Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Come on, man.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

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

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

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

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

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Trump should be leading, not lying.

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

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

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

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

When we show up, we win.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

You are here: Home / Elections / Biden-Harris 2020 / Monday Morning Open Thread: Building A Cabinet & An Administration

Monday Morning Open Thread: Building A Cabinet & An Administration

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Reuters has an excellent checklist of what we actually know about Biden’s choices for his team to date. Many fine choices!

Joe Biden is a natural optimist, and a skilled practitioner of reach-across-the-aisle politics. He also knows, as my granny would say, how many beans make five:

Speaking of the Soon-to-Be-Ex-Squatter… the wealth of details here made me laugh:
Fired Sale - Lalo Alcaraz

(Lalo Alcaraz via GoComics.com)

Reader Interactions

190Comments

  3. 3.

    satby

    I never thought Joe would be too conciliatory toward Republicans, but a fire-breathing partisan would have thrilled us and probably lost the election. I think he’s a practical and kind man, and will use those tools to get the most that he can done. And though I always liked him personally, I really underrated him before and and am very happy to be proved wrong.

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I just noticed that trump appears to be sitting in a plastic chair. I’m wondering if there is any meaning in that.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    Every person dunking on it by claiming he just wants government to understand people, not help them, is actually showing they tweet about videos they don’t watch.

    I don’t even understand the underlying criticism here.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    @satby:

     I really underrated him before and and am very happy to be proved wrong.

    Yep.  I can’t recall the last politician who really exceeded expectations as much as Joe. Obama came with high expectations so he’s not it.  Joe’s really stepped up to the moment.

  10. 10.

    Nicole

    @satby:

    but a fire-breathing partisan would have thrilled us and probably lost the election.

    My lifelong-GOP-voting sister-in-law voted for Biden (you always remember your first Democrat!) precisely because he wasn’t a fire-breathing partisan, so I think you’re right about this.  And the lack of deficit hawks in his selections so far is very encouraging.  As Charlie Pierce has said, fuck the deficit: people got no jobs, people got no money.  I am also happy to have been wrong.

  11. 11.

    MJS

    @satby: I underestimated him as well. I thought (and argued, here) that he would be too gaffe prone in the general election to win. I’ve never been happier to admit I was dead wrong.

  12. 12.

    sab

    @satby: Obama has always been pretty good at picking personnel, and out of the whole Democratic Party to choose from he chose Biden.

    Biden did a good job running the ’08 stimulus in a squeaking clean manner, amd that was also a case of having to hit the ground running.

  13. 13.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    He’s a cheap S.O.B. That’s what that means.

    I don’t think Trump ever got an approval rating higher than the low 40s. Based on that alone, he never had a chance of winning—unless he intended to suppress/rig the vote. Which he did.

    I wish we would point that out more. Rather than defend the integrity of the voting process, point out the many ways Trump conspired to subvert it.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: He’s a cheap S.O.B. That’s what that means.

    I don’t see that. I mean he’s a master at spending other people’s money, to the point of having a golden toilet.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    @Nicole:

    I feel there were a lot of ticket splitters this year.  I just learned we retained ME-2, which went for Trump by a good bit.

  16. 16.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Back before he had political ambitions and was just another mega-millionaire striving to get noticed in the society pages, it was pointed out more than once that the cheap gold paint on most of the French Provincial furniture cluttering up his penthouse were noticeably chipped.

  18. 18.

    satby

    @Baud: If you think government should only work for corporations, as the fascists do, then understanding “the people” just muddies up the mission.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @satby:

    Fascists actually do a good job when it comes to understanding the people.  At least if you’re talking about how to trigger people’s dark side.

  21. 21.

    John S.

    It’s just not good enough according to Nesrine Malik at The Guardian:

    The clue to the lack of potential in Biden’s diversity drive is in the fact that these appointments so far have been received with relief as a return to business as usual.

    After four years of the Trump administration, there’s nothing “usual” about appointing competent people to serve in government. But that’s just proof of how awful Biden’s picks are!

    I swear The Guardian actively looks for contrarians who are just never satisfied with anything.

  23. 23.

    RSA

    @OzarkHillbilly: 

    I just noticed that trump appears to be sitting in a plastic chair. I’m wondering if there is any meaning in that.

    I’m thinking it’s just what people sit on while running a yard sale in a not-well-off neighborhood.

  24. 24.

    satby

    Shipping and supply chains are still messed up thanks to dumbshit donny and his wrecking crew, done by design. Competent people won’t be in charge soon enough for me. I can normally shut down accepting new orders as late as the 19th most Christmases, this year it’ll be next weekend. I sent a big package out last week, dropped it off myself, and it still wasn’t in the USPS system the next day. Scary!

  26. 26.

    PST

    @Baud:

    I don’t even understand the underlying criticism here.

    I don’t either, but my very woke Seattle-based child retweeted it with the comment “Fuck you Joey.” There is a whole lot of undermining going on already, and it’s coming from people with much to lose if Biden fails.

  27. 27.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Dump got 46% of vote this time and 46% of the vote last time.  He got a lower percentage of the vote than Mittens and about the same as McCain.  Yet the media treats him as if he won 66% of the vote.

  28. 28.

    satby

    @Baud: well, yeah I agree. But that’s to stay in power, not to deliver services. Staying in power is it’s own goal. Services then go to the corporations and elite, and any concern for the people beyond effectively manipulating them is counterproductive.

  29. 29.

    satby

    @John S.: The Guardian has really blown it since the election, it seems all their opinion writers are ready to demand political purity over competence and diversity. Which I told them in response to one of their endless begging pop-ups. Not a fucking dime.

  30. 30.

