Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

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

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

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

We still have time to mess this up!

This really is a full service blog.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Bark louder, little dog.

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

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Get offa my lawn!

Get offa my lawn!

by | 200 Comments

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Well, dock, to be more specific:

The river is just below flood stage, which this gator interpreted as an invitation to hoist itself up onto the dock for a snooze. I interrupted its rest, first with a photo, then by performing my version of the “lion’s roar” from Kung Fu Hustle. It skedaddled.

The National Weather Service predicts water levels will drop back toward normal this week. Good!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

200Comments

  6. 6.

    trollhattan

    “Local color” takes on a whole different meaning there. My Sierra foothill friends have deer, bears and mountain lions. Decisions, decisions.

    You should collar these guys and gals so you get to know them better, and can name them.

  8. 8.

    waratah

    I love your photos and stories Betty, but I do not think I could live that close to that water animal. Birds yes plants and trees yes. I would have come close to a heart attack seeing him where I walk.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Why didn’t you do like the tourists Yellowstone National Park do when the bison aren’t cooperating for the pictures? You know, walk up and kick it?

  19. 19.

    James E Powell

    Here in the US of A, we have Cleek’s Law and the phrase “owning the libtards!” to explain stupid right-wing policies that have no other explanation for being.

    Are there similar expressions in the UK that would help to explain Brexit?

    The UK will face a three-month meltdown at its ports, a hard Irish border and shortages of food and medicine if it leaves the EU without a deal, according to government documents on Operation Yellowhammer.

    Why is it a hammer? And why is it yellow?

  20. 20.

    Spanky

    … And frankly, I’ll take a gator over water moccasins any day, though I don’t have to, thankfully. Yet. (They’ll get here via global warming, I’m sure.)

  21. 21.

    Bill Arnold

    performing my version of the “lion’s roar” from Kung Fu Hustle.

    Impressed!
    When there are (eastern) coyotes yipping nearby, I do an impression of a disapproving mother dire wolf. They usually shut up instantly. (Eastern coyotes have some wolf DNA)

  24. 24.

    Kristine

    Lost one of our dogs to a gator. Late 60s, before folks kept a closer eye, and none of our yards had fences. We guessed she and her sister went swimming in the canal across the street from our house. Only the sister came home.

    When it comes to Florida, I miss the flora. The fauna, not so much.

  29. 29.

    Doc Sardonic

    Damn, you let that one get away. He was perfect BBQing size and ya coulda got a nice pair of boots and maybe a bag too.

  31. 31.

    Spanky

    @Kylroy:

    …this is why I live where the air hurts my face.

    Well, it does that in Floriduh too, when it’s blowin’ 120 or so.

    Another strike against America’s weiner.

  32. 32.

    Raven

    @satby: Wilmington is not far from Dwight. It was the last stoplight on 55 (66) home to Weatherwoman Diana.

    How do you feel as you cut
    Down your children now
    And leave them dying
    On the grass in the sun

    What do you see
    When you look at one another
    Now?
    Tell me old man
    Tell me where will you run?
    Sing a song
    For the children going down
    Remember – the ones you know
    Remember how we danced
    And remember what we sang
    In America
    So many years ago

  34. 34.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kristine: That’s terrible. I don’t worry about them myself because I’m careful, but we never let the dogs out of the fenced part of the yard off leash for that reason. My grandfather used to complain about gators being protected under the Endangered Species Act because it allowed them to make such a dramatic comeback.

  36. 36.

    Brachiator

    Wow. That’s a hell of a photo. If the gator gets comfortable, does it come back with friends?

  38. 38.

    Aziz, light!

    @OzarkHillbilly: I once watched a guy in Yellowstone walk up to a 2,000 pound bull and poke it in the butt with a sharp stick to get it to turn around for his wife’s camera. I thought omigod I’m going to witness someone getting killed by a bison. Luckily for him the animal grunted and walked off.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    Yikes! It’s weird how I’m okay-ish with giant mammals that would eat me (like bears and mountain lions) but alligators just freak me the hell out.

  43. 43.

    Betty Cracker

    Vox writer David Roberts is absolutely right about Trump’s “Pocahontas” attack on Warren. De-twitter-fied version:

    The fact that the grotesquely racist “Pocahontas” attack has become a political liability *for Warren* represents a failure of pretty much every US civil society institution.

    I realize she screwed up with the DNA test, but the fact that it got that far at all is already a failure. A sane & health society would have responded to Trump’s very first “Pocahontas” with overwhelming mockery & scorn. “Oh look America’s racist uncle is ranting again.”

    We’ve set up this ridiculously asymmetrical playing field where Trump & Republicans can throw any shit they want at the wall — any lie, any insult — & the media will just gawk.

    “Will this shit stick? News at 11.”

    “Mrs. Warren, how do you respond to the latest shit?”

    I mean, HE’S USING “POCAHONTAS” TO MOCK NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE. There was a time, not that long ago, when everyone in US politics would have been shocked & repulsed by that. Now…it’s just Warren’s problem. When it stops working, Trump can move on to the next one. Ho hum.

    From Republicans’ POV, everything about the “Pocahontas” attack has been a triumph. What they learned from this episode is that US political media & culture reward dishonest racist attacks. And so that’s what we’ll get more of, relentlessly, for next year.

    Just gonna add, before I mute this thread: the worst part of bad-faith RW attacks on Dems is that Dems will echo every one of them. My TL is full of red-rose people who oppose Warren in favor of Bernie enthusiastically spreading this BS.

    This is of course exactly what happened to H. Clinton a million times. The RW would launch a bad-faith attack, just tenuously connected enough to a nugget of truth to require time to unpack, & Hillary’s foes on the left would do the rest, bolstering & spreading it.

    Truth.

  45. 45.

    Mnemosyne

    @scav:

    I was going to argue with Mike J’s pinniped identification skills, but I should have known better. That is most definitely a seal, not a sea lion. I’m just not used to seeing them come up onto the docks.

  49. 49.

    TenguPhule

    “Newt Gingrich and an eclectic band of NASA skeptics are trying sell Donald Trump on a reality show-style plan to jump-start the return of humans to the moon — at a fraction of the space agency’s estimated price tag,” Politico reports:

    The proposal, whose other proponents range from a three-star Air Force general to the former publicist for pop stars Michael Jackson and Prince, envisions creating a $2 billion sweepstakes pitting
    billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other space pioneers to see who can establish and run
    the first lunar base, according to a summary of the plan shared with POLITICO.

    Bring on the asteroids. As a species we can’t be saved.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    It’s even worse, because it’s endless. There’s stage 1- the attack. Then there’s stage 2- “how did she handle the attack?”

    Okay there is no fucking way to win on Stage 2. You lose that just by playing. I know this because Hillary Clinton tried every possible response to the emails and ALL of them were deemed insufficient. In fact, trying all the responses was its own sin, because that meant she was insincere. The response doesn’t matter. Give up on that.

  52. 52.

    TenguPhule

    King demands apology for something he said

    Representative Steve King, the Iowa Republican whose own party has turned on him for his bigoted and controversial speech, has demanded an apology from the media and Republican party leaders after he questioned whether, without the historical persistence of rape and incest, “would there be any population of the world left?”

    After the media reported the quote, which as demonstrated by video is accurate, Republican leaders renewed their calls for King to find another line of work.

