Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“But what about the lurkers?”

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

We are aware of all internet traditions.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

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

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

It’s a doggy dog world.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

When we show up, we win.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

You are here: Home / 2016 / Archives for June 2016

Archives for June 2016

Teach Your Children Well

by | 429 Comments

This post is in: ,

hateagain

Regardless if Trump loses or not, his candidacy and his tactics are going to have long-standing repercussions for society. Today, der TrumpenFührer decided that not only are Americans of hispanic descent not fit for the court, but Americans of the Islamic faith:

Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump said that it was possible that a Muslim judge would be biased against him when asked in an interview aired Sunday for his views after proposing a ban an all Muslims.

Trump reiterated on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that he thought U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over the federal fraud case against Trump University, was biased toward him because he was “very strongly pro-Mexican.”

CBS host John Dickerson asked Trump if he thought he wouldn’t be able to be treated fairly by a Muslim judge.

“It’s possible, yes. Yeah,” Trump replied. “That would be possible, absolutely.”

“He is a member of a club or society, very strongly pro-Mexican, which is all fine. but I say he’s got bias. I want to build a wall,” Trump said, referring to the wall he wants to build between the U.S. and Mexico.

I wish there was an enterprising reporter or journalist who would just confront Trump with a checklist of ethnic backgrounds and religions and ask him to put a check next to which ones are real Americans who are capable of serving on the judiciary fairly.

At any rate, by validating his candidacy, Paul Ryan and others are most certainly partly to blame for this kind of thing:

whitewalkersandtheirwall

A group of students at a western North Carolina high school built a wall made of boxes and blocked access to a common area, and their Latino classmates are upset.

The students were allowed into McDowell High School, about 100 miles northwest of Charlotte, on Wednesday to perform a prank as a teacher supervised them.

A photo of the wall with about 30 students standing in front of it was shared on Instagram and captioned, ‘We built the wall first.’

Principal Edwin Spivey says one of the kids wanted to put a Donald Trump logo on it and was told he couldn’t do that.

The wall was taken down before classes began on Thursday.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has promised to build a wall along the US-Mexico border if he gets elected.

He said in a June 2015 speech announcing his candidacy: ‘I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively, I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.’

At the time, he also said: ‘When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.

‘They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you.

‘They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us.

‘They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.’

Why is that teacher still employed? Oh, yeah. North Carolina.

I’ve long said that I prefer to have my racists out in the open- I like letting the Klan march in Skokie because I actually do like people to speak their minds and then be held accountable for them. I much prefer being able to keep an eye on those hooded peckernecks than have them hidden underground making bombs and planning lynchings. At the same time, I don’t think political correctness is some horrible scourge on humanity. Yes, there are a bunch of whiny shits on college campuses, but hopefully they will grow out of it, and when they don’t, it’s because they have shitty faculty who didn’t teach them. But most of all, what political correctness means is a basic sense of fucking decency.

The Trump campaign has burnt to the ground any sense of decency, and is actively whipping up hate. This is scary and is going to be a mess for a long time coming, particularly since these kids are learning it from their parents and are going to get even angrier and more radical unless their beliefs change, because they are soon going to be the minority in America. What’s happening in schools like this in North Carolina is we are breeding the next group of racists who are going to make life hell for all of us long after I am dead.

Teach Your Children WellPost + Comments (429)

Guest Post: lamh36’s Final Reflections on Roots 2016

by | 43 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , ,

Balloon Juice commenter lamh36 posted her final thoughts on the recently aired remake of Roots as a comment last night. I asked her if we could put it up as a guest post because I think it deserves to be seen by more than those who happened to be commenting on one particular post on Friday night. She graciously said yes and sent me the link to where she’d posted it on her own blog. She also has a very interesting post about the Roots remake that she posted before it had aired, so make sure to click through and check that one out too. Lamh36’s post viewing remarks on Roots are below.

So, yesterday I watched the finale of the Roots tv reboot.

Here are my final final reflections.

So, you may already know, I wasn’t gonna watch…then thanks to blogger Awesomely Luvvie ( On ROOTS Reimagined and Retelling This Classic Story) and other folk I respect I decided to give it a chance. I never saw the original. Usually, I shy away from this type of drama because unless you are a heartless bastard it sticks with you and unless you are a ditzy absentminded sort of person it lingers in your mind even after watching…but I disregarded my usual aversion and I watched episode one.

So first of all, History channel did a GREAT job of filling in some of the holes in the story, that folks expressed about Haley’s original book with facts, figures and real life events of the time. In fact, even though it was based on Haley’s book and ancestors, they stuck to the story Haley told, but interspersed the personal family story, with a History channel style reenactments of real life events and happenings of the time in which the story was set (if you followed them on twitter, they also sent out factoids about the time and the people during the commercial breaks, and also with blurbs at the end of scenes with significant historical impact).

