Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

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

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

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Saturday Night Open Thread

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Saturday Night Open Thread 18

That’s looking like the last big harvest of the year. Still have about 25 or so in various stages of green that I will pick as I need, but that is the last big picking this year. Oh well, on to other things.

The local apple orchard is back open for the fall, and I picked up a new apple I had never had before- the sweet maia, and it is one of the sweetest apples I have ever had. Maia actually stands for the midwest apple improvement association, and the “sweet maia” is a cross between a wintercrisp and a honey crisp. It’s a smaller apple, very dense, with a ruby red coloring, and very crisp and extremely sweet, but with a good bit of what I call the essence of apple. They are very good!

***

Watergirl has uploaded the stickers and yard signs, but they are not quite ready for sale with the shop still creating problems, but I thought you all would like to see a preview:

VERY EXCITING!!!

Update from WG: Look for more options in two comments below at #50-something.

***

Other than that, not much going on here. Shoulder hurts, Rosie is pissy, Max is a dick, Steve is chill. The usual. Did have a little chuckle at Joelle’s expense because she waited late to go to the pool thinking she would have it all to herself, got there at 3:55, and was promptly told the pool was closing. Which totally sucks because now she has to pedal back home in Arizona hit. She told me and I called her a “big dummy,” she said “Did you just Fred Sanford me?” and that made me think of just how awesome 70’s and 80’s theme songs were:

Quincy Jones. What a talent.

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  2. 2.

    Suzanne

    One of my neighbors gave me a beautiful homegrown tomato today. He’s one of the neighborhood longtimers, an elderly Italian gentleman, and he speaks very little English. Talking to him is always a project, because I don’t speak Italian! But he’s so kind.

    I ran a lot today. I am tired. Have to go to Florida on Monday. Not thrilled about it.

  3. 3.

    catclub

    waited late to go to the pool thinking she would have it all to herself, got there at 3:55, and was promptly told the pool was closing.

    I am pretty convinced that almost all people who are responsible for pool maintenance
    1) hate pools, and 2) limit hours as much as possible.

    Pool hours seem absurdly short to me. It would be MUCH more convenient for ME if they were open 24/7.

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    I thought that this weekend would be a brief respite from the ongoing AC crisis at work (who knew that ramming a tunnel-boring tool into a sixty year old water main made largely from asbestos would be a problem?), but then last night one of my students did something stupid rather than pause and email asking for advice, and now I have to figure out how much damage (both literally and financially) we’re looking at. Sigh. Always something.

  8. 8.

    Redshift

    I did the first “Kamala Captain” training this week at our local campaign office, not really knowing what it was going to be. Turns out it’s to be part of the team running GOTV right before the election, exciting!

  9. 9.

    geg6

    @Thylacine:

    It’s the MTM Show, the Bob Newhart Show and All in the Family for me.  Saturday night tv in the 70s was freaking awesome.  The whole CBS Saturday prime time lineup was just killer.  Almost all with memorable theme songs.

    ETA:  And don’t forget The Jeffersons!  🎶Well, we’re moving’ on up🎶

  12. 12.

    lamh47

    John I was saying in the previous thread that I watched the Fall Guy film on peacock.  It’s on streaming now and it was really good.  I think you’d like it.

    If not Peacock, I’ve also heard good things about this movie called Rebel Ridge on Netflix.  My mom watched it and loved it.  I’ll probably watch it tomorrow.

  14. 14.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    I have two neighbors on the block that we call “Fred G Sanford” (there’s an episode of S&S where Fred goes “And the ‘G’ stands for ‘junk'”), because their backyards are full of junk.  One is my next door neighbor, 75-year old from Mexico, who is in ill health.  He loans me practically anything I need in terms of tools.  Wonderful old guy who’s probably not gonna be with us much longer.  We’re currently harvesting peaches off his peach tree in the back, amidst all the junk, it’s giving us a bumper crop this year.

    The other guy is on the other side of the street and down the block.  He is a longtime black resident who hasn’t been displaced…yet.  He has a ladder on top of his porch roof that hasn’t moved in 10 years.  I don’t see as much of him but he’s another great old soul on the block.

  16. 16.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Thylacine:

    70s: Rockford Files.

