Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

The willow is too close to the house.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

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

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

T R E 4 5 O N

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Nerd Alert Updates

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Nerd Alert Updates

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It’s been a busy week. What else did we miss, while glued to the DNC news? What’s on the agenda for the weekend?

***********

From NYMag‘s Vulture blog:

… Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of the beloved book A Wrinkle in Time just got blessed from on-high, as Oprah Winfrey has entered final negotiations for the role of Mrs. Which. Mrs. Which is one of three celestial beings that accompany the story’s protagonists on their journey to find the father of the only girl in the group, Meg…

DuVernay has not directed a feature film since 2014’s Selma, which also featured Oprah, flung both her and star David Oyelowo into the mainstream consciousness. She famously turned down an offer to helm Marvel’s Black Panther, saying she didn’t know if she could give it the identity of “an Ava DuVernay film,” but apparently felt comfortable enough with Marvel’s parent company, Disney, to proceed with bringing Madeleine L’Engle’s story to life under their banner. You will be able to give DuVernay and Oprah more of your money sometime in 2017.

pokemon no keith knight

(Keith Knight via GoComics.com)
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Reader Interactions

285Comments

  1. 1.

    satby

    Ha! Good morning all! I’m off the read the overnight threads.

    Baud, I wasn’t away, my ISP is down, so I’m using my cell briefly as a hotspot. But trying not to blow my data plan. AT&T isn’t sending a tech til Monday.

  2. 2.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    Trump spent 11 minutes yesterday reminding everyone of all the horrible things he has said. It was a full on Captain Queeq rambling meltdown about the strawberries. (video)

    Sopan Deb ‏@SopanDeb

    Trump is right now doing a greatest hits tour of all the times he’s said something that has offended a large group of people in 2016 cycle.

    234 retweets 353 likes

    Sopan Deb ‏@SopanDeb

    Trump on Serge Kovaleski: “I didn’t know he was disabled. I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it all. I had no idea.”

    69 retweets 64 likes

    Sopan Deb ‏@SopanDeb

    Trump is right now once again claiming that he was right about thousands of Arabs celebrating 9/11 on the rooftops of NJ. They weren’t.

    337 retweets 281 likes

    Sopan Deb ‏@SopanDeb

    My goodness. Trump is now rehashing the Megyn Kelly “blood come out of her” controversy right now. And the mocking of a NYT reporter.

    201 retweets 168 likes

  6. 6.

    Big R

    Good morning from Warsaw. Yesterday I returned early on the recommendation of a fellow Alabama alumna, who urged me to visit Polin, the Museum of the History of Jews in Poland. And what a phenomenal thing it was. A thousand years of a unique culture, and so much more than the destination that we all know it’s rattling toward.

    It felt like drinking from a fire hose, but my experience has been that the best museums always do. I did something I never do: bought the museum catalog so I could review it more leisurely. Today’s agenda: I am at the Warsaw airport getting ready to leave. I have four days in Istanbul ahead of me. New mantra: head down, mouth shut, zero detentions.

  10. 10.

    Kay

    Good news:

    A federal appeals court tossed out North Carolina’s voter identification requirement, and a federal judge ruled that parts of Wisconsin’s voter ID law are unconstitutional.

    The North Carolina decision is particularly damning. Targeted AA voters with “surgical precision”. They asked for data on which groups relied upon which ID and then disallowed the forms of ID used by African Americans. They also looked at early vote data and cut early voting days with high AA voter participation.

    Cutting early voting should always set off alarms, because it’s inexplicable- people love early voting and it makes elections run more smoothly. The North Carolina law went in immediately after the conservatives on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. If we’re looking at when and why racism became mainstream and overt in the GOP, the Roberts court should get some of the credit. Serious Conservatives. The brain trust. The intellectual leaders of the conservative movement.

  11. 11.

    Kay

    The Bush Administration voter suppression people were obsessed with Milwaukee. It’s like Ground Zero of all the bullshit stories about “voter fraud”. The WSJ started pushing the story that there was massive voter fraud in Milwaukee beginning in 2000, on the editorial page. This was coordinated and deliberate. Wisconsin drives them crazy because Democrats win it on only 3 counties. If they can suppress the AA vote they can get it close enough to steal.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    @Kay:
    @Kay:

    It’s also why they are holding on to judicial appointments like their party depends on it. Because it does.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    There’s been an uptick in anti-Hillary posts on the Reddit front page. I think the convention scared the libertarians who hang out there.

  15. 15.

    gene108

    So did Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican who is locked in one of the country’s tightest races for governor. “Photo IDs are required to purchase Sudafed, cash a check, board an airplane or enter a federal courtroom,” Mr. McCrory said. “Yet three Democratic judges are undermining the integrity of our elections while also maligning our state.”

    From Kay’s NYT link.

    I wish people would point out that (a) harm can be caused, when too much cold medicine is bought or unauthorized people enter a federal courthouse, (b) cashing a check is an act between private parties, who agree to the terms of the transaction and (c) none of these activities are protected by four Cinstitutional amendments, unlike voting rights.

    @Kay:

    The North Carolina law went in immediately after the conservatives on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. If we’re looking at when and why racism became mainstream and overt in the GOP, the Roberts court should get some of the credit. Serious Conservatives. The brain trust. The intellectual leaders of the conservative movement.

    It is not racist, unless you publicly use racial slurs.

    Everything else has plausible deniability.

    It can also be argued Reoublicans are not explicitly racist here, because they also went after college students of all races. It is just a naked way to maintain power at all costs, because they know their agenda is not popular with many voters, who do not benefit from tax cuts for the rich and a gutting of social services.

  16. 16.

    debbie

    Question: I just listened to a local roundtable. There was a “Republican strategist” who claimed Bernie supporters chanted “Lock her up.” I didn’t hear this, but I wasn’t listening all the time. Can anyone verify the truth in this?

  17. 17.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    There’s been an uptick in anti-Hillary posts on the Reddit front page. I think the convention scared the libertarians who hang out there.

    Interesting. You would think they would spend more time praising Gary Johnson. I still don’t know much about him, but in a recent radio interview I heard, he came across as happier and more tolerant than most Libertarians I’ve come across. He was also pro choice, which always seemed to me to be a rational Libertarian position, and made me wonder how these people ever attached themselves to the GOP.

    I guess I could understand a Libertarian objection to the Democrats on “small government” grounds.

    But are these people attacking Clinton? What’s their beef?

  18. 18.

    Baud

    @debbie: I remember it being reported that it was chanted outside on the eve or first day of the convention. Not sure about inside the hall.

  19. 19.

    delk

    In other Jackson Park news:
    Yoko Ono’s only permanent artwork in North America, titled Sky Landing, is scheduled to be installed in September in Jackson Park.

    In other Oprah news:
    Harpo Studios where she filmed her talk show and pretty much made my neighborhood is in the process of being torn down. McDonalds is moving their corporate HQ to the location.

  20. 20.

    satby

    @debbie: @Baud: You know, I initially wondered why the disrupters didn’t get their credentials yanked, but that probably would have made them a huge distraction from the convention, and an irresistible chew toy for the media. Ignoring them into complete irrelevance was the right move.

  21. 21.

    Baud

    @Brachiator:

    These guys on Reddit are mostly Bros, I think. They had an active Pauline community for a while, and then moved on to Bernie. I don’t think they feel love for Johnson, who is no Ron Paul. So they mock Hillary instead. Not too different from how the GOP conducted their convention.

    Normal caveats apply, of course, when trying to describe the culture of an anonymous online community.

  23. 23.

    Lurking Canadian

    @gene108: Wasn’t there a past voter suppression law that was successfully defended on the grounds of “No, Your Honor, we weren’t trying to suppress Black votes. We were trying to suppress Democratic votes! That’s totally cool right?”

  25. 25.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:
    I really miss you not doing front paging. No way that we can get you to do one on the series of decisions that have come down on the side of right?

  28. 28.

    Barb2

    Sane people are very worried about these security briefing Trump will be getting. I live in an area with a lot of retired military and retired military contractors. I grew up on military bases where a large majority of the military had – need to know – secret and top secret ratings. That “need to know” was stressed often by my dad.

    It’s doubtful Trump has the intelligence to understand a fraction of the security briefing. Or the fact that lives are at stake. He has no empathy.

    This keeps me up at night. Way back when I lived on military bases, military dependents were told to never ever tell anyone what our dad did. If we told the wrong person – our dad might not ever come home. WW II military posters gave kids the same message. The message was recycled to the Cold War era.

  31. 31.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @delk: I had heard about the McDonald’s move to the West Loop. I worked for them many moons ago in Oak Brook, which is a beautiful campus. Between Google and McD, can’t imagine the impact on the neighborhood (west loop, for clarification. Antecedents matter.) It was already getting congested and overbuilt when I sold my condo and moved out one year ago.

  32. 32.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    So happily, courts have now overturned Texas and NC. Have any voter suppression laws/bills been upheld by courts? I don’t remember hearing of any.

