Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, man.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

“But what about the lurkers?”

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

This really is a full service blog.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

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

“woke” is the new caravan.

How stupid are these people?

You are here: Home / Elections / 2022 Elections / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Why We (Must) Fight

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Why We (Must) Fight

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Why We (Must) Fight

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

 
Seriously, too many of our fellow Americans think they’re living in a video game where you can always hit the ‘reboot’ button and start over…

Thank Murphy the Trickster God for President Biden:

There are positive signs!

Oklahoma native, now living in Oregon:

This project seems a little… elementary… but it’s not intended for high-info news consumers:

Reader Interactions

152Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I’m already pretty normie these days, but I might have to avoid all news media until after the election.  It’s all free ads for the GOP now.

  2. 2.

    danielx

    @Baud:

    I’m already pretty normie these days, but I might have to avoid all news media until after the election.

    That makes you someone with normal concern for your mental health.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    @danielx:

    Seriously, I would like to be well informed, but who has such low self esteem that they are willing to sit through propaganda directed against us to get news?

    I still find it astonishing that there are so few media investors who view mainstream Dems as a potential market.

  4. 4.

    Princess

    I’m worried about democracy. But from what I can see about Americans, there’s going to be no way of persuading them we have a problem if they don’t already think so.

    we’re better off focusing on the economy. What’s the GOP plan? Means testing Social Security. That should hit a nerve with all those latter-day Gen X Alex Keatons. We’ll be the gang who paid in the most and got out the least. Etc etc.

  6. 6.

    p.a.

    Normies will trust the plans* of a political party with more than half of its supporters thinking the earth is 6,000 years old?!?!  That depth of ignorance can’t be localized to one topic, it has to pervade everything they think.

     

    *making the over-generous assumption they have plans beside: NO!

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Are you more of a normie now than you were two years ago? I don’t feel like I’ve made as much progress as I’d like since I wrote this post about it after the 2020 election.

    What’s your secret? In retrospect, I think I got this wrong in that post:

    I want it [politics] to be mostly background noise to me too. I don’t want to care less, donate less, volunteer less or anything like that. I just want to focus on it less.

    For me, at least, it’s been impossible to focus on it less unless I can also find a way to care less. The two are too interrelated for that to make sense. I mean, I can shut up about issues and let things pass, which I try to do more often, but I’m no less depressed and angry about what’s happening.

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    High levels of PFAS discharged into the Cape Fear River from a Chemours plant in Fayetteville, North Carolina, are likely making local alligators sick with autoimmune disorders that appear similar to human diseases like lupus, a new study finds.

    The peer-reviewed study, published Thursday in the Frontiers in Toxicology journal, tested blood from alligators in the Cape Fear watershed that have been exposed to Chemours pollution for decades. The alligators showed extremely high levels of PFAS compounds and markers of immune disease in their blood.

    “This really highlights the damage that we’re seeing across the ecosystem from PFAS, and shows we’re just starting to scratch the surface of their impacts,” said North Carolina State University researcher and study co-author Scott Belcher. “The idea that they’re going to be around and contaminating water systems for the foreseeable future is truly shocking.”
    …………………………..
    The new study compared Cape Fear alligators with a cohort from Lake Waccamaw in a neighboring watershed not subjected to direct Chemours pollution. Cape Fear alligators’ blood showed much higher PFAS levels, and had twice as many compounds, including Chemours-produced chemicals like Nafion byproduct 2 and GenX.

    The expressions of interferon-alpha responsive genes in the Cape Fear River alligators were 400 times higher than those of the Lake Waccamaw alligators. Interferon alpha is a secreted immune protein involved in stimulating immune response, and the type that Belcher’s team checked for responds to viral infections.
    …………………………
    The most unusual finding was a high number of unhealed or infected lesions on the alligators’ skin, which Belcher said is “super incommon”. Alligators’ lesions usually heal quickly, and the issue suggested immune system interference.

    As the immortal Tom Lehrer said, “Don’t drink the water and don’t breath the air.”

  10. 10.

    Bupalos

    I’m not sure I’d call that “is it legit” thing “elementary” as much as just seeming almost worthlessly reflexive.

    “How do you check if a source you searched up online is legit? Step 1: do an online search to see if it’s legit…”

  12. 12.

    BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️

    @Baud: It’s the presumption that Repubs and wealthy contrarians are where the money is to be made (either by getting it from them directly OR by influencing them to continue voting for a party that will NEVER require them to pay their fair share).

