Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

So many bastards, so little time.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

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

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

by | 98 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

So the voters have spoken, and “my” candidate won! Per the Washington Post:

A group that wants to kick Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill and replace him with a woman has, after months of collecting votes, chosen a successor: Harriet Tubman.

Tubman, an abolitionist who is remembered most for her role as a conductor in the “Underground Railroad,” was one of four finalists for the nod from a group of campaigners calling themselves “Women on 20s.” The campaign started earlier this year and has since inspired bills in the House and the Senate…

“Our paper bills are like pocket monuments to great figures in our history,” Women on 20s Executive Director Susan Ades Stone said in an e-mailed statement. “Our work won’t be done until we’re holding a Harriet $20 bill in our hands in time for the centennial of women’s suffrage in 2020.”…

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) introduced a bill in April that would ask the Treasury Department to convene a panel of citizens to discuss the issue of putting a woman’s face on America’s paper money. The panel’s findings would then go to the secretary of the Treasury. “That’s the way it was done back in the 1920s,” Shaheen told The Post last month.

Shaheen also noted that her staffers spoke to the Treasury Department about the potential cost of changing a bill’s portrait. The department makes minor design changes to paper money every seven to 10 years for security reasons, the staffers found. The $20 is “overdue for that redesign,” Shaheen said. Her office concluded that changing the portrait as part of one of those redesigns means there’s “not a lot of cost involved” in putting a woman on the bill…

As the expression goes: If not now, when?
***********
Apart from daydream believing, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

98Comments

  3. 3.

    raven

    @tybee: Trying like mad to get an offshore ti next week! I see than hand surgeon today to get the skinny on my finger. I don’t think I can hack a bottom fishing trip where I have to drag stuff up all day!

  4. 4.

    Botsplainer

    A group that wants to kick Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill and replace him with a woman has, after months of collecting votes, chosen a successor: Harriet Tubman.

    “Harriet Tubman is great and all, but my girl Beyoncé totally deserves this honor”.

    – Kanye

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Hyon Yong Chol, who heads the isolated country’s military, was purged and then executed by firing squad with an antiaircraft gun, watched by hundreds of people, South Korean media reported on Wednesday, citing the NIS’s comments to a parliamentary panel.

    Hyon, who spoke at a security conference in Moscow in April, was said to have shown disrespect to Kim by dozing off at a military event, media said, citing the agency briefing.

  7. 7.

    Mustang Bobby

    Cue the RWNM that Harriet Tubman would be an affirmative action hire and that Andrew Jackson is being displaced because he’s a white dude and they’re so persecuted.

    @raven: Best wishes for everything, and tight lines if it happens.

  11. 11.

    ThresherK

    At a community billboard near me I saw posters for

    The Music Man Jr.
    The Little Mermaid Jr.
    Legally Blonde, The Musical, Jr.

    And

    The Importance of Being Earnest

    I was sooooooo tempted to write Jr! after the last one.

  16. 16.

    raven

    Thanks for the MD wishes. My bet, from the google investigation, is that they will want to do a needle biopsy.

  18. 18.

    ThresherK

    @raven: You need something like Ye Olde Kings’ hunting trip, where all they did was shoot, while others beat the bushes for game and retrieved it. Of course you’d have to get there by some kind of waterborne sedan chair.

    Is it bad symbology to wish you “thumbs up” on the procedure?

  20. 20.

    raven

    @ThresherK: Ha, I once took a big boat out of Charleston that had electric reels! The weird thing is that none of the headboats seem to have reels that you crank with the left and pull with the right.

  21. 21.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @raven: I believe there was a bill that would address those infrastructure concerns. I’m trying to think what Joe’s fellow Republicans did to advance that bill. Oh, I remember they didn’t bring it up for a vote in the House. Good luck with the doc.

  22. 22.

    ThresherK

    @raven: I’m a lefty who did some kid fishing with my Dad, and gave it up early because it wasn’t something for me. One possible portent when I was perhaps six years old: I took literally my Dad’s advice of “throw it back” after nabbing a small sunfish. It probably sailed 40 feet from the dock in the air, and that fish had some story to tell when it reached home.

    Totally cannot remember if I turned the rod upside-down or was juuuust ambidextrous enough to not care that the reel-turning thingy was on my wrong side.

  23. 23.

