Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

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

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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

Come on, man.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

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

Monday Night Open Thread

by | 105 Comments

This post is in: 

Kind of a shitty overcast day all day today, very little sun, but it did get up to the mid 70’s, and I got some quality time mowing for about four hours. I can not tell you how important that time is out there for my mental health. It’s just the best. Just me, the tractor, my noise cancelling headphones, and I pick an artist I don’t know or know well and listen to their discography. Speaking of, if you have not listened to Sierra Ferrel, she’s the real deal if you like a folk/bluegrass/I dunno what fusion:

Her voice just gives me wicked asmr chills. Love it.

***

In domestic news, I see that Trump has undone some of what he fucked up with China but with leaving long lasting international effects, so I guess that is better than before he fucked things up but not better than if he had just done nothing. Yay?

Likewise, one of his first things he did was undo Biden’s EO about pharmaceuticals and from what I can tell basically re-issued Biden’s EO with his name on it as well as a I am sure a bunch of fuckery. I’ll wait until I read more before I form an opinion other than why are we governed by the stupidest fucking people on the planet?

***

In the immortal words of Method Man (Wu-Tang is for the children), “If you don’t stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything“:

In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday (May 12) that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Donald Trump’s administration.

In a letter sent to members of the church, the Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe — the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church — said that two weeks ago the government “informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees.”

The request, Rowe said, crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church, which is part of the global Anglican Communion that boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated and vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa.

Read the whole thing, as the kids say. Or used to say. Now they just probably have it inaccurately summarized by chatgpt at the cost of 12 gallons of water.

***

In other news, House Republicans are doing what Trump swore he would never do and are proposing close to a trillion in cuts to medicaid:

House Republicans released their proposed budget Sunday night, and it includes $880 million in cuts, largely to Medicaid, to help cover the cost of $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimates, the Medicaid cuts would leave 8.6 million people without health care over the next decade.

Now this is not a surprise to anyone except, I am sure, Republican voters and the media, because this was pretty explicitly called for in that Project 2025 book that this nice lady from California kept mentioning over and over again and Trump kept saying “Project 2025? Never heard of her” and that was enough for the media to take his word so they never really covered it during the election.

For whatever reason, I feel like this happened in 2016, too, and this nice lady predicted all this stuff that happened and the media never believed her and took Trump at his word. It’s almost like they want Trump, sometimes.

***

I am finally starting to settle down and realize I am here for a while, which is good. I think I am going to settle in and watch the Pitt and see how bad they mangle yinzer accents.

Reader Interactions

105Comments

  1. 1.

    satby

    You’re settled and I’m on my way across the ocean in 2 more hours. Traffic to O’Hare was a breeze, TSA security took only 10 minutes even with the additional screening I almost always get, and I was bored so I had an RJ Grunt’s burger, which was as great as when we used to go to the original back in the late 70s.

  4. 4.

    bbleh

    As much as I would like to see the Orange Guy get cut off at the knees by the finance bros, I am happy for the millions of Americans with retirement savings invested in stocks who are seeing the tide rise again (at least for now), thanks I think to the Orange Guy getting (mostly) bored and (also) antsy that he might get blamed for a genuine sh!tstorm.  (Not to say the latter isn’t going to happen btw, but at least the odds are considerably lower for now.)

  5. 5.

    Phylllis

    I thought The Pitt was awesome, but cannot speak to Yinzer accent authenticity. I was surprised to learn at least two of the actors are Brits, so they at least mastered the mid-Atlantic thing.

  9. 9.

    Cap'n Phealy

    Holy shit, thanks for turning me on to Sierra Ferrel. It was love at first sound.

  10. 10.

    WaterGirl

    @Cap’n Phealy: Welcome!

    Thanks to your comment, I will listen to that and see what I think, too.

    Also, I regret to inform you that WordPress does not like screen names (nyms) with apostrophes, so that means every single comment from you will have to be manually approved before anyone can see them.

