Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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

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

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

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

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Republicans in disarray!

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

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

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

T R E 4 5 O N

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

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

You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Good Things Happen

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Good Things Happen

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Also:

… Age matters a lot considering these are lifetime appointments. Cartwright will now be handing down decisions in federal court cases for decades and is almost certainly a candidate for future elevation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

“As a trial lawyer in Seattle, Ms. Cartwright has established herself as a pre-eminent civil rights attorney, dedicated to ensuring our laws are faithfully executed on behalf of the people they are meant to defend,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who recommended Cartwright to the White House for a judgeship, said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote.

“Importantly, she is someone who will apply the law fairly and impartially,” said Murray. “She will make an excellent addition to the bench in Washington state.”…

Cartwright’s confirmation is part of a broader effort by Biden to bring badly needed diversity onto the federal courts, both in terms of demographics like race and gender but also in terms of professional backgrounds. Cartwright fits the mold: She’s been a civil rights litigator for the Seattle-based MacDonald Hoague & Bayless since 2014, focused primarily on cases involving police misconduct, gender discrimination and sexual harassment…

 
Preempting the inevitable query: Yes, my child, the following tweet is intentionally sarcastic…

Reader Interactions

343Comments

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Blech. Lost electricity again yester eve, lots of big boomers including one strike on the ridge across the holler from us (I think) Big bada boom. 2 weeks ago we were without power for 2 1/2 days (our longest was 6 days), we’ll see how long this one takes.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    I know these space pics are colorized, but does anyone know whether NASA uses the same colorization algorithm for every picture or do they adjust it based on the particular image?

  8. 8.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    Heh, I was just thinking about that commenter we used to have who railed about all the astronomy photographs being fake because of something something “visible color spectrum,” etc.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Seeing as everything is shot in infrared, I’m sure there is a base algorithm they use to start with and then tweek parts here and there to better bring out certain details.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    @Steeplejack: I remember him. I don’t know, maybe he could see infrared and couldn’t understand why the rest of use needed the pictures to be colorized.

  13. 13.

    Lapassionara

    @Steeplejack: Yes. IIRC, the images are numbers that get translated into colors. I think the same numbers are linked to the same colors, so the images will be consistent across time.

    seeing these images are inspiring to me. If we can send this telescope into space, maybe we can clean up our act here at home.

  14. 14.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: It’s got to vary all over. The Webb telescope doesn’t detect the same wavelengths of light as the Hubble, for instance, so the same scheme cannot be used for them.

    The complaint about these pictures being “fake” runs aground pretty quickly since if there were nothing like that going on you usually wouldn’t be able to see anything. There’s a saying in astronomy that most interesting things in space are either too dim to see or too bright to look at. These glorious nebulae would usually just look like a dim gray cloud at best even if you were close up in person. But that’s the limitation of human eyes. We don’t have to be bound by that–that’s the whole point.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin: It makes sense that you can’t use the same algorithm across telescopes that see different wavelengths.  But what about images from the same telescope/sensor?

  16. 16.

    satby

    Heard from our rescue group’s board pres. a few minutes ago. My bleg for the injured cat and our group in general has so far raised $665. Thanks to all who contributed, many anonymously.

    Hoping some of the morning crowd who missed overnight might want to help too. Venmo link here, the one in my comment doesn’t work.

    A volunteer went door to door near the accident yesterday, but most people weren’t home. No idea if she has owners or is a stray. Now waiting for a morning report from the vet on her prognosis.

    Edit: PayPal link here.

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: We have a portable generator that allows us to get the “must have” appliances running (freezers, frigs, AC units, fans, coffee maker, computer and satellite)  but our biggest problem is water. No pump, no water.

    Last time the kitchen quickly became a disaster zone and that just drives me nuts, eats at me on the most basic level. I need a tidy kitchen.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: I used to have a well when I lived out in the boonies, and that was the worst thing.  At least in the big city, a power outage doesn’t take out the water.

  19. 19.

    Jeffro

    I wish astronomy was a required year-long course in every school district at some level (probably middle school).  That and geology.  You have to wonder if it would help folks keep things in perspective, maybe think a little longer-term.

    (he said, ignoring his own good advice most days… =)

  20. 20.

    Ken

    @Baud: The newborn star is still emitting two jets of matter (like human newborns) so is not suitable for colonization.

    Also, wikipedia says the cloud complex is around 460 light years away, so — putting on my science reporter hat — travelling there would take several human lifetimes.

  24. 24.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: @Baud: yep, no water when the power was out really sucked. And once in the summer it took 5 days for power to come back on. Most of my neighbors went to hotels even though they had generators. Just to spend a night in air conditioning and have a shower.

  25. 25.

    Jeffro

    It’s amazing that we live in a time where we can essentially explore the whole of the known universe from our little rock out here in the boonies.

    What really gets me are those animations you see from time to time (not from the Webb – other sources) about Galaxy X and Galaxy Y ‘colliding’ in another 200 million years or whatever, and how they’ll blow through and distort each other, then spin back towards each other over another 200 million years, and back again, and finally coalesce into one galaxy.  Just crazy!

  26. 26.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: It used to be that red was related to hydrogen lines, etc., but Webb is (mostly) an IR telescope so the mapping is probably different.

    WebbTelescope.org:

    These images are a composite of separate exposures acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope using the NIRCam instrument. Several filters were used to sample wide and narrow wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are:

    Blue: F187N, Light Blue: F200W, Cyan: F335W, Yellow: F444W, Red: F470N

    More than you ever want to know about the 29 bandpass filters on Webb’s NIRCam(s)

    HTH!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  28. 28.

    Geminid

    Ah, finally. From Roll Call:

      Senate confirms Torres Small as Deputy Secretary at USDA

    ….[Xochitl Torres Small] was a water rights lawyer before entering the 116th Congress, and grew up in southwestern New Mexico as the daughter of educators and the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants who were farmworkers.

    The vote was 84-8.

  30. 30.

    randy khan

    The diversity of professional experience for Biden’s judicial appointments is a really big deal, almost as important as the diversity of backgrounds.  They’ve done a really remarkable job in picking people for those jobs.  And they are pushing them through the pipeline really quickly as well.

  32. 32.

    Eyeroller

    @Baud: ​
     It has to be uniform or the images wouldn’t be scientifically useful. They’re all false-color images. But I know that sometimes, at least in the past, images released to the public have been adjusted to try to simulate better what the human eye would see, if we could see the object. If it’s an official image there were would be a disclaimer to that effect. Images are useful (and good publicity) but astronomers are typically much more interested in spectra.

  33. 33.

    p.a.

    First orcas attacking boats, now this (from the Iola Register):

    Since mid-June, an otter — which remains nameless — has been attacking and terrorizing surfers off the Santa Cruz coastline — in at least one case, stealing a board.

    They know what we’ve done to the natural world.

  34. 34.

    Betty Cracker

    @p.a.: I see that too now — thanks!

    @satby: Judge Cartwright is a fabulous pick! We need more people on the bench with a civil rights focus to offset all the Trump hacks. The orange fart cloud did incalculable damage to this country on every front but his shitty judges might be the worst injury.

  35. 35.

    narya

    @randy khan: @Betty Cracker: Totally agree on the judges, as well as the wide diversity in other picks. It’s one of the best things about the Biden team, and, from one perspective, possibly the most surprising. That is, one wouldn’t necessarily expect an old white dude who spent his life in the Senate to be such a force for this kind of diversity. So glad he is, though! Also: celebrating 65 turns around the sun today . . .

  38. 38.

    Betty Cracker

    CNN is pushing its big splashy interview with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who is “not sold on” Bidenomics. Dimon urges caution about the admin’s rejection of the “trickle down” approach in favor of focusing on the middle class.

    Welp, that ends the debate for me — Bidenomics is the best thing since dulce de leche ice cream! :)

  42. 42.

    JWR

    @Baud:

    PBS Newshour did a story last night about the first anniversary of the first Webb images. At the 4:00 mark in the video, there’s a sub segment with a “celestial artist” who says this about something like that:

    Miles O’Brien: You’re trying to let us see something we can’t see, right? That’s hard.

    Judy Schmidt: Yes, but there’s a natural order of wavelengths.

    So, even though it’s infrared, I’m still using the same, I guess, formula to put together an image, where the shortest wavelengths will be represented by blue, and then the medium wavelengths get represented by green, and then the longest then in the red.

  43. 43.

    Ken

    @Betty Cracker: I eagerly await the video that intercuts the Dimon interview with the scenes from It’s a Wonderful Life where George Bailey is yelling at Mr. Potter about how his banking practices enrich the bank but keep everyone in town poor.

  46. 46.

    JPL

    If trump were to spontaneously combust, what would you do?   I’d move away from the flames as quickly as I could.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    New York set up a hotline for police handling mental health cases. Not one officer has called

    Beth Haroules, an attorney who has led the New York Civil Liberties Union’s efforts to obtain records about Adams’ directive, calls the discovery “disturbing”. “Eric Adams promised that there was a clinical resource that would be made available to the NYPD, so that all of us would be assured that there would be no unlawful sweeps,” she tells the Guardian. “Then it turns out nobody’s using it. So Adams has misrepresented what the initiative is.”

    To the surprise of absolutely no one.

    Under longstanding New York state law, police may bring anyone to the hospital against their will if they appear to be mentally ill and pose a physical threat to themselves or others. But Adams’ directive significantly expanded the police’s authority to perform these involuntary removals. Now, any officer may force someone who appears mentally ill into a hospital if they simply appear to be unable to care for themselves – a condition that is defined broadly by the city’s new guidelines.

    Documents about Adams’ directive obtained by NYCLU and shared with the Guardian reveal a police force that’s been given substantial latitude to decide who gets hospitalized, with little if any oversight from clinicians. According to training materials for police and health hotline staff, signs that could justify an involuntary hospitalization of someone with suspected mental illness include whether they look severely intoxicated, appear malnourished, or carry “firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas”.

