Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

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

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / Sunday Night Open Thread

Sunday Night Open Thread

by | 241 Comments

This post is in: 

A lovely day here- 70’s 80’s with low humidity. Spent a couple hours at the gym, had white people taco night, and now trying to figure out what to watch.

Bunch of important things happening this weekend, including audio of Trump calling Kamala a “fucking bitch” being released and our media yawning, Vance made an ass out of himself on tv this morning, and then the hack of the Trump campaign which could be a lot bigger than we think it is.

I also had a thought last night that it feels like Harris/Walz have always been the candidates.

I am going to bed early tonight because I have to shuttle a trapped colony of cats to somewhere in Ohio to a vet to get them spade and neutered. Gotta be a half hour from here at 7:30 am. See ya all tomorrow.

Reader Interactions

241Comments

  3. 3.

    Kelly

    Lovely day here in Oregon’s western Cascade foothills. Blue sky and scattered clouds after 4 days of wildfire smoke. Not heavy smoke just a bit stink and that weird orange light. The swimming hole in the little river has been in the high 70’s every afternoon. Comfy swimming. Kayaking the big river is still off limits due to cyanobacteria toxin in Detroit reservoir upstream.

  4. 4.

    Scout211

    I just wanted to let everyone know that Betty Cracker posted a medical update in her Betty Cracker’s Corner, here. She posted it on August 1st and a few of us commented today but that was the first time any of us noticed it. The sidebar is kind of busy lately so it was easy to miss. I’m letting you all know in case you want to comment.  😊

  7. 7.

    Baud

    I also had a thought last night that it feels like Harris/Walz have always been the candidates

    If the men’s 4×100 could have passed the baton as cleanly, we’d have one more gold.

  10. 10.

    OGLiberal

    Re: the “bitch” comment. Unless Trump transforms into the Demogorgon on live TV the media will probably play the same game.  Even if he did the headline would likely be “Both Trump and Harris Display Other Sides on Campaign Trail”.  Cards stacked against.  Harris and Walz need to keep on delivering their message to voters and keep ignoring demands from the whiny press to have press conferences where d-bag “I want to be on tv!” reporters ask, “former President Trump has said you sacrifice young children to Maax from Beastmaster…how do you respond to those claims and how is that connected you dating Willie Brown decades ago…and do you support Jim Jones and his commie goals?”

    Also, Harris/Walz should play Elton John’s “Bitch is Back” at rallies.

  11. 11.

    zhena gogolia

    @Betsy: This video came out a couple of days after the debate — someone on BJ posted it in the comments, although I think at that point it stopped before the Kamala part. So he can call the POTUS a piece of crap and the VP a fucking bitch and they just ignore it. CAN YOU IMAGINE IF IT WAS KAMALA SAYING THIS, EVEN IN A PRIVATE SITUATION? Of course we know what happened when Hillary said the horrible obscenity “deplorable.”

  12. 12.

    stacib

    @Baud: Agreed, but the women’s 4 x 100 was so fantastic, it was almost enough to make me forget what a fiasco the men’s race was.

  13. 13.

    stacib

    @OGLiberal:Also, Harris/Walz should play Elton John’s “Bitch is Back” at rallies.

    NEVER.  There is not a single good connotation for the word bitch – especially when talking about a black woman in power.

  19. 19.

    3Sice

    Couch fucker in drag?

    The unconfirmed image quickly picked up steam and began trending under the hashtag #SofaLoren, a reference to false claims that the Republican senator had sex with a couch.

  20. 20.

    OGLiberal

    @stacib: Yeah, I’m mostly joking…just want to give a big middle finger to that asshole whenever possible.  You are right – it won’t work with voters but would drive him nuts.  But that’s not the goal.

    ETA:  “especially when talking about a black woman in power”  Disgusting we still need to worry about this.  While the FTFNYT will give him a pass for saying it in the first place. (although, I believe, original reporting is from Haberman)

  23. 23.

    stacib

    @OGLiberal: Believe me, she’ll be called buckets of bitches before this election is done AND SHE KNOWS IT.  Not a single one of us can ever be caught, even jokingly calling her a “bad bitch”, or it’s confirmation for those idiots of no harm, no foul.

  25. 25.

    brendancalling

    Per Political Wire, a picture (pictures?) of JD Vance in drag of surfaced. I’ve seen it—it looks like “Halloween drag” at best as a friend of mine put it, but still.

    But it got me remembering my high school years (1985-1989). I wasn’t much for drag—although I once wore a prom dress to a showing of the RHPS—but you know who was, at least once a year?

    Our high school football team. As part of homecoming week, team members would dress as cheerleaders, culminating in a whole routine during the big pep rally. This was every year. Now, this was the 1980s and this was no tribute to either women or LGBTQ people. It was pretty raunchy/juvenile (the name for the troupe isn’t repeatable here), but it was 100% endorsed by the school. I dug through my HS yearbook, and sure enough—photos from pep rally week. I’m still friends with some of the guys in the photos, many of who are leftish Dads. I know one of em has a gay kid, who he totally supports.

    So when I see these prigs on the right boohooing about drag, only to get caught in drag themselves, I just have to point and laugh. A lot of them grew up in the same decade I did, and probably did similar goofball stuff in high school and college. [ETA: The thing is, that in the 80s, it was seen as laughing AT gay people. Now, if you’re going to see drag, you’re laughing WITH and folks like JD hate that. Sorry, lost my train of thought.]

    …which brings us to Shillbilly, who once thought he was gay, who had a trans friend at Yale, and who went to at least one Pride parade. What business does that MF have pointing fingers at other people?

    In house news, a squirrel has been savaging my smaller sunflowers, and made a move on my just-about-to-bloom mammoth sunflowers. I made a vinegar spray and doused them last night. It seems to have worked, for now. Adding more tomorrow. Maybe I’ll wear a gold wig and skirt like JD.

  26. 26.

