Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

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

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Second rate reporter says what?

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

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

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Calendar Notes

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121Comments

  2. 2.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Joe Biden getting dragged by so many for the collapse of Afghanistan is just more proof that many Americans are allergic to the truth. Joe embraced it and said, “Enough.” and now it’s all his fault.

    eta Some people just wanted more comfortable lies.

  5. 5.

    Quinerly

    Good Morning! I’m redoing some Estate Planning/my Will. Looking for solid suggestions for NFPs that we think will be around for awhile who work to get people registered to vote, work for voting rights. Changing things up a bit from NARAL and a local Humane Society. Any other suggestions welcomed too. I will dip in out of the thread this AM but also dealing with HVAC folks, a flat tire I woke up to, and a vomiting JoJo. Have a great day everyone. Any suggestions are much appreciated. Trying to nail all this down before we leave on our long driving trip (if I don’t chicken out b/c of Delta).

  8. 8.

    Spanky

    @OzarkHillbilly: Same as it always was.

    If any of these braying jackasses that were in the govt are truly shocked at how fast Afghanistan collapsed, they’ve just demonstrated their complete incompetence.

  12. 12.

    RSA

    Charles Lane has a piece in the Washington Post titled, “Biden’s presidency and U.S. foreign policy now hinge on pulling off one of the greatest airlifts in history.”

    I wish our media had some sense of perspective, of proportion.

  13. 13.

    marklar

    @Quinerly: We have a chunk of change directed towards the Center for Independent Living, which works for autonomy in people with disabilities.  Added bonus is that most of them vote D.

  14. 14.

    hueyplong

    @germy: More likely the opposite.  More Dems than usual on Sunday shows because Afghanistan provides the opportunity to have Dems on who will slag Biden.

  18. 18.

    JML

    @Quinerly: Brennan Center is pretty awesome. (full disclosure: an old friend worked there for several years). They do some great work on voting rights.

  20. 20.

    SFAW

    Two weeks before Saigon fell in April 1975, 32-year-old Joe Biden met with Gerald Ford at the White House. The freshman senator told the president the situation in Vietnam was hopeless & the US should leave as quickly as possible.

    “So Biden has been a Defeat-o-crat for, like, 65 years?”

  21. 21.

    Kayla Rudbek

    Thanks for the link to the Roddenberry centennial, Anne Laurie!

    As for personal news: still waiting on my oncologist and my insurance company to find me a formulation of tamoxifen that doesn’t have lactose and is covered by my insurance. At least now that I have figured out the problem, I can take a lactase tablet with the tamoxifen, but I still think it’s a fundamental design flaw to put an indigestible sugar (for 65% of the human population) into a tablet that’s supposed to dissolve in the stomach. Not quite as stupid as putting the damned lactose into anti-diarrhea tablets, though, which also happens and is why I have to look for the liquid loperamide HCl at the store.

    And I’m still considering filing a complaint with CVS for not checking my allergens list, and writing to my Congresscritters to see about extending the food labeling requirements to medication. (My initial reaction was to write to them asking FDA to ban lactose as an additive/filler for medication, but Mr. Rudbek is the voice of sweet reason in this house and suggested better labeling requirements.)

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @germy: Nah, not really. I’ve pretty much decided it was just a phishing scam that I forced before they ever got to the money grab. The specificity of it is probably due to the fact that a lot of our info is out there and available to anyone who wants it. That and the fact that I have a last name that if one has it? One is related to me with only a 2 or 3 degrees of seperation. So it probably wasn’t too hard to connect the dots between me and the boys.

    I talked to my eldest last night and will be speaking to the NOLA son in the next night or 2 just to give them both a heads up.

    It’s a brave new world.

  24. 24.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    It’s so fascinating to me that the immediate collapse of the Afghan government is reported by braying horserace journalists as a terrible blunder by Biden, when then alternative was a slow collapse, which is to say a bloody civil war.

    Slow collapse ending in a desperate and futal last stand makes for good reality TV. Of course the press are besides themselves with rage.

  25. 25.

    Quinerly

    @SFAW: I felt like a real Mom. Wed is “school day” until we leave. I had to leave a message for his “teacher” that he was under the weather. He was restless all night and now this. Keeping an eye on him until about noon and then maybe calling the vet. He was supposed to get his nails trimmed to day. Absolutely hates it to a point that two groomers have said don’t come back. The vet tech tried and got the back ones done a week ago. And had to stop. He got so worked up. His teacher was going to try today. I wonder if he is faking to get out of going?

