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

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

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

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

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

When I was faster i was always behind.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

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

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

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

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The revolution will be supervised.

The lights are all blinking red.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Good Old Uncle Joe… Fun, Yet Dependable

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Good Old Uncle Joe… Fun, Yet Dependable

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It’s like a political parody of a Hallmark movie: Recalcitrant kids get dumped on their kindly older relative after their abusive stepdad puts mom in the hospital, again. They have no intention of trusting yet another well-intentioned old person, but eventually he wins them over…

Reader Interactions

172Comments

  3. 3.

    NotMax

    Suitable for use as an extra credit exercise on the Pithy Headline Writing 101 final exam.

    A former Oklahoma resident recently learned she spent years as a wanted felon after she was charged for not returning a VHS tape rented more than two decades ago.
    [snip]
    Online documents show McBride was charged with felony embezzlement of rented property in March 2000, but she didn’t know about the charges until recently when she tried to change her name on her license after getting married in Texas. Source

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax:

    The district attorney’s office said Wednesday it decided to dismiss the case against McBride.

    Thank Dawg for small favors. “Stealing” a $5 dollar video tape is a felony in OK. Just one more reason to never go there, not that I needed another.

  9. 9.

    citizen dave

    @OzarkHillbilly: Seriously.  I’ve been to a lot of states and there is always that vague goal of visiting all of them, but over the last 4 years my desire to go to Alabama or OK has very much decreased to near zero.  My Alabama visit would be Muscle Shoals, and OK something Flaming Lips-related.

  11. 11.

    JPL

    @raven: I’ve been up since 3:30 with the mutt.   I wanted to make sure that he went out before the stormy weather, and I have been unable to fall back asleep.  bah humbug

  12. 12.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Pew poll:61% of Americans support automatically registering all eligible citizens to vote70% support allowing people convicted of felonies to vote after serving their sentences78% support making early, in-person voting available for at least two weeks prior to Election Day— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 23, 2021

    Americans are much more progressive than the Rs some of them elect.

  13. 13.

    Ken

    @citizen dave: I drove through OK a couple times on my way to/from Dallas.  Most of the drive is a tollway with very few exits, so very convenient for people who have no reason to visit the state.

  16. 16.

    Falling Diphthong

    I think young people are responding to Biden getting into office and then actually starting to deliver on his campaign promises.

    No one was quicker to say “Well obviously you can’t take anything Trump says seriously” than a die-hard Trump supporter. Trump’s schtick was to yell a lot, then sit around pouting with no interest in governance. (I believe he was genuinely befuddled that announcing “It’s infrastructure week!” never caused there to be an infrastructure week, and what could you possibly need other than the announcement?) Biden is doing government in action, and after a year of facing a deadly global pandemic under the charge of people who like to say that the government should never do stuff… Biden is doing stuff.

  19. 19.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @citizen dave: A friend was the FBI SAC in OK City for a couple of years and I went out to visit her. I wasn’t expecting much, but the OK Bomb museum and, to my surprise, the Cowboy Museum were really well done and interesting. I haven’t been back. My friend retired and fled the state.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: 

    Americans are much more progressive than the Rs some of them elect.

    Yep. And electing Rs wouldn’t be so bad if they were Rs who can deal in areas where there is common ground. But they elect burn-it-down Rs, who quite naturally burn things down.

  21. 21.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @citizen dave: The north east corner of Alabama, the Appalachian part of the state, is very beautiful. The same for the contiguous parts of TN and GA, collectively known as TAG among cavers. The tri-state area is world famous for it’s bountiful and beautiful pits and caves. Even if one is not a caver, it is an area well worth visiting.

    Back in my younger caving days I would go down there at least once a year and 2 or 3 times a year more than a few times.

  24. 24.

    citizen dave

    @OzarkHillbilly: Thanks for that–if I ever get to a lot of traveling again will check it out.  I have a sister-in-law in Mobile, and my wife has visited, but so far I’ve managed to stay away from Alabama.  And really it’s just joking around here–there are good people all over, including jackals.

    I watched Petticoat Junction as a kid–that whole Hooterville complex of shows.  Great stuff!

  27. 27.

    MattF

    A bit OT. This recent business of how Stacey Abrams did a number on the R Senator from Louisiana by knowing details of the provisions of the Georgia anti-voting bill. Well, yeah, but… one may note that Abrams was a member of the Georgia State legislature for ten years and leader of the minority for most of that ten years, so of course she knew all about the bill’s provisions. JFC, people. Abrams is smart and hard-working and knows how to deal with play-acting country boys.

