Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

This blog will pay for itself.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

You cannot shame the shameless.

We still have time to mess this up!

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Bark louder, little dog.

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

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

T R E 4 5 O N

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Morning Inspiration Open Thread: ‘I Can Do Better’

Friday Morning Inspiration Open Thread: ‘I Can Do Better’

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I’m sad she may not get her chance in Tokyo, but Biles has already earned her place in the pantheon:

… “Only 12 more weeks,” the greatest gymnast of her generation and any other says with a hint of wistfulness.

Not 12 weeks until the Tokyo Olympics begin. But until they’re over…

Biles will walk onto the competition floor for the first time in more than 18 months on Saturday night at the US Classic in Indianapolis. The meet marks the start of a frantic stretch in which Biles will stand at the center of a white-hot spotlight of her own creation not only as the face of gymnastics but the entire U.S. Olympic movement and perhaps the Tokyo Games themselves…

She didn’t ask to be immersed in three different social movements at once. It happened anyway. Three years ago she came forward as one of the hundreds of young women abused by Nassar — a longtime USA Gymnastics team doctor — under the guise of medical treatment. As a prominent Black athlete, she’s found herself trying to find a way to use her platform to speak out against social injustice. As a female, she’s become increasingly focused on aligning herself with entities that make empowering other women a priority, one of the driving forces behind her decision to recently leave Nike for Athleta.

“It’s kind of scary sometimes having that power placed into my hands because I didn’t ask for it,” she said. “So I’m also getting used to that and I have to be careful about what I say because I know the impact that I can have.”…

Biles hasn’t spent the last five years coasting. She’s spent it pushing herself and gymnastics to places it once seemed impossible to go. She has turned the sport’s Code of Points into her own personal keepsake. She has elements named after her on multiple events, with perhaps another on vault in the offing…

It’s in a leotard with the world watching where she’s most comfortable. Doing the things only she can do, awing her peers while trying to silence her inner critic in the process…

“I want to do this and nobody is forcing me,” she said. “Now, it’s just for myself.”

Enjoy the show. However long it lasts.

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  2. 2.

    Ken

    the greatest gymnast of her generation and any other

    I see the unique style of Olympic reporting wasn’t affected by the one-year delay. For better or for worse.

  3. 3.

    Anne Laurie

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s an open question, right at the moment.  Only the IOC *can*, contractually, cancel the games — and of course, the IOC leadership is notoriously crooked as an old dog’s hind leg, and far more interested in the money they’ve got invested in media contracts than in the safety of the athletes, much less the unfortunate natives of the country which made the unforeseeable mistake of bidding for these games some number of years ago.

    Japan doesn’t want to be responsible for pulling the plug, because its leadership doesn’t want to be responsible for paying all the contractual penalties (not to mention the whole ‘national prestige’ issue).   The Japanese population is increasingly anti-Olympics, for very good reasons, but whether the situation will be *quite* bad enough for one side or another to pull the trigger on all that lovely sponsorship money has yet to be settled.

    As it is — I haven’t been keeping a tally — some (mostly smaller, less competitive) countries are talking about pulling their teams, some national sports clubs (ditto — less telegenic sports with smaller prizes at stake) have or will announce they’re not showing up, and every name-brand competitor is weighing whether the chance of winning a medal is worth the chance of potentially compromising their health.

    Even if the games Go On, the venues have been cut back & scattered the length & breath of the Japanese islands, there’s going to be very few spectators outside of the media, and the whole ‘Olympic Village’ party ideal has been nixed.  So *if* the 2021 Tokyo Games happen, they’ll come with more asterisks than TFG’s stint in the White House.

    It really looks like a hostage situation, IMO.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Take note boys, don’t mess with Alyssa:

    An 11-year-old girl in Florida had the presence of mind to smear the blue slime she had been playing with on the arms of an attempted kidnapper, who threatened her with a knife and dragged her toward his van, so police could identify him.

    Alyssa Bonal, of Pensacola, said she learned the importance of evidence from her favorite TV show, the long-running detective series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Alyssa, who managed to fight the man off, was attacked on Tuesday as she awaited her school bus, her near-abduction captured by a neighbor’s home security camera.

    “I was able to get the slime on to his upper arm and a little bit on his lower arm,“ Alyssa told NBC’s Today show in an interview that aired on Thursday. “I knew that might be better evidence if the cops do find him.”

    Her intuition proved right. Chip Simmons, the Escambia county sheriff, said when his detectives arrested Jared Paul Stanga late on Tuesday after an extensive manhunt, his arms were still streaked with blue dye.

    She’s gonna go far.

  5. 5.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Building management announced vaccination stats here yesterday. 100% of the residents are vaccinated except for one woman who’s awaiting medical approval. 70% of the staff is. Management is 100%. Housekeeping at 80%. Food and beverage is lowest. Those restaurants and kitchens have lots of young, invulnerable people. Some of them are young enough that they’d need a parent’s permission.

  9. 9.

    rikyrah

    Yeah, for Matthew and his mom ?

     

     
    Moderna vaccine developer Dr. Corbett convinces mother & son to get vaccine

     https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/moderna-vaccine-developer-dr-corbett-convinces-mother-son-to-get-vaccine-112688197530 via @msnbc

  11. 11.

    Betty Cracker

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Do you think more companies will mandate vaccination eventually? Seems likely to me. Once the FDA fully authorizes the vaccines (rather than emergency authorization), a lot of companies will feel less exposed legally and start mandating it, IMO. I read recently that Delta already is mandating vax for new employees, and existing employees who refuse vaccination will be kept on but may be put into different jobs.

