The FBI is now harassing liberal journalists:
This is a story about how the FBI came to investigate a joke I tweeted about fake news.
[….]One Twitter user warned that she had reported me to the FBI and to Project Veritas — a right-wing organization led by James O’Keefe that stages elaborate stings of reporters, liberals and others; heavily edits its gotcha videos; and then tries to get those people fired.
Project Veritas did not contact me.
But the FBI decided a journalist’s joke was worth its time.
Schlemazel
More evidence that the goal is the silence all opposition. Like pizzagate the object is to show everyone they can make your life hell if you dare cross them
The Dudeist
I agree with John – We’re fucked.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Fuck these people. I can’t do a whole hell of a lot myself. I’m a guy who posts on a fairly well read blog, and I write a lot about Trump on Facebook. I wish I could do more, but I don’t have that wide a reach. Still, it’s up to us, all of us, to speak out about this. Maybe most of us can’t do much on our own, but if enough of us keep making a stink, the sheer numbers will have some effect. That’s all we can do, or at least it’s all I know of that we can do. But it’s our job now. This is our country, and it’s up to us to get it back on track again.
Inmourning
Yes. This. One acre at a time, if necessary.
ThresherK (GPad)
Whew! At least everyone at NPR is safe.
Patricia Kayden
There have been repeated death threats directed at POTUS on Twitter. Wonder if the FBI or Secret Service spend any time harassing those Tweeters. Sigh.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@The Dudeist:
No, we aren’t fucked. Not unless we give up. Donald Trump and the Republican Party and the people who vote for them want nothing more than for us to give up and say we’re fucked. We aren’t fucked. This isn’t over. Nothing is over until we say it is. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
We aren’t fucked. Right now, we’re still reeling from a shocking loss in a race we thought we were going to win. They’re exultant. They’re on top of the world right now, and we’re feeling like shit. But they can’t win. They can’t. They can stave off their losing for a while, and they have done that this year, but time is running out on them, and they know that. We need to hang in and grind out every win we can for the next four years. We can do this. When they do something awful, we need to raise hell about it. I know, it’s hard, since they do something frightful every fucking day, and more than once on most days. But they can’t win unless we let them. Speak up. Write about everything that shocks you. Make a stink. Don’t let them drive you to give up. We’re going to get through this.
Nothing is over until we say it is.
Major Major Major Major
@Schlemazel: that, SWATing, doxxing, general #gamergate shit, frog pictures. 4chan and Twitter dominance techniques installed at the highest levels of government.
max
The FBI is now harassing liberal journalists:
Well, the FBI director pulled a palace coup to get Trump in, so I suppose it follows that folks that speak up will get harassed like gamergaters or Pepe lovers, or just plain old neo-nazis should get hassled, but this is the FBI here.
max
[‘Maybe the theory is that they don’t have to make the new COINTELPRO program covert.’]
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
And we should never forget to thank President elect Trump for making our work easier. This guy hands us things to work with every day. He comes into office having lost the vote by more than two million and a half votes. He’s loathed and feared by at least half the country. And he can’t help but give us all we could ask for to work with to fight him. It’s easy to get down. I know that. Sometimes I get down myself. And that’s all right. We have our bad days and bad spells. But we have to get back up and keep hitting these guys. Hit them until they fall. They’re going to fall. We got dealt a setback, since we thought they were going to fall this year, but instead, they’ll fall a year from now, or two. It’s true, people are going to suffer needlessly in the meanwhile, and I mourn that, but that’s all the more reason not to give up.
All we have are our words. We need to speak and write without stopping for the next four years. We can do this, and we have to do it.
Major Major Major Major
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I honestly think this is probably it. The big one. America will survive in the same sense that there’s an Italy, Germany, or Japan right now, just like there was an Italy, Germany, and Japan 100 years ago.
randy khan
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I’m with you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
.
terben
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): OMG, the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Even Breitbart haven’t reported that one.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@terben: Somebody needs to watch Animal House again.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): We all do.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ll go to the Ben Franklin and pick up ten thousand marbles
Feathers
You left out the most alarming part(s):
Later on he points out that the FBI hasn’t contacted any of the other people working for the “Trump Ballot Destruction Company.” His name must have caught someone’s attention for some other reason when the complaint came in. The FBI is fast sliding back into full Hoover mode. Maybe they’ve recruited too many X-Files fans – and there aren’t any aliens.