  28. 28.

    MagdaInBlack

    @OzarkHillbilly: You’ve sent me down the rabbit hole looking for articles on Tennessee cave pictoglyphs etc. Stumbled across the coolest article a few years ago…..but haven’t found it..yet

    ETA: Artists of the Dark Zone: Archaeology Mag, Nov/Dec 2019…….I cannot post the link ?

  30. 30.

    Immanentize

    Good morning all!

    I see raven is bemoaning the untimely death of Humpty Hump. I too loved Digital Underground.

    Some Saturday thoughts:

    I used to be a productive person, now, not so much.

    One of the local rescue sites will not allow me to adopt a kitten because 1) Toast is an indoor-outdoor cat and 2) will only let me adopt if I take two kittens.  Makes me sad.

    I have finished my exam for Choice of Laws and have to finish my Con Law exam by Monday.  Classes end Tuesday and my exams are given the following week.  Then the torture of grading.*

    It is a beautiful Spring day and I need to get out and bag old leaves and other garden detritus.

    I get my first meat co-op delivery tomorrow!

    * People teach for the love of the students and because it is our calling.  We get paid to grade.

  33. 33.

    dmsilev

    I get emails

    The manuscript in Attachment!!! THERE ARE MANY OTHERS PEOPLE who have published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas… For a better international academic environment

    PLEASE, SHARE this email!!!

    It is about TWO Nobels prizes (Physics and Medicine, Cognitive Neuroscience):

    – Discovering the EDWs, I have changed EVERYTHING! Long time ago (2002, 2005, 2007, 2008, etc.), the NEW PHYSICS (a book published at SPRINGER, Germany in 2015!): my theory is the EDWs (Epistemologically Different Worlds) published in 2002-2003-2005 (see article 2005 at Synthese USA in attachment): a new interpretation of quantum mechanics: in 2006, 2008, 2010 quantum theory is a pseudo-theory! (see the article 2006 in Attachment!!) The Universe does not exist, but EDWs are! (string theory is a pseudo-theory, see last chapter book 2010)

    If the Universe does not exist, strictly speaking neither does this comment.

  36. 36.

    Geminid

    @citizen dave: I’ve mainly driven through Oklahoma, on my way from Virginia to New Mexico and back. Once I camped at Osage Hills State Park a couple nights. Thats a nice area, and I want to camp there again. It’s NW of Tulsa. The northeastern corner of Oklahoma is a good place to buy pecans.

  37. 37.

    Immanentize

    @rikyrah: I saw that!  The one with the women climbing out of the zoom screen was my favorite.  But the one with the woman in black in the park crying proved instantly to cause flying dust and chopped onions in my house.

  39. 39.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: Oh, have they moved to email?  I remember when they used to infest Usenet newsgroups. Do any of them still say “I beat Einstein”?

  40. 40.

    WereBear

    @NotMax: That is an incredible story! And what made it a felony?

    I know VHS tapes were expensive back in the day… maybe it was purchased during that time and so, qualified?

  41. 41.

    WereBear

    @Immanentize:

    One of the local rescue sites will not allow me to adopt a kitten because 1) Toast is an indoor-outdoor cat and 2) will only let me adopt if I take two kittens.  Makes me sad.

    Some shelters are incredibly picky, and some realize they shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WereBear: I am trying to come up with a rationale that makes sense for “will only let me adopt if I take two kittens.”

    The answer to that is “Well, I only want one so I guess I’ll go to the pet store and buy one.”

  44. 44.

    dmsilev

    @Ken: From further on in the message,

    The mind and the brain/body are or belong to EDWs; the macro-objects and the micro-objects belong to EDWs; all the approaches of quantum mechanics are wrong, the correct alternative being my EDWs perspective: the wave and the particle belong to the EDWs! Thus, I solved all “mysteries” of quantum mechanics, the relationship between Einstein’s general relativity and quantum mechanics (microparticles versus macroparticles), the mind-brain problem, and many other problems!

  45. 45.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MattF:

    Yeah. To me, the nub of the story was never about how smart and quick and knowledgeable Stacey Abrams is — although, of course, she is all that — but about how stupid and slow and ignorant that old poseur Kennedy is (yes, I know he went to Oxford. He’s still stupid, slow, and ignorant.)

  47. 47.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @citizen dave: ​
    The OK Panhandle is an amazingly open, desolate yet luring place. Well worth a drive particularly on the road coming into it from CO. Get out a lot to hear and smell the wind and look at the prairie flowers. Mid-May best time.
    Second Moderna shot yesterday and right now I feel like I’ve been out drinking all night with the band.​

  51. 51.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JPL: I got socked with a wave of fatigue and have slept a really horrifying amount of time. And my arm around the injection site was a bit tender. But nothing really noteworthy. Thank you for asking.

