I like it better when my government isn’t actively trying to kill me:
An E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce ripped across 15 states in November, sickening dozens of people, including a 9-year-old boy in Indiana who nearly died of kidney failure and a 57-year-old Missouri woman who fell ill after attending a funeral lunch. One person died.
But chances are you haven’t heard about it.
The Food and Drug Administration indicated in February that it had closed the investigation without publicly detailing what had happened — or which companies were responsible for growing and processing the contaminated lettuce.
What in the fuck is wrong with these people. Just how fucking stupid and broken are they? I’m just struggling to come up with something blasphemous to say about this about just how fucking stupid and evil this is.
I am really struggling with the whole going back thing in the sense that I really don’t want to go back. I did the Pep Boys thing today and got the tires rotated and new wipers and an oil change, and I was going to do a bunch of other stuff to get ready to leave and I just thought “Why? Why am I going back if I am not ready to?” Why do I want to drive 2200 miles across country with two cats leaving behind my favorite person and my dogs?” So that is where I am mentally right now.
Earlier Joelle and I were planning dinner and she decided she wanted hamburgers on the grill, so on her way home she is picking up some ground beef, and I reminded her to get some pickles and she said “Did you eat an entire jar of pickles” and I just said “I don’t like your tone.”
Joelle has been trying to get a good picture of Thurston for you all, and we had a bandana on him so she tried to take some good ones. You know how most dogs when you put them in a bandana it hangs loose on the neck with a nice little triangle hanging down and they look all playful like your cowboy sidekick? I mean I know you are imagining it right now because we have all seen it. Well, not Thurston.
You put a bandanna on this fucker and he looks like Dom Deluise belly up a table with a bib:
After looking at that stupid face maybe I do want to go back to WV for a while.
Speaking of stupid faces, I learn via tiktok that there is a major diplomatic row that was caused when JD Vance called the entire nation of China a bunch of peasants. I remembered hearing about it when it happened thinking what a juvenile and stupid thing to say that is going to haunt us, but like every day there was just so much other shit going on (the market crashing and people being yanked off the streets and sent to third world concentration camps and so on) that it was kinda like a “Oh I think I left the curling iron on” after the tornado rips off the roof and a third of the house.
At any rate, one thing Chinese kids are really good at is memes, and they are having a fucking field day with Vance:
Vice President JD Vance is never beating those eyeliner rumors now!
After being the subject of jokes that he’s a robot who doesn’t know how to interact with humans or that he once had sexual relations with a couch, Vance is now going viral because of Chinese AI videos mocking him for his supposed use of copious amounts of eyeliner.
These hilarious AI ads mocking the vice president started making the rounds on social media in the wake of President Donald Trump’s sky-high tariffs placed on China and Vance’s derogatory comments about China while on Fox News earlier this month. “To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture,” he said.
America is just so fucking embarrassing right now. We really are fucking Uncle Eddie unleashed on the rest of the world, with our wild shirt with a stained sleeveless undershirt and cutoff jeans and flip flops (but we’re wearing socks because we’re redneck fancy motherfuckers). Just stirring the world’s lemonade with our arm, not putting together that we’re the problem. Were it only that comical, but it’s fucking dangerous.
You know what we are right now? We’re the crowd at Woodstock ’99, furious about the conditions there and the price gouging and the totally awful venue and just all that pent up, drugged up, drunken white male energy just fucking angry at the world for no fucking reason and out to destroy things because then maybe something better will happen. And Trump is on the mic and Bannon is setting the tone as Borland and the drummer aka Miller plays it up tempo just to get the fucking point across:
And the Mitt Romney’s and Susan Collins’s are the venue operator saying “I don’t know how it got to this or we didn’t know Durst would do that” when it’s what Durst does and precisely why you had him and Limp Bizkit there in the first place.
Crazy world we live in. I think something is about to go down in Yemen. I don’t have specifics or anything I trust, but I keep seeing the name Yemen pop up on random places you wouldn’t expect it and I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. Or maybe I am just nuts.
At any rate, I just got a text from the lady that I need to fire up the grill, so I will check in later if any of you all are still awake.
matt
What about the people who voted for this shit? Are they the worst people who ever lived, or what?
