If the Debate Were An Actual Super Bowl

by 2:16 pm. It has 204 Comments.

ontheissues

Image via the Washington Post

I’ve heard numerous people describe this debate as a political Super Bowl and that it will draw Super Bowl like ratings. So fine. Let’s make a football analogy.

If this debate/election was the Super Bowl, the Democrats would be sending the New England Patriots, coached by Bill Belichick. He’s a total asshole to them as he hates the media, he does some ethically questionable shit from time to time, everyone hates him and his team, but he is impeccably prepared, knows the system and the game in and out, always gets the most out of his players, makes the most of bad situations (like having Tom Brady benched for four games and still going 3-0), and they generally just succeed at whatever they do.

The Republicans would be sending this guy:

Or this guy:

And this is not hyperbole, which is terrifying.





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This Times 10000

by 1:45 pm. It has 71 Comments.

This is hands down the best Donald Trump piece you will read this election cycle, describing the near instant revulsion many of us have with the man:

The first time you meet Donald Trump, he’s an older male relative who smells like cigarettes and asks when you are going to lose that weight. You’re nine years old. Your parents have to go out and buy a bottle of vodka for him before he arrives. His name is Dick. No, really, it is. At dinner one night, he explains to you that black people are dangerous. “If you turn around, they’ll put a knife in your back.” Except Bill Cosby. “He’s one of the good ones.” Turns out he’s wrong about Cosby and everything else, but the statute of limitations on Dick’s existence on Earth will run out before that information is widely available.

***

The next time you meet Donald Trump, he’s your boss. Well, he’s your boss’s boss. A vice president in marketing who seemingly literally cannot stop talking. He’s on his third wife, and that’ll be over in a few years. He can’t believe your mother is his age. He thinks you are friends. He asks you if you’ve changed your hair every time he sees you. Sometimes during meetings he’ll turn away and open a magazine while someone is presenting. One time he comes to a halt in the middle of his own sentence to stare at a woman’s boobs for somewhere from seven to 27 uncomfortable seconds. (It’s hard to gauge time accurately during a truly aggressive boob-stare.) When he finally gets fired years later, his HR file as fat as a pig knuckle, the rumor is he’s caught stealing his own office furniture on the weekend. They don’t even stop him. They just let him go. It’s like the building itself sighs with relief.

Perfect.





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A sigh is just a sigh

by 12:51 pm. It has 158 Comments.

This tweet that Anne Laurie found was right on the money:

I believe that one of the reasons the 2000 race was so close — instead of being the blow-out it should have been — was the media fixation on Al Gore’s sighs in the first debate. Not to get all Bob Somerby on your asses, but all that bullshit about how Al Gore was the nerdy hall monitor and W was the likable jock…that bullshit is the reason W became president. Thus it’s the reason for the Iraq War and at least 5 or 6 trillion extra in debt.

All that bullshit is starting to happen again in this election.. So if anybody tells you that Hillary shouldn’t have glared at Trump or raised her voice or whatever in tonight’s debate, tell them to go fuck themselves.

Update. THIS (h/t Jim)


Modern “Conservatism” In One Screen Shot

by 10:02 am. It has 203 Comments.

Ole Larry O’Connor at Hot Air is all het up and having a bad day:

gladwehaveourprioritiesstraight

He concludes: “Hillary posts pages of documented Trump lies” and holds a conference call with members of the media detailing the same theme and within 48 hours major publications print articles following along with Hillary’s prescribed narrative.

Yup, total coincidence.”

And there you have it. Rather than being concerned about the fact that Donald Trump’s past is so full of toxic lies it could be an EPA Superfund site, he’s upset that Trump is a victim of the media (a notion which is in and of itself utter nonsense).

Priorities!


Monday Morning Open Thread

by 5:13 am. It has 234 Comments.

momsense-korra-dubious-very-dubious

According to ever-uplifting commentor MomSense:

Korra is practicing her debate watching faces.

He said what??? Please make him stop.

Distinguished commentor Omnes Omnibus linked to the following clip, and Adam was sad that he’d been “beaten to the punch”. But not everybody here reads the comments, especially on weekends, so I gave Adam 36 whole hours to front-page it… sorry, Adam, we need the eggs laughs:

“I will spoil every episode of Game of Thrones!”

Apart from stockpiling supplies for this evening, what’s on the agenda as we start another week?


Later Night Open Thread: Cole’s Favorite Candidate

by 12:43 am. It has 46 Comments.

Jason Kander — he understands how to meet the voters where they’re at!

