Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

He really is that stupid.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Republicans do not trust women.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

In after Baud. Damn.

The revolution will be supervised.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Bark louder, little dog.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Never Know When You’ll Need A Helmet…

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Never Know When You’ll Need A Helmet…

by | 178 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Thank you, Kalakal:

The campaign is produced for the Danish Road Safety Council by NewLand Film and &Co 2021

Ask these Repubs!


Some of Our Media Betters, also showing signs of closed-head trauma:

Reader Interactions

178Comments

  3. 3.

    Baud

    So the GOP did a lot of bad redistricting after their big 2010 victory, but we still won something like 40 seats in 2018 under those district maps.  It really does mostly depend on who shows up.

  4. 4.

    Brachiator

    Student loan stuff is only bc of the election. If he was truly progressive he would have proposed a $1.8 trillion plan w expanded child tax credit, free pre-K & community college, subsidized family leave, support for child care & family/medical leave, &…oh, wait, he actually did

    Yes, yes, yes.

    I will quote this whenever super progressives start whining about how “disappointed” they are with Biden.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    Dana Houle

    ·
    Aug 26, 2022

    @DanaHoule
    ·
    Follow

    If you’re saying something like “whoa, Biden really changed,” you’re not saying what you should say: “I was wrong. I don’t know shit about politics.”

    This is a marriable tweet.

  7. 7.

    p.a.

    Poor W, if only he’d said the racist stuff through a megaphone, maybe he’d have been as loved as tRump after showing himself a miserable failure too.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    WRT legislative victories, yes, a lot of them happen just before the election because Congress is on a clock too, and deadlines force legislators to fish or cut bait.

    No way Joe wanted didn’t want BBB back in 2021.

  9. 9.

    germy shoemangler

    The audacity of Curt Schilling — who took $75 million in government-backed loans, then bankrupted his company, stiffed his employees, and left Rhode Island taxpayers holding the bill — to lecture anyone else about debt forgiveness is truly breathtaking. pic.twitter.com/pR7ZrRd02Q

    — OrcishLibrarian (@BibliovoreOrc) August 25, 2022

  10. 10.

    Geminid

    @Baud: 2018 Democrat pickups on Republican maps included 3 in Virginia, 2 in Texas, 1 each in Georgia, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Kansas. There were 2 seats flipped in Michigan, but I’m not sure Republicans drew that map.

    The seats in South Carolina and Oklahoma were retaken by Republicans in 2020.

  11. 11.

    Ken

    It still feels more than a little weird to agree with Bill Kristol. I’m debating whether I want to scroll through his twitter feed. What if I agree with him on many things, not just the few tweets BJ front-pagers copy over here?

    I also like that Jort-Michel Connard tweet, but I thought Jort was a cat?

  12. 12.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Yesterday, a friend was telling me about a guy she works with who was a lifelong R but left the party because he thinks the current Rs are nuts. He not only left the Rs, but is actively working for the Ds. His only complaint is that the local Iowa Ds are disorganized.

    @p.a.: That is sadly true.

  13. 13.

    oatler

    I always thought it was funny that none of the handsome leads wore helmets during battles in LOTR.

  16. 16.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    There’s a piece on Kos saying the judge is going to give TFG his special master. Is that true? How would that even work? It’s so late. And there’s a bunch of highly classified material involved.

  23. 23.

    mrmoshpotato

    @DanaHoule

    If you’re saying something like “whoa, Biden really changed,” you’re not saying what you should say:

     

    “I was wrong. I don’t know shit about politics.”

    Say it louder for those in back, and the thick-headed idiots!

  24. 24.

    Ken

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: It won’t happen, but I can dream this will backfire like a genie wish:

    “ORDERED, that a Special Master be appointed to examine all documents in the possession of Donald J. Trump, to determine if any of them are the property of the United States Government, and to return any such documents to the Government;

    “FURTHER ORDERED, that all homes, offices, and other locations owned or controlled by said Donald J. Trump be now sealed, and no person be admitted to, or allowed to remove any material from, any such location until it has been inspected by the Special Master.”

