Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

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

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

How stupid are these people?

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Wait, what?

I really should read my own blog.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

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

We will not go back.

You are here: Home / Climate Change / How about that weather? / Saturday Morning Open Thread: The Work Goes On

Saturday Morning Open Thread: The Work Goes On

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(Thoughts & prayers for those in the region, and those with loved ones in the region… )


… “The military made clear to the President that they are committed to continuing this mission, to saving lives, to evacuating more people from the country over the coming days, and completing their mission by the 31st. What it will also mean, as they move to this retrograde phase, is that there will be a reduction of numbers over the next couple of days…”

Since some of y’all were discussing this in the comments yesterday:

In a sense, Peter Doocy’s arrival in the White House press briefing room has been to his employer’s detriment. It used to be that Fox News could spend days condemning Democratic presidents for not responding to whatever controversy its hosts had been tumbling around in their rhetorical rock polishers. Now, though, there’s Doocy, who is regularly selected by White House press secretary Jen Psaki to ask questions probably in part so that the familiar process can be beheaded early. Her exchanges with Doocy drop into the political conversation like bang snaps, crackling with life for an instant before being forgotten, the gotcha almost always redirected to the junkyard.

That’s at least in part because the questions often reflect a network or right-wing consensus that hasn’t been exposed to any significant scrutiny. Little grains of ice snowball into scandals, with Sean Hannity, Dan Bongino and whoever else packing on more and more — and then they get removed from the cooler and placed on the sidewalk. It often doesn’t take long for it to melt…

“Mr. President, there had not been a U.S. service member killed in combat in Afghanistan since February of 2020,” Doocy said. “You set a deadline. You pulled troops out. You sent troops back in. And now 12 Marines are dead. You said the buck stops with you. Do you bear any responsibility for the way that things have unfolded in the last two weeks?”

When Donald Trump was asked a similar question in March 2020 about the failure of coronavirus testing, he answered like Donald Trump: “No, I don’t take responsibility at all, because we were given a — a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time.” Rejection of the idea that he deserved blame and a pivot to his predecessor.

Biden’s been doing this longer, so he accepted blame — and then pivoted to his predecessor.

“I bear responsibility for, fundamentally, all that’s happened of late,” Biden said. “But here’s the deal: You know — I wish you’d one day say these things — you know as well as I do that the former president made a deal with the Taliban that he would get all American forces out of Afghanistan by May 1. In return, the commitment was made — and that was a year before — in return, he was given a commitment that the Taliban would continue to attack others, but would not attack any American forces.”…

At that point, though, Biden went in a different direction: He challenged Doocy to admit that he knew that his own framing of the question was unsound.

“Remember that? I’m being serious,” Biden said to Doocy.

Doocy tried to interject that Trump was no longer the president, but Biden kept at it.

“Now wait a minute,” he said. “I’m asking you a question. Is that — is that accurate, to the best of your knowledge?”

“I know what you’re talking about,” Doocy conceded, before then trying to get Biden to opine on why Americans might be frustrated with the situation in the country. Biden, after resting his head on his hands in apparent frustration, replied that Americans “have an issue that people are likely to get hurt” as they had that day.

He then returned to the prior point: that U.S. forces had avoided attack thanks to the deal made by Trump that had included a withdrawal pledge. This was the case, he said, “whether my friend will acknowledge it” or not — his friend being Doocy…

For all of the right’s focus on Biden’s mental acuity, he’s sufficiently adept at the sort of exchange seen Thursday to be able to put Doocy on the defensive…

Reader Interactions

160Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    And NPR leads off with an interview with an Al Jazeera reporter who dismisses the drone strike as distraction, comparing it to Clinton’s airstrike in Sudan. WTF, NPR?

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    · 13h
    What was the precipitating event that led to the hydroxychloroquine/ivermectin switch?

    Dan Rather
    @DanRather
    ·
    13h
    Fewer syllables?

  10. 10.

    Salt Creek

    @debbie: NPR? Oh you mean National Patrician Radio? They may sound smooth and sophisticated, but they really are the iron fist in a velvet glove.

