Today, the 117th Congress begins its second year.
We've got quite the to-do list before us:
Voting rights.
Affordable childcare.
Expanded health care.
Aggressive climate action.
An extended Child Tax Credit.
And more.Let's get to work.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) January 10, 2022
Five years ago during my Farewell Address, I asked you to believe in your ability to bring about change. Since then, many of you have answered the call â starting nonprofits, organizing around important issues, and running for office yourselves. pic.twitter.com/Mz2JqQ2gPc
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 10, 2022
I wanted to share some of those stories, and also hear about the work youâve been doing to create change: https://t.co/KhjWS3bFGo
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 10, 2022
If you prefer ‘rantspirational’, Chris ‘Mad Bitcher’ Cillizza is your guy:
Half as many opportunities to tell people to drink bleach. A real shame. https://t.co/9CxFsqFkQK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 10, 2022
SiubhanDuinne
I donât know when the fuck heâs going to find time to hang out with us and talk about his book.
:-)
MisterForkbeard
The last one is nuts. Trump was famous for giving lots of insane and useless press conferences. Why would Biden want to emulate any of that?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Several years back, Charlie Pierce said this:
When the Smithsonian opens its American Museum of Feckless Journalism, the Cillizza exhibit is going to be right there in the lobby, across from the statues of Maureen Dowd and David Brooks.â
I swear he’s giving Mrs Greenspan and most of NPR’s political team (and a host of others to numerous to name) a run for their money in terms of the highest tumbrel number.
Soonergrunt
@MisterForkbeard: it’s not that Biden wants to repeat being insane and useless, but rather that Cillizza is insane and useless.
Starboard Tack
@MisterForkbeard: It’s just more of his bullshit. If he stops talking, people stop watching
ETA: Soonergrunt said it better.
Urza
Biden should most definitely tell the nuts NOT to drink bleach, Ivermectin, viagra, strychnine, polonium, arsenic and cyanide to cure and prevent disease, and definitely not all at once in massive doses.
Poe Larity
Lapassionara
How did Chris Cilizza get to be someone people even care to listen to? Seriously? He has no deep intelligence, no impressive vocabulary, no obvious learning that qualifies him as a pontificator. Help me out here . . .
Ken
The first month of Trump’s press conferences were him repeating his inaugural audience was larger than any in history, until the media gave up. Or gave in, one of those.
Quinerly
I thought this was worth the read.Â
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-state-tv-airs-bizarre-january-6-spectacle-featuring-ashli-babbitts-mother?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Geo
@Lapassionara: People are stupid.
mrmoshpotato
@Soonergrunt:
Couldn’t have put that better.
Starboard Tack
@Lapassionara: Reminds me of something somebody said way back, that voting for Papa Bush was like rooting for an incessant whine to win a noise contest. That’s what Cilizza sounds like.
mrmoshpotato
@Lapassionara: Remember that CNN is the Empty Dump Podium Network.
Starboard Tack
@mrmoshpotato: EDPN – Extra Dumb People Network
dmsilev
@Urza: You forgot to include ‘drink their own urine’.
Urza
@dmsilev: Yea sorry, forgot to include today’s crazy.
mrmoshpotato
@Quinerly: Wow. And even the Russkies are pushing that the Capitol security guard (secret service?) was black who shot that terrorist trying to climb through that broken window.
dmsilev
Cillizza and his ilk have a vastly overinflated view of their own importance, and one of the ways that manifests is in thinking that asking Tough Questions at a Presidential press conference counts as real journalism. It doesnât, any more than quoting anonymous sources looking to plant a story counts as investigative reporting.
dmsilev
@Urza: Itâs very important to keep current with the latest trends.
debbie
@Ken:
And now, his insurrection crowd was the biggest ever! Full circle!
debbie
@Quinerly:
Russia needs to die in a fire.
scav
They drink their own urine and return to their own vomit. âDo you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.â
mrmoshpotato
@debbie: Bigger than any other crowd of traitorous trash that tried to overthrow the United States government!
Quinerly
@mrmoshpotato:
That stuck out to me too.
brendancalling
I have long considered it an injustice that Chris Cillizza has a job. Heâs an utter piece of shit, a man with lower morals than sewage, the very definition of âunseriousâ and âfeckless.â
If I had my way, heâd be packed into a rocket and launched into the sun. The worst part is the unctuous skid mark managed to reproduce, which is a tragedy.