    60s: the 3rd season of ‘Lost in Space’, the “Countdown Theme” done by none other than John Williams.  Also too, the Jonny Quest theme.

  18. 18.

    Andrya

    The tomatoes look delicious!

    Are there going to be Harris/Walz tee shirts?   Wants one, wants one, precious, precious, Gollum,  Gollum…

  20. 20.

    Nukular Biskits

    For some reason, I thought Mike Post did the theme for Sanford & Son.

    He did so many others in the 70s & 80s:

    • Hill Street Blues
    • Rockford Files
    • The Greatest American Hero
    • Magnum PI
    • White Shadow
    • The A-Team
    • Quantum Leap
    • NYPD Blue

    and more.

  21. 21.

    A Ghost to Most

    Out here, this time of year is for visiting the various venues for roasted peppers, especially Hatch peppers.

  23. 23.

    TaMara

    @lamh47: I’m glad to hear that. I saw it in the theater and LOVED IT (and I love very few movies these days), but I was worried it wouldn’t transfer to streaming very well.

    It’s on my list to watch tonight.

  24. 24.

    lamh47

    @Nukular Biskits: Speaking of Quantum Leap.

    It introduced me to Scott Bakula who I’ve loved ever since.  I know they did a reboot series, but meh…no Bakula was a no go from me.

    Saw Bakula on another series as a guest star recently and it made me want to rewatch old eps of Quantum Leap!

    Hell, bout the only reason I watched NCIS:New Orleans was because they had Bakula AND it was filmed on site in and around NOLA

  25. 25.

    lamh47

    @TaMara: I’m not big on Ryan Gosling.  He doesnt’ really get me to theatres so wasnt’ planning to see it on the big screen.  I was def waiting for streaming.

    I have a big screen tv so it was a pretty great watch on the big tv.  Not all action films do

  28. 28.

    Another Scott

    Nice looking ‘maters.  Keep getting better, JGC.

    Meanwhile, … Phys.org – reprint of something from TheConversation:

    Is authoritarian populism finally being rejected by citizens around the world?

    In 2016, Donald Trump successfully fused his angry frustrations with globalism with false allegations about immigrant rapists. Eight years later, he is still doubling down on identity.

    But this time around, his message seems worn and brittle. He lacks a silver bullet like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or a border wall that he can leverage to make Democrats look weak.

    The global scene

    […]

    Turnout is everything
    In the United States, Trump’s relentless slurs—aimed at everyone from fallen soldiers to migrants and Joe Biden—are good for the far-right movement because it nurtures new extremists.

    But it’s bad for his electoral prospects. His advisers keep urging him to make a real case to the American people about issues they care about, but he seems incapable of abandoning his grievances.

    Vice President Kamala Harris’s team, meantime, has made access to abortion one of its top campaign issues—and it’s one in which millions of Americans can see the direct impact of public policy on their lives.

    Trump has begun to cast about for a pivotal bread-and-butter issue such as the rising cost of food to rally the faithful, too. But he’s also continuing to double down on hate speech and conspiracy.

    It’s worked before, but it’s a riskier bet now. In 2016, he could blame the economic ills of middle America on NAFTA, but no more. Inflation is cooling. The U.S. Federal Reserve is signaling a rate cut soon, just weeks before the presidential election.

    Populists are having an eventful year, defeated in both the U.K. and France while winning in the Netherlands, Austria and the former East Germany.

    Getting out the vote is always the key to defeating authoritarianism. If enough citizens who believe in the values of democracy show up to cast their ballots, populist forces near and far could sooner or later get clobbered.

    (More at the link – worth a click.)

    We’ve got the wind at our backs in some ways, but we still have to do the work to create the future we want to see.

    Forward!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  31. 31.

    raven

    Multiple People Shot Along I-75 Near Lexington, Kentucky

    The Laurel County Sheriff’s office said in a post on Facebook that it was an “active shooter situation” and “numerous persons” were shot near the highway.

  33. 33.

    JML

    @Nukular Biskits: Mike Post was elite. Magnum PI and Hill Street, great showed that deserved to have that great theme.

    Hill Street holds up pretty dang well, especially if you watch it as a period piece. Magnum? Darker than you might remember (watch Did You See the Sunrise again. Oof). Big fan of both.

  40. 40.

