About fifteen years ago when I was a budding young fascist and started this blog, I never figured I would one day be voting for Hillary Clinton for President. But shit happens, and people change, and so I just got home from early voting where I happily cast my vote for Hillary and also chose to vote for Jeff Kessler.
I don’t think she is going to do very well here, and the polling indicates that Bernie will win and Trump is going to take the state in the fall anyways, as her great performance in 2008 in West Virginia was basically because then new Sheriff Obama was a… community organizer. Regardless, I always like to vote because I think it is so important, so I went and got a haircut, went to the courthouse and voted, and then went and treated myself to a fish sandwich and coleslaw for lunch.
And no, it wasn’t even remotely difficult to “pull the lever” for Hillary as a reformed Republican. I’ve talked to a lot of people who say shit like “I can’t believe I am going to have to vote for her,” and that’s just stupid nonsense talking. In a two party system, you vote for the person who will do a better job. It’s just that simple. You aren’t voting for pope or choosing your spouse. And there is no question that of all the remaining candidates and all who have run in 2016, Hillary is, by a wide margin, the best option. So sack up and go do your duty to the country and stop wanking about as it is all about you.
BTW- 15 blog years is like 175 human years. I’d wager there are not too many blogs that have been around this long.
Emperor Snapper
And here I figured you would never eat Cole slaw, seeing as how its made from your people.
Patricia Kayden
Well said, John. I’ve had to explain to a few friends that Secretary Clinton doesn’t excite me as much as President Obama did, but she’ll do the job of keeping the White House in Democratic hands and moving forward with President Obama’s progressive agenda.
We cannot allow Trump to win in November. It’s no longer funny that he’s gotten this far.
Seanly
Like.
Eljai
Trentrunner
Speak for yourself. The primary campaign to choose my spouse was a BLOODBATH, with dirty tricks, ratf*cking, electronic devices, and lots of lies.
In the end, I dated Dean but married Kerry. So. To. Speak.
Betty Cracker
Well done, Mr. Cole!
singfoom
The dissonance of this post with the giant DEMAND ANSWERS ON CLINTON CORRUPTION ad at the top of the page is delicious. I agree with the post though…..The whole “I won’t vote the lesser evil again” brigade honestly needs to think about who would be hurt by a Trump administration, because it probably won’t be them.
TaMara (HFG)
I would prefer it if he not only lost, but did so in an embarrassingly lopsided defeat.
singfoom
@Trentrunner:
So your spouse pontificates like Kerry? You have my sympathies.
Mnemosyne
@TaMara (HFG):
This. I want to run up the score and humiliate the Republicans. I want it to look like Obama vs Keyes in 2004. Dare I dream?
Yutsano
@singfoom: Most of the “I won’t vote the lesser evil again” brigade is privileged enough to be able to avoid the consequences of a Trump administration either by virtue of personal wealth or means to emigrate. The rest of us have to suffer through the mess he will inevitably make should be win. And yes he could win. Let us not forget the Supreme Court installed Dubya once and then Ohio let him in the second time. So yeah. It’s just enough of a concern for me to unite around the inevitable winner.
aimai
I just read a diary over at Kos (I know, but not that kind) and it really opened my eyes about HRC. I had no idea of some of the things she did while a Law Student at Yale, or even before that at Wellesley. I didn’t know that :
I am actualy very, very, excited to vote for HRC and I hope that she and her team can re-introduce herself to the millions of americans who think they know her. I remember Clinton’s video (“A Town Called Hope”)–that was the first time (IIRC) that a candidate had used a video like that as an introuction to the voters. I think her team is sophisticated enough to manage something like that at the convention and I’m sure they are working on various ways to increase her “likeability” factor. I myself am (absurdly) enthralled by the Hillary Fight Song Video and I listen to it on my walks. Because its my story too. In reality, not in the terms of the Sux/Rox debate over at Kos, she’s a damned impressive person who has re-invented herself and worked hard her entire adult life.
rikyrah
BWA HA AH HA HA HA HA
Great way to open a post, Cole.
dedc79
Silly me, I thought the whole Gore/Nader/Florida/2000 fiasco would put an end to this “i will only vote for my ideal candidate” nonsense for at least 6 or 7 presidential elections. I guess I hadn’t reckoned with how many forgetful people there are under the Democratic tent (not to mention all the new voters who were too young to be paying attention when it all went down).
Hope
certainly not Andrew Sullivan’s blogs
M. Bouffant
Don’t be so modest. This is no mere web-log, it’s an actual website.
joel hanes
I’d wager there are not too many blogs that have been around this long.
The oldest still-running blog of which I am aware is Danny Yee’s Pathogically Polymathic
http://danny.oz.au/blog/
AFAICT, it was the second blog in existence, being an imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery clone of Jorn Barger’s pioneering Robot Wisdom (the first-ever blog on the Net, and the coiner of the term “weblog”).
Jorn is no longer blogging, but Danny is still plugging away.
His book reviews are definitely worth the time to read.
Another very long-running blog is Cosma Shalizi’s “Three-Toed Sloth”. The math there is way beyond my comprehension, but the other postings are fascinating and eclectic.
Mnemosyne
Also, this is totally off-topic but I’m re-posting it at Siubann Duinne’s request:
Sweeney Todd’s story in the style of “Alexander Hamilton”
Now I want to see a full production with that exact cast.
Death Panel Truck
@singfoom: The ad at the top of my page is for Sea-Doo jet skis.
“There’s a Sea-Doo for everyone.”
BGinCHI
I miss that new blog smell.
AkaDad
I found BJ roughly1 month after John’s first post. Someone from DK posted a link and I’ve been here since. I like the reaffirmation every so often that I am, indeed, an asshole.
aimai
@dedc79: There are always new voters for whom the entire politics thing is unfamiliar: the players only dimly understood,the structural issues completely misunderstood. There was a discussion over a Kos of some issues pertaining to Obama’s first term and there were posters who were so young they had simply no idea of anything that happened during that first term, didn’t know who Lieberman was or why various things like his running as an Independent had affected the politics of the Senate and negotiations around the ACA, gays in the military, and other things. A whole lot of younger voters, in every election, simply weren’t paying attention for the 18 years running up to their first election, first serious love affair with a candidate. And they have a hard time understanding that “the past is another country, they do things differently there.”