    Gee, whatever could go wrong?

  51. 51.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Betty Cracker: Dimon urges caution about the admin’s rejection of the “trickle down” approach

    What? 40 years isn’t long enough to satisfy your need to give the American public an unsolicited, unwanted golden shower?

    in favor of focusing on the middle class.

    Oh, I see the problem. Can’t have working people with agency. Masters of the Universe may lose control of them, they may even become…competition. đŸ˜±đŸ˜±đŸ˜±

  54. 54.

    MattF

    The data from JWST float serenely in some multi-dimensional space, well beyond anyone’s powers of visualization. Adding colors to a 2D image brings the viewable dimensionality up to around five or six. People who do image processing will tweak images to bring out correlations— and that’s a good thing, you want to see possible correlations. Training for astronomers emphasizes that human brains are evolved to see correlation, even if it’s not there and they take care— the rest of us can go wide-eyed and enjoy the ride.

  55. 55.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: It generally varies depending on what the astronomers want to emphasize. And the pretty pictures released to the general public are usually not the images used to do most of the science, which will emphasize one or two filters.

  56. 56.

    narya

    Thank you all! I had my first medicare doctor visit yesterday (I delayed the appointment from February just so I didn’t have to deal with whatever the temporary coverage might have imposed), and got my first taste of the old-person questions. It was sort of amusing–“have you had any falls?” “Yes, when running.”–but I was also impressed at the thoroughness of the things he was required to ask to get paid. Champagne last night w/ downstairs neighbor (as we waited to see if we needed to head to the basement to avoid a tornado). Today: Dinner out, definitely including dessert.

  57. 57.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JWR: Sometimes what’s being shown is a distant galaxy whose visible light has been cosmologically redshifted into the infrared, so you could reconstruct at least the visible spectrum of the original emissions.

  58. 58.

    Kathleen

    Some good news from blueohio.org on yesterday’s first day of early voting plus some information about meetings coming up in Dayton, Toledo, Youngstown and Columbus (at the bottom). I strongly urge anyone from Ohio to join blueohio.org.

    Early voting began in Ohio yesterday for the August special election, giving Ohioans their first chance to vote No on Issue 1.

    And vote they did! At the Hamilton County Board of Elections, a whopping 1,136 people voted (anecdotally, most said they were voting NO). And the Franklin County Board of Elections had 1,000 voters by early afternoon!

    The GOP needs this election to be low-turnout and low-motivation – and we’re thrilled to see that Ohioans are fighting back by going to the polls in droves.

    But the great early turnout yesterday doesn’t mean we let up! For the next three weeks, our focus is on educating voters and getting out the vote.

    We thought you might have the same goal… So we wanted to share upcoming urgent community No On Issue 1 meetings that are happening across the state.

    Each meeting is on Thursday(s) at 5:30 p.m. with food, SWAG and yard signs. (Yes, they will have yard signs on a first come, first serve basis!)

    We are attaching the flyers to the bottom of this email; each flyer has a QR code to RSVP. Organizers are asking that everyone please RSVP so they can plan accordingly.

    Here are the details:

    July 13: Dayton, 5:30pm at the Dayton AFL-CIO Headquarters (6550 Poe Ave)

    July 20: Youngstown, 5:30pm at the Operating Engineers Local 66 (291 McClurg Rd. #1)

    July 27: Toledo, 5:30pm at the Warren AME Church (915 Collingwood Blvd)

    August 3: Columbus, 5:30pm at the IBEW (939 Goodale Blvd). This will be a blowout GOTV final weekend rally.

     

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Dimon urges caution about the admin’s rejection of the “trickle down” approach

    Lol. They are absolutely furious that workers have more leverage and we didn’t do austerity.

    It’s so great how he’s always scolding us on how reckless we are:

    In an interview with CNBC, Dimon said Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf is a “quality human being,” so he wouldn’t comment extensively on the recent scandal involving the opening of 2 million credit and debit card accounts without the knowledge of customers.
    Dimon said that comments made by politicians, including by lawmakers during Stumpf’s testimonies on Capitol Hill, are getting out of hand.

  61. 61.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kay: In an interview with CNBC, Dimon said Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf is a “quality human being,”

    Slimy is a quality.  So is crooked, greedy, or thieving.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @Kathleen:

    Thanks. I’m going to the Toledo event. People want yard signs, which is itself a good… sign.

    I’m getting cautiously optimistic but I don’t think early vote turnout is a reliable indicator – we’ve been down that particular hopium road before! :)

    It’s exciting. I think we can beat them.

  63. 63.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kay: What is Issue 1? And y’all don’t wait for regularly scheduled elections for ballot questions?

  64. 64.

    Burnspbesq

    If you have access to Steve Vladeck’s Thursday bonus content (paid subscribers only) don’t miss today’s installment. He tears the Supreme Court a new one (but politely) over the horrific ruling on standing in the student loan case. Money quote:

    Nebraska looms as a weird new 
 exception/caveat/carve-out to traditional limits on state standing—one that makes no sense against the backdrop of prior precedents, that serves no obvious purpose other than allowing the Court to reach this specific program, and that has no obvious limiting principle. (For instance, can Texas now sue the federal government whenever I, as a professor at one of its public universities, am harmed by a federal policy?)

  67. 67.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: It’s implied but unclear if Dimon actually uttered that phrase. Here’s the relevant verbiage from CNN:

    Jamie Dimon isn’t sold on “Bidenomics.”

    “I’d be careful about that,” said Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, in reference to president Joe Biden’s economic theory that rejects “trickle-down” policies in favor of focusing on the middle class.

    The president claims that middle-class focus is the driving force behind the US economy’s success, but Dimon’s not convinced. “It’s a tough question to answer,” said the head of the nation’s largest bank, when asked if Bidenomics is as successful as the president makes it out to be.

  69. 69.

    Ken

    @MattF: Training for astronomers emphasizes that human brains are evolved to see correlation, even if it’s not there

    Ha! Good try, but we can all see the truth is out there. And it’s Cthulhu.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:

    I love the personal testimonials. Jamie is vouching for his friend. Why would we care? We don’t know either of them. The WORK, Jamie. This is about HIS WORK, which sucked because he robbed his customers. 

    That they are so big headed that they think their personal seal of approval is worth something to the public just amazes me. Can’t we just stick to looking at the work they do instead of testimony from interested and conflicted parties on their character?

  72. 72.

    Baud

    @Burnspbesq: He’s correct.  The standing analysis is super weak, especially for conservatives who normally are opposed to  broad standing rules.  That was 100% a results-oriented decision.

  73. 73.

    Burnspbesq

    @Burnspbesq:

    Even better:

    This is the Court literally expanding its power in objective defiance of its precedents, and doing so in this case in order to take power away from the democratically elected political branches of the federal government. I don’t think there have been many “lawless” merits rulings from the Supreme Court in recent years (even as there have certainly been some profoundly wrongheaded ones), but the standing holding in Biden v. Nebraskais, in my view, clearly worthy of that unbecoming sobriquet.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:

    Ha! We would have waited for a regularly scheduled election but our completely out of control Republican Party wanted to block a referendum on womens autonomy and agency so they first blocked special elections then did a 180 and set one to ram thru some more garbage.

    They MIGHT have over reached. We’ll see. I love these type of elections, issue referendums. Right up my alley.

  75. 75.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker: That snippet is great because it pits Dimon against the middle class.

    However, it would also be good if the news media asked that same question of union leaders and people other than Wall Street and corporate types.  People have a bad tendency to conflate business leaders and economic experts.

  76. 76.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @satby: Just threw in a few.

    We had a stray that came to us preggers, but we had four cats and two dogs in the house so we made a place for her on the front porch.

    She had the kittens, we found furrever homes for all of them; but when we took the last one, she disappeared
 then came back preggers AGAIN.

    So we got THOSE kittens homes, and got her spayed, and the next year she disappeared.

    In between, though, another black cat was hit almost right in front of our house and I thought it was Middie, so I rushed out, picked her up, and we rushed her to the vet; but she was too far gone and we let her go over the Bridge.

    We get home and I thought I saw a black cat on the porch as we drove up, and I said “that can’t be Middie, she’d be back here yelling at you for food if it were.”

    Cat walks up to us and yells— it was Middie after all.

    No idea about the poor cat that got hit, I think it was a “neighborhood cat,” but she didn’t suffer any longer.

    So in the name of that little black cat and our Middie, a small donation.

  78. 78.

    Baud

    @Burnspbesq: The best part is that Roberts gets all snippy because the dissent calls him out, even though the dissent’s tone doesn’t approach anything close to the type of acerbic and disrespectful tone that Scalia used.

    Respect for the court is sinking fast, and Roberts want to pass the blame onto critics rather than his majority.

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    The president claims that middle-class focus is the driving force behind the US economy’s success, but Dimon’s not convinced. “It’s a tough question to answer,” said the head of the nation’s largest bank, when asked if Bidenomics is as successful as the president makes it out to be.

    More hilarity. Who does Jamie think drives the economy? Let me guess- bankers and rich people?

    The best thng about Bidenomics may be that these people are no longer treated as oracles. We don’t get them shoved down our throats as much. I think their insistence on punishing ordinary people for the financial system crash they caused led to a permanent loss of credibility. LONG overdue.

  80. 80.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kay: That they are so big headed that they think their personal seal of approval is worth something to the public just amazes me. Can’t we just stick to looking at the work they do instead of testimony from interested and conflicted parties on their character?

    Because for too many people, we’ll say “Republicans” as a brief descriptor, your identity matters more than your actions.

    “A quality person” has morals beyond reproach.

