Nailed it again:
(Explanation here for anyone who is thinking, “WTF?”)
My only other contribution to tomorrow’s Easter feast is asparagus, which I will cook in the morning before we make the trip to the in-laws’ for dinner. I plan to trim up the stalks, toss them in olive oil, salt and pepper, and then roast them on a sheet pan. Easy peasy.
Tonight we’re just hanging out watching the chickens forage and checking out the occasional wild birds who visit the feeders and bird baths. That’s one thing I love about this time of year — observing the feathered visitors.
Other than that, I got nothing. Open thread!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I *may* be headed off to make mine in a few. I’ll try to get some pictures if I do. Hell, if the cafe owner flakes (entirely possible and perhaps likely), I’ll just make one here. Thanks for the inspiration.
pamelabrown53
Jeebus, Betty. You’re like a lefty Martha Stewart. I’m feeling inadequate but that’s okay.
If you want to be the lefty Martha Stewart, I’ll invest in your empire!
LAO
I definitely needed the explanation. Looks great, though. I’m trying to think of a Passover equivalent. Lamb has a much different connotation with Passover than Easter.
MattF
@LAO: Here’s the Mermaid Avenue version, FYI.
Mike J
@pamelabrown53: I thought Martha Stewart was the lefty Martha Stewart. She is, at a minimum, a Democrat, but I think she tries not to talk politics in public, so as to not drive away half of her audience.
satby
Looks great Betty. Way better than store bought for sure.
SarahT
Damn that’s a cute lamb !
NotMax
Ghost of Shari Lewis is on line 1.
Major Major Major Major
Hahahah awesome butter lamb.
I’m getting a haircut.
SarahT
@LAO: A gelfilte fish lamb ?
LAO
@MattF: thanks
@SarahT: nailed it!
raven
It’s been pouring but the girl fiddled in the garden and then fussed with her vintage easter stuff.
Easter 1
Easter 2
Ultraviolet Thunder
Nice lambkin!
My wife has independently invented roasted asparagus and this is her thing now.
*shhhhhh*
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: I watched Lambchop… ??
different-church-lady
Uhhh… aren’t little Xs for eyes cartoon shorthand for “dead”?
NotMax
@raven
Took a minute to realize that is a candle (I think?). At first glance, with still bleary morning eyes, looks like an egg with a foreskin.
MattF
@LAO: Mermaid Avenue is one of my very favorite albums. Here‘s another sample.
pamelabrown53
@raven:
Delightful. Thanks for sharing your beautiful and delightful Easter vignettes.
Brachiator
I finally watched the Shaun the Sheep cartoon that I got when I purchased an Android tablet.
Here’s an episode.
pamelabrown53
@efgoldman:
Do you like gefilte fish or is it “my mother made me eat it” thing?
LAO
@MattF: I like it. Did a little Google-fu and see that most of the lyrics on the album are Woody Guthrie’s.
SarahT
@efgoldman: Perfect ! And it could rest on a tiny bed of bitter herbs !
MattF
@LAO: Yup.
ThresherK
@Brachiator: The feature movie is great. And there’s no words of dialogue in it, so there’s nothing to lose in translation.But a lot more storytelling than most action flicks.
lollipopguild
I blame Shari Lewis for sock puppets. Or Obama.
Elie
I just finished being site coordinator for two precincts in the Democratic Primary for President for WA state. It was interesting and invigorating to see neighbors and friends participate in the process, but I would say that I dislike the caucus process which tends to melt away the one person one vote value to mathematical methodology that can be interpreted variously. The people who develop and then instruct how to do it are not all that good at making it clear. It would be very easy to screw a candidate and underrepresent the desires of his/her supporters in “rounding up or down” to assign delegates. I don’t think that is the right way to go. Should be one person, one vote – not rounding errors that make representation disappear, as I saw could potentially happen. Not good.
Mike J
@Brachiator: If you have Prime, they’re all available.
LAO
@MattF: I figured you knew! Thought it was too interesting not comment on. Thanks for introducing me to it.
PurpleGirl
Betty Cracker: Very good. Looks really cute.
Eric S.
I missed where you are adding fresh garlic to the asparagus.
jeffreyw
Here’s a scruffy looking Whitetail and a pair of Woodies.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Last night I ate lambchop! He or she was yummy.
(Don’t tell Hillary R)
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator:
Love Shaun the Sheep. The movie was one of the things that made the flight back from London to Denver last year much more pleasant and delightful than it should have been.
Likewise love Betty Cracker’s butter lamb, Shari Lewis’s Lambchop, and lamb for dinner in any form whatsoever (h’mmm…making lamb stew for post-hunt Easter breakfast tomorrow, starting it today in the midst of a CO spring snow storm).
Do not, nor have I ever, however, relished the thought of being Washed in the Blood of the Lamb, which was a concept that always made salvation a little gruesome for me.
I guess in an obscure way that covers Passover too, so have I hit all the Thread Lamb Themes, so far?
Baud
@Elie: Thanks for your work.
I sense a lot of non-candidate-specific dissatisfaction with the primary process this time around, including caucuses v. primaries. Regardless of how the primary and election turn out, we may see some reforms in the off season.
One thing that occured to me the other day. I didn’t realize until recently that all Dem primaries were proportional. I wonder how many people don’t realize that. Proportional means that your vote counts even if your candidate doesn’t win your state. That should encourage participation, but it doesn’t seem to. Maybe because people don’t know.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Adam L Silverman: I bought lamb shoulder chops to cook tomorrow – so I won’t tell her.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Spam from the Sea is what my college housemate called it. Of course he was 10th generation Georgia cracker Pentecostal on his mother’s side and 1st generation mainland Polynesian on his dad’s side. So given the latter spam may have been the appropriate cultural reference.
MattF
@efgoldman: Well, the stuff in the jar… I can see why people might want to keep their distance– the aroma is, um, unique. But made fresh, it can be excellent.
Adam L Silverman
@Thor Heyerdahl: Mum’s the word!
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman: Lambchop
Miss Bianca
@Elie:
I know that caucusing has real problems attached to it, so kudos to you for being willing to coordinate…we are debating in CO going to an open primary system – at least, we are debating on the Dem side – everyone agrees that we hate caucuses (well, everyone but me, I must be more of a masochist than I thought), but the sticking point is, “who’s gonna pay for the change”? Seem to recall that cost to the state was the reason why we switched back to a caucus system a few years back.
scav
@LAO: Isn’t there a roasted bone involved somehow? Only other novel idea is making little individual pats to mimic some bitter herbs (which could also be stuck into them). Clearly, I only speak Passover as an invite.
Mike J
@Miss Bianca: The cuacus leader for our LD said the Republican primary is going to cost their party $11M.
At our caucus they handed out donation envelopes and asked people to kick in $5 or $10., and while maybe only 20% did, it probably went a long way towards rental of the middle school. (I have no idea how much that costs.)
delk
I often describe my dog as ‘all curled up like a butter lamb’.
