Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Everybody saw this coming.

Let’s finish the job.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

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

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

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

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Republicans in disarray!

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

The willow is too close to the house.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

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

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Thursday Evening Open Thread: Stop Trying to Make ‘Martyred St. Romney’ Happen!

Thursday Evening Open Thread: Stop Trying to Make ‘Martyred St. Romney’ Happen!

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Y’all may remember, I am a charter member of the ‘Not A Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney Fan’ organization, but many people are saying this. Many people!

For all the good it did him…

Reader Interactions

169Comments

  7. 7.

    SpaceUnit

    I know it sounds crazy but I’m starting to think that treating Mitt Romney badly might be code for electing a black guy.

  9. 9.

    MattF

    RWNJs were also radicalized by the way the evil libs treated Robert Bork. And the way Obama made a joke about Donald Trump.

  11. 11.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Mittens Romney has always been a douche.  The treatment of Seamus alone is reason to consider him a douche.  Not to mention all the other shit that Ragnarok Lobster pointed out.

  14. 14.

    Redshift

    What a shock – these guys got “radicalized” all the way from “elections are illegitimate unless we win” to “elections are illegitimate unless we win, so let’s overthrow the government.”

  15. 15.

    topclimber

    The Dem attack line on Mitt’s vulture capitalism has been around since Ted Kennedy used it successfully when Romney ran against him for senator. That was damn near 30 years ago.

    Cook is executive vp and communications officer for the American Banking Association. If his circle is getting radicalized, watch out world. They might refuse the next handout the government offers them.

  16. 16.

    Gvg

    I think this guy is an idiot and whomever is pointing him out to Democrats is just trying to outrage post to us much like certain media do to republican fools. My recollection is Romney wasn’t that exciting to Republican voters and i doubt there are more than a few who hold these claimed veiws. Possibly his personal friends, some of whom might be called influential but not significant numbers.

    In othet words, bullshit. Not even political party bullshit, but some pundit or attention seekers own special bullshit.

    I’ll bet Romney knows better.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    We treated Trump far worse than we treated Romney.  Can’t wait to see what horrors that will justify.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    @Gvg: Right.  We should ask who this Peter Cook guy is.  If he’s some kind of big shot, then we should be aware that he lacks credibility.  If he’s a nobody, then he’s not worth our time.

    ETA: Ok, like vaccine deniers, I did my own research.  Here’s his twitter bio.  Looks to be a nobody. Perhaps even a Russian plant.

    Always home. Uncool. I regularly delete tweets older than two weeks.

    Time to start sharing recipes in this thread.

  23. 23.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Wasn’t the MA healthcare bill passed with a veto-proof majority?  Also, I believe Scott Lemieux has posted several times about the world of difference between that law and the ACA (spoiler: No, the MA plan was not all that similar to the structure of Obamacare).

  28. 28.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Really, I though Vulture Capitalism is the hard left of the Republican Parties these days along with War Mongers like Bolton and Cheney (silly libertard Romney thinks killing workers is only a accidental result of quest for profits, not an end on to itself like a TRUE Conservative does)

  29. 29.

    Old Man Shadow

    Republicans never have agency. It’s always someone else’s fault for why they lash out and act out in the worst ways.

    It’s the same shit abusers say to their victims.

  31. 31.

    Steeplejack

    This looks like a good place to drop a bleg for the night shift coming on.

    Last week I bought a Fitbit Charge 5. I’m getting used to wearing it all the time and reading up on all the features. Job 1: I changed the clock face to something less obnoxious (I went with Retroflip).

    I’m asking for people’s tips or “one neat trick” type things to ease the learning curve. I’m mostly interested in using it to track steps/​distance for walking. Probably will check out the other features, but that’s the main thing. Also interested in any “I never thought I would like x” items. Thanks in advance.

  32. 32.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Having a tough day here.  Our long-time pet-sitter texted us to let her know that she is using the harness/support that we gave her to assist her elderly/dying dog.  I’m glad it’s helping her but it just reminded me of our loss of Juniper almost two years ago and how hard that was and is bringing back all the memories of her last days :(

  34. 34.

    VOR

    I call bullshit. Romney was not beloved of the far right, he was viewed as too likely to compromise. And after the 2012 election the RNC did an after action report, aka “autopsy” report, where they called for moderation and inclusion.

