Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Let there be snark.

We will not go back.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

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

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Boosters

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Boosters

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Saturday Morning Open Thread 13

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)
.

Spousal Unit & I got ours on Thursday. I’d been considering asking about switching to Moderna, but when we showed up for our appointments, the Walgreen pharmacist said ‘So, we’ve got your Pfizer doses ready, along with your flu shots.’ Didn’t seem worth arguing, especially since it’s been hard to score booster appointments around here!

And speaking of boosters (the political kind), here’s a cogent argument:

Reader Interactions

180Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    The tornadoes that have ripped through the Midwest and South are just devastating. Please, if you’re a Jackal from or near any of the affected states, let us know as soon as you can that you, your loved ones, and your property are safe.

  3. 3.

    J.

    I am a Biden supporter and former journalist and fact checker, and I think it’s shameful how the media has covered him. We know plenty of people who think Biden is doing a great job but we never read about them.

    Also, I got my booster last Saturday at Walgreens and will still wear a mask. (I live in FL and trust no one.)

  4. 4.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Ironically, state and federal aid are going to rapidly flow in large amounts to the citizens and voters of Western Kentucky, these being the very same people who will continue to decry “King Andy” and “Tyrant Joe Biden”, who also are overwhelmingly evangelical and think that their poison idea of a deity removes It’s protective hand from sinners who aren’t devout.

    It is a sick society we’re fostering.

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    That’s a very interesting thread from Marcus H. Johnson.  He’s absolutely right, of course, about the ignored and overlooked “older Black folks in barbershops,” but I think journalists would be astonished (if they ever bothered to do this kind of reporting) to discover how many older white people are also enthusiastic and committed Biden supporters.

  6. 6.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I’ll add – most of that state money that is coming is paid by the residents and businesses of the Peoples’ Kenyan Atheist Shariah Muslim Crony Capitalist Democratic Republic of Louisville. Some of it can be attributed to the labor of furriners and Jews and Catholics and Muslims and secular humanists and uppity coloreds.

  7. 7.

    germy

    From @WSJopinion: Kamala Harris’s shaky standing is a danger to the country given the position she could be called on to fill, writes @Peggynoonannyc https://t.co/X3moCatbwQ— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 10, 2021

    This is transparent & shameful. We are on the brink as a democracy in part because publications like the WSJ & the mainstream conservatives who read it, failed to firmly call out the authoritarian and racist excesses of the former president when it might have made a difference. https://t.co/5V7EWk0a5y— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sifill_LDF) December 10, 2021

  8. 8.

    Geminid

    Those are some really lucid tweets by Mr. Johnson. Twitter has it’s limitations, but I see a lot of very cogent political argument on accounts like Marcus Johnson’s. @Mangy Jay and @Black Professor are two more among many. If I were a political communications professional, I’d be reading these people every day and taking notes.

    @Cheryl Rofer and @Betty Cracker put out a lot of good stuff too. Yesterday Ms Rofer linked to a very good short article of hers in Nuclear Diner, about the Iran nuclear negotiations and crossposted to LGM.

  10. 10.

    Rob

    I’m reading about the tornados and the damage and it’s just horrifying. It was a bad tornado outbreak for any time of year, and especially so for December.

    I am very impressed that Governor Beshear had an overnight press conference about the deaths and damage.

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    So, we had storms last night? Once again I missed all the excitement and slept right thru them.

  13. 13.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Rob:

    He’s a solid executive, shows clear empathy and makes really good snap decisions – the Trumpist KY GOP hates him and has been working feverishly to strip his power.

  14. 14.

    Geminid

    @Rob: Lately, tornado season has been starting in February. And last year, hurricanes and lesser tropical storms persisted into December.

    Virginia hopefully will get off lightly when this front blows through this evening. It will interrupt another unusual weather pattern: an October-November drought.

  18. 18.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @germy:

    I guffawed over the proposed 3% raise. You just know that the C-Suite folks and shareholders have been raking it in.

  19. 19.

    Rob

    @Geminid: ’tis true, global heating is doing that.

    I live near DC and it looks like the area will get off lightly compared to Kentucky, Arkansas, and the other states.

    eta: I’m hoping the rain will ease the drought. Hopefully we won’t have an inch of rain in an hour like we have been getting all too frequently.

  20. 20.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Rob:

    The recipients of the aid will react in the following fashion:

    ”Thanks for the money, you mealy-mouthed spineless tyrant.”

    Then, when some megachurch congregation sends 10 people to clear out some debris from a collapsed church and send three boxes of Kraft Mac and cheese, they’ll hail it as a magnanimous gesture which proves that private efforts are superior to government relief.

    I wish I were joking.

  24. 24.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Geminid:

    John is a great guy. He is a former Republican in the liberal Northern bent who wound up publishing our local alternative paper, I know him well-enough to be greeted by name, have been friends with his daughter in law for years, and met his son through her.

    He’ll be sorely missed.

