Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Bark louder, little dog.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

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

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

“But what about the lurkers?”

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

This fight is for everything.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

He really is that stupid.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Optimism opens the door to great things.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Calling On the Super Friends

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Calling On the Super Friends

by | 187 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

Per the Associated Press:

When President Joe Biden needs advice, there are two people he can turn to who know what it’s like to sit in his chair. Sometimes he will invite Barack Obama over to the White House for a meal or he will get on the phone with Bill Clinton.

The three men share decades of history at the pinnacle of American and Democratic leadership, making them an unusual trio in presidential history. Although there has sometimes been friction as their ambitions and agendas have diverged, they have spent years building toward a similar vision for the country.

On Thursday, their partnership will be on display in what has been described as a one-of-a-kind fundraising extravaganza in New York City to help Biden build on his already significant cash advantage in this year’s presidential election. It’s a dramatic show of force intended to rally the Democratic Party faithful to secure a second term for Biden despite his stubbornly low poll numbers and doubts due to his age (81)…

The display of solidarity is a sharp contrast to Donald Trump’s isolation from other Republican leaders.

Although Trump has solidified his grip on his party on the way to becoming the presumptive nominee, not even his own former vice president, Mike Pence, is willing to endorse Trump’s bid for another White House term. The only other living Republican president, George W. Bush, is not a supporter, either…

The reports from tonight’s big event should be interesting:

Reader Interactions

187Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Three presidents who’ll never get credit for fixing their predecessors’ economic mess because they belong to the political party composed of people the elites find undesirable.

  5. 5.

    gene108

    they have spent years building toward a similar vision for the country.

    Democrats really do have a multi-generational agenda they agree on. The disagreements are in the details.

    Improving access to healthcare is one example.

    Clinton got SCHIP passed. Obama got Obamacare passed. Biden’s making Obamacare more affordable.

    The Dem Party doesn’t get the credit it deserves for having core set of principles that have been embraced for decades.

  6. 6.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

    Wherein lies the genius of RFK3’s campaign, where he plans to mess with his predecessors’ economic credit while belonging to an undesirable political party composed of people the elites find controllable.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    @Tony Jay:

    Actually, I do think that’s why rich people are going to go all out for Trump. They want to take credit for Biden’s work, while undermining it.

  12. 12.

    Jeffro

    This is one of those great high-contrast moments:

    1) Biden: well supported, not only by his current party and cabinet, but also democratic ex presidents

    2) trumpov: not even supported by his own former Vice President; W nowhere to be found; Romney and Ryan actively speaking out against him

    hey, we didn’t pick your candidate for you, GOP 🤷‍♂️

  13. 13.

    Kay

    A Republican here told me Trump “isn’t going to get rid of health care – Biden’s lying”. They won’t say Obamacare now – they prefer to make absolutely no sense rather than use a word that credits Obama for the “health care” people like.

  15. 15.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Baud: The problem with billionaire sociopaths (a redundancy?) is they want to be right, even when they’re wrong.

    They live in a world where the word ‘No’ doesn’t exist, they rarely compromise, and they have no fucking idea what normal people are like anymore.

    An example of this myopic mindset is Elmo talking about how ‘regular’ folks will be able to afford to take the shuttle to Mars, after all it’ll only be around $10,000 a seat.

    Supporting Biden would be an acknowledgement that they’re wrong, and that’s unacceptable.

  17. 17.

    Kay

    This is a popular social media app for kids among parents now:

    Safety & Positivity
    Health and wellbeing are number one at Zigazoo. 100% human moderated. No bullying, no commenting, no messaging, no doom scrolling. Positive and empowering content and interactions only!

    It should be the only social media allowed, for anyone.

  19. 19.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Jeffro:

    hey, we didn’t pick your candidate for you, GOP

    OTOH, Hair Furor has always been a standard-issue Republican, he’s just been totally open about being a scumbag.  The pearl-clutching of clowns like Dense and Rmoney is purely performative.

    The modern GOP weaponized the stupid, starting with the Palin VP pick, and it blew up in their faces with the Orange Fart Cloud.

    Their current predicament & public face is the end result of deliberate choices by the GOP going back decades, to demonize opponents, polarize, obstruct in such a way as to screw the political weal and fool the bigots and ignorants by dangling carrots only ever intended for the rich.  The GOP is where it is because of the Southern Strategy, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Faux “News”, the Tea Party and generations of GOP operatives like Ronna Rmoney who have been fracking whites for years, gutting their fortunes via social/econ policies and now they’re dealing with the earthquake.  It’s no wonder they can’t provide multi-generational photo ops of their “leaders”.

    And while I only semi-jokingly refer to Obama as the best Republican president since Clinton, they all share the fact they worked toward a fundamental boost for providing health care in a country with a system that would deny that to a large chunk of its citizens and for that, they’re good guys.

  22. 22.

    Kay

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    I don’t know. I mentioned Trump trying to kill Obamacare to this person because I know he has Obamacare. He got very defensive and started lying! So that was shocking, that we couldn’t have a calm discussion about how his favorite President wants to kill him and his family.

  24. 24.

    eclare

    Lizzo and Queen Latifah are among those performing tonight.  Colbert is moderating a discussion.  Dr. Jill is hosting a smaller afterparty.

    The event has already raised $25M.

    All of this from Morning Joe.