  53. 53.

    MagdaInBlack

    @SiubhanDuinne: Vaccination was in and out in 5 minutes. Didnt even feel the needle. Yesterday what I started out thinking was just Friday tired, had me ” draggin’ ass” and extra achy by noon. Took ibuprofen and within an hour felt better. I have a little sore spot on that arm, but that’s it. Success !!!

    Thank You for asking ?

  54. 54.

    Hoodie

    Got moderna #2 Thursday. Knocked me on my ass with flu like symptoms on Friday but feeling good today.

  55. 55.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MagdaInBlack: I was caving with a guy once who had done quite a bit of work in Mammoth Cave in KY. He told me a story of one survey trip he did in an unmapped section of the cave. They had been surveying for several hours in some sizable passage and the wind was just brutal that day. They finally decided to take a break to warm up and crawled up into a small side passage to get out of the wind. After snacking a little bit he lay back on the floor to nap a little. Just before he flipped off his head lamp he glanced up at the ceiling and there he saw the initials S.B. carved into the rock.

    Stephen Bishop, a slave who is legendary among cavers for having explored so much of Mammoth by himself had been in that exact spot over a hundred years before and left his mark, as he did in innumerable locations.

    The closest I ever got to finding something as historically cool as that was finding the signatures of 2 men from Sheboygan WI carved into a mudbank way back in a Shannon Co cave with the date of July 4, 1876. Which I have to say, was pretty cool in itself.

     

    eta

  59. 59.

    scribbler

    @rikyrah: Thanks for this!  My favorite, once I figured it out, was the elevator filled with people.  But so many were great!

  63. 63.

    Red Cedar

    @citizen dave: Alabama was never at the top of my list either, but if you get the chance to go to Montgomery and see all the stuff that the Equal Justice Initiative has put together, it is breathtakingly wildly heartstoppingly amazing. The lynching memorial—the National Memorial to Peace and Justice—is one of the most powerful places I’ve ever been, and the associated Legacy Museum is also someplace not to be missed. I had thought that the Legacy Museum would be just another civil rights museum—powerful but I’ve been to plenty of them, what could they possibly add?—and instead I was just overwhelmed. Bryan Stevenson is a genius, and his work is quite possibly some of the most important stuff going on in this country today.  Check out eji.org for info about the museum, the memorial, and all the other things they’ve got going on.

    (Related aside: the Brett Kavanaugh decision yesterday about juveniles and life in prison overturned a case Stevenson had argued in front of the Supreme Court, which was 1) enraging, and 2) more evidence that Stevenson was absolutely right to expand his work from the courtroom to working to change the larger cultural narrative).

  64. 64.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @SiubhanDuinne: but about how stupid and slow and ignorant that old poseur Kennedy is (yes, I know he went to Oxford. He’s still stupid, slow, and ignorant.)

    I’ve read that people who worked with him in his pre-politcal life say it’s an act, right down to the Mr Haney accent, and a surprising one. Nobody has greater contempt for the trumpists than the Ivy League/Oxbridge crew like him and Hawley, and Kennedy may just be the crudest of the bunch. Not entirely sure what his goal was there, but I suspect it didn’t go the way he expected.

  65. 65.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Every state has it’s redeeming places. As Comrade Scott noted above, the OK panhandle has a stark beauty that is very much worth the trip. A couple years ago we took Hwy 61 up thru eastern Iowa (stopping at Maquoketa Caves State Park) and that part of Iowa is stunningly beautiful.

  66. 66.

    Ken

    @Baud: Don’t be silly, that’s not Trump.  He’s not asking for money.

    Back in the USENET days (when we wore onions on our belts), the cranks didn’t ask for money either. I wonder if any of them have started doing that, now that the technological support is there?  “Donate to my PayPal account and when my theories are accepted I will name a particle after you.”

  67. 67.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I haven’t been to MO or OK, but the country has a lot of natural beauty.  And most urban areas are probably decent.   A lot of the things we dislike here are most prevalent in suburban and rural areas, I think.

  68. 68.

    kindness

    When I see the Republicans on the national stage squirm, squeal and kvetch about the calamity of Uncle Joe’s presidency, I can’t help but think they see the trend of normal folk liking a Democrat and they will do anything they can to change the subject and those people’s minds. This is especially true for the sedition Repubs. Thing is the only thing they have in their bag is more or less utter bullshit & lies & stomping their tiny feet. People see that. Most folk understand what is being served up.