    “And so,” King said Monday, “when we have a national, viral attack that comes out on a misquote, and it’s absolutely proven, all the folks that did that attack, I think they owe me an apology, including my own leadership.”

    Sadly, not the Onion.

  55. 55.

    TenguPhule

    Donald J. Trump
    ✔
    @realDonaldTrump
    · 3h
    Our Economy is very strong, despite the horrendous lack of vision by Jay Powell and the Fed, but the Democrats are trying to “will” the Economy to be bad for purposes of the 2020 Election. Very Selfish! Our dollar is so strong that it is sadly hurting other parts of the world…

    Donald J. Trump
    ✔
    @realDonaldTrump
    …..The Fed Rate, over a fairly short period of time, should be reduced by at least 100 basis points, with perhaps some quantitative easing as well. If that happened, our Economy would be even better, and the World Economy would be greatly and quickly enhanced-good for everyone!

    35.2K
    5:26 AM – Aug 19, 2019

    The asshole is demanding actions normally associated with trying to prevent an economy from collapsing entirely.

    WASF.

  56. 56.

    rikyrah

    Hmmph ? ?

    John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) Tweeted:
    in new NBC/WSJ poll:

    are you worried US will suffer another mass shooting by white nationalists?

    Republicans 24%
    non-college white men 27%
    rural residents 37%
    independents 58%
    suburban residents 55%
    white women college grads 70%
    African-Americans 80%
    Hispanics 72%
    Democrats 82%

  58. 58.

    TenguPhule

    Maggie Haberman
    ✔
    @maggieNYT
    The White House, which is insisting reporters are overplaying a potential recession, has scheduled a briefing call for Kudlow with business leaders tomorrow on the topic of the president and the economy.

    582
    5:14 AM – Aug 19, 2019

    I thought they wanted to quell the market panic, not incite it.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    Benghazi is even a better example than the emails, because with the emails Clinton actually did something.

    I submit that there is nothing Hillary Clinton could have done or said on Benghazi that would have changed one word of how that was reported, other than confessing to planning it. We know this because nothing she said or did changed it. It started as “we think she had something (evil) to do with this” and that’s how it ended. They never had anything. They still don’t.

  62. 62.

    TenguPhule

    Steve King is demanding an apology from everyone else for condemning the words out of his own mouth.

    And its not an Onion headline.

    This fucking timeline.

  64. 64.

    cmorenc

    @Betty Cracker:

    We’ve set up this ridiculously asymmetrical playing field where Trump & Republicans can throw any shit they want at the wall — any lie, any insult — & the media will just gawk.

    Some folks who knew Trump back in his middle years knew he had a thing for fucking barnyard animals before he went out on dates with women he planned to seduce and conquer. As late President Johnson would say, don’t care if it’s true, I wanna hear the MF have to deny it.

    Where’s LBJ when we need him?

  67. 67.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I don’t know- I’m no expert- but since law enforcement claim they stopped THREE last week it seems to me odds are not good for that not happening again. Even if one of the three seemed serious and, frankly, imminent, and I think one of the three was much more serious than the other two, that is not good. One a week would not be good. It’s a big country. They aren’t going to prevent them all.

  70. 70.

    Betty Cracker

    @mrmoshpotato: It’s about a foot and a half higher than normal because we’ve had a TON of rain.

    @Kay: Do you think there’s any utility in a candidate calling out the media over it? What if next time someone asks Warren or a campaign official about it, what if they said, “We’ve already addressed this and have nothing new to say. Why don’t you ask Trump and his Republican supporters why it’s okay to lie all the time and repeat slurs?”

    Generally, it’s considered bad form to whine about media coverage, but is that still operative in the Age of Trump? Something has to break the damned pattern here. Beto seemed to gain some traction when he literally said, “WTF, media?”

  71. 71.

    Yarrow

    @raven: I’ve seen Santana once in concert. So good. Must have been amazing to see him the day you got out of the Army.

  72. 72.

    J R in WV

    @rikyrah:

    are you worried US will suffer another mass shooting by white nationalists?

    All those broken out stats are completely wrong, because the actual odds of having another mass shooting in this country is 1 — a dead certainty, given the history of such events over the recent past and the lack of action to stop them in the future.

    Shocking that some groups must know this, yet don’t care at all.

  73. 73.

    Dan B

    @Betty Cracker: This is so true. Dems repeat GOP talking points and discount the way the human mind operates. To quote someone who managed to turn a batch of “good Germans”: Repeat a lie enough and people will begin to believe it.

    Trump’s brand is rage. He lives to demean and cast slurs. Once the media and the Dems start to attach rage, and variations of rage, and slurs to Trump (and many GOP statements) the reality of his statements becomes clear. They are accusations based on rage and are cruel in their intent.

    Everyone lies, mostly little lies. They rarely are intended to do serious damage. But we understand that rage does damage. It’s intended to damage. It’s out of control.

  75. 75.

    humboldtblue

    Newsom signs use-of-force bill into law will require law enforcement to use other means before employing deadly force.

    S

    ACRAMENTO – Today, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 392 by Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego). The bill enacts one of the strongest use-of-force laws in the country.

    AB 392 modernizes standards for use of deadly force by officers. Specifically, this bill updates the existing deadly force standards to provide that deadly force may only be used when necessary. AB 392 also requires officers to use other techniques to address threats instead of using deadly force when safe to do so, encouraging law enforcement to train on and use de-escalation techniques like verbal persuasion and other crisis intervention methods.

    “This is a time for healing, progress and looking forward. The bill goes to the heart of some of our most sacred principles, in which force should be exercised judiciously, with respect for human life and dignity. The bottom line is that deadly force should only be used when absolutely necessary,” said Governor Newsom.

    “With the Governor’s signature, we are closer to a culture of policing in California that values and preserves human life,” said Assemblymember Weber. “Working on this policy has been a high hill to climb, but what has lifted me up is the energy and the devotion of the families who have lost loved ones to these shootings. Our hope all along has been to save lives and to finally establish trust between law enforcement and communities of color.”

    The provisions in AB 392 will be reflected in both law enforcement agency policy and officer training statewide, and will further ensure that all officers in California are trained to a higher legal standard. Use-of-force policies have remained largely unchanged since 1874.

  77. 77.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    The right-wingers that were in high school with me (aka facebook friends) were circulating photos of Hillary Clinton with blood on her hands labeled Butcher of Benghazi. Even those who claimed to be Democrats were certain she had done something wrong.

  80. 80.

    David Evans

    @J R in WV: “I’m not worried” can mean “I don’t think it’s likely” or “I don’t think I will be among the victims”

  83. 83.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    law enforcement claim they stopped THREE last week

    Remember all the jihadist terrorist attacks they stopped by supplying inoperable weapons and bombs? Yeah, without the details I wouldn’t take their word on these either.

  84. 84.

    Dan B

    @Betty Cracker: My communications experts say you gain if you point out the core of the smear and/or the motivation for it. Beto got right to it, “WTF Media” says clearly it’s a media failure and they are blind to their failure. Hillary kept trying to point out the details of Bengazi. The campaign kwpt repeating tge word Bengazi. They should have hammered them on their repeating politically motivated lies /slurs / hack jobs, etc. And pivot to what you want. Fact based media or addressing real security threats.

    My two cents.