    The link below has instructions for the character you can use that LOOKS LIKE an apostrophe but is actually a different character that WordPress doesn’t take issue with.   Please give the instructions a try!

    Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

  11. 11.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Good for the Episcopal Church. It’s flagrant racist bullshit to let Afrikaners, who aren’t even in any real mortal danger in, and end all other refugee resettlement

  12. 12.

    JoyceH

    Huh. I followed a link to a defense magazine that estimated that retrofitting this Qatari floating palace to function as an AF-1 would take until 2030 and cost billions. The plane is a discontinued model so you can’t just take the comms and defense systems being made for the AF-1s currently under contract and move them to this other plane, you’d have to start from scratch. So in addition to being wildly corrupt, it’s also breathtakingly stupid. It also occurs to me that much of the deluxe living quarters that probably appealed to Trump would be replaced by comms shops and command centers. In other words, I don’t think this deal is going anywhere.

  15. 15.

    zhena gogolia

    I’m always late to the “hot” shows, but we’re enjoying Nobody Wants This on Netflix. It’s very funny and the actors are charming. But boy, is it inaccurate / grating on Jewish issues. I have to stop the stream every few minutes to explain to my husband how wrong it is.

  18. 18.

    raven

    Shitty overcast day huh? We’ve been planning this Outer Banks trip for a year and now the offshore trip is off because of the 30mph winds and rain moving in. We’ll be able to go Thursday but it’s put a real spanner in the works. I frightened to death because I went down to the dock and they absolutely slayed the yellowfin tuna today. This will be the third trip on a beautiful 60 foot craft and we have caught ONE fish in the first two trips! Here’s a nice inscription on one of the benches.

  19. 19.

    Westyny

    Love me some Sierra Ferrell.  Also:  Diana Jones, Joan Shelley, Ana Egge (check out the latter’s “Cocaine Cowboys”).

  20. 20.

    satby

    @mrmoshpotato: Copenhagen tomorrow morning for a layover, then Dublin in the afternoon. Where I’ll be traveling around the country visiting some of the places my ancestors (both sides) lived. A lot of which is in the areas where Irish is still spoken. So that’s how I’m spending my 70th birthday next Sunday 😊 HBD to me 😉

    Or as they’d say there: breithlá sona dom

  22. 22.

    pluky

    @satby: No need for the “Mr.” with “Most Reverend”. But this Episcopalian appreciates the attempt at respect.

    If you wanted to be REALLY formal:

    The Most Reverend Sean Rowe, Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

  23. 23.

    JoyceH

    @Harrison Wesley: Don’t know if anyone remembers but back during Trump’s first term, he was leaning on NASA for a manned mission to Mars. The kicker was that what he wanted was a mission that would land on Mars before Election Day. And man, those eggheads were so uncooperative! They kept trying to explain to him that if they were on the launch pad right now, they couldn’t reach Mars that soon. These damn elites, always being so stubborn.

  24. 24.

    Pete Downunder

    There is an Aussie election update thread upstairs if anyone is interested.

  25. 25.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Trump is already telegraphing on social media that “China will stop the flow of fentanyl”, meaning the 20% meme tariff imposed for fentanyl will not likely last. That will bring mutual tariffs down to 10%, which is the lowest since Trump 45 initiated the trade war. Neither myself nor anyone I followed (in the mainstream or those w/ heterodox views) saw this degree of capitulation coming. Well, at least until the inevitable drama toward the end of the 90 days.

    Nothing China does will make a difference to the fentanyl crisis in the U.S., though. That is a demand problem. Even if the PRC cracks down hard on the export of fentanyl precursors, production will simply shift to India.

  27. 27.

    Old School

    On Monday, the president claimed he invented a “new word” while talking about his proposal to lower drug prices by 80%.
    “Basically, what we’re doing is equalizing. There’s a new word that I came up with, which is probably the best word,” he said.

    ….

    According to Webster’s dictionary, “equalize” was first used in 1599.

