Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

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

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

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

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

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

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

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

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Thursday Evening Open Thread: Nikki Haley Is Running for (Vice) President

Thursday Evening Open Thread: Nikki Haley Is Running for (Vice) President

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[Warning: snark]

The consensus seems to be that Haley is actually running for vice president, or maybe as a warmup for a full-scale run in 2028, by which time TFG will be either nullified or dead. Keep in mind, Repubs believe that Vice-President Harris got a totally unwarranted reputational boost when Joe ‘senile old man’ Biden anointed her as his second, so why not try the same One Weird Trick with their very own brown lady?

(Also, the Palin example: Female politicians, at least in the GOP, have a much narrower sell-by date; Haley might not be enough of a MILF for Fox News in four more years.)

It’s not *much* of a patched-together argument, of course, but if you’re Nikki Haley, how much have you got to lose?

I will admit, as a charter Never Trumper, that I was also an early adopter of “Never Haley.” This is because I attach never to any candidate in 2024 who feinted at opposing Trump and then bent the knee to him later. But even in a party of cowards and hucksters, few people can rival Haley when it comes to platinum-tier opportunism…

… We might attribute some of her later cringe-inducing sycophancy for Trump to her position in his White House, but even after the January 6 insurrection, as the former Republican operative Stuart Stevens noted recently, “Haley was openly embracing her inner MAGA.” In late 2021, months after the Capitol attack, she said of Trump that “we need him in the Republican Party” and “I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.” She’ll never snatch the green jacket from the Master’s Open in Sucking Up from Lindsey Graham, but she’s certainly putting in the effort…

One possibility is that she’s getting out in front and taking some heat from Trump as a way of providing top cover to other candidates who will then reward her with the vice-president spot. It’s also possible that she thinks she can win. But it seems that Haley is just another Republican politician who is willing to make deals with the MAGA base if doing so is the price of remaining in public life. Haley, like Graham, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, and so many others, sees principles as disposable, making her yet another example of why the GOP cannot be trusted with power. Haley knows how to say the right things about how the violence of January 6 was bad, but to this day she refuses to hold Trump accountable, and so there is no way to know if she or any other candidate will withstand the antidemocratic demands of Republican primary voters. For Republicans in elected office, the GOP base is now so hostile to our democratic institutions that loyalty to the Constitution has become an unaffordable political luxury.

Another warning sign is that Haley and others have no apparent interest in changing any of these views among the GOP electorate. For all her talk about “a new generation,” Haley knows that the Republican base doesn’t want to move on. Those voters, to judge from the polls, want Trump, unless he can’t win; in that case, they’d like a Trump who can win, a candidate who reeks of Trump’s cheap political cologne but who will wisely wear somewhat less of it while campaigning in the crowded spaces of a general election…

Donald Trump is still the leader of the GOP and its choice (so far) for president in 2024, and Haley, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others, is courting Trump’s base. This means appeasing people who refuse to hold Trump responsible for trying to overthrow our government. As I wrote when Trump ran for reelection in 2020, and as I will continue to insist so long as the GOP resists reckoning with his legacy, no person or party should ever get a second chance to betray the Constitution.

Speaking of old people…

But the GOP wants us to know: they have a brown, female candidate, too!

‘Career’?

Reader Interactions

204Comments

  1. 1.

    Old School

    mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old

    “Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.”

  2. 2.

    Suzanne

    Why does the media want Nikki Haley to be a thing. She’s never going to be a thing. The national Republican electorate have never shown a shred of interest in her.

    The existence of Nikki Haley allows Republicans to conceive of themselves as not sexist or racist.

    ETA: But seriously, stop trying to make fetch happen.

  5. 5.

    Fair Economist

    As a California resident, I can testify term limits suck. Makes lobbyists incredibly powerful, since they’re the only ones who hang around enough to know what’s going on.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    and mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.”

    Someone should ask her what she would do if Biden passed that test and Trump failed it.

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    @Fair Economist: +1.

    It’s not easy to learn the ins and outs of the legislature and yet, instead of having master politicians who learn the Assembly and then, the Senate, or advance to statewide office, they term out and wander off to…consult? Run for the House? Become mayor?

    My senator termed out after leading the charge for mandatory vaccines in schools over the past decade-plus. He was replaced by a pretty sketchy overly ambitious city councilwoman. Le sigh.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    I’m worried that her proposal to test old people’s brains will distract from the important work of monitoring female reproductive organs.

  14. 14.

    Brachiator

    In her presidential campaign launch speech, Nikki Haley calls for “term limits for Congress –

    I regularly hear conservatives spout made up history about the Founders automatically returning to civilian life after a few short years of public service.

    and mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.”

    Why 75? Who says that Hayley could pass a mental competency test?

    Also, how old is Trump now?

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    Someone should ask her what she would do if Biden passed that test and Trump failed it.

    What is this “if” of which you speak?

  16. 16.

    oldgold

    Noem and Reynolds are after that position as well.

    They are not governing their states for the benefit of the citizenry, but to burnish their credentials for being nominated as VP.

  17. 17.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax: They’re both boobs, so they’re left to fight over who’s the biggest boob.