  26. 26.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Oh sure, but what these moneyed assclowns value is a melanin-free Galt’s Gulch In Space, and they’re getting more comfortable saying the racist parts out loud. It’s depressing that their Utopian vision of the future is a bad sci-fi novel that’s over fifty years old.

  28. 28.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Betty: ​
     

    And they would want to go to Mars why? No air, maybe a bit of water.

    Somehow, terraforming Mars will be miraculously way cheaper than preserving the Terraforming of the one planet that’s already Terraformed. //

  29. 29.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Tony Jay: Wherein lies the genius of RFK3’s campaign, where he plans to mess with his predecessors’ economic credit while belonging to an undesirable political party composed of people the elites find controllable.

     

    One of my coworkers is a RFK3 supporter; you mean “the Democrats have lost touch with the people and only care about fighting the Republicans.” At lest that is what the coworker is telling me.  I asked him what policies then is RFK3 calling for and the coworker didn’t have an answer.

  30. 30.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    “No AI – just real people”

    I thought of you. I’m going to put that on my letterhead – “no AI – we are REAL PEOPLE”

  31. 31.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @The Thin Black Duke: They live in a world where the word ‘No’ doesn’t exist, they rarely compromise, and they have no fucking idea what normal people are like anymore.

    I would argue they aren’t even aware of what reality is now like that dork who killed himself with the submarine.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    RFK Jr will “end chronic disease in weeks not years” – quite a platform! He appeals to the people who buy supplements from Joe Rogan and Alex Jones. There are millions and millions of those people.

  33. 33.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    “the Democrats have lost touch with the people and only care about fighting the Republicans.”

    Ask your coworker who he’s voted for for president over his lifetime.  That kind of statement is typical of the “Embarassed Republican” type: always finding some reason to never vote for Dems while maintaining some holier-than-thou electoral moral high ground to disguise the fact they’ve always voted conservative up and down the ticket.

  34. 34.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: Trump’s trying to take credit for the rise in the stock market! It’s insane but I’m sure his cult agrees with him. I saw a meme on FB yesterday comparing how much Epstein had to pay to bond out of jail with how much the civil judgment in the NY fraud case is, saying how unfair that is.  Never mind that they’re two completely different things. I posted underneath it to explain, not that my friend cares but there might be others reading it who don’t understand the difference. One person posted there that “they” are trying to bankrupt TFG so he can’t run for president. I posted that people usually raise money for that, they aren’t expected to use their own personal money to run for office. I swear, people don’t understand anything about how this stuff works.

  35. 35.

    Betty Cracker

    My recent health issues gave me a new appreciation for the ACA. The coverage we get via the mister’s employer sucks big green gators and is absurdly expensive. There’s nothing “affordable” about it or the ACA options in this crappy state that rejects federal money. But at least if we lose coverage, I can get enrolled in another plan without being denied access due to preexisting conditions. That’s a life or death issue for lots of people. Thanks, Democrats!

  36. 36.

    Layer8Problem

    @Betty:  Because it’s spaaaaace!  These guys want the science-fiction world they read about when they were teenagers and have the money to do stupid shit.  To go someplace much less habitable than Antarctica, an entirely different planet where it’s insanely difficult to run straight back home where the grass and trees and beaches are when one’s Robert Heinlein adventure stops being fun.

  38. 38.

    Ken

    @topclimber: Or in-flight costs. “Oh, you wanted oxygen on the trip?”

    I’m also curious about that $10,000 ticket to Mars. I know he’s claimed SpaceX will have a surprisingly* low cost to orbit, but here-and-now $10,000 will get about 10 kilograms into low Earth orbit. Then there’s the transfer orbit to Mars, followed by landing — and I assume many of the passengers might want to come back (“Oh, you thought it was a round-trip ticket?).

    * Some engineers and accountants say “impossibly”, but that’s because they’re not visionaries. Visionaries on ketamine….

  39. 39.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: It’s funny when they won’t even believe TFG when he says it! He keeps saying he’s going to replace it with something much better and cheaper, but he never says what it is or how it would work.

  40. 40.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I listened to a program the other day about how bad social media is for kid’s mental health. It makes me think they shouldn’t be able to be on it until they’re out of high school! I was bullied some as a kid, I cannot imagine having that follow me everywhere. It’s a big problem.

  42. 42.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: It’s denial – TFG cannot possibly be planning to hurt people like him, he’s only going to hurt “those” people who your friend doesn’t like. They think TFG is their biggest champion, in their minds that cannot be a lie.

  43. 43.

    Betty Cracker

    So today is Opening Day for the Rays! Unfortunately, we won’t be able to watch the game because we glom onto my sister’s streaming subscription channel for baseball, and apparently she updated her goddamn password in the off season and is currently unreachable in Nepal or Cambodia. Rude! Oh well. There’s always radio. 😐📻⚾️

  44. 44.

    billcoop4

    @Matt McIrvin: I do believe the Democrats have lost touch with antivaxxers and QAnon believers.

    I do not want to touch antivaxxers and QAnon believers in any way even with the tallest person from Warsaw.

     

    BC

  45. 45.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Layer8Problem: They generally believe a version of the Frederick Jackson Turner thesis wherein a civilization gets vitality from a frontier to expand into. The Wild West frontier closed long ago, there are no places left on Earth to colonize without intense pushback, but we can fulfill our Manifest Destiny In Space!