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    @satby: It would have been a “both sides” story: Democrats throw protesters out of their convention, just like Donald Trump screams for his fans to beat the shit out of protesters at his rallies! Both sides.

  35. 35.

    Shalimar

    I heard on the MSNBC yesterday that the Trump campaign has no events scheduled for the weekend. So Yay?!?!, I guess, 2 full days of twitter offenses where Trump makes lots of new enemies based on whatever he was offended by from the convention.

  36. 36.

    Quinerly

    @Barb2:
    I really think classified info that he has been briefed on will come out in the debates (if he shows up). They will be trying to prepare him for debates shortly…he won’t be able to keep his sources straight. He has the attention span of a gnat.

  37. 37.

    mike in dc

    One of the big things about winning the election, and getting SCOTUS appointments: knocking out most voter ID laws, allowing Congress to write a law that takes a chunk out of Citizens United, maybe even dialing back partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts. All of those things, combined with demographic changes, could lead to an enduring Democratic majority and force the Republican establishment to evolve or perish(i.e., shift their policy proposals towards the center(toward the left from their perspective)).

  39. 39.

    Shalimar

    @debbie:Neither Cruz or Kasich is running for anything this year, so Trump’s pledge to fund PACs against them is a vague threat for the future. Given his attention span, it seems very unlikely he ever actually does it.

  40. 40.

    Nominus

    @Brachiator: years of the Clinton conspiracy narrative makes them think that they were the ones who decided that the Clintons couldn’t be trusted. Now they don’t question it, it is just a Known Fact that the Clintons are corrupt, liars, etc.

    It’s taking a while to challenge them on it, because fronts assaults on the stupidity of that belief just make them double down on it.

  41. 41.

    mike in dc

    @Shalimar:
    If Trump loses the election badly, he will have zero enduring power within the GOP. I also think he’s going to lose the Trump U. lawsuit badly and be faced with another bankruptcy.

  42. 42.

    aimai

    @Kay: There’s a diary up at dailykos about this. Apparently its a Kossack who, being local and being politically involved, had the bright idea of number crunching the data on the polling places and turned the data over to the NAACP where it was used in the case.

    Doc is a scientist. He thinks in terms of data and facts. At some point, probably on the long drive home, he got the idea that while people were largely talking in theory about how limiting polling places would disenfranchise black voters in the state, the data was there to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. All that was needed was for someone to analyze it.

    So he called some friends who are experts at this and convinced them to give their time (a lot of it) and talents. And then they set about analyzing everything they could get their hands on. They mapped polling locations before the laws were passed and after the laws were passed against the demographic information of every registered voter in North Carolina. What they found was stunning. It was also irrefutable.

  43. 43.

    aimai

    @mike in dc: I don’t know about that. If Trump’s various businesss go belly up I figure he’ll try out the Palin/Newt style grift for a few years, hawking white supremacist/trump paraphernalia on a national and international circuit. Doesn’t mean it will be lucrative, but it might be all he has.

  45. 45.

    MattF

    @mike in dc: Major economic, political, and moral bankrupcies are all possible in the endgame. I think there’s a real possibility of a major flame-out before the very end. If there is, Trump could drag a large part of the R party down with him.

  52. 52.

    MattF

    @Nominus: It’s also the core of a whole array of beliefs of varying degrees of idiocy. Even if you succeed in raising doubts about one belief, the believer can always retreat to a somewhat less ridiculous position.

  53. 53.

    aimai

    @rikyrah: Thank you–its a fascinating and important case. I’m kind of shocked that, with all their experience of this issue, this kind of number crunching wasn’t already part of the standard background to the case. Like you think it would be part of the package of information that the lawyers always request to have at their fingertips.

  55. 55.

    HRA

    Right now the second day has dawned on no water for us from a water break on the next street.

    On the last 2 days of the convention, my R husband was home watching it with me and making annoying comments during some speeches. I began to slowly break my silence about them. I could not believe this was the same man who when was told his fellow Marine could not ride in the white only RR car and he chose to ride in the Black car with his friend to go home on leave. He also voted twice for Obama. During the president’s speech, it looked like he was turning back from the R talking points. The next day he went back to them. I found out there was a lot of misinformation I had to correct with the truth. The speeches of the Rev. Barber, Mr. Kahn and General Allen greatly helped in shutting him up. He liked them although he did not say it and he liked Hilary’s speech. Finally, I said you are doing this on purpose to aggravate me and he laughed where I knew I was right. I have 100 days till I get him to go vote with me for Hilary. Whew!

  56. 56.

    ThresherK

    @rikyrah: It’s post-convention. Labor Day weekend 2008 was the beginning of the press’ drunken infatuation with Sarah Palin, followed about four days later, by the sobering up and hangover.

  57. 57.

    amk

    @rikyrah:

    The Chronicle editorial page does not typically endorse early in an election cycle; we prefer waiting for the campaign to play out and for issues to emerge and be addressed. We make an exception in the 2016 presidential race, because the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is not merely political. It is something much more basic than party preference.

    An election between the Democrat Clinton and, let’s say, the Republican Jeb Bush or John Kasich or Marco Rubio, even the hyper-ideological Ted Cruz, would spark a much-needed debate about the role of government and the nation’s future, about each candidate’s experience and abilities. But those Republican hopefuls have been vanquished. To choose the candidate who defeated them – fairly and decisively, we should point out – is to repudiate the most basic notions of competence and capability.

    Any one of Trump’s less-than-sterling qualities – his erratic temperament, his dodgy business practices, his racism, his Putin-like strongman inclinations and faux-populist demagoguery, his contempt for the rule of law, his ignorance – is enough to be disqualifying. His convention-speech comment, “I alone can fix it,” should make every American shudder. He is, we believe, a danger to the Republic.

  62. 62.

    mike in dc

    Will be fascinating to see the contorted, tortured logic the Wall Street Journal will use for their endorsement of Trump.

  66. 66.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    Two interesting articles on Trump have me thinking this morning – Oliver Willis’ Trumpism is a cult so nothing will be able to sway his voters away from him.

    David Frum distills the thinking of a Trump supporter which is, as we already know, simply white nationalism.

    The Frum article raises the specter of a large, hidden, solidifying white vote that will turn out in numbers heretofore unseen. Not buying it. I think that’s a fiction that white men tell themselves in the face of reality, backing up the Willis cult theory. Interesting that both Trump and Sanders followers ended up being cult like, and both consisting of overwhelmingly white/males. Sad!

  67. 67.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator:

    He was also pro choice, which always seemed to me to be a rational Libertarian position, and made me wonder how these people ever attached themselves to the GOP.

    Taxes and guns trump everything else. Also most libertarians are men, though this is not universal.

  71. 71.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator: …Also, libertarians historically were really, REALLY pissed off by civil-rights laws that prevent racial discrimination by private, non-government entities. Most will still tell you they’re opposed in principle.

  72. 72.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @aimai:
    He owns 10s, maybe 100s, of millions of dollars in NYC real estate. I assume a lot of it is mortgaged but even at that I doubt he will ever have to live even a middle-class life. Unless there is a huge crash in property values he will skate. Probably leave his kids a little gift when he goes too.

  73. 73.

    Kropadope

    @Matt McIrvin: Well, if avoiding ill-advised wars and ending our global military presence is more important to you than keeping the EPA and the DOE…

  74. 74.

    Eric U.

    I don’t really understand how polling places are provisioned here in Pennsylvania. If you are out in the sticks, walk right in to vote, no lines. Takes longer to run the gauntlet of people that want to gossip than anything else. Anywhere in town, long lines, people I know waited hours to vote. Many people can’t afford to do that. I did some poll watching in a rural area, they had a full setup of judges for 20 registered voters. There was another precinct voting in the building next door that had another set of judges. It’s clear that in a lot of areas, this is a form of voter suppression. I’m not sure about this area, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Not sure why it doesn’t get more attention.

  76. 76.

    Matt McIrvin

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: If turnout numbers for Trump were set to confound all predictions, you’d think the effect would have been visible in the Republican primary race. But it wasn’t. Trump surprised pundits, but he didn’t outperform his poll numbers, by and large. Ted Cruz was consistently outperforming for a while.

    I tell this to people and they argue that that’s different because it was a primary… but it seems to me that since primaries tend to be lower-turnout and sample the most enthusiastically partisan voters, they ought to exaggerate differential turnout effects, not understate them.

  77. 77.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @amk:

    Are there so many more white men out there who sat out 2008 and 2012, and now are waking up and saying, oh shit I forgot to vote for my racial self interest? Enough to make up for the diminishing number of votes he’ll get from *those people*? Frum’s article seems to imply that the Trumpsters think there’s also a hidden and solidifying number of minority votes that also will break for Trump’s white nationalism. That strikes me as a bit delusional.

  78. 78.