    Tony Jay

    Meanwhile, as the failed-state of Lesser Brexitania continues its well-greased slide down the dissolution poop-chute, ‘our’ Government’s rushed announcement of a Great British Vaccine (conceived, developed, produced and provided, like most other quintessentially ‘British’ staples, by decidedly non-British sources) has been dead-catted off the front pages by the onrushing train that is the imminent Deadline of All Deadlines for the UK to devise, negotiate, and sign a comprehensive post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union. If tick follows tock and nothing very much is agreed (and let’s face it, which trans-national alliance of self-respecting nation states would be stupid enough to trust our reigning menagerie of crab-barrelling slum landlords and xenophobic wallpaste-eaters to stick to any deal for longer than a news cycle?) we will crash out of the world’s largest economic common-market without a single legally binding agreement on anything, with predictable consequences for, well, everything.

    But never fear! The BBC informs me that the major sticking point preventing the UK from guaranteeing food, commerce and all the basic rudimentaries of 21st century civilisation past January 1st isn’t the ideologically rigid refusal of its Government to negotiate in good faith with those actual, real-life EU representatives on the other side of the table, as opposed to the entirely fictional weak-willed but despotic foreign mandarins they’re always outmanoeuvring so brilliantly in their beer-fuelled Brextremist daydreams. No, no, and thrice no, that would be far too partisan a line for the yoke-broken State Broadcaster to take. So instead of uncomfortable truths that might draw a raised eyebrow or a backhanded slap from a Very Important Person, we’re being fed the stale old lines that, a) ‘everyone knows’ all international deals are only ever negotiated in a mad hurry at the very stroke of Midnight, so there’s nothing to worry about, and b) the issue is the EU’s failure/refusal to fully understand that the UK has left the EU and is a sovereign independent state……..so by virtue of its sovereign independence should get absolutely everything it wants out of a trade deal with no cheeky backchat from the insufficiently Anglo.

    This is what passes for ‘news’ in Tory Britain. This is what the ‘independent’ BBC is telling people. Roll on the Christmas Invasion and this year, maybe The Doctor can do us all a favour by keeping his or her nose out of our sovereign and independent affairs, because so help me FSM I am seriously of the opinion that, while a a kinetic impact with cold, hard reality probably won’t do the country much good, I can’t see how anyone rescuing us from the disaster we’ve sleepwalked into will teach us a damned thing. And of course, by ‘we’ and ‘us’ I mean people who voted Tory and people who didn’t vote Labour, not me. I’ve tracked down a Lilliputian great-grandmother and I am applying for dual citizenship ASA fucking P. Better to be an inch-tall and in the right than a racist right-winger who’s full of shite (Note to self – As a national motto it’s punchy but needs polish).

    Still, on the bright side the Biden Administration looks like it’s eager to get on with the job while the Fluorescent Failure is doing his bit for sanity by encouraging as many Georgian Goppers as he can to spend election day in an ICU so, yeah, that’s a thumbs up from this side of the Atlantic.

  32. 32.

    Mousebumples

    @satby: if you’re talking about mine, it’s supposed to arrive today, per my USPS Delivery Notices? And I also was wondering what was up with it since i didn’t get a notice that it was coming until Saturday. Can’t wait to get better postal leadership in a month and a half!

  35. 35.

    debbie

    @Mousebumples:

    We should all be grateful the USPS was able to recover as much as it did and deliver those ballots Trump thought he’d consigned to the depths of … whatever.

  36. 36.

    Geminid

    @Baud: The Virginia 1st Congressional District was a mirror image of the Maine 2nd, with incumbent Republican Randy Wittman winning easily while Biden carried his district. But overall, there sure wasn’t as much ticket splitting as I’d hoped. Steve Bullock ran 5 points ahead of Biden in Montana, but that was not enough. Barbara Bollier ran only 2 points ahead of Biden in Kansas. And while I figured there would be a large undervote for McSally in AZ, she only ran a point or so behind trump in Arizona, while Kelly was only 2 points ahead of Biden. Voting in other races I remember looking at seemed to closely track presidential totals. Tribalism?

  38. 38.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Trump raised the stakes for both sides.  How much would you sacrifice for total victory over conservatism? That’s what Trump promised with respect to liberalism.  Had he won, he might have been able to deliver.

  40. 40.

    satby

    @Mousebumples: I was, but that’s a relief! I know it went out on the truck that day, the counter person assured me it would and I dropped it hours before the last truck out (I know their schedule better than my own). They must not have scanned it until Indy.

    Edit: and how annoying is it that it all has to go to Indianapolis before heading back north?

  42. 42.

    Mousebumples

    @debbie: oh, I am, but I was half hoping that after they failed to steal the election, things would return to normal (usps wise). No luck, so far…

  45. 45.

    Karen S.

    @Tony Jay: I’m looking on with dismay at what’s going on in your neck of the woods from my home in Chicago, but I thank you for your acerbic and entertaining summaries of the Brexit Situation.

  47. 47.

    Matt McIrvin

    @debbie:

    I don’t think Trump ever got an approval rating higher than the low 40s. Based on that alone, he never had a chance of winning—unless he intended to suppress/rig the vote. Which he did.

    Vote suppression combined with the bias of the Electoral College was nearly enough anyway–as Paul Campos likes to point out, if you go by votes needed to flip the EC in the key states, Biden’s win was actually a closer squeaker than Trump’s win in 2016, even though Biden 2020 won by 7 million in the popular vote, and Trump 2016 *lost* the PV by almost 3 million. The system is effectively spotting the Republican candidate something like 10 million votes.

    You can win the presidency today with approval in the low 40s, but probably only if you’re a Republican. Trump’s personal approval rating on Election Day 2016 was actually even lower.

  48. 48.

    Tony Jay

    @Karen S.:

    You’re welcome. It’s good to vent every once in a while.

    Oh, and everyone else is right. Fuck the Fucking Guardian, it’s just another profit-seeking Infotainment outlet with a different tint to its audience filter.

