Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Their freedom requires your slavery.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

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

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I was promised a recession.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Republicans in disarray!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

After roe, women are no longer free.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: *Very* Current Events

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: *Very* Current Events

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… Biles, using a double-pike dismount — no twisting required — posted a score of 14.000. That was good enough for bronze behind the Chinese duo of gold medalist Guan Chenchen (14.633) and Tang Xijing (14.233).

“I had nerves but I felt pretty good,” Biles said.

Olympic all-around champion Sunisa Lee of the United States finished fifth. The 18-year-old Lee won three medals in Tokyo, including silver in the team final and bronze on uneven bars.

Biles arrived on the floor about 90 minutes before the competition started, wearing a red, white and blue leotard emblazoned with nearly 5,000 crystals. If she was nervous, it hardly showed. She warmed up as if it was just another day back in the gym her family owns in the northern Houston suburbs. Twice she hopped onto the beam to do a run-through of her routine and she stuck her double-pike dismount to applause from the stands and the whir of dozens of cameras…


Elsewhere…

Good (if predictable) news!

… Health officials had been monitoring more than 200 people in 23 states and territories, as well as other countries, most of whom flew on one of the two flights the person took to travel from Lagos, Nigeria, to Dallas on July 8 and 9.

The monitoring period for more than three-fourths of the contacts — including all the people on the flights — ended on July 30, with no infections detected, a CDC spokesperson said. The agency is still monitoring some others, but they are considered to be “very low risk,” the spokesperson said.

The person infected with monkeypox — a U.S. resident — traveled from Lagos to Atlanta, arriving July 9, and then continued on to Dallas. The individual was diagnosed with monkeypox on July 15 after seeking care at a Dallas emergency room.

Dog bites man, grifters bite mark:

… From the launch of Jenner’s candidacy through the end of July, the campaign raised about $747,000 and spent some $910,000, leaving her campaign with about $156,000 in unpaid bills and roughly $21,000 on hand for the race’s critical final stretch.

More than a quarter of that money has flowed to fundraising platform WinRed and to enlist the services of former Trump campaign hand Brad Parscale and former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer…

The campaign has sent about $67,000 to Parscale Strategy, LLC, the firm run by former Trump campaign strategist Parscale. It spent $25,000 on Fleischer’s media strategy company Ari Fleischer Communications…

Not a surprise that Parscale got the (unflattering) headline, while ‘friend of the Savvy’ Fleischer’s ripoff was buried below the fold.

Reader Interactions

104Comments

  2. 2.

    Nicole

    That’s awesome about Simone Biles. I’m glad she felt able to come out and very glad she did great. The GOAT, for sure.

    A woman equestrian took the gold medal in the individual Eventing for the first time since women and men started competing head-to-head in the 1960s. And the rider who won the bronze is 62- his first Olympics were in 1984, the very first ones I have a memory of seeing (I don’t remember the equestrian events; I mostly remember watching Mary Lou Retton). Cool.
    https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/en/news/julia-krajewski-creates-history-with-individual-eventing-olympic-title-at-tokyo-

  4. 4.

    Gin & Tonic

    Vitaliy Shishov, head of a Belarusian exile group in Kyiv, has been found dead in a park there. As they say, anybody can commit a murder, but suicide requires an artist. I think we will shortly find that the Belarusians are not Rembrandts.

  8. 8.

    MJS

    Glad to hear Jenner’s candidacy is going down in flames, and that she’s being fleeced in the process. Just a despicable human being.

  10. 10.

    Nicole

    @Baud:

    NBC being douchebags hasn’t put up a clip of Biles routine on their streaming app.

    Are they waiting until after tonight’s broadcast, maybe?

  12. 12.

    Tony Jay

    @MJS: 

    I read that. Hiring Brad fucking Parscale isn’t just a bad idea, it’s an undeniably stupid bad idea. Good of her to confirm that she’s even dumber than Trump this early in the game, that’s a real time saver and I’m sure all the people who aren’t going to vote for her appreciate her putting that extra effort in.

  13. 13.

    MomSense

    I totally missed the Piney Point Disaster in Florida.  Has it somehow evaded coverage?  It’s a major disaster and I only caught up with it because of a Stephen King tweet.