    If Washington is wired for Republicans, NPR is hard wired.

  12. 12.

    Ken

    If you are in the storm’s path, please comply with local evacuation instructions. — President Biden

    I have the sinking feeling that several hundred people just made plans to drive the pickup out on the levee and party as the storm comes it, to show that they can’t be bossed around…

  14. 14.

    John S.

    @different-church-lady: Zero chance. Inside their bubble, they believe what they are told. For example, this viewpoint from someone I know:

    Biden has given up on Americans and our allies who helped us in Afghanistan. He is abandoning them. This is the worst military blunder in modern history.

    Doocy is just feeding into this narrative and saying what the Fox audience wants to hear, and reinforcing what they are being told to think.

  16. 16.

    germy

    Some breaking news: @dandarling urged his fellow evangelicals to be vaccinated. Today he was fired by the National Religious Broadcasters t.co/cSYFsmFIAS

    — Bob Smietana (@bobsmietana) August 27, 2021

    i’m going to say something possibly very weird here, and if i am wrong feel free to tell me, but this is starting to feel like dying of covid or at least not preventing getting infected is some sort of martyrdom. because this is supremely weird shit. t.co/9uYfaptiId

    — World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) August 28, 2021

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @John S.:

    They want mantras they can repeat to themselves.  Afghanistan gives them something, but they’ll invent anything they have to.

  18. 18.

    germy

    2025, America is back in Afghanistan, bombing the newly established Islamic State at the behest of the embattled Taliban government.

    — Liam ✏️ (@Hezbolsonaro) August 26, 2021

  21. 21.

    Immanentize

    There once was a restaurant in Boston on Beacon Hill — Locke-Ober. JFK often ate lunch there when he was a Mass. State Senator. It is closed now, but was famous for its large red headed reclining nude over the bar (men only) and it’s lobster stew. Last night I made it for some friends — and it is really delicious and rich. But it has simple ingredients. It basically comes down to lobster meat in a butter, cream and sherry broth. I may eat the leftovers for brunch.

    Living the dream.

  26. 26.

    artem1s

    Personally I would be tempted to show up to these pressers with a giant MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner wearing a honking huge codpiece.  That Biden can contain his frustration by covering his face with his hands amazes me.  We are lucky to have someone who is so poised and can keep his focus on the real problems despite the distraction of the press and disinformation campaigns.  These asshats are lucky TFG didn’t drone strike their asses – you know he would have if he could have gotten away with it.

  28. 28.

    germy

    cnbc.com/2021/08/27/covid-origin-report-us-intelligence-agencies-are-divided.html

    • The U.S. intelligence community said Friday that it is divided over the exact origin of Covid-19.
    • “All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident,” the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies wrote in an unclassified report.
    • The report, compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, found that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon.
  29. 29.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Does it taste as good without the large red headed nude?

    How sexist is it that I read a slightly different version of the above the first time thru?

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    Should we be snapping up hay and oats futures now?

    “Savvy investors are champing at the bitcoin to get in on the coming boom.”

    //

  32. 32.

    Ken

    @Immanentize: famous for its large red headed reclining nude over the bar (men only)

    I am amusing myself by mis-reading this as saying the bar hired large red-headed men to pose nude.

    At least, I think that’s a mis-reading….

  34. 34.

    raven

    MSNBC just had a piece from a school board meeting in Tennessee where a doctor was trying to explain masks to the reporter. People harassed the doc and one skank said “13 dead in Afghanistan is a lot more important than this!” The reporter asked her “why are you here then”?

  35. 35.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: Probably not.

    In its final iteration, Locke-Ober was owned by a semi-famous woman chef who kept the painting above the old bar which was now a service counter as the bar had become the dining room — for all genders (or none). She was a pretty woman, to be sure.

    The place was so expensive that we were not allowed to take faculty candidates there for the traditional interview meal. Ruth’s Chris was on that no-go list as well

  37. 37.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Immanentize: I’m allergic to shellfish, but otherwise that sounds great!

