Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

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

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

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

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open thread

Reader Interactions

101Comments

  2. 2.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    This morning on MSNBC, they had one of their cub reporters talking to an Independent mayor in Reagan Democrat County, MI. The voters in his town went Trump after two Obama terms. The election, per the mayor, was all about change and trade and that mess in the middle east and political correctness, and Bernie (he was clearly a big Bernie guy, not Sanders, “Bernie”) and Trump were all about change.

    I want to know two things: What this Bernista mayor meant by “political correctness”, and what the reporter, and the anchor, think he meant by “political correctness”

  3. 3.

    trollhattan

    “Political correctness” Those words were uttered time and again in {cough, dumb} voter interviews over the last year. For many it’s their first beef, even more than those rascally Mexicans. Evidently a lot of folks feel oppressed that they can’t say whatever the hell they want in public, which gets me to wondering if what I’ve been hearing is a toned down version? If so, we’re in deep doo here.

  5. 5.

    Ruviana

    @trollhattan: You beat me to it. There’s a GoFundMe site–here the link function won’t let me paste. Look for “Help for Scott’s Medical Bills.” Somehow fits that SEK’s family has to raise money on the Internet to get him care.

  6. 6.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    Just called my congressman and both senators and asked them to do whatever they can and then some to stop the Republicans from fucking with Medicare. They’re all three Democrats, so I didn’t have to worry about where they stand on this, but I wanted to ask them to fight, and I told them that a lot of us are behind them on this.

    My sister has a five year old with cerebral palsy, and he’s only gotten the treatment he needs so far because of Medicaid. They’re fairly well off, but they could never afford the things he’s needed. And you know that if they get through with Medicare, Medicaid is going to be next up. Also, my mother is in a nursing home. She’s burning through all the money she has, and when that’s gone, Medicare is all that will keep her from dying on the street.

    Whoever your representatives and senators are, whichever side they’re on, and whichever party they belong to, call them. If they’re on the right side, then call them and thank them and tell them that we’re behind them on this. Call, call, call.

  7. 7.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Oh man I saw one today that was like a mockup of the New York Times, it looked just like it but it was clearly a fake because it had some headline about “President elect Trump”.

    Man, now that is one bad joke.

    So, I’ve been out of the country and out of touch for a week or two, what’s been happening?

  8. 8.

    WarMunchkin

    @trollhattan: You’ve heard a bit of it when Steve King (R-IA) went on teevee to ask why White People aren’t thanked for the last 400 years or so of civilization and why they aren’t socially allowed to say White Pride. It’s worth noting that these folks genuinely believe it. We doomed.

  11. 11.

    Hitless

    How about news that should be fake:

    Democrats May Try Surprising Strategy: Align With Trump
    By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

    We have just had an 8 year object lesson in what obstruction gets you: full control of the government.

    Someone mail the Democrats and explain:
    1) Helping Trump succeed will not turn Trump voters into Democrats
    2) Clinton barely lost the election…the solution to winning the next is to make sure more Democrats vote…not to try to cater to Trump voters and alienate a base that is ready to be for the Democrats what the Tea Party was for the Republicans.

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    @JMG:
    Heck, I was born in Steve King’s district and I can’t begin to explain him, or how he keeps himself in office. Iowans didn’t use to be that weird–they left that to Missouri.

  13. 13.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Political correctness is a term meant to invoke authoritarian one-party societies where what you can say without persecution, prosecution, or worse, is strictly limited to what’s politically approved.

    Since most of what fits that description in our country has to do with Republicans screaming at someone for not wearing a flag pin or being mean to Sarah Palin, the meaning had to be altered to “Something on the left that I don’t like” It must never be used for the flag pin stuff.

  14. 14.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    @WarMunchkin:

    No, we aren’t doomed. We’ve had these people among us for 400-odd years. And there are a lot fewer of them today than there have been for most of those 400 years. They’re raging against the dying of the light now because they know they’re on the wane, and they’re pissed and scared.

    It’s easy to despair, and easy to understand the inclination, but we can’t afford to do that. We aren’t fucked, not by a damn sight. We have a rough road ahead for the next four years, but we can’t throw our arms up and give up. Too many people who can’t fight for themselves are going to be depending on us.

