Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

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

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

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

When they say they’re pro-life, they don’t mean yours.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

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

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, it’s door #2)

Come on, man.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Small Treats

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Small Treats

by | 142 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Cuz it’s been such a long week, already… (mildly NSFW)

This is absolutely the right thing to do — long overdue, in fact. I’m crossing my fingers Biden’s people have timed the announcement early enough to attract ‘casual’ voters… and late enough the GOP can’t find material to gin up into a Reefer MADNESS!!! campaign.



Floriduh bait!

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I’m worried about Biden winning Florida because Betty C might keel over from pure joy.

  3. 3.

    Jeffro

    How did they not do the cannabis reclassification on 4/20?  =)

    #MissedOpportunities

  6. 6.

    Baud

    I had a moment of weakness this weekend and snapped at JPL, and haven’t seen her since. If she’s reading this. I hope she’ll accept my apology and come back soon.

  9. 9.

    Baud

    I hope we can get marijuana legalized everywhere soon so we can start focusing on implementing laws against smoking it in public.  It’s annoying.

  10. 10.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax: ha!

     

    @Baud: maybe Kamala can shotgun a Bud Light next to him while he does it?

    (or a Modelo, if they do it on Cinco de Mayo?)

    🎶 yeahhhhh, it’s a party in the U-S-A 🎶

  12. 12.

    Soprano2

    Does this mean cannabis businesses will be able to have bank accounts? If so, that would be a game changer for them.

  16. 16.

    Anne Laurie

    @Soprano2: Does this mean cannabis businesses will be able to have bank accounts?

    Yup, that’s part of the proposal!

  18. 18.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Hopefully zhena_gogolia sees this (it won’t have much meaning for anyone else around here): Hey, hey! First of May….

  20. 20.

    RevRick

    @Baud: If Biden wins Florida, he wins re-election. Betty C. might not be the only one to expire from joy/relief.

  21. 21.

    TBone

    @Captain C: Martha Stewart should set something up 😆 cookies and Snoop and Willie and Handsome Joe 😍 oh and ice cream, duh

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @RevRick:

    Yes, and we’d know early on election night.  So I still wouldn’t bet on Florida, but it’s nice to dream.

  25. 25.

    Melancholy Jaques

    I am more optimistic about Biden/Harris re-election than most of my associates. Nevertheless, I refuse to get my hopes up about Florida.

  27. 27.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Any West Virginians around?

    I just watched Colbert’s opening monologue from last night, and this segment (starts at @ 7:30) has me baffled — it’s very funny, but nonsensical. And I honestly can’t tell if these are legit Blankenship ads, or if Stephen’s writers were just having a really creative day.

    ETA: Seems that it must be invention. But in the unlikely event that these are real ads, can anyone tell me WTF that tagline means?

  30. 30.

    JWR

    @Soprano2: @Anne Laurie: It seems that it’s still No on the cannabis banking thing:

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Biden administration’s move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous but still controlled drug was hailed as a monumental step in reshaping national policy. But it might do little to ease a longstanding problem in the cannabis industry — a lack of loans, checking accounts and banking services that other businesses take for granted.

    “As far as financial institutions, I don’t necessarily think it’s going to have a demonstrable effect” on how they deal with cannabis operators, said Morgan Fox, political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

    Similarly, a banking trade group expected no shift in the legal landscape with the proposed change.

  36. 36.

    Scout211

    If you are interested in yet another article about the Trump “veepstakes,” The Bulwark is an interesting read.  Or should I say, a whole pile of fiction, written by Marco Rubio’s PR team.  LOL

    DONALD TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN STAFF has assembled a dozen dossiers on possible running mates, but they largely remain unopened by the presidential candidate, who’s conducting his own vetting process by asking friends, consultants, and insiders whom they think he should pick and why.

    In these discussions, two names consistently rise to the top: Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance, who was this weekend the subject of a flattering story in the New York Times and has been pushed by Don Jr.

    . . .

    The Twelfth Amendment says that if the president and vice president inhabit the same state when the states’ electors cast their ballots (that’s on December 17 this year), the ticket could lose its Electoral College votes from that state (Florida has 30, 11 percent of the total needed to win the White House).

    It’s called the “favorite sons” prohibition.

    “Marco has this residency problem,” is how Trump describes it to others.