    We watched “Burn After Reading” last night without knowing it was a Coen bros movie. At first things could be dismissed as just Hollywood “wacky.” Then they got weird. Then they jumped waaaaay off the tracks. Good movie! Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I’ve heard a lot of folks pan that movie, but I love it. When Clooney and the Coen brothers get together, it is pure comedic genius. (Brad Pitt nails it in this one too).

  43. 43.

    Immanentize

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Not being difficult, but are you sure you are allergic to shellfish? My good friend has thought for forty years that he was allergic to shellfish, including some trip to the ER when he was a kid. I make dinner for him and his wife so this “no shellfish” rule made me sad.

    But this summer he went to an allergist and learned he had no allergy at all to shellfish — but probably got some food poisoning, like scumboid, when he was young and the Dr. Just labelled it “allergy.”

    Worth a real check if you haven’t done that yet. Lobster, crab, crawfish, shrimp, your life could be greatly enhanced!

  44. 44.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Immanentize: I’m allergic to iodide, which is in most shellfish. I know that because I had a dye injected into my veins for a scan, broke out in huge hives, and had trouble breathing. The staff ran around pushing alarms and finally injected something that made me feel better.

    So it’s possible I could eat some shellfish, but I’m taking no chances!

  45. 45.

    Immanentize

    @Gin & Tonic: You and yours should really come up here for dinner some day. Close enough for a day trip!

    Just go to Tufts and go a mile and a half further. I would be thrilled to make stew for you.

  47. 47.

    Ken

    Huh, I was looking at the NHC prediction for Ida’s storm surge and the map looked odd. I hadn’t realized how much of the south and southeast “bird’s foot” part of the Mississippi delta has been destroyed by recent hurricanes and, I assume, rising sea levels.  The map looks quite different than the one I grew up with.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ken: As I understand it, a lot of that is due to containment and channelization of the Mississippi not allowing for the deposition of new sediments to replace that which is eroded away.

  51. 51.

    debbie

    @Immanentize:

    Lots of recipes for it, but I note that most call it “JFK’s Lobster Stew.” The recipe I just read sounds very delicious, but about a million calories per cup.

  54. 54.

    different-church-lady

    Shawn Fleek (he / they)

    @shawnfleek

    ·
    15h

    Cool country you’ve got there. Would be a shame if someone invented a website for ranking hot girls on campus and your mom used it to learn how to poison herself with horse paste.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    “And the waffle iron you sent sucks too.”

    The honeymoon’s over for a pair of newlyweds who were so steaming mad at wedding no-shows — who originally RSVP’d “yes” — that they slapped them with a $240 bill to cover their costs. Source

  59. 59.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: You remind me to make my usual prediction that Ida may be the hurricane that overwhelms the Old River Control Structure and sends the whole flow of the Mississippi River into the Atchafalaya Basin.

  63. 63.

    JPL

    @debbie: yup   I typed the restaurants name so I could pull up the original.   Lobster tails are ten dollars for 5 oz so it would be pricey for me to make.  I’d have to have whole lobsters shipped from Maine, and that’s not going to happen.  Sure is tempting though.

  64. 64.

    debbie

    @JPL:

    I remember way back when I lived in Boston being able to go down to the docks and buy lobsters at $1 per pound. We made that stew a lot; happily, I had a roommate who didn’t mind murdering the lobsters. I couldn’t bear that part of the recipe.

  68. 68.

    Soprano2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s how my husband found out he was allergic to iodide – they injected some to do an X-ray for a kidney stone, and he went into anaphylactic shock. They had to inject adrenaline into his heart. Rough way to find out you have an allergy! He said he always thought he got sick after going to the oyster bar because he drank too much beer.

  69. 69.

    NotMax

    @debbie

    Yeah, a trail of placards announcing “Lobster Fud” and displaying an arrow don’t really work all that well.

    ;)

  70. 70.