Gvg
I remember when Cheney was mocking the French, and I was so embarrassed. I thought, “you can make jokes when you aren’t a major public figure, but not the VP of the United States…”. This has been building for a long time. Too many people’s parents didn’t teach them real manners. And Trump is constantly worse. We have gotten numb to how insulting he is.
caphilldcne
Looks like Van Hollen was able to meet with Abrego Garcia. https://bsky.app/profile/vanhollen.senate.gov/post/3ln2gcpf6js2m keep pursuing his return senator. Righteous work.
different-church-lady
@matt:
Fuck it: yes.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@matt:
Yes. It’s not like they weren’t warned. Repeatedly. I think Trump voters only heard and saw what they wanted to hear. Remember when they dressed up in garbage bags last Halloween?
different-church-lady
@Gvg: I constantly worry that this isn’t the bottom, and something unimaginatively worse follows.
SpaceUnit
Guess I’m grateful to not be in Yemen. Sort of.
Mousebumples
@caphilldcne: I saw that too! Finally (relatively) good news. I was fearing the worst. Still not good, but better than I’d expected. Sigh, low expectations.
different-church-lady
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
They only heard what fucking social media told them. Which was warped as all fuckin’ hell.
NotMax
“And here we thought Fyre Festival was a dumpster blaze.”
//
narya
That photo made me actually laugh out loud.
MagdaInBlack
Go when you’re ready, John. You’ll know
( like when its 900 degrees in the shade, maybe?)
dww44
@Gvg: Beginning about 1980 I’ve observed how much easier it is for the GOP candidate to win an election than for the Dem one. It’s like we have to meet much higher requirements than Republicans do. More is expected of us than of them.
zhena gogolia
Thurston is adorable!
Steve LaBonne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Trump voters clearly see and thoroughly approve of the fact that he has no competence or redeeming human qualities whatsoever, but is simply… white. He is their avatar and guarantee of white supremacy, and that’s what they have always craved.
NotMax
Hoping there’s no This Old House surprises when you return to the land of the pepperoni roll.
;)
NobodySpecial
Nah, nah, nah, let’s not do this. The crowds were perfectly fine everywhere else that day. They weren’t angry, they were just wanting to break stuff just because they can. Limp Bizkit spoke to them because they were assholes who broke stuff for a living and were rewarded for it. The ones doing the actual damage weren’t destroying things for better outcomes. They were just destroying things to destroy them. And that’s the modern GOP, sure, but it’s not America.
Lyrebird
@caphilldcne: Praise be. I know he’s not home yet, Mr. Albrego Garcia I mean, but he is *alive* now, and this meeting shows that the pressure from Sen. Van Hollen is being felt. “Not totally hopeless” is better than some alternatives.
Jackie
@caphilldcne:
Thank Dog he’s alive! I truly thought he’d been murdered. I think I’ve finally completely exhaled for the first time in weeks!
eta Not that he’s “safe,” but still has a chance to come home and go through due process.
NotMax
@Jackie
Sad to say, but said it must be. It’s in the government of El Salvador’s financial interest to see he stays alive.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jackie:
And he appears to be in good health too, judging by the photos from Van Hollen’s visit. I was worried he was dead too and that was what all the stonewalling was about
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Steve LaBonne:
Sadly, that’s truth of it for far too many of them
rikyrah
He is alive 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Thank you, Senator 🙏🏽
Proof of life 😢😢😢
I admit…I thought that he was dead
So happy to be wrong
rikyrah
Thurston is so cute 🥰 🥰
SiubhanDuinne
@narya:
Looks like a doggy diaper installed at the wrong end of the doggy.
Raralexia
Long, long time lurker here piping up for the very first time I think. I’m a lawyer. This 4th Circuit opinion from Judge Wilkinson is a big, big, big deal. It’s rocketing around my legal circles (admittedly on the corporate side, but mostly liberal).
gov.uscourts.ca4.178400.8.0.pdf
RevRick
@zhena gogolia: @rikyrah:
Are we looking at the same dog?
I see bared teeth, narrowed eyes and pulled back ears.