    Starfish

    @OGLiberal: They should go with Britney Spears’ song “Work Bitch” to describe how much they are on the campaign trail while Trump is sitting at home or doing whatever it is he is doing

    “Bring it on. Bring it on. Don’t stop now. Just be the champion. Work it hard like its your profession.”

  27. 27.

    Chet Murthy

    @brendancalling: I remember reading that this was the case in the Army (maybe other services) too: there were even official standards for how to put on drag shows!  Like, during WWII and all.

  32. 32.

    Ramona

    @Scout211: I valiantly tolerated the gorge rising in my throat and watched that a couple of times and what I deciphered him mumbling was, “… she’s so fucking bad …” mumble, mumble…

    Many people remark that he pronounces her name correctly.

  33. 33.

    Ramona

    @Ramona: What I find especially delicious is that someone among these golf course employees had no compunction about filming and posting a candid video of the odious Trump. Here’s hoping that he gets even more careless and something Mitt Romney level destroying gets captured and released.

  34. 34.

    Kent

    @Baud: The world record is from the 1980s when the USSR athletes were completely doped.  No one takes it seriously as a legit record.  It is just too late to expunge it.

  36. 36.

    Scout211

    @Ramona: I only watched it once and the end was kind of unintelligible.  So maybe he said it or maybe not.  But Mags and Swan reported that he’s said it more than once according to their super secret anonymous sources.

    Former President Trump has been in a foul mood the past few weeks and has repeatedly called Vice President Harris a “bitch” in private, the N.Y. Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report.

  38. 38.

    Citizen Dave

    @stacib: I don’t know.  Watched US Women’s basketball era A’ja Wilson post-game interview today.  She praised God 2 or 3 times (God is obviously not French), then asked to sum up a teammate in one word exclaimed “that bitch!”

    NY Post has the story–can’t figure out how to link from my mobile.

  40. 40.

    Elizabelle

    Tonight is the peak of the Perseids meteor shower.  For thrillseekers and insomniacs.  Alleged best viewing is around 3 am Eastern.

  44. 44.

    japa21

    @catclub:

     

    @NotMax:

    Took a long time for somebody to comment on this.  Personally, I think it is because the rest of us recognize John for the wonderful mensch he is and feel it would be beneath us to point it out.

  45. 45.

    BR

    I’d guess that Trump’s leak video is an attempt by his campaign at hardening his base of support, especially given that the neo nazis are starting some weird internal “war” within the right.

  49. 49.

    OGLiberal

    @Starfish: I am a big Britney fan.  I only like a few of her songs, and this is one of them, but she is great.  But she needs help and everyone around her who thinks they are providing that help are terrible.  Or, they aren’t helping her, they are using her.  She has so many indicators of being able to be a Madonna but has been controlled by assholes for so long, too long.

  50. 50.

    Jackie

    @Scout211: Anyone surprised or shocked TCFG has called Harris a belittling name? I’m sure he’s called her far worse; it just hasn’t been caught on tape – YET. 88 days until Election Day, so we can probably expect TCFG to get caught at least once. Those who are voting for him won’t care.

  51. 51.

    Suzanne

    @brendancalling: It’s, like, the worst drag ever. Cheap-ass wig, makeup looks like he applied it with a spackle knife.

    And his beard looked bad then, too! What is with this mofo and looking scraggly? He is a goddamn US Senator and he looks unkempt. Trim that shit. Put some rosemary oil on the patches that aren’t growing in well.

  54. 54.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Elizabelle: ​
     

    Tonight is the peak of the Perseids meteor shower. For thrillseekers and insomniacs. Alleged best viewing is around 3 am Eastern.

    Being the early a.m. insomniac I am, it’s almost a guarantee that I’ll be awake sometime between 2 and 4 am, so I’ll have to step outside and see what I can see.

    My wife and son and I are on Anna Maria Island in Florida this week. I’ve had a few dolphin sightings already, one of which went on for several minutes, so it’s a very good week for that already, and we only got here yesterday afternoon.

  55. 55.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @BR:

    especially given that the neo nazis are starting some weird internal “war” within the right.

    What’s the story here?

  57. 57.

    geg6

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Lovely place.  We had a great vacation there several years ago, before I swore off ever going to FL again unless they decided to get rid of all the garbage in Tallahassee.

  58. 58.

    Starfish

    @OGLiberal: Yeah, I feel bad for her, and now that she is free, she is being loud about the petty grudges she is holding against her terrible family. I am sad that her marriage to Sam did not work out.

  60. 60.

    eclare

    @Starfish:

    Me too, Sam seemed like a steadying force for her, and although their marriage did not last long, they were together for a long time in total.

  61. 61.

    BR

    I’m starting to realize that wannabe accelerationists (Musk, Trumpworld weirdos, etc) and others who might actually act on their words are the biggest risk in the election. If they don’t get to control the world they want to see it fall apart and as seen in the UK want to help it happen. Going to be a messy few months.

  62. 62.

    sdhays

    @BR: At this point, buying a Tesla is literally funding fascist terrorism. SpaceX too, which is a much more serious problem since as taxpayers, we’re doing a lot of that funding, with nowhere else to go. We were trying to hedge our bets with Boeing, but they can’t do anything right anymore because their management hasn’t valued quality for decades now.

  66. 66.

    BR

    @sdhays:

    I think it’s possible to play hard ball with SpaceX. I bet there are dozens of ways Musk has violated defense contracting rules at this point, and they could force him out from any role at the company by putting pressure on investors — basically put all SpaceX contracts on hold until he’s gone due to his violation of rules/laws. Tesla could also be squeezed because most of their money comes from emissions credits and states could just get rid of EV emissions credits and move the money to ebikes.

  70. 70.

    Jackie

    @Quinerly: Yah, the complaints are there was no fact checking LIVE.

    The media KNOWS TCFG is going to be spewing BS, but they don’t set up for live fact checking. Lawrence O’Donnell had a fiery show about this on his program that night.

  74. 74.

