Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Bark louder, little dog.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

White supremacy is terrorism.

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

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

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

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You are here: Home / Politics / Arcane but Useful Information Open Thread

Arcane but Useful Information Open Thread

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Blog favorite (one of them, at least) Sheldon Whitehouse has a useful and actual readable outline of the senate process, which we have to care about because the Republicans are uninterested in actually legislating for the good of the country.

I guess these procedures made sense back when no one dreamed that the calls would be coming from inside the house, and no one dreamed that one party would become the treasonous traitors they are.

I think you would have to have a certain disposition to be able to handle the pace and structure of the Senate, but I get the feeling that this candidate running for senate in North Dakota has it.

 

Sheldon Whitehouse explains senate rules for bills  (PDF)

Reader Interactions

190Comments

  1. 1.

    marcopolo

    Talk about arcane.  I am just happy (and genuinely surprised) that progress continues to be made on the Ukraine funding bill.  It may actually pass out of the Senate!  At which point it probably goes on to die in the House but who knows? Just focusing on the positive atm.

  2. 2.

    SFAW

    “Now go get a life.”

    I refuse to support the Democrat Party, because one of its members was shrill/mean to me!

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    @Old School: That seems like the only viable route. Assuming, of course, sending a squad of Senators over to the Speaker’s office to threaten to give him an atomic wedgie or something similar is off the table.

  7. 7.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Manyakitty:

    The only things I’m sure of with Mike Johnson are that he’s stupid and a coward.  Those traits can work for us and they can work against us.  It’s even harder to know, because whether or not he lets the bill get a vote he will posture about it first, which has no real connection to his actual actions.  See: the spending bills so far.

  8. 8.

    Alison Rose

    I really wish there weren’t anything one single Senator or Rep could do or try to do. I hate that shit. Tatertown and Rand Paul and whoever the fucker was Whitehouse mentioned who tried to send the bill to committee shouldn’t be able to gum up the works all on their own.

  12. 12.

    UncleEbeneezer

    We finally watched Oppenheimer this weekend.  Aside from the great cinematography and special effects I think it was wildly overhyped and overrated. There were some good acting performances, namely Robert Downey Jr. But the script got really cheesy at times with all the big MESSAGE lines being delivered in almost ham-fisted ways. It’s not a bad film, per se. But THIRTEEN Oscar nominations?  I just don’t see it…at all.  I love films about epic scientific endeavors (The Right Stuff is one of my all-time faves) but this movie just did nothing for me.  And while Oppenheimer tried to also show the political persecution of the Red Scare, it really never made me feel the incredible fear and tension in the way that a movie like Good Night And Good Luck did.

    As for Nolan’s directing, I don’t think it was anywhere near as good as Memento, Inception or even his Batman films (I haven’t seen Dunkirk yet).  It was way too long, tried to cover way too many sub-plots and as a result, ended up being a jumbled mess.  It’s definitely not even in the same galaxy as what Greta Gerwig achieved with Barbie.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Alison Rose:

    I really wish there weren’t anything one single Senator or Rep could do or try to do

     

    Agree, although I’m not sure raising the threshold would have made much of a difference in this case.

  22. 22.

    Alison Rose

    @Baud: The son who also really wants to watch porn.

    Which, now that I think about it, a father and son who are both desperate to watch porn but forcing themselves not to kinda sounds like the beginning of a porno.

  23. 23.

    Searcher

    Not going to lie, one of my fears when the Republicans took the House was that they would fail to pass any junk bills that the Senate could amend to actually produce budgets and whatnot.

  25. 25.

    WaterGirl

    Did I miss any big news in the past few days?  I couldn’t bear all the Garland & Biden bashing so I mostly stepped away for a few days.

    Biden has been fighting to help the Palestinians from day one on Oct 7, and he can pressure Bibi, but not control him.  And yes, Garland fucked up by choosing Hur, but he’s done a lot of other terrific things.   I couldn’t take all the throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

    So what did I miss besides the bashing?

  26. 26.

    wjca

    @Old School: Has there been any inkling of what the plan is for the House?  Discharge petition, maybe?

    Johnson is enough of a coward that I suspect he’ll cave, and bring it up for a vote.

  30. 30.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @WaterGirl:

    The Chiefs, including Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, won the Superbowl.  MAGA has a sad, Trump bragged that he’s responsible for Swift being rich, Biden made hilarious jokes.

    EDIT – @Baud:

    Well, as our virtual President, we expect you to have virtually fixed virtually all problems.

  35. 35.

    Chris

    @Alison Rose:

    Mr. Smith Goes To Washington is not an uncomplicatedly bad movie, but immortalizing the idea that one guy bringing the whole business of government to a halt so he can do all his ranting and raving is a good and noble thing was definitely not great.

  36. 36.

    Alison Rose

    @Chris: I mean…there are occasions where it can be for good. I’m thinking of Wendy Davis down in Texas. But those situations are rare, and most of the time it’s one damn dude fucking things up because he just wants to be a dick.

  37. 37.

    Fake Irishman

    Follow Brookings’ Molly Reynolds to understand all the rules of the Senate. She also has a book on how those rules have been changing. She is also a delightful person and hardcore nerd.

    Full disclosure: I once sold her a secondhand bookcase and I seem to recall she and I played together on the worst graduate school intramural softball team that was ever assembled. 

  40. 40.