    These people are losing. They know that, and that’s why they’re fighting so fucking hard. They’re scared. They see their whole world ending, and they want to hang on to it as long as they can. We have to win this fight–or at least not lose it decisively, and we’ll only lose decisively if we don’t fight them.

    70-80 years ago, people didn’t roll over for the nazis or the Japanese. We didn’t roll over in the Cold War. We got through those, and we’ll get through this. It won’t be a boatload of laughs, and we’ll take some losses and setbacks, but we’ll come through this, as long as we’re willing to do what the times are asking of us.

  15. 15.

    tobie

    The next time someone tries to tell you how much more effective the Democrats would have been if they had run a more populist campaign, remind them of the fortunes of Lansing mayor Virg Bernero who ran for Governor of Michigan in 2010 and lost by over 20 points to Snyder. Bernero ran hard on lunch bucket issues and the evils of NAFTA and suffered a resounding defeat. Sorta like Nina Turner in Ohio. This should give us pause before making the kinds of changes that seem in the offing. There’s a basic rule of thumb in politics: don’t alienate your loyal base.

  17. 17.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    I always want to ask people who whine about “political correctness” if that means we can have a conversation about gun control now. Because guns is the ultimate “politically correct” topic in the country right now.

    Also, too, I’m pretty sure everyone knows by now that the beef about “political correctness” is not that you can’t say whatever rude thing you want. It’s that you can’t say whatever rude thing you want without consequences.

  19. 19.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Mnemosyne: Protesting the slightest intolerance in everyone else to the point of hysterics while demanding the right for themselves to be as intolerant as they want is one of the few core, defining traits of the Republican right, from everything I’ve seen.

  23. 23.

    slag

    @trollhattan: My favorite is that past decriers of ‘political correctness’ are now shocked SHOCKED to learn there’s racism going on here. Criminy what the white man would learn if he just stopped knowing everything and listened for a change.

  24. 24.

    Timurid

    @Steeplejack:

    He probably did. But trying to contain that kind of crisis with your average Bronze plan is like trying to catch a freight train with a butterfly net.

  25. 25.

    Ohio Mom

    @Steeplejack: I am not following this story but co-pays, deductibles, lost wages would be the beginning of my guess. Being sick is very expensive even with insurance.

  26. 26.

    WereBear

    @Timurid: Sadly so. Serious illness can run say, a quarter of a million dollars, as in my MIL’s (losing) battle with cancer. Now FIL is on the hook for $50k. WITH Medicare, mind you.

    Oh, I’ll just get Medicare Advantage, you say? Good luck with that one. Mr WereBear is on one that changes what they pay for every single month we’ve had it. When he got a diagnostic test (fortunately negative) on his doctor’s orders, they tell him a different thing about how much they are paying, or paying at all, every single time he calls, to the point where he can’t call any more, it was seriously bad for his blood pressure.

    I demanded a hard copy because they were lying to him so much on the phone, and we got something the size of the Queens phone directory. (Remember those?) And my attempts to figure things out met with pages that contradicted each other. So we still don’t know.

    And we can’t call to find out.

  29. 29.

    Pogonip

    @WereBear: I have Blue Cross and one medicine is either 49 cents per month or $49.00. The pharmacist sees this happen a lot and can’t explain it. I’ve never been able to get through to a person at Blue Cross to ask about it.

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I actually was sure this was a fake news story — Ivana Trump (mother of Uday, Qusay and Lucrezia) has asked to be named Ambassador to the Czech Republic — but apparently it’s twue. (Link is Daily Mail. I refrained from linking to NYTimes because paywalls, but they have it too.)

  31. 31.

    NW Phil

    @WereBear: After reading about your experiences, I feel better about my insurance company (local version of big name, non-profit).

    You can always file appeals for each issue. Drive them up the wall.

  32. 32.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @hw3: Came here to post that. All of a piece with the Macedonian teenagers. Can we bomb them?

  33. 33.

    WereBear

    @Pogonip: No one can explain it. Because then they can’t just do whatever they heck they want. Which is what they have now and they like it.

