Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s a doggy dog world.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

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

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

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

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

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

This fight is for everything.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Peak wingnut was a lie.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

You are here: Home / Elections / Biden For President / GOP Massive Fail Open Thread: The Lying in Winter

GOP Massive Fail Open Thread: The Lying in Winter

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This is not much more than an hour’s drive from Boston, and so will inevitably re-seed the pandemic in one of the few areas of the country that’s been managing to bend the curve downward. Massachusetts and Maine may have to erect physical barriers to (re)entry at our borders. Does this putz have a sponsorship deal with Covid-19?


The NYTimes — if not Chief Court Stenographer Haberman — has turned:

Standing in a packed amphitheater in front of Mount Rushmore for an Independence Day celebration, President Trump delivered a dark and divisive speech on Friday that cast his struggling effort to win a second term as a battle against a “new far-left fascism” seeking to wipe out the nation’s values and history.

With the coronavirus pandemic raging and his campaign faltering in the polls, his appearance amounted to a fiery reboot of his re-election effort, using the holiday and an official presidential address to mount a full-on culture war against a straw-man version of the left that he portrayed as inciting mayhem and moving the country toward totalitarianism…

The scene at Mount Rushmore was the latest sign of how Mr. Trump appears, by design or default, increasingly disconnected from the intense concern among Americans about the health crisis gripping the country. More than just a partisan rally, it underscored the extent to which Mr. Trump is appealing to a subset of Americans to carry him to a second term by changing the subject and appealing to fear and division…

Most politicians, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, this year were forgoing any of the traditional holiday parades and flag-waving appearances. The vast majority of fireworks displays in big cities and small rural towns have been canceled as new cases reported in the United States have increased by 90 percent in the past two weeks.

Mr. Trump’s itinerary Friday and Saturday, however, had a different message: The sparkly, booming show must go on at all costs in the service of the divisive message and powerful images he wants to promote…

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has tried to bend events to his will, often using social media to drive home his alternate version of reality and, thanks to the power of repetition and the loyal support of his base, sometimes succeeding. But the president’s attempt to drive deeper into the culture wars around a national holiday, during an intensifying health crisis that will not yield to his tactics, risked coming across as out of sync with the concerned mood of the country at a moment when his re-election campaign is struggling and unfocused.

“I don’t think it will work, because what he is trying to do is pretend that the situation is better than it is,” Mr. Beschloss said.

Mr. Beschloss compared Mr. Trump to Woodrow Wilson, who presided over the influenza pandemic in 1918 by trying to pretend it was not happening, and to Herbert Hoover, who in 1932 tried to project that the Great Depression was not as bad as people were saying…

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  4. 4.

    Punchy

    risked coming across as out of sync with the concerned mood of the country

    “risked”?  It was an all-around air-horn message of “I dont give a dirty shit about ~54% of the country, and Barr would arrest them if he could”.  The country is completely fucked, Trump spews the basic tenants of Cleeks Law at 140dB and the author uses “risked” in this context?  Fuck your concern trolling you second-rate scribe.

  6. 6.

    Wag

    This is not much more than an hour’s drive from Boston, and so will inevitably re-seed the pandemic in one of the few areas of the country that’s been managing to bend the curve downward.

    Your only hope is that, having bent the curve down, maybe there won’t be much virus to infect? I think the best chance of avoiding a major resurgence of the virus would be for Massachusetts to stop people at the southern border of Massachusetts on their way to the rally, preventing a superspreader event before the southern bozos have a chance to infect everyone.

  8. 8.

    Kent

    Perfect metaphor for the Trump campaign. Near our house is a large former rock quarry that is being redeveloped into some sort of urban village. Mostly they just have the street and utilities in. It is also where teenagers around here have traditionally gone to shoot of fireworks.

    Last night a bunch of MAGA kids with a monster truck with TRUMP 2020 in giant letters on the side and multiple American Flags was parked next to a big dumpster. Kids set the dumpster on fire but there must have been highly flammable construction waste in it because the flames quickly shot out maybe 30 ft high and burning cardboard flew out, landed in the truck, caught the truck’s flags on fire and quickly set the entire truck bed on fire which was covered in fireworks and fireworks debris (all the packaging). So my daughter caught a perfect image of a burning Trump 2020 truck next to a raging dumpster fire.

    This is WA so blue state but kind of a purple suburb with lots of MAGA teens mixed inbetween the woke ones.

  9. 9.

    Kropacetic

    In case you were wondering, it took less than ten minutes for Trump to pivot from talking about the rights of Americans to bragging about jailing protestors.

    Unlike the new far-left fascists who would like to ::checks notes:: stop abuse of power by the police.

  11. 11.

