Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Second rate reporter says what?

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

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

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

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

In my day, never was longer.

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

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

You cannot shame the shameless.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Saturday Morning Open Thread: We Will Go Forward

Saturday Morning Open Thread: We Will Go Forward

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As I said earlier: Like a good teacher, President Biden’s not mad at GOP, he’s just disappointed…

If you haven’t yet read Heather Cox Richardson’s post, it’s well worth the click:

… After news of Willis’s request broke, Trump issued a statement calling the investigation a witch hunt and continuing to insist—despite all the recounts—that the vote in Georgia in 2020 was characterized by “massive voter fraud.” He said: “my phone call to the Secretary of State of Georgia was perfect, perhaps even more so than my call with the Ukrainian President, if that’s possible.”

Our failed media ‘betters’…

Reader Interactions

215Comments

  5. 5.

    Phylllis

    We have snow on the ground here in the midlands of SC. Enough for an array of snowmen in yards built by the neighbor kids.

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A Jewish couple from Tennessee has filed a lawsuit against the state’s Department of Children’s Services after a state-funded Christian program denied them foster care services for religious reasons.

    According to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram signed up for the foster-parent training class and home-study certification process last January at the Holston United Methodist Home for Children.

    On 21 January 2021, the same day the Rutan-Rams were scheduled to begin the foster-parent-training class at Holston, an employee “emailed Ms Rutan-Ram to inform her that Holston would not serve the Rutan-Rams because of the couple’s Jewish faith”.

    The employee wrote, “As a Christian organization, our executive team made the decision several years ago to only provide adoption services to prospective adoptive families that share our belief system in order to avoid conflicts or delays with future service delivery.”

    Reason #n to the infinity why govt functions should stay within govt.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    As a Christian organization, our executive team made the decision several years ago to only provide adoption services to prospective adoptive families that share our belief system in order to avoid conflicts or delays with future service delivery

     
    Just in time adoptions.

  14. 14.

    Ken

    @germy: For geological values of “faster” and “inevitable march”, I assume?  Besides, if they’re talking about anything less than 500 million years, the sun will make the planet uninhabitable first.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Ken:

    Besides, if they’re talking about anything less than 500 million 100 years, the sun Republicanswill make the planet uninhabitable first.

     
    Fixed.

  18. 18.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I read the Republican 2024 convention was going to coincide with it. The GOP wanted to use it to make a statement of their values.

  20. 20.

    Rusty

    @OzarkHillbilly: This is a feature not a fault when the Supreme Court allowed religious organizations that descriminate to have access to government funding.  Expect a lot more of this.  Conservative led government’s will outsource more government functions so they can indirectly descriminate when they cannot directly descriminate.  This only the tip of the iceberg.

  22. 22.

    Ken

    @Baud: Don’t exaggerate. It won’t be uninhabitable, it just won’t have any ecological niches for large mammals. Besides, it will recover nearly completely in a (geologically) brief period — say 10 million years, 20 tops.

  25. 25.

    Ken

    @different-church-lady: “About” in geological/astronomical terms. As the Sun ages, it gets hotter. In about half a billion years, that will trigger a runaway greenhouse on Earth.   According to wikipedia, I misremembered — it will cause CO2 levels to decrease to the point where most plants won’t be able to photosynthesize. The runaway temperature comes a few hundred million years later.

  29. 29.

    Geminid

    Interesting:

    New York Mayor Eric Adams is enjoying high favorability ratings in his first two weeks of office, according to a Siena poll released Tuesday.

    Overall, 63% of city residents have a high opinion of the former police captain, compared to a fifth who have a negative opinion in the first statewide poll measuring the new mayor’s popularity.

    Bloomberg.com Jan. 18 2022

    The same poll asked about the Democratic Governor’s race:

       Kathy Hochul would be a runaway favorite to win a Democratic primary if it were held today, a Siena poll released Tuesday morning found.

    SpectrumNews1 January 22 2022

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ken:

    Maybe the warmth of the earth’s surface and the coolth of its core will counteract each other and leave it with a temperature as perfect as a Trump phone call.

    #goldilocks

  32. 32.

    Starfish

    So this is very On Twitter[tm] stuff, but yesterday Ryan Ken (a comedian) made a joke that Psaki’s response for not getting voting rights passed was very “wine mom.” This is a serious right for Black folks, and we are going to go to “kickboxing class, have a margarita” is the response of someone who is not having their voting rights taken away. This morning, that tweet appears to be gone because there was a political meltdown in the comments of the “how dare you criticize the Biden administration” variety.

    I can see Psaki saying “do self care,” and I can also see this being a lot more upsetting to Black folks who are going to be disenfranchised. Having a margarita is not going to make you feel better if Republicans are trying to snatch your vote.

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @Geminid: A statewide poll of NYC mayor doesn’t mean much.  Still, interesting.

     

    @Starfish:

    I don’t know.  Tone policing or wordsmithing pro-voting rights comments doesn’t seem all that productive to me.

  36. 36.

    Wilson Heath

    It’s gotta be said that the implicit assumption of the hip pundit “both sides” frame here is that black voting rights aren’t actually legitimate.

  37. 37.

    Ken

    @different-church-lady: That’s a question for humanity’s descendants (if any)  in 500 million years.

    Which reminds me of a very good novel by Stephen Baxter, Evolution. It traces the human lineage in a series of vignettes, starting with a Purgatorius at the time of the Chicxulub impact, and ending 500 million years from now with the last few primates dying out as the Sun warms. (I use “primates” because they aren’t human, and aren’t particularly intelligent; H. sapiens-level intelligence lasts only a bit over a million years in the novel.)

