Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“woke” is the new caravan.

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

Good lord, these people are nuts.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

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

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Let there be snark.

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

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

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

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

The willow is too close to the house.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

You are here: Home / Gun Issues / gun safety / Saturday Morning Open Thread: We Must Do What We Can

Saturday Morning Open Thread: We Must Do What We Can

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Not so upbeat, but important:

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163Comments

  1. 1.

    Geminid

    I remember John Lewis High School. It was a big football rival for my own in the late 1960s, when I lived in Northern Virginia.

    It was called Robert E. Lee High school back then; they finally changed the name in 2020.

  2. 2.

    lowtechcyclist

    We all should be able to have the expectation of safety in our daily lives. ‘Freedoms’ that overrule that expectation for some can’t be regarded as legitimate.

    Whether it’s the ‘freedom’ to not have to acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ persons, or the ‘freedom’ to own any kind of firearm and take it wherever, it’s the same.  Nobody should have to live in fear because of who they are, and nobody should have to live in fear because other people insist on a ‘right’ that forces the rest of us to prepare for danger at our schools and workplaces in order that their ‘right’ might be unhindered.

  3. 3.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

    Glad to hear they finally changed the name.  Having lived on the Maryland side of the Potomac for some time now, I don’t always keep track of what’s happening closer to where I grew up.

    I graduated from Groveton High School, btw.

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    Latvia’s Parliament on Wednesday elected former foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics as President, making him the first openly gay person to hold the position in any country.
    [snip]
    Rinkevics came out in 2014, signaling on Twitter his support for a “legal framework for all types of partnerships.”

    In coming out, Rinkevics became the first openly LGBTQ+ politician in Latvia, which is still considered to be more socially conservative then its Baltic neighbors.
    [snip]
    Rinkevics will become the first openly gay president, but not the first head of state. That distinction is reserved for Paolo Rondelli, who served as one of San Marino’s Captain Regents in 2022. Source

  7. 7.

    p.a.

    Remember the usual suspects in the ‘aughts when “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” was their go-to pukefunnel output regarding consideration of First Amendment rights?

    Well it’s not a homicide pact for their Second Amendment “rights” either.

  13. 13.

    Narya

    Went to get new running shoes yesterday and was delighted to find that my usual shoe (Brooks Ghost) has a Pride version, a pair of which is now in my possession.

  16. 16.

    satby

    It’s a market day, and supposed to be the last day of our awful early heatwave of +90° days; tomorrow is predicted to cool down to “only” 87°. The market is housed in an uninsulated metal pole barn surrounded by blacktop with no shade anywhere. Dreading today, send cool thoughts.

    and with that, off I go.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    Does Skittles still use “Taste the Rainbow” as a slogan, or have they been intimidated by the haters?

  20. 20.

    Scout211

    Chris Licht is “stepping down.”

    The captain of the Titanic steps aside. CNN CEO Chris Licht has ceded control of business operations to David Leavy, chief corporate officer for CNN’s parent company. In Licht’s year as CEO, CNN’s ratings, revenue, and reputation have plummeted. pic.twitter.com/bvw0JicaTt— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) June 3, 2023

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    @satby

    The difference, I’ll assume, being a Prime Minister is technically not a head of state. President of ireland is Michael Higgins.

  25. 25.

    Layer8Problem

    We’re hauling off later this morning down I-95 to Our Nation’s Capital to visit the grandtots.  And their parents too, of course.  Maybe squeeze in some local sightseeing.

  26. 26.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The Crawford County Dems are holding a “Banned Book Auction” in Bourbon tonight. I wonder what I will return with, probably something Gay or CRT.

  33. 33.

    Scout211

    @smith: he’s just giving up the business side of the operation.

    Yes.  That’s why I wrote “stepping down” in quotes. In fact, the new COO will report to Licht. It’s not the big deal we wish it to be.

  35. 35.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Scout211:

    “But I thought that skewing our hours and hours and hours of programming toward panel shows featuring right wing authoritarian talking heads and right wing pols making packaged talking points was a sure fire audience grabber. How was I to know that our viewing public finds that unpleasant?”

    As Rick Wilson would say, “everything Trump touches dies”.

  39. 39.

    WereBear

    @smith: Did anyone say what a terrible idea the tRump Town Hall was?

    I’m thinking… not. So they are just rearranging the set of characters, but it’s yes-people all the way down.

  40. 40.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @NotMax:

    “I’m a seasoned broadcast professional with 30 years in the industry!”

    I can see a troll like Zaslav leaping right on that.

  42. 42.