    Ken

    From the release quoted by kilgore trout:

    He rebuilt, restored, and renewed our great nation once, and he’ll do it again

    Sounds like the first time wasn’t that great a job, if it needs to be redone before his term is even over. BTW that’s Trump’s press secretary (!), so either he’s being uncharacteristically honest for this administration, or he’s incompetent.

  12. 12.

    MoCA Ace

    @Punchy:   Fuck your concern trolling you second-rate scribe.

    You, sir, owe sincere apology to second rate scribes everywhere!

  13. 13.

    MoCA Ace

    Saw on the intertubes…

    “Gonna ask my mom if that offer to slap me into next year is still on the table”

  14. 14.

    Kropacetic

    @Punchy: “risked”?  It was an all-around air-horn message of “I dont give a dirty shit about ~54% of the country, and Barr would arrest them if he could”.  The country is completely fucked, Trump spews the basic tenants of Cleeks Law at 140dB and the author uses “risked” in this context?  Fuck your concern trolling you second-rate scribe.

    Comparatively little polishing of Trump’s turds by typical NYT standards.

  15. 15.

    artem1s

    We knew he would get worse and double down on the hate rhetoric once the election drew closer. But at this point I’m more interested in who skips and who attends these plague parties. Which local pols decide they can’t afford to show up and which decide they can’t afford not to. It’s the ‘can’t look away from the train wreck’ stage now.

  17. 17.

    Mike in NC

    Why is Fat Bastard holding a hate rally in Portsmouth, NH? I used to drill at the base and it always seemed like a charming coastal New England town. But I’m sure many MAGAts will drive for several hours to listen to him croak out his patented bullshit.

  19. 19.

    Suzanne

    So I have a cousin who is quite an amazing prankster who lives in Portsmouth. I will check in and see if he has any ideas.

  20. 20.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Ken: Soooooo he rebuilt the nation (with unpaid Polish laborers), then destroyed it, so he has to rebuild it again (with unpaid Polish laborers)?

    I’m so confused.

  21. 21.

    Kropacetic

    @mrmoshpotato: Haha, what’s the context?

    I believe the person in question assumes we will have a new President next year. H’ronmeer let it be so.

  22. 22.

    Danielx

    If he’s like this now, what will he be like in September?

    I hope to hell the chain of command has had some adjustments lest he order a nuclear strike on someplace/somebody, just because he….just because.

  26. 26.

    Ken

    @Danielx: I assume by now the “football” has been replaced with an electronic mockup that flashes impressively and doesn’t do anything.

    (And yes, I know the football is actually a code book, but Trump surely doesn’t and expects beeping lights.)

  28. 28.

    different-church-lady

    Portsmouth? Portsmouth?!? He’s likely to have more protestors than attendees. Is nobody in that campaign even basically competent?

  29. 29.

    Punchy

    @MoCA Ace: my apologies!  Needed something alliterative.  “Third-rate trubadour”?  “Sixth-rate scribbler”?  “Bothsiderist bombaster”?

  30. 30.

    Kropacetic

    @Ken: I assume by now the “football” has been replaced with an electronic mockup that flashes impressively and doesn’t do anything.

    (And yes, I know the football is actually a code book, but Trump surely doesn’t and expects beeping lights.)

    Could Washington professionals actually stage manage us out of this catastrophic Presidency*?  Show him what he expects to see, give him meaningless sheets of paper to doodle what he tries to pass off as a signature, let adults do the real work?

    The only problem is we’d have to convince Fox News to go along with this.  “Today in Washington, Donald Trump was a very good bigly boy…”

    *I know it’s kinda late for that

  33. 33.

    Gin & Tonic

    Unfortunately, idiot superspreader events are fully non discriminatory. Can’t link from a phone, but look for a Twitter thread posted by one @sha__wn showing a photo from Fire Island Pines this weekend.

    If you don’t know what FIP is, the tragic historical parallel will be lost on you.

  35. 35.

    lamh36

    Off to bed but before I go, I’ve got to share the best thing I’ve seen today…LOL.

    This is genius!  Sometimes you have to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, and this video can help!

    OUTKAST PARODY Hey-Ya “Ro-Na” (Coronavirus Edition) https://youtu.be/Bvp0K_-KvqY via @YouTube

  36. 36.

    Ken

    @different-church-lady: I’m sure the groupies have already started the RV trek from North Dakota to New Hampshire, like in 2016 and 2018. Thing is, I doubt the campaign has factored in the increased attrition rate this time around.

  37. 37.

    dmsilev

    @different-church-lady:

    Is nobody in that campaign even basically competent?

    Well, his campaign manager is apparently very competent at routing contributions into his own pocket. Does that count?

  40. 40.

    dmsilev

    Maybe someone should suggest to Trump that he’d draw a more enthusiastic crowd by relocating from Portsmouth to Innsmouth.

