Open Forum

Where you can't be off topic because there IS no topic.

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Bill says:
  2. OzarkHillbilly says:
  3. CSK says:

    @Bill: Just the kind of news I relish reading over breakfast!

    @OzarkHillbilly: Well, I once saw a headline about a man arrested for fornicating with a table, but…

    1
  4. Bill says:

    Headline of the day #2-

    2 Mississippi men arrested for allegedly trying to cash in a fake $100,000 scratch-off ticket

    Apparently these two men never heard of bar codes.

    1
  5. Teve says:

    “It is a shame that this country which is benefitting so much from this president’s leadership does not understand their obligations to this leader who is making it possible”

    -lou dobbs

    2
  6. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Federal Judge Invites Scammed Students to Propose Additional Punishments for Betsy DeVos

    The courts have had it up to here with Department of Education (DOE) Secretary Betsy DeVos and her agency’s repeat—and apparently ongoing—violation of court orders that require her to stop milking scammed college students for student loan repayments. And now, it’s the students’ turn to potentially bring some pain.

    In a terse and harsh two-page filing on Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim called out DeVos for her unlawful efforts to extract those payments from the student victims—who are plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against the DOE over those illegal actions taken to force and coerce federal remuneration.

    2
  7. Teve says:
  8. Kathy says:

    To binge or not?

    I first binged a TV show season back in 2007. I’d just moved, and cable or satellite would take a few weeks to get installed, so I rented whole seasons on DVD from a nearby Blockbuster. Given the limited time for the rental, I watched like 4 eps per day. I did the same with any shows I bought on DVD (I think it took me two weeks to re-watch Babylon 5 whole).

    Recently, though, when catching the second season of a show whose first season I binged, I find I’ve forgotten some of the first season. So I go back and watch a couple of eps. So now I’m limiting myself to one ep per day, if that much.

    This started because I couldn’t binge the last season of The good Place, as only one new ep came out per week.

    All that said, the notorious and much anticipated Picard Trek series is coming in late January, and it will be available, in Mexico at lest, on Amazon. I plan to wait for the season to be complete, take the one month free offer, adn binge the hell out of it 🙂

    1
  9. CSK says:

    @Teve: The implications of this are truly frightening’ Obligations??? What “obligations” do I have to Donald J. Trump???

    4
  10. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @CSK: The answer to your question lies here: @Bill:

  11. Teve says:

    Media Matters has a list of nine people running for Congress this year who support Qanon. Some of them are Republicans and some of them are Democrats. HA just kidding!

    linky

  12. DrDaveT says:

    Interesting article at Slate about how the re-enfranchisement of ex-felons is playing out in Florida. I’m not sure that I buy the unstated assumption that ex-felons will map to the overall party affiliation of the counties they live in (or where they feloned, I’m not sure which it is).

    1
  13. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Noah Shachtman
    ‏Verified account @NoahShachtman

    NEW: Rudy Giuliani — hired by Iran’s MEK to get it off the terrorist list — is in Trump’s ear and cheering the recent Iran actions. Soleimani was “directly responsible for killing some of my MEK people,” he told The Beast. “We don’t like him very much.”

    Hmmmm, that sounds suspiciously like Rudy has dual loyalties.

    3
  14. Liberal Capitalist says:
  15. CSK says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    You mean I have to buy a goat and get kidnapped?

    1
  16. Kathy says:

    Yesterday a B-737-800 belonging to Ukraine International Airlines crashed in Tehran shortly after takeoff. There were no survivors.

    It’s way too early to know why this happened, but speculation and rumor are already rampant.

    The international rules for air crash investigations state the country of occurrence, where the accident took place, has the lead in conducting the investigation. It must allow observes from the country that owns the aircraft, in this case Ukraine, and the country where it was manufactured, in this case the US.

