Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The lights are all blinking red.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

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

Motown is Joe-Town!

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

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

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

We’re not going back!

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "Stories from the Road" / Monday Night Open Thread

Monday Night Open Thread

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I tell you what, this fucking Daylight Savings Time is kicking my ass. I finally adjusted to being two hours behind the east coast and now it’s three hours and I am messing up left and right.

Finally got around to watching the SNL cold open from Saturday night, and MAN OH MAN did Scarjo nail Britt- she was as good at playing her as Tina Fey was at portraying Palin. Although Palin was just a much easier target for humor because that Britt lady is like a freak of nature evangelical with crazy eyes. That rapture look that all the Mormon influencer mom’s have in their instagram feed with their seven tow-headed kids named Chandler, Skylar, Brynlae, Canyon, Stockton, Braxton and Brigham. Freak show.

Finished the sun room/dog room and got everything mostly cleaned up, and will move the furniture in tomorrow.

I really thought I had more to say but I guess I do not.

Reader Interactions

126Comments

  1. 1.

    geg6

    LOL on the rapture look.  She had the trad wife voice thing, too.  It was a tour de force.

  3. 3.

    MattF

    Johansson had practice in playing ‘woman with far-off look’ in Lucy. Good movie, but quite strange.

  4. 4.

    Percysowner

     

    Robert Hur resigns ahead of House hearing with help from ‘Trumpworld figures’: report

    “According to multiple sources familiar with Mr Hur’s plans, the special counsel, who is appearing before the Judiciary Committee at the request of the Republican majority led by Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, has arranged his departure from the Department of Justice to be official as of Monday 11 March, one day before he is scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill,” wrote Andrew Feinberg. “Instead of appearing as a DOJ employee who is bound by the ethical guidelines which govern the behaviour of federal prosecutors, he will appear as a private citizen with no constraints on his testimony.”

    Well, well, well. I wonder how hard he will shiv Biden.

  5. 5.

    grumbles

    @Percysowner:

    I wonder how hard he will shiv Biden.

    He won’t have immunity as a prosecutor, so I expect he’ll be more careful about factual matters.

    Durham did the same thing and refused to renew some of the accusations he made in his report when he testified without immunity.

    Of course sleaze is just opinion.

  6. 6.

    MattF

    @Percysowner: I think the ‘Joe is senile’ horse is out of the barn, over the fence, across the river, and gone. And there’s the reminder that TFG is not always entirely coherent…

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I really thought I had more to say but I guess I do not.

    This so needs to be a rotating tag.

  9. 9.

    Leto

    @SiubhanDuinne: as long as he cites Pink Floyd as the original source :P

    Edit: “but I guess I do not.” Is original work, so I don’t know how that’ll work. They can sort it out in court!

  10. 10.

    Melancholy Jaques

    For reasons I know nothing about, the time change never affects me either way. This time, I forgot all about it. Because the clocks I use – laptop & phone – change by themselves, I didn’t realize it until I got in my car this morning.

    The closer I get to retirement, the more I like the idea of being disconnected from what most people think of as reality. But I do worry that I’m going to end up like Cousin Ellis in No Country for Old Men.

  11. 11.

    trollhattan

    Jesus, this poor guy.

    A former Boeing employee known for raising concerns about the firm’s production standards has been found dead in the US.

    John Barnett had worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement in 2017.

    In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company. Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett’s passing. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday.

    It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating. Mr Barnett had worked for the US plane giant for 32 years, until his retirement in 2017 on health grounds.

    From 2010, he worked as a quality manager at the North Charleston plant making the 787 Dreamliner, a state-of-the-art airliner used mainly on long-haul routes.

    In 2019, Mr Barnett told the BBC that under-pressure workers had been deliberately fitting sub-standard parts to aircraft on the production line.

    He also said he had uncovered serious problems with oxygen systems, which could mean one in four breathing masks would not work in an emergency.

    He said soon after starting work in South Carolina he had become concerned that the push to get new aircraft built meant the assembly process was rushed and safety was compromised, something the company denied.

    There are no winners in the ongoing Boeing saga. Just grave disappointment and anger at those who allowed their collapse to occur.

  12. 12.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @trollhattan:

    In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company. Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett’s passing. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday.

    It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating.

    None of that is in the least bit suspicious. Move along, now.

  13. 13.

    RaflW

    We had a thread just days ago about Boeing and their bullshit about records they “can’t find” for the Max with the ejecting door.