  26. 26.

    hueyplong

    @SFAW: What she (and every other high profile GOPer right now) is, is an internet troll.  It’s the sole qualification for office in the party.

    Look at all the material in a single day’s news on TV or the internet and see if you can find exceptions.  You’ll be hard-pressed to do so.

    Participation in 1/6 is the only real work any of them has done.

  27. 27.

    docNC

    If things are truly going “well”, expect TFG to come out of the shadows for the credit any minute now.

  29. 29.

    NotMax

    Maybe not the post to reiterate the story of Roddenberry (how to put this genteely) — um, er — pursuing me at the very first Star Trek convention.

    ;)

  30. 30.

    debbie

    Are there any specifics about who will be testifying before Congress? I expect all Biden administration officials called will be flogged, but I’d like to hear from the generals and other military who painted such a deceptive perception about the status of the war (looking at the loudest, like Petreus, for instance).

  32. 32.

    WaterGirl

    @germy:

    Lauren Boebert is like if pottery barn and bass pro shop had a baby, and that baby was an air horn.

    Is it possible to love a sentence more than this one?  Discuss.

  34. 34.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Police killed their sons. Their unmovable friendship uncovered a system of lies

    Around 3.10am, a loud banging, frantic and relentless, startled Narene awake: “Ryan!”

    She recognized the voice of Ryan’s friend, Laverle “Lover” Johnson. Half asleep, she unlocked the front door. “Tell me he’s here,” Lover said. “Tell me you heard from Ryan.” She hadn’t. Lover said his sister had called him from Power & Light. “Something bad’s happened to Ryan,” he cried.

    Narene and her daughter Natasha raced downtown. Narene tried not to think what she was thinking. “He’s hurt,” she told Natasha. “He’s not dead.”

    The questions came rapid fire, Narene recalled.
    “Why are you here?” the officer asked.
    “Did your son own a gun?” No.
    “Did he do drugs?” No.
    “Go home,” the officer said. He gave her his card.

    At 5am, Narene’s niece called the police station. “Watch the news,” the officer said and hung up. TV anchors reported Ryan had stolen a phone and died in a standoff with police after refusing to drop his weapon.

    Narene collapsed. All the serenity she’d built in her home, the precious bond between mother and child wafted out the windows, as insubstantial as smoke. A perdition ripped through her body as she – helpless, hopeless – watched a numb, gray dawn break.

    Outside Narene’s ranch home in South Kansas City, family and friends held vigil. The tight-knit neighborhood of diverse, mostly blue-collar workers from Ford Motors and the surrounding K-12 schools gathered on her corner lot in prayer and support. Dozens of Ryan’s friends hovered near Narene; they all called her “Momma”.

    Around 6pm, a caravan of police officers arrived with a Swat team. Armed men swarmed into defensive positions. A detective, flanked by officers in bullet-proof vests, said, “Our investigation has concluded your son pointed the gun at the officers. He refused to drop it. We were forced to shoot him five times in the chest.”

    It made no sense. Ryan was a law-abiding citizen. At the funeral home, Ryan’s father Clarence followed the director into the back room where Ryan lay. After seeing his son, he returned, weeping.

    “They never shot him in the chest,” Clarence cried. He held Narene. “Baby, they shot him in the back.”

    Narene’s knees buckled. She sank to the floor, breath burning, strangled in the shock. Her son hadn’t died. He’d been killed.

    Blame seeped in and affixed itself to her heart like a tumor. The sight of Ryan’s brokenness, the fact he couldn’t answer her desperate pleas oxygenated her belief that this was her fault. For not knowing everything. For not telling him to stay home. For not being with him in his final moments, hurt and alone. Mothers don’t heal.

    “What was he doing down there anyway?” Instagrammers wrote. “Out that late, he’s just asking for trouble.”
    “Why’d he have a gun?” Facebook posts read, even after Narene said he didn’t. “Of course his mother’s going to lie for him.”

    Narene became their receptacle, there to absorb the opinions and interpretations of the righteous around her. Ryan was a hundred different things, but to police, reporters, the public, he was only one.