    OzarkHillbilly

    ‘I can’t’: Georgia gun shop owner to close store as US reels from mass killings

    A Georgia gun shop owner said he is closing his store in the wake of several mass shootings targeting young children, as the country reels from recent attacks and an escalating rate of killings. Jon Waldman, a gun shop owner in Duluth, Georgia, said that he had already closed his store and will have the gun inventory cleared out by 15 June, NBC News reported.

    Waldman told NBC that recent mass shootings, one at a Christian school in Nashville and another attack at an Atlanta hospital, have weighed on his conscience as he has no control over what a customer could do with a purchased weapon. “I’m not against the second amendment. But just with my conscience, I can’t sell it, because I don’t know who it’s going to affect and hurt,” Waldman said, referring to the constitutional right to bear arms in the US.

    “That’s what eats at me,” Waldman added to NBC. “If it can happen, it’s only a matter of time until it does happen.”
    ………………………..
    “That really affected me,” Waldman told NBC, referring to the Covenant school shooting. “And then the shooting at midtown [Atlanta] – this just has to stop. Dude killed a woman from the CDC who only wanted to help others. So I just can’t. That was the final straw.”

  43. 43.

    Another Scott

    Open Thread – We’ll, that was annoying. My Samsung S20+ phone suddenly wouldn’t connect to my home WiFi no matter what I did (reboot, Safe Mode, etc.). Finally I played around with the Developer Options this morning and got it fixed. I turned on “WiFi non-persistent MAC randomization” and WiFi instantly started working again. Yay!

    (I don’t have unlimited cellular data, so not having WiFi working would have cost real money.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  44. 44.

    sab

    @p.a.: There is a bill in the Ohio legislatire right now to exempt firearms from the state sales tax, in respect for the secomd amendment.

    And we are having a special August election to vote on proposition one, which proposes to change the state constitution so that we need signatures from all 88 counties and then 60%  votes to override a state law. Currently we need signatures from 44 counties and 50 % votes.

    August elections typically have 8 to 12 % turnout. This effort is funded by Right to Life, Buckeye Firearms and billionaire Uhlein (who lives in Illinois not Ohio.)  They claim that they are trying to protect us from special interests.

    The legislature outlawed August elections in December 2022, but the Secretary of State and the Attorney General say that doesn’t matter now.

  45. 45.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    More reasons to hate Zaslav – from Variety in May:

    Zaslav said for media companies to gain more scale in streaming, consolidation through M&A at this point is a nonstarter — so, he suggested, the industry needs to figure out a way to package services together in a bundle with “the No. 1, 2 or 3 products” for “a specific price,”in effect reinstantiating[sic] the cable-TV model. “If we don’t do it to ourselves, I think it’ll be done to us,” he said.

  49. 49.

    Geminid

    Some Virginia primary news: Representative Jennifer McClellan (VA 4) has endorsed former Delegate Lashcresce Aird for the 13th Senate District seat. Aird is running against an incumbent, the notorious Senator Joe Morrisey. He unseated the incumbent in 2019.

    McClellan and Aird will campaign together this afternoon. The district lies south and east of Richmond, and includes Petersburg, I believe

    Earlier this year, Morrissey contested the 4th CD special election primary. McClellan flattened him.

  50. 50.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Geminid:

    If they had hung Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Judah Benjamin and the noble visage of Robert Edward Lee(spit) like any another decent country of that era, you wouldn’t have nearly the amount of toxicity in the racial climate that exists today.

  51. 51.

    Matt McIrvin

    It’s a false choice to suggest we have to choose between either upholding the 2nd Amendment or passing commonsense gun safety laws.

    Does anyone really believe this any more? I don’t think any such laws will stick unless we have a vastly different Supreme Court; by the standard of judicial review, regardless of whatever it originally meant, the Second Amendment now means mandatory uncontrolled proliferation of firearms, and, in many cases, the legalization of murder. We’re probably going to have to have a second civil war before it changes.

  52. 52.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Nukular Biskits:

    Somebody needs to talk to Congressman Ezell about his feelings on the Confederate flag that adorned everything in his youth. I’d be curious to see what he thinks about that.

    Also, can we please retire the Nixon era POW/MIA flag, as there aren’t any POWs out there nowadays?

  54. 54.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

    @lowtechcyclist: I used to run against Grovetown track and cross country teams, back when I was an Atom.

    You’re such a positive guy, you must’ve lost an electron somewhere. ;-)

    (Don’t know how NotMax missed that one!)

    I remember the Annandale Atoms were quite the athletic powerhouse. Very much unlike Groveton!