NotMax
Take care not to strain somethin’ pattin’ yerself on the back there, laddy buck.
/doting Irish spinster auntie
Blogged solo for 11 years, beginning last century.
Mustang Bobby
Shameless self-promotion: my blog Bark Bark Woof Woof will mark thirteen years on November 8… Election Day. Haven’t missed a day except during Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, and have written every post.
randy khan
@singfoom:
I’m getting “Gifts for Mom” instead of that. Much less cognitive dissonance. More like cognitive harmony.
rikyrah
@Yutsano:
It was nice to be able to fully, with a clear conscience, to vote for someone that you actually WANTED, without hesitation.
Yeah. I’ve had that experience.
But, since I live in the real world..
and, not in Pony and Unicorn Utopia….
I’ll have to settle to the ‘lesser of two evils’.
Although, I don’t even grasp how that’s even an utterance.
It’s between someone that is ‘ eh’
And an absolute asshole.
I’ll say it again…
How this is even debateable is ridiculous.
The cases that will NOT gut rights for MILLIONS of my fellow Americans because Fat Tony died?
WHY is that not enough for you to vote?
Explain it to me, please.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Mnemosyne:
Pound them into a rathole. Cast them into the wilderness to wander.
Anywhere their filthy hands are off the wheels of government. I’d vote for Nader against Trump. And boy do I hate that guy.
Mike J
Second best rant I’ve read today. Here was the best.
Ruckus
@aimai:
This.
If she had run (or had at least hired better staff) I bet she would have won in 08. She almost did with a relatively crappy campaign. What surprised me about the whole deal was how quickly she pivoted from running for the job to helping the person she lost to, finish the job and win. And how well she responded when asked to be SoS. She’s not just Hillary Clinton, she’s Hillary Clinton, Democrat, she’s proved it several times over and she’s proud of it.
Chris
“Vote for the person, not the party” is all the rage when it comes to politics, and I’ve never grokked it. I’m very much the opposite. I vote for the party, specifically the one whose views and record are closest to what I want, and I don’t really give two shits what poor schlub they happen to put in front of the enterprise. Individuals, even presidents, don’t do anything without the party behind them in any case.
bystander
@dedc79: We are talking about a large group of people who can’t remember Vietnam. Charles Pierce’s piece today was great, as was Cole’s today. Best laugh was, Cole slaw is people!
Trollhattan
@TaMara (HFG):
You’re gonna get your wish!
magurakurin
@srv: you never change though. You’re an asshole each and every day.
jl
” You aren’t voting for pope or choosing your spouse. ”
You are choosing your Lord thy God, your identity, your guardian angel, guiding spirit and sense of self, the core of your being and your true inner identity, as opposed to all other politicians, who are, besides being the embodiment of pure evil, are also jerks and dorks.
And Dino De Laurentiis said about King Kong: ‘Kong is not just beast, not just brute, monster, he is mythos he is idea, he is an ideal!’ (paraphrase).
Easy to see that with Trump and Cruz, but applies to HRC and Sanders as well.
/snark for Cole
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Chris:
Candidates get votes, but parties get the big stuff done. Look at the GOP as a classic example. Their candidates all run on reviving the middle class, then once in office pursue their real goals of promoting the fat cats’ obesity epidemic at the expense of the 99.9%.
HRC is not my favorite Democrat but I believe in the party. There was never any question of my pitching a tantrum and staying away from the polls.
dedc79
@aimai: All good points. My earliest memory of politics is from election day 1984. I was 5 years old and my dad had just come back from casting his futile vote for Mondale. I asked him if Mondale was going to be president and he somberly explained that (1) no, mondale would not be president, (2) that we would be stuck with 4 more years of Ronald Reagan, (3) that this Ronald Reagan person was a “nimrod”, and (4) that when I got older, I’d probably hear lots of stories about what a great and brilliant leader Reagan was, and that I should always remember that such claims could not be further from the truth.
Cpl. Cam
@srv: I’m guessing it’s more the result of “shit happening” than “people changing.”
Mnemosyne
@Mustang Bobby:
Ahem. I may have a slight nit to pick with you, sir, about the stated premise of one of your plays. This writer states my case for me:
Writing A Romance Novel Made Me A Better Feminist
But I’ll download the play in question and read it so we can have a proper throwdown in the next authors thread. Good day, sir!
ItinerantPedant
I’m sick and fncking TIRED of “lesser of two evils.” Choosing between an old line Democrat and a fncking facisti or a theocrat is NOT the lesser of two evils. Edwin Edwards vs David Duke (“Vote for the crook! It’s important!”) is the lesser of of two evils.
Clinton vs. Trump or Cruz is “I’m not getting everything my way!”
Quitcher fncking whining and suck it up, Buttercup.
Mnemosyne
@randy khan:
I bought my mom a Star Wars Death Star kitchen timer. Because that’s the kind of mom she is.
Chris
@dedc79:
There are people coming into the voting age population now who only vaguely remember George W. Bush, and don’t remember his early years at all. “Nader” doesn’t horrify them as it might others.
And it’s not just age; there are always people of all ages who fall in or out of political awareness at a certain point for whatever reason, and who might as well not have been alive previously because they weren’t paying attention to anything.
The lessons learned from most political events are always shorter than we’d wish.
(Heck, I remember a couple of months at the end of 2008 when I actually hoped that after the most conservative president in living memory had left such an unmitigated, all-around disaster behind him, people’s wariness of the Republican Party or at least of its most conservative members might actually linger for more than the usual couple of years. Silly me. Then the teabaggers and 2010 happened).
Chris
@aimai:
Or what you said.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai: You’ve probably seen it before, but in case you haven’t, look up Hillary’s alternative commencement speech at Wellesley. It’s good.
