Narrated by President @BarackObama, Our Great National Parks invites you to discover the power of our world’s wild spaces. Coming April 13. pic.twitter.com/wvSoBqcbUJ
— Netflix (@netflix) March 15, 2022
White House announces that it will resume public tours pic.twitter.com/HEA6LoGHbF
— Mario Parker (@MarioDParker) March 15, 2022
Last year, the deficit dropped for the first time since 2015 — it fell by $360 billion.
And this year, it’s on track to drop by more than $1 trillion.
After four years in a row of increasing deficits, we’re on track to see the largest-ever decline in history.
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 15, 2022
Biden and Harris announce steps to close gender, racial wage gaps https://t.co/L1G8OKbCo4 pic.twitter.com/QwO1yEYsaR
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 16, 2022
Sharing is caring!
Pro-Biden, Anti-Putin propaganda is good. Cope.
— ?Latte4NeoliberalShill?? (@LatteNeoliberal) March 15, 2022
======
NEW: Hillary Clinton just responded to Putin banning her from entering Russia as a response to US sanctions: “I want to thank the Russian Academy for this Lifetime Achievement Award.”
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) March 15, 2022
*in the middle of a war*
to put it another way, one of putin’s strategic aims was to realign europe, and the last three weeks has been an extremely NOT LIKE THAT moment for him https://t.co/ZpCfBHp0US
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) March 16, 2022
A good, eight minute summary of a case that’s so bulky it would be hard to fit into three hours. https://t.co/jlGBReOV88
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) March 14, 2022
Baud
Deficit hawks: I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!
debbie
Great response, Hillary!
Nicole
That Hillary Clinton tweet is hilarious. She funny lady.
Baud
@Nicole:
History’s
GreatestFunniest Monster.SiubhanDuinne
Finally figured out what annoys me about TikTok. Even the good influencers, the ones on our side, are incapable of standing still and simply delivering the message. I don’t mean that they should be rigid statues, not at all. I’d like to see them relaxed, using occasional gestures for emphasis. But the nonstop handwaving and armflinging really detracts from whatever they’re saying. Come to think of it, that’s exactly why I don’t like Samantha Bee.
(ETA: Also, I hate that term “influencers.”)
But I get that am not their audience. I am old. And I need coffee.
Good morning, everyone! ?????
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Good morning.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Asparagus Aspersions
Snide HRC is the best HRC.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
But I still loves ya, young lady.
But yeah on the coffee. I’m slurping some of yesterday’s caffeine, it still hasn’t jump-started my few remaining braim cells.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud: Yeah, all of a sudden the ‘deficit hawks’ are being vewy vewy quiet.
It’s weird, how even the supposedly centrist MSM deficit hawks are wired to believe the Republicans are the more fiscally responsible party, so that when the Dems are being fiscally responsible, they have to pretend it isn’t happening.
Even though the Dems have been the more fiscally responsible party for roughly half a frickin’ century at this point. And it isn’t even close over that period of time. And by pretty much any other economic measure, the country has done better with Dems in charge.
Ken
Happy Freedom of Information Day, everyone.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
For about 90% of deficit hawks, it’s just an excuse to cut spending on social programs. The other 10% are conservative Dems who believe this shit.
SFAW
Still waiting for the semi-obvious-but-not-inevitable (given the current nature of the MSM) expose:
“Donald Trump, Russian Espionage* Asset: Witting, Unwitting, or Completely Fucking Clueless?”
* “Espionage” inserted because the Rosenbergs.
different-church-lady
This is all terrible news for ninnies and fascists.
SFAW
@lowtechcyclist:
Who you gonna believe? The Rethugs, or your lying
eyesdata?Ken
Ah, there’s your problem. You’re fixated on merely economic measures, when the important metric is clicks. Eyes on the page, attention, fame – that’s what matters. And the
Lords of MisruleRepublicans have definitely been better for that. Democrats are so… calming.Emma from Miami
@SiubhanDuinne: Same here. Every word.
mapaghimagsik
@SiubhanDuinne:
It means there are “influenced”
James E Powell
@lowtechcyclist:
“Fiscally responsible” is code for “no free stuff for those people.”
