Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Republicans in disarray!

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

I was promised a recession.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Clinton Walks Back Praise for Nancy Reagan’s HIV/AIDS Advocacy

Clinton Walks Back Praise for Nancy Reagan’s HIV/AIDS Advocacy

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In connection with the late Nancy Reagan’s funeral today, Hillary Clinton praised the Reagans for “starting a national conversation about HIV and AIDS.” Uh, nope. However, Clinton did walk it back less than an hour ago:

Good. Because the Reagans deserve nothing but contempt for their unconscionable neglect as the epidemic that would kill millions grew. As Dr. Bloor said in the thread downstairs:

If white Republicans had started contracting kaposi sarcoma out of the blue, St. Ronaldus would have created a fucking Manhattan Project in a week to figure out what was happening.

Yep. But it was just a bunch of fags and drug users, so he and the homophobic troglodytes in his administration didn’t give a shit. Those of us who lived through the plague years remember the Reagans’ silence. Fuck them.

Anyhoo, discuss whatever.

H/T: Valued commenter Raven.

Reader Interactions

192Comments

  1. 1.

    Served

    This was a really stupid unforced error, but one that can be fixed. I could feel Cole’s anguished scream all the way in Chicago. I’m personally still leaning Hillary. On the bright side, people got to bash St. Ronny in a very public way.

  3. 3.

    Germy

    Reagan’s press secretary (Larry Speakes) yukking it up at a press conference (back when AIDS was funny, apparently):

    Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement—the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that A-I-D-S is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?

    SPEAKES: What’s A-I-D-S?

    Q: Over a third of them have died. It’s known as “gay plague.” (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it’s a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?

    SPEAKES: I don’t have it. Do you? (Laughter.)

    Q: No, I don’t.

    SPEAKES: You didn’t answer my question.

    Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President—

    SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)

    Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?

    SPEAKES: No, I don’t know anything about it, Lester.

    Q: Does the President, does anybody in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?

    SPEAKES: I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s been any—

    Q: Nobody knows?

    SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.

    Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping—

    SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he’s had no—(laughter)—no patients suffering from A-I-D-S or whatever it is.

    Q: The President doesn’t have gay plague, is that what you’re saying or what?

    SPEAKES: No, I didn’t say that.

    Q: Didn’t say that?

    SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn’t you stay there? (Laughter.)

    Q: Because I love you, Larry, that’s why. (Laughter.)

    SPEAKES: Oh, I see. Just don’t put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)

    Q: Oh, I retract that.

    SPEAKES: I hope so.

  5. 5.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    I seriously think she was tired and misspoke. I think she got Alzheimers mixed up with AIDS. Only other possibility is that she had no clue about the Reagan and AIDS history but I’m not even sure its possible.

  9. 9.

    trollhattan

    @Baud:
    On Craig’s List: “Tempest seeking Teapot, Akron area. Should like boob jokes and quiet walks at the mall.”

  11. 11.

    satby

    @Mai.naem.mobile: probably. I got it mixed up too, but back then with gay friends dying I didn’t really pay attention to the Reagan’s either. I’m just glad not to be a politician and have my every stray thought analyzed for evil intent 24/7.
    I’d make Trump look classy with all the f-bombs I’d be dropping.

  14. 14.

    FlipYrWhig

    As satby said in the earlier thread that turned to this, I feel like there was some piece of folk wisdom from back then that Nancy Reagan was trying behind the scenes to do something for Rock Hudson in his last days. The “national conversation” would then mean “making it modestly more acceptable for straight people to talk about AIDS with sympathy instead of callousness” (of the sort Germy just linked). That was probably what Hillary was (mis?)remembering. But as usual “national conversation” is a useless phrase. It raises the question of who counts as the “nation,” just like “national conversation on race” does.

  16. 16.

    Mike J

    She didn’t “walk it back”. She said she made a mistake and apologized for it. She didn’t try to deny saying it, she didn’t try to have it both ways.

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    @Germy: That’s disgusting. Maybe this mistake by Hillary will bring attention to how awful Reagan was on this. (and every other issue)

  19. 19.

    LAO

    I’m glad Hillary apologized, but these self-inflicted wounds she inflicts, just kill me.

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    @Amir Khalid: Wow. I had to look twice to make sure that wasn’t The Onion.

    It’s like there’s a mob mentality with Trump – I’m not sure the people who support him are actually processing the words he says. They’re just cheering along with the crowd at the idea of stringing up the bad guy in jail on Gunsmoke.

  22. 22.

    Anoniminous

    The national conversation the RayGuns started was “let the evil butt sechs faggots die … IT’S GOD’S WILL!!!”

  24. 24.

    elmo

    Compare and contrast her retraction and apology to the way Trent Lott reacted when he was called out for endorsing Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrat ticket of 1948. She didn’t (as some of her defenders did right away) try to justify it by reference to “nice words at a funeral” or any of that nonsense. She made a mistake and is sorry. Full stop.

  25. 25.

    WaterGirl

    @LAO: She does seem to have a penchant for self-inflicted wounds. She is not a natural politician, one wonders why she wants elected office.

  27. 27.

    Baud

    @efgoldman: I’m not pulling a Rubio and quitting my day job. But it’s tiring working all day and then running a national presidential campaign at night.

  28. 28.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mike J: What does “walk it back” mean to you? I think it means something along the lines of “issue a retraction,” which applies to Clinton’s statement above in my book.

    @elmo: Yep. It wasn’t a half-assed “sorry if anyone was offended.”

  31. 31.