    Given trends over the course of my lifetime (and especially the grifting that TRE45ON has gotten/continues to get away with)…

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    Are you more of a normie now than you were two years ago?

     
    More than in 2000, but I’ve fallen off the wagon a little over the last few months.

    For me, at least, it’s been impossible to focus on it less unless I can also find a way to care less. The two are too interrelated for that to make sense. I mean, I can shut up about issues and let things pass, which I try to do more often, but I’m no less depressed and angry about what’s happening.

    I still let things emotionally affect me, which makes me mad because I’m in a pretty privileged position when it comes to being affected by politics compared to most people. Me getting upset and angry helps no one who will actually be harmed by election outcomes, and at a macro level, I often find that our side is hamstrung by our emotional response to adversities. But it’s tough to change.

  21. 21.

    Fair Economist

    Democracy is important for EVERY problem because without it the people in power have no reason to fix anything.

    Pass it on.

  23. 23.

    BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️

    I don’t know that I can say I’m MORE engaged – I’m ALWAYS engaged, because I feel like I’m in the crosshairs EVERY election. May because I’ve lived my LIFE in those crosshairs. For those of you who are feeling it now, welcome to the club, I guess. It sucks, and it’s a club no one WANTS to join exactly, but here we are.

  25. 25.

    Scout211

    Reposting from last night.

    This court case is crucial for saving our democracy. This is good news, I hope:

    An interesting new development in Moore v Harper, due to be argued at SCOTUS on December 7th. newyorker.com

    A powerful new litigant has joined one of the most momentous cases slated to be heard by the Supreme Court this term. The respondents in the case of Moore v. Harper filed a brief today that included a surprising new signatory: J. Michael Luttig, who has been known for years as perhaps the most conservative Republican judge in the country. Now, though, he has joined a coalition of veteran lawyers and nonpartisan government-watchdog groups who are fighting against a far-right Republican election-law challenge—one so radical that critics say it has the potential to end American democracy as we know it.

    The former judge is a surprising co-counsel to Neal Katyal, the well-known Supreme Court litigator. Katyal is a counsel of record in the case for several respondents, including Common Cause and the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters, that are opposing the far-right groups. The case is scheduled to be heard by the Court on December 7th. Luttig told me that he signed on as Katyal’s co-counsel because he regards Moore v. Harper as “without question the most significant case in the history of our nation for American democracy.” Putting it more colloquially, he said, “Legally, it’s the whole ballgame.”

  29. 29.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: The broadcast news media at this point are mostly aimed at old people. Despite what this blog’s commentariat might seem to imply, most seniors are right-wingers.

  30. 30.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Baud: I’ve spent less time reading politics online in the last month. I do what I can and then go do something else because, otherwise, I get too upset.

    When TFG was in office, I had to quit watching msnbc in the evenings or I couldn’t sleep

  32. 32.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A beloved Seattle-area dog known for riding the bus around the major US city by herself in order to get to the dog park has died at the the age of 10. Eclipse, a black Labrador, had become a firm Seattle favorite and also famous around the world for her solo trips on public transport.

    The strange phenomenon began in 2015 when her owner, Jeff Young, was finishing a cigarette and failed to notice in time that Eclipse had got on the bus by herself. The bus then drove off but Eclipse exited at the correct stop and was later found by Young happily playing at her usual dog park. She then made regular solo trips to the park, usually two to three times per week. A friend to all, she became well known in her community and especially among fellow bus riders who enjoyed petting the pup on their commute.

    RIP, Eclipse.

  35. 35.

    WereBear

    @Tdjr: That’s why I can’t understand how people can not pay attention.

     
    We all know people who made all their major decisions that way. Got a job, got married, had children… all without thinking much about it.

    It’s just what you did. Voting wasn’t something they did…

    They don’t see cause and effect with fully developed minds when it comes to politics. Unless it’s so big and ugly it constantly appears and they have to confront it.

    It seems to me that they react properly, then. Which is why I am somewhat calm with the trends of the last few months.

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    @mozzerb:

    News from the UK: Liz Truss resigns as Prime Minister …

    I am just waking up to this news. I thought she was a fighter, not a quitter.

    How many prime ministers does it make this week?

    Also, I think the news is just in time for some of the UK satirical shows that tape their episodes on Thursday evening.

  43. 43.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    I just flipped on BBC to check if my TV was bugged, and saw the report. Then I saw that she’d said some nonsense about a “low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantages of the freedoms of Brexit.”

