Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

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

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

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

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

He really is that stupid.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Accountability, motherfuckers.

“woke” is the new caravan.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

T R E 4 5 O N

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

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

You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Don't Mourn, Organize / Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

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Important note from commentor Burnspbesq:

Speaking of memberships, some anonymous patriot has offered to match up to a half million bucks of year-end contributions to the ACLU.

Go Here

So if you’ve got a little spare cash from a year-end bonus, or need a gift for that hard-to-buy-for friend…

Apart from seasonal charity, what’s on the agenda for the day?

***********

Jared Bernstein and Ben Spielberg, at the Washington Post:

The Fight for $15 has been incredibly successful since 100 fast-food workers first went on strike on Nov. 29, 2012, in New York City. The movement they helped create went 5-for-5 during the most recent election, winning ballot initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington, while defeating a subminimum wage law for teenagers in South Dakota. And with the anniversary of its original strike approaching, that movement is only gaining steam.

As Bryce Covert of the news site ThinkProgress recently reported, workers in more than 340 cities will go on strike again on Tuesday, while “fast food employees, airport workers, childcare and home care providers, and university graduate students” will engage in “civil disobedience at McDonald’s and 20 of the nation’s largest airports.” The workers have also upped the ante: In addition to their calls for minimum wage increases, they’re “demanding no deportations of undocumented immigrants, an end to police violence against black people, and the protection of health care coverage.”…

Raising the wage floor would clearly be good policy, too. Decades of research show that minimum-wage increases more substantial than those Republicans are proposing have their intended effects of helping low-wage workers without much in the way of unintended job loss effects. While the labor market effects of the boldest Democratic proposals are harder to predict, as they lie outside the range of prior research, such proposals still phase in over several years to give businesses time to adjust and are worthy of Republicans’ consideration.

That they should do the right thing doesn’t mean these politicians will do it willingly, of course. Their feet will need to be held to the fire. But that’s precisely where the Fight for $15 has been so successful over the past four years, and low-wage workers’ resolve appears to be as strong as ever…

Reader Interactions

214Comments

  5. 5.

    Baud

    The workers have also upped the ante: In addition to their calls for minimum wage increases, they’re “demanding no deportations of undocumented immigrants, an end to police violence against black people, and the protection of health care coverage.”…

    All good causes, but I’m generally skeptical when a movement branches out into other areas because of the risk of losing focus.

    Their call, though. I respect their decision.

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Delta Air Lines is banning for life a passenger who professed his support for President-elect Donald Trump on a flight to Pennsylvania and insulted those who did not, the company’s CEO said Monday. Edward Bastian said in an internal memo that the airline was also refunding the cost of tickets for other passengers on the 22 November flight from Atlanta to Allentown.
    …..
    In responses to both videos, many were in disbelief that the man was not removed from the flight and speculated on how different his treatment would be if he were not white or not speaking English. Ali continued to tweet updates as he sought a “decent” response from Delta.

    Delta, an Atlanta-based airline, had previously apologized over the man’s outburst in a statement released on Saturday. Bastian said the crew questioned the man and made the best decision they could, given the information they had, and allowed him to remain on the flight.

    “However, if our colleagues had witnessed first-hand what was shown in the video, there is no question they would have removed him from the aircraft,” he wrote Monday. “He will never again be allowed on a Delta plane.”

    “However, if our colleagues had known the economic consequences of their cowardice they would have bucked it up the chain of command and made sure somebody else was responsible.”

    FTFY Delta, you’ll get my bill in the mail.

  9. 9.

    Russ

    Count the number of times Standing Rock protest is seen or heard on network news and newspapers.

    “It’s all one big club and you ain’t in it.” George Carlin

    You know what is news? The American people are turning away from network and print propaganda and finding there own sources of information and many times that information is not accurate. Inaccurately informed people are more dangerous than uninformed people.

    Our country is headed into uncharted waters.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The governor (Rick Scott) held a press conference to announce that three miles of Miami Beach, a popular winter tourist destination, was “cleared” of active Zika transmission.

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…… gasp….. wheeze….. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…. gasp …. wheeze… stop it , pleaze….. yer killing me….
    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA……

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Cards Against Humanity, described as “a party game for horrible people”, marked Black Friday by digging a giant hole funded by donations. “As long as money keeps coming in, we’ll keep digging,” read HolidayHole.com, a website dedicated to the hole set up by Cards Against Humanity. Viewers could watch a live feed of a backhoe digging on YouTube.