  27. 27.

    mrmoshpotato

    David Marcus

    @BlueBoxDave

    The investigations into Trump will never end. This is the rest of our lives now.

    David, sit down.  I have something to tell you – “Well, if the orange shitstain would stop committing crimes!”

  30. 30.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    To my dismay, “promoted” posts show up in my twitter feed. One today reads: “Neither scientists nor biologists can explain these scary trail cam photos captured in the woods”

    Way to give a gratuitous slap to biologists!

  31. 31.

    Suzanne

    The investigations into Trump will never end. This is the rest of our lives now.

    There they are, threatening me with a good time again.

    This is another perfect time for the gif of Michael Jackson eating popcorn.

  33. 33.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I think what Trump is trying to do is delay, delay, and delay some more until the midterm elections. He knows that if the GOP takes the House and Senate, the Republicans will make all his problems go away, because they don’t give a shit about treason.

  35. 35.

    Suzanne

    @The Thin Black Duke: I just fundamentally do not understand. Shit, if I could retire yesterday, I would. All these ex-presidents get a great pension and can fly around the world giving speeches and rake in big dollars for very little work. That sounds great. Being the president sounds fucking terrible. I don’t understand why he wants to do it again. (To say nothing of how terrible it was for all of us citizens.)

  42. 42.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Also, we will judge if they’re scary, dammit!  Or if it’s just clickbait garbage for which several handfuls of slaps should be handed out.

    ETA – also, what about the makers of the trail cams?  Analysis is impossible?

    Someone (probably several people) need(s) a Sunday morning slap.

  43. 43.

    Nelle

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: The Polk County, Iowa Democrats are really organized, particularly in Urbandale.  Where is your friend?  They might want to look at our Neighbor to Neighbor plan.  I can give contact numbers.

  44. 44.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Suzanne:

    Being the president sounds fucking terrible. I don’t understand why he wants to do it again. (To say nothing of how terrible it was for all of us citizens.)

    Vlad and Bonesaw are probably demanding more state secrets.

  45. 45.

    Brachiator

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    I think what Trump is trying to do is delay, delay, and delay some more until the midterm elections. He knows that if the GOP takes the House and Senate, the Republicans will make all his problems go away, because they don’t give a shit about treason.

    The DOJ and FBI will continue to pursue Trump, as will New York state prosecutors. He may avoid a deeper look into January 6 issues, but his problems are not going away anytime soon.

    Hell, there will probably be more stuff, since Trump really does not understand that he is a FORMER president. His ego kept pushing boundaries.  And the chickens keep coming home to roost.

  46. 46.

    Suzanne

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Vlad and Bonesaw are probably demanding more state secrets. 

    That’s probably true.
    Depressing to consider.

    God, I could never be a criminal. It sounds like too much effort and stress.

  47. 47.

    germy shoemangler

    In a Friday rant against President Joe Biden’s student-loan forgiveness plan, Texas Republican Ted Cruz insisted that “slacker baristas” with debt will come out to support Democrats in the midterm elections. “If you are that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans and can’t get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand,” Cruz said his Verdict with Ted Cruz podcast. “Like, holy cow! 20 grand. You know, maybe you weren’t gonna vote in November, and suddenly you just got 20 grand.” The Texas Republican continued: “And you know, if you can get off the bong for a minute and head down to the voting station… or just send in your mail-in ballot that the Democrats have helpfully sent you, it could drive up turnout, particularly among young people.”

    You mad, bro?

  48. 48.

    MagdaInBlack

    @mrmoshpotato: I suspect you misunderstand his sarcasm at upper management and their expectations. Scott is on our side

    ( i may have misunderstood your comment tho, I’m pre-coffee)

  49. 49.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Suzanne: Of course, Dump also wants the attention again, too.

    Good grief, what a bloated sack of personality disorders.  Fred must’ve been a monstrous father.

  61. 61.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Brachiator: Yeah, both my shoulders are shot and my hips are going. Being a side sleeper, the pain wakes me up every hour or so to roll over.

    I wish that was what I’m dealing with now. I am waking up at 11 or 12, and that’s it. My brain kicks into gear and I just can’t shut it off. Sometimes Planet Earth can help. Sometimes a book can help. Sometimes a glass of milk can help. Sometimes drugs can help. The last 2 nights, nothing helped.

