Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

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

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

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

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

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

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

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

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

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Some GOOD News

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Some GOOD News

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As any Californian could tell us, the danger is nowhere near over yet. But it’s a temporary reprieve!

Much more detail from the Guardian.


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69Comments

  2. 2.

    TheMightyTrowel

    I was driving home when the rain hit where i live, and a bunch of people around me pulled off the road, got out of their cars and just stood in it. Amazing too see. God I’ve missed rain.

  3. 3.

    Patricia Kayden

    This is great but Australians need to elect a Prime Minister who actually believes in climate change. The idiot they have now does not.

  5. 5.

    WaterGirl

    Mother Nature always wins.  She’s like the trump card in every situation.  (small t, not bit T)

    She always gets her way.  It’s very humbling when we are reminded of that.  For me that came when the (invisible) straight line winds broke my 7-foot in diameter tree, which fell on my house, then the rain started, just pouring in through the ceiling.

    It also fell on the transformer, and another tree in my yard caught fire, and with my back yard suddenly littered with chunks of tree everywhere, lying on the ground like kindling just waiting to catch fire. But the fire fighters couldn’t put the fire out on the tree while it was raining, because of the live wires.

    Everything that mattered was totally out of my control.  Powerless.

    People who think they can ignore climate change are going to have a rude awakening when they come up against the immovable force that is Mother Nature.

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MagdaInBlack: He is a showboat. I was never impressed with him as a lawyer (a lawyer is supposed to represent their client, not make a target out of them) but I did not think he was a criminal. Even so I am not surprised at the charges because showboating and criminal behavior often go hand in hand*. The shame of it is, I can not dismiss this outright:

    “Avenatti has said he has been unfairly targeted by the US justice department after publicly quarreling with Trump.”

    I think there might very well be more than a little truth to that.

    *One would think that a person engaged in criminal behavior would keep a low profile, it’s the smart thing to do, but too many times I have seen people play these highwire acts of showboating and continuous law breaking. I think they get an adrenaline like rush out of it.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    White House statement just released and read on Today Show didn’t appear to expressly deny Parnas’s allegations.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    US says ‘flash crash’ trader should not face further prison time

    In a recommendation issued on Wednesday, Michael O’Neill, assistant chief of the fraud section of the US Department of Justice, said: “The defendant’s keen insights and explanations regarding both general and specific patterns of deceptive and manipulative trading have illuminated the government’s understanding of similar spoofing. As a result, he has substantially assisted and informed the government’s nationwide efforts to detect, investigate, and prosecute these crimes.

    “Although the defendant’s cooperation with the government is complete, the government has no doubt that he would promptly make himself available to assist the government’s investigative and prosecutorial efforts in the future if asked.”

    O’Neill concluded: “For the foregoing reasons, the government respectfully recommends that this court depart significantly below the advisory sentencing guidelines range. Specifically, the government agrees with the probation officer and the defendant that a sentence of time served would be appropriate.”

  18. 18.

    Patricia Kayden

    She should have worn a long red tie.

    Steve Doocy attacks Nancy Pelosi for wearing pink while singing the impeachment articles, because pink isn't a serious enough color for how "somber" and "prayerful" she said the proceedings were. pic.twitter.com/o1lylElmcK— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) January 16, 2020

  19. 19.

    Reboot

    @TheMightyTrowel: This seems like a dead thread, but just in case you see it, I wanted to ask: I’ve been wondering if Australian government has an impeachment process, and if so, what would trip it.

  20. 20.

    gene108

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Pink is more insulting than a tan suit

    Trump only wears dark blue suits. This shows he’s serious, and why he’s serious, and taken seriously

    Liberals could learn a lot about professionalism and responsibility from Trump

  22. 22.

    TS (the original)

    @Reboot:

    Not The MightyTrowel but

    The easiest way to remove a Prime Minister is for his party to vote him out.  This would be like the House of Reps removing Nancy Pelosi as leader of the House. The PM is the leader of the majority party in the House of Reps in Australia. There is no such thing as impeachment.

    We had a crisis in 1975 when the then Prime Minister did not have a majority in the Senate & they refused supply (Money). The PM then started investigating other ways to fund government & as things went from bad to worse the Governor General (Queen’s representative) sacked the government & asked the Opposition leader to be a caretaker PM & call an election. Whether this was legal or not is still up for debate.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis

  23. 23.

    VOR

    @Patricia Kayden: The Republicans are also complaining because she used a large number of pens. This is standard stuff which is done at every major bill signing. The pens are given as gifts or souvenirs to key allies. Trump has done this himself.

    Apparently, the multiple pens used for signing the Clinton Articles of Impeachment had a typo, saying “Untied States Senator”.

  24. 24.

    OzarkHillbilly

    According to data recently made available from the US Federal Reserve, more than half of companies that have black owners were turned down for loans, a rate twice as high as white business owners. The report found that while black-owned firms were the most likely to have applied for bank financing, less than 47% of these applications were fully funded. Even when black business owners get approved, their rate of failure to receive full financing is the highest among all categories by more than 10%.

