Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

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

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

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

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

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

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

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

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

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

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

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

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

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Respite Open Thread: While We Wait

Respite Open Thread: While We Wait

by | 159 Comments

This post is in: ,

I’m still around, but getting lots of writing done, so stepping away has been good for that process. Thanks to folks for the emails with climate and kindness stuff, I do appreciate it! I’m really missing Steeplejack’s emails filled with kindness topics these days.

I spent the morning listening to one of my favorite new comedians, Josh Johnson. He never fails to make my day better. This is from his recent Denver appearance. I queued it up to the bits on Biden and Harris, but the entire set is a riot.

I’m on my second batch of Palisade peaches and I’m in heaven. They really are the best. But honestly, any fresh peaches can’t be beaten (I say this so the blogfather doesn’t call me to argue about whose peaches are best, LOL)

Respite Open Thread: While We Wait

The critters are all doing fine, I do post weekly pictures (here) every Friday if you miss them (recipes, too). Reggie is growing like a weed and eats his weight in food every day (I don’t think that’s an exaggeration).

Respite Open Thread: While We Wait 1

I do have two climate posts stockpiled that I’ll post on a weekend when we are not awaiting fun news from VP Harris – I’m ridiculously excited to have her officially nominated on my birthday. I don’t know if she’ll wait for the VP pick then, as well, but that would be fun, too.

We’re on fire here – three so far – so no gardening and only quick walks for the dogs. Too smoky for anything else but closing up the house and turning on the air purifiers.

This is an open thread, I’m crawling back under my rock to write, so try and play nice.

 

Reader Interactions

159Comments

  3. 3.

    cope

    What a coincidence, tomorrow morning my wife and I will be going to the Palisade Farmer’s Market where we will meet up with one of my sisters and her hubby, buy some good stuff (the cherries here have been wonderful as well) and then have lunch somewhere.  It is a delicious time of year.  Also, here at the house, I will have way more Fresno peppers than I know what to do with.  I anticipate making lots of sambal olek and pickled Fresnos and am looking around for some other ways to showcase their shiny red goodness

    ETA:  I just caught the birthday thing, so, happy natal day.

  4. 4.

    Anoniminous

    Just for FYI purposes …

    Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by a margin of 0.72% with a low black voter turnout.   Biden won the state in 2020 by a 1.17% margin with an almost unheard of 70.93% of voting-age Pennsylvanians voting without Shapiro on the ticket and with a high black turnout.  Harris should maximize black turnout, the key demographic that give Biden his win.

    I don’t give a rat’s ass who Harris picks for her running mate.  I figure she knows more-better than I.

  5. 5.

    eclare

    Happy belated birthday!  And thank you for the update on the ducks.  Stay safe from the fires, it looks scary from where I sit.

  6. 6.

    Doug R

    Peaches? Sigh.

    We had unseasonably warm weather this winter in the Okanagan so the fruit blossoms came out early and a cold snap damaged the fruit crop. Cherries were cut by at least 25% and a lot of farmers had their peach crop wiped out.

  9. 9.

    TaMara

    “I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States,” said Harris, who joined the virtual event. “I will officially accept your nomination next week, once the virtual voting period is closed.”

    @eclare:

    @Another Scott:

    I guess I should clarify –  Kamala gets the official nomination (via the virtual vote) next week.

    But thanks for the B-day wishes!

  10. 10.

    3Sice

    Emma Hayes is running her starting eleven into the ground. Fortunately one of them is Trinity Rodman.

  11. 11.

    Scout211

    Thank you for the respite thread,TaMara! Much needed and much appreciated.

    I’m on my second batch of Palisade peaches and I’m in heaven. They really are the best. But honestly, any fresh peaches can’t be beaten (I say this so the blogfather doesn’t call me to argue about whose peaches are best, LOL)

    Here in NorCal, I’m partial to the O’Henry peaches, probably because we used to have orchard of them nearby where we bought directly from the grower and we also have two O’Henry peach trees planted on our property.

    I’ve never tried a Palisade peach, but I will look for them around here to find them because I would love to try them.

  12. 12.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Do they have donut peaches where you live? These are flat peaches in the form of a donut. Maybe they’re a local southeast PA thing, because when I see them in the market, they tend to be from local farms.

    They are absolutely delicious. But frankly I love all “stone fruit”: plums, peaches, nectarines, apricots. When they’re in season, I go nuts.

    I don’t know from “Palisade”. With peaches, we have “white” or we have “yellow”, and I love them both. And the aforementioned “donut” of course.

  13. 13.

    CaseyL

    Happy Birthday!

    Thanks for sharing the Josh Johnson video.  I like his somewhat dry delivery.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I’m really missing Steeplejack’s emails filled with kindness topics these days.

    Did I miss something?

  15. 15.

    Scout211

    We’re on fire here – three so far – so no gardening and only quick walks for the dogs. Too smoky for anything else but closing up the house and turning on the air purifiers.

    Same here.  July was full of notifications on my phone from the Watch Duty app of spot fire after spot fire near me.  I think I counted 9 or 10 of them. For some of those fires I could see the smoke billowing in the sky from my home they were so close.  But lucky for us, they throw all resources on the spot fires now, even aircraft immediately and most have been contained before they reached 10 acres.  It’s scary.  The Park fire  north of Chico is still the largest and most destructive right now.