  64. 64.

    Barbara

    @germy shoemangler: ​ It’s a refrain I can’t get out of my head — it’s like they don’t know what country they actually live in, and are stuck with the idea that “working class” means not college educated, working in a “heavy” job like manufacturing or construction. Never mind that manufacturing increasingly relies on people with the capacity to understand and use computers (i.e., post-high school education or training) or that non-blue collar jobs in hospitality and health care are psychologically and sometimes physically demanding.

    It is very unfortunate that the press perpetuates this view when it opines on “working class voters,” by which it almost always means white men working in mining and manufacturing, and maybe construction trades — the latter being the only category that has not diminished greatly over the last two decades.

  68. 68.

    kalakal

    One thing that cheers me up is that every morning Turtle McTurtleface wakes up and the first thought in his head will be

    ” Oh God, what’s that moron done while I was sleeping?”

    If only he had a copy of my new book

    Reputational Damage Control for Scheming Bastards

  69. 69.

    Soprano2

    @mrmoshpotato: There are a bunch of replies to that tweet just like yours, with a few that say “You haven’t proven any crimes”. TFG’s supporters are willfully blind, because him having those documents, lying about it, then refusing to give them back ARE ALL CRIMES! Even if he waved his magic hand and said they were all unclassified it would still be a crime for him to have them!

  71. 71.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: He wants to be a dictator. Plus, he knows it keeps them from investigating all his crimes. I think it’s who he is, he can’t stop wanting power over people. When he was president he didn’t do much work anyway, mostly he watched TV and tweeted.

  72. 72.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Yeah, both my shoulders are shot and my hips are going. Being a side sleeper, the pain wakes me up every hour or so to roll over.

    Yeah. Lying down wasn’t working, still pressure on my leg. So I tried sleeping in a comfortable chair. Inconsistent results.

  73. 73.

    Soprano2

    @germy shoemangler: Wow, I guess he thinks “barista” isn’t a job. He better never go to a coffee shop again! He’s obviously never done a really hard day of work in his life.

  76. 76.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Brachiator:

    I will quote this whenever super progressives start whining about how “disappointed” they are with Biden.

    Anyone on the left who’s still disappointed with Biden wouldn’t have been satisfied if he’d walked on water while turning it into wine.  Fuck ’em.

  77. 77.

    Geminid

    @Brachiator: Have you tried advil pm or an equivalent? It includes an antihistamine to calm brain activity. They work for me, but everyone is different when it comes to sleeping.

  79. 79.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Brachiator: Same here, especially if I’m having a charley horse night. I’m closer to the ice packs, not waking my wife up with fits of cursing and hopping around etc. Eventually, I might fall asleep. Or not.

    6 or 7 hours of broken sleep feels pretty good in the AM. 4-5 is sufficient to get me till I can have a nap. 1 or 2? That sucks donkey d.

  81. 81.

    Percysowner

    @The Thin Black Duke: ​
     They don’t give a shit about treason. The Jan.6 commission will go away if they retake the House. But we have Biden for another 2 years and his DOJ can keep on keeping on and there is no way Biden will pardon Trump so there’s at least that.

  82. 82.

    Soprano2

    @Barbara: They should watch my servers, cooks and bartenders working when it’s busy to see what hard work is. We helped by busing tables last night because it was busy and we only had one server and one bartender! It’s been slow the past few Saturday nights (summer, grrrr) so our manager only scheduled one of each last night, then there was an unscheduled group and it was pretty busy otherwise. He did a great job, too.

  83. 83.

    Brachiator

    @Barbara:

    It’s a refrain I can’t get out of my head — it’s like they don’t know what country they actually live in, and are stuck with the idea that “working class” means not college educated, working in a “heavy” job like manufacturing or construction.

    I am seeing that this is very similar to a hard core attitude of many British people. There is a distinction between working class and middle class. Working class is defined by manual labor and minimal education. And so a pharmacist or lawyer is resented as not being working class. This is sad because it quickly becomes self-defeating.