    How can they not get it at this point? I know that you can’t get someone to understand something if their paycheck (or power, in this case) depends on not understanding it, but I’m more and more convinced that the end result of the Brexit vote was that everybody lost, but not everybody understood it at the time. How much longer will it take them to realize that if they want to get out of the hole they’ve dug themselves, first they’ve got to stop digging?

    Well, in the words of the immortal Canadian-Angeleno philosopher Francis Drebin, the cows have come home to roost

    (Edited to add: at the rate we’re going, King Charles is going to have more Prime Ministers than his mother did.)

  44. 44.

    Lapassionara

    @Lapassionara: PS. Yesterday, somehow, I found myself in a thread from 2021, one of Steve from Mendocino (sp?) photography threads. In it, he answered a question I had asked, then asked me to let him know that I had read his answer. So Steve, if you are out there, I read your answer. Many thanks.

  47. 47.

    Doug R

    “golikehellmachi” blocked me for some reason. Must have heard I lived in Eugene and Corvallis as a baby.

  49. 49.

    OzarkHillbilly

    What a pregnancy actually looks like before 10 weeks – in pictures

    Abortion is now banned or severely restricted in 14 states in the US, the outcome of a decades-long campaign by anti-abortion advocates. In many states, abortion is no longer seen as a health procedure, but a morality issue. Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano – once a state senator, now running for governor – is one of a number of Republican politicians who has called for murder charges for people who defy abortion bans.

    In 13 of those 14 states, abortion is banned even in the earliest stages of pregnancy.

    These images, supplied to us by the MYA Network, a network of clinicians and activists who came together earlier in the pandemic when some states tried to deem abortion as “non-essential” medical care, show what tissue in the first nine weeks of pregnancy actually looks like.

    ETA:“Often people don’t speak to anyone about getting an abortion. They make a very quiet, private decision because they’re afraid to see people’s reactions. And then I do this simple procedure that’s a few minutes longer than a Pap test. For those who choose to look at the tissue, you can literally feel the tension come down. People have been on this emotional roller coaster. And they’re like, ‘You’re kidding. This is all that was?’” says Fleischman.

    No, you won’t see any of these pictures on anti abortion placards.

  50. 50.

    mrmoshpotato

    @JPL:

    Who wants to be Prime Minister?

    Baud! (of course)

    Good grief.  What a tire, sorry, tyre fire on the other side of the pond.

  55. 55.

    Geminid

    (Repeating from yesterday’s “Walk and chew gum” post):

    In an election discussion on Twitter, a person asked about the prospects of Democrats retaining control of the House. Someone from the progressive organizing site Way to Win answered:

        All the polling indicates that an enormous number of these races are inside the margin of error, but even more so: inside the Margin of Effort.

    @WaytoWinAF. October 19

    That made me think of the good work Watergirl is doing here. She credited everyone here who has helped.

  56. 56.

    Leto

    I doubt Lettuce Liz unpacked everything, so it should make her removal that much quicker. What a shitshow all conservatives are putting on.

  57. 57.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Baud:

    Is it common in Greece for the government to bug TVs?

    Not since the junta was thrown out in ’73. This was less a surveillance bug than a computer bug. Smart TVs, feh. Like Mr. Scott once said, the more complicated they make the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.

  58. 58.

    Baud

    @Geminid: Yes! To all of that, especially WaterGirl.  But watching the media (and probably parts of social media) will just bring people down IMHO.  You are made of sterner stuff, which I admire.

  62. 62.

    Lapassionara

    So, I just checked Ian Dunt’s Twitter feed, and it’s a thing of beauty. Have you seen the lectern they bring out in front of 10 Downing? It looks like it was assembled by participants in a Jenga contest.

  64. 64.

    Brachiator

    Wow. So Truss is saying that the Tories will have another leadership election. So 172,000 members of the Conservative Party will get to select another right wing nut job for prime minister.

    The UK is going through more prime ministers than King Charles goes through ink pens.

  65. 65.

    Ken

    Wikipedia informs me that the previous record holder was George Canning, who served as Prime Minister for only 119 days back in 1827. However Truss may be robbed of her title by quibblers, as Arthur Wellesley served as a caretaker PM for about 3 weeks in 1834, while waiting for Robert Peel to return from Italy. (This was before a PM could holiday in the Mediterranean for a month without consequences.)

    Truss does hold one undisputed record; she is the first PM since 1963 to not have a new Doctor Who episode or movie air during her tenure.