    It’s a hard read, and a bit long, but well worth the trouble.

  35. 35.

    germy

    @WaterGirl:

    I saw this comment over at LGM:

    MTG: Crazy and astonishingly evil.

    Boebert: Crazy and astonishingly stupid.

    Cawthorn: Astonishingly stupid and evil.

  37. 37.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WaterGirl: Towards the end Yesterday’s AM thread. Here ya go:

    Just got a weird phone call:

    Caller: “Hello Grandpa.” said a voice I have never heard, sounding kind of high, and very local.
    Me: Who are you?
    C: I’m your grandson. Don’t you know me?
    Me: No.
    C: Are you Thomas?
    Me: Yes
    C: CJ’s father?
    Me: Yes, who the F are you?
    C: I’m your grandson, R. (my eldest son is R)(this weren’t him)
    Me: You’re gonna have to do better than that or I’m hanging up.

    C: click.

    This is obviously somebody who knows me and my sons. What their game might be, I haven’t a clue, and will be talking to my sons about this soon. Fortunately, they made the mistake of calling on my cell (surprised it rang, most times we get no signal) and they didn’t block their #.

  39. 39.

    SFAW

    @hueyplong:

    Look at all the material in a single day’s news on TV or the internet and see if you can find exceptions.  You’ll be hard-pressed to do so.

    Oh, I think that nice Madison Cawthorn is a totally sincere, not-at-all-a-troll, honest, fine upstanding (so to speak) young man.

    I also think Senator Rafael/Ted “Please Slag My Wife, I Won’t Say A Word In Her Defense” Cruz has shown bravery worthy of the Congressional Medal of Honor [sic] — or would be, if he had ever served. [Served in the armed forces; we know he’s served as TFG’s Wormtongue (sorta). Well, he and Lindsey, although Lindsey at least served as a JAG Off (but then and now).]

  40. 40.

    Brachiator

    Joe Biden is never going to be the president the press wants him to be, but he seems determined to be the president the people who voted for him expect him to be.

    Nailed it.

  42. 42.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: That is pretty much the classic dialogue of a scam perpetrated on old folks. Word for word. See how they got you to say a name first? (Reread and they had some names….)

    Another version is that they pose as a police officer and do the same thing. Both end in them asking for bail money or the like — 1000 or 2000 bucks — to be wired. My friends mom was almost caught on this, but was saved by a slow moving Western Union operator (on purpose) and her daughter.

  43. 43.

    Nicole

    @Quinerly: i’m so sorry JoJo’s not feeling well. General advice is to hold off on food and limit water for the next 12 hours and see if it continues.  I don’t think there’s a pet dog on the planet that doesn’t vomit from time to time; it’s just an issue if it continues more than a day or so.

    Speaking of dogs, do any of the commenters here who have owned dogs had experience with Adequan? The leg with the repaired CCL on our senior girl is starting to bother her more and I read that it can be a good treatment for arthritis in an aging joint. Curious if anyone used it on their pet.

  44. 44.

    Butter Emails!

    @RSA:

    You mean like how this “disaster” has yet to cost an American life? Meanwhile governor Tweedledum and Tweedledipshit are killing scores daily with their policies? It’s tragic that desperate Afghans lost their lives  and will continue to do so, but regrettably that was baked into the cake when we made the decision to invade and was an inevitable part of the withdrawal regardless of how it was managed.

  45. 45.

    Immanentize

    @Quinerly:

    Poor Jojo

    I hope you get to go on your trip, but it is rough out there (having just driven through Tenn. and Arkansas)! Looks like if you stick to res land, you will be safe? But some reservations are planning on closing borders again.

  46. 46.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize:

    Didn’t realize it’s a common scam. As I am now an old fart — OK, I have been for awhile — I will try to keep that one in mind.

    Of course, I don’t have any grandchildren at this time, but I imagine there are variations.

  47. 47.

    Sloane Ranger

    The UK Parliament was recalled to debate the Afghan situation. From press reports Johnson is getting it in the neck from both sides. Words like “betrayal” and “complacency” are being bandied around. Joe Biden has also come in for criticism. One Tory MP, Tom Tugenhat, who served in Afghanistan, has even gone so far as to suggest we stop automatically supporting the US and strengthen our alliances with France and Germany instead, to create a military response capable of going it alone without US help!

