This cat absolutely deserves a more expressive voice-over, but ‘I’ve been a perfectly adequate cat for most of my life’ slays me.
Monday Evening Open Thread: Complaints Dept.Post + Comments (84)
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Open Threads
This cat absolutely deserves a more expressive voice-over, but ‘I’ve been a perfectly adequate cat for most of my life’ slays me.
Monday Evening Open Thread: Complaints Dept.Post + Comments (84)
by Betty Cracker| 188 Comments
This post is in: 2024 Elections, Open Threads, Politics, Trumpery
There’s been talk in comments about an opinion piece by Robert Kagan published last week in The Washington Post. The title of the piece is “Our constitutional crisis is already here,” and it’s hard to sum up, but I’ll try. One of Kagan’s premises is that if Trump remains on this side of the dirt and is healthy enough, he’ll definitely run again in 2024.
I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, Kagan’s second premise comes into play, which is that the Trump cult has already successfully undermined faith in elections* for millions and may have put enough state-level levers in place to at least cause massive chaos and potentially violence if he loses again. The evidence for that is solid already, IMO.
Kagan says reform is needed before the 2022 election and that we’re running out of time. He says it will require every Democrat and a small handful of Republicans to act like patriots to address a metastasizing threat of an authoritarian takeover and/or large-scale social upheaval resulting from state legislature fuckery around election results.
Kagan says this must be done to uphold constitutional order, even at the cost — gasp! — of ditching the filibuster rule, which appears no where in the US Constitution. Sadly, that seems extremely unlikely.
One thing I found compelling about the piece is that it lays out what makes Trump a uniquely dangerous threat. People who say he’s a symptom not the disease, that the road to Trumpism leads back to Nixon, Reagan, Bush II or wherever they draw the line aren’t wrong. But they aren’t capturing the full story either, IMO.
I don’t get it, and I never will, even if I live to be 1,000, but Trump is the center of a cult of personality. As Kagan says, Trump doesn’t need to “deliver” on an agenda to keep his followers loyal because Trump being a giant, shouty, self-pitying asshole is the product.
Those of us outside the cult don’t see the appeal, but it’s undeniable, and it doesn’t seem to be waning as we’d hoped after the last election. In that time, tens of thousands have died because they refused to take the pandemic seriously — all because Trump and his disciples told them not to. It’s still happening.
Who else has that power in the Republican Party? In any party? (Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, etc., are trying, but IMO, they’re still riding Trump’s coattails.) So, as much as we’d all like to stuff that shit-bag Trump down the memory hole and speak his accursed name no more, doing that right now would be disastrously premature, according to Kagan, like the dummies in slasher films who let down their guard because they think they’ve neutralized the killer.
Anyhoo, it’s a thought-provoking article and well worth burning a free click and discussing here, IMO. Otherwise, open thread.
*The best of all possible worlds, IMO, is Trump drops dead or otherwise declines to run again, and millions of Republican voters don’t bother to turn out because they don’t trust elections and they hate the institutional Republican Party for disrespecting Trump, even though with few exceptions, Republicans groveled before him. The schadenfreude would be unbearably delightful.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 530 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Everyone has at least one. Here’s mine: the distinction between conscious (being alert, awake and oriented) and conscience (one’s moral compass) has really broken down in popular usage. Case in point:
I was reminded that I had taken this picture in Target when Erik Loomis of all people made the same mistake.
I realize it’s not then end of the world, but for some reason this one really bugs me. I think autocorrect and/or voice recognition might be part of the problem because it reinforces bad usage when texting. Anyway, share your biggest grammar peeve or anything else in this open thread.
by David Anderson| 77 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, COVID-19 Coronavirus
Quitting a job is expensive even in thick labor markets. Talking about quitting a job is cheap.
Only 65 out of 33,000 healthcare workers (0.19%) in Maine have quit their jobs over a statewide vaccine mandate announced for healthcare workers last month, new employment data reveals https://t.co/ZbaXrZAflR
— Nathan Bernard (@nathanTbernard) September 21, 2021
Actual behavior of people who are exposed to a policy is way more predictive of what other groups and cohorts who will be exposed to a policy will do then listening to loudmouths complain on Facebook.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Excellent Links, NANCY SMASH!, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
ZOOM FATIGUE: Cyndi Lauper says she's ready to leave video calls behind. pic.twitter.com/FNORsUGeyv
— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) September 27, 2021
Gauntlet thrown:
Obviously I have no inside knowledge here. It is simply my impression that she a) has no interest in embarrassing herself or her party, and b) knows what the fuck she's doing.
— Seth Masket (@smotus) September 26, 2021
it's not $5 trillion and it *is* polling well. otherwise this is a perfectly responsible thing for a news show to tweet https://t.co/z3lHawsh8y
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) September 27, 2021
Monday Morning Open Thread: Once More Unto the Fray(ed)Post + Comments (167)
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Foreign Affairs
Days after completing his historic ride into space as part of the first all-civilian crew to reach Earth orbit, billionaire e-commerce mogul and mission commander Jared Isaacman is unexpectedly back in quarantine at home with COVID-19-positive family https://t.co/6TvWSYcbNT pic.twitter.com/dKEC7JpzF8
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 24, 2021
So much for Plan(et) B* …
… “I came back to Earth with a house full of COVID,” Isaacman, 38, said in an interview from his home in Easton, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, five days after he and his Inspiration4 crewmates safely splashed down in the Atlantic. read more
Isaacman said his wife, their two daughters, aged 5 and 7, and his in-laws all came down with COVID-19 upon their return from Florida, where the family stayed in the days immediately before, during and after the spaceflight and were apparently exposed to the virus.
So far, Isaacman said, he has yet to test positive…
Isaacman said none of his family has fallen seriously ill, though they do have symptoms.
He said all the adults in his household were fully vaccinated before their trip to Cape Canaveral, where the SpaceX rocketship he flew aboard blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center. The family also spent time in Orlando before heading home earlier this week…
*(/snark)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Sunday / Monday, Sept. 26-27Post + Comments (69)
by WaterGirl| 10 Comments
This post is in: Everglades, On The Road, Photo Blogging
Everglades: as far south in Florida as you can get without being in the Keys.
I had a hard time reducing three days in the Everglades to one post, so I was glad to see the comments that asked for a few more pictures. Here’s some of the ones that didn’t make the cut for the first post.
On The Road – frosty – Everglades National Park, Part TwoPost + Comments (10)
Taylor Slough, from the Anhinga Trail boardwalk