My favorite Olympic sport is watching Donald Trump pretend he cares about other people. pic.twitter.com/WweYIExrFF
— side-eye spice (@goldengateblond) August 19, 2016
Here, kids. Make Gumby and Pokey out of this Play Doh and they'll rebuild your home. pic.twitter.com/LbaPkWuKCp
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) August 20, 2016
Via @AliahG – Gov. Edwards said on MSNBC last night that he advised Obama not to come so not to divert resources from active rescue effort.
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) August 19, 2016
Trump took a question in Louisiana: pic.twitter.com/Kf8YsQ6Y3Y
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) August 19, 2016
These guys stepped off the Trump plane in Baton Rouge ahead of Trump and co. pic.twitter.com/B8qQQrFXDT
— Micah Grimes (@MicahGrimes) August 19, 2016
TRUMP: "The Governor said my visit would make the relief effort more difficult. I said, 'No problem. I'm okay with that. Let's do this'"
— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) August 19, 2016
TRUMP: Terrific day.
RYAN: You proud of yourself?
TRUMP: How could I not be? I handed out Play-Doh to flood people for almost a full minute— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) August 20, 2016
Michele and Marcus Bachmann are here. She told reporters she's met privately with Trump and is advising him on foreign policy.
— Patrick Condon (@patricktcondon) August 20, 2016
(Am I a bad person for wondering if Marcus pestered Trump for Milo Yiannopoulous‘ private email addy?)
TRUMP: Michele Bachmann came out tonight.
RYAN: Yeah?
TRUMP: Now that I'm full Breitbart it's like Christmas for kooks over here— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) August 20, 2016
Before pool reporters ushered out of immigration mtg, Trump was asked thoughts on visit to Louisiana flood zone. "It was great," he said.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) August 20, 2016
Bet he kept some Play-Doh for the plane. https://t.co/ECQLwVhqaa
— Tracy Sefl (@tracysefl) August 20, 2016
Sad trombone…
Christie releases statement on behalf of Trump re Louisiana floods pic.twitter.com/7gwEZ0VSA9
— Dustin Racioppi (@dracioppi) August 19, 2016
Trentrunner
The Villagers want the Pivot more than life itself.
I want to make a joke, but it’s really quite damaging. It’s like they want to etch-a-sketch the past 13 months.
Like we don’t know who Trump is already, and like we can be swayed by some airbrushed, scripted version.
Ironic that what will save us will be Trump’s own ego-driven impulsiveness.
Doug R
Can someone please explain what the F*CK Play-doh is good for?
Dadadadadadada
@Doug R: Building levees.
Baud
Who does the Governor of Louisiana think he is? The Governor of New Jersey.
Tripod
@Doug R:
Good eatin’? Plugging holes in levees? “Think of the kids!”?
The bane of all relief efforts is useless crap (and showboating assholes).
MattF
@Trentrunner: Trump’s constituency doesn’t want the airbrushed version, and neither does Trump. Let Trump be Trump!
Lyrebird
I’m still enjoying this quote from a CNN reporter talking to a different Trump spox:
Thank you Ms. Keilar! Could we have you run some debates instead of the flag-pin-botherers? And (shoot for the moon) maybe Joy Reid, too!
Baud
FWIW, Baton Rouge and environs will go heavily for Trump, so his visit probably does mean more to them than Obama’s will.
Keith P.
@Doug R: During the Katrina aftermath, I helped give out teddy bears (huge donation from Build-A-Bear) to kids. They loved them, but this was after the hurricane and immediate aid (i.e. food and water), and was done in a refugee shelter, not on site (again, IMO food and water would have been the more immediate and appropriate aid)
If Trump really wanted to impress me, he’d use some of his supposed building expertise to start laying the groundwork for rebuilding the BR area.
JGabriel
Doug R:
Mr. Bill.
And uh, umm … er… I’m drawing a blank on anything else.
The Thin Black Duke
And I thought that nothing could ever be more ridiculous than that absurd photo op of Paul Ryan washing clean dishes. Silly me.
Bobbo
Cue Villagers: “Sure, the Governor said a Presidential visit would divert vital resources, but what about the optics?”
Mike E
Heh, I made play dough from scratch for my daughter’s preschool…I guess that alone makes me better than Trump!
BR
My hope / forecast for the final vote is that the polls will show Clinton 46, Trump 41 going into election day, and then our GOTV efforts and Trump’s lack of them will push it to Clinton 50, Trump 40, Johnson 8, Stein 2. Now, let’s make it happen!
Mr Stagger Lee
Hey Gov Christie! Isn’t Louisiana,the place where their congressional delegation, voted AGAINST funding for the people of New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy?
sukabi
@efgoldman: not into building houses. But sub prime lending? There’s a killing to be made there…aaaaand we’re into another failed drumpf business.
Gbbalto
Interesting exercise – from a tavern conversation – add up total medals for former Soviet Union. Recent calculation puts them at 28-41-60 for 129 – highest total and second for golds, despite many Russians being unable to compete. Dont think they would have beat us in golds, but lots of sports power…
D58826
@Doug R: Stuffing in Chris Christie’s cake hole maybe?
gene108
I got my nephew Play-Doh, when he was three. The stuff can get very messy very fast. Get it certain surfaces and it will never come out.
Steve in the ATL
So when is Marcus Bachmann coming out?
Doug R
@The Thin Black Duke: There’s this George W Bush Classic. If the wire had been live…..
Tripod
@Baud:
Obama won Baton Rouge Parish.
Competent leadership at the federal and state level makes a big difference.
Blanco wasn’t much better than Bush on Katrina. That whole nightmare was a leadership vacuum until that NG General showed up.
Edwards is made of sterner stuff, and will be there when this bunch of fucktards has moved on to bankrupting TrumpTV. This is the right play, give him the resources and get out of the way.
catclub
For all the herding cats aspects of Democratic politicians, this message has been uniform at all outlets and all levels Message discipline.
TriassicSands
The response to the question of why he thought it was important to go to Louisiana at this time is among the most idiotic I’ve ever heard Trump utter.
Maybe he should have admitted he was just looking for some good real estate deals — after all, there’s nothing like a natural disaster to open up opportunities for predators.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Rodents, suddenly.
This week Lady Thunder pwn3d a rat. A vacant house in our neighborhood got a colony in the garage and the exterminators missed at least one. She saw it grazing under the bird feeder and sprang into action. Live trap, peanut, bingo: trapped rat. She loves all living things so she transported it to a more appropriate locale: a woodlot next to a Wal Mart 16 miles away.
Just now I was in the basement and a very small mouse (20mm) wandered between my feet. I gently nabbed it. Lady Thunder to the rescue. She assembled the Habitrail that we keep on hand for these occasions and placed the mouselet in protective custody. She’s at the store getting Enfamil at the moment because she thought it looked young and sickly.
Baud
@Tripod:
Surprised to hear that. I assume the black population is bigger than I thought, because it’s very conservative.
philadelphialawyer
@Gbbalto: But would all of those medals actually have been won by a hypothetical Soviet team? Now there are fifteen entirely separate, national Olympic teams. Whereas before there was one. More athletes in general, more athletes entered into each individual event, and more teams in the team sports.
gene108
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Obama did not come to NJ, after Sandy until the major relief/rescue efforts had finished and the flood waters receded.
President Obama toured the damage after the worst hit parts were secure (for lack of a better word).
Christie is a douchebag.
D58826
In the meantime the NYT has a long article about ‘old little hands’ twisted finances and what he has disclosed is only part of his financial situation. Among his major creditors is Goldman, of the Hillary speech fame. And of course the assorted Russian oligarch. In the mean time there have been hall dozen articles in the left leaning media about why the Clinton’s have to shut down the Foundation. Optics you know. Sen. Croyn from Texas wants a congressional investigation.
It will be interesting if in about 4 weeks somebody adds up all of the articles on Trump’s finances and all of the articles on the Clintons.
catclub
@Mr Stagger Lee: Probably not. MS and LA Reps KNOW about hurricanes and federal disaster relief, but GOP reps from almost all other states can still turn that down.
catclub
@Tripod:
Blanco was sabotaged by Bush on Katrina. She was a Democrat.
Hurricane response in Florida, in 2004, with Jeb Bush as Gov, was very good.
Haley Barbour had a lot of pull for Federal resources in MS, instead.
Now ask how Obama sabotaged Chris Christie.