    To my mind, the main reason to explore space is scientific insight, and while sending people has benefits there are immense costs and drawbacks too, so whether you should do it is a tricky proposition. But science isn’t really why these guys want to do it.

  46. 46.

    narya

    @Soprano2: With you on that. I couldn’t wait to get out of my small town to get away from the bullies. Once I left, I found my people, though I’m beginning to see how those formative years still affect me, half a century later. Amplify it w/ social media, and, whew, don’t even want to think about it.

    Edit for clarity

  47. 47.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Soprano2: The problem (or one problem) is that Trump is very responsive to a live audience. He says what they want to hear. So one day he’ll say get rid of the ACA, and the next day, with a different listener, he’ll say he never said that or he didn’t mean it. So his fans can always find something to support them.

  49. 49.

    Ken

    @Layer8Problem: when one’s Robert Heinlein adventure stops being fun

    For example. And there’s always Tom Godwin.

    But now, probably triggered by Bradbury’s “Usher II“, I’m imagining a horror movie where the villain kills people using classic science-fiction stories while gloating “You never read them! If you’d read them, you’d know how to survive!”

  50. 50.

    Harrison Wesley

    @OzarkHillbilly: It’s MBS.  He’s trying to make the Kingdom a tourist attraction/meeting place for Very Serious People/etc., etc.  Don’t know if he’ll succeed, but I went to a presentation recently by somebody who had been there recently and from her description it’s changed a hell of a lot since I lived there.  Of course, the last time I was there was in 1968….

  51. 51.

    Soprano2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: And somehow they don’t see this as a problem, that he says one thing today and the opposite thing tomorrow. It’s yet another sign that it’s not a political movement, it’s a cult.

  53. 53.

    Harrison Wesley

    @Soprano2: You should move to Florida.  Just passed a law limiting young people’s (I forget the ages involved) access to social media.

  55. 55.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I do believe the Democrats have lost touch with antivaxxers and QAnon believers.

    Oh noes! How are we ever going to win in November?! :-D

  57. 57.

    Betty Cracker

    @Geminid: I agree. Still, my favorite thing is to watch the movement of the pitches, and you need TV (or good seats) for that. I always watched games with my family (my mom was a baseball nut), but my fandom took off with the advent of HDTV. You really couldn’t see the detail in the old days. 😊

  59. 59.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    A Republican here told me Trump “isn’t going to get rid of health care – Biden’s lying”. They won’t say Obamacare now – they prefer to make absolutely no sense rather than use a word that credits Obama for the “health care” people like.

     

    I call it Obamacare always. Gotta turn that intended slur back on its head.

  61. 61.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I don’t know. I mentioned Trump trying to kill Obamacare to this person because I know he has Obamacare. He got very defensive and started lying! So that was shocking, that we couldn’t have a calm discussion about how his favorite President wants to kill him and his family.

     

    I don’t know why, but, this tickled me. Confronted with the obvious truth of what the Orange Menace intends to do….they will do anything to cling to the cult.

    Pointing out that the only reason it didn’t happen last time was John McCain…do they have a response to that.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I agree on social media – not for kids. The kid-friendly products are interesting because the idea is the kids post their own content (moderated) but kids can’t comment on it unless they go to the creator in real life and say it to the person. Parents say what happens is they create smaller communities – local. But I think I would just not give them a phone or allow them access until high school. My son is a junior in college and he’s had two professors who won’t allow phone use in class. I would do that if I were a teacher.

  63. 63.

    rikyrah

    @Soprano2:

    @Kay: It’s denial – TFG cannot possibly be planning to hurt people like him, he’s only going to hurt “those” people who your friend doesn’t like. They think TFG is their biggest champion, in their minds that cannot be a lie.

    Will NEVER forget that story about some kind of worker, it was in the South, that was hurt by the Orange Menace’s policies. And, his wife was like…

    ” He’s hurting THE WRONG PEOPLE”.

    It wasn’t bad that he was hurting people.

    It was that he was hurting THE WRONG PEOPLE – THEM.

    lips so pursed.

  64. 64.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I’m so, so sick of the free riders on Dem programs. I know the programs have to be universal and it’s ungenerous of me but I can’t help it. I am tired of supporting safety net programs that conservatives rely on but won’t support. They’re dead weight we’re all pulling.

  66. 66.

    Soprano2

    @Harrison Wesley: I think they all should do something like that. I think on balance social media is bad for kids. It supersizes all the bad stuff way more than is healthy.

  67. 67.

    Pittsburgh MIke

    @Baud:

    Actually, I do think that’s why rich people are going to go all out for Trump. They want to take credit for Biden’s work, while undermining it.

    No, rich people want their taxes to go down.  Trump’s platform is the same as every other Republican:

    1 — be forced-birth to keep the evangelicals happy

    2 — cut taxes on the wealthiest, while cutting back on the IRS, pretending that’s the populist thing to do.

    3 — cut social security, medicare and the ACA subsidies to free up more cash for tax cuts.

    The main novelty that Trump brings to the table is a nativist element that’s purely destructive to the US economy.

    And of course, his vanity.  In particular, his plan to pardon 1/6ers and stop his own prosecution by the DoJ.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I think a lot of the “screens” problems in general are mitigated by day care for little kids. If they’re in halfway decent quality daycare 6-8 hours M-F they’re not using screens. They’re doing blocks of play time all day, where they’re playing with other kids and have to behave decently.