  25. 25.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    “This is after just one year ago, we were hailed as heroes, as we worked through the pandemic, seven days a week, 16 hours a day. Now apparently, we are no longer heroes,” said Bidelman. “We don’t have weekends, really. We just work seven days a week, sometimes 100 to 130 days in a row. For 28 days, the machines run, then rest three days for cleaning. They don’t even treat us as well as they do their machinery.”

    What do they want? A life?

  26. 26.

    John S.

    @J.:

    Also, I got my booster last Saturday at Walgreens and will still wear a mask. (I live in FL and trust no one.)

    I got my booster in Walgreens 3 weeks ago on Saturday, and also still wear a mask because I live in South Florida and trust no one.

    It’s a total fucking freak show here.

  27. 27.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Rob: Articles like this piss me off to no end:

    ‘The Lord took care of us’ | Taylor County man says he’s thankful to be alive after night of tornadoes

    Of course, the headline doesn’t say what’s in the article, as in this nook was awakened by an emergency alert, developed through science and government funding.

  31. 31.

    geg6

    Crazy winds are supposed to hit here later this afternoon.  It’s been rainy and windy since very early this morning, but the big winds haven’t hit us yet.  But at least it’s in the low 60s F.

    As for Nooners, she can just fuck off with her racist self.

    And Marcus Johnson is spot on.  Fucking media suck.

  38. 38.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @germy:

    On an amusing note, that pic reminds me of the time early teen me punched early teen Tom Cruise in the mouth and bloodied his nose or lip.

  40. 40.

    Ramalama

    @SiubhanDuinne: Your comment reminds me of a book I bought on a lark from an author I’d never heard of. And… went on to absolutely loving his work. What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young. Many parts of the book include visits to barber shops with reactions from Black folks reacting to Obama getting elected. I subscribed to the Root newsletter as a result of Young’s writing. I still read it from time to time (too many subs to too many newsletters) and love it. Beltway press won’t ever do that. Or learn lessons from being so wrong in the past.

    Anyway, here’s a passage that stood out to me from Damon Young’s book:

    I’d watch Sarah “my arms are too short to box with science” Palin claim she could fart on her porch and they’d smell it in Moscow. And I’d remember that John McCain one of the good ones – chose her as his running mate as an equally transparent ploy to attract voters repelled for some mysterious reason by Obama, and the remaining hint of a fuck about not giving a hint of a fuck would dissolve.

    This lack of shame derived from our collective and pervasive political chancelessness, from never knowing how it felt for our guy to win. And the fatigue I possess from either rooting for the Washington Generals or being asked to support the least racist racist and hope they wouldn’t be racist-racist when elected had congealed.

    Actually the whole essay goes on to an amazing end and I should have just quoted the whole thing but clearly won’t because I usually go on too much here anyway.

    I haven’t thought about the book since I read it – a few years back. Thanks for the reminder.

  41. 41.

    TheQuietOne

    As I pointed out to my wife last night about the media… Moscow Mitch got 20 seconds to rail against democrats about inflation. I’m sure you can imagine that.

    Later not a single sound bite from ANY democrat about reasons why this pandemic might be raging still and again.

    Democrats messaging issue or the media??

  42. 42.

    Keith P.

    @J.: Just the difference in how the media covered Trump tweets (“BREAKING NEWS!”) vs Biden’s tweets (crickets) is stark.  One thing that is rarely mentioned on that is that the media was essentially handing out Trump’s marching orders to all of Congress (and their constituents) as soon as they hit Twitter.  It struck fear into any congressional dissent against Trump.

  43. 43.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @MagdaInBlack:

    He spent a period of time with his cousins as his mom was couch surfing with relatives at that point. The cousins were a large family, and some of the younger brothers were neighborhood friends, and we all played a lot of sandlot-type sports (one of the older ones introduced me end my wife).

    Anyway, Tommy had an issue when playing any sport – he constantly alleged infractions on everyone else. He’d claim to be fouled in hoops, or someone was offsides in football, or that a hit baseball was a foul ball, or that someone wasn’t really on base when tagged. We’d nicknamed him “Tommy Bell, Junior” (after the famed NFL referee).  I can’t remember the specific infraction he was whining about, but I guess I had enough of his shit and something happened which resulted in popping him in the face. He ran off crying, and that’s the last time I think he ever played (it was around the same time I stopped, too, to be fair – guys outgrow that eventually).

  44. 44.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ramalama:

    On the strength of that excerpt and your recommendation, I just ordered and downloaded What Doesn’t Kill You …. Thanks for the suggestion.

  49. 49.

    Ramalama

    @SiubhanDuinne: Cool, enjoy! This book would make an excellent book chat club hubbub type deal here.

    I have to read Adam Schiff’s book but find my eyes not following when I read politics. I had to cancel my New Yorker sub after 2016. Like I am anatomically incapable.

  54. 54.

    rikyrah

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    ???????

