Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

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

Petty moves from a petty man.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

The lights are all blinking red.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Second rate reporter says what?

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

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Open Thread

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Ferns and clematis on the side of the house.

A Poem for this Thread…

Ticks are terrible,
Chiggers itch,
Spiders can kill,
Life’s a bitch.

Don’t leave the house!
It’s hell out there.
But inside your head
Thoughts are hard to bear.

What to do
When Cicadas fly?
When Manchin reigns?
McConnell won’t die?

Take a deep breath,
Scratch that itch,
Love your loves,
And tax the rich.

by Immanentize

Totally open thread.

Reader Interactions

55Comments

  8. 8.

    Elizabelle

    Love the poem.  Well done, Immanentize.

    And the clematis and ferns are right pretty.

  14. 14.

    TomatoQueen

    Lovely clematis and fern companion planting, in the perfect spot.

    Poem made me get the cortisone cream.

  19. 19.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Till I got to the names in stanza 3, I was thinking it might be Dorothy Parker. Excellent work.

    We were away this weekend and what news reporting I was peeking in on was depressing the hell out of me (like Manchin vowing in effect to kill Biden’s agenda). So I withdrew the last few days. Hope I didn’t miss anything.

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    I am exhausted.  I wonder if 8:30 is too early for bed?

    This heat takes it right out of me.  88 degrees to 92 degrees for the next 5 days.  Ugh.

  22. 22.

    WaterGirl

    I have been catching up on shows on Tivo.

    I finished Suits on Monday, and I started on 2 seasons of The Imposters last night.  That’s a fun show.  I couldn’t believe when I saw that I had recorded season 1 in 2016.  Where did the time go?

  23. 23.

    Felanius Kootea

    I’m probably posting something that you’ve already seen since I don’t have much time to read the blog these days but just in case, the Boston Globe Editorial Board has a new series “Future-proofing the Presidency.” It’s a must-read and not behind a paywall.

    Explanation:

    In this series, the Globe editorial board outlines the key presidential reforms that would prevent a future authoritarian president — perhaps a more competent one than Trump — from abusing their power and subverting our democracy. Just because President Biden has restored a semblance of normalcy to the White House, Americans should not be lulled into inaction. Our government survived a scrape with authoritarian corruption. Next time, we might not be so lucky.

  24. 24.

    WaterGirl

    @Felanius Kootea: That looks really good!

    I have never seen that sort of presentation before – the way they presented and linked the 6 articles is nothing I have ever seen before. Really impressive presentation.  Is that a thing now, or did they just invent that?

    Really tired tonight so I am saving the reading until tomorrow.

  27. 27.

    BlueGuitarist

    Texas Republicans will gerrymander districts again soon, meanwhile, Mike Siegel and Julie Oliver, recent congressional candidates in Austin-area districts (TX-10, TX-25) announced today

    @GroundGameTX

    “a statewide grassroots organization in Texas fighting for workers, wages, and weed” asking for help to “drive progressive change in Texas”

    Maybe relevant to Capricorn’s action matrix spreadsheet?

    Thanks for poem, photo, and more,

    Here’s a link to Curtis Mayfield “Keep on Keeping On”

    youtube.com/watch?v=EJloTr4o8XY

  28. 28.

    Kristine

    Just finished watching the first episode of “Loki” on Disney+. I enjoyed it. but I’m a Marvelette, so.

    Love the poem and the ferns and flowers. Ferns are a feature in my shady sideyard. Ostrich ferns mostly, with a few cinnamon ferns and one narrow-leafed glade fern.

  31. 31.

    Kelly

    @WaterGirl:I am exhausted.

    We had 2 truckloads ~26 tons~ of gravel delivered. Very inept driver. Instead of a nice even layers he put almost none down in places and a foot deep in others. This quarry has delivered gravel before and the other driver spread it so even I barely had to rake it. I think I shoveled up and moved about 30 wheelbarrow loads. Mrs Kelly spent 3 hours raking.

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    @Kelly: Thirty wheelbarrow loads, three hours of raking gravel. I hope you are both ok. My back hurts just reading about this.

  35. 35.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:

    Is it the base at Guantanamo Bay that Biden wants to close, or just the detention centre that was notorious as Camp X-ray? Headline suggests the former, story says the latter Obama always wanted to close Camp X-ray, but Congress refused to support him on that.

    I also wonder if the Gitmo base as a whole still has any military value, and if the US Navy and Marines there might not be better off relocating to a Stateside facility.

  36. 36.

    Another Scott

    Pretty picture!

    I just threw some money in Val Deming’s ActBlue account and signed up for a monthly donation.  Getting rid of Marco would be a great, great thing.

    valdemings.com/home/

    (scroll down if you don’t want to immediately give)

    Early
    Money
    Is
    Like
    Yeast

    as the saying goes.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    Another Scott

    @Amir Khalid:

    CNIC.Navy.Mil:

    Naval Station Guantanamo Bay is the forward, ready, and irreplaceable U.S. sea power platform in the Caribbean.

