Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

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

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

White supremacy is terrorism.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Fight them, without becoming them!

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

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

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

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

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

You are here: Home / Elections / Biden-Harris 2020 / Open Thread: Biden Live Events Today

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77Comments

  2. 2.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    both of those in FLA, no? (don’t @ me, I likes my state abbreviations with three letters to the hogshead, dagnabbit(

  4. 4.

    VeniceRiley

    @Baud: They are! They tried to scare me with polling numbers via text though. I’m less anxious than I was in 2018, so.  I just hope that fed-up feeling carries though and we take the Senate. 6 weeks to go.  Going to feel like the longest six weeks of life.

  5. 5.

    Joy in FL

    I just heard a commenter on Ari Melber say that Trump is running a pro-virus campaign. I think that’s clever and accurate.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    @VeniceRiley:

    I’ve learned that the science of fundraising says that messaging style (fear, hope, anger, etc.) doesn’t have to be consistent because different people respond to different messages.

  8. 8.

    laura

    I’m fucking furious at the entire board of governors of the USPS and Grifty DeJoy in particular. I’m old school and pay my bills by check through the mail since I became a bill paying adult. T-mobile started hounding me about my missed payment/s and I didnt pay much attention at first because US post delivers. Whelp, I checked my account to see what’s cleared and what hasn’t and it’s a mess. Several mailed on 8/10 have still not cleared including my city utilities. I paid my utility bill by mail in Sacramento on 8/10 and it hasnt been delivered 3.5 miles from my home to the City Hall. It can’t just be me. There’s a gigantic processing center just accross the river in West Sacramento. I have no idea if they have had equipment removed or idled. 35 days!11! I’ve contacted Congresswomen Doris Matsui’s office to express my concerns. 35 days for in town delivery. By. Design. To benefit trump.

  9. 9.

    Kristine

    @laura: it never occurred to them that people paid bills by mail, and that credit ratings could be adversely affected. They’ve no freaking clue how the world works.

  10. 10.

    stinger

    Love Joe and Kamala! But that’s a terrible photoshop job on the poster image. Her head looks huge next to his, and she’s even positioned slightly behind him. C’mon, man!

  11. 11.

    WaterGirl

    @Kristine: If they don’t care about people’s prescriptions arriving in time, they sure aren’t going to care about bills being paid on time.

    Besides, only the little people pay bills monthly.

  13. 13.

    A Ghost to Most

    So, ICE has been performing “staggering” rates of hysterectomies at the concentration camps.

    Fucking nazis.

  14. 14.

    Leto

    So I read a piece in the WaPo about how Hispanics/Latinos are feeling disrespected/not valued in Florida, and all I can think of is that it’s white people in Wisconsin all over again. I’m absolutely sure that Latino’s interests will be as well represented during a second Trumpov administration as they have been over the past almost 4 years.

  15. 15.

    catclub

    @Baud: 

    Woodward has more tapes. I hate BW but I have to hand it to him on the rollout of his book.

    He completely crushed Michael Cohen’s book rollout.

  16. 16.

    Leto

    @catclub: Honestly I feel like all of these books say the same thing. Sure you get a different angle, but it’s all the same shit that HRC spoke about him during the campaign: He’s dangerously unfit and completely incapable of carrying out the job. Now that I’ve written that, where’s my advance?

  17. 17.

    catclub

    Alexandra Petri is buying none of Danielle Pletka’s shit. Or  WAPO for printing it.

     

    WaPo fucked up by printing Pletka.

  18. 18.

    catclub

    @Leto: my point was that the threat Woodward saw was not Trump lying and covering it up, but some other guy with a competing book.

  19. 19.

    piratedan

    @catclub: isn’t that what’s truly scary… if we sit back and think on it, there’s so much crime going on in the Trump administration and family, we have four books out at the same time covering “aspects” of it, hell, they barely overlap.  We have the family history of crime covered by niece Mary, Trump’s own campaign of dastardly doings during the election covered by Cohen, Then the administration subversion of the Mueller report handled by Strzok and now Woodward, with a completely different area of filth and degredation…. plenty of crime and illegality for EVERYONE and there’s more that’s been done, we just don’t have those books in the pipeline yet… and I forgot, there’s a 5th, the one from Melania’s handmaiden where they cheated the country during his fucking inauguration….

