Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When we show up, we win.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

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

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

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

Bark louder, little dog.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

Please don’t feed the bears.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

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

This blog will pay for itself.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Monday Morning Open Thread: #LFGooooo!

Monday Morning Open Thread: #LFGooooo!

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NEW: The Harris campaign just announced a major series of interviews and campaign stops this week.

MONDAY: Harris’s 60 Minutes interview airs.

TUESDAY: Harris speaks to The View, The Howard Stern Show, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

WEDNESDAY-THURSDAY: Harris campaigns in Nevada and participates in a Univision Town Hall.

FRIDAY: Harris campaigns in Arizona.


Reader Interactions

196Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    I too have a podcast for 18-24 women. It’s called Call Me Daddy

    ETA: Still looking for my first subscriber.

  7. 7.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Whatever works, but man, I could not listen to that podcast host; annoying. But then, I’m not the intended audience. Kudos for MVP doing the interview.

  8. 8.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Call Her Daddy is the #1 most-listened to podcast among women. And this interview comes as the VP is slated to appear on 60 Minutes, The View, Colbert, Howard Stern, and a Univision town hall – all this week.

    NYT: “VP still refuses to talk to the press. Not returning our calls.”

  13. 13.

    Erin

    @MagdaInBlack: My problem with that cover is that it doesn’t sound like Tom Jones imitating David Byrne. It sounds like David Byrne imitating Tom Jones. Just feels like a parody more than a cover.

  17. 17.

    TBone

    @Baud: for those of us who can’t podcast.

    I had my patience tested again. I’m negative.

    (I need to have something grab my full attention – I’m too tempted to multitask during a listening-only event.)

  18. 18.

    TBone

    @MagdaInBlack: Thank you for widening my horizon with a new-to-me video of a beloved anthem.  I played it so much during both impeachments!  LOUD.

    ETA with TWO new vids! 😍

  19. 19.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

    It’s because of where you put that apostrophe on the application form.

    Refresh the page and you’ll find take-up amongst the 45-60 male demographic has been considerable.

  25. 25.

    TBone

    AP – Milton increased to a Category 2 hurricane early Monday as Florida gears up for what could be its biggest evacuation in seven years as the storm heads toward major population centers including Tampa and Orlando.

    The most likely path suggests Milton could make landfall Wednesday in the Tampa Bay area and remain a hurricane as it moves across central Florida into the Atlantic Ocean.

    Florida is staging emergency fuel for gas vehicles and charging stations for electric vehicles along evacuation routes, Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said at a Sunday briefing.

    The response to Helene won’t let up during Milton and its aftermath, because FEMA has the capacity to address multiple disasters simultaneously, the agency said.

  26. 26.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    One had to love how the MSM has declared the Trump campaign to focus on activating rural white racist drug dealers as an act of political genius while at the same time claiming Harris focus on activating the youth vote through things like pod casts cowardice on her part.

  27. 27.

    lowtechcyclist

    @TBone:

    My FIL and BIL are in Plant City, which is right in Milton’s track.  FIL is about to turn 83 and is in poor health, and probably too stubborn to evacuate.  I’m hoping BIL will stay with him Wednesday afternoon and night. Needless to say, my wife and I are worried for them both.

  28. 28.

    narya

    What I find amusing is that, as TNYFT and Tiger Beat on the Potomac (h/t Charlie Pierce, re: Politico) and TCFG whine how Harris “isn’t doing interviews,” she’s just going out and doing interviews in venues that reach the demographics who want to know more about her. They’re starting to give off very “I will not be ignored!” vibes, and it’s pathetic–not least because their whining isn’t going to get through to the people that Harris’s interviews DO reach. And, really, especially given the short shrift that NYFT gave to Jack Smith (contra the EMAILZ all over the front page), who would trust them?

    I also miss the morning Blech . . .

  29. 29.

    JML

    TFG skips out on 60 Minutes and somehow the insider political media still thinks the story is “Harris doesn’t do enough interviews with us”.

    I can’t even.

    Ad blitz from TFG and his allies is definitely trading on bigotry and hate. They think they’ve found their winner, making Harris the #1 supporter of trans rights (as if that’s bad). Clearly they think they’ve found their disfavored minority group to point to as “the other” to hate and paint as being weird and unamerican and be the ones to blame for anything wrong with your life. What a terrible bunch of people TFG and his ilk are. They really have no policies, only hatred and fear.

  31. 31.

    Geminid

    Some Senate debates are coming up this week. This morning’s Politico Playbook tells me that Michigan Senate candidate Rep. Elissa Slotkin debates former Rep. Mike Rodgers tomorrow night. Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego will face Scary Kari Lake Wednesday, while Maryland Senate candidates Angela Alsbrooks and Larry Hogan will debate Thursday evening.

    Polls show Hogan trailing and this debate could be his last chance to change the dynamics of the race.

  33. 33.

    prostratedragon

    @MagdaInBlack:  Will check it later, but it dawns on me that Tom Jones can probably cover anything.

    In other news, I mailed my ballot today❗️ Once it hits the postal system I’ll be able to track it.

  34. 34.

    Dan B

    HeleninEdinburgh at Joe.My.God. flawlessly spelled out the MSM attitude to being ignored by Harris / Walz, paraphrasing: “They want an award for the journalistic version of properly using the potty like the big boys.”  It’s a giggle inducing version of calling them whiney brats.

    At the same time they’re performing the function of enabling the authoritarian wannabees that’s filled by intellectuals in rising dictatorships.  Some levity is essential to not fall into despair.

  40. 40.

    Jeffro

    @narya: this!  such whiny babies

    also: if Harris won’t play ball with them and their readership keeps dwindling, they do have the option to try something different.  It’s not on MVP to try and please them or prop up their failing model of both-sides stenography.

  41. 41.

    Kay

    Listen to the clip to see the preparation she put into it. She prepared 7 different sets of questions for the interview – “do I talk about the economy, do I talk about border control..”

    None of the versions were “Donald Trump said this bunch of lying bullshit the day before yesterday – please respond”

    This isn’t complicated – political media need to work harder. Get better at asking questions. Make 7 different versions of interviews. Talk about something else other than Donald Trump.