  16. 16.

    Another Scott

    @TaMara: Whoops.  My reading comprehension is a bit rusty today. I blame lack of sufficient caffeine – yeah, that’s it.

    A be-erlied happy birthday to you!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  17. 17.

    Hungry Joe

    Postcards to Swing States update:

    Yesterday — 16

    Running total: 182

    And, for the record, OUR peaches are the knee-buckling best. They’re coming in as fast as we can freeze, dry, devour, and give them away. The rats and the birds are making a dent in them, but I’m fighting back with traps (three rats so far) and a scary fake owl.

    A lot of rats live in the thick mass of dead fronds that hang from palm trees. Some years ago, for a few weeks, we hosted a high-school exchange student from Austria, and I tried to explain this to her. She’d already figured out that I like to say goofy things, so she just shook her head and said, “Rats in trees. Okay.” After that she didn’t believe a word I said about anything.

  22. 22.

    KatKapCC

    That was hilarious, TaMara, thank you for posting it! The CRT bit at the end made me howl :D

  29. 29.

    Kelly

    Oregon has a lot of fires. They’re far enough away that the smoke has been OK, coloring the light but not much stink. Cyanobacteria in Detroit Reservoir has resulted in a stay out of the North Santiam River toxin warning. The North Santiam is our standard kayaking and rafting run so that’s a big loss. Fortunately the Little North Santiam, our swimming river is unaffected.

  32. 32.

    KatKapCC

    @rikyrah: This needs to be hammered home every day. Call him scared, call him a wimp, call him a baby, ask him what he’s so afraid of. Bullies hate being called chickens, and the angrier he gets, the more likely he’s gonna get even worse than “she turned Black one day”.

  33. 33.

    CaseyL

    In wild animal news, I ran out of nuts for the squirrels, so they are again coming into the house demanding I share my pistachios. Nope, I will not.*  I had to shut the door to the deck.

    *I leave the door to the deck open in summer, so my cat can come and go as he wishes.  If I go out, and don’t remember to put the pistachios away, I return home to an emptied bag and pistachio shells all over the living room rug.

  35. 35.

    Bupalos

    “In a weird way, it did feel for a second like they actually listened. Because we had been saying like ‘guys, I don’t feel great…’ and then something happened. That almost never happens. This is America.”

    I think this is underrated as an aspect of the energy that’s emerging with Kamala. I think a huge number of people feel this. Whether you were down with the decision or not, the Democratic Party – very much including Joe Biden – roused itself and did a really big, unprecedented thing that’s almost unthinkable in the normal flow of politics. It belonged in the category of “that can’t happen” until it did, and I think it gives a feeling of politics maybe not being as immovable and untouchable and bound by history or fate as we think, which is an incredibly important thing to affirm in an age of post-truth authoritarianism.

    Which I guess I can see the scary side of that too, but to me it’s a very hopeful thing in itself. It’s why I get tetchy when it is presented as a kind of anti-democratic conspiracy that happened via levers being pulled by villains in the shadows, a conspiracy that we just somehow got very lucky with. To me it happened by democratic will. The party was faced with an election it really really cared about, and took unprecedented (and to some extent personally risky) action to exert itself and effect that outcome. It was a complicated version of democracy, but a really healthy sign.

  36. 36.

    Eunicecycle

    @rikyrah: that’s what Tim Ryan did running against JD Vance. He ran away from the Democratic party and depressed the vote is the big cities, particularly Cleveland. Vance ran like 20 points behind DeWine so was beatable.

  38. 38.

    rikyrah

    @Josie:

    Like I said…

     

    Ask Beasley and Mandela Barnes about that strategy.

     

    Ask Tim Ryan why he underperformed with the base compared to the Congressional candidates.

    None of these folks are in the Senate.

     

    Who does he think is going to vote for him😒

  39. 39.

    Fake Irishman

    @Josie: Texas is probably about 4-5 points right of NC and a bit more of WI.  I think if Barnes had gotten a million more bucks in September to blunt the onslaught of ads, he might have won.

  40. 40.

    Bupalos

    @Eunicecycle: I’m slightly worried Sherrod is repeating the mistake. It’s not quite as ham-fisted as Ryan though. Who had ads that sounded like “it doesn’t matter who you elect, you’ll still get Trump policy…so elect me.”

  41. 41.

    Josie

    @Eunicecycle: This is not the same. The people who will vote against Ted Cruz will vote for a potted palm. He is really despised. It’s possible some Republicans would vote against him if Allred is centrist enough.

  42. 42.

    Ken

    @Leto: Clark Kent/Stephen Nedoroscik being almost blind while doing pommel horse… amaze-balls

    I saw a meme, “gathering the new Olympics superhero team”:

    Stephen Nedoroscik as “nerdy superboy”
    Kim Ye-ji as “supergeared widowmaker”
    Yusuf Dikec as “superbored assassin”
    Gabriel Medina as “flying supersurfer”
    Giorgia Villa as “lady Parmesan”

    The meme didn’t have Simone Biles, which was disappointing, but gives us a chance to propose a suitable character name.

  43. 43.

    mrmoshpotato

    These days I cannot express how much I enjoy the respite posts.  Thank you so much.

