.@Deb4CongressNM and @sharicedavids broke barriers together, and together, they’ll be using their power in Congress to fight for all of us. https://t.co/ztuX3iH1Lo
— Madam President (@Madam_President) January 15, 2019
Excellent, and sometimes unexpected, consequences:
… Davids is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation from Kansas. Haaland is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna from New Mexico. They joined a record number of Native women that ran for public office in 2018, according to Indian Country Today’s Mark Trahant. To say their arrival in Congress is overdue is a harsh understatement…
Congress has desperately needed more Native voices, specifically Native women. Without them, the nation’s most powerful legislative body will continue to misunderstand and mute the litany of issues that Indian Country faces. Some of the more headline-grabbing issues are tragic—scores of missing and murdered Native women, woefully underfunded health services, white parents continuing the long practice of snatching Indian children from the reservation. And some are more abstract, like the issue of climate change in the Southwestern tribes, or the sudden importance of non-voided tribal land agreements.
With such a wide array of issues to tackle, and with little support coming from the White House or the Department of the Interior, it’s fortunate that a pair of Democrats as distinctive as the new Native congresswomen are the first to emerge. Haaland and Davids come from different generations, from different states, from different life experiences, from different tribes, from different views of what a government should look like. The steps they’ll take to represent their people, let alone their own districts, are going to be just as unique as Indian Country itself…
Davids was raised by a single mother who served in the Army, and work was in her daily routine from a young age. She went to a community college in Kansas while working a fast food gig at Sonic… After Sonic, there was a stop as a delivery driver for a local wine company and a stint as a Marriott bartender—all side hustles meant to help her score an undergraduate degree at a public university. She eventually made her way to the University of New Mexico, for a program known as the Pre-Law Summer Institute, or PLSI. This would set her on a path to Congress.Created in conjunction with the American Indian Law Center, PLSI is a program designed to help Natives who would otherwise struggle to get to law school. In a more general sense, it’s a way for Natives to reach the echelons of American society long denied to the nation’s true first people.
For Davids, that meant applying to Cornell Law, a move she said she wouldn’t have made without the encouragement of the PLSI program director…
Davids took her new legal expertise to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, working on issues of economic development for the Oglala tribe. This led to her being one of 16 people chosen to work as White House fellows in President Barack Obama’s final year in office, where she assisted in the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations. She says that it was that work that pressed the fast-forward button on her decision to run for office…
Deb Haaland has spent nearly her entire political life fighting for people like the Native working-class citizens of the Laguna Pueblo reservation right off Route 66.
Like Davids, though, Haaland, 58, is going to D.C. to represent a congressional district—New Mexico’s First—that is made up by a majority of white citizens. Natives constitute just 3.5 percent of the district’s population. But Haaland says that the solutions to the problems in her district—which includes three-fourths of Albuquerque and the state capital, Santa Fe—will help both Natives and non-Natives alike…
Haaland is 20 years older than Davids, and she’s a member of a generation of Native Americans that is much closer to some of the atrocities that are only just now beginning to be taught in American schools. Whereas Davids did not grow up or live on her tribal reservation, Haaland lived on Laguna land when she was younger. Born in 1960, the era in which Haaland came up and the stories she heard from her elders during her childhood were marked by a far different, far more vicious Native experience…
Pointing out Haaland and Davids’ differences is crucial to moving forward, because in mainstream coverage (and in this very piece) they are inseparable history-makers and glass-ceiling-breakers.
The attention itself isn’t a negative thing—if anything, as pointed out by Yes! writer Jenni Monet, the power of the history they made has been under-covered. But the classification of Natives and tribes as groups all facing the same issues is one that would have very easily been attached to a sole Native congresswoman. As Deloria pointed out, having the first two Native women in Congress enter simultaneously make it so that neither Davids or Haaland have to carry the weight on their own.
“The one person doesn’t have to represent everyone [in Indian Country], which is impossible,” Deloria said. “And the one person doesn’t have to become the focal point of everybody’s sense of, ‘Oh that’s what it is. Now I understand Native America because her positions are Indian Country’s positions writ large.’…
If you read the whole thing — you should! — you’ll discover that the more ‘leftist’ of the two is not necessarily the one you’d expect. But I’m so looking forward to cheering both Davids and Haaland on!
???????????? https://t.co/UQTXvZpGMk
— Sharice Davids (@sharicedavids) January 15, 2019
Cermet
About time our shame on the treatment and our nation’s lack of honestly towards native amerikan agreement’s be addressed and no better manner than have native amerikans in congress.
OzarkHillbilly
My shoulder is killing me this morn.
Blech.
OzarkHillbilly
Moon river? Giant, spinning ice disc mesmerises in Maine – video Pretty cool, and just plain pretty too.
satby
All this sitting at bus stops is making me aggravated. I probably have plenty of time, but we stop and sit for 10 minutes at a time.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Of course aliens were involved.
JPL
@satby: Have a wonderful trip.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: In my winter hikes I have come across such ice formations on a much smaller scale in creeks and whatnot many times. So, you know, those aliens? They’re everywhere.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly:
I am sorry. Blech it is.
But I got good news yesterday. As you suggested, no elbow surgery. Yet. But PT for a while. Elbow is stiff from the injury, and the Doc says the opposite of stiff sometimes is unstable. Ha! So first loosen it up, then see of my elbow dislocates randomly. But the hope is the recovered and strengthened muscle will hold everything in place….
Fun fact — the surgical remedy for chronic tendonitis is to snip the tendon I tore. I asked him how much he charges for that, because seeing as I did it to myself, I want the insurance to pay me. Doctor was fake amused.
Immanentize
@satby:
Three Stooges — “Wake up and go to sleep!”
rikyrah
Good Morning ,Everyone ???
rikyrah
@Immanentize:
Glad you got some good news?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: My arm is still sore from my shingles shot, I feel your pain.
rikyrah
@satby:
Have a safe trip??
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Good news indeed, as long as your elbow doesn’t start dislocating for no apparent reason. I have chronic tendonitis in both elbows. Maybe I should try the same.
“George, wake up and go to sleep!” is what my mother would say to my father whenever his snoring reached a certain decibel level.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Heh.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah: Good morning from soggy Southern California.
germy
satby
@JPL: @rikyrah: @OzarkHillbilly: thanks. Breathing deeply.
satby
@Immanentize: yep. Glad you got the PT verdict. It’s a pain, literally, but it can do wonderful things.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in Westbrook since Portland Airport became “Portland International Airport” ‘way back in the before-time. If I recall, they tacked on the “International” part because they had Cessnas that flew to Yarmouth [NS] Airport.