    Bystander

    Why is it I keep thinking that the Repubs will do something to block replacing a Visage of the Old South with that of a renegade, lawless NiKlang?

  24. 24.

    raven

    @ThresherK: It “really” doesn’t matter for that kind of fishing. With the trip I’m talking about you go 50 miles offshore and fish on the bottom in hundreds of feet of water. To get down there you use 8oz weights. When the weight hits the bottom and you feel a bite you crank the sucker up and, because of the weight, you sometimes can’t even tell if you have a fish. If you hit an amberjack or grouper it can really test your strength. With my hand injury I am worried that I won’t be able to do that for 8 hours. If they had a reel that I cranked with my left and pulled with my right I’d be much better off.

  25. 25.

    ThresherK

    @raven: The deepwater stuff is so over my head (haha); thanks for the primer. I’m a landlubber who can’t imagine an 8-oz sinker, and probably caught very few fish over that size.

    (Now I should go read “The Old Man and the Sea” or somesuch for my manly bonafides.)

  27. 27.

    PurpleGirl

    Raven: Good luck with the MD visit today. Hope you can sort out the fishing trip so that you are comfortable and not hurting your hand/finger.

    As to other stuff: Saw a commercial for Wolf Hall on Broadway. I’m seriously considering seeing it. I haven’t done a Broadway show/Ballet/Chamber Concert in ages, not since I lost the job. So I need to decide if I want to see Parts 1 & 2 on different days or on the same day (matinee and evening performances, 2.5 hours between). Have to check the seating charts for the Winter Garden Theatre — it’s not one I know — as to the best place for me to sit.

  30. 30.

    Germy Shoemangler

    Interesting thoughts on Andrew Jackson, from notesironbound blogspot:

    America’s true Founding Father was not Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin or Hamilton, but Andrew Jackson. The 18th century Founders were the product of a pre-modern America where politics was conducted by the “better sort,” not the masses. Jackson was the first president to be a true mass politician, as have all the presidents who have followed him since. Unlike the likes of Jefferson and Franklin, he was not a man of the Enlightenment, but a man of action who felt no need to find moral or intellectual justifications for slaughtering Native Americans, removing them from their lands, expanding the borders of slavery, and filling the government’s offices full of party flunkies. This was not politics as virtue in action, but politics as bloodsport.

    I see much of Andrew Jackson in conservative politics today. Modern day Jacksonians laugh at the notions of global warming and sustainability, and champion a volatile, extractionary economy where entrepeneurs can “drill baby drill” and have access to as much cheap labor as they want. In their minds, public expenditures on infrastructure are a waste. I see much in the same in Jackson’s day, where he pushed to open up more land in the Southwest (as it was then) for the booming cotton economy, its fields worked by slave labor. As Edward Baptist points out in his new book, the cotton frontier exploded during Jackson’s tenure, helped by his destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, and the reallocation of federal money in “pet banks” happy to speculate wildly on the sale of cotton and the sale of slaves. That same hands off, freewheeling impulse is apparent today in the conservative push to lift regulations on Wall Street banking. Jackson also famously rejected Henry Clay’s so-called “American System” of roads and canals. I see that spirit every day when I drive on pothole scarred roads in a nation that refuses to raise its gasoline tax, even when the price is rapidly dropping.

    Of course, just as Jackson and modern day conservatives champion “small government” out of one side of their mouth, they just love using the military to expand territory and reward the vested interests backing them. Jackson moved to remove Native Americans against the will of the Supreme Court, just as the “War on Terror” has relied on illegal and extralegal means. Jackson’s closest imitator, James K Polk, sparked war with Mexico with terms just as illegitimate as those formulated by George W Bush for his invasion of Iraq. Jacksonians of all era scorn the notion that government can improve people’s lives, but have little restraint when using it to further the goals of nationalist expansion.

    While the effects of the supposed populism of present and past day Jacksonians on the lower classes tends not to be economically beneficial for them, they have wielded a powerful ideology of anti-elitism. It was hardly a coincidence that Jackson, the first mass president, was by far the least educated of those to hold the office before him, and perhaps the least literate to ever hold the office. He and his supporters denigrated the educated, much as conservatives today scorn climate scientists, academics, and teachers. All three have committed the cardinal sin of having expertise and thinking that means they know more than the average yahoo. One of Jackson’s most toxic legacies has been the extremely anti-intellectual tenor of American public life, something routinely exploited by conservatives.