     

    Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) tweeted at 6:54 AM on Sat, Dec 11, 2021:
    This is all that’s left of an Amazon warehouse in Illinois after a tornado struck the building, in what’s being described as a ‘mass casualty event’ by officials.

    Several tornadoes struck a number of US states overnight, with reports of more than 50 people killed. https://t.co/AG2RDadwb3
    (https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1469651862668386306?t=W0g3Pe9WrQJA9sNO-3tp6Q&s=03)

  55. 55.

    Starfish

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    As the old adage goes, a “socialist” is just a libertarian whose state has been devastated by extreme weather. https://t.co/XksNUOw6lX
    — emptywheel (@emptywheel) December 11, 2021

    Please let me know how many funding bills Rand Paul has voted against. Let me know if he voted against emergency funding for other states emergency funding. He voted against coronavirus funding. He voted against 9/11 first responders funding. He voted against Hurricane Sandy funding.

  57. 57.

    VOR

    I have a memory of Biden being on a panel talk show, must have been around 2006 (give or take 2 years). They were talking about national security issues – Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, nuclear weapons treaties w/Russia. I don’t remember any specific details, but I remember being impressed with the way Biden knew the subject matter and could talk about it without just spewing talking points. It was an actual conversation with a human being. He was calm and thoughtful. I also remembered how his 1988 Presidential campaign had flamed out. My take-away from watching the program was regret that Biden would never be President. I wish Joe was 15-20 years younger, but given alternatives like TFG or Rand Paul I’d crawl over broken glass to vote for Joe.

  58. 58.

    Starfish

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Megachurches and corporations can respond to weather disasters faster than the US government can. There are some megachurches that keep mobile hospitals that respond to things like this. Arguably, the federal government should be doing stuff like this or propping up rural hospitals a lot better than it is.

    In this incident, there will be medical needs from the incident itself, and the various workers cleaning up the debris and doing construction after this will either be injured or cause injury.

  59. 59.

    Betty Cracker

    @germy: The fucking nerve of cordovan loafer-humper Peggy Noonan — of all people! — wagging a finger at Harris. I don’t think it’s out of line for pundits and journalists to question how Harris is handling the job. We’ve got the oldest POTUS in U.S. history, so it’s more relevant than it usually is. Harris’s 2020 campaign organization wasn’t exactly a well-oiled machine, and she’s had some office turnover as VP. It’s legit to talk about that, IMO.

    But the petty sniping about Le Creuset pots, etc., is bullshit. And Noonan in particular has no standing to say a goddamn word about any of it since she was part of the plot to conceal the extent of Reagan’s cognitive decline while in office. In fact, Republicans in general have no standing since their entire party devolved into a fascist cult on their watch.

  61. 61.

    SiubhanDuinne

    <a href=”#comment-8365871″>@germy</a>:
    Rabbit holes are fun!

    I looked at the photo (YIKES!) that you linked to, then scrolled down a bit and came across a very blurry image of the guy in the original Grey Poupon commercial. And I thought “Wow, I should know who that is,” but the image was so fuzzy I really couldn’t tell, and didn’t remember. So I googled and found the commercial on YouTube, and to my great pleasure the chap in the first car is Paul Eddington, the actor who played the title character in Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister in the 1980s, and the fellow in the second car is Ian Richardson, who starred as Francis Urquhart in the original British House of Cards. Don’t think I ever properly noticed that before. I adore both actors (and their shows!), and love the political snark inherent in the commercial. Just incredibly clever casting.
    https://youtu.be/uwOCOm9Z0YE

  62. 62.

    sab

    @TheQuietOne: NPR yesterday on inflation:short term inflation was to be expected with tje stimulus and the good jobs numbers, but this is starting to look permanent.

    Biden and Congressional majority hasn’t even been a year, and they are now bitching about permanence.

  64. 64.

    germy

    @Betty Cracker:   And Noonan in particular has no standing to say a goddamn word about any of it since she was part of the plot to conceal the extent of Reagan’s cognitive decline while in office.

    That doesn’t stop her from telling Democrats what to do.

  65. 65.

    Butter Emails

    The ingrained racism of the media is a massive part of why they cover Biden the way they do and for the lack of “these voters are still ridin’ with Biden stories”, but it’s not enough to explain it completely. There’s still a shit load of white voters, particularly the college educated professional block that still support Biden and the media ignores them as well unless it’s to shame them for being mean to Trumpers or criticizing the media coverage on Twitter.  This seems strange as these white voters would seem to be the group the media members themselves would belong to.

    Basically, minority voters and voices only matter if they support Republicans or if there is a change in voting patterns that disfavor Democrats. White democratic voters only matter to the media in so far as they need to be scolded for being mean to their Republican and media betters.

    It could be a familiarity breeds contempt situation. The media sees themselves as educated, professional white people so no reason to actually talk to them. Better to strike up conversations with the occasional taxi driver, the guy across from them at the Applebee’s salad bar and launch on expeditions to bars and cafes in the mysterious hinterland to interview the strange inhabitants that live there provided they pass the paper bag test.