    “Hole got dug,” proclaimed the game’s Twitter account on Sunday. According to the site, $100,573 was raised to dig the “tremendous hole in the earth”. Claire Friedman, a Cards Against Humanity employee, explained to NPR how donations translated to digging: “It’s set so time gets more expensive the longer we dig. The first dollar paid for 5.5 seconds, now it’ll only get .3. Basically just reflecting the longer we need to hold crew and equipment here, the more expensive it gets.”

    In an FAQ on the Holiday Hole site, Cards Against Humanity explains that the hole is located in “America. And in our hearts”. There’s no “deeper meaning or purpose” to the hole, the site reads. The FAQ also addresses the question of “Why aren’t you giving all this money to charity?” The game-maker replied: “Why aren’t YOU giving all this money to charity? It’s your money.”

    I think I like these guys. They’ll never make a dime off of me but at least they aren’t pretending they are doing anything of great purpose.

  20. 20.

    Kay

    Trump’s ed secretary:

    Bought and paid for.
    Back in June, that’s how I described the Detroit school legislation that passed in Lansing — a filthy, moneyed kiss to the charter school industry at the expense of the kids who’ve been victimized by those schools’ unaccountable inconsistency.
    And now, through the wonder of campaign finance reports, we are beginning to see what it took to buy the GOP majority in Lansing, just how much lawmakers required to sell out Detroit students’ interests.
    The DeVos family, owners of the largest charter lobbying organization, has showered Michigan Republican candidates and organizations with impressive and near-unprecedented amounts of money this campaign cycle: $1.45 million in June and July alone — over a seven-week period, an average of $25,000 a day.
    The giving began in earnest on June 13, just five days after Republican members of the state Senate reversed themselves on the question of whether Michigan charter schools need more oversight.
    There’s nothing more difficult than proving quid pro quos in politics, the instances in which favor is returned for specific monetary support.
    But look at the amounts involved, and consider the DeVos’ near-sole interest in the issue of school choice. It’s a fool’s errand to imagine a world in which the family’s deep pockets haven’t skewed the school debate to the favor of their highly financed lobby.
    Back in March, the Senate voted to place charter schools under the same authority as public schools in the city, for quality control and attention to population need and balance, in line with a plan that had been in the works for more than a year, endorsed and promoted by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.
    But when the bills moved to the state House, lawmakers gutted that provision, returning a bill to the Senate that preserved the free-for-all charter environment that has locked Detroit in an educational morass for two decades. After less than a week of debate, the Senate caved.
    Even then, several legislators complained that the influence of lobbyists, principally charter school lobbyists, was overwhelming substantive debate. The effort was intense, they said, and unrelenting.
    Now we know what was at stake.
    Five days later, several members of the DeVos family made the maximum allowable contributions to the Michigan Republican Party, a total of roughly $180,000.
    The next day, DeVos family members made another $475,000 in contributions to the party.
    It was the beginning of a spending spree that would swell to $1.45 million in contributions to the party and to individual candidates by the end of July, according to an analysis by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network.

    Drain the swamp.

  26. 26.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The Free Press actually gave Betsy DeVos too much credit in that editorial. They said she didn’t break any laws buying the Michigan legislature. That is true. She was busy breaking laws next door in Ohio, where she was fined more than 5 million for violating campaign finance rules when lobbying the Ohio assembly. Her Ohio lobbying org said they didn’t have the money to pay the fine- they just moved the money out of the Ohio org and into the Michigan org when they were fined. It’s hard to drain the swamp. You drain it in one state and it just bubbles up in another.

  29. 29.

    Morzer

    If any of you would enjoy an evisceration of Tom Wolfe that also bears on our brave new world of post-truth Trumpery, I offer this magnificently savage and extremely funny review of Wolfe’s attempt to write about language:

    http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/tom-wolfes-reflections-language/

    Perhaps you, like I, read The Voyage of the Beagle and found it to be a remarkable triumph of literature and naturalism and science and, dare I say it, the intellect. The fact that you think this, however, just makes you a homer for the Victorian upper class. Wolfe is here to set us straight. In a rare moment of empathy towards the Darwin family, Wolfe imagines what it must have been like for Charles’ poor father, who “begrudgingly paid for the boy to enjoy a five-year voyage or exploration, or sightseeing, or something, aboard a boat named for a dog, His Majesty’s Ship Beagle, to prepare him for a career in the field of—as far as Dr. Darwin could tell—nothing.”

    Yes, it was a veritable Spring Break at sea. Charles could just as well have spent those five years in the basement playing Call of Duty on an Xbox.