    The report, called the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” lays out an extensive plan the RNC believes will lead the party to victory with an extensive outreach to women, African-American, Asian, Hispanic and gay voters. Among the plans: hiring paid outreach staffers across the country in a $10 million push that begins right away; backing “comprehensive immigration reform”; abbreviating the presidential primary process with fewer debates, specifically saying the party would like at least half the 20 there were during the 2012 cycle; and moving the convention to June or July, as well as improving the data and digital effort.

    “We have become expert at how to provide ideological information to like-minded people but ,devastatingly, we have lost the ability to be persuasive with or welcoming to those who don’t agree with us on every issue,” Bradshaw said, noting they need to be “inviting and inspiring.”

    And then their voters chose Trump’s message instead.

    Finally, are they saying Republican voters aren’t responsible for their own actions? Do only Democrats have agency?

  36. 36.

    Mike E

    Oh I think I read that book, The Unbearable Whiteness Of Being. 500 pages of imagined victimhood, fun.

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    “Mitt Romney is the Robert Bork of George W Bushes.”

    Now fuck off with your weak-ass “reap the whirlwind” shit. Hey, I know, go find us one 2022-edition Republican Romney fan. You can find me at the bar.

  39. 39.

    evodevo

    They were radicalized because of ….RMoney?  Give me a break…the Teabagger phenom started as soon as Obama was elected…at least by 2009, and they were already fired up for anti-ACA demonstrations by 2010…it’s been ongoing ever since.  Trumpy just gave them permission to go all out…

  40. 40.

    mrmoshpotato

    Really?  Romney?  Do they know what decade it is?

    Time for dinner and a bike ride.

  42. 42.

    Hoodie

    @Baud: These are the kind of posts that I’ve grown to hate.  There was a similar one on LGM, just another random Twitter asshole with a stinking opinion that is of no significance whatsoever.   Like others have said, MAGA types hated Romney when he ran in 2012, thus just voted for him because he wasn’t The Black Guy, “double Guantanamo” and he was endorsed by Trump.  Therefore, there’s next to zero chance that treatment of Romney by Dems motivated anyone to vote for Trump.   They would have preferred to vote for Trump in 2012.

  44. 44.

    Ken

    @topclimber: Cook is executive vp and communications officer for the American Banking Association.

    Now I’m half expecting an announcement from the American Banking Association association tomorrow regarding a change in their executive board.

  45. 45.

    topclimber

    @Baud: It is hard to tell. His first Twitter descriptor is uncool, which is the classic definition of a Bloomberg journalist.

    The headshots are decidedly different, that’s for sure.

  47. 47.

    topclimber

    @Ken: ​Much to my chagrin, failed Presidential candidate Baud has pointed out that this is probably not the guy.

  48. 48.

    Urza

    @zhena gogolia: Forgot that burn.  That was a good one, though being about foreign policy I think it was more the burn than what he actually replied with that mattered.

  49. 49.

    Suzanne

    Hot damn. Peter Cook is dumb.

    It occurs to me that Republicans, hell, white men in general, do not know how to compete. Romney lost because he couldn’t compete. There’s no shame in that — that’s part of life — but there’s plenty of shame in this sniveling bullshit. Blaming your side’s reprehensible, deplorable behavior on losing a fair fight?! STFU.

    FAAFO is my favorite financial disclosure document.

  52. 52.

    Geminid

    Republican apologists must have pretty slim pickings if they’re going 10 years back to drag up an injustice that never happened.

  53. 53.

    zhena gogolia

    @trollhattan: Hot damn! Sevastopol! That’s going to leave a mark.

    — Says woman who’s slogging through Tolstoy’s stories about the siege

  54. 54.

    Ken

    @topclimber: I object to the word “failed”. Baud has not lost any Presidential election where his name was on the ballot, unlike Romney and TFG.

  56. 56.

    sdhays

    Something we forget is that Obama was unfair to Romney in the first debate by putting in a lousy performance and tricking Romney and his supporters into thinking they actually had a chance. When Obama mopped the floor with him in the second debate and directly called out his lying, the wind left his sails, never to return.

    The disappointment!

  59. 59.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I can’t have illegals cutting my lawn! I’m running for office for Pete’s sake!

  61. 61.

    SpaceUnit

    I’m looking at Peter Cook’s avatar and imagining him hugging a framed photograph of Romney while tears run down his cheeks.

  64. 64.

    Kropacetic

    @Danielx: What? A black guy got elected and had the absolute audacity to get re-elected? That’s not injustice??!!???