  38. 38.

    Geminid

    @Starfish: People may have been criticizing the comedian for leaving out the last part of what she said Friday on The View: “and wake up Monday morning, we gotta keep fighting.”

    There’s been a lot of selective editing and out-of-context presentation of Biden administration officials’ words and people are pretty fed up with it.

    Now I see that Ms. Laurie presented a fuller version of Psaki’s words at the top of this post.

  39. 39.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Starfish: Granted, I’m a white woman, but ” take the weekend to recharge and regroup because Monday we’re back at it” doesn’t seem so awful.

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Fifteen years on, the property has done wonders for its owner. That is, if you measure success according to the idiosyncratic accounting style of Donald Trump.

    He bought the 2,000 acres (809 hectares) site at Menie in 2006 for $12.6m. Within five short years it was valued by the Trump Organization in its financial statements at $161m, an increase of almost 13 times.

    By 2014, the windswept Scottish holding was put at $436m.

    The hike caught the attention of Letitia James, New York state’s progressive attorney general known for her relentless pursuit of the rich and powerful. How the Scottish property came to rise meteorically in value is one of the matters she is exploring in her continuing investigation into Trump Organization finances.
    ………………………………….
    James’s legal document is packed with similarly juicy tidbits. The 2014 value of the Scottish golf club was based in part on the projected sale price of 2,500 houses on the land, even though none of the houses actually existed and the company had planning permission for only half that number.

    In 1995 the Trump Organization bought a parcel of land in Westchester, New York, known as the Seven Springs Estate, for $7.5m. By 2004 it was valued at $80m and by 2014 at $291m. That 2014 figure, James notes in another exquisitely tart reference, included a valuation of $161m for “seven non-existent mansions”.

    The juiciest tidbit of all concerns Trump’s former home, the gilded Fifth Avenue temple to his own ego dubbed “Versailles in the sky”, in which he lived before moving into the White House. James’s investigators were puzzled to find the Trump Tower triplex in Manhattan was listed at $327m in 2015, based on the apartment’s size, allegedly 30,000 sq feet.

    In fact the property is 11,000 sq feet, which produces a value of $117m. That’s an overstatement in Trump’s official financial statements of more than $200m.
    ………………………………..
    Just how serious the prosecutors are about nailing their man is revealed in a single sentence of James’s new filing. She writes that the investigative team is determined to find out “Mr Trump’s actual knowledge of – and intention to make – the numerous misstatements and omissions made by him or on his behalf.”

    “Intention to make” indicates that James is not only thinking along civil lines. She is also anticipating possible criminal charges in which proof of the intent of the accused is required.

    Trump continues to resist giving testimony, as do his two children, on grounds that the investigations are politically motivated witch hunts (both James and Bragg are Democrats). A third child, Eric, who runs the day-to-day work of the Trump Organization, was deposed but pleaded the fifth more than 500 times.

    The family’s best hope is that the prosecutors will struggle to meet the high bar that is set for criminal cases. That is especially so when it comes to the critical issue of intent, said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor.

    “The criminal case is more dangerous since it involves potential incarceration. But it requires criminal intent and that is difficult to prove, particularly in complex financial frauds involving organizations,” Mintz, now a partner at McCarter & English, LLP told the Guardian.

    Time will tell.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Yeah, there’s a lot of people engaging in the same type of propaganda they decry.

    Rereading, the original tweet appears to have been an attempt at a joke, so I’m not sure if anyone actually criticized Psaki, or of the joke just triggered people.

  42. 42.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: We can’t afford “jokes” like that right now, and if you’re so goddamned serious about the struggle, you’d realize that.

  44. 44.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @zhena gogolia: I am serious about the “struggle” and I make jokes all the time. Sorry if you don’t approve of some of them but I can’t make everybody laugh.

  46. 46.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Baud: Yes, the article might confuse people, and one reason I included the Hochul story was for better context. But that story is interesting in it’s own right. Back when Hochul succeeded whats-his-name, I remember a lot of skepticism of an “upstater’s” chances in a Democratic primary. Democrats seem to like what they see in Hochul, though.

  47. 47.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Starfish:

    Psaki’s comment is only “very wine mom” when taken out of context. If you listen to her whole comment, which is in this YouTube clip—you’re welcome, sorry you apparently don’t have Google—you will perhaps conclude that what we have is more a case of “reductive dipshit comedian.” She clearly says have a margarita, etc., and then start fighting again on Monday.

  48. 48.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Electing someone to a new position is kind of like hiring someone for a new position.  The things you look for in trying to predict who would be a good employee often don’t correlate well with what makes someone a good employee.  Same with candidates.

    I’m glad New Yorkers are keeping an open mind about her.

