Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The revolution will be supervised.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

The lights are all blinking red.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

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

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

So many bastards, so little time.

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

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

In after Baud. Damn.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread

Late Night Open Thread

by | 83 Comments

This post is in: 

Looks like we can use an open thread!

What’s everybody up to?  I thought it was so funny on Cole’s thread to see just how many of us were worried about Maxwell staying home alone, myself included, but with nobody saying anything until Cole announced tonight that Maxwell is joining the tour.

I finally put my tree up, and I’m so glad I did.

Tuesday Afternoon Open Thread 3

The last item on this list made me laugh.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  2. 2.

    PBK

    I felt bad for both cats being left behind, but once Steve had to come along I knew Maxwell would be joining the party!

  3. 3.

    WaterGirl

    @PBK:

    Who knew jackals were so polite and considerate?

    Looks like most of us were worried about Maxwell, but nobody wanted to add stress to Cole by suggesting that leaving one cat home alone would not be a great idea.

    That’s why I didn’t say anything, at least, who knows what was in anyone else’s head.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    @WaterGirl: That was exactly my thinking, too. I didn’t want to sound naggy when I knew he was already stressed, but I was like….but what about Maxwell???

    Also, the list made me smile too, especially that he wrote “an historic”.

  6. 6.

    Trivia Man

    @WaterGirl: You mean Ronna Romney McDaniels? Maybe Mittens can put in a good word for her with his solid connections.

    May she twist slowly and publicly in the wind of public scrutiny,

  10. 10.

    AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team

    I’m very grateful for everyone on here. BJ is a lifeline of sanity for me, so ty all, esp WG and all the front pagers.

    Also, Rosenberg is a balm for my default pessimism. Bless him.

  11. 11.

    WaterGirl

    @Alison Rose: Yes, I took note of “an historic” also.  I don’t think is correct, but it doesn’t really matter.  Historic shitshow is right!  Although my computer thinks that should be “historic shit show.

    edit: I wonder if shitshow is in the dictionary.

  13. 13.

    Alison Rose

    @WaterGirl: Yeah, you’re really only supposed to use ‘an’ before a silent ‘h’ but it does make it sound snooty in a funny way. Like some meme I saw once where someone called themselves “an European”.

  14. 14.

    WaterGirl

    Speaking of twisting slowly and publicly in the wind of public scrutiny, what’s going on the fake podium purchase by S?arah Huckabee Sanders?  Did everyone in that state just collectively shrug and say “oh, well, no big deal?”

  17. 17.

    HumboldtBlue

    “an historic”

    That’s one of the phrases that dances between spoken and written, local and regional, colloquial and however you say it at the moment you speak it.

  19. 19.

    lgerard

    @WaterGirl:

    what’s going on the fake podium purchase by Sarah Huckabee Sanders?

    I had the same thought yesterday.

    Also, where are Steven Mnuchin and Gordan “in the loop” Sonderland?

    And after seeing a picture of Steve Bannon recently, his best case for avoiding jail time might be “pleading his belly”

  20. 20.

    piratedan

    @WaterGirl: despite the best attempts of the MSM to pretty much gloss over that the former President attempted a coup and did so thru a concerted effort of intimidating people at the granular level with the help of others in his Administration and his Political Party, it’s slowly leaking out that this wasn’t just in Georgia.  We’re seeing movement along these lines in just about every “battleground” state where there was a false elector slate offered/attempted.

    I still get the impression that if this treason (and it’s still ongoing btw) got the same amount of coverage (factual explanation of the crimes alleged, speculation as to his future candidacy, who else was involved?) as “but her e-mails” received; the GOP wouldn’t have managed to grab the House in 2022.

  21. 21.

    BethanyAnne

    I have an umbilical hernia. I want it repaired, but I have to 1- lose weight, and 2- keep a consistent weight for a while before that can happen. So, when my guts pop out a little, I pop em back in. Day before yesterday, they wouldn’t go. I ended up at the ER, and while I was waiting, I managed to get them back in. I’ve been mostly laying flat on my back since then, recovering. Today’s progress was a little solid food, and laying on my side some. I have shit to do! Don’t have time for uncomfortable annoying body crap.