    Last, but not least, don’t forget white supremacy. Andrew Jackson’s America was more “democratic” in that the franchise was no longer limited to the affluent, but was now open to all white men. Women and men of color were aggressively cast out, even in places where they had once been enfranchised. While the poorest, most low-down white man could pass a ballot, African Americans were expected to toil in slavery, and Native Americans faced a fearsome onslaught of war and ethnic cleansing. Modern day Jacksonians are a lot more careful with their rhetoric, but they still love unleashing the full force of the American military on brown people around the world. These are also the same people wearing “I am Darren Wilson” shirts and are highly supportive of the police state that incarcerates people of color at a truly fearsome rate while reenforcing residential segregation. When a black man took the office of the president, they responded by treating him with unprecedented disrespect and contempt. (Just witness the behavior at the last State of the Union address.) The Tea Party, that most Jacksonian of political movements, has been vowing from the beginning of Obama’s term to “take our country back.” Gee, I wonder what that could mean.

    The America of the Founders is a strange and faraway place. The America of Andrew Jackson, the true Founder of our current dominant political mode, doesn’t seem all that foreign, despite being almost 200 years ago, because its values so thoroughly permeate our political system today. My only hope is that if there was ever an American president who was the anti-Jackson, it was Lincoln. There are alternative traditions to draw from, and we need them badly.

  32. 32.

    raven

    @satby: Thanks. I’ll be fishing no matter what the diagnoses. We have a place at the beach for a week and there is no way I don’t fish.

  33. 33.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @PurpleGirl: I know “history repeats itself” is a cliché, but the more I read about the past the more I see it’s the same characters, the same people strutting around doing and saying the same stuff. The only things that change are the clothes, hairstyles and technologies.

  35. 35.

    mai naem mobile

    This reminds me of some Real Housewives of Atlanta episode where they were at an underground railroad site/museum and one of the women kept.on asking where the train station/tracks were because the.bimbo thought it was a real railroad. It was hilarious. Most of the women on RHOA appear to be black and.you would.think they would.know.history like that. No,I don’t watch the show’ I saw the.clip on some site.

  36. 36.

    Baud

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    I read a biography of Jackson recently and came away with the same connection.

    In substance, the Dems are now the party of Lincoln and the GOP is now the party of Jackson.

  37. 37.

    Germy Shoemangler

    The 2016 presidential race may be more predictable on the Democratic side than with the Republicans, according to a prominent pollster.

    John Zogby says millennials will soon be 30 percent of the work force and voting electorate.

    He says that’s who candidates should be focusing on.

    As for who’s leading the horse race among candidates:

    ”I’m watching Marco Rubio very closely. I’m also watching Hillary closely. I don’t think anything is inevitable. She may be in a situation now where she’s running against herself essentially she may stumble. So that’s something we’ll look at,” says Zogby.

    Zogby also says he does not see Vermont Senator Bernie Sander’s building the momentum needed to win the Democratic nomination.

    I seem to remember Zogby throwing a tantrum back in 2004 or so when he was accused of skewing his polling in favor of Bush.

  38. 38.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Baud: And yet conservatives I encounter refuse to acknowledge that historical shift. They instead argue “MLK was a republican! Lincoln was republican and Senator KKK Byrd was democrap” etc

  39. 39.

    Tommy

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    These are also the same people wearing “I am Darren Wilson” shirts and are highly supportive of the police state that incarcerates people of color at a truly fearsome rate while reenforcing residential segregation.

    I’ve mentioned here my brother married into a very far right family. He asked me the first time we spent the holidays together not to engage and fight with them. For seven years I never have.

    I have heard many bizarre things come out of their mouth. Obama isn’t a “real” American. Obama won’t say the Pledge of Allegiance. On and on but I just smile and walk out of the room.

    But I lost it on the Ferguson thing. We are only about 40 miles from the place and they were like he deserved to get killed. Not sure why it really pushed my buttons but it did.

    I can’t recall the last time I lost my temper but I totally lost it. Maybe it was seven years of pent up rage. I don’t know but they got an ear full.

  41. 41.