    Joe’s messaging skills are way better than any of us gave him credit for. Good job Joe. Keep it up.

  69. 69.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Today in Glenn Greenwald’s world is a sly “falsehoods should publish unchecked and uncriticized, because journalism and valuable public discourse demand that the alt-right be heard” tweet:

    What the “fact-checking” scam is really designed to do, at its core, is foster the false impression that some humans ascend above the subjectivity & biases that plague the rest of us, and therefore have authority to decree “Truth” & “Falsity,” to justify censorship of the latter:

  72. 72.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Baud:

    Both me and OzarkHillbilly can attest to the beauty of rurl Misery. I mean I lived for 22+ years on a bluff overlooking the Osage and Missouri Rivers. Breathtaking view from my deck. And yet, if you’re an off-the-beaten-track person, those kind of views are everywhere.

    Hell, I even found chunks of norther Misery, aka Southern Iowa, pretty in spots. In fact, as OH references above, Iowa has a slew of scenic byways that are nice. I’ve driven literally every back road between Jeff City and Ames over the years, always enjoyed it. There’s a great “antique airfield” literally in the middle of nowhere.
    One thing I learned, tho, doing all the driving is that it’s easy to see why “the kids” flee places like that. Great to gawk at, couldn’t live there anymore.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    I don’t know if the Trump grift machine sold them or they’re an independent product but there’s a “Fuck Biden” flag that uses the font and colors of the Trump flag. I’ve seen 4 or 5.

    It seems excessive and a little silly, honestly.

    I have two elderly clients who I have had a long time and they treat me in this elaborately deferential way – formal- and they were pulling out the other day and I was up front and they have “Fuck Biden” scrawled on the rear window of their truck. It’s just such a jarring disconnect, both as to them and as to Biden. “FUCK this polite, kindly person? Really?”

    Trump makes people worse than they were before they encountered him. Always.

  78. 78.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: One thing I learned, tho, doing all the driving is that it’s easy to see why “the kids” flee places like that. Great to gawk at, couldn’t live there anymore.

    I moved out here when my ex’s husband went after my eldest. Each of my sons moved to the big city within days of graduating HS. Here I remain. There are things I miss about being in the city but the inescapable and constant drone of traffic etc is not one of them. I’ll die out here.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    I bet it was 45 dollars because Trump was 45.

    Now that’s all shot to hell and it’s clearance priced.

  83. 83.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    Equally maddening is that the interviewer would not have followed up with a question about the previous administration’s efforts at bipartisanship. ?

  84. 84.

    Ben Cisco

    @Kay:
     

    Trump makes people worse than they were before they encountered him. Always.

    I think that TFG brings out of people what was always there, waiting for the word to be given to unleash it. Not countering your point, but rather enhancing it.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I love that you and I always see the same displays.

    We have a hysterical one on a state route. It’s like half an angry dialogue – has question marks and things- and it didn’t make sense to me. I told my middle son and he said “that’s because you missed the first part- he had a Biden supporter next door he was responding to, but the Biden supporter dropped out when we won so now he’s just ranting by himself”.

  88. 88.

    Mike in NC

    @Kay: I hope to never hear another goddamn American fascist utter the vile expression “Time to take our country back!”

  89. 89.

    Baud

    @Ben Cisco:

    Agree. Interestingly, I think the same thing about Hillary Clinton, in the other way.   People you might think were decent show their true colors when the thought of her enters their brain.

    I hope she’s able to live her best life these days.

  90. 90.

    WaterGirl

    @WereBear:

    I can’t believe the purchase price could have come anywhere near felony levels.

    I imagine some asshole figured out how many times they could rent a single video before it wore out and then multiplied # of potential rentals x the rental price.

  99. 99.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @NotMax: I had a similar (though much less serious) experience with the state of MD a few years back – as I was trying to clear up back taxes ​they insisted I owed their Central Collection Unit $300 for an unspecified transgression. A few calls established that it was the fine and replacement cost for a statistics textbook I had taken out of the UMBC library some years prior**. I called the library and verified that the book had been returned and was in fact on their shelves. I said, The Comptroller’s Office seems to have lost the notification that I returned it – would you kindly let them know you have it? A few weeks later I got a “nemmind” letter from the CCU…

    ** As an alumnus (Master’s in Applied Math). UMBC charged me a whopping $2 for a library card that allowed me to check out any but a few restricted-circulation tomes; their excellent math-stat collection was an enormous help in my work. Meanwhile my undergraduate alma mater (Johns F’ing Hopkins) wanted $100 to let me into their library (which FTR was much closer than UMBC) to admire their collections, no checkout permitted. Three guesses which of these institutions is going to receive a contribution when I depart this mortal coil – and which bunch of arrogant bastards isn’t getting one fucking cent.​​

  100. 100.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Americans are much more progressive than the Rs some of them elect.