  49. 49.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I wonder if we would have done even better if it weren’t for COVID.  Our side does take it more seriously than the GOP.  We’ll probably never know.

  50. 50.

    Mousebumples

    @satby: yeah, fair enough. There were those who claimed they were unneeded and unused machines. I was hoping there was a shred of truth to that. Obviously, they were lying through their teeth…

  51. 51.

    Amir Khalid

    @satby:

    Thank you. I haven’t been feeling weepy today, partly bcause I have been avoiding certain musical triggers: Bruce Springsteen’s You’re Missing, Linda Ronstadt’s cover of Goodbye My Friend (which Karla Bonoff apparently wrote about the passing of a beloved cat), P. Ramlee’s Di-Mana Kan Ku Chari Ganti, and other music in that vein.

    (Oops.)

    I miss cuddling Bianca and kissing her. I miss her head rubs and tongue baths. I still watch where I put my legs in bed to avoid accidental collisions with her. I look around for her like she’s still here.

    I know this will pass, and it should. I almost don’t want it to.

  52. 52.

    Amir Khalid

    @Tony Jay:

    I still don’t understand why no-deal Brexit, the outcome that will obviously damage Britain the most, is what Bojo And The Tories want. Are they that stupid, that spiteful, that greedy, or all three?

  54. 54.

    Nicole

    @Baud:

    I feel there were a lot of ticket splitters this year.

    Yeah, I’m kinda curious how my SIL voted on the rest of her ballot, but I don’t want to be disappointed in her so I’m not going to ask. ;)  Her area still went for Trump overall, but there was an almost 4 percentage point shift towards Biden compared with 2016, and as she lives in PA, I’m very glad she was able to set tribalism aside for the top of the ticket, anyway.

  55. 55.

    Soprano2

    @John S.: After four years of the Trump administration, there’s nothing “usual” about appointing competent people to serve in government. But that’s just proof of how awful Biden’s picks are!

    I swear some of these people think Biden should appoint the same kind of cabinet officials they think Bernie Sanders would appoint; you know, the kind who couldn’t get confirmation by the Senate even with 50 Democratic senators. *rolleyes* They don’t care about good governance, they care about “making a statement”.

  56. 56.

    TruthOfAngels

    @Amir Khalid: Funny thing is, I read the Guardian (UK) every day and, while the news reporting is very good, the opinion section is more or less complete clickbait drivel.

     

    Not unlike a certain New York-based paper, methinks.

  57. 57.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: 538 made that point too–aside from a few high-profile cases like Maine Senate, there wasn’t a huge amount of ticket-splitting, and the differences in House/Senate/Presidential results mostly came from the different biases of the election process for these bodies.

    It’s easy to perceive us as having done worse in the House than the Presidency, but that’s just because we did better in the 2018 midterm than in 2016–that sets the baseline expectations differently.

  58. 58.

    Geminid

    @Baud: I had been speculating that with trump off the ticket and internal struggles within the republican party, 2022 was looking better for the Democrats than many people projected. Political scientist Rachel Bitecofer killed that buzz, though. She says the Republicans are going to come back just as strong in 2022, and Democrats damn sure better be ready.                             Bitecofer’s twitter feed is very informative. Her strength is her analysis of demography and relation to political affiliation, but her discussion of political tactics and strategy seems insightful. She has her own website now, The Cycle, that features her longer analytical work.

  59. 59.

    germy

    COVIDIOT Staten Island bar owner Daniel Presti fractures sheriff deputy with Jeep while trying to flee, gets cuffed

    “He just doesn’t care about people’s lives … uniformed officer is clinging for life on the hood of his car," a de Blasio spokesman said.https://t.co/lQoqpRJSME pic.twitter.com/FGLTphFsXM

    — New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) December 7, 2020

    The man was charged with a litany of misdemeanors rather than aggravated assault or attempted murder and he was released without bail, but hey, they did use their handcuffs on him for a time. https://t.co/JFWmKrFRoW

    — southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) December 7, 2020

    If he was black he’d be dead on the scene.

    — Kish Galappatti (@Kgalappatti) December 7, 2020

    He literally tried to kill some cops and they’re like “no worries, my guy”.

    — Big Brain (@BigBrain1234) December 7, 2020

  60. 60.

    Gin & Tonic

    What is a Magnitsky Act called if you assiduously eschew the word “Magnitsky?” It is called “Council Regulation (EU) 2020/1998 of 7 December 2020 concerning restrictive measures against serious human rights violations and abuses.” Here is where to find it in your choice of 24 languages.

    All joking aside, congrats to the EU for finally getting through this.

  62. 62.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Tony Jay:

    reigning menagerie of crab-barrelling slum landlords and xenophobic wallpaste-eaters 

    Hehe, well said, good sir!

    while the Fluorescent Failure is doing his bit for sanity by encouraging as many Georgian Goppers as he can to spend election day in an ICU so, yeah, that’s a thumbs up from this side of the Atlantic.

    Yup.  And they’re enthusiastically giving their last dollars to their orange god’s “election recount” fund.  Or whatever the bastards are calling the grift today.

  63. 63.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It’s easy to perceive us as having done worse in the House than the Presidency, but that’s just because we did better in the 2018 midterm than in 2016–that sets the baseline expectations differently.

    We kept control despite continued gerrymandering.

  67. 67.

    Amir Khalid

    @TruthOfAngels:

    I mainly read The Guardian’s football section, and that difference between the reporting and the opinions applies there too.

    Its excellent reporters will help you form your own opinions, and then you can safely ignore its opinion writers.

  68. 68.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Amir Khalid: BoJo is a real knuckle head.  He went to Burma and started muttering about the greatness of colonialism, forcing the UK ambassador to publicly denounce him.

    I understand how a slob like Dump would do that, but how is someone from Oxford and Eton so dim witted.