  13. 13.

    Anne Laurie

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I feel sorry for the athletes, not gonna lie.

    But the current “Olympic Games” are a shonda, and the whole corrupt system running & profiting from them needs to be nuked from orbit.

  17. 17.

    BruceFromOhio

    As a female, she’s become increasingly focused on aligning herself with entities that make empowering other women a priority, one of the driving forces behind her decision to recently leave Nike for Athleta.

    I was already a fan, now even more so.

  19. 19.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Betty Cracker: I think some will. I think health care places should mandate it in staff. Or I think it was Barbara here who said an alternative was to require mask wearing every single minute for an unvaccinated person, including in the cafeteria. That seems reasonable. You can’t let someone endanger others. As your comment suggests, you open yourself to legal action for one thing

  22. 22.

    Betty Cracker

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Agreed. My sister is a nurse anesthetist, and she says hospitals give healthcare providers a choice every year about flu shots: get a shot or wear a mask all the time. It’s nothing new.

  23. 23.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    My building is not yet requiring employees to be vaccinated, though they emphasize “yet” when they say that. But they made it easy by having the J&J in the nurse’s office. And they made it into a competition between departments, which applied a little social pressure to slow folks.

  24. 24.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    I’m a bona fide Olympics fan – meaning I watch the Olympics to the exclusion of everything else every four years when they roll around even though I don’t follow any of the sports in between – but honestly if the IOC had a shred of integrity they’d either postpone for one more year and then have the next Summer Olympics on schedule two years later, or just cancel them without penalizing Japan financially. But, of course, we know the IOC doesn’t have a shred of integrity.

    I’m more of a fan of the Winter Olympics even though they’re nauseatingly Caucasian-centric, but I grew up in Michigan sledding, skating on our local pond turned ice rink, and cross country skiing all winter and just relate to the winter sports more, but I do definitely tune into the summer games and enjoy them. I really don’t know where the Winter Olympics are headed. It’s going to be harder and harder to find places to hold them with climate change and if the Scandinavians are passing on hosting the games because the financial toll isn’t worth it, whose going to be willing? Those countries are the most winter-sports crazy place on earth and also wealthy enough. Basically the IOC is making the games too expensive for anyone to want to host them and they need to recalibrate their expectations or there won’t be an Olympics anymore and then their financial gravy train goes bye bye.

    I really think they should pick spots – one on every suitable continent – that are permanent Olympic hosts and just rotate among those spots so the facilities get re-used regularly. Winter would be once every three Olympics in North America, Europe, and Asia (Africa and South America don’t have enough winter to host) and then you could include Africa and South America as Summer Olympic hosts.

  25. 25.

    satby

    @Betty Cracker: Once the FDA fully authorizes the vaccines (rather than emergency authorization), a lot of companies will feel less exposed legally and start mandating it, IMO.

    It’s coming and that will help more people get vaccinated for sure. Though under public health rules most companies don’t need to feel exposed legally, none of them want to pay lawyers to find out. That’s the thing keeping my doctor from requiring it right now, for the few holdouts who haven’t been vaccinated yet. I just hired a new employee through the reentry program for formerly incarcerated, and that program requires vaccination to be enrolled too. An extra person will cover the gap if one of our hold-outs decides to quit (she’s doing Grub Hub or something at night, and losing her would be inconvenient but no great loss).

    Edited to add: the other two will get it when it’s required, but not before.

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m going up to the Suwannee River this evening for the first family gathering we’ve had for more than a year. Gonna get to see aunts and uncles, siblings and nieces and nephews, etc., all in one place again. It’s one of those things I look forward to so much and yet dread to the bottom of my soul at the same time. But first, I gotta finish up my work and make a three-layer chocolate cake from scratch!

  28. 28.

    JPL

    @Betty Cracker: Family is driving in from NYC and Houston.   I expected them late tomorrow, but will adjust  cuz the Houston family will be here by noon today

    I was up at four so it gave me time to prepare.

    Have fun!!!

  29. 29.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I gotta pass this on:

    A driver on one of Japan’s shinkansen bullet trains is facing disciplinary measures after he abandoned his cab to go to the toilet while the train was carrying passengers and travelling at 150km/h.

    The 36-year-old driver, who has not been named, reportedly had a stomachache and asked a conductor to take his place while he went to the toilet.

    The conductor, who was not qualified to drive the Hikari-series train, sat in the driver’s seat during his three-minute absence, but did not touch the controls, according to the Kyodo news agency.

    The incident happened last weekend as the train carried 160 passengers at high speed along the busy Tokaido line, which links Tokyo and Osaka.

    The driver might have got away with his unscheduled toilet break except for the fact that the train was subsequently one minute late, which prompted an investigation in a country famous for punctuality.

    One minute, that’s all it took.

  31. 31.

    Soprano2

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I really think they should pick spots – one on every suitable continent – that are permanent Olympic hosts and just rotate among those spots so the facilities get re-used regularly.

    Yes, I’ve thought for a long time they should do this. It’s such a waste of resources to rebuild facilities every 4 years, just to have most of them fall into disuse. This would make a lot of sense for everyone.

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The 36-year-old driver, who has not been named, reportedly had a stomachache and asked a conductor to take his place while he went to the toilet.

    What the hell was he supposed to do?

