Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

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

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Giving up is unforgivable.

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

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

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

When I was faster i was always behind.

In my day, never was longer.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

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

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

We still have time to mess this up!

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

You are here: Home / Justice / Racial Justice / Black Lives Matter / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Juneteenth

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Juneteenth

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The Juneteenth flag symbolizes liberation. The star marks Texas, where the enslaved were freed in Galveston in 1865. The arc is a new horizon, and the red, white & blue colors affirm that the enslaved are American. 64 days to Slavery Remembrance Day. #CountdowntoSRD

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— U.S. Representative Al Green (@algreen.house.gov) June 17, 2025 at 1:01 PM

It was 160 years ago that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed — after the Civil War's end.
The resulting Juneteenth holiday — its name combining “June” and “nineteenth” — has only grown, and it was designated a federal holiday in 2021.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) June 16, 2025 at 9:00 AM

We thank #FormerPresident @JoeBiden who in 2021, made #Juneteenth the very first #FederalHoliday since the creation of #MLKDay in 1984. This, will ultimately be his legacy. ?? #Juneteenth #KeepTheFaith #Resist ??

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— Joseph Young (@jayoung3292.bsky.social) June 18, 2025 at 3:18 PM

Juneteenth Explained To White People

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  5. 5.

    JoyceH

    It occurs to me to wonder if this administration will try to undo the Juneteenth holiday. They’ve brought back the Confederate base names so sounds like they’re trying to take us back at least to Jim Crow.

  6. 6.

    lowtechcyclist

    Happy Juneteenth!

    AIUI, word that those enslaved had been officially set free reached Galveston well before June 19, 1865. But it took Federal troops showing up to make it real.

  8. 8.

    lowtechcyclist

    @JoyceH: ​

    It occurs to me to wonder if this administration will try to undo the Juneteenth holiday.

    It’s a Federal holiday because of legislation passed by Congress to that effect, so the orange blob can’t undo it by decree. He can of course limit observance of the holiday by Federal agencies to just having the day off, and can discourage private employers from giving their workers the day off. (As it is, plenty of businesses don’t give workers time off on ‘minor’ Federal holidays like Columbus Day or Veterans’ Day.) And it wouldn’t surprise me if Hair Furor issued some proclamation for the purpose of taking a crap on the occasion. But AFAICT, that’s as far as it goes.​

  9. 9.

    satby

    Happy Juneteenth! Which we should ALL celebrate because, as Josh Johnson said, it was another step on the way to America keeping the promise of the founding Declaration.

  12. 12.

    Shalimar

    Looking through old pictures, I found a cover from a National Enquirer that I took a picture of on March 13th, 2020. Headlines:

    “Coronavirus Cures Finally Found”
    “Miracle Pills and Kitchen Treatments That Work!”
    “Warning! Surgical Masks Spread Infection!”
    “Worldwide Deaths: 3254”
    “American Deaths: 11 And Counting”

    So all of the bullshit they eventually believed that seems National Enquirer-level stupid actually started very early in the National Enquirer.

  17. 17.

    Elizabelle

    Happy Juneteenth.

    Relieved The Felon cannot do much about it.  No banks, no post office, no libraries.

    How many rockets does Elon have to blow up?  That’s three this year.

  19. 19.

    lowtechcyclist

    @ascap_scab: ​
    According to the link, The rocket “experienced a major anomaly while on a test stand at Starbase.”

    Yeah, I’d consider exploding on the launch pad to be a ‘major anomaly.’ ETA: Or maybe not, given the way Elmo’s rockets have been behaving lately.

    Guess “rapid unplanned disassembly” is now passé.​

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    @,a href=”https://balloon-juice.com/2025/06/19/thursday-morning-open-thread-juneteenth/#comment-9638858″>Shalimar

    Just don’t burst the bubble by telling me batboy isn’t real.
    //

  26. 26.

    Elizabelle

    Heh heh.  And they’ve got a permit to be up on the National Mall from June 16 to 22nd.

    Were I in DC, I would be celebrating Juneteenth taking photos in front of this.

    GIFT LINK:  WaPost:  Eight-foot-tall ‘Dictator Approved’ sculpture appears on National Mall

    Did the mystery poop artist strike again? Signs point to yes.

    Remember the poop statue? The curly-swirly pile of doo that sat atop a replica of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-California) desk? The work of protest art placed on the National Mall last October in mock tribute to the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election?