    It sucks that the western states are burning so much (Canada too from the  YouTube I watch).

    Stay safe, and thanks again.

  44. 44.

    KatKapCC

    ROFL this woman is inane:

    .@KamalaHarris, Donald may be afraid of you, but I’m not. I have plenty of things to say – face to face. All you have to do is say when and where. I’ll be there ready to debate. https://t.co/So0Qc49Vtr
    — Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) August 1, 2024

    Harris might as well agree to debate Ryan Seacrest or Katy Perry or the manager of the nearest Home Depot. All would be as equally pointless as debating Jill Stein.

    Jill Stein is like a groundhog that comes out once every four years to announce six more weeks of grifting. https://t.co/8PLJ0GgBLU
    — Nick Jack Pappas (@Pappiness) August 2, 2024

  45. 45.

    Leto

    @rikyrah: Have you seen the Turkish women’s competitor? She ain’t messin’ around! ;)

    Regarding Allred: I know Biden would say if that’s what you gotta do to win, just do it. Maybe his internal polling says he has to do it, but damned if this doesn’t seem tone deaf in the moment. I get it, it’s TX, but fucking tap into the momentum mah dude.

  46. 46.

    trollhattan

    July? This one was a rat bastard I never want to revisit.

    https://x.com/NWSSacramento/status/1819086165074706737/photo/1

    Not cooling overnight becomes a self-feeding beast of continual heat and ever-higher daytime maximums. IDK how it is we’ve not been choked by smoke from the Park Fire, not far from us to the north, but winds have not flipped so it gets trapped at the Valley’s north end and pushes over the mountains into Nevada and beyond. Whee!

    Sacramento recorded its warmest July ever last month, the weather service said. July’s climate data will be finalized later in August after it has undergone a validation process by the National Centers for Environmental Information, the agency said.

    Sacramento Executive Airport recorded an average temperature of 81 degrees in July, surpassing its normal average temperature for the month by more than 5 degrees. That’s not the only heat record the capital city busted recently. From June 23 to July 12, Sacramento experienced a 20-day streak of hot weather with an average temperature of 103.8 degrees, according to the weather service.

    The city previously sweated through a 20-day heat wave with an average of 102.5 degrees in 1984. Temperatures in downtown Sacramento broke daily heat records on July 12 and 13. In a phone interview with The Sacramento Bee on Friday morning, National Weather Service meteorologist Bill Rasch said a “big dome of high pressure” resulted in record temperatures across California.

    https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article290693084.html#storylink=cpy

    No matter what else, still better than Texas.

  51. 51.

    Eunicecycle

    @Bupalos: where I live in NE Ohio the PACs are running lots of ads that are pro Sherrod from labor, manufacturing, and anti Big Pharma. I think it was Kay that seemed to think Sherrod is polling fine and that Kamala may actually help him. I will sort of flip what you said: if Tim had run Sherrod’s campaign he might have won!

  52. 52.

    eclare

    @rikyrah:

    And Tim Ryan.  Did he do any oppo research on Vance, like finding the childless cat lady quote?  Or that he had relations with his couch?

  53. 53.

    Eunicecycle

    @Josie: I don’t know much about TX so I am sure you’re right. It seems more polarized than Ohio. And that’s saying something!

  54. 54.

    Bupalos

    @Eunicecycle: It’s definitely better, but there are a couple in pretty heavy rotation on Guardians games that are about Sherrod protecting us from immigrants,  and which use the phrase “worked with President Trump to…”

    But it’s definitely not the one-note that Ryan ran with.

  56. 56.

    Eunicecycle

    @Bupalos: oh yeah I’ve seen that one. I have my remote ready to mute it as soon as it comes on! I’ve seen almost no pro-Moreno ads though.

  57. 57.

    Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride

    @trollhattan: I moved from Berkeley to Sacramento 35 years ago in early September.  It was a nice 75-degree afternoon when I left.  When I arrived here, after dark, it was 105.  That taught me to expect the worst.  But it’s absolutely true that things have heated up here.  It used to be there were a few triple-digit days every summer.  Now there are a few every week.

  58. 58.

    Mike E

    @3Sice: she really had no choice with Coffey sitting on yellow cards, plus every other team left playing are facing the same limitations… Hayes needs each game to hone the main squad, to make connections in order to go deeper in the tourney.

    ETA 10 extra minutes for Spain to come back against Colombia, jeez

  59. 59.

    Percysowner

     

    @eclare: Yeah, Tim Ryan really dropped the ball with looking into Vance’s background. I will say, you can’t blame him for the couch thing, since it wasn’t real and was a meme that just caught on. It was lightening in a bottle and in the Senate race in Ohio there was no bottle.

  62. 62.

    rk

    How is it that it’s been unilaterally decided that Trump will debate Harris in Fox on 4th September and the media is all for it? Has Trump ever heard of the word consent? Has the media ever heard of it?

    He arranges it and she’s supposed to show up? I swear that one of these days smoke is literally going to come out of my ears with the heat of anger!

  63. 63.

    Jackie

    @rikyrah: Per Kamala:

    It’s interesting how “any time, any place” becomes “one specific time, one specific safe space.”

    I’ll be there on September 10th, like he agreed to. I hope to see him there.