    I still have my money on JD Vance, but Marco Rubio? Really? The trouble it would take to get his nomination past the “favorite sons” prohibition seems like a stretch but the article is all about how Marco could maybe, really, just do all the things that would make him eligible to run as Trump’s veep.  🙄

  42. 42.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: An admin in a doctor’s office mentioned that her birthday is March 8. I said, “International Women’s Day!” She said, “Oh, yes, but they invented that long after I was born.” I said, “Oh, no, it long predated your birth, we just didn’t celebrate it here because it was soshulist.” I told a Russian friend about this and said the woman seemed nonplussed, and she said, “Did you tell her about Klara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg?” I didn’t go quite that far.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

    I always know when it’s International Women’s Day because the misogynists on Reddit all come out to complain that there’s no International Men’s Day.

  45. 45.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: ​ There are 364 International men’s day every year. Except in leap years, then there are 365.

  52. 52.

    frosty

    @zhena gogolia: Good to see you! Some unsolicited advice: don’t bother reading comments if there are more than 200. It generally means there’s an argument about something.

  53. 53.

    Soprano2

    @zhena gogolia: I was literally listening to a podcast where an expert was talking about how to listen better as I was reading the posts on that thread yesterday, and I was thinking we could all use some lessons in that. I hate it when I see people who I like talking past each other in such an angry way, putting words in each other’s mouths and attributing bad faith to each other. Unfortunately, I think that’s inevitable when the topic is such an emotional one for so many people. Many contradictory things can be true at the same time, which is hard for a lot of people to wrap their minds around.

  54. 54.

    JWR

    Right on cue with food for the rubes:

    NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump on Tuesday lamented the possibility that Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protesters could be treated more leniently than the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, marking the second time in a week the former president has invoked the ongoing campus protests to downplay past examples of right-wing violence.

    Speaking in the hallway outside a Manhattan courtroom where his criminal hush money trial is taking place, Trump questioned whether student demonstrators who seized and barricaded a campus building early Tuesday, some of them vandalizing it in the process, would be treated the same way as his supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop certification of the presidential results.

    “I think I can give you the answer right now,” he said. “And that’s why people have lost faith in our court system.”

  56. 56.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Soprano2: ​
      One of the things I try to do here (and I think most people do as well) is to presume that any non-troll commenter is arguing in good faith. I think that got lost a bit in yesterday’s thread.*

    *I don’t want to rehash the arguments or point fingers in any direction.

  57. 57.

    Soprano2

    @JWR: He lies about stuff like this all the time, claiming that people who committed crimes when the BLM protests were happening faced no consequences and had nothing happen to them. This is an article of faith among the right wingers, that if you are at certain protests you don’t get in trouble, which we all know is bullshit. I wonder if they know that the window breaker in Minnesota was outed as a right-wing agitator? TFG claims that people committed murder during these protests and “nothing happened to them”. I mean c’mon, how is that credible?

  58. 58.

    Soprano2

    @Omnes Omnibus: ITA, that’s what made it so inflammatory. People are on the ragged edge right now, and it shows. When TFG is talking about letting states monitor pregnant women it’s no wonder people are on edge.

  61. 61.

    RaflW

    @JWR: As long as we threat the Columbia protesters roughly similarly to how we treat college sportsball fans who flip police cars and torch trash cans on “big win” nights, I’m fine.

    Not that making a point that subtle will work on MAGAs.

  67. 67.

    Jeffro

    @JWR: the RWNJs have been looking for their False Equivalency Moment for J6 since, well, J6.

    My brother tried that shit on me on J6 (that it was ‘bad but no different than any given BLM protest’) – WRONG

  68. 68.

    Hildebrand

    @Scout211: I think it was Tommy Vietor who spun out the dream scenario for Rubio: they convince him he will be the veep pick, he resigns from the Senate, moves out of Florida, and then they decide to go with someone else.

  69. 69.

    Gin & Tonic

    @zhena gogolia: My grandmother was a delegate to the International Women’s Union conference in Paris in the 1920’s. So, yes, this has been a “thing” for a long time.

  72. 72.

    Jeffro

    also, MTG is about to try and oust Johnson, so the media will have a whole new chew toy by early next week

  75. 75.

    RaflW

    @Soprano2: The GW Bushies were awful people, but they were correct that they can, to some extent, create alternative ‘realities’.

    Yeah, they can’t stop crop failures from drought, or make the Dow Jones move as if with puppet strings (individual stonks, yes). But they can manufacture bullshit like the BLM protester “leniency” or even the garbage murder claims, because that sh*t can ricochet around the seedier but well populated corners of the internet fully unchecked.

  76. 76.

    p.a.

    @OzarkHillbilly: There are 364 International men’s day every year. Except in leap years, then there are 365.

     

     

    That’s my take on “when is white people’s history month?” (Yes, I know knew such people.)

    Response was a variant of: “that would be every fucking month since history was invented…”

  78. 78.