    How dare you criticize my racially insensitive comment? I’m not “a racist.”

    I’m “a billionaire” so my choices, however bizarre and destructive, are genius.

    Harry can make hideous observations about his cousin’s weight and Hagrid can transfigure same said child to look more Iike a pig, but it’s OK because they’re “good guys.” But how dare Draco call Molly fat?

  81. 81.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    The best thng about Bidenomics may be that these people are no longer now being treated as oracles orifices.

     
    Fixed

  83. 83.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @narya:

    Adding my wishes for a very happy birthday!

    Also @Amir Khalil, if he’s here (or even if he’s not
)

  85. 85.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kay: It sounds like they’re afraid to out their preferred policy in front of a full complement of voters.

    I mean we have one party control in MA too, but they aren’t out here hiding from voters.

  88. 88.

    Kathleen

    @Kay: Have you  joined Blue Ohio? I’m not necessarily a David Pepper fan but I’ve joined and while I’ve missed most of the Zoom meetings they’ve produced some great candidate interviews.

  89. 89.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Geminid:” Senate confirms Torres Small as Deputy Secretary at USDA
    
.[Xochitl Torres Small] was a water rights lawyer before entering the 116th Congress, and grew up in southwestern New Mexico as the daughter of educators and the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants who were farmworkers.“​

     Hooray! Thank you, Biden Administration; and thank you to Geminid for posting the info.

    Ms. Torres Small is a reminder to me that the USA has lots of good people in public service.

  90. 90.

    FastEdD

    “firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas”.

    That would be me and all of my so-called friends!

  91. 91.

    Argiope

    @Kay: I’m still stuck on the $15 million price tag to put on a special August election to reduce democracy in the state, right after they themselves voted to end August elections.  I’m salty about my tax dollars being used to deprive people of rights.  I think that’s another point worth making about our corrupt and profligate Republican supermajority while we canvass against Issue 1.  I hope they have gone past their skis to an embarrassing extent.

  94. 94.

    narya

    @Kay:

    Who does Jamie think drives the economy? Let me guess- bankers and rich people?

    Another thing I like about Biden–his policies, and his rhetoric, and the work his administration is doing, are all putting the lie to this MOTU thinking. Joey realizes, and SAYS, that it’s the everyday folks who do the work that makes the world run.

  96. 96.

    sdhays

    @Kay: Wells Fargo is such a garbage bank that you even have pick of the hideous wide-spread scandals to ask about. They led the pack, as I recall, in targeting black people for variable rate loans before the financial system collapse, even if they qualified for traditional loans.

    They should have been forced to close down long ago. The rot is too deep.

  97. 97.

    MomSense

    I’m glad people are finally coming around and recognizing the importance of the courts.  The connection between their voting and the composition of the courts seems a bit weaker, but some of that may be defensiveness.

    Yes, I’m really glad that people are finally coming around but I am haunted by past persuasion calls and pissed that it has taken so long.

  99. 99.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Yep, and business leaders have a tendency to conflate themselves with economic experts too, so it reinforces their conceit. As you suggested, talk to union leaders, workers, etc.

  100. 100.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kay: Who does Jamie think drives the economy? Let me guess- bankers and rich people?

    When we were under COVID restrictions; that’s who the essential workers who came in were, weren’t they? Bankers and rich people?

  102. 102.

    Betty Cracker

    Regarding garbage banks targeting people, did y’all hear about the commercial tax prep services handing people’s data over to Google and Meta for ad targeting? I was reading something about it yesterday — there are senate hearings on it. It’s outrageous.

  103. 103.

    Rob in CT

    @Betty Cracker:

    A CEO talking his book?  Shocked face.

    What is mystifying is how many middle class people buy that kind of bullshit, whereas if you got them talking about their own management they’ll complain too…

  105. 105.

    Lapassionara

    @Kay: We’ve had 40 plus years of trickle down economics, and I’d say the results are clear and not good for that theory. Time to put it to rest.

  109. 109.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    However, it would also be good if the news media asked that same question of union leaders and people other than Wall Street and corporate types.  People have a bad tendency to conflate business leaders and economic experts.

    And since most business leaders really want Republicans in power, of course they’re going to crap on what a Democratic Administration is doing whether it’s good for the economy or not.

    CNN might as well just be open about it and interview Steven Mnuchin.

  110. 110.

    StringOnAStick

    @narya: You and I have the same birthday, and the same age. I turned 65 yesterday too.  Seems both significant (made it to Medicare age!) and not (just another busy day in paradise).  Had dinner out and then went to see Will West and the Friendly Strangers; the percussion wizard played is amazing array of things plus keyboards and at the same time, holding a complex beat while improvising a complex keyboard solo!

  112. 112.

    Kay

    @Kathleen:

    No, I haven’t. I like David Pepper though. I think he’s a genuinely smart person.

    I am doing this sort of under the radar work driving people to states with womens health care access. It’s completely legal and we cover our asses belt and suspenders to make sure we don’t go outside the lines, but the women involved in it are scared of political prosecutions or targeting by Right wing nuts who are violent (sensibly, I think) so it’s all very word of mouth. Anyway. I love this work so have all but dropped out of anything else other than going to the County Dem meetings or sort of “referring” people to other people (not me) if they want to volunteer.

    But I do love referendums and I think this one has a shot in hell so I’ll end up involved, I’m sure :)

  114. 114.

    Rileys Enabler

    @satby: thanks for reposting, I missed the original Bleg. In for a bit, hope the kitty recovers- and the volunteer, too. That had to be awful to witness.

    side note: donated in honor of my doggo Riley (hence my screen name). She passed June 30th at the ripe old age of 17 years. I’m still not ready to face the loss but one does as one does. Even seeing my screen name is rough, but I’m not changing it.

  115. 115.

    Kay

    @Kathleen:

    Im mostly going to get the signs. The fucking signs. Democrats love signs like no one else loves signs. I wish they loved voting as much as they love yard signs.

    I went 80 miles to get Marcy Kaptur signs because they were all bitching and we ended up with hundreds left over. Luckily they can be reused.

  117. 117.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kay: I’d wager the yard sign crowd is voting. I wish yard signs could drive turnout. I’d pile them to the moon.

  118. 118.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay:

    I am doing this sort of under the radar work driving people to states with womens health care access.

    Hero!

  119. 119.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack:

    Oh gosh, have I been misremembering? Apologies, if so Amir, take a few extra days to celebrate, on me!

    I do get nostalgic on July 13, remembering with great affection our dear irascible General Stuck, and of course the one and only Tunch. Ten years.

  122. 122.

    Kay

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:

    I know it’s ungenerous of me – signs are either harmless or helpful- but I just find it annoying because it’s always a reaction to seeing GOP signs- “why don’t WE have signs?”

    The Obama campaign put no time or energy into signs – very controversial! – and I was hoping that would stick but it did not. Our people were mad – “where are the signs?”

    I usually get ours from a union hall- they buy signs and then I take (buy) some of theirs.

  123. 123.

    StringOnAStick

    @Baud:

     

    @Steeplejack:

    Thanks!  I’m happy to say I did an open mic song with a friend the night before that was very well received in our weekly music group.  I had to get into my 60’s before I had the courage to sing and play in front of a crowd.  I’m having an absolute blast, so glad we moved here to retire, so many new friends, so much to do.

  124. 124.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m a driving enthusiast. They don’t have to talk to me (and I don’t think they want to talk) – I’m perfectly happy in my meditative driving zone. I take my husband’s big Jeep because it’s comfy but he doesn’t want to know anything about this :)

    That’s how we’ve been married so long. We have..spheres :)

  125. 125.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kay: It’s a reasonable frustration. Honestly, I think those signs are better for local, unknown candidates.

    Perhaps grouping signs might be helpful, turn tribalist impulses to good.

    Eta: I hate my auto-correct.

  130. 130.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: or sort of “referring” people to other people (not me) if they want to volunteer.

    You wouldn’t per chance know of a Misery connect, would you?

  132. 132.

    different-church-lady

    @Betty Cracker:

    Dimon urges caution about the admin’s rejection of the “trickle down” approach in favor of focusing on the middle class.

    “Nice economy you’ve got here. Shame if something were to happen to it…”

  133. 133.

    JPL

    Yesterday I had a visitor in my backyard.   A deer jumped the fence and had a look around, sniffed a few hosta, and decided that sometimes the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.   I have close to an acre so he did spend some time investigating.   My son lives in Sandy Springs and my DIL was enjoying a glass of wine while sitting on her front stoop.   A doe walked right past her.

  135. 135.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    Also a driving enthusiast here. I love an excuse for a road trip—especially an altruistic one. And spheres are good!

    I am going to be dealing with spheres the next few days. I have been estate-managing for the Sighthound Hall mob this summer, and my brother is coming in late tonight for a few days before leaving again to go on a hiking trip. So we’re going to be coexisting, with me sort of camped out here with my stuff. I guess if it gets bad I can return to my modest rooms in Threadkill Lane and come back when he leaves on Monday. But I don’t want to move anything back and forth (computer and a few other essentials). Guess I’ll see how things go.

  136. 136.

    OverTwistWillie

    @Kay:

    His audience is Chase institutional customers who “somehow” got way overexposed in commercial real estate.

    The guy isn’t the brightest brick in the stack, but he knows CYA. Thus his endless squaking about getting back to office work.

  138. 138.

    Kay

    @Steeplejack:

    I particularly like Michigan driving because unlike NW Ohio is isn’t centered on an interstate – you have to (can) plan a route. I keep ending up going thru Sturgis, MI which is not even the famous biker Sturgis but is weirdly centrally located to my various destinations.

    Good luck with the cohabitation. I think it’s really hard to do but it’s very short term and you have a back up plan.

  139. 139.