    Does anybody remember Bobby? Jindal, meet crater.

  18. 18.

    schrodingers_cat

    From the morning thread

    I have advice for the likes of Haley, Santos aide with advice for Harris on how to be more Indian and this Vivek dude. No amount of simping for RWNJs is going to make you white.

    They don’t really like you and I don’t either.

    -fellow Indian-American

  25. 25.

    Brachiator

    @Fair Economist:

    As a California resident, I can testify term limits suck. Makes lobbyists incredibly powerful, since they’re the only ones who hang around enough to know what’s going on.

    Also, California politicians “informally” agree on who will move to a new position when someone is termed out. And potential successors are often hand-picked staffers or relatives.

    In California, the promise of term limits was that new faces and progressive candidates would get a fair shot over incumbents.

    But even for “good” politicians, this game is a tightly controlled racket.

  26. 26.

    Ken

    I might get behind the idea of mental competency tests, but without any age restriction.  There are plenty of younger nutcases in office.

    However if I recall correctly it wouldn’t work at the federal level, as the Supreme Court has said that there can’t be restrictions beyond those in the constitution. Still, kudos for Haley to kick off her campaign with an unconstitutional proposal. Most Republicans take at least a week to roll one of those out.

  27. 27.

    Dangerman

    @Baud: Should be. Can’t get a security clearance, try another line of work. Worked that way in my Aero days, goose and gander, etc

  28. 28.

    waspuppet

    @JPL: She knows it will never be mandatory. The goal is for the Chuck Todds of our discourse to turn it into an EXPECTATION, which Biden will fulfill and Trump won’t. Just like his taxes.

    That said, I will try, and I hope we all try, not to fall into the trap of spending more time and brainpower trying to figure out what a Republican’s Real Goal Is Here than they themselves do. Josh Marshall’s tweet above has it exactly right: Whatever buys them another year of not having to try to get a real job, that’s what they’ll do. I’m just saying, let’s not call this a “swipe at Trump” like CNN of course did last night. He’s thrilled she did this, I guarantee.

  29. 29.

    RaflW

    As I mentioned the other night, she had the execrable and quite zealously nuts Pastor Hagee give the prayer at her announcement. She was already disqualified for her Trump-humping (as it were). But Hagee is off the charts, unvarnished far-right Christianist hoohey.

  30. 30.

    Suzanne

    I am exhausted. Have been working toward a big deadline. Also, I got really excited about repainting some of the rooms in my house, and I’ve been spending hours reading paint color reviews. (Mr. Suzanne is sort of horrified that such a thing exists.) He is of the opinion that “walls should be white”, but of course, there is a universe of variation within the realm of white. So I just ordered a bunch of samples.

    Yes, I am a person who has a spreadsheet documenting paint colors in my house. Imma make a binder, too.

  32. 32.

    Jeffro

    Haley is just another Republican politician who is willing to make deals with the MAGA base if doing so is the price of remaining in public life.

    x11,000

    Also, you all will be interested to know that if it comes down to trumpov vs Biden in 2024, the ‘sage of the heartland’ Gary Abernathy just doesn’t know, man, just doesn’t know which way he’ll go.

    (apparently trying to overthrow the government to stay in power isn’t the deal-breaker that it used to be)

    A trump-Biden rematch would leave me no practical choice but to decide between the man who rejected a legitimate election outcome, and could well do it again, but will pursue social, economic and border policies I strongly support while putting conservative judges on federal benches; or someone whose progressive policies and initiatives on issue after issue will, from my perspective, inflict lasting damage on the country.

    “THE GUY WHO’LL GIMME WHAT I WANT…OR THE GUY WHO’LL ‘INFLICT LASTING DAMAGE ON US WHITE GUYS THE COUNTRY???  THANKS A HECKUVA LOT, LIBS!”

    But fear not!  Mr. Abernathy has an idea of who might be our white knight, come to save us!

    And he’ll bore the shit out of hit us with that gem next week.  Shall we start a pool?  I am guessing that it’s Sunnunu or Youngkin.

  33. 33.

    UncleEbeneezer

    I didn’t think it would be possible to have a more laughable and disgusting display than the 2016 GOP Primary, but with DeSantis, Pence and now Haley already in, we just might get there.

  34. 34.

    C Stars

    Hey, who knows? Maybe in 2024 the GOP is tired of crazy and just wants a boring self-absorbed sycophant who is (kind of) nice to look at? Why’s everyone so negative about Nikki?

  35. 35.

    West of the Rockies

    Haley is very much a non-Palin.  Yes, they are brunette females, however, the comparison ends there.  And say what you will about Palin, at least she had a personality (terrible) and (clearly for a lot of people), some sexual charisma.   Haley is just a gray, amorphous Charlie Brown adult:  “waaa-waaa-waaa.”

  38. 38.

    Jeffro

    Has anyone asked Nikki Haley yet what she’ll do if it comes down to just her and trumpov on the RNC debate stage or primary ballot?  Is she going to step aside and defer to “her friend”?  Or is she going to graciously suggest that he tend to his various ahem legal affairs and let her press onward to reward the rich with yet more tax breaks save the country from “woke-ism”?