    But the Iranians appear not to be willing to allow any American involvement in the investigation. So far they’ve said they won’t hand over the flight data and cockpit voice recorders (ie the “black boxes”) to either Boeing or the US. There’s no requirement that they should, although the NTSB has one of the best facilities for analyzing the recordings. Just about any country can analyze them, and many had specialized facilities and expertise for this.

    Most countries have a civil aeronautics board or agency, and many can carry out crash investigations competently. But it’s no unusual to ask for help or expertise from other countries. When a private jet carrying a cabinet secretary crashed in Mexico City some years ago, the government asked the NTSB to take over the investigation.

    We’ll see what happens. It’s important to keep in mind that air safety is not a political issue, but a global responsibility. Regardless of political tensions, Iran should allow american participation as the rules demand. And let’s not forget Ukraine is also tangled in the impeachment drama in the US Congress. all this should be irrelevant as far as the accident investigation goes.

    1
  17. wr says:

    @Kathy: Boeing. Iran. Ukraine.

    It’s like God is just laughing at us now.

    6
  18. Teve says:

    Monday I sold $5k worth of iPhones and Galaxies and data and insurance to a family and while their 2 solid hours of nonstop jabbering was awful, I kept hearing a name that I couldn’t believe I was hearing. I was busy setting up all the stuff and porting numbers and trying to keep everything straight, so I couldn’t ask, but now I’ve looked up the name on the Social Security website and it’s for real. The latest data is for 2018, but in 2018, the 549th most popular baby name was Khaleesi.

    1
  19. Scott says:
  20. Gustopher says:

    @Scott:

    “Buttigieg has CIA ties for sure,” one responds. “I know this for a fact because I worked beside the CIA in a similar capacity. Buttigieg = Knights of Malta.”

    I believe that would make him Sir Buttigieg.

    3
  21. Gustopher says:

    @Teve: Some people take the opportunity to name a child as an opportunity to honor relatives, or to give the child something special. Others just engage in child abuse.

  22. Guarneri says:

    @wr:

    Uh, correction. Nick Sandmann is laughing at your heroes at CNN. He might even now have a net worth more than the sum total of all you people.

    Heh. Maybe CNN will take it out of Stelter’s obviously prodigious meal allowance.

    1
  23. Teve says:

    “You know what? Trump is a test whether you’re even saved. Only saved people can love Trump.”

    -Jim Bakker

    linky

    1
  24. CSK says:

    @Gustopher:
    No. It would make him “Sir Peter Buttigieg,” and he would be addressed as “Sir Peter.”

  25. just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Guarneri: Was your comment apropos of something? Remember, you can only pnw da libz to the extent that they know wtf you’re talking about. Being too cryptic will make you even less important than you are already.

    7
  26. DrDaveT says:

    @wr:

    Boeing. Iran. Ukraine. It’s like God is just laughing at us now.

    Wait for it… they haven’t yet disclosed which surprising passenger(s) will turn out to have been aboard. Prince Andrew? Sean Spicer? Colin Kaepernick?

    2
  27. 95 South says:

    @just nutha ignint cracker: “Where you can’t be off topic because there IS no topic.”

  28. Gustopher says:

    @Teve: I think that is a very Christian sentiment.

    Trump is an objectively horrible human being. Only someone with an amazing capability to love others without judgement or reservation could love him.

    Although there is some wiggle room in Baker’s statement. “Only saved people can love Trump” does not require saved people to love Trump. They are simply the only people who possibly could, and perhaps only for moments at a time.

    Even the Pope slapped away that grabby lady.

    2
  29. Gustopher says:

    @95 South: No one said that he was off topic, merely that he was spouting gibberish in elven wing-nut or something since no one knows what he is going on about.

    4
  30. KM says:

    @Gustopher:
    I agree with the forgiveness bit but the phrasing Baker used was very exclusionary even when taking Evangelical Christian theology into account. “Only saved people can love Trump” has as its corollary “To not love Trump means you are not saved” and thus puts Evangelicals on the fence about him in an unfavorable position. The *only* condition on “being saved” is traditionally declaring Christ your personal Savior – seeming to add anything to that is consider offensive. Baker meant it to be tribal (Us vs Them) but ended up insinuating a lot of those Us was really Them.

