Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

The lights are all blinking red.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

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

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

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Deep Thoughts

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  8. 8.

    Aleta

    If Trump had come from outer space and landed on the WH lawn and said “Take me  I’m your leader,” he’d already be locked up.

  9. 9.

    RSA

    [if] Trump had worn a mask

    Well, sure, assume the impossible (Trump’s vanity seems to be the immovable obstacle in this case) and you can prove anything.

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    Trump is too self-obsessed to be able to see what even my dog A/C knew:

    If you’re the big dog, you don’t have to prove it to anyone.

    The man disgusts me.

  13. 13.

    dexwood

    Monsters. Ghouls. Traitors.

    Going to fire up the grill, drink a beer, throw some darts on the back porch.

  14. 14.

    Poe Larity

    Objectively, a Full Monty RNC Convention might be the best thing for world civilzation.

  15. 15.

    leeleeFL

    And…..if pigs had wings, they’d be airplanes!

    Brit Hume is a dumb piece of crap and I hope, as I have for a long time,  that Brian Schatz runs for something National, so I can vote for him.  Same with Gretchen Whitmer.  I love remembering Barack at the 2004 Convention.  Luv at first sight…..Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.  Was, and still is, true!  And sad….

  17. 17.

    bbleh

    Yes, well, Republican hypocrisy, which when challenged is followed by anger.  Also sun rises in east, water still wet, etc.

    Emotion and tribal loyalty.  Facts and logic, by contrast, just ain’t their strong suits.

  19. 19.

    leeleeFL

    Joe Biden looks cooler, and more Presidential,  in a mask than tRump would look under any circumstances.  Class elevates the measure of the man

  21. 21.

    Mike in NC

    @Martin: Wait until there aren’t enough vaccines to go around on day one

    Jared is going to work with Martin Shkreli (good buddy, maybe even a former classmate?) to set the pricing for the coronavirus vaccine. It’ll be available to all members of the Trump crime family and to any Republican politicians willing to outbid one another for it.

  25. 25.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    If we’re going into hypotheticals, I wonder what would’ve happened if COVID-19 had appeared in say, the 1980s, 70s, 60s, 50s, or the 40s?

    It’s been commented that modern medicine has what has saved so many people who have gotten seriously ill. During the 1918 flu pandemic, many people died from secondary bacteria infections. With the development of antibiotics, deaths from secondary infections have largely subsided, at least in the developed world

  26. 26.

    scav

    Ah, the vision of all the big burly muscled men, the strong silent types, the Leaders! the Brave! the Heroic! all running together to the mens room before striding out in public and whispering to each other anxiously “Does this item of face-ware make me look whimpy?”

    I keep wanting to tell them that REAL men don’t wear steel toed boots: it makes them look frightened of widdle stubbed toes. REAL men on construction sites wear sandals.

  27. 27.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Today was a good day. I was running our daughter around town and while going through the downtown (such as it is) part of our town we passed by about twenty dumb fuckers yelling and waving flags and signs saying OPEN UP! and rooting for the Orange Plague in 2020. I started laughing out loud as I passed by, shaking my head NO and loudly saying “FUCK NO!” over and over again, looking the last moron in line in the eye and emphatically saying it as I passed by.

    I would have flipped them off but not on Memorial Day. I got my message across without it. :)

  28. 28.

    bbleh

    @scav: Yeah!  And what’s with those pu&&y hard-hats?  Are they wearing’ em just cuz some gummint guy tells them to?  And the widdle glovie-wuvvies, for their delicate little pinkies?  Hell, REAL men don’t even bother with TOOLS!  They use their bare fists and their TEETH!

  29. 29.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Never ceases to amaze me how grown “men” confuse machismo with actual strength, which means being secure enough in yourself to not let the perceptions of others control you

  32. 32.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    If we’re going into hypotheticals, I wonder what would’ve happened if COVID-19 had appeared in say, the 1980s, 70s, 60s, 50s, or the 40s?

    There was a serious flu outbreak in 1957. Cannot easily provide a link on the fly, but you can easily search for it.

    A fair amount of stupidity, but the world got lucky when a vaccine was developed.

    I didn’t know about this either, but ran across a good article about past pandemics.

  36. 36.

    Belafon

    Except Dallas is a liberal city full of minorities.

     

    But we won’t have to wait very long. As in other states, it spreading out from Dallas, through the suburbs like mine, and into the countryside.

  37. 37.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: I used email Maureen Dowd when she would write about “Obambi” and “Hillary the Dominatrix”, that I was sorry no one loved her enough to tell her to stop, but she really needed to take a sabbatical. She never responded to my well-intentioned, caring advice. She finally wore me down to the point that I quit reading her stuff.

    I think she called him “Barry” for most of his presidency. Charlie Pierce used to call her out for the “pink-washing”. She apparently didn’t care about his opinion either.

  39. 39.

    West of the Rockies

    @bbleh:

    Damn straight!  And they open their beer bottles with a spare eye socket or their teeth, then eat the bottles for roughage!

  41. 41.

    Mary G

    I also like the comparison between wreath sizes. Joe’s is small and classy and Twitler’s is gigantic. Like trucks with giant wheels, we know when something is being compensated for.