    BR

    Ugh, if I’m understanding right, Pelosi is on her book tour trashing Biden’s campaign team *and* saying she wished someone had opposed Harris. I don’t get what she’s doing at this point.

  78. 78.

    Jackie

    OT Is NotMax around? Is this an upset? Or expected? And if expected, why?

    “Hawaii’s longtime House speaker lost his Democratic Party primary election to a former state Board of Education member who campaigned on tackling corruption in government,” the AP reports.

    “Speaker Scott Saiki was ousted by Kim Coco Iwamoto.”

  82. 82.

    Scout211

    @BR: saying she wished someone had opposed Harris. I don’t get what she’s doing at this point.

    She helped Kamala Harris raise $12M today in San Francisco.  She is definitely supporting Kamala Harris.  So maybe she said that as a “thought experiment.”  You know, how Vance has defended his statements  about parents of kids should get extra votes.  LOL   Or more likely, it was taken out of context.  Who knows.

    SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 11  (Reuters) – Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the case for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign at a California fundraiser on Sunday that raked in millions of dollars at the conclusion of a swing state tour by Harris and her running mate.

    Pelosi appeared with the Democratic presidential nominee in San Francisco at an event that the Harris’ campaign said raised more than $12 million.

    “This is a good day when we welcome Kamala Harris back home to California,” Pelosi said about the former U.S. senator, attorney general and district attorney from the state.

    She makes us all so proud. She brings us so much joy. She gives us so much hope,” Pelosi said at the fundraiser, held in a hotel ballroom.

  86. 86.

    3Sice

    Jimmy Fallon doesn’t have the TV presence to carry this Closing Ceremony fluff. Was this an audition for Today?

  87. 87.

    Starfish

    @kalakal: Pelosi is doing long interviews to promote her book. They are really fascinating interviews, but the people who are not done being persecuted on Biden’s behalf are whining about it.

    Here is the podcast of the hour-long interview that she did with Ezra Klein. Though the NYT is trying to increase conflict with how they have titled this, she goes through a lot of stuff on how she has loved being a member of the house because it is close to her constituents and because you have to bring together all sorts of very different people.

    The discussions about Biden are a fairly small part of the whole thing. Klein asks her specifically about how she re-opened the possibility of Biden leaving the race after his people sent out a message saying that he was most definitely not leaving the race. She said the choice was up to him as if the choice had not already been made.

  88. 88.

    BR

    @Starfish:

    I’ll listen to it and see. But I dunno, I have no axe to grind regarding what happened with Biden. It’s more that I’ve never thought Pelosi was much of a public speaker or interviewee — she’s certainly excellent at backroom negotiating and strategy and herding cats, but saying things clearly without sending mixed messages was never her thing. And she’s not particularly popular nationwide and we don’t benefit from her being in the public eye right now. I’m at a point where I don’t care for the individuals and how they feel — this is about the country and winning the election and nothing else.

  89. 89.

    Ohio Mom

    @brendancalling: One morning in June, I looked at my daylilies and thought, “Yup, tomorrow’s the day.”  Then a deer came by when I wasn’t looking and ate all the buds. I’m still pissed.

    I know all the varmints have to eat but can’t they eat something besides our favorite flowers?

  91. 91.

    Starfish

    @BR: Pelosi has been villainized for being a woman in power.

    Remember that Republican lady who set her up to be breaking COVID rules by video taping her while she was getting her hair done? Remember how someone tried to kill her husband? She is not “unpopular.” She has an entire rightwing smear machine trying to grind her into dust (like the same machine did with Hillary Clinton), and she is 84 years old. She deserves to be able to have her book and take it on a tour, and the smears against her at this moment are going to look like the misogyny that they are.

  92. 92.

    Chet Murthy

    @Ohio Mom: It’s not a popular opinion, but I think that there’s just too many deer.  Our lawns and gardens are all-you-can-eat buffets for them.  We need to be culling them.  But I’ll stop, b/c I don’t want to be accused of being a psychopath.

  93. 93.

    Chet Murthy

    @Starfish: a-fuckin-men.  I’ll wait until I see the quotes, and in some decent context, before I’ll believe that Pelosi is off-message from the Harris campaign.  She knows better, and she sure AF has visceral reasons for wanting to keep TCFG from the White House.  Like: she and her husband would have to flee the country.

  95. 95.

    eclare

    @3Sice:

    I do not find Jimmy Fallon funny at all.  Of course he asked Katie Ledecki if she planned to swim home, har har har.

  96. 96.

    prostratedragon

    @Baud:  I had that same thought. The Olympics always give at least one Greek tragedy and the USA Men’s 4×100 seem determined to monopolize the genre.

  97. 97.

    Starfish

    @Chet Murthy: So with Biden leaving the race, she said she had no clue about the details of how it was going to go down. She was thinking there would be some sort of primary process, and it would have to be accelerated. It sounded like she was thinking this because she didn’t want it to look like the party was picking the candidate, and it was a done deal. You know the media. Those folks would get bored in two weeks if that was done, so there had to be multiple options on the table, and it had to be unclear exactly what was going to go down. But with Biden endorsing and then all the other endorsements falling into place, Harris took off with it because she is a good politician.

  99. 99.

    M31

    @eclare: ​
     

    argh so dumb

    I did love reading about the women’s 400 relay “they totally Ledeckied the other runners”

    hahahaha when you’re so far ahead there’s no one else on screen but you

  100. 100.

    NotMax

    @Jackie

    An upset of the status quo but then again I don’t pay much attention to races on the other islands. The House speakership has often been something of a (slowly) revolving door, so not terribly shocking. The winner is also a Dem (and I believe unopposed in the general so will now advance to the seat for that district.)

    Closer to home, this is very troubling.

    ‘Terrifying’: Explosion that damaged SUV in Pukalani caused by detonated device
    [snip]
    Multiple improvised explosive devices have been recovered in recent weeks in Kahului and Upcountry Maui. Source

  103. 103.

    Kay

    @Starfish:

    It’s really interesting that this was obviously a team effort by Pelosi, Jeffries, Schumer and Obama yet Pelosi is the big villain.

