Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

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

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

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

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

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

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

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Second rate reporter says what?

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

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

… gradually, and then suddenly.

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

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Totally Open Thread (and book sponsorship for the Elle Reeve book club)

Totally Open Thread (and book sponsorship for the Elle Reeve book club)

by | 60 Comments

This post is in: 

This is a totally open thread.

Plus one housekeeping detail for those who are interested in the Elle Reeve zoom.

For the Midnight in Washington book club, we paired up folks who had extra walking-around money with people who wanted to participate in the book club but didn’t have funds for the book.

Maybe we can do the same thing for the Elle Reeve discussions?  Send me an email message if you resemble either of the descriptions above.

Who is Elle Reeve, and Why Would You Want To Read Her Book?

Open thread.

 

 

Reader Interactions

60Comments

  1. 1.

    AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team

    I asked my local library for a copy, that’s always another option.

    I am not depressed atm, so yay. Got out for a cute cold snowy walk.

    Hope you are all doing alright.

  2. 2.

    WaterGirl

    @AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team:

    We are at a toasty 14 degrees below zero at the moment, so nothing about a walk sounds appealing at the moment. :-)

    Snow, on the other hand, is always welcome.  It is, in fact, the only redeeming quality about winter.  Alas, I’m not sure snow is even possible when it’s this cold.

    Glad you are not depressed at the moment.  That’s a good thing.  Highly underrated!

  4. 4.

    Baud

    Cole should shut down Balloon Juice tonight and bring it back up in the morning with a note thanking Biden for saving BJ as his last official act.

  5. 5.

    WaterGirl

    Changing the side photo for tomorrow a bit early (aka, now) because I will be tied up with a work thing early tomorrow.  I should have worked on it today but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  7. 7.

    SpaceUnit

    Nine degrees here.  Supposed to get down to zero overnight.  On Friday it was warm enough to kick my AC on.

     

    Colorado.

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud:

    Well, first of all, they are going to credit Trump with all sorts of stuff that he has nothing to do with – some real and some imagined.

    Second, how would mocking Trump for taking credit that the sun rises or sets or taking credit for the weather help them credit Trump for things

    edit: Although some of the Trump people are dumb enough to believe anything.

  13. 13.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: I’m afraid most of the energy around here is expended on criticizing Biden for every goddamned thing in the universe. It will probably continue for the foreseeable future, as the country burns down around us.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

    Maybe. We can’t control what other people want to focus on, whether MAGA or Jackal. I’m going to try to find the people I think are doing positive things and do what I can to boost them.

  16. 16.

    rikyrah

     

    I just finished Diarra From Detroit today on BET+

    Know it’s been out for awhile, but really liked it. Hope that it gets a Season2

  17. 17.

    JoyceH

    @Baud: can’t distinguish reality from satire, copy that. There’s a poster on X and Bluesky and probably a lot of other places called Liam Nissan. He does snarky posts, particularly against Republicans, and you would not believe how many people genuinely believe he’s the actor Liam Neeson! “Yeah, well your movies suck!”

  20. 20.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @zhena gogolia: Now now— you know the Democrats are useless and feckless and deserving of being pilloried for everything they do and everything they don’t do, right?

  22. 22.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Since it’s an open thread and tangentially related to books and such, I’m sure most of you are aware of the Neil Gaiman situation.

    I have to say, despite having a casual interest in DC Comics, I never read any of his comic work or much of his other literary work either, aside from Coraline.

    First and foremost, I feel most sorry for his victims. Second, his various creative collaborators who are not as famous as him but they and their families get royalties from Gaiman’s work, such as Sandman. Finally, I know he and his work meant a lot to millions of people, especially marginalized people, who Gaiman spoke out for, and now I’m sure many can’t even read/look at it now thanks to his fucked up actions. The Calliope stuff is especially bad in retrospect

  23. 23.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    How did Colleen Shogan become selected and nominated by Biden and WH staff to be the National Archivist? She’s married to Rob Rafferty, the internal communications director for Stand Together, aka the Koch Network.

    In October 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that Shogan and her top advisers had censored numerous displays at the National Archives’ museum in an effort to de-emphasize negative parts of U.S. history, according to documents, and current and former employees. According to the article, Shogan and her top aides, like Ellis Brachman, ordered the removal of images of Martin Luther King, Jr., Dolores Huerta, and Minnie Spotted-Wolf from the Discovery Center wing of the National Archives Museum, images by Dorothea Lange of Japanese-American concentration camps, cut information about the negative environmental effects of coal mining and the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese-Americans from various exhibits, and directed employees to find “success stories about white people”. Shogan was alleged to ask why a museum exhibit on Western expansion was centered on Indigenous people, ordered records showing treaties in which Indigenous tribes ceded “their lands to the U.S. government”, and directed that a patent for the contraceptive pill be replaced by a patent for the bump stock, and reportedly said that exhibits should not be pushing a “partisan agenda”. It was also asserted that some senior officials who had resigned had blamed Shogan’s leadership, with one long-time employee for the archives filing a whistleblower complaint, claiming that “Shogan abused her authority and engaged in censorship”, and that she had done too much to “appease Republicans”. Brachman asserted, according to Current Affairs, that the story is inaccurate, claiming that “balance was missing in the early planning of some of the new galleries here, and we have had to make some difficult decisions during the planning process” and that some people did not “want to do the hard work to address the nuanced and many layered facts of American history.” Brachman also told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “the story is not accurate.”

