Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Cole is on a roll !

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

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

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

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

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

Republicans do not pay their debts.

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

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Elsewhere…

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195Comments

  3. 3.

    rikyrah

    Government competency IS A CHOICE.

     

    What happened in Philly is not a fluke.

     

    Do you think that if they had a Republican Governor it would have been repaired like that?

    No.

  4. 4.

    Betty

    Good morning. This is a good counter point to the chaos occurring in Russia. I do believe the younger generation will save us. I wish it hadn’t come to this.

  5. 5.

    stinger

    @rikyrah: ​
      If Chris Christie becomes the R nominee, I hope the Dems hang the compare/contrast with “Bridgegate” around his neck.

  10. 10.

    Nukular Biskits

    Good mornin’, ya’ll!!!!

    High today forecast for 90 here on the MS Coast, but humidity should be dropping to around 50% or so by midday.

    Not sure what my day holds yet.

  11. 11.

    Feathers

    Of course, the leftie crowd are pointing to the fixed bridge as proof that not having fixed all of  the nation’s problems already is a CHOICE!!!

    i must say, having taken some accounting classes does help with understanding why certain things happen in the manner they do. Namely that one time and ongoing expenses are considered to be entirely different categories of money.

  12. 12.

    Maxim

    Supposed to hit 85 here. Like WG, my idea of a good climate is 70 with a light breeze, so the heat is Not Fun.

  14. 14.

    Scout211

    Off today on a road trip to visit my 3 youngest grandkids.

    From TIFG’s TruthSocial:

    THE RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS, MARXISTS, COMMUNISTS, & FASCISTS ARE ALL WORKING HARD ON INTERFERING WITH OUR 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. WE WON’T LET THAT HAPPEN! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

    Have a good week all you RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS, MARXISTS, COMMUNISTS, & FASCISTS! 😊

    And have you watched Randy Rainbow’s new YouTube? Sweet!

    Donald in the John with Boxes.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    @Feathers:

    Every unsolved problem is a societal choice.  But where we see the failure to solve problems as the result of a lack of consensus, they see a conspiracy.

  16. 16.

    Ksmiami

    At this point, anyone not voting for Democratic Party ppl is a goddamn moron who probably can’t tie their own shoes. And don’t get me started on the third party voters Jfc.

  17. 17.

    Kristine

    Expected high of 81F here by the lake. But we’ve yet another Air Quality Alert and the expected totals for tonight’s/tomorrow’s rain keep dropping. At least the lower temps are slowing down the ground/vegetation dry-out.

  19. 19.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Feathers: There are many countries on this planet where they didn’t make the choices we have, so I am skeptical of any explanation for our crumbling infrastructure and shambolic social order that treats it as inevitable. But it’s true that a lot of these outcomes emerge out of systems that weren’t designed to produce them.

  20. 20.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ksmiami: Decades of arguing with left third-party supporters, going back to Nader 2000, have left me with a despairing feeling that they just have a different model of a voter’s ethical obligations in a democracy than we do. We see our duties as more or less consequentialist: we vote the way that we judge as increasing the probability of the best outcome. They see themselves as having a deontological duty to vote for the candidate who best represents their feelings and preferences, and if this results in a terrible, perverse outcome, that’s the system’s fault, not their fault. Serves the system right for being so messed up.

    The folks over at LGM like to talk about this attitude as selfish, hyper-individualist and consumerist, but that’s absolutely not how the Naderite/Green Party types see it–they see themselves as following a higher principle, and we’re a bunch of corrupted cynics. All the arguments based on consequence just go in one ear and out the other.

    One of the main reasons I think Trump is probably going to win in 2024 is that I see them already getting really excited about Cornel West. That’s a danger sign of a cycle in which you can’t get the left on the same page because too many liberals see the Democrats as somehow corrupted.

  21. 21.

    geg6

    I’m proud as hell of my governor.  Shapiro is the real deal.  First Jewish president?  I can see it.

  22. 22.

    CaseyL

    Seattle is forecast to be in the low 70s, which is just about my favorite weather.  I need to go out and do something today, and there are too many choices.

    Maybe the zoo.  Haven’t been there for a while.

  23. 23.

    Ken

    @Matt McIrvin: All the arguments based on consequence just go in one ear and out the other.

    Maybe the old “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome” would get through?

  24. 24.

    Viva BrisVegas

    Here in sunny Brisbane we’re expecting 80 today. Not too bad for winter.

  26. 26.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ken: I do find that a lot of young 2000 Naderites learned better after witnessing what subsequently happened. But it seems like there’s always more of them.

  27. 27.

