Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

This fight is for everything.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

This blog will pay for itself.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

He really is that stupid.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Thursday Morning Open Thread: To Boldly Go…

Thursday Morning Open Thread: To Boldly Go…

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PSA: Big deadline for student loan relief — April 30th!

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169Comments

  2. 2.

    TBone

    Lesson they tried to instill at the hospital yesterday:   never wear an N-95 mask to a facility titled Evangelical and expect to be treated as anything less than a pariah and a leper. The only other fellow wearing a loosey goosey surgical mask, out of the many, many people I encountered, was a fellow visitor in the main lobby.  You’d think the ICU medical staff would, at the very least, be sympathetic, and not ostentatiously derisive, but you’d be wrong.

    Today, I’m painting my black mask with the symbol for BIOHAZARD in red nail polish.

    Also, the entire hospital-wide computer system crashed during my visit.  Coincidence, I’m sure.

  4. 4.

    Jeffro

    So much good news to start the day off!

    I absolutely LOVE that we are able to keep in touch with Voyager 1…while it’s IN INTERSTELLAR SPACE!!11!  Go humanity!!

  5. 5.

    TBone

    @Baud: thank you.  There are actually little greeting cards they distribute to each patient with prayers! Thank you for making me smile, it’s lonely here without hubby trying to make me laugh in the morning.

  6. 6.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    As long as we can stay in touch with Voyager 1, I suppose that puts off when it becomes Vger.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    The first Star Trek movie was actually a pretty bad movie, but they hit gold with the VGER meme.

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    Re-establishing comprehensible communication with Voyager is nothing short of amazing, but only the beginning of the task. For now, as I understand it, it’s in narcissist mode, able to relay only information about itself and its status and not yet any other sensory or instrument data. Fingers firmly crossed for further success.

    @TBone

    What, no smiley face paint job?
    ;)

  14. 14.

    TBone

    @OzarkHillbilly: blasphemer!  ha ha

    Once a few years ago during a heart attack, the preacher and his two female companions came into the room to pray over us.  They don’t do that anymore, to my knowledge.  There must’ve been some kind of incident.

    Yesterday, the entire hospital-wide computer system crashed during my second visit.  Even the cable TV went down.

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The first reply to the Voyager tweet above:

    Eric Hoglund
    @EricHoglund6
    ·
    Apr 22
    That’s amazing considering a refrigerator made today will last about 72 months and a car about 120 months

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    Trivia:

    Part of the flight over V’ger was at the time the longest scene without dialogue since talkies became the norm.

  24. 24.

    Mousebumples

    Anyone have a gift link to that last student loan deadline article? My loans are done, but I have friends I’d like to share that with… Including one person who went to a cruddy for profit “college”…

    Thanks – and good morning!

  32. 32.

    Soprano2

    We sure got our money’s worth out of Voyager 1, didn’t we?

    I love these posts, because they prove that there’s plenty of interesting good news to cover about the Biden administration and that they’re getting it out there. It’s not their fault the press would rather cover the rantings of the Bloated Orange Blob than what his administration is doing to improve the lives of the American people. I’m more convinced than ever that whether consciously or subconsciously, they want him back because he made their lives more exciting. ETA – Of course, if he loses he’ll still be out there, constantly on trial somewhere. I wish they would realize that and quit pimping for him.

  36. 36.

    TBone

    @NotMax: now THAT is inspiring!  I was once at the Florida launch location, but it was during my, shall we say, Hunter S. Thompson years, and my memories are not to be trusted.

  38. 38.

    eclare

    @Soprano2:

    Agreed.  Sec Pete was on Morning Joe yesterday to announce new consumer friendly rules for airlines, if your flight is cancelled or severely delayed you must be issued a refund immediately.

  40. 40.

    Betty

    So according to Steven Greenhouse, Biden is the real populist, assuming that means doing stuff that helps people?

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @Betty:

    Since Dems have been doing that for a while, it must mean something different from that.

    But whatever. If it’s positive, I’ll take it.  We need to continue closing the hack gap.

  42. 42.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Baud:
     

    We need to continue closing the hack gap.

    Continue? I see no evidence that we ever started.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    I do. Maybe not so much in mainstream media, but I (unscientifically) see a lot more content that is affirmatively positive about Dems, rather than the traditional blather from savvy people about how nothing the Dems do is good enough.

