How Obamacare reduced the uninsured, via this 7-second GIF. http://t.co/TvVCbdnpt5 pic.twitter.com/YVSrwHKFBH
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) August 25, 2015
Open thread
Reader Interactions
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.
Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.
Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)
Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.
And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.
Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.
They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.
The worst democrat is better than the best republican.
“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”
Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.
Tick tock motherfuckers!
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
Everybody saw this coming.
“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.
The words do not have to be perfect.
The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.
Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.
I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.
It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.
Fuck these fucking interesting times.
DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
OzarkHillbilly
I await the Republican response.
dmsilev
@OzarkHillbilly: It’d be a GIF with one frame from each of the 678 Obamacare repeal votes.
bystander
@dmsilev: I figured they would just replay the GIF in reverse.
Gimlet
Anti-vaxxers
http://www.abc15.com/news/state/measles-outbreak-in-arizona-caused-in-part-by-immigration-workers-refusal-to-get-vaccinated
Authorities have confirmed 22 measles cases in Arizona since late May. They all stem from the Eloy Detention Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility managed by the Corrections Corporation of America.
Pinal County health director Thomas Schryer says the outbreak likely began with a migrant but that detainees have since been vaccinated.
He said ICE employees at the large facility have not been as cooperative. The Department said 120 ICE employees either won’t get vaccinated or will not show proof of immunization.
Nine of the 22 total cases were facility staff.
waspuppet
@OzarkHillbilly: It would be to take that GIF and put AMOUNT OF AMERICAN FREEDOM on top of it.
dmsilev
Also, that tweet (and associated graphic) are nearly a year old. Haven’t there been a few more states that decided to be sensible re: the Medicaid expansion since then? Today’s number might be smaller still.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: But what kind of people whose lives would we be saving? Think about the consequences.
/probably channeling douchey rich vegans more than Republicans, not a lot of daylight between them though
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: Got to love the 5th columnists in our midst, refusing their vaccines. Hail Hydra.
rikyrah
The Democrats built that, Mayhew.
The Democrats.
Period.
Patricia Kayden
Thank you, President Obama.
Baud
I blame Obama.
Gimlet
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-to-back-public-option-for-health-care/
In an apparent concession to Bernie Sanders, presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton plans to back the creation of a “public-option insurance plan” under Obamacare and allow Americans at the age of 55 to enroll in Medicare.
Clinton’s campaign announced the subtle platform shift in a statement Saturday, saying the proposals affirm the candidate’s “career-long fight to achieve universal health care coverage for Americans.” It is the first time she has formally endorsed a public option health care plan since entering the White House race.
Betty Cracker
@Gimlet: HRC said she supported a public option in February and Bill Clinton floated Medicare expansion in the 90s. But if Sanders supporters want to interpret this as a victory for Team Bernie, more power to them — as long as they show up and vote for Democrats.
gogol's wife
F–k Maureen Dowd. That is all.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Thanks, Obama! And thanks to everyone who voted for it.
ObOpenThread: J and her sister just spent 2 hours in traffic in Galway, Ireland due to citwide backups due to the Connacht SFC Final at Pearse Stadium.
It’s still kinda amazing to me that she can call me from 1/4 the way around the world, wirelessly, and ask me to check the traffic there (she doesn’t want to use her cellular data unless it’s an emergency) and I can get information back to her in real-time. All for almost no cost.
https://www.theaa.ie/roadwatch/newsroom/
The WWW was created, and Google was founded in 1989. Imagine what we can do in the next 25-30 years if we are sensible…
Cheers,
Scott.
Gimlet
@Betty Cracker:
It is the first time she has formally endorsed a public option health care plan since entering the White House race.
I guess it’s the modifier “formally”. You sure get upset at the mention of Bernie.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Thanks, Obama! And thanks to everyone who voted for it.
ObOpenThread: J and her sister just spent 2 hours in traffic in Galway, Ireland due to citwide backups due to the Connacht SFC Final at Pearse Stadium.
It’s still kinda amazing to me that she can call me from 1/4 the way around the world, wirelessly, and ask me to check the traffic there (she doesn’t want to use her cellular data unless it’s an emergency) and I can get information back to her in real-time. All for almost no cost.
Ireland traffic [forgot about the naked link problem..]
The WWW was created, and Google was founded in 1989. Imagine what we can do in the next 25-30 years if we are sensible…
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: not just Sanders, the idea that this represents a huge victory for Sanders over the Witch of Wall Street– who was advocating a public option in 2008– is all over twitter. As you say, whatever works. I wonder if this will get His Holiness to call on his followers to engage in more than 1% of House and Senate races.
and if I’m wrong and the Revolution actually grows from the platform committee to general elections and legislature, I’ll be thrilled.
Zinsky
I’m still waiting for the Republican “jobs bill” they promised us seven years ago and for that crackerjack “replacement” for Obamacare. Paul Ryan and his worthless toadies got nothing. When will Americans see that??
Baud
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I believe Aldous Huxley called them “feelies.”
Oh, you said “sensible.”
WaterGirl
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I imagine you are not thinking about Pokemon Go when you say this? :-)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The CBS story was either lazy reporting or deliberately written to throw a bone to Sanders and his supporters (and get clicks). “Apparent” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The reporter should be able to figure out whether it was a concession or not, and whether Hillary’s changed her mind on it or not. Readers shouldn’t have to guess.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s odd, because the one thing I think Sanders can take the most credit for is the new college plan that Hillary rolled out. But this is getting more hype.
Whatev. As you said, if it gets them to the polls….
Baud
@Zinsky:
“When will Americans want to see that?” is the better question.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@WaterGirl: Even that isn’t terribly “new”. Google had Ingress in 2013. It looks like the same company is now behind Ingress and Pokemon Go.
But yeah, there’s no telling what time-wasting things will come along with our self-driving flying cars!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: the normally phlegmatic Greg Sargent is pushing this hard, and has been arguing for a couple days that the platform committee is proof that the Revolution! lives. Like I said, I am not yet convinced.
@Baud: true
khead
@OzarkHillbilly:
“My premiums went up so I won’t be going on vacation this year. Thanks Obama. I hope you are happy khead*”.
* – Note “khead” is not my real name, of course, but that is a real quote. The person who said it works at a business with less than 50 employees. It never occurred to him to either question his employer or check out the exchanges. Because, Obama.
Gimlet
Until it’s law, it’s just talk.
During a speech at the American Medical Association, President Obama told thousands of doctors that one of the plans included in the new health insurance exchanges “needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market.” [6/15/09]
— While speaking to the nation during his weekly address, the President said that “any plan” he signs “must include…a public option.” [7/17/09]
— During a conference call with progressive bloggers, the President said he continues “to believe that a robust public option would be the best way to go.” [7/20/09]
— Obama told NBC’s David Gregory that a public option “should be a part of this [health care bill],” while rebuking claims that the plan was “dead.” [9/20/09]
Despite all this overt advocacy for the public option, it appears that Obama was reticent to apply the political pressure necessary to get the plan in the final hours of congressional negotiation.
“I didn’t campaign on the public option,” President Obama told the Washington Post [12/22/09].
Baud
@Gimlet: Stale tropes are stale.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I wasn’t terribly impressed with Greg when he was at TPM (I recall that he spent a lot of time trying to use his thesaurus – I think he eventually quit that ;-). I don’t think he’s immune to conventional-wisdom-capture. But I don’t read him or anyone at the WP very often, so I really don’t know.
Political columnists have to find something to talk about every day. It’s gotta be tough this time of the cycle when nothing much of importance is happening in politics (as opposed to in the real world).
Cheers,
Scott.
Gimlet
@Baud:
I guess nobody mailed me the official manual to follow on commenting here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Um, yeah. That’s what some of us have been saying about Bernie! and his One Percent (of Congress) Revolution! for a while now.
Betty Cracker
@Gimlet: I’m not at all upset.
JPL
@gogol’s wife: I was tempted to write a comment, but the one that I would have posted, would have banned me, from posting again. During a week when the republican candidate gave an angry, defiant and manic speech, she decided to once again go after the Clintons. Oh yeah, wonder what else happened this week, that she could have written about.
Baud
@Gimlet: Did you check Amazon?
Baud
@JPL: It’s what they pay her for.
DemJayhawks
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
WWW in 1989
Google the research project in 1996ish
Google the corporation in 1998
Shell
Every time I see that I think it says ‘Beanie’. Ah, “Beany & ; Cecil”. one of my favorite childhood cartoons.
Chyron HR
@Gimlet:
Shouldn’t you be spamming #WhichHillary, #BitchHillary, #KillHillary or some other revolutionary hashtag?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Gimlet: Quote with ellipses are more often than not intentionally misleading. I don’t find them persuasive. YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott
Gimlet
@Chyron HR:
Shouldn’t you be spamming #WhichHillary, #BitchHillary, #KillHillary or some other revolutionary hashtag?
Insightful comment as always.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I wonder if this would actually shift the polls at all. Trump’s flip-flopping on abortion has a longer media trail, and has been better publicized, than Romney’s. I would bet the whole War Of Civilization thing trumps abortion.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@DemJayhawks: Yup. And the WWW was built on top of work on SGML which was built on top of work on IBM’s GML. :-) 1989 was a convenient date, but not necessarily a birth-of-the-universe kinda marker.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Gimlet:
I wonder about long term effects, re: “a public option”. The biggest increase in coverage in Ohio is low wage workers- they’re 50% of the increase under Medicaid expansion. I talk to a lot of them and they really love it- for some of them, they almost can’t believe this has happened. I wonder if it changes their perception of “government health care” over time, if the idea is less susceptible to conservatives lying and fear-mongering because they’re having such a good experience with Medicaid.
The bigger problem for Democrats and liberals is lower income people vote at lower rates than higher income people. It’s really tied more closely to education than strictly “income” but there’s enough of an overlap between education and income that income can be a rough proxy for education. There are process barriers to lower income people voting- it’s harder for them.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Whoops. I guess my caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet. 1989 =/= 1998.
Thanks, Obama.
Cheers,
Scott.
smith
@Kay: A lot of people have been choosing post-presidency careers for Obama, and this would be my pick. I think it would be a natural fit for him to lead a well-funded movement to ensure all people have access to the vote.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
Are you sure? I thought that Obama sold us out, no public option let alone single payer.
Gimlet
@Kay:
The $15 minimum wage and possible change in allowing companies like WalMart to exploit assistance programs should change that.
Betty Cracker
@smith: I agree. Expanding voter participation could change everything.
Shell
Its been two weeks since the finales of both Game Of Thrones and Veep. And Im still in withdrawal about whats worth watching on Sunday nights.
Gimlet
@hovercraft:
Be careful.
Two rules in play today 1. Don’t say anything about Bernie to suggest you give him credit and 2, NEVER criticize Obama.
Shell
Guess none of these guys will be speaking at the Convention either.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Gimlet:
Remember when Joe Lieberman kept threatening to filibuster the whole ACA over including the public option, and fellow Independent Senator Bernie Sanders was on TV every day scolding and wagging his finger at him demanding that the public option be included? No? Me neither. Bernie Sanders is a grandstanding fraud.
PsiFighter37
@Gimlet: I think the issue is that you are going firebagger over the public option 7 years after the fact.