    I personally think it has more to do with the nerd factor.  The press and their owners view Republicans as the jocks, socialites and other members of the in group. Democrats are the members of the clubs and groups that are begrudingly given small photographs at the end of the year book and are covered by the media accordingly and the Chuck Todds of the world really hate it when the Chess Club pants them and lock them in their own lockers.

  66. 66.

    Ohio Mom

    @SiubhanDuinne: Here in southwest Ohio, all we had was a loud thunderstorm moving through.

    We do get tornados occasionally — and when we do, almost always in spring, which is when tornado season used to be.

  67. 67.

    Nelle

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’m jumping ahead to reiterate that I think it’s not that journalists think that white people support Trump and that they are echoing it in their work.  A lot of them have a. bought the framing that “out there, in the Midwest, is where the ‘real Americans’ are (so emphasized by Sarah Palin about ‘the heartland’.  b. Serve the media corporations are driving that framing (this is the part that I’ve brought up before.  My daughter was a stringer (free-lancer) for the FTFNYT for about eight years.  Only twice did they ask her to talk to people other than Trump supporters and one of those times, it was to find Democratic women “who were disappointed in Biden.”  They have a script and are looking for quotes and attached names to drop into a pre-written story.  It isn’t journalism anymore.  It is myth-making.  Can a reporter have PTSD? She covered Trump in person too many times and felt the hatred he directed at those in the reporter’s “pen.”  All her life, she wanted to be a reporter and to have begun with a byline on the front-page of NYT was a dream come true.  Now, she scrabbles around trying to rebuild her life in some new direction.  c.  The Trump supporters are like a freak show to some of them and they can’t look away.  The drama brings clicks.

    Today, would be my grandfather’s birthday.  He was a writer, editor, publisher within his church structure in then-Russia (now Ukraine).  He was on the run for a year during the revolution for his writing and, after bouncing from Batum to Constantinople, he finally fetched up on Ellis Island.  Both of my kids (his great-grandchildren) majored in journalism, wanting to carry on the tradition.  They have both left the field.

  73. 73.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MagdaInBlack: Deadline Whitehouse 10/26:Nicolle Wallace & Claire McCaskill dismantle Peggy Noonan’s Kamala attack.

    “I’ll tell her what’s embarrassing right now. Listen up, Peggy. Here’s what’s embarrassing: a President that pays off porn stars. A President that pulls babies out of the arms of their mothers. A President who says he likes to grab women by the you-know-what. A President who uses the White House for campaign events. A President who praises white supremacists.”

    “And, yes, even a President who can’t dance, doesn’t know how to show joy or empathy, and tries to do some kind of ridiculous arm thrust to ‘YMCA.’ That is what is embarrassing. Kamala Harris is anything but embarrassing. She’s uplifting. She is inspirational. She is strong and substantial, and she’s gonna be one hell of a vice president.”

    ETA:  Just realized this is a year old. Maybe it’s what you are speaking of anyway.

  74. 74.

    Ohio Mom

    @germy: I was surprised by the photo of Peggy Noonan that accompanied one of the tweets I saw rightfully objecting to her dog whistling. I thought she was chubbier. And less neon-haired.

    Then I realized I was mixing her up with Ann Althouse. Old drunk blonde right-wingers, who can keep ‘em straight?

  76. 76.

    Biff Baxter

    So many who don’t believe that Biden is legitimately President are now going to be demanding assistance from him.

  77. 77.

    Nelle

    @Ramalama: The Root may be closing down next week – the last remaining writer is having his final say next Wednesday, if I’m following it all accurately.

  78. 78.

    germy

    @Nelle:

    I was wondering about that!

    I checked in last week.  I hadn’t read it in a while.  I couldn’t find any of my favorite authors.  And no reader comments.

    I tried to find out what was happening but didn’t see any news about it.

    Do you have any links or info about what’s going on there?

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    From ‘You can’t catch those 43 years’: exonerated former prisoner tries to start life anew:

    But not all are on board with Strickland’s release, which followed a law passed in April that gave Baker, the county prosecutor, the right to ask the court to vacate Strickland’s guilty verdict.

    Missouri’s fiercely conservative attorney general, Eric Schmitt, battled to uphold Strickland’s conviction, delayed his hearing and attempted to block his release with a series of motions, each rejected by retired Missouri appeals court judge James Walsh.

    “I’d always felt the attorney general’s office was going to oppose everything,” Strickland says. “They’d oppose the change of the day from Monday to Tuesday. It’s what they do.”

    Missouri governor Mike Parson also rebuffed appeals to pardon him, arguing that it was not a “priority”, even as he pardoned Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the Missouri couple who confronted racial justice protesters with guns last year.

    No road to low for a Misery Republican.

  82. 82.

    Citizen Alan

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    The great majority of white Republican voters might as well be peasants transported out of the 14th century who have absolutely no understanding of of the modern world and attribute all the blessings gs of living in 21st century  America to a benevolent supernatural force.