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m a Lady Gaga fan, so I ended up in an internet rabbit hole while reading about her upcoming movie, House of Gucci. Gaga stars as Patrizia Reggiani, who was sentenced to 29 years in jail for hiring a hit man to kill her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver). I vaguely remember hearing about the murder, arrest and trial in the late 1990s, but I did not hear about this detail of Reggiani’s fate:

    In October 2011, she became eligible for parole under a work-release program, but refused saying “I’ve never worked in my life and I’m certainly not going to start now”. With credit for good behavior, she was released in October 2016 after serving 18 years.

    LOL! She preferred five additional years in jail to a job? The Wikipedia article linked above also says Reggiani is pleased Gaga was cast to play her but “expressed annoyance that Gaga didn’t meet with her before accepting the role.”

  17. 17.

    Spanky

    @MomSense: Never heard of it

    Eta – Just looked it up. Had to fight my way past top google entries for our local Piney Point (minus a disaster).

  20. 20.

    whomever

    @Baud: The NBC coverage is and has always been just terrible, absolutely awful.  If you have a VPN to watch another country’s coverage (LITERALLY any other country is better)…

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @Gin & Tonic:

    He was hanged.

    Honestly, why was he out in an isolated place where they had time to subdue and hang him? He apparently knew he was in danger.

  28. 28.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Spanky: 
    To be fair, Madonna is talented. But although she worked damned hard, Madonna was never a good actress. In A League of their Own, watch how Rosie O’Donnell steals every scene the two of them appear in.

  30. 30.

    Amir Khalid

    @Tony Jay:
    Caitlyn Jenner is a totally unqualified fringe candidate who happens to be famous. I suppose she figured that if TFG could make that work, then so could she.

  32. 32.

    Baud

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    This is the first I head of this spat since I don’t follow entertainment news.

    Madonna is of an age where she has had a lot of success and can enjoy her life.  I can’t grasp why she cares about Lady Gaga one way or the other.

  34. 34.

    John S.

    @MomSense: Florida is such a fucking disaster on so many fronts that the national media have fatigue over all the terrible shit that happens here.

    After nearly 40 years living in a state that has been run into the ground by Republican assholes, I can’t wait to escape. My wife and I are going to look for properties out of state in a few months. We’re done.

  35. 35.

    Baud

    @Gin & Tonic:

    It’s the fault of the killers.  But it’s not like the short skirt situation.  The short skirt situation involves telling all women not to live their lives as they want.  Shishov appears to have been aware that he was being specifically targeted.  If that’s true, his decisions do seem risky to me.

  36. 36.

    Betty Cracker

    @MomSense: Agreed. It was also totally avoidable, but if events follow the usual trajectory, no one important will be held to account, and no lessons will be learned or applied to prevent similar disasters at other sites.

  40. 40.

    ArchTeryx

    My father used to say that a pilot’s most important decision, period, was whether to leave the ground in the first place.  In adverse conditions, it was a life and death decision for you and everyone on your plane.

    Better to take off tomorrow than crash today.

    Simone Biles had the mental fortitude to make exactly that decision: To realize that if she took off, she was going to crash, so the best decision was not to take off.  There were other competitions and will be other Olympics, so she chose the smart way and lived that day.  And this is the end result – a bronze in an event that she did extremely well in and didn’t carry immediate, deadly risk to her.

    She’s not just a good gymnast, she also knows herself extremely well.  That’s a helluva lot of maturity, and I’ve nothing but admiration for her.   Screw the media for turning her into a pariah because she chose to not take off when she knew it could kill her.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @ArchTeryx:

    Screw the media for turning her into a pariah

     
    Which media did that, except for right wing media perhaps? Everything I’ve seen in the mainstream media has been supportive (but I may have missed something).

  42. 42.

    WereBear

    @ArchTeryx: It figures, doesn’t it? Act like a mature and intelligent human being, doing courageous things… and the media hates you.

    Fortunately, the support of the public turned their precious narrative around.

  43. 43.

    ArchTeryx

    @Baud: The right wing media and the political media ecosphere, but NBC hasn’t exactly been supportive either.  Other outlets have been a lot better.  Probably should have been more specific about WHICH media was the problem.

  46. 46.

    ArchTeryx

    @WereBear: The public’s been supportive of her?  That’s really heartening to hear.  Lady deserves all the support she can possibly get for being not just a great gymnast but a great role model for other young gymnasts.  It may not be just her life she saved.

