Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

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

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

Let’s finish the job.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

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

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

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

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Refreshing Change of Scenery

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Refreshing Change of Scenery

by | 219 Comments

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Robin Givhan, at the Washington Post, is always worth reading:

The August Vogue cover with first lady Jill Biden is a classic. In these partisan times, that is a statement of both optimism and rebuke.

The story, written by Jonathan Van Meter, is a fashion love song and a political treatise. In every turn of phrase, every admiring riff, there’s a subtle excoriation of the previous administration and an unsubtle mash note to the current one. Vogue has a crush on Biden, but her predecessor was never photographed for the magazine during her tenure in the White House…

Biden is only the third occupant of the East Wing to appear on the cover of Vogue, which despite all its recent struggles and missteps in a world more demanding of inclusivity and less tolerant of hierarchies, remains a cultural touchstone. Hillary Clinton was the first presidential spouse on the cover in 1998 and the occasion celebrated her dignity in the face of her husband’s impeachment. At the time of publication, Editor in Chief Anna Wintour told The Washington Post that the goal of the story, for which Clinton posed in a velvet Oscar de la Renta gown, was to “give her her due.” Michelle Obama was the second. She appeared on the cover three times. According to one Vogue headline, Obama was: “The first lady the world’s been waiting for.”

But simply being photographed for the inside pages of the magazine has been a rite of passage for first ladies dating back to Lou Henry Hoover in 1929. They have been faithfully captured in regal portraiture, images that put a time stamp on the state of the republic…

The omission was not an assault by the deep state. Instead, the willful gatekeepers of celebrity culture — the ones who celebrated Kim and Kanye, Beyoncé, Oprah and Lady Gaga — had slammed the entry shut. They ignored her. They declared her irrelevant. This was quite possibly an even more profound insult. Relevance — who is, what is not — has always been the brutal subtext of fashion, the engine that keeps it humming along.

But now, the gates are open wide. Biden’s tenure thus far is most notable for her decision to continue working at her day job, as a community college instructor. Her work is discussed often in the story, as a point of accessibility, as evidence of her stubborn desire for a wisp of normalcy in her abnormal situation…

Worth a click, just for the photo of Dr. Jill Biden busy teaching her Zoom class.

======

Not so far away…

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Note for the mildly curious: Euro 2020 is taking two rest days. Game posts will return, with the quarter-finals, on Friday.

Reader Interactions

219Comments

  3. 3.

    Steeplejack

    Roger Taney—old news:

    In 2020, in the midst of the protests following the killing of George Floyd, the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives eventually voted 305-113 to remove a bust of Taney (as well as statues honoring figures who were part of the Confederacy during the Civil War) from the U.S. Capitol and replace it with a bust of Thurgood Marshall. The bill called for removal of Taney’s bust within 30 days after the law’s passage. [. . .] After the bill reached the Republican-led Senate (S.4382), it was referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration, but no further action on it was taken.

  4. 4.

    debbie

    Finally found a list of the noes here. I’m surprised only two Ohio reps voted against it (Gym being one…of course).

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    As I said over at OTB this AM,

    Cue up the queue for the latest rightwing grievance: Jill Biden makes cover of Vogue after Melania Trump was snubbed, The rending of garments begins in 3… 2… 1…

  6. 6.

    Princess

    I love the way the cover photo has not been over-edited. You can still see her wrinkles. They didn’t airbrush them away.

  7. 7.

    debbie

    I think the slo-mo videos of Melania fawning over her surrogates’ White House Christmas decorations provided more than enough coverage, especially when you remember she didn’t give a fuck about Christmas.  //

  9. 9.

    Kay

    Michigan Democrats see a pattern:

    Joe F Spaulding Owl
    @beyond_process
    Traverse City, Grand Ledge, Hudsonville, Troy are where the fascism tourists are showing up to school boards in MI. These are electoral targets, not random. They are collecting data through school board recalls and trying to set a narrative locally.

    Big suburban districts, not rural or urban districts.
    A big part of Democrats retaking Michigan (and Pennsylvania) at the state level post-2010 was support for public education. It’s an area of real strength for Democrats state level, akin to the national advantage for Democrats on health care. The anti-CRT panic is a direct attack on that.
    Democrats need a plan. Two more far Right groups just plowed more money into ginning up localized anti-CRT panics. I don’t think academic discussions about how “equity” doesn’t mean CRT are going to do it.
    If it were me I’d attack it like this “schools are focused on recovering from Covid and here comes the Right dominating and disrupting that vital work with a manufactured crisis that is purely political – schools can’t get the real work they need to do done” because that’s a real thing- it’s what the schools themselves are saying in the local news articles.

  10. 10.

    debbie

    I like the dresses I’ve seen her in so far. Jill stands strong, defiant against invisibilizing women of a certain age!

  13. 13.

    prostratedragon

    New series beginning today at the Guardian:
    Climate crimes: a new series investigating big oil’s role in the climate crisis

    The Guardian’s new series, Climate crimes, will examine these attempts to hold the industry accountable and investigate the tactics used by the companies to elide their own role in global heating. It will also interrogate the central question that emerges from these lawsuits: is the climate crisis in fact a crime scene?