  44. 44.

    Kay

    @Betty:

    Greenhouse was (or still is ?) a labor reporter. Labor reporters had a LOT of bad years with nothing to cover other than CEO bonuses doubling. I feel like he’s thrilled working people are finally winning.

  45. 45.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: Yep, the idea popular in the press that the Biden administration doesn’t talk about their accomplishments is ludicrous. They seem to use it as an excuse to not cover these things.

  47. 47.

    JML

    Biden’s the most pro-worker president in my lifetime and it’s not really close. There’s a pretty good argument that he’s the most pro-worker president since FDR. If he continues on this path, he could potentially pass FDR, which would make him the most pro-worker president in the nation’s history.

    But please, professional left-wingers, tell me more about about how there’s no difference between Biden and Trump…

  48. 48.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Today Portugal celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, which overthrew the longstanding authoritarian government (started in 1926) and began the country’s transition to democracy. Virtually every city, town, and village in Portugal seems to have a street named 25 de Abril in commemoration of that event.

  50. 50.

    Steve in the ATL

    Ugh I hate it when the KLM Crown Lounge at Schipol is crowded.  #FML

    On a more positive note, props to whoever it was here who recommended “How to Stop Time” by Matt Haig.  Great book!

  51. 51.

    Baud

    @JML:

    I’m not on Twitter, but I frequent reddit.  At the time of the rail strike threat, there was a push in some subreddits to portray Biden as anti-labor, but that seems to have died down.  Most of the negative stuff I see is more generalized about how everything sucks.  And who knows how much of that is real horseshoe stuff and how much is the right pretending to be the left side of the horseshoe.

  53. 53.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “I like to think of the United States of America as Britain’s greatest invention.”

    – Liz Truss

  54. 54.

    Harrison Wesley

    @TBone: Not to give you any uncharitable ideas, but….as I was getting on the bus the other day, I noticed that the well-tattooed young man ahead of me had a particularly striking one on one shin: “FUCK.”  I’m guessing he doesn’t work in customer service.

  56. 56.

    Kay

    Biden’s closest aides had come to see the Times as arrogant, intent on setting its own rules and unwilling to give Biden his due. Inside the paper’s D.C. bureau, the punitive response seemed to typify a press operation that was overly sensitive and determined to control coverage of the president.

    Good. I’m glad they’re fighting back. It’s true – the NYTimes political team suck.

    “Unlike some outlets, the Times just never invested in a reporter who really knew and understood Biden and his appeal,” said one former campaign staffer. “And the coverage reflected that.”

    Also true. Compare how they’ve promoted Trump reporter Maggie Haberman to whoever they have covering Biden. It was true for Hillary Clinton too – Amy Chozick was absolutely terrible. Chozick reports on celebrities now – what she should have always stuck with. She had no interest in or understanding of politics or policy so the NYTimes stuck Clinton with her. She covers the Kardashians now.

  61. 61.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I clicked for once to encourage more of this reporting, but saw the headline that dismissed the issue as “petty.” Figures.

  62. 62.

    SFAW

    @Baud: ​

    Yeah, but what has he done for me this morning? Nada.

    Well, that’s because he sees you as a political rival, intent on swaying his support within the Almost-Top-10,000 blog community.

    ETA: Plus, he’s envious that he can’t adopt the Pantsless Style. At least, not in public.

  63. 63.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The rail strike threat was really indicative of how little they actually read or care about labor. The headline news was that Biden was shutting it down, but the much less covered news that followed was that he had helped them win concessions. Online Lefties never updated. Months after the concessions had been won they were still saying Biden had harmed them. Freddie de Boer (former BJ front pager) wrote an entire article that was WIDELY distributed about how Biden screwed rail workers without updating past weeks old headlines – the whole premise of the article was wrong. The rail workers actually got the sick time.

    They’re not actually interested in this. If they were they would know more, read something past a headline.

  64. 64.

    SFAW

    @NotMax: ​

    Amsterdam Schiphol’s runway in the middle of nowhere.

    Designed by the same crew that did Mrs. Orcutt’s driveway*, no doubt.