  88. 88.

    J R in WV

    @Yarrow:

    I’ve seen Santana once in concert.

    I saw Santana, Janis, Joe Cocker and BB King all in one long R&R show in the old convention center in Philly, back in fall of 1969. A great Saturday of music. Hard to pick the best act, I would lean towards Carlos, though both J Joplin and BB King were really good. Santana was so different with the Latin flavor, I found it fascinating.

  89. 89.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The NY Times 1619 Project should make its slogan “All the Propaganda we want to brainwash you with”.it is a repudiation of the original NY Times motto.
    -Newt Gingrich

    It’s history, not a wife in a hospital bed. You can’t just walk away.
    –Dave Zirin.

  90. 90.

    rikyrah

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The NY Times 1619 Project should make its slogan “All the Propaganda we want to brainwash you with”.it is a repudiation of the original NY Times motto.
    -Newt Gingrich

    It’s history, not a wife in a hospital bed. You can’t just walk away.
    –Dave Zirin.

    KAPOW

  99. 99.

    Betty Cracker

    @Dan B: Makes sense, but I wonder what that would look like?

    @SRW1: There are parts of it you can swim in — some lovely, clear springs within boating distance. But nah, I wouldn’t jump off my dock. Some people hereabouts do, but not me.

  101. 101.

    SenyorDave

    Warren is my preferred candidate. She is extremely bright and quick, I like almost all her positions, she is an actual financial expert, and I think she is completely qualified. I also think she will chew him up in the debates. She made a huge mistake in engaging Trump on this issue. Once you engage with Trump, you crawl into the gutter with Trump. And Trump lives in the gutter, so it is only the you who will suffer. This will be an issue if she is the candidate. How does she handle it? I say something like “I was told by family that there was Native American blood in our family. My mistake was in not going to experts in the Cherokee Nation as to how to proceed since they are the entity who determines membership. And ultimately my worst mistake was in engaging Donald Trump on this issue, since he has shown himself to be a racist by continuing to use a term that is a slur against Native Americans.”

  103. 103.

    donnah

    @RAVEN:
    Thread painting is a beautiful art form!

    This is rug hooking. I draw my design on a linen backing and then dye wool fabric and cut it into strips, which I pull through the linen with a rug hook. I used the smallest cut of wool strips this time, a #2 cut, which is 1/16” wide. I use a square wooden frame with rug gripper strips on top to secure the linen. The loops form the texture, like a rug. But mine don’t go on the floor. They’re considered art pieces.

    I have a lot of ideas for my next piece, but until I’m done with my travel teaching jobs I can’t dig in. I have a portrait of my youngest son in mind, as the other two sons already have their rugs finished. I’m looking forward to starting again, though!

  106. 106.

    J R in WV

    @David Evans:

    You’re correct — the question itself is so meaningless as to make the poll itself vacant of meaning… I should have paid closer attention to that.

  107. 107.

    trollhattan

    @rikyrah: @OzarkHillbilly:
    Newtie’s gonna need dry ice for that burn.

    Not that he gives a shit, but there it is anyway.

    p.s. Why on God’s earth is he still around? His sell-by date was in the last millennium.

  109. 109.

    Jay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    There were actually 4 Nazis arrested by the FBI last week.

    One today.

    The same “arrest model” was used,

    Social media posts planning/boasting about targetted mass murders,

    Search warrants were taken out,

    Weapons and bombmaking parts found in the searches,

    Most had past criminal records that should have barred them from gun ownership.

  110. 110.

    NotMax

    @raven

    Mae a mental note to mention it to you as it seems more in your wheelhouse, action-wise, than mine. It’s a rough ride, replete with extended scenes of ultra-violence, yet find myself drawn in to the story. (There’s a surfeit of ultra-gratuitous sex scenes too.) Mostly because many of the secondary characters are enigmatic or charismatic enough to keep me aboard, including even a smattering who are repellent. Originally a series on Cinemax, the first two seasons of Banshee are available on Prime. Banshee is the name of the town where it is set, though the place could much more accurately be named Murder Meadows.

  112. 112.

    Dan B

    @JPL: We need an administration and congress and courts and corporations that are all aligned behind restoring the Fairness Doctrine…. oh right, as you said – nit gonna happen. But the object if asking it of the media is reach your audience. The media is not the audience. Voters are the audience. Beto reached them with his, WTF Media?

    Make them say they’re not biased the same way LBJ made his opponents deny they were screwing animals.

  113. 113.

    Mary G

    Hills is taking on Twitler directly now – this is her reply too the one about Google stealing votes from him:

    The debunked study you’re referring to was based on 21 undecided voters. For context that’s about half the number of people associated with your campaign who have been indicted. https://t.co/0zHnWvGjSv— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 19, 2019

  114. 114.

    Steve in the ATL

    @James E Powell: we have to tip here now?! Freaking baksheesh.

    @Chief Oshkosh: it’s a gator, not a croc. You can tell the difference by whether the photographer survived the encounter.

    @Mnemosyne: wife was sorting laundry this morning and found, inexplicably, a “Hamilton 2016” T-shirt. Did you leave something at our house?

  116. 116.

    prostratedragon

    Wow, that is not a kitty, is it? We see so many nice cat pictures here that it actually took my eyes a moment to clear.

  122. 122.

    Betty Cracker

    @trollhattan: That clip was widely broadcast around here, as you can imagine, but I wish we knew more about the context. Pretty unusual behavior for a gator, to say the least.

  125. 125.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jay:

    Weapons and bombmaking parts found in the searches,

    Hmmm… Supplied by the FBI? //

    Good, I’m glad they got them, but they have earned my skepticism by some of their tactics (which I assume from the tone of your comment, were not used in this case).

  126. 126.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: While she has become an Apple cultist, she has not succumbed to your cult.

    @mrmoshpotato: I opened Instagram to see if a pic I’d posed from Flickr has posted correctly and saw a post from the young’n of the Chicago skyline from the Chicago River. (She’s Korean and a nurse and is blonde.)

  127. 127.

    Dan B

    @Betty Cracker: Wondering what it would look like is an indication that Dems have not been doing it well. Rightwing think tanks set up by the Powell Memorandum concept train wingers in media. They don’t have new thoughts just new ways to make them seem reasonable. Dems did not set up similar propaganda infrastructure so it’s handled by each campaign and by groups like Third Way – funded by the Kochs. They’ve persuaded Dems to run moderates.

  128. 128.

    TenguPhule

    ANOTHER FUCKING TAX CUT IDEA.

    Several senior White House officials have begun discussing whether to push for a temporary payroll tax cut as a way to arrest an economic slowdown, three people familiar with the discussions said, revealing the growing concerns by President Trump’s top economic aides.

    The talks are still in their early stages, and the officials have not decided whether to formally push Congress to approve the cut, these people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose internal discussions. But the White House in recent days has begun searching for proposals that could halt a slowing economy.

    Millions of Americans pay a “payroll tax” on their earnings, a 6.2 percent levy that is used to finance Medicare and Social Security programs. The payroll tax was last cut during the Obama administration, to 4.2 percent, as a way to encourage more consumer spending during the recent economic downturn. But the cut was allowed to reset back up to 6.2 percent in 2013.

    Fuck this for a barrel of monkeys. Pelosi and Schuemer need to declare it DOA.