    It would be one thing if he were simply reelected, that would be fine.  But to criticize Rmoney and campaign against him was beyond the pale…

  68. 68.

    hueyplong

    Another way to look at it is that Obama called Mittens a Republican and GOPers call Mittens a RINO.

    They are, this very day, treating Mitt worse than the awful libz do.

    This line of attack is even more ridiculous than Trump’s shifting document excuses.

  70. 70.

    Kropacetic

    Never forget that Mitt pioneered the “lie about literally everything” strategy that Trump rode into the White House.

  71. 71.

    Roger Moore

    @MattF: ​
     

    RWNJs were also radicalized by the way the evil libs treated Robert Bork.

    Yeah, the way they treated Bork was terrible. They asked him tough questions during his committee hearing, then gave him a floor vote even though the committee voted not to advance his nomination. Such savagery. They should have just rubber stamped the guy who was corruptly promised a Supreme Court post in exchange for carrying out the Saturday Night Massacre.

  72. 72.

    eachother

    @Steeplejack: If you walk backward you get younger.
    If you break the crystal you can’t get back to the future. Playing a chord using all 88 piano keys may restore you to real time but you may return Baroque.

  73. 73.

    Tony Jay

    @Geminid:

    Yeah, but if Obama hadn’t pantsed the candidate of the traditional Republican establishment so badly that he had to go hide in a big pile of money, then the Republican electorate wouldn’t have had the gosh-darned gumption to think they could pick their own candidate next time, would they?

    Once again, the radical left fails to understand how Real America works.

  74. 74.

    narya

    @Steeplejack: I switched my Fitbit out for a Misfit, largely because the old Fitbit had to be charged often AND the charging cord/connection was stupidly fiddly. That said, the newer FB’s seem to have improved. Why do I keep using any device for this? Because it’s the tiniest poke to get off my butt to meet my daily goal. Most of the time it’s not an issue–I run or walk nearly every morning, for 4-6 miles–but sometimes on weekends I don’t haul my ass out of bed early enough. I’ve found that maintaining a streak, or hitting the goal, or whatever, is a self-reminder–a post-it note on my wrist–that will be enough to make me go do something on those days. Eventually I’ll get an Apple Watch, at which point I’ll check out their fitness apps for other activities, but the usage will be the same: get off my butt. I admit to a small tick of satisfaction for meeting the goal, but I’m also a bit embarrassed to post this here.

  75. 75.

    Steeplejack

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Condolences. I still get a twinge about the housecat, who died in April 2020. Try to concentrate on the good memories. And see if you can support your petsitter, who seems to be facing some tough decisions ahead.

  78. 78.

    Kropacetic

    @SpaceUnit: For the record, Obama didn’t literally pull down Mitt’s pants on the debate stage.

    No, Mitt did that himself and Obama called him on it, “Please proceed…”

  80. 80.

    Barbara

    Every battered spouse in the world has heard the same logic applied to their own victimization, which basicallycomes down to, “It’s your fault I’m a monster.” Peter Cook evidently belongs to the class that thinks that sacrifice is for others and his own journey through life should be unimpeded by other people’s needs. We. Don’t. Owe. You. Anything. I’m sorry voting for the black guy was so hard for you to bear.

  83. 83.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    The party of personal responsibility wants to blame everyone else for their own racism and antisemitism

  85. 85.

    oatler

    @CarolPW:

    You can see Cook in “The Rise And Rise of Michael Rimmer” from 1969, a demonically accurate prophecy (can be found on YouTube).

    You enjoying that sandwich?

  86. 86.

    Roger Moore

    @Steeplejack:

    I’m asking for people’s tips or “one neat trick” type things to ease the learning curve.

    You can customize the displays so it doesn’t show you things you don’t care about.  For example, I never use the feature to track how much water I drink, so I don’t show it.

  87. 87.

    Citizen Alan

    @Urza: While those were factors, you seriously underestimate IMO the extent to which Romney’s Mormonism suppressed turnout among evangelicals.

    True story: In 2008, when he was running against McCain, I attended church with my parents for Mothers’ Day services. And the pastor felt the need to interrupt the Mother’s Day sermon to say “And by the way, Mormonism is a Satanic ult.” It was that much of a non sequitur. I thought for a moment that I’d nodded off and had woken up in a completely different sermon! Then, he went back to his usual “wives, submit to your husbands” BS.