  69. 69.

    rikyrah

    In the cesspool of Twitter, once the horrible tragedy happened in Baltimore, the racists came out of the woodwork to attack their young, dynamic Black Mayor.

     

    Sean Herrala (@seanherrala) posted at 5:54 PM on Tue, Mar 26, 2024:
    When they call a duly elected Black mayor a DEI hire, they’re not just using DEI as a euphemism, they’re saying Black people shouldn’t have the vote. https://t.co/DZfGlM3qvy
    (https://x.com/seanherrala/status/1772759105813225568?t=lFMTHuFkj4QWL9-CQYHPhg&s=03)

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    In a way the “DEI hire” insanity is good. It discredits the whole “anti woke” bullshit. When push came to shove “anti wokeness” is about people who believe all black people and women are inferior to white men. They’re a joke. Literally anything that goes wrong they look for a black person or a woman to blame. They showed themselves.

  73. 73.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I would do it in meetings if I were running the meeting. I can’t tell you how many times the presenter has to repeat something because a boss got a call or a text and left the room for 5 or 10 minutes. There is nothing that’s so important it can’t wait an hour. We’ve gotten terrible about expecting people to always be immediately available

  75. 75.

    Soprano2

    @rikyrah: I can’t forget that either. I think she was a prison guard. The reporter didn’t ask the obvious follow-up question, which was “Who did you think he was going to hurt?” or “Who do you want him to hurt?”

  76. 76.

    TBone

    Was feeling particularly uninspired this morning until I came across this.  Now I have a reason to live again 🤣😁

    https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/delco-the-movie-filming-on-set-20240327.html

    Also TCM has a wonderful Word of Mouth short piece narrated by John Cleese on DelCo-born W.C. Fields.  Upon being caught and questioned about reading the Bible by a friend, W.C. exclaimed “Just looking for loopholes!” I wish he were still here to comment about the Rump Bible fiasco.

    About the movie (explains a lot about me):

    All three were on set Tuesday for the movie’s big scene, in which O’Halloran’s character, Pastor Joel Powers, gives his son, Wayne, the opportunity to deliver a sermon about “purity.” It does not go as planned. I don’t want to give too much away, but the words “drunk,” “shat,” and “jail” (in that order) come out of Wayne’s mouth at the pulpit.

  77. 77.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: This was something the guy in the interview I heard talked about, how kids don’t have much “free play” anymore because they are supervised to death. They don’t have the opportunity to be creative on their own. I would hate to be a kid these days!

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    That’s on people though. I have no problem letting my cell phone vibrate if I’m occupied. Human beings cannot do two things at the same time well. If I’m talking with you, you were first. The phone call came second, and second comes after first. It doesn’t even save time. It’s going to take him some time to get his mind back to the meeting. Just do one thing at a time. It’s more efficient.

  80. 80.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    As Aaron Rupar says, this is the opposite of Infrastructure Week.

    GOP Rep. Dan Meuser says “it’s outrageous” for Biden to propose using federal funds to pay for the replacement of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I heard some of it and I think he ignored day care, which is a big omission. They do free play at day care. They’re supervised but the play isn’t managed unless they’re hitting one another, that kind of thing. I just thought it was odd that he placed this whole discussion in the home when most little kids are in some kind of care situation most of the week. I generally agree with him, but that ommission hurts his credibiity, IMO. He has to know how kids actually live.

  82. 82.

    Layer8Problem

    @Matt McIrvin: Strip away the engineering and what these guys want reduces down to Musk in an astronaut suit, striking a ridiculous pose and stabbing a finger at the sky screaming “ELON MUSK OF OUTER SPACE!!!”, à la Yosemite Sam in that cartoon.

  83. 83.

    rikyrah

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    GOP Rep. Dan Meuser says “it’s outrageous” for Biden to propose using federal funds to pay for the replacement of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore

     

    Lips so pursed.

    This is why Infrastructure was never going to happen under a Republican Administration. They don’t believe in it. They don’t believe in showing something that proves that government funds can be used for the good of all. With good paying jobs doing it that can’t be outsourced.

  85. 85.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay:

    Safety & Positivity 

    Health and wellbeing are number one at Zigazoo. 100% human moderated. No bullying, no commenting, no messaging, no doom scrolling. Positive and empowering content and interactions only!

    Can they still share the news that Joe Lieberman, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Ken Starr are all still dead?

    Sorry, not sorry.  Sounds like what social media apps should’ve been all along.

  88. 88.

    arrieve

    @Harrison Wesley: I’m putting together some OTR posts right now about Saudi Arabia–we stopped in two Red Sea ports on my holiday cruise. Vision 2030, the big push to diversity the economy–including opening the country to tourism–is very visible. Unbelievable amounts of money being spent in Jeddah right now.

  90. 90.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I agree, but unfortunately they don’t seem to be able to resist the urge to answer the phone or look at the text, because they think it might be something IMPORTANT. If you take the phone away, they can’t do it. My boss often spends most of a meeting on her phone or her laptop. It’s bad. It also enables people to use the boss as a crutch and/or the boss to micromanage everyone.

  91. 91.

    BellyCat

    Gathering this trio is a GREAT idea — made better if all of their well-respected spouses get some speaking time as well.

  93. 93.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I didn’t even think of that, probably because I’m not around kids and don’t know that many people who have kids now.

  94. 94.