    Kay

    Good article from Jake Tapper

    So back to 2005. I was a reporter with ABC News and Salon.com reached out to see if we were interested in doing a TV spot tied to the publication of the Kennedy Jr. piece. I interviewed him via phone, with a TV crew in his office, and prepared a spot for “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.”
    In Kennedy’s bizarre retelling a few days ago (the relevant part starts at 27:55 into the interview), I worked with him “for three weeks doing this incredible documentary” (no and no) about his Rolling Stone story – please note he makes zero mention of the article having since been retracted and disappeared – and then “the night before the piece was supposed to run, he called me up and said, ‘The piece just got killed by corporate.’” (I didn’t say that in any way and the piece wasn’t killed.) “All my career, I have never had a piece killed by corporate and I’m so mad,” he said I said. (I hadn’t. I had been at ABC News for two years. I had had plenty of pieces killed. Not once did “corporate” play a role in killing any of them.)
    RFK Jr. has been misrepresenting the content of this call for years. (I told him we were holding the story for a day.) Now in his retelling, a two-minute piece was an “incredible documentary,” a few days of work was three weeks, one remote interview was me working intensely with him, and a piece that got delayed one day so we could interview some actual experts is a piece that got killed.
    For the record, the piece aired June 22, 2005.

    RFK Jr is truly Trumpian in the boldness of the lies. He knows Jake Tapper is still around and likely to call him out on these lies- he just doesn’t care.

  28. 28.

    zhena gogolia

    Prigozhin would not have seized Rostov-on-Don or shot down those helicopters if the Washington swamp had never offered NATO ascension to Georgia and Ukraine. The sooner Americans accept this, the sooner we can all go home.— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) June 24, 2023

  29. 29.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I don’t doubt that these people exist- I have met them and we have some locally and I certainly see them online. What I have never been able to do is conclusively attribute Democrats losing elections to them. I think they like feeling important so gladly go along with this idea that they turn elections, and ordinary Democrats go along with it because they want to blame them for losing elections. I just don’t now if it’s true because the Democratic Party is a coalition – there are a lot of moving parts. During Gore’s campaign a lot of ordinary Democrats in Ohio thought he was getting killed on guns- that he lost share with WWC on guns and it doesn’t take much- there are so many white working class men that a point or two dip can kill the Democrat. So I don’t know about “cause”.

  30. 30.

    Circular reasoning

    @Matt McIrvin: i think that’s largely correct. I voted for Nader as a naieve optimist, and even wrote an article in the University paper railing against “horse race politics” and the virtue of voting your values. I would still love to see us have more than 2 viable political parties, but I’ve learned to keep my value vote to the primary and ignore any 3rd party/independents in the general.

  31. 31.

    Feathers

    @WhatsMyNym: Did not realize that. Very smart choice.

    @Matt McIrvin: As the daughter of a civil engineer, it’s pretty simple. Reagan came in, first in California, then nationally, and took the tax money that should have been spent maintaining post-war infrastructure and handed it to Republican donors as tax cuts.

    Deferred infrastructure maintenance is theft.

  34. 34.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    There was even a whole response to Gore’s weakeness with WWC men- the whole Howard Dean guns and pickup trucks nonsense. I was and am of the opinion that Howard Dean was wildly overrated so I thought it was nonsense- but other people didn’t – it was dead serious at the time.

    I find the WWC drop off theory more persuasive because while Democrats only get 35% of them or whatever, there are a lot of them, so if we shave off 2 in that big a group it matters.

  35. 35.

    zhena gogolia

    Best meme yet (and make no mistake, I am extremely upset by what’s happening, but you have to laugh at the same time):

    🍿🍿🍿 Ukrainian drone commander who fought Wagner forces in Bakhmut and Soledar appears to be thoroughly enjoying the insurrection unfolding across the border. pic.twitter.com/rSqGdrVlrT— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) June 24, 2023

  36. 36.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    In a close election, any small thing can make a difference, and it’s near impossible to prove a causal connection. But we shouldn’t overestimate their numbers.

    The big problem is they’re not happy just voting their preference.  They hate us for voting and supporting the larger coalition, and that comes through in their rhetoric, which can discourage potential voters in far greater numbers than actual third party voters.

  39. 39.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I wonder if some of this is a “blue view” though, the idea of “contagion”, where they are depressing the normie vote. Perhaps there are more of them in blue states and cities so people who live in those places believe their effect is more profound- and media people live and work in those blue places. As I said, the “story” of the Gore loss I heard in Ohio was he lost on God and, especially, guns. We were all going to follow Howard Dean and get them back by toting shotguns in our pickup trucks. In Vermont. Lol.

  40. 40.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    but that’s absolutely not how the Naderite/Green Party types see it–they see themselves as following a higher principle,

     

    The MAGA see themselves as virtuous too.

