Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

T R E 4 5 O N

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

People are weird.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

How stupid are these people?

You are here: Home / Politics / More Odds & Ends (Open Thread)

More Odds & Ends (Open Thread)

by | 190 Comments

This post is in: ,

Today feels like Friday, so I keep expecting some big announcement.  Alas, it is Thursday.  It wouldn’t be a day ending in Y without a lot going on.

Sounds like Trump is about to find himself in some hot water because he claimed he couldn’t be at the Michael Cohen-related trial because he had to be in NYC for his fraud trial.  Yet he bailed after 3 days, so Cohen is apparently filing something related to that.

⭐️

⭐️

⭐️

⭐️

I thought Trump was offering to “help” the House elect a new Speaker, but this is interesting:

⭐️

This Politico article is sobering.  It shows was a sleaze McCarthy is, but there’s a lot in the article that leaves me worried.  (It’s Politico, maybe that’s the point?)  If the reporting is correct, the White House was counting on McCarthy to get Ukraine funding through.  Now, who knows what will happen.

We are most definitely living in interesting times.

Reader Interactions

190Comments

  1. 1.

    Tinare

    If the White House was truly counting on McCarthy, wouldn’t they have relayed that to Jeffries and at least had enough Dems vote to save McCarthy?

  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    @sab: Seems to me that would be a good thing, no?

    Are you thinking that would be a good thing or a bad thing?

    I hate the elections of judges where you have to google to find who first appointed them so you can figure out what their politics are.

  5. 5.

    eclare

    @WaterGirl:

    I know!  Luckily one of my neighbors does the research on school board, city council, etc., so I go by his yard signs for who to vote for.

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    I feel sure the White House wasn’t counting on McCarthy for anything. He made cutting aid to Ukraine a condition of the 45-day stop-gap bill because he couldn’t get it past the crazies in his caucus. They were always running the show.

  8. 8.

    Eolirin

    @Betty Cracker: Well they would have had to have been counting on him, since all that really needed to happen was a bill getting brought to the floor, and he was the only one who could have done that, short of a discharge petition.

    Doesn’t mean he’s the best person to be counting on. Or that his replacement won’t be better at keeping their word. Though it’ll depend a lot on who ends up with the job.

  10. 10.

    FastEdD

    Not sure what I think about making partisan affiliations known in school board elections. I was a political director for my teachers’ union local for many years. We spent most of our time working on school board elections. Why not? Where else do you get to pick your boss? In the old days we were the only organized group working on those races-way before the Moms For “Liberty” nonsense. Too many stealth candidates get in there on the bottom of the ballot, but some might actually receive less votes if they run as a D. We made sure our union endorsements were on signs all over the place. I had a group of Young Dems do precinct walking for us and our school board candidates gave them a pep talk. One candidate was an R and we endorsed her because her R opponent was even worse. I didn’t tell her the kids she was pepping up weren’t going to work for her because she was an R.

  13. 13.

    RaflW

    @sab: This might be bad, but what’s been happening in practice more and more is that stealth right wingers are running and not really having to disclose that they’re Republicans.

    So the older bargain that school boards are functionally nonpartisan is — of course — being fu*ked by conservative. Maybe daylight is the better of the bad options. TBD.

  14. 14.

    Jackie

    I really really like this Democratic freshman Representative!

    A Democratic House member is asking Palm Beach County, Florida, to tax Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property at the rate the former president claims it is worth amid his ongoing civil fraud trial in New York.
    In a letter provided exclusively to NBC News, Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., issued the request to Dorothy Jacks, Palm Beach County’s property appraiser.
    Moskowitz noted New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling last week saying that Trump repeatedly committed acts of fraud for years. Engoron ruled that Trump lied to banks and insurers by overvaluing and undervaluing his assets while exaggerating his net worth to billions of dollars.
    Trump has raged against Engoron’s ruling, insisting that his Florida resort is worth ”50 to 100 times” what prosecutors in the New York civil case have said, or “closer to $1.5 billion dollars.”

    “Between 2011 and 2021, you value the Mar-a-Lago property between $18 million and $28 million,” Moskowitz wrote in the letter to the Palm Beach County appraiser.
    “Mar-a-Lago was listed as worth $490 million in financial documents given to banks,” he wrote. “If the property value of Mar-a-Lago is so much higher than it was appraised, will you be amending the property value in line with the Trump family’s belief that the property is worth well over a billion dollars?”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/rep-jared-moskowitz-calls-palm-beach-county-tax-mar-lago-rate-trump-cl-rcna119042

  18. 18.

    RaflW

    @JPL: Statewide, unless you’re Sherrod, probably. But in cities?
    The following Democrats hold prominent mayoralties in Ohio:

    Columbus: Andrew J. Ginther.
    Cleveland: Justin Bibb.
    Cincinnati: Aftab Pureval.
    Toledo: Wade Kapszukiewicz.
    Akron: Dan Horrigan.
    Dayton: Jeffrey Mims.
    Canton: Thomas Bernabei.
    Youngstown: Jamael Tito Brown.
    (copypasta from googz, so might not be perfectly accurate, and certainly not a complete list of Dem mayors in OH)

    And I’d think suburbs are, even in OH, trending more moderate like much of the nation. We’ll see…

  21. 21.

    Betty Cracker

    On TPM’s most recent podcast, Josh and Kate theorized McCarthy thought House Dems would bail his ass out right up until he talked to Hakeem Jeffries late Monday, the day before McCarthy got deposed. In the podcast, J&K briefly went over the timeline and McCarthy’s comments before and after the call. It fits. I’d sure love to read the transcript of that call!