Somebody may want to add “Thank you for putting on pants” to the rotating tags widget…

Goal Thermometer


Late Night Open Thread: Waiting and Rumor-Monging

by 10:51 pm. It has 105 Comments.


Read more →


Alternate Working Titles

by 7:41 pm. It has 215 Comments.

This made me laugh:

toxicwaste

Here, guys. Let me help you.

deplorable

bothsides

theyhateyou

At some point the media will notice that Pappy Bush and Susan Collins are not the GOP.


Shameless Hypocrites Open Thread: Ken Starr, Straight from 1992

by 4:03 pm. It has 137 Comments.

The very special prosecutor who chased rumors of Bill Clinton’s infidelities all over the national media has a major grievance. Per Liam Daniel Pierce at Vice Sports:

File this under: you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Former Baylor president Ken Starr seems to have forgotten what a real victim is, as, in an interview with the Texas Tribune [Saturday], he said that “a grave injustice” was done to Baylor’s fired football coach Art Briles. Injustice? Starr might be forgetting the sexual assault victims that received absolutely no justice under his and Briles’ tenure.

The Baylor University football team was rightfully embroiled in a scandal earlier this year, after an investigation revealed that the university and its football program repeatedly failed to respond to sexual assault accusations against Baylor’s football players. In at least one incident, the investigation discovered, university administrators even retaliated against a complainant. Starr was forced to resign and Briles was fired—and I guess that’s the injustice he was talking about?…

“I’m going to resist the issue, or the characterization, that there was an endemic problem,” Starr said…





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And the Stage is Set

by 1:33 pm. It has 307 Comments.

We are so well and truly fucked:

The head of the Commission on Presidential Debates has some advice for debate moderators this fall: leave the fact-checking to the candidates.

Janet Brown, executive director of the commission, told CNN’s Brian Stelter that moderators should let the candidates check one another on “accuracy and fairness.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to get the moderator into essentially serving as the Encyclopedia Britannica,” Brown said Sunday on “Reliable Sources.”

While Brown said the commission depends on “independent, smart journalists” to make their own decisions about how to moderate, she said that historically, correcting the record has been left to the candidates.

And if Trump wins, this from Nick Kristof will have been eerily prescient:

In watching the campaign coverage this year, I’ve sometimes had the same distressing feeling I felt in the run-up to the war in Iraq — that we in the media were greasing the skids to a bad outcome for our country. In the debate about invading Iraq, news organizations scrupulously quoted each side but didn’t adequately signal what was obvious to anyone reporting in the region: that we would be welcomed in Iraq not with flowers but with bombs. In our effort to avoid partisanship, we let our country down.

When some in cable TV cover Trump endlessly without sufficiently fact-checking his statements or noting how extreme his positions are, because he is great for ratings and makes money for media companies, we are again failing the country. We are normalizing lies and extremism.

There’s no real upside to telling the political truth in our society any more. You won’t be held accountable. In fact, those who are honest, admit their flaws, and try to deal with reality are punished because the other guy, who lies at will or just makes up fantasy scenarios (this was true to some extent with Bernie and all the things that would just magically happen and voila PROGRESSIVE NIRVANA) looks so much better by comparison.


NFL Open Thread

by 12:36 pm. It has 87 Comments.

So here are this week’s games and my crappy picks, which comprise zero parts knowledge, 1/2 part wishful thinking and one part uninformed guesswork:

nfl-2016-09-25

I just hope today is a better football day for valued commenter Raven and me than yesterday was. I broiled in the noonday sun watching my daughter’s school get clobbered by FSU (ptui!), then went into the blessed air conditioning to watch my alma mater lose to Tennessee. Figgety fuck-a-doodle!

Anyone cooking today? I’m making a pasta salad that features sun-dried tomatoes, basil, Kalamata olives and feta cheese. Hubby is going to grill some very thin ribeyes for steak sandwiches. That’s all I know.

Open thread!





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Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Still Reaping

by 5:22 am. It has 127 Comments.

marvel-16-sept-few-tomatoes

From faithful Garden Commentor Marvel:

We’re clearly Autumn-bound, here in the Willamette Valley. The sun’s coming in at a good slant, the university (OSU — Go Beavs) is having its first home football game and we’re hauling & processing veggies to beat the band. There’s plenty left out there to harvest and eat/store in coming days/weeks (e.g., the late potatoes are ’bout ready to dig up; kale, cabbage & brocolli are looking good; the basil’s primed for the blender & pine nuts), but it’s the tasks at hand that have our attention.

