Joe Lieberman?

earlier today I made a reference that I thought might have been too online but then realized that it was to an 1853 short story by Herman Melville and "potentially obscure" wasn't synonymous with "terminally online"

scene from Disney's 1967 animated Jungle Book film, with the boy Mowgli standing between Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther in an Indian forest, pointing at something. Baloo and Bagheera are smiling the animals are highly anthropomorphized and do not eat the child

it takes a forest to raise a child

I was going to point out this photo of Truman showing off the sign at his desk, but the metadata indicates it was taken in 1959 - six years after his second term - at a replica of his Oval Office

every accusation a confession; the law of projection wins again

one small (but telling) thing that's always bothered me is when police refer to the people of the towns, cities, or counties they serve as "civilians"

no, buddy, you're not military, you're a member of a civilian law enforcement organization, a civil servant with a uniform and badge

well, yes, that's its entire raison d'être

...oh not *that* Hermes? never mind

the White House press corps is still mad at Stephen Colbert for accurately mocking them at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

...in 2006

Buttons, a gray tabby with a long striped tail, sitting on a patterned red wool carpet on a hardwood floor, looking out a sliding door at nothing in particular. Various cat dishes, a cat brush, and a couple of toys she doesn't really play with are also visible

of course, here she is!

I can move around up until about 4 AM, but after that even the slightest sound summons Buttons, seeking breakfast

sometimes I forget how old some of these wreckers and hacks are

Roger Stone's veneration of Nixon is a reminder, but the other ones just seem to have been around forever as part of the cultural background

for the sake of society the scrivening must go on

the same people who target national postal services and completely misrepresent their mandate to the public would be incandescent with rage if every letter and package cost as much to send as commercial carriers charge

a couple of my university classmates were first responders either studying or working part time and apart from driving the ambulance I thought (at the time, I was 20) it sounded like an awful job

Dersh, the most Democraty Democrat who ever Democrated

easy for you to say, but my cousin's fiancé was blinded by the intense infrared radiation emitted by a heating pad he got for his cat

combined with giant swollen testicles caused by the experimental vaccine (you know the one) it was a rough year for him

(the cat was fine, by the way)

Kristol is one of them

Rubin too, but (with the caveat that I don't follow her closely) in her long slow journey from kneejerk Reagan Republicanism she never seemed to grasp the reasons why her old party could end up led by Trump, something that could never have happened to the Democratic Party

with retirement looming one way or the other, President Consultant shares his business model

personally, I can count the number of former Republican high profile conservatives who turned against Trump and their old party that I think are worth listening to on the fingers of one hand, with a couple to spare

Carlson is not and will never be one of them

One day we might find out how much fossil fuel money went into the endless repetitions of "more research is needed before renewables are practical" when in fact everything static could have been solar-electric since the 1950s... it was simply a choice of which infrastructure to fund.

the pace of steady cumulative progress on solar cells, wind turbines, and batteries over the last 10 or 15 years has been remarkable but I don't know of any technical reasons why it couldn't have started decades earlier

I think it was Norman Mailer who, while researching his book on Oswald, speculated that the CIA was up to so much shady shit with so many bad actors at the time that it genuinely didn't know whether it was indirectly involved or not

someone I follow here put it this way: "the racist incompetent LAPD framed a guilty man"

the Sacred Principle of Bipartisanship, beloved by the leadership and strategists of at least one of the two major parties

you know what would cheer you up? go to the great baker Pagliacci

"Nobody could have known something like this could happen, sir. Except the astronauts, they knew the risks, everybody always says that."
[Isaacman still looks sad.]
"Would you like to fire some more scientists?"
"Yes. Yes, that would make me feel better."

coworkers required for a project nodding politely and saying "that sounds really interesting for somebody else"

and some fans were 30 years younger than they are now

as the saying goes, if a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well

Former Brazilian president and convicted coupist Javier Bolsonaro in a hospital bed, shirtless and with numerous probes attached, with his right arm outstretched in a thumbs-up gesture. Maybe he's not saying "it was just a crucifixion, I've had worse" but maybe he is.

looking forward to the crucifixion scene