    BellyCat

    Whitehouse attempting — but utterly failing at — humor with the “get a life” comment. Disappointed in this from him as it is not only off-putting, it undermines the immense amount of great work and insightful messaging he has done and is doing.

  44. 44.

    Old School

    @WaterGirl:

    So what did I miss besides the bashing?

    Trump said he’d encourage Russia to do what they want to deadbeat NATO members.

    Trump said Pennsylvania would not exist if he doesn’t win in November.

    Trump said Nikki Haley husband has mysteriously disappeared.  (He’s deployed overseas.)

    Another Republican representative retired (Mike Gallagher – WI).

  46. 46.

    Damien

    @UncleEbeneezer: Counterpoint as someone in the industry who watched both and went back to rewatch Oppenheimer multiple times after: the movie is an aching exploration of unintended consequences across multiple threads, done more subtly than I think you’re giving it credit for. From the multiple visual motifs expressing the scientific idea of chaos reflecting the stages of Oppenheimer’s journey coming full circle by the end to the characterization of science itself as a character very suddenly maturing from a game of wide open and sometimes solitary exploration to an industry, I got something new from the movie every time I watched it.

    I liked Barbie a lot, I love the message and that the movie made Barbie back into her context as the feminist icon she was seemingly originally meant to be, and exploring the effects of toxic masculinity on both men and women was great, but Greta Gerwig’s direction is…lazy? I guess? If you’re a cinephile then there’s fairly little in that movie that isn’t a reference to another movie. From 2001 to Jurassic Park to Saving Private Ryan, Yellow Submarine, etc. Gerwig didn’t seem to have an original bone in her directorial body, and don’t even get me started on how poorly she staged and photographed any kind of action: the car chase was so confused about geography and position that it was impossible, and not to mention utterly superfluous to everyone except the car sponsor.

    And Jesus Christ, the transition to the real world where it’s bunch of overlays of real life footage over a freeze frame of Margo Robbie’s eyeball with a tear? The only wholly original directorial touch came straight out of a terrible student film.

    Barbie the movie? Great!
    Oppenheimer’s better and I’m happy I got to toss my vote for it to the Academy.

  48. 48.

    Miss Bianca

    @Alison Rose: Near as I can tell, what it means is that Trump brayed something out of his piehole about “Pennsylvania having to change its name” or something after something something about a statue of William Penn being moved or removed but which apparently did not happen.

    Or something.

    ETA: Apparently you’re better informed than I am, I couldn’t even be bothered to Google it!

  50. 50.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @WaterGirl: Even the Hur thing is wildly overblown.  I wish Garland had picked a better SC who didn’t add the extraneous Biden’s Old bullshit into the report, but at the end of the day he did do the right thing with regard to not recommending criminal charges.  Biden was, in fact, exonerated.  I wish more people on our side chose to raise that point ad nauseam instead of bashing Garland.

    It’s also rather hilarious that the haters blame all the bad stuff that Hur did on Garland, but don’t do the same with all the good stuff that Smith does (which far outweighs the former, imo).  Smith does great things despite Garland but Hur did bad things because of Garland.  It sure looks like mental gymnastics with the sole intent of bashing Garland, to me.

  53. 53.

    Alison Rose

    @WaterGirl: As Miss Bianca said, in a rally or whatever, he made the claim that if Dems win in November, they will change the state’s name, although…no one knows what the hell he was referring to, other than maybe schools and such changing names to remove those of racists from history.

  57. 57.

    BellyCat

    @Alison Rose: Maybe, but I’m pretty sure my snark/hilarity meter is fully functioning.

    I might be alone here — and I LOVE Sheldon Whitehouse’s work — but I have this weird sense that this type of banter cheapens the Senate (and Whitehouse, himself) far more than Fetterman’s wardrobe and the prior fracas. Whitehouse essential insults those who care most about his message, and to what end? 🤷‍♂️ YMMV

  59. 59.

    Alison Rose

    @BellyCat: I think the medium matters. If he said this on the floor of the Senate or something, yeah, that would be out of place. On Twitter, I think it’s fine to make a little joke to acknowledge that for normies, caring this much about the nitty gritty of Congressional procedures seems nerdy beyond belief.

  61. 61.

    Baud

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    What a piece of work is Trump! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

     
    –NYT

  62. 62.

    kindness

    @Old School:  I figure a Discharge Petition is the only way this reaches a floor vote in the House.  How many Republicans do we need for that DP to be brought up?

  64. 64.

    Damien

    @Alison Rose: I feel like I would have agreed ten years ago, but these days with every single thing in Congress feeling life or death when the august body is even functional I think knowing every in and out (mmm Congress animal style) of the process is increasingly important.

    Wish it wasn’t, but damn.

  65. 65.

    Alison Rose

    Re the FTFNYT, I will say I was glad to see this op-ed: I’m a Neuroscientist. We’re Thinking About Biden’s Memory and Age in the Wrong Way

    As an expert on memory, I can assure you that everyone forgets. In fact, most of the details of our lives — the people we meet, the things we do and the places we go — will inevitably be reduced to memories that capture only a small fraction of those experiences.

    It is normal to be more forgetful as you get older. Broadly speaking, memory functions begin to decline in our 30s and continue to fade into old age. However, age in and of itself doesn’t indicate the presence of memory deficits that would affect an individual’s ability to perform in a demanding leadership role. And an apparent memory lapse may or may not be consequential depending on the reasons it occurred.