    […]

    Historians and commentators responded to The Wall Street Journal’s reporting. The president of Win Without War, Stephen Miles, argued that Shogan’s reported action was, “preemptively self-censoring and hiding essential parts of any honest telling of American history”, and called it a dereliction of the agency’s mission. Author David Neiwert said that Shogan and her advisors need to be replaced, and that she is, “making a travesty of American history.” Historian Harvey G. Cohen echoed the same sentiment, stating that the National Archives should be focused on “preserving and presenting the truth” and Timothy D. Snyder called Shogan’s reported conduct, “anticipatory obedience”. Former Obama administration official Brandon Friedman and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Brunch accused Shogan and her advisors of, “obeying fascism in advance”. In an article in Current Affairs, Nathan J. Robinson argued that the National Archives Museum was backsliding into “a sanitized mythological retelling of American history”, asserted that Shogan is “intensely worried about being accused of partisanship” and argued that the Archivist of the United States should be “committed to telling a truthful story that reflects what actually happened.” On November 1st, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Congressional Black Caucus chairs Judy Chu, Nanette Barragán, and Steven Horsford issued a statement which criticized NARA’s reported actions, saying that the agency was “preemptively appeas[ing]…conservative interests” and aligning with far-right “book ban movements nationwide”, and urged Shogan to restore these references and exhibits to ensure that “NARA and the National Archives Museum tell the full and most accurate story of our nation.”

    As far as I’m aware, this crap had been going on behind the scenes for more than a year and the Admin didn’t seem to do anything about it.

  25. 25.

    dc

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Brachman asserted, according to Current Affairs, that the story is inaccurate, claiming that “balance was missing in the early planning of some of the new galleries here, and we have had to make some difficult decisions during the planning process”

    So she confirms the gist of the prior story here.

  26. 26.

    Poe Larity.

    So Melania happened:

    “This is beyond insane,” analysts at The Kobeissi Letter posted to X. “Less than 48 hours ago, Donald Trump launched $trump which just erased $7.5 billion in market cap in 10 minutes. In the minutes around the launch of Melania Trump’s token, we saw massive sell orders in $trump.”

  27. 27.

    HeleninEire

    Talking about taking credit . When the shit hit  the fan in November I thought,  “OK let him take credit for all Biden did. Just make them stop being so fucking angry”.

    My bad.

  28. 28.

    bluefoot

    Snow is coming down hard here on top of rain earlier. Doing something I never do anymore: watching football. Trying to enjoy some normality while I can.

    Not looking forward to shoveling snow tomorrow but I’m sure it will be pretty.

  30. 30.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @WaterGirl: last night Denver had 9 available hard copies. The wait list was for the ebook.

    also, minus 14! We get freaked out when it goes under 10. The thing here is, you can’t get a routine with what to wear. It can be 55 one day, and drop below 20 the next. I might leave the house in just two layers of cotton, but I know I have to bring coat hat gloves, scarf. Because sometimes the prediction is wrong, and the weather changes come faster and harder than expected. When it stays winter, you can get it more together. It may sound silly, but I feel like I have to reinvent the wheel at every season change. There’s not enough routine in the weather. It’s the steppes.

  31. 31.

    SpaceUnit

    @Gloria DryGarden:

    Denver has two seasons.  There’s summer when it’s hot as hell for five months and then there’s not summer when it’s WTF for about seven months.  Any given day it might be 70 degrees and everyone is walking around in shorts and then the next day it might be 10 below zero with four feet of snow.

    Sometimes we actually get a week of spring or fall in between.

  33. 33.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Gloria DryGarden: I really don’t do dead-tree-media anymore, since I can carry around an entire library in my iPad.

    But with these recommendations, it’s ordered and downloaded.

  34. 34.

    Steve LaBonne

    Still a balmy +15° here in Medina, OH but it’s all downhill from here the next couple of days. Still snowing too. I like winter but enough already.

  35. 35.

    Steve LaBonne

    @Professor Bigfoot: I have a huge floater in my left eye because of a posterior vitreous detachment. It makes reading dead tree books and magazines annoying and uncomfortable, so I vastly prefer reading on my large Android tablet where I can increase the font size (and read white text on black which I also prefer).

  38. 38.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Steve LaBonne: MINE TOO, down here in the Hall of Fame City (hey there, meDYEna!).

    But from down here at the gateway to Appalachia, I don’t think the majority of Ohio voters are gonna vote for his dark brown ass.