    In the US young people, especially men, with only a high school education are more likely to vote Republican, without regard to their income. These people may be less likely to have student loans, so the GOP may try to stoke resentment.

  85. 85.

    Suzanne

    @Barbara:

    It is very unfortunate that the press perpetuates this view when it opines on “working class voters,” by which it almost always means white men working in mining and manufacturing, and maybe construction trades — the latter being the only category that has not diminished greatly over the last two decades. 

    Right?! Like apparently they cannot see hair stylists and child care workers and hotel maids and hospital cleaning staff and department store sales staff. It mystifies me.

  87. 87.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​
     

    If you’re saying something like “whoa, Biden really changed,” you’re not saying what you should say: “I was wrong. I don’t know shit about politics.”

    Well, something about him sure changed since he helped push through the abominable Bankruptcy ‘Reform’ Act of 2005.

    Someone would have to do some serious convincing to convince me that the Joe Biden of 2005 and the Joe Biden of 2022 are coming from basically the same place, because that makes no fucking sense at all. Would love to hear how Dana Houle argues that they’re consistent.

  88. 88.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: They used to call those “pink collar jobs”, and they were taken much less seriously than the “physically hard” blue collar jobs. Those were seen as easier, more “cushy ” jobs not deserving of the blue collar moniker because they were mostly done indoors by women and gay men. I think that’s how a lot of the press and conservatives still think of them. Look at how Cruz felt comfortable sneering at baristas!

  92. 92.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ken: I also like that Jort-Michel Connard tweet, but I thought Jort was a cat?

    Jorts are ‘jean shorts’ (aka ‘cutoffs’); the cat of the famous twitter feed was named Jorts because he was adopted to keep office cat Jean company.

    The human with the twitter feed was originally ‘Jean-Michael Connard’, but he liked Jorts-the-union-cat’s twitter feed so much he changed his own nym in solidarity.

    All the best humor is — IMO — let’s call it orthogonal.

  94. 94.

    delphinium

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    He knows that if the GOP takes the House and Senate, the Republicans will make all his problems go away, because they don’t give a shit about treason.

    Precisely this-keep delaying things in hopes someone or something will save his sorry ass.

  95. 95.

    germy shoemangler

    The last 24 hours of this app has just been people posting stuff like, "Let me get this straight: the urinal cleaners of my community owe hipsters $10,000 now?" and then a reply that says, "This you?" and it's a PPP loan receipt for their podcast Reassessing Franco.

    — Michael Arria (@michaelarria) August 25, 2022

  97. 97.

    Brachiator

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Anyone on the left who’s still disappointed with Biden wouldn’t have been satisfied if he’d walked on water while turning it into wine.

    Yeah. I generally ignore these people,  but whenever I run across some comments or a YouTube clip, I see that they keep falling back to their standard “Republicans, Democrats, no difference” nonsense. Worse, I note that the worst of them ignore women’s reproductive rights because it is not part of their reductive focus on making a fetish of the working class.

     

  98. 98.

    artem1s

    @Suzanne:

    . I don’t understand why he wants to do it again.

    Private plane and helicopter. Unlimited personal security, wait staff and executive staff. All paid for by either the GOP or the taxpayers. Not to mention the non-stop grifting and graft opportunities. He was pretty much living the same miserable life he always had, only someone else was footing the bill.

  100. 100.

    Brachiator

    @Geminid:

    Have you tried advil pm or an equivalent? It includes an antihistamine to calm brain activity. They work for me, but everyone is different when it comes to sleeping.

    Just regular extra strength Acetaminophen. It does help a little bit.

  101. 101.

    satby

    @lowtechcyclist: his constituents in 2005 were based in Delaware (banks) and there was a not insignificant amount of people running up huge student loans they had no intention of paying back and then filing for bankruptcy to evade them. I remember a lot of medical school graduates were prime offenders. Joe was repping his constituents then, and now his constituents are the entire nation. It’s perfectly consistent. Plus, we gain wisdom as we age, if we’re the right kind of people, and Joe clearly is.

  102. 102.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    BernieBros are mad at Biden for making people’s lives better by canceling $20,000 of student loans because it denies them the ability to say Biden betrayed them.