    Tommy

    @mai naem mobile: It does make you wonder doesn’t it. I don’t know where they went to school, and maybe it is because I am a Yankee, but my school taught us in detail about the Underground Railroad. I don’t know, think my school felt it was kind of a historical note that should be mentioned!

  44. 44.

    Tommy

    Reading all the stories the day later about Tom Brady. Played a sport at a high level. Golf. I thought for many years I’d make my living doing it. So easy to kick my ball out from behind a tree. Have more clubs in my bag then I should. Use a ball that wasn’t regulation.

    But I NEVER did that.

    You don’t do these things. You don’t cheat. There are very specific rules and you follow them. It appears Tom didn’t. I feel he should have been suspended for a year.

  49. 49.

    debbie

    @Tommy:

    Better he should be publicly shamed and branded (with an asterisk) as the Lance Armstrong of the Pigskin.

    One of my brothers lived in Mass. for years and is infuriated at this outrage. Can’t wait to piss hime off at Thanksgiving.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    Gonna be a burden on banks in the South to reprogram all those ATMs to handle only tens and/or fifties.

  51. 51.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @NotMax: Don’t think folks in the south would care much for the $50 bill either. U.S. Grant.

    ETA: Could be worse, they could put Sherman on the fifty. Good morning all, and good night.

  52. 52.

    rikyrah

    Right takes aim at ‘affirmative-action presidents’
    05/12/15 12:54 PM—UPDATED 05/12/15 01:02 PM
    By Steve Benen
    It was probably only a matter of time before the right rolled out the “affirmative-action” argument. Apparently that time is now.

    In the new issue of the Weekly Standard, Joseph Epstein suggests Hillary Clinton may become the next president of the United States, but she won’t really deserve it.

    If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in 2016 she will not only be the nation’s first woman president but our second affirmative-action president. By affirmative-action president I mean that she, like Barack Obama, will have got into office partly for reasons extraneous to her political philosophy or to her merits, which, though fully tested while holding some of the highest offices in the land, have not been notably distinguished. […]

    How have we come to the point where we elect presidents of the United States not on their intrinsic qualities but because of the accidents of their birth: because they are black, or women, or, one day doubtless, gay, or disabled – not, in other words, for themselves but for the causes they seem to embody or represent, for their status as members of a victim group?

    Epstein explores his answer to his question over the course of about 3,000 words. The Weekly Standard put this on the cover.

    Note the specific timeframe the author relies on. Americans used to elect presidents based on their “intrinsic qualities” – rather than “the accidents of their birth” – right up until that rascally Barack Obama won easily in 2008. In other words, according to this exciting new thesis, George W. Bush’s rise to national power had nothing to do with the circumstances he was born into. He wound up in the White House solely on the basis of his inherent skills and attributes.

    The old joke about those who are born on third base and think they hit a triple? It’s funny because quite a few people apparently believe it.

    When Americans elect 42 white men to be president, it’s because of their “intrinsic qualities.” If Americans elect an African-American man and a white woman, we’re evidently supposed to believe they’re “affirmative-action presidents” who are “members of a victim group.”

    msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/right-takes-aim-affirmative-action-presidents

  53. 53.

    Tommy

    @debbie: Amen to that as well.

    I don’t think many folks that didn’t play sports at a high level get that any advantage, just a small one, can be huge.

    If I just improved my lie on the golf course, by less than an inch, that might mean 1-2 strokes. Enough every round, I might be playing golf for a living.

    I guess what I am saying is the difference between good and great is pretty small when you are operating in that realm. Yes it can be the slight inflation of ball up or down.

  54. 54.

    rikyrah

    Do Michelle Obama’s comments on race resonate with black women? Panel verdict

    The first lady has entered into nationwide discussion about race by speaking candidly about her experiences as an African American woman

    Danielle Moodie-Mills: Her struggle mirrors many of ours

    When First Lady Michelle Obama addressed the graduates of Tuskegee University she did so with a level of realness we’ve come to expect from Flotus, but we also received a glimpse of her very real struggle – which mirrors that of many African Americans.

    The jabs that have been taken at her femininity and personality are similar to the kinds that black women have been dealing with for eons. Our bodies literally poked and prodded – never measuring up to the European standard of beauty. Our demeanor questioned as being “sassy”, “angry”, “hostile” etc.