    FlipYrWhig

    @WaterGirl: But, really, by how low the standard of discourse was about Gay Stuff in the 1980s, Nancy Reagan’s just being vaguely decent to Rock Hudson would have been a step up. Of course there’s apparently not much to document her supposed decency towards Rock Hudson, and I found a thing on Buzzfeed about her very late refusal to help find a way to get him treated, which kind of puts an end to the whole decency thing. Still, I feel like I heard something about it at the time. Anyone else remember that, even as rumor?

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    @raven:

    Yep. She said something dumb, she apologized within a couple of hours, and it was a full apology, not I’m sorry if you were offended. Not much anyone can do about it now.

  33. 33.

    Ridnik Chrome

    As I said below, I think the fact that Hillary felt compelled to apologize for praising (however faintly) the Reagans’ record on AIDS is in its own way more damning of Ron and Nancy than any criticism would have been…

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t think it’s wrong to say she walked it back.

    But quite often, “walk it back” means “my staff tells me I’m not allowed to say that out loud” so let’s just pretend I didn’t say that, okay? And Clinton definitely do that. The closest she came was using the word “misspoke”, but it was already tricky to publicly take back a nice thing she said about Nancy Reagan at a funeral so I can forgive that she tried to soften in with “misspoke”.

    I also think if she had said “I was wrong”, it would have shown up in at least a million TV and internet ads.

  36. 36.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Felonius Monk: Yeah, they bring up the same “behind the scenes” thing. Seems like HRC probably believed the “behind the scenes” story too.

  37. 37.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud: You’re closer to a VP nod than ever. Almost a lock now.

    P.S. Just remember to Play your Cards right after you become VP.

  38. 38.

    Felonius Monk

    @Baud:

    But it’s tiring working all day and then running a national presidential campaign at night.

    Understandable, but then many of your supporters and potential voters are night owls.

    Rubio will be out of a job soon and looking for honest work, so you could hire him to wear the Mask of Baud and fill in for you on the campaign trail. He’s programmable, so you just load him up with your speeches and campaign slogans, wind him up, and let him go while you catch up on your sleep.

  45. 45.

    Caphilldcne

    The irony is that Clinton’s own legacy on HIV is amazing. Essentially the Senate leader on it during Kennedy’s illness and death and then the first high ranking public official to declare the goal of ending AIDS as Secretary of State (on World AIDS Day 2011). Shortly thereafter echoed by Obama.

  46. 46.

    daveNYC

    Surprised she screwed that one up. Even I know that the Reagan administration was ass on dealing with AIDS.

  47. 47.

    Mnemosyne

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I think we’re the same age and I remember hearing those same rumors, but now one wonders if it was just people who were disbelieving that the Reagans could be so cold towards someone who was supposedly a close friend that they had to come up with some kind of excuse for them. I think it was hard for people to believe at the time that they would be that big of assholes.

    Now, after 30 years of the Republican assholery that they inspired, it’s a whole lot more plausible. But I think people wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt at the time.

  48. 48.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @Baud: I’m not trying to say that. I meant my comment more as a slam on the Reagans than as praise of Hillary. She shouldn’t have said what she said, but the fact that she said it and then had to apologize for it makes the Reagans look pretty bad, given the circumstances…

  52. 52.

    Tinare

    I was surprised when I heard that Hillary had said what she said, and thought maybe I had forgotten some change of heart by the Reagans or something, and that Hillary was being very generous at a funeral by honoring an end-of-term about-face. But the Reagans were as awful on this issue as I thought they were.

  54. 54.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Mnemosyne: Yeah, I think we’re the same age…

    What just occurred to me was that maybe Hillary was thinking of the links between Rock Hudson, AMFAR, and Hollywood, and wrote the Reagans into that story erroneously.

  55. 55.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Technocrat: Cross between people actually caring, a media that likes gaffes, and a different set of people who really relishes it when Hillary Clinton fucks up.

  61. 61.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @NotMax: But, some conservative idiot(I repeat myself) put up a memorial for St. Nancy:
    Nancy Reagan, RIP
    1921-2016

    One problem, the picture, it was a picture of Jane Wyman.

  62. 62.

    Eric

    Does anyone find it ironic that Sec. Clinton made up praise about the Reagans when her 2008 campaign jumped all over Obama for merely calling Reagan “transformative”?

  63. 63.

    delk

    And I’ll tie it all together:

    The Trump Rally today is at the UIC Pavillion.
    I saw the Thompson Twins and OMD play there with my friend Lloyd.
    Lloyd died of AIDS.

  64. 64.

    satby

    @FlipYrWhig: @Mnemosyne: Yeah, that’s what I was remembering wrongly.

    And if delk is around, that great piece on AIDs survivors brought back a lot of memories for me too, though about people I knew in Chicago. When my husband ditched me and the kids, my gay friends really rallied around us and it was at the height of the epidemic. I remember how sad it was that people were grateful I had my children interact normally with them instead of hustling them away. Even some of my friends families ostracized them. It was a terrible time, and I was very much a sideline spectator. I can understand delk (edited to fix autocorrect) having some PTSD about those days.

  65. 65.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Germy: Because people dying of any disease is a laughing matter to Conservatives. Good to know.

    Secretary Clinton should have just said that she was sad to hear of Mrs. Reagan’s passing and leave it at that. No need to praise her for anything now that she’s dead when you really can’t think of much to say.

  66. 66.

    FlipYrWhig

    Oh, wow, and now something else just dawned on me: if there’s anyone in the world who might romanticize the idea of a First Lady who was disagreeing behind the scenes with her husband’s policies but couldn’t say or do much about it, it’s Hillary Clinton.