Mike in NC
Let’s pretend that the nation is poorer for not having been blessed with a Donald Trump Farewell Address. Of course he never planned on leaving in the first place.
VOR
@Urza: well, they are up to drinking their own urine soâŠ
BC in Illinois
People type LOL, and very often I doubt whether they actually laughed out loud.
This made both me and Mrs BC laugh out loud.
Sancerre66
@BC in Illinois: Full disclosure… this just made me laugh out loud!!
mrmoshpotato
@brendancalling:
Sun has a capital “S”! Has no one learned anything from my desire for numerous piles of trash to throw themselves into the Sun? :)
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC: Nope. Glad he fled to Florida to feel sorry for his fat, orange, fascist ass.
Starboard Tack
@mrmoshpotato: What did the Sun ever do to you?
mrmoshpotato
@BC in Illinois: Snicker out loud!
HumboldtBlue
@BC in Illinois:
Got me to chuckle.
And Georgia, don’t fuck this up.
mrmoshpotato
@Starboard Tack: Oh the times it’s burned me! It can’t be trusted!
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: Touchdownpalooza second half!
hueyplong
Why on earth would we want them to stop drinking their own urine?
And the best part is that the easiest way to get them to pissguzzle is to tell them not to do it, with a dollop of condescending and elitist inferences that they’d be stupid to do it.
John Revolta
Cilizza says that like it’s a bad thing.
Maybe Biden is actually, you know, WORKING!
HumboldtBlue
@mrmoshpotato:
That’s what I’m thinking.
Edmund Dantes
@MisterForkbeard: is that counting actual conferences or are they also counting those stupid helicopter things as press conferences?
James E Powell
@Poe Larity:
Today we had the big faculty zoom to discuss all this. We still do not know how many students will show up tomorrow, but we expect our numbers to be down about 20%. This is for both students who have tested positive and students who have not yet tested.
Faculty is another matter. They did not share numbers, but warned that we would be short of people. We have no building & grounds staff.
Could be an interesting opening week.
MisterForkbeard
@Edmund Dantes: That’s actually a great question. No idea.
James E Powell
@Lapassionara:
If memory serves, he made hating Hillary his brand. Naturally the entire press/media world adored that.
He’s like a lot of our current press/media people & I don’t mean just the ones I despise. He adds nothing to the discourse. He provides nothing of value, but for some reason gets a job.
NotMax
Needed to run several inconsequential errands in town along with the monthly grocery run today. While toodling about passed several gas stations in different parts of the burg.
Can’t recall ever seeing such a wide spread on pricing. Usually stations will very by a penny or two. Today the lowest price I happened upon for regular was $4.42, the highest $5.02.
Strange too the pet food aisles at Target, which I briefly glanced at while checking for oncoming carts exiting them. I’m going to attribute it to very recent disruptions in incoming inter-island freight brought by boat. Dog food aisle chockablock with product. Cat food aisle? Shelves on both sides barer than Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, save for one lone bag of Meow Mix on an uppermost perch. No cans, no pouches, no nuthin’ all the way down to the end of the aisle.
Another Scott
Phys.org – Badger, badger, badger…:
Cheers,
Scott.
Kayla Rudbek
@NotMax: I have been seeing various pictures on NextDoor of bare shelves at the local grocery stores here in Northern Virginia, thanks to the weather. Mr. Rudbek wound up getting three bottles of vegan egg substitute instead of the usual one because we had a tough time getting our hands on it for a while.
(part of me wants to try eating regular eggs again, part of me is not so sure about trying to test whether they will make me sick)
And my mother-in-law has been very happy with the new blanket I made her. Maybe in a few months, when my hands and arms recover, I can try that yarn again for myself or my parentsâŠ
phdesmond
@mrmoshpotato:
i am respectful of capitalization.
Mike in NC
@NotMax: We basically cannot find canned cat food in the local supermarkets.
Matt McIrvin
@James E Powell: My kid’s school is going remote again after tomorrow just because such a huge fraction of the students *and* staff are out, they simply can’t keep it up. Tomorrow they’re in-person mostly to give the kids a chance to retrieve books and things.