     

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The driver might have got away with his unscheduled toilet break except for the fact that the train was subsequently one minute late, which prompted an investigation in a country famous for punctuality.

    I don’t see the connection between train speed and the potty break, especially if the other guy didn’t touch the controls.

  35. 35.

    JML

    Gymnastics is not really my thing, but I’ll tune in for Biles every time. She does stuff that seems impossible. (swear to god when they slowed down one of her flips it looked like she was somehow pushing off on the air to make herself go higher. unbelievable)

    It’s the best part of the Olympics: seeing that kind of elite performance. But the IOC is a destructive corrupt shit-show that should be burned to the ground.

  36. 36.

    Paul Begala's Pink Tie

    @BruceFromOhio: ugh, Will Graves with “as a female…” Content of the article aside, when will more journalists get the memo that “female” should be a descriptor?

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @Baud:

    Ok I read the article.

    Shinkansen drivers who feel ill are required to report to an operations centre and hand the controls over to a qualified conductor, or stop at the nearest station.
    The driver involved in the recent incident reportedly told JR Central that he did not want to lose time by bringing the train to a halt at the next available stop. “I didn’t report it because it was embarrassing,” he said.

    He may not have been able to make it to the next station, but it sounds like there was a qualified conductor aboard.

  38. 38.

    Karen S.

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:

    I agree with this. I have loved the Olympics since the first time I watched the 1976 games (the Winter ones on a black & white TV that went on the fritz in the middle of the games, leading my parents to buy our first color TV and then the summer ones in glorious color), but I’ve found more recent games harder to get into. I guess that’s mainly because I’ve found the TV coverage, mostly done by NBC in the U.S., somewhat tedious. The “up close and personal” profiles get aggravating. I just want to see the competition.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: What the hell was he supposed to do?

    So you too detected a flaw in their system, eh? It seems rather obvious to me that a conductor on each train should be trained for just such emergency situations, but who am I?

    I don’t see the connection between train speed and the potty break, especially if the other guy didn’t touch the controls.

    I assume the driver slowed it down some to give the conductor a little extra braking time in case of an emergency, but I really don’t know.

    ETA: <a href=”#comment-8176607″>@Baud</a>: Read the whole article??? What are you, some kind of pinkocapitalistcommie heretic???

  40. 40.

    Betty

    @OzarkHillbilly: If it had been a true emergency, what is the plan? Why not have the conductor trained to take over if needed?  I know some US railroads would like to have just an engineer in the cab. No thought of what might go wrong.

  42. 42.

    narya

    good morning everyone! Despite the reason for the visit, I’m still looking forward to seeing family. And I know my mom is very much looking forward to having me there; I’m bringing farm-share asparagus to share w/ her. She loves them, as do I, but dad hates them, so if the season is right I get some to share w/ her when I’m there. It’s really the small things. Chop wood, carry water.

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: it was from a neighbor’s Ring video

    Yes, it was. I read that whole article, which I guess makes me some kind of pinkocapitalistcommie heretic too.

  46. 46.

    CaseyL

    Never much of an Olympics fan, though I did like watching gymnastics and the couples’ figure skating. When the networks carrying the Games decided not to carry the events live, but broke them up into little bits to be shown whenever the ratings would be highest, I checked out completely.

    But I do think the Games should be postponed, if not cancelled altogether. There will be athletes, coaches, vendors, officials, journalists, and spectators from India, Brazil, and other places where the pandemic isn’t under control at all. It’ll be a hothouse for variants to develop and spread.

    Yes, it will be a heartbreak for the athletes. But how more of a heartbreak for them to get Covid?

    OT: Jenn Rubin referenced our very own DougJBalloon in a morning tweet:

    “How Hopes for a Bipartisan Jan. 6 Commission Fell Apart”… How to Construct a Headline that Absolves GOP of Agency cc:
    @DougJBalloon

  47. 47.

    Timill

    @Geminid:

    “I’ll go back to the Swanee
    Where pellagra makes you scrawny
    And the Honeysuckle clutters up the vine
    I really am a-fixin’
    To go home and start a-mixin’
    Down below that Mason-Dixon line“

  48. 48.

    PST

    Like some others here, I’m looking forward to our first post-pandemic family visit. My stepson will actually be staying at his ex-wife’s place taking care of her cats while she is out of town preparing to move to another city, but he will be over often throughout the next few days, eating with us and visiting. I’m looking forward to it, both because it will be good to seem him and as a sign of normalcy. We are all vaccinated and we have all been reasonably careful for the last year, so I’m not apprehensive. When I rack my brains, I simply cannot think of a single friend or acquaintance who isn’t vaccinated, not even the Fox-watching fans of TFG. Places I visit that could be questionable, like the grocery store and the liquor store (I’d better get to one before our visitor arrives) still require masks. Beautiful weather here in Chicago means that even indoor restaurant seating is mostly with wide open windows. Life feels good at the moment. I think I’ll take a nice long bike ride.

  49. 49.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    My aunt died on May 13th. My father’s sister. So we have a family text group and I thought I’d get the ball rolling with a positive memory – I only have a few- and almost immediately after I sent it there were dissenters. “Well. Just know that she wasn’t that nice to all of us” – the word “toxic” came in and also “not a kind person”. I showed them to my youngest while we were in the car together and he read the comments aloud in the person’s voice. So funny.

    She had a sense of humor. I don’t think she would mind that much. She dressed kind of dramatically  which I liked as a kid so I lamely came back with “she wore capes- remember the capes?” Desperate. No takers on the fashion angle.