  66. 66.

    mozzerb

    @Leto: The plan is to get the whole leader-choosing process over in one week, and keep it within the MPs (i.e. not going off for the views of the batshit Conservative party members who voted for Truss in the first place).

    Whether the various factions can agree on who to replace her with is another matter, of course.

  67. 67.

    MattF

    Got an email from the Maryland Board of Elections saying my mail-in ballot has been received. So, I’ve voted! Counting ballots is up to the county, and should take place within the next month.

  68. 68.

    mozzerb

    @Ken: There’s a new Who episode on Sunday, so she’ll just scrape in on that one while waiting for the leadership election.

  71. 71.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    I’m already pretty normie these days, but I might have to avoid all news media until after the election.  It’s all free ads for the GOP now.

    I don’t watch much regular TV or listen to  standard radio, so I miss a lot of the ads.

  72. 72.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Any guess if the next Tory PM will be even worse than Liz Truss?

    If you think that is hard to imagine, you are limited in imagination.

  74. 74.

    Baud

    @mozzerb:

    Whether the various factions can agree on who to replace her with is another matter, of course.

    Don’t they pretty much have to?  What’s the alternative?  I can’t imagine they want to call an election right now.

  75. 75.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amir Khalid: She probably watches trash TV all day and brainlessly believes celebrity equals merit. Same advantage Trump had with an unfortunately not-insignificant portion of voters.

  78. 78.

    Ken

    @mozzerb: How sad, that she will be robbed of her one true accomplishment.  Perhaps it can still stand on a technicality, since she has resigned?

  82. 82.

    MattF

    @Brachiator: I’m a cable-cutter and don’t watch sports, so I miss all the ads. I guess. Seen a few on Twitter, but would not deliberately  watch an R ad. I do wonder now exactly how political messages get to people like me… supposing, for the sake of argument, that there’s more than one.

  83. 83.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @YY_Sima Qian: My dad had a secretary from Russia who had a saying: “never celebrate the death of the Tsar.” Like we’ve seen in the United States with the Republican Party, there is no floor to awfulness, in much the same way there is no peak wingnut.

  84. 84.

    sab

    Jeez. I just got a call from Jeff Crossman himself, D candidate for Ohio AG. I was an early but tiny contributor, so in the scheme of things I am a nobody, unlike Kay. He is having a fundraiser thing in my city so I got a personal call. Maybe I’ll risk Covid and turn out.

  86. 86.

    Ken

    @Matt McIrvin: I saw a tweet by someone saying their son had now seen four chancellors, three home secretaries, two PMs, and two monarchs — and the kid was only four months old.

  88. 88.

    TS

    @Baud:

     I can’t imagine they want to call an election right now.

    Their alternative appears to be a series of short term PM appointments. The UK has walked a path to insanity since Cameron held the referendum on brexit. Everyone in the country is probably regretting that one at this point in time.

    Westminster Government would suggest that an election is the only course (should have been called by Boris) but it seems the current Conservative Party contains too many trump style members and they refuse to let go of the political power.

    If ex PMs get similar benefits to ex Presidents, the UK is going to be supporting many of them for many many years.

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR:

    King Charles is going to have more Prime Ministers than his mother did.

    Looking quite likely at the minute.

  89. 89.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    That young woman in the vid is a prime candidate for Golgafrincham Ark B.

    In other news, for those suburban folks who wondered why Louisville’s West End residents (historically a black area of town) were on a hair trigger and ready to riot in the wake of the Breonna Taylor killing, this offers a tantalizing clue:

    Ninth Mobile Bucket Only Contains a Few Bad Apples

    …

    Prosecutors with the United States Department of Justice say Curt Flynn and Bryan Wilson pelted random residents with drinks as they drove by in their police cruiser. This happened dozens of times between August 2018 and September 2019. FBI investigators recovered roughly 40 video recordings that showed Wilson and Flynn treating the civil rights violations like a game. The two officers were sentenced separately in back-to-back hearings.

    While an attorney for Flynn called the incidents “high school, juvenile pranks,” U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Beaton said the officers’ actions appeared “premeditated, deliberate and repeated” and “shocked the conscience.”

    Prosecutors also said Flynn and Wilson’s actions eroded the public’s trust in police.
    …

    “Instead of engaging in public service in the Ninth Mobile Division, [Flynn] was assaulting the public,” one prosecutor argued.

    Beaton sentenced Flynn to three months in prison on a felony count of conspiracy to violate civil rights. Flynn will also be under supervised release for three years and is required to complete 120 hours of community service.

