Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

The words do not have to be perfect.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

This chaos was totally avoidable.

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

People are weird.

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

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

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

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

You are here: Home / Music / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Be Happy!

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Be Happy!

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Get calm! (not my relaxant of choice, but neither is alcohol, and we FAFO’d prohibition for that already)


Sportsball! The reactions to the World Cup draw seem fairly well-balanced…

Reader Interactions

70Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I remember when progressives were concerned that Republicans would overtake Dems when it came to pot issues.

  2. 2.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Ray Loewe – #StandWithUkraine@rloewe65

    Snoop Dogg once said if that if you put a bottle of booze on a table in a room of bangers, someone would end up dead within an hour. Put a bag of weed on the table, and within an hour they’ll all be telling stories and rapping with each other.

    QFT. I knew a guy who got super paranoid after smoking a joint, but all he ever did was run away from everyone.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    And the worst gateway drug I’ve ever seen is conservatism. As often as not it leads to a hard core fascism problem.

  7. 7.

    New Deal democrat

    Well, well, well . . . It turns out the Florida legislature should never have picked a fight with people who teach grammar for a living:

    Florida teachers’ reaction to FL’s “never say gay” bill, which forbids the teaching of “gender identity” to younger schoolchildren:
    https://mobile.twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1510009738263736326

    You see, it turns out that words like “boy, girl, man, woman, he, she, him, her, and Mister and Missus” *do* indeed illustrate gender identity. Looks like all of those books (and names in class) have to go!

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    Wow.

    The nation’s oldest active park ranger is hanging up her Smokey hat at the age of 100.
    [snip]
    Soskin won a temporary Park Service position at the age of 84 and became a permanent Park Service employee in 2011. She celebrated her 100th birthday last September. Source

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    What the bloody eff is wrong with some people?

    CLAIM: President Joe Biden’s outdoor signing of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, shown in numerous photographs, could not have happened on Tuesday because the White House South Lawn was completely empty and the weather was freezing cold.

    THE FACTS: Associated Press photos prove Biden signed the bill in the White House Rose Garden — not on the South Lawn — on Tuesday, and government records of the bill’s progress show the same. […] As activists rejoiced in a law that they called “a long time coming,” at least one Facebook user cast doubt on the event. “This DID NOT happen yesterday,” the widely circulating post read. […] Yet Biden’s signing of the bill just after 4 p.m. on Tuesday in the White House Rose Garden was clearly documented in dozens of news reports and in AP photos and video from the ceremony. Source

  17. 17.

    Kropacetic

    The only claim marijuana claim has to being a gateway drug is that (a) getting it under prohibition puts people in touch with drug dealers and (b) fools treat it like it’s bad in a way that many other illegal drugs are actually bad, leading marijuana smokers to be dismissive of that type of claim across the board.

    Prohibition is the real gateway.

    @Baud:I can see why the GOP opposes weed.  They need their base angry, not mellow.

    If only it were that simple.  Don’t forget the potential for paranoia.

  18. 18.

    Jeffro

    The US alcohol er excuse me beverage industry sure is working OT to keep grass out of the marketplace.

    Good luck with that.

  21. 21.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jeffro: The US alcohol er excuse me beverage industry sure is working OT to keep grass out of the marketplace.

    That’s a big fail.

  24. 24.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Salt Creek: There was so much BS flying around after 9/11, I don’t even remember what CD did. I’d stopped paying attention long before that.

  27. 27.

    Kay

    2005:

    ORLANDO — The Southern Baptist Convention voted to end its eight-year boycott of the Walt Disney Co. on Wednesday, an implicit acknowledgment that its “family values” campaign failed to bring the entertainment giant to its knees.
    The convention, meeting in Dallas in 1997, voted to boycott all parts of the Disney empire, from theme parks to movies, television shows and networks, books and retail items. The resolution cited a departure from the company’s “family values” tradition, in particular its support of gay days at Disney theme parks and its offer of health benefits to same-sex partners of employees.
    Delegates also approved a compromise resolution dealing with homosexuality in public schools. Anti-gay resolutions are a staple of Southern Baptist Conventions, and one had been put forward before this year’s gathering calling on Baptists to withdraw their children from public schools.
    Instead, the measure that passed Wednesday encourages parents to investigate their children’s public schools to determine whether they are too accepting of homosexuality.
    “Homosexual activists and their allies are devoting substantial resources and using political power to promote the acceptance among schoolchildren of homosexuality as a morally legitimate lifestyle,” the resolution says.

