Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

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

White supremacy is terrorism.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

We still have time to mess this up!

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

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

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

The lights are all blinking red.

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

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

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

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

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Saturday Morning Open Thread: TGI the Long Weekend

Saturday Morning Open Thread: TGI the Long Weekend

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(America-centric, I know.)


Core dump! howled the Spousal Unit, when I read this to him:

Reader Interactions

166Comments

  3. 3.

    Ten Bears

    It has my conviction since Y2K that the Y2K nuts had it right, they just didn’t quite get their grubby little fingers wrapped all the way around it. It has also been my conviction since about that time that history, if there is a history, historians, if there are historians, will mark the appointment by an ideologically stacked court of non-elected actively partisan vigilantes of the scion of Hitler financing, old school Robber Baron money with limited intellect, less education and no experience to the highest office in the land as the End of America. We are where we are on mere momentum. That has run out.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    The slope on a graph for the proliferation of overt nutballitude runs parallel with that of the ubiquity of bottled water.

    Now, correlation is not causation. But still….

  5. 5.

    YY_Sima Qian

    On the Dan Drezner/Noah Smith tweet, I think they forgot that WW I happened in the 20th Century, too. If the current Great Power Rivalry is to descend into global warfare, it will more resemble WW I (though the combatants will surely seek to evoke WW II). It would be just as tragic, just as avoidable (or should have been). With the ICBM & nuclear weapons, it could very well be much more ruinous than WW I, though perhaps shorter in duration.

  7. 7.

    Mousebumples

    @raven: Correction – Go Bucks! #FearTheDeer

    ? In all seriousness, i expect the series to go 7,and hope my team will win at home on Monday. ?

  9. 9.

    Geminid

    I checked out a N.Y. Daily News update on the New York City mayoral race. Primary day ballots have been counted, ranked choices allocated, and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has a 14,000 vote lead over former Sanitation Comissioner K. Garcia. Counting of  ~130,000 mail-in absentee ballots has begun. The hapless Board of Elections promises an interim update this coming Tuesday, but the election outcome may not be known for two more weeks. Attorney Maya Wiley is close behind Ms. Garcia, and can still win. Voter turnout approached 1 million, much higher than in recent mayoral primaries.

    NYC internet magazine Gothamist has an interesting look at the mayoral vote, titled “A Tale of Three Cities.”

  12. 12.

    sab

    @Geminid: Ranked voting. Other places do it okay, but the NYC version seems tailor made to make people distrust the whole voting vote counting process. So I hope it never comes to Ohio, because we can fuck up anything.

  14. 14.

    sab

    @NotMax: What are you doing up at this hour? Early even here in EDT?

    My dog has fleas, so I am awake at all sorts of odd hours when she feels compulsed to scratch maddly.

  16. 16.

    sab

    @NotMax: Also too, I like many Texans I have known, but if they cannot get a handle on things governmental we should let them secede with their awesome electrical grid.

  19. 19.

    Geminid

    @sab: I have reservations about RCV, but a bonehead mistake by the BOE was the major problem thus far. They mistakenly added 135,000 test ballots when they issued an interim count some days ago. The error was so obvious the Adams campaign called it out soon after. But initially, the faulty totals showed Garcia about to overtake Adams, so it was a double sensation.

    I believe the prior system mandated a runoff if no candidate exceeded 40%. Some politicians want to go back to that. I like runoffs, but this is a minority view. RCV promises a quicker result (even if absentee ballots are counted so late), and we now live in an age of impatience.

  21. 21.

    NotMax

    @sab

    A welcome nap embraced the bod from 8:30 to midnight; only 1:30 a.m. here at the moment.

  23. 23.

    sab

    Dobby the demon housecat saw his original owner ( my granddaughter) and stood up full height on his hindlegs to hug her and say he loved her. Then she went home.

    So he crawled up on my lap, let me scratch his head for a long while, then he crawled on my chest and nuzzled  my neck for a while. It was pleasant but terrifying. He has claws and uses them.

    I think he is one one of those cats who wants to be loving but gets overstimulated.

    My husband loves cats and cats love him, but he loves overstimulating them until they go berserk. Does not work with a damaged little guy like Dobby. Grand-daughter happened to mention that Dobby is terrified of men. Would have been good to know that. We were counting on husband’s cat charisma

    ETA It would be generally useful if men worked a bit more on being less terrifying (stop yelling in discussions.)