    How sick.

  103. 103.

    lowtechcyclist

    @sab: ​
     

    Those promoted tweets are Twitters way of protecting you from being too much in your own only people who think like you bubble.

    My in-laws suffice, even though I only see them a few times a year.

  104. 104.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Brachiator: ​
     

    Worse, I note that the worst of them ignore women’s reproductive rights because it is not part of their reductive focus on making a fetish of the working class.

    And even taking that into account, the Dems at least tried to get a minimum wage hike through Congress last year. (And with a few more Senators and holding the House, they’ll probably do it next year.) I’ve been paying attention to politics since the 1960s and I can’t remember a single instance of the GOP trying to raise the minimum wage. It’s always been the Dems.

  106. 106.

    germy shoemangler

    @artem1s:

    Also, Obama had two terms.

    There’s no way FPOTUS will be satisfied until he can have two terms, too.  Otherwise he was “beaten by the black guy”

  108. 108.

    MisterDancer

    @satby: Thank you!

    Joe has changed. He’s said his view on Race changed a lot, working with Obama. He got another dose — the dose he says compelled him to run this term — with Charlottesville, which he’s said he never believed could happen in America, but did.

    Biden has always been a flawed vessel, but one with good intentions. I recall my Dad defending Biden’s School Busing approach back when Harris attacked him for it; he pointed out that politically it was a very different time, and a lot of the best solutions the Black community had did look a lot like what Biden was supporting — back then. And my Dad said this as a Harris supporter, at the time!

    I know it’s Standard Operating Procedures to crap on any literally old pol, but a number of them did get into this to make things better, not just to line their pockets. And Joe, in my estimation, is one of them — even when I personally disagree with his approach.

  110. 110.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Shitstain Jonathan Turley went on Fox and conceded Dump didn’t respond to repeated government requests for documents but says that doesn’t mean he was “uncooperative”.

    If Dump went into a bank and waved a gun and said “give me all the money”, Turley would say that wasn’t a robbery but a loan application.

  112. 112.

    Geminid

    @David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Some of that set are saying Biden’s initiative was a good one (although they give their own “activists” the credit). I’m speaking here of Justice Democrats spokesman Walid Shaheed and a lefty journal I call Common Screams. They say they will keep fighting for more extensive relief.

    For others, it’s on to “abolish medical debt!” That isn’t neccesarily a bad idea on its merits, but for many of these people it’s just another club to beat Democrats with.

  113. 113.

    Jager

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Osteoarthritis, neck, and both shoulders, I sleep for 90 to 120 minutes at a time. I’m at the point that the shoulder I’m not sleeping on hurts like hell. I just started doing some pool exercises, hope they help, because I’m sick of this shit.

  114. 114.

    Soprano2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: At my first job after college the general manager was open about paying men more than women because men were supporting a family while women were working for “extra money” (yeah I was single and supporting myself), plus why promote a woman when she’ll just have a baby and quit? 🙄🙄🙄 He told a woman who interviewed for the newly-created job of safety coordinator that she was the most qualified but he was reluctant to give her the job because the men in the plant wouldn’t listen to her! This was in 1987. She got the job anyway.

  115. 115.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Dump doesn’t want to run again as it prevents him from playing golf all day and from “drinking” with Russian hookers.  But he panicked after the devastating 1/6 hearings and mistakenly believes running will prevent DOJ from indicting him for the coup.  Then the search happened.   He’s no longer acting like someone who thinks he has a get out of jail free card.

  116. 116.

    geg6

    @Soprano2:

    I had this problem when I started in higher ed in the early 1990s.  Single, no kids and female.  During an annual evaluation, my boss told me I didn’t need a raise because my boyfriend made good money.

  117. 117.

    germy shoemangler

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but Trump is now under investigation for tax fraud, election fraud, insurrection and violating the Espionage Act. And he's the Republican frontrunner for 2024

    — David Lazarus (@Davidlaz) August 27, 2022

  118. 118.

    Jager

    @Soprano2:

    When I was in school, I had a bunch of different jobs, construction, etc. The hardest job was working in the back kitchen of a busy restaurant. When I read Bourdain’s first book, I broke out in a sweat.