    The first full installment:
    Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price

  14. 14.

    Kevin the Hen

    WTF is up with that ominous anti-Ilhan Omar banner ad?!?! (Chrome, android)

  15. 15.

    Msb

    Vogue offered to do a profile of Mrs trump no. 3 but did not guarantee a cover, so she turned them down, according to her “friend”’s book.

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: If it were me I’d attack it like “These people are lying sacks of shit so out of touch with reality they think trump is the reincarnation of Jesus.”

  17. 17.

    Kay

    I’m very active locally in school issues and I haven’t hear a peep on a CRT panic. I think it’s because this is a 65% Trump county, so not a swing suburban target.

  18. 18.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Right. Or that :)

    Good faith school discussions are earnest. They’re really nice people, which obviously is a challenge for me but I think “what would nice people find appealing?”  You know, if I were one.

  21. 21.

    Stephen

    As I say to the people complaining about that Vogue cover, you can see a lot more of Melania on the internet than you can of Jill Biden.

  25. 25.

    Wag

    @Kay:

    1. If it were me I’d attack it like this “schools are focused on recovering from Covid

    Excellent point

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Misery congress critters who voted against the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol:

    Sam Graves, Vicki Hartzler, Blaine Luetkemeyer, and Jason Smith

    Surprised that Billy Long isn’t among them. He must have been absent because he’s at death’s door in ICU somewhere.

  28. 28.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    I turned them down for the same reason.

    Oh, bullshit. They turned YOU down after you insisted that the cover photo — hell, ALL of the photos — be of a pants-less you.

  31. 31.

    SFAW

    @WereBear:

    Well, at least the ones whose greatest fears are entirely imaginary.

    I’m tempted to start some kind of “rumor” wherein the Red states are being threatened by giant alligators — the offspring of those which inhabited NYC sewers after the baby-alligator craze of the 1920s or 1930s — with Jewish space lasers grafted onto their bodies by those socialist Demon-rats.

    I bet it could become a thing, especially if we got RoJo or Gohmert or Tuberville to mention it on Fucker Fishsticks or on Hannity, The Stupidest Man on TV.

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    In the spirit of several posts of late, Heat wave: How people had to beat the heat back in 1911.

    Not only people, as well.

    Human beings were not the only sufferers from the sweltering weather. Numbers of horses dropped in the streets and had to be shot. Others kept the police busy reviving them by turning on the hose. The animals in the Central Park menageries, where the thermometer registered from 95 to 96 throughout most of the day, had two hoses playing on them constantly, and the cold water afforded them some relief.

    A big polar bear and a black bear shared the same quarters, in which there was a tank. Both insisted on lying in it at the same time, and as it was not large enough for both bears, and keepers had a busy day.

  33. 33.

    SFAW

    Note for the mildly curious: Euro 2020 is taking two rest days.

    I’m curious, because I didn’t know any currency had its own multi-day convention. Is that like COMDEX or SIGGRAPH (if those too even still exist)?

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @SFAW:

    Right. “Rumor.” Totally made up. We are absolutely not beta testing the gator lasers at Area 51 right now.  Nothing to see here folks.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    During the 2019 tourism boom, condominiums at the Trump International Tower in Waikiki sold for an average of about $1.7 million.

    Since then, average sales prices in the tower have fallen below $650,000 ― despite the hot housing market in the islands.

    “At the same time this year, the overall market ― just resorts ― went up 27%. So Houston, we have a problem,” said real estate expert Ricky Cassiday. Source

  38. 38.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: the pro-confederacy stance of folks in Misery always surprises me. St. Louis has some of my favorite Union statues and the US Grant one is just superb and perfectly situated. I also love the WWI memorial to sailors and soldiers. Is the renovation done on that?

    I need to get travelling again.

  39. 39.

    Spanky

    @NotMax:

    A big polar bear and a black bear shared the same quarters, in which there was a tank. Both insisted on lying in it at the same time, and as it was not large enough for both bears, and keepers had a busy day.

    That anecdote is nowhere near complete enough.

  40. 40.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’m a little disappointed that the House bill/vote did not include erecting a statue of William Tecumseh Sherman outside Brian Kemp’s residence.

  41. 41.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    TMP interviewed the billionaire who is paying for the South Dakota National Guard to patrol the Texas – Mexico border. Guy sounds like a complete nut bag and more than a little fishy “I didn’t see my buddies die in Vietnam…”. Anyway, my take away from this is even the GOP control legislators won’t pay for this shit.

  42. 42.

    WaterGirl

    With the effects of climate change becoming more visible and the likelihood that many of us will have our time in the barrel with crazy hot temps, I added Tips for Staying Cool under Featuring in the sidebar.  It’s yesterday’s thread with tons of good advice from BJ peeps.

  44. 44.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: The more I thought about that story, the more it annoyed me. This guy isn’t hiring mercenaries to fight his imaginary border war. He’s getting the governor of SD to force her National Guard troops to do it. I presume the didn’t think they were signing up to be sold off

  46. 46.