    The bad news doesn’t end there. The report also found that black-owned firms were the most likely group to have applied for a credit card and experienced the highest turn-down rate. For those that applied for bank financing, a smaller share of black-owned and Hispanic-owned businesses received loans of $100,000 or more as compared to other ethnic groups.

    Absolutely. Galen Gondolfi, a senior loan counselor at a not-for-profit that helps small-business owners build credit, recently told NPR’s St Louis Public Radio: “St Louis’s seemingly provincial lending struggles not only with entrepreneurs that don’t historically ‘look like them’, but [also] the types of businesses that are unique to these populations.”

    But discrimination isn’t the only reason. There are other factors that give bankers pause when considering a loan to a black business owner.

    Dell Gines, a senior community development adviser with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City believes that the lack of intergenerational wealth and “insufficient knowledge” about the banking system are also significant obstacles. “Let’s say, hypothetically, there’s no discrimination in the banking industry, we would still probably have disparate outcomes because the system itself hasn’t prepared us to utilize the banking system effectively,” said Gines, who is black. “Then, when you layer on the levels of discrimination that research has showed … when you combine those two, that’s why you see these kind of disparate outcomes.”

    In other words, racism in society, both past* and present, combined with racism in the banking industry, ends with racist results. I am sure you are every bit as shocked as I.

    *I love that part about “the lack of intergenerational wealth”. Not only does that put the lie to the whole “meritocracy” BS, but think back to the financial crash of ’07-’08. Which demographics were shown to have time and again been targeted with the shady loan deals that were at the heart of the crash? Which borrowers were then pushed into those types of loans even tho they were more than qualified for safer more secure traditional loans? And which demographics suffered the worse losses of family wealth in the crash?

    It’s a lesson in how “insufficient knowledge” about the banking system insures a lack of “intergenerational wealth” within certain racial demographics. It’s a feature, not a bug.

  25. 25.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @VOR:

    The pens are given as gifts or souvenirs to key allies. Trump has done this himself.

    Huh. I had no idea they made ceremonial sharpies. The things I learn here. If I had known that back in the day I could have been the classiest carpenter on commercial job sites all over the country.

     

    ETA: As is I could still be the classiest hillbilly in all the Ozarks. See you guys later, I’m on a mission from dawg.

  29. 29.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Patricia Kayden: I think she should have worn Orange…Or maybe Titans Blue but I am weird.  Never understood why everyone in Washington needs to look like they are on the way to a funeral.

  30. 30.

    Gin & Tonic

    Everyone has presumably heard about the Parnas interview by now, and has seen the text messages implying surveillance/stalking of Ambassador Yovanovitch in Kyiv. You might be wondering about the government reaction – well, they’ve opened a criminal investigation into said surveillance.

    Oh, wait, that’s the *Ukrainian* Interior Ministry. The US Government, which actually employs Ambassador Yovanovitch, the highest-ranking female Foreign Service Officer, HASN’T DONE A FUCKING THING ABOUT  IT.

  32. 32.

    Quinerly

    @Baud: I found this:

    In response to Parnas’ interview, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Thursday morning, “These allegations are being made by a man who is currently out on bail for federal crimes and is desperate to reduce his exposure to prison.”

    “The facts haven’t changed — the president did nothing wrong and this impeachment, which was manufactured and carried out by the Democrats has been a sham from the start,” Grisham said.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The long read
    Bring up the bodies: the retired couple who find drowning victims

    When Gene and Sandy Ralston returned to their truck after a day on the Beardsley reservoir in northern California in March 2002, they discovered several handwritten notes taped to the doors and windscreen: “Call Lieutenant Lunney as soon as you get back to town. It’s urgent.”

    The Ralstons, a married couple from rural Idaho, had been scientists until the late 1980s, when they began helping out on local search and rescue missions. By the winter of 2002, they had volunteered on more than a dozen searches for victims of drowning across the US, and had developed an uncanny ability to find bodies. They had just helped Lt Lunney’s sheriff’s department locate the remains of a man who had drowned in the reservoir three-and-a-half years earlier, after falling off his boat while fishing. Divers had brought him back to the surface that afternoon.

    As the notes instructed, the Ralstons drove to the nearby town of Sonora to meet Lunney. Their expertise was needed by some other folks, he said, although he wasn’t allowed to tell them who. The next morning, the Ralstons were briefed by FBI agents on a series of kidnappings for ransom that had turned into murders. The families of four victims of abduction had wired more than $1.2m between them to an account in New York, which then transferred the money to a bank in Dubai. But the bodies of the victims were now thought to be lying at the bottom of a reservoir just east of Yosemite national park. The killers, the FBI said, were possibly connected to the Russian mafia.
    …………………………………………………..
    The Ralstons are now in their 70s and spend most of every year travelling to search sites or on the water, looking for bodies. They have clocked more than 31,000 miles on their motorhome in a single year. In almost two decades of searching, they have found 120 victims of drowning in lakes and rivers across the US and Canada. They are considered among the best underwater search and recovery specialists in North America, and have worked for agencies from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to Nasa (hunting for the wreckage of the space shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated on atmospheric entry in February 2003, killing all seven crew members). They have helped solve crimes and generations-old mysteries.