    Well, now this (via BBC):

    A former Boeing employee known for raising concerns about the firm’s production standards has been found dead in the US.

    John Barnett had worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement in 2017.

    In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.

    Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett’s passing. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday.

    It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating. …

    He later told the BBC that workers had failed to follow procedures intended to track components through the factory, allowing defective components to go missing.

    He said in some cases, sub-standard parts had even been removed from scrap bins and fitted to planes that were being built to prevent delays on the production line.

    He also claimed that tests on emergency oxygen systems due to be fitted to the 787 showed a failure rate of 25%, meaning that one in four could fail to deploy in a real-life emergency.

    Mr Barnett said he had alerted managers to his concerns, but no action had been taken.
    (emphasis added)

    — —

    I’d imagine testifying against a behemoth like Boeing could be stressful enough to lead one to self-harm. But I also think Boeing or some badly motivated employees could, conceivably, have taken a page from Putin.

  15. 15.

    Scout211

    In a settlement, Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law is now “Don’t Say Gay in Classroom Instruction” law.

    ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Students and teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms, provided it’s not part of instruction, under a settlement reached Monday between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.”

    . . .

    Under the terms of the settlement, the Florida Board of Education will send instructions to every school district saying the Florida law doesn’t prohibit discussing LGBTQ+ people, nor prevent anti-bullying rules on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or disallow Gay-Straight Alliance groups. The settlement also spells out that the law is neutral — meaning what applies to LGBTQ+ people also applies to heterosexual people — and that it doesn’t apply to library books not being used for instruction in the classroom.

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    “Damn. Now the furniture won’t fit. I shouldn’t have slapped on that extra coat of paint.”
    :)

  21. 21.

    Lyrebird

    @grumbles: Agreed!

    Sir Cole, that was lovely.

     

    And as far as crazy-eyed libel spreaders, I was sad but not surprised to see that Ms. Jacinto has confirmed that no one from the senator’s office contacted her before using her story in that speech.  I was also happy to see her get some time to say her piece!  Note it’s a DKos link to coverage of a CNN story.  Obvs the subject matter merits a content warning, but the story is less about Ms. Jacinto’s suffering and more about her gracious statements of concern and advocacy.

    ETA: any Spanish-speaking pedants (i mean experts, just a shout out to NotMax) in the house?  Should I be referring to her as Ms. Jacinto Romero instead?

  23. 23.

    RaflW

    Now for more possible Boeing bad news, via Reuters:

    March 11 – At least 50 people were hurt when a Boeing 787 operated by LATAM Airlines (LTM.SN), opens new tab dropped abruptly mid-flight from Sydney to Auckland on Monday, according to the airline and a New Zealand health service organisation that treated the injured.
    The aircraft experienced a strong shake and as a result, 10 passengers and three cabin crew members were taken to a hospital, the South American carrier said as it investigates the cause.

    At least one airtavel blog is claiming that the pilot told a passenger “my gauges just blanked out, I lost all of my ability to fly the plane” though I’d take that very much as hearsay so far. Clear air turbulence can cause what was in the Reuters article. But so, perhaps, could a faulty airdata computer or another f’kd up angle of attack sensor.

  24. 24.

    Quaker in a Basement

    I really thought I had more to say but I guess I do not.

    Kudos for stopping there. Having nothing more to say doesn’t stop some from rambling.

  27. 27.

    Scout211

    @Lyrebird: The CNN article from this morning.

    CNN’s Freedom Project, “which seeks to raise awareness about modern-day slavery”, previously profiled Jacinto’s story.

    In the interview published this morning she said that her story was used for political purposes before by officials in Mexico and she doesn’t appreciate it. She did not appreciate Britt using her story for political purposes this time.

  28. 28.

    Origuy

    @Lyrebird: Using both surnames is more formal and would be found in legal documents, certainly. In more informal usage, only the father’s surname is generally used, unless it’s so common as to be unclear. So Karla Jacinto would be an acceptable way to refer to her.

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    @RaflW

    Sorry, Merriam. Sorry, Webster. The text of the law is Daylight Saving Time.

    it’s like referring to the “Internal Revenues Service.”

  36. 36.

    bcwbcw

    I thought Scarlet Johanson’s delivery was good but her pitch was still too low, too much adult and not enough seven year old to meet church requirements as a proper baby vessel. They needed to feed her some Helium before her performance.

  38. 38.

    Scout211

    @Gin & Tonic:

    She has been telling her story to raise awareness for the victims.

