Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Let me file that under fuck it.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Monumental (Open Thread)

Reader Interactions

179Comments

  2. 2.

    WereBear

    I’ve always been astonished that the white people who benefit the least from the undead Confederacy are its most ardent supporters.

  3. 3.

    prufrock

    @WereBear: Think of all the white people who actually fought the war, in support of a system that depressed the value of their own labor.

    Meet the new boss…

  5. 5.

    Mike J

    @WereBear:

    I’ve always been astonished that the white people who benefit the least from the undead Confederacy are its most ardent supporters.

    Some people who are poor and white just want to know there will always be somebody lower on the ladder than they.

  6. 6.

    WereBear

    @prufrock: Exactly! It gradually became clear to me as a child; they would defend their right to oppress others and try to not think about how they were oppressed. They would deny it!

    By twelve I had decided to take a stand: I would not be prejudiced.

    As always, a work in progress.

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    Thought 1: Is that a safe way to hold a rifle?
    Thought 2: Is he somebody in particular, or is he Pvt. Generic Soldier?
    Thought 3: Did people really go to war to defend community-supported agriculture?

  10. 10.

    germy shoemangler

    I like the pose: gun pointing up at face, like he’s ready to blow his chin off.

  12. 12.

    Mike in NC

    I once read that most of the Civil War statues erected on village greens in both the north and south came from the same factory. Usually the Union version had a kepi while the Confederate ones had slouch hats.

  16. 16.

    Betty Cracker

    @shell & @Amir Khalid: I think he’s a generic CSA dude. The column that you can’t see in the photo is etched with the stars and bars, the dates 1861-1865, the words “Confederate Soldier” and a quote I’ve already forgotten. It also says the monument was erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy — in 1915, I think.

  17. 17.

    germy shoemangler

    @Baud: I never understood the concept. It seems like balkanization to me. A thing is illegal in one state, then drive over the state line and it is legal. Aren’t we supposed to be “one nation under god”? That’s what they made us recite in elementary school.

  20. 20.

    Cervantes

    @Amir Khalid:

    Generic. It’s a monument to “Confederate Soldiers.”

    (Many of them say that. This particular one is, I think, in Brooksville, not too far from where Betty Cracker lives.)

    @Betty Cracker:

    the words “Confederate Soldier” and a quote I’ve already forgotten.

    If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it probably says “Love makes memory eternal.”

  21. 21.

    Big ole hound

    Statues to glorify a redneck defeat….how delightful. I wish them many more. (not you Betty)

  22. 22.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WereBear: there’s merit in the laboratories idea, but the ways wingers use the concept of states’ rights is so clownish and puerile. I saw a clip of Rick Perry telling the ammo-sexuals that when Washington came and offered us a bunch of money in exchange for our liberty, we told’em the same thing: “Come and get’em!” I’m guessing that second ’em was “our guns” from earlier in his blathering. I’d be curious to know what percentage of his audience was laboring under the bondage of Medicare.

    also, I recently started using google chrome. Anybody know why sometimes I can cut and paste and sometimes I can’t?

  23. 23.

    John Revolta

    @Poopyman: It’s because back in the olden days, people posing for a statue had to stand extremely still for weeks at a time, so they would dress ’em up in concrete clothes. How happy would YOU look?

  24. 24.

    Mino

    South African students are having hissy fits over Cecil Rhodes statues and other reminders of colonialism. The fact that their country is being stripmined by their home-grown leaders as efficiently as any colonialist ever dreamed seems to have failed to get their attention.

  26. 26.

    RSA

    @Amir Khalid:

    Thought 3: Did people really go to war to defend community-supported agriculture?

    I had the same thought! Leave the base and the inscription, and replace the soldier with a basket of fruit and veggies.

  27. 27.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    There’s a statue called “Appomattox” in the center of Washington Street in Alexandria, VA.. Here’s a 6 page PDF about it:

    And whereas it is the desire of the said Robert E. Lee Camp of Confederate Veterans and also the citizens and inhabitants of said City of Alexandria that such monument shall remain in its present location as a perpetual and lasting testimonial to the courage, fidelity and patriotism of the heroes in whose memory it was erected … the permission so given by the said City Council of Alexandria for its erection shall not be repealed, revoked, altered, modified, or changed by any future Council or other municipal power or authority.

    Well, that settles it then. :-/

    (That is part of legislation in the Virginia House of Delegates from January 9, 1890.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  29. 29.

    Adam Tebrugge

    My office in Bradenton, Fl. looks out over the monument to Confederate soldiers in front of the courthouse here.

  30. 30.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Some web sites do weird things to the HTML to make it difficult to C&P. Usually you can get around that if you look at the source (Ctrl-U), but sometimes the HTML is really ugly (look at Google.com) and, of course, it won’t help if it’s Flash.

    If sometimes C&P works on a particular site and sometimes it doesn’t, dunno.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  31. 31.

    Martin

    Why are US Military bases named after confederate generals – men who took up arms against their country. There are at least ten – Rucker, Gordon, Beauregard, Polk, Bragg, Hood, Pendleton, Hill, Lee, Pickett.

  33. 33.

    John M

    I ran a half-marathon in Louisville, Kentucky last year and was stunned to run past an enormous confederate memorial just north of the U of Louisville campus. According to wikipedia it’s 70 feet tall. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see such a thing in, say, Georgia, but Kentucky wasn’t even part of the confederacy! I’m sure the runners around me wondered why I yelled, “you gotta be f—ing kidding me!”

  34. 34.

    Gravenstone

    This reminds me that the civil war memorial statue in one of the towns I grew up in (Ohio, so the Union version), has been nicknamed “Clem” since time immemorial. Damned if I know why.

  35. 35.

    D58826

    TGotall OT but the usual collection of rightwing nuts may not be appearing on the Sunday shows due to seriously exploded heads after they read this Huffington:

    tiPANAMA CITY (AP) — President Barack Obama declared his refusal to refight the Cold War battles of the past on Saturday while Cuban President Raul Castro rallied to his defense, absolving Obama of fault for the U.S. blockade in a stunning reversal of more than 50 years of animosity between the United States and Cuba.

    Castro, in a meandering, nearly hour-long speech to the Summit of the Americas, ran through an exhaustive history of perceived Cuban grievances against the U.S. dating back more than a century – a vivid display of how raw passions remain over American attempts to undermine Cuba’s government.