  28. 28.

    Christopher Mathews

    For whatever reason, I feel like this happened in 2016, too, and this nice lady predicted all this stuff that happened and the media never believed her and took Trump at his word. It’s almost like they want Trump, sometimes.

    Sometimes?

  29. 29.

    Suzanne

    @YY_Sima Qian: Every time I hear politicians discuss fentanyl, you would think it’s something foreign countries do to us, like Pearl Harbor or something. I listened to Marie Glusenkamp Perez’s interview with Ezra Klein last week, and she just completely glossed over the fact that Americans demand this stuff and that’s why it’s here. She makes me stabby. Infuriating.

    John, have you heard Marian Hill yet?

  32. 32.

    Jackie

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Did you catch this earlier today?

    Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, spoke to the press while welcoming a group of over 50 Afrikaner refugees.

    “Some of the criteria is making sure that refugees did not pose any challenge to our national security and that they could be assimilated easily into our country.”

    Landau came right out and said why these particular immigrants were acceptable.

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JoyceH: My impression is that every President since Apollo 11 has come in asking about how easy it would be to land a crew on Mars. And then they get some estimates and faint dead away at the sticker shock. But Trump is probably too stubborn and ignorant for the second part.

  34. 34.

    TheOtherHank

    I like Dave Alvin’s version of Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down quite a bit. But I LOVE Sierra Ferrell’s take on it.

  35. 35.

    Suzanne

    Just saw some interesting news: Alexandra Petri, blog favorite, is leaving WaPo and going to The Atlantic. Maybe I’ll subscribe.

  36. 36.

    lowtechcyclist

    From Cole’s link:

    White House spokesperson Anna Kelly…argued “Afrikaners have faced unspeakable horrors”

    Yeah, she can’t speak of those horrors, because we’d point and laugh. Their ‘persecution’ probably pales next to the shit that Black people in America have to put up with on a routine basis.

  37. 37.

    Pete Downunder

    @lowtechcyclist: I know a number of white South Africans and a few black South Africans all of whom fled not because of persecution but because of the crime rate and general chaos in the country. That said, there are millions of people elsewhere in Africa and the world where the situation is far, far worse and who need sanctuary far more.

  40. 40.

    bbleh

    @Old School: “Woke Webster’s” has been removed from the shelves at all Federal agencies and military academy libraries, as well as in several state universities and public school systems, so what it “defines” and “cites” — and all that could just be Fake News — doesn’t matter.

  41. 41.

    Suzanne

    @YY_Sima Qian: It is! It’s astonishing! The discourse used to be 100% about drug use being a personal failing. Now it’s 100% a thing the dirty foreigners are doing to us.

    I read some right-wing comment sections, and I have seen more than one conservative say that fentanyl abuse “humiliates” their communities and it’s something the liberals are trying to inflict on conservatives.

  42. 42.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    and it’s something the liberals are trying to inflict on conservatives

     

    People believe what they want to believe.

  44. 44.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: Oh, for sure. But it was a new layer of ressentiment that I hadn’t realized existed.

    There is a whole strain of MAGA that resents, actually loathes, liberal normies because we are more successful, by and large. They don’t hate billionaires, they hate their boss and their boss’s friends.

  45. 45.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Suzanne:

     It is! It’s astonishing! The discourse used to be 100% about drug use being a personal failing. Now it’s 100% a thing the dirty foreigners are doing to us.

    I read some right-wing comment sections, and I have seen more than one conservative say that fentanyl abuse “humiliates” their communities and it’s something the liberals are trying to inflict on conservatives.

    The Party of Personal Responsibility, finding someone else to blame now that it’s their people having the drug problems.

    I know y’all are as shocked by this as I am.

  46. 46.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    There’s hate, and then engaging in a fantasy world building exercise where the objects of your hate are casts as demons.

  50. 50.

    Hoodie

    @JoyceH: Probably just another outrage du jour to distract from Trump capitulating on the China tariffs.  He basically got nothing but you can be sure he’ll hail as the deal of century.