    Republicans aren’t voting for candidates based on their positions, with maybe an exception for abortion.  They’re voting for assholes.  That’s what they want, an asshole who will be a mean shit in general and stick it to the Dems in specific.  They get what they want and are happy with it.  The few who notice this is not improving their lives will blame it on Dems, because assholes aren’t interested in facts, only validating their hate.

    @rikyrah:

    Even if Big Biden passed legislation to cure cancer without a single GOP vote, The Insurrectionist Party would still be invited onto every Sunday morning news show

    One thing that has been clear to me for decades:  The vast majority of TV pundits do not give a rat’s fart about policy outcomes.  Human suffering in the real world is meaningless to them.  It’s all about their little clique.  In fact, they generally believe in Tough Love (IE, they think like abusers).  This will always make them more receptive to Republican bullshitters than Democrats who care about boring things like what does or does not reduce poverty.

    @dmsilev:

    all the approaches of quantum mechanics are wrong, the correct alternative being my EDWs perspective

    The Museum of Jurassic Technology has an exhibit of letters sent to the prestigious observatory Einstein worked at, and they all read like this letter.

  102. 102.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay:

    Trump makes people worse than they were before they encountered him. Always.

    Even now, I simply don’t get it. A sybaritic Manhattan trust-fund-brat, a failed hotelier, a third-rate Hollywood gameshow host* obsessed with social status and his own Ivy League credentials who made himself the tribune of embittered middle-Americans who hate Manhattan, hate Hollywood, hate the Ivy League mostly couldn’t afford to stay at his hotels, because they share his resentment of the people who look down on him, and them.

    *I used to say “third-rate racist gameshow host”, but that of course is the point.

  104. 104.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    I’m hoping they become incomprehensible to normal people. My favorite birther story was when they paid for a billboard that said “where’s the birth certificate?” and normal people thought it was a PSA, like “locate your birth certificate, in case you need it”

    “Hmm. Where IS my birth certificate?”  Just a complete disconnect between the nuts and the normies.

  105. 105.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Many’s the time I thought about putting “Tuck Frump” on the back of my truck but I never did.

    Heh, speaking of which, picked up my half of pig from the processor in Lyon MO yesterday. The guy who brought it out didn’t notice the stickers until we had it all loaded into the coolers. I caught the look on his face out of the corner of my eye as I turned to get in the cab. He disappeared below the tailgate for like 30 secs or so and I thought he might have been defacing my Biden or Hillary stickers and when he stood there was a look of extreme distaste on his face.

    I didn’t really care but I checked them when I got home and they were fine. I guess he just dropped something or maybe just wanted to make sure I still had an actual honest to god Hillary sticker on my truck.

  106. 106.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    My favorite birther story was when they paid for a billboard that said “where’s the birth certificate?”

    Wendy’s needs a new marketing firm.

  107. 107.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Trump is the biggest asshole Republicans are ever likely to be offered.  That’s his whole appeal.  He’s a mean, stupid racist, and they are mean, stupid racists, and he validates them.  He validates even more the ones who are so very tired of having to hide their hate.

    EDIT – You know every post here where a commenter says that what the Democrat ought to say to a reporter/Republican is some version of ‘fuck you’?  Trump scratches that itch for polite Republicans, and he scratches it big time.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Because his fans are also obsessed with status. Just because many of them are or feel they are treated as lower status does not mean they aren’t obsessed with status. That’s what the whole chip on their shoulder, whining about “respect” thing is- they’re obsessed with status. Everything is a zero sum pecking order.

  110. 110.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @debbie:

    I’m not sure it’s gone forever, but I’m proud I managed to get through it to take the first Pfizer shot (and will, of course, for the second in < three weeks).

    Two nice things happened Thursday that made the day easier (forgive me, and please ignore, if I’ve already shared these anecdotes here)

    (1) For unknown reasons, shortly before I left for the Walgreens, I decided to change handbags, and pulled out one I hadn’t used since the Before Times. While clearing out the detritus of old Kleenex, ancient receipts, and linty cough lozenges, I stuck my hand in an interior pocket and discovered a lovely, crisp, folded $50 bill!