    ABC has guaranteed that Sept 10th slot for the debate will remain available  – even if 🍊🐓💩 refuses to show up!😂

    eta: TCFG’s newest excuse is he’s in litigation with ABC and Stepanapolis (sp).

  65. 65.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Leto: I don’t live in a red state and I think I grok the calculation but it seems to have not worked in many elections.

    Maybe appearing to align with a bunch a people who will never vote for you turns off those who might.

    Reminds me of 2010 when many turn-tailed on Obama. Party in power usually loses in mid-terms but that shellacking was the worst in decades.

  66. 66.

    Mike E

    @Anyway: I see Canada beating Germany and France over Brazil but it’s anybody’s podium in this format… Canada got dinged for dronegate but they’re defending gold medal champs. Spain just tied Colombia in stoppage time and will probably advance now, they’re always dangerous.

  68. 68.

    Leto

    @TBone: abso-fucking-lutely keep calling him a scared chickenshit. Because he is. Keep his shriveled dick pressed to the hot plate.

  70. 70.

    eclare

    @Percysowner:

    The couch story was in the original hardback version of his book.  It was removed from the paperback versions. The AP ran an article saying it wasn’t true but then retracted it.  If you read the passage it reads as true.

  71. 71.

    StringOnAStick

    @Scout211: Palisade is a location, the town of Palisade, next to Grand Jct, CO, so she’s referring to peaches from there.  Palisade is the location where most Colorado peaches are grown, plus lots of wine grapes now too.  My grandparents made their living raising Sungold peaches on a farm near what is now the Grand Junction airport, but all the fruit growing in that part of valley has pretty much been replaced by housing.  The highest concentration of peach orchards is now on the east end of the Grand Valley, associated with the town of Palisade.

  73. 73.

    Geminid

    @rikyrah: Yusuf Dikeç! The guy looked like he was just plinking cans on a Saurday afternoon.

    Dikeç came in 13th in the individual event, but he says he’ll be going for gold in LA four years from now.

  75. 75.

    Salty Sam

    @trollhattan:  Not cooling overnight becomes a self-feeding beast of continual heat and ever-higher daytime maximums… No matter what else, still better than Texas.

    It’s been a really weird summer here in Texas-  we are usually scorching from June to September.  Last year was unbearable, and I say that as a lifelong resident who is usually not bothered by the extreme heat.  The lack of overnight cooling is a terrible thing- getting up at 5 am to go swimming, and walking out into 95F temps and 95% humidity, and knowing that we were gonna hit over 115F heat advisory made me start making plans to relocate.

    This year has been relatively cool-  today will be only the fourth or fifth day we hit triple digits, and that’s only brushing right up against the 100 degree mark.  July had cold (well, cool) fronts and rain that kept temps in the 80’s and lower 90’s.  Believe me when I say that I was empathizing with those of y’all suffering under those heat domes for the past few months.

    But our regular summer pattern is restoring itself in August.  We’ll see how it goes.  Climate change is weird.

  82. 82.

    SatanicPanic

    I don’t think this vp discussion is super interesting tbh.

    They should choose Tim Kaine just for fun. They’re all white dudes anyway it’s not like people will notice the difference

  83. 83.

    trollhattan

    @Salty Sam: Honestly, it’s a relief to know somebody somewhere is catching a break. I’d like to think of weather as zero sum, over time and among different places, but we all read those up-sloping graphs and wonder how it all plays out.

  85. 85.

    StringOnAStick

    @Scout211: Wow, I loved seeing that harvest schedule, and for an organic operation!  I no longer live in CO so I’m getting OR peaches now, but I love seeing more organic operations in the Grand Valley.

  86. 86.

    Gravie

    Are those Palisade, Colorado peaches? My Dad was a produce broker and spent 3 months every year working in Palisade for Mountain Lion Fruit. Those peaches were like a juicy bite of summer. One year, Mr. Gravie and I were at home in Madison, Wisconsin and looked out the front door to see an 18-wheeler pulling up to the curb. The driver got out and handed us a flat of Mountain Lion peaches, which my Dad had arranged for him to deliver as he made his way East. We (and our friends) feasted for a month.

  87. 87.

    JoyceH

    The NYT has corrected its headline, now says that Trump backs out of previously agreed debate and proposes debate on Fox. But guys, the “debate on Fox” misses the real headline – he wants the debate, with Fox moderators, to be held “in an arena with an audience”. He thinks Harris should debate him at an effing Trump rally!

  88. 88.

    Jackie

    Plouffe already working hard for Kamala!👍🏻

    “Donald Trump is cowardly backing out of the debate he agreed to. One just like the debate he did in June. Now, he seems only comfortable in a cocoon, asking his happy place Fox to host a Trump rally and call it a debate. Maybe he can only handle debating someone his own age.”

    — Harris campaign adviser David Plouffe, on X.

  89. 89.

    Salty Sam

    @trollhattan: Honestly, it’s a relief to know somebody somewhere is catching a break.

    It’s been pleasant for a short while, but only a respite- the regular pattern is re-establishing, and it’ll be hotter than hell* until late September.

    * story goes that after the Civil War, Union General Sherman was sent to Texas (Galveston) to supervise the aftermath of the war.  At some point, a reporter asked him his opinion of Texas.

    ”Well son, if I was fortunate enough to own Hell *and* Texas, I’d live in Hell and rent out Texas.”