  24. 24.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: Personally, I think you have to read every source critically. I guess there are some you don’t need to, but you might as well read them all critically because it’s a good habit.

    Op-eds are really good for practicing critical reading skills, They tend to be conclusion-oriented, and authors often have to shade some facts and omit others to get to a nice, authoritive conclusion.

  28. 28.

    sab

    @RaflW: Akron’s next mayor, Shammas Malek, is running unopposed in November because the Republican couldn’t get enough signatures to get on the ballot.

    On school boards I think partisan races would be a disaster for suburban schools, not so much for city schools.

  33. 33.

    Spanky

    Florida, man …

    (Reuters) – Florida sued the Biden administration on Wednesday, accusing it of threatening to withhold more than $800 million of funding for transportation infrastructure because of a new state law that some public sector unions have viewed as anti-labor.

    Signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on May 9, Senate Bill 256 prevents unions representing transportation workers, teachers and other public sector employees from having dues deducted from paychecks, and would instead have employees pay dues to their unions.

    Other provisions require employees who want union representation to sign authorization forms, and require unions seeking certification as bargaining agents to show that at least 60% of eligible employees are paying dues.

    Florida said the White House is conditioning transportation funding on the state’s agreement not to enforce provisions that the Secretary of Labor believes undermine collective bargaining.

    The state said it has “no intention of abolishing the collective bargaining rights of transportation workers,” but that the U.S. Department of Labor’s “ultimatum” should be declared unconstitutional.

    Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and their respective agencies are among the defendants.

    The Department of Transportation said it cannot discuss pending litigation. The Labor Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    “Florida passed laws to protect workers from being strong-armed by unions,” Republican state Attorney General Ashley Moody said in a statement. “We’re pushing back against this overreach to protect our state’s autonomy and Florida workers.”

    The law exempts unions representing police officers, firefighters and corrections officers.

    It quickly spawned litigation, including a lawsuit filed by the Florida Education Association on the same day as DeSantis’ signing.

    DeSantis trails Donald Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Biden is a Democrat.

    The case is Florida v Buttigieg et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, No. 23-61890.

     

    (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    Unless the payment was enough money and resources to end poverty forever, I don’t think I could bear to be Trump’s attorney.

  37. 37.

    Ohio Mom

    @sab: Yes, it would be particularly destructive to suburban districts like mine.

    People in my district love, love, love our schools, and with good reason. They are excellent! They do a fabulous job of teaching all kinds of students and they keep our property values up, up, up.

    In southwest Ohio at the moment, there are two local suburban boards in chaos, each because they elected one right-wing nut job. No suburban board will be safe if people see “R” and automatically fill in those circles.

    Like those two districts, will all have board members with restraining orders against one another, we will all see our diversity programs cancelled, our classroom and school libraries “inspected” and cut, our supports for LGBTQ+ closed, the list goes on.

    Republicans are well-known for hating public education, the one nut they haven’t been able to crack is suburbanites’ fondness for their schools. Well, here they have found their tool.

    This will also be another step in the dismantling of their middle class. There may be philosophical problems with the idea of suburban districts — yes, we are white flight in action, yes we enjoy robust funding due to the insane method of using property taxes to pay for school operations — but we all pay plenty (and often, stretch ourselves to afford) for these ricky-ticky houses. If you destroy the schools our inflated house prices are based on, you jeopardize our middle class financials.

  38. 38.

    Villago Delenda Est

    From Wonkette non-commenter Chemical, just recently, on the current Rethug blaming of the Democrats for Qevin’s little problem:

    So let me get this straight. This is what happened so far, and apologies in advance for sounding like Axios.

    * As part of a deal to secure their support for Speaker, Kevin McCarthy hands a loaded gun to the craziest people in the Republican Party

    * The conditions for using the gun are either “Kevin McCarthy did something I don’t like” or “I think it would be hilarious to end this man’s career”

    * Kevin McCarthy proceeds to act like he has a 420-member majority, which causes problems

    * In whatever the opposite of a M. Night Shyamalan twist is, the crazies use the gun on McCarthy

    * Kevin McCarthy: Why didn’t the Democrats jump in front of the bullet for me?

    * Now Kevin McCarthy appears weak, mostly because he’s Kevin McCarthy and everyone knows it.

    At the end of this saga is a pointless attempt to look tough: he gets a guy who looks like he spent all of high school stuffed in his locker to order Nancy Pelosi to vacate her office, even though she didn’t even vote against him because she was attending a funeral. Of course, Nancy Pelosi claims the funeral was for Diane Feinstein, but I think it was really for Kevin McCarthy’s career.

  39. 39.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @WaterGirl: It would be really helpful for TFG if TFG actually paid attention to that “faithfully execute the law” part of his oath.

  40. 40.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: I’m sure you have. But I think other people trust only “friendly” sources and those can be misleading too. So I think you have to use sources like Politic, just carefully.

  41. 41.

    Ocotillo

    @Spanky:

    The law exempts unions representing police officers, firefighters and corrections officers.

    Ah yes, the only unions that GQPers choose not to mess with.  Perhaps other unions should sue regarding this unequal application of law?

  42. 42.

    RandomMonster

    @Betty Cracker: I feel sure the White House wasn’t counting on McCarthy for anything. He made cutting aid to Ukraine a condition of the 45-day stop-gap bill because he couldn’t get it past the crazies in his caucus. They were always running the show.

