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#notintendedtobeafactualstatement

You are here: Home / Archives for #notintendedtobeafactualstatement

Late Night Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  May 24, 20255:04 am| 105 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Trumpery, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement

Seems appropriate. She is covering the Biggest Loser.

[image or embed]

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) May 23, 2025 at 1:45 PM


 

i continue to think that one of the lasting images that will dog this administration for the next four years is likely to come from this parade

[image or embed]

— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) May 23, 2025 at 3:32 PM


====

we talked about this on a recent NORMAL MEN episode, but keep in mind that planning for the inauguration takes several months, all of this has been extremely rushed and will have predictable consequences

[image or embed]

— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) May 23, 2025 at 3:50 PM


====

like, i'm sure city planners, the parks department, and the corps of engineers are doing everything they can to avoid disaster, but large-scale event planning like this is very complicated and rushing things means missing things

— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) May 23, 2025 at 3:53 PM


=

I really, really don't think they've thought this one through.
A parade in D.C.? Where literally 90% of the city hates your fucking guts?

[image or embed]

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) May 23, 2025 at 3:30 PM


====

This has never happened before. MAGA never shows up. Why do you think they had a private swearing in? It's because the crowd was going to be tiny.
There were all the D.C. area "MAGA" parties after Trump got into office and they were tiny and humiliating.

[image or embed]

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) May 23, 2025 at 3:42 PM

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they're talking about something like 6K-7K military personnel vs. what could potentially be a quarter million or more protestors

— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) May 23, 2025 at 3:33 PM


=====

The protestors will be everywhere but DC. Deliberately not having any there as part of No Kings.

— Sarah Birnbaum (@sarahvb.bsky.social) May 23, 2025 at 3:43 PM

Late Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (105)

Grim Grey Dawn Open Thread: Eternities of Anhedonia

by Anne Laurie|  February 17, 20255:12 am| 122 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement

illiteracy is a genuine problem

[image or embed]

— BeijingPalmer (@beijingpalmer.bsky.social) February 14, 2025 at 2:01 PM

I mean this is the guy who named his surveillance and intelligence company after the lying orb that drives its owner mad

— Brendan O’Kane (@bokane.org) February 14, 2025 at 2:11 PM

Maybe Thiel just wants the rest of us to be as miserable as he seems to be?

Type of Guy (actual, observed): “I don’t really like books, or sports, or films, or paintings, or music, or dance, or sports, or food, or wine, or pets, or people. I want to live forever.”

— Eric Rauchway (@rauchway.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 12:30 PM

Grim Grey Dawn Open Thread: Eternities of AnhedoniaPost + Comments (122)

Entitled Idiots Who Should Be Thanking Immigrants Instead Spreading Horseshit

by @heymistermix.com|  September 14, 20242:37 pm| 219 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement

While the functionally useless political press was breathlessly repeating the pet-eating lie, and chin-scratching thoughtfully about whether it would alter the horserace, it took independent journalism site to track down the origin of that blood libel to a couple of Karens on Facebook in Springfield, Ohio: (via LGM)

NewsGuard identified and tracked down the two people central to the claim: Erika Lee, the Springfield resident who wrote the original Facebook post, and Kimberly Newton, the neighbor who had provided her with a third-hand account of the rumor, making Lee’s social media post a fourth-hand account: the alleged acquaintance/cat owner; Newton’s friend; Newton; and Lee, who posted it on Facebook.

In exclusive interviews, NewsGuard spoke both with Lee, a 35-year-old hardware store worker who has lived in Springfield for four years, and Newton, her neighbor and a 12-year resident of Springfield. The interviews reveal just how flimsy and unsubstantiated the rumor was from the beginning — based entirely on third hand hearsay. Yet it quickly gained traction and, remarkably, found its way to Trump’s lips on a national stage.

“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton said about the rumor she had passed on to her neighbor, Lee, the Facebook poster. Newton explained to NewsGuard that the cat owner was “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from “a source that she had.” Newton added: “I don’t have any proof.”

That adds up to three people with no firsthand knowledge of the allegedly victimized cat: Newton’s “friend,” Newton, and then her neighbor Lee. Or perhaps it’s four people if we count the “source” that Newton says her “friend” relied on.

Lee says she’s a “Democrat who voted for Trump”, because of course she is, and also shared this:

“I think it was two years ago now, I went to the [Bureau of Motor Vehicles] to renew my license or my tags. I can’t remember, but I was sitting in the BMV, and the only way I know to describe it is I felt like … I was transported, because all around me it was people talking a different language. … I felt like I was the minority,” she said.