    (2) While I was waiting for my shot, I noticed the young woman next to me (well, six feet away) was wearing hijab, so I greeted her in Arabic and then said “Ramadan Mubarak,” and then in English wished her an easy fast. She and I struck up a lively conversation, which ended with our exchanging contact information and an invitation for me to join her and her family for a meal once we are all fully vaccinated and past the two-week waiting period.

    So — I got the vaccine without making a spectacle of myself, I found fifty bucks I didn’t know I had, and I made a new friend! All in all, not a bad Thursday!

  111. 111.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Frankensteinbeck: @Kay: he’s their revenge, and they’re his.

    I will note, the fevered stupid is not limited to America. As near as I can tell from clicking around twitter, I can’t find a verified report, this is London, anti-safety protesters have adopted the Yellow Star to signify their victimhood. And it’s not new. The West has lost its moorings.

  113. 113.

    Ken

    @Kay: I’m hoping they become incomprehensible to normal people.

    (Whisper 1) “Why is he waving a toilet brush wrapped with red duct tape and chanting ‘lager-hup’?”

    (Whisper 2) “No one really knows, not even them. It’s something they’ve been doing for hundreds of years.”

    (Whisper 3) “I’m bored. This is worse than the lady making lye soap over a wood fire.”

  114. 114.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Worse, an elitist Wash U Lieberal from STL. Of course, how’d he square that analysis with my beat up rust bucket of a 1/2 ton 4WD p/u I don’t know.

  117. 117.

    rivers

    @Red Cedar: I was about to respond to @citizen dave with a similar comment. I went on a Civil Rights tour to Georgia and Alabama two years ago and it was amazing. The lynching memorial and the museum are both unmissable, but I was knocked out by almost everything I saw – both museums and churches in Selma and Birmingham and Atlanta. Every single place had its own powerful story to tell. Also these kinds of tours often make a point of patronizing black owned businesses when possible, and also many of the people who give tours of specific locations with a Civil Rights history are themselves survivors of that time and they won’t live forever. So this is our chance to hear their stories from their own lips.

  120. 120.

    zhena gogolia

    @Kay:

    I took down my Biden-Harris sign as soon as we won, but the Trump signs hung around the neighborhood for weeks.

  121. 121.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud:

    I have seen that flag but with Trump in the place of Biden, including the line about f you for voting for him — I saw it a long time ago. They have no originality whatsoever.

  122. 122.

    Low Key Swagger

    Just dropping this in here…Oracle cut a sweetheart deal with Nashville to open a campus here, without the city having to eat a bunch of taxes (at least upfront) and promised 8500 jobs.  Good right?  One could (and I have) made a case about yet more gentrification in that area, but yeah…jobs.  So, yesterday I saw an article that says Oracle is reconsidering the deal due to anti-LGBQT legislation being considered by our lowly legislature, no doubt spearheaded by Marsha Blackburn.  What is it the kids say?  “I can’t even”

  123. 123.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    A favourite snippet of conversation from my beloved Gaudy Night:

    “He’s not very fit these days, I’m sorry to say. Got a dose of gas, you know. Lungs groggy.”

    “Sorry to hear that, sir. Remember how put about ’e was over that there pig—”

    “Hush, Padgett. The less said about that pig, the better.”

    “Yes, sir. Nice bit o’ crackling that pig ’ad on ’im. Coo!” Padgett smacked reminiscent lips.

    I hope your half-a-pig provides you as much pleasure in in years to come :-)

  124. 124.

    sab

    @zhena gogolia: Our neighborhood Trump signs went down Jan 7, although I do think our across the street neighbor (who pointed her Trump sign at our house) went to DC that day. I think the Marines up the street and the construction guy around the corner were actually shocked by the Capitol storming.

  126. 126.

    artem1s

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Even now, I simply don’t get it

    The only silo I know of that is similar is the glorification of sports figures.  Catch or throw a ball and win a big game and then suddenly you can do no wrong. No matter how much you screw up the rest of your life, someone will be there to pick your ass up, wipe you off, give you a job and show you off to the community as a feather in their cap.  O.J. was the first that got national attention, I suppose. But for the Goldman’s civil suit he would have spent the rest of his life profiting off the murder of his wife. I’d like to think the  GOP wouldn’t have run him for office, but I am beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt.

    Most college towns have some ginourmous screw up that the locals love to brush up against and so relive their glory years vicariously. It always seems to take forever before the community as a whole decides they have push the boundaries too far and are now irredeemable.  Most of them never make it beyond working for the local giant car dealership, but you occasionally get a Gym Jordan who skips the local stuff and jumps right to screwing up on the national stage.