    ThresherK

    @Matt McIrvin: Libertarians and pro-choice? They get to have it both ways. You’ll find more than a few whose idea of pro-choice or gay rights or the right to vote is outweighed by “unless a state legislature passes a bill…”.

  79. 79.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kropadope: Though there were exceptions, most of the so-called libertarians on the Internet were as enthusiastic as any liberal hawk about invading Iraq. Maybe more so. There are lots of quotes from Starship Troopers they can pull out on the occasion.

  80. 80.

    MattF

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: I think there’s a continuing and pervasive bias that simply discounts the votes of women and minorities. Just look at the genuine surprise and dismay at Obama’s two Presidential victories. The obvious reason Obama won the two campaigns and won easily is that he got a lot more votes. The astonishment is just unwarranted.

  81. 81.

    Baud

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    the specter of a large, hidden, solidifying white vote that will turn out in numbers

    I agree with you that it’s not likely, but it’s sadly not impossible.

    We also have no way of knowing how many white women are hidden Hillary supporters.

  82. 82.

    Denali

    Could someone please tell me why Wikileaks/Julian Assange/Glen Greenwald are trying to take down Hillary Clinton. Do they really want Trump to win?

  83. 83.

    Baud

    @Kropadope:

    Well, if avoiding ill-advised wars and ending our global military presence is more important to you than keeping the EPA and the DOE…

    I don’t buy that. Trump isn’t running as a pacifist.

  84. 84.

    ThresherK

    @Matt McIrvin: Wait, the book or the movie? I never read the book (which I hear doesn’t know it’s fascisty), but I always took the movie as a satire, sort of a space-age dressing up of the Hitler Youth.

  87. 87.

    Emma

    @Denali: They want Hillary to lose. Also, they don’t give a crap about Trump. They’re well insulated from the fallout.

  89. 89.

    D58826

    @gene108: and (d) if there is some obscure reason for voter-id then use forms of id that all citizens have access to. The Tx law allows for concealed carry permits but not student ids. Obviously the CC folks skew GOP and the students democratic

  92. 92.

    Matt McIrvin

    @ThresherK: The book. Libertarians love Heinlein more than anything. They know the movie is mocking the book and they regard it as a foul perversion.

  95. 95.

    Baud

    One thing that gets me is that we’ve hearing for years now about the 1%. But Trump is promising them huge tax cuts while Clinton is proposing to increase their taxes to pay for new programs, and that difference doesn’t seem to have really entered the conversation.

    To her credit, Clinton mentioned it in her acceptance speech and again at the Harrisburg rally yesterday. But where are all the voices that were so angry for so long.

  96. 96.

    mike in dc

    @Baud:

    Trump only wins via the most racially polarized voting in modern history. Based on Clinton getting 80+% of the latino vote, 90+% of the black vote, and 70+% of the Asian-American vote, and non-white voter share being between 30 and 33% of the total electorate, she’s going to pull 85-90% of that, or 26-30 points. Trump is currently losing among college educated whites, and barely ahead among white women overall. He will need an extremely high percentage of non-college-educated whites, particularly white males, in order to win under these conditions. I think his overall ceiling with white males is maybe 65-70%(including college educated white males), and with white women at least 10 points less than that. Trump needs at least 65-67% of the white vote in order to win, and there are probably scenarios where he could get 70% and still lose. But 80+% of non-college-educated white males voting for him is an ugly phenomenon.

  98. 98.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @ThresherK:
    I was a huge Heinlein fan & read Trooper as a teen. Even then I was appalled at the fascist nature of the book. The author said he wanted to write a book with a good and necessary war, it was why he chose bugs, nobody would defend bugs. But the society he built around it was militaristic to a comical degree. It is exactly the sort of story a 14 year old would buy into.

    BTW – RAH himself ran for Congress as a Democrat just after WWII but very much considered himself a libertarian, anti-government guy. He also testified before Congress to save funding for NASA based on the technology they had developed that saved his life! He didn’t seem to understand that was government interference I guess.

  99. 99.

    MattF

    @BruceFromOhio: Republicans tried all that messaging in their primaries and got nowhere. The 1980s R constituencies have wised up– the hope is that messaging will work for the 2016 Dems. We hope so, but we shall see.

  101. 101.

    Baud

    @mike in dc: Right. I know the odds are in our favor. But they’re less than 100%.

    But 80+% of non-college-educated white males voting for him is an ugly phenomenon.

    It really is. I know a lot of good people have been pushing to get the Dems to be more in line with labor, and numbers like this would make that harder IMHO.

  102. 102.

    ThresherK

    @Schlemazel Khan: I won’t bother reading him.

    One thing I liked about the movie was the bugs. After “Independence Day” the previous year (which I never liked), the CGI overdose in action movies seemed to defeat the goal of scaring an audience. The vision of having laser-rifle-carrying soldiers kill that one bug-creature, to turn a corner and see thousands of them, certainly scared me.

  103. 103.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Baud:

    If Hillary can get Florida and Ohio, Trump’s done. Kasich seems to think Trump won’t win Ohio. If Sherrod Brown can be elected, and remain popular there, it’s going to be an uphill climb there for Trump.

  105. 105.

    Soylent Green

    A majority of Americans don’t like Hillary Clinton. I get asked “so you like Hillary now?” by fellow lifetime Democrats here in my reliably blue state, and when I say yes I do and I think she will be a very good president, they tell me they don’t trust her. On whatever shaky grounds, this is the baseline view that has been ingrained in many people’s minds. I can make a reasoned argument as to why they shouldn’t feel this way, but reasoning doesn’t sway them. We can chalk it up to decades of GOP lies, made-up scandals, and the growing incompetence of the news media, but the damage has been done.

    The end result will be depressed turnout. Voters who are not excited by their candidate will find excuses not to vote. Polls give us an idea of how motivated voters will cast their ballots but don’t tell us how many will stay home. I’m most worried about large numbers of Sanders supporters who don’t share my allegiance to the party.

  106. 106.

    mike in dc

    I thought that Verhoeven made a perfect satire of war propaganda films. Robocop was also satirical, and even Total Recall has some satirical touches in it.

  107. 107.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Baud:

    White identity politics Trumps disdain for the economic elites. I think we’ve seen enough.

  108. 108.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Baud:
    Sadly, labor abandoned the Dems around 1980. It was a combination of the ‘Southern Strategy’, VIet Nam and the mistaken belief that they were over taxed. Without their support the Dems were forced to rely more and more of minority voters and women. They also lost a lot of elections, you may have noticed. Of course labor has taken a terrible beating in the last 30 years because they abandoned the Democrats and that has led, perversely, to them being more angry and more resentful and more open to the shitty messages of the GOP. I am hoping this is their last hurrah and workers will return to the Dems and the Dems will be able to reward them with a much better economy and worker safety and rights.

  109. 109.

    Quinerly

    @Denali:
    Great piece on why this morning on NPR. And, yes, I know…NPR. It still was a great piece. Second hour of Saturday Morning Edition.

  110. 110.

    Shalimar

    @Schlemazel Khan: As anyone who has ever been underwater on a mortgage or car loan knows, just because Trump owns billions of dollars in real estate doesn’t mean his liabilities aren’t even greater than that. He could realistically have nothing left after this election season beyond a heavily-tarnished brand.

  111. 111.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    I would love to see Hillary propose a lowering of the SS retirement age to 62.5 for full benefits. It would appeal to everyone young and old, and might even make a difference in the House races.

  113. 113.

    scav

    @Xantar: “hypocrites because they make money shooting people on screen.” Does the same cry of indignation arise because certain actors are faithful in the actual marriages because thet make money playing adulteres on screen? Or that they obey traffic and jewel heist laws when how many oceans are we up to? Distinguishing reality from flickerings of light on da big screen or da Teevee doesn t seem to be their strong suit. Not a new observation, but they do seep insisting on providing better examples of it.

  115. 115.

    gogol's wife

    @Davebo:

    Wow. “Any one of Trump’s less-than-sterling qualities – his erratic temperament, his dodgy business practices, his racism, his Putin-like strongman inclinations and faux-populist demagoguery, his contempt for the rule of law, his ignorance – is enough to be disqualifying. His convention-speech comment, “I alone can fix it,” should make every American shudder. He is, we believe, a danger to the Republic.” Houston, we have a problem.

  117. 117.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @ThresherK:
    He has some very good space operas but that book and Farnam’s Freehold are nutzo. His later books became fixated on living forever and the last couple really ran down hill. He does have some that are worth reading if you like Sci-fi, He is up there with Asimov, Bradbury and Clark even if some of his works have that libertarian malarkey in them.

  119. 119.

    Matt McIrvin

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: If Hillary can get Florida OR Ohio, Trump’s done.

    It’s very hard for him to win even if she loses both Florida and Ohio but holds Pennsylvania. To have a decent shot, Trump has to win all three. Clinton can afford to lose two. She even has a way to win if Trump gets all three but she holds NC, NV and IA, but I think that is very unlikely–in a national situation where Trump is winning PA, FL and OH he’s probably getting one of those states too.