    Well, the artists responsible for the political poo plop appear to have struck again. This time with a work called “Dictator Approved,” an 8-foot-tall sculpture showing a gold-painted hand with a distinctive thumbs-up quashing the sea foam green crown of the Statue of Liberty. It sits at the same location on the Mall near Third Street NW as the poop statue did last fall.

    The artwork’s creators intended “Dictator Approved” as a rejoinder to the June 14 military parade and authoritarianism, according to a permit issued by the National Park Service.

    …. Plaques on the four sides of the artwork’s base include quotes from world leaders [praising Trump] including Russian President Vladimir Putin (“President Trump is a very bright and talented man.”), Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (“The most respected, the most feared person is Donald Trump.”), former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro (“We do have a great deal of shared values. I admire President Trump.”) and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (“Your Excellency.” A “special” relationship. “The extraordinary courage of President Trump.”).

    ….  Some of the tourists and locals who stopped by the statue between downpours Wednesday afternoon expressed surprise that it was allowed to be placed where it was. And they expressed reservations about weighing in on it publicly.

    “I’m amazed that whoever dreamed this up could put this here,” said Kuresa, an 80-year-old from Australia who declined to give his last name because he said as an international visitor he didn’t feel comfortable expressing his views. “It reminds me of ‘Animal Farm.’”

    That Australian gets it.  Every effing day is like living through Animal Farm.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    Hmmm…

    Thursday Morning Open Thread: Juneteenth

    That was on Monday. Then… (WSJ)

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was taken to a Washington, D.C., hospital by ambulance Tuesday after suffering an allergic reaction, according to a spokeswoman.

    Noem, age 53, has since been discharged, the spokeswoman said Wednesday. DHS said Noem was taken to the hospital out of an abundance of caution.

    I’m not saying Noem definitely licked petri dishes, but can we rule it out?

  28. 28.

    lowtechcyclist

    @prostratedragon: ​
     

    Yesterday at 55 E. Monroe St. (near the Palmer House hotel) in downtown Chicago.

    One of these days, someone’s gonna go all Bernie Goetz on their asses.

  29. 29.

    Glory b

    @JoyceH: West Virigins’s governor has announced that the state will no longer recognize Juneteenth as a holiday because it’s an example of DEI.

    His spokesman said every state can make this determination and the governor has decided for WV.

  34. 34.

    Shalimar

    Trump’s ‘Doomsday Plane’ designed to survive nuclear war spotted landing in DC

    Saw this story from yesterday.  Daily Express seems to be a British tabloid.  Not familiar with them except I vaguely remember rightwing shit from them before.  This paragraph is stunning:

    Aviation buffs tracked the giant Boeing’s path from Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana, to Washington, D.C. But the plane’s sudden movement has sparked fears, suggesting a possible US preparation for confrontation with Iran. The news comes after a couple were humiliated and kicked off a flight for trying a money-saving hack.

    The couple kicked off the flight is a completely unrelated story from England, right in the middle of an article suggesting Trump is about to start WWIII.

  36. 36.

    sab

    @Betty Cracker: She needs a new personal stylist. That frilly white thing doesn’t even fit.

    ETA Doesn’t fit her body, not to mention her message. Tough girls in frills?  Seriously.

  37. 37.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Glory b:

    West Virigins’s governor has announced that the state will no longer recognize Juneteenth as a holiday because it’s an example of DEI.

    An example of DEI?!?

    Gov, you know what was an example of DEI? White slaveowners being able to sit on their asses while Black people were forced to do the work that made them rich.  THAT was an example of motherfucking DEI, dammit, and bringing that DEI to an end is damn straight worth a celebration.

    Motherfucking idiot.

  40. 40.

    Suzanne

    I feel like Kristi Noem is one of those women who would buy a beautiful antique piece of wooden furniture and refinish it with chalk paint and fake gold leaf. Maybe install gray “luxury vinyl” fake wood floors. Definitely “color drench” her ceiling.

  41. 41.

    Shalimar

    @lowtechcyclist: You know what isn’t an example of DEI?  92.8% white, lowest-median-income-in-the-nation West Virginia.  They are an inbred backasswards warning sign for where eliminating DEI will lead the rest of us.

  45. 45.

    Suzanne

    @Cheryl from Maryland: Many stores seem to think that I, an adult woman with gainful employment, want to purchase those ruffly-ass clothes this year. “Tiered” skirts and “ruched” bodices. Like GTFO.

  48. 48.

    sab

    @Cheryl from Maryland: I wore one home in college and my Republican dad said I looked liked Tricia Nixon. Not a compliment in his book.