    There is forgetting and there is Forgetting. If you’re over the age of 40, you’ve most likely experienced the frustration of trying to grasp hold of that slippery word hovering on the tip of your tongue. Colloquially, this might be described as ‘forgetting,’ but most memory scientists would call this “retrieval failure,” meaning that the memory is there, but we just can’t pull it up when we need it. On the other hand, Forgetting (with a capital F) is when a memory is seemingly lost or gone altogether. Inattentively conflating the names of the leaders of two countries would fall in the first category, whereas being unable to remember that you had ever met the president of Egypt would fall into the latter.

    Many of the special counsel’s observations about Mr. Biden’s memory seem to fall in the category of forgetting, meaning that they are more indicative of a problem with finding the right information from memory than actual Forgetting. Calling up the date that an event occurred, like the last year of Mr. Biden’s vice presidency or the year of his son’s death, is a complex measure of memory. Remembering that an event took place is different than being able to put a date on when it happened, the latter of which is more challenging with increased age. The president very likely has many memories of both periods of his life, even though he could not immediately pull up the date in the stressful (and more immediately pressing) context of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

    Other “memory” issues highlighted in the media are not so much cases of forgetting as they are of difficulties in the articulation of facts and knowledge. For instance, in July 2023, Mr. Biden mistakenly stated in a speech that “we have over 100 people dead,” when he should have said, “over one million.” He has struggled with a stutter since childhood, and research suggests that managing a stutter demands prefrontal resources that would normally enable people to find the right word or at least quickly correct errors after the fact.

  66. 66.

    vbreakwater

    @Damien: In the industry as well and your analysis is spot on. It eludes me how many films are elevated to the level of greatness from mere adequacy by way of publicity campaigns. Nolan was very compelling the other evening on Colbert. Very thoughtful dude, who actually loves such films as Ironman and Fast & Furious/Tokyo Drift.

  67. 67.

    Old School

    @kindness:

    How many Republicans do we need for that DP to be brought up?

    From what I can find, 218 votes are needed for a discharge petition.

    Current breakdown is 219 Republican, 212 Democrat, 4 Vacant.

    So at least six.  (Unless the vacancies change the number.)

  68. 68.

    Kay

    The author, musician, and husband of podcaster Jamie Ivey showed “a very clear pattern of predatory manipulation” in messages to multiple males, according to church elders.

    Is there anything that has been proven more true over the last 4 years compared to “the Right’s freak out over public school teachers and transgender people is projection”?

    Myyyy goodness. They have A LOT of predators! When is the last time you even read about a liberal with one of these “incidents”? Spending 7 million dollars on pro Right wing Christianity ads for the Superbowl aren’t going to matter if they keep hiring and promoting sleazy people.

  73. 73.

    Eolirin

    @Alison Rose: So glad to see someone in a prominent media space bring up the stutter in the context of all those verbal slips Biden has had his entire career.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Oh, no:

    In 2021, the Iveys wrote Complement, a book and accompanying Bible study about marriage. The couple subscribed to a complementarian theology of marriage, which emphasizes male leadership, and spoke on it often. Aaron Ivey appeared on a 2019 panel hosted by the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, titled “Faithful Husband, Strong Father: Embracing God’s Design for Manhood in Marriage,” that focused on the role of biblical manhood in marriage.

    I have some sympathy for her although I shouldn’t since she thinks I’m chattel and would change the law to make me so.

  76. 76.

    Miss Bianca

    @Baud: Yeah, but Hamlet goes on to nail the fat bastard by summing him up as “this quintessence of dust”.

    (I think it’s Cheeto dust, personally. Which may or may not be the quintessence of dusts.)

  78. 78.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Yep. I don’t care if any woman, or man, wants to live life submissive to another person, but using the state to enforce it upon others is appalling.

  80. 80.

    Kay

    And just to complete the grifter circle, there are very few words in their marriage advice book:

    Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2021

    I have no issues with the content, but the packaging/format advertised feels a little dishonest. These are listed as hardcover–maybe technically you could consider the box a hardcover?–but they’re actually small paperbacks. The small size of the books is not accurately depicted in the product image. I likely wouldn’t have purchased at this price if I knew the actual content was so short.

  81. 81.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kay: Soo…”complementary” doesn’t *actually* mean “equal contributing parts or partners” but “Men in charge”? Got it.

    Quelle surprise.

  83. 83.

    Alison Rose

    @Miss Bianca: In Christianity and some sects of other religions, “complementarianism” is something different from the usual usage:

    Complementarianism is a theological view in some denominations of Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and Islam,[1] that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, and religious leadership. Complementary and its cognates are currently used to denote this view. Some Christians interpret the Bible as prescribing complementarianism, and therefore adhere to gender-specific roles that preclude women from specific functions of ministry within the community.[3][4] Though women may be precluded from certain roles and ministries, they are held to be equal in moral value and of equal status. The phrase used to describe this is “ontologically equal, functionally different”.

  84. 84.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Kay:

    Myyyy goodness. They have A LOT of predators! When is the last time you even read about a liberal with one of these “incidents”?

    The Joe.My.God. blog has at least several posts per week about clergy, cops and other men (and the rare woman) being arrested, convicted, or sentence for child-related sex crimes. And Joe doesn’t even post about all of them, I’ve seen even more posted by Beks on the hell site pretty much at least once every day.

    Every accusation a confession…

  85. 85.

    Another Scott

    @Old School: Johnson voted for Ukraine aid in the past.