  28. 28.

    Geminid

    @Booger: Then you passed a few miles west of me. I sometimes take that route to or from Crozet. The way past my house and on through Free Union is a little more efficient since it is straight every now and then.

    On 810, the owners tore down the old Dyke Store and put up Maybelles, and they have a nice kitchen operation. I look forward to dropping by there some morning for a pancake breakfast.

  30. 30.

    Miss Bianca

    @New Deal democrat: Just had to see that one again. Because it.is.glorious.

    Someone referred to it in a previous thread as an example of “malicious compliance”, which is a phrase new to me and I am so in love with it I want to marry it and have gay babies with it.

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Those conservative evangelicals cannot resist the lure of temporal power. Baptists used to have a good tradition of separation of Church and State, but their preachers sold that birthright for a mess of political pottage.

  33. 33.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    It’s interesting that it was the Southern Baptist convention in 2005 and now it’s mainstream, universal Republican. That’s a lurch Right.

  36. 36.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Their problem with public schools has always been that public schools are an elaborate, endlessly negotiated compromise. What they demand of public schools – MY CHILD DOMINATES ALL POLICY- is inconsistent with the thing itself. It’s an impossible demand.

  37. 37.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Conservative evangelicals swing a lot of weight now in Republican areas, at least in Virginia. My 5th Virginia District Congressman is a product of Liberty University’s political machine. They teamed up with the secular radicals to replaced the Republican incumbent 2020. Denver Riggleman had officiated at the wedding of two campaign aides, both male. He was knocked out in a district convention.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I don’t know- I’m open to it “working” but I don’t think they’ve proved it up yet. I still think it will be difficult to convincingly portray everyone who is not far Right as a pedophile. They will continue to run into the intensely local nature of public schools- you can rant and rave about public schools in a general sense but the truth is public schools are big local employers so on a local level you’re talking about smearing hundreds of people who everyone knows. I have 4 public school teachers in my neighborhood. Two of our judges are married to teachers. We know these people.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Salt Creek: Mo-Tucker too? Shit, I guess I’m not really surprised. In general, people get more conservative as they get older. I certainly have. Not politically, same old “who cares?” socialist I’ve always been, but technologically. I spend half my damn time screaming at stuff, “ON, OFF…. WTF IS SO HARD ABOUT THAT????”

  40. 40.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    I think it isn’t discussed politically enough. How much of the (current, powerful) far Right are either  religious fundamentalists themselves or the ideas come out of that. The truth is the Supreme Court isn’t just “far Right”. It’s hugely influenced by far Right Catholics.

    I just object to the coyness around it- how we’re not permitted to identify what are clearly specific religious doctrines coming out of institutions that the far Right controls. I object to the dishonesty of the discussion.

  41. 41.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I sure hope it doesn’t work but have seen distressing signals that it may be here in FL. The “groomers” conversation mostly takes place in rightwing spaces. DeSantis’s Black Shirts usually avoid publicly smearing specific teachers and schools because that would backfire for the reason you indicate. 

    So they’re going with “Don’t talk to my first-grader about sex,” which sounds reasonable enough to normies, as did “Don’t make white people feel guilty,” which is the excuse they generated for whitewashing history.

    I wrote a depressing post about it that I may publish later.  ;-)

  42. 42.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Something I notice about the machine that elected my odious Congressman is that it has no public profile. Fallwell Senior had his Moral Majority, but it generated a lot of resentment and pushback. The people who run Liberty now keep their operation on the downlow. One has to look beneath the surface to see it, but it’s there.

    But as you say, the overt domination of the Republican party by evangelicals is obvious and needs to be called out. Even other church goers don’t neccesarily want harshell Baptists calling the shots in their communities’ government.

  45. 45.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Betty Cracker: Oh, it’s not the teachers you know, or who live in your neighborhood. It’s the evil teachers in [local city] who are turning “our” kids trans-commie-CRT!

  47. 47.

    Alison Rose ???

    As a former coworker of mine (from about 15 years ago) once said in a TV interview, the only thing that pot is a gateway drug to is Doritos.

