Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… makes me wish i had hoarded more linguine

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Han shot first.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Something seems odd about that, but i have been drinking.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

I’m only here for the duck photos.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

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

Tick tock motherfuckers! Tick fucking tock!

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

Everybody saw this coming.

Naturally gregarious and alpha

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

Just a few bad apples.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

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Acceptance Level: Unlocked

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Well, here it is:

Acceptance Level Unlocked

I edited out all the whiny lies. (You’re welcome.) But this is progress of a sort — the only concession this repulsive crybaby is ever likely to make. For the next 65 days, this egomaniacal wretch will do everything in his power to foment division and delegitimize the incoming administration.

There’s no way Trump sticks around the White House on January 20th to greet his successor and attend the inauguration as honor compels real presidents to do, no matter how hard fought the race. He’ll probably demand that all the toadies boycott the inauguration too.

In a way, good riddance — who wants those puling babies around stinking up the event with their loaded diapers? But Trump is playing a dangerous game with the country, and for no other reason than malice and spite. Fuck that guy.

Now, I’m off to continue binge-watching the latest season of The Crown.

Open thread!

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Give Me Liberty and Give Me Death!

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We’re really the dumbest fucking country:

During the early days of the pandemic, the public’s attention was fixed on various models, each showing a steep upswing, with cases steadily increasing each day, followed by the tail-end of the curve as cases fade away.

Americans saw, with increasing dread, the predicted upswing in the national numbers. Then, over the last couple of weeks, it stopped.

And yet, forecasters are projecting even more deaths on the horizon. A leaked document obtained by The New York Times projected more than 3,000 people could die each day by the end of May. Another historically conservative model, favored by the Trump administration, just doubled its projected death toll, too.

The tail-end of the national epidemic is not materializing.

“If you just look at the total number of cases, you’re going to miss what’s underneath it,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It’s not a leveling-off. It’s a painful handoff.”

America’s current “plateau” isn’t good news, he said. Infections from the earliest-hit metropolitan areas are now spawning outbreaks of their own across the country.

If you take NY out of the equation, which is lowering the national numbers, the entire nation is on a steady incline. Yet we have this:

Republican elected officials are rushing to express support for a Texas salon owner sentenced to a week in jail and a fine for reopening her business in violation of a stay-at-home order issued by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Members of the self-described party of “law and order” attacked a judge who enforced the order.

Dallas County State District Judge Eric Moyé sentenced salon owner Shelley Luther to seven days in jail and a fine of $7,000 for violating the stay-at-home order as well as Moyé’s temporary restraining order and a cease-and-desist order from Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.

On a personal note, I had to go to the store today for produce and allergy meds, and did my usual overalls with full length sleeves, masks, gloves, and carrying lysol wipes, because I am not a fucking sociopath, and noticed that there has been a MARKED increase in the number of people out and about and a MARKED decrease in the number of people wearing masks. Apparently moving from the Governor’s “Stay at home” order to the current “safer at home” order has been interpreted by many as “fuck it, YOLO.”

Personally, I am expecting the entire nation to get hammered in about three weeks to a month, and last week I had a stern talk with my parents that NOTHING has changed, in fact things are getting worse, and they are still grounded for at least another couple months. They were fine with it, because they don’t want to die, either. I’m keeping my shit locked down and don’t intend to change anything. I am expecting at least a half million deaths.

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I Am Over These Fucking People

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Joining Betty in afternoon rage..

I posted this information on Facebook:

I have friends and family in Iowa. No provisions for someone who might be vulnerable, no provisions for someone who might live with someone who is vulnerable. Just get your lazy ass back to work.

First, someone that I do business with (as a customer no less) decided to spew Republican talking points at me about it and that people will take advantage. I was waiting for her to come at me with “strong bucks and t-bone steaks.”  I let her know I wasn’t buying it about these hypothetical deadbeats and wanted to know when we were going to talk about the businesses taking advantage of workers by putting profit over their safety. Her reply was, “Oh, wow” like I’d said something drastic like “So pro-life only means in the womb, right?” She then deleted all her comments.

Then, my cousin, who is a retired minister came at me with the same BS. My response: “Who would Jesus kill for profit, amirite?”

I think I’m banned from future family reunions (not really, my godmother is a retired minister who is totally liberal…or as she likes to call it, “a follower of the teachings of Christ”).  ETA: He just came back at me with “we can agree to disagree and still be family, right” I’ll think about it.