  20. 20.

    debbie

    @laura:

    I too cling to paying bills by check. I like to pay them at the last minute, so I have always tracked how many days it takes for them to clear. When all this started, I paid them as soon as they arrived to avoid problems. I’m very lucky because it hasn’t taken any longer…yet.

  21. 21.

    Jeffro

    @catclub: I just came running over here to post about that!

    Alexandra Petri – national treasure! – walks us through the cognitive dissonhonesty required (by trumpov-supporting, publicly mortally embarrassed, yet still trumpov-supporting) trump supporters in order to vote for trumpov.

    I Can’t Believe You’re Forcing Me to Vote For trumpov, Which I Most Definitely Did Not Want to Do!

    Over the past four years, Trump’s ominous shadow has devoured everything that was precious about America, chewed on it and spat out only bones and gristle. This has slightly obscured the accomplishments of his administration, which include, if I am remembering right (DON’T TELL ME IF I’M NOT; THAT WILL MAKE ME ANGRY, AND YOU KNOW WHO ANGRY PEOPLE VOTE FOR), ending the budget deficit and doing whatever it was Abraham Lincoln did, but better and faster.

    Do I think Trump has the attributes necessary for governing? Absolutely not! He is a dangerous man, and every day we spend under his leadership is a day we lose a precious share of the world’s respect that we may never regain. There’s definitely not a “But!” coming after such a strong and overwhelming condemnation of his leadership.

    LOLOLOL

  27. 27.

    Roger Moore

    @gwangung:

    We can probably move pretty quickly, because a lot of the bills have been written and passed by the House.  It’s mostly a matter of changing the Senate rules so McConnell and company can’t stall them all.

  28. 28.

    Skepticat

    @laura:  When a credit card company notified me their mail to me had been returned as undeliverable, a little research disclosed that the post office where my box was had been permanently closed without notice. (I wasn’t in the country, but my mail was being forwarded to my niece, and she’d been there only a few days previously but saw no mention of the closing.) The “rationale” apparently was that it was the only post office for a city of fewer about 27,000, but it wasn’t economical to serve that small a population. My credit card, newly renewed driver’s license and car registration, and assorted other mail was in the wind. I tracked them down the card, license, and renewal, all of which has been returned to the senders as undeliverable. I mentioned the issue to the woman at the post office where I got a new box (there’s no mail service on my island; I have to go to the mainland) and told her I didn’t like her new boss. I was assured none of them did either.

  29. 29.

    Jeffro

    @TaMara (HFG): TaMara, we all know that trumpov-enablers have absolutely no agency here, they simply MUST vote against the dirty hippies/far-far-left agenda/soshulists, whether real or imagined.  Come on now ;)

    (I kid but it’s technically true: these people have been in the FoxBubble for over three decades now…four full decades if you count from the start of the ReagRandian years.  They’re our own home-grown North Koreans, unable to stop and process the most basic of facts or make the simplest of moral decisions if they come into conflict with worshipping ‘the market’, white supremacy, or both.)

  31. 31.

    piratedan

    @gwangung: I get the impression if we take the Senate that Nancy-Smash has an impressive agenda that will be rolled out.  She’s got an impressive list of Capos in place and I suspect that if we roll sevens on this election that we’re gonna see some wholesale changes.

    It will be fast based on the lessons learned the last time from the GOP ratfucking and abuse of the system….

  33. 33.

    johnnybuck

    @catclub: I live in Georgia, I hear this nonsense non-stop. “I hate Trump, but Joe Biden is senile and being led by the nose by AOC!!”

    They will never change.

  34. 34.

    MomSense

    I’m following Kamala’s example and doing a little cooking therapy. Cuban style black beans and lime cilantro rice.

  38. 38.

    planetjanet

    I went through a seriously rage this afternoon when I heard that Jim Cramer on CNBC was interviewing Nancy Pelosi and called her Crazy Nancy in her face.  I came off his tongue so smoothly like he had said it a hundred times.  He immediately pivoted and tried to say that is what the president says and oh, no he would never say it.  Nancy, so gracefully said, “But you just did.”  Did not ignore it.  Did not excuse it.  Pure graceful cut.