  53. 53.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Suzanne:

    There is a whole strain of MAGA that resents, actually loathes, liberal normies because we are more successful, by and large. They don’t hate billionaires, they hate their boss and their boss’s friends.

    I’ll never understand this mindset. What kind of dipshit does one have to be to think billionaires give a damn about you

  54. 54.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Jay: These people are so gd stupid I often wonder how they managed to survive to “adulthood.”

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    @zhena gogolia: I agree that it’s charming.  I especially like how the rabbi models good communication in a relationship.  I had no idea that some of the Jewish issues are portrayed incorrectly.

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: sorry your offshore trip was cancelled!

    I am not a fishing person, so I have no idea what this means:

    I frightened to death because I went down to the dock and they absolutely slayed the yellowfin tuna today.

    I hope the rest of the trip is awesome for you.

  57. 57.

    Jay

    Here, fentanyl is a health concern.

    Drug dealers put in everything, from pot, through coke, crack, meth, heroin, anything that can get you high, as it turns shitty over cut product into something with a higher high and greater addiction potential. Sometimes it’s just pure fentanyl.

    So we have drug testing sites, safe injection sites, all first responders have Paxlovid NARCAN kits and training, you can pick up a kit at any pharmacy for free and a short training from the Pharmacist on recognizing an OD and how to administer the shots. The kits are making their way into Industrial First Aid kits as well.

  65. 65.

    Jay

    @Suburban Mom:

    Brainworm JR has been saying over and over again, that only people with weak immune systems are the only people who get sick and die, that germ theory is anti-science and you are either born with a great immune system, or you are not, building immunity is a myth.

    Eugenics.

  66. 66.

    zhena gogolia

    @WaterGirl: “shiksa” is a very bad word. I don’t believe a rabbi (or his family) would use it so lightly. The heroine has lived in LA all her life but she’s never heard the words “shalom” or “shabat” and doesn’t know that prosciutto is ham. The rabbi’s Hebrew sounds like he learned it for his bar mitzvah. Just to name a few. Don’t get me started on, these people are not Russian emigres. But it’s very charming and goes down like candy, we love it. I especially like the girl playing Miriam.

  70. 70.

    Jay

    So yeah read the Hell World piece if you haven’t then come back because I’m not spending any time rehashing it. I’ll skip straight to the sentiment: This is fucked. What happened was fucked. What’s happening is fucked. The city is coming unglued. City Hall is giving up pretenses it has any control whatsoever over the police department.

    The police are fabricating stories about how a woman in elected office assaulted them so they can cry to ~the media~ about having been hit by a woman. Mommy she hit me. Literally. Lying in the smarmy way a brother would to get his kid sister in trouble. This Boston 25 article is a top-to-bottom embarrassment.

    Follow up is so rare in US Media.

    https://www.worcestersucks.email/p/the-backlash-blues

  71. 71.

    YY_Sima Qian

    An inside baseball account of the Sino-US trade talks:

    Who blinked first?

    How the US and China broke their trade deadlock Secret meeting in IMF basement paved way for tariff deal seen on both sides as a victory US

    Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington, Joe Leahy in Beijing and Peter Foster in London

    Published 6 HOURS AGO Updated 04:25

    Why did the PRC agreed to the deescalation so quickly? Because Beijing did not want to wage this trade war to begin w/, even if it was/is convinced that the PRC holds more leverage & has greater resilience. Trump caved on all of the “Liberation Day” tariffs, so why wouldn’t the PRC take that win? As I have written, all indications are that the “fentanyl meme tariff” will not last, either. Trump is desperate for a “win” there, too. In the medium to long term, nothing changes in terms of continued de-risking from the US across all spheres & accelerated dealmaking w/ the ROW. Likewise, the US will continue to try to use other means to cut the PRC out of its supply chains (a fool’s errand) & tighten export controls of technology (also likely doomed to fail as anything other than short term delaying action).