Anyway, I’ve had it with these fuckers and they all need to be called on the carpet and then crushed under my heel. You want to preach the economy over lives, then the next woman who says, “this unexpected pregnancy is going to wreak havoc on my personal economy,” better be first in line for an abortion without any protest from these frauds.  Because as we know, profits are all that matter.

If we and our Democratic leaders do not make them own each and every one of these comments from now until no one remembers what a Republican was, except to compare them to Nazis, we are fools. And worse, dishonoring all those who died because of this outrage.

And yes, having had this stupid virus, I am taking all of this personally. And I’m worried beyond words for those around me who may succumb to it.

BTW, I’m fine, thanks for asking 😊 ’cause I know you’re gonna. I’m on day 3 of feeling pretty darn good. But I will tell you the fatigue is impressive. And there were a few days/nights that were very hairy, but those passed and the rest was pretty mild.

Okay, back to my rant. I am mad as hell and really am not going to take it anymore. Come at me with bullshit and I’m going to fight back – friends, family, business, I. Do. Not. Care.

I feel better now.

/rant

I will try and have something respite-like later. No promises though, I may need a nap after this.

 

 

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Captain Courageous (Largely Outsourced To Mr. Pierce)

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Charles Pierce said it all about what Trump and his acting (of course) Navy Secretary did to the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

The Roosevelt, you’ll recall is the aircraft carrier that suffered a coronavirus outbreak while on deployment. It is essentially impossible able to isolate infectious patients on naval vessel.  US carriers are huge–the Roosevelt is 335 meters long (inevitably: more than three football fields), but it’s full of stuff, and there’s not actually that much space to put people, especially folks who need to be kept well away from everyone else.

Its captain, Brett Crozier, asked, then begged his superiors for permission to get the sick sailors off his ship, and to quarantine the carrier for the time necessary to ensure that the infection would not sweep through his whole crew, inevitably killing some of them.

Captain Courageous (Largely Outsourced To Mr. Pierce

Pierce quotes the letter Crozier wrote to command:

This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors…Removing the majority of personnel from a deployed U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier and isolating them for two weeks may seem like an extraordinary measure…This is a necessary risk. Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the TR is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.

Nothing happened until Crozier’s letter leaked to The San Francisco Chronicle. (It’s not now and may never be known who leaked it; possibly Crozier himself.) Once that letter became public, two things followed. As Pierce writes,

Almost immediately, acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly acted like any acting secretary of anything in this administration* can be expected to act. He initially refused Crozier’s request and then, when the public heat came down, he allowed the afflicted member of the crew to be brought ashore. Then, on Thursday, he relieved Crozier of his command.

Modly’s explanation is a masterpiece of Trumpian malign weaselry:

Captain Crozier had allowed the complexity of his challenge with COVID breakout on the ship to overwhelm his ability to act professionally…(Pierce’s emphasis.)

There’s not much to add. Adam and others on this blob more closely connected to the military than me can chime in, but I’m quite sure that there is no way Crozier didn’t understand what would follow from his decision to protect his crew.  A career on the fast track to flag rank is now dead.

Crozier is the kind of leader I would want if  I or anyone I cared about had to go into harm’s way.  His subordinates agree.

Donald Trump does not:

A Navy commander’s written alarms about a coronavirus outbreak aboard his aircraft carrier “looked terrible,” President Donald Trump said Saturday, as he praised military leaders who removed the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s top officer from his post.

A) I hope that military voters take note.  And B):  That Trump and his criminal, and criminally incompetent administration have made a ritual sacrifice of Captain Crozier is not just an act of petty and petulant vengeance.  It measurably weakens US national defense.

We cannot rid ourselves of these malignancies a moment too soon.

Image: J. W. M. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838.

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The Idiot

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There is nothing like helping a friend. Barring it involving moving a body*, it’s usually a sign of Being A Good Person. However… I have learned that this is not necessarily a sign of being a smart person.

Yes, I did lift those. Yes, that’s a heavy band around my legs. Yes, those are velvet shoes.

A few days ago, I went with a friend to their parents’ house, which is being sold, as their father passed last year and it’s become too much for their mother. To say the family dynamic is stressful is a classic case of “My Culture Has a Case of the British Understatementitis”, so I wanted to be there for them. There was also a car. A car that has sat in the garage for about 3 months and is now an ex-running car. The desire was to jump the car, use it to take beloved furniture back to friend’s own home, possibly eat some pizza in a furniture laden home. The best laid plans, juicers, something something, I got distracted, maybe it was important, maybe not.