  50. 50.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m going up to the Suwannee River this evening for the first family gathering we’ve had for more than a year. Gonna get to see aunts and uncles, siblings and nieces and nephews, etc., all in one place again. It’s one of those things I look forward to so much and yet dread to the bottom of my soul at the same time.

    I’m guessing at least some of them are fans of TFG.  Is that where the dread’s coming from?  I know that’s the part that’s hard on my wife as we anticipate our Florida trips this summer: pretty much all her extended family are TFG supporters.  Hopefully everybody will just not talk about it, at your reunion and ours.

  52. 52.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Sorry you lost your aunt — she sounds like a character! Those sorts of family conversations can be amusing when the person who has died was very old and a gigantic pain in the ass.

    I was a young adult when my great-grandmother died. She was an utterly terrifying old lady and a religious fanatic, and I remember being sort of shocked when her kids and grandkids shared their real feelings, which they dared not do when she was alive!

  53. 53.

    Betty Cracker

    @lowtechcyclist: Yep, Trumpsters will be there, but they’ve mostly learned not to tangle with me on that topic. That’s definitely part of my dread, but I’m also an introverted shut-in who generally dislikes crowds, so there’s that.

    @schrodingers_cat: & @Dorothy A. Winsor: I’m using this recipe that Ina Garten nicked off a friend. It’s not a very pretty cake, tbh, but it’s deeee-licious. I will post a pic.

  54. 54.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: I think most companies with employees who have a high degree of face-to-face interaction with the public will mandate it for their employees.  Huge competitive advantage going forward that costs them essentially nothing.

  55. 55.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Jeebus:

    Christian Taylor, the two-time Olympic and four-time triple jump world champion and one of American track and field’s biggest stars, will miss this summer’s Olympics after rupturing his achilles tendon only two months before the Tokyo Games are due to start, his partner said on Thursday.
    100 days to the Tokyo Olympics: Twenty-five US athletes to watch
    Read more

    The 30-year-old from outside Atlanta, who trains full-time at the British Athletics’ national performance center in Loughborough, was injured during the Ostrava Golden Spike meet in the Czech Republic on Wednesday, Austrian hurdler Beate Schrott said in an Instagram post.

    “Christian ruptured his Achilles during the competition in Ostrava yesterday. It’s heartbreaking. Really,” she wrote. “I spent quite some time trying to find the right words, but I am giving up. I don’t have words for this situation.”

    She added: “I know he’ll get through this. He will fight his way back. He’ll come out of this situation not smelling like smoke.”

  56. 56.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    She was really old. My father’s side live a long time. I just checked back and now they’re on “she probably lied but you can’t prove it so you just have to let it go”

    Can’t prove it! She skated on that offense.

  57. 57.

    Jeffro

    OT but noted this morning on Twitter: DougJ got a retweet or tagged or something by one Jennifer “pro-voting” Rubin.  =)

  59. 59.

    Ken

    @Kay: Well, you know what they say. If you can’t say something nice about the deceased, share the really nasty gossip.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    Lis Power
    @LisPower1
    ·May 20
    Fox’s Steve Doocy got the number of Americans who have died from COVID-19 wrong three times in one segment.
    Doocy: “Think about it this way folks, here in the United States of America 52,000 Americans have died from COVID, 52,000!”
    The actual number is nearly 600,000

    The lying on the Right has really accelerated since they swore allegiance to Trump. You’re all going to tell me it was always this bad but it really wasn’t. It was ham-handed misdirection and mostly misleading but they didn’t just blithely lie like this about verifiable things like numbers.
    This is the third time in 2 days prominent figures in the GOP with huge platforms have just blatantly lied about the number of Covid deaths.
    It’s interesting to me because it’s defensive. They really really don’t want Trump tagged with half a million US deaths. We all say “nothing matters” to refer to how their fans don’t care about anything and are just blind partisans but if that’s true why lie so much? Someone in that Party cares a lot, believes it’s damaging, enough to work so hard at denying what happened.

  61. 61.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Hahaha! Was your son surprised by how people were talking about her? It’s weird how attitudes toward death evolve as one ages, or at least it has been for me.

    I remember being all indignant as a kid when people showed up with casseroles after an uncle (by marriage) died in a sudden and dramatic fashion. (A shoot-out with cops during commission of a crime — for real!)

    I remember thinking, OMG, how can anyone possibly think of FOOD at a time like this? It struck me as callous somehow, but now of course I understand how practical and kind it is. I’m the first person to show up with disasteroles now. :)

  63. 63.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    She reached out personally!

    POLITICO @politico
    After Meghan McCain personally reached out to the White House offering to get vaccinated on air alongside her brother, she got crickets in response

    Does Shrieky McJohnMcCain’sDaughter really now know how much the trumpers hate her precisely because she’s JOHN MCCAIN’S DAUGHTER!

  64. 64.

    prostratedragon

    @Ben Cisco:  Per the youtube queueing system, a new remote sessions video from Sanborn and Marcus Miller just dropped a few days ago.

  65. 65.

    hueyplong

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not sure I understand why White House permission/ok/cheers are needed in order for her to go ahead and get vaccinated on TV.

    And why hasn’t she already been vaccinated?

    Seems like an aggrievement safari.