  42. 42.

    Alison Rose

    @different-church-lady: Is nobody in that campaign even basically competent?

    Of course not, that’s a fireable offense! No one on the campaign can be more competent than Trump, which means no one on the campaign can be the least bit competent in any way, shape, or form. MUST NOT OUTSHINE THE MASTER.

  43. 43.

    randy khan

    This is a paraphrase of something I posted at LGM, but one reason that Trump can’t pivot is that he craves the adulation of the MAGA crowd.  He throws them red meat because their cheers are like pure oxygen to him (or maybe pure oxycontin) and he lives for that.

  45. 45.

    different-church-lady

    For those from not around here: Portsmouth is the most liberal part of New Hampshire.

  46. 46.

    opiejeanne

    @lamh36: You know that twitter conversation that you and I and about 50 other people were having about how great it would be to make a movie about the three women who played baseball in the Negro Leagues? I am in twitter jail because I mentioned the Museum  in KC started by Buck O’Neil by name, at least I think the word “negro” in the name was the problem.

    I’m protesting it but this might take a couple of weeks for them to come to their senses.

  48. 48.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: Hmm. Bloated body, pallid flesh, folds of skin around the neck, shuffling gait, misshapen hands, family habit of marrying foreign women… You’ve raised a disturbingly plausible scenario.

    (About the only mis-match is that the Deep Ones secretly work to destroy humanity.)

  51. 51.

    dmsilev

    @Ken: Look on the bright side. We therefore know it’s only a matter of time before his offspring likewise Change.

  52. 52.

    Ohio Mom

    Whoa — wasn’t PsiFighter about to go on a little vacation to a cabin near Portsmouth?

    Or maybe I remember incorrectly and it was someone else, but I swear I read that one of us was headed that way. (I have fond memories of my trip there twenty years ago and am always a little nostalgic and jealous when someone announces they are headed that way.)

    I hope they’ll enjoy themselves and be long gone before these festivities start. More proof that Trump ruins everything.

  53. 53.

    Anne Laurie

    @artem1s: I’m more interested in who skips and who attends these plague parties. Which local pols decide they can’t afford to show up and which decide they can’t afford not to.

    Seconded!

  54. 54.

    Redshift

    @Ken:

    Sounds like the first time wasn’t that great a job, if it needs to be redone before his term is even over. 

    Remember, the first time was Trump making up lies about everything being terrible before he was elected, and that the economy “took off like a rocket” after that. The most he accomplished in his entire tenure was managing (surprisingly) to not tank the economy until the pandemic hit.

  56. 56.

    dmsilev

    @Ken: Also, I imagine Trump would get along just fine with Lovecraft, who was racist as all hell, even by the standards of his time. I mean, there are letters that his acquaintances wrote him which boiled down to ‘maybe ease up just a tad on the racism, ok?’. Trump would sense a kindred spirit.

  58. 58.

    Redshift

    @Morzer:

    Trump could even visit his squamous, batrachian relatives down in the deep waters…

    I suspect the reason he’s lived on land all these years is that he was an embarrassment even to them and they kicked him out.

  59. 59.

    Morzer

    @Redshift: Trump had some memorable times when he’d point to the stock market, squawk about how wonderful everything was – and the poor thing would drop like a bird hit by both barrels. And that was before his latest wife Covidia moved in.

  60. 60.

    lamh36

    Today’s final COVID news from ur friendly neighborhood BJ Microbiologist, just wanted to say that more of our new positive cases of COVID are in young people.  We’re talking 25-35 yrs old…not older people like before. The young people are mainly the ones chomping at bits about the stay at home orders. The seniors are mostly masked-up.  The young ones are not and the newer infections spikes are reflecting that a bit.

    Alright.  Good night BJ!

  61. 61.

    Ohio Mom

    different-church-lady:
    I’ve long been under the impression that Portsmouth was the *only* liberal part of New Hampshire.

    Maybe you can answer this question of mine: How is it that Vermont is so liberal and New Hampshire so right-wing?

    I mean, you expect say, Texas to be different than Minnesota: their histories, geographies, climates, industries are all very different. But New Hampshire and Vermont are neighbors. Why are they so different?

  62. 62.

    opiejeanne

    @lamh36: I think someone complained. Someone who has never heard of that museum or maybe thinks that museum has a different name and that I used the word because I’m racist.

  63. 63.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mike in NC: Why is Fat Bastard holding a hate rally in Portsmouth, NH?

    It’s now a ‘hip’, thriving bright-blue oasis in a (still) red state surrounded by blue states.   The campaign is aiming for maximum publicity, with shots of pink-haired young punks in full anarchist cosplay yelling rude words at the elderly Trump cultists in flag gear.