    Soprano2

    @The Thin Black Duke: That was some chilling story. Pretty realistic for the times. If someone wrote it today they’d come up with some magical tech fix to prevent the terrible outcome from happening.

  95. 95.

    frosty

    @Betty Cracker: ​I would really like to get back to being an O’s fan this year* but every streaming site that carries MASN (which is the only outfit that broadcasts the games) also carries Fox News. Sending my money there? Hard pass.

    I may be forced to pay up for MLB.com or whatever their app is. I can get the Ravens with an antenna but the Orioles cut out all the over-the-air stations.

    * Yeah, fair weather fan. But I was done with them when Angelos got rid of the best general manager, manager, and announcer in baseball in the same year.

  96. 96.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @Kay: I saw a good comeback to “DEI” for the Baltimore mayor: Duly Elected Incumbent.

  97. 97.

    Ken

    @Soprano2: It was filmed for the new Twilight Zone back in the 1980s, and as I recall the producers wanted to somehow have a happy ending. The director and actors refused

    (My one complaint about that version is the set; it’s too large and there definitely appear to be a couple hundred pounds of stuff that could be stripped and jettisoned. But the emotional content is spot on.)

  98. 98.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Yep, reflexively blaming every mishap on DEI discredits the anti-woke ninnies. I always have to remind myself that most people don’t pay close attention to this stuff, so when some wingnut fool blames DEI for the problems at Boeing or the Key Bridge disaster, they sound deranged to normies.

  99. 99.

    TBone

    I hope our 3 guys get up to some good silliness and celebration tonight.  That’s how winners do.

  101. 101.

    Sanjeevs

    Clarence Thomas is a weird weird man

    The email went out to members of Justice Clarence Thomas’s law clerk network late last month celebrating his newest addition to an exclusive club. The justice’s selection needed no introduction.
    “Crystal Clanton’s clerkship for OT ’24 was announced by Scalia Law today!” wrote an assistant to Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, who is known as Ginni. The email referred to the 2024 October term of the court, and the tone was jubilant: “Please take a look at these posts of congratulations and support. Consider reposting, replying or adding your own!”
    The Thomases and Ms. Clanton, a 29-year-old conservative organizer turned lawyer, have built such a close relationship that the couple informally refer to her as their “nearly adopted daughter.” Ms. Clanton, who was previously accused of sending racist text messages, including one that read “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE,” has lived in the Thomas home, assisted Ms. Thomas in her political consulting business and joined her in a “girls trip” to New York.
    Her upcoming Supreme Court clerkship, one of the most coveted jobs in the American legal profession, is the latest triumph in her redemption from a highly publicized 2017 controversy over the racist messages. The blowup led to her departure from a group she helped build, Turning Point USA

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/us/politics/clarence-thomas-crystal-clanton-clerk.html

  103. 103.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: We’ve gotten terrible about expecting people to always be immediately available

    Whenever somebody complains about how hard it is to get hold of me, I reply with some version of, “Life is rough all over.”

  104. 104.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    Too, it’s a little obtuse for me to say it because the only bosses I have are my clients (and judges). If I had a boss who expected me to pick up I would, because I would have to.

    My husband is a gregarious person and has a busy practice – he gets a lot of phone calls. I finally told him he can’t take a call when he’s taking to one of us (me or our kids) because it’s rude and it pisses me off and hurts their feelings. I don’t care what anyone claims – if they are taking phone calls while holding a convo in real life they are not really listening to either party.

  108. 108.

    Betty Cracker

    @frosty: My advice is to take a close look at your team’s contract with MLB.com before you sign up, or do a free trial and see what’s really available. The ads for MLB.com are misleading as hell because they make it sound like you get access to every game when in reality, individual teams have contracts with different networks, and the terms vary considerably. Last year, I would not have been able to watch a single Rays home game on MLB.com because the local blackout extends to my area (ridiculous since I’m 100 miles from Tropicana Field) and away games were exclusively on Bally.

  110. 110.

    Jackie

    @frosty: Be forewarned; if you live in the Orioles home viewership zone, MLB.Com will have the games blacked out. And it’s a spendy app.

  113. 113.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @frosty: I miss Jon Miller.  Angelos was a jerk to fire him for not being a Homer.  But Jon is a native Californian, and he has been with the team he loved as a child for 27 years, so I think Mr. Miller is where he belongs.  I’m happy to have had him for a while, just like even though it fell apart, I was able to listen to Jimmy Piersal in the early 90s when I lived in Chicago.

  114. 114.

    gvg

    @Soprano2: Ah the one I remember was married to an immigrant-turned out he was illegal but had been here for more than 10 years, possibly since childhood and he got deported, leaving the Trump supporting wife struggling to keep their business going. Other people in the town were saying things like we didn’t mean him, he is a good guy….I felt like, yelling Trump ran on demonizing Mexicans and you are married to a Mexican. The other possibility was she wanted him gone but didn’t want to say so.

  115. 115.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @NotMax:

    By the time we did find Planet X, the public craze for it had worn off.  It was very close, too.  I remember lots of “We think something big might be in the Oort Cloud!”  Then it all stopped.  Then we found Eris.  Then a few astronomers went “That’s IT?  How can we change the definition of planet so there aren’t a bunch of little ones?”  So they tacked on the weird, arbitrarily defined ‘clears it’s orbit’ and now we have 8.

  116. 116.

    Timill

    @Betty Cracker: Only 100 miles? That’s next door!