    I’ve actually seen my Twitter feed light up with fundies furious at what Baker said. Not because they don’t support Trump but because “being saved” has a really, really specific meaning they felt he was making light of. They feel he’s questioning their testimony unjustly and it’s hitting them where it hurts. I have Trump supporters in the family who believe Trump is God’s Chosen on Earth but think Baker was way out of line with that.

    2
  31. CSK says:

    @Teve:

    Oh, absolutely. I always rely on guys like Jim Bakker who’ve been imprisoned for fraud and conspiracy for spiritual advice.

    2
  32. 95 South says:
  33. Sleeping Dog says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    No wonder the Onion is struggling.

    Doesn’t surprise me in Missouri. The state only outlawed bestiality in the last 17 or 18 years (though they did beat Kentucky). Two women legislators finally embarrassed the rest of the legislature into action. Didn’t help that there was a UK tour company arranging sex tours to Missouri, tag line was something about beef bayoneting.

    I do have to say, that I always found it interesting when I traveled I70 or I40, that I’d pass porn shops that were about the size of a Wal-Mart.

    1
  34. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Sleeping Dog:

    I always found it interesting when I traveled I70 or I40, that I’d pass porn shops that were about the size of a Wal-Mart.

    We try to keep our fundamentalist perverts happy and peaceful. They have guns you know.

    5
  35. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Guarneri:

    He might even now have a net worth more than the sum total of all you people.

    Or he might have just gotten half a semester of college paid for. The best one can say with certainty is that his lawyers thought the amount was at least going to cut their losses. Or of course it could be a nice payday for them.

    We’ll never know, not that that will stop you from filling the void of ignorance with a fantasy “owning the libs” which you are personally incapable of.

    4
  36. Kathy says:

    When you have a cold, that first time you manage to sleep through the night without waking up parched or gasping for breath, is bliss.

    2
  37. Gustopher says:

    @Sleeping Dog:

    Doesn’t surprise me in Missouri. The state only outlawed bestiality in the last 17 or 18 years (though they did beat Kentucky).

    Washington State only outlawed it about 15 years ago. There was a little incident where a man was fucked to death by a horse.

    I think the law is to protect the people? Or maybe the horse got depressed afterwards?

  38. Gustopher says:

    @95 South: But why did he tag wr? What was the connection? It’s like there was a conversation between them in Guano’s head and we got the third response in the back and forth.

    I have a rich fantasy life about Guano’s rich fantasy life about wr.

    1
  39. Gustopher says:

    @CSK: I’m not sure the Knights of Malta follow the same conventions as the British. They are a Secret Society of Surreptitious Sirs.

    I think we need to convince QAnon loonies that Andrew Yang’s family is really from Manchuria and that he is LITERALLY THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.

  40. EddieInCA says:

    https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/01/joe-biden-has-regained-his-lead-in-iowa/

    Seems like Warren and Buttegieg tryouts in Iowa have fizzled.

  41. Mister Bluster says:

    Considering all this prose about Walmarts, beastiality and tables in at least 3 of our fine States and contemplating Sluggers recent plea that “We need a comprehensive collection of Lenny’s sayings to guide us in these times.”…

    You put a guy on a desert island, he’ll do it to mud, a chicken, a barrel, anything, a knothole.
    Lenny Bruce*

    *Trigger Warning Click at your own risk!

    1
  42. MarkedMan says:

    A previous thread was hashing over what it meant that Trump had a record hall of fundraising, surpassing even the combined Democratic total. I mentioned I wasn’t as concerned as I otherwise would be because I assumed most of the money would be skimmed. And then this from the Southern District of NY via Talking Points Memo:

    Trump’s inauguration wasn’t just extravagant with its haul of $106 million in contributions; it was nearly twice as extravagant as Obama’s 2008 inaugural, the next-highest fundraiser, at $55 million.