    Then, in an abrupt about face, he apologized for letting his emotions get the best of him. He said many U.S. presidents were at fault for that troubled history – but that Obama isn’t one of them.

  36. 36.

    Botsplainer

    This video of the brawl in the Arizona WalMart parking lot between police and authentic heartland Americans of pale hue is insane.

    http://nypost.com/2015/04/11/deadly-brawl-erupts-between-family-cops-outside-of-wal-mart/

    If you follow the story and video carefully, despite all the chokeholds and punches on their br’er officers, the cops don’t deploy their guns and start shooting anybody until they got shot at first.

    White America continually loses its shit every time some winger crackpot gets his dumb ass killed while running an armed standoff. They went nuts about white separatist Randy Weaver getting his wife killed, they went even nuttier over Koresh getting his entire cult killed. The Browns ran their standoff for years, the Feds caved on putting pressure on Eric Rudolph via the death penalty to name his aiders and abettors while a fugitive. Then there’s the Cliven Bundy episode, where court orders against Wingnut’s become worthless due to absence of enforcement.

    Meanwhile, a black child can’t play with a toy gun in a playground in an open carry state without getting shot, and a black man can’t carry a toy rifle in the store that sells the item without getting gunned down on a police incident triggered by a false report in that same open carry state.

  39. 39.

    hitchhiker

    This is kind of cool — a complete html of the memoir of one of the original Daughters of the Confederacy. She and her sistas quite purposely published their stories in a (successful) effort to make sure the Lost Cause was remembered in its correct shade of rosy glory.

    The unconscious racism of the thing is breathtaking.

  40. 40.

    Botsplainer

    @John M:

    Those hags from the UDC were really aggressive in putting those things everywhere. In Hopkinsville (Jefferson Davis’ birthplace), they put up a spire that is (IIRC) the same height as the Washington Monument to commemorate the asshole.

    If I ever get a terminal disease diagnosis, I have a list of tasks, one of which is to steal a bulldozer to destroy that Confederate monument in Louisville, another is to arrange a set of quiet acid attacks through drilled holes on the base of that spire in order to get some weakness started on it so it’ll collapse eventually.

  41. 41.

    Heliopause

    It occurs to me, if liberals/the Left took the collective energy they spend on every little stupid thing they discover in the daily social media cycle and made a concerted effort to eliminate these monuments to human misery from the face of our country, it would be a good thing.

  42. 42.

    different-church-lady

    @WereBear:

    I’ve always been astonished that the white people who benefit the least from the undead Confederacy are its most ardent supporters.

    When all you have in life is resentment, then resentment is a precious thing.

  43. 43.

    D58826

    And for the wingers who survived the Castro freak out this will get the rest – the 2016 democratic ticket (drum roll please

    Isaiah Washington Wants A Hillary Clinton/Michelle Obama Ticket In 2016

  45. 45.

    different-church-lady

    @Heliopause:

    It occurs to me, if liberals/the Left took the collective energy they spend on every little stupid thing they discover in the daily social media cycle and made a concerted effort to eliminate these monuments to human misery from the face of our country, it would be a good thing.

    Not for nothin, but I consider the recent trendiness over condemning monuments to be part of the “every little stupid thing they discover in the daily social media cycle”.

    Now, on the other hand, if they (we) used that energy for get-out-the-vote in mid-term elections… well…

  46. 46.

    AxelFoley

    @Botsplainer:

    This video of the brawl in the Arizona WalMart parking lot between police and authentic heartland Americans of pale hue is insane.

    http://nypost.com/2015/04/11/d…..-wal-mart/

    If you follow the story and video carefully, despite all the chokeholds and punches on their br’er officers, the cops don’t deploy their guns and start shooting anybody until they got shot at first.

    White America continually loses its shit every time some winger crackpot gets his dumb ass killed while running an armed standoff. They went nuts about white separatist Randy Weaver getting his wife killed, they went even nuttier over Koresh getting his entire cult killed. The Browns ran their standoff for years, the Feds caved on putting pressure on Eric Rudolph via the death penalty to name his aiders and abettors while a fugitive. Then there’s the Cliven Bundy episode, where court orders against Wingnut’s become worthless due to absence of enforcement.

    Meanwhile, a black child can’t play with a toy gun in a playground in an open carry state without getting shot, and a black man can’t carry a toy rifle in the store that sells the item without getting gunned down on a police incident triggered by a false report in that same open carry state.

    This.

    ALL. THIS.

  47. 47.

    Betty Cracker

    @Heliopause: It would be an even better thing to work on eliminating ongoing human misery before worrying about the moldy old monuments.

  50. 50.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Thanks. You’d think with all the time I spend with this machine I’d have a better idea of how it works. I’m trying to hold on to my seven year old, seventeen-inch Mac, and for some reason Safari is crapping out. I called apple and they basically said its too old, we can’t help you.

  51. 51.

    the Conster

    I discovered a statue of Wendell Phillips last summer while exploring all the public spaces I could walk to on my lunch hour. He didn’t wear cotton or use sugar as a protest against slavery, and thought the South should secede. He was righteous, and right. The abolitionists of Boston who weren’t acting out of pecuniary self interest must have been something to behold.

  53. 53.

    Kropadope

    I just went to my local bookstore to order a Spanish language children’s fantasy novel, Corazon de Tinta, so I wouldn’t have to get it from Amazon. I almost wound up with a BDSM novel of the same title. Glad she had me read the description.

  54. 54.

    J

    While living in Hamburg some years ago, I noticed a monument–I’m not sure it was a cenotaph, i.e., I am not sure that one was expected to view it as an empty tomb, but maybe. In any case, around its square form were depicted second world war German soldiers on the march. And under them it said if memory serves, roughly, ‘they died so that Germany might live.’

    I had mixed feelings about this. To me it read as though the millions of German war dead, vast numbers of whom died in countries they had invaded, could be viewed as having died for the benefit or the good of their country in reality rather than in their imagination and that of their criminal leaders. Yet I say my feelings are mixed because the sufferings of war are no less real for those who fight in the service a wicked cause. For the ordinary foot soldiers I think it’s fair to say ‘for those who had the bad luck to be born owing allegiance to an evil cause’.

    So I am left with some questions.

