Looks like we could use an open thread after the catharsis of watching Madam Speaker take the gavel again. As some of you said in the earlier threads, I haven’t felt this much hope since November 2016.
Here’s a photo taken yesterday of Badger Aloysius LaBoeuf McMurtry:
He (among others) is a Mr. October in the 2019 Pets of Balloon Juice Calendar. That’s all I’ve got. Open thread!
Virginia
What a good and handsome boy. Betty, I love your new swampville.
Elizabelle
Badger’s getting bigger!
Happy Thursday to us all.
germy
Spanky
That boy is getting big!
Tom Levenson
That’s quite a domain of which Badger is master.
Spanky
That boy is getting big!
(My former comment with mistyped email addy may be deleted, TYVM.)
Betty Cracker
@Tom Levenson: That’s as close as Badger ever gets to the water. There be gators!
TomatoQueen
Handsome Badger and he knows it, too.
Punchy
@germy: that’s a fantastic twitter handle Ms. Petri owns…
Spanky
I notice that the stock market is continuing its slow deflation. Is that really just because of Apple’s stumble in China? I suspect not.
In related news, I suppose, my retirement at the end of the month is becoming more real. The federal contract I’m currently on is expiring and I’m totally unexcited to be looking for another job. And since my 65th b-day is just around the corner … eh, why torture myself?
Mary G
He’s a tuxedo dog with the white front feet!
Tom Levenson
@Mary G: Spats!
germy
@Punchy: She deserves a Pulitzer.
Adam L Silverman
@Spanky: Its because of the trade war and tariffs, because the President can’t stop going after the Fed chair he appointed, because the Fed chair he appointed is a hard money hawk and has raised interest rates, and because his three senior most economic advisors – Hassett, Kudlow, and Navarro – are absolute morons who can’t get their stories straight either.
dmsilev
@Adam L Silverman: We should look on the bright side. Usually, a President can’t legitimately take credit for shifts in the stock market. This one can.
Patricia Kayden
Badger is too adorable. He looks like a mini Boxer.
This is a great day. Watched the swearing in ceremony for Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic majority. Looking forward to all they’ll accomplish in the next two years. A new sheriff is in town!
jl
@Spanky:
” the stock market is continuing its slow deflation. ”
And saw a tweet from an analyst claiming that movements in stock market now seem to be correlated with movements in bond yields. Which, if continues, could mean prospects for stock market look poor enough that there is a ‘flight to safety’ among investors. That would be a signal that drops in stock market will begin to say something about likelihood and timing of next recession.
And I missed that the Treasury 10-2 year yield curve summary took a big drop towards inversion in mid-December.
And I see lots of sputtering in the news about how Trump’s trade war starting to affect outlook on economic activity.
So, some grouches on this here very blog gave me some guff about whether reasonable to start looking for early signs of recession. I think it is about the right time to start doing that, and news today just reinforces my views. I think odds of a, hopefully mild, recession about a year to six months before 2020 election going up.
There will always be another recession, but the worry is if a mild recession will turned into a mess by the incompetent Trumpsters.
The Dubsters turned a mild recession into a miserable recovery through bad fiscal policy. Think what the Trumpsters could do.
I hope the next recession is very mild. We can beat the GOP without a recession in 2020.
@elerianm
This sharp fall in yields on US government #bonds —the 10 year is now #trading at 2.62% in reaction to #Apple’s signals about weaker global growth—is truly remarkable … and especially given that the #Fed has been reducing its balance sheet and the @ECB tapering its #QE. #china
https://balloon-juice.com/2019/01/03/thursday-afternoon-open-thread-27/#comments
Tweet on bond markets found on Josh Marshall’s twitter tweet feed.
[Individual 1] mistermix
Too bad he’s not Mr November – then he wouldn’t fuck you over.
jl
And thanks to Cracker for cute pet pic. And info that there is hot Badgercake pix in the BJ pet calendar.
jeffreyw
Betty should work a few Pogo allusions into her work because she has the location for a proper boost. Is the Great Dismal Swamp a real thing? Should be, at times, anyway.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’ve been out using crits from my writer group to revise chapter 2 of the Dilly book, so I missed Nancy taking the gavel back. I will read the Wonkette piece titled
“Let’s Liveblog Nancy Pelosi Taking Back That Gavel And Immediately Beating The Sh*t Out Of Everybody With It! “
Doug R
@Spanky: I think it’s more of a case of a nervous market looking for an excuse to sell off.
rikyrah
Badger is still so adorable :)
jl
Go Pelosi! Her statements have been right on target recently.
@paulkrugman
Asked if she considers herself Mr. Trump’s equal, she replied, “The Constitution does.”
https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1080925504595787778
Gin & Tonic
@jl:
What’s the old saw, that the stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions?
Barbara
Is that a screened in porch? Don’t make me worry for Badger’s safety!
WaterGirl
Oh my god, when did Badger get so big????
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor: LOL! And we all know Evan would do a great job liveblogging that. Looking forward to the orange turd and traitor turtle running into Nancy SMASH’s wall.
(No, autocorrect! It is not ‘live logging’!)
smintheus
Is Jim Webb dumb enough to take a job working for Trump? Yeah, probably.
WaterGirl
Holy cow, Betty! I knew you were on the water, but I didn’t realize you were ON THE WATER. Wow.
Yutsano
But Mooom! We were gonna TBogg over Nancy SMASH!!!
trollhattan
@smintheus:
If he does we’re changing the name of that damn scope.
zhena gogolia
Waiting in vain for my calendars to arrive. They were announced as having been shipped before Christmas. I gave up and put up the free HSUS one.
Ruckus
@Spanky:
Lucky bastard. My 65th was almost 5 yrs ago and I figure I have to put in 2 more.
Shana
@smintheus: Jeez, what is he being considered for? I know he was once Secretary of the Navy.
Face
@smintheus: Isn’t competent (relatively speaking) leadership within the DoD a good thing? I cant wait to see how Bolton and his ilk respond to bringing in a Traitorous Democrat to the Cabinet. I suspect Trump will be told to change his mind and instead nominate someone like Patraeus or Guliani.
Redshift
@jeffreyw:
It is; it’s in Virginia. But Pogo is set in the Okefenokee Swamp, which is in the Georgia/Florida border (mostly in Georgia.)
Marcopolo
Susan Collins says she intends to run for reelection in 2020
So how long do I have to live in ME in order to legally vote? Voting against Collins makes the idea of living in ME palatable considering they just lost their toxic Gov & Ds took control of one of the legislative branches.
smintheus
@trollhattan: Presumably he’s not related to the great James Webb?
Litlebritdifrnt
@Patricia Kayden: One of the things I am still getting used to since moving to the UK is the fact that Boxers have floppy ears and long tails. They outlawed ear clipping and tail docking years ago so it is normal to see a Boxer au natural. I like it, other than the fact that Boxer’s tails are lethal.
jl
@Gin & Tonic: What may be changing is that drops in the stock market are associated with more buying in the bond market. Before now, drops in the stock market didn’t have much affect in the bond market at all. So you can go from changes in the stock market predicting nine of the last five, to predicting three of the last two, which is about as good as you can do in forecasting.
Amir Khalid
Aaargh. Liverpool trail 1-0 at Manchester City in their top-of-the-table clash that has been billed as a Premier League title decider — in only the 21st match of a 38-match season. If City win, Liverpool’s lead is cut to four points. If Liverpool win, they go ten points ahead of City and nine ahead of Spurs. The match has been a nailbiter.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Does it matter that much if their stories are all bullshit? Given who and what they are, the odds of them being anywhere in the proximital area of correct is at least a hundred billion to one.
smintheus
@Shana: SecDef
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw:
Yes, but it’s in Virginia and North Carolina. My mother used to sing a haunting old song called “The Lake of the Dismal Swamp,” which gave me shivers then and still does!
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44780/a-ballad-the-lake-of-the-dismal-swamp
But that’s not where Pogo and friends live; they’re in the Okefenokee, which is in southeast Georgia/northeast Florida. However, fully agree that this blog could use all the Pogo references it can get, and Betty’s the likeliest FP for that.
catclub
@Marcopolo: I would guess no more than 3-6 months.