Van Buren
@Trollhattan: Everybody who thinks Trump will give a gracious concession speech, raise your hand…hmmm, I’m not seeing any hands..is this thing on?
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
Greenwald wants his promise ring back.
Davebo
@TaMara (HFG):
I would prefer it if he lost, sank like the Titanic carrying 7 or 8 GOP senators and 20 house members with him.
Chris
@dedc79:
Oh, my, God. Your dad is the smartest man who ever lived.
John Cole
@srv:
I’d just as easily vote for Sanders if he had any chance of winning the nomination. So it’s time to sew this up sooner rather than later.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I said it once before here. 100, 80, 0. You want the one who votes your way 100% of the time. But, unless you yourself are running, there is nobody who’s going to vote your way 100% of the time. So you get to choose the one who’ll vote your way 80% of the time, or the one who’s going to vote your way 0% of the time. It isn’t too hard for me to choose.
And, yeah, in the primaries, choose the one you like the best. But if your candidate falls by the wayside, don’t sit at home and pout, or vote for Ralph Nader, or write in Che Guevara or somebody. Suck it up and go with the 80% candidate. ‘Cause in our system, you vote for 80% or you effectively end up voting for 0.
jl
@srv:
We’re progressively regressive,
Crypto-fascist and oppressive,
We’re passively aggressive,
The BJ Family.
The blog’s a social mausoleum,
Where people come for beatin’,
We’re a soul crushing scream,
The BJ Family.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
Thank you. That’s amazing and wonderful and very, very clever.
dedc79
@Chris: Yeah, I actually had someone tell me recently that voting for Nader was the right thing to do because it was a vote against getting into more foreign wars. I mean, I know many Democrats in Congress didn’t oppose the Iraq War (at all, or as aggressively as they should have), but there is no way in hell President Gore would’ve responded to 9/11 (if it had happened) by later launching a war with Iraq.
FlipYrWhig
There’s no way Hillary Clinton is “old-style Republican” unless you mean “one of those liberal Republicans who believed in civil rights,” or, by extension, “similar to one of those liberal Republicans in the limited way in which the liberal Republicans were liberal,” which is a rather roundabout way to say “Hillary Clinton is liberal.”
aimai
@dedc79: I can’t really remember my earliest political memory. I mean–I grew up with Vietnam on the TV. One of my Uncles was in SDS and one of my cousins was in the Weather Underground. We were an extremely political family and talked politics all the time. We followed watergate very closely, of course. But I wasn’t old enough to vote until 1978. My first vote in a primary was for Anderson, and I guess then I voted for Carter. But I was simply a yellow dog democrat. I didn’t get my real political education until I began reading blogs after Bush “won” over Gore.
TaMara (HFG)
@Mnemosyne: That is awesome. Link?
? Martin
And a big kudos to West By God Virginia for universal voter registration. Very good to see the dark side hasn’t fully taken over there.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Apparently Sondheim loved it, too — or as LMM calls him on Twitter, “Sondheezy.” They’re pals IRL.
Chris
@jl:
If you want to save 15% or more on car insurance, you switch to Geico. It’s what you do.
If you want to walk around with an earworm stuck in your head for the rest of the day, you read Balloon Juice. It’s what you do.
singfoom
@Yutsano:
Yeah, exactly. I’ve also heard that “The Two Party System has to die” as a response to my imploring that not voting is equal to a Trump vote. Which I don’t disagree with, I think that the party duopoly is part of the current governing dysfunction (the majority responsibility lies with a party that has no interest in governing but passing 50 resolutions to repeal obamacare) and that’d be fine, but even then, their not voting isn’t going to suddenly make a whole new non two party system develop.
Nobody’s there to get that message for the “symbolic vote”. Because the only people listening for messages are the R and D party, and the only messages that they hear are the actual votes they receive.
It’s truly frustrating. I have hope that a lot of the Bernieorbust people will come around. Because not-perfect vs. straight up fascist isn’t “lesser of two evils”, it’s “not perfect vs. straight up evil”
Miss Bianca
@Ruckus: : )
Yeah, in the year ’08 I was all in for Obama. Never thought I’d find myself so excited to vote for HRC. But I am, for a lot of the reasons outlined in this awesome post courtesy of the author of another awesome blog, Shakesville – kinda brought a tear to this middle-aged lady’s eye….:
http://bluenationreview.com/why-older-women-are-so-enthusiastic-about-hillary/
dedc79
@Chris: I reminded him of that conversation not too long ago. He’d forgotten about it (it’s amazing the randomness and vividness of the memories that stick with you from when you were a kid) but was very pleased to be reminded of his prescience. And “nimrod” remains his go-to insult for republicans.
aimai
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): The thing is–a lot of shit happens over the course of a few years in office. You can’t really know, a priori, what the “right” vote is going to be. you can’t know what alliances you will be forming, what other shit needs to get done, who will have the power in the negotiation, what other crises are coming along. No one predicted that the well was going to bust in the Ocean during Obama’s first months in office and that he was going to have to handle that crisis on top of all the others. You just have to choose someone who you think has a good head on their shoulders, can stay calm in a crisis, and who has a basic moral compass. Because you can’t see what they are going to see anymore than the person in the backseat can see what the driver sees.
Mnemosyne
@TaMara (HFG):
I think it’s this one. There appear to be a couple of different versions, but I definitely got the one with the green laser.
FlipYrWhig
@Miss Bianca: I don’t have a lot of faith in, or goodwill about, Shakesville-slash-Melissa McEwan, where I used to hang out a bit, but I’m glad you’re getting something out of it.
Miss Bianca
@Mike J: Whoa, that is awesome. Up there with the Mumia sweateshirt rant. ; )
dedc79
@aimai: I do think a lot about the spacing of our wars. There are many reasons for the gaps in between, but surely one big one is that the generation that fought the last war comes to the height of their political power and hopefully has the good sense to avoid another conflict. I know this pattern breaks down from time to time (particularly now that we fight our wars without a draft).