  49. 49.

    germy

    Trump Attorney: If you think the Deutsche Banks of the world lend money to anyone without doing their own process and tools and valuation of the assets… then you’re doubting a lot of the banks and people that would work with the Trump organization or the Trump family pic.twitter.com/nvQTX6fgMZ

    — Acyn (@Acyn) January 22, 2022

    *deadpan* Do you doubt the diligence and integrity of the underwriting at Deutsche Bank? https://t.co/qmiARPcmtl

    — southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) January 22, 2022

    Lol. This nonsense convieniently ignores the fact Deutsche Bank is an oft-fined money laundering mess with very questionable practices, deals with tons of Russian $, ignores the incredibly brazen, blatant fraudulent behavior in Tish James’ filing, and so much more. https://t.co/Rjynn2GPs6

    — Spiro Agnew’s Ghost (@SpiroAgnewGhost) January 22, 2022

  50. 50.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Starfish: It wasn’t about people feeling better, it was about the fact that this is going to be a long fight and that people need to use self-care, including such frivolous things as having a glass of wine or going to a kick-boxing class, to make sure that they can keep going for the long run.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    The pundit and political media commentary on voting rights echoes Holder:

    We explained that §5 “imposes substantial federalism costs” and “differentiates between the States, despite our historic tradition that all the States enjoy equal sovereignty.” We also noted that “[t]hings have changed in the South.
    Voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity.Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.” Finally, we questioned whether the problems that §5 meant to address were still “concentrated in the jurisdictions singled out for preclearance.”

    They don’t think federal civil rights protections for voters are important because “things have changed in the south”, “blatant disciminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare”, turnout is up, and a lot of minority candidates hold office.

    They agree with Justice Roberts in Holder as does the whole Republican Party. 

  54. 54.

    germy

    @Suzanne:

    Twitter is a cesspool of people trying to earn cred by finding fault in others. I hate it.

    That would make a good tweet.  :)

  59. 59.

    sab

    @Baud: My family has some experience with foster care, having adopted a kid out of foster care. They are desperate for good homes here in Ohio. I’m sure they are also in Tennessee.

    This story just sickens me. They are probably passing up a really good, much needed home, and a few more kids get to suffer on. My stepdaughter had six years of terror in a bad home (age 4-10.)

  60. 60.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: I will also note that there is a long and toxic history of the things women like and do being coded as frivolous and anti-intellectual, but the things men do aren’t coded that way. She referred to a fruity drink and group fitness and she gets criticized as very “wine mom”, but I wonder what would have been said if she advised to drink a beer and watch a football game.

  61. 61.

    danielx

    @germy:

    Trump Attorney: If you think the Deutsche Banks of the world lend money to anyone without doing their own process and tools and valuation of the assets… then you’re doubting a lot of the banks and people that would work with the Trump organization or the Trump family

    Damn, that attorney doesn’t miss a thing.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @Suzanne:

    Agree. I skip all the ultra-clever “wine mom” commentary. I’m confused- “dads” have no leisure time acitivities and if they do that isn’t used to marginalize and demean everything else they do? Why is that?

    Fuck them.

  63. 63.

    germy

    @Suzanne:

    I think she (like any good public speaker) tailors her remarks to her audience.  If she’d been on a sports talk program, instead of The View, she might have advised them to enjoy a good beer and watch a game.

    EDIT:

    Since she tailors her remarks to her audience, its funny that she sometimes sounds like an extremely patient elementary school teacher when confronted by certain members of the press.

  65. 65.

    M31

    She should issue an apology and say what she meant was “do some shots and listen to Fuck the Police at top volume on repeat”

  67. 67.

    Kay

    “Well the concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” McConnell responded.

    “things have changed in the south”, “blatant disciminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare”, turnout is up, and a lot of minority candidates hold office.

  69. 69.

    germy

    @M31:

    “Do some naked mopping, plant a willow tree, and trim your cat’s fur.  We’ll continue the fight on Monday.”

  71. 71.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Suzanne: As long as we are going in that direction, I wondered if part of the criticism came from Psaki suggesting things that are perceived as stereotypically “white.”  As a white dude, I may very well have a tin ear for that, but it did cross my mind.

  73. 73.

    Starfish

    @Baud: Yeah, I think it was a joke that didn’t land correctly with his audience, and he deleted it when it turned into Democrats in disarray in the replies.

    People are trying to reduce it to sexism here too, and it lands different because it is coming from a queer Black person.

  75. 75.

    Baud

    @sab:

    It is sickening.  But expect a lot more of it. This court will prevent blue states from enforcing blue state values against right wing religious types soon enough.

  77. 77.

    NotMax

    Now there’s a sentence you don’t come across every day.

    The researchers say their experiment was inspired by a levitating frog. Source

  78. 78.

    Suzanne

    @Kay: This dynamic shows up all the time. Fashion and celebrity and pop music, for example, are low-level interests of lots of women (and gay men)….and yet, those are usually cast as shallow and stupid. Meanwhile, dudes will line up in costumes to go to fandom conventions or watch every game played by a team from a school they never attended, and none of that seems to be evidence of a lack of seriousness.

  80. 80.

    Kay

    Qasim Rashid, Esq.
    @QasimRashid
    · 9h
    UPDATE 2: Police have charged Amelia King with making a terroristic threat on school property. She’s been arrested and released on $5000 bond.
    This is a good start to accountability. No one should be allowed to get away with such horrific calls to violence.

    Really pleased about this. She delivered a rant at a public school board meeting where she threatened to come back with guns on Monday if her child had to wear a mask. They should have been enforcing locals laws on these threats months ago- I’m glad they’re finally doing it.
    The same is true for the threats to local election officials re: voting. I’m glad Biden’s DOJ set up a special investigations section and are starting to prosecute but local law enforcement have many, many criminal laws they can use to stop threats on election officials and poll workers. They need to stop making an exception for white conservatives.

  82. 82.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: Possibly. They’re definitely things coded as “basic”, which is usually a specific flavor of upper-middle-class Millennial white lady.

    Another example of this is the now-annual snarking about pumpkin spice lattes. Like, just let people enjoy things.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    Soo-prize, soo-prize (not).