There weren’t the votes to pass the public option in CONGRESS. Forget about what President Obama may or may not have felt/wanted, full stop.
PsiFighter37
@Shell: Glad to see a lot of my fellow Wharton graduates speaking out. I can’t (more because I think it would get me in trouble at work), but glad to see a lot of familiar names on the list – some which are a bit surprising to me, based on my recollections of them from school.
WaterGirl
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Those darn digits, always changing places when we’re not looking!
Kay
@Gimlet:
There was this fiction that low income people were getting “free” care in hospitals (free to them) but that was never true. If they work, they’re collectible and health care providers here are very aggressive. They were sued constantly for unpaid medical bills. The provider gets a judgment in a municipal court and then they garnish or attach. Often people wouldn’t even understand the process- they would think the notice of judgment is notice of hearing. That has dramatically declined in Ohio. I just don’t see those anymore.
Iowa Old Lady
@Shell: From Wikipedia:
Notice that Trump does not have a MBA. He did not go to Wharton’s selective graduate school.
StringOnAStick
We’ve got new neighbors across the street; very friendly, kind of a BSer who likes to talk. I was trying to figure out where he stood politically, and suspected repub. Then he drops “Obama care totally ruined our insurance”. I know he went from being employed by a relatively large company to starting his own, and obviously bought crap level insurance while still in AZ. They get here (CO), wife has an emergency, bill is $40k and his new insurance only covers $5k; claims it would have been the reverse with his old insurance and that’s all Obama care’s fault. Sure. Only Obama had any agency in his choice of insurance plan, he himself had nothing to do with it. Given how grandiose his stories are, I suspect the numbers are highly exaggerated, along with most of the rest of his stories. Yesterday’s was that he was such a good golfer that when he played with his buddy’s friend, that friend said he should join the senior tour because he was a better golfer than he was. Oh, and the friend’s name is Fuzzy Zoeller. Sure he is.
I’d love it if Hillary can get a Medicare buy-in passed for the 55 to 65 set since we’re in that group and my husband wants to quit next year and become a contract employee just to get his hours down from 50-55 to maybe half that. I can’t get insurance through my part time job, it would cost more than I make and we’d do better on the exchange.
El Caganer
@Gimlet: Hey, it’s Sunday, the day of rest. No need to get all bent out of shape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2Wx230gYJw
Gin & Tonic
@Gimlet: And you never learned how to use the Link button, either.
hovercraft
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The MSM narrative is that Bernie has pulled her kicking and screaming to the left, so any inconvenient fact that contradicts the narrative is conveniently disappeared. She shared most of the same goals as Bernie, the differences were in how to achieve those goals, and how much could be achieved with the congress critters we have. She is at heart a pragmatist who knuckles down and takes as much as she can get. Purity sounds great but doesn’t change lives.
Kay
@Gimlet:
The biggest complaint I get are lower income (younger) people who are right above the Medicaid wage and pay out of pocket for employer-provided insurance. They don’t think Obamacare is fair, and they’re right. It seems arbitrary to them- it doesn’t make sense. If it’s free for someone who lives in their neighborhood and makes ABOUT what they make and they’re paying 300 a month that seems unfair. It is unfair.
We happen to have a lot of those people because we still have a lot of manufacturing and manufacturers here have to offer health insurance because they’re competing for employees with union shops- it’s about half union and those are the best jobs.
p.a.
Let’s not forget Pelosi and Reid in this; organizing a party most notable over the previous decade for its spinelessness to actually create something that rivals Medicare and Social Security in its benefit to the country (and mea culpa I hated it and was a PUBLIC HEALTHCARE OR BUST member myself. Incremental advancement: it’s the American way ?)
Uncle Cosmo
@Gimlet: What the fuck would you know about insight? The only thing you have insight into is the status of your colon lining, & that due solely to the position of your head.
gene108
@Gimlet:
Blame Max Baucus. The House rolled out a plan with a public option. Chris Dodd’s committee rolled out a Senate version with a public option.
Then Baucus drags his heels and no bill is signed before the summer recess.
I do sometimes wonder how much smoother healthcare reform would have gone, with a functional Ted Kennedy. Baucus got the job because of Kennedy’s illness.
Emma
@Gimlet: OK, I was actually thinking of posting asking people to let up on you, but since you’re one of those folks who really believe insulting others is the way to establish a dialog, let’s get started.
I consider myself a fairly well informed political consumer. Not nearly as well as people posting here who have spent decades in the nitty-gritty of Democratic politics, but well enough. I was aware of Sanders only vaguely as an Independent who caucused with Dems. I never saw him get down and dirty for any Democratic initiative, never use his senatorial clout for anything. Maybe if I were an avid follower of Vermont politics I would have seen it, but on the national stage, zip, nada, niente, bupkis. Except of course during the last election, when he suggested that President Obama should be primaried from the left.
So then Bernie rewrites himself to be a Democrat and starts lecturing the rest of us about how bad we all are at it. How corrupt. How evil. He casts himself — or is cast by his followers — as the new political Messiah. Rules don’t apply to him, everyone is expected to make way. Even after he loses, he doubles down, at least once insulting the President of the United States, the man whose legacy the Democratic party is trying to save. Now he’s sashaying from media channel to media channel, one day saying that of course we need to back Hillary to oppose Trump and the next that the campaign isn’t over yet.
Why in hell should I view him as anything but a political opportunist? Even if his ideas were all golden, which they are not, he’s shown no interest in really working with the Democratic party to achieve them. We sgould all simply give way to his mighty intellect.
Screw that.
Schlemazel Khan
@DemJayhawks:
I have been working on network stuff since the early 80s. The thing we think of as the Internet is a lot closer to 98 than 89. Around 93-94 I was using mailserv to exchange words like we now do on blogs. The University of MN had just introduced a tool called “Gopher” (as in go for) that could catalog information around the network and deliver information to you about where to find the files you might be looking for in your search. You would have had to ftp it to yourself. It was all very crude. The WWW thing started about this time (probably a year or two earlier, say 91) but had not caught on yet.
smith
It’s a major indictment of this country’s educational system, as well as its media, that so many Americans completely misunderstand the limits of a president’s power. One of our major parties is poised to nominate just such a low-information voter to be president, in fact.
Kay
@gene108:
Me too. I also wonder if it would have gone better with Biden and (especially) Clinton in the Senate. If I could make one request of Hillary Clinton it would be “don’t pull people out of the Senate”.
debbie
Having been uninsured for more than 15 years during the period in that graph, anything that reduces the number of uninsured is a good thing. Being uninsured is f’ing scary.
PaulWartenberg2016
I think I captured the only Squirtle in Mulberry FL.
Sorry.
D58826
one city – two outcomes. Houston cops shot a blackman yesterday. They claimed he had a gun. The video, which is at a distance, seems to show the man turning around and then being shot almost as soon as the cops get out of the car. It’s hard to tell if he has anything in his hands or not. In the meantime in a white neighborhood of Houston a man fired 7 shots at the cops but was subdued and taken in for mental health evaluation. The article on thinkprogress does not say what the man’s race was, just that it was a majority white neighborhood. It’s on twitter feed so no link. sorry
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They’re in the ‘bargaining’ phase of the process, if only he does this it will be okay. They just need to move onto ‘acceptance’, they are fucked, their base has chosen a sociopath as their nominee. No matter how they try to separate themselves, his taint will be their taint. He is losing educated white voters every day with his ever more frenetic insane rallies. Notwithstanding his return to ‘vintage Trump’ applauded by some beltway insiders, the not insane among us see a desperate candidate who knows he is losing and is choosing to double down. His choice of running mate does nothing to change the candidate himself.
debbie
Since this is an open thread. I’m on a mailing list and receive one poem every day. Today, it’s from our Poet Laureate, and I think his “afternote” is even better than his poem (though I like both).
@ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem
Juan Felipe Herrera
RIP Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Dallas police officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa—and all their families. And to all those injured.
Let us celebrate the lives of all
As we reflect & pray & meditate on their brutal deaths
Let us celebrate those who marched at night who spoke of peace
& chanted Black Lives Matter
Let us celebrate the officers dressed in Blues ready to protect
Let us know the departed as we did not know them before—their faces,
Bodies, names—what they loved, their words, the stories they often spoke
Before we return to the usual business of our days, let us know their lives intimately
Let us take this moment & impossible as this may sound—let us find
The beauty in their lives in the midst of their sudden & never imagined vanishing
Let us consider the Dallas shooter—what made him
what happened in Afghanistan
what flames burned inside
(Who was that man in Baton Rouge with a red shirt selling CDs in the parking lot
Who was that man in Minnesota toppled on the car seat with a perforated arm
& a continent-shaped flood of blood on his white T who was
That man prone & gone by the night pillar of El Centro College in Dallas)
This could be the first step
in the new evaluation of our society This could be
the first step of all of our lives
Copyright © 2016 by Juan Felipe Herrera. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 10, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
About This Poem
“To write, but what? How? After a feverish penciled attempt with deep ideas, a poem-agenda of sorts, I stood up and walked away. What about the actual people shot dead? To know them, this was the key—I wanted to know them, the poem longed to know them. Too often we forget them in a rush to ‘say something.’ All of them? Yes, yes. I had to include all of them, otherwise the poem could not be attained, humanity, the core of the poem, had to be the inner goal. After a new draft and new lens, a larger question came into view, ‘Can we take a leap into a new way of living with each other?’ First, and most necessary, still, was to take a full moment and truly acknowledge the people on their last day.” —Juan Felipe Herrera
hovercraft
@Gimlet:
Umm, I was being sarcastic as I’m sure most people here know. I was actually mocking people like you.
D58826
@Kay:
But isn’t that true of a lot of other means tested government programs? I’m not saying its right or fair just that it isn’t unique to Obamacare.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@gene108:
The public option fight may not have been winnable. Nate Silver actually does a good recap of all the “president for a day” Senators who took turns grabbing the spotlight and handwringing about how they just couldn’t support a public option, because…. reasons.
Schlemazel Khan
@smith:
I mentioned this last night in a thread. The original comment was how Kennedy wanted 300 ICBMs but had to settle for 1100 because the DoD wanted 3000, when 300 were more than enough. The President can believe whatever he or she wants, they can campaign on whatever they think will get them elected but what they can do is limited by what the public will support and the votes they can get in Congress.
There are no old hard-nosed folks like LBJ who knew where the bodies were buried. When you hear the verbal beat down he put on Southern Senators to get the Civil Rights bill passed you start to understand both naked power and the actually limited power a POTUS has.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
SiubhanDuinne
@gogol’s wife:
That column today may be the single most vicious thing she’s ever written. How does MoDo even make it through the day carrying around such a huge sack of bile?
PsiFighter37
@Iowa Old Lady: Not to come off as an asshole or defending Trump in any way, but getting into Wharton as an undergrad is probably more impressive than going there for an MBA, given the general dearth of elite undergrad business school programs.
smith
@Schlemazel Khan: And it really should be self-evident to anyone who pays even the most cursory attention to politics, yet you have many who believe we don’t have a public option because Obama didn’t clap hard enough, and many others who believe that President Trump will be able to repeal the Bill of Rights (minus one) on his first day.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Words. Do they mean something?”