  67. 67.

    goblue72

    @Anoniminous: That’s what I recall from the 1980s. And that’s certainly what the LGBT community recalls. Reagan was downright evil on the issue of HIV/AIDS, right down to preventing his own Surgeon General from talking about it – even about something as innocuous as “use a condom”. The man went so far as to state he could understand why a child with HIV would be shunned from school, because hey, we don’t really know that you can’t get this disease from standing next to somebody with it.

  70. 70.

    Elie

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Honestly, almost anything she says or doesn’t say is subject to Monday morning quarterbacking. Its ridiculous. That we have 67+ comments on this issue (mostly around her apology) is ridiculous. Of course if she had just said what you recommended, she would have been criticized as cold and dismissive.

  71. 71.

    Technocrat

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Well, she did incorrectly represent a historical perspective about a dead woman. How is she not in prison, or disbarred or something?

  72. 72.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Elie: Well, but she wouldn’t have angered LGBT people and their allies in the process, and that’s why this is a bigger story: gaffe that offends a group that has been supporting the candidate, and whose interests she goes out of her way to talk about having championed.

  74. 74.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @WaterGirl:
    No, he did not. He was speaking about the number of state delegations to the DNC and 53 was the right number

  75. 75.

    Mandalay

    The late Keith Emerson at his finest doing America.

    Bernstein loathed their version but you can’t please everyone. It still sounds good to me almost 50 years on.

  76. 76.

    WarMunchkin

    Eh, candidates make mistakes. What was it, a few days ago that the potential first Jewish president said that the word “ghetto” is originally associated with blacks? In normal conversations, these kinds of things are just gently corrected, people learn and we move on.

    But politics.

  79. 79.

    Baud

    Rachel is going to spend 45 minutes on this tonight, isn’t she?

    Looks like it’s Hawaii Five-O for me.

  80. 80.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @FlipYrWhig:

    a media that likes gaffes

    You know, nobody makes a mistake without it revealing their “inner thoughts”. Freud taught us that. So no matter what someone’s actual positions and record are (that’s boring “facts” and “information”), the press covers “gaffes” because that the “truth” about a person. And since everyone knows that Hillary is History’s Greatest Monster, her “gaffes” are just showing how horrible she is to everyone who doesn’t have the media’s great insight.

    Or something.

    Plus giving an interpretation of a tweet or a bit of video is so much easier than actual reporting.

    /snark

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who agrees that she can’t be attacked over this without pointing out how horrible Reagan and the GOP actually were on the subject.)

  83. 83.

    Mnemosyne

    I once had to take a tour of the Reagan Library for work (long and uninteresting story). Despite all of the hagiography on display, I somehow came away with the strong impression that Nancy was by far the more conservative of the two and that she had influenced him to become more conservative than he might otherwise have done. Nothing I’ve heard about her since has disabused me of that impression.

  85. 85.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Bobby Thomson: That’s what I remember (hearing) too! And that _has_ to be what Hillary is remembering and giving the Reagans too much credit for.

  86. 86.

    gene108

    @FlipYrWhig:

    In the Buzzfeed article, there’s a reference to a “People” magazine article that mentions Nancy being nice to Hudson.

    The change, and later announced reversal to allow Hudson to be transferred to the French hospital, appear to have been the result of Collart’s influence with the right French officials, as Oppenheimer and Vitek reported in Idol.
    An August 1985 article in People magazine suggested otherwise, claiming that Mrs. Reagan “telephoned French President Francois Mitterrand to insure that Hudson received the best possible care.” While this also was vaguely referenced as a possibility in Hudson and Davidson’s book, though the sourcing is not clear, neither Weinberg nor Drake, the spokesperson for Nancy Reagan, found the idea of the first lady calling the French president credible.

    Link

  87. 87.

    scav

    “Started a Conversation” is such a faint non-praise (because, as in this and many instances you can start a conversation by being stridently, malevolently wrong) that after the initial ??!!!???#@#%#$%$#! I just said ok, damned with faint praise because of gaping tomb and wandered on.

    ETA: Granted, in that case, most of my conversations in their direction both then and now are probably unprintable, even by current RNC debate and rally standards.

  91. 91.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: That’s pretty much what happened. I’ve been to neither of the Presidential libraries in the area. The airplane* at the Reagan library would be interesting though.

    * It’s not AF1 unless it’s in the air and Obummer’s on board.

  92. 92.

    joel hanes

    @WaterGirl:

    one wonders why she wants elected office

    To help people, solve problems, and make the world a better place.

    The skills required for those tasks only partially overlap the skills required to successfully campaign for elected office in the US.

  93. 93.

    eemom

    Let’s look on the bright side….maybe it was a form of eleventy-dimensional chess.

    /headdesk

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    You get to walk through the whole plane, so that was kind of cool. There’s also a spot where you get to stand at a podium with a TelePrompTer and pretend you’re doing a press conference at the White House. Otherwise, not terribly exciting for the non-fan.

    Oh, and they have large signs up around his tomb warning you that you are being watched on video, so there’s no opportunity to piss on his grave.

  97. 97.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: Aren’t there also signs warning of rattlesnakes?

    ETA: It’s up in the hills between Simi and TO so it would be the natural habitat for snakes and other critters.

  98. 98.

    Cacti

    @Mnemosyne:

    Oh, and they have large signs up around his tomb warning you that you are being watched on video, so there’s no opportunity to piss on his grave.

    Is that a recent change?

    Because I remember one of the guys from Ruthless Reviews posted photos of himself dancing on Reagan’s grave and wizzing on Nixon’s.

  101. 101.

