Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Cole is on a roll !

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

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

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

This really is a full service blog.

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

Let’s finish the job.

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Archives for January 2023

Weekend Reading: Longer Updates On the Not-Yet-Over Pandemic

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It’s like clockwork now. Every few months, we’re warned that the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spawned yet another subvariant, this one even more transmissible than the ones it is fast overtaking.

The new entity is given a name, an unwieldy string of letters and numbers separated by periods. There’s discussion — some of it breathless — on Twitter and in the media about the threat the new subvariant poses. People who are still following Covid-19 news worry. People who are determined to ignore Covid pay no attention…

The cycle has some experts wondering about how useful these discussions are. We aren’t, after all, obsessing about which strain of H3N2 flu has been causing most of the illness that has cycled through the United States in this abnormally early flu season. That’s because new strains of existing flu viruses may make us more vulnerable to infection, but they don’t render us defenseless against influenza. The same is true with SARS-2 subvariants — but that sometimes gets lost in the back and forth.

“This keeps happening every couple of months. I sort of feel like it’s Groundhog Day, except with ‘scariants,’” said Angela Rasmussen, a coronavirus virologist at the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, using a term coined by Eric Topol.

(For the record, Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, disagrees vehemently with the notion that people don’t need to pay much attention to which variant or subvariant is currently circulating, arguing among other things that the public discussion could encourage more people to get the latest booster shots.)…

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Sunday Morning Open Thread: Kevin McCarthy, Out of His Depth in the Congressional Wading Pool

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… Away from the glare of the speaker’s official office, McCarthy is conducting some of the most exhilarating but also difficult business of leadership. Yet McCarthy is also confronting the limits of his slim hold on power as the promises of a new style of running the House run into the hard realities of governing.

This past week, an immigration bill that was supposed to be easy work for a Republican Party intent on sealing the U.S. border with Mexico was shelved for quick action, kicked back to committees for changes.

A Republican proposal for a 23% national sales tax that would take the place of income taxes rose and quickly fell from favor, turned into a punchline for President Joe Biden’s attacks on extreme elements in the GOP…

Three weeks into the new Republican majority, the risks of McCarthy’s leadership style are clearly taking hold: In the interest of opening up the legislative process, with more seats at the table for far-right lawmakers, the GOP agenda will be subjected to prolonged debates and delays — and the chance that nothing gets done at all.

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat: October Garden

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat 94

Thank you, Commentor CCL:

A bit of illness has me unable to do much but stare out the window, read, and reflect on the past year. The garden has been a focus of ours beginning in 2020 (yes, COVID lockdown), but only this last year have we started to think about the Fall and Winter views. Because of being a bit bed ridden with the luxury of not being able to do anything else, I thought I could write up our efforts on the Fall bit. Perhaps photos of the Southern New England, October Garden will be interesting to other BJ Jackals.

The top photo is of the vegetable garden behind the house with some of my Better Half’s cobblestone walkway work. (It’s New England, just put a shovel in the ground and up come rocks. They increase in size underground, like dahlia tubers.) Straight ahead is the aster bed, then field, then thicket for the birds, then in the far background, tree line marking the edge of the property.

Now, throughout the years, I have had vegetable gardens – from the desultory variety where the plants get shoved in and are expected to take care of themselves on their own, to more determined attempts where I am willing to water a bit in droughts. But this one, this one is my “best ever garden.”

I loved every minute of caring for it during 2022. We are looking to the Northeast. The garden is on the diagonal. The corners of the garden are East, South, West and North. The walkways inside the little garden are wide enough that I put the potatoes and carrots growing in bags on them with plenty enough space for me to get around.

The light in the garden will change next year. The sugar maple that is just barely visible on the left at the edge of the house died and has since been cut down. It was one of a beautiful pair that we are still mourning. It was always so brilliant in the fall. Its companion (outside the photo) has also been doing poorly, but we are hoping it will recover.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: October Garden

The second photo is on the other side of the house and is what one sees when one drives up our driveway. (The photo faces Southeast.) We did the “no mow May” well into July in field part in front of the woods. We were thrilled with the discovery of a maiden’s tresses orchid – which I knew from Albatrossy’s posts.

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Late Night Open Thread: America’s Rural Dependents Cousins

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Here’s Krugman’s article (gift link):

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Saturday Evening Open Thread: A Start Is Made, in Memphis

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War for Ukraine Day 338: Russia Unloads on Ukraine Again

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:

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