    *Which I would not have known about, but for your link a week or two ago.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    @SFAW:

    The only president who has directly given me anything immediately tangible is Obama because he saved my retirement fund and had policies that opened up some job opportunities that I benefitted from.

  68. 68.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @NotMax: Aside from the name “vger” all I remember about that movie was that there was a long slow closeup tour of the exterior of the Enterprise, obviously meant as a gift to the fans. (It’s real! I knew it!!) Is that the shot you’re talking about?

  70. 70.

    SFAW

    @Baud: ​
     
    On the other hand, TFG made it OK for you to use slurs previously unacceptable in polite company*. Not that you would, but you could.

    *No, this joint ain’t “polite company.”

  71. 71.

    Scout211

    Today is the oral arguments at SCOTUS for Trump’s immunity claims.  Perusing the news articles and commentary about it this morning, it seems like the consensus is that Trump has already won. The speculation is that he will likely lose all or part of his claim to immunity but by taking the appeal and scheduling it for late April, SCOTUS gave Trump the delays he needed.

    Ugh. I won’t be listening to the live audio.

  72. 72.

    narya

    @Kay: And it’s not just the partisan, lazy, hackery: there are some really cool things going on, AND, for at least some of us, the sausage-making is interesting. Not in a breathless who’s up/who’s down way, but in learning how things work, how compromises get made, who knows things, etc. (Hunter Thompson was actually good at covering some of that stuff.) It’s like they’ve dismissed any reporting about Joe because they see it all as partisan, rather than as, say, good news for the country as a whole (e.g., the manufacturing boom). I continue to subscribe, but, honestly, skip nearly all the political coverage.

  74. 74.

    TBone

    @Harrison Wesley: can’t so obviously try to make their heads explode if I want to gain entry today.  Which I must – hubby just told me they won’t even  bring him a glass of water.  He hasn’t had solid food since Tuesday at supper, and his breakfast has not yet arrived.  He asked for water this morning and was told “your nurse will get it.”  Apparently, they are vastly more attentive when I am present.  So off I go.  I’m trying to adjust my attytood accordingly so that I don’t bite anyone.

    Also, poor hubby had to poop in a bedpan first thing this morning.  I am going to be SO nice to him for the duration of his recovery and beyond!

  75. 75.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Harrison Wesley: The uncharitable idea I had was to draw a pentagram on the floor near the doorway and if anybody came in to “pray for you”, rub your hands and cackle, “Yes! You are standing in the pentagram! The spell is complete!” Pointy witch hat optional.

  77. 77.

    Baud

    @Scout211:

    Eh, BJ recognized that long ago, although we framed it not so much as Trump winning but the Republican justices putting a finger on the scale to help him out.

  78. 78.

    p.a.

    Note how whatever consumer product’s price is rising gets the story, especially on local tv media.  In a free(-ish) economy, there’s always some price rising.  Not just gasoline or food.  If those prices were going down, the lead would be “rising price of leather goods endangers American society!”  “We talk to Mary S. who owns this dead-animal-skin emporium about the impact on her business.”  Seen by xxxxx people at 11pm.  Meanwhile local blogger with 17 followers (not including family) googles Mary S. and finds she’s on the local Repub Party Committee & founder of East Shithole’s Moms Against Anyone Not Like Us.

  79. 79.

    lashonharangue

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “I like to think of the United States of America as Britain’s greatest invention.”– Liz Truss

    Then the Middle East was Britain’s invention of the hydrogen blimp.

  80. 80.

    Baud

     

    @p.a.:

    rising price of leather goods endangers American society!”

     
    Ugh. The price of chaps these days is outrageous.

  81. 81.

    Chris

    @Baud:

    The first Star Trek movie was actually a pretty bad movie, but they hit gold with the VGER meme.

    I think I’m the only human being alive who was introduced to Star Trek by that movie and still liked it enough to keep going.

  82. 82.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    What you’re implying is that some of the Justices might not be deciding cases solely on law, but rather on political considerations. Unpossible!

  85. 85.

    Layer8Problem

    @OzarkHillbilly:  Perhaps a steal from Colbert telling Hugh Laurie what England’s greatest gift to the world was.  And perhaps Colbert stole that one himself.

  86. 86.