    Is it possible to honor the dead without honoring the cause they died for (this difference is elided in the confederate monuments)?

    Is there even a way to honor the sacrifice of those who died without honoring the cause for whose sake they
    sacrificed?

    I am moved by these words of U.S. Grant (cited a few days ago at LGM):

    I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.

  56. 56.

    Jay C

    @hitchhiker:

    The lady’s memoir was titled “A Belle of the [Eighteen-] Fifties“. In Alabama. I doubt whether the racism was all that “unconscious”…

  57. 57.

    HRA

    Over here in what was once a very solid liberal area, the DNC was absent during the mid term election. There was no advertising, no flyers and no phone calls at all.
    Now all of a sudden, I get mail from the DNC. Yesterday, I got the phone call. The mail is in the recycle. I cut the guy off in the phone call.
    Moments ago, one of our local TV stations posted the question “Will you vote for Hillary Clinton?” Most of the replies were simply “No”. The percentage in my estimation was 80 to 90% negative.
    It’s going to be a very interesting presidential campaign over here.

  59. 59.

    Jay C

    @Mike in NC:

    Yep, several foundries did a brisk business in supplying bronze soldiers for the Civil War monuments that sprang up all over the country: and it was a common practice to keep costs down: the body and gun were generic, the heads (with differing hats) and some of the uniform bits could be changed, so you could get Johnny Reb or Billy Yank for the same price…

  60. 60.

    Baud

    @HRA:

    Moments ago, one of our local TV stations posted the question “Will you vote for Hillary Clinton?” Most of the replies were simply “No”. The percentage in my estimation was 80 to 90% negative.

    Then the TV reporting was highly biased. Obama did better than that in both Utah and Oklahoma, two of the reddest states in the Union.

  61. 61.

    catclub

    @Amir Khalid:

    Thought 3: Did people really go to war to defend community-supported agriculture?

    I always have the inverse thought when people discuss what their share was this week. Rhubarb! Kale! 1 tomato. Jeff Davis.

  63. 63.

    Keith G

    Growing up next to a very small agricultural village in Ohio, I regularly stopped to ponder the (generic) statute of a Union Civil War veteran – standing in the village park opposite a quaint old bandstand/gazebo. At the base was a plaque of all in the area who served with a special notice for those who died in service. For me it gave a visceral notice that something important, traumatic and sad had happened to that little community all those years before.

    About that same time and since, I have encountered similar statues in small towns in the South. I understand why they are there and respect the basic human sense of loss and sadness that those small communities felt due to the egregious decision-making on the part of so many.

  65. 65.

    Kropadope

    @Baud: He did better than that among voters in those states. The sample of interviewed people may have included some who, like half of all Americans, don’t plan on voting at all.

  66. 66.

    Botsplainer

    @hitchhiker:

    I looked through her chapter headers – she described the Buchanan administration as “brilliant”, which goes to show you just how fucking stupid slaver aristocrats were.

  67. 67.

    Ruckus

    @J:
    I’d say no. People don’t separate like that. A monument is about the whole, not the pieces you like. The only one’s that aren’t like that are simple ones that honor the dead, without honoring the “glory”. The Vietnam wall in DC would be one of those. There is a monument in Myanmar(Burma) for fallen British Commonwealth military that is like that. These aren’t about a hero or glory or a cause. I haven’t seen a confederate monument that isn’t about a hero, glory or a cause. That’s why they are offensive, except to those who think that the cause is not lost nor should it be.

  68. 68.

    WaterGirl

    @J: Those are two very excellent questions:

    So I am left with some questions.

    Is it possible to honor the dead without honoring the cause they died for (this difference is elided in the confederate monuments)?

    Is there even a way to honor the sacrifice of those who died without honoring the cause for whose sake they sacrificed?

  69. 69.

    Amir Khalid

    I found this story on CNN, along with some very disturbing video. I hope the kid gets taken away from this miserable excuse for a father.

  70. 70.

    rikyrah

    @Botsplainer:

    White America continually loses its shit every time some winger crackpot gets his dumb ass killed while running an armed standoff. They went nuts about white separatist Randy Weaver getting his wife killed, they went even nuttier over Koresh getting his entire cult killed. The Browns ran their standoff for years, the Feds caved on putting pressure on Eric Rudolph via the death penalty to name his aiders and abettors while a fugitive. Then there’s the Cliven Bundy episode, where court orders against Wingnut’s become worthless due to absence of enforcement.

    Meanwhile, a black child can’t play with a toy gun in a playground in an open carry state without getting shot, and a black man can’t carry a toy rifle in the store that sells the item without getting gunned down on a police incident triggered by a false report in that same open carry state.

    tell the truth.

    TELL IT!!!

  74. 74.

    Cervantes

    @J:

    Thank you for writing that.

    War — actual war with shrapnel and blood and your dying best friend’s excrement on your face — is unimaginably horrible. It cannot be comprehended even if you live through it. It cannot be forgotten no matter the number of your nights.

    Yet these embarrassments are secret, if our sweet, sweet monuments are any indication.

    To your Ulysses Grant, add Wilfred Owen, who wrote about meeting a dead soldier on the field — a young man who “sprang up, and stared with piteous recognition in fixed eyes.”

    …

    “Strange, friend,” I said, “Here is no cause to mourn.”
    “None,” said the other, “Save the undone years,
    The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
    Was my life also; I went hunting wild
    After the wildest beauty in the world,
    Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
    But mocks the steady running of the hour,
    And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
    For by my glee might many men have laughed,
    And of my weeping something has been left,
    Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
    The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

    …

    I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

    …

    When people build memorials to the enemy’s dead children — in Brooksville and Edgerton, in Hiroshima and Hamburg — those will prove useful memorials, and not before then will war end.

  75. 75.

    Ruckus

    @Ruckus:
    On the other hand, a civil war, even one with so odious a cause as our civil war affects everyone. It can and did become brother against brother. It must hit a very deep cord somewhere to allow people to go to war against their own families. I’d bet that many thought they were going to protect states rights. That the current state right in question was to own other humans may have been a side issue. This was a relatively young country at the time, local autonomy was considered to be better by many, it was after all a part of the reason for the revolution in the first place.

  76. 76.