    The rules of the nomination require that the convention be “open”. That’s all she was saying. “Open” is different than “contested”. “Contested” would have been if someone else had jumped in. That’s what happened. No plot, no coup, no evil Nancy Pelosi spinning her web.

    Oh, and the 12 million Pelosi and Harris raised tonight goes to the Victory Fund – the House. Pelosi is going to win back the House and then retire. You watch. She’ll succeed, too.

  110. 110.

    Kay

    If someone had wanted to challenge Harris they could have done so. Those are the rules. No one did because Biden endorsed Harris and Harris lined up overwhelming support immediately. That’s also what Pelosi said.

    I love how the telling of this tale of the evil Nancy Pelosi and the sainted Joe Biden gives Harris herself absolutely no credit for sewing up the nomination. I noticed that.

  115. 115.

    Quinerly

    @Jackie:

    Saw LOD.

    I guess my point was this is the most extensive point by point/lie by lie fact check I have read. Honestly, I don’t know how any news organization can fact check 150 plus lies in real time. Like LOD said…there could be a side bar but even that would be hard with the amt of crap he spews.

    I think we are at a point that everyone knows he lies. Most of the electorate is pretty harden in their opinion of him. I am not sure fact checking in real time will make a difference.

    I reconnected with someone who was a very close friend years ago. She had always been a Liberal. We practiced together in the same firm in the late 1980’s and remained very close friends until Fox News poisoned her mind during the run up to Obama’s election. I introduced her to the man she has lived with since 1993. He is the one who got her into Fox News. She is truly an unmarried, Catholic,  childless cat lady. We parted ways over Sarah Palin and Obama’s birth certificate.  I was not kind. My infamous temper got the best of me. Anyway, I saw where a very close friend of hers died the other day and I reached out. She didn’t even know her friend had died. Sounds like they, too, had had a falling out some years back. We “chatted” back and forth in emails and texts. Got caught up on 16 years with pictures and personal stories. I realized how much I had missed my old friend. She felt the same. My point of this was I was curious about her politics now in the Trump era so I sent her a copy of that crazy Trump post last week where he said Biden was going to show up at the convention and take back his nomination. My old friend’s reply: “I vote on the candidate’s policies not the personality. Trump’s tweets can be annoying but I agree with all of his positions on solving the economy, inflation, energy, the border, crime and other issues. I know you may or may not agree on the issues but may approach the solutions differently. That’s the beauty of voting.”

    There’s a huge % of his voters who just don’t care whether he lies. They agree with his cruel policies. Obviously, my old friend doesn’t really care about him. She knows his game. She wants the over the top cruel policies and doesn’t care if shit literally gets smeared on the walls of the Capitol if that’s what it takes to get them.

  116. 116.

    counterfactual

    @BR: I’m confident that Space Force has a choke collar on Elon, that they twitch occasionally.

    My main evidence is the curious incident of the shittweets about Space Force, NASA and the FAA.

    “But counterfactual, there have been almost no shittweets about Space Force, NASA or the FAA since 2019,” you say.

    That is the curious incident.

    This is a many who goes on a 20 tweet rant about the SEC the night before he has to give a deposition to the SEC, but he’s said almost nothing bad about his SpaceX customers and regulator.

    There are ways to control him. When Firefly Aerospace went bankrupt, it was revived by a Ukrainian oligarch. Space Force didn’t like the possibility he might be a Russian sympathizer, and forced him to sell off his stake before Firefly could qualify for National Security Space Launch contracts.

  118. 118.

    Kay

    No one changed the rules of the nominating process, so any blathering about “mini primaries” and all that was never going to happen without rule changes, which means it was never going to happen. The one and only thing they could have ever done in the time available was follow the existing rules, which they did, and that’s why it was “open” – but no one contested.

    There is no process that allows Pelosi or Biden or anyone else to coronate someone. That was never an option. It had to be “open”, and it was.

  120. 120.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Starfish:

    she said she had no clue about the details of how it was going to go down

    I knew exactly how it would go down.  There was no realistic possibility of anything except the delegates and the electeds swiftly falling in behind Harris.  This was closely tied to there being no realistic way of anyone else winning the election.

    If I saw that, there is no way Pelosi didn’t see it.

    I can understand why she might want to step back and say “Let the process run” so there’s no question Harris didn’t earn the nomination.  She still had to know how it would turn out.

    I mean, what, was Manchin going to convince even one tenth of the delegates to defect to him?  Oh, please. Only a pundit would be stupid enough to think that could happen.

    The thing that was up in the air, unknowable, was the grassroots reaction.  Thank the sun pony we got the best possible result.

  121. 121.

    hueyplong

    @M31: I’ve always thought of Secretariat when the leader is the only one you can see, but after a half century it seems ok to go with another name.

  122. 122.

    BR

    @counterfactual: ​

    Interesting, I’d forgotten about Space Force. (The name itself…)

    I read that Fish & Wildlife may be stopping SpaceX from using their Texas base soon because of all the rules they’ve broken. Not quite the same, and doesn’t force out Musk, but I’d like to see an end to Musk getting to break any rules he wants.

  125. 125.

    Quinerly

    @BR:

    Not true. I highly recommend the long Guardian article on this. I kinda figured someone had posted it somewhere here.

    I am not linking to it because my comments seem to trigger a commenter. He then becomes extremely overwrought. I’m not in the mood to be attacked.

  126. 126.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: I suspect some of the lack of credit given to Harris is intentional on all the Democrats’ part: God forbid a woman running for President should seem to want it too much. Hillary Clinton was obviously just as ambitious as every man who ever held the office, and I think the sexist double standards we have about that helped sink her. But if this role were suddenly thrust upon Kamala Harris, she’s absolved.

  127. 127.

    Kent

    @sab: I had to deer fence our entire garden to keep them out. Now I have 10 ft tall tomato plants.  And the deer are outside.

    they don’t mess with the zucchini or cucumbers so I leave those outside the fence

  132. 132.