  43. 43.

    satby

    @Baud: oh, hey, since you asked about him, here’s Harry Sisson amplifying Kamala Harris’s answer to one question on that podcast:

    Harry Sisson @harryjsisson. 14h

    This is such an amazing answer from Kamala Harris on Sarah Huckabee Sanders insulting her “I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who are not aspiring to be humble. This is not the 1950s anymore.” Spot on.

  44. 44.

    Kay

    Also it’s pure sexism and misogny that going on Joe Rogan is considered a great idea and going on a podcast geared to women is not.

    I would like political media to explain why they consider women talking less important and serious than men talking. Lay that out for me.

  45. 45.

    lowtechcyclist

    @JML:

    TFG skips out on 60 Minutes and somehow the insider political media still thinks the story is “Harris doesn’t do enough interviews with us”.

    I can’t even.

    They’ve given up any pretense of evenhanded coverage. It doesn’t really matter that they have an editorial endorsing Harris, when their day-in, day-out coverage is massively tilted towards going easy on Trump while coming down hard on Harris for any minor stuff they can find.

    FWIW, the Bible says they’re an abomination:

    “You shall not have unequal weights in your bag, one heavy, the other light. You shall not have unequal measures in your house, one large, the other small. You shall have true and correct weights and true and correct measures, so that you may live long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.  All who commit these offenses, all who deal dishonestly, are abominable to the Lord.” -Deuteronomy 25:13-16

    Ad blitz from TFG and his allies is definitely trading on bigotry and hate. They think they’ve found their winner, making Harris the #1 supporter of trans rights (as if that’s bad). Clearly they think they’ve found their disfavored minority group to point to as “the other” to hate and paint as being weird and unamerican and be the ones to blame for anything wrong with your life. What a terrible bunch of people TFG and his ilk are. They really have no policies, only hatred and fear.

    They are a cult of vengeance and retribution, full stop.  They look for others to blame their problems on, and their answer is to do violence to those people.

    They’re starting with trans people, because they’re a small enough minority to punch down on, and to tell lies to others about trans persons and transitioning to convince enough people that their punching down is really just about protecting everyone’s kids.

    Next stop, immigrants, of course.  What Niemoller said.

  46. 46.

    Eolirin

    I think the thing that’s most infuriating about the whining complaints about how Harris isn’t doing any interviews with venues likely to be “serious” is that the outlets making these complaints have demonstrated time and time again that they are incapable of asking serious and meaningful questions.

    Colbert is a better interviewer than them. Howard Stern is a million times better of an interviewer. The podcast she just did involved far more complex and serious questions than anything Dana Bash asked.

    Our news media has become entirely high on its own supply, and is attempting to claim an authority on these matters that it lacks the credibility to assert.

    I can’t see how this doesn’t just hasten it’s demise, and what comes after is concerning.

  48. 48.

    TS

    @narya: They seem to have forgotten that trump all but shut down the White House Press Room. A very small part of me thinks it would be amusing to see the NYT meltdown if trump actually won again.

    The rest of me fears for the safety of everyone – world wide – if he did win.

  50. 50.

    Eolirin

    @Jeffro: The NYT at least seems to have settled on games to fix their subscription problems. I’m sure that won’t affect their long term decision making when it comes to allocating resources to the news part of the organization. :p

  53. 53.

    rusty

    The readership of the NYT and WP are college educated (with a high percentage of advanced degrees), politically engaged, higher income, predominantly white, highly likely to vote, etc.  This group has an extremely small number of real undecided voters. Add that the papers have historically, and clearly now, an antagonistic relationship to Democrats, and what possible good can come from doing interviews with them?  These other sources reach out directly to groups that have higher rates of undecided voters and voters with low engagement that you want to come out and vote.  It’s not rocket science where you should spend your time.  There is absolutely nothing helpful or good that can come from talking to the NYT, WP or the like at this point.  The arrogance of the NYT in particular, makes them look petulant as they whine about not getting an interview, and they are too blinded to see their whining is pointing out their increasing irrelevance.  They are too self absorbed to see they are hurting themselves.

  54. 54.

    Kay

    @Eolirin:

    They have to stop talking about themselves. It is NUTS how much time they spend talking about themselves and their industry.

    Dana Bash shouldn’t be doing interviews then going on interviews herself to talk about her opinions of her own interview. Do they not get that they have made themselves the center of everything they do? That that is where they went wrong and will continue to go wrong?

  55. 55.

    Soprano2

    @Kay:  Talk about something else other than Donald Trump.

    Also, quit thinking the only way people can find out about Harris’ positions on the issues is if you ask a bunch of loaded, gotcha questions. That’s the implication of their criticism, that you can’t find out what she really thinks unless the interview is somewhat hostile.

  56. 56.

    Jeffro

    @Eolirin: they can keep trying to have it both ways, but in the end, a) they’re pleasing no one and b) they’re not doing their jobs.

    Put the effort in, like Kay says.  Put the screws to people.  Highlight the very real differences here.  And above all, as Jay Rosen puts it, tell people the stakes, not the odds.

  57. 57.

    Kay

    @Eolirin:

    and what comes after is concerning.

    It is. Rejecting reporting and relying on social media isn’t the answer, as we just saw very clearly with the absolute Twitter shit show of disinformation on the flooding in NC.
    Social media is a fucking sewer and it’s all owned by Right wing ideologues. It isn’t going to replace “news”.
    They have to get better. We need the industry.

  58. 58.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Fingers crossed for their safety

    Thanks!

    @TBone:

    oh dear. Does BIL have the strength necessary to manually evacuate FIL if necessary (carry him to the car)?

    No, but FIL has an electric scooter for indoor/outdoor use, and he’s capable of climbing into the car from there.

    FIL is just not gonna leave before it gets to the point where he’s worried about the house blowing away or falling down on top of him, and that’ll be too late to move, of course.

    I’d go down there and evacuate him myself if I thought there was a chance he’d be amenable to it, but it just ain’t happening.

  59. 59.

    sab

    OT: Major breakthrough on our new cat project. Echo the sister has been behaving like a normal cat since last Wednesday. She is afraid of rhe dog, but is otherwise wandering the house and socializing normally with everyone else. Minor setback yesterday when husband watched the Cleveland Browns  lose a game badly. He shrieked at the tv the whole game and all of us  went to the basement to get away.