    Warning Politico.com:

    The message [Mike] Turner [R-OH] brought back from Kyiv is that there’s not a moment to spare: Soldiers, he said, “are already rationing munitions” and “are unable to fully defend themselves on the battlefield.”

    ‘Cold hard American interests’: McConnell urges Ukraine aid

    “We have to get this done,” he said. “This is no longer an issue of, ‘When do we support Ukraine?’ If we do not move, this will be abandoning Ukraine.”

    Turner’s visit is particularly timely. The Senate is on track to pass its supplemental spending bill, which includes funding for Israel and Taiwan as well as Ukraine, no later than Wednesday. But what happens after that remains in question, even though Turner predicts the bill would have “overwhelming support” in the House.

    “The speaker will need to bring it to the floor,” he said.

    I expect it will happen, but it will take some time.

    Politics is slow.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  87. 87.

    lowtechcyclist

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    I wish more people on our side chose to raise that point ad nauseam instead of bashing Garland.

    My gripe is that apparently DOJ rules are that if prosecution is not recommended, what the recommendation is supposed to say is pretty cut and dried in a limiting sort of way.

    If so, Garland should have had Hur’s report reviewed and edited to comply with DOJ standards before publication.  He could have allowed Hur to publish whatever else he damned well pleased, just not under DOJ auspices.

    Nobody should have been in a position to attribute Hur’s insinuations to ‘DOJ,’ which is exactly what too many commenters did.

  88. 88.

    Eunicecycle

    @Alison Rose: yeah the Catholic church tries to use this to explain why women can’t be priests. But all the hierarchy are priests and therefore men, so women have very little say in the church. Yet individual parishes would not exist without women doing the day to day tasks of administration and parish ministries. It’s not sustainable.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    It seems like the GOP candidate to replace Santos is as full of shit as Santos and NYC media did absolutely no work at all finding anything out about her. Again.

    This is Santos II. Same exact players. Can candidates who run in NYC just say anything and it goes completely unexamined? Are we even sure she’s using her real name? They elected Eric Adams although he refused to divulge his real address. Someone should run in NYC with an entirely invented persona and see how far they get – to the election, at least!

  92. 92.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Damien: Half of my friends work in the industry and most of them felt the same way I did about Oppenheimer.  I’m sorry you subjected yourself to it multiple times.  I hope you enjoyed those completely one-dimensional women characters (of the two that actually had lines) and the gratuitous 10 minute scenes of Florence Pugh naked body which added absolutely nothing but titilation to the film.  Ironically, the women in Oppenheimer were more like posed dolls than the women in a movie that is literally about posable dolls.  Not to mention that ridiculous sex scene while reads the Bodhitsava about being the “destroyer of worlds” at her request.  Deep man.  So deep.  It’s like something a teenage boy would concoct.  Then there were the scenes with Yoda, er I mean, Einstein which were also laughably bad.  Speaking of “geographically confused” Oppenheimer perpetuates the myth that Los Alamos and Trinity were largely remote and uninhabited.  Ignoring the whole part about the Federal Govt forcibly displacing Native/Indigenous and Mexican-American residents to develop it.

  93. 93.

    Another Scott

    @twbrandt: I thought for years that his name was “Bob Bedboards”.  ;-)

    A distinctive voice, who, AFAIRecall, never let his politics enter into his newsreading.  But they were different times…

    RIP.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  94. 94.

    JCJ

    @WaterGirl:

    Apparently the National Park Service or some such organization was planning on removing a statue of William Penn from somewhere.  I think that is the origin of the whole renaming Pennsylvania nonsense Trump was spewing.  Of course, the statue was ultimately not removed, and it had nothing to do with the statue of Billy Penn on top of the Philadelphia city hall.  But why would he let pesky facts interrupt anything sloshing around in his brain

  100. 100.

    Soprano2

    @UncleEbeneezer: I think they like to pat themselves on the back with nominations for movies like this, saying “See even though we produce entertainment we can do serious movies too”. I think the reason “Barbie” didn’t get the nominations it should have is because of this. They’re afraid to give too many awards to a popular, entertaining movie because they think it makes them look shallow and unserious.

  103. 103.

    Kelly

    I’ve long been puzzled by right wingers fears of foreign threats, immorality and crimes. Pedophilia has been a particularly prominent fear recently. Seems their communities are riskier than liberal communities.

  105. 105.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kay: OK, that article has got me deeply confused, and I can’t tell whether it’s because it’s super poorly-written or I just don’t have the reading comprehension I used to. Or maybe the situation is just that confusing.

    Are they saying that the Republican candidate is…actually a registered Democrat? Or was until she decided to run as a Republican?

  106. 106.

    NotMax

    @JCJ

    the statue of Billy Penn on top of the Philadelphia city hall.

    Which faces the wrong way. Instead of its gaze welcoming ships and trade to the harbor, his butt greets them.

  107. 107.

    Soprano2

    @Alison Rose: I’ve been saying that anyone writing credulously about Biden having anything like dementia has not dealt with anyone who has dementia. My husband regularly asks me, within a half hour of having fed the dogs, if he fed the dogs. He can’t remember that we went to the doctor last week. I’m pretty sure he remembers he had a procedure to remove kidney stones, but that is because it involved a lot of stuff, and who knows if he’ll even remember it in a month. What happens to Biden is the normal forgetfulness that most people have, and that as the article says increases with age. My grandmother thought the reason you forget more when you’re older is that you have more to remember.