I also think about some of the other major crises in our history and how valuable it would be to have the input of those who lived through it. Reconstruction comes to mind. There’s probably no period of american history more misrepresented and more poorly understood than Reconstruction. Those who lived through it and who believed in it would be mortified to see what most americans know/think of Reconstruction today.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai: Yeah, I think we forget that the whole financial crisis struck incredibly late in the campaign in ’08, which meant we never got to have A National Conversation [tm] about how to respond to it, and I think that led to some acts of spectacular bad faith by the Republicans about bailouts and stimulus. The Democratic primaries had dueling healthcare plans but not dueling economic recovery plans. I’ve wondered for a long time if anything would have happened differently if the crisis had hit a few months earlier.
aimai
@FlipYrWhig: I was just reading an article about HRC, maybe a Time article that was done about her when she was just 22. She was amazing, really an amazing person–and she looked so much like my oldest daughter I had to pinch myself because in reality HRC and my nice ashkenazic/bharata natyam daughter couldn’t look less alike.
raven
@aimai: Days of Rage and Richard Elrod!
aimai
@dedc79: Reagan demonstrated that when you don’t have something you need you can just gin up a tiny little war with some little country and give out a thousand medals. And Bush II thought that Iraq would be like that.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
What did you think of the prominence given to David Brooks in the Hamiltome? I was taken a-back.
And I found it strange that his high school is mentioned multiple times but his university not once. There’s no chapter devoted to Kail.
chopper
west virginia really is a paradise.
AkaDad
@Chris: Everyone knows that.
Did you know if you dress up for Halloween as a woman, you’ll go home with handprints on your ass?
SuzieC
@Patricia Kayden: Need a “LOVE” button.
Chris
@dedc79:
I think my equivalent formative memory of politics would be my dad, an Army brat and career foreign service officer who’s not particularly unpatriotic or anti-establishment, warning me soon after 9/11 to be careful of “people who wrap themselves in the flag.” Was quite a bit older before I understood what it really meant, but I also constantly have reason to remember it.
(And his equivalent, or one of them, was watching the news of the My Lai massacre being reported on television while his veteran, Green Beret, three-tours-in-Southeast-Asia father in the room, and getting to see the man’s reaction. Dad actually did make the “just following orders” point, only to be bluntly told that that order should never have been followed).
Miss Bianca
@FlipYrWhig: So far, so good. It ain’t BJ, but then…*what else is*?
bobbo
Do they make you get a haircut before you can vote in WV? That is harsh, man.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
You know, as I was watching it I was literally (yes, literally!) thinking “I’ll bet Sondheim loves this!” But I didn’t know they were pals IRL, so that’s cool.
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
I don’t remember David Brooks in there, TBH. Which chapter is he in?
I think Hunter got a lot of coverage because (a) it was (obviously) very formative for him, to the point that he went to Wellesley knowing he wanted to write Broadway musicals and (b) he used to substitute teach history there.
Also, didn’t the co-writer also go to Hunter? That may have led to some bias.
CarolDuhart2
Hillary an old-fashioned Republican? Like Rockefeller or Eisenhower or T Roosevelt? Call me a proud Republican then.
Looking back, by not letting Gore win, the Republicans screwed themeselves. Eight years of Gore and they could have bypassed the pathetic candidates they did have and simply had a Jeb Bush who could have run as a reasonable moderate 22 years after the Gulf War. No Romney (unless a running mate), no MCCain, no Trump. And without the disaster of George W, the Republicans would have held on to the house between 2006-2010.
To Cole, I’ve done two things with Hillary. First, I asked myself was there any substance to all of this dislike? I realized that nobody ever seemed to point to anything she had done that was really actionable. It was all fluff: the Travel Office, the Christmas Tree, The Rose Lawfirm. Even Benghazi was more or less an impossible situation-not even Superman could have reached those guys in time to save them. Secondly, I started reading the biography about Bill and was impressed with what she has done both on her own, and while working with Bill. Her work with women and children goes all the way back to the beginning of her professional career. By the way, Hillary could easily have simply cashed her chips in back in 2000 as a somewhat popular First Lady and saved herself a lot of grief. But she runs for Senate and President despite the slings and arrows and actually gets things done.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
He went to Wesleyan, not Wellesley!
There’s a chapter toward the end devoted to a conversation between Brooks and Chris Hayes, in which Brooks is allowed to spout some incredible drivel.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Sondheim had LMM write some Spanish-language updates to the lyrics of “West Side Story” and was an occasional consultant on “Hamilton.”
If you’ve never seen “Original Cast Album: Company,” the documentary by DA Pennebaker, you should. Sondheim comes across as the teacher you always wanted. The HBO documentary “Six by Sondheim” is also excellent.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
Chapter 29. Brooks: “Hamilton used limited but energetic government to create mobility, but after Roosevelt, the debate became big government versus small government, so the Hamilton tradition got caught cross ways. . . .Republicans have become allergic to government, and can’t see what Hamilton saw: that government can let more people into the system, and help capitalism solve the structural problems it is facing. But Democrats balk at embracing somebody whose programs would create more opportunity for gifted upstarts at the expense of creating more misery for the people who can’t excel.” WTF does that last sentence even mean?
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
D’oh! I knew I was going to mess that up, and with exactly the wrong college professor, too! ?
Maybe I skipped over that chapter, or blocked the trauma out of my mind. I’ll have to take a look when I get home.
Chris
@dedc79:
Although the late sixties/early seventies, what with Vietnam and all the social problems that burst out into the light of day during that time, can probably put in a strong claim for second place. There’s a mythology around that era, all designed to make wide-eyed radical DFHs and rioting out-of-control blacks the villains of the story and unite the rest of the country against them, that’s damn near as heavy as all the Lost Cause inspired mythology about Reconstruction, and that bears more than a passing similarity to it. (Just replace “wide-eyed radical DFHs” with “wide-eyed Radical Republicans” and “out-of-control blacks” with “out-of-control blacks.”)