Gbbalto
Interesting exercise – from a tavern conversation – add up total medals for former Soviet Union. Recent calculation puts them at 28-41-60 for 129 – highest total and second for golds, despite many Russians being unable to compete. Dont think they would have beat us in golds, but lots of sports power…@philadelphialawyer: Youre right – just thought it interesting – a lot of people dont clearly distinguish Russia from FSU
D58826
@catclub: If I remember correctly the Bushes actually talked about replacing the state government with federal officials.
Mike E
@Gbbalto: You forgot Poland
Gbbalto
@Gbbalto: May Cthuhlu eat the people responsible for WordPress
EriktheRed
@Doug R: Well, I hear it’s edible…
redshirt
It’s a very small item in a long, long list, but how absurd is it one of our major nominees for the most powerful position in the history of the world campaigns in a baseball cap?
Ludicrous.
Trentrunner
@catclub: Not from Mary Landrieu, who thanked Trump for coming and said Hillary and Obama should follow suit.
Not even kidding.
Shalimar
I need someone to explain the guy walking out of the plane carrying an assault rifle pointed at his own foot and looking at his watch. What the hell? Is he trying to figure out how much longer before he blows his foot off?
It would be insane enough that Trump thought he needed mercenaries to protect him from looters, but this idiot doesn’t even know how to carry a gun.
BR
@Shalimar:
I saw a tweet saying that they are a unit of the secret service, but not the guys who actually guard protectees.
Karen marie
@Shalimar: Who’s his employer? Does he wear the helmet when the plane is in the air? Just curious.
jacy
@Baud:
You do know that Baton Rouge is a majority black city, right? And that the current mayor is black? Not saying that you’re wrong about the voting patterns of white people, and Baton Rouge is an incredibly racially divided city, but it’s also a college town and has much more liberal elements than in rural places in the state. A majority of the people here were not impressed by Trump’s visit.
Major Major Major Major
Ugh. I advised somebody to take the train up from the airport to hang out this afternoon during a long layover, and it turns out there’s a major service closure I didn’t know about. She’s from Korea and does not seem to have got her SIM activated, so I can’t call.
Nm she’s here lol
schrodinger's cat
OT: House hunting question
Which house would you choose?
Excellent location plus adequate house (higher end of our range) + with a great backyard and close to everything (historic town incorporated in 1718)
Spectacular house but nondescript subdivision. (lower end of the range) (bedroom community to a college town)
Jeff Spender
So that whole Green Party town hall in which Stein’s VP doubled-down on calling Obama an Uncle Tom and Stein said a bunch of word salad has resulted in two of the few Stein supporters I know saying that they will not vote for her.
Major Major Major Major
@redshirt: and it’s not even a very good baseball cap either. They’ve got the dumbest shape.
The Lodger
@BR: That’s the crack Secret Service decoy unit. They draw the attention and ridicule while the real agents provide the protection.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: Try to email her, most airports have free wifi. She is likely to carry a tablet or a laptop. I do, when I am traveling alone.
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat:
House #1 Every Single Time. If it’s in your acceptable range that does not kill you, this is the answer.
I bought House #2 over ten years ago and have lost money during that time. The cliche of “location, location, location” is absolutely true in a market that is not in the middle of an overheating/meltdown.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@schrodinger’s cat:
Consider your future there if it’s for long term. We house shopped at age 40 and passed on a ‘fun’ town that already had a lot of commotion. Guessing that activity in the fun town would increase as our tolerance for disruption decreased over the years, we opted for a quieter area and 16 years later we’re glad. I would apply the same scrutiny to a college town.
Corner Stone
@Shalimar:
What would you suggest?
jacy
@schrodinger’s cat:
Depends: what exactly makes the one house spectacular and the other adequate? Can the adequate house be made more than adequate?
I just bought a house, so I’ve agonized over these same questions. Luckily, I found a spectacular house in a spectacular neighborhood. (Personally, living in a nondescript subdivision would be hard for me, but that’s just me. And I could never live in a new house. I needed something that had a little history, but, again, maybe that’s just me.)
Mr Stagger Lee
@gene108: Actually I was talking at the promised aid that will come to the residents of Louisiana, and no doubt the NJ delegation will vote for it, as opposed to the LA delegation that voted to stiff the residents of NY/NJ that were devastated by Sandy.(Does Christie recall that?) As for the PR photo ops I have no problem with politcians
being told not to get in the way of rescue and recovery.
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: I think the style has some technical name – like a yachting cap or something – due to the cord at the base of the visor.
dexwood
@schrodinger’s cat:
For me, the ability to walk to stores and attractions rather than drive everywhere, has become an important consideration the older I get. House # 1 sounds like it fits that desire.
Doug R
@schrodinger’s cat: Lower end of range. You’ll always find problems and EVERYTHING is more expensive than you budgeted for. You can always save up and move to the other neighborhood later.
Doug R
@Jeff Spender: Stein has this amazing ability to say words which you think have meaning but put together just WHAAAAT? I guess that’s why she\s the Vegan Sarah Palin.
Corner Stone
@Doug R:
Ha. I’ve been trying to save up and move to the neighborhood I wanted to live in for more than 10 years. Guess what? That neighborhood outpaced my subdivision to the point where I would need to sell my current house three times to afford a tear down in the other neighborhood.
schrodinger's cat
@jacy: Spectacular house has a spectacular kitchen and a master-bath but the suburban neighborhood feels nondescript, need a car to go anywhere.
Nondescript house has limited curb appeal but you has spectacular views of the nearby mountain range and has farms behind it.
@dexwood: Not quite walking distance to stuff but a shorter drive than the other place, plus a 1/2 mile walk to public transport.
redshirt
Yeah, the ability to walk to things is a huge factor.
That is unless you are building a zombie proof compound. Then, not so good.
Timurid
@Trentrunner:
The Village is just a bunch of tweed jacket white supremacists who listen to Wagner instead of Skrewdriver.
They’ll only turn on Trump when he beyond any possible doubt proves himself to be incapable of turning a white nationalist platform into real results.
raven
BRAZIL!!!!
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: That’s what I am leaning towards, I am hoping that our realtor will be able to negotiate a more financially favorable deal. The seller’s agent said that the selllers were motivated. The other house will give me SAAD in winter, I think.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: Location, unless there’s something drastic which needs to be fixed. A good thorough inspection is absolutely key.
raven
Damn, no one can see these folks don’t care about this Olympic sport!
schrodinger's cat
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Both towns share a border with the college town. One is at the northern end and the other at the southern. Currently we are renting about 2 miles away from house # 1.
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat:
If you don’t think you’ll be happy in a place, drop it.
dexwood
@schrodinger’s cat:
Tough choice. Reduced driving still appeals to me. Any measure as to which neighborhood seems more desirable to others with an eye towards selling later should you want to do so?
Miss Bianca
@Ultraviolet Thunder: OMG, your wife is putting sickly field mice in Habitrails and feeding them baby formula??
I am feeling *so* not worthy right now…
frosty
@schrodinger’s cat: #1. You can upgrade the house but you can’t upgrade the neighborhood..
sukabi
@Major Major Major Major: pretty sure it’s the head in it that is making it look dumb.
schrodinger's cat
@dexwood: #1. The town has a lot of conservation land and heritage farms.
sukabi
@jacy: if the either house comes with an HOA run away.
Miss Bianca
OK, quick question: if someone you don’t know has called you four times within the course of two hours but *not* left a message, would you call back?
Darkrose
@Jeff Spender: Wait, what? When was this?
schrodinger's cat
@frosty: Yep and # 1 has a nice sized kitchen, its a tad dated but from the 90s not the 50s or something, so something I can live with and upgrade slowly.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@efgoldman:
A few years ago she rescued a baby black squirrel whose momma was killed. Named him Skeezix ‘cuz he was an orphan. If you desire a calm life, do not live with a squirrel. Adorable but totally hyperactive.
He was released to the wild after he grew up.
She has also rescued: a baby bunny, a snake, mistreated goldfish (Which I have to care for), and a pair of baby wood ducks that she named Charlie and Daphne (sent to a wildlife center with a large check for their care after she had doubled their size in our bathtub).
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: Not if don’t recognize the number.
Jeff Spender
@efgoldman: Trying to set up some town halls with the Libertarian candidate. We’ll see how that turns out. Doubt we’ll get the Republican to agree to come.
schrodinger's cat
@sukabi: Neither does.