    Based on that, I genuinely thought it was possible for Obama to carry Mississippi in 2012 because in 2008, he took 11% of the white vote, and it would have only taken 15% to put him over the top. That he did not do so was because thousands of Mississippians who genuinely thought Mitt Romney was in a Satanic cult nevertheless picked him over a black man. It foreshadowed Trump in a way–at this point, I think most evangelicals would willingly take the Mark of the Beast before voting for a Democrat.

  88. 88.

    Turgidson

    @Kropacetic:

    This doesn’t get nearly enough attention in my mind.  The Mittens Campaign lied fucking nonstop, and kept telling the same ones over and over even after getting called on them numerous times.  It was fucking reprehensible.  The media and voters have memory holed it because Mittens lost anyway and because we all know what happened in the next GOP primary.  But pre-Trump, Mittens was truly in a class by himself in the mendacity Olympics.

  89. 89.

    Tony Jay

    @SpaceUnit:

    I doubt if it would have been possible. For my money Mandroid Mitt was born wearing a pair of perfectly creased dress pants and has never gone without. Even his attempts at ‘blue jeans and boots’ were just slipped over the top of them.

    Tig, Tag and Bombadil (whatever his kids were called) weren’t so much procreated as exuded from Mitt’s bulging nanite vent.

  91. 91.

    Citizen Alan

    @Geminid: Dude, they’re still ranting about fucking Bork even though he was allowed a full Senate vote despite the committee voting him down, and he was decisively voted down by the full Senate by 58-42 with six Republicans voting against him.

    ETA: What Roger Moore said.

  93. 93.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Roger Moore: ​
      Bork was voted down by 6 republicans. It was a bipartisan rejection. Even the reactionary Boll weevils voted against him en masse.

    His defeat in the Senate was the worst of any Supreme Court nominee since…[ ] 1845, and the third-worst on record [in 245 years]

  95. 95.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Steeplejack: She’s had a real rough go recently, losing one dog a few months ago and now her other one.  Also lost her Mom to Covid in 2020.

  97. 97.

    dm

    Someone went nut-picking on twitter and we’re supposed to care?

    So, if you actually go to Peter Cook’s twitter whatever-its-called, you can find the original tweet.  I was curious, since my first thought was he might be associated with the “Cook Report”, which I see quoted favorably by people writing about politics; if so, he might actually be commenting on something worth knowing about.  He’s probably not Cook Report, and he is responding, but only to some twitter rando.

    In it, he was responding to some guy responding to George Conway.  The thread goes like this:

    • Conway: Well, Liz Cheney lost the election, but she won the dignity contest.
    • Somebody: We tried dignity with Romney, and look what it got us (long list of semi-imagined insults for which one can sometimes see some reality underlying the umbrage)
    • Peter Cook: Yes, the treatment of Romney pissed a lot of people off in the extreme.

    Which could be sarcasm, it could even be nut-picking itself, except a lot of Peter Cook’s feed is retweets of retweets of National Review articles, so I doubt it’s either of those.

    Increasingly lately, when I get a glimpse into the workings of the run-of-them-mill conservative mind, I feel like I’m in a funhouse mirror-maze.  I catch glimpses of things that exist in my reality, but they’re distorted and weird.  I suppose it’s mostly nth-generation friend-of-friend repeats of Fox News.  But I don’t even know how to begin to talk someone down from that high.

  98. 98.

    Tony Jay

    @SpaceUnit:

    I’d forgotten how much fun it was ripping the shit out of Mitt Romney. The man was so uncomfortable in his skin it was clear he was wearing it inside out for much of the campaign.

  99. 99.

    Steeplejack

    @narya:

    Don’t be embarrassed—this is useful. (Although at first I thought you were yanking me with “Misfit.”) I have been trying to get out and walk more—the pandemic put me in serious bunker sloth mode—and I got the Fitbit somewhat as a motivational toy. Fiddling with it is enjoyable to my geek side, and so far it is reminding me that I need to move more. And I am getting off to an okay start.

  101. 101.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Quotations from Chairman Mittens

     

    “Let Detroit go bankrupt.”

    “I like being able to fire people!”

    “Don’t try and stop the foreclosure process, let it run its course and hit the bottom.”

    “The banks aren’t bad people, they’re just overwhelmed, right now.”

    “Banks are scared to death, of course. They are feeling the same thing you’re feeling.”

    “Corporations are people, my friend.”

    “I should tell my story. I’m also unemployed.”

    “There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip.”

    Romney’s solution for illegal immigration: “self-deportation.”

    “We went to the company and we said, ‘Look, you can’t have any illegals working on our property. I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake! I can’t have illegals.’ ”

    “I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.” (Nearly $400,000).

