Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

When I was faster i was always behind.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

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

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Sunday Morning Open Thread: The Good, the Bad, and the Amazing

Sunday Morning Open Thread: The Good, the Bad, and the Amazing

by | 200 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Our streaming queues will remain, for the moment, overlong:

The Bothsides!!! media model remains broken…

And those of us who are not William Shatner have a consolation prize:

Reader Interactions

200Comments

  1. 1.

    Hildebrand

    Good morning – it has been since summer of 2019 I’ve actually had two Sundays off in a row. Feels delightful.

  2. 2.

    debbie

    I’d be interested in knowing how many new fathers rocked the newborn or took the late night feeding so the mother could get a couple of hours of sleep. That’s paternity leave, you assholes.

  3. 3.

    narya

    Good morning, all! I don’t even want to think about bothsides yet. After today’s 5K I need to make two pots of beans and roast a bunch of veggies (beets, squash, eggplant, purple potatoes), and also make an apple crumb cake. And poach some pears. Much as I love tomatoes–and I do–I’m looking forward to vegetables other than tomatoes in the farm share for awhile.

  4. 4.

    JPL

    A former political journalist wrote a piece in the LATimes on both sides.   Maybe a few reporters for the NYTimes will read it.    link

  6. 6.

    JPL

    @debbie:  Fatherhood has changed so much since I had my sons.  I’m so impressed with my own son, and his friends and their involvement.   In fact he wanted to show me how to diaper his newborn.

  7. 7.

    ant

    The thing about republicans is that they are all about maintaining the power structure of the white patriarchy.

    This is the only thing their voters care about.

    So the tweet above has nothing to do with paternity leave. Republicans don’t care about that.

    Matt Walsh is pointing out that women should be at home with the children, while the dad works, and Mayor Pete -as a gay person- aint knowin his place in the closet.

    We as Democrats, need to translate wingnut into normal English, and demand equality.

  8. 8.

    debbie

    @narya:

    The Columbus Marathon is running by my front windows at the moment. It looks as crowded as it used to be, which is a pleasant thought for a Sunday morning.

  10. 10.

    debbie

    @JPL:

    Gotta love instant experts!

    ETA: I remember my father trying to change my youngest brother’s diaper. His hand was as big as the baby’s belly. He tried, but asked if I’d mind doing the actual pinning. Didn’t want to hurt the little dooker.

  13. 13.

    debbie

    @Mike E:

    Yeah, that’s popped up on both my FB and Twitter feed. I love it and I love Jane!

     

    This is the kind of both sides I like to see!

  14. 14.

    Hildebrand

    @debbie: I stayed home for eight years to get both our kids to school age.   My wife had the much more stable job (with great health care benefits), so we decided that I would stay home and finish my graduate work (which I did part time – just one class per term).  It worked out for us.  Definitely a hard decision due to being a one income family, but…no child care costs, and we went back to just one car, so we made it.  The kids turned out to be two lovely human beings (not that I take credit for that – but I think we gave them a pretty decent foundation).

  17. 17.

    Suzanne

    These people are just so ignorant of basic reality that it makes me wonder if they should really be allowed out of the house, lest they harm themselves or others. Like, do they know that babies need to eat? Often? And that they constantly soil diapers? And the Buttigieges have two of them! That’s a lot of work! My God.

  18. 18.

    Steeplejack

    I am feeling pleasantly domestic this morning. Got slightly more, and more satisfying, sleep than usual last night, and after reading the Guardian in bed for a while I am now risen to face the day, or at least the on-line bits of it. I have Trader Joe’s rugelach back in stock, and I just brewed my cup of responsibly sourced, shade-grown, fair-trade, carbon-neutral Trader Joe’s instant coffee. Life is looking okay so far.

    And the good news has started already. The single suture put in when I had an abscessed tooth removed 12 days ago finally came loose. It didn’t “dissolve,” as advertised, and it felt like a tiny piece of dental floss stuck on the adjacent tooth. Very annoying, and good riddance. And the gaping crater left by beloved tooth #20 feels pretty much normal. There’s still a little tenderness, but I can chew on both sides of my mouth now, which is a surprisingly big deal when you can’t do it.