The level of terror isn’t there because, you know, we’re vaccinated, kid just got boosted. But everything’s breaking down anyway.
Felanius Kootea
Interesting data from Singapore on vaccine effectiveness (Bloomberg link):
NotMax
@Mike in NC
If there’s one anywhere conveniently nearby, check at the dollar store (no such places here). Might be off brands, but any port in a storm and all that.
Kay
@James E Powell:
Bus drivers.
They got all but 3 open today. I can’t imagine where they’re finding replacement bus drivers. They need a physical, CDL, a state and federal background check, drug testing, and 15 hours of additional training.
phdesmond
@Another Scott:
the writer seems to trace the provenance of one of the coins.
Suzanne
Trader Joe’s has been out of stuff randomly. Like frozen strawberries have been gone for a few weeks, but there’s plenty of frozen raspberries. Oddly, the one by me has been nearly out of crackers since before Christmas. Like, what?
So I looked up the criminal history of the dude who broke into my house. One of my neighbors found it. He has a long, intermittent history of all kinds of low-level dumbassery. Drug possession, DUI, trespassing, that kind of thing. Seems like for the last almost 20 years, heâd get into trouble a couple of times in relatively quick succession, then be good for a while, then fall back into the shit. Lots of stints of probation. It never ceases to amaze me how many chances white men get.
Hoppie
@mrmoshpotato:
“Inane and useless”, I would say.
debbie
@Kay:
They arenât requiring CDLs now.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sancerre66:
I had a friend who used to sign all his emails to me with âLOL, [his name].â Took me months to realise he wasnât laughing â he was abbreviating âLots of love.â
:-)
Mike in NC
@NotMax: We have lots of Dollar General, Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, and some other dollar chain around here. It’s the South after all.
Kay
@debbie:
Really? That was federal, not state. Federal doesn’t require it anymore?
debbie
@Suzanne:
Too many chances, for sure. Hope things are calming down.
NotMax
FYI.
Amazing as it sounds, it’s still not kosher.
debbie
@Kay:
I donât know about that, but Columbus doesnât currently. That makes me a little nervous.
Heidi Mom
@Lapassionara:
When he did a weekly Q&A column for the Washington Post, he responded to accusations of bias by saying that he didn’t vote, wasn’t a member of a political party, didn’t have a particular “cause,” he just loved the game of politics. I’ve never understand how that’s possible–absent commitment to a person/party/cause, why would you care?
Dan B
@NotMax: There are cat food shortages in Seattle and have been for weeks. Annnnd… our cats have decided to become picky eaters. Sigh.
CaseyL
@Suzanne: Trader Joe’s is out of stuff?? That’s surprising: I’ve been having good luck with the non-traditional grocery store chains. So far, Sprouts has had either what I want or a reasonable facsimile thereof. The one exception was, they were out of shredded cabbage, which seems like an odd thing to be out of. (I saw a recipe for making “hash browns” with cabbage instead of potatoes, and it looked promising.)
Reading up on your B&E guy sounds like a dreary experience: why, yes, he is even more fucked up than originally thought. Great.
Have you been able to get things cleaned up/repaired?
@Dan B:
Because timing is everything. Oy.
NotMax
@Mike in NC
What, no Carpetbagger Bazaar?
:)
HumboldtBlue
@NotMax:
Kay
@debbie:
Did they change it after June of this year?
Kay
@debbie:
Maybe this?
Kent
The House is done with all this shit. We are waiting on the Senate.
Felanius Kootea
OT: I can’t get over this story! A former air force pilot cheated death twice in 10 minutes after his small plane’s engine failed shortly after takeoff. He crash-landed on train tracks in the Los Angeles area to try to avoid hitting people on the ground and rescuers pulled him out just seconds before a train plowed into the wreckage of his plane. (NYT link – graphic). He’s recovering in the hospital. That man has the best luck of anyone I’ve ever heard of. The police officers who rescued him are amazing.
Starboard Tack
@Heidi Mom: It’s a variation on “Let’s you and him fight.”
mrmoshpotato
@phdesmond: You’re hilarious too.
debbie
@Kay:
I don’t think that’s it, and I can’t find the report I heard last week. However, I just heard a local news report that the Reynoldsburg School District (a local suburb) is saying they’ll get CDLs for prospective drivers who don’t have them. Sounds like zero training’s involved.