     

    @Martin: And a finger on the monkey’s begins to curl.

    HA HA HA!

  92. 92.

    JoyceH

    Word from the Carter family is that Jimmy is trying to hang on long enough to vote for Kamala.

  93. 93.

    Belafon

    About the choice for VP:

    I have my preferred VP list order. I had my preferred candidate, but he’s no longer running, so I’ll trust the judgement of my first choice for President in 2020 and I will once again be pissed if ANYONE does anything other than support her choice with the enthusiasm that was demanded of me when Biden announced he was not running again.

  95. 95.

    BR

    I’ve come to realize a lot of divisions in politics are not between left and right but pragmatic and dogmatic. A lot of folks across the political spectrum believe that a candidate who represents something like 150 million people should somehow exactly match their personal views. I guess I never have. I mean I’ve long supported things that are neither left nor right but just not even in the political debate, such as getting rid of income tax entirely and replacing it with steep carbon and other resource taxes (with a dividend) and a steep graduated wealth tax. Almost nobody but a few ecological economists talk about such things.

  97. 97.

    TBone

    My wildlife encounter today consisted of moving a Woodland Box Turtle out of my driveway and into the green space of our adjoining yards pointed toward the meadow (natural, rough area adjacent to golf course).

    Fly, little guy, be free!

  99. 99.

    VFX Lurker

    @Hungry Joe:

    Postcards to Swing States update:

    Yesterday — 16

    Running total: 182

    You rock!

    I will be joining you soon. I volunteered to write 200 postcards (the minimum) for Postcards to Swing States for CA-27. I’ll keep writing Postcards to Voters, too.

  103. 103.

    JoyceH

    @Jackie: Georgia does have early voting but I think the rule is that if a person votes early but then dies before Election Day, the vote doesn’t get counted.

  108. 108.

    wjca

    @BR: getting rid of income tax entirely

    You definitely do not want to do that!  Just for openers, it provides an infrastructure, already in place and running, with which you can implement a guaranteed minimum basic income.  (I’m messing up the name, but you know what I mean.)  Why waste time, energy, and resources reinventing the wheel?

    Besides, why not tax incomes above, say, $5 million a year?  The only reason anybody needs that kind of income is to boast to their friends (if any).  They can still do that, even if it is taxed away.

  109. 109.

    Geminid

    @Salty Sam: That was General Phil Sheridan who made the famous remark about Texas and Hell. Sheridan was sent to Texas after the war to command forces that might have intervened in the fight between Emperor Maximillian and opposition forces. Then he was put in charge of the Fifth Military District that included Texas and Louisiana.

  110. 110.

    trollhattan

    If Nate Silver says it, am I to automatically reject it?

    August 3, 2024 at 1:06 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard

    Nate Silver: “Well, Shapiro is the extremely popular governor of what is by far the most important swing state. He’s highly charismatic and he’s qualified. He seems to want the job. This is about as obvious as things get in politics. You need a good reason to not pick Shaprio — and as I’ll cover here, the arguments against Shapiro are pretty bad.”

    “Heck, you could argue that Shaprio was the best pick even in the absence of the Pennsylvania factor. Say he was the extremely popular governor and two-term former attorney general of New Jersey instead — not deep blue, exactly, but also not a swing state. He still laps the rest of the white dudes Harris is considering in telegenic political talent, he’s in prime VP age (51) and he has executive experience. He’d certainly be on Harris’s short list and he might be #1.”

  111. 111.

    captnkurt

    Just had a random flashback, what was that far-right barely-a-website that had fundraisers like every month to “upgrade the servers” even though it always looked like it was designed by a first-year day HTML student? Is that thing even around anymore and is it still worthy of mockery?

  112. 112.

    trollhattan

    This is Adam’s beat and he may have something more definitive, but Ukraine might have taken out another Roosha sub.

    Ukraine’s military says it attacked and destroyed a Russian submarine while it was anchored at a port in the occupied Crimean peninsula.
    The Rostov-on-Don, a kilo-class attack submarine launched in 2014, sank after it was struck in a missile attack on the port city of Sevastopol on Friday, Ukraine’s general staff said in a statement.
    It was reportedly one of four submarines operated by Russia’s Black Sea fleet capable of launching Kalibr cruise missiles. The Russian defence ministry has not commented.
    Officials in Kyiv said the attack also destroyed four S-400 air defence systems protecting the peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

    Intelligence officials in the UK noted last September that the Rostov-on-Don “likely suffered catastrophic damage” in a missile strike while undergoing maintenance at a Sevastopol shipyard.
    Ukraine’s military said Russia subsequently repaired the vessel and it was recently testing its capabilities near Sevastopol. The vessel was worth $300m (£233m), they added.
    “The destruction of Rostov-on-Don once again proves that there is no safe place for the Russian fleet in the Ukrainian territorial waters of the Black Sea,” the general staff in Kyiv said in a statement on Saturday.
    It marks the latest attack on Russian naval forces in Sevastopol in recent months. In March alone, Ukraine said it hit two landing ships and a patrol vessel in the port city.
    Since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 it has suffered several major naval setbacks. Ukraine says it has seriously damaged or sunk at least 15 warships, including the Black Sea fleet’s flagship, the Moskva.
    Last week Ukraine’s military said Moscow had been forced to withdraw all of its naval assets from the Sea of Azov – a body of water connected to the Black Sea – due to repeated strikes on its vessels.
    BBC

  114. 114.