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She may have just moved herself up to the top of the vp list.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I think a PO might get a higher percentage of support among the current Dem Senate Caucus– I doubt it would get to a 100%, if only because of Heidi Headlamp, though I could be wrong about her– but still a long way from 60 votes.
and then there’s that whole winning the House thing.
Of course as a blinkered and fragile Obot Hill-zombie, I could be oblivious to the awesome power of Zephyr Teachout. (edited)
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Black people, Hispanics, and now increasingly white people all hate Trump. See, he’s bringing the races together!
D58826
@Schlemazel Khan:
Was a different Congress then. When the old bull committee chairman told a junior member to jump, not only did the junior ask how high but what was the hang time. A loose cannon like Ted Cruz would have been squashed like a bug. So LBJ could twist a few arms of the leaders and they in turn would issue the necessary marching orders to the troops. I
hovercraft
@SiubhanDuinne:
I can’t bring myself to read it, can you give us the highlights, please?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Notable in this recap of the Senators all grabbing the mic and the spotlight to air their very important serious thoughts, is the absence of Bernie fucking Sanders, since we’re supposed to believe that he owns this issue – that he’s been the alpha and omega of the push for a public option. What a bunch of delusional horseshit.
glory b
Since this is an open thread, OMG, did anyone just hear Guiliani on Face the Nation just now? Black parents aren’t properly teaching their children about respecting the authorities. They should be telling them to fear and avoid their neighborhood friends, because they will be more likely to get shot by one of them.
he did a small head fake towards white people, telling them that “blacks” fear the police, it might just be a perception, but it’s the way they think.
The panelists, even the rep from the chiefs of police group, are moving away from this.
Why is he even there??
Miss Bianca
@D58826: This fucking shit. This.
In one of the previous threads a few people pointed out that at least one difference between 1968 and now is that at least police shooting and killing black people is actually considered newsworthy. Progress?
@glory b: And then this guy. This fucking guy. Was there any pushback on this BS?
Baud
@glory b: He’s there to say what he just said.
Schlemazel Khan
@SiubhanDuinne:
Money has power to sooth the savage breast
Emma
@glory b: Because the once the utter morons of the media get their narrative in place, they won’t let go. He’s “America’s mayor,” and screw the facts.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Zephyr Teachout + Jill Stein + Bernie Sanders = the public option and ponies for everyone. Paul Ryan will never know what hit him.
MattF
@glory b: Well… it has to be their fault. Because… otherwise… it wouldn’t anyone’s fault… Right?
Baud
Re: Obamacare, as I said the other day, any major new program needs to be revised and amended based on experience. But we didn’t support the Dems enough in 2010, so now we have to deal with the original framework until we can break the GOP’s control in Congress.
Schlemazel Khan
@D58826:
True, many things have changed in Congress, some good others not so much. One thing that gives power today that was not as important 50 years ago is being a rain maker. Members spend more time fund raising than any other task.
Kay
@D58826:
It is, but that’s why “means testing” was always carefully calibrated by Democrats to include enough lower middle class to protect poverty programs. It’s not just because they’re fuzzy-headed liberals- it’s a political calculus. Means-tested programs are politically vulnerable. There has to be a enough of an expansion of benefits to take it out of “this mostly benefits poor people”. It’s why Social Security and Medicare have been so resilient. I think of it as almost a visual- put lower middle class IN FRONT of poverty programs and the poverty program stays protected.
I just saw a very vivid example here. Public preschool. It’s universal, so it enjoys BROAD support. They will never get rid of it now! :)
Head Start (which we always had) was in a way marginalized- it was “for poor people”. I don’t think it’s an accident that the Head Start program was held in a decrepit retired public school building and our new universal public preschool will have dedicated classrooms in our new school. The same Head Start kids will be included. They benefit- they’ll be part of the expansion. It just took non-poor political support to get it done and the way to do that is “universal”. It’s good politics.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: I haven’t read it yet, but in my mind that prize goes to her totally gratuitous hit piece on Teresa Heinz Kerry in 2004.
@glory b: Authoriteh! This is almost as bad as when they brought Paul Wolfowitz out of storage to respond to the rise of Daesh. Stop giving that little man his balconies.
Hal
I work in a hospital and every time an older patient mentions there 30 to 50 copay, specialist office, I know they are going to blame Obama. I always want to ask them if they’ve never had a copay before and if this is the first time they’ve ever had increases in their co-pays. I’m sure of the answer, but why bother with facts when you can just blame Obama.
Schlemazel Khan
@glory b:
Your mistake was in watching Deface the Nation. That they would have that old deflated ego on is just indicative of how low they have gone
D58826
@Miss Bianca:
And what makes it ‘newsworthy’ is there is now video of many of these incidents. In 1968 it was the cops word against a corpse. Black guy didn’t have a gun, no problem, the cop just happens to have an extra one in the trunk. End of story. Harder to pull off that kind of stuff when every witness has a cell phone out and is recording what is happening. So yes I guess that is some progress.
burnspbesq
@Gimlet:
Guy lies to and cynically manipulates millions of kids and attempts to destroy the Democratic Party. If you had were thinking clearly, you’d get upset at the mention of his name, too.
Corner Stone
@hovercraft:
There are none.
smith
OK, it’s an open thread, so another tangent: It looks like one of the two Tory women in contention to replace Cameron as PM has ties to ALEC and the Koch brothers. So the Brexit voters may find that they have traded the EU for Kansas. That’s gonna sting.
hovercraft
@Emma:
He is probably the only candidate who would actually do worse than drump with minority voters. He is despised by blacks people, loathed by muslim Americans, and hated by Latinos. But the media loves him so he gets to go on tv and spout racist nonsense. He is a racist piece of shit whose own son Andrew publicly refused to support his fathers run for the presidency. That is the caliber of person we’re dealing with, his children know him and hate him.
SiubhanDuinne
@hovercraft:
Shorter MoDo: Hillary and Bill are totally corrupt and get their corrupt cooties on everyone. This week alone she singlehandedly corrupted the reputations of Obama, Lynch, and Comus JUST BECAUSE SHE COULD. Imagine the corruption and corrupt awfulness if Bill and Hillary get back in the White House.
Schlemazel Khan
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Good news out of my Eastern neighbor today – Ryan is losing his reelection bid! Granted, it is too early to get too excited but I may see what I can do to help his opponent, Paul Nehlen. Nehlen is strongly aligned with Donald Drumpf and endorsed by Sarah Palin, according to this one poll, Nehlen has pulled out ahead of Ryan.
Thoughtful David
@Emma:
FTFY
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I never heard that, but I believe his daughter uses her mother’s last name.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Schlemazel Khan: Yup. The Internet was a minor curiosity until around 5 things happened: 1) Gore opened up the Internet to more than Universities and the US Government, 2) Berners-Lee released the WWW, 3) NCSA Mosaic got traction, 4) Web Crawlers and Search Engines became available, and 5) Sensible “page ranking” algorithms were implemented to let actual useful information float to the top.
I remember playing with PLATO terminals in college around 1980. There were lots of things like that going on before the explosion in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but they were mostly curiosities.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Gopher, Archie, Vernoica, Scott’s Internet Hotlist (a different Scott) were all the go-to tools before Google took off…)
Emma
@hovercraft: I lived in Long Island from 1990 to 2000 and I can personally confirm all of that. The media worship of Giuliani was the last nail in their coffin for me. I don’t bother watching anything.
Felonius Monk
@Uncle Cosmo: Go Cosmo!
Schlemazel Khan
@Corner Stone:
They really meant to say “lowlights’
Emma
@smith: They’ll find out anyway. May might be even worse for being home-grown.
Kay
@Baud:
I would have split up care- public payment for “regular” care and then insurance for everything else. No one would go along with it though because I would make you all go to community health centers, which I personally love. You have to “give up” your doctor. Sorry. You’d go after I released you from the FEMA camps and you’d been sufficiently re-educated.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Both of his children have always hated him. Ever since he abandoned them and their mother, Donna Hanover.
D58826
@Kay:
Which is why the GOP wants to change these programs to a more means tested approach. First step in the process of making them ‘for those people’ programs. Will be much easier to reduce funding then. To often I think the GOP is playing chess while the democrats are playing tic-tac-toe. The GOP has a well funded infrastructure that will chip away at the saftety net at every opportunity. The democrats have to build that kind of infrastructure to protect and expand the safety net going into the future.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yup and Fallin is pro choice…
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@SiubhanDuinne:
I was hoping Hillary wouldn’t run back before she announced because we’d be subjected to all the lazy Villagers dusting off their story macros from the 90s and update them, adding some current twist. MoDo is the worst. Is Sally Quinn still columnizing?
Baud
Rejecting Giuliani as the nominee might be the best thing the GOP has done in a generation.
smith
@SiubhanDuinne: I thought the CW about MoDo was that Bill was unwilling to sleep with her back in the 90s. Since he was not all that discriminating in his extracurriculars, it was quite the putdown, and she’s had it in for both of them ever since. Don’t know if it’s true, but it would be irresponsible not to speculate (and keep that rumor alive).
burnspbesq
@Gimlet:
If you don’t have a clue how to make it law, it’s not talk, it’s a lie.
Yes, Sen. Sanders, I’m looking right the fuck at you.
Schlemazel Khan
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I had never seen the hotlist – that is a real time capsule! Thanks
GregB
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think the transcript is in error.
Fallin must have said: Racist heel.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The saddest thing about your comment is the realisation that she’s been at this — and, as @Schlemazel Khan pointed out, being well-paid for it — for, at the very least, a dozen years.
Glidwrith
@khead: Yeah, I have a coworker that bitches about rates. The increases are all Obama’s fault, it doesn’t matter we were seeing double digit increases each year before the reforms took effect. And he relies on one data point, his own, for this complaint.
This is a PhD research scientist.
The good news is that the rest of us tell him to piss up a rope.
Baud
@Kay: Your comment reminds me of those creepy anti-Obamacare ads the Koch brothers put on.
Schlemazel Khan
@debbie:
He brought his side piece home in front of his wife & kids. I can’t imagine what that said to them. As an older teen I accidentally heard my dad on the phone to a hooker & I know how I felt about that. It would have been so much worse if I were 5-10 years younger and he actually brought her into our house in front of mom.
Kay
@D58826:
Okay, but don’t give them too much credit. It’s entirely possible that the GOP aren’t such awesome strategists and they’re still beating Democrats at the state level. They don’t have to be great to win. They just have to be slightly better. It may not be such a heavy lift that involves massive infrastructure. It could just be inches.
Schlemazel Khan
@Baud:
They are about to more than make up for that in a couple of weeks.
D58826
@Kay: yep
Schlemazel Khan
@SiubhanDuinne:
20 at least, I remember her sludge being tossed up on the NYT when Bill was POTUS
Emma
@Kay: Actually, one of the things it took was destroying elementary public education at the state level. It’s one of the reasons why the whole “college free for all” does not impress me as an educational emergency. Democrats at the local level should be focused on school boards. We need to get real facts and real money back into public education.
burnspbesq
@PsiFighter37:
There still aren’t. And unless the gimlets of the world figure out that midterm elections matter, there never will be.