    Kropadope

    @MattF:

    The flamingo, seen on the banks of a salt lake on Wednesday morning, is thought to have a genetic condition known as melanism, which causes it to generate more of the pigment melanin, turning it dark, rather than the usual pink color.

    Thus the seeds are planted for divided flamingo society when birds rule the world.

  77. 77.

    WaterGirl

    @Amir Khalid: I just watched the video for a couple of seconds, enough to see him punch the kid and knock him to the floor, and then turned the video off. After I did, my brain belatedly registered that fact that the woman who takes the boy’s hand and takes him out of the store is quite pregnant. Hoping I got that wrong, but I don’t really want to watch the video again.

    If you’ll punch your kind hard and knock him down in a store, I can only imagine what you’ll do at home.

    I’m wondering if the Facebook account that had the video was of the abusive dad’s account? Someone is proud of that? Yikes.

  78. 78.

    Kropadope

    @Baud: To determine whether they were not voting at all, that would require them to ask as much as a follow up question (or inversely asking if they would vote, then following up ‘For Hillary?’ )

    Follow up questions went out of style when the 24 hour news cycle came about.

  80. 80.

    Botsplainer

    @WaterGirl:

    It is highly ironic that those who shout “Git over it and kwitcherbitchin’, slavery ended in 1865 and y’all can vote and work since about 1970” are the very same people who tearfully implore that memory of beloved great great uncle Cleophas (who served under Captain Quantrill) be forever honored with respect and a monument.

  82. 82.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl: a friend of the store owner posted the security tape.

    what sick, sad situation is summed up in less than a minute

  83. 83.

    Amir Khalid

    @WaterGirl:
    It was the store’s security video. The store owner must have copied it to a friend after calling the cops about Mr. Father of The Year — I’m not sure why.

  84. 84.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Macs can stay running a long while, but keeping them updated gets increasingly difficult once Apple moves on.

    I assume you’re on Snow Leopard? Have you got the latest version of Safari for it? Maybe simply reinstalling it will help – https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1569?locale=en_US

    Otherwise, Chrome and Firefox are the next logical choices. Beyond that there are things like Opera, and others.

    HTH a little. Good luck.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  85. 85.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Amir Khalid: they said the child lives in the same home as the piece of shit, they didn’t say it was his son, so I’m guessing it’s the mom’s boyfriend,

  86. 86.

    dmbeaster

    different-church-lady:

    When all you have in life is resentment, then resentment is a precious thing.

    Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

    – Nelson Mandela

    Funny how the black guy got it right.

  87. 87.

    J

    @Cervantes: Likewise thank you for these beautiful words by Wilfred Owen. It’s too long to cite here–I’ve tried and made a mess of it before–but on the chance you don’t know it, let me mention Robert Lowell’s For the union dead (http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/union-dead). This poem acknowledges the pity of war, but it captures for me better than anything I know why there still smolders in me fierce admiration for, and pride in, the sacrifice of those who fought for the Union.

  89. 89.

    Baud

    Stolen from LGM

    It’s worth remembering that central to the Republican agenda is selling off every acre of public land possible (which is everything outside of national parks, national monuments, national preserves, and wilderness areas*) to the highest bidder, which are almost inevitably timber and mining companies, and sometimes grazing interests or perhaps the 1% who want to create baronial estates. A budgetary amendment to move this idea forward, although it really doesn’t have meaningful legal standing, just passed the Senate by a 51-49 vote. A massive firesale of public lands is entirely possible the next time Republicans control the presidency and both houses on Congress. But you know, vote 3rd party in 2016 because drones.

  92. 92.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @J: Hitler was very certain to have every member of the German Army swear loyalty not to the German constitution, or to the Republic, the German people, or even to the Reich, but to Adolf Hitler, by name.

    So that their own personal honor was indelibly tied to him.

    Many German officers didn’t like much about what they were doing, but they had sworn an oath to be loyal to a particular individual. I might also not that the swore “bei Gott“, that is “by God” their loyalty to Hitler himself.

  94. 94.

    dmbeaster

    @J:

    Is there even a way to honor the sacrifice of those who died without honoring the cause for whose sake they
    sacrificed?

    Sure. Add your Grant quote to every one of these odious statutes, and put US Grant at the end of the quote.

    Not. Gonna. Happen.

    All of these statutes seek to glorify the sicko cause for which these soldiers died.

  95. 95.

    allium

    @Botsplainer: According to der Wiki, the Davis memorial is 351 feet tall, and the Washington Monument is, of course, 555 feet tall. The San Jacinto Monument in Texas is 567 feet tall, so that might have been the bit of oneupmanship you were thinking of.

    Two interesting facts:

    1) The Davis memorial was built on the relative cheap, out of unreinforced concrete.

    2) This seismic map of the first of the 1811-12 New Madrid earthquakes puts it in the VII-VIII Mercalli zone. The Richter scale measures the total energy released in a quake, while the less precise Mercalli scale measures local effects. From Wikipedia:

    VII. Very strong – Damage negligible in buildings of good design and construction; slight to moderate in well-built ordinary structures; considerable damage in poorly built or badly designed structures; some chimneys broken.

    VIII. Severe – Damage slight in specially designed structures; considerable damage in ordinary substantial buildings with partial collapse. Damage great in poorly built structures. Fall of chimneys, factory stacks, columns, monuments, walls. Heavy furniture overturned.

    Eventually another comparable quake will happen; as Sun Tzu said, “If you wait by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will float by.”

  96. 96.

    Kropadope

    @Baud:

    It’s worth remembering that central to the Republican agenda is selling off every acre of public land possible (which is everything outside of national parks, national monuments, national preserves, and wilderness areas*) to the highest bidder

    Highest bidder? Since when? They’ll sell it off, no bid, to a good friend or donor.

    My intended third part vote, however, has nothing to do with drones. It has to do with the presumptive Democratic nominee’s decades in Washington with no accomplishments to speak of, her failure to figure out why she hasn’t accomplished anything worth speaking of (see next), her Republican-like antipathy toward facts and dissent and especially facts that support dissent, and her failure to recognize that her embrace of Republican style identity-based resentment politics won’t buy her a pass from the media like it does for Republicans since she is a Democrat.

    I was going to include the fact that I live in Massachusetts and that my vote for president is worthless anyway on that list, however I decided that HRC doesn’t pass the Missouri test for me. The Missouri test being “would I vote for this person if I lived in a swing state?”