  66. 66.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:They really really don’t want Trump tagged with half a million US deaths. We all say “nothing matters” to refer to how their fans don’t care about anything and are just blind partisans but if that’s true why lie so much? Someone in that Party cares a lot, believes it’s damaging, enough to work so hard at denying what happened.

    So true.

    And doubly true for 1/6

    Both “issues” show that not only can’t the Republicans be trusted to govern, they’re actively working against Americans’ best interests/health/own government.

  67. 67.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @hueyplong: I can’t follow the breathless, Page Six-like “insiders say!” and pointless bold-facing of Politico, but apparently they were going to do vaccinate Shrieky and Whoopi on the show with a gov’t doctor. The plan fell through, but Whoopi got more attention from the WH than Shrieky, so Shrieky called a friend at Politico to whine, looks like. Attenion must be paid!

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    He put kind of a positive spin on it “your family are talkers- Dad’s family are not”. Like he’s glad we’re working thru our issues :)

    We went to go cash bonds his grandfather gave him for college. We had to go to his bank and he has a checking and savings there. So the bonds are for his extra expenses so should be in checking but the teller shamed him into putting them in savings. “you don’t want to spend this over the summer”. I remember that so vividly as a kid, where you were always trying to please adults. Do the “correct” thing.

  69. 69.

    Ken

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I can’t follow the breathless, Page Six-like “insiders say!” and pointless bold-facing of Politico

    I believe they prefer it be called “journalism”.

    If so, it’s the kind of journal 13-year-old girls keep, with stickers on the outside, a dreamy picture clipped from Tiger Beat pasted on every other page, and all the “i”s dotted with little hearts.

  70. 70.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Someone in that Party cares a lot,

    I don’t think they care so much as they need to lie to themselves to hold onto that whole “pro life” bullshit, but they sure didn’t complain about death panels when Dan Patrick threw old folks under the economics bus.

  71. 71.

    citizen dave

    @Kay: Re: RW lying.  I’ve always remembered one of the times Bill O Reilly was on Letterman’s show–middle period, before the last few years where Dave seemed to show a more liberal side–and after BillO had talked for a while Dave said something like “I don’t have the ability to counter you right now, but this all sounds like something that once I go back and check it out, learn the facts, I’ll find you’ve been lying the whole time”  Got a decent laugh, but he did sound exasperated.

    Simple working assumption of the GDP is assume they are lying 100% of the time

    ETA: Meghan McCain, truly an idiot.  To quote or paraphrase Bob Dylan, Idiot Wind “It’s a wonder she can even feed herself”

  72. 72.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker: My fraternal grandfather died at the age of 92 with significant dementia. My 10 yr old self was shocked at all the smiling people.

  73. 73.

    pluky

    @Ken: In her case it’s not hyperbole. I tumbled enough as a kid to be jaw-to-the-floor in awe of what she is capable of doing. For a more objective measure, she is the most decorated (i.e. medalled at Worlds and Olympics) American gymnast in history, of either gender. Keep in mind the men have 6 events available to them whereas the women have 4. Post Tokyo, she’s quite likely to be the most decorated in world history.

    “With a combined total of 30 Olympic and World Championship medals, Biles is the most decorated American gymnast and the world’s third most decorated gymnast, behind Belarus’ Vitaly Scherbo (33 medals) and Russia’s Larisa Latynina (32 medals).”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Biles

  74. 74.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

     

    It’s interesting to me because it’s defensive. They really really don’t want Trump tagged with half a million US deaths. We all say “nothing matters” to refer to how their fans don’t care about anything and are just blind partisans but if that’s true why lie so much? Someone in that Party cares a lot, believes it’s damaging, enough to work so hard at denying what happened.

     

    But, they can’t get past that it.

    Dolt45 and his deliberate malice helped kill 600,000 people.

     

    And, the speed with which Biden has helped right the ship shows the malice and incompetence.

     

    It’s the reason why  those Red State Governors are opening up. They want to kill people and get them sick to show that Democrats are bad at COVID too.

  77. 77.

    Betty Cracker

    @NotMax: Haha, nope — the lambs are for my husband’s side of the family, who are Northern Catholics. My Southern Protestant swampbilly family would be all WUT?

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Right. But we shouldn’t say “nothing matters”. They’re worried it matters and that’s why they launch one or another of these lie-a-thons every 2 weeks. If “nothing matters” the multi-millionaire Fox News employees wouldn’t be working so hard to lie about everything.

    The gun nut House member from Colorado booked a slot on one of these bullshit shows yesterday where she delivered a rehearsed line about how there had been “zero” Covid deaths in Texas the last 2 months. It’s a lie. She set out to tell it and went to a lot of trouble. It matters.

  80. 80.

    tarragon

    @Betty Cracker: Do you think more companies will mandate vaccination eventually?

    I think there are plenty that wont.  And that larger companies are more likely to require it.

    My small company just announced it’s return to office plans.  Mandatory return even for people that can and have successfully worked from home.  No mask required if you are vaccinated and asking anyone’s status is forbidden.

    There’s a few that weren’t good about masking to begin with.  I suspect there are a couple that will not get vaccinated and will simply lie to go maskless.

    *sigh

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Have you seen this and what’s coming out of Brazil?

    One of the few statistical comforts of the otherwise nightmarish Covid-19 pandemic — that it largely spares young people — is fading: The long-haul symptoms that have stricken many U.S. adults are now hitting those under 20.
    A relatively small but increasing percentage of children are struggling for months with extreme fatigue, rapid heart rate, memory loss, depression and other symptoms. In one sign of their growing numbers, the UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland is opening a Long Haul Clinic just for young people, the first of its kind in the country.