Jackie
@RevRick: I see a doofus, embarrassed to be put through this humiliation, but did consent to be photographed. :-D
JoyceH
What’s funny is that everyone who attended the original Woodstock raved about how magical it was, but on paper it was a fiasco. They had to change location with just weeks to prep because the local government of the first venue, where they’d been prepping for up to a year; passed an ordinance against music festivals. If Max Yasgur hadn’t volunteered his farm, they would have been SOL. They’d expected and prepped for 150k attendees and got close to half a million. So they ran out of food the first day and were going around to the locals telling them, “the kids up at the music festival ran out of food, what can you contribute?” And bless their hearts, the locals donated, but you ate what was available. The medical tent was overwhelmed and the military choppered in Army doctors. And then the rains came and the place turned into a sea of mud – so the kids made the best of it and played in the mud. I swear, it sounds nightmarish, but ask a Woodstock vet and it was the greatest experience of their life. Of course, the music was pretty good…
TooManyJens
David Brooks, welcome to the … um. Revolution?
What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal (gift link)
Matt McIrvin
@caphilldcne: I figured Kilmar Abrego Garcia was dead and that was why all this was happening the way it was. I guess not.
MCat
Poor little Thurston is such a little sweetie. He just needs love and a better outfit.
Jackie
@TooManyJens: I read that. My jaw hit the floor. When conservatives have lost David Brooks…!
JoyceH
Getting back to the present, I’m expecting a bird flu pandemic next year if not this year. Why? Because the Trump administration has fired the bird flu researchers and fired the pandemic planners and at the same time they’re encouraging everyone to keep chickens in their back yard. Because nobody ever told them that chickens are birds.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jackie:
We’re cool, right?
Ksmiami06
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): welp if the garbage bag fits… basically a large percentage of U.S. citizens are pure trash, but I’ll be damned if I’m going down with them
Steve in the ATL
@JoyceH:
Hell yeah—who doesn’t love Sha Na Na?!
Another Scott
@Raralexia: Thanks for that.
It’s 7 pages and impressive. Everyone should read it.
Best wishes,
Scott.
RaflW
I rarely listen to NPR any more, mostly because my driving habits have changed. But I road tripped 1000 miles y’day and today. ATC this afternoon was probably 75% things the Trump admin is f’king up, or people negatively impacted by things DJT-idjt has f’ked up.
And then Marketplace started, and Kai Ryssdal was just brutal (his Bsky account tends to pull zero punches, btw). He went off on Trump threatening to fire the Fed’s Jay Powell. Heard the Dow dropped another 500 pts/1.25%, so the market is loving all the financial instability of President Idjit.
I did get annoyed when the hour/half hour NPR newsreader would say “it’s unclear if the president has the authority to fire Powell.” I mean, it’s unclear if the milk in our fridge that’s been open 8 days has gone sour. But hardly unprecedented or nation- or even world-economy destabilizing. “Unclear” just has this vague and clinically detached tone.
Which is why I’m glad Marketplace came on after, and Kai in his opening segment clipped Trump making the thread, the show ran a bit from last November in which Jay said he would not resign if asked, and then Kai said “without adding any hyperbole though, were Powell to be fired, it would be catastrophic.” [Italics added, but the tone in Kai’s voice was unequivocal in his scorn and frustration so italics it is.]
THAT is what we need to hear. What I needed to hear.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@caphilldcne: and the judge forced the release of that Georgia citizen that ICE was trying to deport. No wonder Trump was so pissed today.
JoyceH
@Steve in the ATL: Joplin, Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane…
YY_Sima Qian
Evidence, based on satellite imaging, of massive expansions in the El Salvadorian prisons:
Check out the whole [short] thread.
Melancholy Jaques
@matt:
And they need to be told that what they did was wrong, evil, & stupid or they will just shrug & do it again.
Melancholy Jaques
@dww44:
Completely agree. For Republicans, lying, corruption, bad policies, etc., are not a problem. Democrats get blamed for things that no one can control.
NotMax
@Raralexia
Welcome to B-J commenting. Couldn’t agree more. The finding is both comprehensive and scathing.
Hope to see more from you in the future.