    So it really comes down to PA, FL and OH, but Hillary has the advantage because Trump needs to run the table.

    The electoral-vote mechanics are almost identical to Obama vs. Romney 2012. The main differences in the map are that Hillary is stronger in North Carolina and weaker in Nevada and Iowa.

  122. 122.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @MattF:
    If they did they didn’t vote that way. Also, I hear an awful lot of anti-union BS coming out of the mouths of people who should see the benefit of strong unions. One of the great con jobs of the 20th century was convincing workers that unions are evil.

  123. 123.

    Emma

    @Soylent Green: There’s an answer to that: Even if I didn’t like her I’m voting for her because the alternative would be a fascist state. Are you willing to put up with the consequences of that?

  124. 124.

    rikyrah

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    If Hillary can get Florida and Ohio, Trump’s done. Kasich seems to think Trump won’t win Ohio. If Sherrod Brown can be elected, and remain popular there, it’s going to be an uphill climb there for Trump.

    Ok, I keep on going back to that NYT interactive map on the combinations to 270.

    Hillary had over 900.
    Ferret Head had less than 80.

    If Hillary wins Florida?

    Ferret Head has ONE.

    G-O-T-V

  128. 128.

    mike in dc

    @liberal:

    The guy’s killed tens of thousands but we should leave him in there and reconsolidate his hold over the country? I think there are legitimate arguments on both sides of this, but I don’t think wanting Assad’s ouster makes her “horrible”. It depends upon how she intends to accomplish that, and what the plans are for post-Assad.

  129. 129.

    Soylent Green

    @Shalimar: He might lose his real-estate and hotel profits, but will make up for it in wingnut welfare. Book sales, speaking fees, maybe a TV channel. His old brand may suffer but he will get a good ride from the new one.

  130. 130.

    Baud

    @Emma: If they are talking about how much they dislike her, they probably don’t care much about fascism.

    They might be receptive to the argument that we need to balance out the Republican house. Few people believe like we do that the federal government should be in the hands of one party.

  132. 132.

    Shalimar

    @MattF: Oh no, Hillary will escalate the war. Whereas, I suspect Trump’s secret plan is to nuke Syria and half of Iraq, which would eliminate the problem so we never have to escalate again.

  134. 134.

    Soylent Green

    @Emma: Of course likely voters will understand they have no choice. But depressed turnout could make the usual battleground states — and this time around the upper midwest — a lot more iffy.

  136. 136.

    Baud

    @Emma:
    @Baud:

    Another thing that might work is that she’ll have a better team even if she isn’t great. And that she wouldn’t do anything that would make Obama look bad since she gets support from the black community, so that will constrain her.

    The logical isn’t necessarily your friend here.

  137. 137.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Schlemazel Khan:
    Here is a longish commentary on Stranger in a Strange Land that touches on RAHs place in the sci-fi universe
    Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

    The first science-fiction work to enter the New York Times Book Review’s bestseller list, Stranger sold 100,000 copies in hardcover and over five million in paperback. Kurt Vonnegut gloated on Heinlein’s behalf, on the occasion of the novel’s 30th “birthday,” calling it “a wonderfully humanizing artifact for those who can enjoy thinking about the place of human beings not at a dinner table but in the universe.”

    And this book’s influence (and that of Heinlein’s other books) can’t be overstated. Arthur D. Hlavaty refers to Heinlein as a prototypical science-fiction author, saying:

    One of the ways human beings organize the world is by prototypes. We define a set as a typical example and a bunch of other things that are like it. For instance, when I was growing up, the prototype Writer was Shakespeare, the Artist was Rembrandt, and the Composer was Beethoven.In that way, Robert A. Heinlein has been often been taken as the prototype Science Fiction Writer, and as changes and new paradigms shake the field, he still sometimes represents the science fiction of the past.
    Writer Ted Gioia looks at Stranger in a Strange Land’s main character as a prototype for other similar characters in SF, saying: “Smith is more than a character. He is prototype of an alternative personality structure. The question of whether we can remake the human personality from the ground up.” To date, there have been 28 editions of this book.

    As with many artists is best to ignore them as people & enjoy their creations

  138. 138.

    Matt McIrvin

    @mike in dc: I didn’t really like Verhoeven’s movie, probably because I was too familiar with the book–I called it a mockery of the book, but it’s not really; it’s a mockery of war propaganda in general with situations vaguely based on the book. If you wanted to take apart Starship Troopers the book (which includes a lot of cockamamie political lecturing) you could do it much more effectively than the movie did, since it has people doing stupid stuff that wasn’t in the book.

    Also, probably the most distinctive cool thing about the book was that it was one of the main works that introduced soldiers in armored mecha suits to science fiction, and the movie didn’t have that at all!

  139. 139.

    Baud

    @Soylent Green: The only thing that matters is the relative changen in turnout.

    And Hillary won OH and PA, so it’s not like she doesn’t have supporters there.

    ETA:. And FL.

  140. 140.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @rikyrah:

    Florida’s voting machines need to be hack proof, which is something we all need to add to the huge and growing pile of things to worry about.

  141. 141.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @mike in dc:
    It always amazes me that the supposed “real liberals” that pop up here, like BiP and this assclown, are such strong supporters of the oppressive and fascist Putin. I never saw liberals go all in for the USSR as is often claimed but theseguys sure do LUVs them some Putin

  142. 142.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Schlemazel Khan: I actually think Stranger in a Strange Land is where Heinlein’s writing really started to deteriorate. There’s a point about halfway through where the action just takes a left turn into crazytown, and most of Heinlein’s late books ended up doing that same thing. But I think its biggest fans actually like that–it was probably a case of coming along at the right historical moment.

    (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was after Stranger, though, and I liked that one, probably because I was a teenager and could read around all the libertarianism and the creepy sexist stuff).

  144. 144.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Kristine Smith:

    I wonder too – I think a lot of white men realize Trump is a dangerous buffoonish chaos agent, but won’t say it out loud – they merely either keep quiet when they’re with their peers, or go along to get along because white men fuck yeah! They’re thinking about their 401(k)s that are now recovered from 2008, and are too old to withstand another one of those chaotic events. There are a substantial amount of men, assumedly, who are at the age where their economic self interest may indeed Trump their racial one inside the voting booth.

    ETA: Which is why Bernie would have been a terrible candidate to be running against Trump, with his proposals requiring enormous tax increases and large scale intrusion of the government into sectors of the private economy. Talk about voters staying home if the choice were between those two angry white males.

  145. 145.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kristine Smith: I have no idea if anyone is hiding themselves from pollsters, but I strongly suspect that a lot of Hillary supporters, women particularly, are quiet about it because so many Hillary-haters are energetic assholes who are spoiling for a fight.

  148. 148.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Matt McIrvin:
    WHAT?!?! You think his novel of a 2000 year old man who goes back in time to have sex with his mother is a tour of crazytown?

    Yeah, just a little. I liked ‘moon’ and some of his early stuff. I read his juvenile works when I was one. They are very very much “Horatio Alger” stories of poor nerds who win fame, fortune and the love of very smart girls by being true to themselves and using their brains more than their brawn despite being ridiculed for being a dreamer and smart. For some reason those stories appealed to me . . .not sure why . . .

  149. 149.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Baud:

    I think Gallup’s last poll, released the week before the election, had Romney up by 2.

  150. 150.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    @Xantar: I get that Seagal is kind of an asshole and earns a lot of the disdain people throw at him, but as an Aikido practitioner he’s the real deal. I remember when he first appeared on the movie circuit and I would just watch those takedowns. “So that’s what shihonage is supposed to look like!”

    That doesn’t detract much from your point about SWAT teams though, as I don’t think Aikido has much relevance to what they do.

  151. 151.

    scav

    There are a lot of hidden, slow burning and hard to predict paths things take any more. How’s this for one? Lil Wayne mixtape ‘inspires’ Clinton speech say fans

    There has been no comment from Hillary Clinton or her team but Lil Wayne has been getting involved.
    He told reporters he was “cool with it” but admitted he had not seen the speech yet.
    He later posted this message of support for the Democrats candidate for president.

  152. 152.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Brachiator:

    But are these people attacking Clinton? What’s their beef?

    She has girly bits, so she’s cheating because the REAL world the Libertans want is Conan the Barbarian.

  156. 156.

    Tripod

    Stan Greenberg calls them the “Fuck You Boys”. Reliable white male GOP voters who have a penchant for going down the rabbit hole with whatever crackpot white male candidate they perceive as speaking truth to power. Ron Paul, Jessie Ventura, Ross Perot, etc. Some of them landed on Bernie Sanders this cycle.

  157. 157.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    Nate Silver Verified account
    ‏@NateSilver538

    First fully post-DNC poll I’ve seen shows a 10-point bounce for Clinton: http://www.rabaresearch.com/

    Nate doesn’t know this polling firm, but said they did a good job in the Missouri primary.