    I’m far from being a BoJo fan but I agree with his point that, once the US pulled out, we had no option to do otherwise. The optics are terrible, however. Like the US, our government seems to have been taken by surprise by the speed of the collapse, which doesn’t say much about either

    • our intelligence on the ground,
    • the willingness of the intelligence agencies to tell Ministers the truth
    • the willingness of Ministers to accept what the intelligence agencies were telling them.

    Or perhaps some combination of the above. Also, Dominic Raab, our Foreign Secretary, was seen sunbathing on a beach in Crete while the collapse was going on. He claims he was keeping in touch with the office by phone but that’s hardly a mechanism for the sort of secure communications you’d expect a Foreign Secretary to be receiving in such an emergency.

    Lots of things for the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Select Committees to investigate to name the two most obvious.

  48. 48.

    Immanentize

    @Quinerly: I second the Brennan Center suggestion. Also, the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Equal Justice Initiative (Bryan Stevenson’s shop) are both great civil rights and voting organizations that will not collapse.

  49. 49.

    Kay

    Morgan Harper, a progressive attorney and former congressional candidate, announced Wednesday morning that she is running in the Democratic primary for a soon-to-be-open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio.
    “Everything is on the line right now,” Harper told HuffPost, including abortion rights, climate change and workers’ wages.
    “We need to win ― and doing the same old thing will not get us there,” she added. “What my campaign represents is a new fresh voice and a new approach to mobilize the voters we need to turn out to flip this seat.”
    Harper, a 38-year-old Black resident of Columbus, is a founder of the progressive nonprofit Columbus Stand Up! and the director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, a group that promotes tougher antitrust enforcement. She began her career clerking for a federal judge and working at a corporate law firm before a three-year stint at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington, where she ultimately became a senior adviser to the director, Richard Cordray, a fellow Ohioan.
    Harper said that her work for the American Economic Liberties Project and the CFPB is a “signal for people that I am not afraid to stand up to powerful corporate interests.”
    Harper is the second Democrat to jump in the race to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman. She is set to run against the more moderate, Youngstown-area Rep. Tim Ryan in a primary scheduled for May 3. The winner of that contest will face whichever Republican nominee emerges from an already-crowded primary field that includes Jane Timken, the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party; former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel; and attorney and author J.D. Vance.
    Harper faces a tough contest against Ryan, 48, a 10-term incumbent who has already racked up endorsements from a host of labor unions and Democratic elected officials. He also raised more than $2.2 million from April to June ― more than any of the Republican candidates competing for the seat.
    Harper mounted an unsuccessful left-wing challenge against Rep. Joyce Beatty (D) in April 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Badly outspent by Beatty and constrained by the limits of field organizing during quarantine, Harper ended up receiving less than one-third of the vote. (Beatty, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, endorsed Ryan earlier this month.)

    Tim Ryan’s campaign is good. There’s only +/- 8000 reliable Democratic voters here in non-presidential years and they have held 3 events and they contact us a lot personally- by telephone – a person on the other end. The longer-term local Democrats are pleased because we don’t usually get this much attention. The thinking always was there aren’t enough of us in R areas , which I tended to agree with, honestly.

  51. 51.

    Brachiator

    Boris Johnson called the UK Parliament back into session from recess to discuss Afghanistan. Previously, Parliament observed Covid protocols, with only a few MPs actually in chamber, and the others doing Zoom calls. But now, many more are physically present, sitting close together, and many without masks.
    It is actually an interesting debate. Intelligence failure, what to do about refugees, formal recognition of the Taliban, what Johnson knew about the instability of the Afghan government.

    https://youtu.be/vb5WczPleXY

  52. 52.

    Kathleen

    @Kay: A few days ago in a comment I left a link for you to a good article about John Cranley. It was late in thread. Do you remember seeing my comment? Of course I don’t remember the thread. I’m leaning more towards him than I have been. He’s got great strengths but IMHO also has some weaknesses that concern me.

  53. 53.