    I ran cross-country early in high school, but athletics wasn’t required during your junior and senior years when I was there, and I was happy to let it go.

    On a totally unrelated note, I got my bike back from the shop on Thursday, and had a pleasant 10-mile ride yesterday after work.

  55. 55.

    zhena gogolia

    @OzarkHillbilly: I guess Sandy Hook news didn’t reach Georgia. Eleven years ago.

    Oh well, good for him. But he didn’t destroy his inventory, did he?

  57. 57.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:

    Mike is typical of the older white “conservatives” here, wrapping himself in the flag and waving the cross.

    He defeated Steven Palazzo in the GOP primary, running on a platform (among other things) that highlighted Steven’s refusal to show up in the district at anything but “safe” venues and his refusal to hold REAL townhall  meetings.

    Well, guess what?  Mike is doing the same thing.

    I don’t like painting with a broad brush, but they’re cowards, liars, and frauds.

  58. 58.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: The Annandale football team was a big deal my first two years there. There were always a lot if new people moving to the area, and I think families with good players would pick Annandale’s district. Later, outer districts became ascendant in high school football.

    You still have time to take advantage of Maryland’s free fishing day. You do know there’s no limit for snakeheads, don’t you?

  59. 59.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Geminid:

    The object lesson wold be that there are serious consequences to sedition and treason, particularly in response to an election loss that merely was going to result in a national conversation about the moral and economic implications of chattel slavery.

    Lost Cause narrators would have been disinclined to publicly and openly honor and deify the perpetrators.

  60. 60.

    Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride

    @Matt McIrvin: I’m afraid you’re right.  (By the way, great use of a double “to have” in that last sentence!)  Scalia’s opinion in Heller included a list of “presumptively” OK gun regulations, and even said in a footnote that the list did not purport to be exhaustive; but that paragraph was inserted at the insistence of Kennedy in return for his vote, which Scalia needed for his 5-4 majority.  Since Kennedy left the court, they’ve created new (bogus) tests for what makes a regulation permissible that would disallow even some of the items on Scalia’s list, and they’re obviously prepared to make up any new tests they need to reject any regulation they don’t like.

  61. 61.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Actually, the current Supreme Court rarely overturns a gun safety law.  I don’t know where they think the line is drawn, but I think they’ve individually allowed all the stuff on that list.  As extremist as they are, they do not push no restrictions on firearms whatsoever.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @sab:

    We’ve been paying close attention to Ohio, where Republicans are using a special August election to try to raise the standard on ballot measures from a simple majority to 60% of the vote—a move to stop voters from restoring abortion rights. The GOP in the state has been lying their asses off for months about the move: first they claimed it had nothing to do with abortion, but instead was about special interests from out-of-state. Then a leaked letter from state Rep. Brian Stewart laid plain what we already knew—it’s all about abortion.

    Now we have a new deception: The campaign behind the special election to raise the ballot measure standard, co-chaired by Senate President Matt Huffman, held a meeting yesterday with lobbyists where they explained their strategy:

    “You don’t say abortion. You don’t say 60%. You don’t bring up social issues that divide even Republicans. The focus will be on protecting the constitution from special interests.”

    Just to be clear: They want to require 60% of the vote for ballot measures but don’t say 60%. Because they know it’s not what voters want, and they know they’ll have to trick voters and lie to them in order to move their plan forward. Disgusting.

    This is SUCH a deceptive power grab by religious fundamentalists I really think we could beat it, but it will take a lot of money and effort just for voter education because as you can see the anti-abortion side plan is to lie constantly.
    But I think we could win. People need to now that if this passes they have effectively banned the entire referendum process – just removed that whole tool.

  63. 63.

    Kay

    “You don’t say abortion. You don’t say 60%. You don’t bring up social issues that divide even Republicans. The focus will be on protecting the constitution from special interests.”

    That’s the tell. They know we can beat them even with Republican voters, even in a red state like Ohio. They know we will peel off GOP votes.

  64. 64.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Nukular Biskits:

    It is as it always was. If he’s native to the area, he comes from a long line of people who either perpetrated the economic, social and political isolation and repression of people of color within their own communities, or even if they didn’t agree with it, displayed great cowardice in refusing to do anything to stop it. Later, after those gains were hard won by people of color, those malicious thieves and cowards who did nothing to help whined about it and used those gains as a rally point to set back progress.

    In his life, there are plenty of beloved parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, pastors, coaches and mentors who are all culpable.

  65. 65.