  70. 70.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    A couple of thoughts from yesterday:

    1. In a recycling of a Vietnam War theme, who wants to be the last American to die from COVID?
    2. Our media is again failing us. Quit centering 24/7 programming around talking pundits. Start featuring stories from people in hospital beds, bereaved family members, owners of shuttered or struggling small businesses. Bring on Republicans to justify their policy choices to their faces.
  71. 71.

    germy

    I know, I know, there’s a lot of legitimate anger over Rudy’s behavior. But it’s possible both to condemn his absurd legal crusade and reckless Covid hygiene, AND at the same time not revel in the fact he caught a life-threatening disease. That’s all.

    — Mike McIntire (@mmcintire) December 7, 2020

    It’s reassuring to know, as we descend ever deeper into this diseased neo-feudal dystopia, that there will always be a class of people here to remind us that the worst possible thing is to be rude to the wealthy and powerful. https://t.co/ScMzQ9lHqA

    — Under-sea New York Rat Network (@DavidTodd) December 7, 2020

    How many people who are ‘feeling good’ after a Covid diagnosis get a hospital bed? pic.twitter.com/1dpvvvudpt

    — Schooley (@Rschooley) December 7, 2020

  72. 72.

    evodevo

    @satby: Welcome to the post’08 Crash PO, citizen.  It wouldn’t have been such a cluster if we hadn’t then taken on the Amazon contract a few years ago.  The Amazon package volume is horrendous for us carriers, and even moreso this year, with everyone and his aunt buying virtually everything online now.  And our little rural office finally got hit with the ‘rona in the middle of Nov. with several quarantined and one actually affected.  And, now, just before Xmas, one carrier is still out with injuries and another goes out tomorrow for surgery.  Should be interesting….the subs they send up from the central office to pinch hit know NOTHING about the routes they are running AND are overburdened.  So, good luck with deliveries until we get over that hiring freeze and get some good management…

  74. 74.

    TruthOfAngels

    @Amir Khalid:  I dunno, I quite like the sport stuff. Mind you, I’m an Arsenal fan, so what do I know about sport?

     

    (Four flipping League defeats in a row. FOUR. I am much disappoint.)

  77. 77.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @germy: Vichy Times reporter doing what comes natural to them – sucking up to disgusting, racist republicans.

  78. 78.

    libarbarian

    Reuters has an excellent checklist of what we actually know about Biden’s choices for his team to date.

    Why is Biden picking the romantic partners of his staff?

    Why is Reuters reporting on this like it’s normal??

  82. 82.

    Ken

    @Tony Jay: we will crash out of the world’s largest economic common-market without a single legally binding agreement on anything

    I thought there was an agreement on soy sauce tariffs?  But maybe that was with Japan, since in addition to reaching agreements with the EU, Britain also has to re-negotiate everything that used to be covered by its EU membership.

  84. 84.

    Gin & Tonic

    @germy: When I came in yesterday from doing some outdoor work and my dear wife told me the news about Rudy, I laughed and laughed. So, yes, I guess maybe it’s theoretically possible not to revel in the fact that he caught a deadly disease, but that certainly leaves open the possibility of reveling. Which I did.

    Fuck him.

  85. 85.

    germy

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I’m more concerned about other people he probably infected.  Not so much the frauds or delusionals who testified next to him, but the various innocent people who serve his food, mix his drinks, clean his houses, etc.

  86. 86.

    Tony Jay

    @Amir Khalid:

    To an extent, yes to all three, but more than that I think they’re in the same position as many of the other traditionally ‘conservative’ parties around the world. They all sold whatever souls they had to the Murdoch Media Machine and its ideologically-aligned ‘rivals’, trading political influence and unrestricted profit in return for a propagandised populace fed metric shit-tons of hateful racist, homophobic, sexist bilge on a daily basis, and now they’re trapped. Their electorates, especially the ones who have been taught to align their ‘values’ with voting Conservative, are radicalised, and they expect their politicians to enact that radicalism in their policies.

    Someone in the Guardian comments section today made a very good point. They bullet-pointed a National Front flyer from back in the 1970s, with its demands for leaving the common-market, stopping immigration, cutting foreign aid, building up the Armed Forces and making Britain ‘Great’ again. Back then those were fringe radical ideas and the NF a despised neo-Nazi stain on the national political map, now they run the country and their policies are suddenly ‘mainstream’, and it’s all because a majority of the population has spent the intervening four decades marinating in a toxic stew of hard-right tabloid filth that convinced them all of their problems were caused by ‘those people’ and the resentment they felt was not only justified, but patriotic, virtuous and, most importantly, something they should act on at the ballot box.

    Why do the Tories want a No-Deal Brexit? Because the people who own them and who own their Media allies want one, everything else is just slogans.

    On a different topic, hope your heart is healing a bit. The boys in red obviously heard you needed a pick-me-up and did their best to provide it last night. ;-)

  87. 87.

    Tony Jay

    @Ken:

    Yep. Every single trade deal we had as a member of the EU has to be renegotiated and re-signed by the end of the month or they lapse.

    We. Are. Fucked.

    OTOH you can bet every bitcoin you find down the back of your virtual couch that when the fan gets brownbombed and prices skyrocket after New Year the people who voted for all this won’t accept a single, solitary sliver of the blame. Nope. It’ll be perfidious ferriners, treacherous lefties and the strangely-browns on the chopping block toot sweetie.

  89. 89.

    Citizen Scientist

    @Amir Khalid: Condolences Amir. :(. My parents’ special needs cat passed recently from kidney issues.  I may have been more upset about it than they were – she (Miss Kitty) was pretty cranky most of the time and the last I saw her, was a day I had to take her to the vet, so she wasn’t happy with me that day. That memory makes me smile for some reason. :) Bianca sounds like a great cat and companion.

  91. 91.