Usually you have to register a month before elections, and residency is actually established when you get things like a drivers license.
So if you timed it right, just over two months might work.
Redshift
@smintheus: Thinking it over, I think that would probably be a good thing. Webb can be an ass about some things, but he’s pigheaded and doesn’t take shit from anyone. He won’t participate in any Trump bootlicking, and probably won’t last a year.
Plus it will make him even more unelectable if he is think enough to try that again, and it’s better than it being filled by a toady or someone who is actually care of their reputation was destroyed.
smintheus
@Marcopolo: Collins will spend the next 2 years working closely with OJ to investigate who really tried to rape CBF.
Betty Cracker
@Barbara: The porches are screened upstairs and down, and there’s a sturdy fence between the areas of the yard the dogs can access and the river. We would never allow a pet or child out there unaccompanied. Neither of our dogs are attracted to water. They don’t try to follow us through the gates, and they whine the whole time we’re on the dock or in a boat, as if they’re worried about us. :)
MattF
@Spanky: About retirement… I stayed on the job for an additional four years. It wasn’t much fun, but there are advantages to doing it. One big advantage is that a few more years of senior-level salary can make a significant contribution to your retirement savings.
Also, you get a chance to think about what you will actually do.
In any case, retirement is a big, stressful change— you might want to look at ways of easing into it, other than via the path of least resistance.
SFAW
I, for one, am extremely disappointed in Nancy so-called Smash. It’s already 4 PM, and Shitgibbon has not been impeached yet. What the hell is she waiting for? Is she going all squishy on us?
Bernie woulda had Lying Littledick indicted before Noon! Even before he became Speaker! As his amazing legislative career has demonstrated, Bernie is able to push through bill after bill, reform after reform, with lightning speed. His legislative accomplishments have earned him the title of “The Ryan Leaf of Congress.” Or maybe it’s “The Nathan Peterman”? One of those guys. Although I doubt Ms. Pelosi would know her place as Bernie mansplains his awesomeness to her.
That said: TODAY IS A GOOD DAY. How can it be bad with Nancy Pelosi back in charge?
Miss Bianca
@Marcopolo: Great! So does this mean that that crowdfunded war chest for her opponent is just waiting for that opponent to declare herself?
BruceFromOhio
Such a good boy! FedEx says my calendars will arrive tomorrow. Yippee!
Not looking at the 401k. Not looking. Nope, no way.
Not. Looking.
Ruckus
@Face:
Certainly wouldn’t want anyone that might be in the very least bit realistic and with any experience at all, they might just be 1% better than the rest this sorry ass crew.
Mary G
I know it’s from yesterday, but this keeps turning up and makes me smile every time:
Marcopolo
@Miss Bianca: As for the crowdfunding thing, maybe? I do know Collins is challenging it’s legal basis/legitimacy in court (have not read more than headlines so cannot more fully explain why).
I just checked the voter registration/residency stuff. It really does look like a person would not have to move there more than a couple months to be eligible to vote legally. So maybe a long late Fall vacation. Or you go to volunteer on the campaign to work to unseat her for the the last couple of months & make ME your state for voting. I dunno, for those of us who live in red states where it is unlikely our votes will accomplish much at the presidential/congressional level it is a thought. And who knows, a couple thousand votes could be all it takes.
Betty Cracker
@Litlebritdifrnt: I wish they’d outlaw it here too. Our old boxer Daisy has a docked tail, but we didn’t do it; her ears are floppy. Badger’s ears and tail are natural. (Well, the result of breeding — I meant we didn’t cut them.) When he was a pup, he had floppy ears, but they eventually stood up on their own.
Frankensteinbeck
@SFAW:
Jesus Christ, can we give the Bernie Bashing a rest? I propose a ten second official Moment of Silence as soon as he releases his tax records. That should be more than enough time to locate the crime he’s been trying to hide. There, now that we’ve agreed on timing, feel free to keep roasting that ratfucking, self-absorbed, misogynistic Russian stooge.
Mary G
@Marcopolo: I have actually looked at condos for rent in Maine, just because I hate Susie so much.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mary G:
It says everything about lunatic conservatives that they don’t recognize that Boehner and Paul Ryan were their best friends and unprecedented extremist obstructionists.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t agree with idea that Powell is a hard money hawk. Yellen would have raised interest rates too. The pace of the Fed rate increases is most moderate and gradual since the late 1960s. Powell was the person in running for the job that was most competent and similar to Yellen, so the best we could hope for. The Fed needs some positive real as well as nominal interest rate to deal with next recession. Otherwise it will have to jump back onto quantitative easing to manage the next downturn.
And Trump deems that Powell is not too short, which apparently was Yellen’s problem. But Trump did like what Yellen said (blind squirrel problem there), and someone probably told him Powell was most like Yellen, except not short and Trump thought he looked like a central casting central banker.
I think any argument that the Fed is causing economic problems is very weak. The economy needs to strong enough to support a consistently positive real interest rate. With an inadequate fiscal policy, and resulting weak recovery, Fed is given a bad situation with no very good choices. And very low nominal and real interest rates have caused systematic problems with the economy. Susceptibility to asset bubbles is just one, and as we saw in housing boom and bust, a potentially very serious one.
TS (the original)
@Spanky:
I suspect trump is working hard to blame China, but most of the world is puttling the blame where it well belongs. He claimed the up – he owns the down.
Leto
Because this is an OT, I just want to say how fucking shitty the American healthcare system, and insurance system, is; having nightmare runaround with my insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield- Federal, and Avalune and I are ready to scream. Not really sure what the point of having insurance is when all they want to do is reject everything and not honor their part of the contractual agreement. Why the fuck am I even paying you money? It’s one of those days.
Edit- happy about Dems taking control and Pelosi taking back the gavel, but man am I ready to fucking firebomb everything.
MattF
@TS (the original):
Oh, come on… you’re being logical. Which is entirely inappropriate.
jl
@TS (the original): It is not just Apple in China, or just China. Growth has been slowing in low and middle income countries around the world. Krugman has linked to some news items about the slow down in world economy growth recently.
Mary G
That didn’t take long:
Polls for the shutdown must be really bad for Republicans, if Mitch is already losing team members on Day 1.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
And remember, you could be living in Brazil right about now:
Bolsonaro is Trump but slightly smarter and browner. Real Brazil? I mean, come on! What kind of asshole talks like that? And what if these people don’t want to be “integrated”, whatever the fuck that means?
“Gender-based ideology” is a literally meaningless phrase. And it’s never a good sign when some right-wing goober mouths off about “Christian values”. I’m sure fascist/corporatist regimes have never tried to use religion to form a national identity.
Oh, as opposed to your indoctrination of children and teens in Brazil? That “girls will be princesses and boys will be princes” shit is so stupid and insipid that it could have only come out of the mouth of right-wing religious fundie. Do they all go to the same colleges or something?
Amir Khalid
Liverpool work an absolutely beautiful team goal, finished by Bobby Firmino. 1-1.
Quinerly
Spur of the moment WH press briefing coming up soon. MSNBC floated the idea that Trump may appear.
So spur of the moment with such little notice that MSNBC reporting that the press room is virtually empty.
cain
@Spanky:
Ugh, I think mostly because I can’t imagine not working… I suppose you could hit a non-profit and give your time that way.
Mandalay
Nice job Mr. President: The US government is warning Americans that if they visit China they may not be able to return home
Here’s today’s new travel advisory:
Mr. President, isn’t it time to turn Beijing into a giant parking lot?
Ruckus
@Leto:
Everyone needs a lawyer to use the healthcare system. That and an advocate to run interfere when one is sick and ot at their best bargaining condition.
Quinerly
Trump live in the WH press briefing room right now.
Low energy. Says he has never been in the room.
Mary G
@Quinerly: Nancy SMASH getting all the sweet, sweet airtime must be driving him nuts. If the WH press corp had any guts, they would boycott. “Oh, I’m sorry, there was nothing on the schedule, so I made a dentist appointment.”
Amir Khalid
Sane for City. 2-1.