LAO
@efgoldman I was lucky, all I grew up in the same town as all 4 of my grandparents. One Passover, I was 4 or 5, I went into my grandparent’s bathroom to do my business and there was a live carp in their bathtub. I flipped (my memory of the event has been ruined by the re-telling of this story for the past 40 years). Needless to say, that was the last time homemade gefilte fish graced our Passover Seder.
Brachiator
@Mike J:
Very cool. Thanks for the info.
@Miss Bianca:
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
Linnaeus
Sanders currently leading in Washington 74-26 (with 14% precincts reporting). King, Pierce, and Kitsap counties haven’t yet reported, though.
Elie
@Baud:
Thanks for your thanks!
The caucus process is a giant pain. It has its strengths but only in regions where the population attending is small. We had a strong turn out today, though obviously not as many as a primary. This methodology or interpretation of mathematical rules for rounding up or down, really can take representation away from a candidate if not applied correctly. You don’t have that problem in a primary — one person one vote. It also takes enormous organization and effort to put a caucus together and given the lack of numbers compared to a primary, I am not sure that the juice is worth the squeeze.
On my more partisan side, as coordinator I could not fly my Hillary bias in the interest of fairness, but it was pretty horrible to hear the right wing talking points coming out of Bernie’s supporters mouths. And pretty strongly too — no one backing down for lack of evidence. Bernie sure has gotten away with very little scrutiny. The one good thing is that everyone is crawling over glass in the fall to vote for whatever Democrat is the candidate.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: I know what and who was being referred to.
LAO
@scav: it’s a lamb shank (I think I’m not all that religious). I was thinking more along the lines of the angel of death. Or one of the plagues. That would brighten up any Seder.
Anne Laurie
Egg-cellent lamb, Betty C!
Question: I was told that one reason eggs are a big Easter symbol is that, before the invention of cheap artificial lighting, hens didn’t lay during the dark season. So when the days got long enough (or the spring crops of insects & greens started) it was a BFD to have eggs available again. Do your hens decrease production during the winter? Or have I been misinformed all these years?
Elie
@Linnaeus:
Oh he will clean up, for sure. Hillary will get some delegates but its all Bernie here in WA state.
Baud
@Elie:
This concerns me if he makes the comeback he is envisioning.
This is good to hear.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: You are correct. Next up is a musical daily double here on Balloon Jews Double Jeopardy.
Miss Bianca
@efgoldman:
Back when I was still married, and my husband was going thru’ his Born-Again Jewish mode, he decided that he wanted to make gefillte fish. But he wanted to make it His Way, which meant a fishing trip to Crawford Reservoir and trolling for one of the monster pike that lurk in its depths.
Long story short, we got the sucker – or, rather, he and his buddy did, I had something else going on. Come back from my errands and duck into the bathroom to a shout of “wait – wait – if you were going to take a bath, DON’T – ” and gaze in slack-jawed awe/horror at the Monster from the Deep who is glaring balefully at me from a half-foot depth or so of muddy water in the bathtub.
I dispensed with the question of Why Hadn’t They Dispatched the Thing Onsite, Dammit – something to do with Keeping It Fresh and Kosher, mumble, mumble, I was sure – and went right to what I saw as the main point – “YOU are killing it, mister, not I. And I WOULD like my bathtub restored to its primary function, so sooner rather than later, please”.
I did consent to help grind the sucker up in our meat grinder after he and Michael had managed to gaffe it and bash it. Bones, bones, bones, bones, bones – oy, so many bones – but have to say it was mighty tasty.
Elie
@Miss Bianca:
Caucuses are mucho more expensive than primaries.. As populations grow, they are also unwieldly. My personal beef is who is checking the math and the interpretation of the delegate awards to the candidates. The caucus process totally favors highly motivated candidate supporters rather than accurately representing broad support. I prefer one person one vote.
Linnaeus
@Elie:
I’m in Washington, too, and he got more delegates in my precinct. I was a little surprised.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: The issue for Senator Sanders would/will be, and to no fault of his, the amount of anti-Semitism that will be directed at him should he become the nominee. The Daily Beast, Dana Milbank at WaPo, and several other sites have detailed the amount of anti-Semitism that is directed at Jews who are opposed to Trump’s candidacy, as well as just throw around by Trump supporters in his and their twitter timelines. One of these commenters, who wrote something (I think for the Forward) about opposing Trump, has had her personal social media accounts swamped, it was unclear from the right ups if she was doxed, but she’s indicated that she bought a gun and took a defensive firearm course because of the anti-Semitism and threats directed at her and her family.
scav
@LAO: Much better. That would be a seder I’d long to be invited to. Frogs? I might go for frogs. Something with olives or raisins for the flies. I seem to remember flies.
Aleta
@Baud: interesting, news to me.
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman: I not only remember Shari Lewis, I had a Lamb Chop hand puppet. We weren’t allowed to watch much television (my parents didn’t own a tv until the 1960 election) but Lewis was on the educational channel…
@different-church-lady: Well, I hope the butter lamb is dead, if it’s going to be sliced up for the dinner rolls! (And I thought those eyes were cloves?)
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
If it won’t offend her, try adding a few cloves of garlic next time she’s roasting the spears. One of the chain restaurants (go ahead, mock) has added a side dish of roasted asparagus with garlic & cherry tomatoes. Even *their* preparation is irresistible, and that’s with cut-rate mass-market produce.
MattF
@Miss Bianca: There’s an old joke– The way to prepare a pike:
1) Nail the pike to a wooden board.
2) Impale the pike + board on a steel spit
3) Roast the pike + board + spit over an open fire for two hours
4) Eat the board.
Miss Bianca
@LAO:
JINX! ; )
ETA: With regard to the “fishie in the bathtub” stories. Crossing paths, great minds, etc. etc.
Elie
@Linnaeus:
I wasn’t at all. WA state has an old union and socialist history — the Wobblies were big here and so was the grange movement. These folks are also very intensely on his side — he truly can do no wrong and the whole magic unicorn ideology is alive and well. If Bernie says you are going to have no tuition and we get single payer, well that is that. Some of them blinked when I mentioned the need to change the Congress and that downticket races were extremely important — it did not register — sigh
Elie
@Adam L Silverman:
WOW!!!
LAO
@Miss Bianca: I laughed. I thought, I’m not the only one who unexpectedly walked in on a live fish in the tub! We’re like sisters!
Linnaeus
@Elie:
Oh yes, I know all that. I was just a little surprised about my specific precinct – the demographics of my neighborhood are closer to Clinton’s voter makeup than Sanders’s. Or so I thought.
Renie
Here’s an amusing article written by my son on why he is qualified to be a cable pundit – he’s not but he makes some good points about why anyone could be. it’s a safe link on the website drunkmonkeys.com
Article
thanks for checking it out
Mike J
@Linnaeus:
Vote or delegates? My precinct went heavy Bernie, got got a delegate split. I wish I had known about the delegate worksheet beforehand. I would have donated an app to do it all. It would have literally taken less than a day to write, and would have saved much confusion.