Sorry to hear about your shoulder, I hope it feels better ASAP.
satby
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I heard it never rains there.
OzarkHillbilly
Knee-deep, knee-deep, the toady speaks:
Such a great leader, trump is never responsible for any of the idiotic decisions made. Christie is still sucking up to trump. They all are.
NotMax
@germy
Taxi medallions 2.0.
germy
@NotMax:
germy
Roku deletes Alex Jones’ Infowars after user outrage and canceled orders
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
debbie
@satby:
Ignore it, and focus on your destination. I hope your vacation is wonderful!
NotMax
@germy
Bah. Like unto promoting moonshiners and forbidding distilleries. Can’t be both a growth and a cottage industry. There’s also the topic of quality consistency and control.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Did you injure yourself again???
hells littlest angel
I don’t know what was the matter with Kansas, but they seem to be recovering!
NotMax
@satby
Are you on the move? Missed the mention of it. Happy tripping.
Elizabelle
@satby: Happy jet trails, satby. Look forward to hearing about your trip south.
debbie
@Immanentize:
Glad you don’t need surgery, but yikes on random dislocations!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: Fake news!
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: It’s the shoulder I had surgery on back in October. I need to go back and see the surgeon again.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: @germy: I too find the 2 statements rather contradictory.
Baud
@satby: Safe travels.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: He is their god.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Bummer. I was hoping it was weather-related and something that would pass. Take it easy.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I don’t know if it’s a side effect of the shingles shot, but I took a nap this evening and had a dream with Balloon Juice folk in it. Very frightening!
A Ghost To Most
@germy: Any plan that does not allow home grows is just a giveaway to big money, and bound to have problems.
Also, anyone interested in Gillibrand should read the comments in the WaPo article. Not much support there.
satby
@debbie: I will be okay when I get to the gate.@NotMax: @Elizabelle: yep,almost to MDW. Thanks all for the calming thoughts. ?
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Were you dreaming of my inauguration?
Baud
@A Ghost To Most:
I hope I live long enough to see young progressives lead the fight against Big Pot.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: No, it was a road trip with Silverman driving, you, I and another person were passengers. BTW, Adam is a really bad driver(at least in the dream).
Baud
Yesterday I learned that “to table” a bill in Parliament means the exact opposite of what it does in Congress.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
You didn’t say it was a nightmare.
ETA:. You did say frightening. I shouldn’t have asked.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I’m hoping to go to the Baldwin Hills on Friday to shoot LA with the snow capped mountains, here’s the view last year that I just reprocessed.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: It was rather amusing, but we did end up in a creek(as I said, Adam’s a bad driver in the dream).
A Ghost To Most
@Baud: Pay attention in Ohio. They appear to be fucking things up everyway possible.
mapaghimagsik
Glad there are little bright spots of good news.
In my neck of the woods, my fellow employees gave a standing ovation for the departure of our CEO, who has driven the stock down to junk status while walking away with a cool 4 million, after earning 7 and a half million a year. This follows a line of CEOs with Trumpian level of incompetance — possibly more — because it takes skill to rack up seven figures, wreck a company and kill 86 people.
My company has learned nothing. The most vocal leadership replacing them are finance and legal. And, in an effort to make 811 calls ‘better’ somehow, my company is moving that all in-house, where the manipulation of information won’t be as easy to trace.
I’m glad there’s good news out there. Every day at work is a reminder that I can’t even get my fellow workers to see there is a problem, let alone solve it. But I guess they have pensions to worry about, and the fact my company has a very interesting pattern of eliminating employees who might be overly concerned about ethics. The various reporting lines — especially the anonymous ones — are just ways to track down ‘problems’ and remove them. As such, on my little rants tend to be filled with terms to make sure that using the various pathetic-levels of ‘machine learning’ to identify ‘corporate threats’ (there’s a whole industry trying to use language processing to identify ‘problems’, but luckily they’re not much more sophisticated than your average spam filter)
So another day.
JWR
@A Ghost To Most:
She announced last night to Colbert, and I’ll just say that I wasn’t overly impressed by her answers. I left a mini review in the last thread.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: All those Evangelical trump supporters are gonna be mighty surprised if there really is a Christian God.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: What a nightmare!
A Ghost To Most
@OzarkHillbilly: Not to mention fucked.
Baud
@A Ghost To Most: Ohio? I’m shocked.
@OzarkHillbilly: God, that would be sweet.
low-tech cyclist
@A Ghost To Most:
This. There’s absolutely no logical reason to allow people to buy marijuana over the counter, but for it to remain illegal for people to grow their own.
I’d rather see us go the other way, at least as a first step: let anyone grow it who wants to, but ban commercial transactions over a certain dollar amount (e.g. $1000), other than to supply medical marijuana dispensaries. Let a thousand cannabis flowers bloom!
A Ghost To Most
@low-tech cyclist: CO started by giving the med growers/stores a head start, then allowing others. There doesn’t seem to be any behemoths yet, and plenty of smaller shops. Plus, out the door with a 1/2 oz of quality bud for $125.
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: After the Bridge-gate fiasco, Christie should be completely ignored. Imagine how petty and evil you have to be to shut down a key bridge to get back at a mayor for political reasons. Christie should be in jail.
Elizabelle
@satby: MDW. I was wondering where you were flying from.
Steve in the ATL
@A Ghost To Most:
You may see significant improvement in Ohio later today, when I fly back to Atlanta.
NotMax
@A Ghost To Most
Sigh. The days of nickel bags getting smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror.
(Haven’t had any use for the stuff since 1974, so wouldn’t be giving the stores my custom anyway.)
A Ghost To Most
@Steve in the ATL: You do get to travel to all the exotic spots, don’t you?
A Ghost To Most
@NotMax: I feel the same way about alcohol. Different strokes.