    SFAW

    Might have been mentioned elsewhere, but: the FDA has approved the first OTC birth control pill.​
     
    ETA: And to “both sides” the above-mentioned positive: apparently Anchor Steam Brewery is shutting down. Never had it, so I can’t say if this is a negative, or a big negative.

  140. 140.

    Kay

    @OverTwistWillie:

    I should have know he was a handwringer over remote work. These people need to stick to their knitting. They really don’t have to panic at every twist and turn and trend. It’s CONTROL. They live in terror that we’ll somehow bust loose and, I don’t know, do something different.

    I feel like if his bank was stealing from customers he has enough to worry about just in his industry  without scolding us. on all these other topics. The bank took their money. They would STILL be taking it but they got caught. This doesn’t concern any of them? The huge violation of trust in that?

  142. 142.

    SFAW

    @Kay: ​
     
    Lissen up, libtard: if the suckers customers didn’t want they’re money stolen BY the bank (i.e., instead of FROM the bank), they should have been paying closer attention, 24/7.

  143. 143.

    Kathleen

    @Kay: Hamilton County Democratic Party does post cards every Friday from 3-5 so I’m going back up this Friday. It’s great because they do the labels and provide postage (except we all donate for postage). After Issue 1 they’re rolling over to our City Council elections coming up in November.

  144. 144.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    Cohabitation: I’m a bit paranoid because I live the solitary life of an elderly shut-in and my brother has a bustling household with a husband and two kids (8Âœ and 7), so I think he’s much more regimented. And he might have some subliminal irritation about somebody being in “his” space.

    But it’s only for three days, and then (non-)sighthound Chip and I can get back to wallowing all over the place and eating and streaming video at all hours.

    Driving: I like the drive to Rehoboth Beach, because once you get over the Bay Bridge it’s not interstate and there are a lot of bucolic two-lane roads to get across Delaware. Very pleasant.

    Getting out into western Virginia is somewhat the same. You have the option to get off the interstate and navigate the lesser roads.

  146. 146.

    Kay

    @SFAW:

    That’s good news. A lot of rural white teenagers believe birth control is abortion. I assume they’re being told this in fundie churches but the mainstream Right now has a whole misinformation campaign on birth control pills, so it’s another fringe view that has been mainstreamed.

    George HW Bush backed public birth control programs when he was in the House. It’s just shocking how far Right they have gone. Remember “family planning”?  I wonder where that term went.

  149. 149.

    Kay

    @Steeplejack:

    8 1/2 and 7 is a busy time. He probably has to be organized.

    I can’t live with anyone else now either. We usually have a full house for Christmas which I really like but I also like when they leave. I DO think it’s good for people like us to have to accomodate another  sometimes though- we have to bend a little.

  151. 151.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    I think I’m okay on the bending, but I wonder if I’m doing something that I’m completely unaware of. “Would you stop that goddamn incessant humming?!”

  152. 152.

    Kristine

    @SFAW:

    ETA: And to “both sides” the above-mentioned positive: apparently Anchor Steam Brewery is shutting down. Never had it, so I can’t say if this is a negative, or a big negative.

    I liked Anchor Steam. But I’m not the world’s greatest beer drinker so I doubt I helped their balance sheet.

  155. 155.

    thruppence

    @Lapassionara: Krugman calls it Zombie Economics. Dead and disproven a dozen times over, but it still keeps shambling on, devouring the brains of those impervious to evidence.

    And yes, Anchor Steam was a good beer with a great history. Raise a glass in their memory.

  163. 163.

    Geminid

     

     

    @H.E.Wolf: You are not alone! From the Dairy Herd Management news site:

       Vilsack and Dairy Leaders Applaud the New USDA Deputy Agricultue Secretary 

    Agriculture news gets short shrift in national news sites, so industry media will provide most of the reporting here. Maybe conservation groups will also; one reason Ms. Torres Small’s nomination passed the Ag Committee 23-0, and the Senate 84-8, was her broad support from conservation and consumer groups as well agriculture entities.

    Xochitl Torres Small is 38 years old, and I hope there is a bright future ahead of her. And while I try to value public servants for what they do in their current post intead of their potential upward mobility, I know that Secretary Vilsack is 72 years old, and that Torres Small has a good chance of serving as Secretary in Joe Biden’s next Cabinet.

  164. 164.

    Kay

    A small but growing faction of the anti-abortion movement is calling for patients to be criminally punished. It’s gaining traction in states such as Kansas.

    When Dobbs was decided there was a poll of antiabortion voters and a big majority of them wanted women punished criminally for getting an abortion. This sugary-sweet, phony “we LOVE women AND babies and we just want to HELP” nonsense that the paid and trained lobbyists and PR people use is NOT reflective of the anti abortion base. Their voters want women imprisoned and the politicians will follow the base.
    The single biggest indicator of voting anti choice is a negative view of women – they think women are liars and manipulative and not trustworthy enough even to make medical decisions and this includes anti abortion WOMEN. They have a negative view of other women.
    One thing hat was nice about Dobbs is it shut up all the centrist and Right wing men who scolded women for years that we were oerreacting and Roe would “never” be overturned. They finally STFU. They won’t even bet on saving birth control now.

  165. 165.

    Kristine

    @Betty Cracker:

    Dimon urges caution about the admin’s rejection of the “trickle down” approach in favor of focusing on the middle class.

    I read something years ago to the effect that higher capital gains tax rates led to greater investment by owners in their companies because they got really dinged if they tried to move their money. Lowering those rates encouraged them to sell or break up companies and plow their money into hedge funds and other instruments that didn’t encourage the same level of overall productivity. I mean, managing a company is Hard. Breaking one up and selling off the parts is so much easier.

    The economy that Dimon et al care about isn’t the economy that helps the middle and working classes.

  166. 166.

    NotMax

    @Geminid

    Vilsack had been on the political dead to me list since his ill-fated presidential run when he publicly came out as anti-Social Security.

    Luckily, that squalid stance has nought to do with his agricultural bona fides.

  167. 167.

    Kay

    I saw on my legal news that there’s a class action alleging Tylenol use during pregnancy is tied to autism. Is that legitimate? I know we have people here who know about autism issues – I know next to nothing.

  168. 168.

    rikyrah

    Close to 100,000 Voter Registrations Were Challenged in Georgia — Almost All by Just Six Right-Wing Activists
    by Doug Bock Clark, photography by Cheney Orr for ProPublicaJuly 13, 7 a.m. EDT
     

     

    The March 2022 voter challenges were the first of many from Schneider: As the year progressed, he submitted seven more batches of challenges, each one larger than the one previous, growing from 507 voters in April to nearly 15,800 in October, for a total of over 31,500 challenges.

    Vetting Georgia’s voter rolls was once largely the domain of nonpartisan elections officials. But after the 2020 election, a change in the law enabled Schneider and other activists to take on a greater role. Senate Bill 202, which the state’s Republican-controlled legislature passed in 2021, transformed election laws in response to “many electors concerned about allegations of rampant voter fraud,” as the bill stated. Many states allow challenges, but officials in Georgia and experts say that in the past challengers have typically had relevant personal knowledge, such as someone submitting a challenge to remove a dead relative from the rolls. Georgia, however, is unusual in explicitly allowing citizens unlimited challenges against anyone in their county.

    At first, voting rights groups were vocal about other aspects of SB 202, such as restrictions on absentee ballots, paying less attention to the 98-page bill’s handful of sentence-length tweaks that addressed voter challenges. The change to the challenges rule was “the sleeper element of SB 202,” said Rahul Garabadu, a senior voting rights attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.

    Media outlets have reported on the high number of challenges and numerous cases of voters feeling harassed, impeded or intimidated by being placed into “challenged” status. But the outsized role of the small group of people making the challenges was less clear. ProPublica was able to determine that a vast majority of the challenges since SB 202 became law — about 89,000 of 100,000 — were submitted by just six right-wing activists, including Schneider. Another 12 people accounted for most of the rest. (ProPublica obtained data for all challenges logged in 30 of the state’s 159 counties, including the 20 most populous.) Of those challenges, roughly 11,100 were successful — at least 2,350 voters were removed from the rolls and at least 8,700 were placed in a “challenged” or equivalent status, which can force people to vote with a provisional ballot that election officials later adjudicate.

    Challenges from right-wing activists have proliferated in Georgia despite strict federal laws governing how voters can be removed from rolls. That’s in part because state and local election officials have struggled to figure out how to reconcile SB 202 with federal protections. This has resulted in counties handling challenges inconsistently, sometimes in ways that experts warn may have violated federal law, something they say may have been the case with Schneider’s March challenges.

    In the run-up to the 2022 election, voting rights advocates warned that some challenges might create insurmountable barriers to people casting a ballot, such as by removing them from the rolls. But there were no published accounts of Georgians who ultimately did not cast a ballot as a result of being challenged. Schneider’s March challenges did lead to this kind of harm in at least one instance: An unhoused voter found his removal from the rolls too high a barrier to allow him to re-register in time to vote.

     

    https://www.propublica.org/article/right-wing-activists-georgia-voter-challenges?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=feature

    Challenging the right to vote of someone you have never met is absolute garbage. It’s voter suppression. Plain and simple. The GOP can’t win if they don’t cheat.
    I hope people understand what’s going on with the GOP in Georgia. They are doing nothing but cheating. The challenges, the voter purges, the challenges to actual voter registrations…..all nothing but VOTER SUPPRESSION.

  171. 171.

    CatFacts

    In labor news, the American actors’ union (SAG-AFTRA) will almost certainly be joining the screenwriters’ union (WGA) on strike today. First time since the 1960s that they’ve both struck together.

  172. 172.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid:

    And is your birthday indeed today? Whenever it falls, have a happy!!

    (ETA: Oh, sorry, just realised I mucked up your name/nym. I do know better!)

