Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

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

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

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

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

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

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

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

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

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

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

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

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  2. 2.

    Suzanne

    I feel much the same. This is why I wake up before everyone else. Gotta take a few minutes for myself before I commence disappointing everyone.

  3. 3.

    zhena gogolia

    Watch something light and fun like Tina Fey’s Four Seasons on Netflix. It has its serious plot twists, but it’s uplifting in the end.

  7. 7.

    trollhattan

    That thing we knew was coming? It’s here.

    Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after David Richardson, the head of the U.S. disaster agency, said during a briefing that he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, Reuters reports.

    The U.S. hurricane season officially began on Sunday and lasts through November and this year’s season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes.

  9. 9.

    satby

    Hey, I resemble that remark.

     

    @Sure Lurkalot: actually, I think studies in the 70s correlated air pollution and heat with more aggressive behavior. Air here is pretty polluted from Canadian wildfires.

  10. 10.

    Matt McIrvin

    @trollhattan: Well, if it’s an official thing, they can eliminate hurricane season with the stroke of a Sharpie. Problem solved!

    The hurricanes may have other ideas, but we can always use the Joni Ernst approach.

  13. 13.

    Gretchen

    @zhena gogolia: I found The Four Seasons incredibly depressing – the story of people in a long marriage who thought everything was fine and find out that their partner is sick of them? It made me wonder how many people are in that situation. I had to turn it off and find something as a palate cleanser and still felt sad the rest of the night.

  14. 14.

    Scout211

    @trollhattan: OMFG.

    I’ll raise you another OMFG:

    A 23-Year-Old Crypto Bro Is Now Vetoing NSF Grants While Staring At His Water Bottle

    Meet Zachary Terrell, DOGE’s apparent authority on scientific merit. Fedscoop identified him as one of three DOGE operatives deployed to NSF. They had such little info on him that they didn’t even list any associations (unlike the other two DOGE kids at NSF). Terrell’s apparent qualifications for overruling decades of scientific expertise? A 2022 bachelor’s degree from Kansas State and a brief career in crypto.

    Since graduating, Terrell has managed to found three companies, including “Spindl,” which Coinbase acquired earlier this year for its groundbreaking innovation of… putting ads on the blockchain. His LinkedIn profile lists his current government role as “Yeoman” — apparently the official title for “person who kills research grants while playing with water bottles.”

    This is the expertise now trumping peer review at the NSF. Not content knowledge, not research experience, not even basic familiarity with how science works. Just the confidence that comes with being a 23-year-old techbro who thinks he knows better than any actual expert.

    . . .

    What we’re witnessing isn’t just administrative incompetence — it’s the systematic replacement of expertise with ideology.

  15. 15.

    bbleh

    @trollhattan: I’m sure many of the residents of Gulf Coast and Atlantic states, being primarily and in many places overwhelmingly Republican, will be glad to hear it.  Better living through ignorance!

    There’s some (heavily Republican) parts of the country that haven’t even recovered from Helene.  And then there’s the more recent storms and tornadoes and floods in MO, AR, KY, etc., where states have basically been told “yer on yer own.”

    Thanks again, Republicans!

  17. 17.

    trollhattan

    @bbleh: ​
    Yeah, the family did a quick overnight to Asheville last week and saw up close what a yard of rain in a day can do. Nobody needs that mess.

  18. 18.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @satby: Our air quality here in Denver is decent today so that’s no excuse for all the assholery that’s come my way today.

  19. 19.

    zhena gogolia

    @Gretchen: I don’t think that’s quite what happened. I want to avoid spoilers, but “thought everything was fine” isn’t really what emerges. You think that at first, but subsequent dialogue reveals that it’s not the case. I didn’t see anything unbelievable about it as the story unfolded.

    To each his/her own, but I thought it was funny and touching.

    ETA: I guess stories of marriage troubles seem like an escape these days from the destruction of the republic.

  23. 23.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    “Can I watch past seasons relive past years on a streaming service? I’m not at all keen with the way 2025 is going.”

  24. 24.

    trollhattan

    Extreme sports, meet extreme death wish in the form of Taco Bell 50k.

    What began as a goofy event in Denver is now spreading across the country. This past weekend the first “Taco Bell 50K” in Minneapolis was run — which garnered more attention for the event, while also underscoring how this is the most diabolical concept in sports.

    Imagine running a long distance, 50 kilometers more precisely, which is further than a marathon. Now mix in that you need to make multiple stops along the way to consume Taco Bell items — and no, drinks don’t count as an “item.”

    The rules were even more diabolical broken down into line items:

    -Consume one menu item at each of seven Taco Bell locations along the race route
    -Runners must consume one burrito and one crunchwrap as part of their seven items
    -Consuming Pepto Bismol, vomiting, bathroom breaks are all allowed

    In total 50+ people actually competed in the event.

    https://www.sbnation.com/2025/6/2/24441590/taco-bell-50k-sporting-event?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

    Anybody remember JFK’s Fitness Test? This be Donny’s.

  26. 26.