Corner Stone
@Miss Bianca: Nope.
dexwood
@schrodinger’s cat:
@frosty:
frosty summed it up nicely. Good luck. Dinner needs fixin’.
Miss Bianca
@Jeff Spender: you’ll likely get a better debate out of the Libertarian candidate anyway. SBT.
Glad to see you back!
frosty
@schrodinger’s cat: My brother moved to a fairly plain bungalow in a nice community. Over the last 20 years or so they’ve remodeled every room, including tearing off the roof and building a second floor with a master suite and guest bedroom.
It takes time but you can get the house you want. Personally, the nondescript subdivision is a deal killer. But then, I have yet to buy a house built after WWII.
sukabi
@schrodinger’s cat: then probably go with the neighborhood you’d be most comfortable in. You can change the house, but you can’t move it if your neighbors are dicks.
dmsilev
@Miss Bianca: Nope. If it were actually important, whoever it is would leave a message.
frosty
@Miss Bianca: For unknown numbers I type in the number and “whocalledme” in Yahoo. If it’s a spam site you’ll find out in the comments. If it’s a real number there won’t be much. Sometimes I pick it up and usually regret it.
Miss Bianca
@schrodinger’s cat: location. Plus, 18th century house?? Of course, I’m a sucker for that kinda stuff.
Mike in NC
@redshirt: Drumpf was probably handing out free baseball caps to flood victims. Made in China, of course.
Calming Influence
@Lyrebird: Perhaps Republicans can start wearing “burning car” pins to show their support for black voters.
redshirt
@Miss Bianca: There could be ghosts. Subdivisions don’t often have ghosts unless built on an Indian burial ground, and if that were the case, you should be able to find out with due diligence.
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: Nah, its the town that’s 18th century. House was built in the 90s. There is another charming 19th century house we looked at but it is at a busy intersection close to apartments where lots of undergrads live.
schrodinger's cat
@sukabi: #2 is full of cul-de-sacs. I don’t think I will even see my neighbors if I don’t want to.
Miss Bianca
@redshirt: I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.
Oh, who am I kidding – OF COURSE I AM. But I’ve spent plenty of time in haunted houses – or houses that others claimed were haunted – and got nothing. So evidently I’m about as psychic as a block of wood.
@schrodinger’s cat: Ah! Got it. I’d still go for the quaint old town,
rikyrah
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE
Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
Trump tonight said Clinton was “banking on” VA Gov. McAuliffe getting “violent felons to the voting booths”:
redshirt
@Miss Bianca: I can sense a best selling self-help book in the making: When the ghosts aren’t interested
Spice up your aura!
SiubhanDuinne
@Major Major Major Major:
I’ve seen it described as a “trucker’s cap.” Not sure that makes it any better, but apparently it was never actually meant to be a baseball cap.
Miss Bianca
@redshirt: “It’s Just Not That Into You”.
The Dangerman
Too bad there wasn’t a camera on hand to catch the tantrum when Trump was told he was going to be handing out some dough.
dmsilev
@rikyrah: As with many things Trump says, I think we can safely translate that as ‘Ooga booga scary BLACK PEOPLE!’.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Miss Bianca: Google the number.
Baud
@jacy: I did not realize it was a majority black city. And while LSU is there, obviously, it always struck me as a more conservative student body. Glad to hear Trump was not well received.
Lizzy L
It’s interesting to list the state governors that Trump has insulted or managed to piss off. We’ve named two in this thread: Edwards and McAuliffe. He was nasty to Susana Martinez (New Mexico) during the primary. I’m sure Andrew Cuomo has no use for him. I can just imagine what Jerry Brown has to say about him. Kasich’s not going to support him. Charlie Baker (Massachusetts) has said he won’t vote for him. I wonder if Trump has ever considered — or if someone has taken the time to point out to him — that the federal government and the state governments have mutual interests, and it works out better for everyone if cooperation and respect go both ways. I suspect it wouldn’t make any difference to him if someone were to point it out: he’s a bully whose first impulse is to dominate.
dmsilev
I think the NYT Editorial Board is perhaps not so fond of Mr. Trump:
bluehill
Looks like trumps new strategy is to try show a softer side to win back some of the repubs that don’t want to vote for Hillary and need a reason to vote for trump. Read someone suggest that the outreach to African Americans was intended for these people. Also saw that trump created a Hispanic advisory committee and even floated some concept of legalization. It’s a sham but makes it easier to vote for him. Now waiting for bannon/Assange/Putin to unleash all the really nasty stuff about Hillary as part two of their plan. Still a long shot but more organized than what trump was doing before.
Calming Influence
@Lizzy L:
“Some people call him a good governor. I like governors of states that don’t have massive natural disasters.”
sukabi
@dmsilev: now that’s funny. Folks at the times should have a good idea after all these years exactly what drumpfs about, glad they finally found some balls and decided to get real.
HinTN
@schrodinger’s cat: Adequate house in spectacular (ETA OOPS ok, excellent) location. That is all.
gogol's wife
OT, but I highly recommend Florence Foster Jenkins, for a great teaming of Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant.
Average age in theater: 103. But good flick.
Tenar Darell
@schrodinger’s cat: it depends on what you care about more. The way you describe the two locations makes me feel like you already know what you’d prefer. Based simply on your descriptions I’d go with the adequate house in the good location.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I now have pix of Lady Thunder feeding her baby mouse pal Enfamil from a tiny syringe.
It’s never boring around here.
Have a good night all.
gogol's wife
@dmsilev:
Do they say, “The humanity!”
Or “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly”?
schrodinger's cat
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I see a book in your future, written by Lady Thunder. My rescues: Mr. Thunder and others.(A play on Durrell’s, My family and other animals)
jl
I’m boycotting Trump campaign news, since it is messing with my head. I see a piece that says Trump won’t endorse McCain and Ryan. WTF? Wasn’t that hashed out a couple of weeks ago? The story is supposed to be from today. Is the reporter in a time warp, or has Trump ripped the space-time continuum? Or has Trump decided to rehash that stupid mess again, just because he can, and it would make him look so damn senseless?
One of his ex-campaign managers is supposedly sending around racy pics of one of Trump’s daughters. Some story full of incomprehensible nonsense explaining how Trump and Pence stances on deficit and social insurance policy are not in chaotic conflict.
Trump bellowing at African-Americans that their lives are such miserable shit-holes, they have nothing left to lose, so vote for him! Yeah, what do they have to lose (um….. with a GOP win… their right to vote?). (edit: anyway, what person with any sense would not be totally enthusiastic after a pitch like that? “You are losers and have nothing, so why not take a flyer on a fat nutcase bigot like me. Trust me totally!”)
Just too dumb and crazy to bother with. I’ll give money and work for Dems, and hope it turns out OK.
Anoniminous
@schrodinger’s cat:
The house with the excellent location. It’s a pain to have to drive everywhere to get anything and that is what you’ll be doing if you move to the suburbs.
Juju
@schrodinger’s cat: choose the house you’d be happier living in, and you can more easily afford.
Adam L Silverman
@Shalimar: The two guys in the body armor and Kevlar helmets are the Secret Service advance team. Normally they arrive early, sweep the sites were the principle (person under protection) will be, and set up up high – on top of buildings, in the rafters, things like that. Because of the nature of the disaster and emergency response in Louisiana they were unable to do so and had to travel with Trump. This is part of why the governor and the President don’t want the Presisent there right now because his team – advance and in close – is significantly larger than what Trump gets. The two guys that got off the plane behind Trump and Pence are the regular Secret Service “body” detail.
ETA: the M4 is at low ready. He’s carrying it correctly.
SiubhanDuinne
@gogol’s wife:
I saw it this afternoon.
Calming Influence
OT, open threadish: 90s in the Puget Sound region today – no A/C ’cause you want it maybe 6 days a year here – outside thermometer shows 84F and falling, and cats have stopped imitating flat hairy flounders all over the hardwood floors.
Emo cats. (hint, kitties: you evolved in the desert…)
satby
@schrodinger’s cat: I would go for house #1 too, I did a version of house #2 in the country and I really can’t wait to get back to a more urban area. Shorter distances mean less time driving, something only 30 minutes away turns into an hour plus trip just to run out for a loaf of bread.
And motivated sellers often negotiate on price, so unless property is selling quickly in your area make an offer closer to what you’d like to pay, and make it contingent on an inspection.
satby
@Miss Bianca: NO!