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has rejected a prosecutor’s demand for records of his appearance at a pro-Donald Trump rally that preceded the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

    Last week, the Travis County district attorney’s office had set a four-day deadline for Paxton to turn over the records involving the Jan. 6, 2021, rally or face a lawsuit accusing him of violating the state open records law. But in a letter to the district attorney’s office Friday, the attorney general’s office denied any violations and rejected the office’s demands.
    [snip]
    In 2020, eight of Paxton’s top deputies accused him of bribery, abuse of office and other crimes in the service of another supporter, an Austin real estate developer who employs a woman with whom the attorney general allegedly had an extra-marital affair. The FBI is investigating those allegations.

    The attorney general has also spent most of his time in office under a separate felony indictment. He pleaded not guilty in 2015 to three state securities fraud charges but is yet to face trial. Source

  85. 85.

    danielx

    @NotMax:

    He pleaded not guilty in 2015 to three state securities fraud charges but is yet to face trial.

    The ways of Texas justice are mysterious.

  86. 86.

    Reboot

    @Reboot: My edit at # 74 timed out: I’ve seen a fair amount of discussion on how tacking ‘white’ onto ‘woman’ (which I guess ‘wine mom’ implies) is a dodge to say ‘Look, not sexist! Not all women!’ Just saw this last night at Joe.My.God, when someone wrote about some scary thing, ‘I’d be screaming like a white woman,’ but I’m not sure it lands differently no matter who’s saying it.

  87. 87.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @zhena gogolia: You don’t make that kind of jokes, and you don’t make them on twitter.

    Oh but I do make those kinds of jokes, just not on twitter, because I’m not on twitter. My point is that different people deal with all the shit life deals out in different ways. Some use humor. It breaks the tension. It allows them to laugh at their troubles which makes them a little easier to deal with. People can take the right to vote very serious and still joke about the situation because it helps them get up the next day and back to the grindstone.

    You may not find it funny. Lord knows I don’t find a lot of things funny. But I don’t begrudge others the ability to laugh and make jokes about shit. Especially when I know their heart is in the right place.

     

    ETA: reading comments above, it occurs to me we are talking about 2 separate things, one of which I haven’t even seen.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @Suzanne:

    Oh, God don’t get me started. Biker gear? Men who essentially dress as cowboys? Wear what you want but there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference, other than “it’s women so it’s silly and stupid”. Harley Davidson probably sells more branded clothing than they do motorcycles. There’s a tough guy costume! Often it comes with a motorcyle or a truck but it doesn’t have to- it’s a fashion choice.

    I’m amused that ultra savvy media people don’t see how sexist it is, but then they’re really conventional people.

  89. 89.

    Starfish

    @Omnes Omnibus: Kickboxing class and wine.

    There are a lot of women doing kickboxing class. I am not sure why.

    The wine thing is a lot of “tee hee hee, I drink wine to tolerate my children” thing that some Millennial moms engage in.

    I think that making fun of pumpkin spice and The Wine Mom Font is more about making fun of things that marketing teams went overboard with. Please let me know if your life was not complete before pumpkin spice Oreos.

    Sometimes, you don’t notice this stuff because you are not the target audience; but then when someone points it out, you start to see it everywhere.

    There are these pink and green-blue colors that are very “Hi, you are in the Millennial target demographic,” and I didn’t notice it until the designers that I work with mentioned it, and now I see it everywhere.

  90. 90.

    Geminid

    @Suzanne: Speaking of cesspools, from the normally equable Mangy Jay:

        The linguistic parsing that occurs on this site would cause all communication to break down in real life. It’s like, in a quest for one-upmanship, people’s ability to make inferences or engage in other socio-linguistic reasoning just melts right out of their ears.

     

    My new favorite phenomenon is the policing of modal verbs, e.g. “might, can, will, may.”

    Someone to me: “I would replace ‘may’ in this tweet with ‘can.’ Perhaps delete ‘may’ altogether.

    Me: “I would put your head in a toilet, but we can’t always get what we want, can we?”

    @Magi_Jay  Jan.18 2022

  91. 91.

    Starfish

    @Reboot: It’s a little complicated.

    White women taking to the fainting couches when they are accused of being white when a person of color is accusing them of doing something racist is different than “Moooooom… you are such a Karen” coming from their own children trying to sass them. If the person critiquing white womanhood is a white man trying to get his sexism out, that really is a different thing than a Black woman accusing a white woman of doing racist things.

  92. 92.

    Kristine

    My 0.02. Slight wincing when I read Psaki’s comment, whether tailored to her audience or not, and whether objection to her word choice could be construed as sexism or not. A more general “Do what you need to in order to get through the weekend, and then…” would’ve done the job.

    There is no more tailoring to audiences anymore. Words spread like an oil spill. If you work in a world in which your words will be misconstrued no matter what, why give them ammo? And why risk alienating people you’re trying to help?

  93. 93.

    Steeplejack

    Glad I got to express my rage gland right away this morning. Now I’m trying to determine if I’ve got a frozen pipe. It’s 20° now, and I don’t think the temp has been over 30° since maybe Wednesday. Went to wash my hands in the bathroom sink—no water. Turned out to be just the hot water, and then a little (cold) water started trickling out. The hot water in the bathtub was running (cold), but with reduced flow. Cold-water pipes apparently working fine. I have left the hot-water taps open a bit and am checking every 10 minutes or so.