    I was getting worried about Solomon the brother, who has been hiding under the a bed in the guest room (or behind the washing machine in the utility room next door) pretty much since he came up from the basement his first week end with us. That’s ten days of hiding. He was sneaking out at night to eat and drink, but hiding ever since.

    Yesterday I went into the guest room with a book and just lay on top of the bed and read while ignoring the cat under the bed. Just to let him know I am harmless. Dobby came in and sat beside me for a while. The pitbull stuck her head in a couple of times then went away. After a couple of hours I got up, said hi to the cat under the bed and then went to start dinner.

    At 1 o’clock in the morning Solomon started yowling in the hall, then came into our bedroom and yowled at me, so I reached down and patted his head for a bit. Then I rolled over and went back to sleep and he went under my bed. This morning he was still there. Then he jumped up on the bed, landed face to face with the pitbull who just blinked at him. He ran away, then came back, and is now wandering around on the main floor. I think he is now about to become a normal cat again, for the first time in almost two weeks.

  60. 60.

    TS

    @satby:

    I will remain aghast at the hate that is thrown at people all over the internet. Much of it may be AI and bots but there are real people typing in words and sentences they would never say out loud in front of other people. I read/listen to something wonderful and then get hit with pages of hate – so I’m reading very few links any more – couple of blogs is all I can manage.

  61. 61.

    Matt McIrvin

    @TBone:

    They’ll eventually meet the same demise, again, unless I miss my guess.

    There are no Allies coming to invade and bomb us. So the Nazis aren’t a very useful model for how to fight them. All domestic resistance to the Nazis failed.

    But. You know what is a useful model? Jim Crow and the Klan. Fascism with American characteristics.

  62. 62.

    gene108

    @TS:

    They seem to have forgotten that trump all but shut down the White House Press Room.

    Lol! I bet they remember it fondly. Get paid, while not having as much of a job to do.

  63. 63.

    Soprano2

    @Kay:  Also it’s pure sexism and misogny that going on Joe Rogan is considered a great idea and going on a podcast geared to women is not.

    I would like political media to explain why they consider women talking less important and serious than men talking. Lay that out for me.

    They can’t, because then they would have to admit that they think the votes of white men are more important than anyone else’s votes. They still believe the white man is the “normal, average” voter, so what he thinks counts more to them than what anyone else thinks. It’s why they think she should be spending all her time trying to reach them, rather than trying to reach people who are much more likely to vote for her. It’s madness, and you note that they absolutely don’t expect behavior like that from TCFG.

  65. 65.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby: Oh yes, Kamala gives a most excellent answer, and one that I suspect the audience of the podcast will resonate with.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    They’re afraid to say Trump lies constantly – their bosses and owners would be upset and Right wingers are insanely vitriolic. So they have come up with this stupid interview device where they ask Trump’s political opponents to rebut his lies. That counts as “fact checking’ Trump. It’s a silly, chickenshit trick to protect themselves.

    If Bash says to Harris “do you AGREE with Donald Trump that you’re not Black?” that counts as checking Trump. They’re having Harris do their jobs.

  67. 67.

    Trivia man

    @Chief Oshkosh: Exactly! That is today’s media world. Long gone are the days of BROADcasting with 3 tv stations. Niche audience with niche in jokes, culture, shared vision and everything else that people bond over. Its not for me and that is OK by me. I am not the default human that must be catered to by everyone in every situation. Hooray for diversity!

  69. 69.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I told my friend who was complaining that no one was covering what is happening in western North Carolina, that no aid is reaching them, and that the military isn’t there and why aren’t they helping that she needs to re-evaluate her sources of information. She’s a smart, educated woman, but she seems to believe this disinformation. Someone posted a pic of a C-130 landing that was dated 6 days ago, and she said “Finally”. Someone else pointed out that the picture was 6 days old!

  70. 70.

    sab

    @Matt McIrvin: Agreed. Trump and crew didn’t invent all this. They already had an old well-used playbook from Jim Crow. Violence and intimidation with government backing.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    It’s really the most archaic, hidebound industry. It’s full of rigidly conventional people who are brittle and have REAL trouble adapting to change.

    They should start hiring for creativity and flexibility rather than based on elite schools and a conventional  resume. Hire some oddballs with a diverse work history. People who can change without breaking. Or allow their industry to die.

    We really do need a press. It’s all going to shit without one.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I had to check out for a couple of days after that round of disinformation. Too dispiriting.

    I knew Musk was going to be a new era Murdoch. It is absolutely terrifying to me how many people believe everything they read or see on Twitter. Fully 50% of it is outright lies.

  76. 76.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: IMO, the problem mostly isn’t “the industry”, it’s mostly specific bad actors.

    emptywheel

    ‪@emptywheel.bsky.social‬

    Today, Devlin Barrett starts at NYT. He has a history (Hunter Biden, Igor Danchenko, Clinton Foundation) of posting October Surprise stories from right wing lawmakers that end up being overblown once we see the evidence, years later.

    October 7, 2024 at 8:25 AM

    People stopping giving FTFNYT, WaPo, Fox News, and all the other bad actors clicks and ad dollars, and giving them to actual good news outfits, is the way forward.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  78. 78.

    Betty

    @TS: Yes. It has been this open display of hatred that has shocked me. It’s scary to think so many people have either been harboring this for a long time or have been propagandized into developing these feelings. Either way, we have to hope there is a way out of this.

  79. 79.

    Eolirin

    @Matt McIrvin: That’s a troubling comparison because the only way we were able to beat Jim Crow without violence was because it was a regional and not national program of oppression.

    Without federal intervention, there would have been no way out of that. If the federal government is captured by it, we can’t beat it back that way.

  80. 80.

    Jeffro

    @Nukular Biskits: I think it had to do with a very early episode of the podcast, where the 2 hosts at the time were discussing ahem er someone’s empowering ‘adventure’ and since the someone in question was female…

    …it was ‘call her daddy’ (instead of ‘call him daddy’)

    More than that, I can’t say.  This is a family blog after all.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I also get tired of the whining from Americans in these disaster areas, too, honestly. I had nothing but sympathy for the people in NC at the outset but I have no patience with expecting miracles as far as power outages and relief reaching areas serviced by one or two roads when those roads are closed.