  97. 97.

    PurpleGirl

    @Ruckus:

    The Vietnam wall in DC would be one of those.

    I like the Wall. I found the listing of all those names very moving. On the other hand I dislike the bronze statue grouping that was put up near the Wall.

  98. 98.

    Baud

    @Kropadope:

    I don’t care about your reasons. I’m planning on voting for the Democratic nominee regardless who it is, and would do so in any state.

  99. 99.

    gene108

    @WaterGirl:

    I can only imagine what you’ll do at home.

    What I find chilling about the video is the little boy is running away from the man. You first see the boy turning the corner, running hard and then the man catches up and clocks him.

    I shudder to think what the poor boys home life is like too and why the lady so nonchalantly walks out of the store, like nothing happened.

  100. 100.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I gather this is good news

    Jeff Atwater, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, announced Saturday that he would not run for Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) Senate seat in 2016.
    Atwater was expected to be the Republican frontrunner for the seat, according to The Palm Beach Post.
    Republicans expected Atwater to formally jump into the race after Rubio’s announcement on Monday. Rubio is reportedly planning to announce his candidacy for president.

    so Li’l Marco is effectively giving up his Senate seat to run for the second spot on Scott Walker’s ticket?

  101. 101.

    Baud

    As far as the monuments thing goes, I’d be more than happy to honor the past if it were the past. It’s pretty clear we as a country are still not over the Civil War.

  102. 102.

    Kropadope

    @Baud: I hope the Democratic nominee is Rick Santorum, just because of this attitude. Lockstep party loyalty is horrendously destructive. It is the core reason that the Republican party has become what it is.

    I fear the Democrats becoming a left-wing version of the Republicans. HRC for president is a huge step in that direction.

  103. 103.

    PurpleGirl

    @gene108:

    …and why the lady so nonchalantly walks out of the store, like nothing happened.

    Maybe because if she said something or protested the boy being hit, she’d be hit either at the time or later when they got home.

  104. 104.

    Baud

    @Kropadope:

    I hope the Democratic nominee is Rick Santorum, just because of this attitude. Lockstep party loyalty is horrendously destructive. It is the core reason that the Republican party has become what it is.

    The reason I’m loyal is because Rick Santorum could never be the Democratic nominee. Loyalty that’s been earned is not lockstep.

  105. 105.

    raven

    “More than half of the soldiers that died in the war were buried in graves-sometimes mass graves-without identification”.

    “What of the Confederate War dead and their constituency of mourners? The United States obviously could not honor those soldiers who fought against their country. During the Civil War many Confederate dead were buried in local cemeteries near where they fell-Oakwood and Hollywood cemeteries in Richmond, Blanford Cemetery in Petersburg and others around the south. But scores of thousands remained in unmarked graves from Pennsylvania to Louisiana. Southern women formed Confederate Ladies Memorial Associations to locate battlefield and hospital burial sites and reinter the remains of Southern soldiers in marked graves at Confederate cemeteries whose memorials and monuments matched those in national military cemeteries.”

    The War that Forged a Nation
    Why the Civil War Still Matters
    James McPherson

  107. 107.

    Ruckus

    @PurpleGirl:
    Or worse than just getting hit. Which of course is bad, but some know there can be worse things to happen, because they have before.

    Maybe the store owner gave the tape to a friend in the hope that it would see the light of day and maybe, maybe someone would do something about it.

  108. 108.

    germy shoemangler

    James McPherson signed a May 18, 2009 petition asking President Obama not to lay a wreath at the Confederate Monument Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The petition stated:

    “The Arlington Confederate Monument is a denial of the wrong committed against African Americans by slave owners, Confederates, and neo-Confederates, through the monument’s denial of slavery as the cause of secession and its holding up of Confederates as heroes. This implies that the humanity of Africans and African Americans is of no significance.

    Today, the monument gives encouragement to the modern neo-Confederate movement and provides a rallying point for them. The modern neo-Confederate movement interprets it as vindicating the Confederacy and the principles and ideas of the Confederacy and their neo-Confederate ideas. The presidential wreath enhances the prestige of these neo-Confederate events.”

    Obama put the wreath on the monument anyway, winning the praise of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

  109. 109.

    raven

    This is the Lion of the Confederacy in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. After 60 years of identifying as a Illinois native I learned that one of my ancestors was a Confederate soldier was killed at the Battle of the Atlanta on July 22, 1865. After much research I am convinced that he is buried in the unmarked portion. These are some of the graves located there. The Civil War was about slavery and knowing I had a relative die on the Confederate side doesn’t change how I view it. I also know that the war in Vietnam was a horrible thing caused mostly by the stupidity of the US. That doesn’t mean I don’t honor my friends whose names are on the Wall. Maybe after all you badasses plow under the Confederate memorials you’ll dig up the Wall too?

  110. 110.

    Kropadope

    @Baud:

    Loyalty that’s been earned is not lockstep.

    What has Hillary done to earn loyalty?
    Set back the cause of universal healthcare by decades?
    Helping to give political cover to the Bush administration’s copious ass with respect to the Iraq War?
    Supporting the deregulation that resulted in the financial crisis?
    Supporting the bankruptcy bill that made it harder for ordinary families to recover from the financial crisis?
    Providing the Republicans with the core group of lies it continues to use against Obama?
    Using her position at State to argue in favor of every possible military intervention?
    Embracing Republican lies about Obama’s foreign policy promptly upon leaving State?
    Helping to create a bipartisan consensus regarding secrecy in official government communications?

    What?

  111. 111.

    J.D. Rhoades

    @Martin:

    Why are US Military bases named after confederate generals – men who took up arms against their country. There are at least ten – Rucker, Gordon, Beauregard, Polk, Bragg, Hood, Pendleton, Hill, Lee, Pickett.

    I can’t speak for the rest of them, but Bragg was so spectacularly inept at the defense of Wilmington, one suspects he was working for the Union.

  115. 115.

    Baud

    @Kropadope:

    100%. Will probably donate money and may do GOTV again as well. Are they marching orders if one gives them to oneself? In any event, I have them.