    BR

    @Quinerly:

    Ok, good if not. I don’t really care either way about Pelosi. I am just ready for *all* the old guard to step out of the limelight. I know it’s not going to happen, but I would love it if the DNC put Pelosi, Biden, both Clintons, and a bunch of others of their political generation all on the first day and then we never heard from them again. I have respect for Biden and Pelosi but right now, for Harris/Walz, they are not the messengers we need, and I doubt there are any solid Dems that are refusing to vote Harris but were on board with Biden.

  134. 134.

    Kent

    @eclare: the Jordan Chiles saga isn’t over.  Apparently the US team has video evidence that they did meet 1 min time limit.

     

    they should just award all 3 girls bronze.

  136. 136.

    BR

    @Matt McIrvin: ​

    I dunno if I buy it’s that strategic. But someone has pointed out that in many other countries in history a woman was successfully elected president or prime minister when suddenly put into the position because of a resignation or the like.

  137. 137.

    BR

    @Lynn Dee: ​

    Trump’s been struggling to find a name to call her that sticks. He needs to consolidate his base. I think it was a leak by his campaign.

  139. 139.

    counterfactual

    @BR: Um… you need to vet your news sources better. I’ve heard of various lawsuits against SpaceX, none of which are going anywhere. SpaceX is planning on expanding Boca Chica, and doubling flight rates, and the FAA seems ready to approve all of it. The way commercial spaceflight is regulated, Fish and Wildlife, EPA and other regulatory bodies report to the FAA which deals with Elon (or rather, the more rational execs in SpaceX)

  141. 141.

    Quinerly

    @BR:

    I am with you on the next generation.

    And, as I have made clear…I have no problems with what went down to convince Biden to step aside. There are more chapters to come.

    “Win, Baby, Win.”

  143. 143.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Quinerly: Honestly, in an upside down sort of way, I respect that. I’ve always felt that if you vote the person rather than the party, in practice, the party is usually what you’re going to get. Obviously Trump is an extreme case, but I know I would excuse a lot of character defects to support liberal policies over conservative ones (I repeatedly voted for cheating horndog Bill Clinton after all), and if I were a right-winger the reverse would be rational. To some extent.

  144. 144.

    Ruckus

    @geg6:

    I use to work in professional sports and traveled for that to 46 of the states, numerous times to FL. I was once told by Hertz that I was in the top 5% of customers I rented so much. My point is that many places in the US are very nice to visit, many others are not all that grand.

  147. 147.

    KatKapCC

    @Chet Murthy:

    It’s not a popular opinion, but I think that there’s just too many deer.

    “There are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three.”

    (just teasing you :p)

  148. 148.

    Matt McIrvin

    @BR: Based on the news stories I’ve read about what went down, while I don’t know exactly what transpired to convince Biden he should quit, I am pretty sure that the mastermind of the immediate and total coalescence of support around Harris was Harris herself. But there’s been remarkably little talk about that, to the extent that I wonder if it’s being deliberately de-emphasized.

  149. 149.

    counterfactual

    @Kent: I follow Eric Berger’s reporting on arstechnica.com, and I’m stunned at how badly Boeing is performing. What’s worse is that United Launch Alliance, Northrup Grumman, and Blue Origin are not performing better.

  150. 150.

    Ruckus

    @BR:

    Me either. I know we often change as we get old, and often in ways that no one would suspect not all that long before. But she is 84 and I wonder if that is more than enough. It likely won’t be in her mind, but she is, in my mind, likely to want to stay in office until her last day. And yet I think it is time.

  151. 151.

    Quinerly

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Appreciate your comment.

    I haven’t responded to my old friend. I’m trying to contain my temper and not go for some low blows. I have the ammo.

    This Trump stuff boils down to values and morality for me. Both him and the policies of the Repug Party. Cruelty is their point. Win at all costs. Control the courts. In short, imo, my old friend is scum. I want nothing to do with her.

  152. 152.

    hitchhiker

    @BR:

    The part of that video that makes me gag is him handing cash to someone off camera and ASKING to be fluffed about his debate performance.

    Is it really possible that he asks his golf course employees to praise him for his political performances?

    Of course it is. Sometimes I play this game where I imagine other candidates doing things trump does.

    In an interview on morning television, Barack Obama smirked about his daughter Malia’s looks and suggested he’d be dating her if they weren’t related.

    A tape has surfaced of Kamala Harris tipping her driver and soliciting praise for her most recent speech, while referring to her opponent as a fucking prick.

    It helps me reframe how very ugly & weird trump really is.

  156. 156.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    I don’t want to ruffle any feathers when I ask this, because I don’t think Biden has dementia or anything stupid like that, and I never watched the debate. I noticed right after the Trump shooting that Biden sounded really rough with his stutter when he was talking to reporters, but has sounded more or less fine at other times, but the stutter was still more noticeable than it has been in the past. When did anybody else notice this? How long ago did this start? I know he always had a stutter, but I’m guessing his age has caught up with him and he gets more easily exhausted

  157. 157.

    ArchTeryx

    @Quinerly: I saw the response that sort-of respects your friend for voting policy, not the person, because the vast majority of voters in this country vote the person and don’t give two whoops about policy. That’s ESPECIALLY true among the normies. The right is full of single-issue voters.

    But your friend’s base values, which she’s voting for, are straight up out of Mein Kampf. Just because she votes for policies doesn’t excuse the fact that the policies are monstrous. Not to mention she could be lying, and be a part of the Trump cult. The MAGAts see absolutely nothing wrong with lying to normies and especially liberals.

    Your friend is lost, and I am glad to see you realize that. She’s an enemy of humanity now, same as any other authoritarian MAGAt.

  158. 158.

    PJ

    So many people here rewriting the things we saw people say and do just a few weeks ago.  Politicians meant it when they said “Biden can’t win” and “Biden needs to step down”, but didn’t mean it when they thought there should be a “blitz primary”, because really, no one could be so stupid as to think a “blitz primary” was a good idea – they just kept saying it because they though it would sound good to some stupid Americans.