    Curt Flynn LMPD
    LMPD
    Curt Flynn

    Before the judge issued his ruling, prosecutors played six of the recordings they recovered of Flynn and Wilson assaulting residents. In one, a man was knocked to the ground from the force of being hit by the drink. Someone in the police vehicle can be heard saying, “Dude fell down!”

    In another video, one of the officers used a stereotypical accent as he pulled up next to someone who appeared to be an elderly Black woman and rolled down his window.

    “Do you have change for a dollar?” an officer asked.

    “How about a drink?” he said, before throwing the container at the woman.

    Both Flynn and Wilson were members of the Louisville Metro Police Department’s Ninth Mobile Division, which focused on the historically Black neighborhoods of Shawnee and Russell, as well as parts of Iroquois. Prosecutors said the division had some of “the best of the best” focused on fighting violent crime and drug trafficking.

    That division was also known for aggressive traffic stops, and generated a higher rate of policy violation investigations than the rest of the force, according to the Kentucky Center for Investigating Reporting and Newsy.

    Flynn and Wilson admitted to sharing the videos they made with fellow officers in person and through text message.

    …

    In addition to the civil rights violation for throwing drinks, Wilson had also pleaded guilty in a separate cyberstalking case.

    Wilson admitted in June to using law enforcement software to gather information on dozens of women. He said he worked with another individual to hack those women’s social media accounts and download risqué or sexually explicit images of them.

    According to court documents, Wilson contacted at least eight women and attempted to extort them by threatening to send those images to their family, friends and employers unless they sent him other explicit material.

    “Really, it’s difficult to quantify how much of an emotional burden this had on the women who were victims of his crimes,” a prosecutor told Beaton.

    One of Wilson’s victims, a teacher in her early 20s, attended Wednesday’s sentencing to provide an impact statement. She told the court that Wilson turned her life upside down.

    “He invaded my privacy, harassed me, put me through emotional trauma,” she testified.

    In daily text message exchanges with Wilson, he threatened to send her images and videos to people in her life, the woman said. He sent one photo to one of her friends, which she said embarrassed her. The woman said she felt compelled to tell her school’s principal what was happening, which changed the dynamic of her workplace.

    “I was just starting my career, but I felt like it was already over,” she said.

    The woman also said Wilson sent her screenshots of the social media profiles of her family and friends along with his threats. At one point during the harassment, the woman said, she told her mother she was contemplating suicide.

    “With every new day, I wasn’t sure if I was going to receive another text message threatening me, my family or my career,” she said. “I hate that I ever let Bryan [Wilson] push me to that point.”

    At the end of her statement, the woman turned to Wilson and spoke to him directly.

    “I really hope you try to be better,” she said. “I really do, because no one deserves to be in this position.”

    In one instance, prosecutors said, Wilson did send a sexually explicit image to one of his victim’s employers.

    Ninth Mobile is a poisoned apple, as is the Criminal Interdiction Unit, itself an outgrowth of the fatally flawed VIPER unit.

  90. 90.

    SFAW

    @Baud: ​
     

    I’ll be a shoe in!

    That’ll be quite the feat.
    But, in case that wasn’t an intended pun: it’s “shoo-in.”

  91. 91.

    Princess Leia

    Can I get some wisdom from the BJ hive mind? I just passed the date to receive “full” Soc Sec retirement. Given all the weirdness from the GOP, should I start getting it now or wait? I can wait, but I am worried that I should get started ASAP. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

  92. 92.

    Ken

    @Baud: Pity the poor Tory PMs, given a choice between calling a general election that is likely to kick them out of office, or gritting their teeth and getting behind some “unity” PM that they utterly despise.

    In the end, I suppose they’ll look at the polls showing upwards of 80% of the UK public want the general election, and not hold one.

  94. 94.

    MattF

    @Baud: I stopped watching talking heads long ago, since they started yelling at each other instead of talking. It’s also true that my immediate family is pretty lefty, so not much actual political discussion around the dinner table.

  97. 97.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    The actual ads suck, even those on our side.  But I was talking about the media talking heads effectively doing ads for the GOP.

    Ah. I read stories at various news sites. I try to avoid media talking heads, especially the Sunday news shows.

  98. 98.

    Baud

    @MattF: Yeah, even “friendly” talking heads involve a lot of yelling, and also a lot of speculation.  I’ve outgrown a lot of liberal political culture, even as I’ve grown more dedicated to the cause.