    Interesting interview in the Guardian with the author Penelope Lively. The title—“I was a traumatised teenager”—is a clickbait misdemeanor; Lively only said that she was “traumatized” when she returned to England to go to boarding school—culture shock after being raised overseas. The article is worth a read.

  19. 19.

    MagdaInBlack

    I’m not sure why Matt Walsh thinks he’s entitled to an opinion at all.

    Not his kids, not his life. The end.

  21. 21.

    JPL

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:  If only a few journalists would hand their heads in shame after reading it.

    my favorite part because it is so true.

    Republicans in Congress scandalously opposed a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection, which threatened them as well as our democracy. They won’t support a must-pass increase in the nation’s debt limit, despite the trillions of debt that they and Trump piled up. Yet it was Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader, who came in for pundits’ rebuke last week when he lambasted Republicans for flirting with a default, just after they’d allowed a temporary debt-limit measure to pass. What was he supposed to do? Celebrate the Republicans’ “bipartisanship” in defusing, only until December, the dynamite they’d lit under the economy?

  25. 25.

    Steeplejack

    And fuck Matt Walsh. My brother and his husband got their daughter and their son when each was only a few weeks old—if that—and they did the whole parenting thing without a mother on hand! The horror.

  28. 28.

    JPL

    @Hildebrand: Former neighbors took the same approach.   You’re lucky that you had the option.   Quality daycare is so expensive, that if they can pass part of Build, Back Better I hope that is included along with pre-k

  30. 30.

    narya

    @Hildebrand: I know at least three men who were the primary caregiver for some chunk of their children’s early lives, and they all were so glad they were able to do that. One of the things that sorta puzzles me about the whinging is that it’s like they don’t have any sense that men might want to be actually close to their kids, and that the closeness comes from everyday involvement.

  31. 31.

    debbie

    @RSA:

    No idea. He doesn’t even rate a page in Wikipedia, where they usually provide the person’s marital status.

  32. 32.

    MagdaInBlack

    @debbie: If you follow his thread, he has 4 kids, and the bonding is perfect. Blah blah yadda yadda

    There’s therapy in those kids future.

  33. 33.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I’m rereading Maggie O’Farrell’s HAMNET because I’m supposed to lead a book club discussion of it. It’s about the life of Shakespeare’s family in Stratford, told primarily from his wife’s point of view. And really, it’s about the devastating effect of the death of a child. Hamnet was Shakespeare’s son who died at age 11.

    ETA: I meant to say it’s a wonderful book

  37. 37.

    Steeplejack

    @Steeplejack:

    The Guardian also an interview with Lauren Elkin about, among other things, her new book, No 91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute, “written on the bus to and from work while teaching at the American University of Paris.” Interesting how technology changes our habits in so many ways.

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: ​I did. One sleep deprived night I picked my crying eldest up out of the crib, took a step back and…

    He was gone.

    My hands did the panic stricken, “OH SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT…” and somehow in the darkness reconnected with him but did not find a handle. I juggled him for 2 or 3 terror filled seconds before I finally caught him. Then I crawled around on the floor for about 5 minutes searching for my heart which had leapt right out of my chest.

  44. 44.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Hildebrand: My son is doing that with their 2 daughters. His wife makes the big bucks (manages a compounding pharmacy), so it made more sense.

  49. 49.

    nwerner

    Buttigieg has been MIA while his president has been trying to push through an infrastructure bill and there is an unprecedented crisis afflicting our Ports and the intermodal connections. This isn’t Suzie or Sam down in accounting. This is a cabinet Secretary who works for the taxpayers. Anything other take on this is window dressing.

  51. 51.

    gene108

    As my brother pointed out, when my nephew was a newborn, my sister-in-law really had not time for herself, when by brother had to go back to work.