Leto
@Felanius Kootea: the police body cam, standing bystander, and passing driver footage are all crazy. It looked like he was pretty banged up, hopefully he didnât sustain any more injuries when he was pulled out.
Richard
@dmsilev: thank you. I was also going to mention that.
NotMax
Fascinating long read.
Felanius Kootea
@Leto: I know! I’m just glad he was saved and hope he heals completely.
Richard
@NotMax: That’s true. It is not. I know when i am in the wrong room and will be leaving now. Excuse me.
leeleeFL
@mrmoshpotato: Oh, thanks a lot! DeathSantis AND tRump? At the same time? What did Adam, Betty and I do to piss you off?
Suzanne
@CaseyL: We have been cleaning up the inside of the house and we are almost done with that. The bigger issue is the front porch. That is where the police cuffed and held him and he was out there for about 20 minutes until the ambulance arrived. He managed to get his blood all over the damn place. I am going to have to throw all of the furniture out, and the outdoor rug, and the baby stroller. There’s too much to just put out for the trash pickup, so I think I have to call a junk removal service or something. I have reached out to two companies to get me new doors.
Suzanne
@CaseyL: Yeah, both TJs and Whole Foods have had some supply problems, but I thought it was more weather-related than pandemic-related. Maybe Iâm wrong.
Nothing makes me feel like more of a white bougie douchebag than talking about grocery shopping. It always makes me acutely aware that I am a coastal liberal elitist or something.
NotMax
Shove over, H.G. Wells, there’s a new time machine in town.
Soprano2
@debbie: Oh no, there definitely is training. We train all the new field hires so they can get theirs – it’s a requirement that they get it within 6 months of being hired.
brendancalling
@mrmoshpotato: I will do better next time.
I am still incredibly angry about the hatchet job Cillizza tried to pull on Biden over the Tara Reade story. It was some of the most dishonest, manipulative, shallow, feckless garbage I have ever seen. For real, I sometimes fantasize about bumping into him on a long distance flight or other inescable venue and just letting him have it. Heâs simply odious.
leeleeFL
Duplicate post
mrmoshpotato
@leeleeFL: I didn’t make the Soviet shitpile mobster conmanbaby buy the property in Florida.
mrmoshpotato
@brendancalling:
Agreed.
James E Powell
@brendancalling:
And that piece of shit was not alone on that story. There nothing they will not do to smear a Democrat.
James E Powell
@Kay:
That’s similar to the problems our district – Los Angeles – has; there’s a shortage of every type of person and most especially the out of classroom staff. I don’t see many of our students arriving by bus. Most walk or get dropped by parents.
It’s going to be an interesting situation for the next few weeks.
CaseyL
@Suzanne: I get that. I live in very much a coastal elite city, with a dozen or more different grocery chains, many of whom deliver. Plus about a dozen farmer’s markets over the spring and summer.
But I can go less than ten miles south and find food deserts – in, of course, the poorer neighborhoods.
Thor Heyerdahl
Cillizza – the DC media bullshit dung beetle
(No offense meant to dung beetles – which serve a useful purpose).
Felanius Kootea
@NotMax: Jesus Christ!
Gvg
i am having cat food issues too especially for my old lady cat with a delicate tummy. Multiple chains are out of the type she likes best. I also feed her baby food ham and that is hard to find too. My sisters dog has to eat allergy food and it isnât always findable so he has had to eat regular with itchy consequences including skin infections. Even PetSmart and chewy donât have a lot of things. Right after Christmas I ventured into PetSmart in person and the cat food aisles were stunningly empty. I have read pet food companies are having multiple issues including supplies and manufacturing not just shipping.
evodevo
@NotMax: Yep…the Dollar Stores around here often have a bigger selection of certain items than the local WalMart, at comparable prices. I’m a Dollar General fan…
debbie
@Soprano2:
I wasn’t able to locate the specific report, but I ended up looking at job listings. Here’s one where they ask for “A valid driverâs license and driving record that will meet company driving standards.” Granted there’s training, which I assume includes getting a CDL, but they need drivers now, not in six months.