    At the end of the day, policymakers in capitals around the world are drawing their own conclusions, & I suspect the consensus is that Trump folded, & everyone has taken note

    More tariff drama to come even before the end of the 90 days. There are the Sections 232 & 301 sectoral tariffs.

  72. 72.

    Jackie

    @Jay:

    RFK Jr. Took His Grandkids for a Dip in a Sewage-Contaminated Creek For Mother’s Day

    I’d read earlier that RFK Jr went swimming in the sewage-contaminated creek and hoped he’d get contaminated with every vile substance floating around him. Now I learn he purposefully put his grandkids at risk in polluted water.

    How do I curse him with illness, yet hope the contaminated water spares the innocent?

  74. 74.

    Jackie

    @raven: Aww ravin, I’m so sorry. I guess Mother Nature is always a factor when fishing – for good or bad.

  76. 76.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay:

    Thanks for sharing that. I read the original article on Welcome to Hell World that author wrote and I was so enraged.

    I hope that city government gets thrown out on it’s ass

  77. 77.

    Fair Economist

    @YY_Sima Qian: I mean, duh, of course Trump blinked. Trump raised tariffs, and China just retaliated afterwards. China was OK with the status quo ante and Trump wasn’t, and now we’re basically back to the status quo, other than with an added 10% tariff from Trump, that China is matching.

    I’ve heard differing info on whether some of the specific trade steps China has taken, like the soybean restrictions and rare earth export restrictions, are still in place. Do you know or have a source?

  78. 78.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Although India-Pakistan is now quickly off the front pages, here are some interesting geopolitical tea leaf reading (PRC readouts through the link):

    Tanvi Madan@tanvi_madan

    Transl. of China’s readouts of calls w PAK & IND officials (suggests China sought de-escalation, maybe esp post-Pakistani nuclear rattling ; was there coord w. the US?)
    Striking things incl msg to Pakistan: “make a decision…in line with Pak’s fundamental & long-term interests” + no criticism of Indian strike

    The PRC is definitely walking a fine line in South Asia, rapprochement w/ India is important for its Great Power Competition w/ the US.

  79. 79.

    One of André Leon Talley's Fifty Pieces of Monogrammed Louis Vuitton Luggage

    How can you not mention that Sierra Ferrell hails from WV?

    Charleston born and bred.

  80. 80.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Fair Economist: I believe the soybeans restricts are lifted because it was part of the retaliation package. Not that PRC buyers will necessarily rushing back to US suppliers, having already signed deals with/ Brazil. Bessent is talking about the PRC committing to greater purchases of commodities from the US to help balance trade in a new deal down the line (Phase 1 from Trump 45, anyone?), so the PRC may choose to hold that card as leverage in the coming negotiations.

    The export controls on rare earth elements & rare earth magnets remain, because it is “national security” & retaliation against the US export controls on semiconductors. I think the PRC is holding that card as leverage to negotiate loosening of semiconductor restrictions.

  81. 81.

    Jay

    @Fair Economist:

    like the soybean restrictions and rare earth export restrictions, are still in place.

    Soybean orders from the US were cancelled and replaced with orders from Canada, Australia and Brazil.

    DJTdiot 45’s tarfiff’s FFS cost the US the Chinese market, DJTdiot had to bail out the farmers, and sales only slowly crawled back under Biden, but still 40% lower than what China was buying before.

    Rare Earth exports are still banned until China can create a tracking and regulatory system, to prevent rare earths and rare earth products from winding up in the “wrong hands”.

  83. 83.

    Suburban Mom

    @Jay: I didn’t realize that.  I knew he was anti-vax but I thought he was okay with natural immunity after infection.