    You can’t leave the baby unattended to like go and take a shower.

    Just letting the partner have enough time to do that sort of thing is useful, whether it’s a father or mother taking care of the baby.

  54. 54.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think that because the AG is a cabinet appointment, Senators cannot put that kind of hold on them. Inferior officers (like Cruz is doing at State) yes, but not actual cabinet members which is how Garland got through in the first place.

  55. 55.

    mrmoshpotato

    Republicans fault Buttigieg for time off with newborns.

    Oh just fault the babies themselves, you ghouls!

  56. 56.

    gene108

    @Mike E:

    How to save democracy in three easy steps. 1) Justice Breyer retires. 2) Biden appoints Merrick Garland to replace him 3) Biden nominates Sally Yates to Attorney General

    Merrick Garland is pushing 70 years old. Sally Yates is 61. They are both too old to be SCOTUS judges.

    The desire to push Garland out as AG is like watching your favorite sports team and all the fans decide the backup would outperform the starter without any real evidence.

    It often doesn’t end well.

  57. 57.

    MagdaInBlack

    @nwerner: Why do you assume he has been entirely out of touch? We haven’t seen him publicly. That does not mean he is not involved.

  58. 58.

    mrmoshpotato

    The main reason for paternity leave is to make sure nobody drops the baby on its head, like happened to Matt.

    ??? Bravo, Patrick!

  59. 59.

    Immanentize

    @nwerner: Fuck you.

    “MIA” — what an ass you are. That is a straight up Republican talking point. Do you know how many people/professionals work at transportation? Get along little doggy. You get five “fuck off”s :

    ?????

  64. 64.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Quote heard from a young colleague at work years ago, at a time when I naively believed all dads were fully involved: “I changed a diaper once. That was enough for me.”

    I’m guessing Matt Walsh was getting a full nights sleep every night when his kids were born, figuring he was doing his part if he set the table once a week, and wondering why other dads were complaining about lack of sleep.

    Edit: Another quote heard at that same job: “I went to see for 13 years when my kids were little, and they turned out fine.”

    @debbie: “Arguably harder, when you think about it.”
    Gave it a few milliseconds thought. No, Matt, there is no conceivable argument you can make for “arguably harder”.​

  65. 65.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty:

    Lively didn’t talk about it much. She felt out of place coming from a cosmopolitan, multilingual environment in Cairo (in the 1940s), and she was only one of two girls whose parents were divorced. The headmistress called her in and said: “You have divorced parents; that’s not very nice, and you mustn’t talk about it.” I’m sure there were a lot of horrific mean girls, too.

  66. 66.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: Only one other time have I ever been so terrified and that was when the same son chased a ball out into rush hour traffic on South 7th street at Soulard’s Market.

    Wait a minute, there was also the time I got a phone call from a nurse at Cardinal Glennon telling me my youngest had been run over by a car. Which was matched by the time 2 winters ago when he got run over on the Pontchartrain bridge and I thought he was dead for about a half hour.

    Not to mention…. Shit, parenting is not for the weak of heart.

  69. 69.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JPL: Yeah, change the rules of the Senate. But Manchin doesn’t want to do that because bipartisanship something or other.

  71. 71.

    satby

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Honestly, consider any conservatives you ever knew IRL. They’re all basically assholes. Maybe they’re nice to people they know personally, but being an asshole is a key part of the psychological profile that makes them ID as conservative.

  78. 78.

    sab

    @RSA: He has a stay at home wife Alyssa. They claim to have twins. She has a twitter account. She claims she was glad to have him back to work, which I can believe.

  79. 79.

    Baud

    @satby:

    Right.  Makes me wonder why their behavior is still interesting to people.  I’m not fascinated each time I have to pick up my dog’s poop.

  81. 81.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    LOL, I’m sure they’re getting way more advice than they need—or want.

    I was erring on the safe side in my previous comment. I think Bro’ Man and the hubs got their daughter when she was only a few days old, maybe a week. Can’t remember about the son, but it was similar.