    I’m serious.  He declared first, and yet, she jumped in.  What makes her think she’ll be standing longer than him, or even win the nomination?

    Shorter: LET’S HAVE IT, SNOOZE MEDIA – ASK. QUESTIONS.

  42. 42.

    Ken

    @Suzanne: reading paint color reviews. (Mr. Suzanne is sort of horrified that such a thing exists.)

    There are people whose careers are inventing new paint names, year after year after year. “Seafoam green… no, we used that five years ago….”  I admire them; I would break after ten minutes.

    but of course, there is a universe of variation within the realm of white

    As XKCD noted.  (And the comic does use multiple shades of off-white.)

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    @Suzanne

    Went with Mustard Olive for the new front door. Quite pleased with the result; appears more towards the amber in some lighting, more soft touch of avocado in others. Might be a little much depending on size of room, though.

    Was advised by the retailer it dries darker than it goes on, which is somewhat garish right out of the can.

  44. 44.

    JPL

    Tim Scott might enter the race so the field is growing already.  Pence is depending on a strong showing in Iowa, and I expect him to drop out by December.

  48. 48.

    UncleEbeneezer

    CONFIRMED: Daniel J. Calabretta to the Eastern District of California. He’s the first openly LGBTQ judge to serve on this court. A defender of constitutional rights and child welfare, Judge Calabretta will ensure a fair justice system for Californians.

  49. 49.

    Central Planning

    @Suzanne: We are remodeling our kitchen and some adjacent rooms. The paint we got is a light gray (Benjamin Moore Metro Gray). I swear it looks like 7 different colors during the day – different LED bulbs contribute to that, as well as the sunlight at different times of the day.

    It’s hard to say we picked a bad color when it changes all the time!

  51. 51.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ken:

    And the comic does use multiple shades of off-white

    One picks the lightest (off-white) chip in the stack, then specifically asks for 1/2 the pigment.

  52. 52.

    Brachiator

    @Jeffro:

    RE: Gary Abernathy

    A trump-Biden rematch would leave me no practical choice but to decide between the man who rejected a legitimate election outcome, and could well do it again, but will pursue social, economic and border policies I strongly support while putting conservative judges on federal benches; or someone whose progressive policies and initiatives on issue after issue will, from my perspective, inflict lasting damage on the country.

    Turning the United States into a dictatorship or autocracy does not cause lasting damage?

  53. 53.

    Suzanne

    @NotMax: We did CAROLINA GULL for the front door. It’s great.

    When we moved in, the paint colors were varied and terrible. There was a different color carpet in each bedroom and it was all worn out and disgusting. I had a light greige (halfway between gray and beige)  carpet put in on the second floor, wood put in on the first floor, and we painted everything in SWISS COFFEE (Benjamin Moore). I said that I wanted to live with the white for at least a year, to figure out the Pennsylvania light, understand the seasons and how they feel. In Phoenix, I always wanted the house to feel dim and cool and like a sensory retreat. In PGH, I want it to feel softer and more eclectic and like a sensory retreat.

    So now I am evaluating every off-white known to the interior design trade. One of the colors is called BALLET WHITE, and it is not white at all. I asked Mr. Suzanne if he could live with it, considering that it isn’t white, he said, “It has white in the name!”.

  54. 54.

    HumboldtBlue

    Nimrata thinks she’s a serious person who people take seriously.

    Elsehwre:

    WASHINGTON – A D.C. police lieutenant warned Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio that a warrant for his arrest had been signed ahead of his arrest, according to evidence presented in federal court Wednesday during the sedition trial of five Proud Boys.

  55. 55.

    Jeffro

    @Brachiator: oh I know…”lasting damage to the country” vs “not having a country anymore, but a tinpot dictatorship” (and for TRUMP, for god’s sake)

    I think the proper response to Gary is, “you fucking moron, even a tool like Mitt Romney knows what to do here”

  56. 56.

    Suzanne

    @Bill Arnold: You laugh, but the McGees (interior designers who have that Netflix show and blog and line of stuff at Target) have posted the paint colors they use in their own home…..and they had Swiss Coffee mixed at 75% because it was just slightly too rich. LOL.

  57. 57.

    Warblewarble

    Nikki Haley’s dealings with Jarvanka are worth a look. That’s Kushner the “Hidden Genius”

  60. 60.

    Manyakitty

    @Suzanne: seriously. I had MSNBC on in the background and as soon as I saw them broadcast her ridiculous announcement rally live, I turned it off. Silence is so much better. 🤮

  63. 63.

    Kelly

    @Suzanne: Mrs Kelly is a painter of landscapes and floras. There are often a few patches of the next color she has in mind for wall. Most rooms have two colors and a white wall. She’s very skilled at blending her own colors which came in very handy when I bought a nice pair shoes this winter that I couldn’t find a polish to match. “No problem” she says and matched it perfectly blending three tins of polish we already had.

  67. 67.