  47. 47.

    JPL

    @Baud: I thought I had it saved, but alas that is now blocked also.   I started streaming shortly after her performance, but David told me that I could back up the stream.   I was so pleased for her.

  50. 50.

    Betty Cracker

    @Nicole: My grandparents had neighbors who kept Shetland ponies, and they (the ponies!) were such assholes! They’d bite the living shit out of you if they got the chance.

  51. 51.

    WereBear

    The most bizarre thing about the Right Wing, and their Blood Red States, is how they do not recognize how Blue State Socialism works for them.

    The job I was laid off from lasted nearly 20 years, and in the course of it I met a lot of successful Republican small business owners. They loved to complain about the “nanny state” of NY, with all its stupid regulations, and they could not wait until they retired to a Red State: “You know, they don’t have any sales tax in My Dream State.”

    So at the point where they are retired, aging, and really need actual services, they are moving to a place with a low incidence of medical infrastructure, social programs, and support. They are trying to hoard their retirement dollars. Yet they move to a place where they have low taxes, and so will overpay for everything it turns out they need.

    And why aren’t they in that delightful Red State already? Because they can’t make any money there, that’s why!

  53. 53.

    Pyre Light

    Every time I notice WinRed is a for profit and ActBlue is a non profit I remember it’s grifters all the way down.

  54. 54.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    So every time I see Tennessee in the news,  it’s a new piece of blatant  assholery.

    Can we wall it off?

  55. 55.

    Tony Jay

    @Amir Khalid:

    That does seem to be the mentality, along with a similar “I’m a TV star with a legion of ass-kissing underlings telling me how A-for-Awesome my various asshole opinions are, so Awesome is what I am” thing going on. Turns out Trump has something Jenner lacked and Righty-Whitey voters demand.

    You’d have thought that her experience at that GQP Konference thing last month would have clarified her thinking. Those were your ‘Base’ voters hooting and taunting you as some kind of ‘tranny freak’, Jenner. That’s who they are and that’s all they think of you.

    She’s an idiot.

  59. 59.

    Immanentize

    @ArchTeryx:

    Simone Biles had the mental fortitude to make exactly that decision: To realize that if she took off, she was going to crash, so the best decision was not to take off.

    Sadly, JFK Jr. chose poorly.

  60. 60.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @WereBear: A lot of people are stupid like that. Just had to deal with a dumbass who apparently is always pumped about telling everyone he hates the government and tyranny and whateverthefuckFoxjusttoldhimtohate.

    Had to remind him that this was a Wendy’s.

  62. 62.

    Immanentize

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Why hanging? Maybe this is why? (See attached graphic)

    It’s probably no coincidence that head of Belarusian House in Ukraine Vitaliy Shyshov was murdered by hanging. Belarus state television makes weekly programs about “traitors” that must be hanged. pic.twitter.com/rGqGVP62jL— Belarus in Sweden ?❤️??? (@BelarusInSweden) August 3, 2021

  64. 64.

    JPL

    @zhena gogolia: Tucker and others are enamored with poor countries run by dictators, because they think they’ll be part of the ruling class.   Unfortunately,  Tucker  might be correct.

  65. 65.

    Ken

    @Kay: One of the Trump senators threatened them all with “solitary confinement” yesterday

    The senator seems particularly ignorant of the powers of the state senate.  But you did say “Trump senator” so that’s a given.

  66. 66.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    That threat is priceless in it’s “I have zero idea how the legal process works” way.

  69. 69.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @MJS: Which gets to the real point of CA Gov Recall; the grift.  That’s why there is no prominent Republican alternative to Newsom, the people driving this could careless about what happens after the recall, it’s the money they can skim off of Republican donors they are after. In fact, in their minds, if some useless idiot blundering into the governorship, all the more better because that means another recall election and more chances to grift on their marks.

  71. 71.

    Shakti

    @WereBear:

    The most bizarre thing about the Right Wing, and their Blood Red States, is how they do not recognize how Blue State Socialism works for them….

    And why aren’t they in that delightful Red State already? Because they can’t make any money there, that’s why!

    Complaining about the “nanny state” and its regulations is how they explain why they fail at business or why they aren’t as rich as they want to be. It’s never their shitty business decisions.