    Miss Bianca

    @Scout211: What was that about the cucumber of Karma…or was it the dildo…comin’ at ya fast and hard?

    Too bad, Chris!

    ETA: But he’ll still be there. Bummer. Oh well…probably only a matter of time before he cocks up in his new position as well.

  66. 66.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    We had dinner last night with a couple who are pretty new to the building. The woman used to run focus groups for Scott-Foresman, the elementary school textbook publishers. I had heard that Texas was such a big market that they determined what publishers put in their textbooks. She said they created special editions for Texas. Among other things, they couldn’t show animals with genitalia. I wanted to ask more about that but the conversation had moved on and I thought I’d look weird bringing it back up.

    The guy had read my book and praised it, so I liked them and wanted to stay on good terms. Also, over pasta, we all confessed to being Democrats, which is unusual in my building.

  68. 68.

    zhena gogolia

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yes.

    I guess I thought that the day after Sandy Hook, the NRA would disband and all gun-shop owners would close their stores, destroy their inventory, and walk on the knees to St. James of Compostela.

  69. 69.

    UncleEbeneezer

    BREAKING: Late Friday night, a federal judge declared Tennessee’s anti-drag Adult Entertainment Act to be unconstitutional following a two-day trial last month. More to come at Law Dork: https://lawdork.com

  70. 70.

    BlueGuitarist

    Read the post title and heard Bob Dylan’s Buckets of Rain
    Life is sad, life is a bust
    All you can do, is do what you must
    you do what you must do, and you do it well
    I’d do it for you, honey baby can’t you tell
    Here’s a cover by Toni Lindgren:

    https://youtu.be/fmw-EWVmolc

  72. 72.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kay:

    It’s the old Leopards Eating Faces trope.  The conservative ethos is minority rule, so of course their elected officials include their own voters in people whose will they’re determined to override to enact extremism.

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Among other things, they couldn’t show animals with genitalia.

    One of my brothers is – or was – in movie CGI.  Apparently digitally removing genitalia from animals is a whole Thing in the industry.  For a time, my brother was the go-to guy for doing that.

  73. 73.

    Manyakitty

    @NotMax: whoa, that’s a cool shirt. Adding it to my must buy list, along with one that says SLURM in Hebrew. (Saw Zoidberg wearing it)

  76. 76.

    Manyakitty

    @Narya: Brooks shoes rule. Just got a snazzy new pair of Adrenaline GTS 22. Those guiderails are the only thing I found to keep my hyper-pronation in check.

  77. 77.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Frankensteinbeck: In 2022 they basically nullified all state laws requiring people to show cause for a concealed-carry license. It hasn’t really taken effect because it’s under appeal and they allowed a stay to continue, but at some point it’s going to be the Wild West in all the blue states too.

  79. 79.

    sab

    @Kay: My husband doesn’t want me canvassing on this because he thinks in the current climate it is too damgerous.

    But this should be a completely nonpartisan issue. There were a couple of propositions that I hated that won in the last election. One blocked bail reform. Another blocked local issue voting for non-citizens. Their side liked those propositions but they only won by slightly more than 50%. The only proposition that I can remember carrying by more than 60% was the anti-gerrymandering one.  And the legislature and the executive branch just ignored that with the assistance of the federal courts

    ETA I think the 88 county requirement is even worse. There are a few counties in Ohio where I would be terrified to try to collect signatures for certain propositions.

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @zhena gogolia: ​ I thought Sandy Hook would change things, tho certainly not to the extent I wanted. Instead, things got worse and continue to.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    Justin Parmenter
    @JustinParmenter
    ·Jun 2
    NC requires public school teachers to hold a license.
    Durham, NC’s Mt. Zion Christian Academy receives public $ for vouchers. They require their teachers to demonstrate their relationship w/the Holy Spirit by speaking in tongues.
    A license is optional.

    I don’t think people are prepared for how bad the lack of quality control for vouchers is going to get- with these vouchers for junk schools and millions of conservatives “homeschooling” but not actually teaching their children academic subjects at all the education divide in some parts of the country will just widen dramatically. More than ten states now distribute public funds to any entity that calls itself a “school”. We’re going to have tens of millions of people in these states who are essentially drop outs but just not counted as drop outs. It’ll show up eventually! We are going to pay for this lunacy!

  84. 84.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    “well regulated” = good regulatIons
    Of course the corrupt Republican scotus hacks are a big reason we can’t have nice things, but fixing that is easier than changing the constitution. fight for 15!

  85. 85.

    Steeplejack

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Speaking of which . . .