    Also, notice the rally is being held *at* the airport — the Oval Office Squatter can be flown in after his morning golf game, and flown out in time to sleep in his own bed, before another golf game on Sunday.  Lazy bastid.

    I suspect the NH business owners, howsoever Trumpist they might be, are less than pleased with this rally.  They’ve been doing (comparative) bank across the southern half of the state, taking full advantage of advertising C’MON MASSHOLES, WE’RE OPEN EVEN IF YOUR LOCAL TAVERN IS NOT.  Any suspicion of a spike in coronavirus cases will shut down that ‘lifeline’ more effectively than any mere gubmint office holder could do.

  64. 64.

    Aziz, light!

    @Kent:
    Hey Kent, today I watched four MAGA bros get out of a pickup at the Silver Star Mountain trailhead, the truck sporting two large flags mounted in the stake pockets in the bed (the flags tattered by highway speeds). Then I passed three more such trucks on my way back across Clark County. Have not yet seen these over here in Portland. Must be a southwest Washington thing.

  65. 65.

    Kropacetic

    @opiejeanne: I am in twitter jail because I mentioned the Museum  in KC started by Buck O’Neil by name, at least I think the word “negro” in the name was the problem.

    I’m protesting it but this might take a couple of weeks for them to come to their senses.

    Context is for suckers.  The algorithm says Twitter jail, so cuff’em and stuff’em.

  66. 66.

    Kropacetic

    @Anne Laurie: It’s now a ‘hip’, thriving bright-blue oasis in a (still) red state surrounded by blue states.

    To be fair to NH, they haven’t voted for a Republican President since 2000 and have a completely Democratic Congressional delegation.

  67. 67.

    stacib

    @Ohio Mom: have you ever looked at the difference between Chicago and practically everybody we’re surrounded by.  Sheesh, IN couldn’t be more backwards and racist, and parts of Wisconsin are the same.  I’m super scared what is going to happen here in the city with all the folks (who sear they would never live here) come to spread their germs acquired in their very open hometowns.

  69. 69.

    Kropacetic

    @Redshift: Remember, the first time was Trump making up lies about everything being terrible before he was elected, and that the economy “took off like a rocket” after that.

    He, very plausibly of course, started making this claim before he had done a single goddamn thing.  The really frightening part is that some people bought this.

  70. 70.

    Mike in NC

    @dmsilev: At this point Brad Parscale and his wife must own more cars than Jay Leno has in his collection. You’d think someone might notice the conspicuous consumption.

  71. 71.

    NotMax

    @Ohio Mom

    A part of it stems from New Hampshire being attached at the hip to the legacy of Puritan New England, while Vermont was initially settled (by non-Native Americans) as part of New France.

    Also too, a streak of independence as Vermont stood as the independent Vermont Republic (from 1777 to 1791) prior to joining the Union. The Congress under the Articles of Confederation formally recognized Vermont as a separate and sovereign state.

  72. 72.

    Ken

    @Anne Laurie: notice the rally is being held *at* the airport

    Normally that would interfere horribly with operations. How lucky that air travel has been so sharply reduced.

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    @Ken

    Will attendees have to pass through TSA station procedures?

    Gonna be tough on the concealed carriers.

  75. 75.

    Mary G

    @Punchy: I’ll see your second-rate scribe, and raise you this guy:

    Not sure if the Trump campaign could have scripted an event better for the president's current message than a group in Baltimore that used the 4th of July to pull down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Little Italy and throw it in the harbor https://t.co/MBlTPoChyk— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) July 5, 2020

    He gets mugged and his glasses broken by one Republican thug who went on to win a House seat, and thinks they’re untouchable.

  77. 77.

    joel hanes

    @Sellius, if you’re here, I’ve made a late reply to your comments in the stale “Virginnie” thread.

  79. 79.

    Anne Laurie

    @different-church-lady: Portsmouth? Portsmouth?!? He’s likely to have more protestors than attendees. Is nobody in that campaign even basically competent?

    ‘Competent’ seems to be one of the characteristics the Trump campaign is selecting *against*.   Either because the deep grifters don’t want the competition, or due to Parkinson’s Second Law: The first-rate try to hire other first-rate employees.  The second-rate try to hire third- or fourth-rate subordinates.

    But I have to assume this particular choice is meant to Tweak the Libs — ‘brave Sir Donald, flying onto enemy turf’ — and garner footage of Vile Rioters Threatening Decent MAGA Heartlanders.

    Which I don’t think a less desperate / stupid campaign would be trying this early in the campaign, regardless… the ‘swing voters’ aren’t yet paying attention, and there are too damned many ways for a stunt like this to go horribly wrong to be worth the risk!

  80. 80.

    lamh36

    Alright BJ.