    FlipYrWhig

    “The Reagans learned by watching their friend Rock Hudson die to be a bit more sympathetic to AIDS sufferers and gay people” feels like the kind of thing that could be true, or ought to be true. It’s kind of… very bad… that it _isn’t_ true.

  102. 102.

    Mnemosyne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I’m glad that Patti was able to make her peace with her mother but, man, this made my heart ache for her and Ron Jr.:

    “My parents were two halves of a circle, closed tight on a world where their love for each other was the only sustenance they needed.”

  103. 103.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Cacti: The other local Presidential library is down in Yorba Linda, it used to be even worse(I’ve heard).

    ETA: They got an old Presidential chopper(fitting).

  104. 104.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud: I grew up in the area, I don’t remember too many mountain lion sightings. The old Billstead was about 5 miles south of the Reagan library.

  105. 105.

    Mnemosyne

    @Cacti:

    Reagan has a tomb, not a grave, so I’m not sure how he got a picture. It looks almost like a patio with the marker in the middle, so I guess if you move fast, you could get a couple of poses in before they catch you.

  106. 106.

    Elie

    @Mnemosyne:

    I wonder if the two other adopted children (Michael and ?) were there. They were not mentioned… lots of bad blood there..!

  107. 107.

    sparrow

    @Mai.naem.mobile: Hillary knew better. Truth is, there’s little good to be said about Saint Reagan’s wife, so she made something up. I assume it was part of her “pivot towards winning moderate suburban-dwelling republicans” plan. Either way it’s vile revisionist history.

  108. 108.

    MomSense

    I don’t think I will ever get over the grief, anguish, and terror of the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Thankfully my parents and I were very active in Act Up which gave us an outlet for what we were living through. Reagan couldn’t even fucking say HIV or AIDS. I’m still grieving the friends and people I love who died. Amazing how it all rushes back and how raw my emotions are all these years later.

  110. 110.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    The Reagan library is really close to the old police station and jail(also the current newer and larger one too, per Google Maps).

  111. 111.

    Gimlet

    Ben Carson is back. He explains why Trump is the lesser of two evils

    Hillary Clinton was a great friend of Saul Alinsky. On a first-name basis with him as a student. He wrote the book “Rules for Radicals” and if you haven’t read it, I recommend that you read it, and see the kinds of things that are recommended to change, fundamentally change, this nation from the great success we have to a socialist country.

    And the dedication page of that book says, dedicated to Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom. I don’t want anything to do with anything like that.

  112. 112.

    Mnemosyne

    @Elie:

    Nancy basically cut them out of Ron’s life as soon as she married him — it was really sad, but not an uncommon story in those days. Michael Reagan seems to have spent his whole life trying to get his daddy to love him again.

  114. 114.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Elie: You’re thinking of Maureen Reagan, she was Ron and Jane Wyman’s daughter and died in 2001. Michael was adopted, Maureen wasn’t.

  115. 115.

    Kay

    Good:

    Sen. Bernie Sanders notched a potentially significant win on Friday evening when an Ohio judge issued an order allowing 17-year-olds to vote in the state’s presidential primary on Tuesday.
    Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Richard Frye ruled that 17-year-olds who turn 18 by the day of the November election could vote in the primary, though not on ballot issues or for any contests that would actually elect someone to office.
    The ruling trumps a recent move by Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) to block 17-year-olds in the state from voting on election day, on the grounds that the teens would be voting for delegates, not nominating candidates directly. In December, Husted revised the state’s election manual, which previously allowed the practice.
    Frye’s ruling came in response to a suit by nine 17-year-old registered Ohio voters, who disputed Husted’s interpretation of the law.
    The ruling is a victory for Sanders’ campaign, which separately filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against Husted’s order.
    Husted blasted the ruling and said he would appeal.

    I love that Politico calls them “the teens” :)

  118. 118.

    Cacti

    @Kay:

    The ruling is a victory for Sanders’ campaign, which separately filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against Husted’s order.

    Curious what the federal argument would have been.

  122. 122.

    Davebo

    Another unforced error for Hillary. Bad staff work at best.

    But Nancy did come out for stem cell research and for stronger gun control (after her husband got Alzheimer’s and of course, got shot.

    Typical.

  123. 123.

    WarMunchkin

    @Kay: That’s awesome. I’ve been fielding questions from pretty much everyone I know under 40, something to the effect of, “Can Sanders win?”. There’s a lot of excitement there. I mean, I tell them the truth, but I love the enthusiasm. And people will remember that it’s Democrats who fight for this kind of stuff.

  125. 125.

    Kay

    @Mnemosyne:

    Oh, God, I don’t know if that’s true. I doubt most of them knew they could and then found out they couldn’t. There are nine who really wanted to vote in the primary though.

    I just think everyone should sue Husted, immediately, whenever he makes a move of any kind :)

    We are watching you, bud.

  126. 126.

    geg6

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Yes. I remember it and I’m quite sure it was in one or two of the memoirs I’ve read from people in and around that era. I know one said that she was not happy that the politicos in the Reagan White House put the kibosh on any acknowledgement or help for Hudson. And that when he finally did talk about AIDS and having lost a friend to it, it was her initiative. Can’t remember which books I read this same story, but it rang true to me at the time. And I’m not one to cut Ronnie or Nancy any breaks.

  129. 129.

    WaterGirl

    @sparrow: For what it’s worth, and I don’t even like Hilary, I don’t think is plausible that she made this up so she could say something nice and win over republicans. Given her previous public stance on aids, I don’t see her deciding to purposely say something that would offend gay people.

    And I say this as someone who is still unhappy about her “taking sniper fire”.

  130. 130.