    JPL

    @debbie: It has been decades and decades since I purchased live lobsters, but I never had a problem with heads first into the boiling water you go.    I never tried the knife trick which is suppose to be more humane.   It’s a matter of degrees though.

  71. 71.

    Skepticat

    @OzarkHillbilly: As I understand it, a lot of that is due to containment and channelization of the Mississippi not allowing for the deposition of new sediments to replace that which is eroded away.

    My understanding is that canals cut by oil companies bear much of the blame. Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell covers the issue all too well.

  73. 73.

    Cermet

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: While not too likely that the amount of iodine in shellfish will cause a reaction I understand your concern – lobster is higher than shrimp or Blue crab. However, iodine levels are often very high in many salt water fish – like Cod. More to the issue, iodine can be very high in meats (depending on the feed) and even dairy can be high in iodine. Certainly you must get the MDA of iodine in any case. Do keep Benadryl handy if you are concerned.

  74. 74.

    Immanentize

    @JPL: I resisted the onion. So funny you mention that because I really struggled with that.

    I did two very small things — I added a stalk of celery when reducing and a pinch of thyme. Also maybe a slightly higher sherry to butter ratio. But that was it.

  77. 77.

    NotMax

    @OzarkHillbilly

    Was sitting here just yesterday scratching my head at what prompted Prime to list the movie Bagdad Cafe in its “Military and War Films” category.

  79. 79.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Skepticat: Yes, that is the source of much of the coastal erosion all along the coast (which has it’s effect on the delta too). But the overall subsidence of say NOLA for example (as well as of much else in that part of Louisiana) is due to all the silt heading straight out into the Gulf instead of being deposited by floods. I mentioned yesterday that when I climbed to the top of the levee in Gretna I was stuck by how the river in front of me was noticeably higher than the ground behind me. That whole area is just a bunch of soup bowls waiting to be filled.

  82. 82.

    raven

    @Immanentize: My buddies and I ate in this joint a couple of times.

     

    Carl Mandis, owner of the Market Inn, stands in his restaurant’s dark-paneled bar and gestures to a framed picture of a naked woman.

    “There’s old Marilyn Monroe up there,” he says of one of the dozens of nudes that adorn the walls of the lounge area and at one point even covered the ceiling. “You just can’t miss her, huh? … Everybody always said, ‘Go to the nudie bar at the Market Inn.’ That sort of started it all off.”

    Nearly a half century after its opening, the diminutive brick restaurant, located at Second and E streets Southwest in an out-of-the-way perch between elevated railroad tracks and the Southwest Freeway, has proved remarkably resilient. It offers generous portions of fresh seafood and steak along with top-flight live piano music in the bar area seven nights a week.

    Entering Market Inn’s doors is like walking through a portal to a different era.

    There’s the bell in the entryway, which Mandis recalls ringing up to five times a day as a teenager to summon Members to Capitol Hill when the Cloakroom called (three rings for a House quorum call; one for a Senate “yea and nay” vote). The advent of pagers and cell phones silenced that tradition in the 1980s, Mandis says, as he gives the bell a sentimental ring. At the height of the restaurant’s popularity in the 1960s and ’70s, then-Rep. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.), then-Sens. Alan Bible (D-Nev.) and Hubert Humphrey (D-Minn.), and even former Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D), who would arrive with Alabama state troopers in tow, were known to stop by. And then-Speaker Carl Albert (D-Okla.) threw back more than a few at the inn’s long antique-style bar.

  84. 84.

    Skepticat

    Sixteen years ago to the day, I was in Maine, glued to my computer as I watched Katrina roar into New Orleans, where I belong to a sailing fleet. It’s happening again, though this time, far fewer of my many NOLA friends are leaving because the storm is approaching so fast and they’re still trying to prepare and help others. I had then and have now a terrible feeling of helplessness, angst, and fear.
    After Katrina, as I wasn’t directly impacted, I was in charge of tracking down everyone after the storm passed. I found the last couple in Seattle 18 days later. Almost all had left the area before the storm hit, and I’m distressed so many are staying now.
    Wednesday will be Remembrance Day in Abaco, The Bahamas, the second anniversary of Dorian, and I’ll be pondering the pain of losing my home there and of the many, many lives lost.
    Thank goodness global warming is a hoax. Think of how bad things would be if it were true.