  160. 160.

    Jackie

    @NotMax: Ugh! That IS upsetting!

    And, thanks for weighing in on the election. I know it’s Democrat vs Democrat – but I’m unfamiliar with Hawaiian politics, and wasn’t sure if it was an unexpected choice.

  161. 161.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: Actually we published it today with an Aug 1 date because Bettty didn’t want it to show up on the front page.  Not to worry, it started getting comments shortly after the post went up.

  163. 163.

    Ruckus

    @BR:

    I believe that old farts need representation like everyone else but still we all retire at some point and political personalities should be no different. And NP is 9 yrs older than I am and I’ve been retired almost 2 yrs. Now we are all different and my job involved dangerous machines and her’s involves dangerous rethuglicans. Not sure which is worse. The machines most likely, they can do a lot of physical damage, like shortening appendages.

  165. 165.

    Jay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I know he always had a stutter, but I’m guessing his age has caught up with him and he gets more easily exhausted

    You might remember he was negotiating a complex prisoner exchange involving multiple Allied nations and Modor, at the time, along with everything else on his plate.

    I would chalk it up to stress, a known factor in making a stutter harder to control.

  166. 166.

    Jackie

    @Quinerly: That’s sad, AND disappointing. Too many, like your friend feel similarly.

    Thankfully, they seem to be topping out at 48%. Let’s hope that percentage drops the next three and a half months. We need a landslide election to drown out the MAGAts and return them to the bottom fringes of obscurity.🤞🏻

  168. 168.

    Quinerly

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    News to me. Populations of Santa Fe and Albuquerque are up. Lots of people moving here from CA and Texas. Oddly, I am meeting a lot of Chicago transplants out my way (Eldorado/Lamy 285 corridor….12 miles outside of the city of Santa Fe). We are a very small state population wise, though. I think the entire state’s population isn’t much over 2 million.

  170. 170.

    Kent

    @ArchTeryx: The friend is also lying.  She isn’t a Trumper based on a careful analysis of policy.   She knows he is a toxic turd to the rest of the world and has curated her answer in a way that is most difficult to argue with.

    Often they are just stone cold racists who know better than to use that reason.  So they come up with stuff like that.

  171. 171.

    ArchTeryx

    @Kent: Yeah, like I said, MAGAts see zero problem with lying to liberals. She may have put on the old-friend act for Quinerly, but that did not extend to good faith or honesty. And I think Quin realizes it. The friend is just another Nazi now.

  172. 172.

    Fake Irishman

    @BR:

    When was the last time the Clintons served as anything other than senior statespeople? Pelosi voluntarily stepped down from the party leadership, followed by Hoyer and Clyburm, all replaced by folks in their 50s. Patrick Leahy, Ben Cardin, Tom Carper, Debbie Stabenow and others in their 70s and 80s have decided enough is enough in the Senate (Finestein is something of an outlier) Heck, Harry Reid realized when he was losing his fastball and arranged for a solid successor. in fact, generally the  older folks who are sticking around are more likely people like Marcy Kaptur or and Sherrod Brown, who we need in their position until they leave feet first.

    So Could we please stop with the idea the Democratic Party is a gerontocracy? It’s really lazy, especially with Biden retiring. We have some older folks still in government, but the core of the party’s elected officials are in their 40s, 50s and 60s.

  173. 173.

    BR

    @ArchTeryx: ​

    I think this is why “weird” works. They don’t care about lying, cruel policies, or other bad behavior. But they don’t want to be considered weird and “other”.

  174. 174.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I know he always had a stutter, but I’m guessing his age has caught up with him and he gets more easily exhausted

    I do think this is true.  Age and probably the difficulty of the job.  He unquestionably looks older and speaks and acts with less vigor.  The beginning of the debate was a wild outlier and he can still give great speeches and there is nothing wrong with his brain, but he is not as vigorous as he was even a year ago.  It’s a trivial thing, except when you have years of the press pounding away at your reputation over it.

  176. 176.

    Gvg

    @Chet Murthy: yes, you are right, but that is easier said than done.

    We killed off the predators except ourselves, and the deer have adapted to us. They figured out we don’t shoot them when we are in crowds. It’s documented that in hunting season in some areas where they can, deer move into suburbs. Some of them stay. We can’t cull with guns the ones in our densely inhabited areas because we might miss and hit people, which is exactly why the deer are there. Also we grow food for them and water and fertilize plants so they are delicious even in droughts and longer in fall.
    how are we supposed to cull some of them from neighborhoods? They not only eat our plants but bring ticks and fleas that pass diseases on to our pets and sometimes us.

  177. 177.

    ArchTeryx

    @BR: Probably right. Even normies seem to realize the difference between “good” weird (e.g. Weird Al) and “bad” weird… i.e., creepy. Sociopathy seems to be rewarded everywhere, but creepy still turns a lot of normies off instantly.

    Good weird is self-aware and not afraid to make fun of itself. Weird Al, after he lost the mustache, ended up in the audience of one of his own concerts, heckling himself. Bad weird wants to get up in everyone’s business, and thinks they have All The Answers to Everything. They are deadly serious about themselves.

  178. 178.

    Quinerly

    @Jackie:

    Thanks for your comment. I had held out some hope that my old friend lined up with Liz Cheney. We were never going to be close as we once were since she bought into that birther crap early on. But if she was more Liz, I could at least correspond with her about personal stuff. Glancing back over the messages the last month or so and reading between the lines, I realize she may be angling for a Santa Fe visit. That wasn’t going to happen even if she was on the Liz Cheney spectrum. It would not be my nature to totally forget and forgive the birther crap.

  181. 181.

    cain

    @Quinerly:

    Ugh. Land prices will go up unless there is a policy in place. If there is a pattern of migrations then the equity firms will show up.

    It’s just a mess.

  182. 182.