    Good night!  See ya on the flipside

    ‪??Da da da dat da dat da da da da ya da‬
    ‪Da da dat dat da ya da!‬
    ‪Da da da dat da dat da da da da ya da‬
    ‪Da da dat dat da…??‬

     

    ETA:  I always thought of King George in Hamilton being the embodiment of what most of the world thought when we elected Trump, especially at the end, essentially laughing at who the US decided to choose as President.  I think President Biden May be our chance to stop the laughter ringing out round the world!

  81. 81.

    Kent

    @Aziz, light!:@Kent:
    Hey Kent, today I watched four MAGA bros get out of a pickup at the Silver Star Mountain trailhead, the truck sporting two large flags mounted in the stake pockets in the bed (the flags tattered by highway speeds). Then I passed three more such trucks on my way back across Clark County. Have not yet seen these over here in Portland. Must be a southwest Washington thing.

    They are from places like Amboy, Battle Ground and Yacolt.     Mostly not local Vancouver or Camas folks where I live.  Clark County is nearly 500,000 population and the incorporated part of Vancouver and Camas is less than 1/2 of that.   Beyond the city limits of Vancouver you get a lot of trailer trash and meth head and MAGA types.  Vancouver itself is actually pretty blue and mostly Portland commuter types.

    You get them in OR too.  You just gotta drive up to places like Clatskanie,  Estacada, Molalla, or Vernonia.

  82. 82.

    James E Powell

    @Kropacetic:

    New Hampshire bears as much responsibility for Bush/Cheney as Florida but somehow avoids the opprobrium. Unless I’m around.

  83. 83.

    Ruckus

    @Ken:

    If it’s a code book we are probably a lot safer than we think. First, there’s reading. Second, he has to do exactly the procedure to get the proper response. The likelihood of that happening is rather slim. Third, someone on the other end has to receive the code and respond with a code and get an OK. shitforbrains frustration level will have been easily exceeded before that and then he’d have to start over. I’d imagine there’s a limit to how many times this would have to happen and shitforbrains would surpass that easily. So that means he’s not going to be able to function. Which may be an issue for some particular moment, but not most of his moments, we are for the majority of moments, better off when he can’t do anything. I mean, how shitty is he now and how would he be if he was anything near effective?

  84. 84.

    Anne Laurie

    @Gin & Tonic: If you don’t know what FIP is, the tragic historical parallel will be lost on you.

    The AIDS crisis has been shadowing this pandemic since the first cries for the lockdown to end.

    You’re just a fun-hating alarmist! All those nice party-goers can’t be infected, they’re all so clean & fit-looking!

    Sometimes it feels like first-time-as-tragedy material…

  88. 88.

    Kropacetic

    @Badgetoon: You just made an aging comic book artist realize a life goal he never knew he had, a creation mentioned on Balloon Juice in a totally obscure post

    Just so I’m clear on this, are you referring to yourself?

    You have Supergirl to thank for the exposure.  Fantastic show.  It also helped me learn of something I never knew I wanted, a Martian Manhunter detective story.  Just my luck that such a story was published, brand new, mere weeks before I decided this.

  89. 89.

    Brachiator

    @rikyrah:

    Someone out there in YouTube land did a COVID-19 based spoof of an OutKast song.

    This is absolutely hilarious!

    Thanks so much. Really needed this today.

  90. 90.

    Mike in NC

    @Ohio Mom: Not really so different. NH has more glibertarians than hardcore dittoheads. My parents retired to Nashua from Boston to save some money. I visited often and never saw (at least the southern part of) NH as particularly wingnut.

  92. 92.

    Alison Rose

    @Ruckus: I wouldn’t be doing anything special even if times were normal, because I’m not able to do…..like, anything. But I would have at least spent some time at my parents’ place, and I can’t do that, and it sucks. I just want to hug my mom. That’s like the only thing I want right now. Sigh.

    But I’m just going to read and play Animal Crossing and try to avoid any news. Hope you’re able to find some ways to make it a decent day, too.

  94. 94.

    texasdoc

    Just popping in to say how much I appreciate the title of this post, AL.

    Also, with regard to Trump campaign spending/Brad Parscale–driving from Galveston to Houston today, saw one of those programmable billboards with an approximately 10 second spot: TRUMP 2020! Why would any sane campaign spend money here, and for something that would have no influence whatsoever? Or does it mean (I hope, I hope, I hope) that they are actually worried about Trump carrying Texas?

  95. 95.

    Mike in NC

    Watching “Welcome to Chechnya” on Netflix. About the harassment and persecution of LGBT people in that Russian territory, run by yet another Putin stooge. Mike Pence would love it.

  96. 96.

