Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Nothing worth doing is easy.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

This blog will pay for itself.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Republicans in disarray!

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

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

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

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

In after Baud. Damn.

You are here: Home / Archives for Open Threads

War for Ukraine Day 1,128: The Cost

by | 9 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , ,

A painting by NEIVANMADE> In the center of the painting is a green swing set. It is over a targeting reticle with the red dot dirctly under the swing. Behind it on both the left and right are residential apartment buildings and trees. Above the swing set is an incoming Russian missile. It is red with a yellow "Z" symbol on it. To it's left if the caption "Russian "Ceasefire" in red. Below the reticle, in black, is Stop Child Killers!

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

This is 8-year-old Oleh Antonov. russia killed him yesterday near the village of Odnorobivka in the Kharkiv region.

He was returning home with his mother, father, and 4-year-old brother when a russian kamikaze drone struck their car. Oleh died instantly.

[image or embed]

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) July 6, 2025 at 10:22 AM

His younger, 4-year-old brother is currently in critical condition in the hospital. Their father sustained injuries, and their mother is suffering from severe shock.

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) July 6, 2025 at 10:22 AM

I am so tired like you don’t understand I’m tired did I mention that I’m tired

[image or embed]

— Mira of Kyiv 🇺🇦 (@reshetz.bsky.social) July 6, 2025 at 1:42 AM

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

show full post on front page

War for Ukraine Day 1,128: The CostPost + Comments (9)

Medium Cool – Film Noir

by | 123 Comments

This post is in: 

Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Commenter RandyG send me  a couple of quizzes that he wrote a few years ago.   One is on Film Noir, and I thought it might be a fun choice after the week we’ve had.

Note from RandyG:

I wrote them while I was a member of a competitive trivia league LearnedLeague.com. A common attribute of the league’s quizzes is that the questions usually contain additional clues to help people “tease out the answers” if they know something at all about the subject, rather than questions that merely rely on either knowing the answer right away or having no idea how to even figure it out or make a guess.

I try to write them the same way. (Question 12 in Film Noir is a good example of this.) In fact, I added additional clues to many of the questions in the original quiz to make them somewhat easier for our intended audience.

FILM NOIR QUIZ

by RandyG

Introduction

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), described his threshold test for obscenity as “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material….. But I know it when I see it.”

The same might be said of Film Noir. It may be hard to define succinctly, but you know it when you see it.  Film Noir, popular in the 1940s and 50s, spanned various genres including gangster films, private eye mysteries (often featuring a femme fatale), gothic romances and social dramas. It might be urban, suburban or rural. One might argue that it’s more of a visual style that emphasizes low-key black & white cinematography and unbalanced compositions, along with a dark, somber mood and storyline. Or you might notice the abundance of corrupt and/or cynical characters. Then again, not always. 

Ultimately, it may be best to just say “I know it when I see it.” 

#1
Peekaboo! Alan Ladd had star potential. To compensate for his 5’6″ frame, Paramount initially paired him with an equally diminutive actress in two films noirs, first in 1942’s This Gun For Hire and then shortly afterwards in The Glass Key. Who was this blonde actress—the toast of Hollywood by age 20 and essentially washed-up by 30, although still well-known today—who also co-starred with Ladd later that decade in The Blue Dahlia and Saigon?

#2
The title of what 1944 film, whose plot prominently features a captivating portrait of the title character, has been removed from this one-sheet poster?

#3

“Put the Blame on Mame” is an original song written for what film? It was sung by the title character and new wife of Ballin Mundson, a Buenos Aires casino owner. Oh, by the way, we discover that Mrs. Mundson – she, of very flippable hair — just happens to have a steamy and stormy history with Johnny Farrell, Mundson’s right-hand man at the casino. Hilarity ensues…. well, not exactly hilarity

#4

Name this actor, born Jacob Garfinkle, who’s best known in film noir circles for his role opposite Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice, as well as for Body and Soul, Out of the Fog, and Force of Evil.

#5

In a 1955 devilish French classic, which can be classified equally as film noir, horror, and psychological thriller, a man’s wife and mistress (pictured) conspire to murder him. The overall plan goes ever so slightly awry, however, when the man’s body disappears. Oops! Name the film.

#6

Raymond Chandler’s legendary detective Philip Marlowe has been portrayed by eight different actors in nine English-language, feature-length, theatrical films. The first of these was 1944’s Murder, My Sweet; the last was 2022’s Marlowe. Notably among the actors was Humphrey Bogart in the original 1946 The Big Sleep. Name any one of the other seven actors.

 

#7

This audio clip is from what 1941 “whodunit and where is it” film?

Audio clip.