    BR

    @wjca: ​
    Oh, I’m under no illusion that it’s easy to switch to a resource/pollution tax from income tax (and that’s sort of my point — I know that my personal policy preference is not going to be held by any politician, so I vote pragmatically).

    The argument for a resource/pollution tax is that of Pigouvian taxation — we want taxes to penalize things we do not want in society. Income from labor isn’t something we should want to penalize. On the other hand the consumption of natural resources and the pollution of our shared air and water and land is something we want to penalize and minimize, so we can tax it to incentivize companies to choose cleaner alternatives (and if they do so, they are financially rewarded in the market). Finally a wealth tax, say starting at $5 million and going up steeply from there, is needed to penalize income inequality, which again is something we want to prevent. Such a wealth tax would bring the US’s income inequality into line with much of Scandinavia.

  120. 120.

    BR

    Mel Brooks was once asked how he, as a Jewish man, was able to make so many silly jokes about Nazis. He said that evil people enjoy being portrayed as villains, but they detest being made out to look like fools.

    https://bsky.app/profile/stevesilberman.bsky.social/post/3kythyb4h322l

    I think this is our super power in this election. Mockery. Let nothing land, get defensive about nothing, but respond with “why are you being weird?” and variants.

  122. 122.

    bbleh

    Re “debate”: WaPo and CNN have adjusted heds a couple times that I’ve seen, each time edging further away from bothsides and more toward “Trump chickening out.”  So maybe a few green shoots?

    Re VP: I do not care a fraction of a smidgen of an iota of a tiny little sliver of a bit what Nate Silver or (hahaha) Mark Penn or any of the other Professional Politics Knowers have to say about the VP pick.  Again the MSM story seems to be “she’s got about 6 on her list and will narrow it further this weekend,” and the vibe among Dem junkies seems to be “you go girl.”  The one comment I saw that made sense was that she’s focusing on “electability and balance.”  Plus she’s got Obama’s AND Biden’s brain trust along with her own.  They decide, I support.  Fair and balanced.

  124. 124.

    SatanicPanic

    @BR: yes. I’d lean into the idea that Trump is a gross old man trying to get a younger woman’s attention and throwing a hissy fit because he got rejected. Cause all his petty insults kinda look that way.

  125. 125.

    Martin

    @BR: Right, but extreme wealth inequality is also something we shouldn’t want in society because it ultimately destroys democracy. People with money will simply buy legislators and judges, which, you know…

    Pigouvian taxation doesn’t tax things that are harmful with intent of penalizing and minimizing it, not exactly. It seeks to remove externalities. It takes the shared costs that we pay, for say, addressing CO2 pollution and stuffs that cost back into the thing you buy which produces the pollution. Californias LCFS is as direct an example of this as I can think of. It’s not intended to be a model of social balance, but a tool to allow market economics to itself be a little more balanced. If gas prices better reflected the economic harm to society, people might buy more fuel efficient cars or switch to EVs sooner.

    But how do you handle other externalities. Single families houses have an externality of excessive infrastructure costs to allow for that lower density. Do we tax them individually on the sort of pro-rated share of infrastructure needed to service the house? Can we even calculate that? How do we calculate the per-homeowner external cost of failing to provide adequate protection against wildfires when a fire sweeps through a suburban area like the Tubbs fire did? Every single homeowner there failed their neighbors because every exterior wooden structure like a patio cover became an externality. Failure to install ember screens became an externality. How do you tax the city’s own zoning policy which has an externality of homelessness when it fails to allow for construction of enough housing?

    It’s a useful tool for market goods where the social cost of the good is ignored. I’ve suggested that the aggregate cost of gun violence in the US should be totaled up ($560B last year) and Americans buy about 15 billion bullets each year, so there should be a tax of $560B/15B = $37 per bullet levied on ammunition, recalculated annually. That would certainly make it hard to ignore the social cost of that good. But it doesn’t really work as a broader social tax policy.

    One specific place this becomes apparent is what is the external cost of income inequality? What is the cost of having a billionaire single-handedly funding political candidates and buying judges? Shouldn’t that be taxed as well? Isn’t that largely a tax on income, or at least wealth?

    We tax labor because prior to about 1970, GDP and labor were tightly coupled. It worked as a simple mechanism to pay for the full range of social costs. The rise of the investment class in the 70s and then automation which supercharged that broke the old relationship, and we haven’t adapted to that change. The EU kind of did with their focus on value-add, which at least captures the impact of automation, but that’s still passed on to consumers and not to investors. At some point we need to fundamentally rethink this, but that is absolutely a 3rd rail. It would be nice if national Democrats were a bit more aggressive on this, though. It’s a problem that the GOP is offering ideas toward. Terrible ideas, but at least it’s something. Democrats really aren’t. They’re too afraid to change the status quo apart from shifting the marginal rate sliders. Warren came in with a new idea and got pretty roundly shouted down over it.

  127. 127.

    SatanicPanic

    @bbleh: Just checked WaPo – “Trump proclaims new debate that Harris never agreed to”. I kinda like this because it makes Trump sounds nuts. Like -look at the zany things he’s saying.