  175. 175.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Geminid:”Xochitl Torres Small is 38 years old, and I hope there is a bright future ahead of her… [she] has a good chance of serving as Secretary in Joe Biden’s next Cabinet.​

     From your keyboard to President Biden’s ears….

  179. 179.

    Geminid

    @CatFacts: The Teamsters union is preparing for a strike if UPS won’t agree to a satisfactory contract with their 300,000+ Teamsters workers. July 31 is the deadline.

  181. 181.

    OverTwistWillie

    @thruppence:

    Bring back The First Bank of the United States!

    Dimon’s job is setting corporate strategy. I guess whinging to the political class is a strategy….

  182. 182.

    rikyrah

    Southern Sister Resister – Wordsmith #IAmTheStorm (@ResisterSis20) tweeted at 2:42 PM on Wed, Jul 12, 2023:
    Clinton rescued the economy after Reagan and Bush the first blew it up.

    Obama saved the economy after Bush Jr. fought wars on a credit card and let banks run amok.

    All Biden has done is create 13 million jobs and lowered unemployment to 3% in 31 months.

    Democrats prove trickle
 https://t.co/QnSznuwjCG
    (https://twitter.com/ResisterSis20/status/1679214652331368449?t=PO0Gwtw4C4D3Fyq2kpkTIw&s=03)

  187. 187.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    Who does Jamie think drives the economy? Let me guess- bankers and rich people?

    Yeah, ““It’s a tough question to answer,” said the head of the nation’s largest bank, when asked if Bidenomics is as successful as the president makes it out to be” is a sentence that almost sounds satirical and self-aware enough for a Terry Pratchett novel.

    Don’t ask him if the economy’s doing well.  He’s rich: by definition, his personal economy is doing well no matter how much of a boom or a depression we’re in.  Ask the branch employees and cubicle drones who work for him how the economy’s doing.

  189. 189.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Kathleen: ​
    @Kay: ​
     I greatly admire both of you for your community activism. Walking the talk, for sure!

    I’m writing “No on Issue 1” postcards through PostcardsToVoters.org – their writers are busting their collective butts to get out the Democratic vote.

    If anyone would like to join in, the minimum number of postcards is 4, the number of days to write and mail them is 3 (and if you request addresses on a Thursday, you get a 4th day because there’s no mail pickup on Sunday), and the talking points are provided: 3 brief sentences.

    Text JOIN to Abby The Address Bot at 484-275-2229‬
    or
    Email [email protected]

    I’m writing in batches of 5, and this batch will make 75 postcards. I’ve been learning via Wikipedia which cities in my lists were on the Underground Railroad!

  190. 190.

    rikyrah

    VENMO?

     

     

    MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) tweeted at 7:32 AM on Wed, Jul 12, 2023:
    “Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court
paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions. The payments appear to have been made in connection to Thomas’s 2019 Christmas party.” https://t.co/NIpf6mHBgN
    (https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1679106497517862912?t=GfQrZERt741o1YPoMBuDIQ&s=03)

  191. 191.

    rikyrah

    BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAH AH

     

    Florida Chris (@chrislongview) tweeted at 6:53 AM on Wed, Jul 12, 2023:
    “All-time low’: Ron DeSantis down by 39 points in GOP nomination chase.”

    with this bonus:

    “DeSantis trails Biden by 5 (percentage points) in a hypothetical General Election matchup and hasn’t outperformed the incumbent since March.” https://t.co/3c1ZymEhpi
    (https://twitter.com/chrislongview/status/1679096540596432902?t=RLc0LqoSnD0niqETfeLcpg&s=03)

  192. 192.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    You should see the post office when UPS goes out. It’s INSANE – inundated with parcels. So there will be a ripple effect.

  194. 194.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: I knew that his health was not good, but this is indeed very sad news.  Al really kept me sane last November with his spot on analysis of the mid-terms.

  196. 196.

    rikyrah

    Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) tweeted at 7:30 AM on Wed, Jul 12, 2023:
    1/Yesterday, DOJ advised lawyers for Trump & @ejeancarroll that it was changing course & “declining to certify under the Westfall Act that..Trump was acting within the scope of his office..as President” when he made derogatory comments about Carroll while president. https://t.co/O8O8XBpsGZ

     

    Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) tweeted at 7:33 AM on Wed, Jul 12, 2023:
    2/ The decision strips Trump of the absolute immunity federal employees being sued for torts (civil wrongs, like defamation) commit in the scope of their federal employment. Carroll previously got a verdict against Trump for post-presidency remarks. Now she goes to trial again.
    (https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1679106820986552321?t=KxgOblGSgKIOYgdFFa6TGw&s=03)

  197. 197.

    VFX Lurker

    @Baud: I know these space pics are colorized, but does anyone know whether NASA uses the same colorization algorithm for every picture or do they adjust it based on the particular image?

    From what I’ve read, every published photo gets a personal touch:

    It’s after these base colors are applied that things become “a matter of taste,” says Pagan. She might shift the whole palette up or down the spectrum, making blues appear more purple or vice versa. The contrast will likely be raised, as in the case of the Carina Nebula, making the complimentary colors pop. There are more objective changes made, too, like cleaning up any artifacts like scattered light produced by the telescope, but at this point, two processors may come up with different images. “I particularly enjoy making things feel more ethereal and magical,” says Pagan. “There’s a whimsicality to my approach — because it’s space!”

    This article is also cool…

    As NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope continues to capture and release out-of-this-world images of space, artist, graphic designer, and citizen-scientist Judy Schmidt uses her artistic background to translate the raw data into stunning images. ..

    …

    .What began as a simple contest developed into a true passion for Schmidt, who was profiled by NASA for her work in 2018. “Something about it just stuck with me, and I can’t stop,” Schmidt said in a statement. “I try to get it to look natural, even if it’s not anything close to what your eye can see.”

  198. 198.

    rikyrah

    @Betty Cracker:

    CNN is pushing its big splashy interview with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who is “not sold on” Bidenomics. Dimon urges caution about the admin’s rejection of the “trickle down” approach in favor of focusing on the middle class.

     

    I LOVE that it’s being called Bidenomics…LOL

  199. 199.

    Another Scott

    @Kay:

    It looks like it’s been percolating for a while.

    Reuters story from 2022.

    The brain and brain development are complicated. Autism is complicated. I would be very, very surprised if there was anything scientific to this story, rather than an ambulance chaser’s feeding frenzy. It’s too difficult to dig out causation in a scientific way.

    (My brother (born in 1960) has autism. Tylenol was first marketed in 1955 – acetaminophen was first synthetized in 1878, first used to treat pain and fever in 1893.)

    WBUR.org story from 2013.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  201. 201.

    Kay

    @H.E.Wolf:

    Thank you for the postcards. I actually got one of them a couple of cycles ago. I think they help turn out.

    I do less community action than I used to. I have less patience with it. It’s why I like directly helping women – there’s no bullshit or salesmanship involved. It’s self selecting for a lack of bullshit.

    I think I just no longer care if I persuade conservatives. Don’t. Care.

  202. 202.

    rikyrah

    @randy khan:

    The diversity of professional experience for Biden’s judicial appointments is a really big deal, almost as important as the diversity of backgrounds.  They’ve done a really remarkable job in picking people for those jobs.  And they are pushing them through the pipeline really quickly as well.

     

    ICAM.

    which is why whatever we have to do in order to accommodate Dianne Feinstein, needs to be done. Nothing is more important than continuing to get those judges through before the 2024 Election. As many as possible.

  203. 203.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: Oh man. RIP Al Giordano. His writing at Rural Votes gave me hope back in the day when no one else thought Obama had a chance at the 2008 nomination.

  204. 204.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    Oh, thank you. I just saw it on this legal news feed and wondered. I had never heard it before. I’m pretty sure I was told it was safe to take while pregnant- that was before they got worried about liver damage, I think.

  205. 205.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I have to say I thought DeSantis would do much, much better. Because he really did perform in FL. People say it’s “old people” or “anti communist Latinos” but he did well across a really broad range of voters. It was impressive. It is just so great that he is tanking nationally. Talk about dodging a bullet.

  206. 206.

    Chris

    @rikyrah:

    Also, this sentence:

    CNN is pushing its big splashy interview with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who is “not sold on” Bidenomics. Dimon urges caution about the admin’s rejection of the “trickle down” approach in favor of focusing on the middle class.

    It used to be the talking point was that right-wingers wanted to focus on the rich, but left-wingers wanted to focus on the poor, the not-so-subtle implication being, both-sides-do-it and all, that both of them were focused on a special-interest minority while ignoring the Average Guy (though the liberal special-interest minority, of course, is worse), leaving the Average Guy with no one in Washington to think of him.

    But this is just completely accepting the Occupy Wall Street narrative of “the 99%,” admitting that Biden is in fact focusing solely on the Average Guy (which is what “middle class” still means in the general vernacular whether or not it should), that his opponents are the only ones focusing obsessively on 1% or less of the population… and then presenting this as a bad thing.  It’s just Romneyesque in its tone deafness.

  208. 208.

    peter

    @NotMax: Yes, it’s a shame. Anchor had several really tasty beers. Liberty Ale was the first IPA I really fell for. And their Christmas Ale has been a staple in our house for many years.

  209. 209.

    trollhattan

    @JPL: As the fat renders and forms a pool, I would step back as it spreads. Hopefully I’m wearing sneakers.

  212. 212.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    If Florida is diverging so much from the national vote that how well you do there in that environment is so completely unrelated to how well you do nationally, that’s, well, bad for Florida, but a relief for the rest of the country.

  215. 215.

    trollhattan

    @Kay: My question is why the hell is Florida so consumed by a man with the personality of a soap dish and no camera presence, whatsoever? Then I think of Rick Scott and conclude Florida simply doesn’t give a shit. JEB! is an order of magnitude more relatable, and that’s damning with as faint praise as I can.