    ETA He had nothing against Tricia Nixon except for her little girl fashion choices.

  51. 51.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I don’t even want to think about the implications of those twisted cranks rifling around “biological hazard labs.” You don’t have to be Stephen King to imagine that going badly awry…

  53. 53.

    narya

    Happy Juneteenth! In the realm of “no one is free until everyone is free,” one thing I wish we could teach people is that the people who think they support white supremacy or patriarchy or whatever would THEMSELVES be better off w/o those systems of control and oppression. They think they would lose “status,” and they would absolutely lose the freedom to bully, but they would also gain so very much, and be free of so much, but part of the work of white supremacy and patriarchy is to make that invisible to the people (putatively) at the top. (Yeah, we’re all assholes sometimes, THAT will never change.)

  56. 56.

    sab

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Busy week behind on laundry? Been there done that. Bad advice from men? Bad advice from Republican women?

    ETA Sarah Palin was an idiot but she could do hot woman! well.

  57. 57.

    RevRick

    @Professor Bigfoot: Good on that Reagan-appointed (!) judge for calling out the Trump administration’s hateful policy for what it is. After all, the opposite of diversity, equity and inclusion is uniformity, inequity and exclusion.
    Basically, the Trump administration goal is the Mediocre White Guy Promotion Act. It is white male supremacy through and through.

    I should add that the A in DEIA stands for accessibility, which includes a whole other class of people who will be left out and kicked to the curb.

  60. 60.

    WaterGirl

    @Cheryl from Maryland:

    I was just about to type “that looks like something you would see in elementary school” when I saw your comment.

    I had a dress like that in elementary school.

    Women in little girl dresses is almost as annoying as women talking in that baby voice.  Okay, no, nothing is almost as annoying as that.

  63. 63.

    sab

    @RevRick: IANAL anymore, but I did go to law school and pass a bar. Pre-Federalist Society. (All Reagan Society appointees are pre-Federalist Society.)

    Back then, regardless of our politics, we respected the traditions of American law, which grew organically out of our problematic history.

    Federalist Society members only respect the money and clout of its donors and Leonard Leo the filthy rich fundraiser non-lawyer.

  65. 65.

    narya

    @Suzanne: Hah! Never wore those. I am Old, so I remember elephant bellbottoms, as they were called; these appear to be a descendent.

    @Baud: Now you’re talking! As a matter of fact, I have taken to wearing a long-ish skirt or jumper to things like beer festivals. Requires less sunscreen and, most importantly, makes bathroom usage easier.

  66. 66.

    WaterGirl

    It irks me that it’s always “FORMER President Joe Biden” when it’s been “PRESIDENT Trump” even when he was no longer in office.

  69. 69.

    LAC

    @Glory b: That is the only way that governor makes news about his state. Otherwise it is “West Virginia…yep still white, poor, with mountains”

  70. 70.

    Soprano2

    @narya: Yeah, God no. Those things are a nightmare on short people. I like a little ruffle sometimes, but not enough to make me feel like a little girl.

  73. 73.

    Another Scott

    Happy Juneteenth, everyone.

    Meanwhile, one for Billin – Science.org:

    Cerro Pachón in Chile—You can tell the giant telescope is built for speed. The steel mount that holds the mirrors is squat and stout but also lightweight, so it can move fast and stop quickly. A bank of heavy-duty capacitors below the mount is poised to deliver a powerful impetus to motors that swivel the telescope. The camera at its heart is fast, too, capable of spitting out a 3200-megapixel image from each exposure in less than 3 seconds.

    On a typically clear, bone-dry day here at 2650 meters, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is limbering up inside its sleek enclosure, which looks more like a Bond villain’s lair than a science facility. Operators had locked down the telescope for several days while engineers worked on a glitch in the camera’s cooling system. Today, 10 May, they decide it is safe to proceed, and commissioning scientist Kevin Fanning prepares to take his 350-ton baby out for a spin.

    At the press of a button on his laptop, the towering structure begins to move and is soon rotating effortlessly on a thin film of oil. Motors quietly whine as the telescope’s cyclops eye tilts up and down and the dome turns. The movement is all so smooth it’s impossible to tell what’s spinning—the telescope or the surrounding platform on which Fanning and others stand. The test drive shows off just 20% of Rubin’s maximum speed. At full tilt, a runner wouldn’t be able to keep up.