    I saw a big shot specialist at a medical college, who did absolutely nothing for my issues, and was constantly trying to get me to sign onto tests and studies that were going down the wrong track. (I was eventually proved right and him wrong, BTW.) He did the tests I asked him for (which were helpful, it turned out) only my doctor had to do them again because he did them wrong.

    When I went over his bill with the state department that oversees such things, they said he was a tiny bit under the line — not quite illegal. So I had to pay it.

    Went through several days of vengeful fantasies where I showed up at his office with a whiffle bat. You know, not hurting anyone, but some satisfying havoc wreaking.

  35. 35.

    GrandJury

    Saw some clip of Dr. Orange giving some speech and the crowd was changing “drain that swap…drain that swamp”.

    Boy are those naive people in for a surprise! He’s only going to replace career people political people with actual real backroom corrupt people. It will be like the mafia has now taken over the federal gov’t.

  36. 36.

    The Moar You Know

    Being sick is very expensive even with insurance.

    @Ohio Mom: Got as good as it gets just this year, and thank God I did: Gold PPO. Just in time for a complex case of diverticulitis. Still over 4k out of pocket.

    Medical industry’s holding us all for ransom, if you ask me.

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    @GrandJury:
    My new go-to question for Trump voters (who suddenly are self-identifying) “What will you do when you find out you’ve been lied to?”

  42. 42.

    GrandJury

    So is the FBI or CIA or whoever able to get a hold of Dr. Orange’s tax records to look at foreign gov’t ties?

    We really need to rely on these independent federal institutions to do their jobs, now more than ever.

    Of course we all know that during watergate that didn’t happen. So I’m not optimistic. Will need whistleblowers like deep throat now more than ever.

  43. 43.

    Corner Stone

    @trollhattan: And a further question I have been wondering: What will the media do when POTUS POS out and out lies about something in a statement or presser or SOTU or anything?
    Will they call it out as a lie? Say the President lied when he said XYZ?

    This is all over with.

  44. 44.

    Roger Moore

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    It’s a bad idea, but we do have a tendency to appoint politically connected people with no foreign policy experience as ambassadors. We can get away with it because all of the important diplomacy happens in Washington, not the other country.

  45. 45.

    Shell

    Im sick to death of Trump voters justifying themselves with the brain-dead mantra of “change.” And Mr. Outsider’s promise of draining the “swamp.” So how do you like the line-up of new, hip and fresh guys for Trumps cabinet?

  46. 46.

    Gin & Tonic

    Does anybody know anything about the GRE exam? My son called me to tell me that he took it today and scored a 162 on both parts. I didn’t know he was going to do this, so I’m not sure of the extent to which I should congratulate him.

  47. 47.

    Cain

    @Hitless:

    Someone mail the Democrats and explain:
    1) Helping Trump succeed will not turn Trump voters into Democrats
    2) Clinton barely lost the election…the solution to winning the next is to make sure more Democrats vote…not to try to cater to Trump voters and alienate a base that is ready to be for the Democrats what the Tea Party was for the Republicans.

    If they do this, then it’s time for a new party. The democratic party is done. Weak spineless assholes. It’s probably 3rd way former bill clinton advisors that is asking us to do the same thing when Bush was in charge.

  48. 48.

    trollhattan

    Want to note that atop the page, Ron Paul is yelling at me about gold. Two weeks ago same thing. Has Ron Paul been asleep all this time? Asking for a friend.

  49. 49.

    Corner Stone

    Does anyone else find it odd that the head of Trump’s Transition Team is meeting with Congress while Trump meets with over a dozen candidates for top spots?

  50. 50.

    Barbara

    @Mnemosyne: What I would like to say is, if it’s okay for you to call me a bitch is it okay for me to call you an ignoramus? What they mean when they say they hate PC, is that it’s unfair that they can’t call someone whatever they want without the object of their derision being able to retaliate in kind.

  51. 51.

    trollhattan

    @Corner Stone:
    He’ll continue to freeze the media out–it’s flat out worked for him and I don’t see that changing. “# days since last President Trump press conference” where # is a very large number. He’ll appoint a really aggressive, negative press secretary. Ron Ziegler comes to mind.