Anoniminous
@schrodinger’s cat:
What don’t you like about the kitchen?
Kitchen remodels are time consuming and expensive and are more time consuming and much more expensive if you are living in the house when it is being done.
schrodinger's cat
@satby: This house has been on the market since May. Its a bit overpriced that’s why its not sold yet.
schrodinger's cat
@Anoniminous: I want to change the stove to a gas stove. Fridge is also bit old as are the counter tops.
sukabi
@rikyrah: McAuliffe just reinstated the voting rights of about 200k people, so that’s where this is coming from… ramping up the fear and racism is what drumpf is about.
gogol's wife
@SiubhanDuinne:
What did you think?
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: If it’s been on the market for three months, you should be able to negotiate. Of course, sometimes people get stuck on a particular price and refuse to come down at all. If the list price is more than you’re willing to pay and the seller doesn’t want to budge, don’t be reluctant to just walk away from the deal.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: Which area felt like home? Like others have mentioned, you can change the house, but not the location.
Thoughtful David
@Adam L Silverman:
I guess after all the scandals in Colombia and so forth, “Sexret Service” should be made their official name.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: no!
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: Fridge is easy. Stove is easy or hard depending on whether or not there’s a gas line nearby (and is definitely not a DIY job. Gas leaks are scary bad). Countertops (and cabinets) can get very annoying and expensive very quickly.
satby
@schrodinger’s cat: May isn’t that long. The house I just bought was an estate sale that was listed at $69k in February (South Bend is a buyers market). I got it for $26k less because they had started dropping the price every three weeks in May, waited until the last price drop and offered about what the next one would have been.
It’s a 1913 brick Victorian. I love it, and in a walkable community with 1/2 a mile to several stores and a couple of restaurants.!
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: #1 because it is literally 2 miles from where I currently live. I know my way around. The other place is about 20 miles from where I am currently and we don’t go that way much if at all.
JPL
@Thoughtful David: lol
Hal
@dmsilev:
OK, seriously. Enough with the Chris Christie jokes.
The Pale Scot
@schrodinger’s cat:
Depends on what means more to you, do you entertain and enjoy a well laid out living space, or would you prefer to be outside doing things? I’m a sit under my own fig tree and have a nip or two kinda guy. And being near everything is going to save you oodles of time as the years go by. ”The more you drive, the less intelligent you are” But I know people who found themselves eventually unhappy because the layout of house they enthusiastically purchased didn’t work for them.
And like Corner Stone said, location, location, location.
sukabi
@Adam L Silverman: Sexret Service advance team
Are they detailed with getting the hookers and blow lined up for Mr. Brexit?
satby
@dmsilev: This! Unless you have to move in a specific timeframe, offer your preferred price and be prepared to walk. There are other houses, and they might even come back to you in a couple of weeks if they don’t get any other offers. That happened to me with the Chicago house.
redshirt
@satby: OMG you bought a house for 43K?!
That’s like half a parking space in Mass.
rikyrah
LOLGOP
@LOLGOP
What would Trump actually do for Louisiana?
Take health insurance from 265,723+ people who just got it.
schrodinger's cat
@redshirt: True. And I live in the relatively cheaper part of Mass.
jacy
@Baud:
LSU student body is becoming more diverse, and will continue to do so. The Boyfriend works there in Continuing Ed. (The Boyfriend is even more screamingly liberal than I am….) And kid #4 will likely be attending there in 2 years. You aren’t wrong in thinking that a large segment of the white population is really “white” in the worst sense of the word, but they’re becoming slowly less relevant. Baton Rouge is also home to Southern University, which is an HBC.
There’s an interesting dynamic in several major cities in the south. Sure there are terrible racial divides, but there’s also the fact that a lot of these cities are majority black. It’s changing. Where you have problems is the rural areas of the South, which are disproportionately white, and have disproportionate voting and legislative control.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@schrodinger’s cat: We bought house #2 in 1998. Frankly, I regret it — I wish we were in a town where things were within walking distance and we didn’t have to travel so far to do or see anything interesting. Everything I like to do is at least 30 minutes away.
Also, we plan when we get older to move closer to public transportation, doctors, etc. I think a big part of why my mother was independent for so long was because she lived half a block from a bus stop, and could walk to grocery stores and pharmacies. If you plan to grow old there, buy the house where everything you need is closer and a car isn’t as necessary.
rikyrah
Norman Ornstein
@NormOrnstein Norman Ornstein Retweeted Jonathan Menon
Now some who said nothing before are in panic. Wait ’til Louisiana flooding results in huge wave of Zika mosquitoes
satby
@redshirt: when they say “location, location, location” that cuts both ways. Buyers market with a lot of churn and areas that are beginning an upward climb after some rough years. But perfectly safe.
The real deals are in Detroit, I know folks who’ve moved there, but it’s too far from Chicago for me. I like to drive in to the city at least monthly.
jacy
@schrodinger’s cat:
Sounds from everything like #1 has the edge. Best wishes for a regret-free decision! This was the first time I bought a home by myself without a significant other to take on part of the decision-making; it’s an experience that’s been both really great, and really nerve-wracking.
Miss Bianca
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Share! Share the pics!
The Pale Scot
Link didn’t work
”The more you drive, the less intelligent you are”
Adam L Silverman
@Thoughtful David: I’m on the cell phone. So tiny keysXbig thumbs…
rikyrah
@satby:
Congrats satby!!!!
raven
Chelimo the the Silver in the 5000! He a GI too!
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: Go for it.. If it doesn’t work out, then you can think about other options. I was lucky when I remodeled because the economy tanked, I was quite handy and I looked for deals, and there were deals to be had.
rikyrah
The evidence is mounting that Donald Trump isn’t as rich as he claims as an investigation into his business holdings revealed twice as much debt as he reported on his federal disclosure forms.
The New York Times looked into Trump’s business interests and found a mountain of debt:
But an investigation by The New York Times into the financial maze of Mr. Trump’s real estate holdings in the United States reveals that companies he owns have at least $650 million in debt — twice the amount than can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid for the White House. The Times’s inquiry also found that Mr. Trump’s fortunes depend deeply on a wide array of financial backers, including one he has cited in attacks during his campaign.
For example, an office building on Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, of which Mr. Trump is part owner, carries a $950 million loan. Among the lenders: the Bank of China, one of the largest banks in a country that Mr. Trump has railed against as an economic foe of the United States, and Goldman Sachs, a financial institution he has said controls Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, after it paid her $675,000 in speaking fees.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: excuses, excuses.. lol
sukabi
You’d think that having two large areas of Florida being tagged by the CDC with travel advisories would embarrass the repubs into actually doing their phucking jobs and get funding to take care of the bugs… but nnnoooo, gotta be assholes and turn this country into a “no go zone” .
Anoniminous
@schrodinger’s cat:
Appliances are no big deal. Unless you’re changing sizes stoves are easy. Call the gas company and they should put in the line for you either free or at cost, then it is a matter of slipping out the old and slipping in the new; the store you buy it from should hook it up for you. Fridges are even easier and the store should haul the old one away. In both cases, check with the utility company as some places will give you a rebate on the cost if you are upgrading.
Counter tops. H’mmm. Are they tile or single piece linoleum or ???
You should consider in-cabinet steel drawers. Get the steel ones, not the cheap ones, and — yeah — they are expensive … but they increase your storage space by 25%by using the dead space, eliminate the ‘archeological expeditions’ to find things, and your knees will love you. They are dead easy to install. We love ours.
redshirt
@satby: I’m just amazed at that number. I’ve read tales of decent 4 bedroom houses in Millinocket Maine going for 35K, but that’s Millinocket. It’s near dead in the middle of nowhere with the remaining industry gone. There’s almost no future there except possibly maybe as a stocking stop for folks going to Katahdin.
I assume there’s much more potential in your areas.
raven
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: It’s nice in Normaltown but property values have skyrocketed with the Navy School turning into the medical school.
MomSense
@Miss Bianca:
Is it a “no caller ID” number? If so, it could very well be a Clinton/combined campaign call. We are not leaving messages yet. I’m guessing vols are following a similar directive in CO.
satby
@rikyrah: Thanks! It’s a relief, with all the rain we had today I found new leaks in the roof from the tree damage. I’m ready to GO!
jacy
@satby:
House sounds awesome! Hope you are very happy there.