    The Trumpiest undercurrent of it all is the idea that the empirical evidence and logical argumentation is an invention of the elites — designed to bamboozle you into believing what your guts tell you is wrong. And by God, gut instincts are far betters arbiters of truth — not just in politics but in science as well. Ignore those pointy-headed intellectuals and listen to your gut my friends, because your gut is telling you the obvious truth that man’s higher faculties did not evolve from the ape and we have the super-duper-primitive people to prove it.

    As I said, this anti-intellectualism is a cultural tragedy, but there are layers of tragedy and the top layer (or bottom, I guess) is that our alleged liberal media, which rightly recoils in horror at Trump’s nonsense, cannot contain their squeals of delight when Everett and Wolfe hand them a similarly constructed shit sandwich. They eat it up.

    The list is long and depressing here, but we can begin with Barbara King at NPR, who uncritically parrots the nonsense about Pirahã having no color terms or embedded clauses (see Everett’s own counterexample above) and then salutes Everett for “challenging a dominant discourse.”

    Read the whole thing – and get a free education in linguistic recursion with bonus ‘Minnesota salad bar cheese ball appetizer’!

  33. 33.

    Schlemazel

    @raven: @OzarkHillbilly:
    It has been raining here hard on and off since Sunday. We have even had hail at least twice. I’d gladly send some of this your way if I could. I’m afraid we are about to become the land of 1 lake

  34. 34.

    Morzer

    @Mustang Bobby:

    Daylight is something only politically correct sharia liberals believe in as a way of keeping hardworking Medicare fraudsters from leading us all into a glorious Randian future by the true light that emanates from their dazzlingly bald crania.

  35. 35.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Some folks over at reddit doxed the guy, he is not hard to find though he does not keep up on his FB page the photos make it clear its him. His life could get interesting now that he is internet famous

  47. 47.

    debbie

    Does anyone know of a nonprofit that focuses on saving Medicare and SS?

    @Schlemazel:

    FWIW, it’s very annoying because you can’t pause it. My one brother posts them on FB all the time.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The Ohio DeVos story has a happy ending. She failed. They passed a law regulating charter schools. It was the newspapers. Ohio has several large newspapers and they all carried charter corruption stories for months- every large paper in the state covered it daily not on the editorial pages- which are useless ranting- but in news stories. They did stories on corruption in the industry- named individual lawmakers as meeting with lobbyists. It worked.

    It was nice to see because newspapers here all backed charter expansion for years- they admitted they made a mistake pushing to “flood the market” and turned against the industry. It was like the magic spell broke and everyone could admit this was a disaster.

  49. 49.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Schlemazel: Real tilt-shift is insanely expensive(a tilt shift lens), my camera will do faux tilt-shift. I’ll try it next time I go to the oberservation deck. Yesterday’s visit up there was unplanned.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    It was like the magic spell broke and everyone could admit this was a disaster.

    so you’re saying we have a chance?

  51. 51.

    Morzer

    @Geoduck:

    I am not saying I was actually present when Eric and Donald Jr burned all those American flags, but I can certainly testify that friends of mine knew a person who said that they had heard on the Alex Jones show that such flag-burning occurred when Trump was a Democrat….

  54. 54.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel: Fortunately we’ve been getting some, 1/4″ here, a 1/2″ there, every now and again a drizzling. Fall is usually a fairly dry time of year here in the Ozarks. Come December tho, the rains ramp up. Last years New Years flooding was the result of a fairly normal weather pattern that was carrying a lot more moisture than is normal.

    I have a feeling that will become the new normal.

  59. 59.

    Morzer

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    That sort of crazy is old hard right crazy, which is probably why it feels relatively familiar. I wonder when Shrub and relatives will be dragged out and forced to bend the knee before the Gibbering Mouther whose forerunners they were.

  60. 60.

    Schlemazel

    The missus had surgery on her ‘trigger finger’ and thumb yesterday so I am home for a couple days as she needs help with just about everything. I am hoping to break out of my slump but doing useful things around the house between caretaking but am sort of stuck on the sofa so far this morning.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I;ve been thinking about it because newspapers kind of cover their lack of investigative or factual reporting with these “blistering” editorials. The editorials are bullshit- they just get blown off because no one is ever named and there’s no specifics. DeVos responded to the Free Press editorial with a barrage of slogans- she can’t do that with news. There was no real rebuttal from the Ohio charter industry because they can’t do the “war of opinions” thing with news stories. You need X charter school on Y street in Toledo laundered this money.

  67. 67.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud: Yes, but the Court was filled with a bunch of liberals back them.

    ETA: Ya know, like Fat Tony, Silent Clarence, and Chief Bill.

  78. 78.

    Kay

    Petraeus for state department. It’s another giant “fuck you!” from Team Trump. It’s an admission that the entire email story was bullshit, no one really cares about it, and the whole thing was a smear that applied exclusively to Hillary Clinton.