    We preserve America’s strategic influence in the Caribbean by maintaining a deep-water U.S. Naval Station and ensuring effective support across military and interagency operations.

    (Emphasis added.)

    While recognizing that the DoD rarely wants to give up facilities, it doesn’t sound like they are interested in leaving (but will of course do so if that becomes US policy).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  38. 38.

    Ken

    @zeecube: From that newspaper report:

    New Orleans police said what Elhayek ran over Tuesday in the 1600 block of North Robertson Street was an improved explosive device.

    Wonder whether the police, the reporter, or the spellcheck software is responsible for that mistake.  That is, assuming that the device wasn’t actually a better design.

  40. 40.

    dww44

    @WaterGirl: Love it too.  I’ve a request that you or whoever can approve  making a front page post about Fair Fight ‘s action requesting all of us to call our Senators every day during June to support the We the People Act.

    Tonight  Lauren Groh-Warhol was on LOD show to ask folks to do this. We need to jam the phone lines to show support. She provided the 888# we should all program to our phones. I wasn’t quick enough to write it down. This is a great simple action we could do to support our democracy and just maybe get the bill across the finish line. It isn’t dead yet.

    I

  42. 42.

    Ken

    @Another Scott: Cuba hasn’t moved, has it?  I mean, it’s still just 100 miles from Florida, so doesn’t seem to be as irreplaceable as Hawaii or Diego Garcia.

    I wonder if Puerto Rico becoming a state would open up opportunities there?

  43. 43.

    prostratedragon

    It’s 888 453 3211

    Oops, that’s a reply to dww44 just above,  about the call-in for the voting bill.

  44. 44.

    Another Scott

    LAMag – The Curious Rise of Twitter Power Broker Yashar Ali.

    To his 800,000 Twitter followers, Ali’s aching sentimentality won’t come as a complete surprise. They know that this 41-year-old scourge of the internet—the political-operative-turned-social-media-muckraker who took down Sharon Osbourne, hobbled the cabinet chances of L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti, canceled food writer Alison Roman, and helped crush Harvey Weinstein—is actually a big softy. At least when it comes to elephants. And orangutans. But when it comes to everybody else who ends up in his Twitter account’s sights—A-list celebrities, media bosses, and politicians (especially the ones he’s become intertwined with personally and financially)—he’s a force to be reckoned with, emerging over the last five years as one of the most feared and powerful voices on the web.

    Part investigative journalist, part gossip columnist, and part trusted confidante, Ali is a uniquely twenty-first-century media personality—an openly gay Iranian American convert to Catholicism who claims he attends Mass three times a week. He sends out an average of 60 tweets a day—a manic jumble of jokes, news bites, and gossipy commentary about politics, media, aviation safety, the royal family, Scientology, gay heartthrobs, wildlife preservation, and bath linens.

    But his more barbed tweets have also made serious headlines, helping to topple not one but two Fox News anchors—Kimberly Guilfoyle and Eric Bolling (the latter was fired after Ali reported that he was sending dick pics to a colleague). His Twitter bombshells during the Mueller investigation made even Jared Kushner sweat. He’s so well-connected, he could reveal what former president George W. Bush really thought about Donald Trump’s inaugural speech (“That was some weird shit”). Such scoops have brought him serious cred: In 2019, he joined former president Donald Trump, Cardi B, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Time magazine’s list of the most influential people on the internet. Last year, he was invited by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey himself to give suggestions to Twitter’s C-suite on how to improve the platform.

    An interesting, and cautionary, tale.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  46. 46.

    TKH

    Thanks for this beautiful picture! Brings back memories of my parents’ house. My mom had a thing for clematis and had several winding their way up the downspouts of the gutters. Every year a lot of fretting whether they would make it through the winter and elation in spring when the first buds showed.

    On a different note, since I was one to complain vociferously about the video ads, they are not as bad as the placeholders and their frenetic pace on Friday made me fear.

  47. 47.

    Another Scott

    @Ken: It probably has more to do with the geography and the depth of the bay and so forth.  Natural deep ports are rare and very valuable.

    I remember that the DoD had to spend a lot of time and money to bring Kings Bay online:

    The decision to base the Trident submarines at Kings Bay started the largest peacetime construction program ever undertaken by the U.S. Navy. The program took nine years to complete at a cost of about $1.3 billion. The building project included the construction of three major commands: Trident Training Facility (TTF), Trident Refit Facility (TRF), and Strategic Weapons Facility, Atlantic (SWFLANT).

    So, I dunno.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  50. 50.

    Another Scott

    This is the notice of my great-grandparents marriage. My great-grandfather is described as a "bachelor," and my great-grandmother is described as a "spinster." They were both 20 years old. pic.twitter.com/bPU4j5dCz9

    — Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) June 10, 2021

    They were so old!!1

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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