Doug R
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m wondering if Trump’s gonna go for the full on religious nut bar vote and pick Huckabee? Charm, all those right wing values and a friendly face to go with your end times.
SiubhanDuinne
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Haven’t read her in years, but a vague memory says she was relieved of her WaPo column. I think she blobs about religion now.
EDIT: Hahaha, that was supposed to be “blogs” (typo on my part, or AutoCorrect, I cannot say) but instead of correcting it I just decided to leave it up. Because that’s how I roll.
Kay
@Baud:
The biggest impediment to health care reform wasn’t uninsured people. UNinsured people had nothing to lose. It was insured people who were terrified they would end up losing what they have. No one on the Left paid any attention to that aspect, but it’s HUGE. Obama had to keep them happy or “reform” was going nowhere. They’re regular people, not billionaires. They’re the majority of voters. They had to be reassured constantly that their situation would not change for the worse.
Lahke
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: And a big thanks to Google maps. I just spent two weeks driving around Italy on my own, and no way it would have possible without it
Baud
@Kay:
Hmm. What are you trying to say, Kay?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@burnspbesq: a poster here once responded to my bringing up Congress as an obstacle to the Revolution! by saying that President Bernie! would play some legislative hardball that Obama (and Clinton) either couldn’t or wouldn’t. I get the nostalgic fantasy of Johnson passing the Great Society through sheer force of will and personality has a lot of appeal to people, but I am puzzled by the notion that Bernie! would get his way by shouting at Joe Mancin, Susan Collins, Mark Warner and… let’s say Rob Portman.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
From CNN back in 2007
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel Khan:
Yup. According to Wikipedia
SiubhanDuinne
@smith:
I don’t think I’ve ever heard that! I thank and congratulate you for your selfless devotion to duty, and from this moment hence shall do my best to carry the torch.
amk
@Gimlet:
You LIE surely ? You do it all the time but yet whine when people push back.
JPL
@glory b: After his performance on MSNBC, I’m not surprised at all. Maybe Joe Walsh wasn’t available.
Baud
@smith: I’ve never had more respect for Bill.
redshirt
@glory b: Mmmm…. 9/11?
Kay
@Emma:
I disagree with that because I’m watching it locally. We have about 50% low income kids. Their parents are the people at the “free community college in high school” meetings. You can’t tell them they need post-high school education to get even a lower middle class job and then say :good luck paying for it!” Are they the more ambitious lower income parents? Yes. But there’s nothing wrong with that. The prize goes to those who SHOW UP.
We had this debate in the US about high school. What if we had said “you know, wealthy people will benefit from universal free public high school so we shouldn’t do it”. You’re looking for systemic gains, not relative benefits. Nursing home Medicaid benefits plenty of middle class people here. It’s one of the reasons it’s politically bullet-proof. Does it help middle class people keep the class advantage they already had over poor people? Yes, because they’re not paying for their parents’ nursing home. That’s not a reason not to do it.
Schlemazel Khan
@Lahke:
Just got an update to maps on my phone. It insists on asking me a ton of annoying questions about all the cool new features I never asked for or wanted. It also decided that every side road should now flicker. I have no idea why or if I can make it stop. I used to like the app a lot.
debbie
@Schlemazel Khan:
He announced he was leaving his wife during a press conference, before even telling her. Andrew had serious behavioral issues when he was a kid; hopefully he grew out of that.
Baud
@Schlemazel Khan: Google Maps? I’ve never had that sort of problem with that app before.
Felonius Monk
@SiubhanDuinne:
If memory serves me, Dowd took over the spot that was vacated by Anna Quindlen when she left. Dowd isn’t even on the same planet as Quindlen — not a good move by NYT.
Mark B
I look forward in November to the beautiful sight of Sanders supporters holding their noses while voting for Clinton.
D58826
@Mark B: As long as they vote I’ll be happy to supply some clothespins for their noses so they use both hands to vote.
Emma
@Kay: I didn’t say we shouldn’t do it. I said I don’t see it as an educational emergency. I would deal with college education by reviving and enlarging the Pell grant program. That’s how I, a then fairly recent immigrant, got my undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle campus.
But what I am seeing is that kids are coming out of high school with a serious lack of not only factual information but critical thinking skills. Ever since the No Child Left Behind bullshyt got implemented it’s gotten bad enough that good teachers have started to leave the field. Libraries in high schools are practically nonexistent. The last battle over textbooks nearly led to academic bloodshed because the kind of crap Texas was writing into their textbooks drove other states and many universities round the bend. They won, but it was a limited win. We need to fix this before kids get to college.
This isn’t new, BTW. I worked in a mid-level academic library in the 90s and we ended up implementing a summer start program for kids coming to college in the fall, just to teach them basic research and writing skills. It was amazing to see how driven to learn they were and I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if their schools had had proper libraries and equipment.
Schlemazel Khan
@Baud:
I didn’t until yesterday.
@debbie:
I still remember him as a little boy being obnoxious at daddy’s swearing in ceremony. Came off as an entitled clown but he was >10 so I figured it was just a kid thing. But his daddy did him no favors.
Baud
@Schlemazel Khan: I may not have the update yet. I’ll keep an eye out.
Brachiator
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
VR porn palaces?
MomSense
@gene108:
Kennedy chaired HELP and did take part in writing that committee’s version of the bill. He wasn’t on the Senate Finance Committee.
Doug R
@Baud: I find if I update everything on my Android phone, I get the “running out of memory” warning and some apps won’t open. In fact, sometimes I have to regress my Google Play. I guess if I spent $500 on a phone, this wouldn’t be a problem, but I prefer the no contract/$28 a month talk/text/data plan.
And it used to be you turned your GPS on/off for location, but the new Google location services sounds so intrusive, I’m paranoid to turn it on. Plus my GPS function is a major battery drain, so I use a Garmin in the car.
gogol's wife
@SiubhanDuinne:
I have to admit I only read the first sentence, but since the first sentence said that Hillary was going to be elected solely on the strength of not being indicted, that was enough.
SoupCatcher
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
And this year we’re rapidly approaching the 40th anniversary of the Alpine Tavern -> SRI -> Boston transmission.
Kay
@Emma:
Clinton is signalling that she will depart more from what you call “the NCLB bullshit” than Obama did. You have to remember, Democrats supported NCLB. Not all of them, but enough of them.
No one will know until she wins and we see who she hires. There’s a very identifiable group of Democrats who are NCLB-style ed reform backers. Arne Duncan is one of them and so is Corey Booker. We’ll see if they have less sway in the Clinton administration than they did in the Obama administration. My sense is they will because they aren’t as powerful as they were at the height, which was probably 2010- the Michelle Rhee Years. They;ve been discredited to a certain extent. Clinton seems to be very aware of that shift. I’m hopeful.
J R in WV
@StringOnAStick:
A neighbor friend just retired after buying her own insurance from an Obamacare exchange. She was so happy, they had a great party Saturday a week ago, she had already been retired most of a month.
So go on an exchange and see what you guys could buy, I’m sure your spouse is paying something on his pay stub for health care, see how far that amount would go.
Medicare and our supplemental appears to be pretty good, joint replacement for around $400 the first one, less than that the second one. Both shoulders, one night in hospital, 3 months or so of physical therapy, pain relatively gone, like being 30 years younger, in my shoulders at least. According to my very experienced/educated PT I exceeded all the parameters of success for my procedures. I did work hard at the rehab, which is essential.
Best of luck, retirement is pretty sweet. After years of hard work, a sweet reward, the American way!
Shell
Peggy Noonan and Ann Coulter must still be opining, yet I dont hear their being referenced that much these days.
Doug R
@Brachiator: I was reading the other day of some science-friendly celebrity happy that actual science was finally catching up with the amazing progress we’ve made in wireless communications over the past whatever years. Finally we may be getting robotic cars and replacement limbs and a sustainable grid.
Baud
@Doug R: My old Android couldn’t handle all the bells and whistles. My current phone is more powerful and works much better. You can nowadays get a pretty decently speced Android phone in the $300-$400 range.
Reggie Mantle
@Gimlet:
Remember, @Gimlet, the Hill-bullies at BJ don’t think they won an election. They think they won a war, and they’re completely outraged that Sanders and his supporters don’t knuckle under and submit like a conquered people should in the presence of their superiors. They hate the idea that HRC is smarter than they are, that she realizes Bernie is still going to be a Senator in a Senate where the best case is a slim majority, and that progressive voters will be important for winning against Drumpf. They can’t accept the fact that “fuck you, we won, you get nothing” is the way tyrants operate. So they make excuses when she deals with him.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Doug R: My Nexus 4 would act weird when I ignored warnings about the storage on it being nearly full (e.g. ~ 1 GB free). Check to see if you have apps, photos, etc., that you can move off it and/or delete. I think Maps especially uses lots of temporary storage. It might help.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Corner Stone
@Kay: Fuck Arne Duncan. Fuck him up his stupid ass.
hovercraft
Trump supporter spoke words.
The bible tells us that we must obey the police because they are agents of god. Who knew, click over to Crooks & Liars to watch the clip.
Corner Stone
The primary has been over for weeks. Will it ever be over?
rikyrah
@StringOnAStick:
Medicare at 55 would be fabulous
Kay
@Emma:
You have to be careful comparing test scores with test scores when older people were in public schools. Over the last 2 years many states adopted tests aligned to the Common Core. The tests are more difficult than anything I took- I too aced the Iowa Test of Basic Skills! These tests are more difficult. Ohio public school kids dropped 20% across the board, which brought a predictable chorus of “public schools suck!” from adults who haven’t entered a public school since they graduated in 1980, or 1993. You can go online and look the sample questions yourself. Many of my these pundits would fail the Common Core 7th grade math test.
Brachiator
@smith:
It’s not much of a putdown at all. It sounds like the typical BS used to marginalize and dismiss a woman. She couldn’t possibly be a professional. She must be jealous or scorned.
And note that I don’t like her MoDo as a pundit, but because of the quality of her work, not her gender.
Also, I cannot imagine Bill Clinton EVER turning down an opportunity to get a little on the side.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Reggie Mantle: How many suns do you see when you look up at the sky, and what colors are they?
john fremont
@Glidwrith: I have two good friends, both with MBA’s, who vent out the same complaints about Obamacare using only their own history with health insurance. I’ve always wanted to respond to their points by forwarding the appropriate Richard Mayhew article just to see what they would do with it. I suspect they would ignore it .
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
All of them, Katie.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator:
Wow. That says nothing about you at all.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
He’s defensive now. He never loved standardized tests! YOU SIR, are a liar! That’s how he’s decided to defend his shitty record- no one understands his genius- the nuance and brilliance were lost.
He has the horrible combo of thin skin, gigantic ego and scolding sanctimony – he’s the whole package. He’s employed by a billionaire now- good fucking riddance.
cckids
@debbie: Thank you for the poem. It is perfect, and very needed.
Gimlet
@hovercraft:
Alluding to Black Lives Matter protests over killings by police, Jeffress said that he was getting “sick and tired of so-called ministers who do nothing but sow seeds of distrust and disrespect for the police.”
http://thegrio.com/2015/05/12/fbi-white-supremacists-law-enforcement/
May 12, 2015
Because of intensifying civil strife over the recent killings of unarmed black men and boys, many Americans are wondering, “What’s wrong with our police?” Remarkably, one of the most compelling but unexplored explanations may rest with a FBI warning of October 2006, which reported that “White supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” represented a significant national threat.