    “I’ll bet you 10,000 dollars.”

    Asked, “Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though?” Romney responded, “I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms.”

    When asked if he would support the $1500 payroll tax cut ~ “Look, I don’t like temporary little Band-Aids.”

    Described his 3,000 square foot, beach front mansion, valued at 12 million dollars, as “very small”.

    Described his 5,400 square foot, summer home in New Hampshire, which also has a large boathouse and separate guest house, as a “little place”.

    “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person [Osama bin Laden].”

    “I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden.” [I’m not kidding, he really said that]

    Explaining why none of his five sons enlisted to fight in the Iraq war he promotes: “one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I’d be a great president. I respect that and respect all those and the way they serve this great country.”

    “I was a severely conservative Republican governor.”

    “The trees are the right height [in Michigan].”

    “We will hear from the Democrat Party on the plight of the poor.”

    “It’s not good being poor.”

    “You can focus on the very poor — that’s not my focus.”

    “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”

  102. 102.

    Geminid

    @Citizen Alan: I noticed how political evangelical leaders who were so tepid in their support of the upright Romney enthusiastically embraced the reprobate Trump. I bet LDS people noticed too.

  103. 103.

    kalakal

    @Urza: I remember watching in fascination the debate where he claimed that Syria was Iran’s route to the sea.

    once I stopped laughing 2 things terrified me.

    1) A presidential candidate was making a major foreign policy statement, he an his team had prepared this as an attack on Obama and none of them had even as much as looked at a map, let alone done any real research.

    2) No one at the debate, wether Obama or the commentariat called him out “Iran has 1,500 miles of coastline but no border with Syria, that’s some plan you’ve got there Mitt” and nor did anyone I was watching it with , Dem party, Pinellas.

  104. 104.

    Roger Moore

    @David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: ​
     
    The thing that gets me is the extent to which Bork’s role in the Saturday Night Massacre has been completely memory holed. A man who would do that doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the Supreme Court. Reagan’s decision to nominate him should be seen as a deliberate provocation, but somehow it’s the Democrats who get the blame.

  105. 105.

    Another Scott

    Rmoney is a monster who thinks he’s owed his destiny as the guy on the white horse.

    David Corn’s famous piece at MotherJones from 2012:

    Rmoney speaking:

    There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

    Corn:

    At the dinner, Romney often stuck to familiar talking points. But there were moments when he went beyond the familiar campaign lines. Describing his family background, he quipped about his father, “Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.” Contending that he is a self-made millionaire who earned his own fortune, Romney insisted, “I have inherited nothing.” He remarked, “There is a perception, ‘Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.’ Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America.”

    Romney told the contributors that “women are open to supporting me,” but that “we are having a much harder time with Hispanic voters, and if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting block has in the past, why, we’re in trouble as a party and, I think, as a nation.” When one attendee asked how this group could help Romney sell himself to others, he answered, “Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars.” He added, “The fact that I’m either tied or close to the president…that’s very interesting.”

    Rmoney:

    I have a very good team of extraordinarily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particular who have done races around the world. I didn’t realize it. These guys in the US—the Karl Rove equivalents—they do races all over the world: in Armenia, in Africa, in Israel. I mean, they work for Bibi Netanyahu in his race. So they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best, and we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign. I’d tell them to you, but I’d have to shoot you.

    He didn’t have it easy like those Mexicans, who win the Presidency every time, you see. No, he created and paid for the Mitt that he wanted to show the voters all by himself, with no help at all from anyone, especially not his wealthy and talented industrial/political father, and also the Mitt he wanted to show his donors. He had the money (his own money that had nothing to do with anyone else) and the good looks and felt he was entitled to the big chair. Seamus liked being on top of the car on the highway for 12 hours, you see, and of course the trees are the right height in Michigan, and anyone saying otherwise is being unfair to poor Mittster. Only mean Democrats kept him from his destiny. Shame on you – yes you – for being a mean Democrat.

    (grocho-roll-eyes.gif)

    And now monsters on Twitter are looking for every possible squirrel to distract voters from the good things that Democrats are doing for the country even with all the challenges.

    Eyes on the prizes.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  106. 106.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Let’s not forget how Mittens had a Swiss bank account and wouldn’t release his taxes

    Harry Reid doesn’t regret accusing Mitt Romney of not paying taxes

    ***

    [Reid] rebuffed those who said his attacks were “McCarthyite.”