  119. 119.

    lowtechcyclist

    @satby: ​
     

    @lowtechcyclist: his constituents in 2005 were based in Delaware (banks) and there was a not insignificant amount of people running up huge student loans they had no intention of paying back and then filing for bankruptcy to evade them. I remember a lot of medical school graduates were prime offenders. Joe was repping his constituents then, and now his constituents are the entire nation. It’s perfectly consistent.

    So if his constituents had been 60% MAGAts, he’d have been a fascist? I have deep problems with that kind of consistency.

    Also, limiting the extent to which student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy was about 1% of that bill. There’s stuff in there that basically amounts to indentured servitude. Defending that bill on the basis of student loans is like defending Mussolini because he made the trains run on time.

    Plus, we gain wisdom as we age, if we’re the right kind of people, and Joe clearly is.

    Wait, that’s my point. He’s gained wisdom, and as a result he’s no longer the sort of person who’d try to pass an abomination like that.

    Also, speaking from personal experience, the extent to which we are ‘good people’ can change substantially over time. Biden’s ‘good people’ now, but I don’t think that demonstrates that he was ‘good people’ in 2005.

  120. 120.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jager: I was recently diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my lower back, going to PT for it. I have hope that it will help but not much. I’ve got bone spurs on 5 of the 7 cervical vertebrate (maybe all of them now, that was 16 years ago) My neck likes to snap, crackle, and pop. Fortunately, no real pain with them now, just stiffness.

  122. 122.

    MinuteMan

    Senator Ron Johnson wants Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every year.

    And of course the GQP would never use that as an opportunity to take hostages—the recurring debt ceiling and budget crises are totally different.

  123. 123.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Geminid: ​
      Hopefully Biden will move on to canceling gambling debts (asking for a friend)

  125. 125.

    RSA

    @germy shoemangler:

    “Let me get this straight: the urinal cleaners of my community owe hipsters $10,000 now?”

    Not to mention that the share of federal income tax paid by individuals making $50,000 or less amounts to about 7%.  There’s some wealth transfer, sure, but there are much bigger and more egregious targets people might focus on.

  127. 127.

    germy shoemangler

    You entitled Millenials getting your student loans back is an insult to the people that maintain my garden and horses

    — Haus of Decline (@hausofdecline) August 27, 2022

  128. 128.

    Mimi

    I just want Trump to go away. Run to Putin and get disappeared to Siberia; run over by whatshisname, you know Ivana’s youngest; stroke out on the golf course.  Whatever, as long as he’s gone.

  129. 129.

    Steeplejack

    @Suzanne:

    We live in a service economy now. Someone pointed out a while back that there are more people working just at Arby’s than there are coal miners in this country. But they’re not manly men with soot-stained faces.

  130. 130.

    Jager

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Low weight-high rep exercises help with my shoulders, my neck started with a pinched nerve from a skiing mishap, a 30 mph faceplant on a beautiful Colorado day. My neck snaps and pops are so loud, when we were flying to Hawaii last week, I did some neck rolls and the guy across the aisle looked at me and said, “Jesus”…well, maybe not that loud, but …

  133. 133.

    zhena gogolia

    Made the mistake of glancing through the opinion section of the NYT. Rich Lowry, “What If the FBI Were Investigating a Democrat?”

    Fuck you, Rich. Did you sleep through 2016 or something?

  134. 134.

    Brachiator

    @lowtechcyclist:

    And even taking that into account, the Dems at least tried to get a minimum wage hike through Congress last year. (And with a few more Senators and holding the House, they’ll probably do it next year.)

    Biden and, to be fair some progressive Democrats, were not just stuck on minimum wage or bust. It still annoys me that some Democrats forget or don’t know that Biden’s American Rescue Plan enhanced the Earned Income Tax Credit and other tax credits that helped lower income people. Manchin, of course, helped kill an extension of these credits after 2021. But without the 2021 enhancement of the EITC, many lower income working people would have been worse off. Biden wisely did not focus on a single tax policy idea.

    I’ve been paying attention to politics since the 1960s and I can’t remember a single instance of the GOP trying to raise the minimum wage. It’s always been the Dems.