    Barbara

    Biden seems to have internalized the fallacy of sunk costs. Journalists, not so much. But then, the costs rarely accrue to their balance sheets, or at least not the most famous among them. It irks me no end to see women and girls become the talking point of politicians and journalists. There is nothing stopping us from finding ways to promote and support women’s rights across the globe without the use of American military. Yet, at least when Bush and Trump were president, that is a fight they absolutely did not see as important, siding time and again with repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia when it comes to endorsing women’s rights, mostly to burnish their standing with their own misogynistic supporters. Fuck each and every one of them.

  54. 54.

    Joe Falco

    @hueyplong:

    Participation in 1/6 is the only real work any of them has done.

    With special recognition for providing the insurrectionists a reconnaissance tour of the Capitol Building beforehand! That’s going above and beyond the fall of duty!

  55. 55.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize:

    Understood.

    Although not at the same level of deviousness, I recall getting scam e-mails, a few years ago, from various “acquaintances” (i.e., someone spoofing or posing as an acquaintance) who had gotten stranded far away, had their wallet stolen, etc., etc. Those were fairly easy to delete, because there was no emotional connection.

  56. 56.

    dr. bloor

    @germy:

    MTG: Crazy and astonishingly evil.

    Boebert: Crazy and astonishingly stupid.

    Cawthorn: Astonishingly stupid and evil.

    The figure in the center of this particular tripartite Venn diagram would be TFG.

  58. 58.

    jonas

    @debbie: ​
      Agreed — the people who blew smoke up our asses for 20 years about the training of the ANF and stability of that government must be held accountable.

  59. 59.

    Scout211

    @Immanentize:

    That scam has been around for a long time. My aunt was caught up in that with my cousin’s son years ago. He was a freshman in college and the caller said he was in Canada in legal trouble and needed money.  The family never revealed whether my aunt actually paid them any money but the young man is now in his mid-twenties and married. 

    We screen all of our calls to avoid those kinds of scams. But I do wonder if the extended warranty on my car needs to be renewed . . .
    LOL.

  60. 60.

    Brachiator

    @Sloane Ranger:

    The UK Parliament was recalled to debate the Afghan situation. From press reports Johnson is getting it in the neck from both sides. Words like “betrayal” and “complacency” are being bandied around.

    I was initially surprised that Boris Johnson recalled Parliament. But I get the impression that many people, not just the politicians, have been affected by the withdrawal of troops and by the apparent collapse of the government of Afghanistan.

    The obvious background to this must be the sacrifice of families whose children, friends and spouses were casualties.

    There also seems to be some honest and honorable determination to try to rescue Afghan personnel who worked for or assisted British forces.

  61. 61.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    So Dumb Ass Donny opined on Fox yesterday that his brilliant withdraw plan last year was to take all the troops and blow up all the forts.

    No one is sure what hell is Small Hands is talking about with “forts”, does he think this is The Man Who Would Be King? But a reasonable interpretation would be “destroy all the infrastructure and equipment that remains”

    So thinking this threw….

    Trump can not keep a secret, he would have boasted about the Trump Withdraw plan to all of Washington, the Right Wing Media and a half a dozen random billionaires last Fall/Winter.

    The word would have had gotten back to the Afghanistan government that the Americans were about to bail next May, taking all their toys with them. After that they would be on their own.

    So no surprise anyone in the Afghani government who could cut a deal with the Taliban, did, likely months ago.

  62. 62.

    Llelldorin

    @Immanentize: Yeah — they tried that one on my folks earlier this year. They _didn’t_ know that my older daughter is trans, though, leading to some hilarity. (She hasn’t legally changed her name yet.)

  63. 63.

    SFAW

    @germy:

    In product development/engineering, we had a saying: “Cheap/fast/good: pick two.”

    Some years ago, I repurposed that for Rethugs, except it became “Crazy/stupid/evil: pick two.” Somewhere between five and ten years ago, I realized that phrase should be modified to “pick three.” I haven’t seen much to convince me otherwise.

  64. 64.

    bluefoot

    @Kayla Rudbek: ​
      Writing to the FDA or some other regulatory body isn’t a bad idea IMO. There is a list of drug excipients (GRAS – generally recognized as safe) that the FDA maintains. I don’t know how it’s regulated but there must be a process for updating it, or adding cautions for things like lactose. For something that affects 65% of the population, there ought to be some sort of flag.

  65. 65.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Rooting for injuries in the Ohio Republican Senate primary. It looks like DeWine could get cut up some in his primary also. When it’s over, Ohio Republicans might not be singing “Kumbaya.”

