Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Everybody saw this coming.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

He really is that stupid.

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

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

This blog will pay for itself.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

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

White supremacy is terrorism.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Afternoon Open Thread

Friday Afternoon Open Thread

by | 95 Comments

This post is in: 

Here’s a Gulf fliterary on a flower:

“Gulf fliteraries” are exceptionally well-named insects, in my opinion.

And here is the copper top of an old courthouse hereabouts:

I remember my grandmother dragging me through its halls when I was a small child. She was on some urgent mission, but I don’t remember what it was about. I just recall being amazed at the building.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

95Comments

  1. 1.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    The flower is a Mexican Sunflower or “Tithonia Torch” and is beloved by butterflies. If you have them in your garden you will be guaranteed to get butterflies.

  3. 3.

    rikyrah

    The Bahamas are “ground zero for the effects of global warming in the world,” says professor Erica Moiah James of @univmiami. “We have a very small footprint in the world but we have been experiencing the impact of climate change for the last 40 years.”
    pic.twitter.com/MCUCYAs1W1

    — Democracy Now! (@democracynow) September 6, 2019

  4. 4.

    rikyrah

    ???

    Farm loan delinquencies are at a record high at Wisconsin community banks. Delinquencies have more than doubled in Wisconsin since January 2017 and are higher than in any of the top 10 farm states. https://t.co/si6SHLHRTc

    — Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) September 6, 2019

  5. 5.

    Motivated Seller

    Are you sure that’s copper? It should be green, like the Statue of Liberty. Could be the picture, but it looks pale gray, like zinc or lead.

  7. 7.

    E.

    Can someone tell me what the deal is with the DCCC? I am getting emails from them that are so awful it makes me think they have been hacked . . . but maybe this organization was always this bad? They are sending me emails that say things like, “If you don’t rush in $1 in the next five hours, we will fail to hit our critical End of Month goal. The future of our Democratic Majority will be in jeopardy and all of our progress will be obliterated. All because we failed to hit this End of Month goal.”

    I mean, that kind of thing is just embarrassing.

  9. 9.

    Kay

    Smoking gun evidence that the GOP targeted black voters for vote dilution based on race:

    Perhaps one of the clearest and ugliest gerrymanders in North Carolina—or in the entire nation—is the congressional-district line that cuts in half the nation’s largest historically black college, North Carolina A&T State University, in Greensboro. The district line divided this majority minority campus—and the city—so precisely that it all but guarantees it will be represented in Congress by two Republicans for years to come. North Carolina Republicans have long denied that this line, between the state’s Sixth and Thirteenth Congressional Districts, was intentionally drawn to dilute black voting power, which would be a violation of the constitutional prohibition against racial gerrymandering.

    A spreadsheet named “NC College Voters for ZIP ID” contains voter data for more than 23,100 North Carolina university students, including thousands in Greensboro. The detail for the North Carolina A&T students is precise: students are sorted by residence hall. That means that Hofeller knew which A&T students lived in Aggie Village, on the north side of campus, and which resided in Morrow or Vanstory Halls, on the south side—along with a detailed racial breakdown and information about their voting status. As Hofeller sought to create two reliably Republican congressional districts, his computer contained information on the precise voting tendencies of one of the largest concentrations of black voters in the area.

    It’s good news. The North Carolina evidence just keeps piling up, and this is a national GOP operative, so they’ll find more in the other states he worked on.

    The Republican Party deliberately targeted black voters for vote dilution and suppression efforts. We need a new federal voting rights law with real teeth to protect voters from GOP operatives and politicians. People have to start going to prison for this, or it won’t end.

  10. 10.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    They didn’t want discovery, Kay. None of the bad actors associated with cases trying to voter suppress, wanted discovery. Not them, nor the Government on the Citizenship Question on Census case.

    TO THIS DAY, I will forever believe that the discover of the dead man’s hard drives is what pushed Roberts to vote the way that he did. If not for that discovery, he would have been fine with the Citizenship Question on the Census – just take a look at his opinion.

    Dead Men DO tell tales…and in this case…just verification of what we already suspected.

  11. 11.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    We need a new federal voting rights law with real teeth to protect voters from GOP operatives and politicians. People have to start going to prison for this, or it won’t end.

    absolutely on point, Kay

  16. 16.

    trollhattan

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    And what if it’s sitting on a Really Big Third Cupola and on top of the tiny cupola is yet, a Fourth Even Tinier Cupola?

    Oh man, that just blew my mind….

    Last summer (June-Aug) was our fourth hottest on record. Yay, us.

  17. 17.

    Betsy

    @Betty Cracker: @Robby-D: I love the gulf “fliterary” with its SILVER spots underneath! As to Robby’s word discovery — I just want to point out that for along time I pronounced “fritillary “ as “frilli-tary”.