    Stunning stats:

    Before “2007, people in the US never purchased more than 7M guns in a single year. By the time Barack Obama left office, the US was purchasing almost 17M guns a year.”

    In 2020 US consumers “bought almost 23M guns in a single year.”
    https://t.co/Hh5Irrogn3

    — Dan Munro (@DanMunro) June 2, 2023

  86. 86.

    Kay

    @sab:

    I don’t think you should canvass either. It’s not just the threat of unhinged people at the door, I think there’s a genuine threat from religious extremists identifying you and stalking, etc.

    I think we could do this with ads. I know I usually say we spend too much on ads but this is one where if the public finds out what they are doing they WILL oppose it. If we lose this we lose because we didn’t engage. We can win with 10 million dollars. I would spend a good portion of it on radio ads in the rural counties. Country music stations. It’s cheap – we advertise for bankruptcy on country music stations and it’s been really effective for us- and I know they’ll vote against it – those that are not base Republicans, so not the 25%, but the rest. This we can do.

  87. 87.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Steeplejack: It’s an all consuming disease. People on both left and right see the numbers and think for their own safety, they have to get one too.

  88. 88.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: The ads write themselves: “The state lege once to remove the last check on their power…”

    “They want you to do what they tell you, not you telling them what to do…”

    They are trying to do the same here in Misery.

  90. 90.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    the most famous gunfight of the “Wild West” was at the OK Corral, when the good guys – Virgil & Wyatt Earp, Doc Halliday – enforced a city ordinance requiring a permit to carry deadly weapons.

    But you’re right that Rs want to impose their views on blue states on every – guns, abortion, contraception, lgbtqi

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    You can see Democrats moving more and more in this broad, rhetorical “freedom” direction on all the social issues and this is just perfect for that. It’s like we are finally figuring out how to talk about this. Of course it helped that they’re all authoritarians – was a natural responsive shift there, so not really anything we can take credit for, but still. These can all be “freedom” issues.

  97. 97.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Kay:

    @sab:
    Admirable that you want to canvass, but, as usual I think Kay is right, in this case about the danger of canvassing (unfortunately),
    Radio ads are a great idea.
    postcards can provide a lot of the individualized contact and individual effort of canvassing.

  99. 99.

    Eunicecycle

    @OzarkHillbilly: I just found out my son-in-law has a handgun. He’s liberal so I was shocked. He does store it safely away from my grandchildren, thank goodness.

  101. 101.

    Quinerly

    @Steeplejack:

    Thanks!

    Very behind on all threads. Thanks for thinking of me. I bought too many 😎 primroses, sages, and LAVENDER plants on sale in the last 7 days. Been trying to get them in, plus we had 2 days of RAIN. Can’t let the weeds get ahead of me after the rain here.

    Off to a little festival today and tomorrow Miguel is back. Will catch up on all things BJ tonight.

    Have a great day!!!

  103. 103.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    When the kid loses a tooth the same day my wife leaves town, the tooth fairy fucks up big time.  Hey, it’s just stuffed way down inside the pillow case.  She’ll be back tonight for the tooth from the special pillow.  She’s really busy.  Nobody’s perfect.  Dad fail.

  104. 104.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It’s an all consuming disease. People on both left and right see the numbers and think for their own safety, they have to get one too.

    I know people who have said this outright. They see news reports of mass shooting incidents and they think the solution is to have a bunch of guns and carry in public, like that’s going to be useful.

    (The occasional, isolated cases of some bystander with a gun stopping an active-shooter incident get HUGE coverage in the gun-fan community. There’s a widespread folk belief that there are huge numbers of phantom cases like this that don’t get reported.)

    I think this right here, the idea that in a gun-filled world having your own gun around is the only thing that will keep you safe, is what we need to break.

    Personally, when I think about maybe needing to arm up, it’s not to keep myself or my family “safe”, it’s for worse things. Visions of the apocalypse, being the avenging action man. And that right there is why I should and will never have a gun. I’m counting myself out.

    The problem is the other side considers those kinds of thoughts legit.

    Sometimes I think that everything we do with politics is just marking time, doing these little holding actions to prevent the inevitable mass extermination that’s coming. But these aren’t very useful attitudes, I guess.

  105. 105.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Old Dan and Little Ann: When my kid was old enough to ask if there really was a Santa, I asked him what he thought, and he said he thought his dad and I were Santa. I allowed as how he was right. He ruminated on that for a while, and then, in this utterly shocked tone, he said, “But what about the Tooth Fairy?