Greg Mulka
My violin is on its way. Because I’ve decided to relieve stress by learning the violin.
I’m probably not as smart as I think I am.
Quinerly
@Mary G: MSNBC reporting that the room was practically empty. WH gave 15 mins notice.
cain
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
He’s been having fun meet and greets with Netanyahu. I think they plan on moving their embassy to Jerusalem. Of course, this is all part of making the christians happy, a move to hasten you know the death cult need for the second coming.
Luthe
@Mary G: When you’re 15 points below the Crazification Factor, you seriously done fucked up.
@jl: I can think of a way to fix this, but for some reason the stock market doesn’t like it very much when you give rank-and-file workers more money (it’s totally cool with execs getting more money, though).
TS (the original)
@jl:
No argument with this & ever since I can remember the US has been a major player in impacting wqorld economy growth, whether it be via trade or support of underdeveloped nations. Both of these have been seriously limited under trump – he owns the world economy – he is crashing it – and also my retirement.
Edit: Krugman is the only person worth reading in the NYT
Mary G
Is shaving your head a requirement to be a Border Patrol Council officer?
Leto
@Ruckus: Yeah, have a lawyer that’s doing his work, it’s just all the new and exciting holes in the dyke that keep springing up. Also the fact that people need a lawyer and advocate just to work through the system… UUUUGGGGGHHHHH
Quinerly
@Mary G: I was thinking the same thing. Glad someone said it. In totally different news, I totally missed Katy Tur announcing her pregnancy in December. Knew she married a CBS guy a little over a year ago.
Fair Economist
@Leto:
Blue Cross is a ruthless for-profit company masquerading as a non-profit. They are quite bad. Unfortunately they have monopolized many areas and so there is often no choice.
Mary G
“Nobody knows any more about this type of technology than I do. The economy is doing great.” Jesus, his facialist must be drinking. There is a big white spot under his hairline where the spray tan missed.
Mary G
Mood:
Fair Economist
@Mandalay: Are there real issues with Chinese mistreatment of Americans or is this something invented to harass China?
Yarrow
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Hope Greenwald is happy in his new fascist paradise.
Quinerly
@Mary G: don’t we have that annual physical farce coming up? I never heard who replaced Ronnie Jackson.
Mandalay
@Mary G:
The briefings invariably start late, and I’m sure that is deliberate on the part of the Administration. The media needs to get their shit together: if Sanders is more than 10 minutes late, just leave en masse.
In general, the media need to stop hanging over every trivial incident related to the Administration. They’ll have half a dozen pundits blabbering about Trump’s latest tweet, they interrupt their programming if Trump is on the White House lawn walking to a helicopter, and they’ll have entire segments discussing what some other pundit said about the Administration.
Just stop.
Quinerly
@Yarrow: thanks for reminding me that that asshole is in Brazil.
Quinerly
@Mandalay: this “briefing” lasted less than 10 minutes. No questions were taken. Such a joke.
TerryC
@Spanky: Spanky, I retired four years ago at 67. Do it. I have no idea how I ever had time to have a job.
TS (the original)
That g.d. poster on the table at the “cabinet meeting” tells all anyone needs to know about the president* (Just saw it again on MSNBC). How can his senior administrators just sit there as if this is a normal way of being President?
Quinerly
MUST READ
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/bernie-sanders-fans-can-t-be-allowed-poison-another-democratic-ncna953976
Mandalay
@Fair Economist:
I have absolutely no idea. An advisory warning for traveling to Russia seems more appropriate than one for China (assuming that Paul Whelan was not spying).
germy
“What kind of briefing room is it if you won’t take questions??!”
(shouted question as he walks out.)
chris
@Quinerly: 17,000 criminals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CWAA!
Mandalay
@Quinerly:
Wow.
It’s a no-brainer that they should stop attending briefings without questions. What is the point of even doing that? Just issue a press release.
CaseyL
My word, that is a handsome dog. Love the clean lines and long legs.
I was listening to the House doing its first orders of business, and had to turn it off because I know decorum prevents the Democrats from responding to the GOP complaints the way they damned well deserve.
Maybe someone will, and I’ll miss it – but it’s sure to turn up here or on YouTube.
Miss Bianca
@Leto: Brother, I feel your pain. When I had my bike accident back in 1990, it was the day before I was supposed to start grad school. I had had the foresight to sign up for student insurance, so yay! Or so I thought…because unbeknownst to me, my father had kept me on his Blue Cross insurance. Which I didn’t realize until I found that Blue Cross had paid my initial hospital bill, and then each insurance company found out about the other, and the next…I dunno…however many months/years it was that I had to go back for operations and procedures, each company tried to claim that it was the “secondary insurer” and refused to pay any bills sent to them. So I was trying to recover, trying to deal with grad school, and all the other myriad things that were going on, while dealing with dunning letters from doctors and hospitals threatening to take me to court if I didn’t pay their bills., When I had TWO GODDAMNED INSURANCE POLICIES. So I had to waste precious energy on the phone yelling at people at one or the other to just take some fucking responsibility.
And then, oy vay, the runaround when my doctors decided I needed dental implants (because I’d been hit in the face and lost a bunch of teeth).
Blue Cross Service Drone: THat’s dental, we don’t cover dental.
Me: No, it’s MEDICAL because it’s part of the same accident you’ve been (not) insuring. Let me put it this way…if I had lost an arm or a leg, you’d be paying for a prosthetic replacement, right?
BCSD: Yes. Well, that would depend. On the prosthetic.
Me: (shuddering): All right, fine…but instead of an arm or a leg, I lost teeth.
BCSD: We don’t do dental.
ME: (Screams, hangs up phone)
I had to get the head of student health to intervene, personally, on my behalf with the insurance company. And I got my dental implant, but it was literally like pulling teeth to get it.
Don’t even get me started on the evil bastard who did the hit-and-run on me, whose insurance company, when he was finally tracked down, tried to claim that *I* had been the one to hit *him*, so they shouldn’t have to pay anything (NARRATOR VOICE: No, she didn’t, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have run into him hard enough to knock herself out and break her face). They even tried to bribe some poor schlub who had been standing on the street corner selling papers to lie and say that that was how it went down. (NARRATOR VOICE: But Miss Bianca had a very good lawyer, who put paid to that nonsense).
So yeah…while I will never argue that “all for-profit insurance companies must die in a fire, all hail single-payer!”, because I live in the real world…I sure understand why people feel that way about them.
Hang in there, and try to keep your energy up. And if you don’t have a good personal injury lawyer, find one STAT.
That is all, hugs to you and Avelune.
TS (the original)
From wiki
60 million Americans taken in by a snake oil salesman. May they regret it for the rest of their days.(faint hope – most will always blame those others)
CAinCA
@Fair Economist: Yes, it is an issue. I heard recently of a Chinese national who had an investment position here in the US, went back to China for a position in their government, then was offered a major leadership position at the US company where he worked before and it took about 6 months to get an exit visa to return here.
jl
@TS (the original): I don’t think anyone sure whether the slow growth in emerging economies is due to Trumpification of US economy, or there is some independent factor that produced slow down in emerging economy growth while US economy was stronger (so might reasonably be ID’d as the cause of next US recession)
Quinerly
@Mandalay: I think those shaved head guys behind Trump just needed to get out a bit. ?Otherwise, it was pretty stupid considering Tur said hardly anyone was there.
Betty Cracker
@Leto: So sorry you’re dealing with this. Our healthcare system absolutely sucks ass.
@Mary G: OMG, you’re right — there’s a giant white spot at the hairline to match the reverse-raccoon mask around the eyeballs. Oh well. If I had a job that regularly brought me in close physical proximity to that asshole, I’d be drunk all the time too.
Mary G
@Quinerly:
Miss Bianca
@Mary G: Cory can do the math, and he probably knows he’s on the path to being a one-term Senator if he doesn’t at least pretend to give a shit about “bipartisanship”.
jl
The gracious strongly strong leader, whose position on Wall and shutdown is strong, whose political base is strong, and who is strongly strong, graciously welcomes somewhat lesserly strong new House leader. Very strong! Gracious and merciful.
chopper
@Mary G:
hair loss must be a side effect of the roids.