    Amir Khalid

    @TruthOfAngels:

    My guess is that what’s wrong with Arsenal, like what’s wrong with Manchester United, isn’t just down to the first-team manager. United hired the best managers in the world after Moyes, and still failed. Arteta is as good a manager as Arsenal could have chosen, and still they under-perform.  The problems are with how these clubs are being run from the executive suite. Find these problems and fix them before you expect a manager to solve the first teams.

    But it’s hard to impose change on these executive suites, because they are powerful within the club and are entrenched in their ways.

  92. 92.

    gene108

    @Mousebumples:

    Can’t wait to get better postal leadership in a month and a half!

    It really depends on if Democrats can sweep Georgia Senate races.

    There are USPS Board of Governors seats expiring, which need to be filled, in order to remove DeJoy and make the Post Office functional again.

  94. 94.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Amir Khalid: 

    I still don’t understand why no-deal Brexit, the outcome that will obviously damage Britain the most, is what Bojo And The Tories want. Are they that stupid, that spiteful, that greedy, or all three?

    Yes to all three. Bojo wants to stay as PM. To do that he needs to keep the increasingly large, powerful and well organised hard Brexit wing of the Party happy and he is seriously disappointing them with his COVID-19 policy, which pays at least a modicum of attention to the health and wellbeing of the people.

    It is interesting to note that the rhetoric of the Brexiteers has changed from a deal benefiting the UK will be easily achieved and Britain will immediately become a land of milk and honey to one of things will get hairy for a time but Britain will emerge stronger than ever and we’ll be free!

    The effects of Brexit may not be felt by UK consumers immediately as I understand the government doesn’t intend to institute customs checks on incoming goods for 6 months but the potential loss of revenue from that policy is unsustainable in the long term and there’s no reason for the EU to reciprocate so companies relying on exports will suffer.

    Good Times all round. If I could drum up a case for dual nationality I would. Unfortunately , my DNA test shows 77% British and the closest I can get to a foreign connection from my family history research is a sister of one of my Great Great Grandfather’s who married the British born son of a Polish/Russian Jew. I don’t think it’s enough and I don’t want to live in Poland, Russia or Israel anyway.

  97. 97.

    TruthOfAngels

    @Amir Khalid: I think you’re right there. Also, we need to sort out our transfer policy and get rid of the dead weight on our books. But I want to persist with Arteta. After all, he’s the man who masterminded our two victories over the ‘Pool this year :)

  98. 98.

    raven

    79 years ago today my dad was standing on the steps of the YMCA in San Diego. A loudspeaker broadcast the new that Pearl Harbor had been attacked and for all sailors to return to their ships. The next day they put out to sea with some crew members that had been in the navy for one day.

  100. 100.

    Amir Khalid

    @Tony Jay:

    The boys in red obviously heard you needed a pick-me-up and did their best to provide it last night.

    When Liverpool Football Club promise You’ll Never Walk Alone, they mean it. That’s why Liverpool is my club.

  103. 103.

    germy

    @raven:

    When my father heard about Pearl Harbor he enlisted.

    They made him a rifle man and he ended up in the battle of the bulge, and finally a POW.

  104. 104.

    Immanentize

    @Sloane Ranger: Hi Sloane!!

    I tell my law students that if they have a grandparent alive from the old country (most often Italy or Ireland here in Beantown) that they should make no delay on getting dual citizenship.  Work privileges in the EU that Brits will no longer enjoy ….

  105. 105.

    different-church-lady

    i have been surprised by the degree to which biden’s cabinet choices have not been compromises or attempts to win over republican support.

    So Joe doesn’t behave like people who scream on the internet say he’s gonna behave? Nice.

  106. 106.

    Immanentize

    And for something completely different!!

    I hope I see many of you this evening for Tom Levenson’s book club about his most recent book “Kicks for Free”‘.

    Oops. Wrong title — “Money for Nothing.”

    I will be hosting the Zoom.  BGinChi will be primary interrogator of Tom.  All will be able to submit Q’s.

    For the specific invite, please email WATERGIRL!

    We had at least one bad man zoom bomber at Thanksgiving, so we had to tighten up security a bit.

    I want my
    I want my
    I want my script money!

  107. 107.

    gene108

    @Mousebumples:

    Can’t wait to get better postal leadership in a month and a half!

    It really depends on if Democrats can sweep Georgia Senate races.

    There are USPS Board of Governors seats expiring, which need to be filled, in order to remove DeJoy and make the Post Office functional again.

  109. 109.

    Immanentize

    @Immanentize: ADDING:

    Zoom starts at 7:30 EST for cocktails and chat.  Tom will introduce the work at 8, the he and BGinChi (medium cool) will have a discussion with Tom during which y’all may put Qs in the chat.  Although you may join anytime you like — my bouncer, Tito, will bum rush you out at 9:30.

  110. 110.

    Betty Cracker

    @different-church-lady: To be fair to the tweeter, Biden has said plenty of things that could reasonably lead listeners to believe he’d lean toward bipartisan gestures and compromises on cabinet picks. The people screaming on the internet didn’t pull that out of their asses, at least not this time.

  111. 111.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud:

    I don’t even understand the underlying criticism here.

    They’re not watching the video, they’re looking at Biden’s words in the tweet, particularly the quote about the government not solving all our problems, and the “not looking for a handout” phrasing. It’s all framed for the purpose of mollifying people who have been raised on post-Reagan “government is the problem” rhetoric.

    Young progressives don’t want to hear any of that, at all. They want a President who will tell them, YES, we ARE going to give you a handout, and you SHOULD be looking for government to solve all your problems. Not because that’s literally true, so much as because fuck Reagan, fuck Republicans and fuck the 1980s.

    And, hell, I feel it too. But we need a majority.

  115. 115.