    “I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo — and that to me is not fair,” Karla Jacinto told CNN on Sunday.
    . . .
    Jacinto told CNN that Mexican politicians took advantage of her by using her story for political purposes and that it’s happened again in the United States.

    “I work as a spokesperson for many victims who have no voice, and I really would like them to be empathetic: all the governors, all the senators, to be empathetic with the issue of human trafficking because there are millions of girls and boys who disappear all the time. People who are really trafficked and abused, as she [Britt] mentioned. And I think she [Britt] should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude,” Jacinto said.

  41. 41.

    Jackie

    @Percysowner:

    Committee at the request of the Republican majority led by Ohio Representative Jim Jordan*, has arranged his departure from the Department of Justice to be official as of Monday 11 March, one day before he is scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill,”

    *Needs to be emphasized.

  42. 42.

    coin operated

    @Percysowner:

    Well, well, well. I wonder how hard he will shiv Biden

    Gym Jordan is going to try to restart the ‘Biden is old’ fire that went out about 30 seconds after the SOTU concluded. As mentioned above, Hur is going to have to tread a little more carefully now that he loses prosecutorial immunity.

    I think that inviting Hur to testify is going to be an own-goal…Dems on the Judicary Committee are going to tear Hur into bite-sized morsels.

  47. 47.

    Jackie

    A few weeks back, after the GQP, led by TIFG. unbanned Bud Lite because of $$$ donations, it’s happening again. Reported by Rachel Maddow, after the Senate approved banning TikTok, per TIFG’s instruction, he has done a 180 and now suddenly is against banning TikTok. I wonder $$$ why?$??$?

    Apparently there’s a bribedonation involved – JUST AS TIFG NEEDS BIG MONEY.🤷🏼‍♀️

  53. 53.

    Jinchi

    The Britt lady is hard to parody, because even a playing her straight would seem over the top.

  56. 56.

    Jinchi

    @Scout211: The settlement also spells out that the law is neutral — meaning what applies to LGBTQ+ people also applies to heterosexual people

    Now we’re just waiting for the first teacher to be fired for keeping a photo of her husband on her desk.

  61. 61.

    Yutsano

    @Jay: ​I believe our esteemed front pager Adam L Silverman* warned us that TikTok is Chinese malware.

    *If that is his real name…

  68. 68.

    piratedan

    two things… I fully expect that Jordan and his crew believe that with Hur’s testimony they can drive whatever narrative that they want to try and restore the false equivalency in the handling of documents.

    I also think that Mr. Hur is going to find out just how well the Dems have learned on keeping receipts.

     

    also sad to learn that Eric Carmen has passed, yes, in his later years he was a MAGA proponent, but once upon a time, the man knew how to craft a pop song.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtp8WSAzrGw

  72. 72.

    seaboogie

    Hey JC, I was over to the local mini Walmart groceteria here in NorCal, and I saw a gent in overhauls and a straw hat…thought of you in your tie-dyes down in AZ with wife and fur-kids.

  73. 73.

    wjca

    I tell you what, this fucking Daylight Savings Time is kicking my ass.

    Forget Daylight Saving Time, just for a moment.  Ask yourself, why do we have a time zone structure at all?

    The reason is right there in the original name: Railroad Time.  Railroads wanted consistent times across the country to make their scheduling easier.  But how much are railroads visible in our everyday lives any more?

    If you think about it, there’s no reason we couldn’t go back to every town setting its clocks however they like.  Or even each individual.  Sure, you need some way to deal with scheduling stuff with other people, but that’s easy enough.  I have a lot of Zoom calls with people scattered across the globe.  Scheduled start times are routinely given as UTC (once GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time, but anti-colonialusm eventually put a stop to that).  Everybody just converts to their own time to figure out when to connect.

    As individuals, our watches, clocks, and computers can be set to whatever time we like.  Easy enough to display UTC right next to whatever passes for local time.  And run your calendar exclusively on UTC.

    At which point, you can embrace or ignore Daylight Savings as you prefer.  Your only real constraint is 1) needing to start work when your boss expects you, and 2) needing to get the kids to school “on time” — which now means “whenever their first class starts”.  If neither of those impact you, do whatever the hell you like.

  74. 74.

    cain

    @Percysowner:

    Someone thinks that he can get a new career in the grifting world. Looks like Maga will need to increase their payments to the GOP to fund another asshole.