    Amir Khalid

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Using Nikki Haley’s real first name as a kind of put-down is, well, problematic for me. It feels like people are doing it to emphasise her Punjabi Sikh origins, her otherness, rather than what’s really worth criticising about her: that she’s a conventional Republican with no ideas of her own, and no more inclination or courage than any other Republican to challenge Trump’s hold on the party.

  72. 72.

    Qrop Non Sequitur

    @Brachiator: Turning the United States into a dictatorship or autocracy does not cause lasting damage?

    Not if it’s a dictator who does stuff you like…

  73. 73.

    Sure Lurkalot

    I confess to knowing just a handful of republicans and none of them would vote for Nikki Haley in a primary. Maybe not even a general…

  75. 75.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Amir Khalid:

    She won’t use her given name, so I will. Fuck her and fuck her feelings. She’s a fucking kapo, a house negro, who will do all she can to cater to the racists and bigots who would spit on her if she used her given name. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but fuck the noise, the woman stands in opposition to all that is good, and whitewashing her very being isn’t going to change that one bit.

    She’s a hypocrite and a proud member of the GOP. Fuck her.

  77. 77.

    NotMax

    @zhena gogolia

    Once visited, on a private tour arranged with its occupants, a restored 19th century townhouse in Georgetown. Second story was almost entirely given over to a large space originally intended as a ballroom. Painted in what can only be described as Screaming Scarlet.

    Absolutely stunning. In a good way.

  78. 78.

    tobie

    I guess this news about Fetterman is out. I didn’t support him in the primaries but I’m very sorry to see he’s struggling with health problems that may be related to heart injury.

  80. 80.

    gene108

    The problem with challenging Trump in a Republican primary is that the Republican Party, at every level, bent over backwards to declare TFG the greatest best president God ever gave Man on the face of this Earth.

    No matter what the TFG did, pretty ever Republican in elected office sang his praises, while a few were so bold as not to comment because “they hadn’t seen Tweet”.

    I’m not sure how anyone can be a “moderate” in the 2024 Republican primary. There is no center lane, because that would require some level of repudiation of ripping asylum seekers’ families apart, not actively try to ban immigration all together, not give away such a big tax cut to rich people, etc.

    There’s no way for Republicans to get around the fact they can only be poor imitations of TFG, because to do otherwise would require being critical of what he did in office, and Republicans put too much effort into propping TFG up to walk it back now.

  81. 81.

    tobie

    @WaterGirl: No, the article says nothing about his heart. But I’ve heard that one of the side effects of heart disease is depression. That’s all I meant.

  82. 82.

    Suzanne

    @Kelly:

    Most rooms have two colors and a white wall. 

    I admire people who live like that, but oh my God. I can’t deal.

    To note: I have probably 20 black dresses and 30 gray sweaters.

  85. 85.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @Suzanne: Glad I’m not the only one.  The clerk at Sherwin-Williams gave me the big color paint chip collection rather than having to keep looking up samples for me.  I only look at Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore.

  86. 86.

    karen marie

    @Suzanne: I love color.

    The biggest mistake I made was painting a small-ish bathroom blood red.  It was a nightmare walking in there to brush my teeth.

    The best choices I made were painting my bedroom a bright robin’s egg blue and my living room an orangy-yellow, like a Tuscan sunset.  Sadly, I now live in a rental and cannot paint anything, so I live with white walls, gray cabinets, and brown wall-to-wall carpet – ugh.

  89. 89.

    TheOtherHank

    I think the people running TFG’s campaign know that he won the nomination in 2016 by having a bunch of people in the race dividing the not-Trump vote (as I recall he never got a majority in the primaries while it was still in doubt). Haley is being a team player and joining the fray to make sure that TFG can get all delegates without needing to get a majority of primary votes.

  93. 93.

    Suzanne

    @karen marie: I like color in other people’s houses. I like texture in my own.

    I once saw a T-shirt that read, “My favorite colors are concrete, steel, and glass” and that is accurate for me. I do like that soft sage green and I have one grody bathroom and I might do that color in there.

  94. 94.

    Mike in NC

    One of Nikki Haley’s dependable boosters is the awful pundit Kathleen Parker, who is apparently also a South Carolina native. She has repeatedly written of Haley being the first female president. Don’t see that happening in the next 20 years as long as MAGA rules. Fat Bastard will rip her face off and bury her in dog whistles (“Why did she change her name?” will be a rallying crowd to his worshippers).

  97. 97.

    Brachiator

    @Qrop Non Sequitur:

    RE: Turning the United States into a dictatorship or autocracy does not cause lasting damage?

    Not if it’s a dictator who does stuff you like…

    Problem with dictators is that they never stick to the script.

     

    ETA: I truly believe that a lot of the Beltway press believe that they would not be suppressed under a Trump dictatorship.

  98. 98.

    karen marie

    @Suzanne:   I wanted to paint my bathroom sage green but could never find exactly the right shade – they were always too yellow or too blue.  But that was 20 years ago.  I think there are better options now.

    I hate textured walls.  That’s the other thing I’m currently stuck with.  Since I live in a rental, I’m loath to put holes in a wall to make a climbing scheme for the cat.  If I had smooth walls, I could use large stick-on hooks to hang platforms for her to jump around on.