  46. 46.

    hueyplong

    @lollipopguild: “Tucker Carlson being fired by Fox was definitely not on my 2023 bingo card.”

    And right when they need him most (though Putin might be too busy to give him a detailed set of talking points this AM).

  49. 49.

    cmorenc

    @Kay: My neighbors are a GOP version of Naderites – who think Trump absolutely unacceptable as a recklessly irresponsible, selfish sociopath, but could never vote for “incompetent” Biden, and so plan to vote 3p.  They are traditional economic conservatives, but not so much the social side.  I tried to explain the perverse way 3p votes work in practice against the ideals 3p votes attempt to support, but the hill to climb to accept voting practical is too steep to climb.

  50. 50.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Baud:   We have had that ideal weather here in San Diego the past few days, now that the protracted June Gloom seems to be (mostly) gone.

  53. 53.

    NotMax

    Media odd duck mention.

    Strictly drive-in level, a movie* available in full on YouTube: High School Caesar (1960). Lazy rainy day popcorn and Jujubes fare.

    Diabolique magazine wrote that [John] “Ashley is excellent as a poor little rich kid who tyrannizes his high school; it’s a real star vehicle for him – he gets to be mean, charismatic, and cry into his pillow – and it’s easily one of his best performances; unfortunately, the movie… came at the tail end of the juvenile delinquent cycle and was not that successful.” Source

    *One may come away with the impression that apparently the major proclivity for teenagers of the times was dancing. Also features what is quite possibly the dullest drag race ever committed to film.

    Gotta treasure the occasional nuggets such as the main dude’s saying, “No one drives my (absent) father’s car but me” (a finned Cadillac) while tossing another set of keys to his sycophant. “Take the sports car,” he says. It’s a lumbering Buick (albeit a convertible).

  55. 55.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I just think we can bang our heads against the wall trying to change the behavior of pain in the ass (and sort of low information and dumb, IMO) Lefty voters or we can shift some small group of normie D leaning voters to compensate for the Lefty protest vote. They aren’t going to change, but normie voters can be switched with like “I like the cut of his jib!” – they’re lower hanging fruit.

  56. 56.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah:

    Do you think that if they had a Republican Governor it would have been repaired like that?

    No.

    Exactly right.

    Even if they had some MAJOR grift going, ridiculous bonuses, all kinds of payments going on under the table…they still wouldn’t have gotten it done this quickly.

    They’d have gotten it done in a year, for ten times the cost, 75% of which would have gone to line some GOP contractor’s pockets.

  58. 58.

    Jeffro

    Is anyone else sad that if Putin falls, we’ll never have an opportunity know the sheer brilliance of trumpov’s secret plan to end the Ukraine war?

    (sigh)

    LOL

  60. 60.

    Jackie

    @CaseyL: Meanwhile in the Tri-Cities (WA) low 90s creeping up to high 90s next wknd. I sure enjoyed the unseasonal low 70s while it lasted.

  61. 61.

    Jeffro

    Jamelle Bouie would fit right in at BJ with this:

    Where are the Republican ideas…about anything?

    There are, as of Saturday, at least 13 people running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination: former President Donald Trump; his U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, his vice president, Mike Pence; Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida; Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota; the former governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; the former representative Will Hurd of Texas; Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami; and the entrepreneurs and media personalities Vivek Ramaswamy, Perry Johnson and Larry Elder.

    With this many candidates, you might assume that Republicans were fighting over a broad range of different ideas and competing solutions to the nation’s most serious problems, of which there are more than a few. But they aren’t. Instead, Republicans are studiously focused on the fever dreams and preoccupations of right-wing media swamps while showing an almost total indifference to the real world.

     

  62. 62.

    Suzanne

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Decades of arguing with left third-party supporters, going back to Nader 2000, have left me with a despairing feeling that they just have a different model of a voter’s ethical obligations in a democracy than we do. We see our duties as more or less consequentialist: we vote the way that we judge as increasing the probability of the best outcome. They see themselves as having a deontological duty to vote for the candidate who best represents their feelings and preferences, and if this results in a terrible, perverse outcome, that’s the system’s fault, not their fault. Serves the system right for being so messed up. 

    Yes this.
    I do wish we (Dems, lefties, people of good faith) talked about power more, and the importance of having it and using it to good ends. Lots of our voters — me included — are inherently suspicious of power, because we see people use it for ill far too often. I think it’s mostly a good and moral impulse; it’s humble. But we don’t talk so much about how we need power to protect people and do the right things.

  65. 65.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Suzanne: Part of it is that a view that that the government is something separate from themselves as opposed to seeing themselves a part (small, but a part nonetheless) of a polity.

