Click on the photo to watch the video. Just watching and listening to these kids lifts me. Doesn’t hurt to see the best President, either.
Open thread.
Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: A Little HopePost + Comments (170)
by TaMara| 170 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Click on the photo to watch the video. Just watching and listening to these kids lifts me. Doesn’t hurt to see the best President, either.
Open thread.
Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: A Little HopePost + Comments (170)
This post is in: Open Threads
Apocalyptic alerts on my phone: pic.twitter.com/p930cHlnot
— Betty Cracker (@bettycrackerfl) September 9, 2017
In a much dryer morning in New Mexico, my trip to the farmers’ market completely upset my menu planning. Also, I bought too much. Maybe will freeze some.
Good thoughts to Floridians and open thread!
Update: Betty checks in at Comment #66:
Hi guys, thanks for thinking of me. We’re fine. Still at home. The current plan is to head to my MIL’s place, which is inland, in the morning, if the current track holds. We’ve got plenty of gas, and we know how to get there on back roads. It takes about 1-1/2 hours under normal circumstances, and even if it takes six hours, we’ll get there before the storm hits. I’ll check in when I can. Everyone else in the path, stay safe!
Also Adam at Comment #75:
Betty and I are in communication.
I’ll be heading to my brothers later this afternoon. Though we’re out of the storm surge area, they called an evac for our zone so as to reduce stress on emergency services. My brother is in a no evac zone, so we’ll be going there.
But what everyone is still watching for is a turn. They’ve been predicting a turn every day for eight days and expecting one each day for the past three. Right now they’re predicting/expecting this afternoon. But, and again, the predicted/expected a turn yesterday and the day before.
Irma is still beating herself against the norther Cuban coast and the Cuban keys/barrier islands. She’s wobbled a bit northwest again, but no one knows if that’s the beginning of the turn or just another wobble. The questions now are: 1) Does she turn? 2) When? 3) If she doesn’t or if she doesn’t turn till tomorrow or later, then where does she go? If she makes the gulf, and not just skirting the west coast of Florida, then everyone from Mexico around the gulf back to Florida is a target.
Not to sound unsympathetic to the Cubans, but the longer she churns her eyewall and eye on Cuba the better. And the longer she heads west into and against Cuba, with wobbles north and south, the better.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Republicans in Disarray!, Assholes
The big Dem “wins” here are:
(a) FEMA’s not broke
(b) We don’t have a huge financial crisis
(c) The government doesn’t shut downGrow up.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) September 8, 2017
Posers and hypocrites, every one. Per the Washington Post:
While parts of Texas are still submerged from the historic flooding wrought by Hurricane Harvey, four members of Congress who represent the state voted against sending it billions in federal disaster aid.
GOP Reps. Joe Barton, Jeb Hensarling, Sam Johnson and Mac Thornberry all voted no on a $15.25 billion aid package Friday that is on its way to President Trump’s desk. Much of that money will boost federal emergency responders and help small businesses and homeowners rebuild. Some of it could go to victims of Hurricane Irma, which is barreling toward Florida this weekend.
These lawmakers say they didn’t like what the Harvey aid was packaged with: a three-month lift of the debt ceiling to let the U.S. Treasury borrow more money and a short-term budget that basically extends last year’s budget for another three months. As usual in Washington, the hang-up sits at the nexus of money and making a political statement about money.
The four Texas lawmakers who voted no all scrambled to make clear they support the government helping their state recover from rainfall totals so unprecedented that weather forecasters had to invent a new color for their maps. Earlier in the week, the entire Texas delegation voted for an $8 billion package for Harvey victims. After Trump made a deal with Democrats on the debt ceiling and budget, that original package died in the Senate, which instead passed a measure with the additional provisions. The House did the same Friday. Estimates for Harvey cleanup go as high as $150 billion.
The members who opposed the bill had the luxury of being able to prioritize their fiscal conservatism on this vote. None of the Texans who voted no represents a coastal area, and they could safely assume their votes wouldn’t actually put the aid package in danger. It easily passed the House 316-90…
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has become a symbol for the hard choice Republicans must make between helping people they serve recover from an expensive disaster and sticking to their financially conservative principles. Cruz, along with nearly the entire Texas Republican delegation, voted against Hurricane Sandy aid. He misleadingly claimed it was full of unrelated spending. But on Thursday, he and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) swallowed their concerns about what got tacked onto the aid package for their state and vote for it…
Same with Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.), who represents Corpus Christi, where the storm made landfall. He voted against Sandy aid, but before Friday’s Harvey vote, he appealed directly to his colleagues to vote yes…
The media will frame all GOP members who voted no on spending/Harvey aid as only being against Harvey aid.