Several key events preceded the report. A federal court found that members of a Los Angeles sheriffs department formed a Neo Nazi gang and habitually terrorized the black community. Later, the Chicago police department fired Jon Burge, a detective with reputed ties to the Ku Klux Klan, after discovering he tortured over 100 black male suspects. Thereafter, the Mayor of Cleveland discovered that many of the city police locker rooms were infested with “White Power” graffiti. Years later, a Texas sheriff department discovered that two of its deputies were recruiters for the Klan.
In near prophetic fashion, after the FBI’s warning, white supremacy extremism in the U.S. increased, exponentially. From 2008 to 2014, the number of white supremacist groups, reportedly, grew from 149 to nearly a thousand, with no apparent abatement in their infiltration of law enforcement.
This year, alone, at least seven San Francisco law enforcement officers were suspended after an investigation revealed they exchanged numerous “White Power” communications laden with remarks about “lynching African-Americans and burning crosses.” Three reputed Klan members that served as correction officers were arrested for conspiring to murder a black inmate. At least four Fort Lauderdale police officers were fired after an investigation found that the officers fantasized about killing black suspects.
The United States doesn’t publicly track white supremacists
Joel
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: IBM Simon was merely 23 years ago. Ten years ago, the Motorola RAZR was the leading edge of technology.
rikyrah
@Corner Stone:
Amen.
Worst cabinet choice of POTUS in all his 8 years.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
As I said yesterday, there will be a contingent in 2021 at her second inaugural talking about how she used the rigged system to steal the presidency from Bernie. It will never be over, they’ll be sitting around in their rocking chairs 50 years from now, discussing how America could have been a liberal utopia by now if only Bernie hadn’t been cheated out of the presidency.
MattF
@Brachiator: Bill Clinton thinks getting a little with MoDo would be a good thing? I.Doubt.That.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
Who is this trick?
Brachiator
@Doug R:
Actually, I have been coming across people who think that robotic cars are more of a challenge than many assume and are decades away from being practical and widely available. On the other hand, yeah, some amazing advances in prosthetics. I haven’t seen much above fantasy speculation about a sustainable grid.
burnspbesq
@Mark B:
Ifyou need volunteers to hand out clothespins outside polling places, give a shout.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Tell me how you REALLY feel, Kay.?
J R in WV
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I bought my first computer in late 1984, with a printer and a modem, and a 9 inch screen it cost over $3,000. I graduated with a BS CS that year, and got my first job in Feb 1985, which was interesting. I felt pretty incompetent, although the experienced guys I was working for and learning from seemed content with my progress. It was fun. I worked off and on with one guy my whole career for several different employers. We both spent the last 15 years together at a good government job.
I remember signing on to bulletin boards running on CompuServe, an outfit in Columbus, Oh with racks of servers in a former health club, as requirements increased they would take over another racketball court and fill it with hardware. As I say, this was kind of pre-internet. But I was on gopher, got an early web browser from Illinois U-Champlain, Mosaic, wasn’t it?
I loved the work, figuring out how to make a computer system do something for engineers, accountants, biologists, geologists… complicated stuff.
Ruckus
@debbie:
I was uninsured for 7 yrs. The cheapest quote I got for insurance was $1200. Per month. I checked when the ACA passed and my cost per month would have been $300, plus copays and deductable. During that 7 yrs I had a herniated disc and a heart attack and then got into the VA system. I now have a job and am paying $100-200/month in copays to the VA. Health care is not free but it shouldn’t be so expensive that people can not afford it. I got lucky, 40+ yrs ago I joined the military and that is fortunate for me. Many are not that lucky but now we have the ACA. A flawed system for sure but much less flawed than what went before. Think how many people might not have suffered as much or died if we had had something like that decades ago. Think about how many people may not have become disillusioned with life if theirs hadn’t sucked so bad.
And then think how if we can’t have single payer we shouldn’t have anything because that’s the only answer.
Yes I’m bitter. How can you tell?
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
As long as one Berniac has bruised feelings, it will NEVER be over.
Shell
I think hes watched the movie, “R.I.P.D.” one too many times.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
Didn’t take your meds this morning?
You have a problem with the first statement you quoted? This may say much more about you than me.
But you are right. It says nothing significant about me at all.
The second statement was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Sorry if I neglected to add sufficient amounts of emojis and snark qualifiers.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
She’s not carrying it around. She’s made of it. It’s all she is. It’s not her writing, it’s just leaking out.
Amir Khalid
@Corner Stone:
It will never be over. Hillary doesn’t have 2,383 pledged delegates. That means the super delegates (do they attend the convention wearing red capes?) can still vote to hand Bernie the nomination. I know this because HA Goodman tells me so.
J R in WV
@Baud:
And there are a lot of different map systems out there for phones and tablets, he may not be Google Maps at all.
I bought a Magellan GPS gadget years ago when we did a driving vacation out west, mostly in Navajo Nation. I gave it to a directionally-challenged friend after we got home, when you turned off a Federal highway onto a well-built paved 2-lane with stripes Navajo Nation road, there was nothing there on the map, just your little dot with lat and long moving across a blank screen.
Not what I bought it for. That was a long time ago, before Android and tablets etc. Then the Magellan gadget was good in town, so it worked for Jim, who could get lost going out for a container of ice cream.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good god I don’t even know where to start with this fucking Giuliani interview
rarely… never… (I think this year it works out to twice a week?)
some are very bad but respect them anyway, and be careful while respecting. Son.
they… they… they…
20 years? both sides
some may consider it irrational… but try to understand
and I’m sure, true to Sunday show form, one of the most inflammatory figures in American politics was challenged, in real time, only by a host who was very respectful of his authority, while a panel of respectful commentators assembled after a commercial break, one or two may have tut-tutted while chuckling good-naturedly about “Rudi”
Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter
@MattF: This entire exchange about some bs “CW” re President Clinton and columnist Dowd is demeaning to us all.
Schlemazel Khan
@Brachiator:
A Bill has done that.
B the reason tweety is so anti Clinton is that he begged to be named press sec in 92 but was turned down.
It is possible to hold a grudge no matter the gender
Kay
@rikyrah:
I hate-follow his career. He’s back in Chicago, you lucky person you. Literally the first thing he did was put his kids in a private school that follows NONE of his ed reform dogma. It’s the school he went to, because of course it is!
Obama was supposed to appoint Linda Darling-Hammond and the Michelle Rhee wing of the Democrats objected and instead he chose Duncan. I bet Clinton appoints Darling-Hammond. I listened to Clinton’s speech to the NEA and she’s got her own ideas, thank God.
Brachiator
@Baud:
There are also some very good budget phones in the $250-$300 range, if you don’t need a lot of storage space or extra features.
Shell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Did he add that they shouldnt wear hoodies?
Doug R
@Brachiator: That sustainable grid might not be as far away as you think. Solar Freakin’ Roadways are popping up in quite a few places
Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What a racist asshole. TV sucks.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
He is one of drump’s faith leaders, who is here to tell us that all of our woes are caused by us not knowing our place and exercising sufficient obeisance to our betters. He pastors a mega church in Dallas.
He is a real get for drump. He hates Obama, and blames him for pretty much everything. Which is why he is a frequent guest of FOX.
Hate monger
Top 10 Things First Baptist Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress Thinks
TUESDAY, MAY 24, 2016 AT 4:26 A.M. BY STEPHEN YOUNG
1
Robert Jeffress
Gage Skidmore
10. Robert Jeffress thinks that the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage is the worst in the history of the court.
“[Obergefell v. Hodges is] the greatest, most historic, landmark blunder in the history of the United States Supreme Court.”
9. Robert Jeffress thinks that abortion caused 9/11.
“Surely, God doesn’t use pagans to bring judgment upon his own people, does he?” Jeffress asked rhetorically. “Just read the Bible, God will not allow sin to go unpunished and he certainly won’t allow the sacrifice of children to go unpunished.”
8. Robert Jeffress thinks gay sex might make you explode.
From the Observer in 2013:
“Think about this one time in heaven God was sitting up there with his sketch pad and he said, ‘You know, I’m going to design human beings and would it be fun of they started doing this together with one another.'” Jeffress illustrates this by excitedly jabbing his fingers at one another in a way that makes you feel truly sorry for the missus. “God dreamed up sex, He thought it up for our enjoyment, He gave us the equipment to enjoy it with.”
He goes on to offer us the parable of the TV delivery man who very specifically tells the purchaser to only plug it into a 120-volt outlet. But the buyer, “because those are antiquated instructions” and “it’s my TV and I can do whatever I want to with it,” ignores the advice and rams it into the 220-volt outlet.
“Well it is my TV to do what I want to with it but I’m going to blow that TV into smithereens if I put it in a 220 outlet,” Jeffress said.
7. Robert Jeffress thinks President Obama is paving the way for the Antichrist.
“For the first time in history a president of our country has openly proposed altering one of society’s (not to mention God’s) most fundamental laws: that marriage should be between a man and a woman. While I am not suggesting that President Obama is the Antichrist, the fact that he was able to propose such a sweeping change in God’s law and still win reelection by a comfortable margin illustrates how a future world leader will be able to oppose God’s laws without any repercussions.”
6. Robert Jeffress thinks that the Chamber of Commerce, because it wants to respect the rights of transgender individuals, is a bigger threat to freedom of releib than the Islamic State.
“When states are being faced with the loss of business, they tend to fold real quickly. And I’ve said often that the greatest threat to freedom of religion in America is not ISIS, it’s the Chamber of Commerce. I mean, it’s the businesses that say to our representatives, ‘Oh, don’t pass laws like that, don’t pass these religious freedom laws because people will interpret that as anti-gay and we’ll lose business.’”
5. Robert Jeffress thinks Donald Trump has a grasp of the issues.
“I tell ya, anybody that was in that meeting [between Trump and a group of pastors that included Jeffress. would’ve left there, first of all, impressed by his great charisma, by his grasp of the issues, but also the fact that he’s in it to win it.”
4. Robert Jeffress thinks that the Fifty Shades of Grey movie might have been a signifier of the end times.
“I just think this movie may represent a new low in popular entertainment. That’s all I’m saying. And I’m just saying the Bible prophesized that in the End Times, there will be a lack of moral restraint, and I think we’re seeing that manifested in so many different ways.”
3. Robert Jeffress thinks Pope Francis owes Donald Trump an apology for questioning Trump’s faith.
“I think the Pope needs to ask Donald Trump’s forgiveness for making such an outlandish statement.”
2. Robert Jeffress thinks pedophilia and homosexuality are connected.
“Amazingly, some gay activists don’t even try to hide the link between homosexuality and pedophilia. There are some who are right now are actively involved in trying to legalize sex between adults and children by lowering the age of consent or removing it altogether. In all fairness, it would be wrong to suggest that all homosexuals to pedophiles. It would be wrong to even suggest that a majority of homosexuals are pedophiles, but the truth nevertheless is there. There are a disproportionate amount of assaults against children by homosexuals than by heterosexuals, you can’t deny that, and the reason is very clear: homosexuality is perverse, it represents a degradation of a person’s mind and if a person will sink that low and there are no restraints from God’s law, then there is no telling to whatever sins he will commit as well.”