    Immanentize

    @NotMax: hey friend! Yes he’s here, taking two classes this summer (linear algebra and a demographics sociology class). He is a young man in a hurry. But too thin…. I’m trying to fatten him up before he goes back.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I told you it’s just weekends, right? It is just weekends. He is going thru a temp agency. They call them “weekend warriors” which makes me sad. Why do people always have to attach stupid names to things Can’t they be dignified?

    Anyway, first weekend completed so he lasted thru that. He’ll miss the family festivities for the Fourth  but maybe not “miss” so much. We spent too much time together with Covid. He’s been out just about every day since he was sprung.

    They teased him about his clothes – he wore narrow black pants and a white collared shirt which is kind of a style for some of the boys in his group- and his coworkers thought it was amusing (dressed up) so the second night he wore shorts, t shirt and work boots. He’s always liked to “fit in”- he’s good at that- so I was happy he sorted out the dress code. I want him to keep the job thru the summer. He jumps around a lot. He’s gone from Wal Mart to a restaurant to this factory in just the last year. I want him to stick with something, stay for a period. It’s tempting for them now to jump around because the employment situation is so hot here right now- this temp job pays 20 an hour.  Everyone’s desperate for workers.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    @Kay

    narrow black pants and a white collared shirt which is kind of a style for some of the boys in his group

    The look of Mormon?

    ;)

  59. 59.

    NanaR

    Let’s remember Melania’s original profession; I’m sure Hustler or some similar rag would have gladly put her on their cover.

  60. 60.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: Buyers clearly paid a premium for the name, now a liability. And now that the structural integrity, or lack thereof, of multi-story condominiums is in the news,  I can’t help but wonder how well that buiding was made.

  63. 63.

    Kay

    @NotMax:

    It is religious looking. Stark and simple. It’s definitely a “look” though. They cinch the pants with a belt and the pants are short enough to show sock. He wore basically the same thing to the prom, except he he added a thrift store jacket.

    It’s funny you say that though. Part of the reason he had such a difficult year is he was enamored with a girl who wasn’t responding to his overtures. She’s a Mormon- her father is a local dentist. It’s hard for him because she gives him mixed messages. She asked him to the prom – he was thrilled and he went- then she didn’t contact him for weeks. Then she invited him to her home for dinner with her family, which must have been interesting because he’s an out n proud Lefty. Can’t imagine that conversation.  She’s going to college in Utah so this relationship had a shelf life anyway.

  64. 64.

    Soprano2

    That’s a great pic of Dr. Biden. All the MAGA heads are going to EXPLODE over it. They’re all extremely butt-hurt that Vogue never put TFG’s “model” wife on their cover. I told them it’s because women’s magazines want to talk to women who have interesting things to say, and Melania didn’t have anything interesting to say. I’m glad to know the story about her trying to get paid for the shoot, and not wanting to do a no-questions-barred interview.

  66. 66.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Kay: Could be. I grew up in West Michigan and I know Hudsonville as it is fairly near Grand Rapids where I grew up. It is definitely Trump country – a suburb, but outer ring and lily white. Grand Ledge is a suburb of Lansing and similar in demographics/attitude as Hudsonville. I don’t know Troy at all and have only vacationed in the Traverse City area. Traverse City and around have very little diversity but it would not surprise me if there were at least some progressive element there. Actually there’s probably some progressive element in all those places but they are predominantly conservative, mostly. I would guess Troy and Traverse City would be the most gettable for Dems. Troy because it’s in greater Detroit which is the bluest area of the State and Traverse City because a lot of people from bluer parts of the State view it as a Shangri La of sorts and hence if they have the freedom and means to do so move there.

  67. 67.

    Jeffro

    thank you, House Republicans, for once again highlighting the differences between the two parties for all to see

  72. 72.

    Soprano2

    @Kay:If it were me I’d attack it like this “schools are focused on recovering from Covid and here comes the Right dominating and disrupting that vital work with a manufactured crisis that is purely political – schools can’t get the real work they need to do done” because that’s a real thing- it’s what the schools themselves are saying in the local news articles.

    We need to get you a job somewhere that you can actually get them to do this! I agree, this would be a great approach – “The school is concerned with getting students back in the classroom and rebuilding the things that were interrupted last year; this artificial outrage that has been deliberately ginned up over something we aren’t doing is nothing more than an unnecessary distraction from the real work we need to be doing”. I look for it to get extremely loud here this fall, because our new superintendent is a black woman from Houston. She’s the first black superintendent in our city’s history, and our city is 85% white people. We already had one school board meeting in April disrupted by this CRT crap, and one of the board members who was elected in April has been stirring up trouble over it. Thankfully, she’s the only one.

  73. 73.

    Ken

    @SFAW: Once in a while I try to guess what idiocy will next emerge from the fetid RW swamps.  I think I’ve got one hit in ten years.

    However, I’m thinking that as the Delta variant spreads over the next couple months, there will be some nutty theory explaining why it’s largely hitting red areas.  (Because “they didn’t get vaccinated, duh” isn’t acceptable.)

  76. 76.