  67. 67.

    NotMax

    Yuck. Jolted from a late evening nap at 3 a.m. by a fit of hacking and sneezing. Feels for all the world like a first class head cold; hoping it’s just a sinus flare-up. Head feels as if someone put 10 pounds of stuffing into a eight pound turkey.

    Most likely a reaction to the sudden change in weather overnight. Unseasonably chilly (high 50s, with wind chill making it feel like high 40s) and damp. Brisk winds infiltrating through the (closed) jalousie windows.

  69. 69.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: Agreed. I submit that it can be hard to view oneself as part of a polity when the government does bonkers shit. Realizing that many of your neighbors are racist or mean assholes or just utter douchebags can be really alienating.

    I definitely feel the difference, having moved from AZ to PA and being around more people of similar viewpoint in my neighborhood.

  71. 71.

    Nukular Biskits

    Lotsa commenting here about voting, third-party, etc.

    Lemme share my experience here (maybe I’ve shared this before):

    Back a few years ago, I ran on the Democratic ticket for county supervisor.  I ran into a number of folks, who I knew very well, who wished me well, thought I’d be a good supervisor … but said they couldn’t/wouldn’t vote for me simply because I wasn’t a Republican.

    So much for the “I vote for the issues/candidate, not the party” line trotted out by so many “independents” and “conservatives”.

    The point here is that while this is MS (so take that however you may), a lot of folks in this state will continue to vote against their best interests.

  72. 72.

    mrmoshpotato

    @stinger:

    If Chris Christie becomes the R nominee, I hope the Dems hang the compare/contrast with “Bridgegate” around his neck. 

    Oh that is good.

  77. 77.

    Another Scott

    I want everyone to know that you should not be afraid of your local “Chef” We are not planning to do an insurrection and March towards the Capital…we plan just on cooking and serve you dinner….😎

    — José Andrés 🟧🇺🇸🇪🇸🇺🇦 (@chefjoseandres) June 24, 2023

    (via nycsouthpaw)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  78. 78.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Vermont (well, greater Vermont, a region extending into the Berkshires and parts of NH and northeastern NY) is maybe the one place in the US where a pickup-trucks-and-guns left appeal makes sense. The Bernie Sanders movement was big on appealing to the white working class with a socialism that embraced or at least didn’t reject right-wing cultural markers, too.

    I don’t think it works nationally because the white voters that liberals lose are always going to care more about the cultural stuff than about economics, and you can’t pacify them without screwing over part of your base.

  84. 84.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @NotMax: the juvenile delinquent cycle

    I only learned recently that “West Side Story” was controversial when it first opened on stage, and people were walking out, because a lot of people did not want to see sympathetic portrayals of youth gangs on stage.

    And here I grew up being told the world I was born into in 1957 was idyllic and perfect and teenagers were smiling and happy and clean-cut and respectful to their elders.

  85. 85.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax:

    Lazy rainy day popcorn and Jujubes fare. 

    Jujyfruits are better. :)

    And for some reason, my mind swore it was “Jujubees.”

  86. 86.

    kindness

    I don’t have a Twitter account.  But I do look at people’s tweets and read the comments.  Seems to me now, Twitter is a total cesspool.  Used to be I’d see commentary that is kinda balanced or supportive.  Now, it seems every tweet I’ve looked at lately, right wing trolls gang up and trash any tweet/person who is moderate to liberal.  Is that common across the board now or is it just the Big people they do that to?

  87. 87.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Vermont (well, greater Vermont, a region extending into the Berkshires and parts of NH and northeastern NY) is maybe the one place in the US

    Exactly. That’s my point with Howard Dean’s guns and pickup truck solution. If there is a model (and I don’t know that there is) it probably should be Sherrod Brown or Jon Tester.

  88. 88.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jeffro:

    Jamelle Bouie would fit right in at BJ with this: 

    Where are the Republican ideas…about anything?

    Where?  In their large intestines, Jamelle.  In their large intestines.

  89. 89.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Maybe it’s just that the apathetic normies don’t get under my skin the way the lefty Green Party supporters do. The low-info centrist normie types don’t really have a moral argument at all, but the worse-is-better lefties do, it’s a loud and strident one, and I have an inner Hot Take Generator that can’t not pay attention to that stuff.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @kindness:

    I’m just a Twitter lurker and I agree. I think it’s the nasty Right wing Tweets that really tipped the scales- there are so many of them. Just the extreme meanness changed the place.

    Years ago my husband played checkers online. He stopped because the site he was playing on got so mean. He would show me “look at the names these people are calling me and we’re just playing checkers“. He was so sad about it  :)

  92. 92.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    What I have never been able to do is conclusively attribute Democrats losing elections to them.