    “Well, they can call it whatever they want,” Reid said. “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

    God bless Harry Reid

  107. 107.

    Steeplejack

    @Roger Moore:

    Thanks. I’m still mostly in “just out of the box” mode, so it shows me (in succession) heart rate, calories, steps, distance and some “fitness zone” rating that I haven’t figured out yet.

  108. 108.

    Baud

    @Roger Moore:

    Along with only Dems have agency, the media believes that only the GOP can break norms. Dems can never do something unprecedented, no matter how justified by the circumstances.

  112. 112.

    dm

    @David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Reid on Romney’s taxes was one of the things that the Cook’s-timeline Republican bitch-fest brought up as being unfair and dishonest

    “He started it!”  Twitter sometimes reminds me of kids in the back seat of a 12-hour drive in the pre-airconditioning era.

  113. 113.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Baud: ​  It wasn’t even unprecedented. The republicans filibustered two of LBJ’s nominees in 1968. He had nominated (elevated) Abe Fortas (of Gideon vs Wainwright fame) to replace the retiring Earl Warren and Homer Thornberry to replace Fortas who was an Associate Justice at the time.
    They didn’t get a vote.
    But it’s okay if you are republican​

  114. 114.

    Another Scott

    @Steeplejack: I just let my FitBit Charge 5 do its thing.  The step count agrees pretty well with what Google Fit on my phone thinks.  (E.g. Thus far today: GF 3289 steps, FitBit 3954 steps, but I haven’t had my phone with me all day).  I haven’t bothered trying to tell it (or my phone) that cutting the grass is not “Exercise Bike” – I just let it do its thing and don’t worry about it.

    I don’t know any tricks to speak of.  ;-)

    Looking forward to other responses.

    My $0.02.  HTH a little.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  117. 117.

    Gin & Tonic

    Seeing reports on russian social media of explosions in Kerch. It is almost 0300 there.

  120. 120.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Geminid: ​
      Harry Reid biography is fascinating:

    A man named Jack Gordon, who later married LaToya Jackson, tried to give Reid a $12,000 bribe. Reid let the FBI videotape Gordon offering him the bribe, and then, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal account, he “put his hands around Gordon’s neck and said, ‘You son of a bitch, you tried to bribe me.’”

    is there another U.S. senator who has been part of the inspiration for a character in a Martin Scorsese film [Casino]? (A character played by Dick Smothers, no less.)

    Reid’s wife, Landra, famously escaped death when mobsters attempted to blow up Reid’s family car in 1981.

    At nineteen, he had a fistfight with his future father-in-law (because he opposed his daughter’s marriage)

  121. 121.

    Steeplejack

    @dm:

    I’m starting to regret the energy expended on this topic a little bit. Not blaming Anne Laurie, but a bunch of Twitter pundits seem to have fallen into a rage-farming trap that led to deep-dive discussions of . . . Mitt Romney? Yeesh.

  123. 123.

    RaflW

    I still remember how shocked Mitt was that “Binders full of women” didn’t work well as an applause line. Always was a tin ear and a pretentious elite capitalist.

  124. 124.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Another Scott:

    Romney insisted, “I have inherited nothing.” He remarked, “There is a perception, ‘Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.’ Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America

    to an automotive CEO and cabinet officer and governor of one of the largest states in the country (at the time) who was a serious contender for the presidency, and not for nothing gave you a “nest egg” that was worth iirc about $500K in 2012 dollars

  129. 129.

    UncleEbeneezer

    So I finally watched a clip of Ron DeSatan today, for the first time and I must say…I don’t see it.  Sure, he hates the right people etc., but he really doesn’t have the same charisma that Trump has.  And I don’t think he’s gonna have the same drawing power to the MAGA chuds nor enough of the “Reasonable Conservative” persona to attract enough Independent/Swing voters.  I think he would draw closer to Romney or McCain levels of GOP turnout than Trump.  Maybe I’m just being willfully optimistic, but he also barely won in Florida!

  131. 131.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Another Scott:

    Describing his family background, he quipped about his father, “Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.”

    Cause, you know, those people get all the breaks, but you practically have to apologize for being white these days.

    (credit where due, when I saw Our Willard marching for Black Lives Matter, I almost fell out of my chair. I’m willing to recognize growth, but get out of here with this “You were mean to Mitt” garbage)

  132. 132.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Gawd, and then the 2012 convention with his shrew wife screaming “I love you women!” and a dotard Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair.