  24. 24.

    Barbara

    @Geminid: RCV means no candidate gets the advantage of reduced turnout in the subsequent run off. To me, this is its biggest advantage.

  26. 26.

    Tony Jay

    Today, I think I’ll watch a bit of whatever action survives the rain and thunder at Wimbeldon (aka#poshfucksuperspreadevent)

    Then I’ll prepare some garlic and chive mash to go with slow cooked belly pork and settle down to enjoy the Euro Quarter Finals, following that with a few episodes of Lovecraft Country and an early night.

    Politics can go swivel for a day or two.

  36. 36.

    sab

    Landlady listed house for sale and got 40 offers in one day! Even after severely mangling the shrubbery. This housing market is hot.

    ETA Zillow says that at listed price the payment would be $750. That is less than I paid to rent  a cabin in Marin County in 1987.

    Good luck reselling when we eventually get normal interest rates. People buy by mortgage payment, not by house price.

  41. 41.

    germy

    Wow

    Just read through Rep Mo Brooks (R-AL) legal filing today defending himself in lawsuit filed by Rep Eric Swalwell (D-CA) alleging Brooks helped incite the US Capitol insurrection with "start taking down names and kicking ass" speech

    It's quite something

    (thread) pic.twitter.com/JU9xTRmu4Z

    — Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) July 2, 2021

  42. 42.

    Geminid

    @Barbara: That is an advantage for RCV.

    Runoffs are unpredictable. I remember people writing off Georgia Senate candidates Warnock and Ossoff because historically the dropoff in Democratic turnout was greater than for Republicans. In the event, Ossoff’s vote dropoff was ~100,000, and Perdue’s was more like 200,000. Warnock polled slightly ahead of Ossoff.

    Stacey Abrams could take a bow on this one. So could troublemaking attorney Lin Wood. But instead he packed his carpetbag, moved to South Carolina, and ran for Republican State Chairman. The Republican establishment-types were able to fend Wood off, though

  43. 43.

    Tony Jay

    @sab:

    I’m getting all the good eating in before #Brexitbenefits results in us eating grass, worms and each others’ bellybutton lint.

  44. 44.

    Starfish

    @sab: Is that the monthly price on a thirty-year mortgage?

    I am not sure when interest rates will return to sane. The current housing situation is completely unsustainable though.

  49. 49.

    Tony Jay

    @rikyrah:

    Currently watching 18 year old New British Sensation Emma Raducanu stomping all over the racist underpinnings of our New National Ethos by being the daughter of Chinese and Rumanian immigrants.

    I’m sure they’ll love her until she loses.

  51. 51.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @sab: the neoliberal establishment democrat party rigged both the type of ranked choice & the counting of it to screw over adjunct of #ourrevolution andrew yang. this is just the ny democrat presidential primary 2016 & iowa caucus 2020 all over again. #bernieshouldvewon

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    @sab

    Same genus, different species.

    Marmite — named after a type of French cooking pot — was discovered in the late 19th Century by German scientist Justus Freiherr von Liebig, the so-called “father of the fertilizer industry” who also trademarked the Oxo stock cube. The Marmite Food Extract Company then started bottling the black paste in Burton upon Trent in 1902 and opened a second factory in London in 1907, before a milder version was exported to Australia and New Zealand, and the spread — rich in Vitamin B — was added to soldiers’ rations during World War One.

    Like so much of Australian culture, Vegemite was basically a rip-off of the British original. A Melbourne chemist by the name of Cyril Percy Callister developed Australia’s own salty black paste in 1919 after Marmite imports were disrupted by the War, using offcuts from the Carlton & United Brewery blended with salt, celery and onion extracts. Source

    Somehow fitting it was first concocted by an expert in fertilizers.

  62. 62.

    Tony Jay

    @NotMax:

    You want to see my store cupboards. Come ’26 I’ll be the Condiment King of New South Angmar.

    Also, mastering choux pastry to fit in with the other post-Fall warlords. By our profiteroles shall they know us.