    Geminid

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Ullysses Grant lived only a couple years in Galena, but they were good years for him. For several years he had farmed unsuccessfully in Missouri, and now worked in his family’s leather shop. It was easy work, although Grant found it tedious. He had plenty  of time to play with his kids, and be with his sweetheart Julia.

    Grant spent most of the four years after Ft. Sumter in camp, all over the South, and for the twelve years after he lived in Washington, D.C. But Grant’s short time in Galena was a happy interlude in his life.

  77. 77.

    zhena gogolia

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I guess I’d call it a Texas accent. But it’s not particularly slow-paced, which is what I think of as a “drawl.”

    There are many, many accents across the Southern half of the country.

  79. 79.

    Soprano2

    @NotMax: 1911 had to be a crazy weather year. On November 11th, 1911, Springfield had a high temp of 80 degrees at 3:45 PM – and a low temp of 13 degrees at midnight. They call it the Great Blue Norther.

  80. 80.

    Soprano2

    @Immanentize:the pro-confederacy stance of folks in Misery always surprises me.

    It was a split state during the war – there were a lot of Confederate sympathizers here, especially in the southern part of the state. I know people who considered the “confederate government” of the state the real state government during that time. The southern MO Ozarks and the northern AR Ozarks are a lot alike.

  81. 81.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @zhena gogolia: But it’s not particularly slow-paced, which is what I think of as a “drawl.”

    Yeah, you’re right about it not being particularly slow-paced, or at least my experience agrees with you. Mind you I haven’t been down there in more than a decade and my last conversation with Texas relatives was when the old man died in 2010.

  82. 82.

    NotMax

    FYI, Parler games.

    One curious point of consideration for the [Trump] family [the morning of January 6th] — prescient of the events that would shortly unfold — was a follow-up to a discussion initiated some months before by aides and family. Trump representatives, working with Trump-family members, had approached Parler, the social network backed by Bob Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, far-right exponents and large Trump contributors. They had floated a proposition that Trump, after he left office, become an active member of Parler, moving much of his social-media activity there from Twitter. In return, Trump would receive 40 percent of Parler’s gross revenues and the service would ban anyone who spoke negatively about him.

    Parler was balking only at this last condition. Source

    “We’d have to employ a full-time staff of hundreds solely to keep up with the banning.”

    //

  83. 83.

    WereBear

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I came late to President Grant appreciation, but I must say the more I explore, the more impressive the man becomes.

    Another victim of the Myth of the Lost Cause. While the Confederates painted him as a “butcher,” the numbers don’t lie. And put the finger of blame on their sainted General Lee.

  84. 84.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: ​The southern MO Ozarks and the northern AR Ozarks are a lot alike.

    Eastern OK too. I and my caver friends refer to it as “Ozarkistan”.

  85. 85.

    Soprano2

    @Ken: However, I’m thinking that as the Delta variant spreads over the next couple months, there will be some nutty theory explaining why it’s largely hitting red areas.  (Because “they didn’t get vaccinated, duh” isn’t acceptable.)

    I totally expect this, too. You should see the “40 reasons not to get vaccinated” flyer that was posted on our board the other day by an anonymous employee. I read it yesterday – it was mostly conspiracy theories, and *horror* Dr. Fauci is the highest-paid federal employee, you can’t trust him – crap like that. I wrote 41. as “You want to get sick with a possibly fatal disease and spread it to others”. I’m thinking I’ll add more, like “You’ve never been in the ICU before and are curious about what that’s like” and “you’ve never been intubated before, but would like to have that experience at least once before you die” and “There is no such thing as society, there’s just me and what I want” and “You want to show that others aren’t the boss of you”. LOL

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I love Democrats but there’s always an element of fighting the last war. This enterprise they’re in is really competitive. It moves fast. They need to stay current on both state and federal level. That’s why the Michigan Democrat tweet got my attention. That kind of local information is valuable.

    Democrats have an advantage on health care and education, but they have to keep it. Republicans want to take it away and Republicans offer nothing, so we get these “anti” campaigns. Schools are local governments. They’re like towns within towns.

  89. 89.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: Voting against it should have been a slam dunk for him. More than a little surprising.

    It’s not surprising to me – there are too many MAGA’s down here for him to vote for it (they would have been completely outraged if he did), but he doesn’t want to be on record voting against it, so the easiest course is for him to just not vote at all. I think he did that with the 1-6 commission, too.

  91. 91.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:  More of the SD National Guard is being used as prop for a photo op for some politicians presidential ambitions. I mean seriously, how much time on the border can even a billionaire pay for? Not to mention the Border State National Guards have been doing this since the 90s. This is just of the Right is stuck in the ’80s.

  92. 92.

    Betty Cracker

    @WereBear: When we were looking at real estate in early 2018 for our move to the country, one of the houses we saw had a portrait of Robert E. Lee over the fireplace. Hadn’t seen something like that since I was a child!

    (We didn’t end up buying that house. The one we chose had a toilet seat cover featuring a picture of a 10-point buck, and the outbuildings were spray-painted camouflage.)

  93. 93.

    Jeffro

    btw I saw a tweet from the Texas Public Policy Foundation or something like that about “How to Identify Critical Race Theory In the Classroom”.  It proceeded to name 21 different things, lumping them all together under the heading of ‘Critical Race Theory’…JUST like that knob Chris Rufo said they were trying to do.