    It’s the certainty that kills me. We can do risk/benefit but was it really necessary to demonize people who were cautious about kids and covid? No one really knows. Could we have allowed for some doubt? I’m willing to admit I was operating with the info I had but hell if I know whether there’s longer term effects. None of them knew either. Just say that.

  82. 82.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

     

    Right. But we shouldn’t say “nothing matters”. They’re worried it matters and that’s why they launch one or another of these lie-a-thons every 2 weeks. If “nothing matters” the multi-millionaire Fox News employees wouldn’t be working so hard to lie about everything.

     

    Like that muthaphucka Carlson.

    How come he can’t come out and say that he’s not vaccinated. After all, that’s the bullshyt he peddles every night.

    It’s a simple answer:

    YES, I am vaccinated

    NO, I am not vaccinated

  83. 83.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Even early in the pandemic, there were stories about young people filling up COVID wards in various countries. It seemed for a while like the disease was getting inherently more dangerous for younger people, then I eventually figured it out: no, it’s just that small percentages aren’t that small, and if you have a WHOLE LOT of members of some group getting COVID, yeah, you’re going to get a lot of them who get terribly ill. And especially if they don’t die rapidly, they’re going to fill up the hospitals.

    For all I know, it IS getting more dangerous for kids now. But even if it’s not, so many people cannot grasp that a small fraction of a huge number is not zero, and can be quite substantial.

  84. 84.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I mean, I was an “open schools” person but I also knew the infection rate was complete bullshit because we weren’t testing them. But now the Right has seized this as a political issue so we’ll never know- it will be forever unknowable. Put it in the huge basket of things where we never really find out what happened.

    If there’s more risk to kids than was believed they will deny it to the end of their days, because if 600k dead adults is bad enough to invent new statistics they’ll go into lying overdrive on kids.

    It’s exhausting. We need to know what happened.

  85. 85.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    It’s the certainty that kills me. We can do risk/benefit but was it really necessary to demonize people who were cautious about kids and covid? No one really knows. Could we have allowed for some doubt? I’m willing to admit I was operating with the info I had but hell if I know whether there’s longer term effects. None of them knew either. Just say that.

     

    The people who were cautious were largely non-White, living in multi-generational homes, and couldn’t risk having a child come back asymptomatic.

     

    But, OPEN THE ECONOMY

    OPEN THE SCHOOLS

    Phuck all those muthaphuckas.

     

    This was Peanut’s situation. Peanut has been between two houses since February 2020. BOTH of them multi-generational full of Adults who are walking Underlying Conditions. I felt for her. I really did. But, neither one of her households could risk her going back to in-person learning, being asymptomatic, and bringing it back to the home where the likelihood of death was great.

    So, she was isolated for all these months. I know that it’s hurt her. But, there was no other choice. There was no room for error. Not one of the Adults closest to her could have survived any bout with COVID.

    Period.

  86. 86.

    Just One More Canuck

    @rikyrah: it’s not just the 600,000 (probably understated) deaths in the US that should be laid at Trump’s feet. As President, Trump’s indifference to the virus enable the Bolsonaros of the world to act the same way. I’m not saying that no-one would have died had there been someone else in charge or if he had acted in a remotely humane or competent way, but I would argue that he is responsible for far more  deaths around the world than just what happened in the US

  87. 87.

    Mike in NC

    The Orange Clown will go down in history as one of the stupidest and most evil people that ever walked the Earth.

  89. 89.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Just One More Canuck: The big question is: will there be any accountability? Will the manifest incompetence of the world’s right-wing authoritarian populists (with the possible exception of Bibi, and, well, maybe Xi Jinping if you count him) at dealing with COVID be the downfall of this wave of quasi-fascist stupidity we’ve been suffering for the past decade or so?

    I’m not super-confident about it, unfortunately. I guess it got Trump for the time being.

  91. 91.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Matt McIrvin: Do Something Twitter is currently calling on Democrats to make hay out of reports that trump is billing his Secret Service agents at Mar-A-Lago. Trouble is: He’s been doing this  since before he was inaugurated. His corruption has been manifest for more than five years. Tax-cheating, the trump tower meeting, cheap grifting, selling access, using official US policy and spending to extort foreign leaders in the name of election interference… People don’t care. The horses have been led to the water. They won’t drink. I find it absolutely fucking baffling. But Democrats can’t make people care.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I disagree with that, I must say. You just don’t know when something will go from “not mattering” to “mattering”.

    There’s no kill shot. It seems to me it almost operates as a cumulative pile up of offenses then a tipping point. Just keep hammering it. It is impossible to overestimate how little normies pay attention :)

    I’ll concede that corruption is not the killer issue that I think it should be but it could be and it’s worth pushing. They won’t care, won’t care, then they’ll care and it’ll be something fucking stupid that tips it over and we’ll think it’s the ONE thing but it will actually be straw/camel.

  94. 94.

    trollhattan

    Uber and Lyft bought themselves out of being classified as employers last November. Shots fired.

    California’s Uber and Lyft drivers must start switching to electric vehicles.

    The California Air Resources Board voted Thursday to require ride-hailing companies to phase electric vehicles into their fleets starting in 2023. By 2030, at least 90% of the miles driven by ride-hail companies in California must be in electric vehicles.