    Sasha

    Just as importantly, energizing Democrats in ostensibly red states helps with local downballot election and issues.

  82. 82.

    Leto

    ‘Women are scared and angry:’ The reality of the Florida’s new six-week abortion law sets in

    On Tuesday, the reality of Florida’s new six-week abortion ban hit the radar of pregnant women seeking care.

    At a Planned Parenthood clinic in West Palm Beach, doctors scrambled to provide abortions for anyone pregnant beyond six weeks. Women crowded into a waiting room, returning for a pill or surgical procedure. The men who brought them paced the parking lot or sat in cars watching for the women to emerge.

    Yet, even with the scramble, the clinic turned some women away, a glimpse into the future of reproductive care in Florida.

    A recent Florida Supreme Court ruling paved the way for the Sunshine State to enforce a six-week ban on abortions beginning May 1.

    However, Florida law requires two doctor visits, at least 24 hours apart, to get a medication or surgical abortion. So anyone six weeks pregnant or more arriving Tuesday at a clinic learned they must travel outside the state for abortion care. Rather than an abortion, they received a flyer with resources.

  83. 83.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @p.a.: That’s my take on “when is white people’s history month?”

    That’s where I stole it from.

  84. 84.

    CaseyL

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’m pretty sure the tagline refers to Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged suicide: i.e., that Blankenship is such a huge threat to the Deep State that he’s targeted for an assassination that will look like suicide.  (Blankenship, along with all his other lovely qualities, is a conspiracy theory nutball.)

  86. 86.

    JWR

    @Jeffro:

    MTG is about to try and oust Johnson

    I heard yesterday that the Dems have already announced that they’ll give Pastor Mikey a few votes to save his precious speakership should she try to get rid of him. They want nothing to do with her permanent outrage schtick.

    ETA, I just hope the Dems got something big out of him in exchange for their support.

  88. 88.

    rikyrah

    Marvin Sapp InTheSkreets/Marvin Gaye InTheSheets (@groove_sdc) posted at 7:45 AM on Wed, May 01, 2024:
    If you want to know the gameplan for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago just look at these school protests.

    They’re going to be aggressive and instigating police so they can film it and claim they were beaten unprovoked.

    Better have a plan now to deal with it.
    (https://x.com/groove_sdc/status/1785651666580021612?t=IwDjHbfmyGQL_5ihfYyGqA&s=03)

     

    …………………………………………………….

    So, when they said that the DNC was coming to Chicago, there were only a couple of places where I thought it would be held. Either Wintrust Arena, where the Chicago Sky Play or McCormick Place. I leaned towards Winstrust because of the security issues concerning the President and Vice President. McCormick Place, although totally capable, would be a security nightmare.

    When my co-worker last week told me that the convention was going to be held at The United Center, my jaw dropped. I literally couldn’t believe it. The United Center is where the Bulls and Blackhawks play.  It’s in a neighborhood. Not only that, but, it’s on the West Side. Now, there’s been enough  gentrification to where it’s gone from being on THE WEST SIDE to being on The West Side. But..it’s still The West Side.

    And, no, the city is not granting them permits for protesting in the middle of a neighborhood. They’ve gone to court to force the city to grant them permits. They’ve been allowed protesting permits for Grant Park – some 3-4 miles away.  LOL

    Outside of sending all those delegates to The West Side…strategically, it is a good choice.

    The Chicago Police Department has been undergoing ‘ training’ to deal with protestors. We’ll see how that works out.

  89. 89.

    jonas

    @Soprano2: I think so. That’s the really the big deal here — financial institutions have until now been barred from doing most business with (state-level) legal weed shops because of the federal scheduling of cannabis.

    But as we’ve also seen, decriminalizing marijuana is one thing; figuring out how to regulate it as a legal product is a lot more difficult. Clusterfuck is far too generous and mild a term for New York’s rollout of legal weed licensing.

  91. 91.

    jonas

    @JWR: I wonder, though, if this has less to do with the federal re-scheduling and more to do with the chaotic way states have tried to deal with taxation, licensing, and all that. If I were a bank, it would be hard to know at any one time if you were dealing with a legal business or some shady operation that was going to get raided and shut down the next day for not having done their paperwork right.

  92. 92.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @CaseyL:

    I never even thought of that. Thanks. I guess it makes as much sense as anything else in those ads. (And I guess that also means they are actual political ads and not just happy figments of Colbert’s writing staff.)

  93. 93.

    catclub

    @Scout211: how Marco could maybe, really, just do all the things that would make him eligible to run as Trump’s veep.

     

    he could swap houses with Tuberville.

  94. 94.