  42. 42.

    JMG

    Maureen Dowd has been terrible, and to any close reader a person in serious need of psychological help, for 30 years. That’s what the Times, and by the paper I mean the Sulzberger family, wants from her and always has wanted from her. Hating the Clintons got her a life sinecure.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    FYI, a historical snippet.

    The third plague pandemic was a major bubonic plague pandemic that began in Yunnan, China, in 1855 during the fifth year of the Xianfeng Emperor of the Qing dynasty. This episode of bubonic plague spread to all inhabited continents, and ultimately led to more than 12 million deaths in India and China, with about 10 million killed in India alone. According to the World Health Organization, the pandemic was considered active until 1960, when worldwide casualties dropped to 200 per year. Source

    105 years.

  46. 46.

    White & Gold Purgatorian

    Republicans would be shooting people for not wearing a mask and citing stand your ground laws.

    This, exactly. Hell, I’ve seriously thought of shooting people for not wearing a mask, citing stand your ground. And I don’t even own a gun. But the no mask, wrong way on a one way supermarket aisle idiots just get all over my last nerve.

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    @White & Gold Purgatorian

    Maybe the aisles are narrower at the markets where you are but I don’t grasp what the purpose behind one way aisles is.

    No prob keeping distance in the both direction aisles here. Folks encountered here (can’t enter the market sans mask, and number of shoppers inside at any one time is controlled) are sticklers about that.

  48. 48.

    Nicole

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Never ceases to amaze me how grown “men” confuse machismo with actual strength, which means being secure enough in yourself to not let the perceptions of others control you

    A sociology book I read some years back had a section on whether society was literally enculturating men into an early grave, via cultural norms.  The examples they gave were behaviors like aggression, work-obsessiveness, being emotionally closed off (especially re: showing vulnerability), competitiveness- Type A, manly behaviors, which are also coronary-inducing behaviors.

    Covid 19 just seems to be doing it faster for some men, who equate wearing a mask with showing vulnerability.

    Toxic masculinity!  Bad for men, too!

  49. 49.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Brachiator: 
    Yeah, I’ve heard of the 1957 flu pandemic, called the Asian Flu. Killed 1 million worldwide. From Wiki:

    The strain of virus that caused the pandemic, influenza A virus subtype H2N2, was a recombination of avian influenza (probably from geese) and human influenza viruses. As it was a novel strain of the virus, there was minimal immunity in the population.

    The first cases were reported in Guizhou in late 1956 or February 1957, and were reported in the neighboring province of Yunnan before the end of February. On 17 April, The Times reported that “an influenza epidemic has affected thousands of Hong Kong residents”. By the end of the same month, Singapore also experienced an outbreak of the new flu, which peaked in mid-May with 680 deaths. In Taiwan, 100,000 were affected by mid-May and India suffered a million cases by June. In late June, the pandemic reached the United Kingdom.

    By June 1957 it reached the United States, where it initially caused few infections. Some of the first affected were United States Navy personnel at destroyers docked at Newport Naval Station, as well as new military recruits elsewhere. The first wave peaked in October (among children who returned to school) and the second wave, in January and February 1958 among elderly people, which was more fatal. Microbiologist Maurice Hilleman was alarmed by pictures of those affected by the virus in Hong Kong published in The New York Times. He obtained samples of the virus from a United States Navy doctor in Japan. The Public Health Service released the virus cultures to vaccine manufacturers on 12 May 1957, and a vaccine entered trials at Fort Ord on 26 July and Lowry Air Force Base on 29 July.The number of deaths peaked the week ending 17 October with 600 reported in England and Wales. The vaccine was available in the same month in the United Kingdom. Although it was available initially only in limited quantities, its rapid deployment helped contain the pandemic.

    H2N2 influenza virus continued to circulate until 1968, when it transformed via antigenic shift into influenza A virus subtype H3N2, the cause of the 1968 influenza pandemic.

    The case fatality rate of Asian flu was approximately 0.67%. The disease was estimated to have a 3% rate of complications and 0.3% mortality in the United Kingdom; it could cause pneumonia by itself, without the presence of secondary bacterial infection. It may have infected as many or more people than the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, but the vaccine, improved health care, and the invention of antibiotics contributed to a lower mortality rate. Overall, the pandemic caused 1 to 2 million deaths worldwide or 2 to 4 million. The UK Government estimates that between 1 and 4 million people died worldwide. The CDC estimates 1.1 million deaths worldwide. According to a study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the highest excess mortality occurred in Latin America. About 70,000 to 116,000 people died in the United States. In early 1958, it was estimated that 14,000 people had already died of the flu in the United Kingdom of the 9 million who became sick. It caused many infections in children, spreading in schools and leading to many school closures, but was rarely fatal in children. The virus was most deadly in pregnant women, the elderly, and those with pre-existing heart and lung disease.

  51. 51.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    See that’s bizarre because Obama never struck me as “effeminate”, which is a problematic term. He just wasn’t a walking masculinity stereotype

  52. 52.