    Matt McIrvin

    @different-church-lady: A lot of the panic has been, not around actual Cabinet choices, but about leaks of names that may or may not be on the short list.

    (Neera Tanden being a very special exception, because of her having been involved in an arcane intra-left online bunfight that earned her the eternal enmity of a whole wad of fake-left anti-anti-Trump weirdos.)

  116. 116.

    Ken

    @Sloane Ranger: The effects of Brexit may not be felt by UK consumers immediately

    IIUC, those in Kent will notice a few changes, such as having a 70-kilometer tailback of lorries* winding through the bucolic countryside.  That is, whatever bucolic countryside is left after the government builds giant parking lots to handle the overflow.

    * I think I got the British terminology correct.  Americans would say “40-mile-long traffic jam of trucks”.

  119. 119.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @satby: If you think government should only work for corporations, as the fascists do, then understanding “the people” just muddies up the mission.

    Au contraire, ma soeur. Corporations are all about “understanding the people” – the ones with disposable income, who are the only ones who count.

    It’s a question of antecedents:

    Democrats strive to “understand the people” in order to persuade them to do and fund things that will benefit them. Corporations do exactly the same. But for Democrats, the second “them” refers to “the people themselves;” for corporations, the second “them” refers to “the corporations themselves.”

    One of the great mysteries (and tragedies) of our time is how the corps and their Thuglican catspaws have managed to persuade so many human beans that it is we who are totally motivated by self-interest while they are as unselfish as the driven snow. We need to work out how to flip that script.

  120. 120.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Ken: Congratulations, you are correct in your use of British terminology. And, yes, there will be tailbacks, but not for 6 months, when the UK will start actually enforcing customs checks (unless they extend). Until then, incoming goods should flow as now.

    There might be some tailbacks going to the Continent if the EU does enforce Customs checks on goods entering, but most of that will probably be on the French side.

  121. 121.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud:

    …activists are doing what they’re supposed to do, and Biden will do what he is supposed to do…

    I think that’s exactly right.

  122. 122.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Immanentize: Hi, back!

    Yes, work and study – but that only affects people who can speak a foreign language well enough to get by and why would you want to study in foreign parts anyway? We have universities here (The best universities – they’re British!).

  124. 124.

    frosty

    @Amir Khalid: The problems are with how these clubs are being run from the executive suite. Find these problems and fix them before you expect a manager to solve the first teams.

    That’s where the Baltimore Orioles went wrong in the 90s (and still haven’t recovered). I remember telling friends that we could have a good team if we fired the owner.

  126. 126.

    Raven

    @Immanentize: 23,000 captured there! I remember the interview with EB Sledge “ in Europe you could surrender, we learned at Guadalcanal that you could not surrender to the Japanese “. It wasn’t strictly true but it was close enough.

  127. 127.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    FWIW, I think the corollary needed to make it all work is for the vast majority of Dems who are not single-issue activists to actively promote the progress Dems are making, which sometimes means pushing back when rhetoric overtakes reality and perspective.  It’s this part that gets controversial IMHO.

  131. 131.

    The Moar You Know

    but i have been surprised by the degree to which biden’s cabinet choices have not been compromises or attempts to win over republican support. that’s not something i would’ve predicted from him.

    This is the kind of comment I heard from both a LOT of the commenters here during the primaries and a ton of the useless pundits still.  Which shows me that nobody ever bothered to have a look at Biden or his career.  Because if they had, this would not be a surprise at all.

  133. 133.

    germy

    “The large majority of his time has been unstructured, in the Oval [Office], just going nuts about voter fraud,” said a senior administration official. “I don’t know how else to put it. That occupies seemingly every waking moment of his day.” https://t.co/aaO6sqmbO0

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 7, 2020

  136. 136.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Ken:

     

    So the idea is that British goods will be subject to EU customs law, but not the other way around? That’s an interesting variation of sovereignty.

    Yes, we’re exercising our sovereignty to not exercise our sovereignty!

    (The real reason is they hope people don’t link increased prices and shortages with Brexit, plus the customs infrastructure on our side isn’t in place yet.)

  138. 138.

    The Moar You Know

    I swear The Guardian actively looks for contrarians who are just never satisfied with anything.

    @John S.: I use the Google News block feature extensively, because there are outlets, like Newsmax or Breitbart, that I just don’t need to start my day off with.

    There is one and only one of the non-conservative/21st Century Nazis persuasion in that list:  The Guardian.  They’ve been on it since the start of the primaries, because they had, and still have, a very clear agenda:  keeping Trump in power.

  139. 139.

    germy

    Across the country, people complained about threats, aggressive electioneering and racist language both at early voting locations and on Election Day. We’ve corroborated some of those accounts.

    We were lucky.  We voted early on Election Day.  Stood line outside. A MAGA truck drove by slowly and the driver stared at us, but he was some distance away and didn’t make any noise.  Then he parked for a long time, but he wasn’t too close, and not long after he appeared we finally got inside to vote

    Nothing like what some of the people in the above story experienced.

  140. 140.

    Matt McIrvin

    In non-political news, they just towed away my old car, dead of pandemic-induced non-use (but it was in obvious decline anyway, bits starting to fail too often to be worth repairing, high time to get a new one for when This Is All Over; I donated it to charity but I doubt they’ll get more than scrap value, and that market is a bit depressed right now as well).

    It was a good car, while it lasted.

  142. 142.

    Tony Jay

    @The Moar You Know:

    When you’re the only ‘left-leaning’ broadsheet newspaper in the UK market and are owned by a hedge-fund you have to ask yourself, do I sell more subscriptions to my likely readership base when I’m attacking a Conservative Government from the left or a Labour Government from the right?

    Then set your Narrative accordingly.

  144. 144.

    PAM Dirac

    @raven:

     

    79 years ago today my dad was standing on the steps of the YMCA in San Diego. A loudspeaker broadcast the new that Pearl Harbor had been attacked and for all sailors to return to their ships.