    Chet Murthy

    @Quinerly: I unfriended one of my closest friends in 2016 due to his Trumpism.  If somehow we got back in touch, I could only resume friendship (or even acquaintanceship) if he had recanted and started to make amends.  That is to say, it wouldn’t be enough to just become a less toxic G(r)OPer: he’d have to have given up being a G(r)OPer completely and started working for Democratic causes.  Which …. well, pigs’ll fly first, I’m guessing.

    My rights, my famiily’s rights, and the rights of my fellow San Franciscans, women, LGBTQ folks, people of color, are worth more than any friendship.

  184. 184.

    karen marie

    @Betsy:   I don’t understand why so many people are !!!! about this.  I mean, it’s fucking Trump.

    Debating whether he said “she’s fucking bad” or “she’s a fucking bitch” is a waste of time and simply does not matter.

    What matters is the lies he tells.  What matters is that the media doesn’t report that he’s lying.  That I will be !!!!! about every fucking day of the week.

  185. 185.

    ArchTeryx

    @Quinerly: FWIW, I’m sorry that encounter turned out the way it did. But when Trump was elected, I lost friendships that were decades old to his cult. The man’s a boil on the ass of humanity, but he seems to have revealed the truth about a disturbing number of people.

  186. 186.

    BR

    I just realized something: we could get Katie Porter as Treasury Secretary. Or head of CFPB. That would be amazing. Katie Porter’s first job in politics was for Kamala Harris.

  187. 187.

    Jackie

    Arizona (R) Mayor Giles joins Republicans for Harris and endorses Harris/Walz. “Dozens” of Republicans are endorsing Harris, and the numbers are growing. Per Giles on MSNBC’s Ayman.

  190. 190.

    piratedan

    @BR: I could totally see her in CFPB and sic her on the corporate America greedflation beat.  That would be in her wheelhouse and I don;t fucking care if she uses a whiteboard schtick every goddamn day if she can shame these corporate dicks into policies that stop hurting their workers and customers and being greedy fuckers.

  192. 192.

    ArchTeryx

    @Quinerly: The Trumpistas do not differ from the Khmer Rouge, the Brownshirts, the Blackshirts, the (Tsar-era) Cossacks, Idi Amin’s Mau Maus, or the Gestapo. Nazis are an overused metaphor, albeit an accurate one. Being a study of history, I’ve seen exactly what people like your friend are capable of, if given the power to enact their preferred policies. Even if she won’t be the one holding a gun, she’ll cheer them on all the way – including your own death. When that switch gets flipped, they become amoral monsters.

  194. 194.

    danielx

    @Jackie:

    Assuming his minders don’t find an excuse to him to bag the debate(s), I would be neither shocked nor surprised to see him start spewing profane and/or obscene insults before an audience of millions. Which, I would wager, is why LaCivita and the other scum in charge of his campaign would likely prefer to avoid having him debate Kamala Harris. Putting him in a public debate with an experienced and exceedingly bright trial lawyer would seem to be what a campaign manager would consider a Bad Thing. And I don’t think Trump will get away with pacing around and looming menacingly over Kamala as he did with Hilary, either.

    Mental image of Kamala putting hands on hips, fixing Trump with a beady eye, and saying slowly and clearly “sit your fat pasty white ass down” with a pause between each word. Hey, I can dream.

  195. 195.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Yeah, sadly the press had already been hounding him over his age and what happened at the debate could not be unseen. His messaging wasn’t connecting either and that apparently predated the debate by several months.

    I’ll always hate how it played out in public

  197. 197.

    Chet Murthy

    @Other MJS: Oh, I’m sorry, when I clicked back to find the original page, I found a different page, so …. that was why I didn’t see the TDS vid.  When I tried again just now, I found it and yeah, the TDS vid is front-and-center.  Sorry, my screwups.

    Heh, it’s a good bit!  Thank you for sharing!

  199. 199.

    Quinerly

    @ArchTeryx:

    Thanks for your comments. I have had no Trumpers in my circle even going back to 2016. So losing family/friends because of him is alien to me.

    With my old friend, my spidey sense went off when we had discussions during the lead up to 2008. She got heavily into Rush Limbaugh, dropping everything she was doing to listen to him daily. She has had a seizure disorder since childhood that was controlled with medication. She had a major seizure 2007/2008 and under doctor’s orders couldn’t drive. I lived in the city; she lived in the county. I did a lot of driving her to and from work, depositions, and to court. Way out of the way for me and where I officed and lived. She would almost go in a full panic if we were in my car when Rush was on and I wouldn’t flip to his show. She and her boyfriend were the first and still the only people I know who were remotely “birther curious” or at least would admit it. To me “birther” now equates with racism.

    I’m rambling on. Bottomline like I said up thread….she’s scum.

  201. 201.

    danielx

    @Ohio Mom: They can also eat hostas, or at least rabbits do. There is a solution one can purchase to repel the little mfs but It’s so disgusting I’m reluctant to use it. One of the active ingredients is listed as “putrescent egg whites” and it’s worse than it sounds.

  203. 203.

    Jackie

    @danielx: LOL! I so agree!

    AKA “The Mom Look!”

    She’s already used The LOOK when she directs her comments personally  to TCFG!😂

  204. 204.

    ArchTeryx

    @Quinerly: You are not scum, and that’s what is important. You kept your moral compass when she lost her’s completely.

    I’m just this old bird off to the side, trying to survive in a world that’s always been hostile to me – but that hostility got quite direct and quite personal during the Trump years. I didn’t expect to survive, and almost did not. I cannot forgive these people, even if they all somehow woke up from their amoral trances.

  206. 206.

    Trivia Man

    @BR: I think hers are all positive. I don’t think I have seen any on TV with both of them, cant recall because I see some ads on line. And of course CFG is all negative. Maybe one positive ad but that also may have been on line.

  207. 207.

    RandomMonster

    had white people taco night

    In our house these are called honky tacos. Please adopt the term.

  208. 208.