    Agreed, with the exception of Gore’s loss in 2000.

    The problem isn’t really their votes. We are talking about people who don’t vote for Democrats or Republicans, so their votes are not decisive. The problem is their narrative, which is always 100% anti-Democrats and which the political press always elevates.

    Our biggest problem, cycle after cycle, is convincing people who will vote Democratic to vote.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Oh, I have one in my household this summer. You don’t have to tell me. Last night he told me “tankie” is a slur and if I use it I shouldn’t be upset if people call me a “shitlib” because I’m okay with slurs.

    I may strangle him by the end of the summer.

  95. 95.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: “Juvenile delinquency” was this huge moral panic in the late 1950s-early 60s. Crime of every sort was really at a low ebb at that point, probably the lowest it’s been at any point in the past 100 years (the early 2010s were close), but people were still really worried about it and convinced it was skyrocketing.

  97. 97.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: The teenager in my house is fortunately not into this stuff (yet), seems to have a good head on her shoulders about politics. But we shall see.

  99. 99.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Kay: Howard Dean is from Vermont. [explains a lot]. I saw him in person once, seemed OK to me. Long time ago.

  101. 101.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @kindness: I have always been very careful about controlling my feed and have never seen the garbage that so many complain about.  What I have noticed is that many voices have been disappearing and Twitter is far less than it was.  I got a Bluesky invite last week and, lo and behold, a lot of them are appearing there.  Right now, it is invite only. There is a strong desire not to invite fascists and, if any do slip in, and strong consensus that blocking them and not engaging is the way to go.  Maybe a lesson was learned.   I know many people like Mastodon, but it did not click with me.  Spoutible hasn’t really taken off and hasn’t seemed to draw a critical mass of big names.  I know you didn’t ask about all of this, but here is is anyway.  So there.

  102. 102.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Last night he told me “tankie” is a slur and if I use it I shouldn’t be upset if people call me a “shitlib” because I’m okay with slurs.

     

    Don’t they already call us shitlibs?

  103. 103.

    cain

    @Matt McIrvin: The democratic party was a different party back then as well.  A lot more towards the right than it is today.

    The leftists are outmatched by the black voters. Black voters is the bulwark of the party now and they are increasing showing their power. Our wins in Georgia and others is proof of that.

    I’m not going to worry too much about the leftists – those voters aren’t particularly consistent in their votes anyways – black voters are.

  105. 105.

    kindness

    @Kay: Vermont is it’s own special case.  Dean and Sanders both had a constituency that was moderate to liberal, but a lot of them hunt deer up in VT.  You have to go over to NH or upstate NY to get the truly insane gun nuts.  Consequently, if you represent VT, you don’t crap on all gun ownership.  Dean’s 50 state strategy was good, I’ll give him that.  Democrats should never leave an election slot empty.

  108. 108.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Layer8Problem: To be fair, he has the eye patch because he lost his eye while serving as a navy officer.  He is still idiotic on this subject though.

  109. 109.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Omnes Omnibus: That’s my current experience on twitter, too. Oddly, I’ve found a lot of interesting posts on Tiktok. There were a bunch of videos from folks in Russia in my feed this morning. It reminded me of the way twitter used to be.

  110. 110.

    cain

    @Kay: He clearly was given that all it took was a ‘dean scream’ to kill his support completely. It wasn’t even a scream – it was a great piece of ratfuckery though.

  111. 111.

    James E Powell

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    I only learned recently that “West Side Story” was controversial when it first opened on stage, and people were walking out, because a lot of people did not want to see sympathetic portrayals of youth gangs on stage.

    When I was in 8th grade, everyone read The Outsiders. (NB – My friends & I were greasers.) If a teacher saw the book, they would take it away. We had copies where we tore the cover off another book and glued onto The Outsiders to hide it.

  113. 113.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @kindness: Wisconsin has a similar demographic of liberals who hunt and fish.  Maybe it’s states with great fall foliage.

  114. 114.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Well he doesn’t call me that- he’s not a jerk. It’s just that they’re so sensitive and touchy. I was teasing him with “tankie”.

    I listened to a podcast of the “Dirtbag Left”- whatever those people are, Chapo Traphouse-  with him and I actually found their depiction of “liberal moms” funny and accurate, if also sort of sexist and a little mean, and I am a liberal mom. It was true enough to be funny. But they never laugh at themselves, I notice.

  118. 118.

    Matt McIrvin

    @James E Powell: By the time I went to high school, The Outsiders was in the standard English curriculum, though I didn’t happen to get assigned it (I think I was in the group that got The Catcher in the Rye instead).