  67. 67.

    Quinerly

    @Immanentize: much appreciated. I regularly gave to the SPLC and stopped for reasons. Love the other suggestions. Been drawing blanks on exactly what I thought I want.

  68. 68.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: See how they got you to say a name first? (Reread and they had some names….)

    They had all the names, I volunteered none of them, confirmed only mine and CJ’s. At the time I was thinking, “Is this a grandchild I didn’t know I had?” My stepdaughter found out she had a half sister in an out of the blue phone call.

  69. 69.

    SFAW

    @Scout211:

    But I do wonder if the extended warranty on my car needs to be renewed . . .

    It does, but you caught it in time! If you send me $50, I’ll deal with it for you.

  71. 71.

    jonas

    @Kay: I was wondering what your take on this would be — thanks. I know Ohio is tough for Dems these days, but thankfully the Republican side looks like assclowns all the way down, so maybe there’s a chance?

  74. 74.

    Quinerly

    @Immanentize: Sept is driving thru Colorado and camping mostly. Small town stuff with exception of meeting a friend in CO Springs. Eventually Mesa Verde and North Rim of Grand Canyon. 2 months settled in one place in Santa Fe. Then camping thru AZ in Dec.

  75. 75.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    At the time I was thinking, “Is this a grandchild I didn’t know I had?”

    One of my uncles passed away some years ago. At the wake, a guy came up to me and introduced himself as “[insert name], I’m [Uncle’s name]’s son.” Since I thought I knew all my cousins, I was a bit surprised. A few minutes later, I asked my brother whether I had just forgotten someone. He gave me a “WTF?” look.

    Turned out the guy really WAS; he was the result of some “misspent-youth activity.” But my brother and I — as well as the cousins that we thought were the uncle’s only kids — were caught a bit flat-footed.

  78. 78.

    WaterGirl

    @Kathleen: @Kay: Here’s your comment:

    @Kay: I subscribe to the Cincinnati Business Courier, which is one of the most outstanding news publications anywhere. Yesterday’s edition featured an interesting take on John Cranley and his run for governor. I hope you can read it:

    Link

    On this thread:  Comment #57 

  81. 81.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @hueyplong: Trump says the quiet parts out loud because he has no idea which parts ARE the quiet parts.

    James Buchanan may still have the most disastrous administration in US history, but  by far Trump is the most incompetent man to hold that office.

    The stupid ass fucker was the author of that rout in Kabul between his childish thinking and big mouth. Just imagine the insane crap that would have happened if Trump hadn’t chickened out of invading Iran because he didn’t want the generals to get to much attention?

  82. 82.

    germy

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Most likely it’s a spoofed number, though.  If you call it, you’ll get a “This number is not in service” recording

    Scammers know that a blocked number won’t get answered, so they use a fake number.

    I remember getting repeated calls from a certain number in my area code.  One day I decided to call them back, and the number wasn’t in service.

  83. 83.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW: If it had been, it would have been a child my son didn’t know of either. And quite the surprise, seeing as he and his wife have been together since their junior year in HS. Which was… 14 years ago?

  84. 84.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Brachiator:

     

    The obvious background to this must be the sacrifice of families whose children, friends and spouses were casualties.

    There also seems to be some honest and honorable determination to try to rescue Afghan personnel who worked for or assisted British forces.

    The media is full of family members of those who died and veterans who were seriously injured and they are all asking the same thing, Did my son die, did I lose my leg for nothing? It’s an understandable reaction and they are getting a lot of sympathy. Also, even for those of us who are unaffected, the obvious surprise at the speed of the collapse by the government and the lack of any sort of preparation to get out is a cause of angst in a nation that prides itself on the quality of our intelligence services and military.

    The government has promised to take up to 20,000 Afghan refugees but this is over a period of 5 years. The intention is for 5000 to come in this year and preparations are being made for temporary accommodation for them until they can be permanently settled.

  85. 85.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Scout211: I have never been on the book of faces, but both my sons are. And yes, it had occurred to me that that is where they harvested most of that info. Not being on it tho, I was just making a guess.

  87. 87.

    Brachiator

    @Sloane Ranger:

    The government has promised to take up to 20,000 Afghan refugees but this is over a period of 5 years.