  88. 88.

    Citizen Alan

    @Ramalama: Tbh, it’s a bit galling to hear to hear comments like that from Dana Millbank, who was Chris Cilliza’s partner back in their “Mad Bitch Beer” days.

  89. 89.

    Nelle

    @germy:I just followed Damon Young on Facebook and found it there.  So not The Root but vsb.  Here’s the beginning of the announcement (and you can find the rest on his FB page):

    earlier today, Panama announced that he’s leaving the root. which means he’s leaving vsb. which, since i left in april, means no more vsb. it’s a decision we’ve been talking about for years–an inevitability we’ve been preparing and planning for. but the experience of it actually happening is…something. it feels like many things. the most visceral of the things is like how it feels when you’ve just taken your last bite of your favorite food.

    i’ve been reading some of the responses to this news, as well as some of the commentary about the root and black media. i have a few thoughts about all this that i’m going to table. (for now.)

    i do want to add some context to something, though.

  90. 90.

    Mike E

    @Nelle: The “free press” myth is as laughable as the tooth fairy and Santa. CNN/nyt/abc (let alone fox news) and the rest could care fuckall about magical constitutional responsibilities, especially when there’s a money class out there demanding service. Young journalists with drive + integrity can’t make a living in this rigged game, even though we’re all desperate for them to succeed and right the ship. SIFUABS, sadly.

  94. 94.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @germy:

    Amazing that so many Republicans are willing eager to tell Democrats “Yer doin it RONG!”  Noonan’s one of the worst, but she’s far from alone.

  97. 97.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Nelle:

    What an ineffably sad commentary on how a once-noble profession has fallen (largely of its own volition, which makes it even sadder). I hope those two disillusioned young journalists will find, or create for themselves, careers that make them happy.

  102. 102.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sab: The Fed hasn’t even really started to do anything to raise interest rates, have they? Historically that’s the main control if they get worried about inflation.

    It’s a matter of striking a balance between that and economic growth. They got kicked a lot over the past couple of decades for being TOO worried about inflation when it wasn’t happening.

    The crisis of the 1970s was that they kept jacking up interest rates but it didn’t seem to actually be working to control inflation, for complicated reasons that are still imperfectly understood. But this time around they haven’t even started really.

  105. 105.

    evodevo

    @Rob: Supercell evidently went right over our county (got an automatic warning via phone at 2:30 AM), but all we had was a lot of rain and the creek flooded bigtime…

  107. 107.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @evodevo:

    There’s some pretty good clapback in the Facebook comments on the article where one buffoon said “God was looking out for me” by sending the emergency weather alert, while dozens of people died a few miles away.

  112. 112.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @sab: Permanent, maybe so, because the plutocrats will take any opportunity to raise their margins and the rule is their profits can never decline.

  116. 116.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Omnes Omnibus: The US census bureau has it as a midwest state. For what it’s worth, STL is the most northern southern city, and the most southern northern city. KC is the most western eastern city, and the most eastern western city.

  119. 119.

    eclare

    Everything fine in Memphis, although we had a tornado warning around midnight.  I turned the TV to a local station, and the meteorologists there were even surprised about it.  There may have been a little something about thirty miles east, but that was it.

    Those poor people in that factory…

  121. 121.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Starfish: That’s 100% fair.

    But Amazon somehow occupies a different cultural niche that allows them to be awful without being perceived as low-rent.

    So this makes them more dangerous than Wal-Mart, honestly.

  123. 123.

    West of the Rockies

    Remember when Rand(o) Paul was briefly seen as presidential material? Lasted about 37 seconds, just long enough for the cameras to focus and Paul to begin speaking.  At which point everyone was like, “Yeah… no.”

  127. 127.

    stinger

    @SiubhanDuinne: Have you ever seen an earlier British sitcom of Paul Eddington’s, The Good Life (retitled in the US as Good Neighbors)? Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith.

    I have most of the dialogue memorized.

  128. 128.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    This older white person is an enthusiastic and committed Biden supporter. I can’t think of anything he could do that would make me support any Republican.

  129. 129.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: It’s tab A, slot B construction, designed to go up fast at minimal cost. Iron workers erect them. I don’t know how solid the structural engineering is. My own experience with them is limited to the pallet racking inside.

  130. 130.

    zhena gogolia

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    @Steeplejack (phone): I was thinking about this, and as much as I’d like it to be true, my (small) sample of older white people — Democrats, liberal in outlook — tells me something less rosy. They take NPR and PBS as gospel, and they parrot all the stuff about Biden bumbling and Harris being a disaster. I don’t think they match the loyalty I see here on BJ (and not even here sometimes).

  131. 131.

    Mary G

    The tornadoes are terrifying to me, partly because they are so random. I’ve been deeply depressed because I didn’t get but about a teaspoon of rain that was predicted last week from 74% to 91% Tuesday and Thursday,  but I wouldn’t want it with a giant storm. More is predicted for next week, which is coincidentally when my roof replacement is finally scheduled to start.