Adam L Silverman
@Elie: Here you go:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/22/aipac-brings-donald-trump-s-anti-semitic-fans-out-of-the-woodwork.html
additional links in the link. As I’ve long argued about why Jewish Americans harboring anti-Muslim prejudice all the way to Islamophobia: the real professional anti-Semites, white supremacists, xenophobes, and racists don’t actually consider Jews to be white and what’s being done to Muslim Americans is what was too often done to Jews. In this case we’re starting to see kosher chickens coming home to roost.
Miss Bianca
@LAO:
IKR? I was like, “so this IS a thing!”
Linnaeus
@Mike J:
That’s vote percentage. If it holds, he’ll get about 75-76 delegates out of 101 total.
Elie
@Linnaeus:
Oh no! The (Democratic) elites LOVE Bernie here. College professors, doctors, small business owners, etc. Up here in Whatcom we don’t have too many big business elites. I am not sure I can even characterize the Hillary supporters since we seem to be few and far between. I am pretty sure that they will vote for her if she is the nominee. Ahem Pretty sure, anyway.
Linda Featheringill
Is it permitted for a Berniac to say Hooray! Or is that verboten on a Clinton site?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: She’s got such terrific stuff – an a great eye for using it.
As suspected, cafe owner flaked, so I’ll be making my butter lamb here. @SarahT: I intend to get curly parsley for mine. : )
Linnaeus
@Elie:
Apparently so. I may have been extrapolating too much based on local elections here; my precinct tends to go for the more established candidate in those elections.
LAO
@Miss Bianca: I apparently begged for the fish’s life but was unsuccessful.
Ben Cisco
Looks like Lamb Chop.
Elie
@Mike J:
Oh man, you hit the nail on the head!!!!!
The apps, the approaches and methodology are from the dark ages and communicated by people who do not know how to do it and NO, they probably would not LET you make it better. (Don’t get me going but here it goes) — The training was horrible… don’t use powerpoint slides, don’t automate anything!!! Up here its run by retirees who haven’t been near any modern business or organizational processes or training in years. A whole lot of the process in the Democratic Party needs to be re-thought through and re-designed. I just shake my head…. And get this — I am no spring chicken and I can see how ridiculous this is…
Elie
@Linda Featheringill:
Oh for Pete’s sake, Linda. I just spent four hours of my Saturday making sure Bernie had all his votes counted right. Please stop with the victim shtick. We are all adults and own who we are and what we believe but everyone gets to believe in what they believe…
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m almost afraid to ask – mostly because I hate the thought of sounding like an insensitive dipshit, but what the hell – but is that whole white supremecist Anti-Semetic “they ain’t really white” thing still A Thing?
ETA: Never mind…just clicked on that link you sent…
Grasp, I have huge animus toward the Whiteness Club, and who gets to be a member and who doesn’t, and what that means – but I kind of thought the aftermath of WWII would have put an end to the most disgusting displays of that kind of prejudice. And I thought the fact that the one thing I *wasn’t* hearing about Bernie Sanders was a lot of anti-Semetic dog whistles meant progress on that front. Was I wrong, or is it just that the haters haven’t really warmed up yet?
SiubhanDuinne
@Renie:
If I owned a cable network, I’d hire him on the spot!
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
Political media have mostly been reporting these primary results as if they were winner-take-all. Who wins is all that matters to them.
Linnaeus
AP just called Alaska for Sanders, so he picks up 9 delegates.
LAO
@Miss Bianca: haters haven’t warmed up.
Matt McIrvin
@Miss Bianca: Some of Trump’s more vocal online fans are straight-up Nazis. I mean guys who say Heil Hitler all the time and tell Jewish people they’re going to the ovens. It is totally a thing.
Elie
@Adam L Silverman:
This makes me sad sad sad but I am nevah surprised. Jews like us blacks know it always boils down to that hard little nugget in the end. My Grandmother used to say that one of the first words new white immigrants learned when they arrived in the United States was “nigger”. Aint too different for Jews.
NotMax
@LAO
Live fish in the tub. Oh my.
One of the families wasn’t named Clampettstein by any chance?
Gvg
Funny about the anti-semitism coming out of trump supporters. His daughter is married to a Jewish man, and I’d read she had converted. Yet he has had at least one episode of foot in mouth about it and these supporters are definitely bringing it. I guess it goes along with the rest of his demographics. I wonder if his anti Semites even know about his daughter? I get the vibe from him, that daughter or not he is actually bigoted himself.
I grew up totally unaware that anti semitism was still around in America. I still don’t encounter it much face to face. I guess mostly people didn’t talk about religion in public when I was growing up. Sister 11 years younger encountered much more religion in school than I did. I preferred the quiet religion.
Mike J
@efgoldman:
We had one cop in the parking lot, no fire personnel, and I didn’t see a custodian, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. FWIW, we set up took down chairs and extra tables ourselves.
NotMax
Test.
Multiple posts disappearing into who knows which FYWP hole.
Brachiator
@Linnaeus:
He got 78 percent of the vote (with 38 percent of the total tallied). That’s pretty impressive.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: While Jewish Americans who are of European descent have been considered white, by other caucasians, almost all of my life (I’m 45), that transition fully seemed to occur in the 60s and early 70s. If my elders here have a different take on when the transition occurred, I’m curious to read it.
Among the white supremacists, anti-Semites (the former are almost always the latter), racists, and xenophobes Jews are not and can never be white. They are their own distinct racial group and a degenerate and parasitical one at that. This is Judaism as race/racialized ethnicity, not Judaism as religion. It is important to remember that quite often white supremacists don’t count anyone from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and/or Greece to be white either.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t know that the antisemitism would be worse than the misogyny that Hillary will face. He’ll be faced with more skepticism and hostility of his policy ideas in the general election, however. It’s a completely different audience, and I don’t think this primary has done a good job of preparing him for it if he does make a comeback.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: Did you read the transcript of the NYT interview with Trump?
Are the eyes of the butter lamb, cloves?
Miss Bianca
@LAO:
Well, crap. Deep down, I shoulda just known.
But it pisses me off that this shit just goes on and on over the course of fucking MILLENIA.
Renie
@different-church-lady: I’ve been looking for you and trying to catch you in an active post. I wanted to tell you that your comments ALWAYS crack me up. You have the best sense off humor. Keep it going!
Linnaeus
@Baud:
I thought the the socialist thing would be the more appealing attack on Sanders rather than antisemitism. Of course, they’re not mutually exclusive by any means.
Adam L Silverman
@Elie: You are, unfortunately, correct. And it is too often a sad thing that many Jewish Americans, even some who lived prior to being given the privilege of being fully white, have forgotten that. I think it is an unfortunate thing that too often separates the two communities when it should be something that draws them closer together.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: Thinking Housewife, who I can’t bear to even hate read any more has gone full metal anti-Semite. But she is a good barometer for the right wing fever swamp.