    They don’t care and why should they? It doesn’t matter at all. There will be some ineffectual whining but since it was trumped up bullshit no one really cares now that the campaign is over.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    It makes it almost impossible to take this seriously. We spent 20 months dragging Hillary Clinton over the coals for “putting national security at risk” and Trump floats Petraeus for state department because he knows he can do anything he wants.

    He knows the Clinton email story was bullshit. Now that the campaign game is over they can all stop pretending they gave a shit about emails and breaches of national security.

  82. 82.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    It’s an admission that the entire email story was bullshit, no one really cares about it, and the whole thing was a smear that applied exclusively to Hillary Clinton.

    This is my shocked face.

  83. 83.

    Morzer

    @Kay:

    It might be just an attempt to cash in on Petraeus’ residual status as a mighty warrior against terrorism. At least in the right wing mind. Besides, he’s got the very Trumpian quality of public infidelity on his CV.

  87. 87.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: I actually think that’s the correct response to anyone who voted for Trump. “You were conned.” Policy based responses are a waste of time with that group.

  88. 88.

    Morzer

    @rikyrah:

    You’ll be amused to learn that Baby Doc agrees with you and Kay:

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rand-paul-on-david-petraeus-secretary-of-state

    Donald Trump met with Petraeus Monday amid speculation he was being considered as the incoming administration’s secretary of state. On Monday afternoon, Paul told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Petraeus’ past may complicate his confirmation if he were nominated for the position.

    “I think the problem they have if they put him forward is that there is a lot of similarities to Hillary Clinton as far as revealing classified information,” Paul said.

    “One, is that a good thing to have a high-ranking person revealing classified information, and also it’s the similarities,” he said. “They spent a year and a half beating up Hillary Clinton over revealing classified information and then they would appoint somebody who the FBI says not only revealed it but then lied about it in an interview and purposely gave it to someone who did not have the clearance to have that? I think that’s a potential problem.”

    Blitzer reminded Paul that Petraeus had pled guilty to sharing classified information (with his biographer Paula Broadwell, with whom he was having an affair) in a deal that required two years probation and a $100,000 fine. Petraeus resigned from his position at the CIA in 2012.

  92. 92.

    Baud

    @Morzer:

    “I think the problem they have if they put him forward is that there is a lot of similarities to Hillary Clinton as far as revealing classified information,” Paul said.

    For the record, you realize that’s a lie?

  96. 96.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I have little tubs of Vasel!ne I hand out with the little reminder that, “This is the first of many fuckings you are gonna get.”

  105. 105.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    Spousal ThresherK has gradated from walker to cane, owing to very good results in her PT.

    I keep asking her if she needs things from home, Like her high hat, Arrow collar, and white spats.

  108. 108.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Iowa Old Lady: This is actually one of the most astounding thing about Trump. The Supreme Court decision about flag burning was made during his adult lifetime. It was all over the news. Either he was too absorbed in his own world to take in current events or he’s forgotten. Neither thing is promising for good governance.

  109. 109.

    Morzer

    @Baud:

    I suspect that TPM has faith that their readership is well enough informed not to need the reminder. They may be wrong.

  113. 113.

    Schlemazel

    The woman who went off in Michael’s after being charged a dollar for a bag apparently is well known in the neighborhood for that sort of thing. There was a youtube video of her pulling the same attitude in a Peets coffee shop in July but the video was removed recently. The doxers have posted her name, address and phone number (no reddit this time)

    I am very much against this doxing thing even for people like the two recent ones who richly deserve notoriety for their behavior. It is scary how quickly a group can dig this stuff up without even a name to start with. It is scarier still to think some loon will act on the information

  124. 124.

    Baud

    @Morzer: Nah. That was true for Clinton, and it didn’t work.

    I’m partial to “Nach Trump, Baud!”

    I figure the German would help win back the midwest states.

  127. 127.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The Clinton email story is the Whitewater of 2016, complete with the NYTimes promoting it.

    What’s amusing about it is the Clintons were always treated as sleazy by political media- the distaste always had a snobby element- so grasping and low class!

    Trump and his family are sleazy as hell and for some reason that’s delightfully eccentric rather than just sleazy.

  132. 132.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Baud: That really bothers me — somehow, at no point did anyone make clear that Hillary Clinton’s supposed recklessness with confidential and classified information resulted in a total of ZERO people seeing confidential and classified information who weren’t supposed to see it. Nor, as I understand it at least, was it ever the case that Clinton herself sent anything. I get that in politics “if you’re explaining, you’re losing,” but I wish Team Hillary had made a bigger, angrier attempt to make people say what the fuck they thought happened in this story, and then refute it. It probably wouldn’t have helped election-wise, but it might have had an effect on how people understand the story now.