    Next, I’ll do Texas.

  216. 216.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I wonder how much Trump has to do with the DeSantis fizzle. I don’t just mean Trump’s attacks because, if polling averages are credible, DeSantis wasn’t all that effective at challenging Trump even before Trump started slagging him.

    Maybe just the fact that Trump is still an option when DeSantis tried to offer himself as a substitute is part of it. And that DeSantis felt he had to go extremely hard right to outflank Trump. In that sense, he (Trump) is the gift that keeps giving.

  217. 217.

    laura

    @SFAW: Anchor Steam shutting down is a big deal- a big bad deal for an historic and tasty line of beers. Love the steam beer, used to love the Christmas beer, but deeply loved the bitter Liberty Ale.

  218. 218.

    japa21

    @Betty Cracker: ​
      A lot of people think that if Trump was no longer viable for whatever reason, De Santis could just claim the nomination. I really have doubts about that. Sure, he’s number 2 now, but that doesn’t automatically mean he becomes number one. I don’t think he can win the nomination even without Trump.

  220. 220.

    JAFD

    @satby: Have spent a lot of $$$ frivolously on myself this past month, so putting in a few bucks to restore some karma

    Happy Bastille Day, everyone !

  222. 222.

    Dangerman

    @trollhattan:Then I think of Rick Scott and conclude Florida simply doesn’t give a shit. JEB! is an order of magnitude more relatable, and that’s damning with as faint praise as I can.

    Florida was competitive in 2000; Gore woulda been President but for Jeb’s Shenanigans (and butterfly ballots, which may have been part of the Shenanigans; I don’t recall). Now, Florida would elect a well formed Dog Turd if it has an R after the name. Amazing. Gotta be the heat.

  223. 223.

    JPL

    @Betty Cracker: Bingo.   Fortunately for us, he never had a chance to define himself.   As much as I hate to say it, trump did us a favor.    DeSantis would work along side hitler, if he had the chance and I truly believe that.   LBGQT are villanized, and legal immigrants are longer welcome in the state.   DeSantis is following a playbook that we hoped died afterr WWII.

  225. 225.

    Paul in KY

    @Kay: Wells Fargo and Bank of America are 2 institutions that no one with any sense should ever use. They are crooks.

  226. 226.

    Geminid

    @Kay: That reminds me of something the late Dr. Susan Love said. She was describing how “it was pure sexism” that led her to focus on breast surgery in the 1980s. When Dr. Love finished her stint as chief resident in surgery at Harvard, she had no job offers.

        “So I hung out a shingle, and the people who were referred to me were all women with breast problems. And I found that I could make a much bigger difference in that arena….

    There is always something unique that, as a woman, you can bring to the table. And the trick, I think, is not to give in and put up with the [garbage], but to make your own path.”

    This from the obituary of Dr. Susan Love (1948-2023) published by the Washington Post last Sunday, July 9. It’s quite a read.

  229. 229.

    satby

    @JAFD: I just got back on once I reached the market. Had a flat tire on the way, because of course I did 😂

    Anyway, thank you. I’ve not seen your nym lately and am hoping you’ve been well. Take care JAFD!

  230. 230.

    JAFD

    @Kay: My wild-ass guess would be that signs are most important in ‘shifting’ areas – if all the greeters tell the newcomer “everyone here in Chester County, Pa* votes GOP …”  yard signs are ore piece of data to disprove that.

    That’s my VHO, anyway

    *exemplar of ‘shifting area’

  234. 234.

    Chris

    @trollhattan:

    I mean, you can ask the same thing for the entire nation and Donald Trump.

    I don’t like to go too deep down this rabbit hole because it gets nastily close to their thinking, but there’s something absolutely pathetic about how, well, pathetic our generation of fascists are.  I mean, putting myself in the shoes of one of those alpha-male jock dickbags, I can at least understand how they’d look at a veteran who volunteered for World War One, stuck it out for all four years, and got a face full of mustard gas for his troubles, and say “this guy’s a BADASS!!!  That’s exactly what we need leading our nation into the upcoming race war!”  Trump is… not that: he’s such a pathological coward that he notoriously can’t even fire people to their face, and can’t even walk from building to building without needing a golf cart.  And he still has more charisma than the likes of DeSantis!  It’s just embarrassing.

  235. 235.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Kay: I’m with you on all of that. Didn’t mean to misuse “community activism” as a term – I tend to think of it as a really broad catch-all for activities that benefit one’s [local or larger] community….​
     

    PS: And how cool that you got a postcard!

  238. 238.

    Ruckus

    Just got up to live my second day at 74 yrs old.

    Feels like …. another day!

    Always a good feeling…

  240. 240.

    Eolirin

    @Kay: Did he though? He nearly lost in 2018, and broadly failed to grow his share for reelection, Dem voter share just fell off a cliff. I think we may have taken the wrong lessons from his apparent success.

  241. 241.

    Ken

    @VFX Lurker: I just wish they wouldn’t use so much lens flare. And some of them use a four-way flare, others six-way.

    (Do I need to say I’m joking? Probably.)

  244. 244.

    Kathleen

    @Geminid: When I still listened to NPR I heard an interview with Tom Vilsack, Sec of Ag under Obama and I was riveted. I had no idea the breadth and depth of Dept of Ag responsibilities!

  245. 245.

    EarthWindFire

    @Kay: Dimon said Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf is a “quality human being,” so he wouldn’t comment extensively on the recent scandal involving the opening of 2 million credit and debit card accounts without the knowledge of customers.

    I don’t care if Stumpf is a quality human being and I don’t have to care. What I care about, as someone who uses the US banking system, is that John Stumpf is held accountable for the opening of 2 million accounts without those customers’ knowledge in his highly paid role as Wells Fargo CEO.

    Whether Jamie Dimon or anyone else thinks he’s a great guy makes no difference to me. And Jamie Dimon’s a conceited asshole for telling me to care. I have no obligation to do so. Stumpf’s company, at minimum, screwed the pooch bigtime. If Stump won’t accept accountability, the government can and should make him and other financial institutions do so. I’m not putting my money in the hands of a bank and hoping for “quality human beings,” Mr. Dimon. Nope.

  247. 247.

    SFAW

    Re: Anchor Steam replies: thanks for all the info. I’d heard the name plenty of times, but don’t recall seeing it around these parts (Central MA). Any locals know if it’s available here? [The news item said they pulled back to CA-only distro, but I don’t know if there are East Coast sources.]​

  250. 250.

    Baud

    Via Mastodon

    Lawsuit seeks to block Texas from banning gender transition-related care for children

    The families argue the new law, which goes into effect Sept. 1, violates their parental rights by stopping them from providing medical care for their children and discriminates against transgender teens.

  258. 258.

    Ruckus

    @narya:

    Lifelong dem here, from lifelong dem parents.

    I owned the business my father started longer than he did and he worked for me for a number of years before he retired. The Northridge earthquake pretty much did that in so I got a job and after 11 yrs had had enough so I opened up a new business, completely different from the old one, which that fun Bush recession in 2008 did in. Both small businesses but we built a lot of the tooling that created very well know products or served individual customers. There are a lot of companies like that in the US, not every company is a huge conglomerate or a world sized business. Many are relatively small, tiny even.

  260. 260.

    satby

    Oh my gosh, good news from the vet:

    Fractured pelvis but not bad. No head injury aside from a little bit of exterior wounds. He’s going to knock her out and manipulate the pelvis so that it’s where it’s supposed to be. He wants her to eat and have a bowel movement before she goes home because she has not done that yet.

    The volunteer who witnessed the accident will knock on doors again to see if we can locate an owner.

  261. 261.

    Kathleen

    @Barbara: He was amazing. One of the mid term congressional elections (can’t remember if it was 2018 or 2020) he nailed almost 100%. He used pencil and paper to do his research and analysis. I will miss receiving his newsletters. He was working on an autobiography also.

  262. 262.

    p.a.

    @laura: Yes.  Anchor Steam was usually available here in RI & MA, and I always included some when making up a 6pack.  At first only the Steam was around, then other output.  Don’t remember a Christmas brew.

  264. 264.

    SFAW

    @Ruckus: ​

    but we built a lot of the tooling that created very well know products or served individual customers

    “Tooling” as in that used in injection molding or metal stamping?​
     
    ETA: And a belated Happy Birthday!

  266. 266.

    Ruckus

    @EarthWindFire:

    When I moved back to CA to open my small company I did bank research. Banks are rated, for a lot of actual economic safety, money handling, security etc. Many of our big bank companies are 1 or 1 1/2 star rated. Very few go to the other side for maximum stars. I recommend that everyone should do that research before they trust anyone to hold on to their money. It’s not difficult, it is eye opening and google is your friend. The only problem is that this stuff can change in an instant. Where you are today may not be where you want to stay. Banks like to make money, like everyone else. But greed in a banking company comes off each of our backs and accounts. Isn’t greed one of the 7 deadly sins?

  267. 267.

    StringOnAStick

    @Another Scott: What bothers me about Tylenol is the very narrow gap between effective dose and extremely damaging to fatal dose, and that it hammers your liver when used within 24 hours of drinking alcohol.  Since it’s in so many cold and flu preparations, it’s easy for people to take too much.  When people try to overdose on hydrocodone, it’s often the liver damage from the associated huge dose of acetaminophen that does it, not the suppression of respiration from the narcotic.  Or damaged their liver so much that there’s huge follow on effects of they survive.  Not a fan of Tylenol.

  268. 268.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Baud: Love it.  We need to take back “Parents’ Rights” framings.  Because no parent should be denied the right to give their child access to treatments they need to be happy.  I think we should even start passing laws to protect Gender-Affirming Care and literally name them “Parents’ Rights” bills.