Baud
@Linnaeus:
Quite the opposite of mutually exclusive.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Baud: I think it will be worse for 2 reasons. First, lots of women are white supremacists but not necessarily averse to voting for a white woman. Second, the Trump campaign (and its supporters) has totally normalized vocal bigotry of all kind. Sucks.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: I did. That guy wouldn’t know what cyber power is if it walked up and bit him on the knee. And, despite some commenting naysayers here, I nailed it during that last debate when I indicated that Trump wanted us to take tribute like an empire and made the Athenian analogy.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
This is insane, and very sad.
I don’t understand the idiocy of people who wildly applaud Trump’s support of Israel, but who also want to hate Jews.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: The misogyny is going to be terrible too.
mike in dc
April is likely to be the cruelest month for Sanders supporters. He can win in WI and WY, but NY will be brutal and the 26th, with 5 states including PA, may be the death knell in terms of eliminating any realistic chance of catching up. Clinton may not clinch the majority of pledged delegates until June 7th, though. In 2008 she didn’t concede until 3 days after the final contest. I expect likewise from Sen. Sanders. His supporters won’t be fully onboard until the convention or shortly after.
gogol's wife
@Linda Featheringill:
This is a Clinton site? You could have fooled me.
Baud
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Yeah but I feel like misogyny is more widespread than antisemitism. But I live in a bubble. What do I know?
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
Well, that part I knew…about certain Europeans anyway…I remember a friend of Italian descent telling me that her parents got taunted with, “oh, white people don’t GO to your school/neighborhood/church/butcher shop/funeral parlor” etc. That they weren’t considered white. I remember that it blew both our minds. I think that was the first time I really questioned the whole fluidity of the “Whiteness” concept.
Elie
@Adam L Silverman:
It DID draw them together…. that wonderful period in the late 50’s and 60’s in civil rights movement… Many Jews were very involved with that — Sad that things changed a little — but not completely I don’t think. But yes, both peoples know the deal… we are the first under the bus…
Linnaeus
@Baud:
Historically, yes. It seemed to me, though, that the association of socialism with Jewish intellectuals and activists wouldn’t resonate in quite the same way today as it would have, say, prior to World War II.
DRCassatt
And Happy Dyngus Day!
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Brachiator: Meh.
Obama got 75% of the vote in Alaska in 2008.
There is a very strong anybody but Clinton (ABC) vote in red states.
Adam L Silverman
@Linnaeus: The socialist thing will be moved from democratic socialist similar to Denmark or Sweden to socialism = communism. Then you’ll see the international Jewish/Zionist conspiracy stuff and the cultural marxism/Frankfurt School stuff. If you read the comments on any hardcore conservative site, whether dealing with politics or social issues or religious issues or even the firearms blogs, you see this stuff show up all the time. He’ll also be conflated with the NAZIs, this has already been done, because it was National Socialism, and because Jonah Goldberg explained to us all that fascism is a liberal/leftist ideology, not an extreme right one.
Miss Bianca
@Linnaeus:
In fact, “Socialist” has often been a code word for “Jew”. So, this should get (ugh) interesting.
ETA: I see someone beat me to it. Not surprising, in a crowd this sharp.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: Don’t forget Saul Alinsky!
All you need is the right sounding name.
Elie
@gogol’s wife:
Linda takes it personally that people can have strong opinions here but without knowing the denominator, a bunch of strong opinions do not mean that is the majority. She conflates snarky partisans with being the majority instead of just having more aggressive views. Same error for caucuses… Small number of people can given you a not totally accurate picture of what is going on…
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t know who that is, but I believe you. Just look at what happened to Ben Shapiro – not that he doesn’t deserve his share of grief for being a horrid little person – since he left Breitbart over the Michelle Fields stuff. His former fans have been directing several firehoses of anti-Semitism his way ever since.
Matt McIrvin
LGM has one of these Nazi trolls who keeps popping up under different names, crowing about how Trump is going to bring white supremacist government to the White House and the blacks and Jews are gonna die. They have to keep warning people not to engage him to make his comments easier to delete, because when he starts pooping on a thread in earnest it’s just gone.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: For those people support for Israel has nothing to do with Jews as Jews. It has everything to do with the need for Jews to return to the Holy Land in order for the Battle of Armegeddon to occur and for all the Jews, but the small number of Jews who at the last minute accept Jesus as Christ and Saviour, to be wiped out in order for the Second Coming to occur. These people don’t love Jews, they don’t even like Jews. Nor do they love or like Israel. Both are necessary disposable throwaways in their end time fantasies. That’s why when you listen to them really talk about Jews and Israel its cringe inducing.
Linnaeus
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, I’ve seen that kind of stuff too in the cesspool of hard right political media. I guess I’m just wondering how effective that would be outside of those circles in a general election.
You might have a multilayered kind of message, though: the hardliners get the explicit stuff, and everyone else gets the coded messaging. Still, I’m wondering how the latter would look.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: His idea of increasing the tariffs on imported goods by 30% doesn’t seem to have gotten much scrutiny from the media. What does Trump think, other countries are going to roll over and play dead?
LAO
@Baud:
@Linnaeus:
As a woman, I expect plenty of misogyny. It will be overwhelming and disgusting. As a Jew, the level of anti-semintism I’m seeing on Twitter and the web is shocking and frightening. I can’t explain why, because it’s visceral reaction, but the anti-semantism upsets me more.
ETA: I admit, I’m the worst speller
raven
OK Oregon up!
Adam L Silverman
@Elie: I’m tracking on that. I may not have been clear – I mean that today the similarities have fallen by the wayside for far too many. This has given way to distrust on both sides.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: Its a blog I had mentioned earlier. This woman is a conservative Catholic who thinks that the current pope is an apostate.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Linnaeus: that’s a good question. what ever happened to Jewish radicalism? It was pretty strong up to the early 70s. Considering the timing, could radicalism have waned once Jews were viewed as white by other Caucasians; where once barriers fell there was less fuel for personal social and economic reform. Or was it just a causality of post war mass consumerism.
Soylent Green
My grandfather was a sailor in the Pacific throughout WW2 and never tired of telling me stories about the other sailors calling him a kike, sheeny, hebe, dirty Jew, Christ killer, etc., and picking fights with him. This was the norm in those days.
Their mistake was that he was a semi-pro boxer who would punch their lights out, then lose whatever stripes he had earned.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: One drop of non-white (however that is defined) blood makes one non-white. But nothing short of all white blood makes one white.
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman: When I mentioned in the caucus today that nobody had gone the least bit negative on Sanders yet, several of the kids seemed to think that it was because nobody possibly could, since he’s so pure. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that even the liberal MSNBC is going to lead all of their newscasts with his recruiting poster for the Baader-Meinhof group and truth doesn’t have anything to do with what is going to happen to him.
Bob In Portland
@Elie: What right-wing talking points?
By the way, it’s 79-21 last I saw.
Gin & Tonic
@LAO: The pedant corps here can take care of any anti-semantism.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: My PhD is partially in political science and I have to say until President Obama got elected and this became a rhetorical weapon, I had no idea who Saul Alinsky was beyond the guy who wrote a short manual that no one had read for almost thirty years.