Steeplejack
@Patricia Kayden:
Is Christie still in any legal jeopardy for Bridgegate? That whole thing seems to have petered out after his minions were scapegoated. But I seem to remember someone saying, “We’re still investigating,” blah, blah, blah.
rikyrah
@JWR:
If she is the nominee, I will vote for her. Thank goodness I have more choices.
rikyrah
Ruth H. Hopkins (@RuthHHopkins) Tweeted:
Mannn, y’all don’t know how hard this government shutdown is hitting Native communities. This is dangerous. People will die. It’s going beyond government negligence of its treaty & trust obligations to Tribes & becoming willful destruction.
https://twitter.com/RuthHHopkins/status/1085311631368880128?s=17
rikyrah
Well well well ???
Scott Stedman (@ScottMStedman) Tweeted:
BREAKING: Manafort told Gates in January of 2017 that he was using intermediaries to have people appointed to Trump’s administration:
https://t.co/8SAA6G316Y https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1085298162917494784?s=17
Betty Cracker
@A Ghost To Most: I’d expect at least 50% if not much more “BUT MUH FRANKEN” comments at WaPo, on Twitter and here. Maybe one thing we’ll learn from Gillibrand’s candidacy is how closely social media / online yapping corresponds with actual voter behavior.
rikyrah
Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) Tweeted:
Last time Bill Barr was AG he used to power to try to fast-track a bogus scandal abt Bill Clinton to save then-President Bush. This is pretty relevant. Why no more discussion?
https://t.co/d6VzC1i0uz via @TPM https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1085183223951327232?s=17
rikyrah
????
Dan Rather (@DanRather) Tweeted:
When it came time for the shutdown showdown, perhaps Pres. Trump believed those old stereotypes about Democrats (circular firing squads, herding cats). Apparently not this time. They’re sticking together about as tight as Willie Nelson’s headband.
https://twitter.com/DanRather/status/1085314701989371904?s=17
Patricia Kayden
@Steeplejack: I think he’s no longer under investigation for that. I find it amazing that his aides went to jail but he escaped punishment by playing dumb. I don’t understand why political shows invite him on.
Baud
@rikyrah: Yes we are.
A Ghost To Most
@Betty Cracker:
on WaPo, more like 90/10.
Character matters.
Kay
@rikyrah:
It’s great. It’s the only thing Trump respects, too. It’s a waste of time to negotiate with him. Pelosi said it right from the get-go- if the negotiation isn’t “reality based” then why engage?
The immigration negotiation with Republicans was NEVER reality based, either. Democrats have given them more and more funding for “border security” in the hopes they could get concessions but there is never enough funding for “security” – they always want more. The “security” they claim to need in order to fix immigration policy is never enough.
They set up a condition that can never be met. That’s not a negotiation. It’s a stupid game.
Betty Cracker
@A Ghost To Most: My point is, the online response to XYZ might be an unreliable metric, unless you think Bernie Bros and MAGAts swarming every Hillary Clinton tweet says something meaningful about Clinton. Maybe it does! I’m skeptical, though.
Kay
@rikyrah:
They are GUARANTEED to be back wanting more funding for the wall, too. The Trump Administration doesn’t even know what their imaginary wall might cost, but we know it is NOT 5 billion dollars. It is some multiple of that. So if they get the 5 billion we’ll be right back here next year.
rikyrah
???
Christopher Wylie ?️? (@chrisinsilico) Tweeted:
Theresa May says Parliament blocking her bullshit Brexit deal is somehow a “subversion of democracy”.
The real subversion of democracy happened when Vote Leave decided to cheat by committing the largest breach of campaign finance law in British history.
https://twitter.com/chrisinsilico/status/1085288094646054912?s=17
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
It says she has enemies we as liberal Democrats should be proud of.
Kay
@rikyrah:
The wall will be like a generational project for the GOP. They’ll return to it again and again. More immigrants over the border? They need more “wall”! Every time they’re casting around for something to rile up their base we’ll be back at the wall- Democrats won’t fund the wall, Democrats won’t extend the wall, Democrats won’t put rifle towers on the wall and crocodiles in the moat. Twenty years from now they’ll still be bleating about this stupid fucking wall, like they spent 20 years insisting that “selling insurance across state lines” was a health care plan.
Baud
@Kay: This. They will do this again next year and forever more if we give in now.
zhena gogolia
Imma gonna post this again — great new song, “Don’t Mansplain to My Wife”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd6sQHvsKvI
Steeplejack
@Patricia Kayden:
Thanks. I feel the same. I wasn’t asking you specifically, by the way, just venting my spleen—which needs to be done earlier and earlier every day.
Jeez, Chris Matthews had Omarosa on last night! Ugh.
A Ghost To Most
@Betty Cracker: I just read 24 straight comments until I came to one supportive of Gillibrand, and that account may be a troll. Several mentions of Franken, and 4 references to “opportunist”.
Can you say John Edwards?
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker:
She has all the right enemies?
rikyrah
????
Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) Tweeted:
The nature of the lie was pernicious.
Ross claimed he added a citizenship Q so the DOJ could enforce the Voting Rights Act.
It was actually a political scheme dreamed up by Kris Kobach and Steve Bannon to give Republicans an edge in future elections.
https://t.co/IbmKvZw5T0 https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1085533330785951744?s=17
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Beat me to it.
SFAW
@Steve in the ATL:
This is not a case of Bill-Gates-walks-into-a-bar syndrome, you know.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: @Baud: Agreed. To feel completely safe they may want to purge the country of all they deem unworthy. They get to decide who is worthy. Visitors from some Muslim majority countries and asylum seekers south of the border are the current unworthies but that list is the beginning and not the end for Rs.
schrodingers_cat
Nancy Pelosi is showing everyone how to handle the President.
WereBear
Whoa, Kansas! When that one turns, the whole nation has been shaken up.
And while I have traces of family heritage much like Senator Warren, my husband’s side is as close as a grandmother. So we both take keen interest in North American Indigenous Peoples and their issues. In fact, we sponsor a child through this fine organization:
Children Incorporated
The ONLY one we could find, at the time, which was both secular and helping such children.
Our second child graduated just last year, and we got a seven year old we hope to see through to the same happy result.
Steve in the ATL
@A Ghost To Most: as a child, I studied hard in school, was respectful to my elders, kind to my neighbors, and every night prayed to the Lord that one day someone would pay me to travel to Ohio in the winter and stay at midrange hotels.
#MissionAccomplished
Betty Cracker
@A Ghost To Most: 24 consecutive comments! Well, the WaPo comments straw poll has spoken! Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I’m gonna keep an eye on what the candidates say and how voters respond when the primaries get underway in earnest to assess who’s got a shot and who doesn’t.