  129. 129.

    Brachiator

    @SenyorDave:

    How does she handle it? I say something like “I was told by family that there was Native American blood in our family. My mistake was in not going to experts in the Cherokee Nation as to how to proceed since they are the entity who determines membership.

    This absolutely drives me nuts.

    Issues related to details about her ancestry, and anything related to tribal membership are two separate things.

    And she never claimed tribal membership or sought to use either her family history or DNA test results to assert membership in any Native American tribe.

    She apologized to some group in Iowa. Got a standing ovation. But I am sure this nonsense will go on.

  132. 132.

    RAVEN

    @Yarrow: We spent 2 days on a concrete floor after we got the steak dinner and ice cream. September 69 was the start of the pullout and they were not ready for the volume. We were all pissed but there were some grunts. . .
    The worst part was that they had this “no questions asked barrel where you could dump your contraband and few wanted to take the chance on getting busted after making it that far so there was no weed to be found. My buddy lived in the city and he’d been home for a while so we scored 100 hits of purple mesc and the rest is history. (Actually it was so intense I dumped the bulk after several wild ass trips)

  137. 137.

    trollhattan

    @TenguPhule:
    Dollars to donuts they’ll screw with the withholding schedules again like last year, which along with the several new Fuck You, California taxes had us paying many, many thousands April 15 when every prior year going back decades we received rebates.

  140. 140.

    Brachiator

    @TenguPhule:

    Several senior White House officials have begun discussing whether to push for a temporary payroll tax cut as a way to arrest an economic slowdown, three people familiar with the discussions said, revealing the growing concerns by President Trump’s top economic aides….

    Millions of Americans pay a “payroll tax” on their earnings, a 6.2 percent levy that is used to finance Medicare and Social Security programs. The payroll tax was last cut during the Obama administration, to 4.2 percent, as a way to encourage more consumer spending during the recent economic downturn. But the cut was allowed to reset back up to 6.2 percent in 2013.

    Wait a minute. These fuckers helped cause any slowdown in the economy. And now they want more deficit busting tax cuts to fix it?

    And previously, Trump did the opposite of anything Obama did. Now he wants an Obama approved tax cut? Damn.

    Also, I will bet good money that the GOP will tie this to another tax cut for the rich: the indexing of capital gain taxes.

    You cannot trust these weasels.

  141. 141.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Well, as I said, I’m not taking their word. One of the 3 looked legit. One is bad, after we just had two. The seemingly legit threat had also turned up in Charlottesville, so that to me is a bad sign. You have to be pretty committed to travel.

    I also go by stockpiles of weapons and ammunition. One of them looked like it could be an ex GF calling him in because he’s a pain in the ass and harassing her, and he only had one gun. So perhaps dangerous to her, but not others.

  143. 143.

    JPL

    @TenguPhule: Middle class tax cut or increase in personal deduction and pay for it by raising the top .01 taxes. Then the repubs would kill it.

  146. 146.

    Fair Economist

    @Kay:

    Okay there is no fucking way to win on Stage 2. You lose that just by playing. I know this because Hillary Clinton tried every possible response to the emails and ALL of them were deemed insufficient. In fact, trying all the responses was its own sin, because that meant she was insincere. The response doesn’t matter. Give up on that.

    Republicans do well with counterattacking. I think Hillary’s best response would have been to say that she has a lot of enemies who go to great lengths to smear her and so she kept all emails not required to be on government servers separately, following all disclosure and recordkeeping requirements. Any attempts to discuss her emails should have been met with accusations on the Bush administration, which kept most of its emails on RNC servers, and dumped millions in direct contravention of legal recordkeeping requirements, including IIRC about 2 million which were under subpoena when dumped.

    The point is to have a counterattack to bring up every time it’s raised, which interferes with the opinion shaping technique of only discussing our side’s problems. People remember what they hear, not what’s important.

    Warren’s approach to the DNA test should be “I only took the test to show Trump is a lying cheat, which it did, because he still hasn’t made that charitable contribution.” Repeat ad nauseam.

  149. 149.

    LuciaMia

    I read that the Florida gators are starting to take matters into their own hands, er, claws. Even climbing fences.

  151. 151.

    SenyorDave

    @Brachiator: She apologized to some group in Iowa. Got a standing ovation. But I am sure this nonsense will go on.

    I totally agree. If she is the candidate she has to call Trump a racist, and she has to make it stick. Hopefully she will have the Native American groups behind her on that. It is possible that in a general election scenario the slur part of it will not play well, and fortunately Trump is incapable of playing it any other way. For now I am assuming it will not be an issue in the Democratic debates, but if it does come up I hope she or any other candidate will talk about Trump using a slur and leave it at that.

  152. 152.

    Kay

    @James E Powell:

    Even those who claimed to be Democrats were certain she had done something wrong.

    But no one ever said what it was she did. Even the self-appointed prosecutor, Jake Tapper, could only come up with a mighty suspicious public statement by Susan Rice. Which she said on his show, so she couldn’t have been hiding that. That’s it. That’s all they had.
    I know it was a bad thing to say because she was telling the truth, but I cheered when Clinton said “what does it matter?”
    That’s true. It didn’t matter at all what anyone said. It was 100% guesses and speculation.

  155. 155.

    rikyrah

    @Fair Economist:

    Warren’s approach to the DNA test should be “I only took the test to show Trump is a lying cheat, which it did, because he still hasn’t made that charitable contribution.” Repeat ad nauseam.

    Definitely should have been part of it from the beginning.
    She didn’t think it all through, and should have been better prepared.

  156. 156.

    TenguPhule

    @Brachiator:

    These fuckers helped cause any slowdown in the economy. And now they want more deficit busting tax cuts to fix it?

    You betcha!

  158. 158.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @donnah: As it should have! Your rugs are amazing, and that one’s a classic example to illustrate the point.

    @Betty Cracker: I think your snoozing gator is adorable.

  159. 159.

    Brachiator

    @trollhattan:

    They’ll keep the beachball in the air as long as they can, but it’s pretty much deflated by now IMHO.

    I hope so. But it is frustrating to see commenters here raise the issue with the same old confusion.

    Dollars to donuts they’ll screw with the withholding schedules again like last year

    Already done. Administration officials prefer low withholding. They claim that they want people to keep more of their money during the year. But Grover Norquist has said that he wants to see people have to file tax returns and pay tax balances so that they will stay angry and demand further tax cuts.

  160. 160.

    Jay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Antifacist researchers have tied all 5 back to Charlottsville and other Nazi rallies.

    So much for the “Lone Wolf” theory.

    A Proud Boy convicted in New York today for the violent attacks at the Young Republicans Club, has an interesting back story.

    Seems in around 2010 he got a felony conviction in an ATF sting, where he illegally bought guns, then resold them on to street gangs.

    That conviction didn’t seem to effect his later collection of a small arsenal including ghost guns.

    I’ve never heard of a Nazi arrest where the guy didn’t have moar gunz.

    Pretty sure that the FBI doesn’t have to supply Nazis with moar gunz and bombs, given how many Americans have been killed over the years by Nazi guns and bombs.

  161. 161.

    Kay

    @Fair Economist:

    Repeat ad nauseam.

    Well, that I agree with. The response doesn’t matter, at all, but whatever it is she’ll have to repeat it.