    Rubin needs to be fast because it must cover a lot of sky—all of it. Unlike most telescopes, which zoom in on particular objects, Rubin will march relentlessly across the firmament, capturing swaths in a field of view that covers the equivalent of 45 full Moons. At each stop its 3-ton, car-size camera will record the view with an array of 189 light sensors cooled to –100°C, producing an image so rich it would take a wall of 400 ultrahigh-definition TV screens to display it in full. Each snapshot takes 30 seconds; then the telescope slews in less than 5 seconds to a new vista. In this way, it will build up a patchwork picture of the entire sky visible from Chile in just 3 days before starting all over again. The panoramas will gradually grow into a time-lapse movie of the universe.

    […]

    Rubin won’t ignore objects that persist through time. By repeatedly “stacking” images as the 10-year survey progresses, it will slowly build up the deepest and most detailed map ever made of the cosmos, including billions of galaxies, some of them shining with light that began its journey 11 billion years ago, when the universe was less than one-quarter of its current age. Astronomers will learn how those galaxies evolve and grow, and, from their distribution across time and space, infer how they are influenced by dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious substances that, though unseen, are thought to together make up 95% of the contents of the universe.

    The vast archive, growing by 20 terabytes each night, will after 1 year contain more optical astronomy data than that produced by all previous telescopes combined.

    Paid for by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and private donors, the $800 million observatory is as much a data factory as a telescope. SLAC and the U.S. National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) have created a whole new infrastructure to handle Rubin’s deluge of images. In addition to generating the nightly transient alerts, SLAC, along with satellite centers in Europe, will clean up the images, compile data into annual releases, and make them available via an online portal to astronomers and the public in the United States as well as Canada, Chile, France, and the United Kingdom, which have made in-kind contributions to the project. “This is a survey for everyone, a single data set that serves most science problems,” says astronomer Rosaria Bonito of the Astronomical Observatory of Palermo.

    […]

    The team called it the Dark Matter Telescope and scrambled to submit a proposal to the “decadal survey” for astrophysics—an exercise in which the community identifies priorities for U.S. funders. In 2001, the decadal survey rated the proposal highly and, realizing the telescope could address much more than dark matter, renamed it the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. Nearly 2 decades later, as the telescope began to take shape on Cerro Pachón, it was renamed again after Vera C. Rubin, the astronomer who discovered dark matter by charting its effects on galaxy rotation, and who died in 2016. “And so it morphed into a real project,” Angel says.

    […]

    The main mirror is 8.4 meters (331 inches, 27.6 feet) in diameter. The Webb space telescope has a 6.5 meter diameter (segmented) main mirror. Different tools for different jobs, but it illustrates the scale.

    Humans can do great things, given stable investments and time to do them.

    Much, much more at the link, including diagrams, videos, etc.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  76. 76.

    frosty

    @RevRick: As did all of us of a certain age. Ever since bell bottoms went out of style it’s been Levis 505s for me. My California friends settled on 501s and mocked me as an East Coast Preppie because my jeans had a zipper instead of buttons.

  77. 77.

    Bupalos

    I hope Juneteenth can soak in to the culture and grow in meaning. It’s a positive-freedom story that leans on the moral that our rights require the active presence of good government, not just the elimination of bad.  The flip-side of 7/4.

  81. 81.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @sab: This entirely.

    I remember those days when the white dudes at my office were all but literally drooling over her.

    And to give the devil her due, she DID have that “milfy hotness” going on!

    But she was dumber than a sack of wet mice.

  82. 82.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @WaterGirl: That makes AT LEAST two of us.

    Well, to be fair I’m more like  “fucking pisses me the fuck off, the fuckers.”

  84. 84.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Another Scott: WOW!

    I love my species, even when we piss me right the fuck off- we are capable of SO MUCH.

    Thank you for that link, Scotty, I beamed right over.😉

  86. 86.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Baud: I am seeing inconsistent treatment; but it’s a subtle thing, innit, their erasure of Biden and his accomplishments.

  87. 87.

    Bupalos

    @Baud: It does feel to me like this is a thing, I’ve commented on it before. But I also live with a psych major that reminds me how our brains do this kind of talley .

  88. 88.

    Steve in the ATL

    @ascap_scab: I am familiar with ASCAP, but unaware of any ASCAP-related picket lines that you could have crossed to get this nym.  Could you enlighten us, please?  We are a curious bunch!

  89. 89.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … TheRegister:

    A federal judge has temporarily blocked an attempt by the Department of Defense to cut funding for university research programs, perhaps inadvertently saving the DoD from an own-goal.