    ETA: But even more entertaining, my niece told my BIL she thought he was the tooth fairy, because she’d seen him leave the money. He told her she was right, and she asked if the other parents knew he was the tooth fairy.

  108. 108.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin: I fantasize about putting up a string of “How to spot a pansy/coward” billboards. The picture will be of somebody (no faces) open carrying or maybe just an AR-15.

  111. 111.

    Steeplejack

    It got up to 92° in my little corner of NoVA yesterday, so summer is officially here, I guess. Although it’s going up only to 83° today, and it looks like low 80s all next week. Me likey! Windows still open and no A.C. yet. Inside thermostat says 78°, which feels fine. There’s even a breath of cool air coming in occasionally.

    I wish I could find a weather page that would reliably give me the temps from yesterday, just as a check/​confirmation of the forecast. There is a Weather Channel page that shows up on my phone, but in some double-secret mode where I can’t snag a URL, and I can’t duplicate it on my computer. I think it said yesterday that we also broke 90° on Thursday, but I can’t find that now.

    Anyway, the thing to watch here is the humidity. I have become a dew-point guy after chasing down a suitably dumbed-down explanation. Short version: under 60°, comfortable; 61-65°, feels humid; 66-70°, getting uncomfortable; 71-75°, “oppressive”; over 75°, GTFO.

    Yes, I have fully embraced the geezer weather obsession thing. At least now we can do it on line instead of with almanacs.

  116. 116.

    narya

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Also, over pasta, we all confessed to being Democrats, which is unusual in my building.

    My parents have been living in their little community for nearly 20 years, and, at this point, they have found nearly all of the Democrats and atheists. My mother used to tell me about each one she found.

  118. 118.

    Roger Moore

    @Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:

    I think you misunderstand the situation.  The problem wasn’t that we were insufficiently bloodthirsty after the Civil War.  The problem was that the country wasn’t really dedicated to equal rights.  Yes, there were some dedicated abolitionists, and naturally all the newly free Black citizens were committed, but there were a large number of Whites in the North who were either indifferent or actively hostile toward Blacks.  Refusing to punish Confederate leaders was a reflection of that underlying disinterest in protecting Black rights, and it couldn’t have been undone by being more vindictive.

    Shorter: the problem wasn’t that the North failed to punish Confederate leaders; the problem was that too many Northerners agreed with them.

  121. 121.

    RaflW

    @UncleEbeneezer: The strike-down of Tennessee’s drag ban was very broad and substantive, per Chris Geidner at Law Dork.

    The judge in the case was appointed by F(ailed)POTUS in 2017, so conservatives don’t even have the “but he was an Obama judge” to wail ineffectually about.

    From the ruling (emphasis added): “a debilitated patient should not forgo medicine on account of its strength. This statute—which is barely two pages long—reeks with constitutional maladies of vagueness and overbreadth fatal to statutes that regulate First Amendment rights. The virulence of the AEA’s overbreadth chills a large amount of speech, and calls for this strong medicine.”

    A Trump judge called the TN Republican-passed law virulent. Wow.

  122. 122.

    zhena gogolia

    @OzarkHillbilly: We visited some people with a 6-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son named [let’s say] Leo. the next day my husband and I were puzzling over some tech problem, and he said, “Let’s call Leo, maybe he can help us.”

  123. 123.

    MomSense

    Sometimes I just get so furious that with all of our advancement we are choosing to have ridiculous political fights about the size of government which is really just code for not spending money on those people. We’ve barely come through a pandemic where we could have learned as a society that scary shit outside of our control happens and we need to work together to deal with it.  Instead the reality based, decent half of us are forced to cope with a bunch of fucking idiotic, whiny babies who are clinging to ignorance, guns, and all the worst human impulses.
    The GQP were willing to crash the world economy over IRS hiring?  Really?  Meanwhile climate change is coming for everything.  We spend so much goddamned energy dealing with their goddamned stupidity and cruelty that we could be using for productive, necessary, important things.
    I don’t see how we even address the real issues facing humanity considering how fucking terrible the state of journalism is.
    I had morning ho on yesterday and they were just going on and fucking on about bipartisanship even replaying the Tip O’Neil Ronald Raygun greatest hits.  Yes, Biden did the best anyone could possibly do to address a clusterfuck of a manufactured crisis by Republican assholes, but the very least they could do is actually point out how goddamned reckless and irresponsible the Republicans are.

    This is absolute madness.  I don’t know how we snap out of it.

  125. 125.