  86. 86.

    SFAW

    For all of the right’s focus on Biden’s mental acuity, he’s sufficiently adept at the sort of exchange seen Thursday to be able to put Doocy on the defensive…

    “For all of the right’s made-up “claims” regarding Biden’s mental acuity, he’s clearly sharp enough to be able to call bullshit on Doocy’s bogus framing … “

  87. 87.

    sab

    @debbie: NPR has been very WTF all week regarding Afghanistan. Even their reporter following Kamala Harris in Singapore had to weigh in with his editorial opinion about a subject completely off his beat before he could answer the question asked.

  88. 88.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Skepticat: My son is staying. They will be at his BiL’s 2 story house. I asked him if the first floor was reinforced concrete construction and he said he didn’t know. All I can do is cross my fingers.

  89. 89.

    NotMax

    @raven

    One of the gaggle of kids she took in became a respected chef and before his death (duh) ran an eatery in Manhattan dedicated to the memory of his adopted mother, Josephine Baker, which featured walls adorned with nude paintings, photos and posters of her.

  93. 93.

    sab

    @debbie: Just fed monthly ivermectin dose to my dogs yesterday. Brand name Heartguard because it’s meant to prevent heartworm infestations.

  94. 94.

    MomSense

    @Skepticat:

    I was also in Maine that day walking my son in his stroller to a toy store that no longer exists.  We had heard a news report that NOLA had been spared a direct hit and I remember feeling relieved for that brief time until the reports started coming in.

  98. 98.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize:

    I took my girlfriend to Locke-Ober for dinner, once. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much about the meal, but I expect I got well-prepared beef. I don’t think I had the lobster stew; sounds like I messed up.

  99. 99.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ken: If I recall correctly, many official maps of Louisiana are still largely a fiction, showing lots of land that is really not land any more.

  104. 104.

    Eunicecycle

    @MomSense: I remember that, too! I specifically remember one reporter standing in a wet but not-flooded street saying that NO had dodged a bullet. Then the nightmare stories started to trickle in.

  106. 106.

    debbie

    @sab:

    This is an interesting development: One of my local stations reruns the first hour of Weekend Edition, so I listened to the interview again. They cut out the reporter’s reference to “distraction” and “Bill Clinton”!

  107. 107.

    NotMax

    @Eunicecycle

    Decor is* French bistro, not stench bistro.

    ;)

    *Just did a quick whiparound and the place seems to be still in business, not far west of the theater district.

  110. 110.

    trollhattan

    @SFAW: Hell, they tried going after Biden for not being, what, bubbly? while addressing the bombings and lost troops. “So low energy.”

    The whole bunch are stuck in 4th grade.

  111. 111.

    funlady75

    @Immanentize:

    Yes, I am 25 minutes from the Cape Cod bridges & 45 minutes west of Newport…30 minutes from Providence…Best places to eat within a 50 mile radius….your recipe sounds delish!

  113. 113.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The kingfisher presented a unique challenge. McFadyen isn’t the only photographer to love the bird, which is a popular subject and regularly appears on Instagram and elsewhere. For that reason, McFayden didn’t want to duplicate all those photos. “I wanted something different and more unique,” he says.

    Thus began an obsessive quest for the perfect shot, a quest McFadyen estimates took some 4,200 hours and 720,000 exposures. He tried many angles and compositions before landing on the idea of a mirror image. (To be fair, he isn’t the first to do it.) He programmed his Nikon D4 and a Nikon 70-200 lens with a small aperture, high ISO (1250), and fast shutter speed (1/5000). He set the camera at a low angle near the water and waited in a camouflaged blind for the bird to appear, getting the shot with a remote shutter release.