  158. 158.

    kent

    I’m late to the party, but for non-Chicagoans:

    Jackson Park is on the south side, near the University of Chicago. The greater area remains a site of tremendous poverty and relatively high amounts of violence. Other than visiting the Museum of Science & Industry at the far north end, typical middle-class whites do not normally visit Jackson Park.

    Well played Obamas.

  159. 159.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    Tripped the mod filter using some heretofore unknown trigger word – was it *poll*? I did not use the c word where games of chance occur. It sure wasn’t saying that Nate Silver has a post-DNC result that shows Clinton with a 10 point bounce.

    Now I’m out of mod – thanks AL!

  160. 160.

    D58826

    On twitter Nate. S. is seeing a 10 point jump for Hillary but they are newer polling outfits so his confidence level isn’t high. But still better up than down. Never mind

  161. 161.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Tripod:
    Having lived through the Jesse The Boobie Ventura event here on the tundra I can tell you exactly how it happened. The Boobie was a blank slate, he had no plan & no position on anything so everyone projected their beliefs on him. When I would ask people why they were supporting him the answer, depressingly, always boiled down to “he believes exactly what I believe”. There was no chance of his ever getting re-elected because there was no way he was not going to disappoint a large percentage of his followers when he actually did anything.

    Probably the first group he lost were young college students who believed Jesse was going to help control the cost of higher education. When he did the opposite they rallied at the capitol and The Boobie went out & called them names & insulted him. It only got worse after that. The highlight of his term was brokering a deal between the DFL and the GOP so that they each got half of what they wanted and he got a big reduction in the cost of licensing his toys, boat, snowmobile. dirt bikes etc.

  162. 162.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @kent:

    I recently finished “Devil in the White City”. Is the Museum of Science and Industry a holdover building from the fair, or is everything from that time gone?

  163. 163.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: If Hillary can get Florida and Ohio, Trump’s done. Kasich seems to think Trump won’t win Ohio. If Sherrod Brown can be elected, and remain popular there, it’s going to be an uphill climb there for Trump.

    It’ll be interesting to see how Kasich rolls the next couple of months, to see who him working against Trump (I’ve got to assume he’ll be more pro-Johnson than pro-Clinton) and Sherrod Brown for Clinton plays out in numbers.

  166. 166.

    batgirl

    @Soylent Green: I think the argument for people who don’t like/trust Hillary but lean Democratic is that the down ticket Democrats they vote for, i.e. Senate & House, will have no power to implement their agenda without a Democratic president. It isn’t just about how you feel about the top of the ticket.

    I’m in Illinois where many moderate Democrats regularly vote for Mark Kirk. While the GOP will sometimes release Kirk to prove his “moderate” bonafides, it only happens when it will not hurt the GOP agenda. Almost all Kirk’s “moderate” positions are symbolic, i.e. his support of a hearing for Garland. Ain’t gonna happen, and he knows it. In the end Kirk follows Republican marching orders. When you vote for Kirk, I tell them, you are not voting for the individual, but for the policies of the Republican party. Don’t fool yourself.

    When individuals vote for Hillary Clinton, they are voting for the policies of the Democratic party. You are voting for judges, legislation, etc. that support Democratic values.

    I actually heard a great defense of this by a radio host on Black radio here in Chicago the other day in response to a caller complaining about Hillary.

  167. 167.

    Brachiator

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    To those who keep repeating Hillary’s unfavorability ratings mantra of MSM remember that if anything Trump is even more unpopular than her.

    In almost every news story I have seen or heard, the unfavorable ratings of both Trump and Clinton are noted. Also noted is that these are historically low ratings. You can say it doesn’t tell the whole story, but this is accurate reporting, not just biased MSN mantra.

    Also, it is fair to say that right now, Clinton is liked and respected enough to lead in electoral polling. This emphasizes the need to get out the vote.

  168. 168.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Brachiator: If you compare the actual record and statements made by both. And the fact that HRC was viewed favorably when she was SoS tells us that the media and their biased reporting is in no small measure responsible for her unfavorability rating.

  169. 169.

    piratedan

    @Schlemazel Khan: I cut my teeth on Time for the Stars and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. . Heinlein went thru his phases as he aged, and while there is some stuff that is proto fascist dreck, there are others that are truly the types of stores that do allow you to expand your imagination.

  170. 170.

    japa21

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: My wife has been panicking every time she sees a poll with Trump close or ahead. I keep telling her, “Polls mean almost nothing at this time of year.”

    So I mentioned this to her and she immediately replied, “Polls mean almost nothing this time of year.” Not much I could say to that.

  171. 171.

    low-tech cyclist

    A Wrinkle In Time is one of my favorite books of all time, so I’m looking forward to seeing Oprah as Mrs. Which.

    I’m not sure what the NYMag blogger meant by referring to Meg Murry as “the only girl in the group” because the book is full of strong female characters, from Mrs. Murry to the Happy Medium and Aunt Beast. And of course the three celestial beings, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, represent as female.

    And of course, Meg is the protagonist and hero of the book. The story is her journey.

  172. 172.

    Amir Khalid

    In America you guys worry about voter turnout and suppression, about the accuracy of the pre-election polling. But I bet you’ve never had to worry about simian interference.

  176. 176.

    Baud

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    The Boobie was a blank slate, he had no plan & no position on anything so everyone projected their beliefs on him.

    While Obama is a billion times better than Ventura and did have a plan, I think some of that projection happened in 2008.

  177. 177.

    piratedan

    @Kristine Smith: I almost feel like the Media is afraid to go out there and do the following:

    1) expose Trump for what he is and say it in no uncertain terms. They won’t do this because they’re supposed to maintain the horse race narrative because they are revenue based, not information based… Which kind of makes our whole news process devolve into Entertainment weekly for current events which is no basis for an informed electorate over the public airwaves.
    2) do an accurate portrayal of who actually lives in America, the vast majority of people interviewed and accessed are white faces and overwhelmingly white males.

  178. 178.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @japa21:

    LOL. Exactly, but it does help to keep the panic at bay, and confirm what should comport with reality.

  180. 180.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: There was a steep, scary drop for Obama after the first debate, some recovery through the second and third ones, and more recovery right at the end. Lots of Republicans including a certain troll here insisted that Romney would have won if it weren’t for Hurricane Sandy, but as far as I can tell Obama was ahead before that.

  182. 182.

    Baud

    @Brachiator:
    @schrodinger’s cat:

    She can’t waste her time trying to debate her likeability. I would like her to respond, “I care more about being perceived as competent for the job, and I’ll let my favorablity rating take care of itself.”

  184. 184.

    redshirt

    @piratedan: Trump has shown he’ll block/exclude a news organization if he wants to – the WP, for example.

    So, if you’re CNN and you’re getting mad clicks/views for Trump related topics, why in the world would you threaten that revenue stream?

  185. 185.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kay: Every time I find myself thinking I’ve seen the depths of venality and just-plain straight up racism the GOP can descend to, I find that there are new, and lower, depths. : (

    @danielx: where in Colorado are you headed?

  186. 186.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Schlemazel Khan: Most of Heinlein’s early Future History stories and novellas are pretty great, if you like that sort of thing. The prose style is one that doesn’t play well with the youngsters today.

  187. 187.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I read somewhere that Obama’s internal polling indicated that all through that time nothing pointed to him losing, so they didn’t panic. I assume that Hillary will be the next beneficiary of the same kind of data crunching that worked so well for his campaign, which could turn on a dime and employ a laser like focus on certain geo and demographics. Relatively speaking there are only a handful of Cong. districts that really matter, national polling nothwithstanding.

  191. 191.

    Gene108

    @aimai:

    @rikyrah: Thank you–its a fascinating and important case. I’m kind of shocked that, with all their experience of this issue, this kind of number crunching wasn’t already part of the standard background to the case. Like you think it would be part of the package of information that the lawyers always request to have at their fingertips.

    Most folks go into law so they do not have to crunch numbers. People who like crunching numbers usually avoid law school.

    Kind of like why so few reporters know nothing about science and economics and can be easily persuaded by throwing numbers at them. People go into journalism to avoid number crunching.

  192. 192.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Also, libertarians historically were really, REALLY pissed off by civil-rights laws that prevent racial discrimination by private, non-government entities. Most will still tell you they’re opposed in principle.

    There has always been a strain of racism at the heart of the modern Libertarian movement. Libertarians I would talk to would often insist that segregation followed some natural law, some instinct, that people obeyed. And I could never find evidence of libertarians marching to oppose Jim Crow laws that supported public and government based discrimination.

    Or they would resort to idiotic and contradictory rationalizations. It just becomes tiresome. Even their crunchy groovy support for drug legalization is, well, dopey.

  193. 193.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    @redshirt: We saw it last night. I liked it a lot, despite a lot of plot elements that just didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I kept remembering something a director or writer once said about being just plausible enough to keep the audience with you and keep the movie going. So I just let it go.