    Jackie

    Statement from President Joe Biden:

    Today, my Administration is approving $6.1 billion in student debt cancellation for 317,000 borrowers who attended the Art Institutes. This institution falsified data, knowingly misled students, and cheated borrowers into taking on mountains of debt without leading to promising career prospects at the end of their studies.

    While my predecessor looked the other way when colleges defrauded students and borrowers, I promised to take this on directly to provide borrowers with the relief they need and deserve. Over the last three years, my Administration has approved nearly $29 billion in debt relief for 1.6 million borrowers whose colleges took advantage of them, closed abruptly, or were covered by related court settlements, compared to just 53,500 borrowers who had ever gotten their debt cancelled through these types of actions before I took office. And in total, we have approved debt cancellation for nearly 4.6 million Americans through various actions.

    Today’s announcement builds on all we’ve done to fix broken student loan programs and bring higher education more in reach. That includes: providing the largest increases to the maximum Pell Grant in over a decade, fixing Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Income Driven Repayment so borrowers get the relief they are entitled to under the law, launching the SAVE Plan – the most affordable repayment plan ever, and pursuing new plans that would cancel student debt for more than 30 million Americans when combined with everything we’ve done so far.

    We will never stop fighting to deliver relief to borrowers, hold bad actors accountable, and bring the promise of college to more Americans.

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/05/01/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-6-1-billion-in-student-debt-cancellation-for-317000-borrowers-who-attended-the-art-institutes/

    👏🏻👏🏻  👏🏻👏🏻  👏🏻👏🏻

  98. 98.

    jonas

    @Jackie: Great news. I know someone who took on about $100k in debt to attend one of those Art Institute outfits and got absolutely nothing for it. He was a talented artist, but got shit for training and career placement and the debt ruined his life

    ETA, also why we are scrimping and saving to let our middle child, who is studying art at a state school, graduate w/o debt.

  100. 100.

    Flanders Other Neighbor

    Weed sleep gummies are the real deal for people who need the assist.  And don’t we really prefer legit and safe sources for recreational users who are beneficial members of society?  I suspect banking will follow later without much fanfare as people care less about weed being a “gateway drug” and bankers scramble for more customers.

  101. 101.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JWR: I just hope the Dems got something big out of him in exchange for their support.

    I read that what they got out of him was his standing by his word. If he said he was going to do something, he did it.

  102. 102.

    JML

    The move to take cannabis out of the same schedule as things like heroin is both good policy and smart politics. the “medical benefits” bit is mostly a sop, but it makes it much easier to decriminalize possession and dump it as the excuse to toss people (mostly people of color) into or back into prison for weed.

    (I don’t disagree with Baud, either: this will also make it easier to regulate public use. while generally the smell doesn’t bother me much, it can get bad and I know a lot of people that hate it at least as much as I hate the stench of cigarettes.)

    Screaming about reefer madness only works with a portion of old right-wing republicans who are already a lost cause. no one else cares any longer, and younger voters despise our idiotic marijuana laws…even if they don’t use it themselves.

    Amazing how much good can come from having competent people running government.

  104. 104.

    Old School

    @Baud:

    I always know when it’s International Women’s Day because the misogynists on Reddit all come out to complain that there’s no International Men’s Day.

    They always complain about it, but International Men’s Day does exist.  It’s November 19th.

  105. 105.

    rikyrah

    The 6 week abortion ban

    along with the Abortion Amendment to the Florida Constitution on the ballot.

     

    helll  phucking yeah, the Dems need to fight in Florida. I wouldn’t have said this before. I had written Florida off too.

    Plus, we gotta fight to get rid of Voldemort.

  107. 107.

    rikyrah

    @Melancholy Jaques:

    I am more optimistic about Biden/Harris re-election than most of my associates. Nevertheless, I refuse to get my hopes up about Florida.

    I’m hoping that Joe Biden gets close enough to bring the Democratic Senatorial candidate over the line.

  111. 111.

    wjca

    @Baud: I hope we can get marijuana legalized everywhere soon so we can start focusing on implementing laws against smoking it in public.  It’s annoying.

    This.  Smoke is smoke.

  112. 112.

    RedDirtGirl

    Does anyone know what the Xeet posted above is referring to when it says that

    “I would assume his campaign team is not too happy he’s just blurt that out.

    People paying attention likely figured it out but now he’s given everybody an easily digestible sound bite”.

    It seems to be talking about Trump and Biden and Florida, but it’s missing a lot of context…

  113. 113.

    coin operated

    @Baud:

    I hope we can get marijuana legalized everywhere soon so we can start focusing on implementing laws against smoking it in public.  It’s annoying.