SFAW
@Steve in the ATL:
Good to see there’s SOMEONE who still believes in setting high-bar goals.
Steeplejack
@Steve in the ATL:
#BestLife
Plato
Theresa May making sure it’s a brexshit with her stupid stubbornness.
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
Something new happen? Or just a continuation? [Haven’t checked Pelosi-related news yet today.]
B.B.A.
@A Ghost To Most: NY only has a handful of dispensaries, and they’re barred from selling smokeable or edible marijuana because the less enlightened Governor Cuomo who decreed it a few years ago said it’s a “gateway drug.” They only sell extracts in pill and inhaler form.
schrodingers_cat
@SFAW: Nothing new AFAIK. I was applauding her decision to stand fast against the tantrum President.
Uncle Cosmo
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m beginning to suspect your irrepressible complaint is nothing more than a dyslexic belch. :^p
A Ghost To Most
@Steve in the ATL: I studied hard, served my time to get to college, said fuck authority and religion, worked hard, and now I’m retired where I want to be. May you get there as well.
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
“And now, for my next trick.”
– God
A Ghost To Most
@B.B.A.: Yea, that will kill the black market. Sounds like big money has infested NY cannabis as well.
rikyrah
Propane Jane™ (@docrocktex26) Tweeted:
Don’t mind me, I’m just RTing years old news about Trump making it painfully clear he’s a Russian asset since folk are pretending they didn’t know until NYT finally told them 3 years too late. ?
https://twitter.com/docrocktex26/status/1084508946679955457?s=17
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Yes, this time I have no shibboleths. We’ll see what they’re all like and what they say. Every politician’s going to do or say something we don’t like. We have to look past that. We’re fighting fascism, for God’s sake.
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
OK. I keep hoping I’ll see/hear her announce impeachment proceedings, but I guess that’s a heavy lift for the first month.
Uncle Cosmo
@germy: Good riddance to MisinfoWhores.
In a sane & just world, trash like Alex Jones would be found under a bridge living in a cardboard box, & there would be signposts pointing to the location so that sane & just folks could amble by to mock the living shit out of him.
We want to, we need to, we deserve to live in such a world – & we should insist that the evil sorcerers and their legions of knuckledragging mouthbreathing dorcs be made to suffer in eternity for the crime of attempted timeline theft.
rikyrah
Propane Jane™ (@docrocktex26) Tweeted:
As always shout out to our rightful president Hillary Clinton because she literally spelled it out for y’all over and over again, but NO you were too busy obsessing about her stupid fucking emails, @nytimes. Apologize for your willful negligence now.
https://t.co/x1yCiunGQy https://twitter.com/docrocktex26/status/1084514062866763776?s=17
A Ghost To Most
@Betty Cracker: Whatever. I believe what I see.
WaPo comments have been a reliable barometer of what’s going on. Two years ago, it was infested with trolls; they are mostly gone, replaced with pissed off Ds.
Only G. generates vitriol similar to Wilmer.
We can do better.
Jeffro
NYT has up an article about how much pay the average federal worker, by department, has foregone/been delayed due to the shutdown. I believe on average it’s around $5,000. I cannot imagine what keeps these folks returning to their jobs. Democrats, this is yours for the taking: call a strike, today.
JMG
I see nothing seriously wrong with any of the announced/not yet announced Democratic candidates except Gabbard, who shouldn’t count. I am against Sanders and Biden and am troubled a bit by Warren because of age, but that’s a personal preference, not a red line. I see nothing in particular yet to separate one or two as better than the others, either. At this point, between 90-95 percent of negative comments and stories about the candidates are from the leftists who see Sanders as a vehicle to power and who hate the party. They’d turn on Bernie soon enough, too, were he to get elected. That’s Twitter white noise. They don’t have many votes. So I will let the campaign play out. I don’t have to vote until next March, after all.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Good luck with that while Pinche Sulzberger is the publisher.
Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
Of course she does. The cornerstone of her failed Withdrawal Deal is an end to free movement, because she’s a stone-cold racist Little-Englander. Leave predicated their entire referendum strategy on xenophobia and grievance, and Leave ‘won’. Ergo, blocking* her Deal is anti-democratic. Simple, eh?
*Not so much blocking, which sort of sounds temporary. More like smashed into a billion pieces, ground to dust, the dust then heated until it solidified, smashed again, melted, frozen, broken up into pieces, the pieces assembled into a mosaic depicting Teresa May’s face with “TRAYTAH!” scrawled across it, kicked across a field of cow pats, machine-gunned, broken in two and each part sent in opposite directions around the CERN collider, fired into the sun, disassembled by nanobots, stitched together using Tory Whips’ tears, sat on by flatulent old men in a country pub for a while, then dismissed by an esoteric philosopher as not even really real in five sentences without them bothering to adopt even the mildest trace of a French accent because “It’s not worth my time, brah“.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro:
They won’t have a job if they don’t show up, are betting that the shutdown won’t last long* and will be paid once the shutdown is over.
*Probably not a good bet with this crew.
WereBear
@germy: Damn, that sounds sensible and good. I’m so used to hearing about the whacko BAD legislation it’s like getting a whiff of oxygen.
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Can’t be required to work if you’re not getting paid. Alternatively, they could burn sick time. Most importantly though, Dem officials should act, publicly and in a united front, and not just let this drag on. trumpov and the Turtle are content to let it go, and go, and go.
Gelfling 545
@A Ghost To Most: You do understand that all femsle candidates are “opportunists”. It’s a law of nature or something.
--bd
@Tony Jay: Consider this a posting of every clapping meme, from Orson Welles to Leo DiCaprio
SFAW
@Jeffro:
Have I missed Schumer calling out Traitor Turtle on a daily basis for his roadblocking of something that was (I think) unanimously approved a week before Ann Coulter opened her vicious, foul-mouthed yap? Because if he hasn’t been doing that, or having someone like Dick Durbin doing that, he’s a fucking fool.
“Traitor Turtle’s job is to GOVERN, not kiss the Traitor-in-Chief’s ass. Why will he not allow his colleagues to vote on the same thing they approved four weeks ago? What is he hiding? Is he trying to distract from the possibility that Special Counsel Mueller has uncovered something incriminating Traitor Turtle?”
and so on. Every fucking day.