  134. 134.

    Jeffro

    @debbie:

    Does anyone know of a nonprofit that focuses on saving Medicare and SS?

    You mean, your Senators and Congressfolks? They’re the ones that need to hear from us, like, yesterday. Rep Price is interested in phasing out Medicare in the next 6 to 8 months.

    Never look a gift horse in the mouth, I say, but it means we have to get going here, folks.

  136. 136.

    Baud

    @Kay: That doesn’t surprise me. I just thought we were stronger this time.

    Even here, there were some “serious” discussions about Clinton’s server. We are collectively still the media’s patsies, or enough of us are for it to make a difference.

  138. 138.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Kay: IMHO, for media people especially in NY, Trump’s sins are Mafia-like, hence colorful rather than troubling.

  139. 139.

    Kay

    Donald J. TrumpVerified account
    ‏@realDonaldTrump
    Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

    We got this fucking moron but we weren’t subjected to Hillary Clinton’s server management issues so it’s even-steven.

    The President-elect spends an awful lot of time threatening to put people who disagree with him in jail. Relying on “our institutions” to rein this lunatic in is not reassuring.

  140. 140.

    EZSmirkzz

    In order to make America both safe and pure, I hereby offer the final solution of deporting all Germanic, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Czech and Slavic people from the United States as some of them have tendencies towards fascism. Besides, to us Englishmen they all look the same anyway.

    ;-)

  143. 143.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Baud: Chiefly of the “SHE KNEW SHE’D BE A TARGET SO WHY DID SHE GIVE THEM THE AMMUNITION!” sort. But the whole thing has always seemed to me a bit like getting all worked up that someone in a government agency is making copies of personal papers on the office photocopier. Fine, strictly speaking, you shouldn’t do that. No, it’s not a cataclysmic error of judgment, knock it off.

  144. 144.

    satby

    @Baud: oh boy yes. I mentioned the change at the bottom of the last thread. Tl:dr I lose 8 hours a week, but with the latest stir-crazy dogfight that happened while the dogsitters were here I officially have spent almost my entire take home pay since I took the job on vet and boarding bills. It’s been depressing and exhausting, but I’m hoping this will work much better.

  145. 145.

    Baud

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I wish Team Hillary had made a bigger, angrier attempt to make people say what the fuck they thought happened in this story, and then refute it. It probably wouldn’t have helped election-wise, but it might have had an effect on how people understand the story now.

    I really don’t know.

  146. 146.

    Kay

    @FlipYrWhig:

    The NYTimes has started this thing where they say to “understand” Trump (like they do) you have to understand how he manipulated and used NYC tabloids. They present it as masterful. Like only a genius could hoodwink the savvy.

    Seriously- fuck these people. They’re silly and vain and shallow. They’re lousy as elites. I demand higher quality elites. Our current crop are only good for high-end food and fashion reporting- they’re “lifestyle” reporters.

  149. 149.

    Morzer

    @EZSmirkzz:

    They are sending us their Johnsons and Farages and some of them, I assume, are.. oh fuck it, why even pretend that they are within a million miles of being good people?

  151. 151.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Word out now is that the guy doxed as the Delta screamer is not that guy. The photos on reddit sure looked like him but it is always possible they got it wrong anyway. That is one of the reasons I hate doxing, too easy to get it wrong. Even if right it is the wrong thing to do but when they get it wrong it is so much worse.

  152. 152.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The 2013 lease the Trump Organization signed with the federal government to house the hotel in Washington, D.C.’s Old Post Office Pavilion, which is owned by the General Services Administration, explicitly states that elected officials can play no role in or have no benefit from the arrangement. According to two experts on government procurement law, Trump’s election as president represents a clear violation of that contract.

    Steven Schooner and Daniel Gordon, former administrators in the Office of Management and Budget, laid out the ethics issues involved in the lease in a Monday op-ed in Government Executive magazine.

    The contract language is clear: “No … elected official of the Government of the United States … shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom…” The language could not be any more specific or clear. Donald Trump will breach the contract on Jan. 20, when, while continuing to benefit from the lease, he will become an “elected official of the Government of the United States.”

    Says who?

  156. 156.

    Kay

    @FlipYrWhig:

    We actually have a sleazy real estate family like the Trumps where I live. They own a lot of property and they have many other irons in the fire, most of which are scams. We just call them “sleazy” and no one who knows anything about them does business with them. If they had inherited more valuable real estate they could be running the country.

