Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

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

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

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

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

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Midday Open Thread: Michelle Obama on Kimmel

Midday Open Thread: Michelle Obama on Kimmel

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This post is in: ,

I needed this today. You may, too.

 

This came across my feed today (because as a kid, man, oh, man did I have a crush on this guy and of course I follow him now). I thought it was fitting. I went and looked for the George Harrison version and you can listen here.

Bonus kitteh:

This is a big deal for this little guy, and you can read why here.

 

Totally open thread

Reader Interactions

107Comments

  3. 3.

    Old School

    Did you really have a crush on Bill Mumy?  Or are you just afraid he’ll send you to the cornfield?

  5. 5.

    Hungry Joe

    Oh, man — now Joe Ely has died. I swear I wore out the grooves (yeah, I’m that old) on his LP “Must Notta Gotta Lotta.” Tex-Mex alt-country bluesy hard-rock boogie-woogie Western swing, and then some. A great Flatlander.

  9. 9.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @TaMara:

    Hot damn!  How many amps?  Because we live in this 1905 cottage we only have a 100amp service.  My wife did the electrical work to the garage and managed to peel off 30amps, 10 for general stuff and 20 dedicated to the portable charger at 16a.  It’s plenty for our needs.

    But having turned into an EV nurd, I’m always curious nosy about what others have done.

  16. 16.

    TaMara

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: 100 amps here, too. With the Emporia charger, we were able to lower it to 40 amps and use only 30 of that for charging. Which is more than enough to charge overnight.

    My house is super small and the only real draw on that is the dryer. Everything else is high efficiency, or minimal draw and almost nothing overnight. The electrician has done so many of these the last few years and a lot on older houses like mine, so he felt comfortable with it. We’ll do a check in once I get a car with a larger battery.

  18. 18.

    TaMara

    I should be writing. speaking of…I used to use Grammarly, but when they handed over their software to AI, it became unusuable, so I dumped it as soon as my subscription was over. My new editing software is much better, but also, quite the hard grader and I feel as I did when my Professor in my freshman Theatre History class demanded what I felt was Graduate level work. Annoyed with him then, thrilled later because he really taught us to write well/good/better.

    I suspect I’ll feel that way with this software once I get past yelling at it.

  19. 19.

    rikyrah

    @TaMara:

    @Hungry Joe: Add to that, Anthony Geary, which for some of us was the end of an era when Soaps ruled and Luke and Laura were King and Queen.

     

    Been in a mood ever since I heard.

    I was a soap opera fanatic for the better part of 30 years.

    Started with the ABC Soaps, when the lineup began with Ryan’s Hope and ended with The Edge of Night.

    When I tell you that Luke and Laura had me in a chokehold….

    Geary was Luke and Laura, and yet, Luke was so much more.

    There’s a reason the man won 8 Daytime Emmys.

    In the past 2 years, General Hospital has lost the actors who played

    Rick

    Monica

    Lesley

    Bobbie

    Original Nikolas

    Robert

    and now Luke.

    Just another indication of my youth gone by.

    People who don’t watch soaps, don’t understand the connection you feel to characters and actors that you watch in your home 5 days a week, year after year.

  22. 22.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: All I do is text, e-mail, and Safari. E-mail is the same. Texting is weird. I haven’t tried googling yet.

    I guess I take pictures too. It wants me to do all sorts of complicated things, but I think I got rid of them.

  23. 23.

    Gin & Tonic

    @zhena gogolia: ​I was visiting with my son and DIL on Sunday, and I guess she had upgraded, and when he took her phone to do something his first words were “this is awful.”

  24. 24.

    CaseyL

    Bill Mumy appeared in so many shows and movies from my childhood, but I think the one that most formed my earliest impressions of him was “Lost in Space,” simply because we watched it every week. (My family were not fans of shows like “Mayberry RFD,” so I was spared that one.) It pleases me a great deal that he has kept working, has aged well, and seems to be a genuinely Good Guy.

    And Reggie’s story…! Blessings to his foster parents for getting him started, and to you for giving him the perfect home in which to, uh, drive his furry siblings and his guardian human nuts.

    “Things that are cute the first time he does them…” could be the anthem of kittenhood.