Emma
@Tony Jay: Do tell us how you really feel…. Considering what is going on here as well as there, I am beginning to finally grasp in my gut as well as my intellect that the modern West is under attack from inside by a xenophobic contingent aided and abetted by not only outside forces like Russia but also by a subculture whose great dream is to put 7/8ths of the population into economic subjection.
They want feudalism and they will stop at nothing to get it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: Remember PATCO?
zhena gogolia
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I do! I almost became an air-traffic controller. (Grad student in need of a job.)
Gin & Tonic
@Tony Jay:
So, um, pretty final then, eh?
Gin & Tonic
Finishing packing for Argentina here. Probably will be on-line less than usual. Don’t break too much shit, and sweep up when you’re done, OK?
Citizen Alan
@SFAW:
Well, for one thing, she just broached the possibility of delaying the SotU address until after the shutdown ends or even skipping it and have The MF send a letter.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gin & Tonic: No problem, boss. I ain’t going anywhere.
germy
germy
@WereBear:
They certainly put a lot of thought into it.
One less tool for law enforcement to use against young people of color. “We found a couple of joints in his pocket! Lock him up!”
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Enjoy the beef. And the tango.
But not at the same time.
;)
Chloe
@Citizen Alan: Bold of her to assume he can write.
nativeprof
Thank you so much for posting this fantastic article, even if it appears nobody is interested in talking about these remarkable and very different women (a total of three comments about the article out of 130!). But Davids and Haaland are among the most badass of the newly elected class, and we haven’t heard the last from them.
Tony Jay
@Emma:
You are not wrong. Which could be depressing, or it could be inspiring, depending on today’s mood. But then I think, what the hell, it’s the nature of your enemies that defines you. I’m kind of proud to be opposed to White Supremacist wreckers and the chinless aristos who fund them. Those people need to get watering some parched trees of liberty, stat!
Betty Cracker
@A Ghost To Most:
I don’t hang out in WaPo comments sections a whole lot, but it seems like there are plenty of trolls, depending on what the topic is. I guess it also depends on how you define “trolls.” In my book, trollery includes cattle-calls to skew responses to a topic and give a false impression of the scale of opposition. Bernie Bros and/or MAGAts could have sincerely held Bernie Bro-ish and MAGAtty beliefs (i.e., not be Russians sowing confusion) and still engage in this type of trollery.
From what I’ve observed over the last several months, Gillibrand is definitely subject to that type of behavior. So are Harris, Booker and Warren. I’m not saying there’s isn’t plenty of sincere, non-trollish opposition to any and all of these folks — of course there is.
But my original comment was about the correlation between the online response and actual voter behavior. I’m taking a wait-and-see approach because I’m skeptical that there’s really a solid correlation. YMMV.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Yup.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46872419
Cheers,
Scott.
Tony Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
Every rule of politics would say yes, but I hear she’s planning on holding out until she’s seen Avengers: Endgame in the hope that they’ll find a way to reverse the dusting. Apparently that’s another thing that people voted for in 2016. Who knew?
Tony Jay
@–bd:
Just tying to get the point across. 8-)
gvg
The wall supporters are just afraid. They think they are afraid of others, but actually they have a condition of fear and had to find something they could say was the cause. They want the wall because what they think they are afraid of is poor south American type immigrants who speak a different language, not the educated better off immigrants who come in the airports and overstay visas. Fox and type are feeding this fear and increasing it but they don’t have sense to watch something less emotional.
Fear addicts watch and are also gullible about ads which means advertisers get better sales there and pay money, which means Fox has incentive to continue or get worse.
Someone needs to make ads and movies about how the fear machine works and we need to explicitly mention how cowardly all these fear people are and mock them for it. They prefer to think of themselves as tough and liberals as snowflakes but actually it’s the other way around. Just by not being afraid of everything on a daily basis, we are braver. Only thing to fear is fear itself…
If you click over to Fox online, it’s ALWAYS got a bunch of stories about lurid murders or crimes mixed in with the other real news. Compare to the other news sites and the difference is striking. The thing is, in a country of our size and population, there are always some things going on that are sensationally bad. It doesn’t mean the whole country is being engulfed by crime.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jeffro:
It’s a bit complicated but yes, they can.
Elizabelle
Love it. NPR just reported that Nancy Pelosi has suggested that, in light of the government shutdown and the difficulty of providing security for the event, Trump just mail it in for the SOTU. Just send it over in written form.
*Thwack!* You go, Nancy Smash.
Just One More Canuck
@Baud: In “Solomon Gursky Was Here” one character said on his deathbed, “If God exists, I’m fucked”
Elizabelle
@A Ghost To Most: I agree. Sort the comments by “best liked” and you will not see a trollapalooza there at the WaPost. They are there, batting back with little comments, but most of the commenters sound like real (and pissed off) people to me.
WRT the SOTU being postponed or mailed in: I see that Alan and Scott got there first. Kudos! I was so glad to hear that on the hourly NPR recap. Which has gone less “both sides” as this drags on.
Raoul
I am particularly appreciating Nancy Pelosi this morning. Donald Trump has not known what it was like to have real opposition. And I suspect Mitch is apoplectic today. I look forward to his spluttering about unprecedented — unpresidented? — disrespect. A thing he is intimately familiar with (and something Nancy’s disinvite actually isn’t).
I think the typical voter will grasp her position just fine. Why should he be up there bloviating when there is work to do to end the shutdown? (Not that Trump works, of course, but there’s lots of scurrying of staff that needs to happen to give the appearance of work).
plato
cue poutrage tweets.
Ruckus
@Steve in the ATL:
Did you move there and stay 11 yrs?
I didn’t think so.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: I’m sure there was a black van there as well.
Spanky
I’m going to bet that Twittler tries to fulfill his obligation to report on the state of the union via tweets. Won’t THAT be a fun shitshow!
germy
@Elizabelle: Yes, she’s not asking him. She’s telling him. For very good reasons she spells out in her letter.
This should be interesting.
Cheryl Rofer
NANCY SMASH!
She is disinviting the President from giving the State of the Union message until he opens the government back up.
ETA: I see I am not the first with this news.
tobie
@nativeprof: It was a joy to see Haaland and Davids hug on their first day in Congress and their tears showed just how historic it is to go from no native women in the House to two now. The two will be co-chairing the Native American Caucus and, I have no doubt, will do much to draw attention to the issues facing First Nations. It bugs me to no end that the two other Native American members of Congress–Tom Coles and Markwayne Mullin–are wedded to the fossil fuel industry.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
How long do you think Rather’s been waiting for a reason to use that one?
