Westward, Ho! [DOT 12/8/22]

12/8/22 MegMegMcGee 48

Oh, wait… that doesn’t sound right.

Here’s your daily open thread, live from Wyoming.

Today a woman said to me, with a straight face, that before January 6th gas was $2.

There are 500,000 people in the whole state. My county has twice as many people in 507 mi² then Wyoming does in 97,914 mi². Seems fair that these dummies get two Senators.

Having a normal one in Ohio, as usual

Can we just not?

Newly identified Langya virus tracked after China reports dozens of cases
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/aug/10/newly-identified-langya-virus-tracked-after-china-reports-dozens-of-cases

Ukraine news:
Ukraine air force claims up to a dozen Russian jets destroyed in Crimea raid
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/10/ukraine-air-force-claims-russian-jets-destroyed-crimea-raid

In DMV news, this is a sad story

She wanted a career investigating crime. Then she was fatally shot.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/08/10/maurica-manyan-library-officer-shot/

Sprots! This is adorable.

This looks fun!

Have a great day!

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48 Comments

  1. Today a woman said to me, with a straight face, that before January 6th gas was $2.

    i love it when americans bitch about gas prices

    thats per gallon right?

    yous dont know how good you have it

    its about$ 2,20 per liter here

    (the euro being about evens with the dollar i didnt bother doing the math)

      • …it’s mostly tax, I think…could be it’s out of date now but a few years back it was true (in the UK & I think a good bit of europe) that if you removed the tax component you paid more for a litre of bottled/mineral water than for a litre of petrol

        …but there’s a reason german (& indeed french) cars have much better gas mileage than your average ford pickup/SUV/whatever…the running costs on that sort of fuel efficiency would be ruinous even if the things would fit in a parking space

        …mind you…some of those expensive italian cars are thirsty enough to come with a second gas tank & a switch to pick which one to draw from…horses for courses, I guess?

        • its just a switch to make you look like you understand what its like to be a pleb

          if you can afford a ferrari or a bugatti new…fuel prices dont bother you

        • Speaking of the relative cost of things, when I lived in Germany a liter of beer cost less than a liter of mineral water, and beer was sold everywhere, including out of vending machines. And it was good stuff, Spaten, Paulaner, all kinds of brands. I bet that’s changed, since this new health puritanism seems to have swept the globe. Liquor, on the other hand, was horrendously expensive, and all the glasses had the centiliter markings, so you got not a drop more nor less than what was advertised. There was no such thing as a generous pour, unless you were in a private setting.

  3. FBI raids Trump, right wing go ape shit and declare war against the FBI, gunman attempts to attack FBI and CBS doesn’t even try to make even the slightest connection.

     

    Make anything make any moral, or whatever sense….

     

    Fuuuuuuuuuuudge.

     

  5. weee!

    ive just panicked the missus by telling her she needs to find income asap

    dont think im going to be around to pay the bills forever

    ive already got chest pains and the other day i coughed so hard i gave myself pins and needles in my hands and feet

    shits not good i guess

    cant afford the  hospital at mo…you know,…gas prices and shitty insurance

    its like living in the states…without the accent

     

  6. Handsy Cuomo decided to celebrate the anniversary of him being hounded out of office by suing the state for his very expensive legal bills. He and fellow Queens native Trump are really two birds of a feather:

    It appears Cuomo’s been paying his legal bills out of the millions of dollars remaining in his campaign account, but doesn’t want to anymore. [His lawyer Rita] Glavin [who’s possibly as wretched a human being as he is] said the state should do it because the charges occurred while Cuomo was governor.

    James’ office isn’t having it, and fired back that becoming governor doesn’t just give someone a four-year pass for free lawyers to commit any sort of offense they like. Sexual harassment is not part of the job description, a spokesperson for the office said.

    “Taxpayers should not have to pony up for legal bills that could reach millions of dollars so Mr. Cuomo’s lawyer can attack survivors of his abuse.”

    • …I think there’s maybe several things going on at once with that?

      …garland backed them into a sort of corner by making it on them to say not to release it, which would play badly…so they seem to be going for our-lot-won’t-do-homework & plan to just like big, early & often about it all

      …but my understanding is that the worst stuff still would be things not disclosed in detail for explicit reasons pertaining to national security…& the release doesn’t extend to the affidavit that persuaded the judge to sign off the warrant…so the big guns, so to speak, are still on the horizon rather than on the field…which may allow for a lot more shit-talking on the wrong side of this

      …on the other hand…in terms of where the judicial vultures might be circling something hung out to dry I’d imagine that there are some pretty specific lines to read between that would make what garland had to say & the implications of the stuff they’ve begun proceedings to release a good deal more pointed that it might read to us?

      …a propos of nothing…didn’t jared & his father-in-law recently get paid a couple billion dollars by the saudis under the banner of some boondoggle golf tourney thing

      …can’t imagine what brought that to mind?

    • He’s saying this to sow confusion and turn himself into a victim. The press refusing to call this out makes them complicit in his efforts to spin this and potentially get people killed.

      They have to stop treating him as acting in good faith. They have to stop pretending his backers in the GOP are too.