    . . . Bathtub hot water seems to be okay, running hot but with slightly reduced flow. Sink hot water is now hot at low flow but turns cold when I increase the volume. I don’t know exactly what this means; plumbing is not my area. Maybe some partial freezing somewhere in the line but not a break?

  94. 94.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Starfish: What? You got something wrong? And are admitting it? WTF is WRONG with you???!!??? This is the internet where nobody is ever wrong about anything!!!
    ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)

  95. 95.

    Kay

    @Reboot:

    It’s weird and not true too. Black women don’t go to exercise classes or drink wine? If they do (and, I mean, they do) does that mean all of their opinions are somehow discredited and not serious?

  96. 96.

    Baud

    @Kristine:

    They’ll always have ammo, and excessive langauge steralization makes us sound less than human.

    ETA:  Think about all the corporate-speak you’ve ever heard.

  97. 97.

    Suzanne

    @Starfish: It’s pretty well documented by marketers that many Millennial women enjoy group fitness classes, and some successful businesses like Orangetheory and PureBarre have jumped into that market. And yes, kickboxing has popularity in that demographic. Lots of people find it enjoyable. Is that weird?

  98. 98.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:Often it comes with a motorcyle or a truck but it doesn’t have to- it’s a fashion choice.

    And as we all know, so are the motorcycle and the truck.

  99. 99.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kristine: My take is no matter what is said someone is going to find a way to misconstrue it.  There is a whole right-wing industry designed to do that.  After a quick glance to see if the comment was actually objectionable (no, it wasn’t), we should move the fuck on.  The load-bearing part of Psaki’s comment was “and then wake up on Monday morning, we gotta keep fighting.”  Isn’t it interesting that people are trying to distract from that?

  101. 101.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I always feel kind of sorry for bikers in the summertime. It can be 95° and humid, but even if they are not riding their hyper-masculine dress code prohibits them from wearing shorts.

  103. 103.

    Miss Bianca

    @Starfish: I do notice that Psaki doesn’t stop with kick-boxing or margaritas. She specifically states, “and then Monday we start fighting again”, not “give up, it’s hopeless, descend into hedonism and forget about your voting rights!”

    Jesus kick-boxing Christ.

    ETA: Apparently I am not the first to make this observation.

  104. 104.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kristine: If you work in a world in which your words will be misconstrued no matter what, why give them ammo?

    Isn’t that the world we all live in? Isn’t the only way to insure one’s words aren’t misconstrued is to just STFU?

  107. 107.

    Starfish

    @Suzanne: I don’t think enjoying group fitness classes is weird.

    I think that there is a subset of group fitness classes that are more likely to get people injured that are an “I have excellent health insurance” flex, and I was definitely engaging in one of those activities before the pandemic. I am trying now, but I am not nearly as strong as I used to be.

    I don’t think that it is only women who get critiqued for their fitness activities either. Men who go to The Church of the CrossFit are pretty annoying.

  110. 110.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kristine: Yes, everyone always would have worded it better.  If I had been talking to my soldiers in 1990, I would have said something like, “This week was brutal.  Let’s take the weekend.  Go spend time with your family.  Get drunk.  Get laid.  Clear your heads, and let’s get back here on Monday and get to work.”  Problematic in it’s own way, isn’t it?

  112. 112.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Geminid: The leather and denim gives some ( illusion of ) protection if you go down, which you will, eventually. I personally have not been on a bike since it occurred to me that if it went down I would look like a road kill deer, even with the leather.

    Eta: we also joke that its how you distinguish between real bikers and ” biking enthusiasts.” The later wear shorts and harley tshirts, and the current hot sneaker.

  113. 113.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Steeplejack: Yes. your pipe/s is/are frozen. Run it until flow returns to normal. Then just try to turn it on and let it run for a few minutes a couple times a day and night. that should clear any ice that builds up in the line. The chances are that one water line is not properly insulated and/or on an outside wall.

    Keep an eye out for unexplainable puddles in your house. Sometimes the ice will split a line.

  117. 117.

    zhena gogolia

    @OzarkHillbilly: We have some pipes (to our washing machine) in a very cold crawlspace in the basement (bad home renovation before I bought the house), and our brilliant plumber rigged up a thing where some of the hot air from the heating system gets blown in there. We just have to open a valve every fall. No frozen pipes since then.

  120. 120.

    zhena gogolia

    Just got an e-mail from Adam Schiff (not a personal one, don’t worry), with this cute story in it:

    In 2002, I brought my daughter Alexa (Lexi for short) to the Capitol with me for work. She was only four, but already had a better fashion sense than her dad.
    [Photo]
    Right after this photo was taken, we ran into Nancy Pelosi, who was the minority whip at the time. “This is Nancy Pelosi,” I explained. “She’s our whip. If you don’t vote the way she wants, she has a whip.”

    “Don’t tell her that,” Nancy said, then got down on her knees so she was eye level with Alexa and said: “It’s a candy whip. It’s a candy whip.”

    (“It’s not a candy whip,” I said to myself.)

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    @Steeplejack: Your experience matches mine (long ago) in that the hot water line froze first.  (Apparently because of the hot water being a better solvent for impurities, etc., raising the effective freezing temperature.). Here’s hoping that you caught it in time and there is no lasting damage!

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  122. 122.

    Kay

    Men do “self care” too but it’s only selfish and shallow when women do it, which is interesting, huh?

    It’s almost like “self care” is the standard for men, while “care of others” is the standard for women.

    “If all of you were working as maids you wouldn’t have time or money to do self care! So entitled, with your fruity drinks on the weekend”.