SOTU prediction: He’ll send a letter to Congress and deliver the speech on TeeVee. The dilemma: Does he try for the grandiose formality of office that diminishes (and bores) him, or film in front of a live studio audience of friendless, where the need for applause and hooting drives him off script and he finally drives his own approval rating down to 35%
Quinerly
@Elizabelle: MSNBC just did a short hall interview with her. Must see TV. Cool as a cucumber in power red?. Stressing the security risks caused by the shut down. Said he could just give it from the Oval Office. She’s tough as nails. But we knew it all along.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I can’t even remember if I hated her two months ago because she was a divisive, wild-eyed, far-left “San Francisco” [whistle, whistle, here Bluto! here!] liberal, or because she was a corporatist Clintonite neo-liberal WALL STREET shill. I better check Matt Stolller’s twitter feed.
Sans snark: Somebody said on my TV yesterday that her approval rating is up 8 points since the midterms
SFAW
@Spanky:
Never happen. He can’t count high enough — especially if he has to maintain the count — to string enough together to make a “speech.”
Quinerly
I couldn’t give a flying fuck about The Outlaw Jersey Whale but this quote from his book did catch my eye.
“The President has a “revolving door of deeply flawed individuals—amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons—who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia,” Christi wrote.
That’s going leave a mark.
Fair Economist
@A Ghost To Most:
Gotta watch for trolls, though. There are a lot of conservatives who want to tear down each and every Democrat running when almost any of them would be great.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: “But trump is a great leader! I would follow him thru the gates of hell!” – Chrispy Critter
Steve in the ATL
@Ruckus: I may be dumb but I ain’t stupid!
dmsilev
@SFAW: The Constitution just says “from time to time give information on the state of the union”, so arguably a Tweet or two would satisfy the letter of the law. And it would be a lot easier for the rest of us to ignore and/or laugh at.
germy
@Quinerly:
But enough about Jared.
Just One More Canuck
@Quinerly: Sounds like a Hedley Lamarr quote
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: This is fantastic and so appropriate. “No TV address for you, chump – submit your nonsense in writing.” LOLOL
Patricia Kayden
@schrodingers_cat: I would love it if she and the entire Democratic Congress didn’t show up for the SOTU — especially if the shutdown is still happening by then. Let Trump speak to a room full of Republican enablers. He has nothing useful to say anyways.
trollhattan
@Quinerly:
Good thing Donny doens’t read!
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
I kind of want her sitting there behind him wearing Groucho glasses, texting and fiddling with her gavel.
Bruce K
In other, maybe less groundbreaking news, apparently Greece is on the cusp of a vote of confidence/no-confidence in the Tsipras government (a coalition of radical leftists and nationalists who have a lot of fundamental disagreements between them). In Greece, I’d probably be considered slightly right-of-center (which shows how far the Overton Window’s been pushed to the right in the US), but I honestly don’t know who the hell to vote for if there’s a snap election.
Fair Economist
@Tony Jay: Lol. Yes, it’s funny to hear May whine about her Breakshit plan being blocked, when, as you say, the loss is one for the history books. Mostly likely it will still stand as the worst political defeat a British government ever endured centuries from now.
Quinerly
On the move this AM so out of time. Hope all shoulders, ankles, tendons are healing. Have a great day Juicers.
Fair Economist
@Patricia Kayden: Nancy controls the location of the SOTU speech, which is the House floor. The Senate floor isn’t big enough. If Trump speaks somewhere else, it’s just a speech because he won’t be giving it to Congress, so no reason for Congress to show up.
Elizabelle
@Patricia Kayden: I think the Democrats should do that. No SOTU appearance while the government is shut down. Perhaps the Dems could be out in their communities doing service projects for the feds, contractors, and local communities affected by the shutdowns. The towns outside national parks. The restaurants and stores and local services not getting their needed revenue to survive, because the paychecks are not out there to spend.
The media can clutch their pearls as much as they like. They are part of the reason we have Trump in the first place.
Tony Jay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s instructive, isn’t it, how targets of the Two-Minute Hate do better popularity-wise when they’re actually out there in the public eye – doing – things and can be judged by the public on more than just the caricature presented by the Right and its Media acolytes? That’s IMHO one of the reasons Clinton’s 2016 campaign ‘lost’ the Election, the Media never once let her out of the completely bogus frame they’d constructed for her and the alt-Hillary most of the electorate was allowed to see simply wasn’t likable ‘enough’ to overcome the racism and misogyny underpinning The Pustule’s appeal to voters.
It’s also why Labour did so much better over here in 2017 than any of the Political Commentary Class could have imagined. The caricature they’d built up around the post- New Labour Party and its leadership couldn’t survive the legally-mandated equal media time parties and their leaders get during Elections. Once the public got a look at what Labour was really campaigning on and heard actual Labour voices on TV and radio (rather than just pro-Tory voices telling them about how awful the Opposition were) the whole Election shifted radically, the 20 point lead the Tories had had in opinion polls started to shrink, and on Election night the pundits were left utterly shell-shocked by the size of Labour’s vote and how close they’d come to turfing the Tories out of office.
I’m expecting the same thing to happen should there somehow turn out to be a snap Election called after tonight’s vote in Parliament, which is one of the reasons I really don’t think there’s going to be a snap election. The fact that the Tories are so desperately, adamantly against another Election when one is there for the asking tells me they think the same thing.
Tony Jay
@Fair Economist:
Fingers crossed. Though if the Tories do somehow manage to ram a catastrophic No-Deal through the system and omniscrew the subsequent crisis with their habitual incompetence I’d hope that 2021’s “Bill on Exiting the Human Rights Act in Order to Allow For The Nutritional Value of The Children Of The Feckless and Workshy to be Made Available to Hard-Working Unemployed White Britons” would receive even less votes, but you never can be sure in advance.
germy
Ha ha ha what?
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: But crowd size!!!!
SFAW
All you vicious jackals who hate Dem potential candidate X (whoever “X” may be) — you might as well pack it in, right effing now, because the odds-on favorite will soon be entering the 2020 race:
BREAKING NEWS ALERT
Congressman Seth Moulton, a Salem Democrat, will travel to New Hampshire in two weeks to explore a run for president, sources tell The Boston Globe.