    Stay safe, jackals!

  133. 133.

    karen marie

    I signed up for a Moderna booster as well but they called to say they had only Pfizer – which I had got in the first round – but I didn’t really care, so got the Pfizer. I figured it probably didn’t really matter. I wonder if many people chose as I did and so many having got Pfizer in the first place, they ran through Moderna boosters faster than expected or they didn’t expect the switching. I had a larger, more tender bolus with the booster but otherwise no ill effect.

     

    Where’s my sticker? ?

  135. 135.

    Eunicecycle

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That kind of crap drives me nuts. PEOPLE DIED for God’s sake. So that guy thinks he’s so special? I remember during a hurricane some religious yahoo prayed the hurricane wouldn’t hit his area, and it didn’t. But it hit somewhere else! So no one was praying in that area, or their prayers weren’t good enough? The god these people worship is a psychopath.

  137. 137.

    Matt McIrvin

    @zhena gogolia: I have talked to one who had the idea that Biden had promised in the beginning not to run for a second term, and was upset that he wasn’t stepping down, presumably in favor of Harris.

    In the abstract I see the appeal, I’d personally even prefer Kamala Harris as President, but even with Biden’s numbers low I’m afraid I don’t see how it helps us win; it’d be taken as an admission of failure and if anything the irrational antipathy to Harris is worse.

  138. 138.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Geminid: @Another Scott:

    Getting into the pallet racking and holding on for dear life is the only thing I can think of. That stuff is solid as hell and should be well anchored. Good luck if it was filled with sacks of concrete or something similarly difficult to remove tho.

  139. 139.

    germy

    Decent odds the wind knocks out my power later today so lemme just say that credulous wall-to-wall coverage of a Billionaire testing his luxury escape pod simulator as his employees dig out of a warehouse flattened by a once-in-a-century tornado is downright Robocop-level satire.

    — zeddy (@Zeddary) December 11, 2021

  140. 140.

    Mike in NC

    As has been noted many times by different authors, the rotten Beltway media is wired for Republican rule. They’re eagerly awaiting a Reagan 2.0 to miraculously appear, even though the Gipper would today be hanged by the fascist MAGA mob.

  141. 141.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mike in NC: Reagan would be fine today, he’d adapt to the more openly fascist environment like a champ and say a lot of Trumpy things. A lot of these guys only seemed more moderate because they had to be. I was thinking about that a lot when the tributes to Bob Dole were all over.

  144. 144.

    Haydnseek

    @OzarkHillbilly: Please don’t do this.  I was at work when the Whittier quake hit, L.A. area for non locals.  I worked for a fastener company, and those pallet racks were three stacks high, and full of very heavy steel containers.  All it took was for one of those pallets in an upper level to move an inch or two, slip off the horizontal bar and it would have brought the whole stack down.  I was at the wrong end of the aisle and when the shaking got going and so did I.  I was out in that parking lot faster than Usain Bolt.

  145. 145.

    Ruckus

    @Butter Emails:

    A nice summation of the inner workings of a hell of a lot of humans, who don’t even know there is a bigger picture, let alone that in that bigger picture, they would be just one of hundreds of thousands of indistinguishable blobs.

  147. 147.

    Haydnseek

    @OzarkHillbilly: My house is well anchored with foundation bolts in the concrete foundation and bolted to the wooden frame.  In even a moderate quake it shakes like hell.  I watched a crew anchor those pallet rack verticals into the concrete floor myself.  They’re still gonna shake.

  148. 148.

    Ruckus

    @Nelle:

    Journalism has become big business and that usually means that money is the overwhelming driver of what’s what. The product be damned, the profit is the overwhelming concern. Yes normal business would think that the product brings about that profit, modern business sees it as desirability of the product, not the actual product. IOW respect the FTFNYT, the institution, not the crap printed.

  151. 151.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @stinger:

    I’ve seen a few episodes here and there, but never with enough consistency to get to know the characters/situation very well. Had no recollection that Paul Eddington was part of the cast.

  152. 152.

    Geminid

    @Haydnseek: Pallet racks are problematic when a warehouse is full of them. You still might be safer in one than within 20 feet of one. Running out of the building is the safest in an earthquake, but it would be hard to make yourself do it when a tornado is about to hit.

  153. 153.

    Cmorenc

    • @germy: So the WSJ via the mouth if Peggy Noonan thinks Harris as VP is dangerously unfit to be President should something happen to Biden, but nary a peep about Mike Pence as VP while a 70+ overweight guy on a cheeseburger diet was POTUS?  Actually, i can see a profound difference between them that makes good sense from the WSJ’s pov – Pence is a servile quisling who would do as told by the big-business and big-finance community, whereas Harris is an uppity black woman who.may tell them to fuck off about their greedy whining.
  155. 155.