    I don’t smoke now, but listen. As a teenager, especially at 14 and 15, I smoked enough weed to fill the Grand Canyon. There was a minuscule amount of waking time in which I was not stoned out of my gourd. The only other drug I ever tried was acid, which I did once and hated. Never did anything else even though it was pretty much all available to me if I wanted it. If someone wants to use speed or whatever, they’re gonna do it with or without trying pot first. The only reason it’s usually the first one is because it’s easy to get and less intimidating.

  48. 48.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Kay:

    Their problem with public schools

    …is that they educate. Not a desirable outcome in conservaworld.

  49. 49.

    John S.

    @Betty Cracker:

    Ironically, Miami probably has more Republicans than where you are. But they’re mostly Cuban, so conservatives from the Redneck Riviera are happy to get their vote, but not consider them to be “one of them”.

    I can’t wait to get the fuck out of this state and move to Washington.

  50. 50.

    kindness

    Speaking as a lifelong pothead, my first ‘gateway’ drug was tobacco (I stole my mother’s cigarettes), my second was alcohol.  It wasn’t till after those two that I started smoking the evil weed.  Thankfully I never really acquired a love for tobacco and stopped trying to be cool within a few months.

  51. 51.

    Geminid

    @Alison Rose ???: Now that researchers can study cannabis more freely, they may find the drug to be a gateway away from opioid or meth addiction. I read of a VA study showing fewer opioid deaths in states that allow medical cannabis use. Kicking either meth or opioids- or tobacco for that matter- is a physical and emotional challenge that cannabis could make easier for some. Cannabis has it’s own problems, but at least you can’t overdose or get a heart attack from it.

  52. 52.

    James E Powell

    @Salt Creek:

    Charlie Daniels said stupid right-wing things going back to the Reagan days. Not really a major artist, so I never gave him much mind.

  53. 53.

    Brachiator

    @Geminid:

    Now that researchers can study cannabis more freely, they may find the drug to be a gateway away from opioid or meth addiction.

    I don’t think that the idea of a gateway in any direction holds up to scrutiny. I get the impression that people choose drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, for the specific kind of high it provides. And in most places cannabis is easily available.

    Cannabis has it’s own problems, but at least you can’t overdose or get a heart attack from it.

    Good point. I wonder how health issues have changed in states that have legalized cannabis.

    ETA: When I go for medical exams, I am still asked if I have smoked tobacco. Never been asked about cannabis. Also, in California, the illegal cannabis market is still strong. But legal shops do well with cannabis edibles.

  54. 54.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kropacetic: ​Don’t forget the potential for paranoia.

    In the days when I indulged in the gentle weed I would never drive stoned. One evening after a bit of indulgence I discovered I had to drive to a friend’s place to pick up something right away. So off I went.

    Everything was fine till I pulled up to a red light in the right lane and discovered the car to my left was a police cruiser.

    8^O

    Four right turns and eight blocks later I was in exactly the same place – with none of “Baltimore’s finest” in sight. And breathed a yooooge sigh of relief. Tell me about “paranoid”…

    (It has been many, many years since my last indulgence, but FWIW my personal 2020-era addition to Thomas Pynchon’s “Proverbs for Paranoids” is Anyone who’s not paranoid in this day and age isn’t paying attention!)​

  55. 55.

    James E Powell

    @Geminid:

    Even other church goers don’t neccesarily want harshell Baptists calling the shots in their communities’ government.

    While that may be true, they prefer it to any Democrats calling the shots in their communities’ governments. Their state & national governments, also too.

  56. 56.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Brachiator: When I go for medical exams, I am still asked if I have smoked tobacco. Never been asked about cannabis.​

    Insufficient data on any possible relationship between marijuana-smoking and health to justify the insurance companies jacking up your premium because you indulge(d). And TBH any possible excuse to jack up your rate is all they care about. (NB Insurance is theft!)

  57. 57.

    Kay

    Jesse Eisinger
    @eisingerj
    18h
    Oh look who’s the introductory speaker at the Koch-backed small biz group’s Tax Summit:
    Kyrsten Sinema.
    (The Dems & Biden administration are trying to pass tax reforms that would hit wealthy owners of partnerships.)

    It was always about preserving the Trump tax cuts. Always. Anything that involved repeal or reform of any of the Trump tax cuts was never getting by Sinema and Manchin.
    Dems should put a straight repeal of the Trump tax cuts with all the revenue going to deficit reduction up for a vote- don’t worry- it’ll only get (max) 48 votes in the Senate.
    It doesn’t matter what they trade or what they offer- as long as it involves “raising taxes” Manchin and Sinema will find an excuse to oppose it. It’s their one priority.