    How many Benghazi investigations did they have, ballpark? Double digits. Hillary Clinton remains guilty of killing those people. Didn’t matter at all. They charge but they don’t aquit.

  163. 163.

    Steeplejack

    @Raven:

    I can relate to your coming “back to the world.” That same late summer of ’69 I was coming back from two years on Okinawa (Air Force brat) to start college. Kadena Air Base was a major staging point for Vietnam. They flew B-52s and AWACS out of there, also a couple of tactical fighter wings and the SR-71 Blackbirds. And a constant, 24-hours-a-day stream of contracted commercial airliners hauling troops back and forth to Vietnam. Weird to go down to the “flight line” (terminal) and see op-art Braniff jets mixed in with the military drab.

    Anyway, I came back on a commercial contract flight, which had some early-generation music audio channels and super crappy earphones. But whoever programmed the “rock” channel knew their shit. There was a lot of really good, “this hasn’t quite hit yet” stuff on there, including “Evil Ways” and “Treat.” Santana was the first album I bought when I got to college, and I wore that thing out.

  164. 164.

    TenguPhule

    @Brachiator:

    But Grover Norquist has said that he wants to see people have to file tax returns and pay tax balances so that they will stay angry and demand further tax cuts.

    One of the many attractions of the burn it all down approach is that we would never hear from folks like Norquist ever again.

  165. 165.

    Tony Jay

    Nobody Wants It, So Here It Is

    Another Brexit Update

    Halloo and a Good Day to all non-Brexiting sentients, you lucky, lucky people.

    This is the Voice of Occupied Britain speaking to you via the Intertubes from a secret location somewhere equidistant between the lost battlefield of Camlann and what might be the well-lacquered gateway to Narnia but is probably just an old lady’s wardrobe stuffed full of musty fabrics and photo-albums nobody asks to see anymore. It’s been a while since our last transmission, but now that the Right Dishonourable Alexander Boris ‘The Flaxen Fuckwit of Fiddle-Do-Lally’ de Pfeffel Johnson MP has been elevated to the post of Prime Minister by his Party’s inbred membership of shaven apes and unsexed drones, his marmalade textured hide is well and truly strapped to the nosecone of Death-Rocket Red, White and Blow It All Up and things are finally starting to happen again. Whoop De fucking Do!

    First the Tories, that placid tribe of blood-guzzling hypercunts (in the pejorative, rather than the delightfully well-formed and entirely lovely sense) who insist on imposing their delusional mishmash of Randian thievery and Kiplingesque flag-spaffing on the UK as if it were some sort of achievable manifesto rather than the wank-fantasy of 100,000 racist green-belters who make Alan Partridge look like a socially-inclusive champion of the downtrodden. Clown Prince Flobalob might well have achieved his lifetime aim of slumping gracelessly into the Number 10 hotseat, but now that he’s bedded the wench, whatever is he to do with the half-eaten supper and empty bottles of Rohypnol? It’s an open secret that Johnson and Co are planning for an early election, hence the ideological merger between their wing of the Conservative Party and Nigel Farage’s Russo-American owned Brexit-brand franchise. Flobby wants (and needs) those nutcase votes like a dung beetle needs well-fed omnivores, and between him and his advisers has concluded that offering them the No-Deal “Fuck you, Johnny Foreigner!” disaster catastrophe they’ve been inoculated to see as the best possible way of guaranteeing a bright, White future for England (not the UK, fuck the UK, Inger-lund Prevails!) is probably the way to get them onside.

    Speaking of advisers, but what the sweet spasming Jeebus slathered in tahini on a toasted brioche bun is Dominic Cummings supposed to be? Hatched from a malfunctioning xeno-pod near the end of the Mankind/Wailing Dog-Kings of Nebula 9 War and only phased into partial alignment with our Earthly dimension by malicious penguinoids in Year Three of Emperor Norton IV’s reign, this tenuously carbon-based lifeform bleeds sentient doomsday-dust and only suffers the agony of corporeal existence in order to hone his mental superiority against less evolved intelligences. All in all quite the model of the modern Machiavellian and a perfect fit for the kind of conscienceless technocrat Vote Leave’s grey eminences needed to oversee the forced mutation of the pre-Referendum debate on Britain’s place in the EU into a triumph of wedge-issue micro-targeting via social-media and the mass deployment of alt-Right meme-blitzkriegs across traditional campaigning platforms. The kind of (presumably) non-homicidal sociopath quite happy to lie and cheat his way to a ‘win’ with blank disinterest regarding the moral import of either action, Cummings has nothing but contempt for boring old Parliamentary democracy and the old-fashioned ideologies of Left, Right and Centre, something you can read about at very great length in his own blog full of pseudo-intellectual ‘solutions’ to the 21st Century’s problems that might as well be labelled “Eugenics for Misunderstood Teenage Know-it-Alls”, so of course Johnson tapped him to head up the new regime’s campaign to make Brexit happen on time and under budget. Who else?

    While Johnson himself has been touring the country slurping his threadbare ‘Bluff Boris’ personae across the faces of anyone stupid enough to get in front of a camera with him and tossing out unfunded promises of massive Government bail-outs rather like a Byzantine usurper desperately trying to buy the loyalty of the Constantinopolitan Mob before the rightful Basileus can disengage his veteran cohorts from the Persian Front (exactly like this, in fact – Ed) Cummings has been getting his freak on taking the fight over No-Deal straight to the front line of British politics, sneeringly threatening to schedule any General Election only after the cut-off date of 31st October in order to stop Parliament blocking a No-Deal Brexit, while happily ramming his bone-white cranium into every nook and cranny across Westminster and Whitehall hunting for non-believers and doubters he can ostentatiously purge from the ranks of the Legion of Doom.

    Truly, the Great Pretender has found his Minister to Hate, someone solipsistic enough to think he can singlehandedly outwit every foe that stands in his way and also socially inept enough to fail to see how neatly he’s being slotted into the hole marked “Scapegoat A-1 – Press Eject for Respawn Option”. I just can’t help thinking that Johnson’s less ‘cerebral’ advisers have sold him a scheme whereby Cummings is made to embody the whole ‘Leave Now’ project to such a degree that, when they inevitably fail to bully the EU into a last minute climb-down on the Withdrawal Deal (it turns out they really don’t need us more that we need them, whodathunkit?) and either a No-Confidence vote leads to a General Election or Johnson calls for one himself to “arm us with, or indeed, as they say, perhaps in, the steely hauberk of a clear mandate to govern this great country, allowing us to lead you, the Great British People, out of the taloned clutches of the detested European Superstate, and into the Elysian dawn of a better, brighter, and most of all, British future”, then dumping Cummings like a used tissue will give Johnson a convenient fall-guy who can take all the blame without impacting on Johnson’s close relationship with the Brextremist Tories, who have had a mutual hatred and contempt thing going on with Cummings for years. The Media, certainly, would like nothing more than to give their favourite inflated political mascot a consequence-free makeover before any Election campaign gets rolling off the logs. Letting “Boris be Boris” gets them eyeballs and that’s all they’re after these days, accurate coverage and informative journalism be damned.