    Scout211

    @SFAW: What you’re implying is that some of the Justices might not be deciding cases solely on law, but rather on political considerations. Unpossible!

    Some people are saying that it’s a little known fact that Justice Thomas’  middle name is really “NeverRecuse.”

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @narya:

    I don’t think the actual readers and subscribers are the issue. If this were just limited to them the NYTimes wouldn’t be such a problem. It’s the other political journalists following them like lemmings. They absolutely negatively skewed the coverage of Hillary Clinton and then again with Biden, not because ordinary people read them but because journalists all worship and follow them.

    The reporter they send to Ohio is just objectvely terrible. He consistently ignores any majority AA city in any county and covers only the county the city is in. By doing this he’s sort of willfully ignoring AA’s in Ohio, including mayors, city council members, etc. It’s an inaccurate report to go to “Youngstown” but never actually enter Youngstown. It’s misleading to the public.

  89. 89.

    New Deal democrat

    @Baud: The first Star Trek movie was actually an awesome 100 minute movie. Which unfortunately was released as a 135 minute movie.

  90. 90.

    Chris

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “I like to think of the United States of America as Britain’s greatest invention.”

    That is a spectacular passive-aggressive swipe at Great Britain, though I assume it’s not intended that way.

  99. 99.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Baud:

    It was bad, but it somehow made enough money that they made a second one and the franchise was established. I don’t know if they ever topped Wrath of Khan.

  100. 100.

    Tony Jay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “I like to have been told to say that I think of the United States of America as Britain’s greatest invention because I am a fucking idiot desperate to clamber into Nigel’s still-warm spot on the Far-Right Wingnut Wurlitzer and saying ‘White Nations of The Anglosphere Unite! You have nothing to lose but your unchained mud-peoples’ is still considered a bit on the nose.”

    Fixed.

  101. 101.

    Geminid

    @O. Felix Culpa: Now, Portugal is committed to the Clean Energy Revolution. They started developing their hydro-electric resources in the 1970s, and their wind power resources in this century. They can now go for long stretches without using their back-up fossil fuel generation. With the addition of solar farms and batteries, Portugal will likely be the first European nation to achieve carbon-neutral electricity generation this decade.

  102. 102.

    Miss Bianca

    @Layer8Problem: High fives for the Master and Commander love!

    Oh man, how I wish Starz or some other big production company would tackle the Aubrey-Maturin canon.

  103. 103.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    It’s also boring. My husband subscribes so I’ll start reading and then stop when I realize the NYTimes dumbass found some racist bar in the middle of nowhere which he thinks is representative of “Youngstown”.

    Theyve done this same story 100 times. I could recite it.

  104. 104.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Layer8Problem: Personally, I have a problem with the whole idea. America was pried from their greedy mitts at the point of a gun in a wholesale rejection of everything Britain was at the time. How is that defined as a “gift”?

    YMMV.

  107. 107.

    Soprano2

    @Eyeroller: You mean his White House staff doesn’t leak like a sieve and constantly complain and backstab each other to various reporters? Yeah, you’re right about that.

  108. 108.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Kay:

    Like a lot of things, it’s been this way since Reagan. The NYT reporters covering the Republican are basically mouthpieces who seem to admire the Republicans. The NYT reporters covering the Democrat are skeptical and constantly looking for scandal and flaws.

    It may be that the latter is the proper and most useful way for the press to cover a president, but they never cover a Republican in that way

  109. 109.

    Chris

    @Baud:

    I’ve watched a fair amount of sixties and seventies television (Mission: Impossible, It Takes A Thief, The Wild Wild West, Colombo) thanks to the miracle of streaming, and one of the nice things to look forward to is the inevitable Ricardo Montalban Episode.  He almost never plays anything but a perfectly ordinary villain of the week (which at the end of the day is all he was on the original run of Star Trek, before the movie brought him back and made him the Moriarty to Kirk’s Holmes), but he always makes it fun and memorable and makes himself stand out from the pack.  No wonder when Nick Meyer binge-watched all of Star Trek before writing the second movie, that was the episode and the villain that stood out to him as worth bringing back.

  111. 111.

    Harrison Wesley

    @TBone: Damn, that doesn’t sound like a hospital.  More like a private-equity “assisted living facility.”