    This. McCarthy hasn’t kept a single damned promise he made, whether it’s the amount of money for discretionary spending, the funding for the Ukrainian war, holding a vote for a Biden impeachment. The list goes on and on.

  44. 44.

    raven

    I wonder if Omnes knows this dude?

     

    On Wednesday afternoon, Joshua Pleasnick arrived at the state Capitol shirtless, with a leashed dog and wearing a holstered handgun, according to information on the incident provided to lawmakers and obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
    “While being interviewed Pleasnick said he would continue coming to the Capitol until he spoke to the Governor about domestic abuse towards men,” the report said. “Pleasnick stated he did not own a vehicle and it is likely he has access to a large amount of weapons and is comfortable using them.”

    “Use extreme caution when in contact with Pleasnick. He should be considered armed,” Capitol police officials told lawmakers in an alert.
    Pleasnick was arrested after approaching the security desk outside of Evers’ office inside the state Capitol, Department of Administration spokeswoman Tatyana Warrick told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He said he would not leave until he saw Evers. Police arrested the man for openly carrying a firearm inside the Capitol building, which is a violation of state law.

    Pleasnick returned to the state Capitol about 9 p.m. with an assault-style rifle after posting bail at the Dane County Jail. He demanded to see the governor again and was again taken into custody.
    Lawmakers were not notified of either incident until Thursday morning. The Evers administration initially refused to supply information to the Journal Sentinel early Thursday.

  45. 45.

    hueyplong

    @WaterGirl: It takes no effort whatsoever to play the mind game in which you substitute “Fuehrer” for “Nation’s leader.”

    My only surprise is the failure to initial cap “leader” in that opening.

  47. 47.

    Scout211

    Good news in Colorado.

    Link (warning: Politico)

    Democrat Adam Frisch’s campaign reported a massive third quarter haul of nearly $3.4 million — more than many nationally touted Democratic Senate candidates — as he seeks to win a rematch with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) next year.

    Frisch’s campaign said the average donation was less than $32 and reported $4.3 million cash on hand. He lost to the incumbent by a little more than 500 votes in 2022 as he gears up for another shot at the sprawling congressional seat.

  48. 48.

    Trucmat

    @Villago Delenda Est: ​
     

    He had me until the very end when bullying was put forth as humorous. Ha ha. Short guy stuffed in locker.

    I don’t really want to be one note but there was some pretty outrageous commentary last night and it seems at least one front-pager finds it hilarious (Anne). I’m just an uninvited guest here though so I’ll stop complaining about the culture and leave y’all to continue without my carping. … Curt

  49. 49.

    bbleh

    @Tinare: the article says they didn’t want to because (1) WH interference would cause blowback among Reps and (2) they didn’t have a clear sense of which outcome they preferred.

    Another little gem from the article:

    “The White House is essentially missing in action and on things like Ukraine, the president’s not making the case like the president should,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

    Once again, a Republican whining that Dems won’t save them from their own party.

  51. 51.

    Betty Cracker

    Horserace analyst Marc Caputo, now of The Messenger, has an “exclusive” about Trump’s designs (or lack thereof) on the Speaker gig:

    “A lot of people have been calling me about speaker. All I can say is we’ll do whatever is best for the country and the Republican Party,” Trump said Wednesday in New York City during a break in his company’s civil fraud trial.

    House Republicans are holding a candidate forum on Tuesday for the group of would-be Speakers.

    Trump’s visit is not set in stone, but he’s deeply attracted to the idea and his phone is “blowing up” with Republicans urging him to go to Washington, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss Trump’s thinking. That source said Trump is entertaining becoming speaker on an interim basis for a few months.

    “Speaker Trump would break liberal brains,” said that source.

    Not this liberal’s brain. I’m not rooting for this outcome because the Defendant is an embarrassment to the U.S. and an impediment to sound governance. But politically, it seems like his bigfooting could be a windfall for Democrats. More from Caputo’s piece:

    Another Republican insider familiar with the discussions said Trump probably has no interest in the job of speaker; instead, he’s attracted to the idea of quelling Republican feuds and speaking to the House as the de facto leader of the party because he’s so far ahead in the presidential primary polls.

    Yeah, it’s a flex on DeSantis & Co. too. Caputo is a hack, IMO, but like Haberman, he has access and can generally be trusted to faithfully transcribe for sources.

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: They didn’t tell Evers until the next day?  So there could have been a buddy of this guy waiting at Evers’ car when he left at night?  At his home?  A buddy could have accosted him on the way to work the next day?

    ::; bangs head ::

  57. 57.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Trucmat: The man is a trained Rethug ratfucker.  His CV is filled with all the appropriate names for it.  No quarter for such slime.

  58. 58.

    unctuous

    Trump “open to pitching himself as a speaker candidate”.

    Whelp, gonna have to eat crow on that one. Thought his ego would never let him do that.

    Mmfff. Feathers.

  59. 59.

    Citizen Alan

    @geg6: I am trying to imagine a world in which a black man carrying so much as a butter knife could get within 1000 yards of a GOP governor without dying in a hail of bullets, but I can’t do it.

  60. 60.

    WaterGirl

    @Trucmat: I read the thread this morning, and it seemed like there were plenty of people who don’t want mockery based on [insert the list of things here].

    Some of my thoughts.

    Most of the politicians and public figures that get slagged on Balloon Juice are total fucking hypocrites.  I mean, Trump presents as a total slob most of the time, but he’ll hire an attorney who doesn’t even know the law, and h apparently forgives\ her for causing him to have a bench trial because she’s not only hot, but she looks like his type.  (My alternate theory is that Trump was scared to have a jury trial in NYC so he allows her to be blamed because then he can be a martyr.)

