Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

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

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

The revolution will be supervised.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickle?”

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

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

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

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

A consequence of cucumbers

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

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Reader Interactions

93Comments

  1. 1.

    cain

    My employer has made Juneteenth a paid holiday for all of us going forward as part of celebrating and respecting justice and equality. They also encouraged us to use our platform to fight inequality.

    Not only do they pay me well, they have been stellar in managing our anxieties and fears during these times. These are the people who took my offer, and added $50k to it as a return offer. I tried to tell them that they were doing this whole negotiating thing wrong but said that I was worth it. Damn.

  2. 2.

    cintibud

    Hi, I just posted a comment to the dead Ornate thread that is also awaiting moderation as well as being totally out of context anyplace else. I hope Cheryl at least sees it. Help please?

  3. 3.

    cain

    I want a sticker “All Lives Matter when Black Matter” or “When Black Lives Matter, then All Lives Really Matter”

  5. 5.

    cain

    I took the day off today, thinking I would get my cabinet lights installed. I never got to it. :( Thank goodness friday is off!

  6. 6.

    Martin

    I picked up a monkfish filet that was so beautiful I gasped when I saw it.

    Jesus fuck, man. How were you ever a republican?

  7. 7.

    ant

    wow you put that on your car in West Virginia?

    Don’t let that CRV run low on oil John, or you’ll stretch out the timing chain from the heat. Costs about 800 to replace it.

  8. 8.

    Sure Lurkalot

    I don’t do bumper stickers, not even an innocuous one a dear departed friend had made: What’s Wrong With Having a Great Society?”

    But I do love monkfish.  Back when we could shop a lot, I always talked it up at the fish counter, but most people took one look at it (even filleted, it is a pretty ugly fish) and passed.  I’m going to go find some soon!

  9. 9.

    dexwood

    I’d rather see Make Racists Ashamed Again. Like your sticker though because racists need to be called out.

  15. 15.

    James E Powell

    @dexwood:

    Agree with that. I’d also like the press/media to be afraid to cover for racists and bigots with euphemisms like heartland or “values voters” or economically anxious or whatever they intended to use this time around.

  16. 16.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Drive the racists back under the rocks from which they slimed out from under.

    Too long for a bumper sticker, of course.  John’s sticker does the trick with fewer words.

  19. 19.

    TaMara (HFG)

    Okay, I just looked up monkfish and realized we used to catch them deep-sea fishing and throw them back. Scariest looking thing ever. I was like 12-13 at the time.

    I didn’t know you could eat them….

  22. 22.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Renewed protests in Louisville with blocked traffic, pepperballs and flash bangs.

    About 1000 people knelt in the street, arms up – LMPD backed off.

    It was a powerful moment.

  23. 23.

    PsiFighter37

    John, I hope you have an easy way to fix all the key marks your car doors are going to sustain in various parking lots.

  24. 24.

    kindness

    I’d be happy if the haters just went back to the shadows.  It sucks seeing/hearing ’em.

  25. 25.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @ant:

    wow you put that on your car in West Virginia?

    John didn’t say that he was going to put them on his car.

    They’ll look great on his Republican County Chairman’s car bumper, though.

  28. 28.

    ThresherK

    @rikyrah: Rhetorically, who is Rice? It seems every R congresscritter I’ve never heard of is worse than the median R congresscritter.

    I first noticed it with Ginny Fox, and It’s never failed me since. They have a deeeeep bench of mediocrity.

  31. 31.

    chopper

    love monkfish, but i made the mistake of telling the wife once when i made it and she googled a picture of it.  never again.

  36. 36.

    Dan B

    @Sure Lurkalot: I scored Sturgeon yesterday.  My partner’s family had a schooner they brought from California and moored on the Columbia for a few months.  Sturgeon swam around the moorage.  I don’t tell him that his dinner is Sturgeon, ie: Scary bumpy, whiskered, monster.

  37. 37.

    Fair Economist

    @Kent:

    But no one really knows much about them. They are a really deep water fish.

    Unfortunately that’s probably bad for sustainability like with orange roughy. Things happen slowly in the deep.

  38. 38.

    Sure Lurkalot

    You can wrap the tails with prosciutto and grill.   Or cur into 3/4” medallions, dust with flour and pan fry. Monkfish does have a sweetish taste and texture similar to lobster. It’s horribly underrated!

  39. 39.

    Luciamia

    Monkfish. They call it the”poor man’s lobster. ”  Can’t agree. I mean, I !like it. But it’s not lobster.

  41. 41.