    Here in Knoxville TN the Braves (200 miles) and the Reds (250 miles) are the blackout teams. Fortunately for a lot of reasons I follow the Red Sox.

    You can get MLB.TV for the season for free this week if you’re a T-Mobile customer.

  117. 117.

    frosty

    @TBone: ​Now I want to see Delco: the movie! You guys are almost as weird as Baltimore. I see we both pronounce “water” the same way.​

  119. 119.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: I think my intuition about how this plays to normies was broken by growing up in 1980s Virginia among white Reagan voters who blamed everything on affirmative action.

  120. 120.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @frosty: Everything has changed w/ the Os this year, including the owners.  :-)  Good luck to them, I’m gonna be watching.

  121. 121.

    Jackie

    @Betty Cracker: It’s crazy what MLB.Com considers “viewership region” – the Mariners region covers ALL of WA, OR, ID AND western MT! We have to go FUBO or DirectTV.😡

  123. 123.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Layer8Problem:

    Strip away the engineering and what these guys want reduces down to Musk in an astronaut suit, striking a ridiculous pose and stabbing a finger at the sky screaming “ELON MUSK OF OUTER SPACE!!!”, à la Yosemite Sam in that cartoon. 

    The Sun is in outer space.  He can go there.

  125. 125.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Soprano2:

    someone wrote it today they’d come up with some magical tech fix to prevent the terrible outcome from happening.

    The author had several fixes to stop the girl from dying.  The editor absolutely insisted she die because he was a flaming misogynist.  (The point was that women are irrational, you see.). There is a very, very good argument he laid the groundwork for the misogyny problems in fandom today.

  127. 127.

    eclare

    @rikyrah:

    I remember that article, a woman said that.  And she worked in a correctional facility.  I would bet my 401(k) she treats the inmates like shit.  And I would win.

    And Eyeroller got there first.  That comment made an impression.

  128. 128.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @NotMax:

    Adding:  Remove ‘clears its orbit’ and you have to add Ceres and Charon, bringing us up to 14 planets.

    Also, I love that there is a binary planet system in our solar system, and wish more people knew that Pluto and Charon are a binary.

  133. 133.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Frankensteinbeck: Planet X was supposed to be a large outer planet that was causing residual unexplained deviations from theory in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune (this is how Neptune was found, so there was precedent). Pluto was discovered in almost the right place but eventually turned out to be nowhere near massive enough to do that, so that was apparently a coincidence– the deviations were observational error.

  134. 134.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

    And they want to loot all of the money Biden’s stewardship of the economy has saved the country. Tax cuts, baby, it’s what Jesus would have wanted.

  138. 138.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Jeffro:

    1) Biden: well supported, not only by his current party and cabinet, but also democratic ex presidents

    2) trumpov: not even supported by his own former Vice President; W nowhere to be found; Romney and Ryan actively speaking out against him

    This should be one of the top three themes of the campaign coverage. Everyone should be asking every reporter about it. Why do you not think this is significant

    If I were a highly paid Democratic Party consultant, I’d be putting together a 30 second TV ad, along with a longer video for social media. It’s the kind of thing normie voters might actually consider worth knowing. Not sure they do right now.

  139. 139.

    Tony Jay

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

      “the Democrats have lost touch with the people and only care about fighting the Republicans”

    What a wally. The simple act of fighting the Republicans is so ‘in touch’ with the needs of the American people that The People and the Democratic Party might as well be conjoined twins.

  140. 140.

    catclub

    @Kay: about how his favorite President wants to kill him and his family.

     

    No, no, no, only bankrupt him and let him die.

  141. 141.

    Tony Jay

    @mrmoshpotato:

    He did. He loved everyone.

    That’s why he told Peter and the lads to go get swords. Extreme physical violence was their Kingdom, not his.

    Mysterious ways, etc.

  145. 145.

    MazeDancer

    Wish I could go. Even the  cheap seats were gone in minutes. Even if I could scape together $250, couldn’t go.

    Manhattan has been Dem Money Stop for decades. Every Senate and House aspirant comes to town. I was a guest at Amy Klobuchar’s first event. All I remember was her short hair.

    And lecturing her advance staff “What – you don’t have pockets full of pens in a room full of checkbooks?.” (I had asked for one. They didn’t have.)

    As these things go, the tickets weren’t outrageous. Scroll down for pricing options.

  146. 146.

    Jackie

    This is personal!!! Going after “my Zags” GRRRR!!!

    Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock this week drew derision when he falsely accused the Gonzaga men’s basketball team of being immigrant “invaders.”

    Writing on Twitter Wednesday night, Maddock posted a photo of a plane landing at the Detroit Metro Airport and then baselessly speculated it was filled with migrants who had been shipped from the southern border up to his state.

    Maddock seemed particularly annoyed that the “invaders” in question were getting a special police escort.

    “Happening right now,” he wrote. “Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?”

    But Maxwell White of local Detroit-based news station WXYZ did some basic homework on the photos and confirmed that it was the Gonzaga basketball team, which had flown into town to compete in the Sweet 16 basketball tournament being held in Michigan over the weekend.

    “Just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team,” he reported. “Photos show Gonzaga getting on an Allegiant plane to Detroit for the Sweet 16, and Flight Radar shows a plane from GEG to DTW landed at 7:25 p.m., around the time this photo was posted. This is a wild tweet.”