  64. 64.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @debbie: mo brooks: salt peter of the reichwing.

    i wonder when infamous political consultant sen. hockdog amergikag loogar of alabama will complete his kkklay travis like heel turn & start working for brooks?

  65. 65.

    Suzanne

    @Starfish: I am really concerned about it. I am thinking of selling my place soon and I’m really stressed about buying anything else.

  68. 68.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Noah Smith via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    We’ve been replaying all the 20th Century’s Greatest Hits.

    Vietnam War 2:✅

    Great Depression 2:✅

    Nixon 2:✅

    I’m a little confused by this.

    Is Vietnam War 2 supposed to be the War in Iraq, the War in Afghanistan, or the War on Terror?

    Is Great Depression 2 supposed to be the market crash that occurred under Republican President George W. Bush in his last year, or is it supposed to be the market crash that occurred under Republican President Donald J. Trump in his last year?

    Is Nixon 2 supposed to be Bush fils or Trump?​

    Daniel Drezner:

    If you really wanna play this game you need to acknowledge that the 21st century versions of the Great Depression, Vietnam, and the Spanish Flu were all *significantly* less bad than their 20th century equivalents. And 21st century Nixon was way less competent.

    Okay, but can we agree that there seem to be 2-3 times as many of each in a quarter of the time that it took the 20th C. to rack them up?​

  70. 70.

    sab

    Adopted stepdaughter’s cat and pitbull last month. Cat seems okay but a bit scary (claws.)

    Pitbull is a doll. We were not expecting that. The cat that terrorized our late lamented rottmix thinks the pitbull is a great addtion.

    Two dogs, six cats. Only issue is new boy cat, and older girl cat he wants to be friends with. Her motto : No means no, you nitwit.

  71. 71.

    Tony Jay

    @sab:

    I’m hoping they move it a couple of hundred miles south. We can arrange population exchanges (Tory voting racist Red Wallers for the inhabitants of the South’s civilised urban enclaves) and institute a policy of “Nae bellends past Buxton”.

    It’s a plan.

  73. 73.

    Ken

    @NotMax: For some reason I thought vegemite was made from vegetables, and marmite from marmots meat. Now that I know they’re both made from repurposed brewery waste, I will continue not consuming them.

  74. 74.

    sab

    @Tony Jay: Good luck.

    Maybe you should try primaries, instead of the tiny fraction of enrolled party members deciding who the next PM will be.

    Also too, burn Nick Clegg at some stake. ( American here. We love violence.)

  75. 75.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: Hadrian’s instructions to his Governor: “Send your engineers north with two cohorts of soldiers. Have them survey the population along the way.  When the people start having more tatoos than teeth, have the engineers lay out a good line and start building my Wall.

  76. 76.

    raven

    @sab: My stepmom sold her and my dad’s house in Phoenix fo4 40K over listing and it went in one day.

  77. 77.

    sab

    @NotMax: As a non-Brit and a non-Aussie they always tasted like fertilizer. That high salt content cannot be healthy, even for children.

  79. 79.

    debbie

    @raven:

    The other day, I was skimming sales in the very affluent neighborhood north of where I live. Four Three $1,000,000+ properties were sold after only one day on the market! I can’t imagine moving that quickly on something so expensive.

  81. 81.

    New Deal democrat

    US average new COVID cases now up 2,200/day from low of 11,300 10 days ago.

    Number of States with rising new cases over the past 2 weeks up to 21. Of those, 6 States – including FL, which was so sure the pandemic was over it reduced reporting to once a week – have full-fledged outbreaks, averaging over 10 cases/day per 100,000 (equivalent to early last summer).

    But the worst news is out of the U.K., where the upward trend in deaths has started following the exponential trend in cases with a 4 week lag.

  82. 82.

    Ken

    @sab: the tiny fraction of enrolled party members deciding who the next PM will be.

    I’m still unclear on that, despite Tony Jay’s 18,000-word explainer (of which 15,000 words were “prat” or “wanker”). Is that process part of UK law, or was it just something the Tories made up when May resigned?

  83. 83.

    Suzanne

    @debbie: Don’t know? It’s more that we have improved this house and I might want something a bit more suburban next time.

  84. 84.

    Suzanne

    @raven: Yeah, but I don’t have another big wad of cash lying around. Some of these properties that are selling are all-cash offers. I can’t compete with that.