    Over 5 years. This is absurd. And the funds allocated to this are too low, since there have already been a budget reduction in this area.

    But what is interesting here is that the government recognizes that it must make an exception to its previous anti-immigrant policies.

  88. 88.

    Shalimar

    @Quinerly: The only one I would suggest you don’t give to is Southern Poverty Law Center. The work they do is wonderful, but they already have an endowment that could fund their current level of spending for 50+ years. They don’t need your money.

  89. 89.

    sab

    @Kay: Harper, another progressive spoiler running in a race we must win

    ETA She can’t win a Congressional reace so she decides to run statewide with no name recognition. Maybe she should have started as state rep or state senate. Term limits so she would have a chance to get some experience.

  90. 90.

    germy

    @Brachiator:

    In parts of this country it might be dangerous for refugees, what with Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham yelling about hordes of invading refugees infesting America.  Fox is drumming up hatred as we speak.

  91. 91.

    JeanneT

    Oddly enough, I just this moment got a robo call telling me that I urgently need to talk to a federal agent about my legal case, press one to talk to the agent.  I pressed end call to hang up.  I haven’t gotten any grand child in trouble calls, but the grand kid is only 2, so that won’t happen any time soon.

  92. 92.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @bluefoot: 65-70% for the overall adult human population, varies by ethnic/racial origin (Europeans can usually digest lactose just fine and so that’s why FDA allows it in food and medication). This is part of why we need more diversity in STEM!

  93. 93.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JeanneT: Oddly enough, I just this moment got a robo call telling me that I urgently need to talk to a federal agent about my legal case, press one to talk to the agent.

    I have gotten several of those, also bank agents, credit cards, and bill collectors. Funny how none of these people have ever contacted my by mail.

  94. 94.

    Geminid

    @sab: State legislative races offer little glory or money. Harper’s sponsors, the Justice Democrats, believe that defeating moderate Democrats is more important than beating Republicans. They will use Harper’s campaign to build their brand and bank accounts. They will not lift a finger to help Ryan in the general election.

  99. 99.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Brachiator:

     

    But what is interesting here is that the government recognizes that it must make an exception to its previous anti-immigrant policies.

    Yes, that is the one bright spot here and there’s been no widespread push back, at least as yet.

  101. 101.

    Brachiator

    @Sloane Ranger: 

    Yes, that is the one bright spot here and there’s been no widespread push back, at least as yet.

    I saw some story that Nigel Farage was slinging some anti-immigrant nonsense at Afghans, maybe on the crappy new GB News outfit.

    But he went too far. Decent people are not willing to abandon those Afghan citizens who risked their lives to try to provide aid and assistance.

  102. 102.

    Brachiator

    @germy:

    In parts of this country it might be dangerous for refugees, what with Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham yelling about hordes of invading refugees infesting America.  Fox is drumming up hatred as we speak.

    There is an attempt to bring Fox News level hatred to Britain with this new program called GB News. So far, it has been a spectacular failure.

    And even here, some people who listen to Carlson and other vermin draw a line at attacks on those in Afghanistan who worked with the US and Allied forces.

  103. 103.

    Geminid

    @sab: At least one Justice Democrat candidate, Jessica Cisneros of Laredo, Texas, is not so bad. Cisneros came within 5 points of beating entrenched incumbent Henry Cuellar in the 2020 primary. Both Cisneros and Cuellar will have had two years to prepare for their rematch, and it will be a real fight next year. If I lived in the district, I could vote for Cisneros, but I would still be wary of her JD affiliation.

  105. 105.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @WaterGirl: Love that they didn’t block their number! 

    Mmm, don’t speak too soon – technology to spoof Caller ID with a bogus incoming number has been around for years. (For about a day and a half the calls kept telling me they were from my own landline – the one I was being called on!)