    We aren’t going to be able to fix it in 72 hours and the government is never going to make them entirely whole on their financial losses.

    We all better get better at stoicism because there isn’t enough money in the world to make everyone whole as climate disasters accelerate. My place in Michigan is “remote” in the sense that there is one main road in and out. I’m aware of this because I’ve been snowed in there. If we had some disaster where roads were closed it is going to take a long time to get to us.

    Do not expect impossible responses. There are only so many linemen and so many trucks and so many daylight hours.

  83. 83.

    gene108

    Part of the problem is the MSM has a narrative they want to follow that can be fact checked and refuted, by the kinds of people that still read newspapers.

    Their right-wing friendly framing, all of them following the same lead while ignoring other lines of inquiry, etc. can very quickly be checked by their readers as to if the specific emphasis on a topic is warranted or they’re missing the forest for the trees.

    The political media has not been able and willing to adapt to the level of engagement a newspaper reading American can have with a story in 2024 versus 2000.

    They actually have to do more work to meet their readers where their readers are regarding the level of informative political coverage needed to actually inform their readers of the issues.

  84. 84.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Jeffro:

    Yeah, that’s why I (an old) am a little confused.

    I wasn’t sure if it is was a request (sarcastic?) for someone to phone her father.

    Or a punctuation-fail of characterizing her as having (for lack of a better term) “Big Dick Energy”; i.e., “Call Her ‘Daddy'”.

    Or something else.

  85. 85.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Eolirin: In a wider sense, though, it was national. Full Jim Crow segregation was in the South but there were sundown towns and restrictive covenants everywhere. Out West they had separate bathrooms for Native Americans. The civil-rights reforms of the mid-20th century affected people everywhere in the US and there was massive pushback everywhere in the US.

    We had segregationist authoritarian Presidents (Wilson), Supreme Court justices who were in the Klan. And, yeah, because of all that the reform took many decades.

  86. 86.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    That is the industry though. Who hires and promotes the bad actors? The industry. They made Maggie Haberman a multi millionaire with her exclusive focus on Donald Trump. All the rest of the actors then (understandably) imitate that. That’s how we get Trump coverage on the R side and then reporters asking our candidates about Trump (so more Trump coverage) on the other.

    They hire a TYPE of person – rigidly conventional career track, not creative or flexible. Narrow. Brittle. It’s why they haven’t been able to adapt to covering Trump – their industry hires for and rewards conventional thinking.

  87. 87.

    Eolirin

    @Matt McIrvin: The Klan didn’t own the federal government. They didn’t have a way to stop people from voting in many states. That eventually swamped their ability to keep politicians from establishing civil rights laws and from enforcing them.

    Segregation doesn’t go away without an executive that is willing to send in the national guard.

    This is why there’s been such a concerted effort to break the courts too; civil rights laws can’t function without them either.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    Do you know linemen from NW Ohio went to NC? That is a long way. They cannot whine to me about how long it takes to fix a power grid when people from all over are actively working on it. Modernity is not magic. It takes tens of thousands of skilled people behind the scenes to keep it going.

  89. 89.

    Another Scott

    @gene108: +1

    Use the Source, Luke!!

    Anyone with a web browser can go to https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room or https://www.defense.gov/News/Press-Products/ to see what particular parts of our government are saying and doing on any particular day.  We don’t need “analysts” to “interpret, and provide context” when too many of these “analysts” can’t be bothered to adjust their thinking to post-Reagan America.

    There are lots of good people out there doing the work and trying to inform the public about the important stories of the day.  Very few of them seem to have positions of influence at FTFNYT, WaPo, and all the rest.

    There are many, many good sources of real news (Reuters, States Project, GovExec, STATNews, Phys.org, ProPublica, CalculatedRiskBlog, etc., etc.) out there – we’re not somehow just stuck with bloggers if we reject FTFNYT.  People have to take the time to look around and read with a skeptical eye.

    [/soap-box]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  92. 92.

    Eolirin

    @Eolirin: I should add, the danger we face here is enshrining either de facto rules or outright laws which preclude any transition of power away from the fascists. We have never faced that at a national level, even though it’s happened plenty regionally and locally.

    The closest we’ve come to it was secession after Lincoln was elected, but that was them losing.

  93. 93.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @JML:

    They think they’ve found their winner, making Harris the #1 supporter of trans rights (as if that’s bad).

    So far, that’s been a wildly unsuccessful political tactic.  May it continue to be.

    @Kay:

    Do they not get that they have made themselves the center of everything they do? That that is where they went wrong and will continue to go wrong?

    No, for the same reason they’re doing it at all.  When you’re a bunch of twittering egotists showing off for your clique, you think that’s objectively the most important thing in the world.

    @TS:

    I will remain aghast at the hate that is thrown at people all over the internet.

    America’s laws are incredibly lax on hate speech, a lot of people get a kick out of bullying as long as they are absolutely safe doing it, but most importantly the conservative movement cultivates that.  Chickenshit bravado is one of their foundations.  It’s a whole movement to prove that talking loud makes up for carrying a tiny stick, so they pour on the cruelty if it requires no effort or danger.

  94. 94.

    TBone

    📣🚨

    7:00 AM CDT Monday: Here are the latest Key Messages for Hurricane #Milton. Milton is now a category three hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph. Follow the latest at http://hurricanes.gov

  95. 95.

    Betty

    @Kay: This rings so true. Americans are so spoiled. If electricity is out for more than 24 hours, it is woe is me. It took nine months for me to get electricity back after Hurricane Maria. Granted, we live in an isolated area, but we weren’t the only ones who waited that long. That is hardship.

  96. 96.

    WaterGirl

    PSA:

    We have a new list from beth, who you probably know more as the person who does the design for the BJ Pet Calendars, though she reads BJ every day she does’t comment a lot.

    beth lives in Asheville, NC – which is very hard hit by Helene.  beth got power back yesterday, which was a real thrill, but they are expected to be without water for 5 weeks.

    Anyway, my nagging beth to PLEASE tell us what they need is starting to pay off, and she has some new items up on her list.  THE LIST.

    I encouraged her to up her quantity for the 5-gallon buckets so she can share with friends and neighbors who don’t have the support that beth does.