Amir Khalid
Damn. City win 2-1. There goes the unbeaten record. Ah well, we still lead by four points.
Kay
Your new house is pretty, Betty. One of my sisters reads this blog and she loves your Florida pictures- flora and fauna but also water.
Quinerly
@Mary G: ?
CaseyL
@zhena gogolia: Might want to check your tracking info. I ordered on 12/27 and mine will arrive on Jan 9th.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mandalay:
Bear in mind, China is a ruthless autocracy and literally proud of it. They do not even claim to value personal liberty. They do value practicality, in a way the Western right wing doesn’t.
@TS (the original):
While he absolutely is a snake oil salesman, I would say they deluded themselves. Trump delivered. He’s shitting on minorities and conducting foreign policy like a whiny toddler. They flocked to him because they already believed this would magically make a white paradise. They won’t ever give up that delusion, because the truth is that equality benefits everyone. They would rather die.
germy
@Betty Cracker: The spray tan (if that’s what it is) looked blotchy. Reminded me of Jack Nicholson’s Joker.
germy
At the press conference, who was the lady in gray who stood up there behind PEETUS? She looked so aggrieved.
zhena gogolia
@CaseyL:
Yes, they’re now saying Jan. 5. I’ll have to be content with HSUS’s white wolf until then, or whatever it is. Some scary beast, not Badger!
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Yarrow:
I was waiting for someone to bring up Greenwald. So any bets on long it takes for him to flee Brazil? And where would he go?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@cain:
I’m sure sticking it to the Palestinians is also a bonus, for both of them.
Amir Khalid
That match was desperately close. One Liverpool shot failed to cross City’s goal line entirely by one centimetre. That goal could have meant at least a draw.
MomSense
@Leto:
Can you email David Anderson (use the front pager tab). He may be able to point you to the right person or entity to help. I know that when I needed help with my insurance company our state’s insurance regulator was a big help. David will know where you can go for some assistance. I’m so sorry this bullshit is happening to you especially when you need peace and time to heal. Hugs to you and Avalune.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: Check out mistermix’s thread, there is an amen chorus of bros (and trolls) heh indeeding each other about nonsensical economic theories.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Thank you! The house is a ramshackle money pit, and I’m surrounded by neo-Confederates, but I wouldn’t trade the view from my house for Bill Gates’ view. For some reason, I find that the older I get, the more important the scenery is to me. Probably because I spend more time sitting around looking at it. :)
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Frankensteinbeck:
That reminds of an article M4 posted here a while back about China’s version of “libtard”. Many people in China cannot fathom being able to care about the welfare of the nation vs the rights and freedoms of individuals; that you can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. The Chinese government officially considers itself leftist but in reality is closer to fascism than communism these days.
catclub
@Fair Economist:
Considering you can buy stock in Anthem-Blue Cross, that non-profit part is pretty well hidden.
Patricia Kayden
@Marcopolo: I hope Maine voters vote for her Democratic opponent in droves so that she can enjoy an early retirement. She’s beyond annoying and spineless. The ads against her write themselves.
Mnemosyne
@Leto:
You and/or Avelune need to call your HR person at work and ask if there is a patient advocate through your work. A lot of companies and departments have started offering one because their employees run into issues with the insurance company.
If they don’t, see if the hospital has a patient advocate or social worker who can help.
Also, document every single contact you have with the insurance company, no matter how small. That will help a lot later on.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: What happened to your garden, did guys manage to take any of things that you had planted with you.
catclub
@Mandalay:
dream on. He has their number, and can pull their chain whenever he likes.
MomSense
@Marcopolo:
Here you go.
We even have same day registration.
MomSense
@MomSense:
The link didn’t work. Here’s the voter registration page for Maine.
info for voters
RAVEN
I got back from the WW2 Museum just in times to see Speaker Pelosi take the gavel! Now we’re going to try some early chow and music and figure out our last day. The weather could have been worse but not much.
Quinerly
@RAVEN: if you get a chance, check out the Spotted Cat for music on Frenchman Street. Cool place. Very small. I love that area.
Amir Khalid
I have settled on a name for my 100-watt amplifier: Big Mofo. I wasn’t intending to name him, but the phrase just slipped out in a comment I made here. As for the guitar, I find myself leaning toward Missy.
eclare
@RAVEN: What an awesome day! That museum is incredible.
Ruviana
@Mary G: BJ should set up a communal living situation! I’ll be retired in 2020. I’d do it to vote Susie out!
MomSense
@Ruviana:
I can hook you guys up with housing!
Quinerly
@RAVEN: if you want a dive bar/laundromat, Checkpoint Charlie’s on Esplanade is a must. I have actually drunk beer and danced there with some locals while doing laundry after my tent was flooded out when a a group of us camped out on Chef Highway for Jazz Fest. Lost part of my laundry load there that night, but I digress. ?
lamh36
MazeDancer
Watching Nancy Pelosi do the ceremonial swearing in pics on CSPAN 3.
It’s mesmerizing. She takes one pic while they’re setting up the other. Then strides on her stilettos the 20 feet to the next set up.
Takes about 15 to 20 secs depending on how big the group is.
She never stops. Just keeps smiling, hand squeezing, hugging, raising her right hand, walks back and forth. The diversity is remarkable as well.
And plenty GOP seem to want their pic taken with Madame Speaker.
ETA @lamh36: I see we’re thinking the same thing. It’s remarkable how Nancy just keeps going.
Miss Bianca
I just keep going back to Badger’s photo and squeeing, “OMG, he’s so handsome! And so grown-up!”
And speaking of doggies…anyone got any tips for getting pine pitch off of dog fur? Watson decided to use one of the fire logs as a pillow before we chucked it into the stove, and he has a nice big splodge of pitch on one side.
D suggested “brake cleaner” and I said, “I hope you were kidding but even so…nah, not so much.”
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodingers_cat:
Wow, that’s a weird thread. I see with the beginning of a presidential election goblue is back. Amazing how some people disappear until it’s time to weaken Democratic motivation and derail threads again. I halfway respected Kropadope and thought they were being treated unfairly until that bizarre rant saying Hillary deliberately sank health care reform in the 90s.
CaseyL
CSPAN just announced that Shitgibbon has announced he will veto any legislation from the House that funds the government.
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but IIRC only bills that have been passed by both Congress and the Senate go to the President, to be signed or vetoed. Bills from just one House of Congress don’t even go to the WH.
He is such an ignorant, dumb fucking, petulant pitcher of walking, talking human piss.
Gelfling 545
@TerryC: My feelings exactly. There’s always plenty to do, most of it much more fun that work ever was. It’s nearly 11 years since I retired and both my health and state of mind have improved tremendously.
oatler.
President does photo op with his armed elite squad, does not take questions. He’s more than ready for Benny’s meat hook.
Gelfling 545
@Quinerly: Ooo. He’ll hate that & blame Pelosi for distracting from him. Look out for epically stupid tweets.
Skepticat
@Marcopolo:
Although I’m out of the country long enough each year to qualify as a stateless person, I refuse to give up my legal residency status in Maine, as it lets me vote. The income tax payments are well worth it, and I also kicked in twice to fund an opponent–and opponent–for Collins. We’re finally rid of LeRage, and I certainly hope we’ll soon be rid of SC.
FlipYrWhig
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Maybe he could get recommendations from a friend living in some kind of ill-defined limbo state of temporary quasi-asylum status.
Or the other one.
debbie
So I missed everything because I was at work. Who handed Pelosi the gavel? Did Trump do anything to distract, and if he did, did it work?
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: Oh no way goblue is back? I wish I’d continued to be oblivious of his continued existence. (ETA: Oh dear lord he’s still on the How Do You Do Fellow Kids track. Alas.)
Kropadope came back as “Kraux Pas,” innit?
Leto
@Fair Economist: That is a sad sad truth.