  121. 121.

    cain

    @mrmoshpotato: Yeah, I was going to say. That said, complete chaos in Russia doesn’t bode well for anyone.

    It is a good time though for oppositions in the satellite countries to cause trouble given the distraction…

  123. 123.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Circular reasoning: I think that if people want a multiparty system, reform of election systems is a necessary prerequisite–a first-past-the-post system with single-member districts is just not going to be conducive to them, because that absolutely maximizes spoiler effect.

    People who want to break the two-party binary by just urging voters to vote for third parties are doing it the wrong way around, or maybe imagine that repeatedly accidentally electing the worst people will lead to some kind of revolutionary change (the track record isn’t great).

  125. 125.

    Matt McIrvin

    @cain: I’ve noticed that Cornel West’s candidacy has gotten nothing but scorn and skepticism from every Black voter I’ve heard talking about it, but white Berniebro types really like him.

  128. 128.

    Scout211

    Our road trip to spend a week with our grandkids was called off.  We were one hour into our 14 hour drive this morning when my daughter called to tell us we needed to turn around and go back home.  The family is sick and at least one of the kids has tested positive for COVID.

    I thought COVID was in the past.

    [Narrator:  COVID is not in the past].

  129. 129.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Don’t beat yourself up. “Tweets that aren’t intrinsically funny unless viewed in context” are like half of Baud’s output here.

  131. 131.

    Ruckus

    @Betty:

    The younger generation is the one that saves the day because they have a long time to have to live with it. The old farts have lived with it and while may think it might need change, rarely has enough of the concept of change left as an option or the position of followup to make it happen. And then you have republicans who want to progress back 200 yrs so that time will stand still. Must be difficult to see/breathe/think with one’s head stuffed so deep in the sand or up the exit orifice. President Biden and President Obama have the insight to see that more change is necessary to have an actual functional government for the entire nation.

  132. 132.

    Layer8Problem

    @Omnes Omnibus: Fair’s fair.  Some people didn’t cause themselves damage in the fashion of determined putschist and Yale Law graduate Stewart Rhodes.

  133. 133.

    M31

    yeah crime was really low around 1950 but don’t worry, no-catalytic-converter leaded gas cars will take care of that

  135. 135.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Matt McIrvin:

     

    @Kay: This!  I do think 2000 & 2016 are examples of Dems losing elections due to Third Party spoilers who appeal to the Left.  The proof is in the fact that Stein and Andre got enough votes to account for loses in the key states that turned the election.  But totally agree that these idiots (and I know some personally aren’t worth the energy and we are better going after relative Normie and new voters.

  138. 138.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: It did lead to them adopting IRV to try to keep that from happening again… but then it got overturned by the courts for the specific case of gubernatorial elections, because the specific wording of the state constitution doesn’t allow it there!

  139. 139.

    Layer8Problem

    @Layer8Problem: And, damnit, he’s a former SEAL.  Perhaps he is qualified to speak authoritatively on the Biden Administration’s response to rich guy unregulated submersible disasters.

  141. 141.

    RaflW

    @WhatsMyNym: It looks like they did that in a manner that will allow bridge reconstruction to begin on the outer lanes each direction. If so, traffic can at least function for the much longer process of hanging girders, building the forms and casting the bridge deck & outer barrier.

    Then traffic can be split and the inner area excavated and bridged. Sucks for the people who use the underpass, but gets the arterial going in pretty short order. A smart solution IMO.

  142. 142.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    Jeez, that’s harsh. Hopefully it’s just a phase.

    Ah, the good old days of lecturing you on classic rock.

  143. 143.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @UncleEbeneezer: The question always is whether those voters would have stayed home if not voting third party or if they would have voted for the major party candidate.  I tend to think that a good number of Stein voters were never going to vote for Clinton in any case.  In which case, they did little actual harm.  The fact that they got so much media coverage and the damage that did is another thing.

  144. 144.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Steeplejack: ​
     

    Plus Christie nuked the plan for the much-needed additional tunnel to Manhattan.

    It still amazes me, just how many big projects were turned down by GOP governors in 2009-2010. The tunnel. High-speed rail in the Midwest and Florida. And this was all stuff that would have been funded by Obama’s stimulus bill.

    Which was why they turned it down, of course, but it really demonstrated that the people on the right, even the people sane enough to be elected governor back then, were no longer rational actors that one could expect to negotiate with. And it’s gotten much worse since.

  145. 145.

    Cameron

    My impression, as seen through my beady, two-legged-invasive-species eyes, is that Democrats are a third party in Florida, with an opposition party to be named later.