    I mean, one of the terms was ‘normative’.  Another was ‘cultural competence’.  ‘Anti-racism’ – woooo, scary!  ‘Power structures’.

    Can you imagine the ridiculous nationwide game of whack-a-mole that the Q-nuts are about to play this coming school year with a list like that?  They are going to literally stroke out before Halloween…er…waitasecond…never mind, please proceed, Q-nuts!

  94. 94.

    Elizabelle

    @WereBear:   Yeah, think about how we were taught, in school, that “unfortunately” US Grant was also a drunk, and his presidency was filthy with corruption.  (Two terms of it.)

    Now we learn that he supported Reconstruction and protecting civil rights for Blacks. Which is why the Southern myth makers worked so hard to demean his post-Civil War activities.

  96. 96.

    Elizabelle

    @SiubhanDuinne:   Yeah, I noticed that too.

    Actually, it’s interesting that we’ve not heard of any suburbs named “White Haven.”  At least, not formally.

    They even have a fig leaf:  “Why, it’s named after US Grant’s estate.”

  97. 97.

    Ken

    @Betty Cracker: the outbuildings were spray-painted camouflage

    A mistake you realize after the third time the lawn service crew runs the riding mower into the side of the tool shed.

  98. 98.

    Baud

    @Soprano2:

    you’ve never been intubated before, but would like to have that experience at least once just before you die”

    Fixed.

  101. 101.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jeffro: I just saw that too! Here it is:

    In the Twitter bio, this outfit, which is barfing up the Rufo talking points for partisan advantage verbatim, describes itself as “non-partisan,” LOL!

    Sadly, we can’t count on normal people who don’t marinate in this bullshit to recognize this as the astro-turfed garbage it is. I like Kay’s idea — make the point that schools have real challenges to deal with. They don’t have time to hand-hold a bunch of hysterical snowflakes as they come to terms with made-up garbage someone has manufactured for political gain.

  102. 102.

    zhena gogolia

    @Elizabelle:

    My high school teaching of Reconstruction (in a 95% Black school) was total Southern Lost Cause bullshit. It took me years to get deprogrammed.

    Oh, but that’s A-Ok!

  104. 104.

    NotMax

    @Elizabelle

    Long time resort and immediate surrounding area in the Poconos had a, um, unfortunate moniker. I believe it is now called Lakeside.

    Also the locale for the now gone tiny (under 100 car capacity) White Beauty Drive-in theater.

  105. 105.

    Suzanne

    FLOTUS Melania Trump never got on the cover because she has shitty style. She dresses like a dumbshit trophy wife. She never used fashion to craft a positive identity or image of herself, which is what style really is. Melania dressed like crap, despite having a nice body and a lot of money.

  106. 106.

    Suzanne

    Melania is hot to the kind of dudes who actually try to settle down with strippers. LMAO.

  107. 107.

    WereBear

    @Betty Cracker:

    (We didn’t end up buying that house. The one we chose had a toilet seat cover featuring a picture of a 10-point buck, and the outbuildings were spray-painted camouflage.)

    I used to watch those real estate shows with my mother. I was gobsmacked by the number of people complaining about the furniture, drapes, bedspreads, and tchotchke. Stuff that would be IN the moving van should the house be sold…

    No wonder those house selling services remove almost anything and paint the rest beige.

  109. 109.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
     

    Blaine Fucking Luetkemeyer, my former Congressasshole.

    The one I have now? Dianna DeGette.

    Thank god I’m the fuck outta Misery.

  110. 110.

    SiubhanDuinne

    A few days ago, a commenter took a front-pager (or another commenter? can’t remember) to task for quoting 10-12 paragraphs of an article, suggesting that they were putting John in peril of running afoul of the copyright “fair use” rules.

    Not for the first time, I’ve just read a column “by Digby” and come away annoyed beyond belief. I put “by Digby” in scare quotes because she wrote one short introductory paragraph, which mentioned the source only en passant and provided no link to it.

    She then proceeded to paste 111 paragraphs from the article.

    One hundred and eleven paragraphs.

    https://digbysblog.net/2021/06/and-ill-be-there-with-you/

    ETA: She does this a lot. I can’t imagine why she hasn’t got in trouble for copyright infringement so far.

  112. 112.

    Ken

    @Soprano2: How about “Because you didn’t have a choice about being vaccinated for smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, …”

  116. 116.

    Soprano2

    @zhena gogolia: My high school teaching of Reconstruction (in a 95% Black school) was total Southern Lost Cause bullshit. It took me years to get deprogrammed.

    Mine too, in a totally white rural school. “Reconstruction had a noble aim, but it was corrupted by carpetbaggers from the North and had to be stopped because it was full of corruption”. That’s about all I knew about it until I went to college.

  118. 118.

    zhena gogolia

    @Cameron:

    Sorry, I have seen the term “ally-ship.” But the UTTER RACISM OF THIS WHOLE THING IS MAKING ME NAUSEATED.

  120. 120.