    In a sane world, he would be out of a job and the headlines would be howling.  But it feels like a whisper.  Interviewing the Speaker of the House and calls her an infantile name.  Oh, how I want this insanity to end.

  41. 41.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @catclub:

    Alexandra Petri is buying none of Danielle Pletka’s shit. Or WAPO for printing it.

    Daniel Drezner also has a good takedown of Pletka. It’s not as funny as Petri’s, but devastating nonetheless. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an opinion piece being as thoroughly skewered, not once but twice, in the same newspaper and on the same day. Shame on the WaPo for wasting pixels on the original, but kudos to them for running the Petri and Drezner rebuttals.

  45. 45.

    Miss Bianca

    @laura: Come sit 6 feet away from me. My storage unit guy hasn’t received his check – mailed August 13! – and my check to the IRS hasn’t cleared yet either – mailed around the same time. AWWKK!

  47. 47.

    Aleta

    @A Ghost to Most: More psychological torture,  just like terrorizing their children is.   Cheney and Bush told Republicans that torture is justified to stop enemies and told us all to forget about them.

  48. 48.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:

    As far as I can tell shitforbrains doesn’t pay his bills. Period.

    People like the Mercers don’t pay their bills. It’s been said that they owe 7 Billion in taxes. 7 fucking billion in unpaid taxes. Wonder how much they’ve spent avoiding those taxes? When I owed businesses I paid my taxes, because if you don’t and your bill isn’t 7 fucking billion, they will just take it out of your bank account, including interest and 20% penalty – figured on the total of the owed and the interest. But if you owe 7 fucking billion they will negotiate with you, to make it more…. what I don’t know. How can you get to 7 billion owed in taxes without being tried and hung up by your privates?

  49. 49.

    Wapiti

    @planetjanet: I expect that Jim Cramer uses “crazy Nancy” when talking with his friends. He forgot where he was. (Which it why is a bad practice to use derogatory language in private).

    I expect that Ms. Pelosi understands it that way as well.

  50. 50.

    Miss Bianca

    @TaMara (HFG):

    Shorter Republican: It’s Dems fault I have to vote for the crazy disease in the WH

    There’s more of that abuser logic there. Right-wingers sure seem addicted to that mode of thinking. I wonder why.

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    @Miss Bianca: I wish more folks would call what trumpov does “abuse” – it might well be a moment of clarity for an additional few (but important!) % of voters

  54. 54.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Wapiti: Cramer was on Twitter quite a bit to say that he was using that to criticize the way Trump uses it. He says he does not approve of it and was trying to make a point.

    I take no position, just reporting what Cramer tweeted.

  57. 57.

    Yutsano

    @Ruckus: Easy:

    1. Have a shit ton of employees
    2. Don’t pay any of their Social Security or Medicare taxes or even file 941s.
    3. Have the IRS process those 941s for you.
    4. Ignore any collection attempts by getting tax attorneys to keep fighting the attempts.
    5. Keep appealing every attempt until you hope to run out the statute of limitations on the accounts.
    6. Appeal actions lengthen the time of collection.

    Basically: they think it’s fine to completely screw their employees out of either ideological reasons or because they’re that cheap. But because they fight out in court every single action nothing ever gets to enforcement. I’ve seen it on smaller scales but this is beyond ridiculous.

  60. 60.

    Ruckus

    @debbie:

    I pay 3 bills by check. Only 2 get mailed. I can pay one of them in a different manner. It’s a federal program in which the billing department was privatized after trump took office and it’s been hit and miss, wrong charges, now billing has no idea how the system actually works, and I haven’t gotten a bill in 5 months. IOW a cluster of trumpian proportions.

  61. 61.

    Patricia Kayden

    House Democrats need to drag ICE Officials Into hearings for its abuses.

    NEW: ICE deported a crucial witness in an ongoing investigation into allegations of sexual assault and harassment at an El Paso immigrant detention center, according to the witness' lawyers. With @ProPublica: https://t.co/63mFRBkJbD— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) September 15, 2020

  62. 62.