    Patricia Kayden

    There’s no doubt today’s SCOTUS ruling is a major victory for LGBTQ rights.To achieve full equality in the workplace, we must fill in the gaps.Here’s what the ruling changes — and what it doesn’t change. https://t.co/dpZDT0RZ84— ACLU (@ACLU) June 16, 2020

  44. 44.

    H.E.Wolf

    I am tired wanting them to think
    about right and wrong.
    I want them to fear.
    I want them to feel fear now. I want them
    to know
    that there is always a time
    there is always a time to make right
    what is wrong,
    there is always a time
    for retribution
    and that time
    is beginning.

    [final lines of a poem by Susan Griffin, published in 1970: “I Like to Think of Harriet Tubman”]

  46. 46.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Amir Khalid: I seem to recall reading somewhere that there was a time when lobster was the poor man’s seafood.

    And salmon likewise, in the Pacific Northwest.

  47. 47.

    Yutsano

    @H.E.Wolf: Back before all the big and little dam projects cut off so much of their habitat. Development didn’t help, but choking the streams really killed the small runs.

  49. 49.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Yutsano:

    And we’re just beginning to undo the terrible damage that has been done.

    Hope things are better in your world as well.

    @Kent:

    Good point and the oyster farms on Humboldt Bay are a multi-million dollar industry and I still find a good reason why anyone eats them. But hey, they have an oyster festival and everything.

  50. 50.

    Jeffro

    @Amir Khalid: seriously!  Like, who would look at those things and go, “mmm mmm…can’t wait to um, take a bite out of OUCH one of OUCH these delectable OUCH creatures from the OUCH depths of the sea!”

    Many “delicacies” cause me to wonder just how sane our ancestors were…

  51. 51.

    Martin

    @Amir Khalid: Yeah, it was. A few reasons why:

    1. Lobsters were all over the damn place and were easy to catch, making them cheap. They’re not as common any longer.
    2. They don’t keep well – they go bad within hours, unless you can keep them alive (not that easy). The tradition in new england was to cook them at the dock. They still do that – and it’s still the best way to eat lobster, as more of a street food. Transporting them to the city was expensive – way more expensive than caching the damn thing – you needed ice, and you needed immediate transportation and logistics, which didn’t exist until fairly recently. And even a lot of the recent stuff is pretty low-tech. NYC restaurants still buy truffles out of the back of a handful of vans that drive around the city supplying restaurants – handled daily.
    3. So, because it was difficult, it became in demand by wealthy people, sort of a veblan good, as a way of advertising that you could afford to eat this utterly impractical thing.

    But lobster in new england can be pretty damn cheap. it was many years ago but my dad and I took a trip up the new england coast up into Canada and we made a point to eat as much lobster as possible. 2 meals a day was easy, just by swinging by the docks and they’d point you to a boat that just came in. You could get a cooked half kilo lobster for about $3 then. Maybe $6-$8 now. But you have to spend time down by the docks with the noisy seagulls and working class guys and the smell of chum. Or you could avoid those things and pay $40 more in the city.

  53. 53.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Jeffro:

    Many “delicacies” cause me to wonder just how sane our ancestors were…

    It wasn’t about sanity, motherfuckers were hungry.

  55. 55.

    Jeffro

    Meanwhile, one would think this story has some legs, as they say: What Has The trumpov Administration Done with a Half Trillion Dollars?

    Shipped most of it to Moscow?

    Sent it to its corporate crony buddies, minus a 10/20/50% cut for ‘dark money’ campaign groups?

    Had EVERYTHING in trumpov tower re-plated in gold?

    Why. Can’t. They. Just. Tell Us. Who. Got. Bailed Out?

    Compare and contrast to the Great Recession bailouts and President Obama’s/VP Biden’s disclosures and oversight, national snooze media!

  56. 56.

    Jeffro

    @HumboldtBlue: I’d eat a lot of grass and tree bark before it would occur to me to toss a lobster into a pot, crack it open, etc etc.

    And don’t even get me started on crabs.  Or snails.

  57. 57.

    BobTX

    Hey – not meant to sound judgy or scolding.  *Please* just read this as an ecologist who has studied this stuff trying to pass on some info to a crowd that I think might be receptive and also share enough concern about the environment to act on it.  I probably wouldn’t even bother on another site:

    Monkfish is primarily caught through an insanely destructive form of bottom scrape-trawling that destroys huge swaths of slow-growing undersea coral beds.  Any given meal’s-worth of monkfish represents a creepily large area of underwater habitat destroyed and impacted for decades, for a lot of species that call these habitats their homes.