1. Robert Jeffress thinks contemporary American Christians face similar challenges to Jews in pre-war Germany.
“We’re not having our heads chopped off like Christians in the Middle East by ISIS, but you’ve heard me say before, I think when you look at what happened in Germany, look the Nazis didn’t take the Jews to the crematorium immediately. They wouldn’t have been allowed to do that by the German citizens. What the Nazis did was a program of making the Jews the object of ridicule and contempt in the eyes of the German people, and only once they had marginalized them, were they able to take away their rights.”
Keith G
Up near the top of this thread, there are folks typing about Sanders, and Twitter, and who gets credit. Who the fuck cares who gets credit? We are making long overdue progress. And this progress exists in part because we have had for at least a decade a collection of leaders who are willing to rally the troops and fight the important fights.
I wish my fellow members of the winning side of this latest political arguments would have less tender feelings about some of the noise thought to be coming from the Sanders side.
We won that round.
What happens now, is purely in the hands of Hillary and her team. If they take care of business (assuming that no other problems from the past) November will be all smiles and a rainbow.
Can we retire the tender fee fees for a while and focus on other things?
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: Obviously, it’s the juxtaposition of the two. And no, no one here believes it was tongue in cheek coming from you. Take your eternal hardon for the Clintons and keep traveling with it.
J R in WV
@hovercraft:
This guy, like so many biblical con men, loves everything written by Paul, which is where Romans came from. Paul was a sex-phobic authoritarian who believed a lot of stuff that had nothing to do with Christ and his teachings. He never met anyone who knew Christ IIRC.
Authoritarians flock together don’t they? Trump rallies for one, mega-churches for another.
Pretty sure Thomas Jefferson didn’t have much to do with the writings of Paul…
Brachiator
@Schlemazel Khan:
Absolutely correct.
But the speculation about grudges attributed to women too often has sexual overtones. Tweety wanted a job, but MoDo wanted a fuck.
Aimai
@Gimlet: christ! Give him all the credit you want! Just dont expect anyone else to fall down in gratitude for bernie coming in at the last minute and taking credit for everyone else’s hard work in the past and future.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
One thing so many forget is the removal of earmarks. That was a way to make things happen and a way to make things not happen. The money wasn’t personal, the power was. Now that earmarks are gone that power to give and withhold is gone as well.
Maybe we are still in transition to a world of no earmarks and all will work out sometime in the future. But I doubt it. Money and power have a way of focusing the political mind, removing it has a way of bringing on resistance and the idea of what are you going to do for me onto the front of the stage rather than the backrooms.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Keith G:
History and the lessons it teach is important too – someone once said if you don’t remember history you’re going to fuck it all up, all over again. Us olds are trying to keep it real.
Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter
@Keith G:
Exactly. Let’s work as a team, get Republican obstruction out of the way, and make MORE PROGRESS!
bystander
@PsiFighter37: I find it strange that he went to Fordham for two years, then transferred to UPenn. I wonder if his father, a real estate developer, had some pull that got Donny out of the eternal ignominy of non- Iviness and into an Ivy. I didn’t even realize Wharton was other than an MBA program. Not surprised, tho, Trump lacks the discipline to get a graduate degree.
Baud
@Keith G: I’d like some of the credit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
But Fordham was one of the best schools. Terrific. Everybody says so. The best.
smith
@Brachiator: I actually agree that women are often marginalized and dismissed by making everything about their personal life, and especially about sexuality. However, that doesn’t mean a woman, or any pundit, can’t actually be personalizing everything to an excessive degree and perhaps revealing some underlying facet of themselves that has nothing to do with political analysis. It’s quite commonplace, for instance, to observe that the intensity of spittle-flecked invective some male pundits use when discussing gay rights suggests more than a little homoerotic interest on their part. MoDo has shown, consistently and over a very long time, exactly this kind of intensity in her critiques of the Clintons. It’s way beyond analytical, way beyond reasoned discourse, to the extent that it’s hard to conclude that it’s anything but personal. It’s that quality of her writing that leads to the speculation I brought up. I don’t think it’s any different than speculating about some homophobic preacher’s rent boys.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@rikyrah: Duncan has some competition as worst appointment, IMO. Ed DeMarco as head of FHFA was a disaster for people who needed help to get out from under their crushing mortgages on their upside-down homes.
Time (from 2012):
They worked in different areas, and DeMarco wasn’t a Cabinet official, but I think DeMarco did far more damage than Duncan. Public education is (still) and overwhelmingly local and state responsibility (though I think a case can be made that much stronger minimum national standards for access, uniformity of funding, etc., are required). DeMarco was directly controlling federal response to a crisis and preventing progress that hurt millions of people (directly and indirectly).
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
I have no idea why you see yourself as the self-appointed Balloon Juice hall monitor. Or why you think that you speak for some consensus. You should stop trying to hide behind the group.
And yeah, given some of my obvious and continuing uses of humor and puns here, I absolutely think that people without their heads up their asses would understand the tone of my earlier comments.
Odd. I strongly support Hillary Clinton this presidential season. I look forward to seeing Bill campaign for her. There is something seriously wrong with you if you think that I am a Clinton hater. Definitely some cracks in your stone. You should see about getting patched up and stop worrying about who posts here or why.
Seriously. Something wrong with you to make so much about so little, and to be so wrong about everything.
And in any context, curious that you got so riled up about my observation of gendered attacks on women.
J R in WV
@Doug R:
I’m big on solar photo-voltaic panels, have a system in Arizona with batteries, have guy guy coming tomorrow for a site visit for a solar array connected to the grid.
But what happens to a solar panel in a roadway when the potholes form? When those cracks they blow out with steam and run hot tar into? Roads are such an extreme environment it just seems foolish to combine them with fragile high-tech stuff. Now running arrays of panels along the south-facing shoulder of roads is different.
In Arizona many places roof their parking lots with solar arrays, Walmart, churches,high schools. Davis-Monthan air force base has miles of solar array on the north side of their runway, amazing to drive past that. Although it doesn’t show up on Google, I distinctly remember driving along that area to get out of Tucson east-bound a year or two ago. Oh well, take word for it that there’s a ton of solar arrays in Tucson, all over Arizona.
Not in road beds.
Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter
@Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter: Although I will credit the Bernie team with pushing the Dem Platform further in the direction I prefer on climate change and marijuana. link
D58826
And Berne Bros war goes on. From Digby about the platform committee meeting this weekend:
Prescott Cactus
@glory b:
Noun, Verb
9 / 11Troops on the ground.FTFY VP
Doug R
@J R in WV:
From the Solar Roadways site.
Reggie Mantle
@Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter:
Refreshing.
bmoak
@Kay:
No way Darling-Hammond gets confirmed unless the Dems get a clear majority in the Senate.
Chyron HR
Oh boy, time for more desperate denials that Reggie’s voting for Trump (or as he’s known in the First Church of Bernie, “The Holy Avenger”.)
Reggie Mantle
@D58826:
But…but…they were supposed to get nothing! NOTHING! Didn’t they get the memo?
O THE BETRAYAL! What shall the Bernie bashers do now!?
Reggie Mantle
@Chyron HR:
And more lies from Chyron about what people have said. You’ve already been scolded about this by a front pager, but you keep on.
The more things change…
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: Good God. I hope you at least approved of the picture of yourself in the dictionary beside the definition of “overwrought”.
Brachiator
@smith:
Yep. I agree with you very much on this point. But I don’t think it validates your other speculations. Good points, though.
Reggie Mantle
@Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter:
Good point. Although I’m a little baffled by the rejection of a plank opposing TPP. Both Bernie and Hillary opposed it, or so I thought. Has she changed back? Or was her opposition to it just a scam?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Anyone on twitter should read through this thread explaining how Bernie and his surrogates failed to not only be honest about political reality, but to take responsibility for the cynicism he’s created by convincing his followers that when his revolution fell short in numbers, he made them believe everyone is corrupt. Shorter: he’s been an irresponsible net negative to the political process. Which is despicable of him and everyone else who purports to believe in progress, like Susan Sarandon et al.
Uncle Cosmo
@Reggie Mantle: Fuck off & die, Drudgie Mumble, & take Squirmlet with you when you go.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
Jesus Christ. The next time you pop up to make a fool of yourself, bring something more than this juvenile tripe. What are you, 12 years old?
debbie
@Ruckus:
Just last week I finally paid off my credit card debt, which had peaked at $15,000, mostly due to medical costs. I get very cranky whenever I see an ad for a self-labeled “compassionate” hospital, remembering how they refused to cut me any slack in reducing their bill or even to work out a payment plan.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
If you didn’t have your head so far up Bernie’s ass, you would have learned that Elijah Cummings has simply refused to include that plank out of respect for President Obama who is actively supporting it. He refuses to disrespect this president outwardly like that in the last 6 months of his term. A lot of Dems don’t support TPP, but putting it in the platform, which is largely a symbolic document, is not going to happen. Bernie’s meeting with Obama after he lost CA was to scold the president about TPP, 10 minutes after which Obama publicly endorsed Clinton since Bernie is a disrespectful classless PITA boor who can’t figure out how to lose.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
It must really be eating at you to realize that Clinton and her team are negotiating with him and his people over the platform.
Amir Khalid
@Reggie Mantle:
The rejection of that plank came at the White House’s request; you can thank Obama for that one.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: Is there anyone nearby I can call to supply fresh linens for your fainting couch, good sir?
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid: Thanks, Obama.
Reggie Mantle
@Uncle Cosmo:
Jesus, Donald Trump sounds more mature than you when he calls people names.
And no, Lyin’ Chyron, that’s not a Trump endorsement.
Steeplejack (phone)
@SiubhanDuinne:
I was thinking of how to do an accurate recap, but you pretty much nailed it.
The best part of a MoDo column is to go to the comments, click “reader picks” and then see her get mauled over and over again. By the way, the comments are already closed for this piece.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
I actually am enjoying watching the process, and enjoying the last days of Berniebroism.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
So, does “classless Bernie”‘s opposition to TPP mean you’re for it now? Because otherwise, rejection of that plank isn’t anything to celebrate.
Kay
@bmoak:
I kind of disagree. Just like “market based ed reform” is bipartisan, criticism of “market based ed reform” is bipartisan.
It doesn’t follow Party lines as neatly as we would like to think. Darling-Hammond agrees with some Obama policy, and so do I.
Obama favored the Michelle Rhee faction. No one outside that group were heard because Duncan is actually hugely intolerant of dissenters. It built up to a real revolt, even among “moderates”.
Clinton will do a course correction. The Bush-Obama theory went too far towards a kind of joyless, grim technocratic view of schools. Schools are much than that. They’re integral parts of communities. I personally think it was a private school mindset- schools as service providers. Public schools are much more than that. I feel Clinton understands the context better. You can’t cordon off “public schools” from “communities”- they exist in context.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack (phone):
Saints be praised but I hope Brachiator does not chance across these fare comments. His fainting couch being in much need of recharge to stem his plight.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
As the BernieBros get 80% of what they want and the Clinton team wisely rejects the “fuck you, we won” attitude of the Hill-buliies. I’m enjoying that, too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Reggie Mantle: You do realize that HRC and Sanders have always had fairly similar stands on most issues, don’t you?