  269. 269.

    JAFD

    @satby: ​
     Have been busy, out of town vacation trips, online agmes, projects household and hobby, Twitter rabbitholes. Feeling OK for my years – turn 73 on the 26th.
    Hope you and yours are healthy and happy !

  270. 270.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Amir Khalid:

    Ah, so Steeplejack had it right. Well, I’m not surprised; he generally does. Maybe just celebrate now and through the weekend. Just to be sure.

  271. 271.

    Ruckus

    @SFAW:

    Mostly tooling for plastic products, but also I’ve built parts for many other branches of technology. There are millions of employees doing this type of work, much of which makes the world we know go round. Much of the tooling we built made products that all of us know or use. We weren’t the only company by far, just one little bit.

  272. 272.

    Rich2506

    Speaker McCarthy, on C-Span in the past hour, justifies Senator Tuberville’s blockade on military promotions by speaking of the Hyde Amendment, saying the US Government should never spend federal money supporting abortion.

  277. 277.

    JAFD

    @StringOnAStick: OTOH, my cardiologist recommended I take acetaminophen when needed for ‘aches and pains’ – asprin and iboprufin are ‘blood thinners’ which intensify the prescriptions I take – she said “‘Tylenol’ is only recommended for children, pregnant people and heart patients.”

    Signing off here, back this evening, stough to do ,,,,

  279. 279.

    Ruckus

    @StringOnAStick:

    I use naproxen, not acetaminophen. As effective but not the same chemistry. But almost all drugs are things you want to be careful about, take at the minimum dosage and as least often as you need. I suffer from migraines, have for decades. I need medications for those and before reasonable drugs were available I suffered. Now I don’t have to. I also take vitamins, minerals and drugs that help mitigate migraines, slow the progress. There are a lot of humans that have medical situations that require modern medicines that make our lives better. But any medication/drug can be abused, and humans have been known to do that since the first time alcohol was tasted. Seems many of us really, really aren’t all that smart.

  280. 280.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    And that DeSantis felt he had to go extremely hard right to outflank Trump.

    Not just hard Right though. Specifically, ANTI WOKE hard Right. He doesn’t talk about tax cuts- he rants and raves about CRT in schools and grooming. Christopher Rufo is losing along with the candidate he’s managing- DeSantis.

    I want DeSantis to lose but I also want the ridiculous panic over “wokeness” to lose because the panic over wokeness is bigger and includes the NYTimes, The Atlantic and many center and Left Substackers.

    They’re all ninnies. They deserve to lose. This is their SECOND loss- they also lost the midterms.

  281. 281.

    Suzanne

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’m so horrified that I can’t even make jokes about it. Like
. what?! Inside of a week, I’ve been “helpfully informed” by the news media about the dick-measuring contest, and now about these rich, grown-ass men ripping giant farts at a fancy event.

    What the fuck is wrong with white dudes?!

  282. 282.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kay: I want DeSantis to lose but I also want the ridiculous panic over “wokeness” to lose because the panic over wokeness is bigger and includes the NYTimes, The Atlantic and many center and Left Substackers.

    What? Citizen expressions of existential horror at the mainstreaming of hate speech against Trans folk deserve 1000 times the coverage book banning and censoring of history classes do.

    All to protect the real victims, Republicans politicians and anyone who has grown their exposure by being cancelled.

  283. 283.

    StringOnAStick

    @JAFD: For you, that’s the right choice.  The other NSAIDs have blood thinning effects, just be careful about where else you.might be getting it in a combo OTC product.

  284. 284.

    Mike in NC

    Every Dem/Ind who was present (3 were not) and just two Republicans: Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.

    He’s like a stopped clock, isn’t he? Still one of the biggest enablers of Fat Bastard.

  285. 285.

    StringOnAStick

    @Ruckus: Im a migraine person too.  The last time they showed up for me, my quitting all cow dairy stopped it, but it was gut pain that made me do that; getting rid of the migraines was a very happy side effect.  Naproxen works great for me too, just be aware that it has blood thinning effects also.

  286. 286.

    rikyrah

    DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) tweeted at 10:15 PM on Tue, Jul 11, 2023:
    The studios and streamers reportedly have no intentions of negotiating with the Writer’s Guild for several more months.

    “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive tells Deadline. https://t.co/vKXR8lwzYu
    (https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1678966348641337344?t=qheYqCtvQP3Lu-DbGARXBw&s=03)

  287. 287.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Suzanne:

     

    Inside of a week, I’ve been “helpfully informed” by the news media about the dick-measuring contest, and now about these rich, grown-ass men ripping giant farts at a fancy event.

    As an (almost) old white dude, I am concerned that apparently no one there attempted to light any of their farts. That seems like a serious oversight, if true.

  291. 291.

    Kay

    @Suzanne:

    I hate his facial expression – and I do mean “expression” – he only has one. It’s oddly blank. I’m not surprised at all that he sat there like a big turnip when his ridiculous backers were melting down- there’s something nonresponsive about him. I just loathe anti vaxxers and he’s the perfect example of the “type”.

  294. 294.

    Suzanne

    Speaking of large rodents
.

    So SuzMom likes to feed the birds. She orders bags of birdseed from Amazon, and then we empty them into a large, heavy-duty plastic container with a latching lid. Some enterprising squirrels managed to chew their way into it. There have been a few times that I saw squirrels go in the birdseed, and they make me laugh, and I figured that they worked hard and earned it, so I didn’t chase them away. WELL, last night, I sat out on my front porch, and I saw two giant fucken RATS going into the container. Oh HELL no. Lazy freeloaders. I took video and then chased them away.

    A metal container will be purchased today!

  295. 295.

    Geminid

    @Kathleen: The prospective five year Agriculture Bill is being boosted a multitude of interest groups, from Feeding America to the American Farm Bureau Federation, and from Ducks Unlimited to the powerful U.S. Peanut Federation.

    Sponsors hope to get in on the House floor this fall, but stumbling block-heads of the Freedom Caucus threaten to derail the bill. They think restricting access to food by hungry Americans is a hill worth dying on- that is, for their farming district colleagues to die on.

    Politico had an article about this June 15. It sounds like farm district representatives are getting tense. They remember how in 2018 the Freedom Caucus delayed the last Farm Bill for 7 months.

    One unnamed Republican said that any concessions Kraven McCarthy makes to the hardliners would be “a really dangerous pin to pull out of the grenade,” given the swift and bitter backlash it would stoke for the rest of the caucus.

    Speaker Paul Ryan finally gave the Freedom Caucus their SNAP cutbacks and the last Farm Bill cleared the House in mid-2019. Then, the many GOP farm state Senators promptly stripped the bill of these provisions and their changes were ratified by the Conference Committee for the bill.

    There is no reason to think that will not happen this time, so as usual the Freedom Caucus idiots are aggravating their colleagues for nothing.

  296. 296.

    sdhays

    @Baud: Finally some actual parents’ rights advocates, not the “we want to parent your children for you, you ugly turds” advocates.

  298. 298.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @rikyrah: ​
      This may just be me stereotyping, but I would have my doubts about any styling or fashion related business that is LGBTQ-phobic. That’s setting aside the pure discrimination side of it.

  299. 299.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Yes, Lucky Jim was a bit of an outlier. Years ago I went on a jag and read all of his novels in tasteful Penguin editions, and they got more misogynistic as he aged. I think there was a posthumous biography that pretty much concluded he was a thorough shit. Which is telling from someone who devoted a significant amount of effort to their subject.

    (I wonder if biographers routinely fall out of love with their subjects. Not Leon Edel, that’s for sure! And presumably that ancient guy who is still tits deep in his endless biography of Lyndon Johnson. Can’t remember his name.)

    You and the mister might want to give Girl, 20 a miss. Just sayin’. I remember The Anti-Death League as being pretty good. Might be dated now.

  302. 302.

    Brachiator

    @Betty Cracker:

    Oh, man. Sorry I am Pacific Time late to this thread.

    CNN is pushing its big splashy interview with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who is “not sold on” Bidenomics. Dimon urges caution about the admin’s rejection of the “trickle down” approach in favor of focusing on the middle class.

    This is where the news media is biased, even if they deny it or don’t realize it.

    CNN and other outlets will accurately report positive or negative economic news from official sources.

    The first problem is that news anchors and general news reporters are not qualified to discuss economics or anything harder than basic addition tables.

    But the larger problem is that they treat idiots like Dimon as “balanced” reporting. The news outlets could look for other, less partisan experts, but people like Dimon are in every editors contact list, and these people are used to being interviewed and don’t need a lot of prep.

    Worse, Treasury Secretary Yellen and other government economic officials seem to get fewer interview offers than their opponents. The Beltway journalists may pepper the White House Press Secretary with economics questions, but avoid going directly to the people who might be able to give the best answers.

    This is stupid and does not serve the public.

  304. 304.

    Geminid

    @Kay: A lot of people drew a lot of dubious conclusions from Youngkin’s surprising 2021 win in Virginia. I wonder if Rufo and DeSantis concluded that CRT was a winning issue for Youngkin, and that culture-war issues generally could turn purple states Republican.

  307. 307.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @Kay: It is good news.  I was scolded at another website for remarking on how grateful I was as a teen for birth control pills (scolding based on the fact that the pill was “unnatural”).  Why was I grateful – because my period was irregular, and I had public breakthrough bleeding in high school until the pill saved me.  More evidence that there is way too much ignorance about women’s health.

  310. 310.

    Kathleen

    @Geminid: I know this sounds naĂŻve and stupid, but doesn’t SNAP benefit farmers? I know it has to benefit retail grocers. Whey don’t they all raise holy hell about these cuts?

  312. 312.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Well, the whole Republican Party did and also columnists in the NYT and The Atlantic and Substack, so it was a widely held false belief. Seems to be a stubborn belief too, because they lost on it in 2022 and they doubled down. They always over determine the reasons for a result in the VA governor’s race. Over and over and over.