  99. 99.

    Ken

    @WaterGirl: A couple weeks ago, someone remarked that Truss looked likely to have the shelf life of a lettuce. One of the UK papers set up a webcam with a lettuce next to Truss’ picture. They’ve been decorating the lettuce, and adding props for topical news events.

  100. 100.

    Brachiator

    @Princess Leia:

    Can I get some wisdom from the BJ hive mind? I just passed the date to receive “full” Soc Sec retirement. Given all the weirdness from the GOP, should I start getting it now or wait?

    I would say, don’t worry about the GOP and do what is best for you.

  101. 101.

    MattF

    @Princess Leia: My own take was that the difference in monthly payments is scaled to life expectancy, so there are no first-order effects. Whatever you decide is a gamble.

  102. 102.

    sab

    @Ken: I am an old. I had a junior year abroad in college to England in 1975-76. The Brits had the same economic issues then that they are starting to have now. That was their main reason or wanting to get into the EU. So now a generation later they voted themselves out of EU and they are back to the same sucky economy. But with no way out this time.

    Maybe don’t let Australian oligarchs living in the US set your political agenda?

    ETA Last time DeGaulle had just died so France would finally let them in. This time Europeans are frankly tired of them and don’t want them back.

    Also, the non-white hordes they wanted to keep out weren’t in the EU anyway. They were eslewhere, often in the Commonwealth.

    Their real problem is Tories only support their own counties in a very centrally located government. And they keep electing Tories or lite tories.

    What a clusterphuck.

  103. 103.

    mali muso

    @WaterGirl: IIRC, some news organization had a lettuce sitting in front of a camera and the idea was to see if it would wilt and die before or after Liz Truss’s term of office.  Sounds like the lettuce outlived her reign.

  107. 107.

    mozzerb

    @Baud: They can have a bitterly contested internal election process among MPs at the end of which the survivor will become PM, to the horror of large chunks of the party?

    What they’ll want to do is find some way to agree to hand the poisoned chalice to someone relatively uncontroversial, if they can find such a person and persuade the other contestants to take a dive.

  108. 108.

    catclub

    @Lapassionara: have the old people noticed the Republican plan to ax Social Security and Medicare?

     

    The olds will believe the GOP when they say, “These cuts are only for the young who aren’t on SS and medicare already.”

    Of course they are lying when they say that.

  109. 109.

    Ohio Mom

    @mozzerb: Truss really didn’t last longer than that head of iceberg lettuce!

    Talking about being a normie, I let most news about the U. K. wash over me. I can’t care about everything. But the recent hubbub has been impossible to ignore.

  110. 110.

    BC in Illinois

    George Takei :

    I detect a distinct lack of Truss in the British government today.

    Also, it is noted that the Liz Truss said that best thing to do about Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, is to ignore her.

    Is Liz Truss set to leave office without ever having a formal meeting or even phone call with Nicola Sturgeon?

    Yes, she is.

    Sturgeon has been Scotland’s First Minister through four [set to be five] UK Prime Ministers.

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Any guess if the next Tory PM will be even worse than Liz Truss?

    Some in the British media are saying that Penny Mordaunt is one of the top candidates. Unlike Truss, she is a mean piece of work.

  112. 112.

    sab

    @Spanky: We should at least be grateful that he is out of cardiology. Announcing a death sentence or lifetime disability to people with very treatable conditions. What a putz.

  113. 113.

    Kent

    @p.a.:Normies will trust the plans* of a political party with more than half of its supporters thinking the earth is 6,000 years old?!?!  That depth of ignorance can’t be localized to one topic, it has to pervade everything they think.

    This is how I troll my GOP relatives, honestly.

    I could be interested in the GOP if they didn’t insist on blatant stupidity and ignorance in EVERY area of life and policy.  To be a good GOP-er you have to insist that:

    • Climate change is not real
    • All modern earth and life science is wrong
    • Covid is fake
    • Vaccines don’t work
    • Math is not real (Biden lost the election)
    • Tax cuts raise revenue
    • Russia is not fascist but Ukraine is
    • You can “catch the gay” in a school bathroom

    etc. etc.

  115. 115.

    sab

    @Brachiator: One thing I hate in our current world of grudging feminism is that whenever the guys really fuck things up they can trot out a subpar woman to take over and get the blame. Liz Truss. Theresa May. Carly Fiorina. Corporate as well as political.

    I despise Margaret Thatcher, but at least she was herself and not someone else’s tool.