@aimai:
Gulf War I was the threshold, I think. Before that they had enough sense to keep the interventions small, low-risk, and heavily planned (Grenada, Libya, Panama) – the victory in Kuwait, however, was a big enough deal to be celebrated like nothing since World War Two, it all went to their heads, the lesson they drew from it is “we are invincible because ‘merica,” and they forgot all the things that had made Kuwait and its smaller predecessors succeed.
(It’s fascinating that the cabinet members running the Dubya administration were largely alumni of the administration that handled Kuwait, and yet by that point were behaving like completely different people).
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
See my comment #84 above yours, which I was typing while you answered me.
raven
Damn, it’s women’s music week in Athens. Gillian Welch and Rawlings last night, Iris DeMent tonight and Lucinda tomorrow!
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
Yeah, that’s probably why I didn’t remember it — Brooks’s comments make no damn sense! But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a calculated decision to try and keep it appealing to everyone, even people dumb enough to agree with David Brooks.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
Very interesting, thanks. I knew there had been a bilingual production of WSS a few years ago, but had no idea that LMM was connected with it. Makes sense.
I’ll check out “OCA:Company” and “Six by Sondheim.” Know of them both but haven’t seen either.
realbtl
Thanks for keeping this joint open John. I’ve been here mostly lurking for about 14 of those 15 years and it has been a strange journey.
dedc79
@Chris:
I remember hearing John Prine’s “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore” for the first time during the Iraq War and realizing these fights play out again and again.
Major Major Major Major
@dedc79: Hey, that was the first time I heard that song too!
dedc79
@Major Major Major Major: Ha! So that’s at least two of us. I’ve since become a big John Prine fan. He’s playing Wolf Trap amphitheater in Northern Virginia this summer, and I’m thinking about getting tickets.
randy khan
@Mnemosyne:
That is excellent.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I’m in Canada at the moment but I’ll be back home soon.
Trump is getting a lot of media play. The Democrats hardly any. Maybe 80%/20% in the papers. Canadians are famously polite but they’ll gawk at a train wreck like this.
FlipYrWhig
@CarolDuhart2:
I still think what would have happened is that Gore would win in 2000, 9/11 would happen, Gore would be impeached for allowing 9/11 to happen, Lieberman would be president, and probably pick McCain as his VP for “national unity.” Unity ticket could win in 2004, or maybe right-wing Republicans throw a fit and back an insurgent candidate, like a Bush. Or maybe Dean primaries Lieberman and you get a version of the Lamont-Lieberman race at the presidential level. Now the question is this: what happens in 2008?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
today in not-terrorism….
ETA:Beyond what was mentioned in the affidavit, Roos regularly posted on both Facebook and Twitter about his support for Trump and his hatred for Obama, who he called a “muslim faggot” and other derogatory terms. He indicated he wanted to kill Obama’s family and made other racist and sexist statements about Michelle Obama. He also made negative references to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, singer Beyonce, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and reporter Michelle Fields, and said he believed that the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was killed by Obama. He praised Ann Coulter and Stacey Dash, and posted several links to posts on Breitbart.com.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
If you can’t find them streaming, any good public library should have copies. I especially liked “Six by Sondheim” because he talks a lot about writing and the mentors he had (Oscar Hammerstein was like a second father). He also talks about how casting decisions influenced the writing of particular songs and they go into a fair amount of detail about “Send In The Clowns.” Really fascinating stuff.
RSA
@joel hanes:
Cool. I was curious about that. I did come across something discovered by Gizmodo: The Dole/Kemp campaign Web site from 1996 is still up and running.
TaMara (HFG)
@Mnemosyne: That is great.
Robert Sneddon
A friend has had a blog-like presence on the web since 1993 when he poured beer into someone he knew and got a domain name — this was before independent registers who sold domain names, you had to know someone connected to ICANN who could oblige. That makes 23 years and counting.
The beer was a mistake, he ended up with a domain name which wasn’t quite what he had asked for but he stuck with it as doing it over would require more beer.
CarolDuhart2
@FlipYrWhig: 9/11 wouldn’t have happened. Gore would have continued the anti-terrorist efforts of Clinton instead of letting them drop for those crucial months. Clinton tried to drop a bomb on Osama, Gore would have tried again and possibly succeeded. In addition, Gore had an anti-terrorist proposal that would have had locked doors for pilots.
DCF
@srv:
Why Do Progressives Cling to Hillary?
by
Les Leopold
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/29/why-do-progressives-cling-hillary
CarolDuhart2
I’ve had a domain name (and the matching website) since 2006. I haven’t done much to it-after I did all of the assembly, I haven’t spent much time on material. Maybe it’s because it’s too lonely to blog with no feedback.
CarolDuhart2
Nobody is “clinging” to Hillary. It’s just that she’s the sanest, most intelligent person running and the coolest.
hellslittlestangel
@TaMara (HFG): That’s what’s going to happen. I believe Clinton will take Texas, Arizona and Arkansas, in addition to every state Obama won in ’08.
vtr
I am from Vermont, which, scenically, I think is sort Northern West Virginia. I worked there for a statewide radio network, and there I met a few times both Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean. I admire them both. This past Tuesday I voted for Hillary. She’s a more pragmatic choice, I think. I’ve been frustrated by the grousing about who’s the better choice, but that always happen in campaigns. The narcissism of small differences. I remember in 1968, a week before my 24th birthday, my favorite candidate was shot in the head, moments after winning the California primary. That fall I voted for Hubert Humphrey, who I really wish had won.
one more dave
At least you finally recognize she’s a reformed Republican
jl
@gogol’s wife:
‘ But Democrats balk at embracing somebody whose programs would create more opportunity for gifted upstarts at the expense of creating more misery for the people who can’t excel.” WTF does that last sentence even mean? ‘
Is that some blather from David Brooks? I think it shows that Brooks doesn’t understand Hamilton’s ideas about economics very well. Hamilton viewed a disgruntled underclass living in misery because they could not excel compared to the ‘best people’ as a potentially catastrophic social power keg that would explode, the question was not ‘if’, but when and how destructive the explosion would be.