Betty Cracker
@Reggie Mantle: Nope; it was the sexist language I objected to in that case. Personally, I think it’s a cheap gimmick to constantly make up quotes to attribute to another person, but your ceaseless butthurt babble is equally ineffective as a rhetorical device, IMO.
Uncle Cosmo
@Prescott Cactus: The GOP’s road from Julie-Annie to Drumpf was a short one, running from “Noun, verb, 9-11” to “Noun, verb, Chapter 11.”
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
The plank is completely irrelevant. The entire platform is irrelevant – it’s an aspirational vision that isn’t binding on anyone or anything, and it’s really cute all of you Berniebros are clutching it like it’s meaningful in some fundamental way. As far as the TPP goes, there are compelling arguments pro and con, and I don’t understand the implications of a lot of the language. Just because Bernie is against it doesn’t convince me at all, since he completely misread and mischaracterized the Panama trade pact. I just don’t think Bernie is very smart. I think he formed all of his opinions in the 60s and has been too lazy to really update his worldview to incorporate the way the world has changed – partly because he’s 74 and the brain ain’t what it used to be, plus, he hasn’t had to because he’s coasted his way through unchallenged from a white rural state where he’s admired.
D58826
@Reggie Mantle:
I don’t think the Hillary folks ever intended that attitude. If they were going to do that they never would have given Bernie 5 seats on the committee. They know darn well that the party is a coalition and you have to compromise with the various players. On the other hand they were not going to just roll over and hand Bernie platform planks that would make it more difficult to win in the general. Given the Orlando Sentinel report it sounds more like the Bernie folks believe in the my way or the highway approach.
Reggie Mantle
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sure. Do you? How about the other Clintonistas? The fact that they seem to have little or no problem with the party’s rejection of the anti-TPP plank because “fuck you, Bernie” seems to indicate the answer is no.
dogwood
@Reggie Mantle:
They both oppose it. The decision to leave it out was explained by Elijah Cummings who also opposes TPP. It would a deliberate insult to the President who genuinely believes in it, and many on the committee agreed. Whatever happens with TPP, the platform language isn’t going to be the deciding factor.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
1) Change “80%” of Democratic Party platform
2) Declare victory
3) ? ? ? ? ? ?
4) “real change” and Revolution!
Ha! this takes me back to D-Kos when people would start spitting at each other about the FAQs, which I gather were some kind of rules Markos laid out
Reggie Mantle
@D58826:
Doesn’t look as if her team does. Which is good to know. But some of her her supporters here seem to forget that, after you win the primaries, the other guys’ supporters aren’t put against the wall and shot. Or maybe they do and they wish they could be.
Omnes Omnibus
@Reggie Mantle:
Who supports the TPP? Obama. Who is the sitting president of the USA? Obama.
Kay
@bmoak:
My public school district has exactly the same issues as my town and county. They aren’t dropping these kids off from outer space. I can’t cordon “school” off anymore than I can air or water. That’s what was missing and it’s profound because it’s a denial of reality. When our percentage of lowest income kids was going up during the financial crash a local businessman compared it to teachers frantically bailing a leaky boat while everyone screamed at them to just BELIEVE and bail harder! That’s true. I’m on a school committee and that’s how they feel. Once we heard that, listened to them, and admitted reality we came together. We changed focus. We asked them what they needed and they needed “better attendance”. They can’t have kids missing 15 days a quarter. They need kids to show up. We can help with that. It’s fixable.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
So the Democratic Party doesn’t mean what it says? “Aspirational vision” is meaningless?
And this is not a problem for you?
D58826
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: And I think that Bernie is locked into his economic deterministic ideology. I want to say Marxist but that is a loaded term and I’m not sure that Bernie is really a full on Marxist but it certainly seems to color his outlook. Breakup the banks, the evil insurance companies, all seem to have a certain anti-capitalist flavor. Not that capitalism doesn’t have a lot to answer for but Marxism or Marxism-lite has been shown to be pretty much a failure.
Uncle Cosmo
@Drudgie Mumble: Pisses you off, dunnit? You’re very welcome!
Let’s call you something a bit more accurate & specific: a Total Waste Of The Building Blocks Of Life (TWOTBBOL)? Whatever primitive life-forms would feed on your lifeless body bobbing face down in a septic tank would make more constructive & humane use of it than you could manage on your best day.
(This post has been brought to you by the letters F, O, A, and D.)
Baud
@D58826: Agree. Hillary deserves immense praise for her leadership in bringing the party together.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
You know, you’re right. After every plank in the platform, they should just add “and a pony” for all of you Berniebros, and then I’d be 1,000,000% behind it.
Reggie Mantle
You mistake contemptuous amusement for anger. But you go ahead and pat yourself on the back in the belief you’ve pissed me off, which is kind of a troll’s attitude. Just sayin’.
Hint: now’s the time for your “I know you are, but what am I” posts to start.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@D58826: and it falls apart on so many important, and less important, issues. “Wall St” wants immigration reform and infrastructure spending, generally gets very nervous about transphobic and anti-gay legislation, Michael Frickin’ Bloomberg made guns his signature issue, and I doubt a majority of Golmdan Sachs partners or VPs or whatever they are belong to the NRA. To take an example getting a lot of play today, I don’t think resistance to pot legalization/decriminalization/re-scheduling comes from the “millionaire and billionaires”, but from the essential Grundyism of so many Americans, including Obama (who in a lot of ways is a pretty conventional middle aged, upper middle class dad) and Hillary Clinton.
D58826
@Kay:
Doesn’t this get to a deeper question – why are they missing 15 days a quarter. Is it because they are down at the old fishing hole bumming around or because the daycare provider didn’t show up and they have to stay home to mind the little ones? So many of the problems with the schools start outside the school and the school simply can’t fix therm.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Answer the question. If the platform is irrelevant and its vision meaningless, how does anyone trust the Party?
This kind of knee-jerk cynicism is why independents don’t vote.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
like “Southern Democrats”, and voters in Guam, “Independents” are just people too ignorant to know they’re really Bernie Revolutionaries!
Reggie Mantle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
So, maybe you can answer: if a party’s stated platform is regarded by its members or its candidates as irrelevant and its vision meaningless, how does anyone trust that Party?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You’d make a better president than Sanders. When he simply could not offer any nuance to the NYDN about what he proposed related to his own pet issues, it just became clear his stump speech is all he has. Nothing behind it, and nothing to it, nothing more to say except that everyone not a sycophant of his is corrupt. He’s just too old, and basically lazy.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
How old are you? I ask, because party platforms have been put together since there have been parties. They’re not binding on anyone. We don’t have a parliamentary system. People vote for candidates, not platforms. You’re making a category error in your understanding of party politics.
dogwood
Beyond the platform committee there are democrats from outside the rust belt who will have to grapple with opposing the TPP. There are some potential benefits and opportunities for people in parts of the country that don’t matter to presidential candidates.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
54.
I answered your question. Can you answer mine?
Let me repeat it: if a party’s stated platform is regarded by its members or its candidates as irrelevant and its vision meaningless, how does anyone trust that Party?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
I finished my answer above. You’re too old to be so clueless about politics.
D58826
@Reggie Mantle: Party platforms have always been more of an aspiration vision of the party’s direction than a legislative blueprint. The democratic platform supports the general party position of an activist government with a strong safety net. The GOP platform represents the GOP vision – tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of the economy.
If Bernie got 100% of what he wanted in the p[platform and then went on the win the general, given the current environment he would be lucky to get 10% of what he wanted passed into law. Most presidents pick a couple of items from the platform and push them once elected.
And as far as independents not voting because they didn’t get all of the platform passed into law, well maybe if they had voted and elected a more progressive Congress they would have gotten more of their wish list passed.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
And that is why confidence is failing in politicians. The idea that it’s silly and puerile to expect anyone to stand behind what they say they believe in. That’s why people are willing to flock to a non-politician like Trump, even though he’s a con man.
Good luck with that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dogwood: as I recall, Bernie! got very quiet on trade in the run up to the WA caucus.
@Reggie Mantle: First you show me evidence that you have ever, in your fuzzy-brained life, given a moment’s thought to the Democratic Party platform before Bernie! started telling you it was so important
dogwood
@Reggie Mantle:
Do you really believe a political party is monolithic? Do you really believe that Sanders and his voters are the only element of the party to be listened to and obeyed? Just as in the primary season, he made a case but failed to win a majority to his side. He won some and lost some on the platform committee as well.
Baud
@Reggie Mantle: We have your support. We must be doing something right.
Reggie Mantle
@D58826:
I’m not saying it’s a legislative blueprint. But when someone says it’s ‘meaningless’ what the party says its aspirations are, then I have to wonder why bother with the party? Any party?
But if the platform is a vision of the party’s direction, and Sanders has influenced it, then yes, that is something for his supporters to be happy about.
But I suspect the Conster doesn’t think it’s truly meaningless. She just wants to deny that Bernie Sanders has done a single useful thing. That kind of blind hate can lead you down some rhetorical dead ends.
Reggie Mantle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
What evidence would you find convincing and wouldn’t just handwave away? Answer: none.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
Your lack of understanding about the nature of the electorate is stunning. You seem to assume that everyone’s interests everywhere would somehow align at the same time about the same things and be reflected in a party platform, when in fact Democrats are always trying to herd cats who all want to prioritize different things. Thinking that anyone pays any attention to what the party platform says when they’re choosing between the Democrat and the Republican in their Congressional district is just height of either cluelessness or naivete. If Berniebros want to imbue it with so much symbolic signficance knock yourself out. Please.
Reggie Mantle
@dogwood:
No. Do you believe that Hillary’s are? Because I’ve seen quite a few here that do.
D58826
@Reggie Mantle:
Your right President Sanders would have stood like a rock in the wind behind single payer because that is what he believes in and to comprise is corrupt. Of course there are a large number of interest groups, voters, etc who BELIEVE in something different than Bernie does. They get to vote in this process also. Obama compromised and we have 20 million people with healthcare that would not have it because Bernie doesn’t compromise his principles.
But that gets to a deeper question about ‘principles’. What principle is at stake here? Is the principle access to healthcare for all Americans or is the principle single payer or nothing. If it’s the former then I would say Obama and Clinton have remained true to their principles even if they haven’t gotten the entire job done yet. If it’s the later then that is just ideology getting in the way of getting something done.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
So why even have a platform? Why bother to have the party aspire to anything?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Reggie Mantle: could be, but if you could dig up some blog posts where you mentioned it under your current nym from 2012 or ’08 I’ll think a warm and respectful thought about you, my anonymous bloggy friend.
Why don’t you go google yourself?
Or is the difference between a $12/hour and $15/hour minimum wage the distinction between “real reform” and caring about working Americans on the one hand, or on the other being a Neo Liberal Goldwater worshipping secret Republican Wall Street whore, to use the language of the BernieBros.
Reggie Mantle
@D58826:
Only problem with this is idea that Sanders voted for the ACA.
Reggie Mantle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
In other words, trick question. As I suspected.