    If the GOP is going to outdo themselves in finding the next, worser TFG (and they will), they have a giant pool of screw ups to draw from in the sports world.

  128. 128.

    Brachiator

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    So — I got the vaccine without making a spectacle of myself, I found fifty bucks I didn’t know I had, and I made a new friend! All in all, not a bad Thursday!

    Does this mean that in the future, whenever you need some spare cash, you will schedule a vaccination?

    Very cool story. I am glad to hear all the ways that getting the shot had all kinds of pleasant outcomes.

  129. 129.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kay:

    they’re obsessed with status. Everything is a zero sum pecking order.

    Yes, and it’s not an economic pecking order.  It’s a social pecking order of who gets to be openly rude to who.  Republicans correctly believe that city dwellers and Hollywood publicly declare Republican beliefs to be stupid and/or evil on a constant basis.  Their is no separation between shitting on their beliefs and wants and shitting on them personally.  We’re not going to stop, either, because racism and pig-ignorance  should not be respected, and especially not treated as the superior positions, which is what they want.  Trump was exactly of their class, from the way they view the world.

    @artem1s:

    The only silo I know of that is similar is the glorification of sports figures. Catch or throw a ball and win a big game and then suddenly you can do no wrong.

    Sports figures are their champions, the vessel of their own pride, and they treat them like they believe they themselves deserve.  Trump was the champion of White Supremacy, and as such can do no wrong.

  131. 131.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    “Axios” is trending and the good news it’s a thorough dragging for their coverage of Biden’s tax proposals, including from some blue checks who will be harder for Mike Allen and Jim Van deHei to ignore

    Josh Marshall @joshtpm 3h
    almost everyone has noted that “eye-popping” is a funny way to describe tax rates from four years ago. but it’s a good measure of the way DC journalism remains wired for the GOP, or at least by a mix of core conservative assumptions and bothsideism – embodied at outfits like …

    2/ Politico and Axios which were of course quite literally created by the same people.

    Soledad O’Brien @soledadobrien 4h

    “Eye popping” As I frequently tell you, axios is absolute garbage.

  132. 132.

    Steeplejack

    @Ken:

    Can you still stop at Stuckey’s? That was my significant Oklahoma experience 50-plus years ago. Pralines, candy cigarettes and faux Indian beaded belts. Good times!

  133. 133.

    Parfigliano

    @Kay: Trump doesnt make people worse then they are before encountering him.  Trump brings out what the person truely is.

  134. 134.

    cain

    @Betty Cracker: ​
     
    It’s just disturbing using our flag like that for these violent memes against the opposition. Absolutely no sense of awareness.

    Meanwhile, they’ll be telling themselves how kind and gentle they are while how nasty the Democrats are. SMH.

  135. 135.

    CliosFanBoy

    @cain: apparently we forced them to be huge flaming a***** by asking them to please not be such a******s or some such,

  137. 137.

    karen marie

    @kindness: Watching the language shift is interesting. Republicans are now using “everyday Americans” instead of “real Americans.”

    Fucking Republicans are a pestilence.

     

    PS Recently – including today – the comment system has forgotten me, making me type nym/email. Is this a FYWP thing or am I just special? (Android tablet)

  139. 139.

    cain

    @zhena gogolia: ​
     

    I took down my Biden-Harris sign as soon as we won, but the Trump signs hung around the neighborhood for weeks.

    All the trumpers took down their blue line and trump flags after the insurrection. Nobody wanted to be associated with that hot mess.

  141. 141.

    CaseyL

    @Ken:

    Maybe they can have drill teams marching in parades.

    Parades in Philadelphia have “Mummers”: teams of Shriners riding around on tiny tricycles, playing ukeleles.

    I never thought anything was odd about it, because I had first seen them in parades as a child and just grew up accepting the sight as normal.

    It wasn’t until I moved away I wondered what the hell were grown (sometimes elderly) men doing, dressed up in odd clothing, wearing spangly fezzes, and riding tiny tricycles – not in rigid formation, either, but up and down and back and forth.

    I understand Shriners just fine – an ancient fraternal order that does a lot of charity work – but the Mummers bit?  What the hell was that?

    Then I found out that “mummering” is an even more ancient tradition, based somewhere in Europe, dating to pre-Roman times.  It has regional flourishes – some mummering is stomp-dancing, with bells worn on the men’s calves; sometimes they dress up in bizarre stylized outfits reminiscent of ancient gods, or cross-dress, or wear animal costumes.