@Miss Bianca: Jesus, sorry you had to go through both of those. We do have a good lawyer and he’s on it, so I’m happy about that. A lot of it for us is that as soon as we feel that we have a handle on this stuff, BAM! Here comes another wave. It really doesn’t have to be this hard, but we live in a country where we value $$$ over people. It’s like mistermix’s post about traveling back to his hometown in SD. As long as sluts are shamed and abortions are illegal, all the other misery that people suffer are A-OK!
Count another in that pile of people. I’ll prep the rags, or fill up the bottles…
@MomSense: Good advice. I’ll try to work things as much as I can, but if I need to reach out to Mr. Anderson I will.
@Mnemosyne: I’ll be the first say that my HR people at work are extremely limited. My hospital probably has a patient advocate who will help. It’s a good hospital and it’s a shame we don’t live closer to it. Thanks for the advice on documenting interactions. Documentation is always key.
@RAVEN: That’s one museum I’d love to get to. I think it was built shortly after we had left the area (I was stationed at Keesler AFB from 2003-2008), but it’d be nice to go back just to visit and hang out for a few days. Hopefully in a couple of years we’ll be able to do that.
Also thanks everyone for the advice and just for the general space to kind of shout. You jackals really are the best :)
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
The bros are idiots. Paygo is used effectively by democrats to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for benefits – like we did with the ACA. When it’s not useful it is easily suspended. So called progressives who don’t support it are just revealing what novices they are at legislating.
hueyplong
@FlipYrWhig: Sometimes I lie awake at night agonizing over the fact that goblue is tormented by one and all for the crime of always being right on the internet.
Onward to victory.
Chyron HR
@MomSense:
No, see, progressives know that Democrats want to use PAYGO to institute austerity because they’re neoliberals, and they know that Democrats are neoliberals because they want to PAYGO to institute austerity.
(Cue another deranged stalker e-mail from Mistermix telling me to watch my mouth.)
debbie
@Leto:
Have you checked to see if your insurance company has an advocate? I am insured at work through Cigna, and they’re always pimping their advocate services.
Quinerly
A brief history of Nancy Smash’s love of The Grateful Dead…. With mention of her free form dancing at a 2015 show. ❤️?❤️?
https://www.spin.com/2019/01/nancy-pelosi-grateful-dead-fan/
lamh36
Elizabelle
@lamh36: And it’s not even our birthday.
Great news. Adam Schiff will be terrific.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Nah, the mister decided to start afresh (he’s the gardener). So far, he’s planted a few orchids and camellias.
Elizabelle
@FlipYrWhig: And us without a pie filter. As someone else noticed, it has vaporized.
On that note: TenguPhule seems to be missing. What’s up with that? And mind you, I do not miss his absence or his schtick.
jeffreyw
@Betty Cracker: Do you guys fish, at all? Scene out that window needz moar bobbers!
MomSense
@Chyron HR:
He emailed you? Oh FFS.
FlipYrWhig
@Chyron HR: I remember when the thing that triggered ritual denunciation of neoliberals neoliberal-ing was any mention of the “household analogy” likening a government’s budget to a family’s budget. It couldn’t even be treated as a heuristic. It could only be treated as doubleplusungood wrongthink.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Mine seems to be working. I don’t use it, but it’s allowing me to add, should I so choose.
Frankensteinbeck
@FlipYrWhig:
I have no idea. I don’t track nym changes. Like I said, though, that ‘Hillary sabotaged her own health care reform push’ was WEIRD. Up until then I was like “Jackals, you threw the first punch on this one.”
@Chyron HR:
I have been saying for awhile, when people throw a fit that’s Nancy endorses PAYGO, what SHE means is that the rich need to pay some fucking taxes.
lahke
@Leto: On the other hand, glad that you are around to fight for your rights. From the info we got on your health, we were worried that it would be your estate doing the work.
lamh36
Mary G
@Leto: I have had a huge number of those fights over the years, and it is so debilitating. I think they make it like that on purpose, so people will just be too exhausted and give up.
Years ago, when managed care had just become a thing, I needed an MRI and the insurance said the doctor’s group had to approve it, and the doctor’s group said the insurance did. This went on for weeks. I got so frustrated I wrote a letter of complaint and cc’d everyone I could think of, including one of those TV consumer watch-dog guys who FIGHTS FOR YOU! and Al Martinez, who had a column at the LA Times. The TV guy ignored me, and Al just sent me an email that said “Go get ’em, Mary,” but it got everybody off their stick and I got my test. My boss told me that the company was terrified of bad publicity for changing to crap insurance, and seeing the media might get involved got it straightened out immediately. So you might try that. It really is a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, so people who scream loud enough and long enough get what they want much more often than people who just give up.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
My favorite thing about Adam Schiff: he made his name as a prosecutor by going up against Russian mobsters in LA. He knows how they operate and what to look for. ?
Marcopolo
@MomSense: Just make sure you’re around June/July ‘20 since that is when I’ll be making that kind of decision :).
Frankensteinbeck
@lamh36:
Schiff has been delightfully vicious in his criticism of Trump. This should be fun.
@Elizabelle:
I have nothing especially against TenguPhule, but a long break from the news to calm down might be just what they need. Several people here, including me, have taken them and it really helps reduce panic and pessimism.
trollhattan
@jeffreyw:
Set the drag light in case of a gator.
debbie
Stupid market:
Leto
@debbie: We do actually have a social worker that we contact quite often with BCBS. Avalune spoke with them and they couldn’t see the denial, or anything wrong, so I need to get in contact with the person from the hospital who contacted me. Of course when I went to get back with them, I only got an answering machine… /longslowsigh
@lamh36: That’s really good news. Not unexpected, but still really good to see.
Yarrow
@lamh36: I love Adam Schiff so much. He’s going to be so good there.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: Did not know that. Russian mobsters. Excellent.
AND: i do see the pie filter. My mistake earlier. Carry on.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yup. But I need to not jump back into that fray right now, because this stupid cold is making me extra unwilling to put up with that brand of stupidity today. I should go make a nice cup of herbal tea instead. ☕️
WaterGirl
@Leto: I’m sure you want to scream. I know I would. Do you guys have an attorney? If not, it seems like that might be something to consider?
lamh36
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
There will be so many awesome videos of Rep. Waters dragging every conservative in sight.
So. Many. ??
Yarrow
@Leto: FYI, it’s possible to hire a private patient advocate, not just someone affiliated with your insurance or hospital. You might not need that right now but it’s good to keep it in the back of your mind in case things get even more challenging. Sometimes money spent like that can really be worth it.
MomSense
@Marcopolo:
Do you know where in Maine?
cope
@Amir Khalid: Liverpool was right there but unlucky. It seemed to me that they were both playing to not lose. Disappointing result but it will make the rest of the season that much more interesting.
jeffreyw
@trollhattan: Naw, heavy test line, lash it to the pirogue and go on an Okefenokee Sleighride.
MomSense
@lamh36:
They are the two new members of Congress that make me the happiest.
Dan B
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: As a gay guy who lived through the “homosexuals are inverts with pedophile desires” and, later, the AIDS is a gay disease era I have a pang thinking about Greenwald and all the other LGBTQ folks in Brazil. There are plenty of creeps among them but few that deserve to suffer the as yet unknown terrors that Bolsonaro will visit upon them.
There are a number of homosexuals like Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover that would garner no sympathy from me however. Greenwald is a tool but not without some redeeming qualities.
lamh36
@lamh36: video from which still pic came from
stinger
@Elizabelle: Betty bought a bitty Badger. Betty’s bitty Badger got bigger. Bet Betty knows if the bigger Badger’s better.
Shana
@Leto: My daughter is a personal injury attorney In Northern Virginia. Her firm deals largely with Traumatic Brain Injury cases, but her firm may be able to recommend someone in your part of the country. Let me know where you are and if you’re interested.
rikyrah
Just dust ? ??
Frank Dale (@fwdale) Tweeted:
Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids, the first Native-American women to ever serve in Congress, share a moment after being officially sworn in:
https://t.co/acIRC5hX20 https://twitter.com/fwdale/status/1080917018654588928?s=17
lamh36
Miss Bianca
@lamh36: YES!! (victory dance around the office)
Marcopolo
@MomSense: Nah, it’s all a fun thought experiment atm. I tend to windup working on campaigns in elections but that is too far off for me to contemplate right now.