D58826
@Reggie Mantle:
Maybe this is the problem, the word meaningless. No the platform is not meaningless. It is an outline of what the party believes and in what direction it would like to move the country. But like a battle plan than never survives the first contact with the enemy, the platform very quickly gives way to the realities of two party politics as well intra-party politics in Congress.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
It’s a useful exercise as a statement of basic principles. Every organization has a mission statement, but if it fails to survive contact with reality, then what fucking good is it to have one? You know – sort of like Bernie’s “revolution” of half baked pie in the sky proposals being overwhelmingly rejected by several million votes. That kind of reality.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Reggie Mantle: figured that out, did you?
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
And we’re back full circle to “fuck you, you lost, you should get nothing.”
Except Clinton just cut the legs out from under that attitude, and I give her credit for that.
Because, again, Bernie Sanders and his supporters are not a conquered people, their votes will be needed to beat Trump and then to get things done in the Senate, and their voices are being heard. You’re just going to have to learn to get over your bitterness and your hurt fee-fees that some Berniebro was MEAN to you and deal with that.
Reggie Mantle
@D58826:
So we’re in agreement on that much. And so are Bernie Sanders and his supporters.
D58826
@Reggie Mantle: Well if he compromised and voted for ACA then why all of the browbeating about single payer? Why did he seem to gloss over Obama’s accomplishment in getting Obamacare passed? No one on this blog has said Obamacare is perfect. It has to be improved but making a stand on single payer seems like a dumb way to go about it. It was hard enough getting Obamacare passed. The votes for a public option simply were not there.
And remember I said President Sanders not Senator Sanders. Would he have invested limited presidential capital on anything other than single payer? Based on his campaign I not sure that he would have.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
Why do Bernie dead enders all sound like they just discovered politics after a lifetime of gaming and reading Conan comic books? Losers usually don’t get anything. If Bernie weren’t such a shitty politician and a shitty person and a shitty loser, he would have realized his maximum leverage for anything he wanted (which I’m not sure he even knew what it was), was to concede after he lost New York while the CA polls were all over the place. But, he’s a shitty politician so now all he can do is whine. He and his followers all need to grow the fuck up.
Reggie Mantle
@D58826:
When the public option was proposed at first, its opponents were saying that it was the first step to single payer, to which its supporters answered “Yes. And?”
Now, it’s back on the table, Hillary says she supports at least some form of it, and I don’t think that would be if not for Sanders pushing the window back to the left.
D58826
@Reggie Mantle:
Then what is your beef? The fact that there are other voices in that mission statement other than Bernie’s? The 16 million people who voted against Bernie have some say in the direction of the party just as the party should be cognizant of the wishes of the 12 million who voted for him. It’s why they invented the word compromise.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Heh. He’s actually done quite a bit more than that. But you’ve got your hate goggles on.
D58826
@Reggie Mantle:
That may well be true. She compromised. Even though I’m not sure how big of a compromise it is since the public option was always popular in the party and was one of the things that people talked about as part of Obamacare 2.0.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@D58826:
Like I said upthread, Bernie could have been the single payer/public option hero by conducting a series of public media browbeatings and arm twisting/shaming of corrupt insurance whore Joe Lieberman who was the main obstacle. Never heard or saw the guy, but now he’s some kind of public option avatar for good. Miss me with that ahistorical bullshit.
Reggie Mantle
@D58826:
Exactly, My “beef” is with the people who are saying things like:
Like that.
dogwood
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Absolutely! That’s my neck of the woods. No anti-TPP talk from St. Bernard when he was stumping around here. I will accept what happens with TPP and move on because that’s what happens in politics. And it’s election season where the only voters who matter are white working class voters in the upper Midwest. But I suspect calling people corporate whores and sell-outs isn’t going to be enough to scare Cantwell and Murray. They have constituencies as well. Things change slowly but they do change. I won’t live to see the day, but the time might come when the interests of voters in states like Wa, Or. Nv, Co, Az are treated as seriously as those of voters in the “heartland”.
Doug R
What is with the hatred of trade deals? NAFTA has been around for over 22 years, it ain’t getting torn up. It’s probably the main reason Mexico has net migration now. Tariffs on some exports such as pork and peanuts can be OVER 700%, the TPP eliminates most of them-wouldn’t most American products be way more competitive without a 20% tariff?
The TPP also ensures workers in other countries the right to organize and collectively bargain, driving up wages elsewhere. I see a lot of the opposition as a “me first” problem, which is NOT where progressives should be coming from.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
Well, he keeps saying he’ll do anything he can to stop Trump. any day now,…. All I see him doing is holding his endorsement poop. Has he even conceded to Hillary yet? The guy is the sorest, most embarrassing loser in American political history.
D58826
@Reggie Mantle:
I would rather phrase it as the candidate that lost the primary doesn’t get to dictate the terms of nominee’s general election strategy and that include the platform. I’m sure other second place finishers and interest groups that didnot chose sides have all had input in the past. They just don’t call the shots. And they usually have the grace to end their campaign and endorse the winner.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
And people like you are the worst winners I’ve ever seen. It’s 2004 all over again, with Hill-Bullies like you playing the same tune as the Republicans.
El Caganer
I don’t understand why it would be a good idea to write a platform attacking the position of a sitting president of your own party. Unless your goal is to blow up that party, of course.
Reggie Mantle
@El Caganer:
So is Hillary Clinton for TPP or against it?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
Whatevs. Can’t wait to never hear about Bernie Sanders and his revolution of whinebags ever again.
Origuy
@SoupCatcher: I’ve been to Zot’s dozens of times, but I never heard that story. Thanks!
Doug R
@Reggie Mantle: As a resident of a port city, I hope she’s for it.
Reggie Mantle
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Perhaps you should withdraw from all contact with the outside world then. I hear there are some lovely convents out there, where you’ll never have to hear a word of dissent ever again.
Reggie Mantle
@Doug R:
Well she was for an early version of it, is now against it, so who knows.
El Caganer
@Reggie Mantle: I’m pretty sure she’s come out against it. Candidates and platforms aren’t always completely aligned; take a look at the 1964 Republican platform: some of the policies advocated would considered as left-wing by today’s Democrats, and certainly at odds with what Barry Goldwater was saying.
D58826
@Reggie Mantle: She is against it and the platform contains weasel words so as not to embarrass the President. And unless the Benghazi committee decides to refer the issue to the FBI to see if she has committed some crime, no one will care. Besides whither it is TPP or something else The US has trade relationships around the world that require some form of treaty, or executive agreement. Foreign trade just doesn’t happen. And as in all of the the other issues in the platform, the other trading partners get a vote. We will not dictate the terms.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Reggie Mantle:
Or, Bernie could stop acting like a babyman and concede, endorse and start going after Trump. That would actually work too. What the actual fuck is stopping him?
D58826
@Doug R: Trade is complicated. I remember years ago the steel workers union was lobbying to impose tariffs on imported steel. For them jobs were being lost due to cheaper foreign steel coming into the port of Phila. ON THE OTHERHAND, the longshoreman’s union was all in favor of the cheaper steel imports because it meant more jobs for their members. Both unions were important democratic interest groups. Try and sort that one out.
dogwood
@Doug R:
During this election cycle there ‘s a lot of going back is really going forward rhetoric.
Brachiator
@D58826:
Yep. Very well said.
And despite years of blathering about universal healthcare, Sanders could never advance his ideas beyond the magical incantation “we should have what other advanced countries have,” without any further detail or elaboration.
dogwood
@Doug R:
You don’t count.
D58826
@Brachiator: I would add that Hillary tried to get a universal healthcare plan passed in 1993 and it went down in flames. I’m not sure if it would have qualified as single payer but she has been fighting that battle for years.
I’m not an expert and get lost in the details but I’m not sure that many of the European plans would qualify as single payer either. Canada’s does but I think many of the plans in Europe involve a mix of public funding and private insurance with the government imposing very strict rules and regulations to keep things affordable. I’m not sure Americans would like that level of regulation and taxation. By the way did Bernie ever talk as much about how his plan would be paid for as he did about Obama/Clintons shortcomings on the subject?
SoupCatcher
@Origuy:
There’s a commemorative thingy by the front door, but it’s pretty low-key. I happened to see it while messing around on the pinball machine and then did some googling.
Brachiator
@D58826: Yep. Universal healthcare is not necessarily the same thing as single payer. But there are dopes in the US who insist on making single payer their holy grail.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@D58826:
Bernie has deliberately erased Obama from any acknowledgment of the progress made towards universal health care, done without any help from Bernie Sanders except his one vote for the bill. It’s a tell.
dogwood
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I really don’t mean this as a slam on Bernie. It would have been very difficult for Bernie to hold meetings and arm twist in Congress during the the ACA debate. His relationship to colleagues suggests that he isn’t effective one on one as a persuader. He ain’t the only one, I’m sure. His campaign reinforced that impression, by relying on large rallies and staying on script. One -on -one he lost his effectiveness and seemed stumped by questions he didn’t anticipate. Again, I’m sure he has company in that regard. What he was good at was being a left-wing populist rage warrior on the stump. I decided that Bernie wasn’t self-aware enough to be president when I saw that he believed the hype and adoration his fans perpetuated, and ignored criticism and concern from key democratic constituencies.
Aimai
@Reggie Mantle: then you would be wring and historically–homerically–misinformed.
gwangung
@Reggie Mantle:
Citation needed.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@dogwood:
Listening to Bernie’s hagiographers tell it, President Sanders would simply bend Congress to his will by mobilizing his million revolutionary army against Mitch McConnell. All I’m saying is that he apparently couldn’t bend Joe Lieberman to his will or any of his other Senate colleagues who were sitting on the fence about the public option. There was a narrow window of opportunity, and Bernie didn’t make anything of it – either because he wouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t try or wasn’t effective. But now, he’s all talk about the public option, and refuses to acknowledge or explain what happened at that time the public option was an actual option to his supporters, so they too will understand what happened then, and stop with the delusional thinking.
D58826
@gwangung: I googled his Congressional record a few weeks back. IIRC he has submitted quite a number of bills and amendments, which with one exception, never went anywhere. The one exception was a VA reform bill in the 2008/2009 time period. Now this lack of a significant legislative record may simply be the result of being a back bencher his entire career. On the other hand since his stick was he could lead a movement that would bend a reluctant Congress to his will, then he doesn’t seem to have had much success of ‘will bending’ in the past.
sukabi
@bystander: naw, they’d rotate 180°, strip out the relevant information and and replace it with “Number of Obamacare Death Panels in the last 6 years.”
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@D58826:
That VA reform bill didn’t go anywhere either, until he got John McCain to co-sponsor it with him. The guy has nothing of significance in his career that accounts for his opinion of himself.
nutella
[email protected]
That article about the platform committee is from Digby’s blog but not by Digby. It was written by Tom Sullivan.
Do you suppose Bernie or anyone on his campaign pulled anyone aside and recommended not screaming sexist insults at political meetings? Hah. Never.
ETA: And you screwed up you reply button. But thanks for leading us that link. Whenever you think things can’t get weirder…
nutella
@D58826:
Yeah, but everybody knows those 16 million people are all WHORES! because they don’t agree with Bernie on every issue.
workworkwork
@Ruckus: The removal of earmarks meant that the power moved from your fellow legislators to millionaires and billionaires.