YY_Sima Qian
The Trump Administration is moving ahead w/ another harebrained idea:
Something like 25% of all container vessels plying the sea were building the PRC, & more than half of new vessels are being built in the PRC.
geg6
THURSTON! He looks majestic, totally dignified despite the fact that you wrapped a diaper around his neck. Lovey sends her love.
Splitting Image
@TooManyJens:
“Somebody needs to rein this guy in before people get angry enough to start blaming the folks who got him elected.”
sab
Looking at the albatrossity cheetah head shot: I never realized cheetahs have such big brown eyes. Like dogs. My cats all have eyes ranging from blue green to bright yellow. I have never seen a brown-eyed cat. Every last one of my dogs had brown eyes (never had a husky or an aussie). I had never thought much a feline eye color before.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: I feel almost relief that PRC is building so many ships. Before that there were so many run-down, unseaworthy vessels carrying possibly toxic cargoes registered out of Greece, or Cyprus, or Panama, or other countries who made no effort to enforce any kind of safety laws.
YY_Sima Qian
@sab: Well, before the PRC took over dominance of global shipbuilding, it was Japan & South Korea. Of course, as w/ everything (solar, batteries, EVs, industrial robots, caviar, truffles, etc.), the PRC shipbuilding industry made ships available at “cabbage price” (meaning price of cabbages, as the joke goes on Chinese social media).
Odie Hugh Manatee
@TooManyJens:
No welcome to Dave necessary. For example he’s still blaming progressives at colleges for some of this and wants changes there to favor conservatives. Both sides are the problem, as usual with him.
Brooks is just upset that Trump is doing this all out in the open and all at once. He knows that this isn’t going to end well and he’s trying to save his party’s ass in the court of public opinion.
Ramalama
@Another Scott: come on … highlights for the legally disinclined?
Ramalama
@RaflW: I forgot how much I enjoyed Kai and marketplace. It was so smart, that show and guy. Going to go and start listening to him again.
also:
Friend of mine used to play in an orchestra. Luciano Pavarotti sang with it a few times. She said he was so fat he wore tablecloths like a bib while dining.
Trying not to laugh too hard at the image of him wearing a tablecloth while on stage singing.
Anyway
@Ramalama: here’s an excerpt
tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)
@Raralexia: I’m probably too late to the thread, but thank you for sharing this. There’s a plea in that second to last paragraph that is likely to land on deaf ears. I don’t know where we go from here, but I hope more and more lawyers vocally stand up for the rule of law.
Princess
And people wonder why it’s so easy for Canadians to give up buying American food. (It’s not easy. The US produces a ton of the greens we buy and things like herbs and broccoli don’t have a replacement from elsewhere. But looking at it in the store and thinking ecoli does help.)
Barney
On Yemen, if it’s not making US headlines:
US air strikes on a key oil terminal on Yemen’s Red Sea coast controlled by the Houthi movement have killed at least 58 people and wounded 126 others, Houthi-run media say.
The US military said it had destroyed Ras Issa “to eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue”.
The Houthi-led government that runs north-western Yemen said the terminal was a civilian facility and that attack constituted a “full-fledged war crime”.
US strikes on Yemen oil terminal kill at least 58, Houthis say – BBC News
Ramalama
@Anyway: oh this is good. Thank you! I’ll go and read it in full.
lowtechcyclist
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Truth. David Brooks is still a worthless scumbag, and anyone who’s still bothsidesing it at a time like this – it’s like bothsidesing Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
Good to see you, btw. I think I’ve mentioned before that you’ve got one of my all-time favorite nyms.
terraformer
You clearly like Arizona (at least this time of year), and you love Joelle and the animals.
Like someone posted above – you’ll know when you’re ready to leave, and that’ll probably be when it’s like the surface of the sun starting in a few months. Maybe then. But stay if you want to!
Paul in KY
@MagdaInBlack: It’s a dry heat…
Paul in KY
@NobodySpecial: Fred Durst is by all accounts a massive jerkhole.
Paul in KY
@RevRick: He looks pissed, to me. God bless you, Thurston!
Paul in KY
@Melancholy Jaques: Agreed!