  22. 22.

    mrmoshpotato

    Best tree in show!  The pink clothespin really ties the table together.

    The last item on this list made me laugh.

    Hahaha, that’s good.  Historic, possibly; shitshow, definitely.

    Looks like we got rain tomorrow afternoon and on Christmas.  Sadly, no blizzard.  I could really go for a blizzard.

  23. 23.

    Shalimar

    I never thought I would say this 40 years ago, but I really miss the Reagan Republicans.  They were racist evil assholes but at least they actually cared about the country instead of just their party.  Reagan was a terrible person imo, but at least he never wanted to be a dictator.

  25. 25.

    Jackie

    @WaterGirl: She absolutely will. Ronna allowed the RNC to pay TIFG’s legal fees as long as he remained GQP and not go Indy. She also demanded all GQP contestants swear to support the leading GQP contestant – EVEN IF HE REFUSED TO DEBATE HIMSELF.

    Now we find out she participated in phone calls with TIFG  attempting to twist arms to try getting electors to not state Biden won. She’s in a shitload of doo-doo.

    Or would be in a “normal” world.

  30. 30.

    wjca

    2023 ending on upbeat note for Joe Biden/Dems

    Greatly distressing those who hoped they would peak too soon.

    Not that there isn’t a great deal of hard work ahead.  But perhaps we will be spared more (or, at least, afflicted with less) of the cries of doom.

  33. 33.

    wjca

    @WaterGirl: Yes, I took note of “an historic” also.  I don’t think is correct, but it doesn’t really matter.

    When I’ve encountered it in the past, it was from British (or Australian) speakers and writers.

  40. 40.

    Uncle Cosmo

    I might’ve rephrased that last point as “a histrionic shitshow” since there’s not much that the MAGA and MAGA-adjacent aren’t screaming and shrieking over and there’s no hassle over the indefinite article, but whatever.

    No one seems to have pointed out that the closest antecedent of national politics this cycle is the election of 1948:

    Incumbent Democratic former Vice-President with a GOP House majority from the previous cycle, running for election but given up for dead with no less than 3 credible (or credible-appearing) opponents in \the race, two from his own party (Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats’ walkout from the Democratic National Convention, plus previous FDR VP Henry Wallace on the left). As it worked out, Truman crisscrossed the country campaigning vigorously against the “do-nothing (Republican) Congress” and beat little-man-atop-the-wedding-cake Tom Dewey when the Dixiecrats could peel off only a handful of Southron states and the Progressives not a single EV.

    As Sam Clemens put it, history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme, and it bodes well for the defenders of American democracy going into next year.​ But we still gotta put in the work.

  44. 44.

    Jackie

    For all our Jackals effected by these storms, hope you’re staying dry!

    SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) — Motorists were stranded in their vehicles on flooded roadways in typically idyllic Santa Barbara on Thursday, while nearby Oxnard got a month’s worth of rain in a single hour in a storm that pummeled Southern California while Christmas travel got underway.

    The downpours targeted Ventura and Santa Barbara counties northwest of Los Angeles County overnight, swamping areas in the cities of Port Hueneme, Oxnard and Santa Barbara, where a police detective carried a woman on his back after the SUV she was riding in got stuck in knee-deep floodwaters.

    Between midnight and 1 a.m., the storm dumped 3.18 inches (8.08 centimeters) of rainfall in downtown Oxnard, surpassing the area’s average of 2.56 inches (6.50 centimeters) for the entire month of December, according to the National Weather Service.

    The deluge prompted flash flooding in Ventura County around 1:30 a.m., the weather service said. Later in the morning, streets began filling with water in parts of Santa Barbara as the storm delivered another deluge. By midday, the rain and wind had eased and residents ventured outside to look at the damage.

    https://www.wdtn.com/news/u-s-world/ap-us-news/ap-pacific-storm-dumps-heavy-rains-unleashes-flooding-in-california-coastal-cities/

  46. 46.

    opiejeanne

    @Jackie: Isn’t the east coast getting pounded by the weather too?

    That’s an incredible amount of rainfall in just an hour, or even a whole day.

  48. 48.