    Aleta

    (CNN) Dominion Energy and Duke Energy have canceled their Atlantic Coast Pipeline project, a natural gas pipeline that was to stretch hundreds of miles across West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina, citing “legal uncertainty.”
    Despite a recent win for the project in the US Supreme Court, ongoing delays, litigation and an expected increase in costs threatened the economic viability of the project, the companies said Sunday.

     

    (Mother Jones) The decision to abandon the pipeline is a win for Native American groups and environmentalists, who argued in a Supreme Court case last month that the pipeline was moving forward under an invalid permit issued by the US Forest Service, in addition to presenting a threat to the ecosystem and scenery. The proposed, 600-mile pipeline would have crossed the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail, which runs through 14 states between Georgia and Maine. Ultimately, the court ruled in favor of the pipeline companies last month, upholding the permit.
    …
    (Activists are still fighting the nearby Mountain Valley Pipeline.)

     

     

  98. 98.

    Morzer

    @Anne Laurie: 

    Maybe the Trump campaign is just trying to find a safe space for obese racists that won’t be overrun by the cute 13 year old K-pop hordes?

  100. 100.

    cain

    @Aziz, light!:

    I don’t see many showy MAGAs, they are there but mostly out of sight. I got some neighbors who are maga people.. two of them put their 2020 flags out.

    Waiting to see how long they are going to keep it out there as the death toll start mounting and he does nothing.

    ETA: OMG! It’s the 100th comment! HUNDRED!!! Margaritas, HERE I COME!!!!

    ETAG – Also gonna light some incense and wave around my Tunch shrine.

  101. 101.

    Morzer

    @texasdoc: The Trump campaign are running ads in Texas because Trump can’t understand what a colossal waste of time and money it is for him to do this. It’s all about stroking Jabber the Nut’s narcissistic ego.

  102. 102.

    Kropacetic

    @Badgetoon: Well, good. I’m glad you reached this heretofore unknown life goal.  This put a big smile on my face too.

    I recall the gumby form from Justice League.  Also a good show, but a little light on character development. Now I’m curious about these stories from the 90s.  Before I got into comic books, but everything on Amazon was relatively new.

  103. 103.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ohio Mom: Maybe you can answer this question of mine: How is it that Vermont is so liberal and New Hampshire so right-wing?

    Short answer:  Sorting.  You know how the oil & vinegar in your salad dressing will separate out, given time?   Vermont, by and large, is a ‘self reliant’ state; they chose legislators who would vote to protect the established industries (dairy, ‘outdoorsy’ tourism),  which means keeping out big chains & daytrippers.  New Hampshire, on the other hand, is heavily reliant on income from Massachusetts & other states further south.   A good chunk of its voting base are people who commute to the Boston area for work, or who support those commuters.  Its main industry is tourism, but NH has chosen to encourage ‘consumptive’ tourists — cities based around giant outlet malls, vacation RV courts, guns-smokes-booze tax-exemption buyers.

    Vermont isn’t actually that ‘liberal’, outside of the college towns.  But most Vermonters (cf, Jeff Danziger’s VT cartoons) actually want to be left alone to make their own way, within a community of people they know.  Granite Staters know they’re deeply dependent on those terrible terrible lie-bral ‘outsiders’ from other states — hell, a lot of the mouthiest NH voters have deliberately fled places they consider ‘too liberal’ — so they’re as resentful as a bunch of surly teenagers who demand their horrible parents should just LEAVE THEM ALONE, but only after dropping them at the mall, and also they need an advance on this week’s allowance…

  105. 105.

    Aleta

    @Aleta:

    (July 2) — Today the Southern Environmental Law Center, joined by partners at Appalachian Mountain Advocates, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and the law firm Johns & Counsel, opposed  Dominion Energy and Duke Energy’s request for two additional years to build the risky and unnecessary Atlantic Coast Pipeline. …

    “Since FERC approved it in 2017, a litany of new reasons have emerged to show that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is obsolete,” said Mark Sabath, Senior Attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “One major reason is the landmark Virginia Clean Economy Act. This new energy legislation forces Dominion to abandon its ill-advised plans to build new gas power plants and to close its existing plants. Now that both Virginia and North Carolina have committed to renewable energy and a carbon-free future, FERC’s original approval of the ACP has not just grown stale, but has fully decayed.”

    … Over the last four years, Atlantic Coast Pipeline ignored expert agency recommendations, declined to provide important information to agencies, and refused to acknowledge the historic African-American community of Union Hill in its efforts to push its pipeline forward. That approach has backfired.

    “The fact that we had to go to federal court to prove that we, a majority Black community, even existed and that our air quality should be protected speaks volumes to why this pipeline doesn’t make any sense,” said Friends of Buckingham member John Laury.