Elizabelle
@stinger: Betty’s beautiful baby badger. On the bayou?
Does Florida have bayous?
Leto
@Mary G:
Oh, they absolutely do this! There’s a flow chart that looks like military acquisition hell, and that’s just to be able to talk to the operator. It’s like the beginning of the Incredibles when Bob is talking with the old woman, telling her, “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but you don’t want to fill out this form, you don’t want to talk to this person… copy all of this down, you def don’t want to do this…” and then Bob’s boss reams him out for the fact that his customers seem to shred through the bureaucracy and are able to get paid.
Same thing with everything in life. We’re not the type to give up, nor the type to shut the hell up. Especially when it comes to money and the little bit we got.
@lahke: Morbid joke about the fact it wasn’t the accident that killed him, it was the neverending rigamarole surrounding payouts that did it :P Also I’m reluctant to talk about just how close to death I really was. Apparently my type of injury (open book pelvis fracture, with shearing; that was the worst out of the many, many) is one that most people don’t survive. There’s a joke among World of Warcraft players about using up so much of your luck when a very rare item you’ve hunted for a long time finally drops. I feel like I’ve used up a lot my own luck with this. Luck that I was in such great health prior to the accident. Luck that I was very close to a great hospital. Luck that extremely talented surgeons/doctors were on hand to stabilize me and put me back together.
Just a whole lot of fortuitous things that all happened. One of these days I’ll write about it, but I’ve got a bit on my plate at the moment :)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Frankensteinbeck
I stopped watching broadcast/cable news years ago and I truly recommended it. It’s pretty obvious to me now how blatantly manipulative the news has become with the constant fear mongering.
Frankensteinbeck
@lamh36:
That makes me curious about a tangential point. Does anybody know if the First Nations currently consider themselves political friends and allies? It makes sense, but I don’t know their perspectives and wouldn’t want to assume. It’s just curiosity anyway, and I would expect these two to be allies regardless.
WaterGirl
@Leto: Okay, but you have to let us know if you get jammed up financially while everything gets sorted out. You have to do that. Really.
Elizabelle
@Leto: We are just so glad that you are back, and in excellent spirits.
Foo on the medical bureaucratic complex. It should not be like that. Good luck.
Chris Johnson
@MomSense: And sure enough…oh. Oh, they’ve cut taxes on the wealthy. Boy, that worked. Way to go, PAYGO.
Be snarky all you like, but when you talk nonsense you may not be believed. From where we stand, none of that shit worked. It’s like listening to David Anderson talk about health care.
I hope he DOES help Leto. I would genuinely think better of him if he could. It seems like I normally see people grateful to him for… telling them which health insurance to buy, when they have not tried to actually use it and are confused by the whole mess. I feel like the true picture of what’s happening is when you’re in Leto’s position, not when you’re looking to pay money to insurance companies and selecting how you’re going to go about doing that.
Everybody looks great and nice and cooperative when you’re deciding whether to pay THEM. If they then have obligations to you and are called upon to honor those obligations, that’s a whole other story.
Fortunately not everything is horrible. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker, and is gonna kick ass. And THIS time, Elizabeth Warren is running. I already wasn’t going to give Bernie money a second time (I’m a Vermonter, he’s got my vote, but he’s way richer than me and doesn’t need my money) but if Warren had been available in 2016 I would have gone with her. She is as aggressive about economic abuses, but she DOES something about it and there’s a glorious record of that. Love Bernie’s economic speeches but he didn’t do anything beyond talk a good game. Warren backs up the talk with action, and it’s smart, sensible action.
These are good things. I hope you get through all this safely, Leto, and try not to freak out too much ‘cos that’s how they get ya.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Dan B: Up until Bolsonaro’s special male friend comes out… I can’t imagine Brazil is that much different than the US and any straight guy who obsesses like Bolsonaro over gays, an’t.
debbie
@rikyrah:
Great video, but I can’t get past using someone else’s clothing to wipe tears from your eyes!
(((CassandraLeo)))
@TS (the original): Counterpoint: Charles Blow and (as of today, apparently) Jamelle Bouie, at the bare minimum. Arguably Joan Collins and Michelle Goldberg too, at least at times. And that piece on Trump’s taxes was good, though it doesn’t make up for the thirty years of Clinton Derangement Syndrome.
Still, FTFNYT overall.
Frankensteinbeck
@lamh36:
Those dresses are pretty. We need more diversity, especially with the ‘pro Israel committing genocide’ lobby being so strong.
Elizabelle
@debbie: Yeah. I saw that in real time on the C-Span feed. Not something you see every day on the House floor, but get used to it.
Mandalay
@Dan B:
This.
Whatever you think of Greenwald, as a prominent gay journalist who has been outspoken against Bolsonaro I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that his personal safety is at risk.
It’s pretty disappointing to see folks here on BJ gloating about his predicament.
Miss Bianca
@Leto: It’s pretty damn sobering to realize how close you came to death or permanent maiming in an accident like this…all the “for want of a nail” narratives, or rather, “because I put in an extra nail in that horseshoe, I *didn’t* lose it” etc. etc. etc.
If they haven’t already visited, wait till the “OK, I *didn’t* die when I was ‘supposed to.’ Does that mean my life was spared to DO SOMETHING, and if so…what?” gerbils come to play in your brain at 3 am! >: >
rikyrah
Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) Tweeted:
As Nancy Pelosi becomes Speaker of the House and Democrats take control, that means Donald Trump, for the first time in his adult life, will have someone to say no to him.
https://t.co/UVBVUv6ymp https://twitter.com/keithboykin/status/1080828162177671168?s=17
Leto
@WaterGirl: We do. He’s handling a lot of the billing paperwork and settlement stuff. If we need to get him more involved we definitely will.
@Yarrow: Def something I’ll keep in mind.
@Shana: Thanks for the offer; we have one right now, but if for some reason we need more I’ll def reach out.
Uncle Cosmo
@FlipYrWhig: Apparently. I ragged him awhile back to the effect that “dint yer nym useta end in ‘-dope’? & didja drop it cuz it was too close to the truth?” & he didn’t squeeeeeeal like a stuck hog as is his wont….
(o/t but how do you clear auto-fill options?)
debbie
@Elizabelle:
First saw it happen on the NYC subway, so I’ll never get used to seeing that. But it doesn’t diminish my joy at their election victories.
Miss Bianca
@Mandalay: I’m not gloating, but I am hoping that GG has some sort of “Come to Flying Spaghetti Monster” moment about the precise difference between a real autocracy that can really threaten him and his, and the pretend one he thinks that Obama built.
ETA: Oh, who am I kidding. He won’t. But that doesn’t mean I wish him ill.
FlipYrWhig
@Miss Bianca: I’m gloating.
Suzanne
I just watched the video of AOC dancing in college. I kept waiting for it to get scandalous. Then it ended.
Is this seriously the best they can do? A cute girl dancing in a T-shirt and gym shorts? Is that seriously intended to be scandalous?
Should I remind them about Ben Quayle skinnydipping in the Dead Sea while on a Congressional trip?
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: Happily, I missed that whole thing. I just remember Beto in a dress.
ruemara
@Mandalay: It could be because he doesn’t see too much there to complain about, but has so much complaints about here. Russia is so free, but America is just a terrible place. I have yet to see GG stand up for the gay community abroad. I have no illusions that GG is under duress. He’ll be a convenient token kept safe to point out that Bol is completely friendly to journos & the gays. Because he’ll be very quiet. My heart goes out to lgbtqia without the money & prestige to give a buffer. They’re at risk of wholesale slaughter.
Miss Bianca
@ruemara: Or what you said.
Suzanne
@Elizabelle: That picture of Beto in a dress…..SPLASH.
I think the GOP doesn’t realize that we look at this old stuff they dig up about our politicians and think, “That person looks cool”. Meanwhile, we have photographic proof that Ted Cruz was a mime.
Mary G
Our America contains multitudes. (Warning, new paywall) Charley Pierce describes prep for the swearing in ceremony today:
The Evangelical crowd is probably gnashing their teeth, and I hope they break them. That is the First Amendment in action the way it was supposed to be used, not to slut-shame women who use contraception.