  75. 75.

    cain

    @Percysowner:

    Someone thinks that he can get a new career in the grifting world. Looks like Maga will need to increase their payments to the GOP to fund another asshole.

  76. 76.

    cain

    @Percysowner:

    Someone thinks that he can get a new career in the grifting world. Looks like Maga will need to increase their payments to the GOP to fund another asshole.

  77. 77.

    cain

    @Percysowner:

    Someone thinks that he can get a new career in the grifting world. Looks like Maga will need to increase their payments to the GOP to fund another asshole.

  78. 78.

    cain

    @Percysowner:

    Someone thinks that he can get a new career in the grifting world. Looks like Maga will need to increase their payments to the GOP to fund another asshole.

  79. 79.

    cain

    @Percysowner:

    Someone thinks that he can get a new career in the grifting world. Looks like Maga will need to increase their payments to the GOP to fund another asshole.

  82. 82.

    cain

    @dmsilev:

    Hey everyone in the GOP will be shoveling money into the cult leaders legal fund and not to any races.

    They can’t win on MAGA votes alone. So they still need to get the undecideds. Moronic as that is

  84. 84.

    HumboldtBlue

    @wjca: ​

    Everybody just converts to their own time to figure out when to connect.

    We can’t convince stupid motherfuckers who vote GOP how to fix the clock on their microwaves, and you expect them to do math?

    Oddly enough, the clock on the cheap microwave I bought three years ago doesn’t work and can’t be set to the proper time, so I fit that group as well.

  87. 87.

    Earl

    @Percysowner: The moron Garland — Trump’s man in the DOJ — ‘s reign of geniusing continues unabated.

     

    I predict people will be rushing in to explain the Top Sekret Geniusing Moves of Garland any second now.  There’s no possible way that his actions — doing his best to not prosecute Trump, appointing Republican hacks to go after the first failson — could be, well, exactly what they look like.

  88. 88.

    mrmoshpotato

    @wjca: You can live in Crazy Time Land as much as you like.  You don’t get to impose that idiocy on the rest of us.

  90. 90.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @HumboldtBlue: It’s like a condo; after you buy it there are maintenance fees, and if they need to pay for something* really expensive, they can assess a special fee.

    *Like a shitload of lawyers, so many lawyers, you have no idea how many lawyers…

  91. 91.

    NotMax

    @wjca

    Buses and planes don’t rate mention? Doctor appointments or dinner reservations in the next county?

    Freight traffic on the rails ain’t exactly chopped liver either.

  92. 92.

    Chetan Murthy

    @NotMax: broadcast And cable TV schedules?  How will everyone know when to tune in to watch the Oscars?  If you’re counting on everyone being able to do the math from GMT, I think thats a pretty tall order.

  94. 94.

    Chetan Murthy

    @NotMax: and along every town to set its own time works great if everyone uses a smartphone, but fails colossally for people who use watches.  Or at least, watches that don’t talk to GPS to figure out where they are.  When there are only four time zones, It’s still feasible to useold school watches.

  96. 96.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Chetan Murthy:

    and along every town to set its own time works great if everyone uses a smartphone, but fails colossally for people who use watches. Or at least, watches that don’t talk to GPS to figure out where they are. When there are only four time zones, It’s still feasible to useold school watches. 

    But we have six time zones. :)

  97. 97.

    Chetan Murthy

    @mrmoshpotato: Sure, that works too.  What makes it work, is that they differ by an integral number of hours.  If two towns differ by 15min, that’s going to be *problematic*.

  98. 98.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Chetan Murthy: and then there’s the problem of borders.  With only a few time zones, there are borders but not that many.  Not that many miles.  If every town can declare its own time, there will be borders everywhere.  lots and lots of borders, lots and lots of miles of borders.  And These borders Will Traverse populated areas, and that will be a gigantic mess.  There will be people on either side of the border who, when they cross that border will find themselves, let’s say, off by 14 minutes from the people they interact with.

  100. 100.

    opiejeanne

    @Chetan Murthy: Heh. In 2005 we went with my dad from LA to DC so he could see the WWII memorial, and as the plane was landing he asked me how to set the correct time on his cell phone. He didn’t quite believe me that his phone would take care of it automatically.

  104. 104.

    Chetan Murthy

    @opiejeanne: I remember the first time that happened: I was surprised and pleased!  It’s from around that time, that I stopped wearing a watch.