Princess
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: I think it is more that Bernie voters = Obama voters – (African Americans + Hispanics + Jews + most BJ readers). He’s doing fine in the Obama states as long as they are mostly white.
JPL
@Renie: He did a good job and I just liked it.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: I copped to it. The Worst Speller in the world and the iPad isn’t helping.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: It’s the old saw about put a tablespoon of wine in a barrel of sewage and you have sewage; put a tablespoon of sewage in a barrel of wine and you have sewage.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: One of the Pope Pious the IX folks no doubt.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: Reality is usually unpleasant and often best avoided before noon.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks, Newt!
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: copped to reading Saul Alinsky? I’m confused. Not that that is either abnormal or difficult to make happen.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: And Frank Luntz, who was his word meister and information operations specialists. That Luntz has done this stuff is another example of a shonda for the goyim.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: I hit the wrong reply bottom. This is not my day. Sorry.
Renie
@SiubhanDuinne: thanks for reading it. i thought it was pretty funny myself and i’m bias. (i did tell him he forgot to mention chuck todd’s awfulness)
raven
@Soylent Green: Good. . . that he whipped their asses. What ship was he on?
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: No worries. I thought that might be the case.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Princess: There’s very little white Obama supporters who are for Sanders. His white support is largely the Edwards populist bloc with the ABC voters.
dogwood
I live in Idaho which gave Obama his biggest margin of victory in 2008. Decades of right wing Clinton bashing that is ubiquitous and loud has an effect on Democrats as well. And in states like these that are caucus states, the loudest and angriest are more motivated to show up. Although, in 08 the huge caucus turnout in my county was very respectful. But Obama voters weren’t a particularly angry lot. In the general election, I would imagine that Hillary would perform about as well as Sanders in most of these states.
Betty Cracker
@Anne Laurie: Chickens typically molt in the fall (shed feathers) and stop laying until they regrow them. It affects egg production for a month or so here in FL. Don’t know if that’s how they do in other places or not!
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
WTF is it about white people, anyway?? At least, so many WASPs I’ve known – up to and including members of my own family, alas – who wear Whiteness like a security blanket seem so much prouder of, so much more invested in, what they’re NOT – not Black, not Hispanic, not Jewish, not Catholic, not Muslim, not Other – than what they thought they WERE – that Whiteness itself just seems like a freaking illusion to me. But a deadly one – you get kicked around enough as a culture and a people, you’ll do anything to get into it – and then once you’re there, you get sucked into the trap of keeping other people out.
Can’t we just blow up Whiteness once and for all?
ETA: Well, yeah…one-drop rule. That would be why. Duh.
Linnaeus
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
That is a good question. It’s not my speciality, but if I were to offer some guesses, they would be:
1. Cultural assimilation among later generations
2. Greater acceptance and entry of Jewish Americans into American political structures.
3. Other social reform movements coming into the fore.
Linda Featheringill
@Elie:
I’m sorry if I hurt you. Please accept my apology.
Elie
@Bob In Portland:
BENGHAZI! She’s gonna get INDICTED! EMAILS! (what about them?) She’s a HAWK!
You know, the same shit YOU say..
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: It would make a very big mess.
chopper
I would *love* to bite the head off that thing in front of the kids.
Renie
@JPL: thanks for reading it. i’m proud of what a good writer he is turning into
Elie
@Linda Featheringill:
No — you didn’t hurt me at all. Hopefully you now feel reassured that you are being heard and treated fairly, but I doubt it.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: Not a Chicago boy obviously! Here’s Saul:
Baud
@Miss Bianca: Yeah, it’s depressing.
@Elie:
Hawk isn’t a right wing meme. It’s a left wing meme. It’s not necessarily incorrect, but it’s overdone, I think.
The rest is right wing.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@dogwood: That’s the other point. A caucus is night and day with a primary because the amount of time you have to invest to cast a vote and the narrow time parameters to cast the vote. Therefore it slants to the most fervent voters (people who spend 3 hours a day reading political blogs).
Elie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Oh I am not sure that is true here in WA state. These folks were all aboard the Obama train and many are now Bernie supporters. I stand out in my group of friends and associates who were overwhelmingly Obama supporters who now support Bernie (including my husband)
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
I just read the whole transcript. Just as bad as the Washington Post interview. Aside from the bits where the Donald brags about being an international man of business, it’s like interviewing Archie Bunker on foreign policy.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
Goddammit, I get on a high-horse righteous rant and you make me laugh and knock me off it again.
Elie
@Baud:
You’re right (hehhehheh)
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Linnaeus: cultural assimilation is a very good point. That’s how young Cubans turned progressive. They don’t cling to a decades failed embargo. They want to go down to Havana and enjoy life, not stew over the past.
raven
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
I think that this may animate a small group of evangelicals, but I don’t think that the average Trump supporter is particularly religious, and definitely is not moved by ridiculous theological rationalizations.
I agree with you somewhat. There is hatred for Jews. But I also think that these people hate Obama and Muslims more. And I think that some of these people think that they could use Jews to get rid of Muslims, and of course, hate Obama for siding with Muslims and impeding the Middle East Ass Kicking to come.
There is still an obvious contradiction here. Israel and the Jewish people of Israel are not real to these people, or are real only as long as they are useful to their fantasies of American power.
Baud
@raven:
Trump should buy Rafalca.
Mike J
@Elie: Was talking to one of my neighbors at the caucus and found it funny that I was an Obama supporter in ’08 and now a Clinton supporter. She was Clinton then and now Sanders.
Soylent Green
@raven: I can’t recall its name. To entertain the crews, the Navy would hold boxing matches on board, and send my gramps to other ships to compete. He was a radar chief when he wasn’t being demoted for fighting.
Miss Bianca
@raven:
Whoa! Where is that quote from, btw?
debbie
Betty, I know you said you used a garlic press for the wool, but how do you get the strands to stick to the body?
JPL
Oh my, Douthat does not like Cruz. link What are the republicans to do?
Elie
@Mike J:
See what I mean…..
I find it just amazing since its Hillary that has said she will build on Obama’s legacy/accomplishments. I think her cautiosness to sign off on instant remedies such as free tuition for all is what holds up her approval. There is also some serious mysoginy from many women (sad to say) that somehow tar her with her with her husbands mistakes… she wasn’t part of his administration then, but its a back door way of still keeping the halo around Bill while ascribing all his policy and moral failures to his cold, controlling, lesbian wife.
raven
@Soylent Green: They were called “Smokers”. They were often on bigger ships that had large crews to draw from.
“PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (NNS) — USS Russell (DDG 59) revived an old Navy tradition Jan. 24 by holding a boxing “smoker” on the ship’s flight deck. Twelve participants competed for trophies in six weight classes, as well as for a “best form” award.
“It was a great roll-back to the traditional boxing “smoker” days,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 George Conley, systems test officer aboard Russell and the promoter of the event. “The crew and the guests were all excited. I’m really pleased with the outcome.”