  116. 116.

    Brachiator

    @mozzerb:

    What they’ll want to do is find some way to agree to hand the poisoned chalice to someone relatively uncontroversial,

    Conservative MPs thought that Liz Truss would be uncontroversial.

    Tories are looking for someone who can dupe swing voters into believing that Conservatives care about them. Then they will continue to wreck the British economy.

  117. 117.

    Kent

    @Spanky: That woman is a dipshit who thinks that voting a split ticket makes her look edgy and smart.

    I guess if you are going to have to pick the least-bad GOPer in PA it is a tough call, but Oz is probably less completely insane and authoritarian than Mastriano.

    But of course control over the Senate is more important than control over the PA governorship.

  118. 118.

    sab

    @Ohio Mom: I have a stale lettuce in my yard under the bird feeder, waiting for our deer. So far, no chomps.

    The much younger wife of a friend of ours always had an actual manger in the yard to keep the deer out of her flowers. It worked. But that was her backyard. In the front yard our neighbors might riot.

  119. 119.

    Brachiator

    @sab:

    One thing I hate in our current world of grudging feminism is that whenever the guys really fuck things up they can trot out a subpar woman to take over and get the blame.

    Hmm. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss are both subpar. Johnson was just better at bullshit.

  122. 122.

    Leto

    @WaterGirl: the Economist published an article Oct 11 with a scathing review, featuring this future meme:

    “ Liz Truss has already secured her place in British political history. However long she now lasts in office, she is set to be remembered as the prime minister whose grip on power was the shortest.

    Ms Truss entered Downing Street on September 6th. She blew up her own government with a package of unfunded tax cuts and energy-price guarantees on September 23rd.

    Take away the ten days of mourning after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and she had seven days in control. That is roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.”

    https://mothership.sg/2022/10/liz-truss-lettuce/

  125. 125.

    Kent

    @Princess Leia:Can I get some wisdom from the BJ hive mind? I just passed the date to receive “full” Soc Sec retirement. Given all the weirdness from the GOP, should I start getting it now or wait? I can wait, but I am worried that I should get started ASAP. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

    I would wait if you can afford it.  You get something like an 8% lifetime increase for every year you wait.  I view it as insurance against the rest of retirement savings going belly-up which is more likely.

    Mathematically speaking if you are healthy and likely to live past the median American lifespan then you gain by waiting.  If you are likely to die younger than the average American than you gain more by taking it early.  So women who live longer than men usually gain more by waiting.

    The calculation is supposed to be actuarially neutral for the population but that only works for an individual if you die at the median age.

  126. 126.

    MisterDancer

    @Kent: I could be interested in the GOP if they didn’t insist on blatant stupidity and ignorance in EVERY area of life and policy.

    What’s sad is that all this happened because the Party was more interested in power, back in the early parts of the 20th Century, than it’s principals.

    The GOP was shut out of the South. The only way, many of them thought, to gain “real” power there was to fully embrace the illogic of White Supremacy. And that was a death spiral.

    It’s always grimly hilarious when you see Conservatives try to claim the mantle of the OG Republicans (“‘we’ freed the slaves!”) , while dismantling everything they openly and publicly stood for, back then, as Justice Jackson noted in Court recently.

    So yeah, you get me some real old school Radical Republicans, GOP, and maybe we can talk.

    Otherwise, y’all been playing with trash for too damn long, now.

  127. 127.

    Kent

    @sab:@Kent: I used to vote split ticket. No more. Nowadays even reasonable Republicans lose their minds when they aspire to higher office.

    Last time I split the ticket was when I lived in Alaska and voted for Ted Stevens for Senate over a completely batshit crazy fringe Dem opponent who managed to squeak through a large primary slate on basis of name recognition in the Anchorage area.  I couldn’t bring myself to vote for the Green candidate who was an equal dipshit.

  131. 131.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MattF: You are not alone. No radio, no TV, no ads on my computer because of my ad blocker, which every time I am asked to disable it, I realize I don’t really need to read that piece anyway.

  134. 134.

    sab

    @Kent: My mom also was an Eisenhower Republican. She was not a racist  dixiecrat. She hated Nixon and Goldwater. She disliked W Bush. She loved Obama.

  135. 135.

    Ohio Mom

    @Princess Leia: That’s more of a math problem that has to do with your personal finances. They aren’t going to be able to end Social Security like it’s light switch, now it’s on, now it’s off. It will be a process even IF they succeed.