The Summer was fairly mild and the tomatoes showed it — harvest was relatively scant & late…with none to waste, every precious one was brought in and lovingly prepared/processed.

marvel-16-sept-popcorn

We husked & dried the popcorn (first time we’ve grown it) and have, in the loudest, most kinetic operation my kitchen’s ever seen, wrestled the kernals from their respective ears. Whew. There are vintage hand-cranked shellers (looking much like medieval torture devices and hard to find) and modern, zippy-looking ones (w-a-a-a-y too expensive), but we used tools at hand (me = a sweet corn skinner; Jack = a gnarly pair of pliers). We may not plant popcorn again, given the wrestling required.

marvel-16-sept-chutney16

The apple crop was good (for us and our organic/no spray ways, anytime we lose less than about 85% to the various bugs [talking to YOU, coddling moth], it’s a good year) and I have a swell recipe for a savory chutney using crisp apples and green tomatoes (plenty of those around) — cooked up a double batch of it just this AM.

***********
This year was absolutely THE WORST for my tomatoes in the 20-some years I’ve been gradually expanding my “garden” from a plastic pot on a rental deck to a whole bunch of 15gal rootpouches on an asphalt driveway extension. Of course I overbought seedlings, but I got everything planted out & tomato-laddered & fertilized in good order and then… well, we’re currently under ‘extreme drought’ conditions. Which wouldn’t have been an issue, except that the humidity level hung between oppressive and unhealthy from July into September (all that water & none of it doing our poor plants, or my lungs, any good). I could not bear to spend more than an hour or so outside on any given day, which just about gave me time to keep the raised flower beds and lilacs from drying up once I’d watered the tomatoes. So at least three different varieties of blight hit early & hard, and the few fat green specimens I carefully nurtured got messily destroyed by some bird or small mammal despite the large saucer of water I carefully kept filled for just such visitors (another disaster that hasn’t happened in at least 15 years). And the whole yard looks like it was cruelly abandoned, ungroomed and dusty.

I’m trying to decide whether I should order a handful of “essential” heirlooms from my favorite California-based mail-order source right now, rather than waiting to look at multiple sites in February as a mood-lifter. Or if maybe I should just declare a moratorium, and spend next year’s green season doing some serious & desperately-needed spadework to revive the rest of the yard…

What’s going on in your garden(s) this week?





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Another Exciting Saturday Night

by 11:21 pm. It has 139 Comments.

When we last toured the house, we examined the front entrance, the living room, and the dining room. Today, because it is all sorts of special, we will do the kitchen. Mind you, this was taken with my ipad because I dropped my iphone and shattered the screen (first time since I started using cell phones since I broke one- I know, I am as surprised as you), so they are not as good. Here is a refresher pic of the dining room:

8underarchleftview

The kitchen is the door to the left. Here is a view from standing in the doorway:

sink

The kitchen has a drop ceiling, which we ripped out without looking at it because there was no vent in the kitchen, and there was no place for a ceiling fan, and by now I know these idiots and if they have a drop ceiling, it’s because they were too lazy or stupid to fix obviously broken shit. I was not wrong.

sink2

ceiling

That second picture is directly below the commode upstairs, which is great, because I need to move that anyway since the idiots have the toilet in a place where you have to put your knees under the sink to do your business, and the plumber is going to need access anyway. We can use this as an opportunity to fix that without ripping things out, and idf any wiring needs to be done, can deal with that. Panning left from the sink:

leftsink

furtherleft

The doorway in the last picture leads to the basement. Backing up a bit, here is a picture that is to the right of the cabinets in the second picture, with the doorway to the back porch (AKA THE DECK OF INSTANT DEATH) and the pantry:

panningright

As soon as you walk into a pantry, there is another commode, which is going to have to be moved, because who wants to shit right off the kitchen? That makes no sense and is disgusting.

moreright

And on the back wall of the pantry, some old shelves:

pantry

Finally, here is the wall with my back to the sink:

wall

That is the wall that connects to the dining room, and we are knocking part of that out so the kitchen is bigger and flows into the dining room into a coherent plan. I don’t need or want a big dining room, so we are going to make that space make sense.