    My dad was asleep at Bellows Field on Oahu. All hell broke loose and he said no one knew what to do. The planes had been parked very close together to make them easier to guard, which meant that one Japanese bomb took out 2 or 3. I don’t think they got a plane in the air. He said they started shooting at the Japanese planes with their pistols because that was the only weapons they had. He didn’t spend the rest of the war in the Pacific. They sent him to Texas for bombardier training and he ended up flying almost 50 missions over Italy and Eastern Europe (Ploiești was a dirty word to him until the day he died).

  145. 145.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: We live at least 2 miles from any woods, but more than once I’ve startled deer in the back yard late at night. I expect we’ll start seeing them again as the food gets scarce later in winter.

    One morning there was a good sized stag in the neighbors yard, just a few feet away across the chain-link fence. He was lying down, just watching me as I approached and at first I thought he was a statue. Till he decided he didn’t trust me, got up and trotted off.

  146. 146.

    Ken

    @germy: “Unstructured,” huh?  My only objection is it implies that there have been times over the last four years where his activities could be called “structured”.

  147. 147.

    Ken

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: The Ireland-UK border, judging from what the UK government has claimed about it, is very complicated.  Maybe even quantum, to steal a line from Terry Pratchett.  Schroedinger is certainly involved – it’s impossible to pin down its position, much less what it will do.

  148. 148.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Looming scandal? Ratfucking? Or completely unsubstantiated rumour?

    There seems to be some chatter that Kelly Loeffler was wearing a wire last night during her debate with Raphael Warnock.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ibtimes.sg/kelly-loeffler-caught-wearing-wire-during-georgia-senate-debate-was-she-being-fed-answers-53972

    I know nothing about the reliability of the IBTimes.

    FWIW, while I was watching last night, I did find myself wondering why a 50-year-old supposedly professional woman was sporting a long, down-to-the-tits hairstyle more commonly seen on young college students. But I decided I was being lookist and judgemental, and put it out of my mind. But now I’m thinking, Hmmm…

  149. 149.

    Ian

    @John S.: I trust the Guardian’s analysis of American politics about as far as I trust my local Sinclair rag to provide me with up to date facts about Brexit negotiations.

  152. 152.

    raven

    @PAM Dirac:  I have only met a couple of Pearl Harbor survivors. I’m glad he made it. You know that the police officer shot by Jack Ruby was also a PHS?

  153. 153.

    cain

    @satby:

    I suspect that the folks he would be “reaching across the aisle” are not Republicans but all the folks in the big tent Dem party. There is a lot of us here.

    I mean, why would you reach out to a class of politicians that still wont’ acknowledge you as President elect? 24 people?

    So fuck them, fuck their party, and hopefully we can create an environment that will break people out of their cult.

  155. 155.

    JPL

    @SiubhanDuinne: Bluestein already said it didn’t happen.   He was one of the moderators.    I watched about five minutes of it, because it’s about all I can handle of her.

  160. 160.

    cain

    @satby:

    But with all those machines gone will make it hard to send christmas cards, right?? The war on christmas by the USPS has begun in earnest.

  161. 161.

    cain

    @Amir Khalid:

    I cried for months. She was there when I needed her most during a very turbulent time and so I was much more attached to her than I was with the other two.

    She used to love sitting on my lap. She hardly weighed anything so you never noticed she was even sitting there.

    Eventually, the pain is less, but you’ll still have fond memories. As you say, it will pass.

  162. 162.

    germy

    The Oregon Medical Board suspended the license of an Oregon doctor who said he refuses to wear a mask in his clinic while also encouraging others to not wear masks.

    Dr. Steven LaTulippe told a pro-Trump rally in November that neither he nor his staff wears a mask while working in their Dallas, Ore. clinic. That violates a state order requiring health care workers to wear a face-covering in health care settings.

    Members of the medical board voted Thursday evening to suspend LaTulippe’s license immediately. According to a statement on the Oregon Medical Board website, the suspension was issued “due to the board’s concern for the safety and welfare of licensee’s current and future patients.”

    The indefinite suspension prevents LaTulippe from practicing medicine anywhere in the state. LaTuilippe ran a family practice clinic called South View Medical Arts in Dallas, Ore.

    From Science-Based Medicine.

  164. 164.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    That’s pretty much what I said to the person who first mentioned it to me. Why would she need answers? She didn’t say anything all night except “radical liberal Raphael Warnock.”

    @germy:

    That tape edit is perfectissimo! I especially love the condolences at the end ?

  165. 165.

    PAM Dirac

    @raven: I didn’t know that. My dad was active in the survivor’s association. I just read that the last chapter shut down. Only a handful of survivors left. I didn’t think much about it growing up, but he would talk about Pearl Harbor, but almost nothing about Europe. One of the many things that I only realized how interesting it would be to talk to him about after he was gone.

  166. 166.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @frosty: That’s where the Baltimore Orioles went wrong in the 90s (and still haven’t recovered). I remember telling friends that we could have a good team if we fired the owner.

    IIUC it’s the younger Angelosers who are running things now & ,having been weaned from their rotisserie baseball illusions, are mostly doing what’s needed to turn things around.

    The problem is that a MLB franchise is a pig to reorient & generally takes years. Which is a function of no salary cap, long player development times in the minor leagues, and a few franchises with more money than God that wait for the less-affluent teams to develop their high draft choices into future stars & then throw stupid money at the young’uns once their rookie contracts are up.

    The best a small-market team like the O’s can hope for is for smart drafting, player development and managing to catch lightning in a bottle for a couple of years, then be stripped of their standout players & sink to the bottom for several more years until the next top-flight draft class is ready. And even that doesn’t work all that well, since the rich teams are just as good at throwing stupid money at the managers and GMs and player development gurus to leave as well.