    Elie

    OT but I have been really concerned up here in Whatcom Co WA that there has been increasing incivility at local government meetings mirroring some of the Trump hostility (not about race per se) but anyone who has views different from some of the right wingers….. Its even showing up for Fish and Wildlife matters and some folks have had to be arrested. Like I say, its gonna be a bitch to get the Trump hatred paradigm back into the bottle, no matter how this election turns out. Some of these folks are getting used not following procedures or processes that do not agree with theirs…

  137. 137.

    Villago Delenda Est

    All the sudden when Rock Hudson started deteriorating, Nancy got concerned.

    Not when people like my brother did.

    Fuck the Reagans. Their sin in this regard is unforgiveable.

  138. 138.

    bemused

    Trump gets deep satisfaction from his power to incite violence from his supporters and he can’t, won’t stop. Just reading at Raw Story about a local activist with a bloody face outside Trump rally. Not clear how he got bloodied.

    What is reported is Trump saying to the crowd that he is fantasizing about doing something to protesters but “won’t say what’s on my mind.” and the crowd goes wild. He said it’s shameful protesters have to be treated “gently” by the police. “There are no consequences to protesting anymore. Our country has to toughen up, folks.”

    This is a sick, dangerous man.

  139. 139.

    Kay

    @WarMunchkin:

    This is a big “get” in the NW part of the state. Two hours ago:

    Representative Marcy Kaptur (D – OH) endorses Bernie Sanders in Toledo event.

    Kaptur is loved in Toledo. Real affection. The Toledo mayor endorsed Clinton, but she’s brand new as mayor. Mayors are good, though. Obama had many of the mayors in ’08.

  142. 142.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    Yes, it was a very poignant comment, and in keeping with everything I have ever heard from any of the Reagan kids, that neither parent really ever had much time or attention to spare for their children or anyone outside their own little dyad. But I agree with you, I’m happy for Patti that she was able to reconcile with her mother. Having been there, I can say with authority that estrangement* is the worst.

    *(Not with my mother)

  143. 143.

    WaterGirl

    @Iowa Old Lady: Good for her. I was hoping she would do that! Especially after her own colleagues pretended they didn’t see it. Assholes. Let’s see them pretend they didn’t see it when they are under oath, or at least giving false statements to a police officer.

  144. 144.

    Mnemosyne

    @Elie:

    IIRC, the Malheur and Bundy idiots were all upset about Fish & Game as well, so I suspect it’s the same crowd. The whole Malheur thing supposedly started in support of a couple of jerks who poached a deer and then set a forest fire to try and cover their tracks.

  145. 145.

    Elie

    @bemused:

    I think its an open question about who is controlling who and the crowds and Trump are mirroring each other and that is getting further amplified as behavior to be modeled by the other yokels. It really puts the law abiding rules followers in a quandary… if you get down in the mud with them, you amplify it but you can’t get anything done if you ignore it.

  146. 146.

    debbie

    @Mnemosyne:

    I think it’s that same moment, mentioned in Patti’s earlier book, that embittered her because she felt shut out by her parents.

  147. 147.

    Trentrunner

    Here’s Hillary’s ENTIRE quote:

    “The other point to make, too, is it may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s,” Clinton said. “And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan, in particular Mrs. Reagan, we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it.”

    Clinton added: “Nobody wanted to do anything about it. And, you know, that too is something that I really appreciate with her very effective low-key advocacy, but it penetrated the public conscience and people began to say, hey, we have to do something about this, too.”

    Glad she apologized, but this wasn’t “misspoke.” This was a f*cking paean to St. Nancy of AIDS.

    It’s the OPPOSITE of what was true, which is that our leaders–Ronald Reagan being the most prominent–were the most powerful “nobodies” who refused to acknowledge AIDS sufferers and did far less than they could to mitigate the suffering. So people were stigmatized and suffered and died miserably and horribly.

    Where did Hillary get this bullsh*t?

  148. 148.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mnemosyne: The pair in question had been resentenced to comply with Federal minimums for felonies, and were being shipped off to a California federal prison to serve out their sentences. The felony being setting a fire to cover their tracks on poaching. They had numerous run-ins with local, state, and federal authorities over the years.

  149. 149.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    Looks like it’s Hawaii Five-O for me.

    You cannot be that self-loathing. Grimm is leagues better, or John Carpenter’s The Thing starts at 8:00 EST on El Rey (if you get that).

    Or you can go old-school with Merle Oberon and George Sanders in The Lodger (1944) on TCM (starting at 8:00 EST) and continue with Oberon and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights (1939).

  151. 151.

    WaterGirl

    @Steeplejack: Speaking of TV, did you ever go back and give Castle a second chance this season? Looks like they cut the number of episodes from 22 to 16, so I wonder if this is the last season of Castle.

  154. 154.

    Mary G

    I read “And the Band Played On” when it first came out. Periodically the author would give the number of days since the epidemic started without the government doing anything. It was a devastating indictment of Reagan and his administration.

    Oddly, the one good thing that GWB did was getting lower-cost AIDS drugs in Africa.

  155. 155.

    Gimlet

    Maybe another storm coming for Hillary

    http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/11/before_her_assassination_berta_caceres_singled

    March 11, 2016
    Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres was murdered last week in her home in La Esperanza in Honduras. Last year, she won the Goldman Environmental Prize. She’s a leading environmentalist in the world. Professor Grandin?

    she criticizes Hillary Clinton’s book, Hard Choices, where Clinton was holding up her actions in Honduras as an example of a clear-eyed pragmatism. I mean, that book is effectively a confession. Every other country in the world or in Latin America was demanding the restitution of democracy and the return of Manuel Zelaya. It was Clinton who basically relegated that to a secondary concern and insisted on elections, which had the effect of legitimizing and routinizing the coup regime and creating the nightmare scenario that exists today.