    I will say, I can tell you the date of my sister’s, father’s and mother’s death. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget those. I can’t tell you exact date of my grandparent’s deaths, though.

  108. 108.

    lowtechcyclist

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    He would’ve been bashed for that too, and compared to Bill Barr by both MAGA and his haters on the Left.

    He’d have been bashed any which way.  The point is, Hur’s insinuations should NOT have gone out with a DOJ imprimatur.

  109. 109.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kelly:

    Pedophilia has been a particularly prominent fear recently.

    It’s a weapon.  There are very, very few things you can accuse someone of that gets such a visceral, universal, immediate condemnation from almost everyone.  It’s the ultimate accusation in our culture.

    And like a lot of things, they only care about the word as a weapon.  Actually doing it they don’t think is a big deal.  All appearances, no substance.

  110. 110.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: You should see the stuff that’s going on in MO over Christian camps. Google “Kanakuk Kamp” if you want details. There was an abusive counselor at that camp for years that they covered for. Doing naked things with campers, that kind of thing. It’s a theme, over and over again, that pretty much every institution defends the abusers rather than the victims. I don’t know why that is, but it’s true. My husband told me when he was in business that anyone who was ostentatious about their faith made him grab for his wallet, because they were probably some kind of con artist.

  113. 113.

    Alison Rose

    @Soprano2: Yeah, my grandpa had Alzheimer’s and the last few years of his life, and especially the last two years after my grandma died, were really bad. And absolutely NOTHING like what Biden has exhibited.

    Trump, OTOH…I will say that some of that nonsense rambling does resemble some things I heard from my grandpa, where it sounded like a few different internal thoughts got mixed into one verbalized thought.

    And as I’ve ranted before, EVERYONE forgets shit sometimes or has verbal stumbles. Literally everyone.

  114. 114.

    lowtechcyclist

    @NotMax:

    Which faces the wrong way. Instead of its gaze welcoming ships and trade to the harbor, his butt greets them.

    Hey, maybe that’s how he really felt about them. ;-)

  115. 115.

    teezyskeezy

    @Another Scott: Well, maybe it will happen, but of course Trump will keep trying to blow up any deal with threats and will never stop doing so…which sets up a curious situation.  Unstoppable force vs. immoveable object, sort of.  I feel like at some point, though, that eternal dance has to stop, perhaps catastrophically (maybe for the GOP only) and it will be before summer.

    In fact, the crisis of (the lack of) GOP leadership, Ukraine funding, and the Hamas-Israel war are all currently in kind of a slowly decaying orbit around each other and the present trajectories of all of these things are not sustainable. Something will give.

  116. 116.

    trollhattan

    @Kay:  In case one’s conservative betters are flogging the old “Of course rich people are smarter” meme, a reminder that the Santos district is New York’s wealthiest. IIRC #4 in the nation.

    “Won’t be fooled again.” Well….

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … Nature.com:

    Abstract

    The advent of proteomics offers an unprecedented opportunity to predict dementia onset. We examined this in data from 52,645 adults without dementia in the UK Biobank, with 1,417 incident cases and a follow-up time of 14.1 years. Of 1,463 plasma proteins, GFAP, NEFL, GDF15 and LTBP2 consistently associated most with incident all-cause dementia (ACD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD), and ranked high in protein importance ordering. Combining GFAP (or GDF15) with demographics produced desirable predictions for ACD (area under the curve (AUC) = 0.891) and AD (AUC = 0.872) (or VaD (AUC = 0.912)). This was also true when predicting over 10-year ACD, AD and VaD. Individuals with higher GFAP levels were 2.32 times more likely to develop dementia. Notably, GFAP and LTBP2 were highly specific for dementia prediction. GFAP and NEFL began to change at least 10 years before dementia diagnosis. Our findings strongly highlight GFAP as an optimal biomarker for dementia prediction, even more than 10 years before the diagnosis, with implications for screening people at high risk for dementia and for early intervention.

    Early work, needs to be duplicated, greater understanding needed, etc.

    Still.

    This shows the potential value in finding correlations in large datasets – when it’s done correctly.

    Still lots to learn.

    (via MedicalXPress.com)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  124. 124.

    Damien

    @UncleEbeneezer: I didn’t argue that it’s a perfect movie, just better than you are giving it credit for and also better than Barbie, two points I will stand by.  I am happy to make arguments for why Florence Pugh’s scenes are better than you make them out to be as well: given how much of Oppenheimer’s journey is about shifting loyalties, betrayals, hidden agendas, etc. Florence Pugh represented the purest form of openness, in every way.  She never lies to him, never denies being exactly who she is, and when she demands that he read the Bodhitsava during sex it is what we in the biz call “foreshadowing.”

    Oppenheimer destroys her, the only truly pure (in her own way) person in his entire life.  Unintended consequences, the theme of the whole damn movie, are particularly apparent if you follow that plot thread.  I also feel that you aren’t giving that character and her portrayal by Pugh enough credit; I feel that while she isn’t shaded as deeply as Oppenheimer is, she’s on equal footing with Lawrence or Teller, who are much more important characters in the overall narrative thrust.

    And I think that demanding a film depict the eminent domain seizure of a ranching school and homesteads is kind of silly dude, come on; good movies have a narrative point and prune away as much as they can to clarify that point.  Whether you think that Oppenheimer delivered on that (which I do, and apparently a whole lot of professional filmmakers do too) you have to admit that diving into the politics of land seizure might have derailed the movie just a hair?