    All are wonderful words. Keep on flitting!

  19. 19.

    geg6

    Well, should be an adventure tomorrow. My John, Koda, Lovey and I are all heading to Cole’s for a visit tomorrow afternoon. I am hoping for some of that fresh homemade sauerkraut.

  21. 21.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah: I mentioned this in one of the other threads – there was a pretty good WaPo opinion piece that I can’t link right now, from last night or this morning, explaining what’s going on.

    Uncle Joe’s big “crime” was to publicly call for the dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. In this Joe joined several million other people, as Shokin was widely understood to be corrupt and ineffective, and the Parliament ultimately voted (by a pretty large majority) to dismiss him. But since Joe’s son was on the board of a gas company in Ukraine, this is proof of something. I wish I knew what.

  22. 22.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @trollhattan:

    And what if it’s sitting on a Really Big Third Cupola and on top of the tiny cupola is yet, a Fourth Even Tinier Cupola?

    Just like turtles, it’s cupolas all the way down!

    Edited to correct blockquote fail

  26. 26.

    Gelfling 545

    Just back from the vet. My old gentleman cat, Mewtant has passed on. I’m sad & teary but certain it was his time. He was with me – on & off as he was prone to roaming – over 20 years. Couldn’t let the old boy suffer.

  28. 28.

    Mr. Mack

    Hey Betty I’m very interested in a whole home generator as well. Please keep us up to date, and if it isn’t too much of a reach…cost info is always helpful.

  30. 30.

    chris

    What a lovely flutterby!

    Nova Scotia sky greyed over about an hour ago and the wind died. Storm’s a’comin’! We’re all battened down here because we still don’t really know what’s coming or where. I’m seeing forecasts of 70km/h winds up to 75 KNOTS. Helluva difference there!

  31. 31.

    CaseyL

    @Gelfling 545: 20 years! A very respectable lifespan. I’d love to hear more about his roaming life – did he just vanish now and then? Adopt different families? How long would he be gone?

    I’m very sorry for your loss.

  32. 32.

    satby

    @Gelfling 545: Condolences on the passing of the magnificently named Mewtant! 20 is a wonderfully long life that he was able to enjoy thanks to your love and care. You did the best for him right to the end. I can only imagine how much you’ll miss him.

  34. 34.

    bg

    Is that the old Citrus County courthouse? Last time I was up that way, they had a big poster of Elvis in one of the windows. I think he filmed the movie Follow That Dream there.

  35. 35.

    TenguPhule

    @Kay:

    We need a new federal voting rights law with real teeth to protect voters from GOP operatives and politicians.

    Catch 22.

    In order to pass a law you must first remove Republicans who use the law to stay elected.

  36. 36.

    TenguPhule

    @Gin & Tonic:

    But since Joe’s son was on the board of a gas company in Ukraine, this is proof of something. I wish I knew what.

    Proof of being a Democrat. Soon to be a Capital Crime as dictated by the Department of Injustice.

  38. 38.

    Aleta

    NYT, by Miriam Aukerman, a lawyer.

    “On June 4, I told my colleagues that Jimmy Aldaoud — a medically frail Michigan man who came to the United States in 1979 when he was an infant — was not going to survive. That was the day his sister Rita Bolis called to tell me he had been deported and was sleeping on a bench in an airport in Najaf, Iraq.

    Mr. Aldaoud had never been to Iraq. He was born in Greece to Iraqi refugee parents. He had no ID and no ability to get the medical care he needed for his diabetes. He did not know Arabic, much less how to navigate a war-torn society where being Americanized makes you a target.

    On Aug. 6, Ms. Bolis contacted me again to say that her brother was dead. His family believes he died because he couldn’t obtain the medicine he needed in Iraq. His funeral is Friday. His physical remains were sent to Michigan, the only way he could come back home. Jimmy Aldaoud — the living person who loved and was loved by his family — would never have been allowed in America again.

    I am part of a team of lawyers who began trying to save Mr. Aldaoud’s life over two years ago, before we even knew his name. He was one of more than 1,400 Iraqis in this country with deportation orders, most issued years or even decades ago. In June 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement suddenly rounded up hundreds of them for immediate deportation.

    My organization, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, working with lawyers around the country, went to court, warning that deporting these people to Iraq would result in persecution, torture and death. A federal judge ruled that an immigration judge had to decide whether they would be safe in Iraq before deportations could be carried out. That order saved hundreds of lives.

    But ICE appealed, no matter the human cost, intent on deporting people like Mr. Aldaoud who have lived their whole lives here. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling, giving ICE the green light to resume deportations in April. And ICE did, even though Iraq is so dangerous that the State Department recently evacuated all nonessential personnel. Mr. Aldaoud was one of the first to be deported once ICE had that green light. Predictably, inevitably, he died.