    The board’s vote represents another step in California’s crusade to electrify its cars and trucks to reduce carbon emissions and battle climate change. Amid the worst wildfire season on record last fall, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order eliminating the sale of new gas and diesel cars by 2035.

    “The transportation sector is reponsible for nearly half of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, the vast majority of which come from light-duty vehicles. This action will help provide certainty to the state’s climate efforts and improve air quality in our most disadvantaged communities,” air board Chairwoman Liane Randolph said in a prepared statement.

    The air board said the ride-hailing companies have several routes to help meet the electrification mandates — including stepping up the number of carpooled rides and reducing “deadhead miles” driven without any passengers.

    Lyft’s senior manager for sustainability, Paul Augustine, said in a letter to the board that Lyft supports California’s electrification and clean-air goals but is worried that the Air Resources Board is glossing over the difficulties in meeting the 2030 mandates.

    The program “could economically harm low- and moderate-income drivers in particular,” he wrote. He added that California is making a mistake with its “singular focus” on ride-hailing vehicles, given that they represent “only 1.2% of total vehicle-miles traveled” in California.
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article251574748.html#storylink=cpy

    Oh, are you saying those “independent contractors” are low income? Now, what steps might you take to being them out of poverty? A  wage? Benefits? Hmmm, what to do, what to do….

  95. 95.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I guess I’m with Do Something Twitter on this. You absolutely have to keep pounding a message relentlessly to make a sale. You can’t just shout it from the rooftops for all to hear and then conclude no one gives a shit if there’s no immediate and dramatic response. I think wingnuts generally understand and internalize this far better than we do, maybe because they have a lot more contempt for their base.

  96. 96.

    Kathleen

    @Ken: Clearly Joe Biden either didn’t sign someone’s yearbook or stood somebody up on prom night. The MoDoization of “journalism”.

  97. 97.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    We saw it with Trump’s lying. Years went by, he lied every day, people were “oh, I give him the benefit of the doubt”, we were fuming.

    Then it tipped and most people described him as a liar, which of course he is. They get there when they get there, maddeningly slowly, obviously, but they will get it.

  98. 98.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker: wing nuts are already angry, they don’t really know about what, and the Republicans who despise them just feed them after-the-fact reasons for them to justify it.

    So… Do Something. By all means. Hold hearings. Go on MSNBC and CNN and even go on Fox and try not to get out-shouted, do all kinds of podcasts. Carol Leonnig’s new book probably has half a dozen stories that would bring pretrump politics to a screeching halt. She’s been all over MSNBC and NPR and probably CNN and other outlets not on my radar. Nobody’s even talking about it here.  (a personal favorite nugget cause I’m petty AF: When Melania and Barron stayed in NYC for the first six months of the administration, at great tax-payer expense, it wasn’t just to renegotiate her pre-nup, it was to get Barron a larger share of The Beast’s assets. It give me pleasure to think how much they all hate each other. Cold and small comfort, but like I said, petty AF)

  99. 99.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay: and with an impeachment, over half a million deaths, and multiple pending lawsuits for fraud and sexual assault,  he increased his vote share, lost the electoral college by an even smaller margin than he won it by last time, and Republicans are clinging to him in the hopes of retaking the House and Senate.
    I’m not even close to giving up on the mid-terms, I’m actually somewhat optimistic about the Senate, but it will probably be a close-run thing.

    My real point: Don’t blame Democrats, as Do Something Twitter does, for American voters being disengaged and tolerant of massive and blatant corruption.

  100. 100.

    wmd

    I’m hoping the Olympics can happen safely.

    My son has been coaching a  young swimmer that is likely to qualify – she’s 17 years old and he has been coaching her for 4 years.  Lydia Jaboby has the 6th fastest time in the world in 100m breast stroke.

  101. 101.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I had to turn off Rachel Maddow the other night when she slipped into a mode she sometimes, if rarely does, pretending she doesn’t know why “Democrats” won’t Do I forget which Something. Like she doesn’t fucking know who Joe Manchin is.

  102. 102.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: You’re all going to tell me it was always this bad but it really wasn’t. It was ham-handed misdirection and mostly misleading but they didn’t just blithely lie like this about verifiable things like numbers.

    I would never tell you that. It’s one of the things I poke my right-wing friends about, that TFG made it permissible for them to just outright lie about things all the time. Before it was mostly a twisting of the truth through a partisan lens, but if someone outright lied they’d be taken to task for it and at least that lie wouldn’t be told again. Now they repeat the same lies over and over like TFG does, without any pushback at all most of the time. How can they lie about Covid deaths – anyone can look that up in all kinds of places or hear it or see it all over the place! Yet they do it over and over again.

  103. 103.

    Soprano2

    @hueyplong: Not sure I understand why White House permission/ok/cheers are needed in order for her to go ahead and get vaccinated on TV.

    Isn’t she already on a TV show? Geez….

  104. 104.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    The lying on the Right has really accelerated since they swore allegiance to Trump. You’re all going to tell me it was always this bad but it really wasn’t.

    It has accelerated and intensified and it was not always this bad.

    Trump taught the Republicans that there are no negative consequences for lying. Their voters don’t care and the press/media are happy to promote the lying because it’s entertainment

    If the press/media cared about the country or the truth, instead of asking Republican congress creatures “What do you say happened on January 6th?” ask “Why are you lying about January 6th? The whole world saw it. We have the video. Why do you lie?”

  105. 105.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I hope to live long enough to see the Trump spawn and trophy widow fight like methed-up ferrets in a sack over The Beast’s “estate,” only to find it’s a big pile of overdue bills.