    Barbie was a fun, popular, visually beautiful film; so was Oppenheimer (fun being subjective, of course).  Barbie had an interesting and timely message; so did Oppenheimer.  Barbie had a messy narrative, poor plot transitions (seriously, the Gina Rodriguez plot wrapped up like a needle scratch), and barely an original directorial flourish in its entire runtime; Oppenheimer was just, to me and the thousands of professionals in the Academy, a superior film.

    In fact, I’m gonna go watch it again right now and see if I take anything new away from the experience the way I have on each previous viewing.

  125. 125.

    Kelly

    @Frankensteinbeck: Yes the right wing leadership uses pedophilia accusations as a weapon. I know three adults that were childhood victims and one adult that is a convicted abuser. I have no idea if my experience is a typical familiarity with this problem. I’m pondering how many victims or perpetrators I’d have to know before I started seeing them everywhere.

    Plenty of statistics that crimes of all sorts are more commonplace in rural communities which are predominantly right wing. Folks tend to believe their community is just and moral. If the community you’ve lived your life in is high crime it seems easy to convince yourself other folks are worse. I live in rural Oregon. The country folk I know are always convinced the city are must be dealing with more crime and do not help one another in emergencies. The country folk see the absolute numbers of crime in Portland, etc and are unaware crime rates tend to be a little higher out here in the boondocks.

  126. 126.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    One of the perqs of coming of age back when was getting two school holidays in the midst of dreary February. For both Abe and George (when their birth dates both happened to fall on a weekday).

    None of this holidays transposed to a Monday hoop-de-do.

  127. 127.

    cain

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    It’s also rather hilarious that the haters blame all the bad stuff that Hur did on Garland, but don’t do the same with all the good stuff that Smith does (which far outweighs the former, imo).  Smith does great things despite Garland but Hur did bad things because of Garland.  It sure looks like mental gymnastics with the sole intent of bashing Garland, to me.

    I think they are mad that because Garland is a GOP institutionist and we seem to be doing a lot of “bipartisan” outreach where some of them like Comey have fucked us. I think it’s responding to a pattern.

    That said, if I was Biden, I would have summoned Garland and flayed his skin for Hur’s very unprofessional conduct. He was asked to investigate and his report is filled with non-sequiturs that has nothing to do with what he was investigating. Plus making a political statement.

    Since Garland is an institutionist who cares about the reputation of the DOJ – this makes the institution look bad. Hur should be given an official reprimand as to not encourage others to do the same behavior regardless which party is president.

  128. 128.

    Quiltingfool

    @Soprano2: Ha!  I worked for a lawyer back in the old days (I was a secretary) and there was a fellow who popped into the office to chat with him about something.  I guess this guy was parading his Christian bona fides to my boss (who was Jewish and probably wasn’t interested in the guy’s Jesus Talk).   After he left, the boss said to me, “Whenever I meet a person who talks like that, I check to make sure my ring is still on my finger and my wallet in my pocket.”  I chuckled and said that we Christians have to watch out for them, too.

    My former boss was a good guy and wicked smart.  I’m not sure why a native born New Yorker out of Brooklyn chose to live in Kansas City, but very glad he did!

  129. 129.

    Brit in Chicago

    @wjca: But he’s under pressure from two directions (or more?)—how does he decide to whom to cave? Sometimes it’s tough being a coward. If you just decide to do the right thing, you’re not faced with such choices.

  130. 130.

    Jay

    @Miss Bianca:

    She’s still a registered member of the Democratic Party, voted for Trump in 2020, has flopped all over the map in her interviews, past and present and will tell an interviewer anything she thinks they want to hear.

    The mixed media “news stories” chafe my ass. I don’t want to have to watch a video to get the whole story, just sum up the video after the embed.

  131. 131.

    Kay

    @Miss Bianca:

    She’s a registered Democrat. Still. They think. I suppose someone in the billion dollar political media industry could look that up or ask her about it but given Santos I think that is too much to expect. Like I said we’ll be lucky if she is using her real name rather than some kind of alias.

    This is a wealthy district, btw, and in the US “wealthy district” = “educated district”. You would think they would be a little more discerning.

  132. 132.

    Kay

    @trollhattan:

    In case one’s conservative betters are flogging the old “Of course rich people are smarter” meme, a reminder that the Santos district is New York’s wealthiest. IIRC #4 in the nation.

    I didn’t know that, thanks. Just baffling. Apparently they don’twant to know anything at all about the person who represents them in Congress and of course no one in political media is interested either – too busy following the breaking “Joe Biden is Old” Story.

  133. 133.

    Brit in Chicago

    @Alison Rose: That’s a compliment? I’d say: if you can’t think of something nicer than that, keep quiet. (The old phrase: damning with faint praise.)

  135. 135.

    teezyskeezy

    @Damien: Also, the Native American relocation aspect was not entirely ignored, as they mentioned the Native people used the land and later Oppenheimer suggested it be given back to them. Barely mentioned? Yes. Totally ignored? No.

  138. 138.

    TeezySkeezy

    @cain: This is spot on.  Also, I’d compare it to a zookeeper who left the leopard cage unlocked one night…why are we talking about the zookeeper when it was the leopards that did the face-eating??? Think of all the other cages that were still locked!