    Mr. Aldaoud is to be buried next to his mother. He would have wanted that, because, as Ms. Bolis says, he was a “big-time mama’s boy.” He was also a fierce defender of his three sisters, especially when their father drank. His dad kicked him out when he was 16, but they continued to fight, and the son ended up with assault convictions.

    He struggled with mental illness and homelessness, working odd jobs and stealing loose change from cars. Jimmy’s convictions made him deportable, because he was a lawful permanent resident, not a U.S. citizen like his younger sisters who were born here.

    Yet Mr. Aldaoud didn’t harden. He stayed close to his family, never leaving the streets of Metro Detroit. And when his mother had a stroke that paralyzed her left side, Mr. Aldaoud returned home to care for her, changing her diapers and giving her insulin, until she died on her birthday in 2015.

    Before Mr. Aldaoud was deported, he sat for a year and half in ICE detention, desperately missing his family, especially his 3-year-old niece, Ella, Ms. Bolis’ daughter. Mr. Aldaoud kept Ella’s photo under his pillow in his cell, and told her mother, “I just sit and look at Ella and pray to God that I can see her only for five minutes.”

    After Mr. Aldaoud was deported, he never got to see Ella or his family again, except on desperate FaceTime calls — an effort to etch his loved ones into his thoughts so he could try to sleep at night on the Baghdad streets. He had lost the family that kept his world intact.

    Every day, ICE is trying to deport people like Jimmy Aldaoud to Iraq. And every day, I feel like I am doing a type of death penalty work. My clients face death simply because they were born outside our borders. In fact, I don’t even know whether Mr. Aldaoud was the first to die — we can’t reach many of those who’ve been deported. But we know that if the deportations continue, he will not be the last.

    We must protect other Iraqis from Mr. Aldaoud’s fate. ICE must immediately halt Iraqi deportations until there has been a full investigation both of his death and of ICE’s overreach in attempting to deport over a thousand people to a country where they are in grave danger.

    And Congress must pass bipartisan legislation, the Deferred Removal for Iraqi Nationals Including Minorities Act, that would pause most Iraqi deportations for two years and give Iraqis a chance to show an immigration judge why their old removal orders are no longer appropriate.

    This legislation is essential. I fear, indeed I know, that if it doesn’t pass, if ICE continues the deportations, more people will die. And I don’t want to foresee another death.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/opinion/refugee-deportation.html

  42. 42.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @geg6:

    Well, should be an adventure tomorrow. My John, Koda, Lovey and I are all heading to Cole’s for a visit tomorrow afternoon. I am hoping for some of that fresh homemade sauerkraut.

    I hope the fracking noise doesn’t make everyone crazy.

    And I wonder whether Lovey and Thurston will remember each other. (Well, I guess Lily and Rosie also knew Lovey, but I was thinking of their being litter mates.)

    (And whatever happened to their mother? Ginger, I think? Did a jackal adopt her?)

  43. 43.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Gelfling 545:

    Oh, I’m sorry about Mewtant. But your “couldn’t let the old boy suffer” says it all. You did the hard thing, but decidedly the right thing. Hugs.

    (“Mewtant” is a great name, BTW!)

  46. 46.

    Aleta

    @Gelfling 545
    Sorry for your loss of gentleman cat Mewtant. So hard. No matter their age.
    Good of you to help release him. And to be an example of “it was his time,” cause examples help me as well.

  51. 51.

    Yarrow

    I missed this yesterday. Hilarious.

    A friend wrote a well-performing tech article on Medium. It's a good article with one small error – its click success has come from dudes clicking and sharing and explaining how she's wrong. So she keeps the error in and makes roughly $100/month off of mansplaining.— Celeste Brash (@celbrash) September 5, 2019

  52. 52.

    J R in WV

    @Gelfling 545:

    I’m sorry for your loss, but it is the most loving and important thing we do for our furry critter children. But you knew that!

    There will be another sweet kitty to purr for you someday.!

    ETA: Mewtant, as others have said is a purrfect name for a gentleman cat!!

  57. 57.

    Martin

    Following the automakers deal with California on emissions issues, the DOJ is now investigating the automakers for antitrust collusion.

    We’re going to have to burn the federal government to the ground when this is all over with.

  58. 58.

    hueyplong

    @Gelfling 545 Cool name for what must have been a cool cat. May your many happy memories flood over your sorrow and eventually wash it away.

  61. 61.

    Jager

    My judge grandfather worked in an 1880 era courthouse. In the 60s they rebuilt the bathrooms and gramps salvaged one of the old fashioned 4 and a half foot tall urinals from one of the men’s rooms. He tucked it away in his garage and when he and gram built their retirement house, he had it restored and installed the old relic in the bathroom room off his retirement “chambers” office along with a couple of brass spittoons and original roll-top desk from his office in the courthouse. As gramma said, “I expect to come home someday and see him holding a trial in the living room.”