Just follow the fiscal thoughts of Joe Manchin for an illustration.
raven
Here’s a nice piece from our local rag about what the pukes have done to our local government
The Defense of Democracy Starts at Home
Kay
They break the news a year and a half late so they can sell books. Does holding on to this information for months change the public perception of these events as they occur? Should the public have been told a GOP Senator thought the President was so out of control he needed to be removed on an emergency basis?
This is a real ethical question in their profession and it goes to the core of what they do. They should at least address it.
SFAW
@Ken:
No, it’s not clips, you hippie. It’s whether economically-anxious white working class patrons of diners in reddest Ohio, Iowa, etc., are angry/happy that “those people” are getting as much/less* free stuff than said patrons.
*NB: If “those people” were getting more stuff than the diner patrons — well, I don’t want to even think (sorry for the split infinitive, SD) how the patrons would respond.
Baud
@Kay:
They won’t address it. They’re mad at us for never establishing a blogger ethics panel.
SFAW
@Kay:
Especially considering it was Graham, given his sycophancy for the last five years.
But, as always with the MSM for the last NN years: “Nothing to see here, folks” or “Views differ.”
Anne Laurie
For you. For the people they’re talking to, ‘expressive’ body language is so much the standard, if the influencers didn’t carry on like that, their viewers would think they didn’t really mean what they were saying.
(Or that they were being held hostage by the WH / snark)
But then, I grew up in a family where my parents constantly encouraged big, vaudevillian performances in every conversation… so much so, that when I left the Bronx for the Midwest, people would sometimes say ‘Gosh, why are you so angry?’ or complain that I was ‘intimidating’ even when I was simply enjoying the back&forth — and thought I’d dialed it down!
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
It’s magazines.
Soprano2
@SiubhanDuinne: I hate, hate, hate that I’m this way, but Sam Bee’s voice drives me crazy. Molly Jong-Fast is another one who I think should employ a voice coach if she’s going to be on the radio. I listen to her podcast, but her voice grates on my nerves, especially the way she laughs. It’s not about women, because there are a lot of women in media whose voices I like or I don’t even think about.
Kay
@Baud:
They don’t tell us what’s happening when it’s happening. It’s not their job to decide what is useful to the public in the moment and dole it out. They’re managing it- inevitably- and managing it means they are affecting public perception of these events. This was a real threat. We should have been told.
Should we stop calling them reporters and start calling them “relatively recent event historians”? Because that’s a different job.
Frankensteinbeck
@SFAW:
”He wasn’t being evil, just wildly incompetent” has been an excuse thrown at the MSM more than once about Trump, and they seem to think that’s perfectly acceptable, as long as there is even a shred of deniability to racism and treason.
satby
Well, I grew up in the Midwest, though rural midwesterners don’t think Chicago counts, and I’m still accused of the same. I blame my Irish roots. Nothing we love better than a rollicking good craic.
SFAW
@Anne Laurie:
Do tell.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Either that or “if only the Dems had met him halfway….”
Soprano2
@Kay: It’s amazing to me how they don’t think like they’re Americans who are affected by this stuff. If I knew that, I would think people needed to know about it right away! This reporter, however, evidently thought it wasn’t important enough to tell us when it happened, but was important enough to include it in his book.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
Well, that’s exactly why I specified that I am not their audience, and I know it.
And I love the way Celts, Italians, Jews — anyone from an expressive culture — use extravagant body language. It’s real. It’s organic. But what comes across to me in these TT videos is that every gesture is calculated, planned, choreographed. And it ends up spelling PHONY.
To me.
Baud
@SFAW:
Heh. Baudelaire.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Po-TAY-to, to-MAH-to, you libtardess. (Or is it “libtardette”?)
Be that as it may: good one.
ETA: And I’m embarrassed to discover (with your help) that I apparently don’t know how to transcribe “clicks.”
SFAW
@Baud:
And I hoped you noticed that he was not wearing pants.
Ken
No, no, no. Don’t admit error. Blame the spelt chucker.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Leaves me speechless.
SiubhanDuinne
@Soprano2:
Yes. And there are some men whose voices annoy me. It’s nothing to do with sex/gender. (And, of course, it’s subjective. One person’s sandpaper is another person’s deep velvet.)