  53. 53.

    fuddmain

    There’s been this one story going around the last week or so saying Donald Trump, of all people, was elected president. What a joke! People will believe anything.

  54. 54.

    Corner Stone

    Media chasing their ass in circles at every little drip and drab the Trump campaign floats at them for these different positions.
    Played so hard by Ailes, but it pays the bills.

  56. 56.

    Corner Stone

    For the love of fucking christ, please stop saying Team of Rivals.
    May history damn Doris Kearns Goodwin to hell forever and ever.

  57. 57.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Roger Moore:

    Oh, I know that. Just not sure if we’ve ever had an ex-wife of the incoming president on a short list, even if it is (perhaps) mostly in her head.

    (Actually, I am sure. The answer is, No, never.)

  58. 58.

    Corner Stone

    Oh, the MA NG and the Olympics. That’s successful foreign policy exposure. STFU Kasie Hunt.

  59. 59.

    Corner Stone

    Trump is putting the Touch of Shit on every single person who ever opposed him. He is not “bringing them in closer”. He is preparing to damage them, forever.

  61. 61.

    Corner Stone

    Can you imagine being a person asked to go through a background check to possibly join the Trump administration? Giving up all the goods to Trump when he is a notorious grudge holder and venal POS.
    He is going to fucking destroy the people he has deemed insufficiently loyal.

  62. 62.

    GrandJury

    @Shell: When they say “drain the swamp” what they are really saying is get rid the black guy and all the other liberals.

    The change thing is total bullshit. If they wanted change why did they relect most incumbent Republicans, including antique fucksticks like Burr.

    Will never understand their mindset. All I know is that it is not based on facts, logic, reason, or anything else that requires higher level thinking. Something that distinguishes humans from most animals.

  63. 63.

    Cain

    @Corner Stone:

    Media chasing their ass in circles at every little drip and drab the Trump campaign floats at them for these different positions.
    Played so hard by Ailes, but it pays the bills.

    And he will get a pass on it, the press just whines.. it’s amazing how well they respond to authoritarians, so easily cowed. But totally aggressive with a Democratic president. I sense that we have a different metrics for Democrats and Republicans. (no shit) Maybe we should do the same thing. The republicans of course would seize on that and start their own wingnut howitzer.

  64. 64.

    Roger Moore

    @GrandJury:

    Boy are those naive people in for a surprise! He’s only going to replace career people political people with actual real backroom corrupt people.

    Sure, but he’s going to drain the swamp by running all the liberals, ni**ers, c*nts, w**backs, ch*nks, and the like out of the government. We’re going to have a government run by white men, just as the founding fathers intended, and that’s what really matters.

  65. 65.

    Chris

    @Barbara:

    What I would like to say is, if it’s okay for you to call me a bitch is it okay for me to call you an ignoramus? What they mean when they say they hate PC, is that it’s unfair that they can’t call someone whatever they want without the object of their derision being able to retaliate in kind.

    Yeah, seriously. “Don’t be PC” amounts to “don’t call me a bigot,” which is hilarious, because it’s demanding that everyone else modify their language to avoid offending them, i.e. exactly what they accuse nonwhites, LGBTQ, et al of doing through “political correctness.”

  66. 66.

    Roger Moore

    @trollhattan:

    “What will you do when you find out you’ve been lied to?”

    Close their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears, and pretend otherwise. That’s what they always do when it turns out the Republicans lied to them.

  67. 67.

    Corner Stone

    Kasie Hunt, Hallie Jackson, Katy Tur. They all remind me of the magpies (or ravens or crows or whatever the hell they were) in the old kid’s cartoons. They just sit there, watching the chaos, chatting about nothing much. Just waiting for their chance to swoop in and steal off some bit of a pie or picnic item.

  68. 68.

    Steeplejack

    @trollhattan:

    Gold is always good! When times are bad it’s your only safe store of value, and when times are good you need gold because everything is about to turn bad. QED.

  69. 69.