ETA: (Shakes fist ineffectually at germy.)
rikyrah
@plato:
absolute BOSS MOVE
SFAW
@Kathleen:
Not lawn signs?
rikyrah
@SFAW:
BWA HA HA HA HAH A HA HA HA AHH A
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Nah, a real boss move would have been for her to ask him to submit it in crayon (his choice of color). [Yes, I know that “in writing” does not preclude crayon; I’m saying she should have s-p-e-l-l-e-d it out for him.]
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I once had a dream that Cole had a slumber party at his house and we were all there rolling sleeping bags out on the floor. It was … odd.
germy
@Mnemosyne: Was I there?
zhena gogolia
@nativeprof:
I am very excited about them both! I wish either of them were POTUS.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Yeah, no kidding. If I had the energy and smarts to run another campaign, and was willing to deal with the oppo, I’d move to one of the towns in MA-6 and primary his worthless ass.
Elizabelle
I know people tire of hearing Fuck the Fucking New York Times, but FTF NYT. This just went up on their website.
Elizabelle
And the NY Times has opened the Starr op ed to reader comments. This should be fun. The top six, in order:
We’re at top comment 6 before someone brings up Baylor. Remember that?
So, the NY Times readers see right through this. Very Serious Person media, maybe not. To the cable shows!
dmsilev
@Elizabelle: Can’t “Mr. Starr” go back to what he truly loves, covering up sexual assault charges against college football players?
trollhattan
Republicans and the money people drift further apart.
Steve in the ATL
@Elizabelle: Ken Starr is one of those people whom no one ever needs to hear from again on any subject ever.
chopper
@rikyrah:
and it makes sense anyways. the SOTU is a security and logistical nightmare on a good day, much less with half the security guys either furloughed or working without pay. the last thing i want to see is some sort of terrorist attack and then kiefer fucking sutherland becomes president, ugh.
Elizabelle
@Steve in the ATL: I am amazed the NY Times gave him Opinion page real estate.
Frankensteinbeck
@Elizabelle:
You can tell how Serious Ken Starr is by how much he hates the Clintons. It’s an asymptote up until foam actually starts spraying from your mouth in public, like Rush Limbaugh. Then you become lovably quirky.
Uncle Cosmo
@SFAW: “Seth Moulton, the ‘Which-Is-He?’ of Salem…”
Run for President, my royal Italian-American arse – he should have one of his staphers research the nearest border to MA with a nation that has no extradition treaty with the US, & then run like hell for that.
trollhattan
@dmsilev:
That, and struggling to keep a millionaire sex trafficker and statutory rapist out of prison. Special shout-out to Dersh, who evidently “sampled the goods” as part of his defence research.
Yet these two keep getting booked by every new outlet in the country. Why?
Gravenstone
@Tony Jay: You aren’t by chance a long lost relative of Jonathan Swift?
Elizabelle
@Frankensteinbeck: Making him a favorite of the Sulzbergers. Clinton Derangement Syndrome out in full force, at the FTF NYTimes.
Gravenstone
@SFAW: Couldn’t unseat Pelosi , but convinced he can win hearts and minds across the nation!
Gravenstone
@Elizabelle: Witch Hunter sezs whut?
Frankensteinbeck
@trollhattan:
‘Fuck the liberals and everything they want’ has united hard racists and plutocrats since Reagan’s time. As the two groups feel less need for excuses, they start demanding exactly their own way, refusing even the tiny compromises that make their interests align. (They both support hurting the weak, for example.) I saw an interesting variation of this in 2012. Citizens United let the plutocrats each demand to be in charge, and their ego means they don’t work well together. In 2016 that wasn’t a problem because everyone was united by their hatred of Hillary Clinton.
Uncle Cosmo
@trollhattan: The real threat of those “global risks” to the bazillionaires at that conference is that they have yet to figure out how to connect scaring the shit out of the human race over climate change with stealing whatever’s left of whatever wealth those “little people” have managed to squirrel away in their bank accounts or their civic commonwealths. But give them a couple more years, they’ll come up with some scam.
Civilization, Neofeudalism, ho!(Edited to remove extraneous verbiage.)
trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck:
True. Hillary to them was like the Irish were to the people of Rock Ridge.
Frankensteinbeck
@Gravenstone:
It’s a religion. You can see a naked version of it in Trump’s behavior towards Schumer and Pelosi. They just can’t imagine anyone wants a woman to have power. Any specific victory must involve special circumstances, but they themselves must be the norm.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Love it.
chopper
@A Ghost To Most:
given that a shit ton of people who consider themselves democrats are shitting all over gillibrand for speaking for the women of the democratic caucus re: franken, and yet are supportive of harris, klobuchar etc who were right there with her, leads to me to believe that gillibrand is going to be dealing with the same level of I DON’T CARE I JUST DON’T LIKE HER that hillary had to endure.
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
yes yes yes yes yes
chopper
@Elizabelle:
she should have suggested he put it out via twitter. misspellings, inappropriate capitalization and all.
Raoul
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yup. This is why lots of forces were arrayed to try to tear her down. She’s effective. Great piece on how she beat Bush on SS privatization, and why she’s likely to beat Trump in the shutdown.
Elizabelle
@Gravenstone:
And Kenneth Starr did not actually find any witches, did he? Despite millions upon millions spent “investigating” (with no return on investment to the Treasury) and just about unlimited time. I guess he got Susan MacDougall. That’s major, isn’t it?
Whereas Robert Mueller … cannot turn over a rock without finding a convictable witch, is still talking with the witches months into his investigation, and has somewhat paid for his investigation with returning some witches’ ill gotten gains to the Treasury.
Kenneth Starr can go blow a goat. Sorry, goat. You’ll have to take one for the team.
SFAW
Interesting tweet from Burger King, with a beautiful follow-up from someone named Dave Orlick.
NY Robbin
@Elizabelle:
Really?
chopper
@SFAW:
the hamberdler. that’s trump’s new name.
Spanky
On this day in 1945, Hitler retired to his bunker under the chancellery, staying there 105 days until … well, he finally did something useful.
Not related to anything at all! No, no ….
Is there a bunker under the White House?
Elizabelle
@NY Robbin: Yeah. Discrediting Kenneth Starr is pretty low hanging-fruit. Let him opine away in Town Hall or the Daily Caller. The Washington Times. The NY Post.
JoeyJoeJoe
@SFAW: No, the favorite is clearly former Maryland representative John Delaney, who announced his run in 2017, I think.