    Greg Jenkins, who ran Bush’s 2005 inaugural, told me last year that “it would be like our inaugural raising $54 million, spending it on staff and events, and then raising the money all over again and finding a way to distribute it after all the bills have been paid.”

    So, all this leaves a big, unsolved mystery as to where the money came from, and where it ended up. The Trump inaugural put on far fewer events than previous inaugural celebrations, deepening the question of how the $106 million was spent.

    3
  43. Mister Bluster says:

    @MarkedMan:..deepening the question of how the $106 million was spent.

    Every time JKB and the G Man post here they each get 50cent.

    2
  44. MarkedMan says:

    @Mister Bluster:

    Every time JKB and the G Man post here they each get 50cent.

    Hmm, now there’s a thought…

  45. CSK says:

    Buck Henry has died.

  46. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Nice profile: Doctor, sailor, Super Bowl contender: Laurent Duvernay-Tardif’s strange career

    As he waited for his name to be called at the 2014 draft he wasn’t at home or at a party, he was attending an emergency C-section to assist a mother giving birth to premature twins. He handed his phone to a nurse and said, “If somebody calls, just say yes”.

    As it turned out, Duvernay-Tardif needn’t have worried: he ended up being picked the next day in the sixth round. “When I got home, all my friends and the media were there, even though I didn’t get drafted and they were asking me, ‘Where were you?’ And I told them, ‘Well, I wasn’t done with my shift’”.
    ……………………….
    It was only in the run-up to college that Duvernay-Tardif started to properly embrace the game. His talent and size – he is currently listed at 6ft 5in and 321lbs – helped him stand out in the defensive line and when he was accepted to medical school at Montreal’s prestigious McGill University, he was inevitably tapped up by the coaches. But his academic commitments, particularly during a freshman year that saw him watch recordings of lectures at half-speed while furiously flipping through an English dictionary (French is his first language), ensured a breathless schedule.

    The following year, Duvernay-Tardif worked various hospital shifts, including overnights. To ensure he’d make the team’s early practices, sometimes he’d sleep in the locker room in his scrubs. But he seemed to find calm in the chaos and when he transitioned to the offensive line, he excelled. His teammates nicknamed him Dr Kill, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde character – the sweet, caring medic and his ruthless, bone-crushing, intimidating alter ego.

    By his fourth season in college, some whispered of a potential NFL career, and various teams came to see him in Montreal. But he told them all the same thing: continuing his degree was non-negotiable. “Some teams said, ‘Well, how do we know you’re fully committed to football?’ But others – like the Chiefs – told me, ‘This is amazing because it means you love the game and you’re here for the right reasons’”.

    1
  47. An Interested Party says:
  48. OzarkHillbilly says:
  49. Kathy says:

    So Mexico City and at least its metropolitan area have banned single-use plastic bags in supermarkets and stores.

    Sort of.

    At Walmart on January 1st, I was given a single use plastic bag for my purchases. At Comercial Mexicana, they still have plastic bags for produce, but not for packing all your groceries. They sell fabric bags for about $0.75 US. Now I have to carry one around in the car, but they’re cheap enough it’s no big deal if I forget it. At street markets, plastic bags are plentiful.

    Given how many products are packaged in plastic, from soda to cheese to meat, etc. I don’t think this will make any big dent in the plastic pollution problem.

  50. OzarkHillbilly says:

    If’ns anybody has the stomach for it, donald trump as a…. precocious? little girl.

  51. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Kathy: My first trip to Mexico back in the 80’s I was impressed that EVERYBODY had their own reusable grocery bag, so much so I bought a few for myself. I still have one that I continue to use.

  52. Kathy says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    You see people in street markets carrying reusable bags, but most of that they purchase comes in plastic bags.