Miss Bianca
Hmmm…if I have this correctly, number is listed to an ESL teacher on the Front Range somewhere. Which is something of a connection to my past professional life. Curiouser and curiouser. However, I shan’t call.
I’ve had people do that when I got a wrong number, and it was always disconcerting to hear someone bark, “who is this?!” at me. It’s like, “dude…YOU called me…oh, wait..”
@MomSense: Oh, maybe that’s it! Thanks for that insight!
JPL
MSM seems to thing the optics are bad for Obama, but they haven’t covered the flooding. Instead they followed Trump around as though he was a dog in heat.
SiubhanDuinne
@gogol’s wife:
Oh, I thought it was terrific! Thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m not always a big Hugh Grant fan, but he was perfection as FFJ’s husband. Streep was wonderful, as always. Even when she’s in a meh vehicle, she almost always delivers, and this was a pretty good screenplay. Sorry they left out the famous episode of the taxi accident* but from a dramatic standpoint it would probably have been an unnecessary distraction. I didn’t know any of the syphilis stuff.
*Short version: FFJ was riding in a taxi that collided with another vehicle. All her friends urged her to sue the cab company and driver, but she refused, saying “Ever since the accident, my high C is higher than ever!” She gave the cabbie a box of fine cigars as a thank-you.
Prescott Cactus
@schrodinger’s cat: the old saying goes “It’s better to have the cheapest house in an expensive neighborhood than a great house in a bad neighborhood.
redshirt
@The Pale Scot: I’m driving so much lately I can feel the life bleeding out of me. The price I pay for living 2 hours from everything.
satby
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Send them to Anne Laurie for the morning pet pictures.
Mary G
@satby: That sounds lovely. I bought small close to town instead of huge but a long drive away and never regretted it.@schrodinger’s cat: Add another vote for #1.
raven
@redshirt: I’ve worked from home for 12 years. It’s really made a difference as I age. I don’t think I could have done the hour commute I used to do.
Adam L Silverman
@sukabi: actually panic has started to set in among the GOP portion of the Florida Congressional delegation. It’s finally sunk in that they’re up for reelection, that they can’t blame this on Democratic control of even one chamber of Congress, and their reelection efforts are more difficult than expected this year. So they’ve asked Speaker Ryan to immediately call a special session and pass a clean bill giving the President what he asked for.
schrodinger's cat
@Anoniminous: They are laminate counter tops.
jacy
@redshirt:
The Boyfriend and I each have houses in Baton Rouge that didn’t flood. So if they didn’t this time, they never will. (And if they do, it’s a true apocalypse and we’ll all be dead.) He told me, “I don’t mean to sound callous, but you do realize that this weekend both are houses gained between 10% and 30% value….”
I just bought in May, and I looked at the areas of nine other houses I looked at before I bought. All but one of them took water, and three were in Denham Springs, which was a total loss. Scary.
MomSense
@gogol’s wife:
I loved it, too. One of the women in the audience told me that her family listened to the recordings when she was growing up. I said the other night that the actor who played Cosme has the most expressive and sweet face I’ve ever seen.
NotMax
@schrodinger’s cat
Dunno if you saw it (dead thread) – response to your Roku question.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, ha HA! Somehow I find it extremely gratifying to hear that THOSE particular chickens are coming home to roost! Or would that be mosquitos coming in to bite?
Mike J
Anyone watching the Tragically Hip farewell show?
redshirt
@raven: Amen. One day I’ll get back there.
raven
@Mike J: Olympics here.
satby
@redshirt: South Bend is a multi-college town, but there’s some light industry and a lot of logistics companies around. But mostly a service economy. Houses go up to several hundred thousands in outlying subdivisions; the average price of houses in the city center is well under $100k. The irony is I got a bigger, better house for less that 1/2 of what I owe on the country farmhouse.
TS
@schrodinger’s cat:
Always choose location – you can renovate the house,
raven
Chelimo DQ’d. shit.
schrodinger's cat
@NotMax: Thanks! I was leaning towards Roku2. Sling has a promotion on both. R2 is free if you sign up for 3 months and R3 is 50% off. Being cheap, I was leaning towards Roku 2.
MomSense
@SiubhanDuinne:
Love the taxi story!
Doug R
@Miss Bianca: Try a text. What?
NotMax
@raven
Spiral here. Although gonna have to pause it to sneak in a pre-Saturday night gathering nap.
sukabi
@Adam L Silverman: well good, but they’re going to find they should have been grownups months ago, as it’s going to get worse before it’s gotten under control. Way more $$$ going to be needed in medical costs and eradication measures than if they’d acted months ago.
They’re still short sighted assholes.
MomSense
@raven:
Same. As soon as the closing ceremonies end, I’m going to sleep.
raven
@NotMax: We spent another frickin day getting ready for this damn garden club party tomorrow! I have all my fish thawing but, since I froze them in big ass blocks of ice, I won’t know exactly how much I have until morning.
redshirt
@satby: Congrats. Hope you can turn a nice tidy profit on it after many years of living in it and the rebound of your local economy.
raven
@MomSense: They are tomorrow. I really wish I had my hernia surgery during the games so I cold have watched while I chilled.
NotMax
@raven
Heh. Fishin’ roulette.
redshirt
@sukabi: The Repukes have no intention of helping fight Zika as they want to use a health crisis in October for political purposes.
It’s the most base motivation you could consider, but then, that’s our Republican Party.
gogol's wife
@SiubhanDuinne:
I was pleasantly surprised too. I do love Grant, and I think this was one of his best roles.
Prescott Cactus
@dmsilev: Doubt it is rolled out nationwide but Habitat for Humanity has Re-Stores in some area’s where they sell everything from doors, trim to appliances & countertops. They also get product from Home Depot & Lowes.
In Arizona they a group (Deconstruction department) that will come out to your home and remove all cabinets, appliances, countertops and islands if they are in at least good enough shape to resell. Two or three week lead time from call, initial look-see to a crew of 4 to 8 folks coming out to remove everything in 2 to 4 hours.
MomSense
@raven:
Did you get the tree limb sorted out? Glad it came down when you weren’t under it!
gogol's wife
@MomSense:
And he did his own piano playing.
Mike J
@schrodinger’s cat: The 3 has a better processor. Almost always doesn’t matter except on long youtube streams. My 2 will barf and reboot itself if I try to watch a 3 hour youtube, my 3 chugs along. Only happens youtube. Never had a problem with say, an Amazon stream, or Premier League football on the 2.
jl
@jl: Hadn’t thought about it, but in terms of his pitch to African-Americans, Trump is no bigot at all. His pitch is the same to everybody: ‘you are stupid losers. I am a genius, a winner, Leave it all to me and I’ll fix it. You’ll get tired of winning when everyone does everything my way.’. See, Trump not a bigot after all. (/snark tag here)
MomSense
@raven:
I’ve had very little sleep since the games started and I’ve tripled my coffee intake. The Olympics have me burning the candle at both ends.
SiubhanDuinne
@MomSense:
I cut my teeth on the first Florence Foster Jenkins record (The Glory??? of the Human Voice) and to this day, straightforward performances of things like the Queen of the Night aria and the Musical Snuff-Box sound just slightly ~wrong~ to me because I first learned them with FFJ’s intonation, or lack thereof.
The actor who played Cosmé McMoon (which is one of the Best. Names. EVAH., yes?) was just charming. Very expressive face. He is apparently famous from a TV program I’ve never seen. Heard an interview with him a few days ago and he played his own piano in the film. It makes a difference, just as did the fact that Streep did her own singing and wasn’t dubbed by a latter-day Marni Nixon.
sukabi
@redshirt: if they go that route they are writing their own epitaph, no way Obama, Clinton, gov. Of the affected states, senate and house dems will sit still for that. They are really endangering the lives of everyone with that bullshit.
raven
@MomSense: Yea, they make a pruning blade for a sawzall and it even handled the 8in section. I cut all the small limbs then as much of the trunk as I could. I rolled about a 1oft log down the hill into the kudzu so that is done!
MomSense
FELIX!!! Gold!
Doug R
@Calming Influence: I know here in the PNW 25C/77F feels intolerably hot. Trust me, in the rest of the continent, they’re laughing at us.
MomSense
@raven:
I hope your bride spoils you for a few days for all your hard work.
@SiubhanDuinne:
He is on The Big Bang Theory which is a show I share with my kids and my dad. It’s very funny.