    Amazon is having issues with wishlist items from third-party vendors – so if you click to buy items for beth and you run into that –long-time BJ peeps can send me an email and I will send you beth’s address.

  97. 97.

    Betty

    @Kay: I read that some people had their power restored by linemen from Quebec. Yes, the area is getting a great deal of assistance.

  98. 98.

    Ironcity

    @rusty: You just described the Willie Sutton school of political campaigning.  “Cause that’s where the votes are”.

  101. 101.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    America’s laws are incredibly lax on hate speech, a lot of people get a kick out of bullying as long as they are absolutely safe doing it, but most importantly the conservative movement cultivates that. Chickenshit bravado is one of their foundations. It’s a whole movement to prove that talking loud makes up for carrying a tiny stick, so they pour on the cruelty if it requires no effort or danger.

    Concur 1000%.

    While I feel I should make it clear that I’m not advocating violence, a lot of these asshole fucking around wouldn’t do so if the targets of their maliciousness could legally open a case of “found out” whup-ass.

  102. 102.

    Trivia Man

    @VeniceRiley: That is great news. I welcome diversity in religion, i do not welcome the existing de facto veto the most conservative “Christians” seem to have on all institutions. Hope she boycotts the prayer breakfast, too.

  103. 103.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Nukular Biskits: I went through a very similar thought process. I’m still not sure how you’re supposed to parse that name. But I’m probably not in their target demographic. Hell, my daughters are aged out of their target demographic. Geeze, am I getting old?

  106. 106.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Kay: Thing is, people have unrealistic expectations when they don’t know how things get done. Maybe we need a Schoolhouse Rock type program on how infrastructure works? Nah. Too boring.

  110. 110.

    Trivia Man

    @Eolirin: The next step i can imagine is public on public violence in the streets. And that only works if the national guard stays neutral. We have seen they tip the balance. Last time for the better, but if they decide to support and protect the racists… game over.

    Instead of guarding Ruby Bridges they will guard the crowds of haters.

  111. 111.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I understand what you’re saying; during the Great Ice Storm of 2007 we were out of power for 12 or 13 days, and we live in the middle of the city! It was a huge disaster, most of a city of over 150,000 plus the metro area was affected. They were hauling brush away for weeks and weeks. It was the biggest natural disaster that’s happened in Springfield in my lifetime. I wish people understood that if you live in the country, it might be nice and quiet out there but in an emergency it’s going to take awhile for things to reach you, because they’re going to prioritize the areas where a lot of people live.

  113. 113.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Linemen from here went there too, most of them have reciprocity agreements like that. When the ice storm happened we sat at the local Krispy Kreme and watched bucket trucks and other heavy equipment leave the staging center for literally 30 minutes! Thousands and thousands of them, from all over the country. That’s why they were able to get most of the city’s power back on in two weeks.

  114. 114.

    Eolirin

    @Soprano2: A lot of the people still living out in the country already have a complex about the cities being where all the people live. I think it’s gonna be hard for that pitch to land well with many of them.

  115. 115.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Trivia Man:

    The next step i can imagine is public on public violence in the streets.

    Forget it.  This isn’t the next step, it’s the previous step.  It’s the step they tried during Trump’s presidency.  It turns out that conservatives are lazy cowards and the number willing to risk their victims fighting back is vastly less than the number of liberals willing to fight back.  Except for an absolutely tiny sliver, conservatives only fight when they think the system is completely rigged in their favor and they can’t possibly face consequences.  See their absolute bafflement when the FBI came knocking after J6 – and those were the bravest spearhead of the movement.

  116. 116.

    Suzanne

    I want to note that I think going on podcasts is fantastic. Much better than legacy media.

    Does anyone under 50 watch “60 Minutes” or read freakin Politico or the NYT?!

  117. 117.

    Belafon

    @Eolirin: Um, the “hiding in plain sight” secret was that the guy in the white hood in the position behind the leader of the Klan was the local sheriff, and that the guy behind him was the local judge, and the guy behind him was the county commissioner. Of course they had control of the elections and government. And the hoods were there so that blacks knew what would happen if they tried to vote.

  118. 118.

    RaflW

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’m definitely petty enough to find the Harris campaign trolling the NYT a delight.

    As someone on Bsky said quite recently, we’re in a phase where the Times is finding out that they aren’t the sole arbiter of what’s news, and it’s burning them up inside.

  119. 119.

    BR

    @Kay:

    After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake we didn’t have power for 3 weeks. Major freeways in Northern California took 2 decades to rebuild fully. I guess there was no expectation of instant communication and repair back then, because we understood that it was a major quake and this was how it would go.

  120. 120.

    moonbat

    @Another Scott: Thank you for saying this. I’ve made it my mission to seek out and support the journalists who are doing reportage right (and no, I don’t mean with a liberal slant) and supporting them.

    If there is going to be a post-NYT and WaPo world we need to be the ones picking the winners.

  121. 121.

    stacib

    @The Thin Black Duke: I said to a co-worker trump supporter last week (was spouting shit that was so stupid my head almost exploded) that he needs to take a Civics class.  Needless to say, he hasn’t spoken a word to me since.

  122. 122.

    opiejeanne

    @lowtechcyclist: I hope your BIL can convince your FIL to go to safety.

    My middle kid and her husband are in Sarasota and at first were going to ride it out, when they thought it would be a cat 2. Now that it’s projected to be a 3 or 4 and roll right through Sarasota they have decided to hit the road.

    I hope everyone gets to safety before Milton hits.

  125. 125.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Soprano2: @Eolirin:

    I know I mentioned this before but we were without power for 2 weeks post-Katrina.

    We lived out in a rural area (but not too bad … 5 miles north of I-10), and based on what I’d already seen and heard, I didn’t expect power for up to a month.

    We were lucky in that we had no major structural damage to the house, just had lost about 1/3 of the shingles.  I had probably over 200 gallons of gasoline so I was able to run the house off the portable generator (sans A/C and hot water) until a line crew restored power.

  129. 129.

    catclub

    @Nukular Biskits: I was in Picayune, so more than 5 miles north of I-10. We got power back after Katrina in a week. Mostly because the repair crews were staying in a motel half a mile from us.

     

    We also never lost water. benefits of living in a ‘city’

  131. 131.