  87. 87.

    sab

    @Ken: Not Brit so don’t know, but my understanding is PM candidate determined by enrolled dues paying members of each party, which is fractional percentage of members of British electorate. I.e. like a few hundred members decide.

  88. 88.

    Cermet

    @YY_Sima Qian: When AGW really bites (not this very, very minor heat wave and the ridiculous worry about ocean rise) world war will be almost unavoidable. As I never (nor will I) tire of pointing out – most of India (over a billion people), south east Asia (nearly half a billion) and so many other places will be uninhabitable by the 2050’s. You think these people will go quietly into the night so we can live our lives of comfort?

  90. 90.

    New Deal democrat

    @Starfish: House prices are insane, but with mortgage rates of about 3.10%, monthly payments are not that high historically – nowhere near the 2005 peak.

  92. 92.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @Ken:

    … Tony Jay’s 18,000-word explainer (of which 15,000 words were “prat” or “wanker”) …

    You say that like it’s a bad thing.

    Old words are good. Short words are good. Old words when short are best. – Winston Churchill​

    Obscenities and other terms of approbation are usually among the shortest and oldest words in the English language.

  96. 96.

    ian

    @Geminid:

    NYC is fouling the waters for other reformers across the country.  The people running their BOE should be ashamed of themselves.

  98. 98.

    Amir Khalid

    @sab:

    I once watched Hugh Jackman teaching an American late-night host — Letterman, maybe — how to spread Vegemite on toast: you put on as thin a layer as you can, so that the saltiness doesn’t overwhelm you. I’m still not sure I’d want to try it; Vegemite is probably the Aussie equivalent of Europe’s favourite stinky mouldy cheeses.

  99. 99.

    Another Scott

    @Suzanne: It’s temporary.  But whether prices stop rising then stay flat for 10 years, or stop rising then fall 25%, is anyone’s guess.  Inventory is slowly rising; framing lumber is approaching normal prices again.  But demographics is still a thing and too many MotUs still have too much cash to dump into homes as rentals, AirBnBs, etc.

    Watch inventory.  And interest rates.

    https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  100. 100.

    Steeplejack

    This is the first morning that I have remembered in real time to watch the Tour de France, which in past years was one of my video wallpaper mainstays. It’s a rainy afternoon in the Alps—a bit past Cruseilles, France, according to a sign I saw a little while ago. About 20 miles south of Geneva, Switzerland. Today’s stage is the first of two in the mountains, from Oyannax to Le Grand-Bornand. No hard climbs so far, but there are some coming up. And the last 10 miles will be a downhill run from 5,300 feet to 3,000 feet altitude. Might be dicey if the rain starts up again.

    Here in NoVA it’s sunny and 67°, going up only to about 80° today. Humid, of course (67%), but very pleasant.

    Looks like it might be drizzling now on the Tour. Hard to tell on the TV. (Coverage is on NBC Sports Network.)

  101. 101.

    New Deal democrat

    @Suzanne: If you are talking a couple of years from now, the pricing situation is likely to be very different.

    The issue I see is will be whether the Fed raises interest rates to put the brakes on the economy.

  103. 103.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Mr DAW is watching Formula One practice, and there’s a driver named Lando. Is that a common first name somewhere? Is is possible the guy is named after Lando Calrissian?

  104. 104.

    Geminid

    @Starfish: I live near a hotspot where house prices have shot through the roof. But the runup in house priced seems to extend widely, well beyond hotspots like Charlottesville.

    I wonder who the people are that are buying? They must be of several different types. What role is intergenerational wealth playing? I hear anecdotally of parents or grandparents helping finance young people’s homes. And there has been a small trend the last decade younger people moving from more urban areas to more rural ones. This may have been accelerated by the pandemic.

    I wonder how many immigrants are buying their first homes. I see this in central Virginia, and my Atlanta friend sees a lot of this in Atlanta suburbs like Stone Mountain, where he bought his first home back in 1982.

    But I guess there is good reporting out there on these questions, or at least there will be before too long.

  106. 106.

    New Deal democrat

    @Another Scott: Rising prices have historically tended to bring out more inventory. Inventory of new houses bottomed late last year, iirc. Existing home inventory has also started up in the past few months from record low levels.