    BethanyAnne

    @geg6: Hey, I’ve been hoping to see you around. I had a problem with vertigo a couple of decades ago, and wanted to chat briefly about what worked for me, if you didn’t mind. I know I’m just a rando commenter, so if you’d rather stick with the sources you’ve got, that’s fine, too.

  43. 43.

    Kayla Rudbek

    I was wiped out all day today by the vaccines.  Lots of napping and listening to audiobooks. I didn’t even want to knit or embroider anything today; what I personally think of as a “total full stop” day.  Now I’m watching the Vuelta in between naps. Northern Spain (Cantabria) surprisingly green. Lots of mountains, winding narrow roads, and now going through a town.  This is the last day of road racing and then tomorrow is a time trial in Madrid.

  45. 45.

    Ruckus

    Anyone enjoying the outdoors?

    I’m not, it’s just after 6pm and my phone says it’s 100 degrees outside, while national weather service says it is 102. Just took out the trash, it feels a tad warm out. It was 105 earlier. Tomorrow 105 with 20% chance of rain.

  46. 46.

    Hungry Joe

    @eclare: Agree about  “Barney Miller” theme. That show is also on my list of Top Ten Sitcoms EVER. Damn, it was good. I watched a couple of episodes not long ago and they held up perfectly.

  49. 49.

    BethanyAnne

    @geg6: You can just skip this if you don’t advice from randos on the interwebs, of course. I had vertigo badly in the 1990s – I couldn’t even sit up straight. ENTs couldn’t help, and I wasn’t getting any answers. I finally went to an older ENT in Houston that had actually trained the folk I had been visiting, and he said that it was likely a problem with my middle ear. Prescribed me Transderm Scop. I wore the patches for about 2 weeks, and the vertigo went away permanently. No clue if that would help your sister, but it’s a cheap medicine, and it’s non-invasive. Might be worth trying. HTH, Bethany

  51. 51.

    WaterGirl

    And now I see that Cole didn’t include all the images.

    These are the car magnets.  Available in “regular” Steve and “regular” Tunch, and in the “Dark Brandon” versions.  (look at the eyes)

  66. 66.

    danielx

    @Ruckus:

    Got that right. Had a brush with an old friend earlier in the week and it was like one or the other of us was looking through a funhouse mirror at current events, and I’m reasonably certain it wasn’t me.

    I maintained civility but when he got to the “you people” stage I was all “what’s this ‘you people shit’? I’m not ‘you people’, I’m the same person you’ve known for better than thirty years. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  71. 71.

    dmsilev

    @WaterGirl: Part of the job, really. Not the enjoyable part.

    So far as from what I can tell from our logs, no physical damage, so that’s good. We may have lost some expensive gas (isotopic helium), but unless the entire charge of the whole system got vented, that’s manageable.

    Now back to the water nightmare. They (our Facilities team) have promised an improvement from our current “can run, maybe, half of our gear” situation starting in about a week and a half. The real true permanent solution is expected roughly speaking around Thanksgiving. Hope the interim one gets better.

  76. 76.

    JoyceH

    Another shooting and I’m not yet over the last one. Wondering if the response on the right to this latest will be that highways need to be “hardened” to be less of a “soft target”.

    But I’m still stuck on the fact that the school shooter’s dad bought his fourteen year old an AR-15. What strange myths abound in the gunosphere that convinces parents that a high-powered rapid fire gun would be at least harmless and perhaps even downright therapeutic as a gift for their troubled child? I recall an earlier shooting where the mom got the gun, knowing the kid had problems, with the justification that they could bond at the shooting range. Perhaps archery would be a better option, or competition grade slingshots.

  78. 78.

    eclare

    @JoyceH:

    Adam Lanza’s mom bought him a gun, and she thought going to the gun range was a great bonding time.  He murdered her with that gun,  and then he went to murder kids at school in Sandy Hook.

    There have to be better hobbies that are not lethal.

  80. 80.