      There is no way to bothsides this, create a wishy-washy headline only hinting at wrongdoing, or act like some 14th paragraph “however” clause is sufficient to offset unfiltered repetition of his talking points.

      Articles which fall short of clear, direct accounts focused on his failings are only helping him.

    • It might bring the senior citizens though. There’s one drug, isn’t it insulin? that only got capped for those on Medicare. Both of Better Half’s parents were on an astonishing variety of pills toward the end of their lives but they had gold-plated public sector pensions so drug prices weren’t a concern for them. One of my sister’s in-laws, on the other hand, the guy owned his own business and his wife was his bookkeeper/office manager, and no conversation with them was complete without at least a mention of how high drug prices are, if not a full-on tirade.

      • I think it’s the faux-objective presentation that bothers me the most, and I sacrificed my actual point for the sake of being glib. I just don’t see a lot of old people crossing the aisle regardless of drug prices. Maybe some, but not a lot. I do think a wave of younger women are registering and planning to vote based on abortion, and I do think that is an issue that could bring moderates across the aisle.

        I’m basically in blue dogcollar territory here, but I see at trend across all media to assume that the Democrats have already lost. It seems almost calculated, and pieces like this that attempt to elevate a marginal issue and claim it’s a deciding factor bother me. It just resembles the Republican stance of “No, nobody cares about abortion — the voters want ZERO INFLATION.” Except here they’re replacing inflation with CHEAP INSULIN.

        I feel like “forcing me to bear a rapist’s child” =/= “cheap insulin” and trying to equate the two and place the entirety of Democrats’ chances on a fringe issue is a way of minimizing the much, much larger issue. It doesn’t help that the piece literally shuns any reference to abortion as a voting factor, which makes it look ill-considered at best, and slanted at worst.

        It’s really an outgrowth of both-siderism, where an actual issue (vaccine efficacy, for example, or climate change) is minimized by saying “some people don’t believe it in.” Well, some people are morons and don’t deserve to have their opinions elevated to the level of national debate. But the media rushes to present them as equal and opposite.

        • Ah, I see, I didn’t read the article, I thought it was more like, “In addition to the horrendous Dobbs decision drug prices could provide [an implied additional] lifeline.” Every little bit helps.

  10. WY, ND SD ID and Montana: combined population is less than NJ. And yet, they control 10% of the Senate.

    But hey, at least we have some representation…*wink wink* 

  11. People get killed for things nuclear. My dad, a nuclear engineer,  was recruited by South Korea in the mid 70s to help on a “special” project which he suspected was their rumored nuclear bomb project. He said no.

    Soon after the leader of the project disappeared. Apparently he was killed by the CIA as a message to the then military government to stop their program or swim with the fishes.

    • Right, if this is at all connected to knowledge for other countries it’s another level of crazy that he had this stuff in a box.

      Of course nothing of any sort regarding nuclear secrets should be in a box.

  12. OK, I’m going to say this again:  please stop with the bitching about two Senators for every state.  We wouldn’t have a Constitution without it, and there is zero chance that low population states run by Democrats (of which there are 8 below the halfway mark) would go for changing it.  Not to mention the fact that the following Republican/swing right states would get a major boost in their Senate representation:

    #2: Texas

    #3:  Florida

    #5: Pennsylvania

    #8:  Georgia

    #9:  North Carolina

    For damned sure, if the Senate were likewise determined by population, you can bet those elections would be by district, rather than by statewide vote.

    So, once again, please stop.  If you want a better solution, then make Puerto Rico and DC states.

    • Agree. The solution is to expand the number of states. Just like the solution to the Supreme Court is to increase the size of the court, so that each judge doesn’t have an outsized impact on decisions. There’s no reason a single person should be responsible for 11% of a decision that affects the whole country.

    • I agree with you, although it’s not a popular opinion on the left, and the problem does go all the way back to the writing of the Constitution itself. Then, everyone was concerned that without a Senate the way it was Virginia would essentially run the new country, with occasional input from populous MA, NY, and maybe PA. They weren’t wrong. Four of the first five Presidents of the US were from Virginia and six of the first 10 were. That brings us up to 1845. Of the first 10, two more were from MA and one was from New York. Only Jackson, from TN, was the outlier. Several VPs were also from VA, MA, or NY.

      And let’s not forget, teensy Delaware has two Senators, and one of them, for decades, was Joe Biden.

    • Ngl, my DREAM is to see Puerto Rico, DC, Guam, and all the *other* inhabited US territories made into states!😉😁💖

      Because, frankly, that “paying taxes but NOT having representation” thing is something that i find 100% unacceptable.

      especially with that recent USSC ruling that said folks ARE eligible for… was it Medicare? benefits while living in a different state, but ineligible if they decide to move back home for support while they need help…

  13. Hmmmm, what could this mean?

    Damn, Fox not even trying to act like news anymore…

    https://crooksandliars.com/2022/08/fox-news-smears-trump-warrant-judge-0

    Some mornings you just need a good back scratch from a friend…

    Lemur asks for back scratch from FunnyAnimals

  14. Friday is always a big chores day for me.  It’s 12:19pm, I’m about 3/4 done, and I’ve come in to refill my coffee mug and see what’s happening.  Oh, and to send out my love to you all.

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