Marcopolo
@Suzanne: It gets better. First the full YouTube vid that the clip was taken from: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj2Xald7NYQ
Second, a tweet thread that explains the context around “mash up videos” of which the Breakfast Club/Lisztomania series was an early example. And he brings in the Electronic Freedom Foundation & the 1st Amendment & Fair Use: https://mobile.twitter.com/xor/status/1080909782071066628?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Definitely, for me, a worthwhile trip down an internet rabbit hole. I hate to admit I love this stuff. I think it is called learning about context.
Tim C.
@Suzanne: Hey! A mime is a terrible thing to waste!
I’ll see myself out….
Mnemosyne
@Leto:
One of my weirder beliefs is that the ancient Greeks were right and we all have a specific, fated time when we’re supposed to go. That’s why some people will die after a seemingly small head injury, and others will get smashed by a car and survive.
Atropos was not yet ready to cut your thread, so here you are.
Betty Cracker
@jeffreyw: The mister is an avid fisherman. I am not, but I cook all fillets presented.
VeniceRiley
Among the cool shots from today: 1) Rep Omar holding Rep Swalwell’s newborn. 1) Sinema’s Elle Woods coat and bag, followed by her smashing indoor ensemble, made me sya “I know we’re not supposed to comment on their looks, but damn!” The sheer number of women of and color … both people of and the outfits. Republicans looked like a bunch of old white dudes at a funeral. Perfect.
jl
@Mary G: “President John Quincy Adams was sworn in on [a copy of the Constitution]”
The Adams family back then were Unitarians, so it makes sense. They were not Godly people, by current Evangelical standards. But then neither were Washington, Jefferson or Madison.
Suzanne
@VeniceRiley: Sinema is my senator, and she was my congresscritter before that (and my state senator and rep before THAT), so I have been familiar with her for years. Mr. Suzanne is ashamed that he thinks she is hot.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mary G:
Oh gods, does it ever!
This (your line) should, indeed MUST become a rotating tag STAT, Pronto, Immediately, and At Once! All FPs, please take note!
jl
@VeniceRiley: It’s nice to see a group that looks like the US. The age mix is important too. Not just a bunch of almost exclusively old rich people,
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Meanwhile:
Elizabelle
@VeniceRiley:
They really did. Old, wealthy (some of them), and out of touch.
jeffreyw
@Betty Cracker:
Well then, as bobbers need neither bait, nor even hook, you need not be bothered with fish whilst you soak your float. Do tie them off or they will drift away.
Redshift
@Leto: I hear ya. I’m dealing with BCBS having decided that my cancer treatment was “not medically necessary.” WTF?
They say there’s a different radiation treatment that is “recommended” (i.e., cheaper, presumably.)
I would swear that it was pre-authorized, but there was a lot going on then,you so I can’t be sure. Itseems, to my nonprofessional eye, like they either:
a. are confused because it’s a recurrence in a different place
b. prefer a cheaper and less convenient/slightly less effective variation
c. my treatment isn’t even cheaper because the health system already has the equipment, but it’s not on their list so they can say no
The most annoying part right now is that neither they nor the giant medical facility will keep me updated on the fight, so I have to call both of them every couple of weeks to make sure I’m not missing a deadline. Giant medical facility is giant enough that they will probably win, but it’s stress I didn’t need.
With apologies to David, I continue in my belief that all health insurance companies are evil, and they only vary by degree.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: What is genuinely embarrassing is that all of the GOP are, like, the people in high school who were never popular or smart or attractive, but are totally bitter AF about it. Dude, it was so long ago (SO LONG), get over it.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
At this point, it’s because they desperately want to fuck AOC but know she would never give them the time of day. Classic incels — they always want the women who are repelled by them to be forced to sleep with them anyway.
Frankensteinbeck
@Suzanne:
They are cruel people, with a philosophy of cruelty. If someone they dislike is having fun, that is so self-evidently a sign of immorality that they can’t explain it. In particular, AOC has been poor, and they can only see that like Scrooge. If you’re poor, shouldn’t you be miserable and have absolutely nothing?
John S.
@ruemara:
Meanwhile back at the ranch, GG is still pimping alt-right memes about “fake news” in defense of Julian Assange.
https://static.theintercept.com/amp/five-weeks-after-the-guardians-viral-blockbuster-assangemanafort-scoop-no-evidence-has-emerged-just-stonewalling.html
jl
@Elizabelle: I think alll the Congressional GOPers are well on their way to wealthy after a term in office.
I think the industry lingo is High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI).
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: I was at first stunned into speechlessness by that pink ensemble, but then Adam said that it reminded him of his paternal grandmother, and that’s when I remembered that *my* paternal grandmother – the inimitable “Madame Tsong” – loved pink, too, and suddenly I was OK with it.
SFAW
@Frankensteinbeck:
No problem, as soon as he realizes he’s been a self-centered asshole with nigh-on zero legislative accomplishments, and decides to take a vow of silence and live in a monastery on Shemya.
Mary G
@Mary G: Picture of some of the books used to be sworn in today in this tweet:
Miss Bianca
@John S.: Oh, well, nice to see he’s not so worried about his immediate future that he’s lost sight of what’s *really* important.//
jl
@Mnemosyne: The scandalous AOC HS dancing video is part of a broader trend of GOP and Fox running attack pieces that are indistinguishable from Democratic campaign ads. If they want to keep it up, Dems can run a good internet ad campaign in 2020 just by sending out a link to GOP and Fox outrage bait. So, if they want to do that, fine with me.
Dan B
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It’s interesting to speculate about Bolsonaro’s being closeted but he’s also a racist and religious bigot so who knows if this is just a solid core of fear/loathing/hatred. Then again the disgust at the “impure” and the “diseased” can reinforce self loathing.
ruemara
@John S.: *sigh* He’s just not right in the soul.
B.B.A.
@John S.: I’m half convinced that Greenwald’s typically insufferable ranting in favor of Bolsonaro’s opponent is what won Bolsonaro the election.
Of course I don’t speak Portuguese and I don’t know how he comes off to the Brazilians.
Elizabelle
@Miss Bianca: I was just thinking Legally Blonde, and wondering if there was a purse pooch in that handbag.
She pulled it off, though.
Baud
@Suzanne:
That particular dance is called the Private Email Server. Make sense now?
Elizabelle
@Baud: Hello there. Did you catch some of the Nancy Smash vote and victory entrance? And the kids surrounding the podium as she took her oath?
It was good for the soul.
jl
@Baud: Where’s the Baud 2020! dancing video? I thought Baud 2020! was hep and withit, just like AOC.
lamh36
Baud
@Elizabelle: Only bits and pieces. Looking forward to catching up tonight. I’m so happy we’re here.
Gex
@lamh36: How are they the first? Warren…
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
Badger is so handsome, Betty. And your home on the swamp looks delightful. I so enjoy your nature pictures.
Suzanne
@Miss Bianca: Martha McSally had tried to “smear” Sinema in an attack ad by pointing out that Sinema had made a statement opposing the Iraq war while she was wearing a pink skirt that looked like a tutu. (At a rally at ASU. Like five hundred years ago.)
So she wore pink, pearls, and fur. Fuck yeah.
Baud
@jl: I need to get my parachute pants out of storage.
Can’t touch this.
plato
@Amir Khalid: Fernandinho was the spoiler. And the law of averages.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
There are a number of other interesting dancers in that Tweet thread, including His Royal Assholeness.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Even without seeing it (and I caught a bit, just enough to see that AOC was a really, really cute college student!), I am still having a hard time figuring out what the GOP, and therefore the rest of us, were suppposed to be getting *our* panties in a twist about. I mean, really? A college kid dancing in a video? Uh…yeah…so what?
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: OMG. OK, now I get it. MAD PROPS.
Mnemosyne
@Chris Johnson:
The Republicans waived PAYGO in order to do that, genius.
Probably should have taken your own advice here.
Pro-tip: it didn’t work because the Republicans deliberately destroyed it.
