National
DL Open Thread Wednesday, April 24, 2024
If you were wondering what kind of coverage the News Journal would give the race for governor, today’s paper is discouraging. They’ve got a story touting – I kid you not – her endorsement by a bunch of lieutenant governors of other states. Nowhere in the article does it point out that these people know […]
DL Open Thread Tuesday, April 23, 2024
The media desperately wants Trump on Trial to be as big a ratings hit as O.J. was, but the dynamics are different. O.J. had a dream team of lawyers, so he kept his mouth shut and tried to look amiable. Trump’s lawyers are not the stuff of dreams, and their client is constitutionally incapable of […]
DL Open Thread Monday, April 22, 2024
Republicans stay in disarray, most recently over Marjorie Taylor Greene’s unabashed Russia-humping. Even the New York Post called her Moscow Marjorie on its cover. Meanwhile Texas GOP rep Tony Gonzales called out his party’s “scumbags” and said Matt Gaetz paid minors for sex. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think that even […]
DL Open Thread Saturday, April 20, 2024
Nobody seems to know who got House speaker Moses/Mike Johnson to change his mind – some say it was fundies from The Family who don’t like Putin’s religious intolerance – but it looks like that foreign aid for Ukraine is going to pass the House, even though it might cost Johnson his gavel. The Space […]
DL Open Thread Tuesday, April 16, 2024
And so the torch is passed. Just days after O.J. Simpson, defendant in last century’s Trial of the Century, hurdled off this mortal coil, Donald J. Trump donned the mantle of rich womanizing defendant for what the infotainment industry hopes will be a similar ratings bonanza. The big story on Day 1: Trump fell asleep. […]
Song of the Day 4/15: Cheap Trick, “Taxman, Mr. Thief”
Today’s the deadline for mailing their 2023 federal tax return for most people. If you live in Massachusetts or Maine you get a break because of the Patriot’s Day holiday, and if you live in a disaster area you get until June, because you have bigger problems. “Taxman, Mr. Thief” appeared on Cheap Trick’s 1977 […]
Song of the Day 4/13: Paula Cole, “I Don’t Want to Wait”
Yet another Trump stunt to delay his hush-money trial got rejected yesterday, so it’s almost certain to start Monday. Almost certain. The title of this song sums up my feelings on the matter. Paula Cole burned briefly but brightly in 1997, when two singles from “This Fire,” her self-produced second album, scaled the Billboard charts. […]
DL Open Thread Saturday, April 13, 2024
People who thought Ron DeSantis might stop acting like a tinhorn dictator after his presidential-race embarrassment can abandon that hope. He signed a bill that turns police oversight boards over to the police. In what’s now a running gag, Truth Social’s stock price fell again. It would make a better reality show than the one […]
DL Open Thread Wednesday, April 10, 2024
The day after Trump pretended he’d let the states make their own decisions about abortion, the Arizona Supreme Court gave away the game by reinstating an 1864 ban on the procedure, notable because Arizona wasn’t even a state back then. The result: Republicans rushed to pretend they had nothing to do with it. The White […]
‘State’s Rights’ On Abortion Comes Home To Roost In Arizona
I think you can cross Arizona off your list of competitive states for November. Check this out from the NY Times: Arizona’s highest court on Tuesday upheld an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, a decision that could have far-reaching consequences for women’s health care and election-year politics in a critical battleground state. The […]
Song of the Day 4/9: Clarence “Frogman” Henry, “Ain’t Got No Home”
You don’t have to check, puck. Singer and pianist Clarence “Frogman” Henry died Sunday in his native New Orleans, age 87. His ability to sing in a frog’s croak, a skill he said he developed to scare the girls at school, gave him both his nickname and his most enduring hit. Henry was just 18 […]
DL Open Thread Tuesday, April 9, 2024
The news, apparently spooked by yesterday’s eclipse, went into hiding, so the media, as always, fell back on Trump. After a big buildup teasing his position on abortion – can you name another candidate who, eight years after entering the White House, still hadn’t formulated one? – only to chicken out and say the decision […]
DL Open Thread Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Just when you thought that Israel couldn’t sink any lower, they drone-bombed a World Central Kitchen vehicle, killing seven people working to bring food to famine-stricken Gaza – despite having cleared the trip with Israel’s defense department ahead of time. Which demonstrates that this regime isn’t just evil, it’s also incompetent. RFK Jr. tried to […]
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