    The issue with inventory is that the spring selling season in 2020 all but disappeared because of the pandemic. So now, will inventory simply increase to normal levels, or will all those houses which “should” have been on the market in 2020 be added to the normal inventory of houses for sale in the next 12 to 24 months? If so, there will be a glut of inventory on the market, and prices will head right back down – which is my best guess as to where we are going.

  107. 107.

    Another Scott

    @New Deal democrat: I think Powell is finally taking the “full employment” part of the mandate seriously and won’t strangle the economy early.  But something will need to be done about the speculation in the housing market.  Dunno if it will be the Fed or some other body – interest rates are not a front-of-mind concern for cash buyers…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  108. 108.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A group of heavily-armed men were engaged in an ongoing stand-off on Saturday with Massachusetts police, prompting shelter-in-place orders in some areas and sparking massive delays on the holiday weekend as a portion of Interstate 95 remained shut down.

    The standoff began around 2am when police noticed two cars pulled over on I-95 with hazard lights on, authorities said at a Saturday press briefing. Between eight to 10 men were clad in military-style gear and carrying long guns and pistols, said Col Christopher Mason of Massachusetts state police. The men refused to put down their weapons or comply with authorities’ orders, claiming to be from a group “that does not recognize our laws”, police said.

    They took off into a wooded area. By mid-morning Saturday, two men had been arrested. Officials were using negotiators to interact with the other suspects.

    “Time is our ally in this and we will certainly utilize this,” Mason said.

    3 guesses as to the race of the armed idiots and the first 2 don’t count.

  109. 109.

    Tony Jay

    @Ken:

    PM isn’t a Head of State position, that’s the ‘job’ of Mrs Windsor and her ilk. Here the PM is just the leader of the Party or Coalition of parties commanding the largest chunk of votes in the House. Parties choose their own leaders.

    Basically, Parliament has all the power, the Government is the group that has the votes to seize that power, the PM is just the MP the rest of those Government MPs elect their leader.

    The more ‘Presidential’ style adopted in recent years has no foundation in our traditional system outside of the fact that it’s a fluid system, parties have become much more top-down run affairs than they used to be, MPs are lower quality intellects and the British Media is lazy and wants to pretend its reporting on The West Wing.

  111. 111.

    Orange is the New Red

    @Geminid: We are just starting to look for a smaller home in Charlottesville and communities west of it in VA. Prices in Charlottesville proper are rising so high and fast, we are getting priced out.

  112. 112.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Lacuna Synecdoche: ​
     

    Obscenities and other terms of approbation are usually among the shortest and oldest words in the English language.

    In non-Norman English the important words are short words — war, food, water, farm, cold, heat, death. Obscenities tend to be more inventive and multisyllabic, tending towards the sesquipedalian.

  113. 113.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Cermet: I wasn’t even thinking as far as 2050. If there is a war between China & the US, it will likely happen between 2025 & 2030.

  115. 115.

    Tony Jay

    @sab:

    Oh, they’ll love us. The Scottish Premier League will suddenly become a major player and just think of all those pasty white Scots suddenly gaining unrestricted access to the steamy hot beaches of Morecambe and Whitby.

    Okay, it’ll take some work.

  117. 117.

    Spanky

    A suppressed housing market in 2020 coupled with insane lumber prices for new houses coupled with cheap money is what’s driving the market.

    I read that lumber prices are falling at near-crash levels, so building may tick up soon. And money won’t stay cheap forever.

  118. 118.

    Geminid

    @OzarkHillbilly: I wonder where they were going, and for what? This does not seem like training, but rather an operation of some kind. And I wonder whether these guys were part of a larger group on the same operation.

  120. 120.

    sab

    @Tony Jay: I saw pictures of them in last year’s heat wave, sunbathing in Edinburgh parks. It was interesting. So much pinkened whiteness.  ( Me be Scottish ancestry. Not exactly adapted to US South and Midwest climate, but here we are, toasting in the sun.)

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    @YY_Sima Qian: That’s a scary thought.  :-/

    I would think that China’s leadership would remember its little war with Vietnam.  They crave stability above all – wars upset stability.  They’ll push and prod and bluster and throw their increasing weight around.  But if they’re smart, they’ll always pull back before war.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  122. 122.