Another thing I applauded, was that unlike with the orignal mini-series, they didn’t go for ANY stunt casting (no white sitcom stars or black pro-athletes in this one). Instead, other than for a couple of the iconic roles (i.e. Fiddler, Kizzy, Tom Lea…) the cast was made up of new, and hopefully, up and coming young actresses and actors of color, including some  for whom the show was their very first real acting job (US or otherwise).  The standouts including Malachi Kirby as Kunta Kinte, Regé-Jean Page as Chicken George, Erica Tazel as Matilda, and a number of other younger actresses and actors.  The casting for the series was really good.

As I expected, each and every scene lingered. but as I watched the first ep and the second ep…I began to see this NOT as a story of victim hood, or airing grievances against white people (though to be fair from this family’s saga standpoint and millions of others who were slaves…the grievances against white folks were valid and should NOT be forgotten or erased from conversation). Anyway, I began to see it as the story of SURVIVORS! From Africa to the Americas…these people SURVIVED all this brutality and came out of it on the other side yes bloodied but ALIVE and in many cases unbowed. So even with the painful acts and lingering anger at the entire institution of slavery in America, I feel blessed to know that I come from generations of these Survivors and I’d like to hope that their stories are told and heard by as many folks as can see or hear them, Black or white.

Guest Post: lamh36’s Final Reflections on Roots 2016Post + Comments (43)

Turkeys, Turtles and Pie — Oh My! (Open Thread)

by | 223 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

We went hiking yesterday at an inland nature preserve near Brooksville, Florida. It’s called Chinsegut, and we’ve been there before. It’s a lovely place with easy trails through sandhill and hardwood hammock habitats:

Chinsegut June 2016

It’s usually an easy hike, but yesterday, it was hotter than a red-headed roofer. We got a late start, so we were traipsing through the woods during the suffocating heat. The birds had more sense than we did — they mostly stayed hidden in the woods. But we did see a couple of wild turkeys on the way to the preserve:

wild turkeys June 2016

We also saw the gopher tortoise pictured below on the trail. It was greedily devouring a plant when we first noticed it. I interrupted its meal long enough to take this photo:

gopher tortoise June 2016

Gopher tortoises dig burrows all over the place, so you have to watch your step around them. They are otherwise harmless, unlike this snapping turtle* we saw, which gave us the most evil look, as if we’d trampled its eggs (we hadn’t). They can be nasty customers, so we kept our distance:

snapping turtle June 2016

After a relatively short but sweaty hike, we figured we deserved a treat, so when we got home, I made this peach pie, pictured below when it was still hot and bubbly, fresh from the oven:

peach pie June 2016

I need to work on my crust-crimping game, but the pie is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. The trick is to mix the sliced peaches and half the sugar in a bowl and let it set for a bit. Then put a colander on a saucepan, dump the peaches into the colander to drain and return them to the bowl.

Then you boil the sugary peach juice in the saucepan until it reduces down to a syrup and add it back to the peaches. That way, your pie won’t be too runny, which is always a danger with peach pies.

Anyhoo, that’s what we did with our Saturday. Today is the last day of our vacation, so we’ll have to make the most of it. We’re still deciding how — baseball, beer and BBQ are under consideration. Got any plans today?

Open thread!

* A couple of commenters pointed out that this is probably a Florida softshell turtle. I think they’re right.

Turkeys, Turtles and Pie — Oh My! (Open Thread)Post + Comments (223)

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: West Coast Bounty

by | 59 Comments

This post is in: 

scout211 may16 cactus

From loyal garden commentor Scout211, mid-May:

This group of photos shows an eclectic group of plants ripening right now in sunny, warm rural Northern California.

Photo #1 [at the top] is one of our tiniest cactus in our cactus garden blooming with beautiful yellow flowers. This is the first year that we have had blooms on this little guy.

scout211 may16 milkweed

Photo #2 is one of our many milkweed plants that we have planted all over our property. It is blooming season for our milkweeds. We actually saw two Monarchs last year (the first two we have ever seen here).

scout211 may16 blueberries

Photo #3 is of our blueberry bushes, currently starting to ripen….