    Maddock’s tweet was quick to draw ridiculed from some Democratic politicians, both in his state and outside

    “Hey Einstein, your state is hosting the Sweet 16,” wrote Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). “Could it be a team bus? If it is, will you resign for your spectacular stupidity?”

    Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow also piled on to mock Maddock.

    “A sitting State Representative sees a group of busses at the airport and immediately yells ‘illegal invaders’ which is a pretty rude (and also, frankly, dangerous) way to greet the Gonzaga Men’s Basketball Team arriving for March Madness,” she cracked.

    One of Maddock’s followers even informed him of his mistake, but the Michigan Republican replied by saying, “Sure kommie. Good talking point.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/matt-maddock-2667624690/

  147. 147.

    Redshift

    @Frankensteinbeck: All they had to do was create a category like “major planets” for the ones everyone’s familiar with, and leave the definition of planet alone, since the only real motivation was not to have “planets in the solar system” become more than anyone could remember. I’m with the planetary scientists, a definition of planet that depends on its surroundings isn’t a scientific one.

  148. 148.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Soprano2:

    We’ve gotten terrible about expecting people to always be immediately available

    Truth and its corollary, the faster you can send data, the faster the recipient can read and discuss it.  In the before times, I’d be overnighted 100 pages of legal documents and then called an hour later to discuss them in detail. Then came the fax machine with the disappearing print…now you can share countless pages instantly and the expectations are likewise accelerated.

    When mobile phones were in their early years, getting a call in a meeting conferred some kind of importance. I had a boss who totally bought into that posturing, probably had one of his kids call.

  149. 149.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: Baseball on radio and tv are very differrent experiences. You have to use your imagination more for radio, obviously. But it’s a laid back experience, which suits me. Still, I had to see players like Max Scherzer a couple times on TV to appreciate their intensity. Then, I could see him in my mind’s eye when he’s stalking around the mound after a strikeout.

    What I most dislike about TV baseball is the frenetic effort to fill time between batters, sometimes even between pitches. Networks bombard viewers with volleys of derivative statistics and interview soundbites.

    This is part of a larger problem I have with television: broadcasters want to keep viewers constantly engaged, “glued to the screen.” Radio, or at least radio baseball, is not nearly so intrusive.

  150. 150.

    sdhays

    @TBone: I love Cleese’s comedy, but I lots most of my respect for him when he outed himself as a Brexit supporter because he didn’t like people coming to Britain and making it less British. Or something along those lines.

    Doesn’t stop me from watching old clips, but it does make me sad.

  151. 151.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Timill:

    Thank you SO much for this tip.  I’m now on.  MASN isn’t available to directTV customers with a billing zip outside their broadcast area…and Denver is just slightly outside of that.

    I had no idea T-Mobile did this.  I can now watch the Nats!

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Redshift: It seemed as if many people who were upset just wanted the list of nine they learned in school to be correct, and would have been just as disturbed with a definition including many new planets (there are potentially hundreds of undiscovered dwarf planets out there in the dark).

  155. 155.

    Villago Delenda Est

    TFG is insanely jealous of Buden.  The deserting coward won’t give TFG the time of day.

  156. 156.

    Kay

    @Jackie:

    One of Maddock’s followers even informed him of his mistake, but the Michigan Republican replied by saying, “Sure kommie. Good talking point.”

    This is what is going to eventually kill conservatism. The inability to admit an error and the constant lying that comes out of the inability to admit error.
    I saw on social media even Christopher Rufo is concerned about the decline in quality on the Right – he (rightly) believes this sort of craziness will do them in.
    We just elected a Trumpist county commissioner – he won the GOP primary so will replace a moderate Republican who was just a better person. Not a liar or a criminal. I happen to know the new commissioner and he is both a liar and a criminal. They will find this out.
    It’s like Trump gave the whole “movement” permission to be chronically dishonest and mean spirited nutcases, and now they can’t stop it – it’s infecting all of them.

  158. 158.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Redshift:

    The decision was made by an absurdly tiny number of astronomers, too, and is not popular.  They were the closest thing to an authority at the time, alas.  Somebody has to make the definitions, even if they’re jackasses about it.

    ‘Clears its orbit’ is just… it’s such an arbitrary addition.  It’s not only the ‘Why would you add this to the definition’ aspect, but it’s not absolute for any planet.  They picked a value that meant nothing farther out than Neptune could ever possibly qualify, because it’s distance dependent.

    @Geminid:

    broadcasters want to keep viewers constantly engaged, “glued to the screen.”

    I blame this as one of the biggest factors of the media being wired for Republicans.  Television news selects heavily for people who can fill large amounts of time with very little information.  So, the most prestigious positions in the social club are filled with bullshitters.  Republicans also run on the bullshit system, so the national news media club looks at Republicans and goes “Yeah!  Those guys are doing it right!  Oh my god, Dems, stop talking about poooolicyyyyyy.”

    @sdhays:

    I love Cleese’s comedy, but I lots most of my respect for him when he outed himself as a Brexit supporter

    It was when he outed himself as a transphobe for me.  I should have seen it coming.  He made so many ‘laugh at men in dresses’ jokes.

  159. 159.

    Kay

    @Jackie:

    Organizations reflect the people at the top. Always. Inevitably. There is a (great) book about Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes’ fake blood testing company. One of the top employees resigns and send her an email explaining why – he writes that dishonesty and lying have infected the whole place – that people who work there lie to his face and everyone pretends it isnt happening and this is making him crazy and making him doubt objective reality. That’s what happens. Always.