  99. 99.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Suzanne: I want to do an accent wall now that we’re homeowners, just ‘cuz, but I can’t decide which wall, to say nothing of which color… also this is a brand-new house so we should maybe just wait until something gets damaged enough to need a spackle & touch-up and do that wall… very new to the idea that I own something… but everything is just so beige-flavored…

    When I was a kid we painted my room green and that was pretty cool. Too cave-like for me now but it was a fun task and interesting to live in.

  100. 100.

    trollhattan

    So this is…interesting.

    Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has filed for bankruptcy but has nearly $10m (£8.3m) in assets and spends almost $100,000 (£83,000) a month, according to court filings.

    He owes almost $1.5bn in court-awarded damages, mostly to relatives of victims in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.

    Details of his finances were laid bare this week in documents filed with a Texas bankruptcy court.

    In previous court filings, he declared assets in a range between $1m and $10m.

    The Infowars founder declared bankruptcy last year, and the latest documents include voluminous detail about his possessions, debts, outgoings and legal issues.

    Mr Jones, who repeatedly made various false claims about the Sandy Hook murders, owns three properties in Austin, Texas, along with a $1.5m plot of land, three vehicles, two boats, two guns and a cat.

    BBC

    No word on if the cat is getting away in one of  the boats, packing one of the guns. You know cats.

  101. 101.

    zhena gogolia

    @Brachiator:

    ETA: I truly believe that a lot of the Beltway press believe that they would not be suppressed under a Trump dictatorship.

    Absolutely. That’s also the philosophy of the New York Times.
    I’m pissed at them for comparing Jennifer Coolidge to Peppa Pig. How insulting. They’re such assholes.

  102. 102.

    Danielx

    I’m sort of looking forward to republican primaries, if for nothing else but full display of TFG’s shitflinging ability. Secondary benefit of putting his fourth grade mentality on equally full display.

    Though I admit just the thought of seeing the miserable bastard in public again makes me tired.

  104. 104.

    Suzanne

    @Major Major Major Major: I am personally anti-accent walls. I like COMMITMENT. Do the whole room whatever color.

    I see images of colorful interiors and I like them, but they aren’t me. I have been drawn, as of late, to a lot of these rustic English country interiors, where everything is this sort of desaturated color palette and vaguely cattywompus.

  105. 105.

    trollhattan

    @Danielx: Monster Truck Trump running everyone over in 2016 was fun, when I believed he had no chance.

    2024 I picture Trump versus ten John Kasiches and just get depressed.

  107. 107.

    Suzanne

    @karen marie: October Mist! It was Benjamin Moore’s Color of the Year a couple of years back. Also Silver Sage.

    I hear you on the textured walls. This house still has some plaster-on-lath, and there is highly varying texture on those. The drywall walls are much smoother. In AZ, everything was that hideous orange peel texture. Just the worst.

  109. 109.

    Danielx

    @NotMax: Back in the day when we were looking at houses in northern VA, we looked at one owned by a Vietnamese woman. My thought was east and west, never the twain shall meet. Every room a different (bright) color, with different (bright) colored carpet. That particular viewing took about ten minutes.

    Another viewing: house was “professionally decorated”. Three different wallpaper patterns in the dining room…first unspoken thought, decorated by who, Ray Charles?

  110. 110.

    Geminid

    @trollhattan: That would depress me too- if I were a Republican.

    Trump might still be the 800lb gorilla of the Republican Party, but I think that to the general electorate he’ll be a 350lb mangy monkey.

  111. 111.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax: Oh god, I know that house.

    An acquaintance inherited mom’s ’60s rancher, a big one in a nice neighborhood. Every room had its own theme and had been dialed up to 11.

    The purple room had purple shag, purple walls, psychedelic pattern purple and chrome wallpaper on the ceiling plus some kind of crazed multi-bulb light fixture just shy of “full disco.”

    Repeat that for the orange room, the red room, the chartreuse room, and on and on. Each, its own world. The real crimes were committed in the bathrooms because she found fixtures in some pretty intense colors to anchor that room’s color theme.

    Bet there was 2,000 ft sq of shag in total and I cannot guess how many discrete colors there were. (Not in the kitchen, though.)

    He had begun the process of bringing the house back to planet earth, but had only undone three or so rooms the last time I visited. I sometimes wonder if he won, or mom won. Considering today’s market it would fetch $1.5 mil or more, if it been returned to sanity.

  113. 113.

    Danielx

    @Suzanne:

    Had to have a builder explain that to me. He said it’s a hell of of a lot cheaper to have somebody come in and spray stuff on the walls than to have a skilled drywall contractor do filling, sanding, etc etc. Deplored the esthetics, but…$$$.

  115. 115.

    karen marie

    @trollhattan:   How does one even vacuum shag carpeting?  You can’t use a beater-type vacuum on it.  My Shark upright would get jammed the minute it was turned on.

  116. 116.

    Honus

    Since this is an open thread I need to note that THEM! is currently showing on TCM. Starring a 33 year old Hames Whitmore and with James Arness, Fess Parker and Leonard Nimoy.