    Chet Murthy

    @Ruckus: I thought about this a long time.  And I think that the answer is “no”.  That is to say, no more insane than we’ve been for a long, long time.  Some reasons:

    • It’s well-known that speeding causes crashes and fatalities.  And yet people do it.  They do it a lot.  And heck, states have raised speed limits.  And people die as a result, yet we continue.
    • An armed population with these sorts of deaths, mass murder events, is going to cause people to feel stress.  And that’s a good thing for the Fascists, b/c people who are afraid, are going to be receptive to “it’s their fault, we’ll go after them, make them pay!”
    • I remember reading that during Weimar Germany there were a lot of violent clashes: weapons were everywhere and militias (freikorps, but others too) were widespread.  And this was helpful to the Nazi cause, b/c they could point at Weimar as not maintaining the peace.  That a lot of the violence was coming from the Nazis themselves didn’t invalidate this point in the eyes of voters.

    I guess what I’m saying is, this is an effective strategy, and we shouldn’t be surprised that the right-wing is using it.  And then there is (of course) the fact that an angry, heavily-armed right-wing faction is going to be very useful, if Teh Fash [sic] decide to declare a civil war.  And they have their Radio Milles Collines (from Rwanda) already in operation (Fox, ONAN, Newsmax, etc).

  81. 81.

    Joelle

    @catclub: You don’t know the half of it.  I went to the pool late because it’s an ASU home game tonight. so I went to the pool late specifically to have it all to myself while the students were at the game.  Meanwhile, Pool and Gym closed early because of the game. Irony can be a cold ass bitch sometimes.

  86. 86.

    Glidwrith

    @eclare:

    @Another Scott: The only reason I can think of for the fakery, if you scroll down, it’s a bunch of crap claims against Harris.

    Cute animals as a hook to pull you in, then a steaming helping of horse shit this person expects you to swallow.

  87. 87.

    wjca

    @raven: The Laurel County Sheriff’s office said in a post on Facebook that it was an “active shooter situation” and “numerous persons” were shot near the highway.

    It doubtless says something that my instant kneejerk reaction was: “Thank goodness it wasn’t another school!”

  88. 88.

    TS

    @eclare:

    There have to be better hobbies that are not lethal.

    Guns are designed to kill. I’ve always wondered whether it’s feasible to promote this to the Olympic committee and get any shooting events removed from the Olympics. Weapons of war, designed to kill, are not sport.

  89. 89.

    TS

    @BR: Shame the only thing the WaPo discussed about Harris today was ‘Harris is preparing for the debate” while their bff was out campaigning in Wisconsin.

  90. 90.

    Chet Murthy

    @TS: Unfortunately, the origins of the Olympic sporting events, both in antiquity and in the modern age, were from skills needed in wartime, right?  That’s why dressage is a sport in the Olympics: being able to control your horse was a key skill in a good cavalryman.

    I mean, I agree with you that these events should be removed from the Olympics,  but it would cause quite a ruckus.

  91. 91.

    Chet Murthy

    @Chet Murthy: And upon further consideration, why should the Olympics change just because the US is ….. insane?  The rest of the world (well, at least the rest of the West, which is where the $$ for the Olympics comes from) has no problem with guns, and hence the Olympics events around guns aren’t a problem for them.  We’re the one big country that has a problem, and instead of fixing it, we want to change the Olympics?  Which won’t actually fix anything?  I can see why the rest of the world would look at us like we’d went off our rockers.  Which, for sure, we have.

    ETA: AFAIK, the rifles used in Olympics events aren’t actually weapons of war.  They’re target rifles, and guns like those haven’t been used in wartime for …. nearly a century?  True, the skills are transferable, but that’s true of most of athletics.

  92. 92.

    TS

    @Chet Murthy:

    but it would cause quite a ruckus.

    That would be fun to see – be interesting to find out who would support the “sports” being removed.

    I have/had many farmers in my extended family who owned guns.  (they were mostly locked up in cabinets with wooden (not glass) doors whenever I visited). I had never even seen a hand gun until I went to the states in 1978. At that stage the police in my part of the world did not carry guns.

    At the bottom of an elevator at Dulles Airport we saw a policeman chewing gum with a gun in a holster towards his back pocket.  I’ve never forgotten that & was dismayed when the police at home started carrying guns – mid 1980s. Thatcher/Reagan fear stories spread everywhere

    Edit: I’m not from the US – I do not think guns are “sport” – shot guns/rifles or anything else. Farmers used them to kill foxes and other animals ruining their crops – they are designed to kill.