  124. 124.

    Suzanne

    @Starfish: I’m not sure it’s a health insurance flex. I think it’s definitely a middle-class thing, because going to a place for a $15 (or thereabouts) class is not a thing everyone can afford.

  126. 126.

    Reboot

    @Starfish: Yes, but it seems to me you’re shifting the goalposts when we’re discussing what a man (you did say *he* is Black and queer, right) said to when ‘a Black woman accuses a white woman of racism’ (paraphrase). When ‘he’ says it, it doesn’t ‘hit differently,’ not to me. Your mileage obviously varies.

  127. 127.

    Suzanne

    @Kay: Women also do much of men’s care for them, which is part of why married men live longer than unmarried men.

    I make Mr. Suzanne eat kale.

  128. 128.

    Geminid

    @MagdaInBlack: Long pants are very functional if you are riding. It’s a uniform, though, and has to be worn at all times if you are part of that culture, even if you don’t own a motorcycle.

    It used to be that way for country guys. I remember one making fun of another man wearing his “shorty-shorts” at a country store. This was about 1980. By 1990, most of the country guys had adopted the cosmopolitan practice of wearing shorts in the summertime. Some of the old-timers never succumbed, though.

  130. 130.

    Ohio Mom

    @Steeplejack: one of our pipes froze and broke once — it made a very loud BOOM.

    Fortunately I was home so I heard it. Walked down basement stairs to see what exploded, saw that the pipe to the outside was pouring out water, turned off the main switch and went upstairs to call the plumber.

  132. 132.

    Kay

    @MagdaInBlack:

    Women had to invent a special phrase “self care” and then sort of rigorously enforce their right to do it. But it’s controversial! Should they be able to do that? Opinons differ. Juries still out on whether it’s valid for women to do anything that is exclusively beneficial to them. MIGHT be overreach on their part.

  134. 134.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Geminid: I grew up out there, northern Illinois farm country. I’m very familiar with that culture. (My husband would NOT wear shorts.)  I still know a few out there like that. Silliness. Peer pressure. The usual bs.

  137. 137.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @zhena gogolia: If you have heating ducts in the right location, that should do it. Another option is to wrap the pipe with… brain fart brain fart… I’ll call it “electric heating tape”. Unfortunately, some pipes aren’t accessible. When I ran the pipes to my kitchen, I ran them along an exterior concrete wall (for reasons of construction). I insulated the pipes, but one still froze up during an exceptionally long and deep cold spell. Since then I make sure to run it from time to time during such periods and have had no problems since.

  141. 141.

    Kay

    “If I take this kickboxing class or order a margartita, does that make all of my political opinions invalid?”

    Hard decisions for women. It’s kickboxing OR political opinions. God, do they want EVERYTHING? So demanding.

  144. 144.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: ​Speaking as a manly man, I don’t do self care. I just grit my manly teeth and soldier on through it.

  146. 146.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Suzanne: Women also do much of men’s care for them, which is part of why married men live longer than unmarried men.

    I make Mr. Suzanne eat kale.

    My wife does it by being a pain in my butt. Wait a minute, that’s what you said. ;-)

  148. 148.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Isn’t it interesting that people are trying to distract from that?

    That’s what got me going. By now we should all know that there is a huge rage-farming ecosystem on Twitter and social media in general—not confined to right-wing propagandists—dedicated to dividing us, distracting us from where our rage should properly be directed (spoiler: at Republicans suppressing the vote) and “owning the libs” in general. But, no, let’s get mad at Jen Psaki and “wine moms” because we’ll accept their misleading framing (inadvertent or not, in the case of this comedian) and harrumph about “this is a serious right for Black folks,” “have a margarita” is the response of someone who is not having their voting rights taken away and “this is a lot more upsetting to Black folks who are going to be disenfranchised.” Then let’s put the icing on the cake by saying that the pushback was just a generic “political meltdown of the ‘how dare you criticize the Biden administration’ variety.” That’s a trifecta of fail.

    I don’t think Starfish was trolling, but c’mon, man, think about the framing that you are accepting and disseminating.

  149. 149.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “Self care”. That they have to say it and then defend it makes me sad. IMO, the United States has a long, long way to go on attitudes towards women and just adding “white women” to every slam on women so you’re still cool on Twitter isn’t fooling me. Not buying that either. Try again.

  150. 150.

    Suzanne

    @Kay: AND AND AND much of what falls under the category of “self-care” is basic-ass hygiene and health stuff. Like “physical exercise” or “getting a hair cut”.

    I remember one time a few years ago going to get new glasses. I have worn glasses since I was two years old. My glasses were really scratched up and I badly needed new ones. I went back to the same place I had gone previously, and it turned out that I hadn’t replaced my glasses for five years. Not because I didn’t have the money, but because I didn’t make the damn time and effort for myself. I did it for my kids, clients, SuzMom, husband, dog. Not myself. Now, when I did finally buy some, I splurged a bit on the frames. So I guess that’s “self-care”.

  151. 151.

    trollhattan

    BBC headline wins the week.
    “Robot vacuum cleaner escapes from Cambridge Travelodge”
    That’s all.

  156. 156.

    debbie

    @Starfish:

    Self-care gets your mind and body back in balance and restores the kind of strength and focus it will take to get rid of these assholes.

    There they go again: Portraying liberals as elitists. Well, fuck them. They’re the same people who still believe (quietly or not) that any woman-related issue is really only “hysteria.” They’re also the same people who insist on cushy car seats and monster grills. As if that wasn’t also self-care.