    Republicans tend to be against any minimum wage. They believe that market forces magically set wages.

  135. 135.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @MisterDancer: Same goes for Hillary.  The more I’ve listened to and read people who have worked with her it becomes clear that she is a fundamentally decent person who is always willing to learn and evolve.  That, to me, is even more important than where a pol stands on a particular issue right now!  It’s what I want from public servants.  And much better than the attitude that they are always right and can never evolve their understanding/stance or admit they were wrong.

  136. 136.

    germy shoemangler

    @zhena gogolia:

    Every one of Sulzberger’s headlines should simply say “Please don’t vote for Democrats – I don’t want my taxes raised”

    Bezos, too.

  140. 140.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @zhena gogolia: I don’t remember even one Democrat advocating political violence against law enforcement because as a result of the FBI’s investigation of Hillary.

  141. 141.

    NorthLeft

    It’s unfortunate that Mulvaney is only getting pushback from the right. CBS should have him explain WTF he actually meant to say in that idiotic tweet.

    While they are at it point out the stupidity of John Yoo’s idea to just dump all the documents to the public and let uninformed ignoramuses decide if these documents are important/classified. They should also highlight Yoo’s employment by UCal every time they call his idea stupid and finish with the observation that UCal seems to believe that a person as stupid, amoral, and biased as John Yoo is qualified to teach law.

  145. 145.

    germy shoemangler

    COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — When Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan spoke out against President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan this week, it marked a departure from both his past statements on the issue and some of his votes.

    The decision to go against a same-party president comes as Ryan tries to parlay his hometown credentials in Ohio’s working-class Mahoning Valley into the support he needs from Republicans and independents to defeat Republican JD Vance in this fall’s closely watched race for U.S. Senate.

    Ryan on Wednesday joined Republicans and a handful of fellow Democrats in criticizing the president’s executive order to erase federal student loan debt for certain borrowers as unnecessary for some people and unfair to others. The plan forgives $10,000 in federal student loan debt for those with incomes below $125,000 a year, or households that earn less than $250,000, and cancels an additional $10,000 for those who received federal Pell Grants to attend college.

  147. 147.

    sdhays

    Not counting any chickens yet, but now that the conventional wisdom is a lot more pessimistic about Republicans’ chances in November, perhaps the media hiring spree of Republicans so as to “be prepared” for 2023 seems premature now, no? I wonder if those people they hired, like Mulvaney, will be let go if Democrats hold both the House and Senate.

    LOL, of course they won’t. It was always a bullshit excuse to inject more Republican bias into the “mainstream”.

  148. 148.

    Baud

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Well, something about him sure changed since he helped push through the abominable Bankruptcy ‘Reform’ Act of 2005

     
    I’m pretty sure most of the Biden Has Changed memes are looking at a two year time scale.

  149. 149.

    Danielx

    @Suzanne:

    Well, for starters he wants to avoid being prosecuted. Then there’s being the center of attention, the guy to whom everybody has to pay attention. He likes the trappings and the perks, he doesn’t give a fiddler’s fuck about actually doing the job except for how he personally can benefit.

  151. 151.

    Elizabelle

    @germy shoemangler:   It’s Ohio.

    A crabs in a bucket state.  Like its neighbors, West Virginia.  And Indiana.

    Those swollen up people who get university educations … move right out of your community, perhaps.  Who benefits from that?

    Sad.  (FWIW, my parents’ families all hail from Indiana.  I remember attending a family reunion, decades ago.  The smartest young cousins.  Were working and living in Ohio.)

  152. 152.

    Elizabelle

    @germy shoemangler:  

    Every one of Sulzberger’s headlines should simply say “Please don’t vote for Democrats – I don’t want my taxes raised”

    Bezos, too.

    Democracy dies in darkness tax avoidance by the owners.

    And fuck the fucking Sulzbergers. And their pinhead tool executive editors.

  155. 155.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @satby: Merci beaucoup, vielen Dank, diky moc, köszönöm szépen, ευχαριστώ πολύ, дуже тобі дякую – you saved me the trouble of pointing out these very simple and straightforward facts to those too young, distracted, or willfully obtuse to understand US political history.

