

    Refino Pig (R)
    Pew Die Pie (I)
    Internet Beef (NP)
    Grapelton Feret (D)

    ;)

  124. 124.

    JAFD

    @lamh36: Congratulations. Wishing fair winds and following seas for you (keeping to the theme of this thread ;-) )

  125. 125.

    JAFD

    @NotMax: Used to get these. Found ’twere indication I’d gotten dehydrated. So I drink more.

    Worth trading middle-of-night bathroom trips to avoid them. Keep a waterbottle beside bed, nowadays.

  126. 126.

    Ruckus

    @raven:
    Don’t really have to.
    The bunks were the same.
    The lockers were the same.
    The amount of space was the same.
    Sound powered phones were the same.
    Officers still had the wardroom and stewards still shined their shoes.
    The navy was, as I’ve been told, pretty much the same.
    It started to change as I was getting out. I was assigned to an LPH for about 3 weeks before discharge and the bunks were steel with a mattress rather than a canvas roped to a frame. The locker was under the bunk and over twice as large. Still a lot of people for the space, but better. Today it’s back to a shortage of people and too much sailing time with not enough training . Different day, different shit, same as it ever was.

  127. 127.

    JAFD

    My mother (may she rest in peace) saw An Affair To Remember too many times. So, when she’d seen me thru college, she and Father booked passage for Europe, round trip on the QEII.

    Trip went well, but return voyage ran into full-bore North Atlantic gale. Mother very seasick, miserable trip spent mainly in bunk.

    Father, on other hand, immune to seasickness was. Enjoyed trip. They didn’t get divorced afterwards, but was near-run thing.

  128. 128.

    opiejeanne

    @Suzanne: Disney cruises are the bomb whether you have kids or not, but there are lots of things for the kids to do, and there are great places for those traveling without children. We went because our youngest was one of the entertainers one year and it was great. They do make you sanitize your hands before you go into the dining room for every meal, and they enforce that rule.
    The best part was the stop on the island where there was an adults only beach, one for small children with their parents, one for teens. We just sat in the water and relaxed. We had lunch on the beach, a barbecue was set up nearby, and then a terrific thunderstorm rolled in and we were ordered into shelters. It came up so quickly that no one on the beach made it to the ship but there were shelters all along the path. The one we were under was kind of small, only 30 people under it, and it had a lightning rod on top that got hit while we were huddled in there. It was like being inside a gong when it’s struck and the little hairs on my arms stood on end. That was exciting. We could see lightning repeatedly hitting the rear deck of the ship.
    All of the food and drinks were included except in the bar and those were not excessively priced. There was a special restaurant that was covered in the price as well, no children allowed, and you had to make reservations for it. You could only go once but while the food was really good in the dining rooms this was fantastic.
    My only issue was with a group of idiot women from Oregon in the hot tub, three “Christians” who were bitching about immoral Hollywood liberals and included Disneyland in that for being in Hollywood, while they were sitting on a Disney cruise ship having the time of their lives. I finally pointed out that Disneyland wasn’t even in the same county as Hollywood, they were astonished. Idiots.

  129. 129.

    Ruckus

    @JAFD:
    Crossed Atlantic east to west early in Dec when in the navy on a destroyer. I have pictures of green water hitting the bridge, then we’d go over the next wave and down into the trough, then green water up to the bridge. We spent 7 days in that storm and ended up several hundred miles north of where we wanted to go and had to then steam south to homeport. Ten days total transit, usually 6 or 7.
    There were 5-6 of us out of just over 300 that didn’t get sick. The mess deck always had open seating. Not sure what all was in the food but I’m still here.

  130. 130.

    opiejeanne

    @J R in WV: Oh, Carnival ships and all of the cruise companies owned by them are to be avoided. Those are the ones with terrible illnesses, norovirus or whatever the E. coli illness du jour happens to be. The floating toilets.
    Several years before the Disney cruise we went on one other cruise that left out of Long Beach, visited Catalina for a day. The Carnival ship was in port at the same time and some of the people from that ship buttonholed us and asked about what ours cost, what was the food like, how many launches we had, when did we have to be back at the ship? We compared notes and they were so damned mad afterwards. I think our ship was a Viking cruise. It was clean, the food was good, and they treated us very well but the Disney cruise cost about the same 5 years later and blew it out of the water. We spent several days in Florida, met an online friend at Homosassa State Park, saw the mermaids at Weekiwatchee, visited Disneyworld, Cape Canaveral, etc. It was a good trip aside from the cruise but damn is it miserable in Florida in the summer.

  131. 131.

    Ruckus

    @opiejeanne:
    As you probably know, some people are born idiots and can’t help themselves, and some come by their idiocy by their own effort, they earn the title.

  132. 132.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @opiejeanne: Wild horses couldn’t drag me on board one of those. No judgment implied; it’s just that the whole premise at best leaves me cold.

  134. 134.

    MuckJagger

    Will there be dental surgery without anesthesia as well? I mean, it you’re going to spend two weeks with Glenn and Bill you might as well go for the gusto, y’know?

  135. 135.

    opiejeanne

    @Jay: My daughters worked for a shipping company that allows their employees to ride o one of the barge boats from Seattle to Alaska, once. They took that trip before the older one quit to start her own unrelated business and said it was a great experience but nothing like being on a comfortable cruise ship. No stabilizers but then they hugged the coastline all the way so they didn’t get tossed around too much. Most of their photos looked like the inside of the fishing boat that picked up Bourne in the first movie. They spent a little time in some of the stops along the way, getting to visit with locals in some places. The return trip was on a plane.

  137. 137.

    opiejeanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: Not for everyone, but we were so very surprised by the Disney cruise. The meals in the dining rooms had assigned seating so we sat with the same extended family at every meal except for the one dinner in the adults only restaurant. The kids at our table were well-behaved, the parents and grandparents were nice people, and we really didn’t notice anyone whose children were misbehaving. My kid said that the serving crew was good about leading children back to their own tables and gently impressing on the parents why letting them run loose was not a good idea, but we didn’t see them having to do this. There was no casino on board; there was a nice theater that ran new Disney movies most of the day and a different live Disney show every evening. We weren’t around kids very often and we found out that they limited the number of children on each cruise to about 200 out of 1200 passengers. It worked.
    Disclaimer: I would like to have some grandchildren but I don’t love all kids and I don’t want to be around them 24/7 because I’ve been there and done that. It would have been a nightmare of a cruise if there were more kids on board and if there were no facilities specifically for them. The child care people should have been tipped very well by the parents using the facility.

  138. 138.

    NotMax

    @opiejeanne

    Will note that this time around there is no Vermin Supreme listed.

    Suppose that moniker would now be considered redundant and/or too easily confused with another person.

  139. 139.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: That’s a name I’d forgotten.

    GoodSpaceGuy shows up on Washington ballots every election. He’s not just a nut, he’s an asshole and I think he’s shown himself to be a Nazi when he’s gotten up to speak at Seattle city council meetings.

  141. 141.

    lynno

    This is a spy/hacker dream cruise. Folks old enough to still use 1224/password as the code to get into their phone/tablet. Would not be surprised that the amount of malware on the ship it ends adrift on the sea.

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