    OTOH, boosting the shower of con-men and ambitious non-entities comprising our national Government has been rendered a bit tricky with the leak of a cross-Government report codenamed ‘Operation Yellowhammer’, which sounds a bit like a National Geographic special following a family of Saskatchewan woodpeckers trying to survive over the course of a year and/or a defiantly Sinophobic airport pot-boiler based around a sinister plot by Caliphate terrorists to spark an international incident on the Korean border as cover for a huge Bitcoin heist to fund a left-wing revolution in Mexico that will draw troops to the border and leave small-town America undefended when their allies amongst the BLM/Antifa Axis launch waves of riots in order to to supress patriotic voters in the 2020 Election that only just gets foiled by a maverick FBI Special Agent who has to go on the run with a sexy Russian gymnast after her late father reveals to him via an encrypted QAnon post that it’s all really a cover for a conspiracy between Chinese Communists and European bankers to drive down the price of Florida real estate in a crafty attempt to bankrupt billionaire US President Ronald P. Murt before he gets to chair the next G20 and expose them all as Satanist Paedophiles, but isn’t that at all.

    In reality, Operation Yellowhammer is actually an impact study for the most likely results of a No-Deal Brexit, and is much, much worse for being pretty optimistic. Rising prices, no fresh food on the shelves, protests (turning violent) on the Irish border, fuel shortages and huge job losses, lack of access to vital medicines, holidays and business travel delayed, huge pile-ups around ports and rail-hubs due to customs checks lasting months on end and permanently slashing commercial traffic by a third to a half, all of which leads to widescale public disorder and probably rioting, with permanent divisions wedging society apart and being filled by extremists. The Government’s response has oscillated between “Oh, that’s just Project Fear, everything will be fine!” and “the real scandal is that Remainer traitors have leaked this secret (but not accurate) data!”, and now seems to be settling on “Look, that was the old Tory Government, this one has solved all of those problems in less than a week, chill out and stop stressing”. The Media doesn’t seem to be entirely buying it, but is allowing Regime spokesmen to get away with a lot of “He said, She said, who really knows?” obfuscation while the ‘political correspondents’ at the BBC rub their collective chins and contemplate how, exactly, the Government might successfully make it all go away with a huge propaganda blitz over the next few weeks…. wait, that’s not right (checks notes) oh yes, a series of public information broadcasts laying out how it has already solved all of the potential issues.

    Yeah, right. Good luck with that one.

    Meanwhile, back in the real world, Labour have completed their slow and steady amble towards the finish line and have surprised no-one by announcing their intention to table a No Confidence vote in the Government as soon as Parliament gets back from Summer hols, putting the ‘sensible’ fringe of the Tory Party right on the spot – do they want to save the country or is it more important that they stay as MPs for just a little bit longer? Chances are that enough of them will vote against their Party if that’s the only way to stop Johnson and Co from forcing the UK into a suicidal plummet out of the EU without a withdrawal deal, but after that no one’s sure what will happen. Labour’s idea, nicely judged to be as non-controversial and unthreatening as possible, is for Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn to take over on a purely temporary basis in order to request an extension on the withdrawal date from the EU and call for a General Election. No other legislation, no power grabs, just an acknowledgement that someone has to pull the trigger, and since the Tories themselves proved incapable of electing someone with an ounce of nous when they had the chance, it conventionally falls to the leader of the official Opposition to get first crack of the whip. Surely no-one who actually wants to stop Brexit could have a problem with that, could they?

    Right, yeah. Welcome to Brexit Britain.

    The new leader of the Liberal-Democrats, Jo ‘Scotland’s Yellowest Peril’ Swinton, woefully misjudged her own political status by instantly and contemptuously dismissing the very idea of Corbyn assuming the PM role on an interim basis as “Nonsense” and tried to reach past him to open ‘negotiations’ with that backstabbing shitheel (and elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party) Tom “King of the Twats” Watson. I can’t blame her, really. Swinton has been enjoying a blissfully easy honeymoon period and had obviously got so used to the motherly nuzzling that has so far constituted Media scrutiny of her graceless statements and Tory-lite policies that she naturally assumed everyone would join her for another bout of gratuitous Corbyn bashing. That’s the way it’s always worked before, after all. Attack Corbyn on any topic under the sun and you could always rely on the Media to be there, bouncing around with the expectant eagerness of a puppy at a family BBQ and handing out uncontested bloviating spots to anyone and everyone willing to take part in the pile-on.

    This time, however, it rapidly became clear that she’d over-reached herself and forgot that in politics 2 + 2 can’t always be reported as equaling 5, because sometimes, like when the fate of the nation is about to be decided for good or ill, there are just enough people paying attention for the Media to conclude that it should at least try to get its figures right for a change. With the country approaching an actual time of decision, rather than floating around in that dreamy netherspace between events where nothing really matters and you might as well just enjoy yourself by making shit up, it was hilariously bad politics for the self-crowned leader of the ‘Party of Remain’ to be caught out basically saying that she would prefer a Tory Government and a No-Deal Brexit to giving that horrible scruffy Socialist so much as a morsel of victory. Those are some fucked up priorities you’ve got there, Jo. And while exploiting Brexit to damage Labour and increase their own vote share might actually be the only Liberal-Democrat policy anyone has a clue about, it’s not actually considered smart to rub everyone’s face in it.

    Still, that’s only the second most embarrassing thing a female Party Leader has done this week. Green Party leader Caroline ‘If I were German this would be a lot easier’ Lucas donned the Right-Wing Stereotype hat and used her 15 minutes of fame to tell everyone that if she were made interim Prime Minister (something that might not have been totally out of the realms of possibility, then at least) she’d form a women-only Unity Cabinet, because men caused Brexit and the laydeez are simply better at communicating, yeah? Funnily enough this did not go down too well and sank permanently into the Marianas Trench with an anchor wrapped around it once it was pointed out that her choice of worthy women were all, a) Remainers, and b) white as a Klansman’s hood. I mean, that’s just a special kind of stupid. I’d say the entire plan from start to finish was a load of balls but, you know, phrasing.

    Back to the Lib-Dems, Swinton must have had a conference call with her friends on the Guardian politics desk because pretty soon she was back-tracking like an aging Michael Jackson impersonator Moonwalking on an airport carousel. It went from “No Surrender to the Corbyn Cult!” to “I only meant I’d prefer a moderate Thatcherite Tory or Blairite Labour retread instead of that nasty Socialist” to “I never said I wouldn’t co-operate with Corbyn” in the space of a day. It surely didn’t help her that even rebel Tory MPs were sounding much more conciliatory and willing to talk to Jezza the Red Peril than the wannabe Lady-Protector of Remainland, but them’s the perils of believing your own press releases, I suppose.