    In her speech the first lady gave us insight into how being ridiculed, stereotyped, overlooked and verbally abused by right wing conservatives can take its toll – not just on her and the first family, but on all black Americans who have been wrongly judged and labeled as “thugs”, “troublemakers”, “rioters” and worse, for daring to challenge a system that was created to ensure our silence and submission.

    We have yet to reach the mountain-top and the arc hasn’t reached the promise land of justice – but her sheer presence, grit and fortitude as first lady of the United States reminds us just how far we’ve come and yet her treatment as a black woman shows us just how much further we need to go.

    theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/12/do-michelle-obamas-comments-on-race-resonate-with-black-wo…

  55. 55.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Tommy: @debbie: Why are people upset about this? Cheating??? In sports???!?!?!!! Why I never………. Seriously, for the NFL to give control of the balls over to teams, than express outrage that a team would use it to their advantage, is ridiculous and speaks of willful stupidity. Baseball doesn’t allow teams to supply the balls for the pitchers for good reason.

    But that never stopped the cheating. However, unlike football fans who want their heroes as pure and unsullied as Mother Theresa, we true baseball fans celebrate our cheaters:

    Gaylord Jackson Perry (born September 15, 1938) is a former Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher. He pitched from 1962 to 1983 for eight different teams. During a 22-year baseball career, Perry compiled 314 wins, 3,534 strikeouts, and a 3.11 earned run average. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991.

    His autobiography? Me and the Spitter.

  56. 56.

    Tommy

    I am watching GMA from yesterday. Just rolled over to the show on Hulu. I guess a rich couple got killed in Rockville, MD. They talk to all their neighbors and they are horrified. As they should be.

    But they all note this doesn’t happen where they live. They are scared now. I want to ask them, “hey, you realize other people live in areas where murders are almost a daily thing.” Where is our outrage about that?

  58. 58.

    Tommy

    @OzarkHillbilly: I am almost all in with you on this.

    Seriously, for the NFL to give control of the balls over to teams, than express outrage that a team would use it to their advantage, is ridiculous and speaks of willful stupidity.

    I didn’t know this happened until this all came up. As you said how do you give control of the balls to a team? I feel Brady and the Pats are first to blame. A close second if not a tie for first is the NFL.

  59. 59.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    I love the Guardian. Meanwhile, Glenn Beck’s portraying her as an angry black woman much like Jeremiah Wright.

    I hope she keeps her advocacy going after leaving the White House.

  60. 60.

    debbie

    @Tommy:

    how do you give control of the balls to a team?

    Just like you gave banks the right to pick their regulators. It’s the same country after all.

  61. 61.

    jonas

    @Tommy: I think curricula in states like Maryland and NY tend to cover it pretty well. Harriet Tubman lived in Auburn and stories about the UR are part of local history in upstate NY. In Georgia? Probably not so much.

  62. 62.

    rikyrah

    @Tommy:

    You don’t do these things. You don’t cheat. There are very specific rules and you follow them. It appears Tom didn’t. I feel he should have been suspended for a year.

    So simple.

    Makes sense to me.

  63. 63.

    Tommy

    @jonas: I live in IL and we were taught in detail about the Underground Railroad and Tubman. I am frankly confused how somebody doesn’t know about Harriot Tubman. Even more confused how an African American doesn’t even know who she is.

  64. 64.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: Yeah I know, but even that mystifies me. When Bill got caught with his pants down, the only people upset about his lying were Republicans. Everyone else was like, “Well Duhhhhh… I wouldn’t want to piss off Hillary.”

  65. 65.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Tommy: I can only say this: The Patriots were the first to get caught. Not for one second do I believe they were the first to doctor the balls.

  66. 66.

    Tommy

    @rikyrah: I mentioned in my first comment here I played golf at a high level. I’ve had the same clubs since 1982. Ping. The first edition. They are squared groove.

    The PGA ruled out square groove clubs in like 1985.

    I won’t get in the weeds about what this means, but I spent the better part of a few weeks, and I was 15, to ensure I wasn’t playing with a club that was illegal.

    I also carried the PGA Guidelines with me and I pulled it out many times. I didn’t cheat. I played by the rules. That Tom cheated and he is pretty clear he did, I will always slam him for.

  67. 67.

    Patricia Kayden

    @raven: Didn’t President Obama say the same in last year’s budget proposals during the State of the Union speech? But I bet Scarborough is blaming Obama for the lack of infrastructure spending, right?