    I suspect that in most cases, the person slagging DeSantis for being short or the stupid female governor for being ugly is doing it because they are repulsive people and not because they are short or not pretty.  But those awful people being mocked do care about being mocked, so people hit them where it hurts.

    I think we are pretty much in a cold civil war in this country, so maybe people feel like anything goes?  Or maybe we’re not always our best selves because we are living in such stressful times, and it feels like one thing after another because it seems like these people must spend every waking moment thinking of more ways they can be evil?

    Anyway, I doubt that any BJ peeps – even the ones who are slagging evil Republicans for their looks – actually care if you are tall or short, or if you personally got a boob job, or if your eyes are mismatched, if you are skinny or fat, if you ever stood on a box so you could reach a microphone, if got stuffed in a locker, or bullied in school, or cares what your fashion sense is.

    If you like Balloon Juice except for this, why not stay and try to have an impact on this one thing that bothers you?

  61. 61.

    Steeplejack

    If you combine the people you'd never hire with the people you'd never invite to your house with the people you'd never want your kids to meet with the people you'd cross the street to avoid with the people who should never hold public office you have the current GOP leadership.

    — David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) October 5, 2023

  63. 63.

    jonas

    @Dangerman: Speaking of Bakersfield being a little piece of Texas in central California, the LA Times did a fantastic story the other day about how these hugely wealthy and powerful farmers around Bakersfield have basically carved the southern Central Valley up into independent water management fiefdoms that counties and the state have very little control over, because, you know evil “big government” and DFH environmentalists. So now in a big water year the otherwise dry Tulare lakebed filled again with floodwaters and the big landowners made sure to protect their fields at the expense of other farmers and towns and now everyone’s like “why isn’t the government doing anything to stop these guys?”

    Yeah, good question. Maybe now that Kevin McCarthy will have some more time on his hands, maybe he get on that problem.

  65. 65.

    Alison Rose

    @WaterGirl: I won’t speak for Trucmat, but to me, the issue wasn’t so much people saying “nah I don’t care, I’m going to mock him for this because he sucks”, but the exaggerated and absurd response to those of us saying we didn’t like that. “Oh FINE THEN I guess you just LOVE MCHENRY so much and think he’s WONDERFUL and I guess we can NEVER say ANYTHING about ANYONE that isn’t about their politics.” It was stupid. It sounded like when women say “hey you know what, being sexually harassed in the workplace isn’t fun”, certain men respond with “I guess I’ll just never talk to any woman ever again!!!!”

    I won’t say I’m 100% innocent, but I don’t love how often and how easily people on all parts of the political spectrum go for looks-based attacks, especially when people who share your political views might also have those traits. All a few of us were doing was noting that using shortness to claim a man is less of a man is a long and shitty cliché, and that there are a thousand other things to go after someone for. None of us were putting on our Insult Police uniforms, preparing to show up at other commenters’ houses and arrest them for making Keebler Elf jokes. The responses were over the top and made the whole conversation really annoying.

    If folks here wanna make short jokes, fine. Free country. Others are free to say we think it’s shitty. Coexist and all that jazz.

  66. 66.

    SoupCatcher

    In terms of whether they are repeating or reporting, I feel Politico is much more likely to engage in the former so I look at their pieces as press releases.

  67. 67.

    unctuous

    Also, since this is an open odds n ends thread…. I wonder if anyone still uses dimes or coinage in general outside of figures of speech? I think almost never.

    I had to go to the bank (an actual building) the other day for a roll of quarters for feeding a parking meter this week (which is itself old school — I have several parking pay apps on my phone). I had to ask how many quarters were in a roll since I could not remember. I barely recall payphones and iirc it was a quarter. So dropping a dime on someone was archaic even then.

    A penny for my thoughts. And that saying is very much out of circulation too.

  68. 68.

    Citizen Alan

    @Trucmat:

    He had me until the very end when bullying was put forth as humorous. Ha ha. Short guy stuffed in locker.

    Personally, I just thought it was inaccurate more than offensive. Patrick McHenry, I’ll wager, did not spent his school days stuffed in a locker. More likely, he was that wormy little guy who stood behind the bully and encouraged him to shove other kids into lockers. The Grover Dill to some bigger jock’s Scott Farkus (/A Christmas Story). No one who has ever been bullied in their entire life could grow up to be the sort of shithead who would order someone to vacate their office within 24 hours while that person was 3000 miles away at the funeral of a close friend.

  70. 70.

    OGLiberal

    @geg6: Not sure about where you live but it’s standard in NJ.  You can generally know the party, even if it’s not advertised.  In my town, it doesn’t matter – everybody running is a Dem.  In the town I grew up in it was the same – everybody was a Dem – but then their white racist asses turned them all into lunatics so now they are all MAGA freakdogs.  So they are all white, racist, angry, aggrieved douchebags.  And almost none of them have money…they are just hateful, mostly poor white people.  But when they run to fuck up schools they don’t have to state their party.

  72. 72.

    Citizen Alan

    @unctuous: Oh I’m certain he’ll pursue the Speakership, both as a plausible way to shut the trials down while he’s “serving America” and as a way to get around gag orders by abusing the Speech and Debate Clause. I don’t know that he’ll get it–surely the thought of having Trump as Speaker would be enough to make Republicans in Blue Districts abandon the party.