  106. 106.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Soprano2: she seems to genuinely believe she’s a powerful voice for an oppressed and maligned minority of principled Republicans.

    I used to say if I wanted to lay a curse on George W Bush, I would grant him complete self-awareness. It would be an even crueler blow to the middle-aged spoiled brat with the weird hair.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    The covid deaths are this hugely profound thing that happened not just to the US but to the whole world and these people think they can go out there and just disappear them- make it so those people never existed. It’s really evil. It’s just wrong on every level. I’m not superstitious or religious but it makes me uncomfortable in a gut way, like “oh, you will PAY for that!”

  109. 109.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @trollhattan: I’m sure they share a deep bond of shallowness and vapidity, but I’ll always believe the reason Ivanka married Jared was in part because she had seen her father’s balance sheet, and Papa Kushner’s.

  110. 110.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker:  You absolutely have to keep pounding a message relentlessly to make a sale. You can’t just shout it from the rooftops for all to hear and then conclude no one gives a shit if there’s no immediate and dramatic response.

    I read somewhere that people have to hear or see a message at least 7 times before it even begins to sink into their heads. So yeah, we need to keep repeating it over and over again. I think our side gives up too easily if people aren’t as immediately outraged by something as we are.

  112. 112.

    Ken

    @trollhattan: There’s also the aspect that this won’t cost Lyft or Uber one penny, since the cars are provided by their drivers. They just have to shift to drivers with electric vehicles.  If they can’t find people with electric vehicles who are willing to work for them, well, that also says something about their business model, doesn’t it?

  113. 113.

    WaterGirl

    @wmd:

    I’m hoping the Olympics can happen safely.

    I think that ship has already sailed.  Reading that line brought me back to when my mom was dying.  I really did not want her to die. But at some point I had to accept that the person my mom had been – a real go-getter, always moving, always involved in stuff – was long gone because of the limitations of her terminal illness.  My mom was already gone in many respects, and in the end, reality was more powerful than what i wanted.

    To get back to the olympics, I don’t think there’s any chance that they can happen safely, especially in Japan where no one is vaccinated. I don’t see how the Japan olympics can come out of this with any success.  What they have to do now is have the courage to choose what kind of pain is preferable to the other kinds of pain.

  114. 114.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

     

    The covid deaths are this hugely profound thing that happened not just to the US but to the whole world and these people think they can go out there and just disappear them- make it so those people never existed. It’s really evil. It’s just wrong on every level

     

     

    Not just this.

    But, it’s related to their phucking evil with regards to the refusing unemployment benefits.

    these 600 maybe up to 900 thousand DEAD WORKED SOMEWHERE.

     

    The whole

    OPEN THE ECONOMY

    OPEN THE SCHOOLS

     

    MUTHAPHUCKAS  are responsible for a lot of these deaths

  115. 115.

    sdhays

    @WaterGirl: Not a lot, but I grew up in a town that still has train service, and I’ll often take the train down there from the big city with the airport when I go back to visit. My toddler is now obsessed with trains, so I’m really hoping we can do that again this winter. Some trains are know to always be hours late because they start out in California, while others are mostly on-time.

    But down to the minute on time…LOL.

  117. 117.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    @Mike in NC: Narendra Modi has him beat.

    As hard as it is to believe that Modi has TFG beat, it is so obvious, so extreme, so horrible — what is happening in India. Yes, Modi is more evil that Trump.

    Perhaps it is partly that India was more fragile from the beginning, less health care available, way more crowded, so no way to space at all. And Modi minimized the potential disaster until it was overwhelming everywhere. Corpses in the Ganges…

    I took a class in Indian Religious history in the long ago, and always wanted to visit to see the ancient temples and palaces. Not likely now…

    ETA: And of course, Modi has done far more varied horrible things than just the uncontained Covid plague — racist fascists don’t stop, they keep on destroying society and their own culture. So strange. I will never understand the goals of these monsters!

  118. 118.

    J R in WV

    @Betty Cracker:

    I hope to live long enough to see the Trump spawn and trophy widow fight like methed-up ferrets in a sack over The Beast’s “estate,” only to find it’s a big pile of overdue bills.

    This, so much this !! Your gift for literate scorn is gleaming like a lighthouse on the rocks around the entrance to the port of safety.

    Keep up  the good work, Ms Cracker!!

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I’m sure they share a deep bond of shallowness and vapidity, but I’ll always believe the reason Ivanka married Jared was in part because she had seen her father’s balance sheet, and Papa Kushner’s.

    And this also too !!! Ya’ll on a ROLL today. Ivanka needed to marry money, because she knows that Big Daddy Trumpkin’s wealth is a mirage.

  119. 119.

    Yutsano

    There being a surprising dearth of threads this morning, I feel like I need to drop this here.

    Elizabeth Cheney has to be one lucky so-and-so. Why? Her primary opponent was not only outed as a statutory rapist but he also drove his underage wife to suicide AND has almost no relationship with the kid. Now this being Wyoming (this all apparently happened in Florida BTW) how much this matters is up for debate, but oh ye gods this story is beyond skeevy…

    Liz Cheney primary challenger impregnated 14-year-old when he was 18 https://t.co/mlaD5oOyuF— Scott Wong (@scottwongDC) May 21, 2021

  122. 122.

    Amir Khalid

    There hasn’t been a new post or new comment in hours. Where is everybody?

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