    Mo Salad

    @ian: I believe that they are fucking it up on purpose like a sullen teenager doing a chore poorly so that the parents never ask them again.

  123. 123.

    Amir Khalid

    @MattF:

    Sez you. (He said with a shudder.) When my mum travelled to Japan with my dad and saw sashimi for the first time, she was grossed out by the very idea; and to the end of her life she refused to try it, even after it became widely available (and popular) here.

  125. 125.

    Spanky

    @sab: A war between China and the US is not going to involve million-man armies. Cyberspace attacks on infrastructure, maybe precision cruise missile strikes on carrier groups. I sincerely doubt it would come to ICBMs.

  126. 126.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: As I’ve said before, there was a certain symmetry and merit in the ancient concept of “outlaw”. If someone says the laws don’t apply to them, take them at their word — they also lose the protections of those laws.

  129. 129.

    sab

    @Spanky: Dream on. People starting wars always think “of course the leaders will be rational, and won’t go nuts.” Ask Vietnam about that. Ask 20th century Europe aboit that.

  130. 130.

    Tony Jay

    @sab:

    Oh, I can’t talk. My natural colouration is speckled white with an underwash of eggshell blue. I fry like a breaded scampi anywhere south of Orkney.

  132. 132.

    Another Scott

    @sab: Interesting.  And a good point.  But the world is very, very different now (China especially).  Turning Korea into a wasteland again would mean millions of refugees that would destabilize adjacent areas…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  133. 133.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @Tony Jay: I only learned the term “swivel” from Shakespeare Retold’s version of “The Taming of the Shrew,” with the great Shirley Henderson as Katerina, (she’s a fierce feminist MP) Twiggy! as her parental figures, Rufus Sewell as Petruchio (impoverished cross-dressing aristocrat with lovely manor house who needs money and thus looks to Katerina, while Katerina is advised by the Party Heads to “marry and soften her image”, and David Mitchell as Katerina’s hapless chief of staff).  Shirley is always saying “swivel” while shooting the bird at people (what is Brit speak for “shooting the bird”?  PS – love you Wimbledon hashtag.

  134. 134.

    Geminid

    @Orange is the New Red: Housing prices in Augusta County are not so bad. Personally, I think that area of the Shenandoah Valley is a great place to live. Prices there have risen, but not like those in Charlottesville, with all it’s urban amenities.

    And I really like the people in the Valley.

  137. 137.

    Tony Jay

    @sab:

    Technically, yes, but it’ll be soooooo much sweeter when it’s Greater Alba and not Sassenachland.

    Plus, fuck you Longshanks and Co. That matters too.

  138. 138.

    MomSense

    I’ve been without kids for one week and I don’t care for it.

    Watching Tomorrow War.  It’s one of those movies that I don’t think is actually good but I can’t stop watching.

  139. 139.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @OzarkHillbilly: lexington n’ concord 4ever.

    true patriots once more standing up to the distant, tyrannical rule of a braindamaged sovereign. but at least george iii came from superior bloodlines compared to biden.

  140. 140.

    Tony Jay

    @Cheryl from Maryland:

    I think “swivel on this” with digit- action would cover it.

    I have a love/hate relationship with Wimbeldon, but that Raducanu match was a great show from start to finish. If you listen carefully you’ll be able to hear the creepy Tennis and Tabloid PTBs licking their lips all the way from Maryland.

    “18, pretty, hits like a mule with tourette’s. Get that girl on the front page!”

  142. 142.

    frosty

    @YY_Sima Qian: ​

    With the ICBM & nuclear weapons, it could very well be much more ruinous than WW I, though perhaps shorter in duration.

    “I’ll look for you when the war is over, an hour and a half from now!”​

  143. 143.

    MomSense

    @sab:

    Yeah I saw that.   I signed up for recurring because I can’t do a big lump sum.  I’ll share it on social media again.

  144. 144.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I’m going out with the cats now and maybe will make a post when I come back, but no guarantees. I leave you with this on the Massachusetts I-95 situation:

  146. 146.

    MomSense

    @NotMax:

    Not far off.  My least favorite of the Chrisi Chrises (plural of chris?) is actually very sweet in this.  I think fatherhood agrees with him.