  73. 73.

    raven

    @Alison Rose: Ever heard of tunnel rats?

     

    Tunnel rats were generally men of smaller stature (165 cm (5 ft 5 in) and under), who were able to maneuver more comfortably in the narrow tunnels.[8] Tom Mangold and John Penycate, authors of one of the definitive accounts of tunnel warfare during the Vietnam War, reported that the U.S. tunnel rats were almost exclusively soldiers of European or Hispanic descent, many of whom were Puerto Rican or Mexican American.[9]

  76. 76.

    Ken

    @unctuous:  I wonder if anyone still uses dimes or coinage in general outside of figures of speech? I think almost never.

    Pre-COVID, I definitely used coin and currency a lot more. Now it’s usually the credit card.

    Oddly, I am accumulating coinage, from the rare times I use currency and get change. I used to be better about shoving some coins in my pocket, so I could give exact change and get rid of it.

  77. 77.

    Citizen Alan

    @Steeplejack:

    If you combine the people you’d never hire with the people you’d never invite to your house with the people you’d never want your kids to meet with the people you’d cross the street to avoid with the people who should never hold public office you have the current GOP leadership.

  78. 78.

    Scout211

    @WaterGirl:I am apparently not in the scoop about cherries. ??

    A pair of cherries can represent in texting, etc., what was, uh, falling out of the front of Boebert’s dress.

    Sorry, just a silly off-color comment.  I will put myself in the corner right now.  Frisch’s campaign would never use eggplant emojis or a pair of cherry emojis to denigrate a member of the US House Representatives. Nope.  Never.

    ::sitting in the corner now::

  80. 80.

    Alison Rose

    @raven: Well, no one ever made me go through war tunnels, but I’ll you, many was the time my 5′ tall ass was asked to crawl under a low table or a porch or something to find something lost. And my brothers once gave me $5 to squat down and waddle through a drain pipe while we were waiting for our parents outside a restaurant.

  82. 82.

    tokyokie

    @WaterGirl: In other words, in order to ensure that the nation’s laws are faithfully executed, tifg had to violate the nation’s laws. Helluva defense you got there, pal.

  85. 85.

    JML

    @Ocotillo: They think that these are the unions whose members vote GOP. When it comes to cops and and corrections…that’s mostly right. And they’re not like other unions, in that they don’t support Labor.

    Firefighters, on the other hand…they are Labor, and they do get it. The Firefighters are smart enough to know that eventually they’ll just be the next ones on the block and stand with the AFL-CIO, Building Trades, Teamsters, Teachers, SEIU, all of us in Labor. They marched against Act 10 in WI, even thought they were excluded from it.

  89. 89.

    skerry

    @Ken: My daughter moved last year from an apartment building where the washer/dryer were coins only. $3.80 a load.

    So both quarters and nickels were required. My kid just packed her laundry up and came home to Mama’s machines.

  93. 93.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @raven: It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog!

    Says McHenry, “Meep, better be real ostentatious with this gavel or they may not respect me.”

  94. 94.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Timill: I keep a pocketful of quarters because I shop at Aldi and the carts need quarters to free them.

    I neglect to get any of the freely available carts at my supermarket, buy more than I planned, then juggle my items on the way back to the service counter.

  95. 95.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @hueyplong: ​It takes no effort whatsoever to play the mind game in which you substitute “Fuehrer” for “Nation’s leader.”

    Well yeah, I guess not, since Fuehrer is German for “leader,” adopted as the equivalent to the Italian duce, as Mussolini styled himself when Schicklgruber was a penny-ante rabble rouser in Munich beer halls. (Thus Reichsfuehrer = “nation/realm’s leader.”)

    NB I will be happy to replace the “ue” with “u with an umlaut” as soon as Fucking Word Press provides me an edit window not limited to text.

  97. 97.

    Brachiator

    @unctuous:

    Also, since this is an open odds n ends thread…. I wonder if anyone still uses dimes or coinage in general outside of figures of speech? I think almost never.

    Staying home during the pandemic only accelerated my not using coinage. But even before that I was using coins less and less.

    I barely recall payphones and iirc it was a quarter. So dropping a dime on someone was archaic even then.

    It’s weird in a way how pay phones have pretty much disappeared. The last time I used one, the initial amount to get a dial tone was a dime. I don’t think that my niece and nephew, both in their 20s, have any idea about pay phones.

    When I was a kid, I thought it was cool that pay phones in parts of Louisiana cost a nickel to use.

  100. 100.

    Tony Jay

    @Scout211:

    Well, lah-di-dah, hark at this one. To the Manor Born, eh? You expect a corner?

    In my day we got a handful of dried thistles down our nethercloth and a night wedged under the floorboards if we spoke ungentlemanly, and we thanked them for it.

    Tsk. Kids these days.

  101. 101.

    HumboldtBlue

    @SpaceUnit: ​ 

    Stump Mitchell, Billy White Shoes Johnson, Bob Sanders, all undersized NFL players who shone on the field. But they weren’t a sniveling, sneering little Keebler elf of a man who isn’t fit to shine Pelosi’s shoes, much less wield the Speaker’s gavel.

  103. 103.

    Old School

    @Timill:

    I keep a pocketful of quarters because I shop at Aldi and the carts need quarters to free them.

    How many carts of groceries do you normally buy?

  104. 104.

    SpaceUnit

    To be fair, the MAGA horde isn’t concerned about immigrants from countries on that Nobel Prize winners list.  Their pigmentation will likely be acceptable.