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
I prefer the French libtardteuse.
SFAW
@Ken:
Fixed
gvg
@Kay:
What is their source? If it’s Graham…….BS. Where is the documentation? Why are we only hearing about it now? Why didn’t Graham vote to impeach? Why didn’t he say so publically at the time?
Now if its some reporter saying the source was not LG …I still think we need to know the source and all connections, how they know etc. If I was a reporter, i can imagine holding off to report it until I could prove it, otherwise it seems like a calculated rehabilitation story and probably just not true.
Anne Laurie
Disclosure that may get me driven off this website: I cannot stand President Obama’s voice. Which I realize is extremely personal, and I do my best to suppress the irritation that makes my hackles rise with every ‘um’. But given a choice between listening to him speak, and a transcript, I’ll pick the transcript every time.
(And you’ve met me, so yes I *do* know that I myself sound like Heckyll & Jeckyll’s older sister, but there it is.)
germy
Oil Companies Lament Rising Price Of Joe Manchin
(The Onion)
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
Whoa. True confessions!
germy
@Anne Laurie:
Glenn Greenwald’s voice is like fingernails on a chalkboard, at least to me.
I have described it as “air escaping from a resentful balloon”
Shalimar
@SFAW: Sycophancy reminder: Trump gave out Graham’s personal cell phone number during a primary rally so the MAGAs could harass Lindsey and send him death threats. Graham responded by telling the truth about what Trump is, calling him a disaster and the worst thing that could ever happen to the Republican party and the nation. All of which was forgotten (by Graham, at least; guarantee you Trump will never forget) as soon as Trump was the nominee.
Kay
More juicy gossip about the attempted coup of your country!
oldgold
After negotiating the mean streets of Naples for several eye-opening evenings filled with the sound of bad music, I decided to have a beach day.
The last time I soaked in the sun on the sand during spring break most of my collegiate classmates were, like me, clueless, carefree and clownish. We were hula hoopIng, swiveling our hips to a young Elvis and dreaming of playing beach blanket bingo with Annette Funicello. At the extremes, a few liked Ike and the cultural avant-garde were listening for answers blowing in the in the wind.
The good news is that most of the spring breaking collegians have remained clueless, carefree and clownish. The bad news is that in addition to the toilet paper, car parts and medical supply shortages spawned by the pandemic, I discovered there is a severe swimming suit fabric shortage. As I fumbled with applying sunscreen, SPF 467, to my aged hide, my long suffering partner of many decades alerted me to this phenomenon: “OG, would you look at that!” A directive she soon rescinded.
sdhays
@gvg: Oh, I believe it. It’s exactly the kind of thing Lindsey Graham would say while he’s wetting his pants in the Capitol, and doing a 180 and wanting to “move on” to “heal the country” is also perfect Lindsey. He’s a very particular clown, and this is his act – hysterical pronouncements in one direction based on current circumstances and then hysterical pronouncements in the exact opposite direction when circumstances change.
He’s a uniquely pathetic individual.
Kay
lowtechcyclist
@germy:
Perfect. What would we do without The Onion?
OzarkHillbilly
@Anne Laurie: KILL THE HERETIC! KILL THE HERETIC! KILL THE HERETIC!
Kay
Good article on how people who actually care about (and use) public schools beat back the anti-public school campaign on the Right:
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Talk about a target rich environment…
SFAW
@Anne Laurie:
I, on the other hand, have what some call an “interesting” combination: a face made for radio, and a voice made for mime.
Not sure what that all means.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Gross people at gross parties.
Media gave him HOURS of free advertising for this book. Millions of dollars worth of promotion. Why?
germy
Jeffro
Apologies to AL, but I can picture Morgan Freeman handing Barack Obama the ‘narrator from heaven’ baton and I’m looking forward to O running with it for the next several decades.
Sheila in nc
Open thread? Wordle in 2, for the second day in a row. My pride in my Wordle proficiency is only eclipsed by my embarrassment regarding the need to tell somebody.