    And yes that analogy implies the GOP has the agency of a leopard, but they *are* complete psychos and so it is kind of accurate.  It isn’t *fair* or *just*, and we don’t deserve the burden, but from a pragmatic point of view it is kind of on us to know what we are dealing with.

  139. 139.

    piratedan

    @cain: just wanted to pile on here in agreement with your take.  If Garland wanted to be protective of the DOJ and restore pride and impartiality to the agency, then at the very least, he should have checked what Hur had produced as a finished product before allowing him to shit on the agency itself with that ridiculous finding.  The finding, in the best imitation of burying the lede since Glenn Greenwald, should have led with no charges will be filed.   It certainly didn’t match what Mike Pence’s report looked like, despite all of the alleged insect mind control that VP went thru with his most famous television debate.

  140. 140.

    Geminid

    I haven’t seen either Barbie or Oppenheimer and am unlikely to anytime soon. I have followed the news about the movies though, and I saw an interesting item out of Turkiye.

    Like here, the movies premiered in Turkiye the same week and someone released a map showing which drew bigger audiences in the various provinces. They compared it to a map of results in May’s Presidential election, and the provinces Erdogan carried were the ones where Barbie was more popular.

    Opposition candidate Kilicdaroglu won the provinces where Oppenheimer was to be more popular five months later. That was basically Istanbul and the Mediterranean coast, Ankara, and the Kurdish southeast.

  141. 141.

    Roberto el oso

    @BellyCat: I read it completely differently, as a nice antidote to politicians taking themselves so seriously that they imagine everyone hanging on each utterance ….

  144. 144.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Nobody should have been in a position to attribute Hur’s insinuations to ‘DOJ,’ which is exactly what too many commenters did.

    That’s certainly not the position I took.
    My beefs are (or were; it’s all whisky under the bridge now…unless we get a repeat):
    1. Hur (or any other Republican) should not have been given the position to begin with.
    2. Hur’s report should have been edited to meet DOJ policy prior to public release (NB: I have no idea what the policy is on that, but it sure seems like there should be some sort of policy).

    In the event, a partisan Republican was given the position and produced the entirely-predictable partisan hit-job. Pretty cut-and-dried.

  145. 145.

    dirge

    @lowtechcyclist: The point is, Hur’s insinuations should NOT have gone out with a DOJ imprimatur.

    In principle, sure.  But it still comes out, after a month of breathless speculation, as the report the DOJ tried to bury.  In practice, whether that’s better or worse is a judgment call, upon which reasonable people can disagree.

  146. 146.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kay: Thanks for the link. It is incredible. However, your statement:

    Someone should run in NYC with an entirely invented persona and see how far they get – to the election, at least!

    Maybe my irony meter is broken (were you being ironic/sarcastic/sardonic?), but isn’t this exactly what Santos did?

  147. 147.

    lowtechcyclist

    @dirge:

    But it still comes out, after a month of breathless speculation, as the report the DOJ tried to bury.

    What, Hur deliberately waits a month before releasing his unredacted report that he had permission to release under his own name the whole time? And says DOJ tried to prevent him from releasing it that way? And DOJ doesn’t immediately produce their communication to him giving him that permission?  OK whatever.

  148. 148.

    Bupalos

    @Alison Rose: I think Trump confusing Haley with Pelosi is kind of classic dementia. It was mostly reported as if he confused the names, like a verbal slip. But that’s not right. He absolutely knew he was talking about his primary opponent and thought that was the person who had been in Pelosi’s position on 1/6. He confused the actual people. As he did E. Jean Carroll and his ex wife in that deposition. Cognitively speaking that’s a MUCH bigger deal than confusing names, if you think about it.

    I worked in an Alzheimer’s facility in college. That’s a very recognizable type of mistake. They see a few cues that reminds them of the person they’re thinking of and suddenly it IS that person. One of the residents there used to “fire” me every few hours because I apparently set off whatever cues indicated to him that I was a particular lazy colleague from his past.

  149. 149.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    It isn’t entirely water (or whiskey) under the bridge: it bears on the question of whether Garland should continue to be AG. This seems to have been an all-around fuckup on his part.

  150. 150.

    Jay

    @lowtechcyclist:

    there doesn’t need to be a “there” there.

    Just a rumour of review and edits is enough to create a Deep State Conspiracy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! on the Reich.

  151. 151.

    Ksmiami

    @BellyCat: no offense but I’m glad the Dems are showing actual outrage over the Republican trash pile. I mean I don’t know how I’d cope even being in the same room w garbage like Tuberculosis Tuberville

  152. 152.

    RevRick

    @Baud: Careful, bub. A mob of irate West New Jerseyans, furious at being called West New Jerseyans, are forming for your blood. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh don’t agree on much, but they are united in their loathing for neighboring states.

  154. 154.

    Citizen Alan

    @Quiltingfool:

    After he left, the boss said to me, “Whenever I meet a person who talks like that, I check to make sure my ring is still on my finger and my wallet in my pocket.”  I chuckled and said that we Christians have to watch out for them, too.

    When I was a practicing bankruptcy attorney, when I had clients  who reassured me that they were Christian and therefore would never lie about anything or try to hide assets, it would be a red flag to triple check their filings.

  156. 156.

    RevRick

    @Bupalos: It’s not just his confusing Haley for Pelosi. It’s him denying the fact that he and he alone was responsible for the DC National Guard.

  159. 159.