    My forgiving-ness probably has a lot to do with the fact that I really, really love this cast. And the Spock-Uhura thing is great.

    BTW somebody remind me why Nimoy-Spock is part of this universe. Was there a time travel thing? I remember the two Spocks talking but I don’t remember the explanation.

  194. 194.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @piratedan:
    I started by accidentally finding “Podkane on Mars” when I was 12 or 13. “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel” followed & I was hooked. When “Stranger” came out I was way ahead of the pack in my high school group. I think it is hilarious that long haired hippy types took a pilgrimage to his house to knock on his door and meet their guru. I wonder how many were met with a shotgun!

  195. 195.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Baud:

    They’re following the blueprint of a twice triumphant winning coalition, with the architect – reputation and legacy at stake – in the background willing and able to offer help and advice. I like our chances.

  196. 196.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @C.S.:
    No, Queeg was a bad officer and mentally unstable. But all of that was made much worse by the attitude and behavior of his officers. Instead of making him better they made him worse.

  198. 198.

    Doug R

    @Schlemazel Khan: Most of his deals are other people’s money, he’s basically licensing his name. His share is a small percentage. This coupled with the millions in debt, there’s a good chance he has a net NEGATIVE worth. Wait until the Russian mobsters realize he can’t pay.

  199. 199.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Baud:
    ABSOLUTELY! I had that discussion with many during the primaries. He was never as liberal as so many of his supporters imagined. His record was clear & they expected way too much of him. He is, and always has been, a centrist, moderately progressing incremental change guy. But that is so much better than anything the GOP has had to offer since the threw Nelson Rockefeller out.

  200. 200.

    The Other Chuck

    When I read A Wrinkle in Time, I could only imagine Charles Wallace having the same voice as Stewie from Family Guy. I think Atlas Shrugged managed to have more realistic dialogue.

  201. 201.

    redshirt

    @Ceci n’est pas mon nym: I liked it too, only because it seemed like the first Nu-Trek movie to even attempt something cerebral, relatively.

    As for Spock and Nu-Spock, my Gods! I’m going to get a Trek question wrong. Shocking! Here goes: Old Spock appeared in the first “Nu-Trek” movie as a concrete example of the timeline changes which mean this is an alternate universe and not a continuation of TOS and TNG Trek. It also means “Enterprise” is the beginning of this alternate timeline.

  202. 202.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I enjoyed those books when I first read them, they are good stories but they do tour crazytown at times. But then many people love super hero comics, I don’t but I see that they can suspend disbelief for certain stories and I can for the ones I like. It is the same sort of thing.

  204. 204.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    She can’t waste her time trying to debate her likeability. I would like her to respond, “I care more about being perceived as competent for the job, and I’ll let my favorablity rating take care of itself.”

    I would never in a billion years suggest that Clinton should waste time debating her likability.

    But even your suggested response is an example of her responding to the issue.

    Also, any politician courts disaster with any approach that smacks of “I don’t care whether people like me…” Adlai Stevenson could not overcome the perception that he was a cold, distant egghead. And what was one of Eisenhower’s catchy campaign button tropes? I like Ike.

  205. 205.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Amir Khalid:
    I disagree, we have a lot of simians interfering with our elections from their perch in many legislative bodies around the country.

  206. 206.

    Miss Bianca

    @Matt McIrvin: I’m one of the least militaristic people I know, and yet I found “Starship Troopers” – the book, not the movie, haven’t seen the movie yet – to be strangely moving. The political lectures made me grind my teeth with their simplistic smugness, but what the book managed to do – which no other book, person, movie, or other source of information had managed to do – was make me understand the concept of esprit de corps. It didn’t make *me* want to go to war against bugs – or anything or anyone else – but for the first time I felt I really grokked why *others* might. And for that, I am actually grateful.

  207. 207.

    The Other Chuck

    @redshirt: 27% of the public is a pretty big market niche, actually. Trump Steaks and Vodka will be hawked alongside gold futures and survival kits on the wingnut grift network for all time.

  208. 208.

    C.S.

    @Schlemazel Khan:
    Right, and I agree, I just seemed to remember that as to his accusations — crazy as they were — that Queeg’s paranoid suspicions were basically correct. But I might be misremembering.

  209. 209.

    Baud

    @Brachiator: She’s going to be asked about it, probably at every debate. I agree she shouldn’t say “I don’t care”. But that’s not what I suggested.

  212. 212.

    redshirt

    @The Other Chuck: When Trump loses YUUGE this November, I doubt even the 27% will be jumping at the chance of buying Trump branded steaks.

    Sure, some will, and Trump will milk that. But his brand of high end hotels and golf courses and ca$in0s is over. Rich people won’t want to associate with a YUUGE LOOOSER.

  213. 213.

    Groucho48

    Trying to categorize Heinlein is a tough job, though, I would agree his political views hardened as he got old. His juveniles are great and hold up well e enough today as good stories with well thought out backgrounds. Hiss views on sex are problematic. Early on, he has a creepy tendency towards having pre-pubescent girls as love interests, though, to be fair, not as sexual beings. But, he also, starting in the 50’s, had strong, intelligent females as main characters. Then, as he got older, sex and romance in his books got really strange. And, yeah, there is no excuse for Farnham’s Freehold.

    Many of his stories involve solidly democratic world governments essentially run by hard working and dedicated bureaucrats.Same with the military. Starship Troopers posits a world in which only people who have done government service can vote or hold office. Now, the smoke and mirrors thing here us that Earth seems to be a pretty peaceful place,after a big world war which brought about the government service requirement. So, given that, until the bugs came along with the goal of wiping out humanity, it’s a bit unclear what all the people volunteering for government service would actually do. And how a couple years spent, say, mowing lawns on government property, would qualify you to be a good citizen.

    Given all that, the novel, itself, is quite a good coming of age S-F story and a good read.

  215. 215.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soylent Green: Gallup isn’t doing a presidential election tracking poll this year. They quit after they missed so badly in 2012. They’re doing favorability ratings, though.

  216. 216.

    p.a.

    anyone else see this alternative US flag lately? I’ve seen it 3 times in the last week. Is it meant to honor? Or divide/oppress? Think I know which. Hope I’m wrong.

  218. 218.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    They’re doing favorability ratings, though.

    Maybe that means America really loves Hillary!

    At least they had the integrity to quit when they failed.

  221. 221.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ceci n’est pas mon nym: It was a time travel thing. In the first Abrams movie, there was a disaster that wiped out the Romulans in the original Star Trek timeline, and the main bad guy was a Romulan who was pissed off at the Federation about this (it didn’t make a lot of sense) and traveled back in time in a huge spaceship to wreak havoc with the history of the Federation. And Old Spock was chasing him, basically. So he ended up marooned in the past in the other timeline.

  222. 222.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @p.a.:
    Black and blue together are the colors of the gay S&M community. They’d like this a lot

  224. 224.

    Groucho48

    @redshirt:

    Some folks hate that kind of thing, other folks like it. I happen to like it. Apparently, lots of other folks do, too, as powered suits like that have become a mainstay of military S-F.

  226. 226.

    Brachiator

    @redshirt:

    Speaking of nerd alerts, I finally saw the new Star Trek movie as contractually obligated.

    Anyone else see it? Thoughts?

    I think that the original director and script were dumped, but that the studio didn’t want to delay the release too long. I think that this resulted in some story problems and inconsistently rendered special effects.

    That said, I really liked the film. I think that all the main actors fit comfortably into their roles, and I also think that in this latest installment, Chris Pine is finally able to put his stamp on this incarnation of Kirk.

    My only reservation: I liked that there was a cerebral edge to the story, but I think that some of these themes should have been better developed and brought out earlier. And as with the Marvel universe, I think that using heavy masks and make up for the chief villains defeats the ability of the actors to deliver a strong performance.

    I also think that director Justin Lin did a great job and has a good visual imagination.

    I liked the early montage that gave you a look at daily life aboard the Enterprise. Overall a fun summer movie.

  228. 228.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Groucho48:
    I am not sure exactly what you have in mind with the under-aged girl stuff, I can’t think of a case except where the boy is also under age. He is very big on smart girls and even wrote female leads (Podkane for instance – which he wrote to shut up a female editor who told him he couldn’t write a female lead). But the mother thing really weirded me out.

  229. 229.

    amk

    (((Touré)))

    This race must be familiar for many women: she’s overqualified for the promotion, he’s unqualified, and yet it’s still a contest.

  230. 230.

    D58826

    @Schlemazel Khan: Vicious circle. He was a bad officer and did not inspire his officers to try and make him better. Other than Fred McMurray I don’t think they started out trying to be disloyal.

  231. 231.

    Amir Khalid

    @Groucho48:
    I’ve never been impressed by the practicality of powered combat suits. You’d need another army of mechanics and workshops, and a spare parts supply chain going all the way back to the factory. I just don’t see fitting al that into even the most generous military budget.