    When the Ralstons’ home phone rings with a search request, though, it is usually a family member of a missing person – someone reaching out after an official search has been called off. By the time the Ralstons arrive at the scene of a disappearance, no one expects the missing person to be found alive. What Gene and Sandy offer is not the hope of rescue, but the solace of finality. They have spent years crisscrossing North America in the service of grief.

  36. 36.

    terben

    @Reboot: There is no equivalent to the US impeachment process in Australia. PMs are not chosen by the voters directly like the US President. PMs are chosen by their party and can be changed by a ‘spill’ motion and subsequent ballot at a party caucus meeting. PMs can also lose a confidence motion on the floor of the House of Reps if enough of their party defects and votes with the opposition. The PM would then be expected to tender his resignation to the Governor General and if no one could cobble together a majority on the floor of the House then a fresh election would be called.

  40. 40.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kathleen: Nancy Smash will be devastated and won’t be able to go on upholding and defending the Constitution.  I expect a resignation letter from her later today.

  49. 49.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: I certainly don’t.  It’s like whenever Pompeo says, “It’s outrageous you should ask such a question!”. Without answering the question.  It is pure deflection and dodge.

  51. 51.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: But will Moscow Mitch have a rock dropped on him while sitting on a hard place?  And, no, I’m not talking about crack cocaine.  Oh Moscow Cocaine Mitch…

  56. 56.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The UK’s food security is to be regularly assessed by parliament to ensure minimal disruption to supplies after the country leaves the EU and while new trade deals are sought.

    The commitment will be part of the biggest shakeup of British agriculture in 40 years and requires a regular report to MPs outlining supply sources and household expenditure on food, as well as consumer confidence in food safety.

    The move reflects concerns over potential disruptions post-Brexit, as more than a quarter of Britain’s food comes from the EU and nearly a fifth from other countries.

    The revision is one of a handful to the agriculture bill, introduced to parliament on Thursday more than a year after the previous government was forced to abandon the legislation amid Brexit turmoil.

    Other changes include a stronger emphasis on the soil, at risk from overuse, erosion and nutrient loss; farmers are to receive help maintaining healthy soils, as well as with improvements to the tracing of livestock movements between farms. There will be powers to regulate fertiliser use and organic farming after Brexit.

    Missing from the bill is a binding commitment to prevent trade deals allowing the import of food produced to lower standards than those to which British farmers must adhere. This has been a key demand of farmers concerned that after Brexit they will be undercut by cheap imports from the US and Asia, with lower food safety and animal welfare regulations.

    Call that the trump clause.

  58. 58.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: It will be called the “two notch test.”. When Britons have to pull their belts in by two notches, then (and only then) will the US come to their rescue with food sales (sorry, no special friend or family discount).

  59. 59.

    Jay

     

    @OzarkHillbilly:

     

    as Chris Grey’s Brexit Blog pointed out recently, when it comes to trade with the EU or any other trade deals, Britain is now in the position of “getting only what their trade partners are willing to give”, so it’s going to be a meal of chlorinated chicken washed down with a slug of Colt 45 or Ripple.

  60. 60.

    Jay

    There are many things I want to know more about, especially regarding defense and foreign policy — but ewarren sending the message that you don't break a nonaggression pact with ewarren without facing consequences is a massive net positive. https://t.co/uaBpjdIj8V— Molly McKew (@MollyMcKew) January 16, 2020

  61. 61.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JPL: That’s a theory. Do you know if she is that well liked within the Republican caucus? Is she that good of a fund raiser? I just haven’t seen all that many stories about her. She has a reputation as an attack dog, but she seems to be awfully quiet for that role.

    The lone commenter on Stoehrs tweet says, “They do not like her there at all.” which is silly on the face of it. She was re-elected for WY lone congressional seat with a 34 point margin.

  64. 64.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Aardvark Cheeselog: yup I read it. Looks like the school administrators never read Genesis. Also they are assholes and I hope her parents find a more kind and open minded school for their daughter.

  65. 65.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @OzarkHillbilly: I know, right? Cheney would be facing the exact same electorate if she ran for Senate.

    Is this about seniority? She’s not been in the House that long, has she? Does she think the Republicans will have a better shot at taking back the House than the Senate in 2022?

  69. 69.

    annamal

    @terben: The (somewhat unkind) joke in my part of NZ was that a change in Ozzie PMs was a good prompt to change your smoke detector batteries.

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