    Anyway, I personally think it vanishingly unlikely that Corbyn will assume the post of interim PM when it comes right down to it. Too many Tories will be scared off by the prospect of being seen putting a Socialist in the Iron(hearted) Lady’s old seat no matter what the context, but politically it’s important that the decision for Corbyn to step aside in the name of anti-No Deal Unity be made by Labour from a position of strength and only in order to drag recalcitrant Tories over the line, not as what will be presented as a virtual admission that Labour believes the anti-Corbyn smear campaign of the last three years has made the leader of the Labour Party too ‘divisive’ to be treated as a ‘normal’ politician. The anti-Corbyn ‘moderate centrists’ have been huffing their own farts for so long they’ve forgotten that the vast majority of the country isn’t made up of them, their friends, and people they’ve met at their friend’s dinner parties or when sneaking a sly fag behind the beer tent at their village fete. It’s been easy enough for the Media to enforce a near total boycott of any friendly commentary on Labour’s actual, as opposed to hyperbolically fictional, Brexit position during the aforementioned happy-time between important events, but General Election rules mean that all of the major Parties get equal time and equal coverage. If I had to make a bet, I’d hazard that the real agenda setters fear that Labour’s studiously neutral line on Brexit, which boils down to offering Remainers a second referendum on any withdrawal deal while giving Leavers an ‘easy out’ that doesn’t mean being pushed into the same camp as Farage’s alt-Right Ultras, might prove attractive to an electorate that is worn out and just wants the issue to fuck right off so they can worry about which Party might actually improve their lives and communities for a change. In that environment the loud, plaintive howls of “You can’t trust him!” and “He doesn’t really mean it!” that have served the bullshitters so well in their own echo-chamber won’t have anything like the same impact during an actual General Election, no matter how many sock-puppets they have infesting the BTL underworlds of newspaper and TV News comment sections.

    So, what’s probably going to happen over the next few weeks is that Parliament might or might not get recalled early to give MPs a chance to debate Brexit. There’s a lot of support for the idea but I believe the Government has to be the one asking for it, and why on earth would the new regime do that? What will happen is talks between the various Opposition parties to try and hammer out a united front of sorts to block No-Deal, hopefully get behind Labour’s Vote of No Confidence in Flobalob’s flailing Government, and presumably decide on what form an interim Government might take and – vitally – what form its anti No-Deal manoeuvrings will take. If the last couple of years have taught us anything it’s that there’s a couple of ocean’s difference between waving a “Stop No Deal!” placard and actually crafting a Parliamentary strategy to get the job done. Meanwhile Johnson is sloping off to Berlin and other exotic climes next week to tell those perfidious Eurojohnnies what’s what and come back with an agreement in which Greater Britain resumes control of the Angevin Patrimony and gets to win the Eurovision Song Contest in every odd-numbered year. Failing that he gets a better Brexit deal that humiliates Europe and proves how right the hard-line Brextremists were to keep the threat of No-Deal alive. Failing that he gets sweet FA out of anyone and scurries back to Blighty to deploy the same time worn “It’s all their fault!” excuse Leavers have been reliant on since the Summer of 2016. I’m thinking Option Three is by far the likeliest of those three possibilities to come to fruition, but I’m not a well-paid political correspondent so what the Ethel Merman do I know?

    Whatever happens, interesting times lie ahead. I really wish I didn’t have to keep on saying that, but it’s true.

  166. 166.

    Brachiator

    @rikyrah:

    This definitely points out how nervous they are about the economy.

    Trump is killing the economy with his tariffs and amateurish trade policy. He can lie about it and blame the Federal Reserve Board, but reality will keep biting him in the ass, like an angry gator.

  167. 167.

    Steeplejack

    @donnah:

    Congratulations! That’s a great piece. It has been a gift to see how it gradually took form in the pictures you have posted.

  168. 168.

    Spanky

    Still in the mid 90s here. I noticed the blazing afternoon sun had turned a bit wan, so I know what that portends and came outside to watch.

    Dead quiet broken by distant thunder in three directions. I see the closest stratocumulus is dropping rain a few miles to the west, but it’s evaporating pretty high up.

    Lots out here that beats the internet, if you just sit and watch.

  169. 169.

    Jay

    @JPL:

    They were too busy survelling, infiltrating, investigating and trying to charge Black Identity Activists and Environmentalists.

    Then when Wussolinni came to power they were told not to piss off this base by investigating Nazis.

    White Male Privledge is a hell of a drug.

  172. 172.

    FlyingToaster

    @Dorothy Ann Winsor:
    @Mary G:

    As the purchasing department for an 11-year-old girl, allow me to elaborate:

    Yoga pants are somewhat looser, generally have bell-bottom or wider bottom legs, and you can easily do exercises in them. WarriorGirl recommends the cotton-poly yoga pants from Lands End, either the school uniform version or regular from “Active Wear”.

    Leggings are tighter, often as not cropped (“capri” vs “ankle-length”), and normally wouldn’t have room for an alligator. Also generally not comfortable for exercising unless you’re a masochist.

    I don’t wear this stuff, but I am told that [x] pairs of each must be procured prior to the start of school (done!).

  173. 173.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Jay:

    White Male Privledge is a hell of a drug.

    I am so freakin’ high right now…

    Not really. My flight was delayed so I’m less than 2,000 feet above sea level.

    Steve at the ATL

  174. 174.

    JPL

    @Tony Jay: They voted for Brexit and our president crazy baby pants would like them to proceed. He’s ready to make a deal.

    Thanks for the update and stock pile food while you can.

  175. 175.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Tony Jay: the £ was too good to be swallowed by the €, but will it soon become the ₽ in recognition of who was behind and who benefits from Brexit?

  177. 177.

    Tony Jay

    Thanks for the update and stock pile food while you can.

    Won’t be a problem. If they drag us into a No-Deal I’m going to abandon all of the civilised values they obviously have no time for and hunt free-range Leaver long-pig for protein and the sheer, brutal pleasure of it.

  178. 178.

    TenguPhule

    @Tony Jay: Its sort of amazing and horrifying that the optimistic government projections for No-deal are food shortages, medical shortages, violence in Ireland and the world’s slowest border crossings and that’s before accounting for Boris Johnson being in charge.

  179. 179.

    Tony Jay

    @Steve in the ATL:

    A few months of No-Deal chaos and we’ll be lucky to retain a barter system where armed Farmers trade florets of brocolli for the labour of displaced urbanites and the most powerful man in any region is the one with the basement full of baked beans.

    Or we’ll be on the Amero. We’ll see how low we sink.

  180. 180.

    Miss Bianca

    All I can say is, “SHRIIIIEEEKK!”

    I could never, ever live in Florida. Huge reptiles and bugs give me the cold grue.

  183. 183.

    Brachiator

    @Tony Jay:

    Okay, the Brits are officially crazier than the Trump administration.

    The Tories want a general election. Labour wants a general election. What’s the difference? And the presumably Russian funded BREXIT Party is the wild card. They could siphon votes from other parties and even become power brokers in a coalition government. How does this help anything?

    The various factions keep trying to play the same old political power games while alternately ignoring and fumbling over BREXIT. These should be two separate issues. And it is insane that anyone thinks that they can use BREXIT to their advantage.

    And this includes Corbyn. I’m an outsider, so I can say that just because he is leader of the official opposition doesn’t say to me that he should get first crack at doing anything. But Brits are strange. Tell them the world will end, and they will ask if it will happen after tea.

    This is not to say that Corbyn should be excluded. Just that it is absurd that these dopes insist that old rules and procedures should apply.

    I also don’t understand why the Lib Dems even bother. I guess they are as surprised as anyone that they seem to have been temporarily raised from the dead, but that they think that they can make demands is almost as funny as the Green Party’s attempts to be relevant.

    So let’s see. Yellowhammer reveals how weak the UK’s position is. This doesn’t help with either no deal demands or in begging for an extension.

    And the elephant in the room. Johnson can talk all the Etonian shit he wants. Corbyn can offer olive branches and reasonable alternatives. The EU is not going to even pretend to look at anything that hurts one of its members. And that’s the Republic of Ireland. In this context, the wishes and dreams of the UK are of secondary importance. It’s too bad that they don’t get it.