#8

A man marches through a police station to the homicide division and tells the head detective that he wants to report a murder. When the detective asks him who was murdered, the man answers “I was.” This is the “initial” scene in what 1950 thriller starring Edmond O’Brien that was remade with the same title in 1988 with Dennis Quaid in the lead role?

#9

Name this groundbreaking actress, director, and producer, who has a place in cinema history as the only female director working within the 1950s Hollywood studio system as well as being the first female to direct a mainstream American film noir, 1953’s The Hitch-Hiker.

#10

In this climactic scene from a 1949 film directed by Raoul Walsh, the main character (James Cagney’s Cody Jarrett) proclaims to his not present mom that he’s made it to where, as a fire rages behind him? The answer is contained within quote #18 in AFI’s 2005 list “100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time.”

#11

What 1947 film, starring Jane Greer, Robert Mitchum, and Kirk Douglas, is considered a superb example of film noir, due to its complicated, dark storyline, dark cinematography, cynical and sinister characters, and classic femme fatale? It was remade (against all logic) in 1984 as Against All Odds. At “present”, there are no apparent plans for another remake. Good!!

#12

Rose Loomis (Marilyn Monroe) is on a delayed honeymoon with her much older husband George (Joseph Cotten), ostensibly in an attempt to patch up their troubled marriage. Rose has other thoughts on her mind, though…. like murder, perhaps? Name this one-word 1953 film, notable for being a rare noir shot in Technicolor, which showcased the spectacular scenery that backdrops much of the film.

Who’s up for a quiz, or at least a discussion of favorite films in this genre?

In case you are new to Medium Cool, these are not open threads.

Medium Cool – Film NoirPost + Comments (123)

Justice Brown Jackson, Already Cementing Her Legacy

by | 70 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Assuming that we get onto some kind of good timeline in the future I think justice KBJ's volumes of concurrences and dissents will be studied as the important work of a justice with a fervent commitment to democracy and the constitution, a commitment that ACB and the NYT leadership lack

[image or embed]

— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 5:34 PM

The SC(R)OTUS Sinister Six sent Amy ‘Blank Sheet of Paper’ Cunning-Bunny out to complain about that very rude Black lady, and the NYTimes had a nice clean hanky for her — “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes Herself Heard, Prompting a Rebuke” [gift link]:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote just five majority opinions in the Supreme Court term that ended last month, the fewest of any member of the court. But her voice resonated nonetheless, in an unusually large number of concurring and dissenting opinions, more than 20 in all.

Several of them warned that the court was taking lawless shortcuts, placing a judicial thumb on the scale in favor of President Trump and putting American democracy in peril. She called the majority’s opinion in the blockbuster case involving birthright citizenship, issued on the final day of the term, “an existential threat to the rule of law.”

Justice Jackson, 54, is the court’s newest member, having just concluded her third term. Other justices have said it took them years to find their footing, but Justice Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the court, quickly emerged as a forceful critic of her conservative colleagues and, lately, their approach to the Trump agenda.

Her opinions, sometimes joined by no other justice, have been the subject of scornful criticism from the right and have raised questions about her relationships with her fellow justices, including the other two members of its liberal wing…

Her slashing critiques sometimes seemed to test her colleagues’ patience, culminating in an uncharacteristic rebuke from Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the case arising from Mr. Trump’s effort to ban birthright citizenship. In that case, the majority sharply limited the power of district court judges to block presidential orders, even if they are patently unconstitutional…

Justice Jackson added her own dissent, speaking only for herself. She said the majority imperiled the rule of law, creating “a zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes.”

That prompted an extended response from Justice Barrett, the next most junior justice and the author of the majority opinion. It did not stint on condescension.

“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Justice Barrett wrote, in an opinion signed by all five of the other Republican appointees…

Just months ago, Justice Barrett was the target of ugly criticism from the right for minor deviations from Mr. Trump’s legal agenda, with some of his allies calling her “a D.E.I. hire,” suggesting she had been chosen only for her gender. But the president’s supporters were delighted by her criticism of Justice Jackson, with some crowing that their earlier attacks on Justice Barrett had succeeded…

Professor Murray said she suspected that Justice Barrett’s remarks were part of a larger agenda intended to silence a critic. “It was incredibly dismissive,” she said. “And I just wonder if it wasn’t just about this case, but rather about these asides that Justice Jackson has been leavening into her dissents.”…

show full post on front page

Justice Brown Jackson, Already Cementing Her LegacyPost + Comments (70)

Still Grim in Texas and It’s Only Getting Worse

by | 149 Comments

This post is in: ,

Update at 4:27 pm

I have added our thermometer for World Central Kitchen to the sidebar.

*****

I know this is hitting Subaru Diane hard, and I know we have a lot of BJ peeps from Texas.  Love and hugs to all of you and to all these communities that are suffering an almost unimaginable loss.