Steeplejack
* DVR Alert *
TCM is running Dead Reckoning (1947) at midnight EDT tonight. Underrated (and not shown very often) noir with Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott. Ex-paratrooper comes to a corrupt Florida town to find out what happened to his missing buddy.
sukabi
@Doug R: where the hell you get 77°? It was 100° yesterday and 96° today in my part of PNW
Doug R
@schrodinger’s cat: Overpriced? Then make an offer solidly in your price range and see if they bite. Otherwise, on to the other property.
raven
@MomSense: She has worked about 599 bazillion times harder than I have. For reals.
SiubhanDuinne
@gogol’s wife:
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike him at all. It’s just that so much of the time he ends up simply playing Hugh Grant. This role had a little more meat to it, and he did it well.
jl
@sukabi: “if they go that route they are writing their own epitaph, ”
I guess depends on how stupid they think public is. The probability was very close to one that would get domestic transmission in places in US that have the right mosquitoes. Maybe public did not know that, but the public should know something needs to be done now.
And, have to say, media reporting on the Zika virus and funding fight has been miserable. I heard nonsense like “The Democrats would not allow ‘left over money’ from Ebola epidemic be used”. What does ‘left over money’ mean? There was money sitting in the Ebola Epidemic Bank of Sierra Leone gathering dust? Surveillance and prevention money is ‘left over money’? Or media drones just repeated some nonsense propaganda a GOPer hack spat out instead of doing an ounce of work on the story? I’d like to know.
SiubhanDuinne
@MomSense:
I’ve heard good things about that program, but have never seen it. I’ll see if the library has it on DVD and maybe binge watch this winter sometime.
The Pale Scot
@Miss Bianca:
Assuming it’s a cell phone; If it’s someone you talk to all the time, maybe they don’t waste your time, I hate using my voicemail (I dislike phones period), If you don’t know them NO WAY.
Anoniminous
@schrodinger’s cat:
OK.
Typically those are one piece, attached to the base cabinet by screws from underneath the cabinet. Meaning removing/replacing is dead simple: unscrew the screws, lift the old piece up and out, put in the new piece, screw it to the base cabinet, and you’re done. Note I didn’t mention anything about the back splash/wall tiling/whatever because I don’t know where the grout line is.
“Typically” because I have known dorks to put down glue to the base cabinet before screwing them down, making it not so easy to replace. The only way to find out is to replace a piece and see how it goes.
So far your remodel is all surface and appearance which AFAICT can be done later if/when. You aren’t ripping out sinks, running new electrical lines, and stuff like that.
MomSense
@raven:
And then she’ll be on call for your hernia recuperation so I guess you’ll have to spoil her.
I declined the invitation to be in the garden tour this year because I was spooked by all the work I’d have to do. Good thing I did because I got the cold from hell and would never have pulled it off.
redshirt
@sukabi: Your faith in our media is greater than mine. I can see them running “Dems block Zika funding” stories all day and all night. Then running human interest stories highlighting victims, then scare stories how you should be very afraid.
CaseyL
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh, mountains! I’d opt for the mountain view. Absolutely.
raven
@MomSense: Yea, the tour is in the spring. This is their dopey party/eats thing. It gave the girl an excuse to go berserk and “finish” the work on the yard left from the addition work. Shit make her happy so, whatever. I’m sure I’ll be a lousy patient, I don’t like being fussed over.
NorthLeft12
@Mike J: Yes, was going to go to a simulcast in Canatera Park in Sarnia but it is raining and I don’t have the energy to stand in the rain with my wife and dog. It’s been a long day already.
jl
@redshirt: GOP has been pumping out nonsense excuses why they shouldn’t need to spend new money on a new disease, each BS and some kind of pander. Should use women’s reproductive health money, ‘left over’ Ebola epidemic money, kids’ disease immunization money, Obamacare money should fund it. Media just repeats whatever BS excuse the GOPers shell out. For ‘balance’ I guess.
jl
Is that Pence in the top pic? Didn’t know Pence was in Louisiana with Trump. Maybe Trump campaign photoshopped him in (no, can’t be that, would detract from the Star), or RNC hack who was told to.
Looks like Pence is distracted and concentrating very hard, trying to figure out how the toys work. “How do they do that? Is it magick?”
rikyrah
Affluent and Black, and
Still Trapped by Segregation
Why well-off black families end up living in poorer areas
than white families with similar or even lower incomes.
By JOHN ELIGON and ROBERT GEBELOFFAUG. 20, 2016
MILWAUKEE — Their daughter was sick and they needed family around to help care for her, so JoAnne and Maanaan Sabir took an unexpected detour.
They had spent years blowing past mileposts: earning advanced degrees and six-figure incomes, buying a 2,500-square-foot Victorian with hardwood floors. Yet here they were, both 37, moving to a corner of town pocked by empty lots, cramming into an apartment above Ms. Sabir’s mother, in the very duplex that Ms. Sabir’s grandparents had bought six decades earlier.
Their new dwelling was in a part of the Lindsay Heights neighborhood where more than one in three families lives in poverty; gunshots were too often a part of the nighttime soundtrack. They planned to leave once their daughter, Ameera, was healthy.
But then, reminding them of why they feel at home in communities like this one, their new neighbors started frequently checking on Ameera: Is she doing O.K.? And on their son, Taj: When’s his next basketball game? Mr. Sabir’s car stalled in the middle of the street one night, and it was the young men too often stereotyped as suspicious who helped him push it home. So many welcoming black faces like their own, they thought.
“It felt like that’s where we should be,” Ms. Sabir said.
Now, two years later, Ameera, 14, is healthy. And the Sabirs have not left. They have, in fact, only strengthened their resolve to stay after a fatal police shooting last weekend led to fiery unrest that was also fueled by frustrations over race and segregation. Rooted where they are, the Sabirs point to a broad yet little explored fact of American segregation: Affluent black families, freed from the restrictions of low income, often end up living in poor and segregated communities anyway.
It is a national phenomenon challenging the popular assumption that segregation is more about class than about race, that when black families earn more money, some ideal of post-racial integration will inevitably be reached.
In fact, a New York Times analysis of 2014 census figures shows that income alone cannot explain, nor would it likely end, the segregation that has defined American cities and suburbs for generations.
The choices that black families make today are inevitably constrained by a legacy of racism that prevented their ancestors from buying quality housing and then passing down wealth that might have allowed today’s generation to move into more stable communities. And even when black households try to cross color boundaries, they are not always met with open arms: Studies have shown that white people prefer to live in communities where there are fewer black people, regardless of their income.
The result: Nationally, black and white families of similar incomes still live in separate worlds.
In many of America’s largest metropolitan areas, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, black families making $100,000 or more are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods than even white households making less than $25,000. This is particularly true in areas with a long history of residential segregation, like metropolitan Milwaukee.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The House attached Planned Parenthood defunding to the Zika funding, didn’t they? Then they left to go a’fundraising?
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@raven: I’m not sure we’ll stay in Georgia. I miss the ocean and flat bike paths (the Firefly Trail is still years away, from the looks of it). But we’re not going anywhere for a while.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m pretty sure I found about her thru’ “Songs in the Key of Z” which dealt with “outsider music”. Of course, the irony is that she was the ultimate insider, but in her sublime and serene indifference to her stunning lack of talent, and single-minded pursuit of the Muse, however far and fast away it fled, she was considered a proud “outside artist” by the standards of the authors.
Villago Delenda Est
Governor Christie needs to STFU about this shit.
jl
@rikyrah:
” In many of America’s largest metropolitan areas, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, ”
I’ve wondered about that. In Los Angeles, seems like middle class African-American families have been confined to bands around the central cities that they moved out of. One is a long band running north and south halfway between central LA and the beach. Much of the central city is Hispanic and poor SE Asian now. Anyway, you can see the segregation. Neighborhoods are quite a mix, parts look very nice, I suppose because families with good incomes have been fixing up older and rather small, tract houses for decades. Other parts look not so good.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@raven: I work from home now, but it’s an informal arrangement, only because none of the people I support are based in Georgia, and none of the HR people who would enforce the no-non-exempt-staff-working-from-home rule are based here either. It’s nice, but it can be yanked away from me with no notice. I wish I could plan my life around it — with Mr. Mingobat working in Athens, I’d be tempted to move there, at least until he retires — but my company’s office is in Johns Creek, which would be an impossible commute if HR ever starts cracking down.
rikyrah
Tika Sumpter on Playing the Future First Lady, Michelle Obama
By ROBERT ITO
AUG. 18, 2016
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Tika Sumpter knew the screenplay was something special. It was, at its core, a romance, with two charming leads slowly falling for each other over the course of a single Chicago day. They speak passionately — at some points, angrily — about moral courage and racial politics and the struggles of staying true to oneself. They take sides on “Good Times” versus “The Brady Bunch,” ice cream versus pie. They quote the poet Gwendolyn Brooks (“We Real Cool”) from memory, while sizing up Ernie Barnes’s painting “Sugar Shack.” They watch “Do the Right Thing.”