  85. 85.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay:

    That reminds me of Trump’s belief about exercise: that you only have so much energy and you’ll eventually run out of it and die, so exercise should be avoided

  86. 86.

    geg6

    I highly recommend The Pitt.  Lotta Pittsburgh references (though not much scenery; for that, catch Watson in CBS which shows the city in its full glory: just this last week, they filmed scenes in the Duquesne Incline).  But the truth it shows of emergency medicine is pretty groundbreaking.  My niece, who works at UPMC Children’s Hospital here, as a CAT and MRI tech, says it’s spot on.  Since Children’s is a Level I trauma center, she’s in and out of the ER every shift.  She vouches for its accuracy.  Plus, she got to meet Noah Wiley a few months ago when he was touring the hospital with the head ER nurse, who consulted on the show.

  87. 87.

    YY_Sima Qian

    FTFNYT (not thrilled by the bylines), but the the pattern to Trumpian “Art of the Deal” is pretty transparent (gift link below):

    Why Trump Suddenly Declared Victory Over the Houthi Militia
    The militant group in Yemen was still firing at ships and shooting down drones, while U.S. forces were burning through munitions.
    By Helene Cooper, Greg Jaffe, Jonathan Swan, Eric Schmitt and Maggie Haberman Reporting from Washington
    May 12, 2025

    Crazy details:

    Emma Ashford @EmmaMAshford

    Some crazy moments in this NYT story about the Houthi campaign:
    — they almost shot down an F-35
    — it cost $1 billion for 30 days
    — it used so many precision munitions that Pentagon contingency planners started to freak out
    — CENTCOM’s metric of success was “bombs dropped”

    Beyond the usual Trumpian shambolic policymaking, further evidence of longstanding pathologies in the US FP “Blob”. Some of them are still eager to fight a great power war against the PRC.

  88. 88.

    RevRick

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Not only is this a good stand for the Episcopal Church to take on the merits, but it also allies itself with the ELCA (Lutheran Church) which took a massive hit when DOGE axed their overseas work as part of USAID and their domestic work of Lutheran Social Services, slandering them as money-laundering operations.

  89. 89.

    frosty

    @Jay: ​I can’t read the article but I doubt that Rock Creek has sewage discharged into it. That could only happen if there is an old combined storm and sanitary sewer system. The only one I know of in DC flows to the Anacostia.

    Now, bacteria I believe. Every urban stream has high levels of bacteria from stormwater discharges, which pick up everything in yards, parks, sidewalks, and streets and funnels it to an inlet and then an outfall which is usually along a creek.

    Dog waste and goose poop are among the things that end up in the creek. Environmental engineers and managers have been trying to clean up the bacteria sources for decades. Dog parks and pooper scooper laws have helped.

    Signed: Former stormwater and watershed planner

    ​ETA: Typical journalism. Read the word bacteria, write sewage. Headline writer says OMG RFKJr took the kids on a walk through shit!​​​​​

  90. 90.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Jay: Unless a strategic decision by the CPC regime, US sales of soybeans to the PRC will never get back to pre-Trump45 trade war levels. In the past 8 years the PRC has invested a lot of money to expand the export logistics infrastructure in Brazil to enable the export of Brazilian commodities. The world has shifted. Which is why Lula wants to further enhance the relationship w/ the PRC:

    Brazil’s president seeks ‘indestructible’ links with China amid Trump trade war
    Remark comes as Brazil, Colombia and Chile’s leaders fly to Beijing amid international uncertainty generated by Trump
    Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
    Mon 12 May 2025 20.01 BST

    & why Columbia (under a Left wing president) wants to sign on to the BRI:

    Colombia to sign onto China’s Belt and Road initiative, Petro says
    By Reuters
    May 12, 2025 9:36 PM GMT+8 Updated 12 hours ago

  91. 91.

    RevRick

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Except most bosses are Republicans, especially in MAGA dense areas. What they hate most are prosperous cities, where people of all races, orientations and genders can thrive. They hate the attention cities get. They hate how cities shape our culture.

  92. 92.

    Jay

    @frosty:

    The Park service has huge signs warning people to stay out of the creek, keep their kids out of the creek, keep their dogs out of the creek, because of sewage, bacteria and chemicals.