So, that is why Hamilton wanted a diverse economy that created spaces where as many people could excel, or at least do well, at something, as possible. And that is why one of the things that Hamilton admired the English Poor Laws of his day. These Poor Laws seem awful to use now, but we have to be careful about that judgment. For one, the Poor Laws did evolve into a pretty awful mess at times. But the English Poor Laws were viewed at the time as a very generous (by European standards) welfare, or social insurance system. Hamilton admired the way they allowed ordinary people to be mobile, take risks, and move around and find a situation where they could do well, or at least adequately for themselves. Remember that the alternative to the English Poor Laws of Hamilton’s day, in crowded countries, was not the US today, but the nightmare (for the poor) of France, or Germany.
If that excerpt was Brooks, it shows Brooks doesn’t have much idea what he is talking about, and hasn’t read much of what Hamilton wrote, including famous sections of Hamilton’s famous reports.
Edit: People can argue whether Hamilton had good ideas about the best way to ensure that the mass of people had an adequate situation. But that is another matter altogether. A population full of failed people living in misery because they could not compete with what society considered to be excellent at the time, was something Hamilton viewed as a social disaster waiting to happen and was to be avoided at all costs.
Edit2: Hamilton was also quite skeptical that we could know for sure whether what society considered to be ‘excellent’ at any given time was really excellent and worthy of big bucks.
les
@Mnemosyne:
Good to know he’s consistent across categories.
Jeffro
@gogol’s wife: Brooks: “Democrats still insist on people playing by the same rules, even though they should let their betters self-make some exceptions once in a while or maybe all the time, if they’re better (richer) people”
That’s how I read it anyway…
les
@DCF: Thanks, DCF. Another author I can relax and avoid.
Jeffro
Btw John, would you mind spearheading an effort to get this across to David “If I Can’t Stand Trump, Then What Should I Dooooooooo?” Brooks:
Because in spelling out what that Trump-alternative looked like today, he clearly described HRC and the Democratic Party, but just can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
Patricia Kayden
@Yutsano:
Like the lovely Susan Sarandon.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/susan-sarandon-talks-breakup-with-hillary-i-fear-her-record-more-than-trumps-wall/
Applejinx
@TaMara (HFG): This is what I want. Also, I can’t help but notice that seemingly ALL my black friends are either solidly pro-Hillary, or moderately so. That includes younger people. Obviously it’s not by accident or mistake. (actually, I do know a much older black guy who’s still probably a bernie-or-buster, but the thing is: he was a no-show in the NH primary, cursing out Hillary but then not helping us at all)
I still voted Bernie and would advocate people do that to signal their issues and platform, but I’m not even sure I’d do it again, knowing what I know now, if he’d be the nominee. Back when I voted, it was still very much about sending a message, and the two were being real polite in debates.
Here’s hoping we can keep it together, and that Hillary lives up to the hype. We may get only one shot. Let’s make it a Dem landslide, and then claim it’s because of a triumphant return to liberalism :)
Patricia Kayden
@hellslittlestangel: Voter ID laws may prevent that from happening but that would be great. With Trump running perhaps some Republicans will sit it out in November which may lead to some redder states turning blue.
eemom
I didn’t even know what a blog WAS until 2004. First one I ever hung out at was FDL, in the days before it sucked. Then at TRex’s place that he put together after Lady Jane fucked him over. Then there was an obscure little spin off from that whose name escapes me at the moment.
Found BJ in 2009 and it was love at first sight. Hardly ever comment anywhere else….I’m a one-blog kind of woman.
eemom
@Patricia Kayden:
Fuck. her. AND that asshole she rode in on, Robbins.
delk
Joe.My.God is celebrating his 12th year anniversary today.
Linkmeister
My first blog post was dated 23 March 2002. I’d been using LiveJournal for about four months by then. Still blogging 14 years later.
Applejinx
@CarolDuhart2: I’ve had airwindows.com since May 1998, according to this here Network Solutions receipt (I’ve been meaning to frame it, like the shopkeeper’s first dollar bill)
Wow, it’s coming up on 20 years o_O
DCF
@CarolDuhart2:
How To Debate Hillary Clinton Supporters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmaXB-NprOM
She’s practical and expedient, that’s for sure….
DCF
@one more dave:
Now if she’d just stop having relapses….
gwangung
@DCF: Because most progressives have IQs over room temperature.
DCF
@gwangung:
If you read the article, progressives with a three-digit IQ – and whose amygdala isn’t on habitual overdrive during election season – pursue answers to the questions posed within it, resolutely and honestly.
shomi
That must be one seriously screwed up state Cole lives in if a world class ahole and totally unqualified politician who doesn’t know the first thing about governing can beat Hillary for president.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Eljai: test on tablet
Turgidson
@FlipYrWhig:
The Great Depression obviously happened in an extremely different time and political context, but it suggests that, if a cataclysm like that happens such that there is no debate about which party dropped the ball in allowing and/or responding to it, the party that sweeps them out gets a lot more bandwidth and time to figure out how to clean up the mess. The 08 crisis didn’t allow for that – it happened during a period of divided government and in the middle of an election season. And the American electorate had been subjected to 30 years of warmed over Reaganite bullshit about government being the problem, always, so the GOP and its moneyed allies were able to muddy the waters and deflect blame, while throwing sand in the gears of what should have been a broad consensus around supporting a classic, massive Keynesian response to the crisis. Instead they politicized the shit out of the Stimulus bill and tried to pin TARP on Obama even though it was their own president, Treasury Secretary, and Fed Chair who begged for it to get passed.
I think that kneecapping campaign would have been a lot less successful if the crisis had hit even 6 months earlier and the bottom had clearly fallen out before the voters went to the polls in November. The GOP being the lying band of traitorous scumbags they are, they still would have tried. But it would have been a tougher sell.