  115. 115.

    Soprano2

    @TBone: That’s interesting, because when my husband was in the hospital they had aides who did stuff like getting water and snacks. All I had to do was go to the nurse’s station to ask for it and he got it right away. I wish you and your husband luck, and I hope he recovers and gets out of there quickly.

  116. 116.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    Mika just said that “they” (meaning MSNBC, presumably) are going to be carrying the SCOTUS audio. No idea if that also includes a bevy of talking heads, but probably.

  117. 117.

    Baud

    Via reddit, closing the hack gap

    Biden Just Saved the 40-Hour Work Week
    It’s been a fantastic week for middle-out economics.

  119. 119.

    hueyplong

    When we’re being irritated at Trump’s delay tactics (abetted by the Supreme Court and lesser RW tribunals), it helps to remember that none of that will matter if Biden wins in November. Instead, Trump will face justice totally alone, as a two time loser whose cult will have faded, someone whose favor need not be curried by even RW judges/justices anymore.

    It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be a really enjoyable kickoff to Biden’s second term to see FoxNews reduced to encouraging Biden to pardon Trump after multiple federal convictions to “heal the nation.”

    To the extent they haven’t already made Trump a nonperson.

  121. 121.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Thus continuing the mainstream press’ obsession with white men, who they think are the only voters who actually count. I truly believe this is one of their big problems. They were totally unable to see the millions of enthusiastic Hillary supporters because they were older women of all races, and they just don’t see those voters as important. Same with Biden, they can’t see his enthusiastic voters because they aren’t white men. Until the reporters for major press outfits get past this idea that the only voters who truly count are white men, this kind of reporting will continue to happen. It’s like how when they say “blue collar” what they really mean is “white blue collar”.

  127. 127.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Soprano2: Yes, because it wasn’t just Shatner getting the majority of the screen time; the entire cast was involved. Everyone has a moment. The scene where McCoy says, “We have to save Chekov from 20th century medicine” is wonderful.

  129. 129.

    Geminid

    @OzarkHillbilly: I guess that’s possible, but the economic interests committed to the clean energy transitions will be hard to resist. Portugal initially began this transition in the 1970s, when the oil shock exposed their over-reliance upon fossil fuels. They had to import them all. Now, Portugal intends to become an energy exporter.

    But, I suspect the political shift to the Right was not that great, and could be attributed to resentment toeards refugees. That seems to be the driver of similar shifts in countries like the Netherlands and Sweden.

    Speaking of the Netherlands, I haven’t heard that right-winger Geert Wilders has been able to form a government. It’s been months since his party came in first in their parliamentary election. The previous government fell out over refugee questions

    Ed. The CEO of chip fabricator giant ASML weighed in on more general immigration issues last month. He warned that if Holand restricted immigrant visas for its many foreign engineers, ASML would have to shift some of its operations to other countries. ASML has the largest market capitalization of any Dutch corporation, and the CEO will be taken seriously.

  131. 131.

    Chris

    @Melancholy Jaques:

    It may be that the latter is the proper and most useful way for the press to cover a president

    It would be the proper and useful way to cover a president if the flaws they constantly looked for were actual policy issues and bad calls made by these people.  Instead, they invariably just give us court gossip.

    They could have spent the last four years harassing Biden because he voted for that 2000s law that made it so hard to discharge student debt in bankruptcy.  They harassed him about his age instead.  They could have spent all of 2016 harassing Hillary Clinton because she voted for the Iraq War.  They harassed her about her emails instead.

  132. 132.

    japa21

    @hueyplong: Personally,  I think Biden should pardon Trump… Let’s see.  Which of the Federal charges has the least punishment?  Pardon Trump for that one and let the rest ride

  133. 133.

    RevRick

    @New Deal democrat: We think Star Trek is primarily about exploring outer space, but, time and again, it’s really about us. What makes humans human? What is the nature of justice? Are there healthy limits to what we can and cannot do (Prime Directive)? How do we foster peace in a world riddled with warlike impulses? Are emotions burdens to discard or qualities to embrace? In the struggle between good and evil, how do we not become evil ourselves?