    Nukular Biskits

    @catclub:

    My house at the time was all electric, meaning electric water heater & a water well.

    No power meant no water at all for us.  In addition to keeping the stuff in the fridge & freezer, I had to hook up the generator just for water.

    To be fair, though, I never did like the taste of our well water so I always had bottled water.

  132. 132.

    TBone

    @Chief Oshkosh: wonderful, earlier I was pointing out her going full Antifa today and stated previously that the navigational maps she draws reach a pretty large following!

  133. 133.

    TBone

    Having lived without running water and carrying large (heavy! slippery!) containers to flush, wash, and drink for 6 months while old, I can unequivocally state that it is an extreme hardship for the physically challenged.

  135. 135.

    Eolirin

    @Belafon:  There’s a big difference between that guy being the local sheriff and affecting the elections of his town and that guy being the President of the United States and affecting the elections of the entire country.

    You can eventually outvote the former, and you can then establish laws that put him in reach of federal enforcement. There’s nothing you can do to outvote a federal government that will not accept electoral outcomes that go against its desires.

    It’s like if when Lincoln had won, they had had the power to simply install Douglas instead. We’ve never faced that in this country at the national level. There were coup plotters during FDR’s administration, but they didn’t dominate the opposition party, and they never had control of the executive.

    We’ve faced stuff like this at the local and regional level plenty, and I don’t dispute that. But it’s not the same as facing it at the federal level. There’s no coming back from that.

  138. 138.

    Chris

    @VeniceRiley:

    In the words of our first Catholic president: “Fuck the bishops.  They’re all Republicans anyway.”

    And it’s true.  As it is with most elites.  But they used to at least somewhat try and balance things out because their constituents were overwhelmingly Democrats.  Recently, that hasn’t been the case anymore.  Certainly for all of my life they, like the media, have been stretching backwards more and more to send out a message of “both sides do it, but liberals are worse.”

    I hope this doesn’t bite Harris in the ass (Catholics still straddle the political divide and there are just as many shallow and stupid ones as in any other group), but the fact is that the Catholic high clergy is just another interest group that our politicians shouldn’t have to genuflect towards in the first place, and hasn’t done anything to earn their solicitude lately in any event.

  139. 139.

    Belafon

    @Eolirin: I think you might need to go read your history a bit better. Let’s talk about Rutherford B. Hayes, and how he won. He lost the popular vote, and technically the electoral college, but the backroom deals installed him as long as he would end Reconstruction, which ended the Northern troops being stationed in the South, who were constantly having to fight the Klan. And then you should see what Woodrow Wilson did to minorities in civil service jobs.

  140. 140.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kay: I wonder if there is an all-in-one source that logs or tracks all of the efforts — not that the MagaMorans would believe it, but when the NY Post is blaring such a blatant lie on the front page, SOME pushback is in order.

  142. 142.

    Baud

    @Chris: Did she turn it down because of the church leadership, or because she didn’t want to joke around with Trump? I thought it was the latter.

  144. 144.

    Captain C

    @JML:

    TFG skips out on 60 Minutes and somehow the insider political media still thinks the story is “Harris doesn’t do enough interviews with us”.

    I mean, obviously it’s all her fault, just like literally everything else bad in the universe.  What?  Why aren’t you taking me seriously?  I’m with the FTFNYT for god’s sake, you have to respect me and listen to me!

  148. 148.

    Eolirin

    @Belafon: Hayes was a not appointed President despite his opponent winning the EC, the process followed the law in terms of deciding what to do when there was no clear EC winner, and Wilson, for all the awfulness he engaged in, did not resist the peaceful transfer of power.

    Neither example is like Jan 6th

    The end of reconstruction did horrific damage that took an absurdly long time to come back from. I’m not sure how long a shadow Wilson’s bullshit cast. But they still left open the ability to fix the situation through the existing structure of government; we eventually managed to pass the Civil Rights Act and get a court that would make segregation illegal.

    A fascist take over would not allow this.

  149. 149.

    Chris

    @Eolirin:

    The closest we’ve come to it was secession after Lincoln was elected, but that was them losing.

    The closest we’ve come to it was before Lincoln was elected, actually.  Dred Scott was only the most blatant and memorable instance of what, in the mid nineteenth century, had been a real push to impose the slave state model nationwide, and force the free states to bend the knee.  By 1860 they’d come around to the idea that this wasn’t going to work – as you say, their attempt at secession was a result of them losing.  Came way too close for comfort, though.

    This time?  Well, to be determined…

  150. 150.

    Captain C

    @Jeffro:

     if Harris won’t play ball with them and their readership keeps dwindling, they do have the option to try something different.

    “This is a free market!  People should have to buy what I’m selling regardless of what I do!  I shouldn’t have to adapt to changing market conditions!”  — A FTFNYT opinion writer, most likely Bedbug Stephens or Chunky Reese, probably

  151. 151.

    Belafon

    I googled Alexandra Cooper and the news articles up are that the podcast is facing a backlash from “some of her fans”, probably tens of them. If someone brings it up, make sure to remind them that Trump turned down an invitation to be interviewed.

  153. 153.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kay:

    I also get tired of the whining from Americans in these disaster areas, too, honestly. I had nothing but sympathy for the people in NC at the outset but I have no patience with expecting miracles as far as power outages and relief reaching areas serviced by one or two roads when those roads are closed.

    We aren’t going to be able to fix it in 72 hours and the government is never going to make them entirely whole on their financial losses.

    We all better get better at stoicism because there isn’t enough money in the world to make everyone whole as climate disasters accelerate. My place in Michigan is “remote” in the sense that there is one main road in and out. I’m aware of this because I’ve been snowed in there. If we had some disaster where roads were closed it is going to take a long time to get to us.

    Do not expect impossible responses. There are only so many linemen and so many trucks and so many daylight hours.

    This. This is an absolutely massive disaster, encompassing everything from a good-sized city (Asheville) to people trapped way up in mountain hollers.  Like you say, there are only so many linemen and so many trucks and so many daylight hours – and the terrain they’re having to conduct their operations over is especially challenging, to say the least.  I’ve been in those mountains, and spent a lot of time in very similar mountains along the VA/WV border, and I just can’t imagine how long it’s going to take just to get basic aid and relief to everyone that got flooded.