     

    Generally,  it’s underappreciated and not discussed nearly enough,  how having a reasonable strong national government with “nanny state” protections and a safety net enables states, especially Red States, to not bother funding services & infrastructure.

    Do you think California has a Prop 13 if it is their own nation? Does Texas actually have to fund its own power grid if it secedes for real? What happens to Florida and the Gulf Coast during hurricane season?

  72. 72.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @The Thin Black Duke: In A League of their Own, watch how Rosie O’Donnell steals every scene the two of them appear in.

    Going by previews of The House of Gucchi, Lady Gaga is doing some scene stealing of her own with actors like Al Pacino.  On the other hand, Al Pacino as an elderly Italian fashion victim would be worth of the price of admission alone.

  75. 75.

    Soprano2

    Well, the update on my mom isn’t great; unfortunately, the fluid they took from her knee showed some kind of growth yesterday morning, 4 days after they took it, and since she doesn’t have her spleen anymore they’re concerned the fluid in the knee might be infected. It seems like this happens more than you’d think; you go to the hospital for one thing, and end up with another completely different problem too. They took some more fluid out of her knee yesterday to culture it and see what happens, but this means she’ll be in the hospital for another 2 or 3 days. *sigh* I was so hoping she would go to the rehab place yesterday to start getting her strength back. I’m already starting to feel worn out by this, and it’s only been a week and two days! It’s hard when you’re the only one to do everything. I have an industry conference to go to next week on Monday and Tuesday, leaving Sunday afternoon and coming back Wednesday; she’s pressuring me to cancel, which I can’t really do since it was already paid for by my employer and no, there’s not anyone else to go in my place. I told her it will be two days, I’m not that far away, my husband can feed her cats and get her mail and come and see her, and I can call her, and it’ll be OK. If it were my sister, she wouldn’t even question anything about work, but it’s me, so………*sigh*….

  78. 78.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Gin & Tonic: “my name is luka

    i live in the presidential palace

    i live upstairs from you

    yes i think you’ve seen me before”

  83. 83.

    Spanky

    @Baud:

    Thank you. I’m at work now and can’t watch. At this point, I’ll just catch it tonight.

    DA fuck? You have a job?

  84. 84.

    Mike in NC

    I hope that Lifetime or some other network will gift us with “The Brad Parscale Story”. My favorite of the many mutants and grifters that Trump brought to the party, and who robbed the imbecile of millions of dollars.

  85. 85.

    lowtechcyclist

    Ari Fleischer is a ‘friend of the savvy’?  I still think of him as our own Baghdad Bob.  I wouldn’t take his word for what day of the week Thanksgiving’s gonna fall on.

  86. 86.

    Spanky

    @Spanky: Upon further reflection, I realize that I comment way less now that I’m retired.

    Balloon Juice: Proudly lowering profits since 2005.

  87. 87.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Anne Laurie: 

    Anne Laurie

    August 3, 2021 at 9:17 am

    @Nicole: I don’t want a pony. Ponies are assholes.

    Yes, Norman Thelwell’s ponies were among my earliest spiritual inspirations. ​

     
    OMG yes. Our local library had Thelwell’s “A Leg at Each Corner”. As a middle-schooler, it’s very difficult to laugh quietly when you’re reading a hilarious book in the stacks* and don’t want to be shushed by a grownup….

    * I didn’t ever check it out to read at home. Somehow it seemed so delightful, and so unexplainable to adults, that it had to be read IN the stacks. A middle-schooler’s logic is a thing unto itself. :)

  88. 88.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    New York Times Pitchbot @DougJBalloon 18m
    Doing It His Way Between the beloved Bucks’ NBA championship and Wisconsin’s newfound status as the swing di tutti swing states, Milwaukee hasn’t been this hot since the days of Laverne and Shirley. Can Biden play Lenny to Trump’s Squiggy?
    by Maureen Dowd

    Swing di tutti swing states…. DougJ should watch and see if MoDo lifts that one

  89. 89.

    Nicole

    @Betty Cracker: I sent that post about ponies being assholes right before my 11-year-old and I started a riding lesson.  My son is a total beginner and I feel for him  because they keep putting him on a pony who is, as all ponies are, an asshole.  But I guess if you can learn to ride a pony you can ride anything.