    Elizabelle

    @SiubhanDuinne:   You counted?  You got patience, girl.

    Interesting.  Digby, pulling content from NY Magazine, which published an article (about Trump and 1/6) by Michael Wolff.

    Whom Digby describes with “His reputation isn’t great so I have no idea how much of this is true.”

    I bet Michael Wolff thinks any publicity of his book is good publicity.

  121. 121.

    Suzanne

    @zhena gogolia: The other thing to note….. when she wore that “I REALLY DON’T CARE DO U?” jacket, the thing I was honestly the most surprised about was that she would wear something so cheap (from Zara, a super-fast-fashion brand with very low price points, I think that jacket was well below $80) for an appearance that was supposed to be image rehab for her husband. Like, just a basic blazer and slacks would have been utterly appropriate. But every choice she made was terrible, for so many reasons.

  123. 123.

    Ken

    @Elizabelle: Whom Digby describes with “His reputation isn’t great so I have no idea how much of this is true.”

    “But I thought I’d amplify it anyway.”

  124. 124.

    Soprano2

    @SiubhanDuinne: I knew Digby way back when – I posted with her in 1999 on the Brill’s Content message board (remember those?), and then on a semi-private message board for a few more years. She was always verbose, but she’s too “doom and gloom” for me, so I quit reading her blog. That’s insane, though – 111 paragraphs? Holy shit, I’d think she’d get in trouble for that.

  125. 125.

    Fair Economist

    @Kay:

    A big part of Democrats retaking Michigan (and Pennsylvania) at the state level post-2010 was support for public education. It’s an area of real strength for Democrats state level, akin to the national advantage for Democrats on health care. The anti-CRT panic is a direct attack on that.
    Democrats need a plan. Two more far Right groups just plowed more money into ginning up localized anti-CRT panics. I don’t think academic discussions about how “equity” doesn’t mean CRT are going to do it.

    I’ve said this before: the critical goal here is covering up the massacres and ethnic cleansing done under Jim Crow, and this provides the counter-attack. Go after the anti-“CRT” people as massacre apologists, because they are. Everybody will get that in the Tulsa massacre the attackers were using bombers and getting support from the police and the National Guard (which burned the Stradford Hotel), and that these people are trying to cover that up.

  126. 126.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: my cousin put it this way last weekend:

    Which would you prefer?

    Maybe in five years a small lobster claw will grow out of your vaccine site -+ which might be useful to hold a small flashlight! Or…

    Ending up in a dirt pit within a year?

  127. 127.

    Ken

    @Suzanne: But every choice she made was terrible, for so many reasons.

    Which is odd since she entered the US on the special “Einstein” visa because of her modelling and fashion genius.

  132. 132.

    germy

    @Suzanne:

    Maybe I’m wrong, but I always got the impression the “I REALLY DON’T CARE DO U?” jacket was in response to all the news about Stormy Daniels (and the other woman whose name I can’t remember).

  135. 135.

    germy

    Breaking WSJ: The Manhattan district attorney’s office is expected to charge the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer with tax-related crimes on Thursday, people familiar with the matter said.https://t.co/jmOPlqLbcU

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 30, 2021

  136. 136.

    Elizabelle

    @Ken:   Yup.  Pretty much.  I worry about when we do that here.

    Although:  Digby’s goal might be getting it out there (NY Mag has a paywall) to taunt Trump supporters and anyone else who might spill.

    Weirdly, I wonder if the market for Trump stories has abated on the left/center.  I do not read anything except about his coming legal/financial travails.  Otherwise:  he demanded too much attention at the time, and I refuse to give him any more.  We survived him.  So far.

  137. 137.

    Elizabelle

    @germy:   I hope that is the first of many charges.  I wonder how broad the prosecutors’ demands for discovery items can be.  Maybe this is a slam-dunkish case designed for fishing out more info??

  138. 138.

    Soprano2

    @Elizabelle: Those evil carpetbaggers totally ripped off our noble Southerners, they had to be stopped! The truth is, we rarely studied history after the Civil War. I deliberately took a college history course “The Civil War to the Present” so I could learn about that history!

  140. 140.

    Soprano2

    @zhena gogolia: Hey, I’ve got a lot of nice clothes from “The Limited”, I mourned when they went out of business. LOL One thing I liked about Michelle Obama was that she wore clothes from places like J. Crew, that were accessible to the average middle-class woman, but she wore them with a sense of style. Meliana  didn’t have much of a sense of style.

  141. 141.

    rikyrah

    Someone in the NY Bureau of Elections has lost their job. Multiple somebodies.

     

    How do you NOT run a ZERO file before you begin to run the returned ballots?

     

    So, Mr. Adams wasn’t too far off after all.

  142. 142.

    Immanentize

    @Elizabelle: Just FYI — n criminal cases the prosecutors cannot demand any discovery. Further, once an indictment is filed, no grand jury can subpoena any further witness or records (unless on an unrelated matter entirely).

  144. 144.

    Ken

    @SiubhanDuinne:  I’ll go all Mr. Monk on you with my OCD.