    RevRick

    @Damien: The star of Oppenheimer was the atomic bomb. Everyone else were just supporting players. The star of Barbie was a fantasy. The doll/character was merely a supporting player.

  160. 160.

    sab

    @Soprano2: I agree with you so much on the dementia issue.

    My dad is 99 and has had dementia for about 10 years. We have the same conversations with him thirty times a day. His nurse’s aidw has the major topics written out on posterboard so that she can go over the conversation again without shouting (Dad is quite deaf.)

    Trump is so obviously well down the dementia road, complicated by a serious personality disorder that makes him lie and obfuscate about everything.

    I think Biden’s “memory” problems are more stammer control problems.

  162. 162.

    dirge

    @lowtechcyclist: What, Hur deliberately waits a month…?

    Well, we already know he’s running a ratfucking operation, so why not?

    But my assumption here is that the DOJ, as a matter of policy, doesn’t release early rejected drafts, for good reason.  So presumably it comes out in response to a FOIA request or something, which takes a while.  During which time Hur goes on Fox to coyly hint at the stuff he can’t tell us.

  164. 164.

    trollhattan

    A thing you have read many times:
    Robert F Kennedy Jr has apologised to relatives
    And one that’s brand new:
    after a Super Bowl advert mirrored one broadcast by his uncle John F Kennedy’s campaign in 1960.
    Hate him so very much.

  166. 166.

    karen marie

    @UncleEbeneezer:   One year I tried to watch all the Best Picture Oscar winners.  Almost every one was an absolute dog of a film.  Winning such an Oscar is – for me – a kiss of death.

  168. 168.

    Geminid

    @Alison Rose: One problem with assessing Trump’s erroneous statements: he will spread falshoods when he thinks it advantages him politically. Right now he’s trying to energize his base and conflating Haley is a way of doing that. It may be crude, but it may be effective because his followers are emotional and irrational.

    This weekend’s attack on Nikki Haley’s husband was a similar appeal. Most people see it as an outrageous attack on military service, but Trump is playing on his followers Isolationism, raising the question, “What are Nikki Haley, her husband and Joe Biden cooking in the Middle East?”

    Trump had already appealed to his base’s Isolationism with his discreditable remarks on NATO. The attacks on Haley played into that and two related MAGA “values”: Nativism and Racism.

  169. 169.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @teezyskeezy: Sure, it was mentioned.  But the visual portrayal in every scene I watched, was that the area was uninhabited, and that’s why they chose it.  That just isn’t true and it reflects a decision made by the film to shoot it that way.  It’s not a big deal to me honestly, my other critiques are much more why I think it’s totally overrated.

    But it’s the kind of film that the (77% male, average age of 62 years old) Academy believes is great film-making so it’s not a surprise that it got so many nominations.  I suspect that much of what made Barbie so great went right over the heads of the old, white, male Academy members.  Ironically, Barbie even makes reference by having a hilarious scene where the Ken’s try to Mansplain to the Barbies why The Godfather is so amazing because obviously Women just don’t understand what makes good cinema.  All the articles and comments about Gerwig being unoriginal have a very similar tone.

  171. 171.

    wjca

    @Brit in Chicago: But he’s [Johnson] under pressure from two directions (or more?)—how does he decide to whom to cave?

    Either who is standing closest to him, or who can do him the most damage.  Probably short term damage, as strategic thinking does not appear to be a core competency.

  172. 172.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @karen marie: They definitely love some really shit movies.  But in reality an Oscar win can be a very big deal for an artists career in opening future doors for them.  Not always, obviously.  Greta and Margot are gonna be fine either way and their careers are already on the way to legendary status.  It’s more the way the Academy continually overlooks art by/for Women, Black People etc. (the numbers historically don’t lie) while claiming it’s because nobody else outside of their mostly-old, white, male organization really understands great film-making, that is so obnoxious.

  173. 173.

    wjca

    @Citizen Alan: I suppose “master and slave” do complement each other from a certain point of view, since you couldn’t have one without the other.

    Some of us would like to believe that it is possible to master oneself.

  175. 175.

    prostratedragon

    One of the more arcane aspects of the political landscapes is that Presidents put forth and implement policies on government issues. With that in mind, economist Bharat Ramamurti has started a series of comparisons of TFG and Biden policies, starting here on taxes.

  181. 181.

    Kathleen

    @UncleEbeneezer: I thought that was the best part of the movie. It was hysterical. I loved Barbie the first time I saw it. The second time I didn’t enjoy it at all. FWIW.

  182. 182.

    lowtechcyclist

    @prostratedragon:

    One of the more arcane aspects of the political landscapes is that Presidents put forth and implement policies on government issues. With that in mind, economist Bharat Ramamurti has started a series of comparisons of TFG and Biden policies, starting here on taxes.

    Good on Ramamurti!

    This is exactly the thing every big newspaper should be doing, but they never seem to do.

  185. 185.

    karen marie

    @UncleEbeneezer:   Oh, absolutely.  No question there’s an “insider” benefit.  I’m just saying that the idea that a “Best Picture” Oscar win means it’s a good movie is laughable.

  187. 187.

    prostratedragon

    Ok. Just found him from Dean Baker’s account, but will try to remember to check regularly and let you know.

  190. 190.

    206inKY

    Katrina Christiansen will be president someday. Holy moley, strongest ad I’ve seen in ages. I hope some millionaire donor goes all in for her.

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