Ohio Mom
That eight minute Jake Tapper video was just what I needed. Nothing in there I hadn’t already heard about but I wouldn’t be able to put all those events in chronological order, even if given a full list of them.
Seeing how one thing preceded another, all in one place, astonishes me anew. That all actually happened, truth is indeed stranger than fiction, the proof of which I appreciated what Bolton had to say.
Would make an excellent teaching tool for future history classes.
rikyrah
YS (@ReallyActivist) tweeted at 9:10 AM on Tue, Mar 15, 2022:
So, I’m obsessed with the 1/6 Bomber
In the last week, The FBI took down the surveillance videos on their website & have stopped circulating the video to ask the public for tips.
My uncle, a retired FBI agent says:
“Someone fucked around and they will soon find out. They know.
(https://twitter.com/ReallyActivist/status/1503735491094409221?t=oNyAvxFZ9zsaE8OXhuSafg&s=03)
Ken
Don’t suppose we’ll get lucky with the salmon mousse….
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: You can be both (as I’m sure you know).
germy
OzarkHillbilly
@Ohio Mom: I couldn’t watch it. They kept putting up clips of trump lying his ass off. I never listened to him when he was president, why the f would I now that he isn’t?
jonas
@SFAW: I forget where it was published, but John Sipher, the former CIA agent, had an interesting essay a couple of years ago about Trump’s role as a Russian asset — not necessarily a recruited spy, but more of a witless pawn who could be easily manipulated into saying and doing things favorable to Moscow. It’s less risky than actual intelligence gathering, which is why the Russians always preferred it. Trump has been fascinated with Russia since the 80s and was an easy mark. The Russians wined and dined him (and possibly provided a variety of other recreational diversions), made him feel like a “big man,” and he’s been in their pocket ever since.
rikyrah
This entire thread. This story
Sam Hoadley-Brill RIP CHARLES MILLS (@deonteleologist) tweeted at 11:21 AM on Tue, Mar 15, 2022:
1. Yesterday I saw this Breitbart headline about a high school student killing himself due to “CRT [and] Coronavirus Isolation.” I decided to do some fact-checking.
I was not prepared for how awful this story was going to be. Here comes a thread…
https://t.co/hVpaLPY6Vh
(https://twitter.com/deonteleologist/status/1503768477076656133?t=8ceo2zOe2mVHghX7hWk19g&s=03)
Ken
@jonas: Plausible, but I still prefer the narrative where he did something heinous on one of his Russia trips and is being blackmailed.
Mind you, even that takes second place to the one where he tried to get out of repaying his Russian creditors, and they beat the hell out of him.
rikyrah
Outspoken™️ (@Out5p0ken) tweeted at 7:33 PM on Tue, Mar 15, 2022:
NEW: The Republican National Committee is suing its own email vendor, Salesforce, in a last-ditch effort to stop it from turning over extensive internal data to the January 6 Select Committee
(https://twitter.com/Out5p0ken/status/1503892299545292800?t=qIueFwpF664yueZ5FUjHUw&s=03)
Geminid
@Ken: I expect the Russians, as well as the the CIA and NSA, have thick files on Trump dating to before his first trip to Moscow in the 1980’s.
Kristine
@Sheila in nc: I get it. Got yesterday’s in 2 and felt so pleased with myself. Haven’t tried today’s yet. I fear it will teach me a lesson.
Matt McIrvin
The most amazing political thing that happened this week is that the Senate UNANIMOUSLY voted to go to year-round Daylight Saving Time starting in 2023. If the House and President pass it, and I have no reason to believe they won’t as the Senate is usually the difficult ask with these things, the twice-yearly time change will be GONE.
I know the big sticking point here was disagreement over whether to go to year-round Standard Time or year-round DST. I leaned weakly toward DST because the sun sets really early here in the winter, but honestly, either would be fine compared to what we have.
SFAW
@Matt McIrvin:
In addition to the (likely) change to year-round DST, I think Congress should also mandate that other countries change their time-tracking system (or whatever you want to call it). Maybe their hours should start at the 12-minute mark?