    It was a fascinating look at how traditions dating back thousands of years survive to the present time, long past any immediate social connection to or understanding of what the traditions meant in the first place.

  145. 145.

    Steve in the ATL

    @cain: I drove out to the lake yesterday which is in Jody Hice’s district. Many trump signs are still standing, and one business has a new, very large trump 2024 flag flying.

    Saw a flag on a pick up that had all the usual stickers that was an American flag with “COS” where the stars should be.  Does anyone know what this stupidity is?

  146. 146.

    J R in WV

    The last time we drove back east to WV from Colorado, we started out on 2-lane country roads, avoiding the Interstate highways to see slower country and farm country. Eventually we had to go north to I-70 to find a hotel, but then drove back south to state roads to continue the trip.

    Beautiful country vistas, rolling hills, little local museum was wonderful, half pioneer recent history, the other half a fabulous exhibit of truly ancient history, fossils from local chalk beds collected by local folks.

    Was a great drive.

    We crossed the Mississippi River where the Ohio River joined at Cairo, and then crossed the Ohio river into Kentucky — those bridges are old, one built in the 1920s and the other completed in 1938, but still carrying an industrial load of traffic!

  147. 147.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    I didn’t know you knew Stephanie Stuckey! She and I worked together on several environmental projects when I was with the Canadian Consulate and she was in the GA legislature. She is indeed good people.

  149. 149.

    J R in WV

    @karen marie:

     

    PS Recently – including today – the comment system has forgotten me, making me type nym/email. Is this a FYWP thing or am I just special? (Android tablet)

    Sounds as if your “cookies” (which are how browsers track your activity history) got flushed or reset. You should be OK once you’ve posted again, which should reset your Balloon-Juice cookie.

  151. 151.

    Steeplejack

    @WaterGirl:

    Well, actually ? right-handed players typically catch balls with their left hand because they throw with their right (dominant) arm.

  157. 157.

    way2blue

    Wasn’t that a Robert Redford movie, ‘An Unfinished Life’, where he plays a gruff rancher sheltering his widowed daughter-in-law & granddaughter from a vicious boyfriend…

  158. 158.

    J R in WV

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Completely off-topic, started your first “Please Don’t Tell My Parents…” novel, hilarious so far, thanks!

    The description of when protagonist breaks through creating tiny gears, etc, to build her first machine, in kind of a daze was fabulous.

  159. 159.

    WaterGirl

    @karen marie: J. R. is correct.

    There are three things that can look like BJ forgot your nym and email.

    You don’t allow cookies, or you have cleared all your cookies.

    You posted on BJ in private browsing (or whatever your browser calls it).

    You got a new computer or a new system board, so BJ thinks you have a new computer.

    Are any of those relevant to your current situation?  If you post a comment again, does it remember you now?

  164. 164.

    karen marie

    @J R in WV: May be my tablet. Sometimes I type and nothing shows up. Rebooting corrects it. Do not want to have to buy a new one! Grrr!

  165. 165.

    Another Scott

    @WaterGirl: In Virginia the threshold for Grand Larceny used to be $200. It was recently raised to $500, then $1000.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if a store valued a video tape at $200, so the state GL threshold might have been exceeded.

    An easy way to keep poor people down, and felonies are obviously a convenient way to keep “undesirable criminal” people from voting, also too.

    Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  167. 167.

    OldDave

    @J R in WV:  We crossed the Mississippi River where the Ohio River joined at Cairo, and then crossed the Ohio river into Kentucky — those bridges are old, one built in the 1920s and the other completed in 1938, but still carrying an industrial load of traffic!

    I’ve crossed those two bridges many a time, and almost always with the same thought in my head:  “Now would not be a good time for the New Madrid fault to let go.”

  168. 168.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: Exactly that.  Fuck the poor, and make sure they can’t vote.

    I remember in the 80s when I worked for the Rape Hotline that the laws in NYC were written such that, as the saying went, “in New York City, if you steal a $500 TV, the rape is free.”

    Laws are written by the powerful, for the powerful.

  172. 172.

    chris green

    it’s even more amazing when you consider that the press is completely uninterested in reporting on the administration’s actions and policies. I googled for stuff the admin and Congress had actually done on justice and police reform and was surprised at how much I didn’t know about. Substantive stuff that would be popular. I did just go to Google news and search for coverage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing act. I did find coverage but the big new organizations “cover” everything. What people see is what they promote. The number of people who know about Nancy Pelosi’s idiotic tweet dwarfs the number who know that the house has banned no-knock warrants.

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