Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Books are my comfort food!

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

“Alexa, change the president.”

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

“They all knew.”

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

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

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

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

… gradually, and then suddenly.

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

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

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

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

Thursday Night Open Thread

by | 87 Comments

This post is in: 

I have been in a bear of a mood all day- lots of stuff to deal with, dogs acting like dicks, the country is a cluster fuck. I told Joelle I am going into the spare bedroom to work some shit out and will come out when I am ready for public.

The plumbers came today and Thurston was an uncontrollable jackass the entire time, but they got the whole cut in the wall and the “thing” they had to replace is replaced and the shower is no longer leaking continuously. Jack was a very good boy and slept by my feet, but his medicine is making him flatulent, so I spent the entire day being gassed by him. He lies under the desk by my feet, so every couple of minutes a bunch of eyelash curling fumes waft up from under the desk to say hi. I just suffer in silence because he is a good boy.

In other news, the replacement batter for the ebike came. The first battery had a bad contact so it was hard to charge, this one has a different input on it, so it will be more stable. The problem is they did not send a charger, so now we have to wait two days for that to show up. But the new battery is in and has a full charge, so that is good. Just a couple more tasks to complete before I leave next week. Gotta move and remount the security camera for outdoors to cover the bike shed, and get a couple other minor things done.

In other news, as WG noted below, a brief moment of sanity from the Supreme Court. I have no idea what this man’s rights are as far as punishing those who did this to him, but the government damned sure better be compensating him (they won’t). Let’s just cross our fingers and hope the admin follows through on the courts decision and brings Mr. Garcia home without incident.

In other news of our impending descent into full-fledged fascism, Rubio and company are now admitting they are just trying to deport people for thought crimes. Pre-crime can not be far away- thanks a lot, Philip K. Dick.

I’ll be back later to check in on you all.

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    @lowtechcyclist: We didn’t have those when I was growing up.  We had whatchamacallits.  Perhaps it’s a regional thing?

    edit:  Very excited to know that I spelled that correctly.  I had never typed that before.

  5. 5.

    narya

    My brother refers to such parts as “mergatmecaters” and “goomzions” (or “goomzie/s” for short.

  10. 10.

    WaterGirl

    The first 8 comments on this thread are providing a data point re: my theory that the first comment on a thread often determines what gets discussed.  More so than the content of the post itself.

    edit: Make that “the first 9 comments”, thereby providing yet another data point for my theory.

  23. 23.

    Jay

    So Palm Springs and area, are spending millions of dollars to try to get Canadian’s to come back, and stop selling off their housing.

    It’s not working.

    The key response is “America is no longer safe for Canadians”.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    Used exclusively by the initiates of our close-knit group way back when was “bondura.”

    Its origin lost to the roiling fog of time.

  30. 30.

    Chris T.

    @Jay:

    The key response is “America is no longer safe for Canadians”.

    I want the entire west coast (along with any other states that are up for it) to break away from Jesusland and petition to join Canada.

  33. 33.

    Jackie

    CNN is reporting that Xi hasn’t called FFOTUS .

    “But one country was conspicuously absent from any outreach: China.”

    I never thought I’d be cheering for China against the USA.

  37. 37.

    frosty

    @WaterGirl: It’s a good theory, I like it. I wonder if the phenomenon occurs most often when the post is an open thread without a lot of sturm and drang and more or less “this is how my day is going.”

    Or maybe it’s just Cole. BC would be getting a lot of comments like this based on what some of her posts are about. Or maybe we’re too skeered she’ll set the gators and cranes on us.

  40. 40.

    Ohio Mom

    @Jay: I wonder where they will go after extricating themselves from Palm Springs. I foresee a housing boom somewhere in Central America or wherever they end up.

  44. 44.

    Jay

    @Ohio Mom:

    Hard to say, Europe, Cuba, Mexico,

    Not a Snowbird.

    It’s kinda an entitled Boomer thing, most of us are trying to figure out retirement when everything has been blown up.

    I bought my second house, by selling my first, and remortgaging, for $236,000. That house is currently listed for $3,685,000.

    So I rent what I can afford. My income has never matched realty.

  45. 45.

    WaterGirl

    @frosty: as for wondering if this holds true only with open threads or more with open threads, I can say definitively that that is not the case. They’ve been about three post recently, and no one talks about it at all because of whatever was the first comment.

    That may have been true forever – maybe it’s just that my frustration level is higher because of everything that’s going on, so I notice it more?

  49. 49.

    Martin

    @Jay: Yeah, that’s why my friend who works out there was saying. Starting mid-February the place started to clear out. Didn’t realize it had reached the housing market. Not surprised, mind you.