EllenH
@aimai: Thanks for mentioning this. I read both the diary and the article it referenced. I had no idea that she had Chaired the Legal Services Corporation and had such an impact. I was so curious about it, I wanted more information and ran across this fascinating interview of her from July 1991. It’s an oral history of her relationship with LSC, and she talks about her early work setting up a legal services clinic at the University of Arkansas. It’s fascinating to watch her in this because she is so unguarded but as impressive as ever.
Ella inNew Mexico
@aimai:
Thank you for that link- I’ll be sharing it a lot with my disheartened friends and family over the next few months. ?
I actually knew a lot of those things about her, from back when Bill was running. Back then, I was impressed, and saw her as far more Progressive than he was. It actually made his candidacy more appealing.
My concern with her have to do with what I’ve watched her stifle in order together elected or run for President. In spite of her gusty and smart beginnings, I’ve seen her have to stuff and compromise so much of what she could have been because of the era she has lived in and because she married someone to whom she had to defer career-wise in order that he be successful. I watched her lean right during her first Senate term,’in order, I think, that she appear more “credible” and I blame that damn AUMF vote on trying to look like a hawk, not a liberal wimp. I’ve watched with bewilderment some of her associations with folks who I’d rather she not have, like the insider Christian group “The Family” or J-Street extremists and, yes, Goddamn it, the financial/banking industry.
I’m really hoping that given all she has accomplished, given the magnificent freedom of being a mature, strong, wise and seasoned woman she will feel the freedom to let her Progrssive roots come out without fear of being held back anymore. They really have always been there, and I will say that this Primary season, she’s speaking to many of my issues better than she did in 2008. It show me she can learn and grow, which is reassuring.
Sanders still speaks more specifically about the big picture, fundamental changes Imwant us to fix in this country, but I’m resigned to the fact that it’s not his time and he is not going to be the candidate to be able to move on those things. I’m hoping the zeitgeist we’re all seeing in this country presents us with more leaders and candidates who can keep the pressure on to get those big solutions. But for now, we can do far, far worse than a Hilary Clinton as President.
Oh, and can I just say for the record that for whatever positive value he has had to her career, I still I truly wish she had kicked Bill’ fucking philandering ass to the curb long ago, and had freed herself from his baggage? Ugh.
D58826
Interesting article on the daily beast about ‘swing voters’. Seems they are not as into Bernie’s revolution as he thought. In fact neither is a large segment of the democratic party. It doesn’t mean that they are all closet Trump voters but to much of a swing to the left and Hillary could well lose those votes. The point of the article is she needs these swing voters more than the hard core Bernie Bros voter. Again the truism about presidential politics the votes are in the middle. Now Bernie may well be right in much of his criticism of the current system he just hasn’t convinced the middle of that.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/29/clinton-s-key-never-mind-the-bernie-bros-here-come-the-swing-voters.html
D58826
@aimai: Go further back and she was on the democratic staff of the Watergate committee
Ella inNew Mexico
@aimai: I actually knew a lot of those things about her, from back when Bill was running. Back then, I was impressed, and saw her as far more Progressive than he was. It actually made his candidacy more appealing.
My concern with her have to do with what I’ve watched her stifle in order together elected or run for President. In spite of her gusty and smart beginnings, I’ve seen her have to stuff and compromise so much of what she could have been because of the era she has lived in and because she married someone to whom she had to defer career-wise in order that he be successful. I watched her lean right during her first Senate term,’in order, I think, that she appear more “credible” and I blame that damn AUMF vote on trying to look like a hawk, not a liberal wimp. I’ve watched with bewilderment some of her associations with folks who I’d rather she not have, like the insider Christian group “The Family” or J-Street extremists and, yes, Goddamn it, the financial/banking industry.
I’m really hoping that given all she has accomplished, given the magnificent freedom of being a mature, strong, wise and seasoned woman she will feel the freedom to let her Progrssive roots come out without fear of being held back anymore. They really have always been there, and I will say that this Primary season, she’s speaking to many of my issues better than she did in 2008. It show me she can learn and grow, which is reassuring.
Sanders still talks more about big picture, fundamental changes we must address in this country, but I’m resigned to the fact that it’s not his time and he is not going to be the candidate to be able to move on those things. I’m hoping the zeitgeist we’re all seeing in this country presents us with more leaders and candidates who can keep the pressure on to get those big solutions. But for now, we can do far, far worse than a Hilary Clinton as President.
Oh, and can I just say for the record that for whatever positive value he has had to her career, I still I truly wish she had kicked Bill’smfucking philandering ass to the curb long ago, and had freed herself from his baggage? Ugh.
SIA
@Emperor Snapper:OK that made me laugh. Out loud. In a room by myself.
D58826
@Chris:
And the little misadventure in Beirut was just washed down the old memory hole., Never happened. Or if it did it was Obama’s fault.
tones
@CarolDuhart2: I don’t think any of those are reasons given for not liking her – it is more along the lines of Wal Mart, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Goldman sachs, wall street, 28 million for speeches no one can read, etc., etc.,.
No one cares one whit about the Christmas tree.
Mnemosyne
@D58826:
As I’ve mentioned before, my brother who died of cancer last year was in Beiruit when that happened. In fact, he ate breakfast in that barracks about an hour before the bombing — fortunately, he was already safely back on his ship when the bomb went off.
tones
@DCF: so on the money , thank you for that – I was never a republican, so Hillary does not have anything to appeal to me.
tones
@CarolDuhart2: proving you did not read it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Applejinx:
I just want to say, you are a great advocate. I often wanted to argue with you when you yourself were Bernie-or-bust, but it’s been absolutely fascinating, and gratifying, and exciting, to watch “out loud” your thoughtful transition. If you can bring those skills to politics, you can bring them to anything life throws in your path. I’m very glad you’re here.
tones
@Applejinx: that would work if it was Bernie, but not with Hillary
tones
@eemom: ahhh, after that last comment you are back in true form.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: @Applejinx: Hear, hear! Seconded.