    JWR

    What, did they run out of books to ban? From Voice of OC:

    Huntington Beach Nixes Black History Month, Other Ethnic Celebrations

    Huntington Beach City Council members are throwing out their recognition of many ethnic heritage celebrations and replacing them with what one state senator called a “whitewashed revisionist history” celebration schedule.

    Council members are removing celebrations of Black History Month in February, Women’s History Month in March, and other similar celebrations going forward with officials writing the celebrations should be free of identity politics, according to the staff report.

    […]

    Some of the potential themes include “the Revolutionary and Civil War” month in August and “Black Gold Jubilee – Honoring the Discovery of Oil” month in November.

    “All monthly themes hosted by the City must be included in this approved twelve-month program and will therefore repeal and supersede all such monthly themes/celebrations previously approved by Council,” reads the staff report.

  50. 50.

    HumboldtBlue

    @opiejeanne: ​

    That’s an incredible amount of rainfall in just an hour, or even a whole day.

    For a year!
    And considering dry years, two or three. My sister reported extraordinary rainfall and serious flash flooding across Ventura County.​

  54. 54.

    AlaskaReader

    @Shalimar: Reagan and Reagan Republicans built the foundation Trump stands upon.

    When you say they ‘cared for the country’, it was only that part of our country that they occupied.

    Just like Trump, they actively worked to subjugate and bring harm to any and all others.

    The ‘lesser evil’ wasn’t any less evil.

  55. 55.

    The Thin Black Duke

    When Reagan was governor of California, he cut the budget for school lunches by redefining catsup as a “vegetable”. Ronnie was a monster, and I hope that when Alzheimers was rotting his brain he knew what has happening to him.

  57. 57.

    Chris

    @Shalimar:

    Reagan lived in a completely different time and a completely different environment. It wasn’t possible for him to govern like Trump yet, just like it wasn’t possible for Eisenhower thirty years earlier to govern like Reagan. We got to where we are thanks to decades and decades of Republican politicians doggedly pushing their party and the country in an ever more authoritarian, lawless, corrupt direction; and Reagan was absolutely part of that effort.

    There’s no way to know for sure what Reagan would do if he were alive and an important politician today. Iran-contra, however, argues heavily that he would have been right alongside the Trumpies. Even more so HW, whose pardoning of all the conspirators was one of the biggest assertions we’ve ever had that, fuck it, when the President does it, it’s not illegal. At least not when the President is Republican.

  58. 58.

    Glory b

    Reagan announced his candidacy at Philadelphia MS with a speech on states’ rights.

    The place where civil rights activists Gooman, Cheney & Schwarner were killed & buried in the woods.

    Journalist Jonathan  Alter was interviewed in the 3 part documentary on Reagan. He noted that every adult in the crowd was alive when they died (which caused a large scale FBI investigation). He said there was no way the audience didn’t understand what he was saying and why he chose an otherwise  NOWHERE place like Philadelphia MS to announce he was running for president. He told them exactly who he was going to be in the White House.

    Remember Lee Atwater & the southern strategy.

  59. 59.

    Geminid

    There may be good news coming from Ankara. Middle East Eye reporter Ragip Soylu says that Turkiye’s National Assembly will vote on approval of Sweden’s Nato membership next week. That’s the word from “a top Turkish lawmaker” and “Western diplomatic sources.”

    President Erdogan agreed to Nato accession for Sweden at July’s Nato summit in Vilnius, but has since slow walked Assembly approval. Last summer, Turkiye and Swede resolved bilateral issues relating to PKK activities in Sweden, and the sticking point now is US approval of F-16 sales to Turkiye. Turkiye wants to by 40 new planes and upgrade packages for 80 of its fleet of 200 F-16s.

    This is somewhat of a chicken/egg situation, but the Biden administration may signal movement on this matter in coming days. That is easier now that Senator Menendez, an implacable foe of Turkiye, no longer chairs the Foreign Relations Committee. Also, Turkiye and Greece have improved their problematic relationship.

    The US and Turkiye have deep disagreements over the Israeli/Gaza war, but they seem to have kept that from seriously harming bilateral relations.

  62. 62.