There we have it.  Anyway, why does Lee even have a job in a hardware store in Springfield?  Because of Haitians.  The town was in the post-industrial death spiral until immigrants showed up to do jobs that locals wouldn’t or couldn’t do:

When Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017, some thought the new residents could help the city regain its former vigor as a once-thriving manufacturing hub. Once home to major agricultural machinery companies in the mid-20th century, Springfield has lost a quarter of its population since the 1960s.

[…] Haitians and immigrants from Central American countries have been in high demand at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables – where they’ve been hired to clean and package produce – and at automotive machining plants whose owners were desperate for workers due to a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The vast majority of Haitians are legal immigrants because they’ve received a temporary, renewable 18-month permit to live in the US.

There are legitimate issues in a town of 60,000 when it tries to absorb 15,000 immigrants — schools and healthcare are stretched, and housing is scarce. Medicaid rolls, for example, have swelled, probably because the jobs the Haitians are taking don’t pay a living wage.  But is it better to have a dying town full of desperation and sadness, or a growing town that’s struggling to incorporate hard-working immigrants trying to make a better life for themselves?

I really hope this issue comes up at the Vance/Walz debate, because the racism that Trump and JD are tapping ignores the fact that immigration has revitalized small towns across the midwest.  Look at any town that has a plant with jobs no white person wants (like meat packing), and you’ll find immigrant communities.  Here’s a great example in the tiny town of Worthington, MN, in Tim Walz’ district.  And just look at this (via Jeff T.)

Entitled Idiots Who Should Be Thanking Immigrants Instead Spreading Horseshit 1

I don’t know how you do dozens of Cletus safaris and miss the biggest story of the last few decades in the small-town midwest:  immigrants are saving those areas because they’re a great workforce that wants to share in American prosperity.  I guess the intrepid DC reporters missed that fact because the immigrants are just quietly doing their jobs, while the Karens are making up stories on Facebook.

Entitled Idiots Who Should Be Thanking Immigrants Instead Spreading HorseshitPost + Comments (219)

Monday Night Open Thread: Proud to Be A Democrat, And Also Snarky

by Anne Laurie|  December 4, 20236:43 pm| 78 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Grifters Gonna Grift, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Venality, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement

I thought my ethically-challenged colleague @BobMenendezNJ could use some encouragement given his substantial legal problems.

So, I approached a seasoned expert on the matter to give ‘Bobby from Jersey’ some advice. pic.twitter.com/y8iX55EyNi

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) December 4, 2023

It’s gloriously real, per Business Insider:

Former Rep. George Santos finally made history last week when he was expelled from Congress. Now he’s made history again, as the first former congressperson to be used by Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania to troll Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey via Cameo.

“I thought my ethically-challenged colleague @BobMenendezNJ could use some encouragement given his substantial legal problems,” Fetterman wrote on X. “So, I approached a seasoned expert on the matter to give ‘Bobby from Jersey’ some advice.”

An attached video shows Santos giving advice to “Bobby from Jersey” about how to stay strong…

A Fetterman spokesman told Business Insider that Santos posted the Cameo just 16 minutes after it was requested. The spokesman said that with taxes, fees, and an extra charge to deliver it within 24 hours, the Cameo cost Fetterman $343.20.

“We did not expect to get it back so fast,” the spokesman said.

Menendez has been accused by federal prosecutors of taking bribes, including over $480,000 in cash, in exchange for secretly aiding the Egyption government.

Menendez has denied the allegations…

I was aware that Philly and Jersey pols did not always play nice with each other, but this is top-tier snark.

bought a cameo from george santos but now my credit card has charges from hermes, sephora, and onlyfans??? https://t.co/HtGlTMQHX6

— derek guy (@dieworkwear) December 4, 2023

Monday Night Open Thread: Proud to Be A Democrat, And Also SnarkyPost + Comments (78)

Sunday Night Funnies Open Thread (Extremely On-Line Social Media Edition)

by Anne Laurie|  September 17, 20239:06 pm| 99 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, The War On Women, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Assholes, Bitter Despair is the New Black

"Banality is like entropy; everything collapses into it in the end. And so the organization premised on relentless self-congratulation for the capacity to offend leaves us with this: respect mothers." https://t.co/KeUAKwDkoe

— Aaron Bady (@zunguzungu) September 17, 2023

Yes, you *have* heard the name Bari Weiss before, at least if you’ve skimmed the posts sharing my unhealthy compulsion to mock Bari and all her cronies. On the other hand, their ‘ideas’ are so weightless and insubstantial that perhaps they slide off your minds, unregretted.