  133. 133.

    dm

    @Steeplejack: I was regretting it halfway through typing up what I’d found.  Then it was just good keystrokes after bad/sunk-cost fallacy.

    One benefit this thread did bring was the reminder of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

  134. 134.

    Another Scott

    @Steeplejack: The “zone” stuff is to indicate where (supposedly) you’re most efficiently using calories and losing weight.  And other stuff – it’s based on estimates of your peak heart rate.

    FitBit Heart Rate Zones. (You may need to expand the section).

    Mine buzzes briefly when I enter the Fat Burn Zone and shows some info on the screen.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  135. 135.

    RSA

    The treatment of Mitt Romney during the 2012 election radicalized a lot of GOP voters in a way that the left and the press still don’t seem to understand.

    I’m remembering photoshopped images of Obama as Satan and the anti-Christ. Granted, “Electing my opponent will mean the end of democracy” has been a thing since the 1800s, but Republicans have said this every election in my lifetime. (Democrats only had a bit of fear-mongering toward the end of Bush II’s second term.) It’s crazy that when we’re actually in this situation, hardly any GOP voters will admit that they’re the real danger.

  136. 136.

    dm

    One other thing I noticed in my foray into the funhouse: “They’ve been investigating Trump for six years and haven’t come up with anything.”

    Wow.

  138. 138.

    Fake Irishman

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Masscare was the blueprint for Obamacare. Leimieux talks about the Heritage plan from  the early 1990s with an individual mandate being completely different when lazy folks say Obama was a sellout because he proposed a plan similar to the Heritage plan (and the parties are the same etc etc)

  139. 139.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog

    @VOR:

    Who could forget the “Gropertunity” project?  No one can say it wasn’t superlatively on-brand.

  140. 140.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     Donald Trump, Birther In Chief? Poll Has Him Leading GOP Field With 26 Percent

    April 15, 2011 4:35 PM ET

    This was a full year and a half before the 2012 fall campaign.

    They were flocking to Dump and his birtherism. They never wanted staid Mittens. It was never about Mittens or the 2012 campaign. They wanted the unvarnished racism they had been fed since Nixon’s-Jesse Helms’s-Strom Thurmand’s 1968 “southern strategy”​

  145. 145.

    catclub

    @UncleEbeneezer: ​
     

    ,[DeSantis] but he really doesn’t have the same charisma that Trump has.

    The only charisma Trump has ( and for his rubes, it is enough) is that he can claim he is a billionaire and they will believe him. See how much coverage Jon Huntsman or Michael Bloomberg get compared with any competent non-billionaire politician.

  146. 146.

    Origuy

    @Steeplejack: Do you have a smartphone? You might be interested in the Strava app. I have an Apple Watch, but I’m sure the Fitbit works with it. You can upload your activities and share them, if you want, so that your friends can see them. Strava may also do some analysis that the native Fitbit app doesn’t.

  147. 147.

    Steeplejack

    @Another Scott:

    Thanks. I’ve got a cheap pedometer that I used to use, and I have a vague memory of a walking/​jogging phone app even further back than that. I’d like to get a feel for how “accurate” the Fitbit is, and I guess I could use one of those for comparison. But I’m tending toward “set it and forget it” like you.

    I did see a discussion of Fitbit solo GPS accuracy vs. Fitbit linked to your phone GPS. Some of the comments seemed valid, some seemed like sawing sawdust. Wouldn’t matter much to me unless the disparity was pretty big.

  148. 148.

    Steeplejack

    @CarolPW:

    The remake of Bedazzled (2000) with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley is surprisingly good. . . . Huh, directed by Harold Ramis, IMDB reminds me.

  149. 149.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    I remember Mittens once staged a photo of of him doing laundry and he was completely befuddled on how to start the washer.  Had no idea.  None what so ever.  To make it worse it was a basic washer not one of the new machines that have 50 settings.

  151. 151.

    Steeplejack

    @Kayla Rudbek:

    I’ve barely scratched the surface, but the Fitbit seems to have the ability to link to “friends” and join communities and do challenges, etc. Not very interesting to me at this point—maybe later.

  153. 153.

    Steeplejack

    @dm:

    “They’ve been investigating Trump for six years and haven’t come up with anything.”

    [Spit-take!] 💦

  156. 156.

    lowtechcyclist

    @CarolPW: ​
     

    Peter Cook was brilliant in Bedazzled, but he’s dead Baud.

    Boy howdy, was he ever! He and Dudley Moore were also quite good in The Wrong Box, which also had a young Michael Caine in a major role. And of course he was the priest in The Princess Bride.