    Location, location, location. Trump was lucky enough to be born in NYC instead of rural Ohio.

  157. 157.

    Princess

    @Baud: So, my kid got me Trump toilet paper for my birthday (no flags — just his face on it) that was made in China. It was really low quality. Would not buy again.

  161. 161.

    EZSmirkzz

    @Morzer: The mockery of their cognitive dissonance is delicious! I’m surprised they put their shoes on the right feet. Wait a minute! I’m surprised they don’t put both shoes on their right feet.

  167. 167.

    Kay

    @FlipYrWhig:

    We had a physician from out of town buy the patriarch’s house, which is across the street from my house. Too late to warn her! There is a service truck in that poor woman’s driveway every day. I hate them. I feel like they spread misery everywhere they touch down. OMFG buy NOTHING from these people.

  168. 168.

    ThresherK

    @Betty Cracker: Actually, even though she’s mumblemumble years older than I am, I’m the one who brought the movie/theater geekery to our marriage, especially the old-school variety.

    Of course, like everyone, she knows “Puttin on the Ritz” from Young Frankenstein. But thanks to decades of my movie habits she knows now (unlike when we met) why “I’m Tired” from Blazing Saddleswas so funny.

    And thanks to her I know more about all the Oz universe than ever existed.

  170. 170.

    Kay

    Our school went to mixed grades because we’re trying to be groovy and innovative. So they’re in mixed age classes. My 8th grader is now friends with older kids, almost exclusively. I feel like this is a mistake. They’re emotionally ahead of him- more mature and harder in some ways. He’s impressed by this and thrilled they’re friends with him so adopting this kind of fake sophistication. I’m like “oh THIS is why they put them in classes grouped by age!”

    I want him back with the goofballs :)

  171. 171.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Therein lies the one big difference between a liberal and a conservative. A liberal can imagine what it would be like to have someone else’s fate befall them. A conservative can’t imagine that ever happening to them & assume the person deserved it

  175. 175.

    D58826

    Wildfires burning up a good bit of Tennessee real estate. Any one want to start a countdown clock till the Tenn. GOPers ask for federal disaster money?

  176. 176.

    gogol's wife

    @Bostondreams:

    Yesterday I donated to ACLU and SPLC and subscribed to the Washington Post. I have a little to-do list every day. Unfortunately most of the items on my list involve spending money. Oh well.

  177. 177.

    Lizzy L

    @Bostondreams: Please note: you can also make a tax-deductible donation to the ACLU Foundation. It’s on the same website. Your membership is not tax deductible.

    Trump tweets outrageous stuff – like that tweet this morning about flag burning – because his narcissism requires him to seek attention constantly. It’s gonna be like this from now on.

  178. 178.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I’m like “where’s Zane? I miss Zane”. He had the same crew since kindergarten and now he’s with these older …people. I’m not ready for giant, glowering teenagers draped on the furniture. This whole thing is a mistake.

  179. 179.

    Schlemazel

    @Kay:
    Our daughter played hockey and, because she was good early, she ended up playing with high school girls when she was still in 8th grade. It was not a positive experience as far as I could tell. There is a huge difference in the teen years and I think it is not a good thing to put early teens with older ones like that.

    I will also throw in that sports are not the suzi sunshine environment it is projected to be. When I was in high school the biggest drinkers and the biggest partiers were the jocks. That did not change when my kids were in sports 30 years later

  180. 180.

    Kay

    @Schlemazel:

    It’s “personalized learning”- they move around according to (basically) test scores. I was thinking about the flip side too- there must be older kids stuck with younger kids all day. That can’t be great for them.

    This child in particular is sort of sunny and easy-going. He’s goofy- he laughs a lot. These people are too serious for him, too mature.

  182. 182.

    hovercraft

    @FlipYrWhig:

    That really bothers me — somehow, at no point did anyone make clear that Hillary Clinton’s supposed recklessness with confidential and classified information resulted in a total of ZERO people seeing confidential and classified information who weren’t supposed to see it.

    There was the “possibility” that the server “could” have been hacked, just like there is the possibility that I could become a supermodel, if I grow 7 inches lose half my body weight and start looking like a teenager. It was always a bullshit story and they knew it. Speculating on what might have happened is stupid, there are endless possibilities of things that could happen, but in this election the only important hypotheticals seemed to concern her server, none of the stuff that was obviously happening and is now ongoing at warp speed, was worth dedicating as much time to as the dammed e-mail server. Every time it came up they media said that there was nothing there but it was the “appearance” of wrongdoing that was the problem. It’s funny how “appearance’s” no longer seem to be a problem for the Shitgibbon and it’s merry band of reprehensibles.