    Ruckus

    @Yutsano:

    I know you know all of the following but it should be obvious that this pisses me off to the maximum. I have owned two businesses. The second one cost me a lot in interest and penalties to make up for taxes owed because of the recession. Also caused by fucking republicans. I’ve paid every cent of all of it while those fucking assholes owe some fucking spectacular amount. And that money belongs to their employees and to all of us. It could be used to make the country a better place for all but no, they have stolen it all to appear wealthy and patriotic. And all it’s really done is show that they are fucking assholes. And trump would have to come up a few hundred steps to be at their level of fucking assholes.

  63. 63.

    catclub

    @Yutsano: The mercer case was employee free, it was a real dodgy tax loophole, that they are fighting as long as they can – with better lawyers than the irs, no doubt.

  64. 64.

    Kay

    @planetjanet:

    Jon Stewart went after the cable financial shows after the 2009 crash because they did such an incredibly bad job predicting it, up to and including telling people to buy stock in companies that then crashed within days. It was funny, and I think a public service:

     Stewart said, “The thing that upsets me the most, honestly, there are three 24-hour financial networks. All their slogans are like, ‘We know what’s going on in Wall Street.’ But then you turn it on during the crisis, and they’re like, ‘We don’t know what’s going on!’ It’d be like turning on The Weather Channel in a hurricane, and they’re just doing this: ‘Why am I wet? What’s happening to me? And it’s so windy! What’s going on, I’m scared!’ How do you not know, man?”

  66. 66.

    Kay

    @planetjanet:

    I don’t think Cramer is telling the truth. After the insult he said “I would never say that, I have such respect for the office”

    That’s what you say when you don’t respect the person in the office. He knew what he was saying. It doesn’t matter that much- I don’t think Pelosi cares what he says- but he intended to disrespect her.

  68. 68.

    planetjanet

    @Kay: You are absolutely right.  He said it so easily.  He was not asking “how do you feel when the president calls you crazy?”  His denials just ring hollow.  I don’t care how many tweets claim he never meant it.  I could hear it in his voice.  Pure gaslighting.  Again Speaker Pelosi responded so well.  He inferred it was a joke, saying you know what I meant.  She simply said, “I know what you did.  I do. I do.”  Just perfect.  She is a gift.

  69. 69.

    oclib

    @Ruckus:

    Would that one bill be from the VA?  I ask because I haven’t gotten one for at least 5 or more months.  Wasn’t sure if I got labeled totally free or what….

  70. 70.

    Jeffro

    The clips on Twitter from the president*s  Town hall on ABC are absolutely lit

    Biden & Co must have a minimal production budget for future ads between now and the election, because all they have to do is run clips from this shit show with a quick voice over and boom, we are done here

  71. 71.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay:

    That’s what you say when you don’t respect the person in the office. He knew what he was saying. It doesn’t matter that much- I don’t think Pelosi cares what he says- but he intended to disrespect her

    That’s how I took it too. Cramer is such a fucking buffoon in his own right, and CNBC doesn’t get enough attention as the FoxNews knock-off it is.

  72. 72.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jeffro:

    Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom ·11m
    This woman is just staring at him while he rambles on at high-speed about all he’s done for the military and then for some reason Trump says “and the gloves are off with Biden, who I never respected greatly” Trump says it was a disinformation campaign started

    He wants to have a pissing contest with Goldberg and Woodward? Just saw a clip on the O’Donnell show where-in Wee, Whispery Jared says he taped all his conversations, makes it sound like he’s ready to release dueling clips with Woodward. I’ve despised Woodward for years, but I think it’s a mistake to threaten the old man. I think this book has brought him a relevance he hasn’t had in over 20 years, and he’s going to fight to the (proverbial… probably) death to hold on to it

  74. 74.

    Sally

    @Kay: We were in the building materials business at that time. We knew, Jerry Brown knew, almost a year beforehand. We put our Atlanta house on the market Jan 2008. People didn’t believe that it could or would happen. The money guys knew, and were betting against the US economy. They made fortunes.

  75. 75.

    catclub

    @Sally: The money guys knew, and were betting against the US economy.

     

    A FEW of the money guys got the bet right.  A surprisingly small number. They were betting that house prices could not grow forever.

  76. 76.

    Sally

    @catclub: Well, I would suggest that it was not so much that they thought house prices couldn’t rise forever, but they knew a debt crisis was coming. Because they set it up, making shonky loans and bundling and selling them as investment opportunities.

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