  158. 158.

    trollhattan

    @Kay: ​Isn’t that essentially the libertarian ethos? Except for the added bit about crushing those whose need for support renders them unworthy, the slackers.

  161. 161.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    My wife does it by being a pain in my butt.

    That’s exactly how I do it.

    Take Omnes’s advice and save the details for BJ After Dark.

  162. 162.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: ​There’s a part of me that thinks sexism will never die. It’s part and parcel of what some think being a man is. You know, men don’t cry, they go to the bar and drink. Then the room gets really dusty.

    eta: need to add that sometimes I find myself saying/doing sexist stuff w/o even being aware of it. So easy to fall back into 40 year old habits.

  163. 163.

    Kay

    The media commentary on Republicans and the electoral count act has been dumb and infuriating because they are 1. conflating voting rights with tweaks to the electoral count act, and 2. demanding Democrats sign onto the GOP effort on the electoral count act with no Democratic input, but this article on the electoral count act is meaty and specific and good. 

    There are two working groups, well one real working group that has produced something (Democratic Senators) and one group that has boasted they will produce something (Republicans plus Manchin and Sinema). The Republican group (plus Manchin and Sinema) doesn’t even have enough support if you ADD all 48 Democrats because they don’t have enough Republicans. The Democratic group has or will have 48 (Democrats minus Manchin and Sinema), so they should be in the drivers seat.

  165. 165.

    Suzanne

    @debbie: I drive a seven-year-old Honda, don’t own expensive tools or hobby equipment. Very little jewelry, and what I have is heirlooms. If it wasn’t for Mr. Suzanne, I would have no entertainment electronics except for a small TV. I get really, really tired of “women be shopping”.

  167. 167.

    Suzanne

    I should note that I do want to drop a bunch of $$$ on a new couch. Waiting until Spawn is less spill-y.

  168. 168.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Its funny because I notice it a lot more older than I did younger. There was a busyness when I was younger, a sense that if I went there I would go off track and I had to get all this shit done, so I’d just breeze past it, vaguely aware of it as the water I was swimming in but more important to just keep swimming. It stops me cold now- “wow- there’s that again”. It;s this grim “noting”. Noted. Seen and jotted down.

  171. 171.

    Steeplejack

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Thanks. Running the sink and bathtub hot-water taps at low flow and will check them every 20 minutes.

    This is the first time I’ve had this happen in nine years. I live in a six-unit building, and things seem pretty well insulated. But this is about the coldest it has been for the longest continuous time, too.

  172. 172.

    Brachiator

    On 21 January 2021, the same day the Rutan-Rams were scheduled to begin the foster-parent-training class at Holston, an employee “emailed Ms Rutan-Ram to inform her that Holston would not serve the Rutan-Rams because of the couple’s Jewish faith”.

    Somebody put this in writing?

    Damn. Bigots getting bolder.

  173. 173.

    sab

    @Kay: We compromised like crazy on the Ohio redistricting law, and what it got us was a garbage law where every default tosses it back to the gerrymandered to be Republican legislatyre. legislature

  176. 176.

    WereBear

    @sab: And what if, like so many of these religiously oriented “social organizations,” they are using it to proselytize, too. One had to raise it in the same church, and use church discipline methods, and agree to take problems to the church and not the authorities… all those ways are terrible ways to foster children.

  178. 178.

    James E Powell

    @Suzanne:

    She referred to a fruity drink and group fitness and she gets criticized as very “wine mom”, but I wonder what would have been said if she advised to drink a beer and watch a football game.

    Exactly right. But you know how it goes, pointing out misogyny is much worse than misogyny itself. Cf. Racism.

  179. 179.

    Starfish

    @Suzanne: The $15 classes are not the ones I am talking about. The ones I am talking about are more either because the facilities have to carry more insurance because of the danger of whatever they are engaging in, or they take a long time to excel at. It would be more like a parkour class or “Hey, this dude is training for an Iron Man” because he is CEO and can spend several hours running 20+ miles every day or biking 80 miles.

  182. 182.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Yeah, we’re older, and in my case more educated. Not that my sisters and mother didn’t knock me upside the head from time to time, but way back when, it was just the way things were.

  184. 184.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Suzanne: I’m far from being a millennial and I’ve done kickboxing classes (videos) for years. When I did attend group fitness classes, there were always men…mostly hard core aerobics and spinning  but also some of the more dance oriented ones.

    I wish that things weren’t so often sliced and diced by gender and age, among other categories. I would not have seen offense in Jen Psaki’s words had I not read this post. I focused on the let’s be raring to go on Monday part.

  188. 188.

    prostratedragon

    Kickboxing and the like help one to keep a bit of an edge on one’s attitude that’s useful in the political arena.

  189. 189.

    sab

    @debbie: Ha ha. We have one, but his cats peed on his favorite chair so now it is unusable until ‘somebody’ goes shopping for new chair cushions.

  192. 192.

    James E Powell

    @Tdjr:

    l think what the turtle wanted to say was

    African American voters are voting just like Real Americans.

    And if he’d said that, he’d be even more popular with the only voters he cares about.

  194. 194.

    Starfish

    @Steeplejack:

    I don’t think Starfish was trolling, but c’mon, man, think about the framing that you are accepting and disseminating.

    I was looking at people younger than me and interested in their perspective. Sometimes, that is “people are not party identified” but that can also be “the party is not serving the interests of these folks.”