    P.S. Good luck with your medical procedure.

  70. 70.

    Patricia Kayden

    @rikyrah: Straight up racism. So only White, straight males are “intrinsically” qualified to be president? Truly cannot stand these people. I am dying for Mrs. Clinton to win the presidency just to see their bitter tears.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    This is why we can’t have a focus on “pocketbook” issues in this country:

    The 13-point agenda doesn’t break much new ground. Its policy goals – like raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and enacting paid family leave – are familiar.

    Those issues bore pundits. None of these proposals actually exist in this country so they by definition would “break new ground” but because they’re “familiar” they’d rather cover Chris Christie’s bold “cut Social Security” plan or Rand Paul’s ruminations on why we don’t need the ADA. Paid family leave would be huge. The FMLA was huge. Millions of people have benefitted from it, including me. BOR-ing!

  73. 73.

    Chris

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    I thought Jacksonianism was a more legitimately anti-elite ideology, anti-1% as much as anti-intellectual, in contrast to our teabaggers who worship the group the 1% walk on. I can see our teabaggers commiserating with Andrew Jackson about those Fucking Fancy-Pants Harvard Elitists, but I think they’d recoil in horror at his opinion of the “Job Creators.” And poor whites did get real benefits from that brand of populism; it’s in that time that the right to vote was extended to them.

    None of which of course invalidates the point that he was a racist and genocidal maniac and that for his followers that was part of the package.

    Jacksonianism always reminds me not so much of our teabaggers but more of early twentieth century populism – genuinely populist, but only when it came to white people, and often racist as hell when it came to anyone else. This used to be the Democratic Party’s thing, but Truman threw down the gauntlet in front of the racists and there hasn’t been a real equivalent since.

  74. 74.

    japa21

    @Patricia Kayden: Well it is Obama’s fault about lack of infrastructure spending. After all if he wasn’t blah and a Democrat, the GOP would be happy to spend the money.

  75. 75.

    HRA

    The Patriots were caught cheating once before and that was present in the findings of this incident. Tom Brady was cited as not being responsive in answering the questions put to him in the search for the truth or agreeing to let them look at his cell.

    Personally I do believe Brady had the greatest part in this incident and deserves the greatest punishment for it. It’s no secret to watch his reactions to being sacked and intercepted differ greatly from the other quarterbacks in the league in the same circumstances. It’s eons different from when I made sure to watch the team being quarterbacked by Jim Plunkett and Drew Bledsoe.

    As a long time Bills fan, I do want him to play the Bills in the 4th game in the schedule. So far he will not be playing it.

    I found it amusing to see a GoFund put up for the million dollars fine today.

  76. 76.

    Cckids

    @Mustang Bobby:

    Cue the RWNM that Harriet Tubman would be an affirmative action hire and that Andrew Jackson is being displaced because he’s a white dude and they’re so persecuted.

    I don’t have a link, but I’m pretty sure Sarah Palin’s already been there. She breathes outrage.

  78. 78.

    agorabum

    @tybee: I will say this about Jackson, he did know how to handle seccesionist threats from South Carolina (that he would hang them all from the highest tree)

  79. 79.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    I have a bit of a RL social problem that I’m not sure how to handle, so I thought I’d put it out to the B-J hivemind:

    I went to Florida last week to help support one of my older brothers, who was diagnosed with lung cancer last year and it’s not looking good. Now that I’m back at work, people I know somewhat casually are asking me what my family emergency was. How do I tell them without being Debbie Downer and feeling like I’m ruining their day? It turns out that saying that your 50-year-old brother has (probable) terminal lung cancer and three kids under 18 tends to depress people.

    This isn’t for people I know well, but for casual acquaintances who saw my outgoing message and are curious. Any ideas?

  80. 80.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @rikyrah:

    Yes, George W Bush, son of a president and grandson of a senator, was elected based on his intrinsic qualities, not an accident of birth.

    Excuse me, I need to go pound my head on the desk for half an hour or so. BRB.

  83. 83.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @rikyrah: To replace Jackson I really wanted Wilma Mankiller because of the ethnic cleansing. I’ll love Harriet Tubman though.