Still Grim in Texas and It's Only Getting Worse

I hate to link to the NYT but they seem to have the most complete coverage, and it’s not behind a paywall, so here we go.

Desperate Search for Missing in Texas Floods as Death Toll Rises to 70

11 girls from the summer camp are still missing, and the weather forecast includes more rain and possible flash flooding in other parts of Texas.

Hundreds of searchers were combing wide swathes of Central Texas on Sunday morning looking for any survivors of devastating floods, including girls still missing from a riverside summer camp, as the confirmed death toll climbed to at least 70 and forecasters warned that downpours would continue in areas already reeling.

Eleven campers and one counselor from Camp Mystic, the girls’ summer camp in Kerr County, remained missing on Sunday, according to Larry Leitha, the county sheriff. The sheriff also said that 22 of those found dead had not yet been identified, including four children.

Of course, the media wasn’t conveying concerns about flash flooding in TX until this ghoulish incident occurred, and now they are all over it, which makes me sick, but that’s the way most of the media works.

Also, of course, they are busy playing the blame game.

Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose.

Texas officials appeared to blame the Weather Service for issuing forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated how much rain was coming. But former Weather Service officials said the forecasts were as good as could be expected, given the enormous levels of rainfall and the storm’s unusually abrupt escalation.

I’m sure it’s too early to politicize this horrible event, but this is what happens when you slash and burn the government entities that keep us safe, on so many levels.

It’s impossible not to feel for these families and these communicates.  At the same time, I wonder if this would be getting the same traction if it were a summer camp for the kids of migrant workers.  Actually, I don’t wonder at all.  I’m sure the coverage would be a combination of “oh well, these things happen” and ” they were irresponsible.

I have been kind of assuming that everyone who is missing at this point will likely not be found alive, yet there’s a story about a woman who was rescued after the flash flooding “swept” her 20 miles down the Guadalupe River.

Woman rescued after flash floods swept her 20 miles down the Guadalupe River.  Holy shit, with a trauma like that I wonder if she will ever be the same.  It makes me think about Raven’s friends who were caught in one of the terrible fires and finally ditched one of their vehicles as they were trying to get out, all but certain that they would die and they at least wanted to be together when it happened.  I am still haunted by that.

And I’m guessing that this disaster will bring another wave of grieving for people who have been through recent disasters and lost everything.  I am thinking of our BJ peeps who have lived through trauma in the past year.

Hugs to everyone.

Open thread.

Still Grim in Texas and It’s Only Getting WorsePost + Comments (149)

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Never Trust A Tobacco Merchant

by | 145 Comments

This post is in: , ,

"What neither the American public nor Parliament knew was that the man who would go on to draft the Declaration had secretly encouraged Norfolk’s ruin shortly before it happened." Andrew Lawler on the biggest coverup of the American Revolution:

[image or embed]

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) July 4, 2025 at 3:31 PM

I thought I knew a fair bit about our Revolution, but this was news to me. Per the Bulwark:

… THERE IS NO DISPUTING that King George III’s military forces treated New England’s coastal towns harshly at the start of the conflict. At the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775, redcoats torched the Boston suburb of Charlestown to prevent patriot snipers from targeting their troops during the bloody fight.

That fall, in retaliation for a deadly patriot attack on a Royal Navy ship in Maine, Admiral Samuel Graves, writing from Boston Harbor on July 6, ordered a fleet under Captain Henry Mowat “to lay waste burn and destroy such Sea Port towns as are accessible to His Majesty’s ships” in the northern province. On October 17, Mowat gave the residents of Falmouth—today’s Portland—two hours to evacuate. The subsequent bombardment and landing parties left most of its four hundred buildings in ruin and nearly half the population of 2,500 homeless.

But the fates of Charlestown and Falmouth paled in comparison with the annihilation of the port of Norfolk—Virginia’s largest city and the eighth-largest settlement in the thirteen colonies—which lay five hundred miles to the south. With its fine harbor and recent influx of Scottish merchants, the port had burgeoned from a regional trading center into an important node in the expanding Atlantic trade. As the largest port between Philadelphia and Charleston, it boasted a population triple that of the capital of Williamsburg. Half were enslaved people, many of whom were highly skilled laborers in the Scottish-owned factories, at the shipyards, on the docks, and aboard the many vessels plying the waters.

Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, had fled Williamsburg in the summer of 1775 and made a Norfolk shipyard his base of operations to defeat the rebels. By year’s end, however, the patriots had seized the town, pushing his troops and civilian loyalists onto ships in the harbor. On New Year’s Day 1776, after a bombardment by four Royal Navy warships to destroy sniper posts, an enormous fire swept the port that burned for three days. Soon not a single building was left standing. Dunmore was immediately fingered as the villain.