  82. 82.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Nor is babysitting. I was once watching my youngest brother (at the age they pull themselves up and walk around holding onto tables, etc.). I was watching the television in my father’s basement art studio, looked away for a moment, then turned back to see him chugging a small jar of used turpentine. I lunged, turned him upside down, and pounded on his back. My parents whisked him off to the ER, where he stayed overnight. We kids waited back home, where my next-youngest brother tortured me with accusations of baby-killing (he’s still the same). The baby ended up fine (i doubt the stuff was in him long enough to reach his stomach), but the ER doc said I had done the wrong thing. I don’t know.

  83. 83.

    Kathleen

    @debbie:  Columbus Marathon was my first and I’ve since done it two more times. Columbus does a great job and the supporters along the course are awesome! It is my favorite marathon (after the Flying Pig).

  85. 85.

    MattF

    Long Twitter thread with interesting and informed psychologizing about Trump and his followers. I may not agree with all of it, but he’s done some thinking about what’s happening.

  87. 87.

    MomSense

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Having major sections of your own heart out there in bodies that do their own thing and cannot be kept safe and happy at all times is torture.  It can also be glorious.  It’s everything except easy.

  90. 90.

    WaterGirl

    @nwerner: Buttigieg took 4 weeks, and for the last 4 weeks he has been involved in the efforts, even if still working from home.

    They make telephones and computers now that allow people to not have to be in the office in order to work.

    If you want to criticize Buttigieg, then at least be accurate about what he has been doing, or not doing, and then criticize that.

    Bitch about his 4 weeks off?  Sure, if you want to.  But Buttigieg has not been “missing in action”.

    I am tired of Buttigieg bashing based on incorrect information.  Get your facts straight, and then complain.  Please.

  91. 91.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: I had a neighbor whose 2 yr old son got hold of the charcoal lighter fluid. He was in the ICU for 4 or 5 days. She was dirt poor, no insurance, and they kicked him out straight from the ICU. I lost touch with them after they moved. No idea how the boy turned out.

  93. 93.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Well, I cleaned out my Pandemic Lockdown nest yesterday, which is a sign of something or other, even though we’re still leading a semi-lockdown life (virtually no in-person shopping for instance).

    We had the kids and their families over for a pumpkin-carving party yesterday, which was one hell of a lot of fun.

    My wife demanded (reasonably) that before they come over, I reclaim the living room sofa for human occupancy. Starting in March 2020, it became the center of my lockdown life. I took over the coffee table for various hobbies and projects, and it became piled high on top, below, and around with books, magazines, unsorted mail, origami books and paper, ship models and tools, notepads full of scribbling, dead computers, and who knows what else.

    Really, she was remarkably patient to wait this long.

  96. 96.

    Ramalama

    @JPL: I’m starting to read more and more stuff there in the LA Times, and your link is just another reason why to keep at it.

    NYT is just tone-deaf where it really matters.

  98. 98.

    Charluckles

    I dropped my oldest son in the ocean when he was just a baby. Why should Moms get to have all the excitement/terror?

  99. 99.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @ant:

    We as Democrats, need to translate wingnut into normal English, and demand equality.

    Eh, fuck ’em. We as Democrats should crush the wingnuts and use the carcasses for fertilizer.

    Fuck ’em.

  100. 100.

    gene108

    @MomSense:

    Isn’t he the guy who didn’t pay his child support?

    I believe that’s former Congressman Joe Walsh. The child support issue got settled a few years ago.

    If his Twitter account is any indication, he’s repenting his former Republican view points. He’s had a serious political change of heart.

  102. 102.

    Kathleen

    @debbie: It’s huge! I first ran it in 1990 and it was smaller and women were definitely in the minority. It’s very popular with runners in Cincinnati. Your city should be proud!

  103. 103.