  84. 84.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): Co-workers who insist on knowing what your family emergency was deserve to be told the truth. So what if it brings them down. Maybe they’ll learn not to pry. “Family Emergency” isn’t enough info for them?

    I work with people who need to know every last detail about everyone’s lives. It’s because they find their jobs so boring.

  85. 85.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    I do work somewhere where friendliness and cooperation is prized (one of our divisions is the Happiest Place on Earth), so there is a bit of social pressure to share. And they are well-meaning people, which is why I don’t want to bring people down who are just trying to be polite.

  86. 86.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): I’m with Omnes on “family illness.” You could even add “serious family illness in FL” if you want to be more detailed. If they mean well and have any social skills, they’ll understand that you’ve provided all the information they want to hear.

  87. 87.

    Calouste

    @rikyrah: The first 35 white men to be elected prior to the Voting Rights Act were affirmative action presidents, because not everyone who was not a white man could be a candidate or even vote.

  88. 88.

    Joy in FL

    Annie Laurie–
    I appreciate the update on the $20. I learned about it from one of your earlier posts and voted, forwarded the link to a couple friends whom I thought might be interested.

    I’m glad to know who won; I would have been ok with any of the women on the list.

    I hope you’ll post as the next steps in the process occur.

  89. 89.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Hyon Yong Chol, who heads the isolated country’s military, was purged and then executed by firing squad with an antiaircraft gun, watched by hundreds of people, South Korean media reported on Wednesday, citing the NIS’s comments to a parliamentary panel.

    Wait a minute. Didn’t Sy Hersh recently say that bin Laden was killed in exactly the same way?

  90. 90.

    Brachiator

    How have we come to the point where we elect presidents of the United States not on their intrinsic qualities but because of the accidents of their birth: because they are black, or women, or, one day doubtless, gay, or disabled

    Hmmm.

    James Buchanan (1857-1861), lifelong bachelor, probably gay

    FDR (1933-1945), disabled

    And all those presidents whose “intrinsic quality” appears to be mainly that they were white males (and in the earliest days of the nation, white male property owners).

  91. 91.

    ruemara

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): It’s not their business, it’s yours. If you’re comfortable with being honest, how they take your family’s difficulties is their problem. If you know these are honest inquiries from decent folk who can be supportive, say my brother is dealing with lung cancer. If they’re the type who are just nosey, family matters. And if you don’t want them to know anything at all, “Thanks for asking, it was a family emergency”.

  92. 92.

    daddyj

    @Mustang Bobby: I eagerly await the thinly veiled complaints that we should not be honoring a person who helped property escape from its rightful owner.

  93. 93.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):

    I went to Florida last week to help support one of my older brothers, who was diagnosed with lung cancer last year and it’s not looking good. Now that I’m back at work, people I know somewhat casually are asking me what my family emergency was.

    I don’t know. I don’t see that people you only know casually have a right to know the details.

    But I guess if you want to share the information, and it does not bother you to do so, then you should tell them, even if it is “a downer” for them.

    Or as another poster noted, “it was a family emergency, and the family wants to deal with it privately for now. Thank you for asking.”

  95. 95.

    Chris

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):

    I’ve gotten a few variations of “I’d rather not talk about it but I really appreciate your concern” when I was being too nosy. I’d recommend that as a nice version of “natcho bisnesss dude.”

  96. 96.

    Fair Economist

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):

    How do I tell them without being Debbie Downer and feeling like I’m ruining their day? It turns out that saying that your 50-year-old brother has (probable) terminal lung cancer and three kids under 18 tends to depress people.

    At some point, they’re likely to find out the whole truth, when he dies if not before, so don’t feel bad about it. But you can say “I went to help take care of my brother who has cancer.” If they ask followup questions, give honest answers but don’t volunteer details. Most people know the whole story of almost any cancer death is depressing and they’ll generally not ask for more than they can handle.

    Also, he’s not *their* brother or even somebody they know in most cases (I assume) so it’s not going to be nearly as downing for them as it is for you. And people do appreciate the chance to empathize and give support.

  98. 98.

    serge

    I’ve been hoping it would be Harriet Tubman. She’s a personal icon to me. Just down the road from me is the scene of her outrageously brilliant Combahee River raid. Her presence on the $20 bill will drive many (most) of my SC compadres Batshit Fucking Crazy. I can’t wait.

Comments are closed.