  50. 50.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Oof. (Cartoon through the link)

    Louis-Vincent Gave@gave_vincent

    A reminder:
    Emerging Markets usually trade at a discount because:
    • policy making can be sudden, unpredictable and even capricious
    • in times of stress, bonds, equities and exchange rates are usually correlated

  51. 51.

    Chetan Murthy

    @YY_Sima Qian: reuters.com/markets/us-is-starting-look-like-an-emerging-market-after-tariff-shock-euronext-ceo-says…
    US is starting to look like an emerging market after tariff shock, Euronext CEO says

    The United States is starting to resemble an emerging market more than a developed country, the head of pan-European stock exchange operator Euronext (ENX.PA), opens new tab said on Tuesday as financial markets remained volatile after the imposition of sweeping U.S. tariffs.
    “Fear exists all over,” Euronext CEO Stephane Boujnah told France Inter radio. “The country (United States) is unrecognisable and we are living in a transition period. There is a certain form of mourning, because the United States that we had known for the most part as a dominant nation resembled the values and institutions of Europe and now resembles more an emerging market.”

  52. 52.

    geg6

    @Jay:

    I have a snowbird friend who goes to the Panama City area every winter for 3 months or so and the condo they rent is in a building with dozens of Canadians he’s made friends with over the years.  I’ve talked to him a couple times since he’s been away and he’s really upset.  All his friends told him that it’s going to be a permanent goodbye, unless he wants to visit them in Canada.  They are not coming back.

  53. 53.

    Jay

    @Martin:

    Our friends, Bun and Bob have successfully transitioned from Phoenix,  Arizona to Canmore, Alberta.

    Bun is Canadian/American, Bob is a Vietnam vet, who has had his benefits gutted.

    All Bun’s kids are Canadian. Bob doesn’t have kids, other than Bun’s, (not a diss, he has been a mench).

    They have no plans to go back. Bob got a new heart pump, 2 days after they crossed the border, he was on a VA list that would get him a new one, after 8 months wait time.

  56. 56.

    Jay

    @geg6:

    Cross border crossings are down 70%.

    My wingnut Christo fascists brother had a P/O box in Blaine.

    He would order IC’s et al, in the US, smuggle them back across the border, buy cheap Government Cheese, milk and gas, and come back.

    He does not do that anymore.

    Not because of “Canada”, but because he worked for years in the US on a visa, (Meta and Microsoft) and now, CBS says he is an enemy.

  59. 59.

    Ksmiami06

    @YY_Sima Qian: To be honest, our political economy has been more akin to an emerging market for quite awhile. It doesn’t surprise me that the international financial world is starting to catch on. Essentially, Trump and the Republicans have been nuts for a long time and travel through America, the huge divides, lack of human infrastructure etc, poverty looks more like the second and third world.

  60. 60.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ksmiami06: As Brad Delong put it during Trump I:

    “Once (Dubya) is bad luck; twice (Trump I) is coincidence; three times (Trump II) is enemy action”.

    Of course, he wasn’t writing that recently, so he stuck with the first two.  But basically, after Trump I, anybody with any sense had to be thinking “how can we possibly trust these fuckers?”  And yet, many did (b/c Biden worked really damn hard at it).  But now?  Now?  AAAAAAhahahahahahaha …..

  61. 61.

    Ksmiami06

    @Chetan Murthy: huge Delong fan. The only way we will emerge from this and recover sort of is to be completely honest about who, what and where this country is: we’ve allowed ignorance, racism, misinformation and greed to fester and our political system to rot.

  62. 62.

    YY_Sima Qian

    This contradiction has been evident through Trump 45, Biden & now Trump 47 terms, & most parts of the industrialized West – economic nationalism for me, neoliberal orthodoxy for thee:

    scientism@mr_scientism

    This whole tariff affair is just a repeat of the 1st Trump admin. Tariffs were announced as a reshoring policy, then they became a negotiating tactic to lower trade barriers. After that, they became a way to get China to purchase goods, and then that ‘deal’ was just forgotten.

    The two goals of attempting to reindustrialize and attempting to get China to change its economic practices are incompatible. If the US wants to reindustrialize, it needs to normalize Chinese practices and give up its own norms. Changing China is a free trader fantasy.

    The problem is that the mainstream of American ‘industrial policy’ discourse has been built inside the free trader mythos where China is a ’cheater’ and industrial policy is a means of compensating for ‘unfairness’. You can’t build an coherent industrial policy in that mythos.

    Biden & the rest of the industrialized West still operated w/ some technocratic competence in execution, despite the strategic incoherence. MAGA is straight up sh*t show & clown show in execution, but they operate w/o meaningful constraint.

  64. 64.