    Here’s one quick link so you don’t think I’m talking out my rear: https://news.mongabay.com/2014/05/trawling-destructive-fishing-method-is-turning-seafloors-to-deserts/    – “Deep-sea trawling is currently carried out along large sectors of the oceans,” write the authors, “and it appears to have severe consequences on deep-sea sediment dynamics at a global scale.”

    Again, *really* not trying to guilt or scold, just to inform anyone interested.  There are a lot of other great-to-eat fish species that are fine to eat.  My favorite, for instance, is wild salmon (it’s well-managed, but not farmed salmon).  Also line-caught mahi-mahi (they mature super quickly).  I should also add: lobster itself is pretty well-managed.  There’s going to be some problems with climate change coming to a head for the lobster industry, but personal consumption of them isn’t the problem at all.  Same goes for other New England shellfish.

  58. 58.

    Calouste

    @H.E.Wolf: I remember reading a story that servants in London in the mid 19th century were complaining about too much salmon on the menu. Of course within decades there was no salmon left in the Thames.

  59. 59.

    Martin

    @Jeffro: i’m always impressed that one day somebody was so hungry that they decided ‘I’m going to eat that‘. And their buddies saw that they didn’t die and a new recipe was added to the list.

  63. 63.

    Another Scott

    Off all the bad polling numbers for Trump his fall among seniors is the most important. They move slowly in polling and are not real swingy once they make their mind up. Without seniors going GOP the Congressional losses could be historic downballot. Everything is in play.
    — Ben Tribbett (@notlarrysabato) June 16, 2020

    (Emphasis added.)

    Make it so!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  64. 64.

    opiejeanne

    @H.E.Wolf: In the San Francisco bay way back when, the farms adjacent to the water used to pull thousands of crabs from the water and plow them into the dirt, as a fertilizer.

  65. 65.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    you never know about people and food….

    Kayleigh McEnany @kayleighmcenany· Nov 8, 2012
    FUN FACT: @dominos is wayyyy better than any NYC pizza

    Domino’s Pizza @dominos
    Replying to@kayleighmcenany
    That’s one heck of a compliment! Thanks for the love! #WEAPPRECIATEIT!

    Before I saw that date, i thought “that’s one helluva a combination of micro targeting and cultural resentment politics”

  68. 68.

    neldob

    I saw a truck with 12 bumper stickers: Make America Hate Again, Vote for Scumbag, We Don’t Care About Your Fucking Wall, Throw the Rascal Out, Corruption/Collusion, Separating families; Good for Nazis Bad for America, Donald, Putin wants you: Bring your knee pads, Impeachment? It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, etc. etc. Brought little twinklings to my heart. or something.

  72. 72.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    Just came across a Twitter video of this lone protester in Bethel, Kentucky getting verbally harassed by a swarm of Maga fools.  He gets punched in back of head while standing next to a cop and nothing Fucking happens.  Kid eventually gets an escort out by police.  Scary.  It ends with a USA USA chant., ugh.  I’d link if I had any clue how.

  76. 76.

    patrick II

    So, I live in a downstairs condo — apt #2.  At about 10:45 p.m. the doorbell rings.   Who could be calling? I go to the door and look at where the masks are usually kept.  For some reason, my wife had moved them.  I open the door a crack.  There is a 70-year-old lady standing with a pizza — and no mask.  I hadn’t ordered a pizza.

    Me: What do you want?

    Unmasked Old Pizza Lady: You ordered a pizza.

    Me: No, I didn’t.

    UOPL:  Your number 2?

    Me: Yes, but I didn’t order a pizza.

    She looks down at her order.

    UOPL:  It says right here, number 2.

    Me:  It’s probably for my upstairs neighbor, number 3.  (They sometimes have pizza delivered).

    UOPL, balefully looking up the stairs and then back at me:  No, number 2, it says right here.

    She holds up the order for me to see the number.  I can’t see it.

    Me: No, really, I didn’t order a pizza.  Try upstairs.

    Another unhappy look up the stairway.  Just then my sharp-eared upstairs neighbor opens the door.

    Upstairs neighbor lady:  Hey! up here!

    I closed the door.

    Poor old lady.  It’s sad a 70-year-old is delivering pizza. I hope my neighbor came down to get it.  I wish the UOPL  was wearing a mask.

  78. 78.

    Anotherlurker

    @Kent: Hi Kent, I am formally an East Coast fisherman/SCUBA Diver and general fish nerd.

    The Monkfish (AKA Goosfish) is a shallow water member for the Anglerfish family.  When I was a wee lad, we would occasionally find them washed up on L.I. Sound beaches.   I have also seen them while diving N.E. Atlantic shipwrecks, in 90′ to 130′.