    I do recall when supermarkets used paper bags, which were bigger and had no handles. I actually don’t much care what a bag is made of, so long as it has a convenient handle and it doesn’t break.

  53. gVOR08 says:

    A few weeks ago I caught a little flack for saying media fact checkers seem to bend over backwards to nit pick Dems. Via Eschaton Alex Pareene at New Republic goes into more detail in an article with the subtitle Glenn Kessler and his ilk aren’t sticking to the facts. They’re promoting a moderate dogma.

    At the June 28 Democratic presidential debate, Senator Bernie Sanders said, “Three people [in this country] own more wealth than the bottom half of America.” And Glenn Kessler, who leads The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” blog, wrote, “This snappy talking point is based on numbers that add up.” But Kessler, having checked the fact and confirmed that it was true, for some reason continued checking. “People in the bottom half have essentially no wealth,” he helpfully pointed out. “So the comparison is not especially meaningful.”

    That seems like a judgment call best left to, say, a “meaning-checker,” but Kessler, a former business section editor who happens to be a descendant of Royal Dutch Shell and Procter & Gamble executives—an actual member of the American elite and a likely member of the one percent—makes Sanders the regular target of his attempts to police the bounds of acceptable political realities from his perch at The Washington Post. In June, he dinged Sanders for saying that “millions of Americans are forced to work two or three jobs”—because, while Sanders was right, at least eight million do work more than one job, 95 percent of Americans don’t.

    Sanders may get the worst of it, but no one is safe from Kessler’s cherry-picking, his tendentious selection of experts from an array of reliably center-right publications and think tanks (“Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute wrote recently for Bloomberg” is a typical Kesslerism), or his insistence on presenting center-right economic assumptions as “facts.” When Senator Cory Booker, for instance, made an entirely factual statement about American gun violence, Kessler took issue, again, with Booker’s premise, calling it “facile” (raising the question, once more, of whether we are reading the “Fact Checker” or the “Superficiality Checker”).

    However, this centrist bias seldom seems to lead to going to so much effort to assign Pinocchios to rightist Republicans. To be fair, perhaps because it’s so easy to catch them in outright lies.

    1
  54. gVOR08 says:

    @Kathy:

    I do recall when supermarkets used paper bags, which were bigger and had no handles. I actually don’t much care what a bag is made of, so long as it has a convenient handle and it doesn’t break.

    I used to have a rule of thumb that a full paper grocery bag was about $10. That rule seemed to hold for a long time, but the bags got a lot smaller.

    I think I’ll quit showing my age and go find something useful to do. Maybe there are some kids on my lawn.

    6
  55. Kathy says:

    @gVOR08:

    I remember B&W TV.

    According to legend, often told, color TV arrived in Mexico in 1968 along with the Summer Olympics. If so, then by the mid-70s to early 80s, there were still plenty of B&W sets around. I do recall even unto the 90s, announcers in sporting events telling the audience which team wore the light uniforms and who the dark ones.

    I am getting a bit nostalgic due to the book I’m reading now, “Next: The Future Just Happened” by Michael Lewis, published in 2001 (!) There’s lots of talk about the effects of the internet on society, which seem so quaint now in the age of social media…

    1
  56. Teve says:

    @Kathy: Michael Lewis is the best, I have most of his books in PDF on my Google Drive.

    Speaking of books, I need book recommendations, people.

    1
  57. Kathy says:

    @Teve:

    I think of him as a more informative, less performative Malcolm Gladwell.

    Recommendations, if you’re into science fiction, I highly recommend Niven’s “The Integral Trees” and its sequel “The Smoke Ring.” For background, not necessary, the work to read is “A World Out of Time.”

    Nonfiction, I always recommend Dr. Kooney’s two books, “The Woman Who Would Be King,” and “When Women Ruled the World,” both deal with women in power in ancient Egypt. For more about Egypt, the classics are “Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs” and “Red Land, Black Land,” both by Barbara Mertz.