    Now that I’ve learned a bit more about the immune system, I’ve decided it’s like Monk, in that it just wanders around until it suddenly says “that’s not right…”

    The analogy then breaks down, because that’s when it morphs into some hellish combination of the Terminator and Jason Voorhees, and does not stop killing until the problem is gone.

  145. 145.

    Immanentize

    @germy: Flippers are always quiet if they have good attorneys. Just safer that way. “I will never be a rat!, Copper” is the mantra until the cooperation agreement and plea is entered.

  150. 150.

    Immanentize

    @rikyrah: Why NYC was running — and releasing — a test of the rank voting system before the over 120k absentee ballots were counted was beyond me.

    But now I’m glad they did.

  154. 154.

    Elizabelle

    @Suzanne:

    when she wore that “I REALLY DON’T CARE DO U?” jacket

    That was so clueless.  The only thing better would have been “I’m with Stupid.”

    It was just a ridiculous item to be worn by a First Lady.  Thumbing her nose at the status, which she never deserved in the first place.  It was callous.

    @ Germy:  if her goal was a message about the Stormy Daniels “scandal” — be best, Melania.  You did kind of get that out of the news.  But …

  155. 155.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: i really think this is a big non-issue. It’s a primary for goodness sake. Except as pointed out, the supporters of former Governor LePage in Maine will flog this horse forever.

  157. 157.

    WaterGirl

    @Elizabelle: On Preet’s podcast last night, Preet was on vacation, but Dan Goldberg Goldman filled in and did the show with Joyce Vance.  I believe that is his name, he was formerly Preet’s assistant in the US attorney’s office, and he was an attorney for the first impeachment.

    Anyway, they had very low expectations for anything much coming out of prosecutions from that office.

    They believe that the head money guy (Weisellberg?) in the Trump organization has decided he can do the time for whatever they charge him with, and they said he is refusing to share information about intent, that would allow them to go after Trump.

    So they think this is mostly a dead-end except for whatever charges they can get on the money guy, which might just be as low as a year in prison.

    I am hoping they are wrong, but they were pretty confident.  Has anyone heard anything different?

  163. 163.

    Geminid

    @Elizabelle: Ullysses Grant drank enough to be an average army officer in that respect. In the gossipy “old Army,” it was known that he had resigned his commission when his commander in California threatened to court martial him for being tipsy at company payday. Grant’s brother officers told him that if he faced the court martial he would be acquitted.

    Grant was fed up with peacetime Army life. He missed his family, but the cost of living in California at the time, and the hazards of the journey, kept him from bringing them out. So Grant just submitted his resignation, borrowed some money, and went back east.

    Ullysses was the apple of his father’s eye, and Jessie Grant was appalled that his son had given up his military career. The elder Grant actually traveled to Washington to try to persuade the Secretary of War to reinstate his son’s commission. But Jefferson Davis turned him down.

  165. 165.

    Elizabelle

    @WaterGirl:  Weisselberg seems like he is not going to flip.

    I wonder if there is another person who could be charged that the prosecutors are sending a signal?

    Anyway, this will hopefully be the first of many, many tax evasion charges leveled at Trump, corporately and personally.

  166. 166.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl: IANAL or a banking expert, but a lot of people (!) are saying that the effect on trump org loans could be devastating (to his laundry business). I wonder about his ability to shake down the rubes for $$ vs how much he really owes.

    And I guess we haven’t seen the charges yet, but not every criminal conviction (again, NAL) leads to jail time. Probation, a ban from certain business activities, home confinement, appeals…. I’m always leery when people start talking about jail and orange jumpsuits

  167. 167.

    Jay C

    Among the (many) things to like about our incumbent FLOTUS is that when she’s photographed smiling, she is actually smiling.

    With Melania, it mostly seemed like a set modelling move: “wrinkle mouth to expose teeth“….

  168. 168.

    SFAW

    @Ken:

    Once in a while I try to guess what idiocy will next emerge from the fetid RW swamps.  I think I’ve got one hit in ten years.

    I have a similar record, so I thought “Hey! Why not be pro-active?” Of course, the RWMF-/Qrazy Qauqus-friendly ideas that I can come up with are limited by (A) my imagination, and (B) my relative (i.e., to the Q Qauqus) sanity.

  171. 171.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SiubhanDuinne: ​
      As I pointed out in the recent thread where the commenter definitively stated that the comment he was blasting was a violation for fair use, courts have held that even publishing a document in its entirety may not be be a violation. There is a four factor balancing test, and the amount of material used is just one of the factors.

  174. 174.

    scav

    @Soprano2: I’ve been muddling up a list of Still More Ways of Demonstrating Your FREEDUMB!

    The more rounds in your revolver, the freer your game of Russian Roulette.

    Show your Spirit! Down a fifth and Drive.

    Only sheep juggle with inactive chainsaws.

  175. 175.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Jay C:

    Jill’s eyes smile. Melania’s didn’t. You can test this by looking at photos of them and covering the mouth.

  177. 177.

    Ken

    @scav: “No shoes no shirt no service is tyranny! Naked shopping is freedom!”

    “Who are you to tell me I can’t piss in the street?  People did that for thousands of years!

    “I don’t need no stinking car insurance, I’m a great driver!”