    “Wokeness” would have walked itself back a little because that’s how these things go. Itwould have moderated as it mainstreamed. They really, really didn’t have to have a shrieking panic attack and clamp down on the Oberlin students. They need to let go – it’s this sweaty GRIP on events. They don’t need to control and direct every cultural trend and blip. People would have sorted it out without their help.

  313. 313.

    Jay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    when we lived in the hills south of Kamloops, we had a solar powered well pump, that pumped to a 1280 gallon cistern buried up top of one of the hills. A 6′ pipe fed from the cistern down to the house, (stack pressure increase), a 1′ ipex line fed into the house. If the well pump went out, (which it did twice, the controller went out once, the solar wiring to the pump got damaged once), we still had medium pressure water, (35 psi) for 4 days.

  314. 314.

    Geminid

    @Kathleen: SNAP benefits do benefit farmers, and they also broaden the public constituency for these big farm bills. Industry groups know this, and so do Republican farm district Representatives and farm state Senators. It’s the Freedom Caucus ideologues who want to restrict the SNAP program.

  315. 315.

    Kay

    @Cheryl from Maryland:

    (scolding based on the fact that the pill was “unnatural”).

    Oh, no. People are jerks and there is nothing worse than health scolds. I can’t imagine scolding someone for medication. I mean, honestly, do they ever have an unexpressed thought? People need them to weigh in on that? What about just thinking dumb mean things and not saying them?

  317. 317.

    JPL

    @Geminid: Their mentaility is that they benefit one race, which is a big lie.   Let’s face the freedom caucas is made up of shifty, white nationalists.

  319. 319.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I thought the CRT issue benefitted Youngkin in one particular way: as an issue around which to rally Republican base voters. He knew he had to keep abortion rights and gun control in the background if he was to win. Republican voters usually want their candidates to center these issues, but CRT was like a shiny object that hypnotized the base, and helped them look past Youngkin’s sly evasions on abortion and gun control.

    I think most voters just scratched their heads when Youngkin talked CRT, but Republicans heard the dog whistle and responded.

  320. 320.

    laura

    @SFAW: i was in Boston in the winter of 2011 for a semester course at “a college” and was delighted to find that Trader Joe’s carried both Anchor Steam and Liberty Ale. I believe it may also have been available at Shaw’s.

  322. 322.

    Steeplejack

    raven:

    Or maybe you’ve got a browser extension that subs in ☠ Lyndon Johnson ☠ whenever his name appears.

  323. 323.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    “People would have sorted it out without their help.” 🙀 That’s exactly what they’re afraid of! Although help is “help,” of course.

  324. 324.

    Eyeroller

    @StringOnAStick: For some reason the medical community has decided that this enormous risk of liver damage is better than the slight chance of gastric bleeding from NSAIDS even for short-term use.  I suppose allergies to NSAIDS are also a risk and hospitals don’t want to take the chance of a patient having an unexpected allergic reaction  But it’s always Tylenol, Tylenol, Tylenol.  I don’t even like to have it around because I have an irrational fear that a tablet might fall on the floor and a cat would lick it (extremely unlikely to say the least, I said it was irrational).  Even a tiny quantity of acetaminophen/paracetamol will kill a cat because their livers are a lot less capable of detoxing than ours are.  In humans it’s the leading cause of acute liver failure in much of the world.

  325. 325.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:

    We aren’t all assholes.

    OK, yes many are. In this country white dudes have been most of the leaders for a long time – a lot longer than anyone alive. And many white dudes (and dudetes) think their shit doesn’t stink. It DOES. It stinks like everyone else’s and skin color has nothing to do with how badly it does. It’s people who think their shit doesn’t stink, whose shit stinks the worst.

    Sorry to be so graphic but really it is rather simple, some people’s egos are so big they wouldn’t fit under the Golden Gate Bridge. Or the Brooklyn Bridge. They are the high and mighty segment of humanity, the shitty side of life if you will. We all need egos, it’s part of life, egos often protect us, and often allow one to see that life is better than hate. But just as often an ego will propel a major asshole into becoming even more major. This is nothing new, it’s been the story since the beginning of time. But along with the growth of humanity comes the growth of major asshole egos. It’s like the sun coming up. It’s everywhere.

  326. 326.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    One thing hat was nice about Dobbs is it shut up all the centrist and Right wing men who scolded women for years that we were oerreacting and Roe would “never” be overturned. They finally STFU. They won’t even bet on saving birth control now.

     

    We were HYSTERICAL.

    Remember that?

  327. 327.

    Ken

    I am slightly worried about the writers and actors strike, because COVID showed that the entertainment industry could still limp along without new material coming out.

    Admittedly the pipeline (theater to streaming to premium cable to basic cable) jammed up, and channels were stuck showing “X-Men: First Class” for a year and a half, but it didn’t seem to matter. Maybe that was because we were all worried about dying and the lack of toilet paper.

  328. 328.

    Ruckus

    @StringOnAStick:

    Many meds thin the blood. Some of course thin it more.

    I take vitamin B2 and magnesium oxide daily as a mitigation process for migraines and it works to slow the build up, the strength and number of migraines. Anything that reduces stress helps as well. Retiring 2 yrs ago has helped. I haven’t had cows milk for decades, stopping didn’t help. I do oat milk for my cereal now, I like it better than almond milk.

  329. 329.

    narya

    @rikyrah: Oh, I have NOT forgotten.

    Also, thank you to EVERYONE for the BD wishes! I honestly thought I could kinda sneak it into the end of the comment and slide on by without notice. I am a dolt–but also a dolt that is profoundly grateful to have found Jackalstan.

  330. 330.

    Soprano2

    @StringOnAStick: My husband cannot take acetaminophen at all because he has a Dexcom G7 patch, and they said it messes with what the patch does. Do you know how many cold meds have that crap in them? I wish someone would make a version of all that stuff without it.

  331. 331.

    zhena gogolia

    @Steeplejack: Robert Caro.

    I read Girl, 20 years ago, as well as a bunch of others. I used to just lap it all up. Can’t take it any more.

  332. 332.

    Kay

    @sab:

    The post office works with UPS so it’s not like it is really an alternative.

    They do, they do “last mile” delivery for both UPS and FedEx, but if UPS goes down the postal service gets hit with most of the UPS volume- and there is a lot. The Teamsters really have some leverage in this case- they can make the whole parcel delivery chain slow down.
    UPS is a really demanding employer. They pay well and the benefits are good – they can make 80 to 100k with overtime and seniority- but they track every second and push the drivers constantly – when you see them running they’re running because they’re expected to finish in X amount of time. They’re not easily replaceable because they’re the best among the parcel services as employees. FedEx is different – it’s the winger company. They use quasi “independent contractors” who are not professional drivers and they ARE easily replaceable. They have a lot of turnover.
    The FedEx drivers who came into the PO would ask me how to get a job there – they were all unhappy. The UPS drivers never did.

  333. 333.

    Brachiator

    @Ken:

    I am slightly worried about the writers and actors strike, because COVID showed that the entertainment industry could still limp along without new material coming out.

    Producers and studios may be more worried this time. It’s summer and people want to go outside. If there is less new programming on streaming services, people may watch less. Others might have less incentive to subscribe.

  334. 334.

    satby

     

    Rileys Enabler: I’m so very sorry to hear about Riley, she was such a cutie! You gave her a happy, well loved life. May the memory of her bring you comfort ; know that you gave her a dog’s version of heaven on earth.

  337. 337.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @SFAW:

    Anchor Steam Brewery is shutting down. Never had it, so I can’t say if this is a negative, or a big negative.

    It’s a big negative if you’re a Californian, especially if you live in the Bay Area, where it’s been an institution since the Gold Rush.  Good beer made by a unique method, the name, used became CA at the time lacked the infrastructure for a typical brewer. For San Franciscans it’s been one of those iconic SF things.

    Unfortunately, they got bought out by a megacorp that tried to force fit Anchor into their operating model, which was an utter failure. Or why we can’t have nice things.

  340. 340.

    Gvg

    @Suzanne: Look in barn and stable supply stores. Horse feed and such has had this problem for centuries. They know about making rat proof containers.

    Squirrels teeth are built for chewing and keep growing their whole life. They have to chew, or the front teeth get too long. That means they will chew on soft metal such as flashing on your roof. They can destroy flashing that lets leaks in or chew into air conditioning systems and cause thousands in repairs. I used to go to a business that had it happen. You really want to discourage both. Try red pepper. Birds can’t taste it.

  341. 341.

    Chris T.

    @Cheryl from Maryland:

    (scolding based on the fact that the pill was “unnatural”)

    Unlike, say, totally natural cholera and measles….

    “I only eat natural sources of arsenic and lead!”

  342. 342.

    Chris T.

    @Eyeroller:

    For some reason the medical community has decided that this enormous risk of liver damage is better than the slight chance of gastric bleeding from NSAIDS even for short-term use. I suppose allergies to NSAIDS are also a risk and hospitals don’t want to take the chance of a patient having an unexpected allergic reaction But it’s always Tylenol, Tylenol, Tylenol.

    In this case it’s because acetaminophen / paracetamol has so many fewer drug interactions than other commonly available cheap pain relievers. That makes it the default, which is self-strengthening. It’s unfortunate that the dividing line between “effective dose” and “toxic dose” is so narrow…

  343. 343.

    JAFD

    @Kay: Have told a couple of ‘logistics fulfillment’ companies ( the guys who are responsible for getting Kickstarter or GameFound projects to customers.) “Please don’t use FedEx Ground for delivery.  Us folk in the NYC-Philly area have more complaints about them than about UPS, USPS, Amazon and DHL combined.”

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