    1
  58. Teve says:

    @realdonaldtrump

    U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration.

    10:00 am 1/9/20

    1
  59. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Kathy: As the tag line from a political cartoon put it recently

    If you ban single-use plastic, what are you going to wrap all the dead whales in?

    1
  60. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Teve: If you haven’t read Lewis’s 5th Risk yet, get it. Scary.

    I started Bloodlands recently but have yet to sink my teeth into it. Highly recommended by others.

  61. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Teve: More good news: US overdose rate* highest in history! Suicide rate* too! So much winning!

    * I really have no idea, just snark. Pretty sure trump’s statement is even less accurate than mine.

  62. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Kansas to expand Medicaid

    Details to come.

    But the expansion looks to be fast with a 1/1/21 start date and it will be a full expansion to 138% FPL so it could potentially be a state plan amendment expansion with waivers either not needed or able to be sequentially added to the program. There is no work requirement. There is a work referral program, but that is common.

    Elections matter, and here are some of the results of all the hard work Kansans put in over the 2018 campaign season.

    2
  63. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    @Teve:
    @OzarkHillbilly:

    U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History!

    What Trump is talking about is a trend that started in 1991.
    It’s the same as him taking credit for employment, and other economic trends, that started way before he took office.
    Which is to say, complete BS.

  64. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Daryl and his brother Darryl:

    Which is to say, complete BS.

    Just another day ending in “Y”.

  65. Moosebreath says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “If you haven’t read Lewis’s 5th Risk yet, get it. Scary.”

    Seconded.

  66. An Interested Party says:

    Nothing like a little religious intolerance…the best line of the whole piece…

    It’s not like she cried fire in a crowded theater…

    1
  67. JohnMcC says:

    Breathtaking shocking surprise of the year so far: The video of Jeffery Epstein during the period of time in which he died — somehow got lost.

    2
  68. Teve says:

    Seen on the internet:

    Don’t blame me – i voted for the email lady

    1
  69. Mister Bluster says:

    Kookie
    RIP
    1932-2020

    (that’s your grandma in the front row)

  70. Tyrell says:

    @Kathy: That is somewhat my situation. I want the NBA, but I can’t get the team I want because we are considered in that team’s market area, even though we are 45 minutes away from their arena. Their games used to be carried by local broadcast station for free.
    CBS is dropping SEC football in a couple of years. Then we will have to pay for that if we want it.

  71. Teve says:

    @JohnMcC: Killary gets another victim!

  72. Mister Bluster says:

    I live 200+ miles north of Memphis. A 3 hour drive on a good day. All the Memphis Grizzlies games, home and away, are blacked out of the DirectTv NBA package at the local Buffalo Wild Wings except the TNT and ESPN/ABC coverage. Since the Griz are 16-22 this means not much TV coverage.
    When the bartender attempts to tune in Memphis NBA games a message appears on the screen that DirecTv has to honor the NBA blackout rules.
    I have searched the internet for these restrictions and they are harder to find than Trumps Tax returns.
    How my zip code, 300 miles from the Fed Ex forum, can be in a Memphis NBA market is beyond me.

  73. Mister Bluster says:

    @Mister Bluster:..How my zip code, 300 miles from the Fed Ex forum,..

    200 miles…

    Christ on a crutch. I don’t see errors no mater how many times I proof read.

  74. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Mister Bluster: I just assumed that when you said 200+ you must have meant 298 miles and next rounded it up. 😉

    1
  75. Tyrell says:

    @Teve: “Escaping From Houdini” (Kerri Maniscalco) Nonstop action.
    “Three Days That Shook the World” (Brett Baier) Imagine sitting in on meetings with Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Now you can.
    “The Education of a Coach” (David Halberstam) Stand on the sidelines beside the amazing Coach Bill Belichick!
    “Shiloh” (Winston Groom) Probably the most devastating two days in American history.