    In January 2020, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the permit for a pipeline compressor station in Union Hill, Virginia, for failing to meet environmental justice standards—just one of the eight required permits the ACP is missing.  And just this week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ended FERC’s unfair tolling practice, which had allowed pipeline construction to proceed before the Commission’s review was complete. With eight missing permits, multiple incomplete agency reviews, and a final route that is still unknown almost six years into the process, Dominion and Duke must not be allowed to build the ACP.

    https://www.southernenvironment.org/news-and-press/press-releases/atlantic-coast-pipeline-confronts-its-expiration-date

  106. 106.

    Kropacetic

    @Aleta: The proposed, 600-mile pipeline would have crossed the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail, which runs through 14 states between Georgia and Maine. Ultimately, the court ruled in favor of the pipeline companies last month, upholding the permit.

    If this goes through, where will Mark Sanford hike?

  107. 107.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    @opiejeanne:

    Someone who has never heard of that museum

    My guess?  A MAGA-type reported you for trolling purposes.  I always assume bad faith; saves me a lot of time.

  108. 108.

    Ruckus

    @Alison Rose:

    Family is gone, I was the youngest. And I’ve had what seems like a lot of birthdays. 50 was a good one, half a century, damn. Since hitting 65 I’ve been a real regular at the neurology dept but about 4 months ago the head doc told me that they’ve tried every med in their arsenal and I can’t take any of them so I get to just live with all my crap. And believe me everybody I know, my age or older has issues. Even mom, who lived to the day before her 95th B day. Getting old would suck, if the alternative wasn’t worse. I mask up and stay inside except for work and grocery shopping. Plan on retiring in about 7 months or so, and I’d like to hit 100, just to see what that’s like. OK I don’t want to hit 100, I want to sail smoothly by it. Good to have goals.

    Enjoy 40, it’s a great age. And yes life right now sorta, does suck, but if you take care of yourself we can get through this. Besides you and I have to wish each other Happy B day for another 29 years….

  109. 109.

    cain

    Looks like all these pipeline people have grown bold in trying to build pipelines everywhere. We should destroy them and hear the lamentation of their accountants as they crawl before us.

  111. 111.

    cain

    @Ruckus: Enjoy 40, it’s a great age. And yes life right now sorta, does suck, but if you take care of yourself we can get through this. Besides you and I have to wish each other Happy B day for another 29 years….

    I loved my 40s. I’m now hitting my 50s. Damn arthritis.

  112. 112.

    Anne Laurie

    @NotMax: To tell the truth, Massachusetts is a much more divided state than our national status indicates.

    A not insignificant part of the Vermont/New Hampshire divide, these days, is that Vermont is economically tied to the neglected low-income western side of the Bay State.    They both draw some tourist ‘benefit’ from upper-income NYC folk coming up for concerts in the summer & skiing in the winter, but every Clark Institute or Lake Champlain Aquarium is surrounded by miles of struggling former industrial towns that look depressingly like those in the Rust Belt (only smaller).  And those towns aren’t necessarily as ‘blue’ as you might expect — but their votes are outweighed by those of us in the actual Bay area.

    New Hampshire, which drew the ‘lucky’ wide side of the parallelogram when the mapmakers split it into two triangles, feeds off the wealthy eastern half of Massachusetts (& points south).   So they’re much more prosperous… but also more resentful of the ‘outstaters’ they depend upon.

  113. 113.

    joel hanes

    @Kropacetic:

    Martian Manhunter

    Holy shit.   I had forgotten all about the Martian Manhunter.

    Time to dive down a google rabbit hole …

  114. 114.

    Aleta

    @Aleta:

    (Richmond Times-Dispatch) The decision (to abandon the Atlantic Coast Pipeline)… ends a six-year effort to build the 42-inch-wide natural gas pipeline through the heart of Virginia to connect gas shale fields in West Virginia with markets in southeastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina.

    Thwarted by environmental groups repeatedly in the federal courts, the project was more than three years behind schedule and more than $3 billion over budget, with no clear path to completion after federal courts in Montana threw out a nationwide federal water quality permit that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline relied upon to cross hundreds of bodies of water in its path.

    Dominion, a Richmond-based company with a majority interest in the project, will absorb about 53% of the $3.4 billion already spent on the pipeline…. The partners spent $400 million on the pipe alone.

    For opponents, the abandonment of the project represents vindication of grass-roots opposition that arose along the pipeline’s path.

    “It’s all about the people,” said Nancy Sorrells, who helped form the Augusta County Alliance against the project in 2014 and represents the county in the Alliance of the Shenandoah Valley…. “It’s been the best Fourth of July since 1776,” she added.

    Rick Webb, a retired environmental scientist who helped lead the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition from his home in Highland County, said of Dominion, “They should have known better. It was a bad idea from the beginning. Dominion, with its ill-conceived project, has done a lot to strengthen the environmental community in the region,” Webb said. “Thank goodness for that.”

