C.R.E.A.M.

Friday Evening Open Thread: The Peasants, They Are REVOLTING!

by Anne Laurie| April 16, 20216:25 pm| 138 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., GOP Death Cult, Open Threads, Our Failed Media Experiment

Alternative headline:

Local business shutters after 10-year run of paying poverty-level wages comes to an end. https://t.co/PjQXGWVGZB

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) April 15, 2021

Or so the ‘small bidniz owner’ and his right-wing media accomplices would like you to believe…

Baffling. No one wants to be exposed to COVID hundreds of times a day in red counties where no gets vaccinated. Not even for that sweet $11 an hour.

— JustPassingThrough (@coloradonelly) April 15, 2021

But wait — there’s (so much) more!

frankly I do not understand why no one wants eleven bucks an hour to clean grease traps for a guy who says covid deaths are fake pic.twitter.com/MTSFSvdvXa

— the women of kilgore trout’s office (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 15, 2021

so about two weeks ago, bill anderson, owner of dale’s diner in waterville, ohio, gets a micro-burst of stories in the news on his diner’s pending closure; three different headline variants through the same outlet pic.twitter.com/8GZSGDbj6f

— the women of kilgore trout’s office (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 16, 2021

now bill anderson is not just “a dude”. he’s an ex-corporate executive from a family in a long line of ohio agriculture & industry magnates. pic.twitter.com/Sq5MyPbF2H

— the women of kilgore trout’s office (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 16, 2021

because in addition to not revealing that bill anderson is not just some random dude who got hammered by covid, what they don’t tell you is bill enjoyed turning his restaurants into covid petri dishes pic.twitter.com/1nlmQizB36

— the women of kilgore trout’s office (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 16, 2021

yet again, the “who is bill anderson and what has he done to get here” element of bill’s story is mysteriously absent. bill blames stimulus payments for his downfall and not, you know, paying $11 an hour to bus tables inside a virus arboretum.

— the women of kilgore trout’s office (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 16, 2021

TA-DAAAAAA! (you totally guessed this, didn’t you, you jerk) pic.twitter.com/VsMV1cNb45

— the women of kilgore trout’s office (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 16, 2021

and that’s how a dude who spent the last year trying to poison his woefully underpaid workers with a virus by purposefully violating basic safety measures turns “no one will work for me because I’m a crazy entitled dickhead” into “joe biden ruined my teeny tiny poor business”

— the women of kilgore trout’s office (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 16, 2021

wrapping up here, it took me maybe ten minutes of googling yesterday to unwind this whole thing. ten minutes. at any point along the way, any node of the right wing media system that adopted bill as their new pet cause could’ve just googled the guy. but that would ruin the fun.

— the women of kilgore trout’s office (@KT_So_It_Goes) April 16, 2021

We need an American equivalent term for ‘poujadist’. Other than just ‘Republican’, I mean.

Friday Evening Open Thread: The Peasants, They Are REVOLTING!Post + Comments (138)

Friday Morning Open Thread: TGIF

by Anne Laurie| April 16, 20217:26 am| 154 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., GOP Death Cult, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat

(Clay Jones via GoComics.com)

This week’s been quite the month, yes?

MANCHIN isn't buying the $800 billion infrastructure price tag Sen. Capito floated y'day: "There's no number that should be set on at all."

"We're going to do whatever it takes. If it takes $4 trillion, I’d do $4 trillion but we have to pay for it,” he tells @alexanderbolton.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) April 15, 2021

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Friday Morning Open Thread: TGIFPost + Comments (154)

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Readership Capture

by Anne Laurie| April 14, 20216:34 pm| 105 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, Readership Capture

Michelle and I are thrilled to be one step closer to bringing the Obama Presidential Center to the South Side of Chicago. We hope it will help lift up the South Side and breathe new life into Jackson Park and the surrounding communities. pic.twitter.com/IItJNFyoAp

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 14, 2021

good news is everywhere if you look for it https://t.co/fRf9JxYcL9

— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) April 14, 2021

In lieu of a headstone, the family will be erecting a pyramid. #Madoff pic.twitter.com/RaRLu6w6YK

— Chuck Greenia (@charlesofcamden) April 14, 2021

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Readership CapturePost + Comments (105)

Open Thread: Space, the Final (Marketing) Frontier

by Anne Laurie| April 12, 20212:47 pm| 10 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Foreign Affairs, Space

On this day in 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, a major milestone for humanity and a triumph for Moscow in the U.S.-Soviet space race https://t.co/z1QWt9Dgba

— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) April 12, 2021

If it hadn’t been for Russian propaganda efforts, how much later than 1969 would it take for a man to reach the moon?

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60 years ago today Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into outer space.

When he landed in a random field, he was met by a 5-year-old girl and her grandmother, who weren't sure he was human. He was needlessly fucking ambiguous about where he'd come from and I love it. pic.twitter.com/qMTwBdHizq

— James Felton (@JimMFelton) April 12, 2021

It’s sixty years since Yuri Gagarin became the very first man in spacehttps://t.co/nt9sYmx7XZ pic.twitter.com/2l0c0R4S6y

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) April 12, 2021

Yuri Gagarin wrote a goodbye letter to his wife before he climbed into Vostok 1, and he had to overcome numerous faults and malfunctions, but 60 years ago today his 108-minute flight made him the first man in space and an enduring Soviet hero. @visachenkov https://t.co/JIn7Hx487o

— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) April 12, 2021

Crushed into the pilot’s seat by heavy G-forces, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin saw flames outside his spacecraft and prepared to die. His voice broke the tense silence at ground control: “I’m burning. Goodbye, comrades.”