I realize I’m an old fart etc etc, but this has to be the stupidest fucking thing the
CanuteSenate has done since who-knows-when. “We now declare that Noon is 11 AM. And that everyone gets a pony.”And don’t get me started on the renumbering of highway exits from a logical, sequential system, to a “hey, what mile marker is this exit at” so-called “system.” Of all the things to spend ARRA (or BBB, or whatever it’s called) money on, that was among the stupidest.
rikyrah
Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) tweeted at 8:00 PM on Mon, Mar 14, 2022:
ICYMI: under President @JoeBiden, White House internships will be paid for the first time in history. An important step that will make the prestigious program more accessible to all.
(https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/status/1503536598650179587?t=wrLRbZ4oPTajEw00KCBxYw&s=03)
rikyrah
hope they told him to pound sand
Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) tweeted at 3:46 PM on Tue, Mar 15, 2022:
It could just be a coincidence, but @Jim_Jordan wrote a letter to the FBI demanding they share info on the pipe bomb investigation with his committee THE DAY AFTER Tarrio was arrested and Bertino and Stewart were raided by the FBI. #PipeBombs #January6th
(https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1503834977439416322?t=1kTf0UZsyPOLUVVQJcx0TQ&s=03)
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: I think it’s fine. The time of day is already a social construct and has been ever since we introduced time zones. You could make an argument for year-round Standard Time being more logical. But it doesn’t matter a lot to me either way–either option is far better than changing the clocks twice a year, with all the repercussions in lost sleep, accidents and health trouble. The original energy-savings rationale is more or less incorrect.
WaterGirl
@Sheila in nc: do you always start with the same word, or same two words? or is it whimsy?
SFAW
@Matt McIrvin:
The time of day has been around a lot longer than time zones. Maybe not a few thousand years longer, but certainly centuries. Like, seven or so, at least as far as “Noon” goes.
On the other hand, I guess we could stop calling it “Noon.”
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: Yeah, but our clocks have basically NEVER followed true astronomical noon–that would require resetting your watch constantly because the earth’s orbit around the sun is elliptical and varies slightly in speed, so it happens at a slightly different time every day. For a long time civil authorities tended to follow local *mean* solar noon, which meant that the time was different in every town. Standardizing it required getting further and further off an astronomical benchmark.
SFAW
@Sheila in nc:
I’m embarrassed to say that I missed it. Had letters 2 through 5 in order from guess four through six, and those same letters (out of order) from the start. Just couldn’t pick the correct first letter.
On the plus side, I solved Quordle today, and yesterday, and the day before, and …
Brantl
@germy: Or gas leaving a life-sized humaniform colon.
SFAW
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t think we’re looking for atomic-clock accuracy. I’m reasonably sure that the sun is due-south (within a reasonable plus/minus) at “Noon,” every day, during Standard time.
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: The plus/minus even for mean solar time maxes out on the order of 15 minutes–it’s called the “equation of time”. So, appreciable fraction of an hour. And if you’re in an extreme part of a time zone it’s off by way more than that.
DST is now most of the year, so making it all of the year is arguably the smaller change than eliminating it.
Matt McIrvin
@Sheila in nc: My favorite one of those puzzles now is Semantle, which isn’t about spelling but works on a database of similarity in meaning:
https://semantle.novalis.org/
Ruckus
@debbie:
@Nicole:
Hillary Clinton has exactly zero fucks left to give. She really is a national treasure.
thisismyonlinenym
@Kay:
Obviously they’re not reporters. If they’re managing public perceptions they are PR flacks. That’s what PR spokespeople get paid to do.
For whose benefit? Who is their client? That’s the question that should be asked and pursued by real journalists. If we still have any.
Ruckus
@jonas:
trump likes their style. Steal from everyone, especially those that can’t complain, live in opulence (of course his version of opulence is, like everything else he does/believes – very trashy – come to think of it – so is theirs…) and his only real problem is he is about as smart and refined as a box of rocks and far more hateful.
Ruckus
@Kay:
They should at least address it.
If they addressed it, that would have been admitting it. By the time the book comes out it’s almost a new revelation and other than those committed to the subject (on either side) no one will care. They, as we all know, get paid for the book, more than the newspaper scam they are working. It is, plain and simple, all about money. It’s always about money, the most important entity on the planet. But you know that….