    The grass-roots opposition also drove an aggressive legal strategy led by the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville and Appalachian Mountain Advocates, which foiled the project by persuading the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond to throw out numerous federal and state permits needed to complete the project.

    Greg Buppert, senior attorney for the Southern Environment Law Center, was stunned by the announcement that the project was dead. “Wow!” he said when he heard the news on Sunday. “This is a victory for all the communities that were in the path of this risky and unnecessary project.”

    The law center lost a pivotal legal fight with Dominion in the U.S. Supreme Court last month over a permit for the pipeline to cross the Appalachian Trail in the Blue Ridge Mountains between Augusta and Nelson counties. The court voted 7-2 to overturn a portion of a ruling by the 4th Circuit in December 2018 that had thrown out a permit issued by the U.S. Forest Service to allow the pipeline to cross beneath the national scenic trail at Reed’s Gap above the Wintergreen Resort.

    But the project still had to get a new permit from the Forest Service to cross the George Washington and Monongahela national forests, as well as a new biological opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service….

    The project also needed a new federal permit for the pipeline to cross beneath the Blue Ridge Parkway and a revised state air pollution control permit to build a natural gas compressor station in Buckingham County, where the project’s effect on the historically African-American community of Union Hill raised national concerns over environmental justice.

    https://www.richmond.com/users/profile/michaelmartz/

  116. 116.

    James E Powell

    @cain:

    Yesterday I saw a guy in the grocery store with a Trump 2020 Fuck Your Feelings t-shirt, with a piece of tape over the word Fuck. This was an adult, at least 50 years old.

    What kind of a person wears something like that?

  118. 118.

    Anne Laurie

    @Alison Rose: Happy birthday, in advance!

    I’m (a few months shy of) 25 years ahead of you.  On my 40th birthday, home computers were still a luxury item, the ‘internet’ as we know it barely existed, and social media was paper pamphlets mailed to a central ‘editor’ for collation & redistribution, once every couple of months.  And those of us who even had cell phones certainly didn’t have built-in cameras, or nationwide texting capabilities, much less access to just about every form of information / entertainment ever invented…

    So:  Just imagine how wonderful & currently almost unimaginable the birthday messages you’ll get from your friends in 2045 will be!

  119. 119.

    Kropacetic

    @Aleta: Up his pants?

    I believe he outsourced that job

    @James E Powell: Yesterday I saw a guy in the grocery store with a Trump 2020 Fuck Your Feelings t-shirt, with a piece of tape over the word Fuck. This was an adult, at least 50 years old.

    What kind of a person wears something like that?

    The answer to your question is, itself, contained within the question.

  120. 120.

    NotMax

    @Anne Laurie

    I hesitate to apply the term libertarian to the perceived traditional political bone and sinew of Vermont as a way to differentiate it from New Hampshire so shall instead go with ornerier.

    ;)

  121. 121.

    tokyokie

    @Morzer: I saw a poll last week that had Biden +1 over der Trumpenführer in Texas. Well within the poll’s margin of error, but with Abbott having fucked up the Covid-19 response as thoroughly as the fellow to whose ass Abbott has surgically attached his lips, Biden has a realistic shot to carry the state.

  122. 122.

    Anne Laurie

    @NotMax: Vermonters, on average, have less money than Granite Staters.    They can’t afford the luxury of taking a day off to drive across state lines to wave expensive non-hunting weaponry and show off their MAGA swag.

    A mostly unexamined (as of yet) subtext behind the current MAGA rallies is how much they rely on people with spare cash to burn.  They’re retirees, or Poujadists who rely on their employees for the day-to-day labor of keeping their franchises and car dealerships and real estate firms running, or folks living on disability  or their relatives.   It’s not cheap, being a public Trumphead — even the nonofficial swag is comparatively pricey, from what I’ve seen!

  123. 123.

    Brian

    @opiejeanne: Reminds me of someone a while back who used “niggardly” and had to issue an apology, even though the word is derived from Scandinavian and has nothing to do with the n-word.

  124. 124.

    David Evans

    @Brian:  This kind of thing infuriates me. How long before Tolkien’s “Leaf by Niggle” is off the shelves?

  129. 129.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Anne Laurie: The western part of the state is super blue.  Dump got an anemic 26% of the vote in Franklin county, a pathetic 25% of the vote in Hampshire county, 25% of the vote in Berkshire county, and an embarrassing 38% of the vote in Hampden county.

  130. 130.

    tarragon

    @Aziz, light!:

    One of the local bro-dozers that I see usually has an American flag and a traitor flag in the bed.

    Last time I saw it they had changed out the traitor flag for a Gadsden flag.  If they are feeling a bit of shame it’s a start.

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