I’ve also gone through and made a long list of needs, wants, and desires, and I am prioritizing them and trying to figure out how to budget them and then how to do them in the right order so we do not need to redo things to fix something else on the list. Here it is as of now:

Needs:

1.) Inspect roof, gutters, insulation, make repairs where necessary
2.) Furnace situation (which vents can we remove, etc.)
3.) structural integrity of first floor- support beams to level droop
4.) Basement
4a. drainage and moisture (French drains outside? Seal walls)
4b. new windows
5.) Flooring for first and second floor
6.) Fix or replace both front and back door.
7.) Structural integrity of back deck
8.) Fix wall cracks, paint interior
9.) Kitchen- knock out wall, make kitchen and dining room coherent, appliance, fix pantry, door that closes to basement.
10.) Scrape and paint floor and deal with stairs on front porch
11.) Build garage?
12.) Vent in bathroom, new vanity and floorplan for toilet
13.) Have KA deal with their god damned trees

Wants:
1.) new railings on deck
2.) new outer doors to basement
3.) lighting out front
4.) fireplace
5.) new tub
6.) drapes in all rooms
7.) fill in under fence in backyard so animals can not escape

Desires:
1.) celing fans in every room
2.) good lighting- my eyes are getting shitty and I would like lighting that is not harsh but still does not create glare
3.) hand crafted desk that built into wall that fills entire office so I can roll from computer to computer and have two workstations
4.) raised bed gardens in back yard.
5.) several trees (not ornamental- maple or something solid that can grow and last) for front and back yard
6.) nice rugs and runners
7.) Something for once you enter the house for coats, mail, keys, shoes, umbrellas, etc.

It’s a lot of work. Right now I am in the mental planning phase, where I think about what I want to do while dealing with obvious things (cleaning, extermination, structural integrity issues). So much work.

*** Update ***

Went to the fridge to get some of the ice cream (TURKEY HILL DARK CHOCOLATE CARAMEL ESPRESSO), excited because I am going to sit down and nom nom nom while watching some HGTV I dvr’d and this is what I find:

whatkindoffuckingmonsterdoesthis

WHO LEAVES A TABLESPOON OF ICE CREAM? WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THAT? I need to have a stern talk with the kids.


The Keith Lamont Scott Execution Video

by 9:03 pm. It has 119 Comments.

I still, for the life of me, can not figure out why they did this. Why did they have to have him out of the damned truck. he wasn’t who they were looking for, he was in his truck minding his own business, and they dragged him out and shout him. He didn’t do anything threatening. His hands were at his sides. North Carolina is an open carry state. The cops were undercover. He probably thought he was being jacked or something.

There was literally no reason for them to do this. They could have easily backed up, secured the area, calmed down, assessed the situation, and de-escalated. There is no reason for this. None.

If anyone in the military behaved like this anywhere in the world, they would be court-martialed, dishonorably discharged, and probably sent to Leavenworth. There would be a thorough review of training policies, and tens of thousands of man hours would go into making sure something like this doesn’t happen again.

Now the cops are making a big deal about the blunt they found. This is the picture they released:

blunt

I didn’t know whether to laugh and roll my eyes or just cry when I saw that. I bet if you fucking scroll back the douchebag will be wearing a hazmat suit. It’s not even a half gram of weed. I haven’t smoked pot in, well, a while, and that’s not even enough to get a person high. Maybe a mild buzz and a craving for a milkshake. They wouldn’t even prosecute this- a half ounce (that’s 14 grams for you squares) gets you a $200 fine. It’s a class 3 misdemeanor, which, btw, just to remind you, is not punishable with the death penalty. They’d most likely just make you shred it in front of them if they caught you with it.

I mean, we’ve all heard the phrase “killer weed,” but they don’t mean it literally. But now, because a bunch of hotheads with gun and a badge killed a man for no reason, this pitiful joint (it’s a shitty roll, too, if that matters) is now causus belli for a public execution. And they didn’t even know he had it. And they wouldn’t have if they hadn’t fucked up and rolled up like fucking commandos on a dude at a bus stop waiting for his kid to come home from school.





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Open Thread: Only A One-Word Response Required

by 8:27 pm. It has 134 Comments.

Hillary, tilting her head, politely: “….. Who?”

Donnie couldn’t help trying his usual half-witted Twitter “dominance” primate routine, and of course Ms. Flowers was gonna jump on the ‘invitation’, because what has she got to lose?

So when HRC pretends she doesn’t remember the name, the Media Village Idiots… get to besmear themselves a little more? Look like even bigger douchecanoes than Lord Orange Littlescrotum?

Never mind those college-educated suburban Republican women who Trump’s campaign is supposed to be courting — every married Republican man whose wife has forgiven him, barely, for That One Time on A Business Trip has (another) reason to resent Donald popping off. He’s just given the Democratic GOTV another boost, and given the “average” Repub voter one more reason to stay home.

It’ll go down well with the Twenty-Seven-Percenters, sure, but that’s not enough to win a national election. Good for the post-election grift, though!