  156. 156.

    Elizabelle

    @zhena gogolia: Ah.  I just have a digital sub.

    And could not stand the FTFNYTimes at all if I couldn’t see that most of its readers push back against the bullshit and trial balloons it often floats.  Makes it more bearable.

  157. 157.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Elizabelle: Does the pushback have any effect? Or is this just part of their “engagement” business model, which allows them to continue setting the official MSM narrative for the nation whilst allowing the misguided minions to fruitlessly blow off steam in the comments?

  159. 159.

    Elizabelle

    @O. Felix Culpa:   Good point.  I wonder about that one, myself.

    It’s occurred to me that the readers comments are an escape valve.  Otherwise, you really would cancel your sub.

  164. 164.

    Citizen Alan

    @germy shoemangler:  They really do have nothing to offer except hate, don’t they. And it is very telling, I think, that while painting a word picture of the person who his audience wants to hate the most, he vomits out what what sounds to me like a caricature of AOC.

  165. 165.

    Another Scott

    @MisterDancer: Someone said a while ago that Biden has always been in the center of the Democratic party at the time.  As the center moves, he moves.

    I think that’s a wise take.

    Not that I don’t wish that he would move faster on some things, but he has learned the lesson very well that “politics is the art of the possible”.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  168. 168.

    Kent

    @Baud:

    @Suzanne:

    Being president is terrible for people who take the work seriously.

    Exactly.  But if your entire purpose is grift then the White House is a better  place to conduct business than Mar a Lago.

  169. 169.

    Another Scott

    @O. Felix Culpa: Bobo (IIRC) remarked dismissively that he never reads comments about his column.  I assume the rest of them (except good guys like Krugman – he once replied to an e-mail I sent him) don’t either.

    We’re not their audience.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  170. 170.

    swordfish

    Just wanted to stop by to thank Anne Laurie for the helmet video.  My brother died when he rode his motorcycle around a curve in Arizona’s White Mountains and ran into an elk who was standing there.  He wasn’t wearing a helmet – he never did – and received a massive head injury when his head hit the road.  He had been riding for about 20 years, so he was no amateur.  But roads are harder than heads.  I miss him still.

  171. 171.

    Betsy

    @OzarkHillbilly: Try this.  YouTube, search for a 45-minute video called “Rainday Antiques.”  I don’t even know what’s in the little antique store, because I never make it more than 3-4 minutes in.

  173. 173.

    Citizen Alan

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:  Even a relaxing of the Brunner test would be a big deal.  At present, to get a bankruptcy judge to sign off on a discharge of student loans, you essentially have to be injured to the point of permanent disability, and even then it’s hard.

  174. 174.

    Citizen Alan

    @lowtechcyclist:  If Delaware were 60% maga, Biden wouldn’t have gotten elected in the 1st place. And as a bankruptcy attorney with 15 years of experience and an LLM, I should like very much to know which part of BAPCPA you think imposed indentured servitude.

  176. 176.

    Citizen Alan

    @geg6:

    I attribute the fact that I was raised in a solidly middle class household and that my sister and I were the first people in our extended family to go to college (and the only people until the last 15 years to do so) in large part to the fact that my mother got a job at Bell South doing electrical work that had previously been reserved for men.  Luckily, just a few years before I was born, AT&T got sued for sex discrimination, and as part of the consent decree had to open all those jobs up to women.  My mother was in the very 1st group of women in Mississippi to ever be allowed to hold that high paying Union job.  All six of my aunts in her age group group were stay-at-home mothers whose familys struggled financially for decades. None of their children ever went to college and only some of their grandchildren did.

  178. 178.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @mrmoshpotato: Trump’s mother became very ill and was basically absent from childcare when he was about  2-3 years old.  Fred didn’t hire any replacement, so Donald was emotionally neglected and abused at a crucial development stage (as well as most of the rest of his childhood).  Not to excuse this vicious shitstain, but to explain a bit about the childhood trauma he (and the rest of his siblings) experienced

    ETA: TL:DR Yes. Fred was a monstrous father. And his mother was very distant when she was even present.

Comments are closed.