  114. 114.

    sab

    @debbie: That is an interesting development. I heard a different interview yesterday. The reporter first mentionned the ” debacle” of the Afghanistan evacuation airlift before he answered the question. East Asian governments are relieved that we might be focusing on their security instead of Afghanistan.

  115. 115.

    Miss Bianca

    @Immanentize: Mmmm…lobster stew…mmm….hey, does your dinner invitation extend to mid-continental guests? Might take me a while to get there, does it freeze well?

  117. 117.

    sab

    @debbie: I think I might send belated pledges to my two local NPR stations with strongly worded comments about how appalled I am with the national coverage coming from NPR in DC. Cleveland station is more tied to NPR. Kent station is cutting loose, and uses PRI a lot. NPR is mostly “news”. PRI is more “culture” (music etc.)

  120. 120.

    debbie

    @sab: 
    It’s the same situation here. One has more NPR than the other, but both have a lot of variety. There’s a third network aside from NPR and PRI, but I can’t think of it at the moment.

  123. 123.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: ”

    To date, an investment of $4 billion in creating new levees and flood control structures has given the West Bank and Vicinity a wall of protection that never existed.

    “The West Bank now has real hurricane protection and a comprehensive Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System,” said Maclay. “This new system is resilient against storms that are larger than the 100-year storm event.”

    We’ll see.

  125. 125.

    Ken

    @raven:  “This new system is resilient against storms that are larger than the 100-year storm event.”

    Yeah, to me that’s just tempting the universe to send a 500-year storm.

  127. 127.

    persistentillusion

    @Skepticat: Sixteen years ago today, I was attending the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo and fretting about my 18 year old daughter who was attending orientation at the University of New Orleans. She rode Katrina out in Mississippi where the eye of the storm came ashore.  I didn’t know whether she was ok or not for 3 long days.

  131. 131.

    trollhattan

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Good lord, perfection.

    I internet-know a few photogs dedicated to kingfishers and who take amazing images, nothing quite like this, though. The water surface perspective is as important as the timing and light for this shot.

    Scotland has “venomous adders”?

  133. 133.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: There’s that moment when one knows it is bad but has no idea how bad it is. The mind naturally fills itself with all the worst case scenarios.

    I am hopeful that it isn’t bad so I can skip the 2nd part altogether.

  134. 134.

    trollhattan

    @raven: My little slice of Sacramento went from 99 to 100-year flood protection and while that released us from mandatory flood insurance (yeah, like I’m dropping that) it is only a statistical projection of the odds of a flood occurring on any given year.

    Any time the river is at 30 feet I get nervous about my house, which is something like 16. ATM the river is at 6, being a drought and all.

    The Dutch have been here to lend their advice and are appalled at anything less than 10,000-year protection.

  135. 135.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @persistentillusion: My niece was in Sendai Japan when the quake and tsunami hit. I forget how long it was (less than 3 days iirc) before we heard from her but it seemed like forever.

  139. 139.

    trollhattan

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    We recently went thru 3 different 100 year floods in less than 5 years.

    It’s almost as though their predicterating machines need recalibration or something.

    The Houston floods during Harvey didn’t just reveal the Texas-size disregard for building bans in their floodplains, it had NOAA adjusting maximum possible rainfall ceilings upward.

    There’s a theory of an “ARK Storm” (atmospheric river 1,000-year) having hit California in the mid-19th century and basically flooding the entire Central Valley (think Bakersfield to Redding). Endless bands of wet storms over a month without pause. With extreme becoming normal, how long before that is repeated? Our defensive systems will all fail, fairly early on should that occur.

    Guess we’d go enroll in our kid’s college–they’re way up in the hills.

  140. 140.

    Skepticat

    It’s so difficult to be helplessly watching this monster storm advance. I have faith in my friends’ intelligence, and I know they’ve learned a lot from and made dramatic changes after Katrina. However, Dorian was a category 6 storm, according to Scientific American, so Mother Nature is ever ramping up the intensity of her effects. And now another friend and his second home are in danger from the Caldor fire.

    My fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes, and wires are crossed for everyone.