  62. 62.

    Yutsano

    For the briefest of moments I thought that was hawt butterfly on butterfly action.

    (And no I haven’t read the thread yet so if that has been mentioned too bad.)

  63. 63.

    Ghost of Joe Lieblings Dog

    @Gelfling 545:

    Oh, I’m so sorry. He sounds like he must have had a large presence.

    We had a wandering cat when I was a kid — Mister Pink — who disappeared one day and was gone for months. We thought he’d been killed by a car … but it turned out he’d adopted a neighbor family down the street. Then one day he decided to move back in with us again and he stayed with us to the end of his days.

    Old-man cats really touch the heart. Well, they all do, don’t they…

  67. 67.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Martin:
    I’ll love to see how they present this shit in court. California’s ability to regulate car emission and mileage standards has been fairly settled law for 50 years as I understand it. This should get easily knocked down by a court. Barr should know better, as corrupt as he is. This is pure Cleek’s Law. So much for the small government, “state’s rights”, pro-business party.

    I’ve half-joked that the Trump admin will propose nationalizing the auto industry to bring it under “red-blooded American control” and declare that the auto companies have been infiltrated by “eco-commies”.

    With Trump, the GOP have completely abandoned free market policies and have embraced autarky as well as a bizzare corporatism that favors the wealthy

  69. 69.

    Aleta

    @JPL: “Statement attributed to a NOAA spokesperson”
    This admin is nothing if not cowardly, and every move shrouded in lies.

    Is it possible they decided that the deplorable Barry Lee Myers (nominated to head NOAA in 2017 but still unconfirmed, for very good reasons) could be called a spokesperson? Nah they couldn’t … they wouldn’t …. hard to tell. Whoever it is is a half-dead worm on the take and similarly ethicless.

  70. 70.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @JPL:
    Was there even any legitimate chance that AL was going to be hit? I wasn’t paying attention much Dorian

  73. 73.

    MisterForkbeard

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Not really.

    Basically, at one point very early on a few of the models shows that AL might get hit. These were extreme outliers, with a less than 1% chance IIRC. Trump made his statement several days LATER, after an AL hit had been ruled out.

  82. 82.

    pluky

    @Motivated Seller: Copper has two oxidation states — one black (CuO), one reddish (Cu2O). If both are present the perception is of green. A greenish patina on exposed copper is more commonly the result of conjugation with carbonate (from atmospheric CO2), sulfate/sulfide (from air pollution) or chloride (when near salt water).

  85. 85.

    NotMax

    Was trying to figure out what the double Bulfinchesque domes reminded me of – the State House in Augusta, Maine (original design by Charles Bulfinch, completed in 1832).

    Just going by your picture, would hazard a guess the dome exterior is lead sheathing (maybe over wood?) possibly with copper flashing/trim around the dome base.

  89. 89.

    TenguPhule

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    California’s ability to regulate car emission and mileage standards has been fairly settled law for 50 years as I understand it.

    Union right to collect dues from non-members to avoid free riders was over 70 years old.

    Didn’t stop Roberts from overturning it.

  91. 91.

    Amir Khalid

    The Snow Dogs Vlogs/Gone To The Snow Dogs channels are among my favourites on YouTube, and I think of some others here too. I was sad (though not entirely surprised) to see this a few moments ago: the oldest Siberian husky of the three currently featured in the videos, Shelby, has died of acute kidney failure at 12.
    As the link button is not with me right now, here is the naked link to the death announcement by Shelby’s human mother Jess:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_Z7TwSmbD4

  93. 93.

    Miss Bianca

    @Gelfling 545: Aww. Old kitties. I had a cat named Mab, a calico lady, for 18 years – from the time she was a fuzzie wee kitty till the time of her death, with only a few breaks in between where she had to be put up by others while I was moving. My condolences.

    @Amir Khalid: Aww, and don’t get me started on dead Siberian Huskies. My poor Luna, I still miss her terribly.

  94. 94.

    Victor Matheson

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: @MisterForkbeard: according the the NOAA charts, for a couple of days there was a small band of Alabama that had a 5-10% chance of experiencing 75 mph winds at some point in the following 4-5 days. That didn’t mean Alabama had that sort of chance of getting a direct hit, only that exactly the right sort of direct hit on Florida could spawn weather with those sorts of winds as far away as Alabama.

  95. 95.

    Victor Matheson

    @HinTN: that’s not quite right according to the NOAA charts and that is at least a tiny kernel of truth in the NOAA announcement.

    That being said, bullying a scientific agency into making pro-Trump announcements is appalling. And my uncle worked for NOAA for 40 years and would be embarrassed by this nonsense especially as the republicans otherwise just want to cut the agency’s budget.

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