  178. 178.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize:

    I appreciate you doing your part to promote the gators-with-lasers story.*

    *Notice how it’s now a “story”? Hannity, here we come!

  180. 180.

    Geminid

    @Elizabelle: Weisselberg and others may not flip. Hopefully, prosecutors have the documents to prove the criminal activities of Weisselberg and his master, without Weisselberg’s testimony. And in that case, Weisselberg will have up until his trial to reconsider and cooperate.

  181. 181.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MontyTheClipArtMongoose: I believe Himself has a large and luxurious home on the shores of Lake Michigan, but in spite of his MMFlint twitter handle, lives fully time in what I’m sure is a spacious and high-ceilinged pre-war coop on the UWS

  185. 185.

    Quiltingfool

    @Soprano2: Missouri was a dangerous place for civilians during (and just before) the Civil War.  As for Northwest Arkansas, it was the same.  One of my ancestors in NW Arkansas fought on the Union side; another with Confederates.  Confederate ancestor left for war; during his absence, his wife took the kids to Forsyth Missouri and she fed the kids with her earnings from doing laundry for Union soldiers.  When he returned from war, found out about the laundry gig and he promptly left her (with all the children save one).

    I think folks in Missouri and N. Arkansas had to be pretty savvy about the ideology of any group of men who rode up to their homes.  Give the wrong answer, your home was burned, your wife became a widow and your kids lost a dad.

  186. 186.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Suzanne: she also wanted an appearance fee.

    pretty sure vogue isn’t paying for a cover. not even a flotus. (& if they did, we would know, since a paid michelle obama cover would have joined solyndra, fast n’ furious, czars, & irs impropriety as obama scandals.)

  187. 187.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    How do the alligators get their yarmulkes to stay on their heads?

    There’s probably a joke to be made about a gator mohel but I sure as heck won’t make it.

    ETA: That’s more in NotMax’s area.

  189. 189.

    Immanentize

    @SFAW: They certainly terrify me! I heard just one of them escaped Area 51 and the deep state had to clean up the mess (and bodies) in a neighboring town claiming there was a chemical plant explosion!

  192. 192.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @SiubhanDuinne: FTR that was me, Subaru Diane. And if I gave a rodent’s rectum whether Digby gets her butt in hot water over that wholesale expropriation, I’d be posting the same thing (PROBABLY IN ALL CAPS) over at her site…

  196. 196.

    Quiltingfool

    My sympathies.  I am represented by the fabulous Trump groupie, Vicky Hartzler.  Not that I like the GQP choices for Blunt’s grift job, but I do look forward to seeing her go down in flames in the Senate primary.

  198. 198.

    Immanentize

    @SFAW: The FBI is covering it up too, but one rogue special agent, I think his name is Mulder, is going to the press….

  203. 203.

    Geminid

    @Quiltingfool: Civilians in the East generally did not have it as rough as those living west of the Mississippi during the Civil War. But in contested areas, they still were wary, especially of lawless bushwacking gangs who stole stuff and sometimes did worse. In his Personal Memoirs, Confederate Colonel Porter Alexander recounts knocking on the door of an East Tennessee house. A girl came to the door asked, “Are you a Yankee, a Secesh, or a Bushwack?”

  205. 205.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Immanentize: No, I am fine.  Thank you for asking.  Pierce’s alcohol issues seemed as relevant to the topic as his friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  206. 206.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: thank you!

    I’m going to start calling myself “The Virginia Extra-Special Public Policy Personage” and see if that makes me feel better/gives me official ‘cover’/slides right past folks’ critical thinking filters when throwing nonsense around.  Will let y’all know how well it works (not ‘if’…just ‘how well’)

    Ugh, these people…

  208. 208.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro:  Have you and yours gotten out on the water yet? The Shenandoah River (South Fork) was starting to get low when I saw it a week ago, but the rain forcast for the next few days out to charge it back up.

  209. 209.

    Benno

    @germy: Esquire did a story on it. But she was traveling to visit immigrant detention centers for kids. She can *say* anything she wants about what message she thinks she was sending, but the message actually sent isn’t really up to her alone (though I fear I’m getting perilously close to some of those concepts on the Texas CRT watchwords list!).

  214. 214.

    TheflipPsyD

    @NotMax: OMG — I spent many a summer weekend at a place called WLE, right near there. I’ve driven past the remains of that drive in theater.

    There is a White Haven PA, also in the Poconos, south of Greentown.

  216. 216.

    OldDave

    @SFAW: SIGGRAPH

    I miss going to those.  Saw at least one early Pixar short before the general public had their chance.

  217. 217.

    geg6

    @zhena gogolia:

    Huh?  All the native Texans I’ve ever known certainly do.  Not as badly as Louisianans or Alabamians, but definitely a Southern drawl.  Which, FTR, I hate.  I find it as difficult to understand most Southerners as I do most Scots.  Which means I can’t understand a word they say. :-)

  218. 218.

    Nutmeg again

    @SFAW: So, are we ready to nominate ‘Marching Through Georgia’ as the state song yet? /s  (I’m doing my annual US Grant-a-thon, via biography.)

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