— Andrew Kugle (@AndrewJKugle) September 8, 2017
I, personally, will take note of the fact they knew it would pass and think of them as self-important dipshits who want the attacks. https://t.co/1Y9O1QXr3i
— David Benner (@davidabenner) September 8, 2017
NEW: Mulvaney tells reporters he tried to make case GOP to vote for Harvey/debt ceiling/CR, doesn't mention deficit impart. pic.twitter.com/xilcAk284s
— Kayla Tausche (@kaylatausche) September 8, 2017
The national debt won't matter politically until the next Democratic president puts her hand on the bible. https://t.co/iqWuMn7vnh
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) September 8, 2017
Saturday Morning Open Thread: More Repub Virtue SignallingPost + Comments (189)
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., I Can No Longer Rationally Discuss The Sanders Campaign, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Assholes, Fucked-up-edness
Kamala spoke w Bernie on the Senate floor. Others go thru Schumer or Merkley. The msg: please talk to your backers. https://t.co/ykZ1F2GU6c
— Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) September 8, 2017
Politico, of course, is rooting for Democratic injuries — but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a real problem. I give Bernie Sanders due credit: With a mere fraction of the economic advantages Donald Trump or even Jill Stein were born to, he (eventually) achieved a rewarding career that did not require more than three days’ work per week, and that doing what he loved best. Tragically, a confluence of larger forces during the 2016 election gave him a much larger platform for his talents, attracting a motley crew of fellow cranks and perennial malcontents along with the media-friendly innocents who actually believed that he offered a working alternative to our current two-party political system. If he’d only had the smarts to shut up and go back to his Senate sinecure no later than December 2016, I would not dismiss him as the least effective Presidential Change Agent since Leon Czolgosz…
… But it’s not just the outside agitators that Democratic lawmakers, operatives and activists are annoyed with: They’re tired of what they see as the Vermont senator’s hesitance to confront his own backers, either in public or through back channels.
Tensions boiled over recently when a handful of Sanders loyalists bashed freshman Sen. Kamala Harris — a rising star in the party and potential 2020 hopeful — as an establishment tool. Democrats were also rankled that other prominent Sanders allies said support for single-payer health care should be a litmus test for candidates.
In response, Democratic senators and outside groups have begun telling Sanders and friendly intermediaries that if he wants to be a leading figure for Democrats ahead of 2020’s presidential election, he needs to get his supporters in line — or at least publicly disavow their more incendiary statements…
The mutual mistrust goes beyond the establishment vs. insurgent divide that defined 2016’s presidential primary. Some Democrats from the progressive wing of the party agree that he needs to do more to rein in his supporters.
If Sanders intends to lead the party, said one Democratic operative who’s worked with him, requesting to speak anonymously like many others for fear of reprisal from Sanders backers, “you don’t get to wash your hands of all of this.”
The complaints have largely gone unheeded by Sanders’ camp. Many of the senator’s closest allies insist such frustration simply reflects the same misunderstanding of Sanders’ “political revolution” Democrats have had since he first started running for president.
“Bernie Sanders really does lead a movement, he doesn’t run an organization. And movements are different from organizations,” said Mark Longabaugh, a veteran Democratic strategist who was a senior adviser to Sanders’ campaign. “A movement operates organically and moves on its own. It can have leaders, but no one directs a movement.” …
A ‘movement’ happens when it happens! No fair picking on an old man for his incontinent habits, no matter how often you have to clean the furniture or replace the rugs!
If Granpa can’t stop taking off his Depends in public — or encouraging his cultists finger-painting with the contents — I’m gonna start hoping the investigation of his wife’s penny-ante Burlington College “financing” scheme gets serious enough to distract the old phart into an overdue retirement. Let him go spend more time at any of his three lovely homes, basking in his fat pension and a no-doubt-unending stream of worshipful acolytes…
Takeaway: few w any influence w him, weak/no relationships w colleagues, can't/won't reel in ppl who use his name/control his campaign data https://t.co/nhBvGqqGN2
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) September 8, 2017
Good for Senator @KamalaHarris. But this is not a case of @SenSanders' supporters freelancing. This has been a tactic of his messaging staff https://t.co/uocvpDM6NK
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) September 8, 2017
Look no further than Sanders' own appointees to the "Unity Commission" & last year's Platform Committee for some of the harassment leaders.
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) September 8, 2017
…to the point where it seems highly likely that his messaging consultants *created* those accounts to do just that.
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) September 8, 2017
Late Night Rant Open Thread: Speaking of Cranky Old Grifters…Post + Comments (137)
by Adam L Silverman| 132 Comments
This post is in: Faunasphere, Nature, Open Threads, Not Normal
#NewYork 10 #sharks seized from basement pool https://t.co/9TPA7v42M9 pic.twitter.com/eo5rVlFwp0
— Dayton Daily News (@daytondailynews) September 7, 2017
NBC New York has the details:
Seven live sharks and three dead ones have been seized from a pool in the basement of a home in the Hudson Valley.