    Harrison Wesley

    Hurricanes? Those are in the Gulf of Mexico. According to the Florida legislature, I live next to the Gulf of America. No problem here.

  27. 27.

    Sister Golden Bear

    “King of the Hill” voice actor Jonathan Joss was murdered Saturday in a particularly horrific hate crime (serious trigger warnings regarding homophobic harassment and animal cruelty).

    And now the FBI is threatening to investigate any healthcare provider who provides “gender affirming” surgery to minors, and set up a snitch line to report doctors, clinics and hospitals.

    Happy Fucking Pride.

    *I’ll note that the numbers are minuscule. I’m too pissed off to find the original study, but there were 150 breast reduction surgeries done on minors in the U.S. during the year that was studied — and all but four were for cisgender boys with gynecomastia. In other words, gender affirming surgery is good for cis boys, but it’s “mutilation” if performed on trans boys.

  28. 28.

    Leto

    @trollhattan: If it was a golf cart 50k he’d be fine, otherwise in this incarnation he’d be dead before the first burrito stop. Hopefully they enter him. 50k’s used to be weekend training runs for me, and I wouldn’t have minded a taco stop or two. Don’t know about TB though.

  29. 29.

    Anne Laurie

    BROKENWOOD MYSTERIES, Season 11. is streaming on Amazon now. New Zealand not-that-‘cozy’ series, 90-minute episodes, just exotic enough, plus a stellar continuing cast!

    Spousal Unit & I are currently watching HARRY WILD on Amazon — it doesn’t really find its feet until the fourth or fifth episode, but title character Jane Seymour is backed by a pretty good cast and some very pretty Dublin landscapes / interiors.

    And I want to re-watch FOREVER AFTER… a thirty-years-younger Drew Barrymore in a Terry Pratchett-style version of Cinderella.

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    Excerpts from a llongish read (emphasis in original).

    A little more than four months into his second term, the president’s personal cellphone has become, in many ways, the most pivotal technological device in the federal government, directly linking Trump to the outside world. Lawmakers, friends, family members, corporate titans, celebrities, world leaders, and journalists regularly call it, knowing that, unminded by aides, Trump remains open to picking up the phone, even when he does not recognize the number.
    [snip]
    Several aides told us Trump has two different devices, and at least one aide said they have seen him with three. (One of the phones, some aides suggested, is mainly devoted to his social-media use.) The lock screen of one, captured by a Reuters photographer Friday night, shows an image of Trump’s own face, stern and commanding, with a finger pointing directly at the camera.
    [snip]
    But Trump treats his direct line to the world as an enhancement of—not a risk to—his presidency. “I’ve been on the phone with him before, and he’s just said, ‘I’ve got to go. I have someone from another country calling,’” an outside adviser told us. “He doesn’t even know which country. He just sees the number and thinks, This might be a foreign leader I want to talk to.”
    [snip]
    Advisers tried to break his habit. John Kelly, the retired U.S. Marine Corps general who became Trump’s second chief of staff in 2017, was particularly strict about operational security, several advisers, current and former, told us. Kelly repeatedly warned Trump about how vulnerable cellphones are—to hacking by the Russians and the Chinese, and also to the phones themselves being turned into listening devices by foreign or other bad actors. He and his deputies would regularly remove Trump’s cellphone from the Oval Office, storing it in a padded box outside.

    But Trump either didn’t understand or didn’t care. “He’d just reject it and say, ‘It’s not true,’” one of the former advisers told us. “He’d say, ‘My phone is the best on the market.’”

  31. 31.

    bbleh

    @NotMax: well I don’t believe a WORD of this!  He takes security VERY seriously!  I mean, he kept his TS/SI and RA files in his PERSONAL OFFICE at Mag-a-Lardo.  All the ones in the bathroom were just TS or lower, and they were behind a shower curtain!  (According to Alina Habba.)

  32. 32.

    Jackie

    @bbleh:

    I’m sure many of the residents of Gulf Coast and Atlantic states, being primarily and in many places overwhelmingly Republican, will be glad to hear it.  Better living through ignorance!

    You ARE aware a lot of BJ jackals live in these states – including BettyCracker? Your flippant/snarky comment is in poor taste.

    Yet another ignorant comment suggesting that ALL red states only have Republican/MAGA voters.

  35. 35.

    bbleh

    @Jackie: You ARE aware that I said “many of”?  Very deliberately, because yes I am so aware, including myself until recently.

  36. 36.

    Craig

    @trollhattan: when I was there in December my friend drove me down to the arts district by the river. Mostly getting cleaned up, but there was that semi trailer on it’s side the roof of a warehouse. That was an eye opener.

  37. 37.

    me

    The lock screen of one, captured by a Reuters photographer Friday night, shows an image of Trump’s own face, stern and commanding, with a finger pointing directly at the camera.

    of course it is

  41. 41.

    Ohio Mom

    @brendancalling: Your comment made me remember your first year of teaching and your misgivings about choosing that line of work. It wasn’t clear that you were going to last.

    How far you have come!