    RaflW

    Matt Walsh, makin’ it clear that from the conservative perspective:
    – Women are mainly breastmilk machines
    – Real men do not change diapers, or make grocery runs to restock them

    I’m continually amazed that women are willing to marry, much less bonk these janky dudes.

  107. 107.

    mrmoshpotato

    @sab:

    My husband drove off with his firstborn on the roof of the car in his carseat. He survived, laughing. 

    Inspired by Mitt?

  108. 108.

    Steeplejack

    @MattF:

    That is a very good thread. Recommended reading.​

    ETA: Also some good subthreads going off on interesting tangents.

  110. 110.

    RaflW

    @WaterGirl: Definitely gonna pile on here @nwerner. Besides the excellent points WG makes about cell phones and computers at home, Buttigieg has Polly Trottenberg as confirmed Deputy Secretary, Carlos Monje as Undersecretary for Policy, a CoS, and a whole g-d dammed department. They aren’t MIA or letting Biden down.

    FTR Ms. Trottenberg’s bio is very impressive. I can see how she is the chief operating officer. No doubt Pete is a fine politician, wonk, and leader. But she is the type it sounds like to get shit done.

  112. 112.

    germy

    Jeff Bezos interrupts emotional William Shatner to spray champagne after rocket landing pic.twitter.com/ATImeMEIEB

    — The Independent (@Independent) October 14, 2021

    pretending to listen to someone talk about the humility of reaching for the stars made him hear the gaping void inside him and he got scared and had to do one of those loud, idiotic things rich people do to drown that noise. https://t.co/ses1dqSBge

    — Man Who Lives In A Haunted Hotel ? (@ScaryNewDad) October 17, 2021

  114. 114.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mike E: Bad take, IMO, even though I share Tea’s fear that Garland isn’t the wartime consigliere we need (re that: we’ll find out soon enough). If Garland isn’t bold enough to be the AG we need right now, he’s not bold enough to be a minority justice in a stacked court. Also, too old. That was arguably true when Obama nominated him, and it’s definitely true now.

  119. 119.

    Soprano2

    @MattF: I read that thread. A lot of it tracks with things I’m finding at my mother’s. I think she kept a lot of it hidden from me. She was immersed in all of this stuff – all the right-wing talkers on Fox and the radio, all the popular right-wing sites, all the newsletters – and I know she didn’t used to be that way. She had a pad by her chair where she was taking notes while watching TV! Almost everything being recorded on her DVR was Fox primetime shows. I think it really started when Obama was elected, though – a significant portion of the country lost their minds when a black man became president, and I think my mom was one of those people.

    In kind of the same way, I think the CRT “panic” is a direct response to the racial justice protests in 2020. They saw lots of white people supporting them and thought “Oh hell no, we have to figure out a way to stop that”. It’s not a coincidence, the timing of that getting play in the news. They claim it’s about seeing what their kids were learning in school, but that’s bullshit.

  120. 120.

    Jinchi

    @Mike E: ​

    1) Justice Breyer retires. 2) Biden appoints Merrick Garland to replace him

    Ummm.. No.
    Merrick Garland was a compromise pick 5 years ago, when Obama was trying to find common ground with a majority Republican Senate. The idea was that he was a moderate and, in his mid-60s, was not going to spend decades on the court.

    Mitch McConnell rejected that compromise. Garland will be 69 years old next month. Six sitting justices are younger than him.

    Breyer isn’t offering to retire, but if he does, Biden should nominate a solid young liberal to counterbalance the Trump trio.​

  121. 121.

    Kayla Rudbek

    If Tony Jay or schroedingers_cat are around: I figured out this morning that a good part of the delay in refilling the liquid tamoxifen prescription was that the manufacturer my original pharmacy was getting it from was in the UK.  When I switched pharmacies, the new pharmacy wised up and used the German manufacturer.  So I can blame the English for almost two weeks of unnecessary lactose exposure (my Irish ancestors are all co-signing on to that).

  126. 126.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: I just love the canonization of Sally Yates, as if she’s now the magic bullet and she will miraculously throw everyone in jail without following the law. They would hate her in five minutes.