  105. 105.

    hueyplong

    @Uncle Cosmo: Looks like maybe I should have dropped an emoji into the post.

    And I too failed to figure out how to avoid having to add the “e”

  106. 106.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @raven: It’s nice to know that my height wasn’t a barrier to any professional sports career, it was my crippling lack of physical coordination.

  107. 107.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Trucmat: ​He had me until the very end when bullying was put forth as humorous. Ha ha. Short guy stuffed in locker.

    The actual comment is “a guy who looks like he spent all of high school stuffed in his locker,” which appears to be more a comment on MacHinery’s unkempt and rumpled habit of dressing )including his bowtying) more than anything else. So maybe you should just pack up your oh-so-sensitive hairtrigger sensibilities and fuck right off, capisci?​​

  108. 108.

    WaterGirl

    @Steeplejack:

    If you combine the people you’d never hire with the people you’d never invite to your house with the people you’d never want your kids to meet with the people you’d cross the street to avoid with the people who should never hold public office you have the current GOP leadership.

    I want to have that somewhere I can see it all the time!

  111. 111.

    Immanentize

    @raven: More folks, like Not-Speaker-for-Long McHenry ought to consider what Mr. Shunderson said to Professor Ellway in People Will Talk:

    Shunderson : Professor Elwell, you’re a little man. It’s not that you’re short. You’re… little, in the mind and in the heart. Tonight, you tried to make a [wo]man little whose boots you couldn’t touch if you stood on tiptoe on top of the highest mountain in the world. And as it turned out… you’re even littler than you were before!

  112. 112.

    raven

    @Brachiator: We hosted the Olympic soccer here in Athens in 96 and there was a bank of pay phones that went for a half-a-block. Funny thing was all kinds of people got super greedy, threw people out of their rentals, put up tents downtown with concessions and swag and they lost their asses. I wasn’t surprised because I went to LA in 84 and saw how Ubberoth (sp) convinced people that they were going to be able to rent their houses and cash in big time. The rub was that here and in LA the vast majority of people who attended were from the surrounding area. Our football stadium housed 90,000 at the time and basically no one stayed over night!

  113. 113.

    Scout211

    @Timill: I keep a pocketful of quarters because I shop at Aldi and the carts need quarters to free them.

    What?!  You have to pay for shopping carts? I’ve never had to pay for a shopping cart.

  114. 114.

    C Stars

    @unctuous: I keep change around in the car for parking. Some meters only take in-app payments but most take both coins and app, and coins are far quicker to use. My ten year old also saves up coins he finds to purchase 25 cent candy at the corner store.

  115. 115.

    Suzanne

    @WaterGirl:

    Anyway, I doubt that any BJ peeps – even the ones who are slagging evil Republicans for their looks – actually care if you are tall or short, or if you personally got a boob job, or if your eyes are mismatched, if you are skinny or fat, if you ever stood on a box so you could reach a microphone, if got stuffed in a locker, or bullied in school, or cares what your fashion sense is. 

    Presentation of self — which includes choices made about grooming, fashion, facial expression — is a huge part of imagecraft, and is absolutely fair game for discussion. And mockery.

  116. 116.

    Betty Cracker

    Somehow I’ve always failed to appreciate how much people’s average height differs by region of the world. I have a friend from Guatemala who is about my height (5’8″), which is considered on the tallish side for a woman but not remarkably so in the U.S., but which my friend says constitutes a giantess in Guatemala. I always wondered if she was exaggerating.

    Well, this same friend always raves about a fried chicken chain that’s popular in Central America and has a few outlets in the U.S., one of which is in Miami. Once when I was visiting another friend in Miami, I said I’d pick up an order for my Guatemalan friend at the chain when I was headed home. I went into the very crowded restaurant and was startled to notice I was at least a head taller than anyone else, man or woman. She wasn’t exaggerating!

  117. 117.

    raven

    @Scout211: At Aldi you put a quarter in and get it back when you return the cart. It keeps the lot clean of “buggies” (as they are called in the south) and saves on labor.

  118. 118.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: No need to sit yourself in a corner!  I know sometimes I complain about acronyms or personally-made-up shorthand or really esoteric stuff without explanation.

    I figure here that I’m the one who should know what cherries represent.

    So come back out of the corner, please!

  122. 122.

    Suzanne

    @Scout211: Aldi lets you unlock a shopping cart for a quarter, and then you have to return it to the cart corral to get your quarter back.

  127. 127.

    rikyrah

    @Citizen Alan:

    @geg6: I am trying to imagine a world in which a black man carrying so much as a butter knife could get within 1000 yards of a GOP governor without dying in a hail of bullets, but I can’t do it.

     

    Yeah, me neither.

  129. 129.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: You have to pay the quarter to get one to use, and you get your quarter back when you return the cart.  How 25 cents would keep someone from stealing a cart is beyond me.

    I was only at an Aldi’s twice and I never did the cart thing, but that was my understanding, at least.  Maybe you also have to give a name and an ID?  who knows?

  131. 131.

    Shalimar

    @Alison Rose: My opinion of one particular person from those threads completely changed, which is a shame because it was someone I highly respected for their posts before that.

  133. 133.

    raven

    @WaterGirl: Nah, I thin k they studied it and found that people would just rather get the “case” quarter back. Often people offer your cart for free!

  135. 135.

    Scout211

    @raven: @Suzanne:

    Thanks. I’ve never shopped at Aldi’s, so that was a surprise to hear that you need a quarter to unlock a cart.  But at least it’s just a deposit.