    Dan B

    The tornadoes started a few miles from the town we lived in in Arkansas.  The pictures of three funnel clouds there are horrifying.  One looks like a half mile across.

  156. 156.

    Haydnseek

    @Geminid: Yeah, I used to talk to relatives in rural Missouri and they would be amazed that I could live in SoCal with earthquakes.  They’re rare, and even a large one doesn’t cause anything like the death and destruction that the mid west and south suffers every year.  They remain unconvinced.  They think Los Angeles is a wretched hive of scum and villainy no matter what.  We don’t talk anymore.

  157. 157.

    Quiltingfool

     

    @OzarkHillbilly: We drove through torrential rain to go eat catfish.  So much for a 30% chance of rain.  I think south central MO got it worse than we did in central Ozarks.  Didn’t see any damage this morning, but wind probably did a number on inflatable Christmas decor and untethered trampolines.

    My husband’s concern was the rain would make the pond bank too muddy to use the rented excavator (cleaning out excess pond vegetation) but he’s out there digging around, so guess it’s all good.  Lord, that man loves machines.

  158. 158.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: I think there will be more detailed reporting on the warehouse collapse in St. Louis and Illionois media outlets. That may tell where warehouse workers were when the building collapsed. St. Louis TV stations will probably have pictures taken from helicopters showing what, if anything, stayed up. There also may be reporting on whether there was a tornado emergency plan. There probably wasn’t, but there will be now.

  159. 159.

    debbie

    @Geminid:

    The building I work in is a very, very large box, only three floors. I wouldn’t be surprised if the construction was similar. During tornado warnings, they would herd us into the middle of the floor. Needless to say, I never felt particularly safe.

  162. 162.

    Brachiator

    @Ruckus:

    Journalism has become big business and that usually means that money is the overwhelming driver of what’s what. The product be damned, the profit is the overwhelming concern.

    Journalism has always been a business and has always been interested in profit. In Los Angeles, the Hearst papers and the Los Angeles Times, run by the Chandler family, were never beneficent charitable organizations, but hard nosed business entities.

    They also typically cared more about the Establishment and power than the public interest.

    To be fair, the Hearst papers often had a pro union tilt, and the Times became more than a conservative rag when Otis Chandler became publisher. But the Times also often led every other paper in America in advertising revenue.

    By contrast, it is very difficult to run viable and credible news operations at nonprofit public TV and radio outlets. And extremely difficult to to investigative reporting, which can be expensive and subject the organization to lawsuits.

  163. 163.

    J R in WV

    @Eunicecycle:

    The god these people worship is a psychopath.

    Certainly is. Go back to the roots and read a little of the King James version of the Bible.

    Their Lord G-D is a genocidal psychopath from the beginning straight through to the end. Orders his Chosen People to conquer a set of other tribes, to kill all the men and boys, and take all the women and girls as concubines. Holy, holy~!!~

    And that’s just one of the not so crazy bits. . .

  164. 164.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Cmorenc: A lot of the politer conservatives probably would have greatly preferred Pence in the White House to Trump, whether they said it out loud or not.

    Some religious conservatives initially saw Trump as a vehicle to get Mike Pence into the White House, though I think most of them came over to outright loving Trump once they got a load of his Two Minutes Hates.

  165. 165.

    Geminid

    @debbie: The middle of the floor in a three story building? Maybe that’s to keep people away from windows. Or to make it easier to locate the victims.

    These tornadoes may make employers in the midwest rethink storm safety, maybe even build safe rooms. People in the east should be thinking more about tornadoes too.

  166. 166.

    sab

    @Geminid: Yes. My stepson works for a highly regarded shipping company outside of Cleveland OH. He sent us a photo of a tornado this summer that he took from a window at work. There was nowhere safe to go in the building.

  167. 167.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: The few Republican voters I know are upper middle class professionals, of a type that used to be called Volvo Republicans. I think they all would much rather vote for a Bush or a Kasich than for a trump. They’ve swallowed the myth of a radical-left Democratic party, though, and to them trump was the lesser of two evils. They are a good example of negative partisanship.

    This demographic is not so big numerically, but they along with Chamber of Commerce type businessmen punch above their weight in the Republican party, or at least they used to. Now the bible thumpers and their more secular radical allies are as or more powerful.

  168. 168.

    sab

    Our next door neighbors in Florida had a bomb shelter. (They were RWNJs.) It turned into an actual snake den, so wouldn’t have been useful if it was ever needed. King snakes, but still snakes.

  169. 169.

    Ruckus

    @Haydnseek:

    In the 94 Northridge earthquake, I could see about a foot of clear air under my ex as I looked her direction. We were the same distance off the bed.

    It was dark out that early in the morning and the only reason I could see was all the electrical sparking from power poles/transformers/overhead electric lines shorting out. That earthquake was somewhat unusual in the most of the movement was vertical. The rest of the earthquakes I’be been through have more horizontal shaking. I’m not sure which is worse, but a lot of the then current earthquake damage mitigation efforts were for horizontal shaking, so the vertical motion of that one did a lot of damage, and of course it was a rather active quake.