    I watched Star Trek in my late teens and Star Wars as a young parent, and thoroughly enjoyed both, but I could never become fans of either. To me, such shows/movies have little appeal about space exploration. It’s more about the mirror they hold up to us that matters.
    I think the fantasy of space exploration will remain just that — a fantasy. The notion of The Great Filter comes to mind, and right now our planet is screaming at us about the wounds our industrial civilization is inflicting upon the ecosystem, telling us that there are limits to our ambitions. The Star Trek universe is premised on the idea that we can win the bet with the physics of the carbon dioxide molecule. I doubt it.

  134. 134.

    Chris

    @Soprano2:

    Same with Biden, they can’t see his enthusiastic voters because they aren’t white men.

    It’s even worse than that: they can’t see his voters even when they are white men, and heartlanders to boot!  Biden winning back Rust Belt states that are heavy on white men without college degrees was key to his victory in 2020, which is exactly the kind of thing you’d think the assholes at the New York Times could see coming and would want to talk about if they really do have their finger on the pulse of the average Midwestern white guy like all those diner interviews keep suggesting.  But no, we can’t even talk about that.

  135. 135.

    sdhays

    @Kay: In Sulzberger’s view, according to two people familiar with his private comments on the subject, only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.

    My goodness. The arrogance in that statement. I hope Biden never gives them that damn interview.

  136. 136.

    narya

    @Chris: Somewhere I have Russell Baker’s “Growing Up,” and the sequel, and part of what makes them interesting (in addition to his gentle humor) is that he came from serious poverty. Same with someone I knew here. But so many of the people in the business now come from a very different place, and they cannot SEE people who aren’t Like Them.

  138. 138.

    Soprano2

    @sdhays: Wow, he has way too high of an idea of the importance of the NY Times. No wonder they like TFG, they think like him.

  139. 139.

    Geminid

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I remember visiting New Mexico in the 1990s. They had an AM radio channel welcoming tourists to the “Land of Enchantment” and telling us about New Mexico’s many attractions. Ricardo Montalban was the narrator.

  141. 141.

    Soprano2

    The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau. Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview. Harris, according to three people in the room that day, suggested that he contact the White House press office and later grumbled to aides about the back-and-forth being a waste of the allotted time.

    So they thought so little of Kamala Harris that they wasted time with her complaining about how they couldn’t get Biden to give them an interview. I think this is probably the crux of a lot of the problem, as long as they don’t get the interview they’ll continue to put the thumb on the scale.

  142. 142.

    Baud

    FYI

    Hertz is currently offering an array of low-mileage 2023 Chevy Bolt EV and Bolt EUV models for sale, potentially leading to an exceptional opportunity for car buyers. The new listings follow reports released earlier this year that Hertz would reduce its EV fleet amidst fluctuating demand and high costs. The low-mileage 2023 Chevy Bolt EV and Bolt EUV models are listed for sale in the low-$20,000 range, providing an appealing alternative to purchasing new from dealerships where significant market adjustments have inflated prices

  144. 144.

    Chris

    @Soprano2:

    Nah, it’s not that.  They’ve been putting their thumb on the scale against Democrats for far too long for it to be something that recent and that small-scale to be causing it.  The interview is just one more thing to get pissy about.  Kudos to Biden for not indulging them; I hope he keeps it up.

  146. 146.

    frosty

    @Baud: ​The only president who gave me something tangible? The first one that comes to mind is Nixon. He ended the draft my senior year of college just before my 2S deferment was going to expire. And me with a 34 in the draft lottery. By then we weren’t sending more troops to Vietnam though.​

    I’ll have to think some more about the others.

  147. 147.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re absolutely right. I have a Dilbert cartoon on the wall of my office about how even though the assistant got her MBA, the boss still treats her like she’s a secretary, and that if you’re a woman and you ever take a job like that, all the people who knew you when you did that will treat you that way forever. It’s true.

  149. 149.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:  for me the best Star Trek movie will always be “Galaxy Quest.”​

    YES YES YES!!!! Say what you will about Tim Allen, but his portrayal of Captain-as-sleazeball, effectively dropkicking the Shatner mythos into the next universe, IMHO deserved an Oscar nomination.

    (ETA: They also got the sci-fi convention and the boredoutoftheirgourds actors exactly right.)

  150. 150.