    Kayla Rudbek

    To sum up from downstairs:

    1) lump in breast is likely a cyst

    2) mammogram is scheduled for tomorrow morning, likely will have ultrasound as well (this is with my usual place and they read the results before I leave the building)

    3) eyes are fine, no diabetic issues or real change in my prescription (they didn’t even try to sell me new glasses that’s how close it was to last time)

    4) yarn store trip to celebrate, more yarn arrived in the mail when I got home, new pair of handknit socks finished tonight

    I should go to bed now so I can get gas and to the appointment on time tomorrow morning

  65. 65.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Pure speculation, but reasonable ones given the MAGA clown show:

    Lei Gong@gonglei89
    If bond market signals are what team Trump is most sensitive to and their theory for grand reset of the US economy was to deflate USD that tells us 1) They didn’t think through how their theory would affect bond rates 2) Tariffs aren’t likely to hold if bond rates continue climb.
    And if the bond market can scare them enough to even pull back (at least some) on China targeted tariffs, where that probably leaves us is some attempt at a thin face saving deal just to return back to a stable condition, followed by 4 years of memory holing and awkward pouting.

    scientism@mr_scientism
    Bessent comes out and says the China tariffs were another bluff and the real target was the penguins all along.

  66. 66.

    Yutsano

    I’m still alive!
    I’ve been talking about every night with a friend in Florida. She was just diagnosed with leukæmia. Right now she’s dealing with a deep vein thrombosis in her left arm, & she has no immune system left.
    Oh & she’s trans.​

  67. 67.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Something a lot of Americans, not just MAGA reactionaries, have lost sight of:

    Joe Weisenthal@TheStalwart
    All around the world, people are engaged in difficult labor to produce goods for American consumers. And in exchange they get pieces of paper that we can basically print as many as we want of. And yet some claim that we’re the ones getting ripped off.

    Trade only happens because it benefits both parties, neither party is trading w/ the other as a favor. How the benefits & values created by trade is distributed internally is primarily a domestic policy matter, where each party has overwhelming agency. Yet, the self-conception of the US as a victim of the very systems built by the US to primarily benefit the US, is pervasive.

  70. 70.

    Jackie

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    scientism@mr_scientism
    Bessent comes out and says the China tariffs were another bluff and the real target was the penguins all along.

    I sincerely hope the penguins WIN!

  71. 71.

    YY_Sima Qian

    This is the kind of self-censorship that would be normal in the PRC & other authoritarian regimes (gift link to Bloomberg article below):

    JPMorgan Analyst’s ‘Redacted’ Report Spells Out Fear of Trump

    By Annie Massa, Sridhar Natarajan, and Hannah Levitt

    April 11, 2025 at 12:04 AM GMT+8

    A JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategist whom Jamie Dimon has lauded as “one of our firm’s great thinkers” is taking an unusual approach to highlight fears on Wall Street over speaking out against the Trump administration.

    On Monday, before Donald Trump pivoted on tariffs, Michael Cembalest ended a 45-minute client presentation about the levies with a caveat. After calling the president’s plan a “sledgehammer, brute force” approach, the JPMorgan analyst said he withheld certain material with his firm and colleagues in mind.

    His remarks built on a report from last week in which he voluntarily blacked out several passages. He titled it Redacted: Straight talk from the CEO front lines on Liberation Day, invoking Trump’s branding for the day the tariffs were announced.
    …

  73. 73.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @YY_Sima Qian: I only wish four years of memory-holing. These idiots are just getting started, and things will only get worse from here on in.

  74. 74.

    Aziz, light!

    @Chris T.: Canada does not want to merge with the west coast states because they are not, in any sense, Canada, a nation that decidedly does not want to be like us or be dominated by California. There’s no real difference between this sentiment and Trump demanding that Canada become a state. Both express the insufferably American view that Canada is not real.

    Give it a fucking rest.

  77. 77.

    Steve LaBonne

    @YY_Sima Qian: Trump is completely incapable of understanding the concept of a transaction that benefits both parties. His universe contains only winners and losers, dominators and dominated.

  79. 79.

    Martin

    @YY_Sima Qian: If the US wants to reindustrialize, it’s going to have to put a bullet in the head of about ⅔ of the financial industry – you know, the thing that make most of the rich people rich.

    How many rich industrialists have we created in the last half century?

  80. 80.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Martin: It’s all vibes, memes & abstractions, because TechBros & FinanceBros dominate the American elite, w/ a large percentage of technocrats being lawyers by training.

    Below is relevant:

    A new who’s who of the global elites

    They dominate the countries that account for more than half of global GDP — but who are they?

    Simon Kuper Published YESTERDAY

  81. 81.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Continued closer engagement between the EU & the PRC:

    Finbarr [email protected]‬

    Late night SCOOP!
    EU leaders planning trip to Beijing in July for summit with Xi Jinping VDL + Costa plan comes after they failed to convince Xi to come to Brussels
    scmp.com/news/china/d...