  170. 170.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:

    I’m not saying that the old stuff wasn’t for profit. Any business has to have profit in the picture, and both of mine were included in that concept.

    I am saying that profit wasn’t the overwhelming motive. It is a part of business. I am saying that in the modern world many businesses are about profit as the sole arbitrator of what to do and how to do it. Profit has become the overwhelming motive in many businesses because their size has made survival easier, and their owners have made profit the most important thing, far more important than product. The FTFNYT has made profit the one and only goal and how to get there runs far down the list of importance. They are not alone in this change of process, much of business today is the same. Quality and product is down the list. The name and the bank accounts are far more important to the owners.

  171. 171.

    sab

    I remember back in the 1970s when the town of Xenia OH blew away with a tornado. Our newspaper, at the other corner of the state, sent a team of reporters down. They interviewed a whole bunch of survivors and asked them where they had hidden in their houses. Very useful information, and not really what we had been taught. They won a Pulitzer for the series.

  172. 172.

    Kalakal

    @sab: My wife was just outside Xenia when it got hit. She and her boyfriend sheltered in a ditch. She still remembers seeing a cast iron bathtub fly overhead about 20 feet up

  174. 174.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: So I looked up “Amazon Warehouse tornado Edwardsville Illinois” and saw a daylight picture taken by “Fox2” station. It looked pretty bad, and the story said two people were killed. Around thirty workers escaped the wreckage on their own.

    The lead item on the topic was an ad for amazonhiring.com: “Flexible Shifts Available, Edwardsville Illinois Warehouse.”

  175. 175.

    Brachiator

    @Ruckus: 

    I am saying that profit wasn’t the overwhelming motive.

    There is no magical mystical past where newspapers were consistently noble entities that did not care about profit.

    The Los Angeles papers cared about profit and power. The Times cultivated the career of Richard Nixon, for God’s sake.

    The Times also had a bag man who would walk across the street and deliver money and instructions to City Hall officials.

    In the past many people, especially white people, were naive or their lives were going well so that they didn’t care that the media were handmaidens to the Establishment.

    But the idea that we have entered some special new age of avarice is not sustainable.

  176. 176.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:

    Another point.

    I worked for a for profit subsidiary of a non-profit organization for 11 years. For those that don’t know: That non-profit operated differently, was taxed differently, but it had more inflow than outflow. Any business has to have more inflow than outflow, at least most of the time, or it won’t last long. But you obviously know that because of the business you worked in.

  177. 177.

    dopey-o

     So no one was praying in that area, or their prayers weren’t good enough? The god these people worship is a psychopath.

    a quick perusal of the bible will show the correctness of your observation. which is why we refer to them as “old testament christians.” they look down upon “red-letter christians” such as many Jackals, who actually read and follow the words of the prince of peace.

    Had lunch with a RWNJ family member, who didn’t want to eat meat on a Friday. “Advent?” I asked. “No, every Friday!” Worried about saving his soul, this ultra-catholic, but won’t wear a mask.

    He’ll save his soul, but my life? Not so much. Only got his vax because I threatened to publicly banish him from my funeral.

  178. 178.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:

    I’ve never stated that all was peachy keen or legal and proper about newspapers. I said that the profit motive can became a bigger issue when some businesses become less about the product than the profit. I also have never stated that the LA Times was any different than the FTFNYT. Only that the quality of the output of many businesses changes depending on the focus of the owners/staff. And often when companies become rather noticed or successful they focus more on profits than quality of product. The product doesn’t matter, be it toys or newspapers. Some companies start out that way. And sometimes those companies still grow and sell product because quality is often a perception of the buyers.

  179. 179.

    Brachiator

    @Ruckus:

    I said that the profit motive can became a bigger issue when some businesses become less about the product than the profit. I also have never stated that the LA Times was any different than the FTFNYT. Only that the quality of the output of many businesses changes depending on the focus of the owners/staff.

    I hear you. But I don’t think that things have ever been different for the NY Times or any other big city newspaper. I cite the Los Angeles Times as a counter example only because I know the history of the paper very well.

    I think that people are indulging in false nostalgia when they try to invoke some idea of the good old days when profit was not as important as it appears to be today.

    Also, ironically enough, both the Washington Post and the New York Times in the past had been run as vanity projects by wealthy publishers who cared more about ego than profit and who ran the newspapers into the ground.

  180. 180.

    PurpleBabied

     

    A right winger who lives in the same town as one of the tornadoes:

    https://clarissasblog.com/2021/12/11/not-boring-3/

    It’s +22°C (summer weather.) We’ve had 3 tornadoes pass through the town tonight. Been trudging up and down the stairs into the tornado shelter area. The roof of the Amazon warehouse nearby collapsed.

    Boring the Midwest definitely isn’t.

     

    I think the post title speaks for itself.

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