  154. 154.

    Belafon

    @Eolirin: Aaaahh, yes, they could have fixed it anytime they wanted, and yet they prevented women and blacks from voting. Nazis could have just been less bad people as well.

  155. 155.

    Jackie

    They’re baaack…

    “The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans,” the AP reports.

    😡😢😡😡😢

  156. 156.

    Anoniminous

    Can’t rule Milton getting to Cat 5. The Surface Sea Temperature in the Gulf is at historic highs at 29.6 C (85.3 F) and Milton’s cloud tops are colder than -80 deg C (-112 F.) The tl;dr: that’s a WHOLE BUNCH of potential energy waiting to be tapped. As the eye wall moves over the shallower water near the coast more of the potential energy will be converted to kinetic energy resulting in rapid intensification.

  160. 160.

    Anoniminous

    @Belafon:

    LIke the vast majority of white people at the time Woodrow Wilson was a white supremacist.  That’s the reason the first file shown at the White House was De Mille’s racist Birth of a Nation.

  161. 161.

    kindness

    The Village Elders and the NY Times folk in particular live in an epistemological bubble made of steel.  I just returned from visiting family in NYC and it hasn’t changed.  Everyone there still thinks they are the true center of the universe and everyone else is just hayseeds.  Those NY Times people have no idea how the rest of us think of them.  Oh sure, they’ve heard whispers but they immediately write it off as unworthies because they are the vaulted Village Elders.

  163. 163.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @kindness: Those NY Times people have no idea how the rest of us think of them.

    They know what I think of them. My cancellation letter was clear. They may also have noticed the protest in front of their building, also urging people to cancel their subscriptions.

  164. 164.

    TBone

    There’s a tidbit we don’t hear every day! (fixed)

    @Anoniminous:

    That’s the reason the first film shown at the White House was De Mille’s racist Birth of a Nation.

  165. 165.

    JML

    @lowtechcyclist: If the GOP were in power, they’d be spinning stories about how everything is perfect because of all the wonderfulness they’ve done, and if anything is wrong it’s because of the Democrats. It’s all very predictable.

    FEMA is a pretty great agency, and our government response to big disaster is pretty strong. It’s not perfect…but it never will be, because these things are too individualized based on a variety of factors (particulars of the disaster, specific locations and their infrastructure, other disasters the agencies are responding to, etc). But considering is massive scope of this, they’re going to get most people back on their feet in a shockingly fast period of time.

    Government actually works well when you put competent people in charge, don’t spend all your time railing how it’s always bad and never works, and put a semi-reasonable amount of resources behind it.

  167. 167.

    frosty

    @Nukular Biskits: I’m in a borough, not a city, but we have borough water. It’s groundwater and I can see a well house from my front porch. I’ve watched them plug in a generator when we get a long power outage. Very comforting.

  168. 168.

    AWOL

    @kindness: I’ve lived here for 65 years. There’s some assholes for sure, but I don’t see that. But I’m glad you met all 9,000,000 folks on your brief visit. Your assessment is certainly kind and will build bridges.

  170. 170.

    Chris

    @JML:

    Government actually works well when you put competent people in charge

    The point I’ve been making since long, long before Trump, is that the government cannot work if you insist on electing people to run it whose entire worldview is that the government cannot work, and if it can, it shouldn’t.

    It’s like making a bunch of pacifists into generals and still expecting your army to win wars.  It’s like appointing a bunch of communists to a board of directors and still expecting your corporation to turn a profit.  It’s like building an FSU football team out of Florida Gators fans and still expecting them to win a single game.  No institution in the world can work like this.  It’s an absolute fucking miracle that the U.S. federal government works as well as it does.

  171. 171.

    Captain C

    @TS: “Did we fuck up?  What a TCFG victory means for the soon-to-be imprisoned reporters of our wonderfulest and totally objective and truthful paper”* — FTFNYT editorial on a hopefully never-happening November 6.

    “Why my colleagues deserve to go to the camps and Pravda was the truth-tellingest newspaper ever” — co-written opinion piece by Bobo, Bedbug, Pamela Paul, and Chunky Reese that day

    *Spoiler alert:  everyone but the FTFNYT fucked up, and they are just the brave truth-tellers paying the price.

  172. 172.

    Eolirin

    @Belafon: I feel like you’re almost being deliberately obtuse at this point. There is a range of structures of power that run a spectrum between responsive to change through the democratic process and not at all responsive to that process. The US has never been all the way to the former, but it’s also never been the latter. Jan 6th, had it succeeded, would have put us there.

    In the US, women and minorities through difficult and sustained action, were able to organize and successfully change laws and win the right to vote and to broaden protections and access to rights, without having to violently overthrow their government. The system despite being horribly slanted against them, allowed that change to occur. The people getting in the way were outvoted in the end, despite the tactics they used.

    This is not a path that’s open to a country that falls under authoritarian rule; the organizers will be arrested and murdered and real elections will not happen, and so nothing can be changed except by uprising. Uprisings rarely succeed and what follows them is usually unstable. So once you’re stuck with that, things become very bleak.

  173. 173.

    Captain C

    @Kay:

    Do they not get that they have made themselves the center of everything they do?

    They seem to believe that this is the natural order of things and that no one should mention it or even notice it, lest they be accused of being impolite to their obvious betters.

  175. 175.

    Citizen Alan

    @Belafon: i remember Haley Barbour bragging about the fact that when he was growing up in Yazoo City there was no klan presence. Because it was wholly unnecessary: the local white citizens council did all the work of keeping blacks and anti racist whites in line through economic pressure without the need to resort to violence

  176. 176.

    K-Mo

    @narya: I think that’s the big question.  Is she reaching everyone she needs to this way?   I have no idea but I my guess is that she will spend the next few weeks broadening out her distribution.  The 60 minutes gig is a good example.  Unfortunately for the NYT, I don’t think this will translate into her sitting down to answer a bunch of devils advocate style questions that only their advertisers care about.

  177. 177.

    K-Mo

    @Jeffro: My guess is, they won’t implement the needed changes until the cows are totally off the farm.  They’re already crossing through the pasture.

  179. 179.

    catclub

    @Chris: our first Catholic president: “Fuck the bishops. They’re all Republicans anyway.”