    The plan suggests a second successive EU-China summit would be held in the Chinese capital, despite the fact that the location is supposed to rotate.
    VDL and Charles Michel went to Beijing in 2023, there was no summit last year

    No date has been confirmed with the Chinese side, but EU leaders’ willingness to make the trip indicates a serious effort to reengage with Beijing at a time when the bloc’s relationship with the United States has effectively collapsed.

    US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has seen him impose tariffs on EU goods, while he has performed a dramatic geopolitical volte-face on Ukraine, leaving Europeans to consider him on the side of the invading Russia in the three-year war.

    Von der Leyen spoke with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday, at the request of China’s No 2 official, while trade chief Maros Sefcovic spoke to Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao on Wednesday.

    On a video call, Wang and Sefcovic agreed to “immediately start negotiations on electric vehicle price commitments, as well as discuss China-EU automotive industry investment cooperation”, according to a Ministry of Commerce read-out.

    During von der Leyen’s call with Li, the two agreed to monitor the trade diversion effects stemming from Trump’s sweeping global tariffs.

    In particular, EU worries a flood of cut-price Chinese goods that were US-bound could be rerouted to Europe and heap pressure on embattled local producers.
    The fears have grown more acute this week with rounds of tariffs being piled onto China’s US exports

    With both sides under pressure from the US, Brussels has put the brakes on a spiralling relationship with China, which sank to new lows over Beijing’s ties with Russia and trade grievances.

    This year, von der Leyen – seen as among Europe’s most prominent hawks – has adopted a softer tone when speaking of China. The adjusted stance was palpable again in the commission’s read-out of her call with Li, making no mention of some traditional gripes such as human rights.

    For months, Europeans have tried to convince Beijing the summit should be held in Brussels, given they travelled to China in 2023
    They were told Xi had no intention of travelling to Europe this year – to which they have commented that he does indeed plan to be in Europe… in Russia next month!

    Beijing has also long insisted that the summit be held at Li’s level
    EU point to Xi’s attendance at 3 successive summits between 2020 and 2023 – 2 of which were online – as setting a precedent that they wanted to keep, particularly given that 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations

    Costa, who late last year took the top job at the European Counci, the political body made up of the bloc’s 27 member states, spoke with Xi in January, at which point an invitation to Beijing is thought to have been extended.

    When China’s vice-foreign minister, Hua Chunying, came to Brussels in February, she suggested that von der Leyen join Costa and they call it a summit
    At that point, EU still hoped to convince Xi to come to Belgium. Now, they accept that to meet China’s top decision maker, they must accept his terms

    It will be part of a procession of European leaders travelling to see Xi this year.
    Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez arrived on Thursday for his third trip in two years, while French President Emmanuel Macron plans to visit in the second half of this year, according to several official sources.

    Meanwhile, Xi will be visiting SE Asia in the coming week:

    Xi Jinping’s Southeast Asian tour: Strategic ‘charm offensive’ amid US tariff war but pitfalls ahead
    Experts say the Chinese president’s upcoming visits to Malaysia, as well as reportedly Vietnam and Cambodia, could work in Beijing’s favour, but host countries must exercise caution amid the US-China rivalry.

  83. 83.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Just came across this in my BlueSky feed, the comments are… oof:

    Chuck Schumer@schumer.senate.gov‬

    History will remember April 9, 2025 as America’s actual liberation day—the day that President Trump backed down from his ridiculous tariff fiasco.

    There is a way to message this, ridicule the Trump gang’s shambolic decision making until their hands were forced by the bond market, the nonsensical stated rationale of the “retaliatory tariff” proposal, while also criticizing Trump for making lives harder for average Americans w/ the tariffs he did impose.

    Much better from Hakeem Jeffries:

    Aaron Fritschner@fritschner.bsky.social‬

    Dem Leader Hakeem Jeffries on “colleagues and friends in organized labor” saying tariffs can be used strategically: “That’s a discussion that can be had when we are in a period of actually being able to debate policy in an enlightened way. That’s not this moment.”
    newrepublic.com/article/1938…

  84. 84.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Probably didn’t need to match the 125% tariffs, either, but does come off as being the adult relative to Trump, which is a nonexistent bar.

    China Raises Retaliatory Tariffs on U.S. Goods to 125%
    By Hannah Miao, Reporter
    China said it would raise its retaliatory tariff on U.S. goods to 125%, matching the latest duty imposed by the White House on Chinese goods. The 125% tariff will go into effect Saturday, China’s tariff commission said.
    China signaled it wouldn’t continue to match any levy increases by the U.S., saying American imports are no longer marketable under current levels. Beijing said if the U.S. continues to put additional tariffs on Chinese goods, it will disregard them.

  85. 85.

    sab

    @WaterGirl: My only dog and two of my cats are complete assholes much of the time. Fortunately one of the asshole cats enjoys slapping the asshole dog in the face with claws extended. Saves me having to control things.

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