  127. 127.

    Villago Delenda Est

    There’s already a virtual reality device that allows you to travel through space and time.  It’s called the MMO.

  130. 130.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    We have a chronic Green Lantern problem. Just like “one neat trick,” there’s always one great person who could solve the problem if only [whatever].

  134. 134.

    Steeplejack

    Didn’t realize “bottomless” mimosas referred to the drink and not the dress code, my apologies to everyone in this airport.

    — Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) October 16, 2021

  135. 135.

    evodevo

    @debbie:  That’s because you don’t want the turpentine in the lungs if he coughs or vomits…and actually it won’t kill you just going through your GI tract – just clean you out LOL.  Back in the old days they used to use it as worm medicine for kids, if you can believe it…

  140. 140.

    RaflW

    @Steeplejack: Amen.

    We have to work. Hard. At every level of government, and on elections from city council to potus.

    That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect good things and strong leadership from folks like Biden, Garland, various governors and prominent mayors, etc.

    But this is a team effort. (And I do believe there is a lot of work happening at all these levels. BJ itself is a node, but lots of grassroots interest groups, local party units, and on up.)

  148. 148.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @zhena gogolia: Fitzmas! Mueller Time! (have to admit, I was guilty of the latter)

    Me, too, but in fairness I still can’t believe Fredo learned the family lesson of “never put anything in writing”.

    And the great problem of trumpism and trumpian corruption isn’t a lack of criminal prosecutions, it’s a lack of public interest and outrage. I don’t know how a theoretical AG Yates is supposed make people care.

  151. 151.

    boatboy_srq

    Republicans fault Buttigieg for time off with newborns.

    How typical of the mindset that brought us the 12 hour day and the 7 day work week. Somebody’s been thumbing through their Complete Works of Dickens again looking for ways to oppress labor more thoroughly.

  153. 153.

    cain

    @Betty: 
    I was in an Indian rich man’s catholic school when I lived in Bangalore for a year. For an all boys school, there sure was a lot of sexual assaults.

  154. 154.

    cain

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
     
    The AG should start looking into Ted Cruz. He’s been gleefully gumming up the works. We have Ted to blame for not having our full state department.

  162. 162.

    smith

    @Betty: There was a book reviewed in the Guardian recently, Posh Boys, that makes the point that the whole boarding school system there is a major reason for dysfunction in the British government, given that public school alumni have had a lock on top government positions for a very long time. From across the pond it’s easy to see how sending a little kid of 7 away from home to sink or swim in a cruel and abusive environment would not result in adults with much empathy.

  165. 165.

    Another Scott

    @Mike E: That’s getting a lot of sensible pushback.

    Yates thinks Comey went too far investigating Flynn/Trump!https://t.co/ZgNA1cC792

    — LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) October 17, 2021

    See the whole thread.

    Garland’s too old for the SCOTUS now.

    There are lots and lots of good people on our side. We don’t need to find the needle-in-a-haystack non-crazies on their side (no matter how good they were on some particular issue – Comey was good on one issue too, before he got the big chair).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  167. 167.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Another Scott: I have nothing against Sally Yates, but I’m a big vague on how she became such a hero to some. Also, I’m not clear what she would or could do as AG. IANAL but as far as I can tell, the Justice Department mostly works through the courts, and the courts move at their pace.

  168. 168.

    J R in WV

    @nwerner: ​
     

    Buttigieg has been MIA while his president has been trying to push through an infrastructure bill and there is an unprecedented crisis afflicting our Ports and the intermodal connections. This isn’t Suzie or Sam down in accounting. This is a cabinet Secretary who works for the taxpayers. Anything other take on this is window dressing.

    And there’s a whole cabinet department full of transportation experts to work with the administration on the transportation issues. You seem quite overblown about the Secretary’s new babies, overwrought, actually. I hope you like pie!!

  169. 169.