    I mean—and it’s also in her emails. She talks—the process by which she works to delegitimate Zelaya and legitimate the elections, which Cáceres, in that interview, talks about were taking place under extreme militarized conditions, fraudulent, a fig leaf of democracy, are all in the emails.

  156. 156.

    Elie

    @bemused:

    I think he is going to get a really bad surprise coming up….I agree that he enjoys the power. He has not, it appears, read much Greek drama or Shakespeare

  157. 157.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Jesus, guys.

    Take a chill pill, O.K.?

    Yes, it was a goddamned stupid thing for Hillary Clinton to say. And yes, Ronald Reagan was a fucking monster, and his crimes shouldn’t be forgiven or forgotten. And yes, I remember the era of AIDS. I lost friends, I lost my sister. I was pissed off when I heard about it.

    But Hillary admitted she did a dumb thing and apologized. And that should be the end of this.

    Because anyone who would refuse to vote for Hillary in November if she wins the nomination because of this is a fool.

  158. 158.

    liberal

    @Gimlet:
    Not really. I doubt most Americans give a $hit (unfortunately). The various Hillbots here will probably find an excuse for Hillary, or (more likely) say she actually did the right thing. (Just like they stupidly believe the BS lie that Ghaddafi was going to “genocide Bengaz!!1!”.

    NB: I find Hillary repulsive but will of course vote for her in the general, maybe even give money. Between a repulsive neoliberal and a fascist, I’ll pull for the neolib.

  159. 159.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elie:

    Someone may have already commented on your question, but it seems Michael Reagan (RWNJ adopted son of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman) — although he had no hesitation in slamming Obama for not attending Nancy’s funeral — was not there himself, as it would have been difficult for him to reschedule his business meetings in Asia, where he’s currently travelling.

    Well, sob and gulp. First of all, as has been amply documented, it’s not customary for sitting Presidents to attend the funerals of former First Ladies, and there’s a list of examples going back to Truman and Eisenhower. Secondly, why does he think the President’s pre-arranged commitments (major SXSW speech) are so disposable while his scheduled meetings are sacrosanct? And thirdly, I daresay if he had really wanted to be there today, the Reagan Library folks would have bent over backward to accommodate him, even if it meant a delay of a few days.

    I like Ron Jr. a lot, and I’m liking Patti better than I did, but Michael is nothing but a hypocritical POS. Screw him.

  160. 160.

    magurakurin

    @Baud:

    Looks like it’s Hawaii Five-O for me.

    the old one or the new one? Because Vlad the Impaler needs to have a chat with the people who made the new one. The old one? That is some serious hallowed ground of television. Book ’em Dan-O.

  161. 161.

    Steeplejack

    @WaterGirl:

    I haven’t yet. Every time I see it on the schedule on Monday (?) night I think about picking it up from where I left off—a handful of episodes after the wedding/disappearance/amnesia fiasco, and then I get pissed off all over again about that. It struck me as almost a shark-jumping watershed. Serenity now.

    My current broadcast-network favorite is Elementary, which has really dialed it up this season. Good writing and more sharing of the story with the supporting characters (which was one of the things I liked about Castle).

  162. 162.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @The Thin Black Duke: Jamelle Bouie has made this his headline tweet (or whatever you call it

    ‏@ jbouie
    Remember everyone: Politics on the internet…isn’t politics.

    @SiubhanDuinne: If you’ve ever seen the movie Guarding Tess, that character is at least in part based on NR, and there’s a loser son trying to get his mother to endorse some fly-by-night real estate scam he’s involved in that is pretty clearly based on Michael.

  163. 163.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    PPP:

    Democrats are looking pretty good for the general election for President in Ohio- as long as John Kasich doesn’t end up somehow snagging the nomination. Hillary Clinton leads Marco Rubio 44/41, and both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump 45/40– leads that are pretty well in line with how much Barack Obama won the state by in 2008 and 2012. Bernie Sanders does comparably well, leading Rubio 42/38, Trump 44/40, and Cruz 44/38. It’s a whole different ballgame with Kasich though. Unlike Rubio who’s become incredibly unpopular at home over the course of his Presidential bid, Kasich has remained very popular with a 54/36 approval spread. He leads Clinton 52/37 and Sanders 54/34 in head to heads.

    Do something, Baud. Stop him :)

    You know we can’t count on Little Marco.

  165. 165.

    Bob In Portland

    Warriors taking on the Blazers tonight. Blazers hurt them up here in Portland. Pretty sure Steph and company want some payback.

  166. 166.

    ThresherK

    @Mary G: That was his almost singular unalloyed, not-a-devil’s-bargain, thing we can point to. That, and praying with the NYC imam(s) a week after 9/11, in public.

    The rest is well-documented.

  168. 168.

    Chris

    @Anoniminous:

    The national conversation the RayGuns started was “let the evil butt sechs faggots die … IT’S GOD’S WILL!!!”

    Yep. It’s a “gay disease,” therefore they bring it on themselves with their sinful lifestyle, so the thinking goes.

    Yet another reminder that yes, the religious right absolutely does kill people. Many, many people. Even when they’re not doing it with a gun at an abortion clinic.

  169. 169.

    Nate Dawg

    Heard this today and about made me throw up. I’ve been Clinton tolerant, but it’s absolutely apparent she is too out of touch to lead the Democraric party.

    But you have to win with the candidate who cleared the field you have.

    I couldn’t be any less enthusiastic about her Presidency.

  170. 170.