  117. 117.

    trollhattan

    @Geminid: Let’s hope.

    I question his mimicking 2016 today. He obviously tires more easily and a Secret Master Plan of bring out Don Jr. to rev up the crowd before he comes out for ten minutes probably ain’t cutting it. Now Kimberly filling in for Junior, that I’d watch. (In horror, but I watch car wrecks too.)

  118. 118.

    NotMax

    @DanielX

    All I remember is eye-searing orange wall-to-wall shag carpet, an electric blue vinyl sofa and vinyl side chairs, one bright yellow, the other kiwi green. The rest must have been too hideous to store in the brainpan.
    ;)

  119. 119.

    Ruviana

    @HumboldtBlue: Much of what you say is true but Nikki is her given middle name, is a Punjabi name, and has been called that all her life. Kind of like Beto. And a hat-tip to Brachiator, who got there ahead of me.

  120. 120.

    trollhattan

    @karen marie: ​My last shag apartment (god, that’s fun to write) there was an upright Hoover available to check out from the offce, which I diligently did every month or so. Amazing how 1. much stuff gets hidden in there and 2. the yarn doesn’t come right up with it. Sturdier than it looks! ETA it had a height adjustment, which you’d set to “Stratosphere.”

    The same complex looks unchanged decades later (very late ’60s vibe) and I am genuinely curious whether they ever replaced the stuff.

  122. 122.

    Elizabelle

    @trollhattan:  Sounds like the settings for Poe’s The Mask of the Red Death.  The masked guests strolled from room to room, each of its own color and design …  Free PDF from ASU.

    … To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue — and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange — the fifth with white — the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet — a deep blood color.

  124. 124.

    NotMax

    @Honus

    Borderline criminal not to give mention to Edmund Gwenn, who brought what gravitas there was to the hokum.
    ;)

  125. 125.

    trollhattan

    @Honus: Do not bury the lede: ANTS, GIANT ANTS!

    All those dudes. Am reminded of The Blob with Steve McQueen. Who plays a guy named…Steve.

  126. 126.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Brachiator:

    I truly believe that a lot of the Beltway press believe that they would not be suppressed under a Trump dictatorship.

    This April 2022 blog post by Dan Froomkin, responding to a Politico article, perfectly captures the mindset of the White House Corps with respect to their preference for Trump over Biden.

    White House reporters are bored, Politico reports.

    According to Politico’s own White House reporter Max Tani, they’re unhappy because they’re not getting the attention – or reaping the career rewards – that came with covering the madness of the Trump White House.

    Biden “has been a journalistic sedative” compared to “the most theatrical, attention-seeking, Beltway-panic-inducing president in living memory,” Tani writes.

    “Gone are the Tweets that sent newsrooms scrambling,” he notes, wistfully.

    The constant lies, the wild incompetence, and the staging of an attempted coup all made for great material. Now, White House reporters say, “the storylines, while important, and substantive, can lack flair or be hard to get viewer attention.”

    h/t https://presswatchers.org/2022/04/whiny-bored-white-house-reporters-evoke-no-sympathy/

  128. 128.

    CaseyL

    I like color, but I also don’t like my eyes to hurt :)

    My two bathrooms are teal, as is the spare bedroom.  My bedroom is a nice light purple.  My living room is mint green.  The entry hall and dining room are orange, the kitchen and transition from entry hall to living room is yellow, and the huge wall where the staircase climbs is a very light “sand.”

    Writing that, it sounds garish.  It really isn’t.  For one thing, about half my walls are wood-panel, so the paint is one or two walls per room, not the entire room.  And the yellow is pretty saturated, but everything else is toned down, though not to the point of pastel.

  129. 129.

    trollhattan

    @Elizabelle: ​Oooh, perhaps!

    I got a strong swingers vibe, and not the movie. That or raising a passel of damaged children. “But mommy, I don’t like the orange room. Can I sleep in pink?” “You know very well Timmy has a week left in pink.”

  130. 130.

    kalakal

    @Suzanne: I have wonky colour vision, Mrs kalakal was a professional artist. Colour schemes are most definitely her domain chez kalakal.

  133. 133.

    bookworm1398

    No one thought Trump had a chance in 2016. Nikki might figure, you never know, might as well as try.

    Mu question is – when she left the Trump admin, it was because she said she needed a job with more money. But President doesn’t pay that much more, so has her financial situation changed?

  136. 136.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Ruviana:

    Nimrata is her given first name. What you and Amir and Brachiator are gently asserting is that I should extend to her a measure of respect she actively refuses to extend to others.

    Fuck that noise. She’s a member of a minority group, and she deliberately whitewashes that fact in order to enrich herself, and that entails doing harm to not only her minority group but every other minority group in this nation.

    I’m tired of the Michelle Obama schtick that we go high when they go low. There is no low low enough for these fucks and if she’s willing to be a shitty person I’m more than happy to stand there and point out just how shitty of a person she is, and a good place to start is with her disgusting hypocrisy.

  140. 140.

    mrmoshpotato

     Haley might not be enough of a MILF for Fox News in four more years.