  232. 232.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    and one more…

    Matthew Yglesias ‏@mattyglesias
    Matthew Yglesias
    If by “now” you mean “since the 2004 smear campaign against John Kerry” then yes.
    Max Boot @ MaxBoot
    GOP has now become the party of people spitting on veterans home from war.

    and as I think Martin pointed out last night, it started at least as early as ’02 with Max Cleland

  233. 233.

    p.a.

    Yeah, had a feeling it was tribal. Can’t know the players without a program semiotics degree.

  235. 235.

    Groucho48

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    Well, Door into Summer is the main one I was thinking of. Have Spacesuit Will Travel, the guy was probably 16 or 17 and the girl was around 10.

  236. 236.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    She’s going to be asked about it, probably at every debate. I agree she shouldn’t say “I don’t care”. But that’s not what I suggested.

    I was saying that even “I care more about…” can be seen as a variation of “I don’t care…”

    You’re right that this might be brought up, especially in the debates. But who knows; maybe there will be some movement on likability as active campaigning begins.

  240. 240.

    hovercraft

    Politico reports that top Trump donors tried to arrange a meeting between Charles Koch and Herr Trump while he was in Colorado yesterday, but Koch said no. When will he get the respect he deserves, it’s just so unfair.

  241. 241.

    D58826

    @Steeplejack (phone): I have been creating the post and submitting it. Then going back with edit to add the naked link. A pain but seems to work most of the time for just a single link. .

  242. 242.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Schlemazel Khan: He didn’t get into the underage girl stuff until he got into the Lazarus Long stuff. Even then the Laz-Lor stuff could be explained around, but the stuff with Long’s mom and sisters struck a lot of people as skeevy.

    But Heinlein was into alt sexual lifestyles from way back. He had a menage a trois with his second wife Leslie and his third wife Ginny for quite a while, before Leslie’s alcohol abuse problems led to her being admitted to a rehab facility. Didn’t show up in his writing until Stranger, but then it was an element of most of his fiction afterward.

  243. 243.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @D58826:
    agreed. I think he would have been a bad Captain at any rate and he was unstable but lovable ‘ol Fred and his three sons made everything worse.

    The first time I had seen the movie I knew the story already and had seen the testimony scene (Bogart was a much better actor than most of his roles allowed). I was totally prepared for that. I was totally blown away by Jose Farrer and the ending. It changed the entire film & made it better. I wonder how the actual veterans of the war felt about it.

    BTW – on the McMurry role: I read Captain Winters autobiography about his time with the “Band of Brothers” One thing that came out way too clearly was that his problem with Sobel was that Sobel was a Jew. He also had some very unkind things to say about his good friend Lewis Nixon & a lot of that grew from his belief that Nixon was the “wrong” religion. Winters is very very lucky his book never became popular or BoB would have suffered from the truth that they intentionally torpedoed Soble because he was Jewish.

  244. 244.

    Brachiator

    @redshirt:

    The villain almost seemed beside the point in the film. I was more interested in the Yorktown base and what it means for the Federation,

    There was very little in the story that told us anything significant about the Yorktown. It was kinda the damsel in distress of the movie.

    I guess you could develop the Yorktown more in a tv series than in a movie. But budget constraints would be a problem, and it would be harder to have as impressive a star base.

  249. 249.

    redshirt

    @Brachiator: The Yorktown was the central point of the plot. It showed how far and how complex the Federation had become. It was a deep space space station made up of dozens of NYC’s made up of every alien species known to date. It is Roddenberry’s fictional future to a T.

    And it was was extremely vulnerable and should have been destroyed entirely… if not for the heroics of one ship’s crew….

  251. 251.

    Redshift

    @Soylent Green:

    I get asked “so you like Hillary now?” by fellow lifetime Democrats here in my reliably blue state, and when I say yes I do and I think she will be a very good president, they tell me they don’t trust her.

    My response would be the same as to the Republican acquaintance who tried to convince me I should vote for Bob Dole in ’96 because “you can’t trust Bill Clinton.” Even if that’s true, why should I vote for someone I can trust who says they’ll do things I’ll hate, rather than someone who says they’ll do things I like, but I don’t completely trust?

  252. 252.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    More pondering about why I like this latest iteration of Star Trek so much: the prominent roles of the junior officers. Perhaps I can credit Justin Lim with that. Examples: It’s very clear that Spock and Uhura are the big brains on the bridge and it’s wonderful when they get to problem-solve together. There’s a hair-raising ship navigation scene where Kirk basically hands it off to Sulu and Chekhov, working together, to coordinate the maneuver. Sulu has the captain’s chair at one point during a crisis and has to give actual split-second orders. And many more examples. The officers look like OFFICERS as well as real people.

    For just a minute in the beginning I was worried that Uhura was going to be relegated to the minor role that Sigourney Weaver’s character satirized so hilariously in Galaxy Quest (Kirk: Lieutenant, open hailing frequencies, Uhura: Yes, Captain). But much to my delight she has a major role and is clearly as I said one of the big minds on the bridge.

    Also I love the new character Jayla and hope and expect we’ll see more of her. Hopefully aboard the Enterprise.

    So I guess more than anything it’s the characters that I love about these movies, that have me geeking out.

  253. 253.

    japa21

    @hovercraft: Can’t wait until Trump says something about how unclassy the Koch brothers are and how he knows a lot about them that he won’t say right now, but, “believe me” it is yuuuge and would really embarrass them.

  254. 254.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    Aargh, latest FYWP bizarre symptom: If I edit an unmoderated comment (in this case to add the word “and”) it goes into moderation.

  255. 255.

    Brachiator

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    If you compare the actual record and statements made by both. And the fact that HRC was viewed favorably when she was SoS tells us that the media and their biased reporting is in no small measure responsible for her unfavorability rating.

    OK. I think I see what you are saying here, and I disagree. I don’t think that the media is entirely responsible for how Clinton is viewed. I certainly don’t think that biased reporting is responsible for Trump’s negative likability rating. He’s earned it all on his own.

  256. 256.

    Kristine Smith

    @piratedan:

    2) do an accurate portrayal of who actually lives in America, the vast majority of people interviewed and accessed are white faces and overwhelmingly white males.

    I’ve read more than once that the media are ignoring the POC vote, and they are overwhelmingly for HRC. One reason why this rollback of voter suppression laws is so important. And, of course, why the GOP pushed those laws through in the first place.

  257. 257.

    Brachiator

    @redshirt:

    The Yorktown was the central point of the plot. It showed how far and how complex the Federation had become. It was a deep space space station made up of dozens of NYC’s made up of every alien species known to date. It is Roddenberry’s fictional future to a T.

    For me it was just background. It didn’t tell me that much about the Federation, and I had to suspend my disbelief that it was, relatively speaking, so lightly defended.

  258. 258.

    japa21

    @Brachiator: I have read several places that if you look at the history of her favorability ratings, they always went down when she was running for something, but once in a position, i.e. senator of SoS they would go up. There is some theorizing that it is due to people being uncomfortable with a woman trying to be put into a position of power, but once there she is okay. This is more true for her due to all the “scandals” that accompany her.

  261. 261.

    Groucho48

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    Well, like I said, there wasn’t a sexual component, so it isn’t super creepy. And, for Spacesuit, I can see Heinlein wanting to put in a female character but without a sexual component, so, made her a kid. The Door Into Summer relationship is creepier, though. The protagonist an adult. His evil partner has a young step daughter. The protagonist has the role of her favorite uncle. Due to various plot points, he goes into frozen sleep for a few decades. Before he does, he asks the girl to also take the frozen sleep when she turns 21. She does, they both are awakened and get married.

  263. 263.

    gwangung

    @Brachiator:

    My only reservation: I liked that there was a cerebral edge to the story, but I think that some of these themes should have been better developed and brought out earlier. And as with the Marvel universe, I think that using heavy masks and make up for the chief villains defeats the ability of the actors to deliver a strong performance.

    Totally. Borrowing some themes from THE CAGE. And the shortened prep time showed most in the underdeveloped themes.

    People give shit to how masks get torn and discarded so much in genre movies, but there’s really a reason for it…

  264. 264.

    gwangung

    @rikyrah: Given that the enemy knew EVERYTHING about the Yorktown’s defenses, and the Yorktown knew nothing about the enemy, I would quibble over the term “lightly defended.”

  266. 266.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    Frum’s article seems to imply that the Trumpsters think there’s also a hidden and solidifying number of minority votes that also will break for Trump’s white nationalism. That strikes me as a bit delusional.

    Dunno if someone has already made this point, but…

    What else are the Trump people going to say? “Yeah, I got 0% of the AA vote in a couple of recent state polls, but it doesn’t matter. Yeah, I’ve got lower LatinoA and AsianA support than Rmoney. Yeah, the GOP hates me. Yeah, women hate me. But none of that matters. But I’m still gonna win yooooge!!”

    It’s the Baghdad Bob School of Playing the Press. Everyone can see Trump is a disaster, but the GOP syncophants have to keep pretending he has a chance. Trump’s people have to keep the grift going – Who knows?! Lightning might strike!!1 Frum has to still find a way to make a living with his writing, so he’s apparently going to play along.