  93. 93.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Chet Murthy:

    I disagree.  Ancient nude wrestling in the Olympics had nothing to do with hoplite warfare.  As an example.  In fact, nothing in the Ancient games had any relation to effective warfare as it was being practiced during the time frame.

    Modern Winter Olympics, the Biatholon has nothing to do with warfare, it’s all about skiing and shooting animals.  It’s a very subtle and alluring event.

    Modern Summer Olympics, Archery.  It’s accuracy and when you start watching it, very compelling.  It has nothing to do with pre-gunpowder archery tactics which were mass missile fire be it with longbow-armed English taking down French knights or horse archery anywhere from the Sarmatians to the Parthians to the Mongols.

  94. 94.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @raven: Just waiting for the cultists to claim yet again that the shooter is a trans people—which they now do after any mass shooting that gets media attention.

    Including the Georgia school shooting, despite the shooter saying he had problems with society accepting trans people.

  95. 95.

    Chet Murthy

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: All three of your examples share the same feature: the skills needed to excel are going to be -related- to skills needed in wartime.  So no (of course not) fencing isn’t going to be the same as sword-fighting.  But it’s related, and that’s probably why it was included in the Olympics.  Ditto archery, target shooting.  And of course, back when a soldier was their own transport (I remember a book published by the US Army titled _The Soldier’s Foot and the Military Shoe_), winter combat in Northern Europe critically required cross-country skiing

    ETA: I should have said “are going to be related to skills that -were- needed in wartime, around/before the time when the event was introduced into the Olympics”.  Obvs. dressage isn’t needed in wartime -today-.  But it was critical before mechanized warfare.

  96. 96.

    Origuy

    From the FAFO File: (Embedded from Bluesky)

    there’s currently massive unrest in the venomous snake hobbyist community bc some dumbfuck who owned an inland taipan in the US, encouraged free handling and didn’t have anti-venom (insane) got bit and now he’s in the hospital on a ventilator and also he posted this one (1) week ago

    [image or embed]
    — cait (@cait.bsky.social) Sep 7, 2024 at 9:40 AM

    The image is of a post this snake handler made only a week ago that said “Anti-venom is for pussies”. Now he’s in the ICU and trying to get someone to send anti-venom to the hospital. The inland taipan has the most potent venom on Earth.

  97. 97.

    Ruckus

    @CaseyL:

    Having been stationed on both coasts while in the USN and having traveled to 48 of the states while working in professional sports for a significant period of my life, I’d put the percentage at closer to your high number than the low.

  102. 102.

    Ken

    @Origuy: Wow, there’s absolutely no sympathy in the replies. Also absolutely no sympathy from at least one zoo that does have the anti-venin, but isn’t sending it, which surprises me a bit.

  103. 103.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    Gotta remember those fundies are more scared of their kids’ souls being corrupted than of the prospect of their kids’ getting shot full of bullet holes.

  104. 104.

    Geminid

    The controversy over the last weekend’s Turkish Military Academy grasuations continues. It began when pictures of President Erdogan awarding diplomas to each of the top graduates of the Army, Navy and Air Force schools went viral because for the first time, they were all women. Some snarky comments about this on Twitter triggered intense secularist, nationalist pushback

    I haven’t got a good handle on the matter but I’ve seen a lot of pics showing the new lieutenant classes brandishing their swords in the air with a typical caption stating, “We are the soldiers of Kemal Ataturk!” I’ve also learned more Turkish words like konformist, sosyal medya, trollerin and cringe.

  106. 106.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

    I’ve seen a lot of pics showing the new lieutenant classes brandishing their swords in the air with a typical caption stating, “We are the soldiers of Kemal Ataturk!”

    They need one with the caption, “I’d walk a mile for a Kemal.”

  107. 107.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: That joke could get you in trouble if you posted it in Turkiye. Insulting the memory of Kemal Ataturk is a criminal offense there. Anyway, it’s “cringe.”

  109. 109.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @lamh47:

    Gov. Walz at the HRC dinner

    Took me way longer than it should have to figure out that HRC was Human Rights Campaign, not Hillary Rodham Clinton.

  110. 110.

    BellaPea

    @eclare: I’m late to the thread, but I cannot get over that Tennessee vs. NC State. My husband went to bed before it was over, and I told him this morning how amazing it was–the Vol defense looked like Georgia. Hope it is a sign of things to come.

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