    Ohio Mom

    @The Moar You Know: Holy moley. I did not know there was such a thing as “complex” diverticulosis. I guess the two people I know who had it got off easy, a relatively short course of antibiotics cured both of them.

    It is always amazing to me, how many ways our bodies can go kablooie (or however you spell it). Always a new illness I never heard of.

  70. 70.

    JPL

    The biggest fake news of the day for me was to discover that Sen. Isakson hasn’t discussed Medicare. I did ask whether he planned on keeping the part of ACA that actually strengthened Medicare, and the gal didn’t know. There did seem to be more hedge on Bannon though.

  74. 74.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    I have really come to hate Kasie Hunt, which is surprising, because I don’t watch much of any of the political-chat channels. But just a few doses of her late in the campaign were enough. The one that pushed me over the edge, I think on the night of the election, was when she made some completely bullshit point and Chris Matthews started leg-humping her. “Oh, you’re smart; you know what’s going on.”

    Hey, Tweety, you’re rich. Just pay for an expensive outcall. Bang one out early in the day and your brain will be clearer and more focused to not cover the issues on your show.

  76. 76.

    WereBear

    More about Our Free Press:

    Unacceptable Is The New Inconceivable, at Driftglass

    I was moved by Chris Hayes’ and Rachel Maddow’s plea that journalism is now under threat and we need to come to its defense. Mr. Hayes and Ms. Maddow are two more rays of light in a dark world, and I appreciate their positions, but (in yet another question in a long line of them that Mr. Hayes and Ms. Maddow will never answer) I wondered why they were asking us for help.
    …
    Shit, Rachel, your bosses at MSNBC are sitting on staggering, unprecedented profits from playing footsie with monsters —

    –Third-ranked MSNBC, which falls under the larger NBC News umbrella, will have projected earnings of $279.6 million this year, according to Kagan. MSNBC is growing faster in percentage terms than its two much-larger competitors: Its projected profits reflect a 19 percent growth rate over 2015, compared with 14 percent for CNN and 11.3 percent for Fox, according to [SNL Kagan, a media research company]…

    — as are the executives running CNN:

    –According to people intimately familiar with CNN’s finances, the network and its related media businesses will approach $1 billion in gross profit in 2016, a milestone unseen in its 36-year history…

    So before you ask someone like me — a terminally under-employed nobody who goes through the sofa cushions every week to come up with the scratch to feed his family — to leap to the defense of your profession, I have to know, when exactly are you planning to take that long walk up to the NBC or CNN executive suites, camera in hand, the ask the men who profited so obscenely from this fiasco what the fuck they are planning to do to defend your profession?

  77. 77.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Corner Stone: I’m surprised at Katy Tur given how much hatred Trump specifically directed against her during his Nazi rallies. You would think she would have something sharp and meaningful to say about how dangerous he is and will be to this country.

  79. 79.

    Mary G

    READ THIS !

    After the Election, the White People of Los Angeles Adopted Pets (NY Mag)

    A lesbian couple came in looking for cats. Both were white. One woman wore athleisure; the other wore trekking pants. Athleisure was excited; trekking pants didn’t smile. Were they scared too? Had they woken up that morning and looked at the news popping up on their screens and decided a cat was the answer? A spoonful of cat would make Mike Pence go down? (Hahaha, my broken brain said, like Mike Pence has ever gone down on anything!) If the world made sense, Mike Pence would not only be forced to pay for this lesbian couple’s new cat, he would be forced to come to their house every day and scoop hardened poop cakes from their litter box as they made love in front of him.

  81. 81.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Shell:

    So how do you like the line-up of new, hip and fresh guys for Trumps cabinet?

    Like Jeff Sessions for AG? New, hip and fresh racists, for the win.

  82. 82.

    Hal

    @Cain:

    2) Clinton barely lost the election…

    I have been saying this since 11/10. The margins Clinton lost by were small and no reason for dems to retreat in panic. But, I thought what dems were talking working on issues with Trump that other Republicans are not going to support, like infrastructure spending. It’s not about Trump succeeding, but trying to make voters see dem ideas work.