It didn’t hurt that the two characters were Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson, in a fictionalized account of their first date, in 1989, when Spike Lee’s film was in theaters and Janet Jackson’s “Miss You Much” was in the air.
“I loved that it was an origin story about the two most famous people in the world right now, and about how they fell in love,” Ms. Sumpter said. “You don’t see a lot of black leads in love stories, and you definitely don’t see a lot of walk and talks with black people.”
In “Southside With You,” which opens Aug. 26, Ms. Sumpter plays the first lady-to-be at 25, a corporate lawyer who is also an adviser to a young man named Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers), an up-and-coming, Harvard-educated summer associate. The film received rave reviews when it had its premiere at Sundance, where it was one of the festival’s breakouts, in large part because of Ms. Sumpter’s performance. But “Southside With You” may not have been made if Ms. Sumpter hadn’t also pitched in as one of three producers.
As much as Ms. Sumpter coveted the meaty role of Michelle Robinson, once she secured the part, reality set in. “At first it was overwhelming,” she admitted. “I’ve never been to Harvard, I’ve never been to Princeton. I didn’t even finish school because I couldn’t afford it. But once I stripped away that ‘Michelle Obama,’ I was able to take it back to that girl from the South Side.”
The actress was here at the London Hotel on a recent morning, holding forth on the challenges of playing the young Ms. Robinson. Dressed in a black sundress and high heels, Ms. Sumpter, 36, would occasionally and animatedly slip into Mrs. Obama’s distinctive speech patterns to describe a scene or illustrate a point. “You feel like she’s talking just to you,” she said. “And she enunciates everything, to show that she really means what she says.”
Born Euphemia LatiQue Sumpter in Queens, the actress was the fourth child of six. Her mother was a corrections officer at Rikers Island; her father died when she was 13. “My mom said I was quiet and observant,” she said. “I always wanted to impress her, so I’d always clean the house.” In school, she was on the cheerleading squad, ran for student council, befriended skinheads and “the preppy girls,” spoke up for the bullied. “I was that girl in high school,” she said.
redshirt
@Villago Delenda Est: Not gonna happen. They’re gonna run with the “Obama played golf while Baton Rouge drowned” line for a while, even though Obama isn’t running for anything. Even though a black man playing golf goes against all their normal buttons.
It’s Katrina “payback”, just like everything they do is payback for something else.
redshirt
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, but riders don’t really sink into the collective consciousness. Which is entirely the point of course.
Villago Delenda Est
@sukabi: He’s probably one of those people on the coast.
raven
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: It would be, I commuted to tech 20 years ago and it was a nightmare. It’s way worse now.
raven
Chelimo reinstated!
Villago Delenda Est
@Doug R: In Seattle they get absolutely apoplectic if it hits 90 F. Down in the Willamette Valley, we shrug that off.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
I can’t wait to see this film! Have been seeing trailers for it for (it seems like) about a year.
Villago Delenda Est
@redshirt: Yes, I know. This is one of the reasons I talk of tumbrels now and again.
geg6
@schrodinger’s cat:
The first, no question.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
MomSense
@redshirt:
My son is moving to Austin and says the rents are a lot cheaper than Portland.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: I am so sympathetic to the plight of the Florida GOP delegation.
NOT.
amk
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: isis is doing god’s will, that michelle?
redshirt
@MomSense: Austin is cheaper than Portland?!
I guess Austin’s just much bigger so more choice. But that’s pretty amazing.
ms_canadada
@gogol’s wife: My sister and I saw ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’ last Thursday in Kanata, Ontario. Hugh Grant was wonderful, IMHO, and Meryl Streep, well she’s Meryl Streep!
I really enjoyed it, and thought the energy between Meryl and Hugh was absolutely charming. Just my $.02.
BTW, I don’t get out much :^)
Patricia Kayden
@Jeff Spender: lol! Voting for Stein is like voting for Nader. It’s meaningless and could end up throwing the election to Trump. Glad to see that Stein is not more competent or competitive.
Lizzy L
I live in one of the poorest towns in the Bay Area, and I’m not even going to talk about the house prices in my neighborhood. They’re not as bad as they were in 2007. In 2007 the house next door to me, 940 sq. ft. 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, no garage, on a not at all special lot, sold for just under half a million dollars. I knew then that the crash was coming.
redshirt
@Villago Delenda Est: Are tumbrels even made in America any more?
Sad!
Villago Delenda Est
@amk: Michele. One L, just like Guntits in Nevada. Michelle is OUR Belle, the fabulous First Lady.
redshirt
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Michelle Bachman as your foreign policy advisor!
The heavens wept.
amk
@Villago Delenda Est: My bad.
Corner Stone
@MomSense: Austin where?
amk
have we left out any other kooks that are yet to join our team ?
/donnie dick
hitchhiker
@schrodinger’s cat:
We bought a beautiful house in a boring exurb in 1991 … living there was great while our kids (1 and 3 when we moved in) were at home. BUT it was always an ordeal to visit our friends (who lived in the urb) or have them come visit us. And forget about spontaneous anything; the drive into the city was onerous for anything.
About a year ago we decided to rent out said house and occupy a small apartment with a great city/water view and everything easy to get to. It’s made me realize how different our lives would have been if we’d always lived in a place more to our liking … the kids would have adjusted to whatever seemed normal, but at the time we were thinking of giving them room to spread out & a good neighborhood public school.
I got to hate the symbol of the burbs: the garage door opener. Everyone is sealed in at all times, and if you don’t catch your neighbor walking to the mailbox, you may never see them at all.
Brachiator
@gogol’s wife:
Very funny about the audience demographics.
Good to see that you enjoyed the movie.
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA:
I worked from home for two years when I was doing a job for a software company, and it was a great experience. I had to impose a little self-discipline in the beginning, make sure that I created a “this is work” atmosphere, but it worked out well.
It’s funny that some companies encourage working from home, while others are suspicious of the concept.
J R in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
If the less expensive house is on higher ground for the neighborhood, go for it. Else, if the higher end house is on higher ground for the neighborhood, go for it. Assuming the interior of both houses is acceptable.
Else look some more. Elevation is more critical now than it was last month, as climate changes and rain becomes more prone to cause local flooding.
Mike J
@Villago Delenda Est:
I grew up in Memphis. There’s a reason I moved to Seattle, and it ain’t because I like it over 90 degrees.
Jeffro
@schrodinger’s cat: You have to go with the better location that’s close to everything…it’s nice to have an amazing house, but if you’re not close to the amenities (parks, shopping, fun stuff) that you enjoy, it won’t mean much.
cmorenc
@gene108:
Just *try* to get play-doh out of a carpet once someone has stepped on it and mashed it into the fibers.
Also, I suppose your Christmas gift to this kid when he was 10 was a drum set. You really must secretly hate his parents. :=)
BTW: something else you’ll never never never ever completely get out of carpet – is orange or red gatorade. It soaks all the way down through the carpet into the pad underneath, and no matter how many times you have the carpet cleaned (even professionally), just enough remains in the pad and will get wicked back up into the carpet to again discolor it to a noticeable extent after a day or two, especially if the carpet is a light color. It’s for this reason (also the persistent stickiness that attracts dirt) that many sports complexes with an artificial turf surface ban players from bringing gatorade or powarade onto the artificial turf surface.
Feebog
@Steeplejack:
They ran Key Largo earlier today. Grandkids (10 and 13) got into it pretty quickly. Did not remember that Clarie Trevor won an Oscar for her part.
Jeffro
@dmsilev: kind of historic, the words our usually timid MSM are resorting to when trying to get the point across this election…
…not a free pass or an absolution of past sins, but at least they are showing signs of life, common sense, civic duty, etc.