  146. 146.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Thanks for the update. I really miss Popehat but never seem to be able to drag my ass over to Mastodon to read him.

    On Twitter I start with @TheRealHoarse, @Zeddary, @RSchooley, @NYCSouthpaw, @MollyJongFast and branch out from there to some other semi-regulars and odd finds.

  150. 150.

    Ken

    @Steeplejack: Popehat’s latest:

    Glenn Greenwald: Mercenaries, whom I do not support, are acting like Nazis, whom I do not support, when they threaten Russia, which I do not support, instead of battling Ukraine, which I do not support, at the best of the West, which I do not support.

    (He’s still doing mostly legal stuff, this foray into pitchbot territory is a one-off.)

  151. 151.

    JWR

    “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. Eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.”

    – HRC

    If Putin didn’t understand what this meant, he does now.
    — Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) June 24, 2023

  152. 152.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Omnes Omnibus: The Stein voters I know are regular voters.  The type who held their noses to vote for Obama.  They believe in voting (and disparage those who don’t) but take the consumer voting perspective that ignores actual election results.  In short: they are self-centered a-holes.

  153. 153.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Crenshaw attended graduated from some course at the Kennedy School of Government that was supposed to be some bipartisan problem solvers kind of program. IIRC JD Vance did that program as well. There are some rare times when you think some of that went through Crenshaw and then you figure out he’s just another chickenshit water carrier for TFG, American oligarchs and ofcourse the racists.

  156. 156.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    One of my cousins is doing the Nice Ironman race tomorrow. I wonder if Krysten Sinema has managed to get one of her corporate sponsors to pay for some wine tasting knowledge tour in France to fit in this race? I was thinking of asking my cousin to look out for her. Do I send him the tweety bird colored dress pic or the Davos sheepskin vest thing pic?

  157. 157.

    rikyrah

     

    Since the Russian coup guy is a mercenary….
    You think some of the oligarchs got together and put a deposit in this guy’s Cayman Island account?

  159. 159.

    Kathleen

    @Omnes Omnibus: That’s my experience as well. I don’t engage with people I don’t want to deal with and limit comments and interactions mostly to my “tribe”. I still enjoy Twitter but so many people I enjoyed have left.

  162. 162.

    Citizen Alan

    @Matt McIrvin: (raises hand) I voted for Nader in mississippi in the belief that it was the only way my vote would actually matter. And in the abstract sense, I was right, because bush carried the state easily regardless of my vote. Nevertheless, I consider it one of the biggest regrets of my life that I was taken in by third party bullshit. Though for what it’s worth, I think if I lived in a state that was going to be close in that election., I would have held my nose and voted for gore and lieberman despite their deficiencies.

  163. 163.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kathleen: It takes a while to “get” you. It keeps track of what you watch and tries to give you more of the same. You can also search for and follow people or subjects. So it shows me a lot of book reviewers (booktok), clips of Ted Lasso, dogs, and leftie political posts.

  168. 168.

    Anyway

    @Matt McIrvin:

    One of the main reasons I think Trump is probably going to win in 2024 is that I see them already getting really excited about Cornel West

    Oh c’mon. Of all the doomers on this here top-10,000 blog I swear you’re the worst.

  169. 169.

    Citizen Alan

    @rikyrah: Really? It was smack dab in the middle of my bingo card. I’ve always thought it would be a race as to whether Ukraine would hold out long enough to destabilize the Russian government or, conversely, whether the russians would keep the war going long enough for a putin friendly government to take over in the u s and kill our support for Ukraine.

  170. 170.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kay: Personally, I was a Dean supporter because I thought he was the most aggressively anti war candidate and because he was the guy arguing we should confront the republicans everywhere instead of ceding the south and the midwest to them for cultural reasons.

    I do agree with you, however, on the idea that third parties function as a voter suppression mechanism. The true advantage to republicans in a nader or stein run is not that they will peel votes away from the democrat, but rather that they will discourage people from voting at all. I think that for every one person who votes for a 3rd party candidate, there are probably 3 or 4 who accepted the argument that there is no difference between democrats and republicans but who also realized a third party vote wouldn’t actually change anything, so they just stayed home.

  171. 171.

    JoyceH

    So, I just had an intriguing thought. Remember back when that Russian-backed Ukrainian strong man (forget his name) was overthrown? And the victorious mob looted his palace and dumped out all manner of papers and records, and in those records was a Smoking Gun against Paul Manafort? Okay, so what if that happened at the Kremlin? How many Smoking Guns against GOP luminaries do you suppose would be revealed?

  172. 172.

    rikyrah

     

    My go- to for the happenings of the anti-abortion forces is Jessica Valenti.

    Her latest?