    This is interesting because il Papa is definitely NOT a republican. And the Bishops hate him.

  180. 180.

    frosty

    @Nukular Biskits: From my friends in the water/wastewater division:

    “There are two kinds of septic systems: The ones that have failed and the ones that are going to fail.”

  181. 181.

    Bupalos

    @Frankensteinbeck: It turns out that conservatives are lazy cowards

    Erm… it could actually be that everyone’s ideas of just how radical people actually are IRL is vastly distorted by the new reality of the internet age:  that we get a lot of our ideas about what other people believe and desire and are like from a self-selected, algorithmically purified kind of unreality. An unreality that is heightened by internet-mediated disinhibition. Do you really mean to claim that conservatives who didn’t resort to violence are cowards? 

  183. 183.

    Eolirin

    @Eolirin: And also, before this becomes a focus I am very aware that arrests and murder were used as tools to maintain the Jim Crow south and segregation, broadly.

    That the US government was involved in targeted assassination of civil rights leaders.

    It’s still not what happens in a place like Russia or what would happen with a Project 2025 like executive and a Presidency that will refuse to allow the certification of election results it doesn’t like.

    Abolitionists always had a voice in the country, even if using it in the south was dangerous. Women’s suffragists weren’t systematically hunted down across the whole country. The Klan wasn’t able to reach across every state and every community and force consent with their position.

    And ultimately the violent white supremacist groups were brought to greatly diminished relevancy through federal action. If the federal level is lost and the core democratic principal of the peaceful transition of power is lost, we can’t come back from that. There won’t be any power left that can act in opposition.

    Short of a military coup, there are no means of redress.

  184. 184.

    KenK

    I have a question re Jack Smith’s 10/2/24 filing. I’m hoping for some clarification from the Commentariat. My interpretation is that Rudy agreed to lead Defendant’s election chase to confirm voting fraud to allow Defendant to stay in office. Apparently, if Rudy succeeded, he would be paid whatever fee was agreed to between he and Defendant. If Rudy did not succeed, he would be paid nothing.

    It also appears the Defendant attorney Eric Herschmann assured Defendant that he would not have to pay anything since Rudy would not succeed. So, Eric was intentionally working at cross-purposes to Rudy?

    My takeaway: 1) Defendant, et al, knew there were not voting shenanigans, but allowed Rudy to root around to create Twitter fodder, and 2) Defendant already was hoping that Pence would “do his job” or his Insurrectionists would do theirs’s to alter elector certification and allow Defendant to stay in office/power.

    What nuances did  miss. Thanks.

  186. 186.

    Nukular Biskits

    @frosty:

    @Nukular Biskits: From my friends in the water/wastewater division:

    “There are two kinds of septic systems: The ones that have failed and the ones that are going to fail.”

    You will get no argument from me at all on that.

    When septic systems work, you start to take them for granted.  When they don’t, it’s a literal shit storm.

    It doesn’t help that probably most of the lower half of each of the MS coastal counties (Hancock, Harrison, Jackson) don’t “perc” well enough for true gravity-fed septic systems with field lines …  the soil isn’t suited for it and the top of the water table is about 1.2 inches down.

    Mine did fail. I had to install a second tank “downriver” from the original one. This new tank aerated the effluent coming from the 1st tank then, in a separate 300-gallon chamber, chorinated it. When the 300-gallon chamber was full, a pump kicked on to run the treated water out a 1″ line to several irrigation sprinklers in the far backyard.

    All this worked because, at the time, I had about 6 acres. Many folks don’t have that large a property.  And, if no power to pump out that 300-gallon tank, problems start backing up really quickly.

  188. 188.

    Eolirin

    @Nukular Biskits: It’s almost like in order to maintain the basic infrastructure necessary to enable the standard of modern living we expect nowadays, we need a level of governmental involvement.

  189. 189.

    Chris

    @catclub:

    Il Papa is pretty damn different from what came before, indeed.

    The irony being, of course, that the “difference” largely comes from applying Catholic doctrine indiscriminately rather than playing favorites like the USCCB prefers to.  Like I said a few days ago, even the act of speaking of abortion and the mistreatment of migrants in the same sentence, heavily implying that they’re equal crimes and that a Catholic is on solid grounds rejecting a candidate for either of them, is a massive lurch “to the left” of what the USCCB prefers, which is simply to talk about abortion and gay marriage all the time and ignore literally every other part of Catholic doctrine because it makes their Republican friends uncomfortable.

    It’s been very much like Gorbachev taking over the CPSU in 1985, where the difference between him and most of his peers wasn’t that he wasn’t a communist.  It’s that he wasn’t an irretrievably corrupt aristocrat.

  191. 191.

    Bupalos

    @Nukular Biskits: Septic systems can be great and can be essentially forever solutions… when designed well, AND when in the right soil, AND when not overloaded. And a couple more ‘AND’s’

    Obviously that’s a lot to ask, so yes, many fail.

  192. 192.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Bupalos:

    In rural areas or otherwise areas unserved by municipal/county/community utility districts, they really are the only other option.

    But, as you said, there are a LOT of “ifs” involved.  And, even when all the stars aligned (well-designed/installed, good draining soil, etc), there is still maintenance required and, eventually, the system will still fail.

  193. 193.

    catclub

    @Chris: The present Pope was probably elected because…

    after Benedict, who was even more conservative than JPII, and the priest/child abuse scandals he did NOT handle well, let’s hope a liberal will take the blame.

     

    Reminds me of the election of Obama when the other side has driven the economy into a ditch.

  195. 195.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Kay: What we need are investigative reporters not pundits and not gossip columnists. Even if they technically arent those things, they are trying to be. Remove the interpretation and spin, and you fix this.

  196. 196.

    Ruckus

    @JML:

    TFG skips out on 60 Minutes and somehow the insider political media still thinks the story is “Harris doesn’t do enough interviews with us”.

    shitforbrains is last week’s, month’s, year’s news. Pick one it doesn’t matter, his style, brain, mouth has gone stale. Or worse. He is such a pompous, arrogant old fart with a rapidly degrading, already limited brain, who seemingly can no longer put out a reasonable sentence, like he ever could – but now? This is what bad senioritis looks like. (Good senioritis just isn’t quite so insane. And a hell of a lot less public)

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