  136. 136.

    raven

    My bride had a spinal injection this morning and AFTER they told her that she should have waited 2 weeks after the covid injection!!!

  137. 137.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @unctuous: Trump “open to pitching himself as a speaker candidate”.

    Whelp, gonna have to eat crow on that one. Thought his ego would never let him do that.

    Cheetoh Benito’s only way to avoid long stretches in the slammer is to return to the Presidency and pardon himself. His quickest and most direct route is to get elected & sworn in as Speaker & wait for MAGAts lurking in the Secret Service and/or WH transport maintenance staff to arrange fatal accidents for Joe and Kamala. Avoids messy things like elections that you have to wait over a year for and might not have the resources in place to steal, y’know?

    (I wish I were kidding.)

  138. 138.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @rikyrah:

    @sab:

    Ohio legislators trying to get a bill through to make school board elections partisan.

     

    Aren’t they already partisan?

    That’s one of your de facto/de jure distinctions. Personally, I’d rather have it out in the open.

    Not apples to apples but look at the situation with the newly voter-confirmed judge in Wisconsin. They’re trying to say it was unethical of her to have acknowledged she has formed opinions in her lifetime. Bullshit, pull the other leg while you’re at it. I have a cramp.

  139. 139.

    Dan B

    @Alison Rose: I agree that laughing at a person being short is uncalled for.  What I found interesting is that he was likely bullied and that would put some history behind his pettiness.  And the milk carton gaff made it seem he’s not ready for the spotlight.  Why not do the presser where other pols do them?

  140. 140.

    Brachiator

    @raven:

    I wasn’t surprised because I went to LA in 84 and saw how Ubberoth (sp) convinced people that they were going to be able to rent their houses and cash in big time. The rub was that here and in LA the vast majority of people who attended were from the surrounding area.

    I mainly remember a lot of people who could do so taking vacations during the LA Olympics because they were convinced that the crowds and traffic would be nightmares.

    But there was a lot of intelligent changes make getting around to the venues pleasant. Most people had a good time and I think the games were even profitable.

    I had family come out and we got to see a number of events.

    A number of people we talked to in the stands were from out of state or from foreign countries.

  141. 141.

    eclare

    @Betty Cracker:

    Even region of the US.  My (now) ex and I live in Memphis, and we traveled to San Francisco and while there saw a band at a club.  Everyone was much taller than we were, and they also had much better teeth.  The value of prenatal and childhood nutrition is real.

  142. 142.

    Shalimar

    @raven: That sounds like incompetence from the nurses or the front desk.  They should have asked her before the injection.

  144. 144.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @hueyplong: ​And I too failed to figure out how to avoid having to add the “e”

    You figure there must be some sort of workaround on the text menu but I’ve never found it. FYWP!

  147. 147.

    Old School

    @WaterGirl:

    How 25 cents would keep someone from stealing a cart is beyond me.

    Especially since you can steal carts from other grocery stores for free!

  150. 150.

    Betty Cracker

    NBC News says Cornel West dropped the Green Party affiliation and will run as an independent. That’s probably good news because it will be much harder for him to play spoiler if he fails to get on the ballot everywhere.

  151. 151.

    trollhattan

    @HumboldtBlue: Barry Sanders? IDK Bob, but maybe there are Sanders galore.

    Anyhoo, one of my alltime fav running backs. Lord knows what he’d have done on a good team.

  154. 154.

    Alison Rose

    @Uncle Cosmo: Oh look, another totally calm and reasonable contribution to the conversation.

    Unless you’re doing a parody of the MAGA “fuck your feelings” crowd, for the love of God, calm down. Telling someone to fuck off because they said “eh I don’t love this kind of joke” makes you seem like a fucking preteen having a hormonal temper tantrum.

  156. 156.

    raven

    @Brachiator: As I recall it was the best traffic in modern LA history. I had a great time and went to tons of events. The one weird thing  was the travelers check situation. I was there from Illinois and I had to go my mom’s bank with her to cash them in!

  159. 159.

    Ken

    @Old School: It’s not for theft protection, it’s so they don’t have to pay employees to return the carts to the store.

    Except in San Francisco and Portland of course, where it’s necessary because otherwise organized gangs of hundreds of thieves would swoop down and steal all the carts.

  161. 161.

    Shalimar

    @Betty Cracker: So he sidesteps the embarrassment of most likely failing to win the Green Party nomination and runs headlong into the embarrassment of failing to get on any ballots without them.  Nice.

  162. 162.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: Yeah, but it must have been discussed in advance if she was on some sort of waiting list or cancellation list.

    Did they say which injection would be impacted?  Hopefully not the spinal one, that can’t be fun.

  163. 163.

    Scout211

    @Old School: Especially since you can steal carts from other grocery stores for free!

    Sure, but once you leave the parking lot, the wheel-lock engages and the cart won’t move.  That’s at least what the stores do around here to prevent stealing them.

    But someone upthread said Aldi’s does it also to keep people from leaving the carts in the parking lot all willy-nilly.

    Sheesh!  What’s next? Self-check? Self-bagging your own groceries? Pumping your own gas? No milkman delivering your milk? What’s the world coming to? 

  164. 164.

    RaflW

    @sab: I’m not in favor of partisan school elections. But we’re getting them anyway, de facto, in a lot of school districts. These “moms for liberty” folks are well financed and getting even more organized.

    And I think as long as they can cloak as “nonpartisan” it helps with the ugly stealth nature of it. I don’t have a fix, other than our side financing and organizing better to fight it back.