    How the right -wing is trying to change the meaning of the word BAN , as they try to impose a national abortion ban, because they know that abortion bans are unpopular.😡😡

    https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8JGWQCC/

  173. 173.

    Jay C

    @JoyceH:

    Doesn’t matter: even the most unequivocally incriminating stuff would likely be dismissed by its domestic GOP subjects as (a la Trump) a “Russia Hoax”, and they would simply double down on their deflectionary BS: probably by trying to link Prigozhin’s mutiny to Hunter Biden’s laptop…..

  174. 174.

    Calouste

    @JoyceH: Not just GOP luminaries, probably every single neo-fascist politician in Europe as well. Le Pen, Farage, Wilders, the lot of them.

  175. 175.

    Another Scott

    @Steeplejack: Be aware that Popehat is a lot less active on Mastodon than he was on the bird site.  Similarly with LOLGOP.  In a way, that’s good, of course.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  176. 176.

    Josie

    @Mai Naem mobileI: ​
     Crenshaw is my house rep and there are times when I think he actually has a brain cell working. I suspect he has to come out with stupid stuff just often enough to keep the base happy.

  178. 178.

    Citizen Alan

    @kindness: Indeed. I mentioned in another thread last night that my local state senator here in Mississippi has come out in support of white supremacist Chris McDaniel for lieutenant governor and also believes we should bring back the state flag we finally got rid of 2 years ago. You know, the one with the rebel flag on it! And she takes those positions despite being unopposed in both the primary and the general election!

    21 days and counting.

  180. 180.

    James E Powell

    @eclare:

    One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies!

    Same here. It’s filled with great lines.

  181. 181.

    James E Powell

    @Citizen Alan:

    I was a Dean supporter because I thought he was the most aggressively anti war candidate and because he was the guy arguing we should confront the republicans everywhere instead of ceding the south and the midwest to them for cultural reasons.

    Same here. And a lot of my support for Dean was based on the belief that Ds didn’t stand a chance in 2004. Not only was the political media promoting Bush Jr as our own Winston Churchill, Democrats like Daschle and Gephardt were praising him for his great leadership. For about a year, Dean was the only one who would say that Bush was wrong. It never occurred to me that we would get as close as we did.

  183. 183.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    One of the nice features at Sighthound Hall is that Bro’ Man ran a little pipe that comes up and arches over his birdbath. He has it set for a one-second drip. It keeps the bath mostly filled and provides just enough noise for the birds to be attracted. And he planted a bush nearby so that guests can wait safely for their turn. All sorts of birds take big, sloppy baths.

  185. 185.

    Dave

    @Anyway: To be fair I think Matt comments regularly at LGM and compared to the baseline there he’s basically a wild eyed panglossian.

  187. 187.

    Geminid

    @Omnes Omnibus: Gary Johnson probably peeled off more Clinton voters in 2016 than did Stein. The Libertarian vote that year was twice as high than in 2012 and 2020. The Libertarian “overvote” might arguably- but not provably- have cost Clinton Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

    One dynamic at work in November, 2016 was a common belief that Hilary Clinton had the election sewn up. That may have contributed to the unusual turnout for Johnson. He was not that dynamic a candidate and won only a normal Libertarian vote in 2012. But many Independents may have thought they had a “free” protest vote and exercised it.

    I expect that a disproportionate  number of Johnson voters that year were male, and misogyny played its part also.

  193. 193.

    kindness

    @Citizen Alan Oh..  Fresno, eh?  I’m about an hour north of Fresno in Modesto.  Welcome to the Central Valley.  Hope you’re OK with 100 degree (dry) heat.  We get about a month of that every summer.

  194. 194.

    El Muneco

    @Geminid: There were a number of things that stole just enough votes from Clinton in 2016 to cost her the election if all of them were in play, but none of them was decisive in and of itself. Extremely close elections tilt on _everything_.

    One of my favorite examples of this is that in Florida in 2000 – the state where 2 Live Crew had been prosecuted for rapping while black – a vote for Al Gore was a vote for giving the founder of the PMRC a bully pulpit as First Lady. Enough young people were turned off enough by this to stay home that it made the election close enough for SCOTUS to steal.

  195. 195.

    Geminid

    @El Muneco: I understand that the 2016 election result was multiply determined. I focused on the Libertarian vote because someone mentioned the Green Party vote as a factor and I wanted to point out that the Libertarian vote could have been a bigger one.

    People often assume that Green Party votes come out of the potential Democratic electorate, while Libertarian votes come out of the Republican. That is often true (although I think most of these 3rd Party voters are not “gettable” by either party). But 2016 was an exceptional year, and I think many of the Libertarian voters were more diverse ideologically than is typical.

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