  143. 143.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    · 13h
    What was the precipitating event that led to the hydroxychloroquine/ivermectin switch?

    You can’t get hydroxycloroquine at the local feed store…?

  145. 145.

    J R in WV

    @JPL: ​
     

    I typed the restaurants name so I could pull up the original. Lobster tails are ten dollars for 5 oz so it would be pricey for me to make. I’d have to have whole lobsters shipped from Maine, and that’s not going to happen.

    I can get lobster right here in central SW West Virginia. Kroger’s has frozen lobster tail meat AND frequently live lobsters in their tank. General Steak and Seafood always has whole tails frozen as well, downtown. Where do you live that you can’t just buy some lobster? Sad…

    Will confess, not cheap, don’t indulge very often.

  146. 146.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @debbie: & that was to deflect from testimony in the starr chamber about monica lewinsky, so really we must ask — how badly was major biden behaving

  148. 148.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Ken: if reinstallation by unanimous consent of the supremes hasn’t happened yet, technically el jefe is still just the man of maralago & not head of state

    but storm’s coming

  149. 149.

    J R in WV

    @NotMax:

    Josephine Baker was just added to the French Pantheon for her heroic work in the Resistance during WW II. Also beautiful and talented! First Black  Woman. Great choice in my opinion.

  150. 150.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Ken: salaries in the early mls era were so low, even for stars, that alexi lalas did what he had to do to survive

  152. 152.

    Yutsano

    @J R in WV: A tragic tale of American racism turned into French megastar. Josephine never gained the appreciation from her home country. But in a weird way if she had never made it to France who knows what would have happened.

  153. 153.

    sixthdoctor

    Since I canceled my Washington Post subscription, they wanted feedback. Welp, sent them this. Probably could’ve said it better, but I felt like I had to say something, even if it was shouting in a wind tunnel.

    While I found the reporting valuable and informative, your baffling insistence of promoting right-wing propaganda such as Hugh Hewitt and Marc Theissen on your opinion page made me feel uncomfortable supporting your publication. The publication of opinion pieces from John Bolton and Condoleeza Rice concerning Afghanistan without context of their previous policies was the final straw. Giving a forum to these people under a misguided policy of objectivity does nothing but damage the body politic. It’s unfortunate because I honestly appreciate and support the fine journalism you do, but you insist on undermining it by giving a voice to those who are clearly using your platform to push a hideous political agenda.

  157. 157.

    Capri

    @Immanentize:  My sister had the opposite experience.  She felt sick occasionally after eating out and never made a connection to a specific food. When she got sicker sooner after eating she made the association with shellfish and got tested. Sure enough, she’s allergic to chitin, which is in shellfish shells (and insects although she doesn’t feel any loss from not eating them).

  158. 158.

    hotshoe

    @Ken: Yes, see John McPhee’s long long classic article Atchafalaya, from The New Yorker Feb 1987.

    It’s not behind a paywall for me — it was collected into the book The Control of Nature which might be available from public library or used book seller.

    I’ve read it three or four times and I guess I’ll read it again in honor of the Katrina anniversary and Ida’s approach.

  159. 159.

    WaterGirl

    @Capri: That’s how I figured out that I am allergic to mushrooms.

    When I went to college, I would sometimes puke in the middle of the night, always on nights when I had gone out to eat. Then I realized it was always on the nights that I had either eaten pizza or “chinese food” as we called it back then.

    Mushrooms were the only commonality.

    I had a roommate a few years later who decided it was all in my head.  So he made us all dinner (5 of us were roommates) and he cut up the mushrooms really small and said they were piece of black olive, so I ate the spaghetti sauce without concern.

    Fast forward to a few hours later, and i was puking my guts out for the next 2-3 hours.  Our bedrooms were both downstairs, across from the bathroom, so he got to listen to me puke all night.

    Fitting punishment, I thought!

  160. 160.

    Bill Arnold

    @sixthdoctor:
    Consider capturing it in an image and tweeting it at some WaPo accounts. (Reporter accounts if you find any bylines objectionable.)

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