Just One More Canuck
@Mnemosyne: Would it be wrong to buy that for my wife for her birthday?
PaulWartenberg2016
15 years is a long time in blogging. most bloggers have interrupted or changed careers or walked away: at some point, unless they’re making legit money on it, they just get burned out.
I’ve been running my political blog since May 2006, so I’m coming up on a 10th year anniversary, although granted I changed the name and address between then and now. Back then I started off with minor, intellectual blogging that got quickly overwhelmed – I admit it – with the partisan nonsense of the 2008 elections and have been logging at least once a week since then. Ever since 2013 I think I’ve been blogging once a day. Some times this YEAR I’ve blogged multiple times a day. This has been a very intense year to blog…
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Mnemosyne: I was in training at Lowry AFB CO in 1984 when I wrecked my left knee. As a result, I had occasion to spend some time on a ward at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center. One of the ward mates was a kid that was injured in that bombing. The pain that Marine went through – unimaginable. He screamed the whole time I was there. I’ll never forget it.
Karen Weisz
@Van Buren: More than likely he’ll demand a recount and send his minions to issue death threats.
phoebes from highland park
Glad you pulled the lever for Hillary, Cole, BUT WHERE’S THE DAMN CAT? Pictures please.
Karen Weisz
Jane Sanders has actually said (in a joking way of course) that the FBI would get on with the Clinton email probe.
Gotta love the passive aggression, especially since earlier she whined that if Hilary Clinton wasn’t running, Bernie would be winning. And she says that Open primaries are more democratic. This woman is Bernie’s way of saying vicious things without it coming from HIM. Even though I wouldn’t vote for him, it was because I’m pragmatic and I want to beat Trump. But he’s quickly annoying me. Who told him that giving his wife the bitch role would make him win more votes? And if Clinton was to defend herself by being negative SHE would be called the bitch.
Dr. McCoy
“The big difference is class and income.
In 2008, Mrs. Clinton was pummeled among affluent voters. She lost voters earning more than $100,000 by 41 to 19 percent, according to entrance polls.
This time, she won big among voters making more than $100,000 per year, by 55 to 37 percent.
Mrs. Clinton’s strength among affluent voters is partly because of age: Affluent voters tend to be older, and Mrs. Clinton excels among older voters.”
“Yes, $250,000 a year is obscenely wealthy, even by global standards. We need to take account the actual statistics on income, when using evaluative terms like “rich”. If a couple makes $250,000 a year, that puts them in the top 0.001% of the global income range, and places them unarguably among the very richest people in the entire world. To claim that someone at this high a global level of income is not rich is absurd.”
NYT article- in a x2 household, it puts most who post here in the top 5%.
As can be witnessed in the postings the last few days.
Stick around through he winter, after the election.
Not many Cratchits here.
D58826
@Mnemosyne: My brother-in-law was in the Marine unit that did not deploy from Lajune at the time.
BruceFromOhio
@Mike J: That is EPIC. Thank you for sharing!
AnotherBruce
@Mike J: Holy shit that’s good, I bookmarked it right away.
AnotherBruce
@Applejinx:
I’ve always called myself a liberal, even during the darkest Reagan days. There’s nothing wrong with the progressive label. But Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and yes LBJ and Eisenhower were proud liberals. So I want that return. And I think Clinton can get us there. The greatest era of our nation was governed by liberals. So why did we ever run away from that?
sunny raines
that’s often not really the case. Often as not people vote against the candidate (of the two candidates that can win) they like the least as much as they vote for a candidate they like. And this makes perfect sense when you stop to think that candidates are trying to please the most people, which tends to end up pleasing no one. In other words, making any one group completely happy is going to alienate the greatest number of other groups. So pols are always threading the needle of pleasing some somewhat, while avoiding pissing others off as much as possible.
Applejinx
@SiubhanDuinne: Aw <3
The hardest part is actually shrugging off, over and over, when the 'other side' gets bro-y. I think that's a good lesson for everybody. In other circumnstances, it could have gone differently and it'd be my job to explain that Bernie's overly-vague calls for action weren't grounds for panic: that it was always going to require everybody working together to get any sort of result.
One thing about Democrats that's fascinating is, we have to work together without agreeing. Republicans seem to have been more comfortable with just leader-following. I'm incredibly suspicious of blind leader-following which is why I understand how Bernie's handling this: a lot of people need to cool off and be reminded, repeatedly, of 'it's the platform', and then reminded that Hillary has pursued liberal causes (AGAIN with the 'Bernie standing right behind Hillary as they try to sell health care, years too early).
For those who can't reason this stuff out (I thank/blame my autism for this ability to entertain ideas outside my comfort zone) you've got to give them time and 'adapt' the world around them until they can transition. These guys need airlocks, or more like they need wait stops as they come up from the depths of 'unstoppable revolution represented by one old white guy from Vermont who speaks truth to power!'.
Otherwise they will get The Bends and be useless to liberalism or even radical progressivism. Electing Trump is BAD for radical progressivism. Most of these guys are not prepared to fight in the streets with rifles, and even if they were, the ugly truth is that they are no more capable than a wingnut open carry freak, of identifying 'evil enemies' at a glance. The whole concept is utter bullshit. Not even Bernie buys that nonsense, he just represents a state with lots of hunters and open country.
It's nice that people appreciate my ability to think dispassionately and adjust, but the same thing got you folks very cross with me when I was less sure Hillary would pursue the socialists and hippies. I can only say, remember that more normal people have more inertia, and give them more time and slack to come around (AND grounds to do so). I doubt there's anything Hillary can do to get me voting Trump, but right now given the behavior of the candidates I expect they are coming to an agreement, and that's what I want. If I saw a 'fuck those voters, we don't want their kind' coming out of the Clinton campaign (and not just excitable blogposters) I would be not wanting her either.
Cleos
@Turgidson:
*Would have* tried? You’re so charitable. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they had.
Cleos
@tones:
That’s because it’s not Christmas yet. They’ll get to it.