  40. 40.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    Seriously, is that your response to what I said? That is such a cop out. Our leaders, regardless of political affilation, should be questioned and held accountable when they make mistakes or do something wrong. Republicans may absolve their leaders of wrongdoing and not hold them accountable, but we shouldn’t. And I’m well aware of the whole “only Dems have agency” thing, but this is different. That doesn’t fly because he, his staff, and Dem Senators specifically choose and confirmed this person, so they bear responsibility for her actions

    When I found out about what Shogan was doing at NARA, I was fucking livid. I expect that kind of shit from Republican appointees, not our own. Doesn’t her whitewashing of history, her directive to find “success stories about white people” while erasing the painful history of America involving people of color piss you off? Don’t you want to know why Biden nominated her in the first place, when she’s married to the internal communications director of Standing Together, aka the Koch Network? And why he did nothing for more than a year while she censored American history to appease fascists? There’s no evidence afaik that the Admin tried to tell her to knock it off behind the scenes, but I maybe I missed something. The president can remove the Archivist but has to give a reason to Congress. Maybe it could be explained as not wanting to create a scandal during a campaign, but that’s no excuse for not removing her in the last 2 months, even if just for the principle

    As for the reference to Ukraine, I’ve haven’t followed Adam’s Ukraine posts in some time, but my understanding is that he has been very critical of Biden’s Ukraine policy. Adam Silverman is an expert who generally knows what he’s talking about

  41. 41.

    Kayla Rudbek

    On vacation out of the country so I am in the warm weather (although I think I may have a sunburn starting on the back of my left hand of all places; need to move my hands more when sitting on the beach).

    I have one knitting project finished, one where I need to decide whether to rip it out and start over again, and a decision to make about which pattern to use for the next blue and gold shawl. I wrote the last decision up on Bluesky, one vote for one pattern and one vote for the other one. My mother wasn’t much help either and it’s past 10:30 pm so I know better than to make knitting decisions at this time of night. The advantages of shorter write up and looking different go to one pattern, the advantages of easier stitches and being made by the same company that makes the yarn goes to the other pattern.

  46. 46.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Harrison Wesley:

    I would assume he would have final say over any nomination, probably a slate of vetted candidates were presented to him if he didn’t have anyone particular in mind; if I were president, that’s how I’d want it. It’s possible his staff fucked up and didn’t do their research on her, but that’s still a failure on their and ultimately Biden’s part. And yeah, it’s a question why she was allowed to stay on, even past the election, after the WSJ published their reporting on her. Like I said above, the President has the power to remove the Archivist, but must give a reason to Congress why.

  48. 48.

    No One of Consequence

    Evenin’ all. Just curious, what’s the over/under on Merrick the Meek dropping the case against remaining defendants in the Merde et Loco case in Florida and releasing Part 2 of Jack Smith’s report to the public and/or Congress?

    If we aren’t fit to receive adjudication or even litigation, can we at least get an Official Airing of Grievances? The American People paid a lot for that Whole Effort, donchaknow.

    FFS?!!

    (asking for a friend)

    Peace,
    -NOoC

    eta: I was to understand ze thread, eet is open, and I meens no disrespect to the authors and others. Jackals or no. But still, fuck you to the trolls. ;)

  49. 49.

    danielx

    Weather widget says three degrees and going down to -4, high of 9 tomorrow, high of 4 on Tuesday.
    Ever so grateful for roof, heat, food and amenities. Letting the water run tonight downstairs and if I’d the nerve I’d be letting the space heater run in the garage. Especially since if it gets really cold in the garage the refrigerator in the garage doesn’t kick on and your frozen stuff thaws out….hmmm, maybe it’s time to put stuff out on the back porch.​

  50. 50.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    So I guess Silverman is just full of shit then on Ukraine, for example?

    You’re not engaging meaningfully with what I’m saying at all. I appreciate Biden for his domestic policy efforts, believe me, I do, but he’s not above criticism. There is no excuse for allowing Shogan to continue on for as long as she has unchecked, censoring history at the Archives, for example.

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    Biden’s remarks at the Royal Missionary Baptist Church in SC today (about 18 minutes total, he starts at around 5 minutes).

    (roughly) “We talk about Good Friday. We talk about Easter Sunday. We don’t talk about that Saturday. When the Disciples thought all hope was lost….”

    “… moved from pain to purpose …”

    “… we don’t turn on each other, we lean into each other…”

    “Always keep the faith in the better days to come. I’m not going anywhere.”

    “I don’t think the good lord brought us this far to leave us behind.”

    He’s a good man, and we were fortunate to have him as our president when we needed him most.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  54. 54.

    AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team

    @WaterGirl: I’m lucky, just waiting for it to percolate up to North Boulder and I’ll be first in line when it gets here!

  56. 56.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:

    Not to make you feel too bad but it’s currently 49 degrees in SoCal. It will likely go slightly colder, down to 44. Likely colder in the actual mountains. Not an all time low here but for SoCal in the flat lands, not all that and a bag of chips.

  58. 58.

    Mr. Mack

    Don’t want to dunk on Coles’ friend…but I cannot remember being so excited to read a book, then be so disappointed in it when I was finished.  It was nearly unreadable for me.  My two sons and I exchange books on a regular basis, and my eldest said the same with no prompt from me.  Waiting to see what my youngest thinks.

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