    Another Scott

    @nwerner: Really?  That’s your hot take?

    Hmm…

    SESers are entitled to a day of annual leave every 2 weeks.  They, like all federal employees, are also entitled to paid Family Leave for adoption as of 10/1/2020.

    The work doesn’t stop when people are on leave – they have deputies, etc.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  171. 171.

    J R in WV

    @J R in WV:

    And I see I’m not the first person to make that sort of reply to this guy. Who has been around trolling since at least 2013, but has posted less than 30 comments according to my google-fu, which is weak. Anyone may correct that datum. Or not.

  173. 173.

    WaterGirl

    @J R in WV: Yeah, I have reached my limit of bullshit Buttigieg bashing.  I had my fill during the primaries, so the recent stuff puts it over the top for me.

    Not directed at you , JR:

    You don’t like him because he’s white, or short, or gay, or smarter than you, or more successful than you?

    Then bitch about those things, but please don’t bitch about made-up shit or some story you heard that was discredited 45 seconds after someone spouted off or a comment was deliberately taken of context.

    My patience for that is zero.

  175. 175.

    Kalakal

    @Betty:  I was sent to one when I was 8, up to that point I’d never been in England more than a few weeks at a time. It was one hell of a shock.
    It was a very violent place, problem was your’re all stuck in the same place 24/7 300+ days a year. I never saw any abuse by adults but a lot of mental and physical violence between the kids.
    I was there 10 years and came out of it somewhat fucked u. I still find it difficult to trust people, get very anxious if I have to depend on anyone. The problem is it’s an enviroment where you try never to show weakness, doesn’t mean you have to bully others but you don’t want to let anyone get at you.
    Some people come out of it as arrogant, entitled pricks who think they’re the centre of the universe ( see any Tory government), I just came out very emotionally repressed and had a real problem trusting and making friendships.

  177. 177.

    StringOnAStick

    I read a Twitter thread from a guy in food manufacturing yesterday, how people get hired, trained and then find out that every other day they are working 16 your shifts, a double shift after the usual daytime shift by adding 4 hours from 8 to midnight then another 4 hours after midnight so it doesn’t count as illegally making someone work 16 out of 24 hours.  No wonder they can’t keep workers.

  181. 181.

    Ruckus

    @boatboy_srq:

    Nothing should interfere with the unearned flow of greenbacks into a bank account of a person who has never actually gotten their hands dirty accomplishing anything except disgust and possibly hate.

  184. 184.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: I guess we’ll put you down as undecided!

    Speaking of Twitter, do you ever follow @Mangy Jay? I bet you’d like Ms. Jay’s thoughtful approach.

  186. 186.

    trollhattan

    @Immanentize:

    TBF Mrs. Mitch sure made her mark in that job over the course of four years. Why, her list of accomplishments is [checks notes] missing. No, not missing but rather, summed up here: 0

  194. 194.

    Aaron Rodgers Mustache

    @WaterGirl: they think buttigieg is a loq qabin republiqan because they can’t see thru their sabrmetric baseball hipsterism to know nate silver is the true loq qabin denizen of willenialism.

  195. 195.

    dnfree

    @JPL: diapering a baby used to involve big sharp pins, endangering the baby if you did it wrong.  What needs to be demonstrated now?

  198. 198.

    MoCaAce

    I know this thread is long dead but allow me to scream into the void… FUCK YOU MATT WALSH YOU IGNORANT PIECE OF SHIT!!!

    With our second child my wife suffered serious post-partum depression and I was the primary care giver for more than eight months.  With no paternity leave I burned through all of my vacation, all of my sick leave, and took several weeks of unpaid leave… not to mention untold number of days I came in late or left early while my boss looked the other way because he knew what we were going through.  It’s been more than twenty years but when I read his idiotic take my rage came flooding back like it was yesterday.

  199. 199.

    matt the somewhat reasonable

    I’d guess that Matt Walsh ate lead paint chips, not that he was dropped on his head, based on his entire personality.

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