Gagarin didn’t know that the blazing inferno he observed through a porthole was a cloud of plasma engulfing Vostok 1 during its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and he was still on track to return safely.

It was his quiet composure under pressure that helped make him the first human in space 60 years ago.

Gagarin’s steely self-control was a key factor behind the success of his pioneering 108-minute flight. The April 12, 1961, mission encountered glitches and emergencies — from a capsule hatch failing to shut properly just before blastoff to parachute problems in the final moments before touchdown…

A soft-landing system hadn’t been designed yet, so Gagarin ejected from the module in his spacesuit and deployed a parachute. While descending, he had to fiddle with a sticky valve on his spacesuit to start breathing outside air. A reserve chute unfolded in addition to the main parachute, making it hard for him to control his descent, but he landed safely on a field near the Volga River in the Saratov region…

Propaganda is a form of marketing — or do I have that backwards? — and so are the various Space Tourism!!!! proposals…

there is not going to be a space hotel in 2027 https://t.co/vJEibXgddB

— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) April 12, 2021

I love space. adore it. I want humans on other planets and living in space. setting ridiculous commercial milestones is going to do two things: raise money and get people killed

— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) April 12, 2021

Of course, Robert Heinlein was writing about the (driven, miserable) moon moguls before most of the current crop were born, but when have prophecies deterred the True Visionaries?

Open Thread: Space, the Final (Marketing) FrontierPost + Comments (10)

Monday Morning Open Thread: Another Week, Another Chance

by Anne Laurie| April 12, 20217:31 am| 134 Comments

This post is in: Biden Administration in Action, C.R.E.A.M., Immigration, Open Threads

WALK OF HONOR: Staff and students line the hallways of an Oklahoma public school to celebrate their cafeteria manager after she passed her U.S. citizenship test. pic.twitter.com/wNPOVArAF5

— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 11, 2021

Elsewhere…

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Another Week, Another ChancePost + Comments (134)

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Well, Yeah…

by Anne Laurie| April 10, 20218:13 am| 233 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, President Biden, Proud to Be A Democrat

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that the American Jobs Plan will transform the country’s roads, bridges, rails and airports and undo decades of underinvestment that had pushed U.S. infrastructure to 13th place in the world pic.twitter.com/Wzk2W8ScfA

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 10, 2021

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Well, Yeah…Post + Comments (233)

April showers, November flowers

by DougJ| April 8, 20212:26 pm| 106 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M.

Ok, I think maybe it’s time to get back to fundraising. Last cycle was a funny one — very successful for Dems, all in all, but with some races like Maine that seemed winnable but where gobs of money made very little difference.

On the other hand there is this calculation. About $200 million was spent on the Georgia Democratic Senate candidates’ campaigns (including a million from here). If we’d lost either race, the COVID relief bill would have been for $1.3 trillion. Two hundred million for a 1.3 trillion dollar pay-off…you can’t beat that on bang for your buck.

I’ve been reading a lot about the best ways to give. This article by Stacey Abrams was great. My take-away from it is that groups like Fair Fight are great places to give and so are state and county parties. I’m also friends with one of the real legends and pioneers of online fundraising and he says whatever gets people excited to give is the best thing to raise money for. One other factor is that early money has a big effect on who enters races — I don’t think that’s such a big thing this cycle because the last one showed Dems will raise lots of money for Senate races anyway and the House is still murky because of redistricting.

So I’d like to strike a bit of a balance. This year (an off-year), I’d like to focus on state parties, county parties, and maybe most of all groups like Fair Fight and Four Directions, with a special emphasis on groups who work on the Latino vote because that’s where Dems’ biggest problem was last time. As we get closer to the midterms and people start getting excited about races and candidates, I’ll shift more to that. How does that sound to people?

I’d like to start with a few places that really came through in 2020 and are continuing to come through (big win in Wisconsin on Tuesday)! We are planning on doing a big one for Four Directions where we talk to the people who run it. I’d like to do the same with a few other groups I’m looking at.

Maricopa County Democratic Party (AZ)

Wisconsin State Democratic Party

Fair Fight (Stacey Abrams’ ballot access group)

April showers, November flowersPost + Comments (106)

The willow is too close to the house.

There’s some extremely good trouble headed their way.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Let there be snark.

Shelter in place is one thing. shelter in pants is quite another.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

It’s not even safe to go out and pick up 2 days worth of poop anymore.

I’m only here for the duck photos.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

There will be lawyers.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

This really is a full service blog.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

We can agree to disagree, but i’m right.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Friday Evening Open Thread: The Peasants, They Are REVOLTING!

Friday Morning Open Thread: TGIF

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Readership Capture

Open Thread: Space, the Final (Marketing) Frontier

Monday Morning Open Thread: Another Week, Another Chance

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Well, Yeah…

April showers, November flowers