    Mary G

    @NotMax: I don’t know about Maui, but one of my pet peeves as a disabled person here in California is that the aisles are plenty wide enough for a cart and a wheelchair/scooter to pass, except that there are so many freestanding exhibits that markets get paid big bucks to add that it’s often gridlock many times waiting for some idiot to read every label and price tag or look up from their phone convo to see you can’t get by them. I’ve even backed up and gone up the next aisle to come down.

  55. 55.

    zhena gogolia

    @Mary G:

    I’m not in a wheelchair, but I know what you mean. Those things were annoying before the pandemic.

  56. 56.

    Geoduck

    The Shiatgibbon could still do a 180, start wearing a mask and telling his followers to copy him, and they would. And yes, they’d be chasing people down in the street and forcibly stapling masks to their face.

  57. 57.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @NotMax:

    Was it 1968-1969? That was the “Hong Kong Flu” pandemic that killed 100,000 Americans, mainly the elderly and immunocompromised. Some people have tried to use the 1968 pandemic and the fact that Woodstock took place in the summer of 1969 as evidence that the lockdowns and current restrictions are unnecessary.

    According to the Wiki article:

    In comparison to other pandemics of the 20th century, the Hong Kong flu yielded a low death rate. The disease was allowed to spread through the population without restrictions on economic activity, until a vaccine became available four months after it started.

    It doesn’t explain why there were no lockdowns then or social distancing restrictions in 1968-1970 or the 1957-1958 flu pandemics. Why weren’t hospitals overwhelmed then, I wonder? I do realize that COVID-19 and those flu viruses are from different families

  58. 58.

    Trapped Lurker

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  I was 7 yrs old in October of 1957; my 10-year old sister, my mother, and I all were quite sick. I remember my mom hanging onto walls trying to care for us when she could barley stand herself. Dad was an army doctor at Walter Reed and must have been working around the clock. He’s not in the memory at all. After recovering from the flu I developed encephalitis as a “complication “ and nearly died. It was a nasty epidemic.

    ETA: I don’t remember if they closed he schools; I don’t think so

  59. 59.

    White & Gold Purgatorian

    @NotMax: The aisles are fairly narrow. Definitely closer than 6 feet to pass someone. Masks are not being required and most of the folks going the wrong way are not wearing masks. I suspect they are making a statement, on both counts.

  62. 62.

    WaterGirl

    @NotMax: You are face-to-face with someone, just inches apart when you are going one way and they are going another.

    If you are all going the same way, no one at least is coughing sneezing or talking to you FACE-TO-FACE as they pass.

    One-way lanes is not security theater.

  63. 63.

    White & Gold Purgatorian

    @WaterGirl:

    If you are all going the same way, no one at least is coughing sneezing or talking to you FACE-TO-FACE as they pass.

    Even more importantly, if everyone is traveling east on aisle 5, for example, no one has to pass at all. Those in a hurry may choose to do so, but most people seem to just hang back and follow the shoppers ahead of them. Much better spacing when all are facing the same direction.

  67. 67.

    Bill Arnold

    If the coronavirus had had its epicenter in Dallas instead of NYC and Trump had worn a mask and said people should, Republicans would be shooting people for not wearing a mask and citing stand your ground laws.

    The anti-masking movement (influence operation, really, with multiple players) is basically advocating for the personal right to kill random people, sometimes including oneself.
    So, yeah. Spree killers are dealt with harshly in the US gunlands.
    Short story, made into a twilight zone episode:
    Button, Button, RICHARD MATHESON, 1970

    “If you push the button,” Mr. Steward told him, “somewhere in the world someone you don’t know will die. In return for which you will receive a payment of $50,000.” Norma stared at the small man. He was smiling.

  68. 68.

    catclub

    @Nicole: 

    Toxic masculinity!

    I think we as a civilization are becoming much less violent than in previous centuries. Being big and violent has less evident payoffs.
    I am reminded of the guys breeding wild foxes to docility. It takes very few generations (with strong selection). Even weak selection is working on us now.

  70. 70.

    Bill Arnold

    @NotMax:

    See also The Third Man.

    That works too; thanks!

    [i’m wrestling with this on another level, when utilitarian calculations are involved on both short and long timescales. Mortality goes down/life expectancy up during economic downturns. Reduced air pollution kills fewer people. Reduced auto traffic kills fewer people. GHG emissions down means 10s of millions fewer deaths. etc.]

  71. 71.

    James E Powell

    @Nicole:

    Toxic masculinity!  Bad for men, too!

    So, it’s true! Men are the real victims here. I knew it!

  72. 72.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @NotMax: Still fail to understand what purpose is being served by making them one way. Maybe am dense but seems like security theater to this observer.

    Security theater, virtue signaling, potayto, potahto. “We’re doing our part!” – yeah, bullshit.

    The tell of unseriousness is that the idiotic 1-way signs are plastered to the floor. No one in a supermarket looks at the floor – their eyes are scanning the shelves. If the stores really cared about customers observing the posted direction of traffic, they would attach the directions to the displays as thin banners on either side, hung from above the top shelf & running down maybe 2′ and 5-6″ wide. But they don’t – they want to keep those buying eyes firmly on the merchandise.

Comments are closed.