    IMO in this case it’s kind of unlikely – sounds like a tech-inept attempt at scamming a few bucks from a grandpaw – but Oh-Oh should be prepared to discover that the owner of that supposed incoming number had nothing to do with the attempted scam.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    @jonas:

    I was wondering what your take on this would be — thanks

    My take on progressive challengers in primaries is that IMO, Dem “moderates” in Congress have always been more of a pain in the ass than progressives are, that’s been true for decades and it’s still true. I accept the moderates so I also accept the progressives. I don’t think moderates not being team players is any different than progressives not being team players. I think Joe Manchin is full of shit when he claims his voters care about the difference between a 2.9 trillion bill and a 3.5 trillion bill. That’s not true.
    Joe Manchin is a Right-leaning Democrat so Joe Manchin objects to progressive bills. I don’t know why he can’t just say it. There’s a Right, a center and a Left in the Democratic Party but for some reason the Righties and the Centrists won’t admit that’s what they are.
    I’ll support Ryan though in this one because he’ll be fine and he has a good campaign.

  110. 110.

    Kay

    @jonas:

    The “problem solvers caucus” should call themselves “the Right leaning Democrats”.

    I find their refusal to even say WTF they are irritating.

    Ryan, in the context of Ohio, will be plenty progressive. He’s fine. He’s not that old either! Compared to some of them.

    In Senate terms he’s like a toddler :)

  111. 111.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Tim Ryan is also a vegan. First NYC mayoral candidate Eric Garland, now Tim Ryan! This is like a leftie horror movie: “The Attack of the Vegan Centrists.”

  113. 113.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Pennsylvania Democrats could elect a Senator even younger than Ohio’s Tim Ryan. If Representative Conor Lamb (PA-17) wins the primary and general election, he will be 38 years old when sworn in as Senator in January 2023.

    Lamb could be a strong candidate. Of the four viable contenders for the Democratic nomination, Lamb most closely resembles Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey in politics and personal profile. Casey won his third term in 2018 by 600,000 votes.

  115. 115.

    opiejeanne

    @OzarkHillbilly: About 30 years ago, my in-laws’ phone rang, an operator asked if they’d accept the charges for the phone call. from someone claiming to be their grandson (our son), supposedly calling from prison and asking for money to be wired. I don’t think the caller used my son’s name until they did.

    They called us in a panic, “Where is B? Why is he in prison?”

    It took us a while to calm them down and make them believe B was fine.   The police got involved and told us it came from a pay phone in a prison, can’t remember, and it was a common scam run by prisoners.

    It was terribly unnerving for my in-laws.

  116. 116.

    sab

    @Geminid: How so? ( Not meaning to argue. Just actually curious about how so other than Dem with Irish surname.) All I really know about Casey is the abortion case,

    ETA Ryan has a moderate label on him that I don’t think he derserves. He used to be bad on guns and abortion but he backed off on those quite a while ago. On everything else he has been quite progresive always.

  117. 117.

    Gretchen

    @Kayla Rudbek: my daughter, who has celiac, had the same problem even finding out if a medication contains wheat.  Had to call the company, which didn’t know offhand.

  118. 118.

    Geminid

    @sab: the principal similarities are that both Bob Casey and Tim Ryan are white, male, and Catholic, and both fall in the moderate  wings of their caucuses. Within the House Democratic Caucus, Ryan is a member of the New Democrat Coalition, not the Progressive Caucus. This does not mean he is not  “progressive” in the sense that he wants progress on social justice, climate, and economic growth. Joe Biden was one of the most moderate of last year’s Democratic candidates, but he has governed in effect as a progressive. This wasn’t some sudden conversion. The fact is, there just isn’t that much difference between moderate and liberal Democrats, at least not as much as there is made out to be.

    I tend to classify Democratics as liberal or moderate, although they actually fall on a continuum. “Progressive” and “centrist” seem descriptive more of political strategy. But that’s just me.

    The commenters on this forum tend to be liberal, and sometimes  “moderate” is used pejoratively. But polling shows that within the Democratic electorate, there are as many moderate Democrats as liberal, if not more, and these deserve representation as much as liberals do. Most moderate and liberal Democratic Representatives understand this and know that each side needs the other. Some of their fans resent Democrats from the other wing, though, and would like to see it curtailed and their wing more dominant. I guess that is what primaries are for.

  119. 119.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Gretchen: NIH has a database where you can search by drug generic name and see what each manufacturer’s formulation is, which is how I found out that my particular prescription has lactose in it. Weirdly enough, my oncologist wants to change the prescription to a liquid formulation, although there are other tablets that don’t have the lactose. I suppose that her thinking is that the liquid is much less likely to get reformulated to include lactose.
    and here’s an article about making medication gluten free: journal article

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