“
Anne Laurie
@Miss Bianca
The evolution of parochial prejudices: When I was growing up in NYC in the 1960s/early 1970s, the target of schoolyard ‘dirty, primitive’ jokes (“Why is there so much food at a ******* wedding? To keep the flies off the bride”) were Italians. My dad, during the late 1930s, heard the same jokes told about Jews. By the time my ten-years-younger siblings were in elementary school, the target was Puerto Ricans… who were very indignant, but that didn’t stop them telling those jokes about Domicans…
raven
@Miss Bianca: da wiki
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@JPL: the scuttlebutt is they’re hoping for implacable grid-lock at the convention, which would force the delegates to pick someone other than Trump and Rafael.
It’s a pipe dream.
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Hey, that’s my plan.
debbie
@efgoldman:
I’m not picky; I’ll eat it out of the jar.
dogwood
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
If you live in certain parts of Arizona, voting in a primary might require significantly more time than attending a caucus.
raven
@efgoldman: “Then after WW2 they all became relatively successful and moved to the suburbs, where all my cousins, baby boomers, grew up. When you grow up like that, you tend not to be radical.”
You sure about that?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@schrodinger’s cat:
He doesn’t. He just spouts.
@debbie: Not Betty, but if they’re warm enough you just put them there and they sort of stick. It’s a fine line though, because if you let the butter get too warm, you can’t make the wool.
I’m going to go
tackleattempt to construct mine after I clean up from Mr. Q’s dinner.Bob In Portland
@Elie: She is a hawk. But that’s a left-wing talking point. Farther to the left than where you are. Right-wingers generally don’t seem to mind wars. Sort of like you.
Benghazi? That’s right-wing. But the regime change (“We came we saw he died”) is a left-wing concern. Some folks don’t think the US has the right to go around replacing heads of state. International law. That kind of shit. That’s “Kissinger-ish” you know.
As far as the emails are concerned, there are certainly a few embarrassing things there, nothing indictable, and I’ve suspected that FBI Director Comey, who’s a big Ted Cruz fan, might be screwing with Hillary for political purposes. But again, that’s a right-wing meme.
How about her fiscal relationship with the top 1%? Anybody talking about that?
So either you can’t tell the difference between left and right or you don’t read well, because I don’t talk about emails and Benghazi.
What did you think about that arms deal with Qatar where the weapons showed up with ISIS in Syria and Libya? Did you know the Clinton Foundation got a kickback after that?
Bob In Portland
Nice lamb.
opiejeanne
Easter is at Middle Child’s house, for reasons I do not understand but I am going along with it. It’s not warm enough yet to have the dinner outdoors, and we still have quite a bit of mud in the gardens.
I’m making a gluten-free, egg-free cake, which is way better than it sounds. I use the Betty Crocker gluten-free cake mixes and substitute applesauce for the eggs. It is indistinguishable from a cake made the traditional way. I tweaked it by adding the zest of an orange and the juice from the same orange to the liquid called for; I’ll make a lemon glaze when it cools off a bit. The birthday boy asked for a maple bacon cake, which ought to come with a free heart bypass (around of bacon and way too much butter), so middle kid is going to make some Grand Marnier candied bacon for a topping so her future BIL won’t be too disappointed.
I’m also making vegan potato salad, using home-made vegan mayo, which doesn’t taste much like mayo but the consistency is correct, and by the time I’m done adding Dijon mustard to it no one will notice. The only reason it’s vegan is that there are no eggs. I bought some regular potato salad as back-up in case this is awful, but so far I think it will taste just fine. Youngest Child is bringing deviled eggs, so we will get our quota of HB eggs tomorrow.
Middle child’s allergies to proteins is the reason for these adjustments; before, it was just gluten but now eggs and certain nuts are causing gastric and other problems. It is a bit impressive to watch her face and neck develop a rash and swell up just from accidentally eating something made with wheat flour.
Bob In Portland
Betty, have you read the Nation article about Ukrainian fascists yet?
Mike J
@Anne Laurie: But not during National Brotherhood Week.
Adam L Silverman
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Its Ryan. Charles Pierce is correct that he’s running. The same thing we witnessed last October and November regarding the Speakership of the House is playing out again. Lots of other people talking that he would be the only acceptable compromise. Ryan constantly denying it while positioning himself for it. And lots of people explaining why it wouldn’t or couldn’t happen.
The RNC writes the rules for who gets to be the nominee. They will meet in the next month or so to do so as that is when they have to write the rules for the nominating convention. This is going to have very, very little to do with delegates. It is going to have everything to do with what the RNC thinks it can get away with. If they think they can survive by making it impossible for not only Trump, but also Cruz to become the nominee – that is the Course of Action they will pursue. If they don’t think they can get away with it, then they won’t. Either way it will be messy and ugly.
Anne Laurie
@Betty Cracker: Thanks! It would make sense, I guess, that chickens finding their own food — which I think was the standard up until industrialization — would take longer to grow out a new coat of feathers. So if they molted in the fall, and then went on short rations all winter, they wouldn’t be productive until the days got longer (and the bugs started emerging).
raven
Damn, this is long and intense:
Bob In Portland
I’ve got traces of South Asian, Mongolian and Japanese in my DNA, so please, no more comments about my whiteness.
LAO
@JPL:
OT: IIRC, you advised me to adopt a new dog last week. Just wanted to let you know, this morning I went to see some puppies (Australian Shepard lab mixes). And I decided 2 things: I am ready but no puppies! They were ridiculously cute but little troublemakers.
Bob In Portland
This article, Betty. Ukrainian fascists.
Baud
@raven:
Too long. Saved for later.
@Adam L Silverman: The Village would forever be in the GOP’s debt. They ? Ryan.
dogwood
@Adam L Silverman:
I agree completely. Ryan started his general election campaign with the apology about “makers and takers”. Whether they can get away with it is still up in the air.
Anne Laurie
@Baud:
I’m actually seeing it among center-right pundits, like Jen Rubin at WaPo. Hillary is a lefty squish who simultaneously wants to bomb (all the wrong) foreigners just for funzies. Sure, she’ll carpet-bomb little children in Syria, but do you see her nuking Iran?
You know, just like President Obama is a dedicated secularist and also a devout Muslim.
raven
Jesus another blow out.
elftx
Lambchop!!! O how I loved that puppet as a kid.
I love Auntie Mame for many reasons, pushing back on bigotry was super in that film.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: And that’s why, if they decide to try it, they’ll be able to pull it off. The Village will cover for him. And they will try to sell it. It won’t matter that Secretary Clinton or Senator Sanders would make him look like a poorly prepared 5th grader in the debates, the Village will sell, sell, sell the daylights out of that product.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
They’ll glom onto anything negative that has legs.
Bob In Portland
@Anne Laurie: Wasn’t she and McCain bragging about nuking Iran back in 2008? Around the time of the 3 a.m. phone call.