    Since World War II, the DoD has made significant awards to university research projects in a wide variety of subject areas. According to the DoD’s Research Directorate, research programs funded by the Pentagon can involve practically anything provided they “may lead to enhanced warfighter capabilities, and strategic and tactical advantage.”

    […]

    According to the lawsuit, reimbursement rates negotiated by institutions and the government “often fall between 50 and 65 percent,” but Hegseth said in a May 14 memo [PDF] that the DoD intended to cap rates at 15 percent across the board.

    “Our objective is not only to save money, but to repurpose those funds,” Hegseth explained, “toward applied innovation, operational capability and strategic deterrence.”

    Hegseth’s letter includes plans to revisit existing awards and negotiate universities down to the 15 percent rate – those that refuse will have their awards terminated and reissued “under revised terms,” the memo explained.

    The higher ed plaintiffs filed a lawsuit [PDF] against the Department of Defense and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday to reverse the move, and then asked for a temporary restraining order (TRO) the next day to pause it immediately.

    The universities explained in their TRO request that the letter puts them in the impossible position of either submitting to the Pentagon’s demand and possibly losing the funding permanently, or refusing to budge from earlier negotiated rates, which means the DoD might “reject the proposals out of hand.”

    With thousands of pending funding proposals on the table and many more already in place, the plaintiff universities argued their TRO was necessary “because the harms from DoD’s unlawful Rate Cap Policy will be immediate, irreparable and compounding.”

    Judge Brian Murphy of the US District Court of Massachusetts agreed, granting a TRO [ 2 page .pdf ] to block the DoD’s 15 percent cap. The court scheduled a return hearing for July 2, and ordered the TRO to remain in effect until further order of the court.

    Once in court, the DoD will need to explain how its actions don’t infringe on the Administrative Procedure Act in a multitude of ways, as charged in the lawsuit. The universities who stand to lose funding have accused the Pentagon of six counts of violating the APA, including illegally departing from negotiated cost rates, unauthorized action, unlawful termination of existing grants and arbitrary and capricious action.

    Contracts are sacrosanct!!

    No, No! Not like that!!11

    Grr…

    Many, many of the courts are continuing to push back and to demand that 47’s monsters uphold the law. That’s a good thing. We need to hold fast to that while the monsters want us to give up.

    See the original for many more embedded links.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Baud: the North Pole, helping Santa decertify the elves’ union.

    Based on information and belief, you posted that roughly an hour by sunrise at your undisclosed location that I tracked with some help from my friends at the NSA and Unit 8200.  BTW, you have a stain on your shirt.

  95. 95.

    Jackie

    @Glory b:

    West Virigins’s governor has announced that the state will no longer recognize Juneteenth as a holiday because it’s an example of DEI.

    His spokesman said every state can make this determination and the governor has decided for WV.

    Brings back memories of states who chose not to recognize MLK Day.

    I just put my flag out in honor of Juneteenth :-D

  96. 96.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Yes, what is so irksome to me is that it’s FORMER President Biden and PRESIDENT Trump, even when he was no longer in office.

    I’m not saying it happens every time, everywhere.  But I stand by by irritation as a trend that happens far too often.

  98. 98.

    Jackie

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I noticed the puff sleeves because they’re so different from her usual costuming. I wonder what she thought she was doing.

    Flirting? Given her choice in men… It’s hard not to speculate.

  99. 99.

    JML

    Juneteenth is a really good holiday, better than so many others for a host of reasons, including historical and logistical. (I mean, seriously: the only reason people “celebrate” President’s Day is because they get a day off) There’s actually something positive to celebrate here and have a meaningful holiday that interacts with our history. And June is a fine month to have a holiday (doesn’t mess with schools) and gives people a day off during a month where there aren’t other holidays that most people have as a day off.

    I remember when we fought to have this included as a paid holiday in our union contracts, and it was one of the few times management wasn’t a complete dick about it, or ask for something absurd in return. (as opposed to getting language put in place for observance of religious holidays and management’s lead negotiator claimed in the most snotty way possible that the language we wanted would allow someone to take the fishing opener as a religious holiday)

    Happy Juneteenth!

  101. 101.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … ArsTechnica.com:

    An experimental reusable rocket developed by the research and development arm of Honda Motor Company flew to an altitude of nearly 900 feet Tuesday, then landed with pinpoint precision at the carmaker’s test facility in northern Japan.

    The accomplishment may not sound like much, but it’s important to put it into perspective. Honda’s hopper is the first prototype rocket outside of the United States and China to complete a flight of this kind, demonstrating vertical takeoff and vertical landing technology that could underpin the development of a reusable launch vehicle.