***********
More photos below the fold.

Here north of Boston, I bought too many tomato plants this year. I say this every year, but I may have achieved an inadvertent personal best (felt compelled to order from five different companies to get all the ‘must have’ varieties, and kinda lost track of how the numbers were adding up). The last two dozen (gorgeous) plants just arrived from California, and there’s previous transplants, half-empty rootpouches & bags of potting mix everywhere. The Spousal Unit finally got around to buying a tree pruner so the strip of asphalt that serves as my tomato garden is hip-deep in oak & lilac prunings. And my allergies have been knocking me out for the last couple months, so the rest of the front yard has gone to wrack & seed (although the roses & perennials are faithfully blooming through the weeds & winterkill…

What’s going on in your garden(s) this week?

Continue to the rest of Scout211‘s pics…

show full post on front page

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: West Coast BountyPost + Comments (59)

Late Night/Early Morning Open Thread: Sleep Soundly

by | 139 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

For your drifting off to sleep enjoyment this evening you have your choice: 15 foot bull gator toddling about a golf course in Florida, the two female protagonists from The Ring and The Grudge promoting their new movie by throwing out the first pitch at a Japanese baseball game, or both! Pleasant dreams!

 

Late Night/Early Morning Open Thread: Sleep SoundlyPost + Comments (139)

Float Like A Butterfly, Muhammed Ali

by | 114 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Sportswriter Charles P. Pierce:

… He was an iconic human being in an era that produced icons with every turn of the television dial, every front page of every morning newspaper and, my god, most of them died young. John and Robert Kennedy. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. None of them ever made 50. None of them ever made old bones. Only Ali lived to see how he truly changed the world around him, how it had come to understand that some lives are lived beyond the mortal limits.

He was a transcendent athlete, first and foremost, every bit as skilled at what he did for a living as Michael Jordan or Pele. The greatest change in athletes over the span of his physical life is that big athletes got fast. LeBron James plays basketball and he is just about the same size as Antonio Gates, who is a tight end. When he first arrived at Wimbledon, Boris Becker looked like a college linebacker. Ali was tall for a heavyweight, bigger than anyone who was faster than he was and faster than anyone who was bigger.

You have to have seen him before he was stripped of his livelihood to appreciate fully his gifts as an athlete. Foot speed. Hand speed. Before it all hit the fan in 1968, Sports Illustrated put him in a lab with strobe lights and everything, to time the speed of his punches. The results looked something out of a special-effects lab. In one of his routines, the late Richard Pryor used to talk about sparring with Ali in a charity exhibition. A Golden Gloves fighter in his youth, as Pryor later put it, “you don’t see his punches until they comin’ back. And your mind be sayin’, ‘Wait a minute now. There was some shit in my face a minute ago. I know that.'” He was an accelerated man in an accelerated age. Saying he was “ahead of his time” was only the half of it. His time was all time.

That was what led to the rest of it—the opposition to the criminal stupidity that was being practiced by this country in Southeast Asia, stated in terms as fundamentally American as the First Amendment to the Constitution. “Congress shall make no law…” His stubborn insistence that his life was his own, that it did not belong to the sclerotic old gangsters who still ran boxing, nor to the sclerotic old men who still ran the government, with their wiretaps and their phony indictments and their lawbooks. He was too fast for them all to catch, ultimately, and too pretty for a country that was vandalizing its most beautiful elements. That stubbornness also likely led to his physical downfall. All gifts have their dark side. All debts come due…

The past is a foreign country… From that Playboy interview:

It wasn’t until 9:55 on a night last February that anyone began to take seriously the extravagant boasts of Cassius Marcellus Clay: That was the moment when the redoubtable Sonny Liston, sitting dazed and disbelieving on a stool in Miami Beach’s Convention Hall, resignedly spat out his mouthpiece—and relinquished the world’s heavyweight boxing championship to the brash young braggart whom he, along with the nation’s sportswriters and nearly everyone else, had dismissed as a loudmouthed pushover.

Leaping around the ring in a frenzy of glee, Clay screamed, “I am the greatest! I am the king!”—the strident rallying cry of a campaign of self-celebration, punctuated with rhyming couplets predicting victory, which had rocketed him from relative obscurity as a 1960 Olympic Gold Medal winner to dubious renown as the “villain” of a title match with the least lovable heavyweight champion in boxing history. Undefeated in 100 amateur fights and all 18 professional bouts, the cocky 22-year-old had become, if not another Joe Louis, at least the world’s wealthiest poet (with a purse of $600,000), and one of its most flamboyant public figures.

Within 24 hours of his victory, he also became sports’ most controversial cause cèlébre when he announced at a press conference that he was henceforth to be billed on fight programs only as Muhammad Ali, his new name as a full-fledged member of the Black Muslims, the militant nationwide Negro religious cult that preaches racial segregation, black supremacy and unconcealed hostility toward whites…

show full post on front page

Float Like A Butterfly, Muhammed AliPost + Comments (114)