  116. 116.

    raven

    From 2103 NYT

    When Robert E. Lee surrendered, Ulysses S. Grant summarized how ambiguous he (and the nation) felt: “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

    Americans know, on the one hand, how much the South suffered, and the Confederates indeed had some dazzling victories, and the war claimed more American lives than all our other wars combined. But on the other hand, we also know that the war was fought for terrible reasons, and many good men nonetheless fought for the right to own other men as chattel. So we tell ourselves that the Southerners were really well meaning and that it was a tragedy, and we console ourselves with naming forts and schools for Confederates, because the alternative–that thousands of well meaning men committed atrocities and slaughtered hundreds of thousands for the hideous institution of slavery–is too painful for Americans to look at.

  117. 117.

    Cervantes

    @Martin:

    Why are US Military bases named after confederate generals

    That’s an easy one: Because the people (e.g., in the Department of War Defense) who did the naming accepted recommendations from local base commanders and gave in to political pressure from local civilians.

  120. 120.

    Kropadope

    @Baud: So, back to my thought experiment: If, by some perverse and inexplicable phenomenon, Rick Santorum was nominated by the Democrats to run against Tim Cruz in 2016, would you vote for him?

    ETA: Why is it that so many state that they will not vote for her in the primary but will vote for her, no questions asked, in the general? Doesn’t that seem strange? What makes her so unacceptable as a candidate in the primary that can be overlooked in the general?

  122. 122.

    Corner Stone

    @Kropadope:

    I hope the Democratic nominee is Rick Santorum, just because of this attitude. Lockstep party loyalty is horrendously destructive. It is the core reason that the Republican party has become what it is.

    …

  127. 127.

    Baud

    @Kropadope:

    A thought experiment requirements thought, not an unrealistic hypothetical.

    Here’s something more realistic. If the Democratic and Republican parties decided to change names, so that Democrats would henceforth be known as Republicans and Republicans as Democrats, I would vote for the Republican nominee. So, see, I’m not a lockstep Democratic voter.

  128. 128.

    Kropadope

    @WereBear: It’s not about me, it’s about the health of our country and it’s political class. We really can’t afford to have both our major parties on the A train to Crazy Town.

    Allowing the politics over policy and image over truth attitude that prevails among the Republicans to take over the Democrats is by far the greater evil.

  129. 129.

    Mike J

    @Kropadope:

    I hope the Democratic nominee is Rick Santorum,

    This is the first thing you’ve ever said that I believe you actually meant.

  130. 130.

    raven

    @Cervantes: I thought someone earlier said that Camp Pendelton was named after a Confederate and I couldn’t figure out why local San Diegans would want that?

  131. 131.

    Cervantes

    @Kropadope:

    Lockstep party loyalty is horrendously destructive. It is the core reason that the Republican party has become what it is.

    That’s certainly arguable.

    Less arguable, I think, is the notion that the country would be in equally poor shape no matter which of the two major parties wins the presidency. What’s more, I would extend this argument into the foreseeable future.

    Not suggesting I’ve tried to capture your argument accurately — feel free to distinguish yours from the above.

  133. 133.

    J.D. Rhoades

    @Kropadope:

    So, back to my thought experiment: If, by some perverse and inexplicable phenomenon, Rick Santorum was nominated by the Democrats to run against Tim Cruz in 2016, would you vote for him?

    Clown question, bro.

  134. 134.

    Corner Stone

    @trollhattan: I’m sure there is a clinical diagnosis that describes this illness, but I am unaware of it. I mean, what could possibly drive wealthy, successful, and in Sharper’s case a relatively handsome man, to drug another human being and assault them? It has to be a sickness encompassing massive insecurity or some other physical brain malfunction.

  135. 135.

    Cervantes

    @raven:

    I thought someone earlier said that Camp Pendelton was named after a Confederate

    Oh. If someone did say that, they were either joking or ignorant. Was Joe Pendleton even alive during the Civil War? At the most he was a toddler.

  136. 136.

    Ruckus

    @Cervantes:
    The major general that Camp Pendleton is named for was born in 1860. Pretty hard to be a ranking officer in the confederate.

    I see from your answer while I was typing that you knew that. It was Martin that made the comment about Camp Pendleton.

  139. 139.

    raven

    @Cervantes:

    Martin says:
    block April 11, 2015 at 2:14 pm
    Why are US Military bases named after confederate generals – men who took up arms against their country. There are at least ten – Rucker, Gordon, Beauregard, Polk, Bragg, Hood, Pendleton, Hill, Lee, Pickett.

  140. 140.

    JoyceH

    @Martin:

    Why are US Military bases named after confederate generals – men who took up arms against their country. There are at least ten – Rucker, Gordon, Beauregard, Polk, Bragg, Hood, Pendleton, Hill, Lee, Pickett.

    It’s weird, isn’t it?

    The National Park Service owns and maintains the site where Stonewall Jackson died. It’s the Stonewall Jackson Shrine. That’s its official name – it’s a ‘shrine’.

  142. 142.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:

    Here’s something more realistic. If the Democratic and Republican parties decided to change names, so that Democrats would henceforth be known as Republicans and Republicans as Democrats

    I understand that this has actually happened, more or less .

    @Kropadope:
    If the best third-party candidate you can find is unfit to be President, then what?

  145. 145.

    Mike in NC

    The Spanish-American War of 1898 was considered by the media at the time to be a major step in reconciling the north and south, because a number of ex-Confederate officers served in the U.S. Army, either with regular or state units. Likewise, forts built for WW1 and WW2 (especially in the south, where training could take place year round) were sometimes named for Confederate generals as part of the “healing” process necessary to deal with foreign enemies.

  146. 146.

    Cervantes

    @Ruckus:

    It was Martin that made the comment about Camp Pendleton.

    OK, but if I had a nickel for each mistake I’ve made …

  147. 147.

    gene108

    @Kropadope:

    So, back to my thought experiment: If, by some perverse and inexplicable phenomenon, Rick Santorum was nominated by the Democrats

    I’d vote for Rick Santorum, if he were the Democratic nominee.

    I’d vote for Rick Santorum, if he were the Republican nominee.

    I’d vote for Rick Santorum on a plane.

    I’d vote for Rick Santorum on a train.

    I’d vote for Rick Santorum on a mouse.

    I’d vote for Rick Santorum on a house.

    I’d vote for Rick Santorum over there.

    I’d vote for Rick Santorum over here.

    I’d vote for Rick Santorum anywhere.