    Kay

    @BlueGuitarist:

    I like postcards too but they’re really for GOTV and this is a predicate to that- we first have to tell them what is is– that this will bar citizen referendums. It’s a fucking August election too- deliberate on their part- so it’s like 20% turnout. They will get the fundies out- all we have to do is get everyone else :)

    I think radio ads are really well suited to 30 second infomercials- that’s what we do for bankruptcy- we tell them what it is. They take it from there. I would also run them during radio broadcasts of high school sports. You would not believe how many people listen to high school sports and they’re not “political” per se. Sadly we can’t do them for football- August- but there’s baseball. High school baseball is actually more popular where I live than football, possibly because we are not good at football.

  126. 126.

    Quinerly

    @Steeplejack:

    That thread is hilarious.

    Cole will never get his hands on “my” Miguel and this thing that combines my substances to make a separate and 4th harder substance.

  127. 127.

    Steeplejack

    I feel like I can coast the rest of the day, because I got a notice from Amazon that my answer to someone’s question about a product—a cheap serrated knife—was “liked.” Yee-haw. Validation.

  129. 129.

    RaflW

    @MomSense: “We spend so much goddamned energy dealing with their goddamned stupidity and cruelty that we could be using for productive, necessary, important things.”

    That’s exactly the point.

    .

    Relatedly, Sherrilyn Ifill (Gwen’s sister, former NAACP LDF head) was tweeting the other day about how the GOP cutting IRS agents & costing revenue greater than the savings shows the Republicans have no policy goals. I countered that the ‘lost revenue’ is of course tax largess for the rich — by way of unenforced audits of bullshit deductions — so of course it’s furthering a policy goal: Enriching the already rich.

  131. 131.

    Steeplejack

    @Quinerly:

    I considered it a victory that Joelle revealed her undisclosed location so that the garden gurus could zero in. I know from a few visits to Arizona and longer experience in Nevada that the microclimates can vary wildly. What works in Tucson doesn’t necessarily work in Phoenix, etc.

  132. 132.

    Ruckus

    @zhena gogolia:

    You know that the only thing that fixes too many guns is more guns, that shoot more bullets faster and even farther, right?

    Wait, that can’t be right can it? OK, I see the problem, I got right screwed up with correct….

  134. 134.

    Quinerly

    @Steeplejack:

    And where I travel in AZ…Northern on the Utah border is very, very different. North Rim, Canyon de Chelly, AZ Strip, Marble Canyon, and on and on. I have never been south of Sedona in AZ. Got caught in the NYE snow storm in Flag this year. Keep trying to get farther south and failing. Hoping for Dec and Jan.

  135. 135.

    Steeplejack

    @Jackie:

    Thanks. That’s useful, but when I put in my ZIP Code it shows me results for Washington National Airport, which is eight miles away and has a different microclimate profile (can’t think of a better phrase). It’s on the river and it’s all concrete.

    The Weather Channel does a good job of showing me the forecast for my specific ZIP Code; I just can’t find where it shows the historical data (if it does), except for that one mini-page on my phone.

  137. 137.

    Kay

    These are the anti- abortion money people in Ohio. They are hitting up lobbyists for 6 million to run ads lying to Ohians about what State Issue 1 is.
    Labor will be opposed because they know if the ballot initiative process is banned in Ohio the GOP will ban labor unions. They can pony up some money to beat this. If they have 6 million we should have 10- also I think 10 is enough.

    Senate President Matt Huffman, the co-chair of the campaign backing State Issue 1, summoned lobbyists to the briefing this week. The event was private — the invitation emphasized it was “non-transferrable.” Roughly 50 lobbyists attended, a mix of hired-gun lobbyists who represent various corporate interests with business before the Statehouse and in-house lobbyists who directly work for business associations. The event was held at the swanky Columbus Athletic Club, a popular destination for Republicans that’s located near the Statehouse.

  138. 138.

    Steeplejack

    @Another Scott:

    I have fiddled with Wunderground and other sites and never found anything satisfactory. There was one amateur weather station in my neighborhood that was very good, but it disappeared a few years ago.

    I’m hoping some other weather geek has a magic link. Thanks for looking.

  139. 139.

    MomSense

    @RaflW:

    Didn’t MTG lose her shit in a hearing about taxes during the Ice Age which she somehow connected to climate change?  Am I imagining that asinine rant or did I eat too many edibles?

  141. 141.

    Steeplejack

    @Another Scott:

    Thanks. On that map you added I’m up by Seven Corners. Lee Boulevard Heights and Castle KVAFALLS140 are the two stations closest to me. The station that disappeared was closer still.