    Here, this year, with all the construction, we have had several fish kills in Stoney Creek, (a salmon stream), everything from oils and tars, unknown chemicals, detergents and other soaps. The storm drains lead into the creek.

    People dump stuff down the storm drains, surface runoff, etc, but you know all this.

    Add in leaking septic fields or toilets flowing straight in to the crick, dating back to when car’s were used as bank riprap.

    A big thing here, is with all the hard surfaces, the creeks and urban rivers that remain, blow up to flood stage in mere moments with heavy rain.

    They have started experimenting with “water gardens” with a lot of success. Basically a ditch replacing a storm drain, with pools, gradual slopes, ponds, and plantings that clean the water and control the rate of runoff.

  93. 93.

    frosty

    @frosty: ​
     Also, a not-unusual source of bacteria is cross connections between the sanitary (sewage) and stormwater (rain) systems. During outfall inspections we ran across one where an upstream sanitary sewer had broken and the flow went into the stormwater.

    My colleague who was walking ahead of me got one whiff and hollered back “We’ve got a stinker here!” DPW fixed it in a week.

    The only reason it was found was that outfall investigations were part of the County’s stormwater NPDES permit. Thank you EPA. Thank you federal government.

  94. 94.

    lowtechcyclist

    @frosty: ​
     

    I can’t read the article but I doubt that Rock Creek has sewage discharged into it. That could only happen if there is an old combined storm and sanitary sewer system. The only one I know of in DC flows to the Anacostia.

    Here’s what the article says:

    Rock Creek’s water quality issues are hardly a secret. One 2021 report found “high E. coli values, indicating sewage pollution,” likely resulting from “antiquated sewers that have long since passed their useful life.” Earlier this month, DC Water announced it would undertake an emergency repair of a major sewer line, putting Rock Creek at even further risk of contamination, after finding a 200-foot-long crack in a section of piping that dates back to the 1800s.

    So it sounds like they really are talking about sewage. Not an open sewer pipe flowing into the creek, but apparently failing pipes close enough that seepage can get there through the intervening soil.

  95. 95.

    Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Ohio soybeans were cheaper, sow, harvest, ship, and still are in some regards, but the supply is not.

    Ag crops can be dirt cheap, it’s the infrastructure to store and ship that costs.

    China investing is double edged. They make the product cheaper, and retain some control over supply.

  96. 96.

    frosty

    @lowtechcyclist: OK, looks like they’re talking about the source in my second comment, where my colleague and I found a broken sewer line. This was in Arlington County where the infrastructure was definitely newer and in better shape than around Rock Creek.
    So I’ll buy the sewage in Rock Creek story now.​

  98. 98.

    WaterGirl

    @Jay: It’s called NARCAN here in the US.

    P.S. I edited your comment to strikeout Paxlovid and add NARCAN.

  100. 100.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @pluky: makes me proud to have grown up going to episcopal church with my parents. They’re good people, the Episcopalians.

  101. 101.

    Msb

    For whatever reason, I feel like this happened in 2016, too, and this nice lady predicted all this stuff that happened and the media never believed her and took Trump at his word. It’s almost like they want Trump, sometimes.

    Even with two nice ladies saying things, in the USA it doesn’t count until a man says it.

  102. 102.

    Doug

    this nice lady predicted all this stuff that happened

    Alien is a movie about how nobody listens to the smart lady, and then they all die except the smart lady and her cat.

  104. 104.

    Chris T.

    @Jackie:

    Landau came right out and said why these particular immigrants were acceptable.

    Because, like Commissioner Bele from ST:TOS, they’re “white on the left side”?

    (OK, that was a seriously awful episode. Beat everyone over the head with it. But that’s what we need again, alas.)

  105. 105.

    Chris T.

    @Jay:

    Srry, NARCAN. (Naxalone in the US).

    Naloxone (nasal spray); goes by the same marketing name (Narcan).

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