  147. 147.

    MomSense

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    My kid texted me that police are in a standoff with a militia group heading to Maine to train.  I think they are probably Sov Cits because they apparently said they don’t have to follow US laws.
    The kid who texted me is also a trickster so he could be teasing me.

  149. 149.

    MomSense

    @MomSense:

    They apparently were en route from Rhode Island to Maine for militia training when they ran out of gas. Fucking survivalists ran out of gas on an interstate highway.

  155. 155.

    Geminid

    @debbie: So they were going to Maine to play soldier. I bet they’re not liking the practice they’re getting now.

  156. 156.

    RepubAnon

     

    @WaterGirl: Perhaps they were practicing a scenario where all the power went out and they had to get to the assembly area before going out to defend freedom by killing anyone with differing opinions.

  157. 157.

    Starfish

    @Geminid: @Suzanne: 

    I also live in a housing hot spot that was not touched by the burst of the first housing bubble. Houses are going up in value by 10% or more a year. We were thinking of selling our house and getting something else, but no offer contingent on the sale of your current place is accepted in the current climate because it is so hot.

    We actually put in two offers that were rejected this season. One at around asking, and one at 10% over asking.

  160. 160.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @zhena gogolia: Then you will like Charles II: The Power and the Passion, with Sewell as Charles II and Henderson as his wife, Catherina of Braganza, along with the late great Helen McCrory as Barbara Villers, Duchess of Cleveland  (Charles’ main mistress) and Rupert Graves as the Duke of Buckingham.  Streaming on Brit Box.  Maybe other streaming sites.

  161. 161.

    dnfree

    @OzarkHillbilly: Dead thread, but my guess is that all three of your guesses are wrong. from Masslive,
    The individuals are members of Rise of the Moors, a group who identify as Moorish Americans.

    “The Moorish sovereign citizen movement is a collection of independent organizations and lone individuals that emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of the antigovernment sovereign citizens movement, which believes that individual citizens hold sovereignty over, and are independent of, the authority of federal and state governments,” the Southern Poverty Law Center says of the movement. “Moorish sovereigns espouse an interpretation of sovereign doctrine that African Americans constitute an elite class within American society with special rights and privileges that convey on them a sovereign immunity placing them beyond federal and state authority.”

    Jamhal Talib Abdullah Bey is identified on the group’s website as the Moorish American Consular Post Head for the Rise of the Moors. His biography on the group’s website lists him as having served in the United States Marine Corps previously.

  163. 163.

    Origuy

    @dnfree:  JJ MacNab has been tweeting about the Moorish Sovereigns for a while. Crazy knows no racial boundaries.

  165. 165.

    Anyway

    TGI -LW!

    OT – one of my favorite movies -The Third Man- is on TCM at 4 ET. Had a fun time doing the Third Man walking tour some years back on a trip to Vienna…

  166. 166.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Another Scott:

    I would think that China’s leadership would remember its little war with Vietnam.  They crave stability above all – wars upset stability.  They’ll push and prod and bluster and throw their increasing weight around.  But if they’re smart, they’ll always pull back before war.

    It’s not just China that is pushing and prodding. There is a great deal of anxiety among the US military brass & Congress wrt China’s rapidly improving military capabilities, & fear that China will overmatch the US (even including Japan) in the Western Pacific in the not too distant future. Some of this is surely posturing to win more budget allocation, but some of it is real. There is also a great deal of anxiety in China that the US is aiming to arrest China’s rise economically & especially technologically (by deeming everything as “dual-use” & every Chinese entity as “connected to military”), & fear that the US will undermine the “One China Policy” (which really is the bedrock of Sino-US relations) & go beyond playing footsie w/ Taiwan in the military sphere. All of it is disturbingly reminiscent of the period leading up to WW I, or the Peloponnesian War for that matter.

    If both parties remain rational, sure, it won’t come to blows. However, if all parties remained rational, WW I would not have happened, Imperial Japan would not have attacked Pearl Harbor & Nazi Germany would not have waged war on two fronts. I do think the chance of a Sino-US war remains low, but it is not something that can be dismissed out of hand, any more. Nuclear MAD will help deter conventional war, but once a conventional war starts, turning nuclear becomes a real possibility.

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