Elie
@Bob In Portland:
So Clinton unilaterally decided we should go into Libya during whose administration?
Bernie has had it good. He has been out of the tent as the socialist who caucused with Democrats and could piss in at will (like now).
Politics is about getting things done with people of varying ideas and backgrounds that don’t always get along. Bernie’s supporters and sometimes he gives the sense that the process of real governing — not just promising your ponies, is sordid and ugly if you have to deal with anyone not as pure as you. Its just not that easy and his lack of reputation is a help to him now — but would not be in the future. So you are telling me that he would waltz in to the board rooms of wall street and cut their balls off without considering any fall out to anything? Would he just assume that Wall Street types are empty figure heads who would just let him do that or do you think that they might have a assymetrical response of some type? Bernie like all Presidents, would have to deal with a whole variety of people and interests and he might not always be able to tell them kiss his ass. Just saying. Bernie recently had a mini melt down when the asshole Arpaio interrupted his wife’s speech in AZ with some bullshit. He was so furious that he walked out of the press conference. While this is no biggie, you can bet your sweet bippie that his reaction was duly noted and he can expect to see goo gobs more of this in the future — esp if he is the nominee. He will be spinning and furious that these people are not fair, that they are mean, craven, out to do him harm — but you know, he would have to suck it up and be cool — cause that is reality.
Bernie is not made for the real world rough and tumble and dirt of politics. I am sorry. Unfortunately, that is the name of the game. You have to be able to deal with your enemies and those who wish you harm to protect the American people and our system. Some of his decisions will have only down sides and some will never be known in their entirety. He will have crushing responsibility, the likes of which he cannot imagine and will make him the loneliest man on the planet at times. That is the office he is running for. He is not Moses.
Miss Bianca
@LAO:
My rule was first, No More Puppies (which I broke).
My new rule became No More Puppies Without An Older Dog. Because rearing my second puppy was *so* much easier than the first with big, anxious Mama Guard Dog around to take over most of the socializing process for me.
But I’m coming back around to No More Puppies. ; )
@Elie:
Right on!
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: Chris Matthews would rub one out on his show if it were Ryan. I don’t think he would be able to contain the tingle to his leg.
Bob In Portland
@Baud: And in an election year?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Adam L Silverman: That’s a Bingo. That’s why he’s going out his way to make all these statements denouncing Trump’s rhetoric. I mean, Ryan had no problem with Trump’s disgusting birtherism in 2012, but now he cares cuz he wants to set himself up as the reluctant white knight.
debbie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Trump supporters have no reason to support Ryan.
Baud
@Bob In Portland: No, anytime. Just worse in an election year.
Mike J
@debbie: They’ll do what they’re told. Or so the thinking goes. It’s not like they’re going to vote for Hillary.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: eye bleach, please!!!!
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: This is true, but the RNC is going to work off of “they always fall in line, every time” idea.
Bob In Portland
@Elie: Try again. She was part of the Obama administration. Another thing to hang on Obama’s presidency. But your point? She has embraced the regime change in Libya. We came we saw he died. That sure sounded like she was bragging. And if you’re saying that she got together with other people to destroy LIbya (“get things done”), that doesn’t make destroying Libya any better. It only says that Obama’s foreign policy wasn’t all that different than what PNAC laid out a couple decades back.
If you think Bernie can’t handle the “rough and tumble” well, that’s your opinion. About 80% of the people casting votes today think differently.
Shana
@efgoldman: I love gefilte fish. Tried making my own one year and it was good, but not markedly better than jarred.
Funny story about a relative. She toiled for days preparing for her first seder with her new husband and his family. Made the gefilte fish from scratch. Plated everything in the kitchen during the first part of the seder before the meal. Went in to the kitchen to bring in the gefilte fish on the individual plates, beautifully presented, and found that her cat had taken a bite out of each piece. She panicked for a minute and then flipped each piece over and served them. No one knew a thing until about 10 years later.
rikyrah
Looks fabulous!
NotMax
Meanwhile, in the land of borscht and vodka, From Russia with love: Why the Kremlin backs Trump.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
“If I wish it, it will be so.”
Not this time, guys.
Germy
@efgoldman: Remember the old Kliban cartoon? “Robert lived in Vermont, where he ate only the heads off chocolate bunnies.”
Germy
@efgoldman:
They own our local CBS news affiliate. It shows in what they choose to report on, and what they choose to ignore. Also, every exposé is on big bad government and Taxpayer Waste®.
Bob In Portland
@NotMax: I saw some positive press on Russian sites, pretty much because at one point Trump said something about dealing with Russia as opposed to fighting it. This was back in 2015. I wouldn’t call it a major endorsement. They recognize Clinton as a Cold Warrior, she’s the one talking about taking back Crimea, she’s the one talking about a no-fly zone over Syria, so for them Trump is a more rational alternative.
Except he doesn’t seem to be very rational. Still, he’s not aiming guns at the Russians.
Matt McIrvin
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I must know all of them, then.
dr. bloor
@Bob In Portland:
They also recognize Trump to be a blithering idiot far more vulnerable to being pantsed than HRC, which is why they really want him. The notion that he might have said something complementary about Russia in the past has nothing to do with anything.
Putin has wet dreams about dealing with a mark easier that GW Bush.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: I use a straightened-out paper clip to transfer the curly-cues from the garlic press to the butter lamb. The only hard part about making one is keeping the butter temperature just right. It has to be soft enough that the pieces will stick together but not so soft that it melts into a single unit. I usually have to put it in the fridge a time two during the assembly process.
Elie
@Bob In Portland:
Using the retrospectoscope where the view is always 20/20, I think its safe to say Libya was a mistake. There have been other mistakes in our foreign policy. Do you think those would not happen with Bernie? Can you envision a situation where NONE of the options are very good and where we put our people in danger? No? What would you like a candidate who actually has been in the tough landscape of our foreign policy to say? Should she apologize for any part she had in that decision? Should she have quit rather than be involved with any invasion or intervention in a ME country? Do you know all of the factors and issues that affected the decision and may or may not have played out? Could you really do an accurate risk assessment on anything in or outside of the ME, factoring all the possible outcomes and particularly the down sides you might need to swallow? Bernie wouldn’t have any you say? Really?
Bernie has not been in the crucible. He has not had that sort of exposure. We can only surmise, given the complexity and chaos that we see in the world, that he would be unlikely to have a smooth sail through foreign (or domestic policy) because that is just the way it is.
It comes down, once again, to who you want thinking about things at 3:00 AM when not one but possibly several critical things are happening. That is how I see the world and what we all have seen in the last – well — 20 years. I trust Hillary to be able to weigh and make appropriate decisions because she is more likely to come up with the best solution given her experience and analytical bent — and cool head. Bernie has been a Senator who didn’t even need to count heads in his party to get anything done. He could ride along with the Dems when it suited him and then go his own way when it didn’t suit him. Now, he will have two chambers of enemies who if by some miracle, he was elected, would be not helping him get things done. So what then? Walk away? Call them assholes?