As for Sharice Davids, did people know that she has a black belt (I think it’s a black one) in at least one form of martial arts?
SFAW
@Spanky:
There used to be a bowling alley, but I think the Traitor-in-Chief turned it into a gold-plated “not-quite-a-man cave.”
Uncle Cosmo
@chopper: “Given that a shit ton of people who consider themselves democrats*” have a metric fuckton more reasons to despise Gullybrained, you are cordially invited to go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw.
(*NB: Democrat since 1970. Never once voted for a Thuglican. Go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw.)
SFAW
@JoeyJoeJoe:
So what? Shitgibbon has a DOUBLE black belt in every form of martial arts, including a few that he invented
Spanky
Also, today is the 40th anniversary of the fall of the Shah of Iran. Wonder if there are any special events taking place?
zhena gogolia
@chopper:
It’s dispiriting.
I don’t think Al Franken himself would be too pleased by this. If he would, then he’s not the person I thought he was.
Spanky
I see that in today’s WaPo, Kathleen Parker tells us how much she loves Lindsey Graham (hint: a lot). I guess that info may be useful, should I ever be required to comment on a Kathleen Parker column.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
It’s a witch-rich environment!
chopper
@Uncle Cosmo:
you seem nice.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
my own scorching take is that Gillibrand is the Martin O’Malley of this cycle. Looks great on paper, will fizzle out on a national stage.
I have a record of being astoundingly wrong on primaries, ours and theirs, but I was right about O’Malley.
Kathleen
@SFAW: Yes! Crowd size and yard signs! And bumper stickers! Wish I could do all caps!
Tony Jay
@Gravenstone:
When you steal, steal from the best.
Scotian
I’ve been reading the threads for a while now in lurk mode, but I am dropping into visibility for the moment to make an observation regarding Gillibrand, and the distrust of her, especially over the Franken thing. It isn’t just the Franken thing in my view that drives it. In isolation that action can be seen as many have portrayed it here, a necessary act given the political dynamics going on at the time and she just was the spear tip. Ok. That is defensible, if distasteful, political operations, and I can see that argument holding real weight. Where I suspect though the problem with her in this comes is that in close proximity to that event she also turned on the Clintons publicly, which given all she had owed and said about them in the past, well that seemed rank opportunism in play for naked political purposes, and casts her actions regarding Franken into darker tones. I think also for some seeing HRC’s successor turn on her like that given all that had been done to HRC in 2016 et al, that too I believe leaves a fairly negative impression of her for some.
I read a description of her as a liberal female version of Mitt Romney. I can totally see where that comparison is coming from. I think that is what is going to really be one of her worst political problems, in some ways she is actually behaving in the manner HRC critics have accused her of truly being, expedient, loyal only to herself, and willing to cut anyone/anything down in the way of her path. Someone that is so convinced of the rectitude of her ends that the means matter little. So when I read defences of her as being unfairly hit like HRC, well frankly I find that a little hard to swallow, hence this comment. Of course she like all women running will get some of that, that is alas where American politics lives these days. That she is an innocent bystander/victim undeserving of any of it? That, THAT is where I think this defence fails for the reasons I have already noted,
Gillibrand is clearly a capable political operator. She is clearly a competent one too. However, her actions have on multiple occasions left one wondering where her truly loyalties lies, to her principles, her agendas, and/or her ambitions, or does she see a difference between any them, and that last I suspect worries more than a few as it is in no small part because of how she came off during the Franken incident and then combined with the Clinton treatment. That she sees her agenda as being so noble that it embraces any ends to get to it, a mindset that scares me whenever anyone has it gets near real power. So I think there really is more nuance to the distrust and dislike of her here over the Franken thing that is not getting the fair examination it should. Did she do the politically necessary thing then? Quite likely, as much as I personally found it seriously offensive the standard being used on Franken for the “both sides are equally bad” political argument GOPers were looking for at that time. Is it all she did though to solidify that perch politically speaking for herself? No, as I have noted, she also took after the Clintons too, which given her history with them smacks of something truly unpleasant smellwise.
So that is my observation, no doubt offending on both sides, but there you go from this detached Canadian perspective.
Mandalay
@chopper:
Asserting that doesn’t make it remotely true.
And there are plenty of reasons to dislike Gillibrand as a candidate even if you put the Franken issue aside.
SFAW
Completely OT and unrelated:
For you nerds out there: Google “10 Brown Mill Rd, Bridgton, ME” and then click on the map, and notice another point of interest nearby.
I was Googling another address nearby, saw this Point of Interest, and said “WTF?”
Gravenstone
@SFAW: Even better if you click on the PoI for details.
SFAW
@Gravenstone:
Which I did. Pretty funny.
blackcatsrule
@SFAW: Could that be where Redshirt ended up?
Dan B
@nativeprof: This comment is probably too late but I’m also disturbed that there arr very few comments about Haaland and Davids. It seems to point to the need for much more vigorous and consistent media coverage of native peoples, and many other minority groups. There are so many gripping stories to be told. We had a good friend who was adopted out of Pine Ridge. She has borne much pain from growing up in a white community that harbored much prejudice. I coukd go on about other friends but being mostly invisible is a huge hurdle in the path to justice.
SFAW
@blackcatsrule:
I’m not a Mainer yet, so … MomSense or Davis X. might be better able to answer that.
chopper
@Mandalay:
are you saying she isn’t catching shit for speaking for the women of the democratic caucus re: franken? what would you call
it instead? some “light disagreement”?
i never said otherwise. this is true for any candidate.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: I’m with you, Betty. And I say that having been in the BUT MUH FRANKEN camp.
WaterGirl
@Scotian: No offense taken by me, anyway. Very well thought out comment, and I think you are right.
J R in WV
@SFAW:
I’m not seeing anything nearby that address of any interest… help a guy out here?
SFAW
@J R in WV:
Gallifrey
When you click on it, or the above link, you get:
The Constellation Of Kasabouros, 16 Brown Mill Rd, Bridgton, ME 04009
There are also reviews, a number of which say some variation of “It’s larger than it appears from the outside.” The address to which it is pegged is an actual address, with a house, etc. It also says it’s a “Timeshare agency.”
ETA: Apparently, some of the reviews are three years old.
Melusine
@Tony Jay: I know I’m zombie-ing this thread, but that was a truly beautiful description.