  184. 184.

    Tony Jay

    @TenguPhule:

    I know. Brilliant isn’t it? They’ve indoctrinated their Base (which includes the Media) so successfully that they can bullshit just about anything and get away with it.

    “It’s not true, and even if it was true it’s not their fault, and if it is their fault it’s great news because it totally owns the Euro-Lefties”

    I have to share a country with these people. Sigh. Guess I shouldn’t have slapped that Gypsy after all.

  185. 185.

    Jay

    @Tony Jay:

    Bulk brown rice and dried pinto beans. Cooks fast in a pressure cooker, ( go old school so you can use fire again). Flavoured with a little bit of canned tomatoes, dried onion, dried garlic and a small amount of Leavers cheek flesh or sweetbreads.

    Bait the long pig into the open near a cricket pitch or lawn bowling green with a small cluster of Remain signs. Use a crossbow as it can be fired from prone even when wearing a ghillie suit.

    Good hunting.

  186. 186.

    Steeplejack

    @Raven:

    I had that CD, The Healer. Hooker doing duets with a bunch of different people. And then later Carlos did the same kind of album.

    Carlos and Rob Thomas, “Smooth.”

  189. 189.

    TenguPhule

    @Brachiator:

    The Tories want a general election. Labour wants a general election. What’s the difference?

    Tories want an election after Brexit because at that point everyone is fucked anyway so they might still vote Tory.

  191. 191.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Tony Jay:

    If they drag us into a No-Deal I’m going to abandon all of the civilised values they obviously have no time for and hunt free-range Leaver long-pig for protein and the sheer, brutal pleasure of it.

    Will you let us know if they taste like chicken, or just idiocy? On second thought, nevermind.

  192. 192.

    Tony Jay

    @Brachiator:

    The Tories want a general election. Labour wants a general election. What’s the difference? And the presumably Russian funded BREXIT Party is the wild card. They could siphon votes from other parties and even become power brokers in a coalition government. How does this help anything?

    The Tories (some of them) want a General Election in order to solidify their control over Parliament and turn Britain into a no regulation, low-wage, socially fractured racist shithole where the rich can play and everyone else fights in car-parks over black market sausages. Labour want a General Election in order to end austerity, raise wages, tax the 1% to fund the rebuilding of the social safety net and start rolling back four decades of Thatcherism. That’s a pretty huge difference, even before we come to the Brexit conundrum. Both sides really don’t, not at all.

    Farage’s Brexit franchise exists to suck votes from the Tories and the parts of the Labour electorate who suffered most under austerity but got suckered into blaming darkies, muzzies and Eurocrats for it. While Johnson is driving the Brexit Bus off the cliff the 1/3 of the electorate who voted for BXP in the Euro Elections are likely with him, but if the Tories split over a No Confidence vote and stay fractured into the Election it would be sweet if they and BXT screwed each other by splitting the pro-Brexit vote down the middle. And while Labour are going to lose some votes to the baffling lure of racism, the best chance of gaining a functional majority in a First Past the Post electoral system lies in offering Remainers and penitent Leavers a compromise policy that comprises an actual plan to get a new referendum with Remain as an option.

    It might not work, but it’s the only plan on the table that might work in the real world. At the end of the day only two things matter.

    1) Getting enough Tories in a position where they have to vote down their own Government.
    2) Getting enough votes from Remainers and Leavers to win a majority and keep the Tories (and their BXT shadow-selves) out of power.

    Oh and

    3) Getting the Lib-Dems to fuck the fuck off. Fucking Tory-lite austerity enablers.

  193. 193.

    Brachiator

    @Tony Jay:

    Labour want a General Election in order to end austerity, raise wages, tax the 1% to fund the rebuilding of the social safety net and start rolling back four decades of Thatcherism.

    No, I understand the different political goals of the Tories and Labour. Oddly enough, the goals you note, for both parties, don’t really take into account the potential negative impact of BREXIT. Again, to this outsider, the various factions are acting as though BREXIT is no big deal, when it may have a huge impact on the nation and what any future government might be able to accomplish.

    But I was also wondering about the strategy behind calling for a general election. Could it be tougher for Labour to win a majority? What damage might a phony BREXIT Party cause if a coalition government needed to be formed?

    At the end of the day only two things matter.

    I agree about the two main points you noted. Crazy thing is, if these two things get taken care of, the problem of BREXIT will still be there, looming large.

  194. 194.

    --bd

    I am a bad person. I worry most about the ramifications to the Premier League, and specifically LFC. Will foreign players care to stay with teams that pay them in a shrinking currency to play in a country decending into financial and xenophopic chaos? Also, European matches become even more of a pain in the ass with the loss of EU travel rules. Spanish, German, and heck, even Italian teams may look better at that point.

  195. 195.

    Tony Jay

    @Brachiator:

    Strategically there are only two ways to stop Brexit. Either via a new referendum or via a General Election that leads to a non-Tory Government that calls a new referendum. Technically Article 50 could be straight out revoked but without the mandate of a new referendum that overturns the 2016 result that’s very not going to happen outside of incredibly dire circumstances.

    There’s not going to be a new referendum before a General Election. The Tories won’t call one and when Parliament had the chance it didn’t vote for one. The votes just aren’t there. The factions calling for a referendum to follow any no confidence vote and precede a General Election are being politically inane. No interim government would be able to get a referendum bill passed and the idea of an interim
    Government staying in power but not legislating about anything else for the whole length of a referendum campaign, it’s just nuts. It simply couldn’t happen, the country would fall apart for lack of governance.

    That leaves a General Election in which the Tories campaign on Leaving ASAP alongside or in competition with Farage’s Brexit Company Ltd, while Labour campaigns for a renegotiation without May’s red lines followed by a new referendum. The Lib-Dems will campaign as some kind of Real Continuity Remain thing but will find it hard to maintain their purity if they are seen to be splitting the Remain vote and letting the Tories slip back into power.

    This is now the only route to avoiding Brexit that has any realistic hope of success. If we get a Labour Govt or some sort of Remain backing Coalition then the country gets another chance to fix the error of 2016 and strip the Brextremists of the democratic legitimacy they’ve been clinging to. If we don’t… we don’t. And we deserve whatever comes next.

    Basically it’s about realism and dealing in the possible as opposed to drum circles and Magical thinking. We can’t just wish Brexit away, we’ve got to beat it at the ballot box.

    Hopefully.

  197. 197.

    tybee

    @satby: i thought a yellow hammer was a norther flicker but then i heard some folks near tuscaloosa yelling “rammer jammer yellow hammer, give ’em hell, alabama”

  198. 198.

    Steve in the ATL

    @tybee: that’s a Confederate States of America reference, and racist as hell, which is why it’s a popular cheer in Alabama.

  199. 199.

    Amir Khalid

    @–bd: Don’t worry too much about the effect on Liverpool. Remember, Mane, Salah and Firmino are all non-EU nationals.

  200. 200.

    opiejeanne

    @OzarkHillbilly: Gators in Missouri? I was surprised by the armadillos everywhere when we were there in June/July, but you’ve got alligators too? I probably shouldn’t be too surprised after witnessing the flooding everywhere.

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