There’s a surprising amount of time lifting things for no reason on my calendar. & Looking like a Flashdance extra.

Said car is a luxury vehicle. As in, a Lexus. Did I mention it’s a 2017 Lexus SUV? Someone had to stay in the vehicle to steer the non-running thing & someone had to push. Being a clever person, I was not about to steer a car I have no clue about, with friend’s expensive car too close, and possibly lose control, crashing expensive SUV into parents’ house or a neighbor’s house. I’m not saying I’m disaster prone, I’m saying I have a tendency to defy statistics.

Piece o’cake!

So, your pal pushed a 4 ton vehicle about 20 feet. It charged up, was driven back into the garage. It died again. So, I did the feat of strength, again. We did some what was needed, we went back to our respective homes. All was well!

Until… I woke up the next day with the most incredible pain in my left shin, ankle & foot. I’ve been laid up for a couple of days and can only walk moderate distances with a cane. I have no idea what happened, so don’t ask me. It seemed really simple at the time. I did push the thing, it moved, I kept pushing until we had the space we needed. Why my body didn’t signal, “Girl, you crazy? Call AAA!”, i dunno. I’m breaking down the scar tissue and slowly regaining mobility, but that was, in hindsight, probably stupid. But good intentions? Ah, well. I can take loving well, if not wisely. Open thread, laugh at my pain, but remember, I did move an suv.

“You’re supposed to be smarter, WTF.” “Forget it, Odo. Mom can’t even hunt.”

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Lisa Page is done being quiet

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I understand the argument when people say Trump isn’t the worst president ever — or even the worst this century. In terms of body count through pointless military actions and the number of lives ruined through financial malfeasance and mismanagement, Trump doesn’t come close to George W. Bush (yet).

But Trump is in a class by himself in his willingness to recklessly gin up rage against entire groups of people and tell outrageous lies that endanger individuals. He eagerly and often does both for political gain, to get himself off the hook or to paint himself as less sleazy by comparison to others. It’s grotesque and repellent, and, as far as I know, it’s unmatched in US history. In this way, Trump has exposed countless people to crackpots and mobs and has caused death and mayhem, though not at scale…so far.

Two of his favorite targets are former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and agent Peter Strzok. Trump defames them not because they engaged in official misconduct (investigations turned up indiscreet behavior but nothing illegal) but rather because they were critical of Trump in text exchanges, which Trump latched onto as evidence of a “deep state” conspiracy. Trump has relentlessly mocked the two and called for their jailing, just like the tinpot authoritarian he aspires to be.

Trump’s behavior toward Page and Strzok is particularly disgusting to me because they aren’t public figures. The way he leers about “lovely Lisa” and lingers over the word “lovers” when talking about Page and Strzok at his hate rallies is grotesque because no one deserves to have their private business publicly mocked by a foul, degenerate hypocrite like Trump. (It’s also jarring to me because I once found it impossible to imagine Trump using the word “lovers” outside the context of a food order in which it immediately follows the word “meat.”)

Anyway, after remaining silent and hoping in vain that Trump would move on, Page has had enough of the shitgibbon’s shit, as she says in an interview with Molly Jong-Fast in The Daily Beast. Here’s an excerpt where Jong-Fast describes why Page decided to speak out:

I asked her why she was willing to talk now. “Honestly, his demeaning fake orgasm was really the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she says. The president called out her name as he acted out an orgasm in front of thousands of people at a Minneapolis rally on Oct. 11, 2019.

Ugh. That’s just so many shades of fucking cringe.

I hope Ms. Page gets some measure of relief from breaking her silence and highlighting the many ways Trump and his nasty sycophants have subverted our federal law enforcement institutions. The whole interview is worth a read.

Open thread.

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Today’s Public Relations Fail

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South Dakota, like a lot of other rural states, has a meth problem. Today they rolled out a campaign to deal with it.

Evidently nobody along the way said, um, that could be taken in two ways.

The negligence here is cruel. Let us hope those are models in those photos, and not real people who thought they were helping to deal with South Dakota’s drug problem.

How does something this bad happen? Lack of diversity? An ad agency just in it for the money?

Today’s Public Relations FailPost + Comments (117)