The scope of work for President of the United States is almost too big for anyone. Of our choices today, Hillary is the only one who has nearly the experience, maturity, coolness under fire and native intelligence to handle the job. This is a very very rough job and she is the only candidate I see as up to the task. She may not be perfect, but she is a Spartan warrior. And while that is a martial symbol, I use it to frame and describe her self discipline and ability to handle great suffering and strain while still functioning.
The other thing is that people who work for her, are deeply loyal to her and like her. Obama has certainly had her back. There is a reason for that, despite the horrible “reputation” that the media and others have painted. She is not a wicked she demon. She is smart, determined and has been successful in navigating very difficult terrain.
Matt McIrvin
@Mike J: I get the impression that there were a certain number of left Clinton supporters in 2008 who regarded Obama as to the right of Clinton for whatever reason, and turned into bitter PUMAs, then that led into left anti-Obamaism in 2012 that came all the way around to become anti-Clintonism this year. It looked like Firedoglake might complete the half tour of that particular Möbius strip just before it came down.
JPL
@LAO: I’ve had two rescues and both were adults. Both were house trained which is a plus.
Bob In Portland
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Leprechauns?
If you are talking about whether or not white centrists like the folks here at BJ support Sanders, no. But in 2008 everyone on the left had a choice between Obama and McCain. Clinton is counting on the left gritting their teeth and voting for her this year. Meanwhile the left is voting for Sanders. We’ll see if they fall in line for her, or if it’s necessary.
jl
BC’s butter lamb rules. it looks totally spreadable and delish.
dr. bloor
@Bob In Portland:
If HRC wins the nomination, the left will have the choice of Clinton v. Trump/Cruz/Ryan/Someotherasshole. Does this strike you as being a more difficult call for a progressive/left voter than Obama v. McCain in 2008?
Bob In Portland
@efgoldman: The word troll has come to mean, “someone we don’t agree with.” Very rightish of you.
tastytone
@Elie:
So you’re saying that being a low-radar gadfly, whose ideas on enacting major legislation seem to be culled from Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret”, ISN’T a good choice to nominate for POTUS?
Miss Bianca
@Elie:
This. Thank you. For this. I always love it when someone else manages to say what I wish I could say.
Going off to make lamb stew, but just wanted to say before I cut out, “I like the cut of your jib”. Which is another martial styling. ; )
Keep on rocking in the free (real) world of working to get Better Shit Done in politics. Messy, ugly business that makes you late for dinner.
Elie
@efgoldman:
Thank you. It was the caucus today. I couldn’t really say my whole piece because I was the site coordinator and didn’t want to be seen as too pushy. I sat on my opinions and they just popped out on Bob. Yes, I know he is one of our sad “trolls” —
Bob In Portland
@dr. bloor: It’s an easier call for me. After years of right-of-center Democrats I won’t vote for one. Why? Because the corporate Democratic Party doesn’t represent me. It’s pretty obvious that Obama’s rescue of our economy didn’t rescue the bottom 80%. So, no, I won’t try to kick that football again, Lucy.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Chez Q butter lamb in progress…
Bob In Portland
@Elie: Is there a difference between having a different opinion and expressing it, or being a troll? Maybe Balloon Juice should have a closed membership. Then no one will sow discord with the BJ party line.
dr. bloor
@efgoldman:
He’s not trolling, he proselytizing. Motivationally dissimilar, but with identical effects on the audience.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I’m not saying there will be a lot of buyers, just that the sales team will be in overdrive.
Brachiator
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Sanders is the projected winner in Washington, with 72 percent of the votes.
PurpleGirl
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve known people of Italian ancestry who have forgotten that once they weren’t seen as white or even as human. My niece also does not recognize that the Irish were once looked down on as subhuman. Hell, even Judge Alito probably doesn’t think of the privilege he has now as special and that at one time he wouldn’t have been considered fit to be a lawyer or allowed to attend Yale… well, you know Italian.
I really dislike people who don’t remember the hardships that certain ancestors had when they first arrived here.
Elie
@Bob In Portland:
I don’t like calling you or anyone a troll. I apologize
dogwood
@Elie:
Talking about many foreign policy decisions as if other nations have no agency in the situation and the results seems like a mistake to me. The right wing meme that bad outcomes occur when America doesn’t intervene and the opposite view that bad outcomes occur because America intervened, is too simplistic. we might be a very powerful nation, but we aren’t the only actors who effect results around the globe.
Mike in NC
@PurpleGirl:Used to work with plenty of Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans who consistently voted Republican because they were against Those Other People.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
I was afraid that was how you did it, strand by strand. You must have a steady hand!
Elie
@dr. bloor:
You are right…. He is “preachin” to us (as they say)
PurpleGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation still does community organizing and training. In the early 1980s I took their training as part of group forming in Queens. I was involved through my church — you couldn’t take the training as a individual, you had to be part of a group such as a church. It was interesting. (And we didn’t use his book as a text, but being in NYC we used Robert Caro’s Power Broker.)
JPL
@Betty Cracker: You are amazing!!!!
Matt McIrvin
@PurpleGirl:
There are the people who do remember that, but just use it as justification for denouncing other minorities today, because they won the oppression Olympics. “My ancestors were just as persecuted, nobody ever gave us anything, but we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps.” Etc.
J R in WV
I was so shocked to see “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” signs at filling stations down south when we drove to Florida back around 1960 or so. Coming from the coal fields of West Virginia, where there were no Jim Crow laws in effect, and segregation was pretty much customary rather than deep seated legal hatred.
I asked my mother “What does that sign mean?” and she said “Shhh – we’ll talk later…” but we didn’t. At the age of 10 or 12 I was pretty puzzled. As we got farther south, and left partially finished interstate highways to follow rural dirt road detours, we got to see share-cropper houses on the edges of farms, which were almost certainly slave quarters a hundred years ago – a hundred sixty or so now. Which it took me a long time to figure out.
And the whole Jewish thing – that was another whole strange thing to learn about. I read a lot about WW II and the death camps. It is amazing to me that anyone could not hate Nazi doctrine in today’s world. I had neighbors, now gone mostly, who were infantrymen in WW II and who were the first on the scene of German camps, so I have heard the stories first-hand. Anyone with any questions or doubts should come and see me, make an appointment. I will educate as needed.
Bob In Portland
@dr. bloor: And then they can take advantage of us! Yeah, cold warrior. You too.
redshirt
I haven’t read anything and I am anti-butter.
What happened to butter lamb?
Bob In Portland
@dr. bloor: Actually, that’s true. I want you to understand why a good portion of the Democratic coalition is losing faith in the Party. If you can say you’d be willing to vote for either Clinton or Sanders as many BJers have said then you don’t see what we see. This is a little more eloquent than what I’ve tried to say:
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Brachiator: A skinny young black guy with a funny mooslim name, who nobody had ever heard of, and had only been in office for 3 years, won the Washington caucus in 2008 with 68% of the vote. There’s a strong ABC vote in various states.