    There is some weird Social Security catch that if you apply within a few months of your full retirement date, they give you a lump sum for the months between your application and your full retirement date. Wait too long and that disappears, you just get your monthly amount starting when you apply. It’s something of a grace period.

    Sorry I don’t remember the time span, I just know that when I applied, it was a few months after my full retirement point had passed and I got a check for $6,000 and change. Then Ohio Dad retired a few months later and I went on his since half of his was a larger sum than all of mine.

    Finally, as my sister is fond of pointing out “Their (for various “they’s”) actuaries are better than yours (i.e., you and your calculator).”

  138. 138.

    NorthLeft

    Just wanted to clarify something. That “median voter” that shared her wisdom with us can be more accurately described as the median Steeler fan voter.

    What the hell do you expect from NFL fans?

  140. 140.

    Jackie

    “Even though her short, six-week stint as the UK’s prime minister came crashing down on Thursday, Liz Truss will still get to claim a yearly £115,000 allowance reserved for former prime ministers,” Insider reports.

  142. 142.

    Brachiator

    @sab:

    He is vile and selfish but he is not subpar. He’s just all about him, and he is pretty good at that.

    Johnson had a reputation for being lazy and inattentive going back to his days as a school boy at Eton. Didn’t he get fired from a newspaper job for making shit up. He skipped essential meetings as prime minister and continually tried to bluff his way through his job.

    Like Truss, he largely surrounded himself with stooges that made him shine by comparison.

  143. 143.

    mozzerb

    @Brachiator: IIRC he got fired from two separate jobs for making shit up (one newspaper and one magazine). That’s because making shit up is his basic MO. I’m not sure he knows how not to.

  146. 146.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Betty Cracker:

    bonus-dr-oz

    “So, what we find out from the discovery files, once everything goes public, this guy Lindsey Duncan, he’s not a medical doctor. He has a naturopathic degree from the Clayton College of Natural Health, which is a school that the state of Texas has said confers fraudulent and substandard degrees. He seems like he’s just a doctor on this, right? I’m just somebody who cares about your health. He’s actually a marketing executive for a company that makes supplements.

    Aubrey: Yeah, that is right.

    Mike: About a month before he comes on Dr. Oz, he gets an email that eventually ends up in the Federal Trade Commission lawsuit from the Dr. Oz show. They say, we’re hearing about this green coffee bean extract. Do you know anything, have you heard anything about this? There’s this study that’s coming out showing weight loss. Have you heard anything about this? He at this point has never heard of this thing. He immediately writes back and says, “Yes, I’ve heard of it. I’m really excited about it.” And then that same day starts calling manufacturers to start producing green coffee bean extract.

    Aubrey: Oh, God.

    Mike: It’s dark. So, over the next month, he calls up Walgreens and Amazon, all these other retailers and says, look, I’m going to be on the Dr. Oz show. You guys need to have this on your shelves and ready.

    Another really important thing. Remember in the clip how he said, ‘you need to take 800 milligrams of it twice a day, and you need to look for the pure version of it.’ These are search terms that he bought on Google.

    Aubrey: What! So, he’s done SEO to make sure that when people search those terms, they will get his version and not anybody else’s version.

    Mike: Exactly.

    Aubrey: Fuck off.”

  152. 152.

    Chris

    @sab:

    @Kent: I used to vote split ticket. No more. Nowadays even reasonable Republicans lose their minds when they aspire to higher office.

    The first election I was old enough to vote in was 2008.  I knew full well how much George W. had fucked the country, but I was still one of those dumbasses at the time who believed that 1) there was such a thing as “moderate Republican,” 2) John McCain was a “moderate Republican,” therefore 3) should I vote for a moderate Republican who might be able to put the party back on a non-crazy track, even if I agree with the Democrat more?

    And then he selected Sarah Palin.  That was one of the big moments of clarity in my political education: it doesn’t even matter if John McCain is a moderate, because even if he was, he’d have to throw so many bones to the psychopaths in his party just to keep them satisfied that he might as well be a psychopath himself.

    My political analysis has gotten a lot more sophisticated since then, but I still think that part was dead-on.  Look at every county in the nation and it doesn’t matter what the partisan or economic or religious or ethnic makeup of the overall population is, the local Republican Party is exactly the same troop of howler monkeys screaming exactly the same Fox News talking points.  Whether you’re in San Francisco or in rural Mississippi, if you’re a Republican, that’s what you have to please before you get anywhere at all in politics.  Kind of limits your options.

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