  142. 142.

    narya

    @Steeplejack: My personal favorite is the NOAA site that someone else linked above. You can poke around on it and find quite a bit of info. When they changed the radar, I wrote to them and complained, and they responded (my tax dollars at work!), so you might ask them for help.

  143. 143.

    Jackie

    @Steeplejack: Try the “more local wx” link just to the left of the 3 day forecast link. It’ll give you alternate locations that “might” be closer to your location.

  144. 144.

    Steeplejack

    I didn’t mean to hijack the thread. Steep off the weather hobbyhorse. Current temp 80° and dew point 62°. 🌞

  145. 145.

    Another Scott

    @Steeplejack:

    Ok, one final attempt from here. ;-)

    WeatherChannel – Almanac for Arlington, VA – Click on May, click on a date to see the numbers for that day.

    (I found the Almanac via the hamburger menu on the top right.)

    I’m not sure what station it is actually using, but the 92-93F high yesterday varies with the zip codes I’ve tried, so it doesn’t seem to be just grabbing the DCA numbers.

    HTH a little.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  146. 146.

    Geminid

    @eclare:

    “Fish Familiy Freedom”

    Very Alaskan. A friend of mine use to live in Alaska, during the 80s and 90s. Debbie is very tuned in to the culture around her, and she thought Mary Peltola’s slogan was “perfect.”

  149. 149.

    dnfree

    @Old Dan and Little Ann: I still have little containers full of tiny teeth because I couldn’t bear to throw them away.  Some of those teeth are going on 50 years old.  It’ll be a surprise for our kids when they’re going through stuff after I’m gone.

  150. 150.

    Steeplejack

    @Another Scott:

    Thanks. I live in the independent duchy of Falls Church, and the numbers don’t change when I put in my ZIP Code (22044). There, I have revealed my “undisclosed location,” although I think I revealed it before when Kay and I were talking about post offices.

    I appreciate everyone’s input, but I have been down most of these rabbit holes before. It is just irritating that I can’t find one specific data item that I know is being collected. 😾

  152. 152.

    RaflW

    @MomSense: You are not imagining that. “MTG Rants About ‘Ice Age’ Taxes To Deny Climate Change” was a real headline a month ago.

  153. 153.

    James E Powell

    @MomSense:

    This is absolute madness.  I don’t know how we snap out of it.

    That’s what I’ve been thinking. The only cure I know is more cowbell winning elections.

  155. 155.

    Brachiator

    @Steeplejack:

    I feel like I can coast the rest of the day, because I got a notice from Amazon that my answer to someone’s question about a product—a cheap serrated knife—was “liked.” Yee-haw. Validation.

    A good answer to a specific question can be better than a favorable review.

    And for now, I think answers are more real and honest than some reviews.

  156. 156.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @dnfree: I was thinking about that, too.  Got me wondering if anyone had made like a necklace out of old teeth, left it under a kid’s pillow, and permanently scarred someone for life!  Lol…

  157. 157.

    Brachiator

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    The guy had read my book and praised it, so I liked them and wanted to stay on good terms. Also, over pasta, we all confessed to being Democrats, which is unusual in my building.

    There must be a science fiction story out there where, after a dinner about UFOS and related matters, all the regulars at a dinner for new guests announce that they are Martians.

  158. 158.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Cheryl from Maryland: The MO of every conservative is to get or keep their cultural, political, religious, sexual and gender preferences enshrined as the neutral default, so that everything that deviates from it is labeled as a sinister and divisive “agenda”. Their agenda isn’t an agenda, it’s just the absence of an agenda.

  159. 159.

    dnfree

    @Old Dan and Little Ann: According to my “plan”, the kids will be scarred by finding their old teeth after my death, so it will no longer be my fault.  It will just be more evidence that any eccentricities they have can continue to be attributed to me.

  160. 160.

    RaflW

    @Matt McIrvin: Decades after learning that “the view from nowhere” that is prevalent in journalism is of course “the view from comfortable, college educated white men”, far too little has been done to change that, too.

  161. 161.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Mixed bag of news this morning… Klanned Karenhood bullied a FL high school into reprinting their yearbook without pages about LGBTQ+ students. The haters want us literally erased from society. It’s the next step in FL Gov. DeSantis’ fascism.

    OTOH, a Trump-appointment federal judge not only rules TN’s drag ban is unconstitutional, but gives state an officials a legal beatdown in his ruling. The link to LawDork has details about the ruling for our attorney jackals.

  163. 163.

    Jesse

    I’m so old I remember when NASCAR was a go-to punching bag for the left, an out-and-proud (no, not that way) full metal redneck organization.

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