  166. 166.

    japa21

    @Ken: No, that’s in downtown Chicago where they would then use the carts to break store windows and the use the carts to carry stuff away.   Actually the “smash and grab” is a problem in Chcago, though not to the extent the GOP makes it out to be.

  167. 167.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @WaterGirl:

    How 25 cents would keep someone from stealing a cart is beyond me.

    I always thought that it was to get you to return the cart to the corral rather than just leaving it anywhere in the parking lot.

  168. 168.

    RevRick

    @WaterGirl: In the places I’ve lived in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, school boards are elected with partisan affiliations. However, here in Pennsylvania candidates can cross file. A Democrat can run in the primary on both the Democratic and Republican sides! And vice versa. Which absolutely muddies the waters. And if there are five openings, then the top five are advanced to the general on both the Democratic and Republican sides. This has led to a Democrat failing to win on the Democratic side, but ending up running as a Republican.
    In Connecticut, counties are meaningless, except as lines on the map. In many parts of the country, counties control much of the local government operations, including the school system. Here in Pennsylvania, school boards operate independently of other local governments, and set their own budgets and assess their own taxes.  In the city of Allentown, the city and school district are coterminous. In suburban and rural areas, school districts usually encompass one or more townships plus any boroughs within their boundaries. In Irwin, a borough in Western PA, the school district encompassed the boroughs of Irwin and North Irwin and the township of North Huntingdon.

  169. 169.

    Anyway

    @Suzanne:

    Presentation of self — which includes choices made about grooming, fashion, facial expression — is a huge part of imagecraft, and is absolutely fair game for discussion. And mockery.

    I’m more cavalier about commenting/discussing/mocking of public figures. Sometimes the tone police get to be too much.

  171. 171.

    Citizen Alan

    @WaterGirl: I would be surprised that “stealing carts” is the real issue. More likely, they figured that 25-cents to “lease” a cart would be enough to ensure that most customers returned their carts to the store rather than leaving them out wherever they parked, thus eliminating the need to have employees collect carts when they could be doing other more productive things.

  172. 172.

    Old School

    @Scout211:

    Sure, but once you leave the parking lot, the wheel-lock engages and the cart won’t move.  That’s at least what the stores do around here to prevent stealing them.

    At the grocery store near where I work, those damn wheel-lock often engage when you exit the checkout and enter the lobby.  So you have to grab another cart, transfer your groceries, and then take that cart out to the car.

  173. 173.

    sab

    @RaflW: They will be elected anyway as Rs in suburban districts. And on the other hand we had a very good school board member who was elected several times in our city because people mostly didn’t know he was a Republican. He didn’t go along with any of the culture war bs.

  174. 174.

    Chris T.

    @Brachiator: The pay phones at the Oakland airport were 50 cents in 2005-ish. Most of them were obviously broken, and one that wasn’t ate my 50 cents and was broken.

    That was when I finally broke down and got a cell phone.

  175. 175.

    CarolPW

    @Betty Cracker: I went down to LA in the 70’s to visit the Jewish grandmother of my boyfriend (later husband). We took her to her favorite delicatessen, and when we went in the boyfriend was the tallest man, and since I am several inches taller then him I towered over everyone else. I looked over a sea of people pretty much at shoulder level. Some genetics, but mostly nutrition I think.

  176. 176.

    Suzanne

    @WaterGirl: It’s not about theft. It’s about them making their customers keep the parking lot clean so they don’t have to pay a cart runner person!

  177. 177.

    Citizen Alan

    @sab: Then he’s not really a Republican, is he? I mean without culture war, what even is a Republican?

  180. 180.

    Wapiti

    @Citizen Alan: And if some customer doesn’t return a cart, either the next customer does, or some enterprising kid brings it back.

    When I was a kid some discount drugstore held a raffle where for each cart returned a kid got a ticket. I won a bike running carts.

  182. 182.

    Matt McIrvin

    @geg6: In my city, all of our local elections are officially nonpartisan. We now have top-two “jungle primaries” for elections where there are more than two candidates per seat. As it happens, I have a bookmark on my browser right now for a local news article that starts something like “while they don’t mark parties on the ballot, here’s how the City Council candidates see themselves”.

  187. 187.

    Roger Moore

    @Betty Cracker:

    The thing for me is going to conferences with a lot of European people.  I’m used to being tall here in the US, but the Dutch and Scandinavians are enough taller on average than Americans that having a contingent of them around makes me feel, if not short, at least a lot closer to average height.

  188. 188.

    Roger Moore

    @WaterGirl:

    How 25 cents would keep someone from stealing a cart is beyond me.

    I don’t think it’s to keep down theft as much as to convince people to leave their carts in the cart corral rather than scattered all over the parking lot.  Even if people are willing to spent 25 cents to avoid returning their cart, I’ll bet there are enterprising local youth willing to return the carts to get the deposits.  I’m sure I would have when I was young enough that a quarter seemed like a lot of money.

  189. 189.

    LiminalOwl

    @Citizen Alan:

    No one who has ever been bullied in their entire life could grow up to be the sort of shithead who would order someone to vacate their office within 24 hours while that person was 3000 miles away at the funeral of a close friend.

    Sorry, no. That’s as incorrect a blanket assumption as its opposite (the idea that all bullies are acting on rage from previously being victimized). I’ve known counter-examples to both.

  190. 190.

    evodevo

    @Scout211: ​
      Yep…you do at the local cut-rate Kroger outlet (called “Ruler” for some reason)…they also don’t have bags, either…you have to bring your own…

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