Additional pro-tip: Republicans will likewise destroy any #Medicare4All proposal that gets off the ground. Because the common thread in this shit getting shredded is not actually the presence of any particular Democrat. It’s the Republicans.
If Republicans keep setting our buildings on fire, we need to stop them from setting shit on fire, not find new architects.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Pelosi’s granddaughter steals the show (video)
Punchy
Dear stupid libtards — Trump is winning his wonderous wall fight!!
How do I know? He says so. So it must be true.
Baud
@Miss Bianca: Yeah. I don’t spend much time anymore trying to understand them.
poleaxedbyboatwork
@Betty Cracker:
The Cracker household follows Catch-and-FILET-GO House rules.
Mandalay
@ruemara:
That’s total bullshit. Either you know what he has written and said about Brazil, or you have no clue because you don’t follow him, but you really can’t claim that you know what he writes about and he doesn’t write and talk about Brazil.
He has written about, and discussed, Bolsonaro, and the problems of Brazil in general, many times, both in English and Portuguese. For example, he wrote an article titled “The Most Misogynistic, Hateful Elected Official in the Democratic World” in 2014.
chris
@Baud:
Very glad to see that Baud2020! plans ahead. Way ahead.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
Like I said above, it’s because AOC gives them a funny feeling in their pants, and they hate her for it. Every straight conservative dude who talks shit about her on Twitter is also furiously jerking off to that video.
Chip Daniels
@Mandalay:
Unlike millions of other Brazilians, GG has money and a passport, should things get uncomfortable.
TS (the original)
@John S.:
Has he forgotten about Snowden living out his days in Russia?
Suzanne
@Miss Bianca: I don’t get it, either. Like……dancing and spinning around? Really? That’s….not okay with you? You find that problematic or objectionable in some way?
That’s like when someone complains that they’re cold and it’s 90 degrees outside, and it’s just so WEIRD.
Jeffro
Meanwhile, DHS secretary Nielsen is tweeting some crazy town shit about “violent caravans” “trying to breach the border wall” (‘breach the border wall’? KN, you know that was just a fake ‘GoT’ mock up poster on the cabinet table, right?) to please her boss and try to keep her job another week. Kristjen, there’s a special place in hell for anyone still serving Trumpov at this point in time. Look around you: Bolton, Miller, Whitaker, Ross…does this look like #winning?
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne:
She’s good!
Yarrow
@Miss Bianca: I know. It’s just kind of cute. She’s in a college t-shirt and a skirt. Wooo….scandalous!
plato
That AOC dance video is pretty cool. She is a very good dancer.
plato
Now, it’s dems’ turn and make it stick. Which they can easily.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: Okay, that made laugh. It was the word “furiously” that did it.
Do we have a video of this dancing? Hope it’s as cute as the scandalous (!) photo of Beto playing in a band or the scandalous (!) photo as a little boy.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: Maybe they expect everyone to be born (already) old and boring like they were?
Marcopolo
@Yarrow: The appropriate word, IMHO, is adorkable—and that goes for all the other kids in the video as well.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: She IS good, and she’s adorable. Like I said, I kept watching it, half-expecting her to take her clothes off or something, because I had the expectation that it was going to be potentially embarrassing…..and then it was over, and all I can think of is that every Republican must feel such deep self-loathing for their sexual desires that they wash their genitals with vinegar and salad tongs.
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
I’ll say it again: Nielsen will either resign or be fired within 2 weeks of her boyfriend Kelly’s last day at the White House.
Mandalay
@Chip Daniels:
You are either very charitable, or very naive, about Bolsonaro.
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne: Well she should be fired, letting “violent caravans” within a hundred miles of our sacred border wall (may she never be breached!) and what not.
These people, how do their circuits not just overload with that much insanity and hate? Never mind, I don’t want to know…
Marcopolo
@WaterGirl: I posted a link to the original vid that the RWNJs cut AOCs dancing out of to make their hit piece from @ 221.
Marcopolo
@Mnemosyne: So she’s has, at most, 11 days now?
chris
@Suzanne: Harumph! Shameless (Democratic!) hussy showing her knees like that!
Heh, the whole video linked above looked like a lot of fun. Trolls have no sense of that.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
The Hoarse Whisperer had it on his Twitter feed:
https://mobile.twitter.com/HoarseWisperer/status/1080950540203368448
Oh, and the even bigger scandal is that her high school/college nickname was apparently Sandy. SANDY! ?
Mnemosyne
@Marcopolo:
Is Kelly actually gone now? Last I heard, he had turned in his resignation but had not actually left the building, and they were begging him to stay into February.
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne: I loved one of the first comments on that tweet:
Yes, GOP trolls…mock AOC and Beto for these transgressions of being tremendously hot and also extremely relatable…go for it! What could possibly go wrong for you? (wink)
Yarrow
@Marcopolo: Yes, “adorkable” is a good way to describe her.
Dan B
@Chip Daniels: GG has a Brazilian husband and who knows if Bolsonaro would let them out of the country with any of their money. Hopefully a lot of people will get to Uruguay if things get really dangerous. We’ll see if Bolsonaro revs up thugs to cleanse the country. If that’s the case then GG may be as big a target as anyone.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Wikipedia says yesterday was his last day.
Dan B
@Jeffro: I believe that many of the GOP were beaten as children and forced to be strong and emotionless bullies. Having fun at a birthday party was probably considered weak.
There are some that probably had happy childhoods. Done being charitable.
Suzanne
@Jeffro: The Beto picture was amazing to me, because I thought it was kind of a known thing that chicks dig dudes in bands. And, if I do say so myself, he looked really, really good back in the day. 19-year-old Suzanne would have been, like, mmmmmmm. Delicious.
On a bunch of the feminist blogs, the positive comments were near universal. My favorite was “guaranteed panty-dropper”.
Meanwhile…..TED CRUZ MIME PHOTOS EXISTED.
Marcopolo
@Mnemosyne: I thought 12/31 was his last day. However, nothing, not even Kelly hanging around as some kind of wraithlike figure would actually surprise me. After all, he wraithed himself a long time ago.
Betty Cracker
@Dan B: IMO, Greenwald has become a crank and a useful idiot to neofascists and white supremacists in the US and elsewhere. But I hope he and his husband either escape Brazil or manage to muddle through the current administration there without being persecuted.
plato
@Betty Cracker: He should suffer the same fate as the victims of the neofascist and white supremacist regimes that he aided and abetted. Fuck him and his precious life.
WaterGirl
@Marcopolo: That was a totally nerdy nothing burger! What the fuck is wrong with these people.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: I wish I knew how to spell the snort-like sound I made after watching that. It was definitely a dismissive sound. She did have one sort of sexy move with her hand to her mouth, I’m sure that’s the scandalous part. :-)
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: Something you said made me recall something from maybe 2007? Wasn’t there some scandalous report card from Barack Obama in kindergarten?
No, I am not kidding.
Jeffro
@Dan B
Yup. That, and/or absorbed their parents’ prejudices/anxieties without a second thought or moment of reflection, and/or genuinely believe their privilege is a right, and/or whatever. They’re closed-off authoritarians who’ve never spent a moment reflecting on what it would be like to be on the receiving end of their ‘policies’, which are really just abuse of others cloaked in fancy talk and justification.
Jeffro
@WaterGirl: Sounds about right, but a quick search only turns up a number of elementary schools being (recently) named after one Barack Hussein Obama.
Made my day. =)
Betty Cracker
@plato: i don’t want anyone persecuted for being gay, not even assholes, but you do you.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
Like I said, I’m pretty sure the “scandalous” part is how much those creepy weirdos hate themselves for finding her attractive.
plato
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I don’t do fake compassion for assholes who ruin other people’s lives willfully, sue me.
Betty Cracker
@plato: Do you suspend support for other civil rights in the case of assholes, or is Greenwald and/or gay rights a special case? For example, would you wish lynching on a horrible, reactionary black guy who has directly harmed people, like Sheriff David Clarke?
plato
@Betty Cracker: If he was the enabler of that lynching mob, why not? Poetic justice and all that.
Betty Cracker
@plato: Wow. Okay then. Have a lovely evening!