  157. 157.

    dm

    @Steeplejack: Oh, god, now the context-free will think I said that.  Glad it is in a mostly-dead thread, and wasn’t a tweet.

    But like I said: things are weird over in the right wing.

  158. 158.

    NotMax

    FYI (emphasis added).

    A Texas school district is pulling all books from library shelves and classrooms that were challenged by parents, lawmakers and other community members in the last year — including the Bible.

    The day before students started back at the Keller Independent School District, which serves students in the Fort Worth suburbs, Jennifer Price, the executive director of curriculum and instruction, told principals and librarians to remove 41 books while they undergo a review, according to an email obtained by the Texas Tribune.

    Some of the books included in the list are all editions of the Bible, a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” by Maia Kobabe, the Tribune reported. Kobabe’s book tops the American Library Association’s list for most banned books in 2021. Source

  159. 159.

    lowtechcyclist

    Of course it is only the Republicans’ fault that they’ve become what they’ve become. But in the annals of “look what you made me do,” this has to be the most weak-ass excuse there ever was, just transparently bullshit. Did they get mad about that “treatment” at the time? I sure don’t remember it. And knowing full well it doesn’t and shouldn’t matter, it’s hard for me to imagine what possible “treatment of Mitt Romney” this Cook guy could be referring to. I’d love to see his examples, so I could laugh at them.

  160. 160.

    J R in WV

    I have a new Maytag, which turned itself off the other day when our pump system suffered an intermittent failure. The owner’s manual says to press and hold the power switch, which I have done multiple times.

    Also says you may need to unplug it to reset things, which I have done for lots longer than the recommendation. Still says Loc and won’t rinse and spin the load that was in there when the water went off days ago.

    So I don’t feel too bad about Willard (which fuck him!) having trouble with a washing machine… Could have gotten the maid to help, tho…

  161. 161.

    Steeplejack

    @dm:

    The quotation marks (should) indicate that it was something you quoted, not you yourself. And anyone wanting to revile you can click back to see the context. 😹

  162. 162.

    Another Scott

    @J R in WV: Cryptic error messages are annoying.

    I’m sure you’ve seen this, but on the off-chance you haven’t. I hope you find the magic combination of keypresses and time to get it unlocked.

    My 2004 VW sat for a couple of weeks because I couldn’t get the ignition to unlock – the key wouldn’t turn. Such a simple thing, but when it doesn’t work, it causes big problems. :-(

    (In my case, it seems to have been 18 years of wear and lint buildup and a possibly stuck tumbler. A brass wire acting as a digger, some canned air, some silicone spray, and about 30 minutes working in 100F heat to clean-out the keyway got it freed-up and working.)

    I hope you get it figured out! Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  163. 163.

    Narya

    @Steeplejack: I like Strava. More accurate than Fitbit or misfit. I used the free version for a year and actually ponied up for the paid version a year later.

  165. 165.

    dnfree

    @Steeplejack: if you use it, you’ll be surprised at how accurate the sleep monitoring can seem.  For instance, if I recall that I was dreaming right before I woke up, that’s what the Fitbit will indicate.  And if I feel somewhat sluggish, most likely it will show I didn’t get enough deep sleep.

    On your phone or computer, set up the hourly goals. I think I told you before, my goal is 250 steps per hour between 9 am and 9 pm, but you can set the hours that work for your schedule.  So if it’s 10:50 am and I have just been sitting in my chair or at my desk, the Fitbit gives me a gentle nudge and tells me how many steps shy of 250 I am.  Sometimes I ignore the reminder, but most times I get up and walk around for a few minutes.

  166. 166.

    Steeplejack

    @dnfree:

    Thanks for the tips. I wasn’t too interested in the sleep feature, except I thought I might try it a few times to see if I go into an apnea-adjacent coma when I sleep. And I’ll see how it matches up with my subjective sleep experience.

    The hourly goals are probably a good idea. I often sit too long at the computer, and taking regular breaks and, say, going down the block for a 10-minute walk would definitely be good.

  167. 167.

    dnfree

    @Steeplejack: I have informed the neighbors that if they see me come out the front door, walk the approximately 100 steps to the corner and then back, they should check the time.  It most likely will be within the last ten minutes of the hour.  Sometimes I am efficient and leave the house at for instance 9:57 and walk until 10:03, thereby checking off two hours at once.

    I sometimes count steps manually and the Fitbit is pretty accurate.

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