  58. 58.

    MobiusKlein

    @Brachiator: In California, I have been asked about pot smoking in medical exams. Seemed routine. Also asked about sex stuff, for HIV screening.

  59. 59.

    mrmoshpotato

    Raskin: I concede our party is not for the kind of cocaine fueled orgies that a freshman Republican representative bragged about but we do understand that their marijuana prohibition laws don’t work for our people

    Ahem…COCAINE CAWTHORN!

  60. 60.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    In general, people get more conservative as they get older. I certainly have. Not politically, same old “who cares?” socialist I’ve always been, but technologically.

    I think I have become more radical politically, which I enjoy. Or just happy that I have not become afraid and intolerant as times change.

    I also realize that I am profoundly grateful to have lived through and witnessed a time, from the 60s through today, of incredible social, cultural and political change.

    Also love technological change. Had an aunt who rode in trains and carriages as a young girl, and traveled in jet planes as an adult. She loved it. I love new stuff even if I don’t know how it all works.

    The one thing that surprised me is that I have got more cranky, and I have to work harder at patience. Some of this is clearly related, I think, to nutrition and other factors as I get older. I have to snack healthily and hydrate or else my mood is affected.

  61. 61.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud:

    I remember when progressives were concerned that Republicans would overtake Dems when it came to pot issues. 

    Haha.  It’s not weed that they all want to snort off of Dump’s fat, orange, fascist ass.  (Sorry not sorry)

  64. 64.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @mrmoshpotato:

    “…their marijuana prohibition laws don’t work for our people”

    Happy to identify as one of “Jamie Raskin’s people”!

  65. 65.

    Brachiator

    @Kay: 

    The Southern Baptist Convention voted to end its eight-year boycott of the Walt Disney Co. on Wednesday, an implicit acknowledgment that its “family values” campaign failed to bring the entertainment giant to its knees.

    Does this mean that Governor DeSantis is going to fight the Southern Baptists?

    I would enjoy that.

  68. 68.

    JaneE

    Pot can be a gateway drug if the guy you buy pot from also sells other drugs which are both addictive and have bigger profit margins and wants you to switch products.  Not really all that different from the upselling done for legal products.  And almost every pot smoker ever started with tobacco.

    I like knowing that if I want pot I can go to 3 or 4 different stores more or less locally and not have to worry much about contamination or adulteration or someone trying to sell me something I don’t want.  Back in the 60’s you might get pot, or you might get some other green stuff that looked like pot, or you might get either of them that was laced with something which could be another drug to get you high or a herb/insecticide that would really do some damage.   Or you could grow your own.

    I really want to see medical research into cannabis and its compounds.  I have seen one article several years ago that looked like it was promising as a new painkiller using a different metabolic pathway from NSIAIDs or opioids.  It has been anecdotally useful against glaucoma for decades.  But no research because it was schedule 1.  And yet there was still research done elsewhere which showed it did have medical applications.  It probably won’t cure cancer, but if something really useful does come from more research, it is almost a century late, and that is a real shame.

  69. 69.

    oatler

    I was in line at a dispensary earlier this year and overheard a grumpy-sounding woman fumfering a load of QAnon nonsense. In a line to buy “mellowing” weed.

  70. 70.

    Geminid

    @JaneE: One form of cannabis, the “Charlotte’s Web” strain, has proven effective at suppressing a rare and severe form of chilhood epilepsy. After testimony by parents the Virginia legislature approved this medical use years before permitting medical cannabis use in general.

    I would be surprised if that is the only cannabinoid that acts beneficially on the human nervous system. Now that more research is allowed, scientists and laypeople might discover and develop strains that can treat other serious neurologic diseases like Parkinson’s.

    Cannabis is a good natural analgesic. I was glad to hear it when the NFL quietly relaxed it’s drug testing for cannabis. Those guys need weed if anyone does. And as I alluded to already, cannabis might help people trying to get off opioids or meth. Some of the strains out there now are so powerful they might substitute for the more dangerous drugs long enough for the addictive hunger to fade. I think an addict would still have to have a desire to quit, but cannabis could make quitting easier.

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