Honus
@Adam L Silverman: @Adam L Silverman: president Obama has come to Charlottesville three times, twice within a block of my office, and I’ve never seen any guys like that. And SS guys were all over the place days before he got here.
sukabi
@Villago Delenda Est: think he’s still under the impression he’ll be rewarded with a plum position in the drumpf administration… but yeah, he needs to STFU period.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro:
Jeebus help you if Atrios is monitoring this thread. He does not seem to understand what people actually consider an amenity.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sukabi: I confess to having had many unchristian thoughts about Rudi Giuliani in recent weeks, as well. and that might-as-well be hooded garden gnome Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.
Jeffro
@Mike J: Just heard about this today…apparently the lead singer/songwriter has brain cancer and will soon be gone? Had heard the band’s name before but never checked out the music. Good stuff?
Shalimar
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. I promise not to laugh when he shoots himself in the foot, since that is where he is supposed to have it pointed.
sukabi
@redshirt: don’t have any faith in the media, but they seem to love twitter, facebook and other alt media as opposed to doing actual journalism…perhaps a social media campaign to bypass traditional media to directly communicate with folks…
Worked for Obama’s presidential campaigns, worked for Sanders as far as message, name recognition.
sukabi
@schrodinger’s cat: JR’s right, before you buy, and while you’re searching check the parcel maps at the county to see if the properties you’re looking at are in flood zones… FEMA has been updating maps and redrawing flood planes the last several years. You don’t want to get stuck with something that’s going to be a submarine the next major flood.
Jeffro
@Corner Stone:
Noted, I guess…he’s welcome to try and convince me that it’s a good thing to be far away from my job, restaurants, shopping, parks, etc. Who’d want all that icky stuff right next to them anyway, right?!? ;)
MomSense
@Corner Stone:
Texas.
schrodinger's cat
@sukabi:.@J R in WV: I have lived in this area for 5 years and there has never been a problem with flooding but I will double check
Eric U.
@Corner Stone: I don’t understand this post at all. Atrios is big on walkable neighborhoods close to shopping, parks, etc, and not spreading things out so that parking is the most important thing. In particular, destroying nice neighborhoods so that suburbanites can come and visit easily.
Prescott Cactus
@Mike J:
Trying !
redshirt
@MomSense: Heheh. Watch Corner Stone lose it in reply.
redshirt
@sukabi: Maybe it’s a Presidential year/off Presidential year kind of thing. Ebola fears worked well for them in 2014. Thus, they WILL be going back to that well.
pat
@schrodinger’s cat:
Sounds to me like this is what you want and you’re just looking for folks to say Yeah!
So.. Yeah.
schrodinger's cat
@hitchhiker: Well put, that’s what I am afraid of, if we chose 2.
Corner Stone
@MomSense: Rents in Austin, TX are less than in Portland, ME? Is that accurate as to what I have read?
Just making sure I have the locations correct, thanks.
redshirt
@Corner Stone:
*in quiet British naturalist voice* “And here you see Corner Stone laying a trap for MomSense, thinking her unaware of even the possibility of a trap….”
Corner Stone
@Eric U.: Atrios does not understand what amenities are for actual real people with families. Curb cuts and parking are important but there are a number of items that should also be included that he dismisses.
The Pale Scot
@Calming Influence:
MomSense
@Corner Stone:
Yes. Housing prices, too. I’ve been checking it out since he told me he is moving.
Corner Stone
@MomSense: Holy shit. You and/or he should move immediately then. Austin is an amazing place to be. Technology forward, great outdoor places, amazing vitality through the technology industry and also UT. I’m there several times a year, it’s amazeballs.
Hot AF in summer but great to be outdoors 10 months a year.
ETA, I will say though that right now is the wrong time to look for places in Austin.
The neighborhoods I want to live in are around $500K for a tear down.
MomSense
@Corner Stone:
I’ve visited a few times and it’s great. He is going the end of September and saying with friends until he lines up a place. Three of his friends have moved there in the last year and they are loving it. I’m looking forward to visiting.
MomSense
@Corner Stone:
They don’t care about schools at this point in their lives. It’s just work and trying to get gigs in the evenings.
The Pale Scot
@redshirt: That’s the worst thing about FL, I gained 80 lbs when I moved here, I blame it on lack of good food choices and mostly having to drive fckin’ EVERYWHERE, took me 3 years to lose it.
redshirt
@The Pale Scot: Well, let me clarify that it’s all because of the poor choices of my fellow drivers. They’re uniformly terrible.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
I had a great software person who had diabetic nerve pain in her feet, and had arranged to work from home unless a meet was scheduled. I had worked with her before and helped recruit her to the agency I worked with the last nearly 20 years of my career.
After I retired my former boss only called me to ask about her “agreement” to work from home. He was evidently upset that he couldn’t walk down the hall and see her hard at work, no matter that he wouldn’t have known what she was doing if he had watched her working, had never worked together with her, etc.
I couldn’t understand why he cared where the work was getting done – she was very productive, her work was easily maintained, her users loved working with her… what more could you ask for?
Gretchen
@redshirt: Rod Dreher over at American Conservative is having conniptions that Obama hasn’t been there yet. He thinks he’s only going at all because Trump did. He doesn’t believe that the governor said he shouldn’t go, and if the governor did say that, it’s just to give him cover. He’s unconcerned about pulling first-responders from flood duty to cover the president, and is sure the president would have gone to Berkley immediately if they had a disaster.
The fact that he’s golfing on Martha’s Vineyard seems to be a particular sore point. Bush vacationing on his “ranch” didn’t count as vacationing, even though he vacationed more than any other president before or since. But Obama vacationing in hoity-toity places like Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard seems to particularly get their goats.
Matt McIrvin
@Gretchen: Republicans spent basically Obama’s entire first term waiting for the shoe to drop that would be “Obama’s Katrina.” It became one of the rotating taglines here, I think. About a dozen different things were Obama’s Katrina: Deepwater Horizon, the Haiti earthquake, a bunch of hurricanes, I forget what else.
I think Hurricane Sandy actually being the thing they blamed for Obama’s reelection put a close to the genre for a while. But flooding in Louisiana is on the nose enough that they’ve decided to revive it. And they think it was always all about symbols–Bush going to McCain’s birthday party while Louisiana drowned, not the actual bungling of the relief effort that was happening at the same time. If it’s about symbols, then you can find some symbol that will symmetrically take down Obama.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gretchen: Rod Dreher needs to STFU, just like Chris Christie.
redshirt
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, this precisely. They do believe everything is symbol, and thus symbols of their defeats must be countered by opposite symbols. Mirror symbols. They must reverse the charge of the failed symbol and turn it on the accuser, on the Attacker.
Bobby D
@schrodinger’s cat: Location location location. First three rules of real estate. That said, you have to live there, do what makes you happy as far as commute, local amenities like grocers, etc. For me,it’s always about proximity to work. I hate to commute and live as close as possible, last job I walked to for 6 years. This one, I live in the closest neighborhood to the military base I work on, and the drive to office is 10min.
hitchhiker
@Matt McIrvin:
This thread’s over, but I have to say that I’ve always loved the “Obama’s Katrina” thing. In each iteration, it never, ever is or could be, because for something to qualify as a “Katrina” it has to be able to stand for colossal presidential incompetence — and the effect of discussing it over and over was, every single time, to remind us all about who really did have a “Katrina.”
It was their guy.
redshirt
@hitchhiker: Symbols. When they reference Katrina, they don’t actually mean the hurricane which swept over the Gulf Coast and the results. They mean the ideas of “Failure”; “Embarrassment”; “Shame”; “Bad Things”. Things Katrina represents. Symbols.
The Pale Scot
@redshirt:
Apparently I can’t do links properly tonight.
FYWP
The Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p-cY1XWN_Q&t=4m5s
redshirt
@The Pale Scot: LOL. Thank you.
The Pale Scot
@J R in WV:
Lack of knowing whether he could have pushed her just a little more and claimed credit for his management skills enhancing “efficiency”
Uncle Cosmo
@Lizzy L: Add MD Gov Larry Hogan (GOP!) to the list; he’s said publicly that he won’t support Trumpolini. I’m no fan of his but I’ll give him that.
shomi
Haven’t heard enough about how Trump contributes almost nothing to charity. Yet another reason he doesn’t want his tax returns made public. However, suddenly he wants to go to Louisiana and hand out play doo…..lol. Give me a break.
NWliving
@schrodinger’s cat: Location always.
Which means the best location that works for you, not some real estate writer or agent.