    I’m not ashamed that this got a loud “HA!” out of me.

  141. 141.

    WaterGirl

    @tobie: Oh.  I think trying to recover from a stroke and not recovering as quickly as you would like, or not fully recovering, could easily cause depression.  But I guess none of us is equipped to diagnose the cause from afar.  :-)

  142. 142.

    Tony Jay

    @HumboldtBlue:

    I’m tired of the Michelle Obama schtick that we go high when they go low.

    It still works. It might sound all morally pure and above it all, but when the ‘they’ in question are so far below the bottom of the barrel they’re splashing around in molten mantle, going high to their low can quite comfortably accommodate a wide range of subterranean brutalities.

  143. 143.

    Another Scott

    @Suzanne:

    […] there is a universe of variation within the realm of white.

    rofl. Memmoooiieeeeeeees…

    When we were deciding on what color to paint our walls, we wanted “white” but not hospital, zinc oxide, white. We agonized over dozens of shades of very light cream to very light sunrise yellow. We had swatches, but couldn’t decide.

    We ended up going to a paint store, said we wanted something sorta between this and this. The counter person took a quart of base, punched some things in the machine, it added a little yellow. He put on the lid, shook it up thoroughly, said try this.

    It was fine, and has been on the walls for close to 20 years now.

    The agony isn’t worth it. ;-) The lighting changes during the day, and from season to season, and the paint will pick up reflected light from other stuff in the room. There is no perfect color.

    My $0.02. Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  145. 145.

    mrmoshpotato

    I’m with @RadioFreeTom, who says this GOP can’t be trusted with power

    We Democrats knew this generations ago, Tommy!

  147. 147.

    buggrit

    I believe in going high when they go low: that way, you’re perfectly positioned to kick ’em in the teeth.

  148. 148.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @Suzanne: Interesting.  I’ll have to check them out.  I retired after 30 years as a museum exhibition professional at the Smithsonian.  I learned to work with small paint chips and computer screen pdf-sized graphics, not to mention floor plans and CAD drawings.  When I started, we had actual blueprints.

  149. 149.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    Another possible VP nominee, Kristi Noem, sinks to a new level of stupid:

    South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) spun a kind of conspiracy theory on Thursday, claiming the U.S. military waited to shoot the Chinese spy balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean so that they could conceal anything “they didn’t want the American public to know.”

    “I suspected, Greta, and this is just me and speculation. I may be a bit cynical, but I assumed they waited to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon over the ocean so that if something couldn’t be recovered, that they didn’t want us to know that it was an easy excuse, that it was somewhere in the ocean and they couldn’t find it,” Noem told Newsmax host Greta Van Susteren.

    Noem continued, concluding:

    These last three balloons and now they have shot them down over land. When you shoot things down and there is debris, we should have been there immediately to recover it and done an analysis and known exactly what these objects are. The fact that they tell us they don’t know what they are is unacceptable. And we’re not dummies.

    h/t https://www.mediaite.com/politics/were-not-dummies-kristi-noem-spins-theory-on-why-u-s-military-waited-to-shoot-down-chinese-spy-balloon/

  151. 151.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @oklahomo:

    For most White House reporters, dictatorship is simply much more exciting to cover than a normally functioning executive branch.

  152. 152.

    artem1s

    let’s be honest about this. Nikki is running for a piece of the fundraising action. her tenure as a serious candidate will last exactly as long as the donations last and she isn’t edging to far into TFG’s piece of the action. I honestly don’t buy that Nikki wants to do the hard work needed for a real campaign. there are very few candidates who are actually interested in getting job and are willing to do the work. Pence (Jeebus help us) is one of those. And Florida Man. Everyone else is running to get more speaking fees on Faux News and the Sunday shows.

  154. 154.

    cmorenc

    I will give Nikki Haley credit for one thing: successfully pushing through the state legislature the removal of the confederate battle flag from the South Carolina state house.

    Aside from that…nothing, zero.  And even on the confederate flag thing, the then-recent murder of nine black people in a Charleston AME church by a white supremacist rather put the pressure on her and the SC leg to do at least that one symbolic thing toward not alienating national / international businesses who otherwise might consider building facilities in South Carolina, because of the cheap labor.

  156. 156.

    David 🏈 Mahomes! 🏈 Koch

    “Nikki Haley Is Running for (Vice) President”

    Of which country?

    Dump isn’t going to put her on the ticket.

  157. 157.

    cmorenc

    @David 🏈 Mahomes! 🏈 Koch:

    Dump isn’t going to put her on the ticket.

    On the contrary, if Dump thinks nominating Hailey will significantly help him with voters to retake the White House, he sure would nominate her, and think himself the smartest politician ever for doing so.  And then if elected, completely ignore her except as window dressing, unless he needs her as a tie-breaker if the Senate is 50-50.

  160. 160.

    Honus

    @Tony Jay:I do it for me, not them. Also, in my experience it does work.  Killing them with kindness really bothers them on a couple of levels.  It makes it hard for them justify their meanness, and it shows they’re not really bothering you or causing pain. There’s a lot to that old saying “Love your enemies. It’ll drive them crazy”

  162. 162.

    geg6

    @trollhattan:

    HGTV has a great show hosted by the comedian Retta.  It’s called the ugliest house in America.  They compete for a makeover.  It’s truly astounding and Retta is hilarious.