    Mr. Trump campaigned on some issues that Democrats have long championed and Republicans resisted: spending more on roads, bridges and rail, punishing American companies that move jobs overseas, ending a lucrative tax break for hedge fund and private equity titans, and making paid maternity leave mandatory.

    Trump isn’t going to go forward with hardly any of these ideas, if any at all. But if dems come out saying they support these wholeheartedly and will support Trump if he pushes these ideas, it seems to me that Trump vs his own party could help dems win Congress in a couple of years. But again, if Trump supports any of this, I would be shocking.

  84. 84.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Mary G: From your link:

    “Oh white women, white women, keep adopting animals if it helps you forget that 53 percent of you voted for Trump,” I sang to myself in my head to the tune of Dolly Parton’s Jolene.

    The whole article is delightfully off the chain and hilarious. Love it!! But at least some abandoned pets are getting some good homes, I guess.

  85. 85.

    rikyrah

    @trollhattan:

    “Political correctness” Those words were uttered time and again in {cough, dumb} voter interviews over the last year. For many it’s their first beef, even more than those rascally Mexicans. Evidently a lot of folks feel oppressed that they can’t say whatever the hell they want in public, which gets me to wondering if what I’ve been hearing is a toned down version? If so, we’re in deep doo here.

    utter bullshyt.

    NOBODY is stopping them from saying anything they want. They have freedom of speech.

    What they want is FREEDOM FROM THE REPERCUSSIONS OF SAID SPEECH.

    They wanna party like it’s 1948.

    And, nobody is playing with them.

  86. 86.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    I have refused to watch any news media since the election, and frankly it’s been easy. They’re not getting me back either. I feel like they’re trying to mainline Trump’s toxicity into me through my eyes and ears, so I’ll stink as much as they do now that they’ve all smeared themselves with Trump’s feces. I’m not going to let them.

  89. 89.

    Corner Stone

    @Patricia Kayden: She doesn’t give a shit. She held it a s a badge of honor that put her in the Cool Kids Club. And she was really proud of herself for saying how Trump was lying about the press not showing his crowd size. That was a big girl scout badge for her. Fuck you. How about you do some actual god damn reporting instead of lapdogging Trump and being so cool about it all?

  90. 90.

    NotMax

    @Patricia Kayden

    Copy.paste from Wikipedia (emphasis added).

    In 1986, Reagan nominated Sessions to be a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. Sessions’s judicial nomination was recommended and actively backed by Republican Alabama Senator Jeremiah Denton. A substantial majority of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which rates nominees to the federal bench, rated Sessions “qualified,” with a minority voting that Sessions was “not qualified.”

    At Sessions’ confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, four Department of Justice lawyers who had worked with Sessions testified that he had made several racist statements. One of those lawyers, J. Gerald Hebert, testified that Sessions had referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” because they “forced civil rights down the throats of people.”

    Thomas Figures, a black Assistant U.S. Attorney, testified that Sessions said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “OK until I found out they smoked pot.” Sessions later said that the comment was not serious, but apologized for it. Figures also testified that on one occasion, when the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division sent the office instructions to investigate a case that Sessions had tried to close, Figures and Sessions “had a very spirited discussion regarding how the Hodge case should then be handled; in the course of that argument, Mr. Sessions threw the file on a table, and remarked, ‘I wish I could decline on all of them,'” by which Figures said Sessions meant civil rights cases generally. After becoming Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, Sessions was asked in an interview about his civil rights record as a U.S Attorney. He denied that he had not sufficiently pursued civil rights cases, saying that “when I was [a U.S. Attorney], I signed 10 pleadings attacking segregation or the remnants of segregation, where we as part of the Department of Justice, we sought desegregation remedies.”

    Figures also said that Sessions had called him “boy.” He also testified that “Mr. Sessions admonished me to ‘be careful what you say to white folks.'” Sessions was also reported to have called a white civil rights attorney a “disgrace to his race.”

    Sessions responded to the testimony by denying the allegations, saying his remarks were taken out of context or meant in jest, and also stating that groups could be considered un-American when “they involve themselves in un-American positions” on foreign policy. Sessions said during testimony that he considered the Klan to be “a force for hatred and bigotry.” In regards to the marijuana quote, Sessions said the comment was a joke but apologized.