    ( h/t Theodore S. Geisel)

  148. 148.

    Corner Stone

    @Josie: Yes. No. Yes?…Maybe?
    Shit, I’m still trying to figure out wtf that nonsense was. It’s almost helicopters are not laughing type clowning.

  149. 149.

    Kropadope

    @Cervantes: My argument isn’t that both parties would be equally destructive to the country, but rather that someone who would be destructive to the country, regardless of party, is not someone to be supported.

    Furthermore, the presidency is a high-profile position and the person leading it can have a dramatic effect on the culture and image of his or her party. Hillary would be very destructive to the Democrats in that regard, considering her full-time beating of the war drums, her difficult relationship with the truth when it doesn’t suit her, her retributive attitude toward Democrats who stand in her way (at least ones she can get away with punishing, she likes punching down), and her top-down style leadership.

    Worst of all, no matter how many times I have this conversation, no one has managed to provide me a reason to vote for Hillary that doesn’t amount to “she’s a Democrat and her opponent will be a Republican.” That’s not reason. That’s not a thought process. That’s tribal allegiance. That’s the justification my libertarian friend gives for his claim that I will line up behind her in the end.

    I mean I’ll be watching the campaigns. I’m even still open to the idea that she will surprise me and turn out to be a legitimately good presidential candidate. She has been in the national spotlight for over twenty years, however, so I’m not holding my breath.

  150. 150.

    Kropadope

    @Amir Khalid:

    If the best third-party candidate you can find is unfit to be President, then what?

    If I think all my choices are bad, I’ll do what I always do in that case: leave that part of the ballot blank or write someone in.

  153. 153.

    Kropadope

    @gene108: My choice of Rick Santorum in posing that question was designed to show that the individual candidate matters, not just Red Team vs. Blue Team labeling. I was not trying to show some sort of weird solidarity with Rick Santorum.

    Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican and he was a wonderful president. He had flaws like anyone else, but he moved this country forward in a lot of important ways. Incidentally, he ran his last presidential campaign as a third-party candidate. He lost, but garnered more votes than Taft, the Republican nominee. Does that make him or Taft the spoiler?

  154. 154.

    J.D. Rhoades

    @Mike in NC:

    Just finished the first volume of Edmund Morris’s biography of Teddy Roosevelt. In one of the chapters dealing with the Rough Riders, they’re headed form their training base in San Antonio to their embarkation point in Florida via trains through the South. TR remarks on the warm reception the troops got from Southern crowds at various stations, hoping that it might at last signal some reconciliation.

  158. 158.

    Baud

    @Amir Khalid:

    You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
    If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
    You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
    I will choose a path that’s clear
    I will choose freewill

  160. 160.

    Cervantes

    @Kropadope:

    Worst of all, no matter how many times I have this conversation, no one has managed to provide me a reason to vote for Hillary that doesn’t amount to [1] “she’s a Democrat and her opponent will be a Republican.” [2] That’s not reason. That’s not a thought process. That’s tribal allegiance.

    Does [1] offer any corollaries you’re not recounting here? (See [3] below.) If it does, then perhaps [2] is a poor summary of [1].

    My argument isn’t that [3] both parties would be equally destructive to the country, but rather that someone who would be destructive to the country, regardless of party, is not someone to be supported.

    OK, but what are your thoughts about [3]?

  162. 162.

    Kropadope

    @Amir Khalid: I will have made the best possible choice among the choices available to me. If there is no one running for president who I want to be president, that’s really the only choice I can make. The other offices are important, though, I still need to show up and vote.

  163. 163.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Kropadope:

    Worst of all, no matter how many times I have this conversation, no one has managed to provide me a reason to vote for Hillary that doesn’t amount to “she’s a Democrat and her opponent will be a Republican.” That’s not reason. That’s not a thought process. That’s tribal allegiance. That’s the justification my libertarian friend gives for his claim that I will line up behind her in the end.

    Have you been asleep the last 15 years? :-/

    The choice these days isn’t between someone you don’t like and some formless ether on the other side. The choice is between someone who represents a fairly rational party that believes in doing some things, and will work to do those things; and someone who represents a bunch of slogans, and will work to implement policies that often have little or nothing to do with those slogans. One party accepts rational arguments, evidence, learns from history, and one doesn’t.

    Voting 3rd party isn’t going to help move the country forward. George Wallace didn’t. John Anderson didn’t. Ross Perot helped make balanced budgets a big deal – was that a good thing? I don’t think so. Ralph Nader didn’t. The Libertarians and Greens and Natural Law and Constitution and … parties have been (national-level) vanity projects in the US for decades.

    Man up and vote for the major party that better reflects your views. If it’s Republicans, then be honest enough to admit it. Don’t think that whining that Hillary isn’t good enough to ever earn your vote because she’s not pure enough is helping in any way.

    The place to make your views known about the candidates is in the primaries. Since those are months and months away, and we don’t know who the candidates are, and we don’t know what issues they disagree about, it’s silly to rule any major candidate in the party you like out yet.

    Jimmy Carter ran a pretty vile campaign for governor of Georgia, but he was a good governor and a pretty decent President (all things considered).

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  164. 164.

    Kropadope

    @Cervantes: I’m not sure what precisely your asking with your first question.

    As far as your second question, I don’t think both parties, as currently constituted, are equally harmful to the country. In fact, I think the Democrats have done a lot of good for the country in recent years, while the Republicans have been almost uniformly harmful.

    ETA: I think the following fits as my response to I’mNotSureWhoIWantBeYet:

    The choice these days isn’t between someone you don’t like and some formless ether on the other side. The choice is between someone who represents a fairly rational party that believes in doing some things, and will work to do those things; and someone who represents a bunch of slogans, and will work to implement policies that often have little or nothing to do with those slogans. One party accepts rational arguments, evidence, learns from history, and one doesn’t.

    I think Hillary Clinton as president is a huge step in changing that balance. Supporting HRC for president is rewarding ideological rigidity, playing to the media-driven politics instead of the facts, white resentment, blacklisting, and a whole spate of other problems that sound a whole lot like the problems I already have with the Republicans. Rewarding those things will change the party culture so that these things will be accepted or even encouraged.