  163. 163.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Jeffro: Oddly enough, Gary never actually addresses these oh-so-awful Biden policies. Hell, his “analysis” is more shallow than any of the Fox talking heads. Now THAT is skill.

  164. 164.

    bookworm1398

    Wyatt Salamanca

    This is also my theory for why they didn’t shoot it down over land. So they could make sure pieces weren’t carried off by random citizens and anything the military wanted to keep secret could be kept secret. Since details of the tech used by spies are not generally considered public information.

  165. 165.

    Anyway

    I don’t give a rat’s ass about N Haley. She’s a nobody. I am more concerned about Tulsi Gabbard or Andy Wang who can mount credible third party runs and leech off enough D votes to cause some damage. They both seem able to attract RW ratfucking donors.

    The person that pisses me off more than all three is Alex Jones who’s somehow able to spew lies and hate on the public airways and get away with it and even monetize it. Fuck him.

    That’s my list for today.

  167. 167.

    Mike in NC

    Nikki Haley is such a shameless opportunist she probably is a proud dues-paying member of the Daughters of the Confederacy. But would lie about it anyway.

  168. 168.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    I painted a (tiny) bathroom last weekend in the Michigan house i’m gradually moving to. I got involved in the whites at the paint store and it took me a very long time to choose. I finally chose “line dried” which is a cream color. The woman who mixed the paint said “oh, cream, always nice.”

    So easy for her :)

  169. 169.

    Geminid

    @Anyway: Yang doesn’t concern me, but Gabbard does. She will speak at an upcoming “peace rally,” and the “von Mises Caucus” that took over the Libertarian Party is listed as a “Silver Sponsor.”

    That party consistently puts their presidential candidate on 35+ state ballots, so the LP and Gabbard is a worrisome combination to me.

  170. 170.

    Mai Naem mobile

    So Nikki Haley’s announcement was on my news feed a couple of days ago with some pics. This isn’t something I would ordinarily  notice but she seemed  lighter skinned in her recent pics then her older pics. I am not saying she’s doing it intentionally and its not like Michael Jackson’s transformation. Its more subtle.  It could be as simple as she’s living in DC or NY and not SC and getting less sun.  Oh, and she has zero chance of being the GOP nominee even if Kamala is the nominee.

  171. 171.

    Kelly

    @trollhattan: We once bought a 1925 bungalow that was well maintained and mostly unmolested. There were some lively paint color choices and orange, yellow and black shag carpet. We decided to pull up the carpet before moving our stuff in. Underneath was oak, in great shape, didn’t even need refinished.

  180. 180.

    Scout211

    A footnote to the thread earlier today about the NYT and their anti-trans obsession, the management is not happy with staffers who signed the letter.

    Wow.  Just wow.

    A day after open letters from both celebrities and New York Times contributorsblasted the paper for its coverage of transgender people, executive editor Joe Kahn hit back with a stern newsroom memo defending the coverage and condemning contributors and staffers who railed against it.

    “Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy,” Kahn wrote, later adding: “We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.”

    Kahn argued the open letters ignored the paper’s “strong commitment to covering all aspects of transgender issues, including the life experience of transgender people and the prejudice and violence against them in our society.”

  184. 184.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Major Major Major Major: Congratulations on your home acquisition and may you find lots of love and laughter within its walls.

    PS Go ahead, paint a wall. It’s one of the better aspects of ownership…your walls, your bad color choices, your do overs. FUN!

  187. 187.

    David 🏈 Mahomes! 🏈 Koch

    @Geminid: ​  anyone
    @Anyway: ​
     someone voting for Gabbard isn’t voting for Biden in the first place.

    She draws votes from the sick lefty Hillary haters and Tankies who became Dump supporters

  190. 190.

    Geminid

    @David 🏈 Mahomes! 🏈 Koch: You are correct when talking in present tense. But right now most voters haven’t heard of Tulsi Gabbard any more than they heard of Gary Johnson 20 months before the 2016 election, and he got just under 4.5 million votes, 3.3%. This is not a matter of who you see now, but of who American voters see next year.

    If I were Peter Thiel or a like minded billionaire wanting to sponsor a spoiler, I’d put my money on Gabbard. She’s a three term Congresswoman and an Army Reserve Lt. Colonel with at least one deployment in Iraq. Gabbard’s also a slick talker, and a “looker” whom many would describe as a thirst trap. A couple hundred million dollars could go a long way towards peeling off Independents and soft Democrats, and if she runs I think the money will be there.

  193. 193.

    Anotherlurker

    @Honus: In my humble opinion, “Them” is truly a masterpiece of the 1950s Sci-fi genre. It is also  wonderfully written, produced, and acted.  One of my favorite films.

  203. 203.

    Miss Bianca

    @Wyatt Salamanca: Those sons (and daughters) of bitches. I’d be thrilled to be making what they’re making being “bored” by covering actual good governance.

    Assholes.

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