    David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch

    (If we don’t stop Medicare) one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.

    — Ronald Reagan (1961)

  64. 64.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Fun (and tragic) Ankara Facts:

    In the 19th century, Westerners knew the town as Angora, and it was best known for its distinctive long-haired cats, rabbits and goats adapted to the cold Anatolian winters.

    Twenty-one hundred years before, Ancyra was capital of the Kingdom of Galatia, and many residents spoke a Celtic language.

    Ankara’s population going into the First World War was 27,000. A third of those people were Armenians who were to perish in the Genocide of 1915.

    Ankara was proclaimed the capital of the Turkish Republic in 1920. It now has a population of 5.2 million.

  66. 66.

    RevRick

    @Uncle Cosmo: I think you’re right about the upcoming election being similar to the one in 1948. Democrats then were preparing for the worst, and Truman’s polling numbers were abysmal. And the Democrats had gotten clobbered in the off- year, primarily because of the wrenching readjustment that occurred with the sharp reduction in defense spending followed swiftly by soaring inflation due to pentup consumer demand for everything from stockings to cars to washing machines.
    I don’t expect Biden to go on a whirlwind, whistle stop tour, but then he doesn’t need to. He does have ready foils in the GOP Congress and Trump. But he only needs to hit six states. And that’s what makes the Reuters Battleground states poll so promising. In 2020, he only won them by 1%. If that +4% is even remotely accurate, then 2024 is in the bag.

  68. 68.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    As for what I’m up to: the air, literally. Currently in the middle of a Heathrow layover before connecting to a flight to BWI. Rough journey, 22 hours from waking up to arrival, but the destination will be worth every minute of it.

  69. 69.

    Geminid

    @RevRick: By the 1990s, I’d come to appreciate Harry Truman as a very good President who had to make some really tough decisions. Bill Clinton was ok, but I remember thinking when he left office that Clinton’s biggest challenge would have ranked 6th or 7th on Truman’s list.

  72. 72.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Geminid: Fifteen days Stateside, covering Christmas and New Year’s. I actually prefer the long layovers, though, so I don’t have to go through what some of my fellow passengers did when our flight out of Athens was delayed an hour and they ended up missing their connections.

  74. 74.

    RevRick

    @Geminid: Off the top of my head, starting with the decision to drop the A-bombs on Japan, the Marshall Plan, the UN, organizing NATO, desegregation of the military, vetoing Taft-Hartley, and proposing national health insurance.

  75. 75.

    Eyeroller

    @RevRick: To me it’s more reminiscent of Obama 2012.  I still have emails from that time to various people in which I was extremely worried.  We had had a terrible midterm in 2010 (much worse than 2022, and we’re still paying for 2010) and Obama’s polls were bad in 2011 and early 2012.  They didn’t really turn around until March or April of 2012 and it remained tight almost right up to the election.

  76. 76.

    frosty

    @JWR: Great. Of all the places I lived in SoCal several decades ago, Huntington Beach was my favorite (converted garage a block from PCH). Turns out it’s one of the most MAGA places in Orange County. Ugh.

  77. 77.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Geminid: Security? Nothing extra in Athens and nothing stood out at Heathrow (though I only went through the Terminal 5 internal security checkpoint).

  78. 78.

    Chris

    @RevRick:

    The thing about Truman is that it’s under him that the Democratic Party we identify with today took its final form. There were two legs of the tripod, the foreign policy internationalism and the economic populism, that were already there under Roosevelt (and probably already under Wilson). But the third leg and arguably the most defining one – at least the one most central to Democrats’ identity and morality today – was civil rights. And for that you had to wait for Truman.

  79. 79.

    Chris

    @Eyeroller:

    See, I remember being pretty confident about Obama’s reelection as early as summer or so 2011, for two reasons: 1) the economy was finally picking up again, and 2) it was already obvious that the Republican would be Romney, and also that Republicans desperately didn’t want it to be Romney.

  80. 80.

    Paul in KY

    I was generally OK with Maxwell getting the run of the house for a few months (with Daily loving visitors). Did not figure on how much he and John have bonded and the negative effects on John/Maxwell. Glad he is going!

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