    The progress on climate change, student debt, and things that are important to younger members or tentative members of the Democratic Party have not been great this past year.

    Even though ACA passed not so very long ago, the 21-26 year olds benefiting from it have had the ability to stay on their parents’ insurance for as long as they have been adults. It is wild to think about. ACA passed in 2010; but from the perspective of the youngest adults, it has always been this way.

    Shaming younger folks for “Hey, you need to clap louder” while they are swimming in educational debt that cannot be discharged through normal bankruptcy, trying to get by on a burning planet, and about to have their right to abortions snatched is not the winning strategy that some people think it is.

    In general, they are not going to vote for Republicans, but there is the possibility that they might not show up at all.

  196. 196.

    Brachiator

    @Starfish:

    I can see Psaki saying “do self care,” and I can also see this being a lot more upsetting to Black folks who are going to be disenfranchised. Having a margarita is not going to make you feel better if Republicans are trying to snatch your vote.

    Coming late to the thread, but this really seems much ado about nothing. Especially because nobody said anything about giving up the fight.

  197. 197.

    Steeplejack

    @Starfish:

    Okay, maybe you are trolling. Nobody here—or in the Twitter pushback to that comedian, that I can see—is “shaming younger folks for ‘Hey, you need to clap louder.’” They’re pushing back against the conflation of “Jen Psaki says have a margarita (and keep fighting)” with “hurtful denigration of Black voters’ rights.”

    Everything else in your comment has nothing to do with the original topic—which you brought up!

  198. 198.

    J R in WV

    @Geminid: ​
     
    Mangy Jay said, in part:

    My new favorite phenomenon is the policing of modal verbs, e.g. “might, can, will, may.”

    Wife hates headlines using these words, because no matter how outlandish the statement, the addition of might, may, can… makes it possible. The earth might be twisted into rubble by the latest huge coronal mass ejection by our sun. Maybe… or not so much.

    TFG might make an important confession regarding the 06JAN21 insurrection tomorrow, maybe. But Probably NOT !!!

    Alternatively, TFG will be exonerated of all possible wrong-doing regarding the 2020 election, possibly… but almost certainly NOT !!!

  199. 199.

    Yarrow

    @Starfish:

    there is the possibility that they might not show up at all.

    I’ll mention again my tactic when talking with young people about voting. I tell them that their votes have more impact than those of older voters because no one expects them to show up so they’re not factored into polling, forecasts, and expectations. If they vote, get five of their friends to do the same thing and those people do the same thing then they can have an unexpected impact on how this upcoming election goes. They can make a big, surprising impact by just showing up and voting. If enough of them vote they can change outcomes.

    My assessment after these conversations is that they don’t know they aren’t expected to show up. They don’t know they are being discounted in this way. They also don’t understand the impact they can have.

  201. 201.

    No One of Consequence

    @Suzanne:  Twitter is a honey-pot for trolls, by design. I have yet to be convinced otherwise. I submit, as evidence, UseNet. The technology and use of which, preceded Twitter by quite a number of years, and offers object lessons in mass (largely unrestricted) public commentary.

    It may also serve as training grounds for recluse would-be standup comedians, but it’s allure is misleading, because Twitter allows for the time-delay of wit, which Real Life sadly, does not.

    This is of course, just one fool’s opinion. Ymmv, peace,
    – NOoC

  203. 203.

    J R in WV

    @Suzanne:

    I make Mr. Suzanne eat kale.

    I can’t make Wife eat Kale. Other greens, sure, but Kale? Nope! Same for brussel sprouts, won’t even think of it.

  204. 204.

    zhena gogolia

    @Starfish:

    but there is the possibility that they might not show up at all.

    Then fuck them. They deserve their low salaries.

    ETA: And yes, I can be a troll too when I feel like it.

  205. 205.

    Jackie

    @OzarkHillbilly: And chewing gum. In WWII, the Army Air Corp issued gum because it could be chewed and used to patch bullet holes in planes  – the bodies were canvas back then. Per my Army Air Corp dad ?

  206. 206.

    Steeplejack

    @OzarkHillbilly, @Steeplejack:

    Okay, both the sink and tub hot-water taps are flowing a little stronger, and the water is hotter. Gonna let ’em go a while longer, but I think I’m out of the woods. Thanks again for your input.

  207. 207.

    Brachiator

    @Steeplejack:

    “Coming late to the thread . . .

    ”Oh, jeez, better strap in.

    Can’t help it if I am in the West Coast time zone.

    I know that Balloon Juice never sleeps, but still…

  209. 209.

    J R in WV

    @Steeplejack:

    Okay, both the sink and tub hot-water taps are flowing a little stronger, and the water is hotter.

    I left the kitchen sink water dribbling last night, it was really cold here, single digits. Still dribbling, also too. That’s the only sink with pipes against the outside wall.

  213. 213.

    Miss Bianca

    @Steeplejack: 

    Up here at the Mountain Hacienda we are dealing with our second – or is it third? – well-pipe freezing this winter. Pal D has our thawing process down to a MacGyvering-science now, because this invariably happens on the weekend.

  215. 215.

    Steeplejack

    @J R in WV:

    Things appear to be back to normal now. I took a (somewhat hurried) shower and shaved with no problems. Probably will trickle the taps tonight just to be on the safe side. Supposed to go down to 20°, which normally wouldn’t concern me. It was the mid-teens the last couple of nights that got me, coupled with low 20s during the day. It just never got “warm” at all. Supposed to go all the way up to 39° tomorrow. Yee-haw.

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