    Nate Dawg

    @The Thin Black Duke: you know what? It’s not the end of it. Her apology is fine, whatever, but the real question remains–how could she think this? How could she utter this? You might as well praise Rockefeller for his labor advocacy. It is just straight-up wrong.

    And yes yes yes, those of us who live in blue states will vote for her, don’t fear, because we’d rather not be rounded up in camps, deported, sent off to war, deregulated into a dystopian nightmare. But so we have to like it? Jesus.

  171. 171.

    chromeagnomen

    @Trentrunner: in a certain sense what hillary said is true. the reagan’s certainly didn’t initiate the conversation by their positive reaction to the AIDS epidemic, but the fallout around that incident DID ramp up the dialogue.

  172. 172.

    Gimlet

    @Nate Dawg:

    To paraphrase a comment I read earlier “to substitute “dog” for “cat” is to misspeak. When you go on 100+ words something different is happening”.

  173. 173.

    gene108

    @Gimlet:

    Zelaya’s Wikipedia entry.

    The situation was a mess, with some of it self-inflicted by Zelaya.

    Elections, per the Honduran Constitution, were scheduled for November 2009, anyway. Zelaya dismissed a General, responsible for organizing the elections (apparently the Honduran army manages the logistics of elections, such as making ballots, setting up polling places, etc) and the Honduran Supreme Court said this was illegal.

    Congress moved to impeach Zelaya.

    The next in the line for succession was installed as interim President, until elections were held, as scheduled in November.

    Because of Constituional term limits, Zelaya would have had to step down in January 2010, when the new government was formed.

    Zelaya had a lot of support from labor activists and other liberal groups.

    Zelaya went into exile for a few years. He’s back in Honduras and is part of the government.

    The Goodman interview leaves a lot of background out.

  175. 175.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    I can’t stand Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Everything from starting the campaign in Philadelphia Mississippi to the massive tax cuts to kissing Jerry Falwells ass. And what they did for AIDS was horrific. But they were in their 60s. I hear homophobic stuff from clients I work with now who are in their 60s. Not giving Nancy an excuse but was she that different from the majority of the country during that period? I remember in college in the late 80s I knew a girl(not a conservative) who was absolutely devastated that her best friend(a guy)from high school had come out. I think the first out gay person I knew IRL ! was in mid 90s. Obama wouldn’t come out for gay marriage in ’08. And it isn’t like Nancys life was a bowl of cherries out of the WH. Anybody been a caregiver for an alzheimers patient or any chronic illness? It sucks the life right out of you and even if you have help its hard. I remember Rep. Mo Udall asking for stem cell research for Parkinsons because he had Parkinsons and the Reagan people refused and then Reagan got hit. with Karma.

  176. 176.

    Chris

    @gene108:

    apparently the Honduran army manages the logistics of elections, such as making ballots, setting up polling places, etc

    Boy, that sounds like a healthy state of affairs with very little potential for abuse.

  177. 177.

    gene108

    @Gimlet:

    From the BBC:

    The Honduras Truth and Reconciliation Commission has concluded that the removal from office of former President Manuel Zelaya was a coup.

    It said the move was illegal and not a constitutional succession as some of Mr Zelaya’s opponents said.

    The Commission investigated the events of 28 June 2009, when Mr Zelaya was forced into exile in Costa Rica.

    The crisis was triggered by Mr Zelaya’s refusal to cancel a referendum linked to presidential term limits.

    Point of no return

    The chair of the Commission, former Guatemalan Vice-President Eduardo Stein, presented the report to current Honduran President Porfirio Lobos, Head of the Supreme Court Jorge Rivera Avilez and Secretary General of the Organization of American States Jose Miguel Insulza in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.

    The Commission identified Mr Zelaya’s decision to press ahead with the referendum on constitutional change as “a point of no return” in the crisis.

    His critics said the move was aimed at removing the current one-term limit on serving as president, and paving the way for his possible re-election – a charge he repeatedly denied.

    The consultation was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court and Congress.

    When Mr Zelaya insisted the consultation go ahead, Congress voted to remove him for what it called “repeated violations of the constitution and the law”.

    The Truth and Reconciliation Commission said Mr Zelaya, 58, had manoeuvred himself into a corner, where he lacked the support of Congress, the Supreme Court, and even his own party.

    The Commission said Mr Zelaya broke the law when he disregarded the Supreme Court ruling ordering him to cancel the referendum.
    It said therefore both Mr Zelaya and those who ousted him bore responsibility for his forced removal from office.

    De facto regime

    The report said the Honduran Congress lacked a clear procedure to resolve power conflicts such as the one which arose in June 2009 between the president and Congress, but that it had acted beyond its limits by deposing the president.

    The report further said that Congress overstepped its powers when it nominated Speaker of Congress Roberto Micheletti as interim president.

    According to the Commission, the interim administration was therefore illegal and a “de facto regime”.

    link

  178. 178.

    gene108

    @Chris:

    The country’s a mess.

    Whatever happened there in the summer of 2009 was not a military coup, where democracy died and a dictator was installed.

    I honestly do not know exactly what is going on in Honduras or why they a struggling with violence and gangs.

    I am just going to withhold my opinion on the matter about what the U.S. did or did not do, other than I think Goodman’s interview was disingenuous.

  179. 179.

    Gimlet

    @gene108:

    Whatever happened there in the summer of 2009 was not a military coup, where democracy died and a dictator was installed.

    Not sure about that. The timeline suggests a high ranking military officer was in a conflict with the President. The referendum may or may not be an attempt to legitimize what happened next.