  27. 27.

    WaterGirl

    He got up there by himself???  He must be so proud of himself.  Victory!

    edit: written before clicking the link. :-)

  29. 29.

    Paul in KY

    @TaMara: Isn’t that Bill Mumy of America and not Bill Mummy of Lost in Space?

    Edit: ‘Bill Mumy’ never in America. This is the Lost in Space kid! He should have worked with the robot to send Dr. Smith out the airlock.

  31. 31.

    JML

    @rikyrah: we didn’t have cable growing up, so if I was home sick it meant I was watching soaps in the middle of the day because there wasn’t anything else. You do get hooked on the stories. I’ll still occasionally flip on Y&R and GH (the only 2 left on broadcast) when working from home.

    Tony Geary was a towering presence on GH. I loved all the spy games stuff they did on there with Robert & Anna. (less happy with the “mobsters are the good guys!” stuff with Sonny & Jason…) Tough one to lose TG and Tristan Rogers in the same year.

  33. 33.

    NeenerNeener

    I have to be a dissenting vote on the Luke and Laura story line. For fan service they turned a story about Luke raping his employee, Laura, into a love story. Geary claimed female fans used to beg him to rape them. Rape didn’t need to be trivialized any more than it already was/is. I lost all interest in watching GH after that.

  35. 35.

    J.

    @rikyrah: I feel ya re Tony Geary. General Hospital was a lifeline for me during a very dark time of my life. It helped me to escape. So many of the main cast from my youth have died recently. Very sad.

  36. 36.

    J.

    Hooray for Reggie! Love that video you posted of him as a kitten and so proud of him. We had a black cat who couldn’t jump, but I don’t think he had Manx Syndrome. He was the sweetest kitty.

  40. 40.

    Scout211

    @zhena gogolia: I don’t have our phones on auto update.  I read how so many people hate it, so I am definitely putting it off. There is an update coming soon, I hear.

    I was looking forward to the updated CarPlay but maybe I’ll just wait.   

  42. 42.

    Scout211

    That’s a George Harrison song I don’t remember hearing before.  It fits the mood, for sure.

  44. 44.

    Jackie

    President Donald Trump announced plans to give an “address to the nation” on Wednesday night but did not explain why.

    “My Fellow Americans: I will be giving an ADDRESS TO THE NATION tomorrow night, LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, at 9 P.M. EST. I look forward to “seeing” you then. It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” the president wrote Tuesday on his Truth Social platform.

    Any clues on what this will be about? One thing I know – I won’t be watching. I’ll get the Cliff Notes.

  46. 46.

    piratedan

    @Jackie: going to irresponsibly speculate that he’s going to declare War on Venezuela, please note that this is prior to the Epstein files deadline for release from the DOJ to Congress.

    He’s been building up forces in the Caribbean, he’s already killing people sans justification, I think he’s deduced that he can take the heat from that and roll it into some sort of bullshit justification to push the envelope further.

  50. 50.

    Jackie

    @Suzanne: As FFOTUS can’t keep secrets and the WH is very leaky, we’ll know what’s what before too long! I don’t think “good and exciting news” means the same thing to us as it does to him.

    eta: I remember during his first go round, he would hold the news media hostage, then ramble on about nothing. But he got the airtime.

  52. 52.

    Hoodie

    @Jackie: Maybe new plans for the WH ballroom or an invasion of Venezuela, if not both.  Maybe an update on Peruvian snakes and the new signage in the WH.  I look forward to it with the hope that it will yet again show what a demented fruitcake he is.  A lot of Americans seem to need repetition to figure out relatively simple things.

  53. 53.

    trollhattan

    @Jackie:

    Jesus wept. Note to self: do not use the teevee machine around six o’clock.

    He’s gonna bag on gas prices at some point, because “Trump make gas free. Get your free Trump gas, rawwwwr!” e.g.,

    x.com/ENERGY/status/1999873251674116339

    To which I say fuck you, buddy boy. This a.m. at Costco I filled up for $4.19/gallon, half a buck or more less than your Chevrons. I checked my little book of every frickin’ gas purchase for current car. One year ago Costco charged…wait for it.

    $4.19/gallon.

    Thank you mister president.