  128. 128.

    Salty Sam

    @BR: I think this is our super power in this election. Mockery.

    If you’ll recall, when Biden debated Paul Ryan in the 2012 VP debate, he mostly just laughed in Ryan’s face.  Ryan would try to tout a Romney policy proposal, and a Diamond Joe would just guffaw.

    Extremely effective- he just destroyed Ryan in that debate.

    I wish he’d remembered that on June 27…

  129. 129.

    BR

    @Martin:

    Right, but extreme wealth inequality is also something we shouldn’t want in society because it ultimately destroys democracy. People with money will simply buy legislators and judges, which, you know…

    That’s why I wrote in that comment above that a wealth tax is *also* required in addition to resource/pollution taxes. I think maybe $5 million is a good starting point for a wealth tax, like I wrote, because there are folks who bought their house 50 years ago and now it’s worth $3 million but they live on Social Security.

    As for other externalities, like the fire risk example you give, those aren’t taxed properly under our current system either. And things like the infrastructure cost of single family homes — that’s also under taxed today, as Strong Towns have been banging the drum on for years:

    https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/2/5/suburban-infrastructure-over-time

    Pigouvian taxes can be used for other externalities, but it does get complicated. At the end of the day, though, since any money (from income) that is spent on goods must necessarily consume resources, this will still recoup money via taxation for government spending on infrastructure and such.

  130. 130.

    Martin

    @SatanicPanic: Harris can pretty easily respond to “Donald Trump seems to think he can tell women what to do without their consent, but that’s not how things work in America. He agreed to debate the Democratic candidate on September 10, he agreed to the conditions of that debate, I’m the candidate, and I’ll see him then.”

  131. 131.

    JoyceH

    @SatanicPanic: I can’t help wondering if Fox had even agreed to host a debate – was there actually any prearrangement before Trump just stated that a debate had “been agreed to”? Of course if you ask them now they’d say of course because they’re in the tank for Trump but I’ll bet he just made it up and blurted it out.

  134. 134.

    different-church-lady

    @Martin:

    “Donald Trump seems to think he can tell women what to do without their consent, but that’s not how things work in America.

    TRUMP SUPER-PAC: “That’s what he’s going to change!”

  135. 135.

    MattF

    The idea of holding a debate in an arena in front of a crowd sounds like a WWE event. Is Hulk Hogan going to be there? Will there be a rink on the stage?

  137. 137.

    KatKapCC

    @JoyceH: Oh, I sure hope he can. Especially since he’ll be 100 on October 1st and Biden can give him the 100th birthday call!

  139. 139.

    KatKapCC

    @Belafon: 100% agree. There are a couple of names in the running that I’m not super duper thrilled about, but it does not matter to me. My enthusiasm will not be dampened just because the VP isn’t my ideal, because the top of the ticket is my ideal and that’s what matters.

  142. 142.

    KatKapCC

    @WereBear: There was also one time, I think in 2008 maybe??, where the moderator was posing a question to him, talking about his tendency to ramble on and to say things he shouldn’t and all that, and asked him if as president, he would be able to…I don’t recall exactly, but like, be more judicious with his words and whatever. And Biden just said, “Yes” and that was it, and the crowd started chuckling :)

  144. 144.

    artem1s

    @Bupalos: ​ those are opposition ads trying to convince anti big business voters and white union voters that Sherrod is in TCF’s pocket so they’ll vote for Moreno. They’re using his support of the immigration bill that Biden brokered with Johnson and the GOP killed against him. Take a closer look the next time you see one.​
     
    and it looks like it’s working since you all ate it up without questioning it.

  145. 145.

    Geminid

    @Orange is the New Red: Yes. Chiles has a nice store with peaches in season, and other good stuff including peach cider donuts. They also let people pick their own fruit

    Chiles Orchard is 4 miles west of Crozet, near Greenwood. They are owned by the same family that runs the orchard and shop on Carter’s Mountain, a couple mies southeast of Charlottesville

  146. 146.

    Martin

    @BR: Except that you’ve set a trap for yourself.

    At the end of the day, though, since any money (from income) that is spent on goods must necessarily consume resources, this will still recoup money via taxation for government spending on infrastructure and such.

    Food are goods. Shelter are goods. Medicine are goods. We cannot have a society without having an adverse impact. The problem arises when that impact is too large for the environment to absorb. If you apply a tax on externalities uniformly, you’re essentially having people buying medicine subsidizing the people who want to buy pleasure boats, because you’re treating the medicine as a proportionate problem to the boat, when the medicine really has no externality – we do not want to disincentivize that in any way, and we do want to disincentivize the boat heavily because is has no societal benefit – only a personal one.

    The challenge with incentive oriented taxation is that it both relies on consumers having agency (to make the rational choice to buy less of the thing being taxed) and also pretends they don’t have agency because they can also put their energy into avoiding the tax. That’s the light truck problem in the US in a nutshell – it was a loophole around an environmental regulation that applied to cars, and now no US automaker sells cars any longer (GM just canceled the Malibu), everything they make is light truck. And congress is so slow moving that a trend that started 20 years ago couldn’t be countered.