    While Tuesday’s announcement by Honda was unexpected, the company has talked about rockets before. In 2021, Honda officials revealed they had been working on a rocket engine for at least two years. At the time, officials said a small satellite launch vehicle was part of Honda’s roadmap.

    […]

    Includes video.

    Impressive. Good for Honda.

    And yet another illustration that once someone shows something is possible, then others can do it too, eventually. See also, nuclear weapons. :-/ The R&D race is never over – for good and ill.

    The world will march forward, with or without US leadership and participation. Crazy ideologues won’t change that.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  103. 103.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Another Scott: When I was a “mere yute” I remember reading a Heinlein piece saying that humans WOULD go to space; but that those humans might not be Americans, and might not even speak English.

    Here we are.

  104. 104.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, in the “trust but verify” column…

    AlJazerra.com:

    The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda have signed a provisional agreement aimed at stopping the conflict in eastern DRC, according to a joint statement from the two countries and the United States Department of State.

    […]

    Although the African countries have agreed to at least six truces since 2021, none has lasted.

    […]

    The draft agreement is due to be formally signed on June 27 by ministers from the DRC and Rwanda in the presence of Rubio.

    I suspect this one won’t last either, and that 47’s monsters only care about access to the minerals, but time will tell.

    Peace and comfort to the innocents.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  105. 105.

    narya

    For the lawyers among us, here is where an attorney addresses a judge as “honey” as he tries to make a point

    ETA: it does not go well.

  108. 108.

    Another Scott

    @narya: NAL, but oof.  I could see him trying to spend the rest of his career trying to overcome that.  Probably unsuccessfully.  An imminent career change is probably in order.

    Cue NYTimes Pitchbot – Lawyer X to join Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

    :-/

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  112. 112.

    TONYG

    @Jackie: Nice job insulting the black residents of West Virginia.  If (hypothetically) a black professional were to consider moving to that shit-hole of a state, there’s now another reason not to go there.  Nice job making West Virginia stupider and more impoverished.

  115. 115.

    WaterGirl

    @TONYG: At first I thought your comment was directed at Jackie.  But I think your comment was really directed at the WV governor?

  116. 116.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott:  “Honey” would not have come out of his mouth if he were able to see a female judge without his subconscious thinking “just another babe that I can talk down to”.

    I hope he doesn’t have a wife or daughters, or even sisters, because they now know what he thinks of them.

  118. 118.

    Steve in the ATL

    @narya: ​
    @Betty Cracker: ​
    @Another Scott: ​
    @WaterGirl: ​
     

    Loved this from the reply comments:

    Early in my marriage, I accompanied my husband to a reunion of his law school class. There was a seminar called “Just Because You Argue Better Doesn’t Mean You’re Right.” It was about how the skills that make you a good lawyer do not make you a good spouse.

  119. 119.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Steve in the ATL: I just rewatched Legally Blonde with my daughter and her 9-year-old twins. We all enjoyed it. I have to say, though, my favorite courtroom scene is in My Cousin Vinny.

  124. 124.

    WTFGhost

    @lowtechcyclist: Meh. He doesn’t love the American dream of freedom, if he has to share it with Black people. I get it. It’s gross and disgusting, but, I get it.

  125. 125.

    WTFGhost

    @sab: Yeah, but if you had the right kind of eyes, you always saw the poison heart deep within her, so if you made the mistake of thinking “truly hot woman,” you had about two seconds before your pecker would shrivel up in fear. “You wouldn’t put me in touch with mucous membranes that hide *that* heart in it, would you?”

    Pulchritude may be only skin deep, but fugly starts in the heart, and oozes its way out, like rancid sewage.

  126. 126.

    WTFGhost

    @Betty Cracker: Yeah, instead of some poor private panicking and fleeing, you’d have these people feeling they don’t ever belong in quarantine, no matter what – they learned that during the first Trump admin! – so, let’s face it, it’s better if we re-do the plane joke, where (Trump_admin_official) grabs the supposed penultimate parachute, saying they’re the smartest person in the world, and dives out, and the pope tells the child “you take the last parachute” and the kid says “no worries, holy father, the smartest man in the world just leapt out of the plane wearing my knapsack; we still have two ‘chutes.”

    (eta: reworded because my brain broke the joke.)

  130. 130.

    Ironcity

    @Jackie: Virginia was a winner.   They already had a Lee Jackson Day (and it was NOT Jesse Jackson) so they added and it became Lee Jackson King Day.  Went over like a lead balloon.

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