    In response to a question from Joe Biden on whether he had called the NAACP and other civil rights organizations “un-American”, Sessions replied “I’m often loose with my tongue. I may have said something about the NAACP being un-American or Communist, but I meant no harm by it.”

    On June 5, 1986, the Committee voted 10–8 against recommending the nomination to the Senate floor, with Republican Senators Charles Mathias of Maryland and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania voting with the Democrats. It then split 9–9 on a vote to send Sessions’ nomination to the Senate floor with no recommendation, this time with Specter in support. A majority was required for the nomination to proceed. The pivotal votes against Sessions came from his home state’s Democratic Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama (ironically, Sessions would succeed Heflin in the Senate just a decade later). Although Heflin had previously backed Sessions, he began to oppose Sessions after hearing testimony, concluding that there were “reasonable doubts” over Sessions’ ability to be “fair and impartial.” The nomination was withdrawn on July 31, 1986.

    Sessions became only the second nominee to the federal judiciary in 48 years whose nomination was killed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was quoted then as saying that the Senate on occasion had been insensitive to the rights and reputation of nominees. A law clerk from the U.S. District Court in Mobile who had worked with Sessions later acknowledged the confirmation controversy, but stated that he observed Sessions as “a lawyer of the highest ethical and intellectual standards.”

    After joining the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions remarked that his presence there, alongside several of the members who voted against him, was a “great irony.” When Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania left the GOP to join the Democratic Party on April 28, 2009, Sessions was selected to be the Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. At that time, Specter said that his vote against Sessions’ nomination was a mistake, because he had “since found that Sen. Sessions is egalitarian.”

  91. 91.

    Mary G

    @Patricia Kayden: A good laugh is important, but it fits what I have been feeling to a T. I am glad my mom isn’t here to see this. She would want to fly to Texas where she was born and just start slapping white women at random if they say that they voted for it.

  93. 93.

    rikyrah

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Does anybody know anything about the GRE exam? My son called me to tell me that he took it today and scored a 162 on both parts. I didn’t know he was going to do this, so I’m not sure of the extent to which I should congratulate him.

    Highest possible is 170…

    IOW…

    HE KICKED ASS!!!!
    Like 90th percentile.

    Even if he’s going for very competitive schools, his scores won’t be the thing to hold him back.

  94. 94.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Mary G: LOL!! Your mom would tire herself out in TX.

    One of my workmates told me that Omarosa Manigault (who boasted that all of Trump’s enemies would have to bow down to him when he won) is complaining that she has lost all of her Black friends because of her support for Trump. We laughed and laughed about that. What the hell did she expect?

  95. 95.

    Gindy51

    @Mary G: I virtually slapped a half white half Mexican woman friend of 30 years for voting for the thing. She’s out of my life now, too bad so sad.. for her. I was the one friend she could talk to about her day to day problems who wasn’t fing crazy. Good luck to her finding the sympathy from each rest of her fuck ed up cadre of pals.

  96. 96.

    Patricia Kayden

    @NotMax: What an odious person. I hope the Democrats filibuster the hell out of his appointment to any office. If Republicans could filibuster Susan Rice because she “lied” about Benghazi, then Democrats better filibuster Sessions because he is an unrepentant racist. They better grow a backbone and filibuster Trump’s attempt to place racists in key positions.

  98. 98.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Hitless: Align with someone they rightfully claimed was dangerously unqualified and bigoted during the entirety of his campaign? Really? Keep it up Dems and you’ll stay in the minority in the House and Senate for decades to come.

  99. 99.

    NotMax

    @Patricia Kayden

    Wondering if constantly reminding them that they’d be voting for someone whom ‘Saint Ronnie’ backed off from and withdrew from nomination would be effective.

  100. 100.

    Chris

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    I haven’t watched it in years. Even if it wasn’t all bullshit, the gleeful sports-commenter “oh isn’t this exciting?” demeanor of the anchors in front of political questions that will help or harm millions of people is enough for me to switch off the TV set.

Comments are closed.