  56. 56.

    Josie

    @TaMara: ​
     I’d be interested to know what editor you are using now. If you don’t want to name it on the blog, you can use my email to let me know. Thanks.

  58. 58.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @trollhattan:

    Wow!

    Gas prices in the Denver metro area are now consistently *under* $2/gal.  They haven’t been that low since the early days of the plague.

    I understand regional differences in gas prices for a variety of reasons (state gas taxes, refinery capacity regionally, seasonal blends for air quality reasons, etc) but damn, from where you are to here is vast.

  59. 59.

    Josie

    I love the video of the Willow in the box and the little head peaking from underneath. Just so darned cute.

  60. 60.

    WTFGhost

    @Old School: I think Mumy gave up on that, after the jack-in-the-box eventually grew into Chuckie, and, after Mumy threw Chuckie into a blast furnace, Freddie started haunting his dreams. Eventually, he’ll fall asleep, resulting in another temporal paradox… so I hope he’s figured it out by this go ’round.

    @TaMara: How much experience do you need to get to a level 3 charging station? –asks the RPG player, where characters “level up” with experience

    @Jackie: You say this as if he, himself, has any clue….

  61. 61.

    Jackie

    @Timill:

    He’s going to cancel Christmas?

    He basically already has for way too many Americans.
    Gift wrapped groceries under the Christmas tree instead of two pencils and two dolls.

  62. 62.

    trollhattan

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    Yeah, we might be the only ‘murkans who can fly to Hawaii and be happy how cheap it is to fill the rental.

    None of which explains why full-size pickups and SUVs clog our roads. Doesn’t it make you eyes bleed paying $150 to fill up?

    We’ll transition to EVs as the fleet wears out, question is whether Donny will outlaw them first.

  63. 63.

    Another Scott

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: Our NoVA neighborhood station has had regular at $3.19 for what seems like a year or more.  It’s one of the cheaper stations (one a few miles down the road at a bigger intersection is consistently 60+ cents a gallon more).

    47 lies about everything.  It’s what he does.

    Thanks.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  64. 64.

    Emily B.

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: For our Ioniq 5, we have been surprised to find that we’re doing okay with the trickle charge (120V outlet). If it takes three days to bring the charge up to 100 percent, well, it takes three days. Most days we don’t drive more than a couple of miles around town anyway.

    To be fair, we’re fortunate in that there are level 2 and level 3 chargers in town if we need to charge up in a hurry.

  67. 67.

    Scout211

    @Jackie: Any clues on what this will be about?

    He’s going to announce that by executive order he is extending the ACA subsidies.

    But they will all be in bitcoin.

    ///

  70. 70.

    MattF

    @Jackie: We’ve all been here before several times. The history of big Trump announcements is a big build-up leading to a big nothing. Of course it’s possible that this time will be different, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

  71. 71.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Emily B.:

    Yeah, that’s not unusual.

    Everybody gets sold on “needing” shit tons of L2 charging at home.  We on the main Bolt forum are always preaching “look at your driving profile” first before blowing tons of dough on a home charging setup.

    And, as we exemplify, you typically don’t need much.  To be honest, we probably could also get by on the trickle charge but since the wiring in the garage was ancient, half-assedly done in the first place, and had been on our list of rehabs to do after we moved back, getting the Bolt was the excuse my wife needed to update everything to include minimal L2 charging.

    So it always comes down to driving profile and what you basically need to get the car back up to whatever is defined as “full” (in our case 80% on a regular basis, only go to 100% for any kind of trip because of the kind of battery our gen of Bolt has) for overnight garage charging.

  72. 72.

    oldgold

    After Trump revealed that he would give a speech from the White House, Fox News asked Leavitt to detail “what it’s all about.”

    Leavitt: “And so he’ll be addressing the country about all of his historic accomplishments over the past year and maybe teasing some policy that will be coming in the new year, as we head into this Christmas season.”

    The major networks should not carry this live.

  73. 73.

    TaMara

    @Josie: ProWriterAid is what I settled on after test driving a few and then their Black Friday deal made it almost a no-brainer. I mostly use it so I can give my editor a copy with the fewest copy editing mistakes so he can focus on fixing my content. :-D

  74. 74.