The news shocked and outraged Americans. John Hancock, presiding over the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, called the act “contrary to the rules of war . . . by all civilized nations.” George Washington, commander of the young Continental Army, decried British leaders who behaved like “the most barbarous Savages,” and predicted “the destruction of Norfolk, & threatned devastation of other places, will have no other effect than to unite the whole Country.”…

WHAT NEITHER THE AMERICAN PUBLIC nor Parliament knew was that the man who would go on to draft the Declaration had secretly encouraged Norfolk’s ruin shortly before it happened. Nor did they know that the colony’s patriots perpetrated the deed themselves and successfully blamed it on the enemy. Later historians continued to consider Dunmore the culprit in what was arguably the greatest war crime of the American Revolution.

The truth only came out sixty years later, when a 1777 report on Norfolk’s destruction, long hidden, came to light. The careful study of the blaze by a committee of Virginia patriots determined that 96 percent of the destruction was caused—on purpose—by the patriots themselves. They had used Dunmore’s bombardment, which by itself had caused limited damage, as an opportunity to set fire to and loot the town. They did not even spare the Anglican church, Masonic Hall, or homes of fervent patriots.

show full post on front page

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Never Trust A Tobacco MerchantPost + Comments (145)

War for Ukraine Day 1,227: A Brief(ish) Saturday Night Update

by | 9 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , ,

Russia decided to switch things up a bit and all of Ukraine wound up under air raid alert during the day.

Unexpectedly, during broad daylight, Ukraine is under russian missile attack.

Alert everywhere. Missiles in our airspace.

[image or embed]

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 10:44 AM

Right now at 2;55 AM local time/7:55 PM EDT, Kharkiv is under threat of ballistic missile attack, as is Sumy.

Here’s last night’s Ukrainian air defense tally:

Fascist Russia has escalated the war so much in the six months since Trump came to the White House that 322 drones (and no missiles) seems like a not very large overnight attack on Ukraine.

So much for “ending the war in a day.”

[image or embed]

— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 3:10 AM

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

show full post on front page

War for Ukraine Day 1,227: A Brief(ish) Saturday Night UpdatePost + Comments (9)

Tragedy in Texas

by | 8 Comments

This post is in: 

Holy cow, this has to be a parent’s worst nightmare as they send their kids off to camp.

July 5 (Reuters) – Some 27 people, including nine children, have been confirmed dead after flash floods in central Texas, authorities said on Saturday, as rescuers continued a frantic search for survivors including dozens still missing from a girls’ summer camp.

The sheriff’s office in Kerr County, Texas said more than 800 people had been evacuated from the region as flood waters receded in the area around the Guadalupe River, about 85 miles (137 km) northwest of San Antonio.

“We will not stop until every single person is found,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said at a news conference.

At least 23 to 25 people from the Camp Mystic summer camp were missing, most of them reported to be young girls.

The river waters rose 29 feet rapidly near the camp.

The U.S. National Weather Service said that the flash flood emergency has largely ended for Kerr County, the epicenter of the flooding, following thunderstorms that dumped as much as 15 inches of rain — half of the total the region sees in a typical year.

A flood watch remained in effect until 7 p.m. for the broader region.

Kerr County sits in the Texas Hill Country, a rural area known for its rugged terrain, historic towns and other tourist attractions.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said up to 500 rescue workers were searching for an unknown number of missing people, including some who had come to the area for an Independence Day celebration by the river.

Item 1 of 7 People survey the damage following deadly flooding in Kerrville, Texas, U.S., on July 5, 2025.

“We don’t know how many people were in tents on the side, in small trailers by the side, in rented homes by the side, because it was going to be the Fourth of July holiday,” he said on Fox News Live.

Camp Mystic had 700 girls in residence at the time of the flood, according to Patrick. Another girls’ camp, Heart O’ the Hills, said on its website that co-owner Jane Ragsdale had died in the flood but no campers had been present as it was between sessions.

Videos posted online showed bare concrete platforms where homes used to stand and piles of rubble along the banks of the river. Rescuers plucked residents from rooftops and trees, sometimes forming human chains to fetch people from the floodwater, local media reported.

Dalton Rice, city manager for Kerrville, the county seat, told reporters on Friday that the extreme flooding struck before dawn with little or no warning, precluding authorities from issuing advance evacuation orders as the Guadalupe River swiftly rose above major flood stage in less than two hours.

State emergency management officials had warned as early as Thursday that west and central Texas faced heavy rains and flash flood threats, citing National Weather Service forecasts ahead of the holiday weekend.

The forecasts, however, “did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,” W. Nim Kidd, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, told a news conference on Friday night.

One more reminder about how fragile life is.

Tragedy in TexasPost + Comments (8)