    The Republicans used to elect people to office who were able to good things for the American people. The culture of the party changed and those days seem like a long-gone memory. Voting for HRC, even if only in the general, is voting for the same change in the Democrats.

    Then who do we have left to fight for us?

  165. 165.

    WaterGirl

    @Kropadope: Did you see my comment at #155? Are you willing to read that article? You seem like an intelligent, thoughtful person, I would really like you to read that article with an open mind as I think it might give you some of the answers you are looking for.

  167. 167.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Kropadope: (sigh)

    I don’t like Hillary much myself, but I don’t hate her. I told “Ready for Hillary” to stop bothering me months ago. I hope O’Malley runs and makes a strong case. As much as I would like a woman to be President, (in an ideal world) I would prefer someone else be that woman (Granholm would be an interesting candidate, were it not for the fact that she wasn’t born in the USA…).

    But I don’t think Hillary would destroy the Republic or is somehow a danger to our future. I don’t think in terms of politicians “fighting for me”. Most of politics is grunt-work. It’s not pretty; it’s a thankless job most of the time. Give me competence over a fighter any time. The danger to our future is having the Republicans win the White House.

    People do change when they have reason to do so. Losing a presidenital nominating contest, serving as SoS for 4 years in the winning candidate’s administration, being 8 years older – those can be reasons to change. Maybe she’ll surprise us. Maybe not.

    Give her Hell in the primary contests if you want. But vote for the (presumably Democratic) party that aligns more closely with your views in the general – even if HRC is at the top of the ticket.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  168. 168.

    pappenheimer

    Douglas Adams described a planet of people who were ruled by evil lizards, and when asked why they kept voting for lizards, answered that if they didn’t, the wrong lizard would get in.

  169. 169.

    Kropadope

    @WaterGirl: Yeah, I had been working on it, but took a couple breaks for posting responses to others.

    I do understand that the federal bureaucracy and the Supreme Court are important things to consider. I don’t think that HRC will necessarily leave them in a better condition over the long term. Her appointments may well be better administrators or an ideological improvement over most of the current jurists. None of that negates the fact, that HRC consistently shows terrible judgment and a complete inaptitude for advancing positive reform. We don’t need people doing a better job at administering bad policy.

    My concerns spread down-ballot also. As I said, I think she would have a terrible effect on the culture of Demoratic party. It would look like a far more welcoming home for grifters and charlatans. I could easily see Hillary’s war mongering and inaptitude for advancing good public policy leading to a shit show for Democrats in 2020. Do we really need that in a redistricting year?

    My vote for president, as I said, is completely academic anyway. Still, I worry.

    You seem like an intelligent, thoughtful person

    Have these words ever been posted on the internet? I’m not saying this to be rude, but now I’m going to spend the rest of my day wondering if this is very well disguised snark. Perhaps Corner Stone has broken my spirit. Still, I hope you mean that and, if so, I manage to live up to that compliment going forward.

    ETA: It’s been lovely, but now I should probably engage the real world.

  171. 171.

    Kropadope

    Oh, quickly:

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    I don’t like Hillary much myself, but I don’t hate her

    I don’t hate her either and am open to the idea that she could surprise me. Still, regardless of

    People do change when they have reason to do so. Losing a presidenital nominating contest, serving as SoS for 4 years in the winning candidate’s administration, being 8 years older – those can be reasons to change. Maybe she’ll surprise us. Maybe not.

    she has never really struck me as a person who learns lessons or, at least, the right lessons. Years after trying and failing a top-down attempt at changing national health-care policy, her attitude when debating Obama on the subject showed she didn’t like being challenged on the issue and again wanted her ideas adopted wholesale. Bad for a debate and awful for dealing with Congress.

    She also didn’t learn much from the Iraq debacle, seeing as how she kept beating the war drum for every conflict at State and reverted to her campaign position of “Obama is weak” upon leaving.

    Give me competence over a fighter any time.

    That’s approximately the opposite of Hillary.

    Sorry, really leaving now. You won’t have Kropadope to kick around anymore.

  173. 173.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Kropadope: Mutual admiration societies are boring.

    Sorry if I’ve seemed harsh – I see some of my past in your comments. My first vote for President was for John Anderson. I’d like to think I’ve learned a little over the years… ;-)

    Hope to see you around.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  174. 174.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kropadope:

    Worst of all, no matter how many times I have this conversation, no one has managed to provide me a reason to vote for Hillary that doesn’t amount to “she’s a Democrat and her opponent will be a Republican.”

    Wait, you actually think that President Hillary Clinton would nominate the same Supreme Court justices as, say, President Jeb Bush? She would appoint the same cabinet members? You actually think that, like Jeb, she has John Bolton on her shortlist for Secretary of Defense?

    Whatever it is you’re smoking, I’d like some of that.

  175. 175.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kropadope:

    As I said, I think she would have a terrible effect on the culture of Demoratic party. It would look like a far more welcoming home for grifters and charlatans. I could easily see Hillary’s war mongering and inaptitude for advancing good public policy leading to a shit show for Democrats in 2020.

    What do you think would be more damaging to the country long-term: the Democratic Party looking like a more welcoming home for grifters and charlatans, or having two Scalia clones on the Supreme Court so that every decision is 7-2 in favor of the Koch brothers’ agenda?

    Only one of the two things above is an absolute certainty, and it ain’t the one about the Democrats.

  176. 176.

    Cervantes

    @Kropadope:

    I’m not sure what precisely your asking with your first question.

    Not your fault; I was in a hurry and the question was inartfully worded — sorry.

    In any event you’ve addressed it in your responses to others — thanks.

  178. 178.

    W. Kiernan

    Standing there, Private So-and-so, saying to himself in the clearness of day, “I got fucked,” shortly before he’s finally writhing on a battle field from a gut shot, or happily gone snap! like that from a head shot. Like all those Privates everywhere, maybe dead in a bad cause, maybe dead in a good cause, most likely somewhere in between, but for damn sure dead in what was never his cause.

  179. 179.

    W. Kiernan

    @Kropadope: This actually happened to me once here in Florida. I was going over the ballot candidate by candidate, fussily checking out the low-level nominees, and I found out to my alarm that the Official Dem. candidate for some half-assed little local office had previously been, believe it or not, a “Grand Dragon” or some other kind of fancifully-named officer in the fucking KKK. You can bet your ass I voted Rep. on that line.

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