    I think that’s a fair trade…

  114. 114.

    rikyrah

    This entire series of tweets was a nightmare to read:

    Hannah Dreier (@hannahdreier) posted at 10:29 AM on Tue, Apr 30, 2024:
    Use our migrant child labor data!

    More children are crossing the border on their own than ever before, and thousands are ending up doing dangerous, illegal jobs.

    We sued the government for a huge trove of data about these kids, and shared it all here: https://t.co/lpse7uYK4G https://t.co/rlGAQNVzyY

  115. 115.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @JML:

    …the “medical benefits” bit is mostly a sop

    That’s not true. Thankfully with rescheduling we’ll get even more evidence of this through increased freedom for cannabis research.

    @Flanders Other Neighbor:

    …as bankers scramble for more customers

    But this isn’t about banks choosing their customers, it’s about federal law that prohibits these institutions from doing business with the cannabis industry. Congress needs to change the law. It’s not something that will be directly affected by this rescheduling action.

  118. 118.

    rikyrah

    @rikyrah:

    Hannah Dreier (@hannahdreier) posted at 0:13 PM on Tue, Apr 30, 2024:
    A Times-Picayune reporter noticed a striking concentration of migrant children being sent to parts of Louisiana with construction booms.

     

     

    James Finn (@rjamesfinn) posted at 9:23 AM on Thu, Dec 28, 2023:
    Four Louisiana parishes — Cameron, St. Martin, East Baton Rouge and Jefferson — are among the U.S. counties with the highest rates of migrant children who often end up working jobs meant for adults, @hannahdreier reports:
    https://t.co/6ECh9UgcNF
    (https://x.com/rjamesfinn/status/1740392917112643652?t=dAWYWOf-nDl437HWorOtrg&s=03)

  120. 120.

    Old School

    @RedDirtGirl:

    Does anyone know what the Xeet posted above is referring to when it says that

    “I would assume his campaign team is not too happy he’s just blurt that out.

    People paying attention likely figured it out but now he’s given everybody an easily digestible sound bite”.

    It seems to be talking about Trump and Biden and Florida, but it’s missing a lot of context…

    It’s referencing this:

    Trump: I'm going to go into the icebox now and sit for about eight hours or nine hours. I would much rather be in Georgia and Florida. I much rather be in states that are in play pic.twitter.com/oE63o5qp1U— Acyn (@Acyn) April 30, 2024

  122. 122.

    coin operated

    @JML:

    the “medical benefits” bit is mostly a sop

    Spend some time around patients undergoing chemo…just the munchie effect cannabis provides is enough to merit further study.

  124. 124.

    wjca

    @CaseyL:  i.e., that Blankenship is such a huge threat to the Deep State that he’s targeted for an assassination that will look like suicide.  (Blankenship, along with all his other lovely qualities, is a conspiracy theory nutball.)

    Perhaps he will try to lend credibility to this by actually committing suicide.  Crazies have done nuttier things.,..

  125. 125.

    brantl

    Cannabis is classified along with drugs like heroin and LSD.

     

    LSD shouldn’t be on that list, either.

  126. 126.

    Uncle Cosmo

    You contest FL for the same reason a football offense throws the occasional deep pass: If it works, it’s brilliant, but even if it doesn’t it serves notice that the opponent must choose between defending the entire field (opening up opportunities for shorter completions that move the chains) and letting the back end go (risking the chance that the next deep shot will work).

    Hey, if FL Dems have the foot soldiers available, I say make the Thugs play defense – it’s not like many of those troops are available to be sent elsewhere, and anyway they’ll do better work in places with people they know (and help to build the local party however things turn out).

  127. 127.

    Geminid

    @Uncle Cosmo: The Biden campaign is pressing Republicans even harder in North Carolina. They couldn’t put many resouces at all into the state last time, but this year Biden’s in it to win it.

  131. 131.

    zhena gogolia

    @Manyakitty: Thanks. I can never quit for long. I’m just worn down by the academic year and I go to BJ to get away from what I have to face all day, not rehash it.

  133. 133.

    Soprano2

    @brantl: I probably should have found a different word or qualified it by saying “seemingly contradictory statements”.

  134. 134.

    Manyakitty

    @zhena gogolia: this week feels extra brutal, too. Oof. I’m with you about avoiding certain discussions. Might need to get a little promiscuous with the pie filter.

  141. 141.

    Kayla Rudbek

    1. @Baud: I totally agree. I can’t stand the smell of it. Legalize the edibles, add FDA labeling requirements and allergen labels, turn the analytical chemists loose so we can have accurate tests for DWI, and make it uncool to smoke it in public where it can get into other people’s lungs.

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