    It can work if the regulatory body can move fast enough and has sufficient authority to act (which USSC has just stripped them of) that it can stay ahead of reactions to that taxation. I’m personally of the view that capitalism has so badly outpaced democracy here that we kind of have no choice but to kill it because it’s no longer possible to keep in check, which sort of invalidates the whole discussion. But at a minimum, that kind of taxation scheme isn’t possible without a fundamental reworking of the administrative state in the US – and I mean on a constitutional convention kind of order. And once you go down that path all manner of things become possible.

    I think you use it as a tool where it can be safely used, and you focus instead on more achievable mechanisms.

  148. 148.

    BR

    @Martin: ​

    Why would the tax on externalities be evenly applied by quantity — 1 pill of metformin taxed at the same rate as 1 megayacht? There are many approaches and none are that simplistic. There are whole books on how this can be accomplished — the (mostly ignored) field of ecological economics addresses these things. It’s not something I’m inventing here, and these details have been examined. The current system is hugely skewed and misses most externalities entirely. Is a perfect taxation system possible? No. But the ecological economics way is better. But I also have no hope that anyone will adopt it anytime soon, so my main hope is that we can get a carbon fee and dividend scheme in place that will address two things simultaneously: penalize carbon emissions and provide a universal basic income without having to call it that.

  149. 149.

    bbleh

    @Martin: alas, nothing in MAGA-land is EVER plainly stated, other than empty slogans like “make America great.”  It’s all implied, or hinted at, or communicated in code.  And if they’re called out about it, they will become angry and say they never said such things (ie, plainly).

    They won’t talk about women being made second-class citizens by law or codified practice; they’ll talk about “tradition” and “family,” with occasional allusions to things Biblical. And if you point out that’s what those things mean, again they’ll get angry about you mocking their religion or hating America or some such.

    It’s the same thing as the Felon’s mob-boss speak, that Michael Cohen talked (and even testified) about.  He doesn’t give direct orders; he just says it would be good if something like X happened.

    If it weren’t for bad faith, Republicans would have no faith at all.

  151. 151.

    Martin

    @BR: I wasn’t suggesting it would be proportional to quantity. I’m suggesting that the environmental cost of making medicine is not bad, it’s good, and shouldn’t be taxed. And if you are taxing it, it becomes a subsidy on the boat tax, because you’re trying to recoup a fixed quantity (the impact of medicine+boat) by some proportionate measure, when instead it should be 0% medicine, 100% boat.

  152. 152.

    Martin

    @bbleh: I disagree. One of the challenges Trump presented to the media was that he was too plainly stated. They were accustomed to politicians speaking exclusively in euphemisms – when Trump comes straight out and calls Mexicans murderers and rapists. They had no fucking idea how to cope with that, and still don’t. They’re still trying to find the hidden meaning behind ‘dictator on day one’ when the hidden meaning is that he intends to be dictator on day one.

    Sure there is still the euphemism and double talk, but there’s a lot of stuff just laid out there bare. Certainly more than anyone since, maybe, Wallace?

  153. 153.

    BR

    @Martin: ​
    Nah, medicine *can* be bad depending on how it’s made. There are literally medicines that are made by harvesting non-renewable resources or by farming massing numbers of animals. (Not all, of course, but they exist.) Those that do not have much of an environmental impact would not have embedded in their cost much or any tax. In general the total physical environmental footprint of medicines is very small. (I’ve done extensive life-cycle analysis of different technologies, medicines are not anywhere up there.) Companies would be incentivized to come up with better methods, whether it’s medicine or cheap consumer goods, because their products would be cheaper than the competitors.

  154. 154.

    Geminid

    @Salty Sam: Sherman and Sheridan are easy to mix up. The two generals had a lot in common. I happened to look up Sheriden a couple months ago and that quote stayed in my mind.

    Sheridan was maybe 14 years the younger of the two men. He had made his reputation as a hard fighting division commander in the Army of the Cumberland before Grant brought him east to command the Army of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps.

    Sheridan was born in Albany, New York. Besides his military accomplishments, Phil Sheridan is also known for his role in preserving what became Yellowstone National Park.

  155. 155.

    bbleh

    @Martin: well except he was never QUITE that explicit — there was always an out.  It wasn’t that Mexicans were murderers and rapists; it was that “they” were “sending” murderers and rapists into the US as immigrants.  He’s not going to be a dictator “from” day one; he’s going to be a dictator “only on day one” — hahaha jokey joke.

    I agree he’s a lot closer to saying those things explicitly than any other contemporary politician was, and I think that’s why so many MAGAts worship him.  They BELIEVE and WANT those things, but they will say so only to others of their tribe (or with enough alcohol in their systems), and they become angry if they’re called out on it.

    He did the same thing in business for years.  He was always hedging and talking out of both sides of his mouth, and his word was never to be depended on.  That’s one reason he was such a bottom-feeding bit player in the NY R/E market.

  158. 158.

    Chris Johnson

    @Martin: Don’t overthink it. ‘the media’ or at least certain key players in the media like the NYT are working for him or at least for his boss in Moscow.

    They’re not confused or lost at all. They know what they’re trying to make happen. It’s just a question of how much credibility they can afford to burn, to do it.

  159. 159.

    Al

    There are so many wonderful delicious tasty foods, meals, and recipes but there is simply nothing “better” than a ripe peach.

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