    The military – police seized control of the country and violently quashed protests, disappeared people and terrorized its citizens. A number of respectable people seem to support the deposed President.

    Still not clear what was going on.

  180. 180.

    Eric U.

    the only person I have ever seen that I’m reasonably sure had Kaposi’s Sarcoma was a white Lt. Col in the Air Force back when Reagan was preznit. Not that it changes anything, but plenty of white people died of this HIV/Aids, it’s just that the Republicans were sure it was just gays and druggies that were dying, so they didn’t give a shit.

  181. 181.

    Gimlet

    The Commission of Truth was created in June 2010 with the objective of “clarifying the facts of the June 28, 2009 coup d’état. The Commission was created by human rights organizations as an alternative to the Honduran government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR).

    According to Bertha Oliva, Coordinator of the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras, the CVR report, which was released in July 2011, “makes the victims invisible and gives a layer of protection to the assassins.”

  182. 182.

    policomic

    My God, you people are in the tank. She was “tired”? Anyone who was an adult in the 1980s–certainly anyone who was politically aware–knows full well the Reagan record on HIV/AIDS. As for Nancy doing anything “behind the scenes,” read about her “friend” Rock Hudson’s desperate plea for help, which dear Nancy rejected.

    This was a move to court “Reagan Democrats,” and a transparently stupid one. It’s true her apology is not a “non-apology,” but it is absolutely a crock of shit. She didn’t “confuse” stem cell research/Alzheimer’s for AIDS. You can believe it if you like, I guess.

    And yes, I will still vote for her if she’s the nominee, but Jesus Christ, she’s not making it easy for me to feel good about it.

  183. 183.

    Nate Dawg

    @policomic: that’s right. She can’t refrain from Sister Souljahing her base. And no; just because we have a fascist alternative doesn’t make it right.

  184. 184.

    PhoenixRising

    @Nate Dawg: you guys are hilarious.

    She is evil! She’s stabbing the base !!! Just like we knew she would!!

    Occam says she fucked up, by revealing that she thought in 1986 that the Reagans were open minded and nicer to gay people than expected at the time.

    But don’t let what is most likely interfere with how satisfied you feel right now.

  185. 185.

    Heliopause

    Good. Because the Reagans deserve nothing but contempt

    In case you didn’t notice there was nothing like “contempt” in Clinton’s walkback, just redirected praise for another issue that the POS Nancy Davis Reagan deserved no credit for. Do you deserve praise for advocating, years later, on an issue that you actively tried to hide from the world when it might have mattered (you know, when your very obviously impaired husband had the nuclear codes, for instance)? Fuck Nancy Davis Reagan. This was an own goal by Clinton but one that probably won’t matter in the larger scheme of things.

  186. 186.

    ellennelle

    @policomic:

    could not agree more.

    and this is the second apology for ‘misspeaking’ in just the past 2-3 weeks, what with that embarrassment in SC with ashley williams. for her to so callously dismiss ashley’s concerns regarding ‘super predators…being brought to heel’ – the painfully obvious dog whistle in that – i swear, i’m more inclined to believe she is just hopelessly out of touch and thoughtless. note that her parting words to ashley were identical to those she shared – like instructions – to the BLM folks earlier on: got complaints? run for office. really? does she not hear how much that sounds like ‘get a job’?

    these incidents keep rolling into a big stinky pile, along with ‘raining bullets in bosnia’ and ‘we came, we saw, he died,’ and they all make me cringe. they describe a thoughtless streak that exposes just how out of touch she is. which is not surprising; 100 mill buys a lot of social buffer.

    and puts you in touch with the likes of lloyd blankfein, kissinger, oscar de la renta, trump……

  187. 187.

    Chris

    @Heliopause:

    (you know, when your very obviously impaired husband had the nuclear codes, for instance)

    I think, between Brezhnev’s latter-years senility and the fact that we now know Reagan had Alzheimer’s (if not exactly when it started), the early eighties might just objectively have been the most terrifying era in human history. Two senile and ideologically blinkered conservatives each with a finger on the nuclear button? And somehow the Earth didn’t end up a radioactive cinder. Maybe there really is a God, after all.

  188. 188.

    Nate Dawg

    Let’s not forget she was one of the first ones out the gate with ALL LIVES MATTER. had to walk that back to.

    This is a pattern @phoenixrising. She’s just not that awesome. Sorry.

  189. 189.

    Applejinx

    @The Thin Black Duke: On the contrary, if this Reagan thing does accurately represent Clinton on AIDS and gay rights, and if this report from Honduras is correct that Hillary was collaborating in a “permanent counterinsurgency on behalf of transnational capital”, something explained in excruciating and heavily documented detail in Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’, then you could make a fairly legitimate argument that Trump the fascist is less dangerous.

    You could also make a pretty legitimate argument for fleeing the country, or getting all radical. To my mind the Honduras thing is a lot more worrying than some praise for Nancy Reagan, but we may not have made much progress vs. Shock Doctrine and transnational capitalism, while we have made a hell of a lot of progress on gay rights since those days.

    Rewriting history is a big problem. It’s more important than it looks because collective memory is a stabilizing influence, and certain things really benefit from erasing history and removing context. That’s what shock doctrine IS.

  191. 191.

    Litany

    @TaMara (BHF): I was going to say the same thing… 19 year old hemophiliac who counts himself blessed to be born after the crisis here. I’m writing about this topic in an independent study history class, and the level of guilt and culpability on the part of the government and manufacturers is mind-boggling. I’m so sorry for your loss.

  192. 192.

    Socraticsilence

    @WaterGirl: Remember when knowing the correct number of states was a massive political issue that sick and dying people started a protest movement specifically to address?

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