    Contrast this with the NFL, where astute (and fortunate) drafting and free-agent acquisition and management of the salary cap can turn a bottom-feeder into a Superb Owl winner in a couple of years’ time. (Or go rapidly in the other direction, like the Ravens, who are busy frittering away the best years of their generational-talent QB under an imbecile coaching staff and a CEO-stye head coach who can’t find his arse with both hands. Grrr….)

  167. 167.

    Ruckus

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It’s his chair, cheap would be perfectly in character and easier to hose off after he craps in his diaper. That it’s not spray painted gold would tell you that he is, in fact, broke. OK that and that he’s trying to sell everything at market prices. When you are at rock bottom you don’t get to argue about how much your crap is worth.

  169. 169.

    J R in WV

    @libarbarian:

    December 7, 2020 at 9:12 am

    Reuters has an excellent checklist of what we actually know about Biden’s choices for his team to date.

    Why is Biden picking the romantic partners of his staff?

    Why is Reuters reporting on this like it’s normal??

    Where do you see that Biden is picking “romantic Partners” of his staff for any positions at all?

    Sounds totally Trumpish fictional for the most part to me.

    No link, no data, just a crazed assertion leading the posted straightaway into the pie safe!

  170. 170.

    Nora Lenderbee

    @germy: My uncle enlisted in the Air Force in 1942. They put him in the meteorological corps and he spent the war on Ascension Island, forecasting the weather.

  172. 172.

    J R in WV

    @gene108:

    There are USPS Board of Governors seats expiring, which need to be filled, in order to remove DeJoy and make the Post Office functional again.

    I disagree. Dejoy should be indicted on Jan 21st for intentionally interfering with the delivery of first class mail, intentionally interfering with the conduct of an election(x50), intentionally damaging USPS equipment costing millions of dollars, breaking personnel regulations and anything an actual lawyer can come up with any information to support.

    Once he’s jailed without bond, someone else will need to be appointed to that position.

    Frankly, anyone on the USPS Board of Governors who voted for his appointment should be charged with conspiracy to commit the crimes I listed above. I would offer them a pass for resigning post haste and confessing in sworn testimony before a grand Jury.

  174. 174.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Rachel Bitecofer knocked out a 23 part tweet Dec. 6 about problems with Democratic messaging and why they get beaten in this area (Bitecofer doesn’t waste words, she just has a lot to say). She says that a basic problem is that that Democrats think voters are “smarter” than they actually are. By “smarter” she doesn’t speak to IQ but to basic civic awareness. The messagers assume that people already know what they themselves know, whereas Republicans know that they start with a blank slate and propagate a broader macro narrative while Democrats get into micro narratives. She also points out that digital messaging can be highly effective when only one side is doing it, and Parscale’s digital campaign was countered only after it had done its damage. I really can’t do Bitecofer’s ideas justice but they are easily accessed through her twitter feed.

    I expect that Bitecofer will be active in future Democratic campaigns, and will not just be critiquing them. The decision of Christopher Newport University’s Political Science Department not to offer her a tenure track position disappointed Bitecofer’s academic political science hopes, but it freed her up to do political engineering. She seems to have a shrewd appreciation of strategy and messaging, and I think she will get to use her skills in the political-industrial complex.

  175. 175.

    J R in WV

    OK, “…to date.” OK.

    I wasn’t looking for a punny joke, so I didn’t see it.

    I read the whole article looking for the romantic partner. . .  just too literal I guess.   ;~)  Now That‘s a joke!!

  176. 176.

    frosty

    @PAM Dirac: My uncle who flew a C-47 for Troop Carrier only told his kids he towed gliders over Normandy; that was all they knew. Thanks to the internet, there’s a lot of info out there that was unavailable a few years ago. My brother and I did the research and filled in a lot of the gaps. Including finding a picture of him in France!

  179. 179.

    sab

    @SiubhanDuinne: I was shrieking at my husband about that. He laughed. She is fifty years old and applying for a supposedly serious professional job.

    Why is she wearing her hair like she aspires to be high school homecoming queen. Pin it up or tie it back, or at least trim off about six inches of split ends.

    I could never have gotten away with hair like that, and I wore mine a lot longer for many years.

  180. 180.

    frosty

    @raven:  Yes, it’s amazing what’s online. We found info via the Silent Wings Museum in Texas, historians in Normandy and Holland, and a Shutterfly group of relatives for his unit. One of those people found the daily orders in a footlocker in her dad’s attic and scanned it, so I could summarize my uncle’s training, combat, resupply , and repatriation flights for almost all the time he was overseas.

    All completely unavailable before 15-20 years ago.

  182. 182.

    Miss Bianca

    @J R in WV: Err…methinks it was a joke. Note the play on the words, “to date”.

    That is all, thank you.

     

    ETA: I note that others have, to date, got there before me.

  183. 183.

    Elie

     

    BTW — I’m sure no one really cares but Kelly Loffler has the mother of all hair weaves on her head. She’s got about 5 lbs of somebody else’s hair woven into and/or glued into her head and scalp.  Love to part her hair in the sides and back and take a peek.  That was where all the proceeds from the stock deals went — a weave of this scope will set you back some change!  I’m sure Kelly looks at it as HER hair — she paid for it!

  187. 187.

    sab

    @Elie: Interesting. Is that why it is so ugly? I see her and think “Brush your hair, girl. You look like you just climbed out if bed.” Long and blond is not necessarily attractive if it is slightly unkempt. Good for porn. Not so much for public appearances as a Senator.

  188. 188.

    planetjanet

    @J R in WV: I see what libarbarian is snarking on.  Reread the phrasing.  He is picking people for his team to date.  You can take him out of the pie safe.  It is a stretch, but not as bad as some of NotMax’s puns.

Comments are closed.