    Chet Murthy

    @Quinerly: It was an easy decision.  But living with it hasn’t been easy at all.  A few times over the years, I’ve woken up in tears, from missing him.  We were  that close.  Doesn’t change things, but it still hurts.

  209. 209.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Quinerly: I offer you my sympathy.  I had a childhood friend who went off the RWNJ deep end years ago (long before Trump).  I haven’t spoken with him since.

  210. 210.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay:

    That’s also a good point. I’m sure the stress of the job and everything else got to him too

  213. 213.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @Quinerly: honestly she sounds like a narcissist by asking for so much driving. She may have been really pleasant in asking but she was still taking advantage of you.

  214. 214.

    sab

    @Gvg: Our county metroparks cull deer with hired sharpshooters every few years even in the city limits. The nearby National Park does not cull, and whole herds of deer starve to death in harsh winters.

  217. 217.

    danielx

    @piratedan: ​ You’re saying that like those are bad things. Those standing shells are handy.
    I’ll give you the pace mild.​
     
    @Jay: ​
     yeah, that cheese mayo baloney thing sounds too disgusting to be real.

  218. 218.

    Quinerly

    @Chet Murthy:

    Thanks.

    I do tend to be a bridge burner and don’t look back. No regrets when I burn those bridges. I also am a firm believer that people mostly fit periods of our lives.

    I hadn’t thought of Jeanne in years until I saw Leigh’s death notice in The Missouri Bar Journal. Jeanne and Leigh were very close. Plus, same area of practice…domestic relations. Leigh was brilliant and I know she was Jeanne’s sounding board in a lot of cases. A wave of sadness came over me for Jeanne….losing her friend. Probably should have left it where it was when Jeanne emailed back she didn’t even know Leigh had died.

  221. 221.

    Soprano2

    @Chet Murthy: We have to cull them because we eliminated all their predators. It’s just the truth. They’ll die from starvation if we don’t keep their numbers down.

  222. 222.

    Chet Murthy

    @Quinerly: Showing kindness to someone, even a MAGAt, isn’t a fault.  We all get to decide what we can tolerate, and I certainly can’t judge others for what they’ll withstand.  I know of people with MAGAts in their family: I can’t imagine the pain they must endure, b/c who can exclude their parents, or their children, or siblings?

    We have to be kind to ourselves, too.

  223. 223.

    Ramona

    @Scout211: I have no doubt he has called MVP a bitch. I’d already clicked on the link in another thread and listened many times and I hoped I’d misheard somehow so I clicked on the link here to be sure but still did not hear it. I was mildly disappointed that there didn’t appear to be a smoking gun.

  225. 225.

    Chet Murthy

    @Ramona: I listened to it again.  Around the :19 mark, he said either

    • “she’s just so fuckin bad”
    • “she’s just a fuckin’ bitch”

    I can’t decide which.  So I’ll go with the worse interpretation, b/c he certainly deserves it.

  226. 226.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Soprano2:

    @sab:

    There was actually a “Save the Deer” group that sued the metroparks in my area for culling the deer using hunters in the past few years. People, including an expert, disputed the park’s findings that a culling was necessary. As I recall, park officials were also very heavy-handed in their response to the public dispute

  227. 227.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I agree, it’s interesting that the powerful woman is seen as the villian. You know I wasn’t on the side of Biden dropping out because I’m more risk averse, but I’m not too proud to admit that it’s turned out better than I thought possible. I was leery of all the stupid “beauty contest” ideas I was hearing, and I honestly thought it was being driven by the big money people.

  228. 228.

    Jay

    @sab:

    Boom and bust populations are common even in the wild where there is a predator/prey balanced relationship.

    The big problem is in most areas, there is no balanced predator/prey relationship, and like I pointed out in The Tyee article, in the past 150 years wild mammals have fallen from 80% of mammal biomass, to 4%.

    Starvation is common in the wild

    And the “common” answer is always a cull.

  229. 229.

    Aziz, light!

    The problem is not too many deer, but not enough wolves. All was in balance before New World newcomers erased them from 95 percent of their range.

  232. 232.

    Princess

    @Quinerly: “Always a Liberal but parted ways over Obama” means one thing — your friend is racist. Votes the policies not the person, my left foot.

  235. 235.

    BellyCat

    @Quinerly: Tough realizations about a (once) close friend. I have a similar situation, but more recent. My theory: these people were slow-walked into their depth of callousness by Fox consumption. Repetition easily (or eventually?) reshapes those without a strong moral compass.

  237. 237.

    Quinerly

    @Princess:

    Agree. First crack was the moral outrage over Clinton’s blowjob. She eased into liking GWB and we didn’t discuss that much. The real red flag came when Obama ran. Like I said, by Ted Kennedy’s death we were done. We had had the big blow up when Obama was elected. She was convinced he wasn’t born here. I actually didn’t unfriend her and block her on FB until she posted a very distasteful meme about Kennedy’s death.

    Thanks.

  239. 239.

    Lynn Dee

    @Kay:  Pelosi also said in one interview that she had hoped Biden would “make the decision” to run a better campaign (as opposed to making the decision not to run). I don’t quite buy that. Obviously if he could’ve run a better campaign, he would’ve — although, she does also fault his operation.

    Anyway, she did what she had to do, or what she believed she had to do. I can’t begin to speculate who set things up after that to turn out as well as they did, but I do credit at least Biden and Harris both. It’ll be a fascinating accounting to read about one of these days.

  240. 240.

    dww44

    @Fake Irishman: thank you.

    @piratedan: Thank you.  That’s my kind of taco sans the Pace Picante. It’s Taco Bell’s  sauce from the grocery store shelf. 3 different spice levels and my household prefers the mild.   We’re white olds.

  241. 241.

    WaterGirl

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): People checking Betty Cracker’s Corner periodically?  Or someone sees it in their RSS feed, regardless of the date.  One person comments on it, and then it shows up in Recent Comments every time someone else comments.

    Betty Cracker wanted it low key.

Comments are closed.