  160. 160.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kay:

    It’s like Trump gave the whole “movement” permission to be chronically dishonest and mean spirited nutcases, and now they can’t stop it – it’s infecting all of them.

    Since 2010, the craziest Republican in the primary usually wins.  It’s been an actual race to the bottom.

  162. 162.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kay: Meh. I doubt that the fuckin’ moran would’ve even known what you’d be referencing. You would have to show him complete videos of Trump and various other Republicans trying to kill the ACA, of Democrats trying to protect it, and of McCain’s thumbs down to prevent Trump from killing it, and even then the moran would STILL claim the Trump will protect “healthcare” and that Biden is lying.

  163. 163.

    cain

    @Baud: Yet somehow make bank during those periods of time. Of course, the real reason is that a downturn is great for rich people because it leads to buy outs, consolidation, and cheap real estate.

  167. 167.

    cain

    @Kay:

    I don’t know. I mentioned Trump trying to kill Obamacare to this person because I know he has Obamacare. He got very defensive and started lying! So that was shocking, that we couldn’t have a calm discussion about how his favorite President wants to kill him and his family.

    When you’ve tied your entire identity to the man (ala cult) then you’re going to be defensive about everything he does. After all, the whole thing is about grievance and their defense is all about grievance as well.

  168. 168.

    smith

    @sdhays: I love Cleese’s comedy, but I lots most of my respect for him when he outed himself as a Brexit supporter because he didn’t like people coming to Britain and making it less British.

    I always suspected Cleese was actually playing himself in Fawlty Towers.

  169. 169.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @cain:

    the real reason is that a downturn is great for rich people because it leads to buy outs, consolidation, and cheap real estate.

    And desperate workers they can shit on.  See:  Employers whining that nobody wants to work, and particularly rich employers whining that we need a big jump in unemployment to teach the proles their place.

  170. 170.

    TBone

    @mrmoshpotato: I live on the border of that district and a tornado took down a lot of trees, telephone poles with live wires downed, and almost took our roof off.  Tax Day, 2019.  EF 5 tornado with ball lightning explosions in midair about 8-10 feet off the ground.  Was surreal!  Mueser is an asshole.

  172. 172.

    TBone

    @frosty: I highly recommend seeing it with any sense of political correctness or propensity for decorum left at home 😆 it’s gonna be a wing dinger!  All PA peeps should go IMO it’s educational!

  173. 173.

    TBone

    @eclare: I know what I woulda done with that!  🤣 I once told my boss if he wanted me to answer calls outside of the office, he’d have to pay overtime AND buy me the phone/pay all bills for same.  There woulda been a lot of sound effects is what I’m saying.

  174. 174.

    MazeDancer

    @Redshift: Too bad.

    While even the cheap seats weren’t so cheap, they were less than good Broadway seats.

    And they were real. Know someone going to their first political event, ever, who went online the second it was announced and got two.

    Suppose if one had a spare 100K, the lowest price point that included a photograph, one could have just clicked and purchased.

    Though one wonders what kind of frisking and poison screens have to be endured to stand with 3 Presidents.

  176. 176.

    PAM Dirac

    @Redshift:

    I’m with the planetary scientists, a definition of planet that depends on its surroundings isn’t a scientific one.

    I went to a meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the AAS a while after that definition was “passed”. (Note that the definition excludes exoplanets). About 2/3 of the meeting was about things that don’t meet the definition (Pluto (New Horizons), Rosetta, and exoplanets). The general attitude seemed to be that the definition was useless and could be and should be ignored.

  179. 179.

    Ruckus

    @Baud:

    Well you know, that if you aren’t going to do everything possible to make the wealthy far wealthier then what good are you? I mean really if you just want to be an actual leader of the entire nation then what the hell use are you to someone whose only goal is to become the world’s richest human?

  180. 180.

    Ruckus

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    THIS.

    They can’t be wrong, they support them having MONEY and everyone else sucking hind whatever. That’s the American Way, just ask them.

    I believe much of the wealthy does not want democracy in any way, shape or form. They want aristocracy based upon monetary wealth because having that wealth shows that they are smarter, better, and should be above everyone else. Most of the animal kingdom does in some way fight for their position in life because that is survival. But we as a universe have figured out that HELPING each other makes survival for a much larger percentage of any population far more likely. Those that think that money is the one and only concept of better always go with who has the most is the highest. Take the Forbes 400. Every person listed is a billionaire. It wasn’t always this way but money talks and way too much money screams the loudest.

  182. 182.

    Paul in KY

    @eclare: Have seen Lizzo several times and she’s always a kickass show. Saw her 1st time on a Thursday at Bonnaroo (when the new music/lesser knowns perform) and I came back to tent raving about her. She hasn’t stopped since then. Saw her at ACL back in 2019 and there had to be 60,000 at her set.

    I bet The Queen will bring it too!

  185. 185.

    Paul in KY

    @Sanjeevs: Having the name ‘Clanton’ must have helped her. She’s probably thinking how much farther she can rise if she replaced that ‘C’ with a ‘K’.

  187. 187.

    2liberal

    @frosty:  you  can get a streaming sub for the MLB which is not a cable company.  I think it’s something like 150+-250 per season.

Comments are closed.