Officers searching a home in the Dutchess County hamlet of LaGrangeville last month found a 15-foot-diameter aboveground basement pool with seven live sandbar sharks, two dead leopard sharks and one dead hammerhead shark, officials said Wednesday.
All the sharks were 2 feet to 4 feet long, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Marine wildlife experts took blood samples and measured and tagged the sharks before transferring them to the Long Island Aquarium in a truck equipped with water tanks, oxygen and climate control.
No one has been charged. An investigation is continuing.
This post is in: Science & Technology
I watched this video yesterday that shows the difference between a category one and category five hurricane:
It made me wonder how our new weather apocalypse is going to shape architecture. I firmly believe that these powerful storms are here to stay, along with flash flooding and tornadoes and earthquakes in the interior of the country, and it is only going to get worse. Of course, because we’re Americans we’ll let out a defiant yell that “We’ll rebuild!,” and because we as a nation are stupid as fuck, we will. And then next year, or the year after that, another storm will come through and knock our shit down again.
I’ve given up hope at any political willpower when it comes to climate change, and I’d give the same odds that we’ll actually have political solutions to flood plains, rebuilding on the coast, building on fault lines, etc., so we’ll probably keep doing this (and you know changes in building codes are out of the question because FREEDUMB) for a little while. Because it is our god given right as Americans to never fucking learn anything.
This will go on until the people who actually count, the underwriters and the insurance agencies and the bankers say “The fuck you’ll rebuild there because I am sick and tired of paying out massive claims and it is cramping how many hookers and how much blow I can do.” At that point, because our government is made up of the people, and we agree the people are fucking stupid (see Trump, Donald J., President), we’ll probably set up some sort of government insurance beyond what we already have. And that will go on for a while until we realize we will not have enough money to bomb brown people somewhere and pay social security and rebuild our coastline every few years.
After that, maybe we’ll adapt. And I wonder what future houses will look like. In the video above, it’s pretty clear that angles are the big problem- anything that is not aerodynamic in all directions is just going to have the roof ripped off, and when that happens, so go the walls. And the people.
In my mind’s eye, I see lots of domed structure and concrete or similar materials. Sort of a geodesic brutalism.
After I thought this, I realized- “hey, jackass- you could google this!” And so I did, and lo, I guess I’m not as dumb as my cat thinks I am. There are still lots of angular buildings in this, but they rely on structural changes and materials which might become scarce and really expensive, so I think the future is going to look like this:
Or this:
Or maybe we will science our way out of this and still be able to live in a colonial or ranch or beach cottage while continuing to ravage the planet while it bites us back. Any ideas or thoughts? And while we’re at it, since I have trees on my mind, what about vegetation and trees and landscaping? How might that change? And roads and bridges? Buried powerlines? Water and sewage.
It’s a mess and a lot to think about.
This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Venality, Assholes, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?, Our Failed Media Experiment
After telling listeners Irma was a liberal hoax, Limbaugh quietly evacuates South Florida https://t.co/JAtylJjmHF pic.twitter.com/3XyhfiE577
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) September 8, 2017
Just in case anyone’s got elderly relatives in Hurricane Irma’s path who’ve been unwilling to evacuate because they’ve been listening to RW charlatans…
“May as well… announce this. I’m not going to get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow,” Limbaugh said Thursday. “We’ll be on the air next week, folks, from parts unknown.”…
Limbaugh did not recant his earlier statements about Irma, and he did not encourage his listeners in the area to evacuate. In fact, Limbaugh seemed to even double down on his earlier views…
On his show Tuesday, Limbaugh said he was reading the paths of the hurricane and was certain it would curve into the Atlantic, and even if it did so, Limbaugh said “official” meteorologists and the media would have accomplished their goal.
“If it ends up not hitting where you are, hits somewhere else, you might temporarily breathe a sigh of relief, but you’re still gonna think, ‘Man, there might be something to this climate change,” Limbaugh said. “Do not doubt me, with everything being politicized, of course it is an objective of some, not everybody, of course, but some of the people involved here.”
Even Big Water was in on the conspiracy, Limbaugh concluded, as people were stocking up on cases of bottled water for the storm that wouldn’t come when they could just use the water coming out of their taps…
Apart from praying that people won’t die because they believed this charlatan for everyone in the storm’s path, what’s on the agenda as we start the weekend?
Friday Evening Open Thread: Watch What He Does, Not What He SaysPost + Comments (66)