    As a petite kid and then a petite woman, I can’t count the number of trail rides I went on where I was put on the goddamn pony because I was light enough to not strain their back.  It’s a wonder I ever still wanted to learn to ride.

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: I’ve been more than annoyed by the news snippets that talk about her withdrawing for her “mental health” or putting it in the same bin as Naomi Osaka’s battles.  As if their brains are broken, and coincidentally, they’re brown women, nudge-nudge.

    Grr…

    I remember in HS gym class taking the demonstration exam on trampoline and being completely unable to do “swivel hips” any more.  And that was nothing, absolutely nothing compared to what gymnasts go through.  If your brain says “nope, you’re not going to do that” when you’re flipping around 20-30 feet off the ground, it’s not some sign of bad “mental health”.  One has to be totally there in the moment or it’s dangerous.  End of story.

    Not to minimize it, and it’s horrible to have to accept abuse from the press, but Naomi Osaka’s case is different.  She’s not risking death or serious injury if she isn’t fully in the moment.

    The Olympics coverage by the US networks is usually bad.  It seems especially awful this time.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  92. 92.

    Nicole

    @Anne Laurie:

    Yes, Norman Thelwell’s ponies were among my earliest spiritual inspirations.  (I was a perverse small child.  And now I am a perverse, short, fat old lady!)

    Holy cow, I absolutely howled at those cartoons.  I was unaware of his work before; thank you for the link!

    If I were going to defend ponies at all (and I’m really gritting my teeth while I do), I think they’re such total dicks because horses are herd animals and if you’re smaller than everyone else you’re going to have to develop a BIG personality to compensate.  One of my riding teachers once told me that while a stallion “owns” a herd, it’s run by a mare, and not usually by the youngest or biggest one; it’s usually some old lady mare who has the experience to intimidate all the bigger horses into doing what she wants.

    So props to all of us little ladies with years of life experience.  We’re not perverse; we’re just being boss mares. ;)

  95. 95.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @MattF: I think Frum should add “These people are way too stupid to think of doing anything else” to his list.

  97. 97.

    artem1s

    @Another Scott:

    The Olympics coverage by the US networks is usually bad. It seems especially awful this time.

    the US press never could get a handle on how to cover the Olympics post-cold war. Treating it as a proxy for war with Russia, it was easy for them to frame it as life and death and REAL American’s should sacrifice themselves on the field of battle and be honored to risk life and limb for God and Country.  Incidents like the kidnapping and deaths of the Israeli team in Munich only made their blood lust worse. In 1968 when the US track and field team stood on the podium with raised Black Power fists, it was inevitable that the press would jump on the bandwagon and declare those athletes as Not REAL Americans. This proxy for war coverage has leaked out into the NFL and NASA and the space race too. No one wants to speak the truth to the dirty reality that the Olympics is only about making celebrities and the money that comes with it. Sports and athletic competition stopped being the focus right after the fall of the USSR and when the US decided to let professional Dream Teams compete. After that, it was all about the ratings and what NBC decides is good for TV. The athletes are supposed to carry on the charade of Patriotism no matter what the personal costs.

  98. 98.

    J R in WV

    @ArchTeryx:

    She’s [Biles] not just a good gymnast, she also knows herself extremely well. That’s a helluva lot of maturity, and I’ve nothing but admiration for her.

    I agree, she showed extreme maturity and wisdom by holding off, altering the beam plan to avoid twisting in mid-air, etc.

    I hope she recovers her ability to follow her position in the air, or just retires to become a coach. Or just retires to enjoy being alive and well. A bright and mature young woman!

  101. 101.

    J R in WV

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Ari Fleischer is a ‘friend of the savvy’?  I still think of him as our own Baghdad Bob.  I wouldn’t take his word for what day of the week Thanksgiving’s gonna fall on.

    Tuesday, right?          ;~)

  102. 102.

    Geminid

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: More generally, the campaign industry has grown a lot in the last few decades. Now it’s players don’t just support candidates, they are actors in their own right. A political industrial complex, so to speak.

  103. 103.

    mrmoshpotato

    Caitlyn Jenner’s campaign is now broke, with Brad Parscale walking away with the bulk of the cash.

    Anyone else having really conflicting feelings about this?

    I’ll feel better if Jenner sues Pascale. (I have no idea for what, but it would be hilarious.)

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