    Chris

    @frosty:

    During the Great Recession, Obama first made it possible for me to stay on my parents’ health insurance, and then made it possible, once I’d moved back to a blue state, for me to have health care even when I had no job or a poor job.  I’m doing okay now, but basically all my health care throughout my twenties came thanks to Obama.

    I’m sure other presidents have done tangibly good things for me, but it’s hard to top that one.  Especially since some health complications did, in fact, arise in my twenties.

  151. 151.

    Citizen Alan

    @TBone: I’m curious. Do they provide any services at an evangelical hospital other than praying over you? Or perhaps accusing you of being a sinner who deserved whatever’s ailment brought you there?

  152. 152.

    Mel

    @TBone:

    I am so sorry that you and your hubby are  having to deal with that idiocy. It’s hard enough just trying to deal with the illness or procedure itself, much less having to navigate lunatic wingnuts’ behavior on top of the stress and worry.

    That crap seems to be a pattern in crazy Christer- owned hospitals, once they clock  the patient/relatives as being sane (thus, “the enemy”.)

    I had a horrible three night stay in one about 12 years ago, which involved a night nurse delaying my iv antibiotic five hours past the set time (it was an every six hours infusion, so…) and then telling me that she was doing me a favor by “forgetting” my meds, b/c “the only way to get better is to pray and beg jesus for forgiveness”. For what??? Apparently , b/c I listed “agnostic” as my religious preference.
    Reported her to the charge nurse- he gave me the meds but did no disciplining of her. Asked for an administrator- nobody showed. Mysteriously, my breakfast didn’t show up the next morning, nor later did my lunch, nor any help to get to the toilet, etc.

    Hubby arrived and raised hell, they looked at his contact info and realized that he was an attorney, and suddenly food, administrator, water, offers of unnecessary pain meds, social worker,  and chaplain all arrived in a flurry.

    Bye-Bye-asshole to chaplain, hello formal complaint.

    One of the scariest things about it is that the administrator tried to make excuses for the nurse by saying that she “had just been hired from a nursing home, and [isn’t] used to caring for ‘normal’ patients.” Which meant, I guess, that she was used to harassing and endangering people who were too weak or cognitively impaired to fight back?

  153. 153.

    stinger

    @Baud: ​
     

    I wonder how they fix the tape when it gets twisted.

    With a pencil.

    Stick it in a spindle to loosen the tape.
    Untwist.
    Stick the pencil in the other spindle and tighten.

    Voyager’s got this!

  155. 155.

    frosty

    @Chris: Yes, thanks for the reminder. Obama made it possible for my son to be on my employment health insurance while he was in community college and living at home. Simplified my life!

  156. 156.

    Ruckus

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Totally amazing that Eric doesn’t understand the difference between assembly line production of an item for general consumption that can get used to travel well over 100,000 miles in that 10 yrs and an item that is designed to travel in space and transmit for as long as it can, given that space travel is a bit more difficult than the morning commute anywhere in Los Angeles county or New York city.

  157. 157.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ruckus: At the time the Voyager spacecraft were made, American cars were if anything shoddier and flimsier than they are now.

  159. 159.

    geg6

    @Kay:

    Totally true about Youngstown!  It’s always about the WWC men and their grievances.  Well, all those WWC men don’t actually live in Youngstown.  They probably live in Boardman or even further out of town in farm country in Canfield.  If they would actually talk to real residents of Youngstown, it would be a group of African Americans and maybe a couple white people.

  160. 160.

    Ruckus

    @JML:

    Well at the basic level one is human and the other is …….. whatever the hell that is that walks – sort of upright and paints itself orange because that makes it brighter (think about it – would anything bright enough to be human paint itself bright orange?)

    So no difference? I believe someones are burying the entire plot, storyline and library.

  161. 161.

    Matt McIrvin

    @RevRick: Space exploration is happening, to an astonishing degree, but mostly not with crewed spaceships. Old science fiction underestimated what automation could do even though the same stories speculated about intelligent robots and headstrong AIs. I think that was for narrative reasons, not as any kind of reasonable prediction. Often it seemed as if the first people would arrive in an alien solar system without anyone having seriously looked at the place through a telescope first.