  183. 183.

    bemused

    Rightwingers have a zero-sum game mindset about social contracts. They deeply resent government using their hard-earned tax dollars to help anyone more disadvantaged than they are and can see no direct financial benefit to themselves. All they see is X number of dollars of aid given to others is the equivalent to X number of dollars stolen right out of their wallets. I’ve been searching for some good essays or opeds on this but no luck so far.

    It’s not that I think many rightwingers would believe that any money going to help other Americans can improve their own lives or their own communities. Everyone not them are losers and moochers yet they never seem to resent the very wealthy for getting a huge amount government welfare dollars or calculate how much that is draining their wallets.

  184. 184.

    gvg

    @Baud: Flags get burned all the time, when they are properly disposed of. there is a box at my grocery store where you can have a veterans group do it for you. I have considered it because I wonder if some of my nutty neighbors would misinterpret it if I did what protocol says. I wonder of reactionaries like Trump even consider that.
    Flags are symbols, not the actual things. Burning them doesn’t even always mean you hate America, it can mean you think it’s doing something wrong. Flags aren’t alive and I actually prefer flag burning to other ways of expressing anger where someone gets hurt. I have noticed quite a few of what we currently call conservatives really have a kind of magical thinking where the symbols are the things. It causes all kinds of problems.

  185. 185.

    FlipYrWhig

    @hovercraft: Yup. The whole election turned on the idea that Hillary Clinton supposedly ACTS LIKE she has something to hide, while Trump supposedly ACTS LIKE he’s an open book. The fact that Trump conceals all kinds of things, starting with his own taxes and record of sheer fraud, while Clinton has been minutely scrutinized for 30 years… that just doesn’t enter into it, because one projects carefulness and defensiveness and the other projects straight-talk and tellin’ it like it is. That was what determined the election: Trump runs his mouth so much it COMES ACROSS AS un-politician-like unguarded honesty. This is a stupid, stupid way to choose a leader. And the media likes it this way because digging for facts and connecting dots is a lot of work, while talking about what other people are accusing other people about and how those other people come across is easy. Who’s on the attack, who’s caught flat-footed, and so forth. When Rachel Maddow started talking about “body language,” that was when I started to give up on even the liberal media. Fuck “body language.” This isn’t a show. It’s real.

  186. 186.

    WereBear

    @bemused: Everyone not them are losers and moochers yet they never seem to resent the very wealthy for getting a huge amount government welfare dollars or calculate how much that is draining their wallets.

    I have come to believe this is another facet of their essential nature: they are suck-ups. They are totally kick down/kiss up in their hierarchical structure, and they are totally about the hierarchical structure.

    Which is why “equality” sounds like one of those politically correct things they hate so much. Deep down, they are not Americans.

  187. 187.

    FlipYrWhig

    @hovercraft: Also, and I know you know this already, there’s a POSSIBILITY that Hillary Clinton COULD have lost the key to her office. This doesn’t mean that it was reckless and irresponsible of her to carry her office key in her purse, or ask Huma Abedin to hold said purse while she went to the bathroom. The whole thing was an immensely idiotic story that I guess sounded intriguing to people because it involved The Computer.

  188. 188.

    FlipYrWhig

    @bemused: @WereBear:

    Everyone not them are losers and moochers yet they never seem to resent the very wealthy for getting a huge amount government welfare dollars or calculate how much that is draining their wallets.

    That’s because outwitting the greedy government is cool. That’s the promise of every tax preparation commercial. When Trump said not paying taxes made him smart, I’m sure they cheered. Getting handouts from the government is the lowest of the low; tricking the government is the highest of the high.

  189. 189.

    Jeffro

    @gogol’s wife:

    Yesterday I donated to ACLU and SPLC and subscribed to the Washington Post. I have a little to-do list every day. Unfortunately most of the items on my list involve spending money. Oh well.

    That’s awesome! I had ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Sierra Club covered but forgot to re-up with the SPLC, thanks for the reminder!

    Don’t forget to call your Senators and Rep: NO CHANGES to Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. Calls are free! =)

  190. 190.

    Botsplainer

    Has everybody finally realized how well and truly fucked we are this time? Movement conservatives tried to do it the nice elected way in W’s terms, but the natural order of things is that conservatives run vital functions of government about as competently as a drunken 19 year old frat boy trying to fuck while having a bad case of whiskey dick, so they got dumped in 2006 and 2008. Eight years of raw obstructionism paid off, they cheated via vote suppression in 2016, and now intent to both jam the entirety of movement conservatism through as if by mandate, followed by massive vote suppression and police state measures in 2018 and 2020.