    Jackie

    @Paul in KY:

    comrade scotts agenda of rage: About $2.50 a gal here in the Central KY.

    $3.42 Costco in Tri Cities, WA. WA has one of the highest gas taxes in the country, but it takes a lot of revenue to keep the mountain passes clear of rock and mud slides, avalanches, plowing and such. And our interstates infrastructure are in great condition. Plus the taxes maintain our ferry structures.

    MAGA Washingtonians cry bitterly as the fuel for their MAGA Big Wheels is spendy.

  75. 75.

    Gin & Tonic

    Having felt like barely warmed-over shit the last day and a half, I went to the doctor’s office this afternoon and found out I have the flu. I get the flu shot every year, and this year I made a point of getting it before I went to Europe in October. I guess it’s not as effective as I thought. I’m going to blame that asshole RFKJr – he’ll deny it, but he probably secretly replaced all the real doses with some homeopathic horseshit.

    So now I guess I have to wait for this to run its course. But I’ll tell you, Sunday night I felt like I’d been hit by a truck – it was awful.

  76. 76.

    TaMara

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: This was part of it, the electrial company gave me a great deal to install the outlet,  upgrade my system and add a sophisticated hardwired heat/smoke alarm in garage. The tech also fixed a couple of wonky outlets in th house while he was at it.  I got away with it all for about a grand and feel safer all around.

  77. 77.

    Jackie

    @MattF: Thankfully, most media outlets have no problem pulling the plug once they determine it’s a lot of blah blah blah. Even Faux walks away.

  78. 78.

    hueyplong

    He’ll cherry pick some state’s sub-$2 regular unleaded price, say the market is higher than it was on 1/20/25 (if it in fact is), and declare economic victory, with more astounding successes to come next year.

    In other words, he’ll once again test the country’s credulousness and we’ll once again worry for 24 hours about whether it will be wildly successful.  If there is pushback, we’ll likely be treated to video of some craft blowing up in the Caribbean to pair with his claim of, what, 57 wars ended?  (Calling to mind Sen. Iselin’s “Hon, just give me one simple number I can remember.”)

  80. 80.

    trollhattan

    @TaMara: ​
    Our electric utility subsidizes EV charger installs and I expect we’ll explore that when time comes to get the car.

    Because we’re time-of-day metered it behooves us to do all charging after midnight. Between a charge timer function and high current source it should be relatively easy to do it all at home during offpeak pricing. In summer our peak rate is 3X the lowest.

  81. 81.

    trollhattan

    @Jackie:

    Ooh, will CBS have a townhall reaction segment hosted by Bari? With a “representative cross section” audience comprising nothing but Scientologists and Mormons?

  82. 82.

    trollhattan

    Don’t bust your Schadenfreude meters laughing at this fucking guy.

    A pro Trump traveler who posted his first class boarding pass online to brag that he could afford it “because of Trump” ended up finding out his flight was canceled before he even reached the gate. According to reporting from View from the Wing, the man shared a clear photo of his boarding pass on social media while talking up how Trump had “made America great again,” including his name and record locator

    instagram.com/p/DSTonHNlHgw/?igsh=MXkwZjdjOXF6dnpnMA%3D%3D

  84. 84.

    jonas

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: We’re hovering in the $3.00-3.20/gal range here in CNY. Been in that range for the better part of a year, it seems. Some stations are offering $2.99 cash deals, so I guess it’s “under $3” in some sense.

    Trump will of course try to claim credit for this, but the real explanation is that gas prices fall when producers/refiners sense a recession (= fall in demand) coming on.

  86. 86.

    jonas

    @trollhattan: God, what an asshole/idiot. If the guy claims he’s rolling in dough “because of Trump” he’s almost certainly a crook/grifter of some kind, just like his hero.

  87. 87.

    trollhattan

    Related to the EVs convo.

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Tuesday that the state has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over halting federal funding for electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

    The joint lawsuit followed an executive order President Trump signed on his first day in office, Unleashing American Energy, which directed federal agencies to pause the distribution of certain federally approved clean energy and infrastructure funds, including the two electric vehicle charging programs.