  106. 106.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I was searching something and came across a fake, probably AI site. I was searching “hunting vs non hunting gear set” which is related to vehicle axle gear types. The first link in DuckDuckGo was to a hunting site that has a poorly written article about the subject with a picture at the top of a couple of guys carrying their rifles and walking along with their hunting dogs. Other site articles are about the hunting with dogs stuff…lol

    Fucking bogus bullshit that wastes bandwidth and time. At least it’s good for a laugh.

  109. 109.

    AlaskaReader

     

    A bassist to outshine all others,  …Mohini Dey

    If you know an aspiring bassist, …turn them on to Mohini Den,

    …she is in a class all by herself.

     

  111. 111.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Jay:

    Two new ones in a single thread!

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    Fucking bogus bullshit that wastes bandwidth and time.

    AI does what it does badly.  That does make it a useful tool for people who don’t care if the product is garbage – scammers.  It’s becoming a problem on Amazon already.  Mind you, that makes it just the latest fad in fake authors manipulating Amazon to scam readers.

  113. 113.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Oh, about the AI thing, I learned something interesting.  Predictive text and art makers are becoming desperate for pre-2023 sources of material.  You see, if you feed a generator material that already has significant AI product in it, the output turns into illegible garbage quickly.  They can’t trawl the current internet for training material anymore.

  116. 116.

    lowtechcyclist

    @NotMax: ​
     

    Sorry, Merriam. Sorry, Webster. The text of the law is Daylight Saving Time.

    That’s nice, but most of us don’t refer to the U.S. Code very often.

    it’s like referring to the “Internal Revenues Service.”

    Not really. One sounds natural and the other sounds stilted, and that’s probably why our language has evolved so that people use the one but not the other.

  117. 117.

    NotMax

    @lowtechcyclist

    most of us don’t refer to the U.S. Code very often

    More’s the pities. :)

    One sounds natural

    Okay then, change the example to Madison Squares Garden. Or in reverse, Verazzano-Narrow Bridge.

  118. 118.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: I think that in the original phrase, “saving” is a modifier for “time”, but in US English we’re much more likely to use “savings” as a noun, especially in advertising. Not even necessarily a plural noun.

    “By Grabthar’s hammer… what a savings.”

  119. 119.

    sab

    7 am here in Ohio, and in about fifteen minutes the kids will be out waiting for the school buses in the dark. I am ambivalent about daylight saving in general, but we really do not need it in March.

  120. 120.

    sab

    @cain: I saw those multiple posts, thought “hmmm”, then looked at the posting time and sure enough. 2 am when the blog hamsters change shifts.

  121. 121.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sab: 7:15 here in eastern Massachusetts, and it’s gotten light out, so the really rough patch was only a bit earlier.

    I think DST is better suited to us, further east in EST, which is another way of saying we might be better off in the Atlantic Time Zone.

  122. 122.

    MomSense

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Over the years it is commonly referred to as Daylight Savings with time dropped off.  Count me as someone who would prefer to switch to Atlantic Time and stay with it all year.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    This morning’s Politico Playbook reports that Trump endorsed former Congressman Mike Rogers in his Michigan race for Senate. Rogers is thought to be leading a field that includes two other former Congressmen Justin Amash and Peter Peter Meijer.

    Representative Elissa Slotkin is expected to win the Democratic nomination. Slotkin was one of 40 Democrats who flipped Republican seats in 2018.

  124. 124.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think that in the original phrase, “saving” is a modifier for “time”, but in US English we’re much more likely to use “savings” as a noun, especially in advertising. Not even necessarily a plural noun.

    That’s definitely true, but my main point is that language evolves, and there comes a point when yesterday’s incorrect usage is today’s correct usage because how people used the words overwhelmed the previous rules.

    “By Grabthar’s hammer… what a savings.”

    <g>

  125. 125.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    I tell you what, this fucking Daylight Savings Time is kicking my ass.

    Hmmm. I thought Arizona abolished DST in 1968. Everybody knows that standard time was because railroads couldn’t adjust their clocks to every podunk town that wanted to be 30 minutes different than the neighboring town right? So because of railroads, time zones were created and then later along came daylight savings time because we all know it is easier to make everybody change their clocks than to change what time kids go to school. So Arizona is a special place for railroads. Because trains traverse large distances they try to standardize their own clocks and in Arizona the railroads do use DST. This creates problems for railroaders cuz the railroad time is an hour off of Arizona’s Mountain Standard Time. So the conversation goes like this: “Hey lets go bowling on our day off at 11:00am. Wait you mean 11 railroad time or 11 city time?“

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