    There are 2 species in shallow water on the East Coast, Lophius Americanus and Lophius Gastrophysus (AKA Black Fin Goosfish) ranging from Maine and the Maritimes to the Gulf and the Caribbean.

    There are species in the N.W. and the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

  80. 80.

    dirge

    @Martin: 

    I recall reading that back when household service arrangements typically included room & board, it was common in New England to include a provision in the contract limiting the number of lobster meals per week, since otherwise employers might not provide anything else.

    So yes, only became a luxury food after they stopped washing up on shore by the ton.

  81. 81.

    cain

    @Another Scott:

    The best part is that – it will be hard to ratfuck when the seniors are against them.. that means no matter what election shenanigans are out there it will be hard when seniors don’t show up.

    Of course, they could make up ballots – anything is possible with these assholes.

  84. 84.

    Origuy

    The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch lists monkfish aka goosefish as a “Good Alternative“.  In other words, it’s not the most sustainable, but it’s not an endangered species.

  85. 85.

    Kent

    @Anotherlurker:

    @Kent: Hi Kent, I am formally an East Coast fisherman/SCUBA Diver and general fish nerd.

    The Monkfish (AKA Goosfish) is a shallow water member for the Anglerfish family.  When I was a wee lad, we would occasionally find them washed up on L.I. Sound beaches.   I have also seen them while diving N.E. Atlantic shipwrecks, in 90′ to 130′.

    There are 2 species in shallow water on the East Coast, Lophius Americanus and Lophius Gastrophysus (AKA Black Fin Goosfish) ranging from Maine and the Maritimes to the Gulf and the Caribbean.

    There are species in the N.W. and the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

    Interesting.  Just looking at them I assumed they were deep water.  I spend a decade working for NOAA fisheries in Alaska and before that did observer work on Bering Sea fisheries.  I would occasionally find angler fish coming up in really deep sea pollock trawls, but never shallow water.  I can get very nerdy about Alaska fisheries but my knowledge of Atlantic fisheries is extremely scant

    I did hundreds and hundreds of dives in SE Alaska, both shipwreck and recreational diving and never once saw an angler fish in shallow water.   So that must be an Atlantic thing.

  86. 86.

    NotMax

    “Whaddaya do with a monkfish? Bake it? Poach it?”

    “No, silly, it’s a friar.”

  87. 87.

    BobTX

    My previous comment didn’t make it.  I included a link to an article – I don’t know if that’s kosher and prevented it from getting published or something.  I’m here to read often, but I’m an incredibly rare commenter.

    Super not trying to be scolding or shaming, just passing info as an ecologist that used to meet with a whole lab full of fish biologists (my jam is amphibians), including someone who studied this:

    Monkfish are primarily caught by super destructive bottom trawling – it destroys very slow-growing sea bottom habitat that takes decades or more to recover.  A given meal’s worth of monkfish represents a very large area of such habitat destroyed.

    Search “Impacts of bottom trawling on deep-coral ecosystems of seamounts are long-lasting” for an example of research into this.

    Again, really not trying to be judgy or annoying.  I love wild caught salmon (well managed) and mahi-mahi (caught correctly – they mature super quickly).  Also, US lobster is well-managed.  It’s going to have increasing climate change problems, but consumer purchasing of lobster isn’t harming populations.  Same goes for most New England shellfish.

  88. 88.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    I’d buy this bumper sticker if I could find it (and I don’t even own a car!)

    TRUMP LIES
    EVERY DAMN DAY

  90. 90.

    NotMax

    Late entry on the U.S. history of lobster.

    In the 19th century, the poor lobster still suffers from a widespread negative stigma. Essayist John Rowan explains in one of his works […] that when you find empty lobster shells outside of a house, it’s often “a sign of poverty and degradation.” How kind. In 1836, the B&M company (Burnham & Morrill) no longer knows what to do with the lobster surplus in Maine and Massachusetts. They are the first to make it a canned good, and succeed in commercializing the product outside of the United States. But even if it gets made over through this novel mode of conservation, it is still held in low esteem and is sold for a fifth of the cost of a can of “Boston baked beans.” Source

  91. 91.

    trnc

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Kayleigh McEnany @kayleighmcenany· Nov 8, 2012
    FUN FACT: @dominos is wayyyy better than any NYC pizza

    Wasn’t that around the time high school kids working there were putting cheese up the their noses before putting on the pizza, and people were saying the crust tasted like cardboard?

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