  42. 42.

    frosty

    @Suzanne: ​Gotta take a few minutes for myself before I commence disappointing everyone.

    Hmm. Good plan. I may have to change my lifetime habits and become an early riser.​

  45. 45.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    “Hurricane season!”
    “Tornado season!”

    “Hurricane season!”

    “Tornado season!”

    ***WHOOOSH!

  46. 46.

    JML

    My day is actually going ok. Had a nice breakfast with friends from law school (one was in from out of state for a conference). Bacon, ham, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich on a croissant with honey mustard and some breakfast potatoes. That’s a nice start. Got my vacation days approved so I can get under the limit for the year. Had a couple of books I ordered arrive.

    Gotta take the wins when so much of the world is terrible.

  53. 53.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Snarki, child of Loki: ​
     

    “Hurricane season!”

    “Tornado season!”

    “Hurricane season!”

    “Tornado season!”

    ***WHOOOSH!

    Whichever season it is, you wascal wabbit, you better DUCK!!

  54. 54.

    Jay

    TrumpsTaxes
    ‪@trumpstaxes.com‬

    Follow
    This explains why a Fox News viewer I spoke to over the weekend thinks that Joe Biden is the most corrupt President ever, and doesn’t know a single thing about Trump’s blatantly corrupt activities around crypto, pardons, etc.

    ‪Aaron Rupar‬
    ‪@atrupar.com‬
    · 10h
    Mentions on this morning’s Fox & Friends

    Medicaid: 1
    Biden: 39
    June 2, 2025 at 1:54 PM

    Don’t worry about MAGgot’s in Hurricane Alley. Between Faux News and the cuts to NWS and FEMA, they will never know what hit them.

  55. 55.

    Jay

    southpaw
    ‪@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social‬

    Follow
    Seed, stems, *and* sticks

    ‪Daniel Knowles‬
    ‪@dlknowles.bsky.social‬
    · 1h
    A photo shared with me earlier of uh, DOGE’s legacy at USIP

    June 2, 2025 at 3:21 PM

    When DOGshitters were finally kicked out of the US Institute For Peace, the cleaners found rats, cockroaches, piles of rotting garbage and food waste, and bags upon bags of “ditchweed”.

  57. 57.

    Jay

    @MagdaInBlack:

    It’s 1970’s High School level Ditchweed grown by somebody who never cracked open the cover of  High Times magazine.

    It’s crap that I would never have paid money for in High School.

  58. 58.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Jay: Me either. We had much better looking stuff in the “70’s

    In a teeny little farm town H.S. no less.

  61. 61.

    Jay

    @MagdaInBlack:

    @Marc:

    One of my HS friends started growing pot, became an expert, part of the group that created BC Hydro. Set up grow ops in small industrial buildings with remote security, NG burners on the roof tied into the HVAC, so you couldn’t smell the pot growing from outside. I occasionally worked as a trimmer.

    He retired at 30 to Jamaica as a multi-millionaire.

  64. 64.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jay:

    When DOGshitters were finally kicked out of the US Institute For Peace, the cleaners found rats, cockroaches, piles of rotting garbage and food waste, and bags upon bags of “ditchweed”.

    Good job of getting rid of waste in government, huh?

  66. 66.

    Jay

    Ted Cruz called the FBI on me
    ‪@weareronin.bsky.social‬

    Follow
    San Diego neighborhood makes ICE agents retreat
    San Diego neighborhood makes ICE agents retreat
    1:08

    0:13 / 1:21

    June 2, 2025 at 2:29 PM

    Everybody can reply
    3.5K reposts
    1.1K quotes
    12.7K likes

    Make sure the sound is on.

    https://bsky.app/profile/weareronin.bsky.social/post/3lqnpuphux225

    Unmarked vehicles, no badges, no ID, dressed for a battle in downtown Fallujah, armed with a Squad Light Machine Gun,

    all to kidnap somebody’s gardener, day care provider or the family running all three shifts at the local 7/11, and haul them off to a Concentration Camp.

  67. 67.

    Bill Arnold

    @NotMax:

    But Trump either didn’t understand or didn’t care. “He’d just reject it and say, ‘It’s not true,’” one of the former advisers told us. “He’d say, ‘My phone is the best on the market.’”

    Working zero-days for both iOS and Android are increasingly expensive (like many millions of dollars) on the black market, but they are available, and POTUS phones are viable targets even when using very very very expensive exploits.
    ETA: I would assume, without evidence, that his phone is probably rooted by at least one adversary.

  69. 69.

    Marc

    @Jay:

    One managed to launder the weed profits well enough to start a successful independent Audio store (last I was by there he had a Ferrari 308 out front).  The other one was more interesting, he somehow managed to get into Harvard Business School a year or two after he left college, then ended buying a large house in Santa Barbara and running a venture capital firm there.  I say interesting, as he grew up on an  Army base in Germany, had a German mother and Filipino  (not American) dad who was a Green Beret and Vietnam vet.  Managed to get ROTC to pay 3 out of 4 years of tuition, then dropped it. Not your typical HBS candidate.

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