    Drum circles, peace marches, giant puppets, non-violence and legally compliant strikes aren’t going to cut it. This time churches, gated communities, country clubs, charity events all have to face potentials for everything from Pu55y Riot type action to potential violence, all while the Oaf Creepers and the camo clad fat militia thugs act in support of law enforcement.

    The only alternative is to learn from our brothers and sisters of color in how to order our lives when neither government nor our businesses or institutions can be counted on for support, in the knowledge our votes are worthless.

    America claims to love George Bailey as it cringes in support of Old Man Potter. It claims to love the redeemed Scrooge while it votes for the Scrooge from the opening chapters. It claims to admire Lincoln while idolize Calhoun and Davis. We’re a diseased, debased culture.

  191. 191.

    bemused

    @WereBear:

    They worship the plutocrats. If they really hated elites, they would have recognized Trump was playing them for fools right off the bat.

  198. 198.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Geoduck: Trump just posted a tweet saying that flag-burning should result in jail-time or loss of citizenship.

    ‏@ KFaulders Katherine Faulders Retweeted Donald J. Trump
    Timing of Trump’s tweet lines up w/ Fox segment at 6:25AM on students burning the flag

  199. 199.

    Peale

    @Kay: not just that, but I think this is about the fifth non-crime that he’s decided should come with a loss of citizenship. What he plans to do with all these non citizens is beyond me. Send them away somewhere?

  200. 200.

    bemused

    @WereBear:

    btw, with your expertise on all things kitty, do you use dryer balls in your clothes dryer that collect cat hair? Some dryer balls are said to be good for that purpose. I try to brush as much cat hair off laundry as I can before washing and drying. Our two long hair black kitties are big shedders. I try comb them a lot and give them laxatone but they still puke up hairballs. Sigh.

  204. 204.

    Calouste

    @WereBear: America was founded by a bunch of semi-educated slave owners (and Ben Franklin). The notion that they thought equality applied to anyone but themselves is laughable.

  205. 205.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    from RootsCamp, an “un-conferece” (fercrissake) of activists in DC

    At one strategy session, a Colorado activist named Kim McKinney Cohen rose to declare that she had voted for Trump, an act of protest and reform after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) lost the Democratic primary.

    “I wanted to shake people up,” she said. “Last time, Democrats got the White House, the Senate, and the House, and did nothing.”

  206. 206.

    WereBear

    @bemused: AHA.

    Dry food is a problem because it is full of grains, and cats don’t graze in a wheat field; they eat meat with a high water content.

    So lot of what you are paying for with dry food is something that only makes them hungry and eat more; encourages illness like diabetes; and contributes to your shedding problem.

    Almost a third of a cat’s metabolism is for maintenance of their skin and coat. So nutritional deficiencies are going to show up there, first.

  210. 210.

    J R in WV

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    Or:

    Just doesn’t care because he has no intention of allowing the Constitution to shape his actions in any way whatsoever. After all, we know he has never read the Constitution, he didn’t even know the number of Articles nor what they contain. No less, he is completely ignorant of the Bill of Rights and the other, what 15 or 20 Amendments passed over the last 250 or so years.

    In fact Trump is pig-ignorant of how the United States is governed in every way, except he knows that if he pays enough to building inspectors, permit issuers, and zoning board members, he gets to have his way on his Real Estate Developments [caps because that the most important, most precious things evah!].

    We are so fucked. I’m so jealous of people who have commented about their dual citizenship in Canada, Ireland, Brazil, etc. I know these countries have problems of their own, many similar to the problems we have just created for ourselves, voluntarily, but still, to be able to just ship stuff and buy tickets to fly….

    Barcelona, I can hear you calling!

  212. 212.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @J R in WV: I have too many obligations to emigrate, but if they haven’t changed the rules (4 Irish-born grandparents), I could get Irish (and so, EU?) citizenship. A few of my cousins did it, I think in the 90s, just to say they had Irish citizenship, I always thought that was kind of silly As those ties unbind with time, and things continue to go to hell, I may change my mind.

  213. 213.

    FlipYrWhig

    @J R in WV: I don’t think Trump understands ideas like “cause and effect” and “consequences” and “time.” He dwells only in the now. He doesn’t learn, doesn’t plan, doesn’t cogitate. He has only sensory knowledge that comes from what he immediately sees and touches.

  214. 214.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Central Planning: I’ve heard it suggested that Trump is trying to provoke his opponents to burn flags to make them look stupid and unpatriotic and justify cracking their skulls. Whether or not he’s calculating enough to do that, it’s probably worth treating this as bait.

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