It’s the end of the weekend, after one chaotic week and facing into another, and mocking the deserving is as much energy as we can spare… (Bonus: Elon Musk’s most mock-worthy ex!) From Kerry Howley at NYMag, “Scenes From the End of the Sexual Revolution”:

The question “Has the Sexual Revolution Failed” contains within itself a number of other questions (failed at what? Failed whom? Why are we talking about this?), precisely none of which were answered Wednesday night at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where 1,600 plaid-skirted e-girls and be- khakied normies and the aspiring canceled paid as much as $165 a seat to hear a British ideologue, a deft Dimes Square shape-shifter, an ex-Muslim podcaster, and Techno Mechanicus’s mother debate the resolution. You can’t really fault the organizer, even if the organizer was Bari Weiss. It ought to have worked. An ill-defined proposition, half of Red Scare, a random British lady very upset about BDSM, and Grimes? No notes…

The alt-right’s inchoate longing for sexual repression in the absence of religion remains mysterious. Fifty-six percent of the audience, polled beforehand by text at an event featuring four ambitious women and moderated by a queer married media mogul, agreed that the sexual revolution had “failed.” The debate was drawn from Louise Perry’s book, serviceably titled The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, which takes as its presumed reader an extremely credulous liberal raised up in isolation from any information beyond the feminist blogosphere circa 2004 and who needs to be informed, at truly extraordinary length, that men are, on average, physically stronger than women. Women have been pressured to “fuck like men,” a situation that leaves alpha males very happy but all women depressed, abused, vulnerable, and commodified. If there is nothing here that went unsaid by Kay Hymowitz or Christina Hoff Sommers in the dark heyday of the hookup-culture think piece, at least everything sounds better in a British accent.

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Sunday Night Funnies Open Thread (Extremely On-Line Social Media Edition)Post + Comments (99)

Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: A Shift in the Political ‘Vibes’?

by Anne Laurie|  September 11, 20235:06 am| 130 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement

Someday, somebody needs to write a doctoral dissertation on how and why so many on the Bernie Sanders campaign team ended up on the far right of American politics, and so many on the Mitt Romney team ended up on the center left.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) September 10, 2023

Simple as: Some ‘political’ people are interested in getting their priorities into law; some are authoritarians who just want to force voters to act as they ‘should’…

Rubber is hitting the road with Biden admin and blue states getting wins and we’re now figuring out who actually cares about moving the ball forward vs who is crypto fash or willing to make a career on taking their money https://t.co/F8Ub7XmSE2

— Giacomo Volpe ?????? (@_jack_fox_) September 10, 2023

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Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: A Shift in the Political ‘Vibes’?Post + Comments (130)

Friday Open Thread

by WaterGirl|  June 30, 20231:45 pm| 122 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement

Yesterday’s storm took down our internet just after 5 pm or so, and just came back up at noon.  No internet for 18 hours, yikes!

What did I miss?

Jackie sent me this fun video, so I will share it with al of you.

I want to see the expression on this kid’s face when he is 16 and his mom is showing it to his first girlfriend / boyfriend!

I saw this yesterday when I still had internet – do we know what these are about yet?

Between yesterday and today, there have been three new sealed entries on the docket for the Trump/Nauta case. I have no idea what they are, but you best bet I am watching. pic.twitter.com/NCF1yCzrQD

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) June 29, 2023

Well, shit, 5 minutes on the internet (because I saw that Tom had just put up a post) gave me lots of bad news.

BREAKING: SCOTUS just tanked Biden’s student debt forgiveness program.

So it doesn’t matter if it was $10K, $20K, $50K, or all debt. I told you your real enemy wasn’t Biden. But I guess you just didn’t like Hillary enough.

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) June 30, 2023

So, let me get this straight: yesterday the Supreme Court ruled colleges CAN’T discriminate on the basis of race but today they ruled that a web designer CAN discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community? Sorry, but this Court is so freaking messed up.

— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) June 30, 2023

Anything else good or bad that I missed?

At least this made me laugh.

Good morning.

More indictments are coming.

Big, beautiful indictments.

The likes of which no one has seen before.

Make America Lawful Again.

— Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) June 30, 2023

Open thread.

Friday Open ThreadPost + Comments (122)

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