    The election is clearly Hillary’s to lose. We have to do our best to make sure it’s a blowout, up and down the ticket, so that shenanigans don’t end up making the disaster we all fear occur.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  267. 267.

    redshirt

    @gwangung: I’d like to quibble with naming such a space station “Yorktown”. The “Yorktown” is a good name for a ship. Not so much for a space station.

    It should be New Manhattan or New Tokyo or some such. There are multiple huge downtowns in Yorktown. There must be some 50-100 million souls living on the space station. If not more.

    It’s such a hugely interesting place. And it almost got destroyed. And yet we got none of that.

  268. 268.

    J R in WV

    @Groucho48:

    Isn’t “Door into Summer” the book with the cat who could walk through walls? Into Summer?

    That would drive Cole berserk…

  269. 269.

    Groucho48

    But, as I mentioned, Heinlein is hard to categorize. Here’s a link to a brief discussion of strong female characters in his books.

    </aTunnel In the Sky (1955)
    A solid example of Heinlein’s view of the abilities and equality of men and women. Male and female high school student are on an equal par in the life/death survival test. The women survive better than the men, with the bulk of the stupidest fatal mistakes being done by the men. Among the many strong female characters in this story are:
    Helen Walker, Rod’s sister, assault captain in the Amazons, an all-female military unit that sounds not at all dainty.
    Jack (Jaqueline) Daudet, that Rod takes as male at first, clearly doing far better than Rod or Jim.
    Caroline Mshiyeni, as tough as they come, smart, strong, confident, Captain of the Guard.
    Add to the sound female role models and attitudes in this book, the bonus of a racially integrated cast where minority characters aren’t presented as anything other than characters. As well as Caroline Mshiyeni, the main character, Rod Walker, was black. Bear in mind, this book was written in 1955.
    more on Rod Walker's race in the FAQ

  271. 271.

    kent

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne

    Museum of Science & Industry is housed in the former Palace of Fine Arts from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Initially endowed by Julius Rosenwald, the Sears, Roebuck and Company president and philanthropist, it was supported by the Commercial Club of Chicago and opened in 1933 during the Century of Progress Exposition.

  272. 272.

    Dmbeaster

    @aimai: It takes either savvy volunteers or $$$ to assemble that type of data. Lawyers would always like such info, but getting it in a form that survives cross examination and persuades skeptics is difficult. I would bet the case was litigated on a modest budget.

  274. 274.

    J R in WV

    @Groucho48:

    Will and Ariel Durant, wrote “The Story of Civilization” 11-(fat ones too!)-volume work. Will was her teacher, IIRC Ariel was 15 when they married in 1913. He quit his job teaching at the school to marry her. They won awards for their work and died within weeks of one another in 1981. Not particularly skeevy.

    Nor was Bob Heinlein’s work with regard to age… he asked her to wake up at age 21, after all. No hint they did anything other than fall in love and rearrange their comparative ages to work that out. I’m going on your memory of that plot, I don’t recall it as I read the book in the 1960s – a very long time and many books ago. He wrote a lot of mostly adult relationships into many of his stuff, which is after all realistic. Grown ups have relationships, some of which are adult and some of which aren’t.

  275. 275.

    Anne Laurie

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    I was a huge Heinlein fan & read Trooper as a teen. Even then I was appalled at the fascist nature of the book. The author said he wanted to write a book with a good and necessary war, it was why he chose bugs, nobody would defend bugs. But the society he built around it was militaristic to a comical degree. It is exactly the sort of story a 14 year old would buy into.

    BTW – RAH himself ran for Congress as a Democrat just after WWII but very much considered himself a libertarian, anti-government guy. He also testified before Congress to save funding for NASA based on the technology they had developed that saved his life! He didn’t seem to understand that was government interference I guess.

    “No, see, Heinlein was a veteran! He was entitled to the best cutting-edge health care. Now if it was meant for mere civilians — you, know, women or kids or Those People — then it would’ve been a government boondoggle… ”

    Yes, I heard this argument more than once, back in the 1970s/80s. Even from Heinlein fans who were more into Stranger in A Strange Land than Starship Troopers, because FREEDOM (for the white men, and maybe their chosen concubines, if there was any to spare).

  276. 276.

    Groucho48

    @J R in WV:

    Well, even when I read it as a teen I found it a little strange for a 30-ish man to ask a pre teen to wait till she was 21, then sleep so they would awake at the same time so they could marry.

    And, yes, it seems even stranger considering all the strong adult women in his books. Not to mention the strong adult woman he married.

  277. 277.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @ThresherK: Some years back I did some contract work for the Army Surgeon General’s office. First time I went down there I was somewhat astonished to find the place festooned with nicely mounted Starship Troopers movie posters. I commented on this to the young officer escorting me & he said the SG loved the flick. After establishing the immediate area was unpopulated he murmured, He doesn’t realize it’s satire.

  278. 278.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Miss Bianca: One of the tells is that the protagonist ships on the Rodger Young (named after Medal of Honor recipient Rodger Wilton Young). IIRC the call to board is the chorus from “The Ballad of Rodger Young”:

    Shines the name: Rodger Young,
    Fought and died for the men he marched among.
    To the everlasting glory of the Infantry…

    What’s the old saying: You fight for your country, but you die for your friends. I never served but that makes complete sense to me.

  279. 279.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Groucho48:

    And, yeah, there is no excuse for Farnham’s Freehold.

    I haven’t read that one for years, but as I remember it, there may in fact be something of a tattered & frayed “excuse” for it.

    I think that what Heinlein wanted to do is take his (mostly white) audience through the looking glass to contemplate life as a minority subject to the treatment of the ruling majority. And that sort of role-reversal can be salutary. This old white guy (who’s lived in an 85% AA neighborhood for nearly 30 years now) never really understood what “white privilege” meant until after Ferguson, when I thought back over all my encounters with the police & asked myself, How would that probably have gone if I’d been a young black man?

    But Heinlein depicts the black rulers of that future as so immoral & inhumane (castration? cannibalism??) that most readers (with their own resistance to confronting the truth of white racism) couldn’t make the reversal; all they got out of FF was We can’t let those savages take over! Maybe that’s the fault of his own blind spots; maybe, aggravated by his post-WW2 political sharp-right turn, it was deliberate. I’d have to reread the book some day (if I have a copy here I sure as hell can’t find it now) to say any more. YMMV

  280. 280.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Groucho48: The best part of Heinlein’s SF is that he approached it as an engineer rather than a scientist: When establishing some key fact or technology, he would rarely dwell on the why but focus on the how. If the reader saw how the technology worked, or how some event affected the world of the setting, he (it was always a “he ” in those days) would buy into it, & that’s crucial for any speculative fiction.

    Now CGI is a great way to show the “how” of technology. You never have to ‘splain nothing: Just watch & you’ll see how it works! I didn’t see the movie (arachnophobia!!) but IMHO eschewing the power-suits whiffed on a golden opportunity (probably for production cost reasons).

  281. 281.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @D58826:

    Just use the “link” button above the comment box to dress up a hyperlink. It’s not hard at all.

    Write your plain-text comment, highlight the bit of text you want to contain the hyperlink, then press the “link” button to add the URL.

    The critical thing is to overwrite the HTTP prefix that FYWP supplies. If you end up with two prefixes, the link is screwed. That is by far the most common problem that people have.

  282. 282.

    Travels with Charley

    @Uncle Cosmo: I’m catching up after a long week, so this post may be way too late. But I was at the Army Surgeon General’s office 2000-2005 and the guy who loved Starship Troopers wasn’t the SG, it was the Director of Healthcare Operations. An ….unusual man, who I don’t think had read the book.

  283. 283.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Anne Laurie: Heinlein’s politics changed over time. Early on he was a Social Credit advocate, which is hard to place on a left-right spectrum (the modern Canadian version is fairly conservative, but that seems to have been a later modification). But many of his beliefs seem to have been roughly liberal. Some people claim that his wife Virginia gradually turned him into a hardcore libertarian starting in the late 1940s. And he seems to have been seriously disturbed by the Sixties counterculture and the antiwar movement, even though the counterculture took Stranger as one of its primary texts.

  284. 284.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Uncle Cosmo: Yeah, he was probably trying to do an anti-racist fable of the well-worn type N. K. Jemisin calls “discrimiflip”, but his desire to shock people probably combined with some buried racism of his own just made it come out as a straight-up racist story.

  285. 285.

    Groucho48

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    Sorry for the late reply. Yeah, he was clearly trying a role reversal thing by making g black folks the racists in charge. I don’t think he handled it very well, but, I can understand what he was intending.

    That wasn’t my main problem with the book. Unfortunately, I only have read it once, back when it first came out, so, I don’t remember the details of what I didn’t like, but it had way more to do with the autocratic patriarchal aspects of the story.

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