    “This lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s decision to unlawfully halt billions of dollars in federal funding for electric vehicle charging infrastructure here in California,” Bonta said during a press conference he held with Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Tuesday. “We’re talking about just shy of $180 million that were owed for building, repairing and maintaining a network of accessible, fast and reliable EV chargers — funding that was lawfully directed to states and local communities by Congress when it passed the bipartisan infrastructure law,” Bonta said.

    The Biden-era bipartisan programs — the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Program — were authorized by Congress in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Together, the programs were designed to distribute roughly $7.5 billion in federal funding to build and expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

    Tuesday’s lawsuit targets the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration for withholding approvals for EV charging funds that California depended on for projects already underway. The California Department of Transportation was in the process of repairing and replacing more than 1,300 public EV charging ports across the state, Bonta said, “until Trump pulled the plug.” The state was also collaborating with other states including Oregon and Washington on zero-emission freight corridors, he added.

    sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article313752456.html#storylink=cpy

  90. 90.

    Princess

    @Gin & Tonic: I’ve felt like barely warmed-over shit for the last two weeks and I’m going to the doctor in a couple of days. Not sure it’s flu though.

  91. 91.

    Quiltingfool

    Thank you for the Michelle Obama video.  It was kind of dusty in the room (IYKWIM) while I watched; I kept thinking of how lucky we were to have the Obama family represent our country.

    Michelle is a national treasure.

  94. 94.

    Redshift

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    Everybody gets sold on “needing” shit tons of L2 charging at home. We on the main Bolt forum are always preaching “look at your driving profile” first before blowing tons of dough on a home charging setup.

    I need to start getting better educated about that. I still want my next car to be electric, and my current one could at any moment require a repair that’s not worth the cost. I work at home and only run some errands and very occasionally drive longer local distances to visit people. (Mine is definitely the second car; we have another for longer distances.) The other thing is that we are going to be doing a big remodel, including upgrading the 1960 wiring, whenever we get off our asses, so figuring out the least I can manage with until then would be great.

  96. 96.

    Dan B

    @Emily B.: Weve been charging on Level 1 (110) for 8 years with larger batteries every three years.  The most we drive is four hours in a day which leaves plenty of time to recharge.  My partner wants 220 but I want the house repainted first, or at least a couple rooms.

    We hope to never drive an ICE vehicle again, except our little truck for hauling junk and plant prunings.

  97. 97.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @TaMara:

    Good price for around here of late.  Lot of gouging going on when it comes to doing L2 charging installs in garages.

    We spent around $600 for materials and the charger and the rest of was my wife’s work with me as the (very) humble electrician’s helper.

    Redshift @94: Your profile screams trickle charge.

    Plus, by the time most people here who want to buy an EV buy one, you’ll be able to charge to 100% with no long-term battery degradation.

  98. 98.

    Dan B

    @Quiltingfool: Kimmel had a black family pulled off the street to have a professional Christmas photo taken with him.  He decided it wasn’t exciting enough so he invited a guest out to pose with them.  Out walks Michelle.  The adults went into orbit, for some reason…

  100. 100.

    JML

    So glad I’m doing Trivia on Wed night. No phones, no TVs, just good time with friends, plus beer. And good food trucks.

  101. 101.

    Professor Bigfoot

    I have a 500 mile roadtrip tomorrow; old college roommate’s mom passed— thanks to this FULL SERVICE BLOG, I’m not updating my phone ‘til I get back.

    Regular here fluctuates between $2.79 and $3.19; we’ll see how it is on the road— and there’s a Buc-ee’s between here and there.

  102. 102.

    zhena gogolia

    I just watched the whole Michelle Obama video. Crying now. This is who used to represent us. We have fallen so far.

  104. 104.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Old School: 🤣 Mumy recorded a commentary for It’s A Good Life on the Twilight Zone DVD boxset – paraphrasing, Undisciplined children turn into monsters.

  106. 106.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Redshift: Our ancient Prius will probably be in line for a replacement in the next few years, and it would make sense for me to go electric as I have a short commute and even going into old town Alexandria isn’t that far either. The main problem is that we wouldn’t be able to charge it at home (no garage and I’d have to lobby the HOA to get a charging station set up; it would be easier to charge it at local businesses or the library).

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