    The romance of boots on alien soil and the science that humans can do generally isn’t worth the costs of sending people–not just the cost of keeping them alive, but also the fact that people are filthy enough to contaminate the search for microbial alien life. That’s even aside from the impossibility of any MacGuffins for fast interstellar travel.

    Star Trek uses space exploration as a mirror to human society. Star Wars isn’t even ostensibly about space exploration; it takes place in a galaxy that has been well-traveled for millennia and almost no exploration happens in it except way offscreen. It’s about politics, heroics and family drama.

    I think civilization will survive the Age of Carbon unless there is a global thermonuclear war. Time was, there wasn’t even a roadmap. Now there is one and we’re walking it too slowly, but the “business as usual” predictions are still way better than they were even 20 years ago because business as usual changed.

    The biggest threat is still the same one we were facing when I was a kid, and when the original Star Trek was on the air. We nuke ourselves into oblivion.

  162. 162.

    Ruckus

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Yep. And many people think they are made worse. When I closed my shop I had one machine that cost $250,550. It worked to +/- .000025 of an inch tolerance and ran 24 hrs a day. It was the first one in the country. That was 14 yrs ago. That was a major step ahead of what went before. The change since then is likely even better than that was. The machines are better, that makes the parts better, which makes the product better. How many miles do you get out of a set of tires these days?

    And that is just one aspect of modern life, is your computer better, your phone? Mine are significantly better – my first computer I bought in 1978. From the same company as the one that is less than a year old now. And I can actually put my phone in my pocket and carry it with me, as most/all of us can.

    Also I’m an old, my first car was a 1960 model – well used of course, that I was given in 1968 because it’s first owner bought something better – Thanks dad. Ugly thing, couldn’t kill it though. Cars have gotten a lot better these days because machines used to build the parts got a lot better.

    It’s called progress. Health care is far better. Your phone can call around the world and fits in a pocket, cars work and mostly require far less service and repair.

  163. 163.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: “V’Ger” initially appears as a mysterious alien cloud of unintelligible visual effects that is, like, solar-system sized. Inside of that turns out to be an automated spaceship-entity so vast that the Enterprise looks like a bug next to it, and especially in the original theatrical cut, you never even get a good look at the whole thing so you can tell what it’s shaped like. And there are lo-o-o-o-ong effects sequences that are just shots of these incomprehensible images with occasional cuts back to the crew gawping at them.

    Eventually, Spock jacks a spacesuit with maneuvering thrusters and goes on an unauthorized solo journey to the heart of the thing in a bid to communicate with it. And I actually kind of love that sequence–it’s quintessential Spock.

    That the whole thing began life as a NASA Voyager probe, upgraded by “a planet of living machines”, was the big twist at the climax.

    It was a movie that seemingly set itself up to fail, grafting these “2001”-inspired ponderous visuals onto a franchise that was really all about beloved characters having very human adventures, even if the humans technically weren’t supposed to be human. It did make money, but not as much as expected and it was horrendously expensive. The sequels succeeded mostly by cutting the budget and re-using as much stuff from the first movie as they could, and they picked up the pace.

    But I still kind of like Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It was such a big swing.

  164. 164.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ruckus: Lots of things do get ruined by “enshittification” done intentionally because somebody needs to make a buck. Planned obsolescence is just one example of that.

    In the world of software and online services, the lesson is just that you can’t expect to treat something subsidized by venture capitalists as a loss leader as if it were a public good. It might seem that way at first, but the money guys are always going to want to cash out eventually, and that’s when the so-called “enshittification” comes. If we want public goods we need to fund them as public goods.

    But I think we do often underestimate how much better technology gets because it’s happening in the background and gets taken for granted.

  165. 165.

    TBone

    @Mel: godamn fucking hell.  Spite is a helluva Xtian drug … That’s why I’m keeping my powder dry.  At their mercy is not a good place to be

  166. 166.

    Mel

    @TBone: Agreed. You are doing the absolute right thing: keeping your hubby and yourself physically and emotionally as safe as possible right now. Time for justice when he is safely back home.

    I will be thinking of you both this week.

  167. 167.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Baud: hmm, I will have to check this out. I’m not sure if we’re going to keep our Prius or not (I think that it’ll be eligible to be plated as an antique car in 2029).

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