gogol's wife
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I agree. I get very down, but we can’t give up. I’m inspired by people like you, and Charles Blow, and even this Evan McMullin I never heard of — he wrote a fantastically blunt and true op-ed in the NYT.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Major Major Major Major:
No, I really don’t think it is. These guys are living on borrowed time, and they know it, and that’s going to drive them to do desperate and stupid shit, but they can’t hold off the world forever. It’ll take time, and sometimes it’s be hard and ugly, but we can beat these shits, and we will, as long as we don’t give up. The only way they can win is if we let them. We need to keep that in mind. We need to tell that to ourselves every damned day. They can only win if we let them. Trump’s legions are louder and nastier and dumber and more violent, but there are more of us. They can’t win. Not if we keep fighting them.
Jay S
@Schlemazel: OK, who crossed who in pizzagate? I thought that was just conspiracy theory collateral damage.
gogol's wife
@Feathers:
Okay, so we all need to re-read Rex Stout, The Doorbell Rang.
mdblanche
@terben: Forget it, he’s rolling.
Suzanne
It astounds me how these people hold themselves up as the Last Defenders of Truth, Justice, the American Way, and NOT BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT, yet they full their Underoos with fear pudding at the dumbest shit, and think that being called racist or sexist is UNCIVIL and doesn’t belong in public discourse but words that begin with N and C are like totes awesome.
Suzanne
@Major Major Major Major: I agree with you. It’s done. America is done. At least, America as something special and meaningful is done.
FEMA Camp Counselor
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Plus, it’s not like having the FBI against us has stopped the left before.
If they want to party like it’s 1956, bring it on.
Jay S
@Feathers: I don’t know why he thinks his joke tweets would fall under the “newsgathering activities” rules, but the lack of investigations into similar jokes makes this seem sinister.
gogol's wife
@Suzanne:
Did you live through Nixon by any chance?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Suzanne: Fear pudding. I like that. I’d never heard it, but I like it.
And that’s one of the things I can’t understand about conservative thinking [sic]. It’s this belief that the best way to be a stand-up, gutsy man’s man is to shiver and shake and cower and quake at the thought of, well, anything. Black people. Muslims. Transgender people, terrorists, atheists, people who don’t wish you a merry Christmas… Everything. The only way to be bold and fearless is to cradle your gun lovingly as you shit your pants in fear. I don’t get that.
Omnes Omnibus
@gogol’s wife: HUAC, Red Scare in late teens and twenties, the Klan, etc.
gogol's wife
My best way of getting through Trump so far is watching videos by this gentleman — so soothing and amusing.
Jay S
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Now that isn’t fair. They will totally stand up to you about Happy Holidays or Holiday Trees and give you the what for, at least online. The other things as well, although I don’t know what they do in the privacy of their own pants.
Suzanne
@gogol’s wife: No, I was born in 1980.
So I have voted in five presidential elections. In 40% of them, the winner of the popular vote lost the electoral college. Why do I bother canvassing Nd donating $$$? Yes, I am bitter.
Major Major Major Major
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): they’re dying but not for years. Enough years to hollow the place out.
Italy still has train tracks and coastline and pasta. We’ll ‘survive’ but we’re talking at least 15 years before the demographics kick in electorally.
gogol's wife
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Have you ever heard the tremble in their voice when they say “Black Lives Matter”?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Suzanne:
Jeez, people, get a grip here. Please. We had a civil war, 80 years of slavery, 100 more of institutional, state sponsored terrorism of Black Americans, two world wars, 50 years of staring down a country that could have wiped all life on Earth out. This guy is a small time conman with a flair for whipping racists into a lather. Yes, he’ll do a lot of harm while he can. But to hold this clown up against the confederacy, or the k.k.k., or Hitler or even Kaiser Wilhelm is a joke.
Zinsky
This is how fascism begins.
Suzanne
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I didn’t come up with it. I can’t remember where I heard it. Maybe Gin & Tacos?
gogol's wife
@Suzanne:
I’m bitter too, just seething, but I’m trying to remember that America hasn’t always been a special, wonderful place, but we keep trudging forward. Obama was a huge step forward — and we had him for 8 years. Whatever they do, they REALLY CAN’T JUST UNDO THAT so easily.
Omnes Omnibus
@gogol’s wife: Exactly. America as a liberal concept is over only if we let it be over.
Major Major Major Major
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): best case scenario is Berlusconi, who kind of destroyed Italy. If they didn’t have mother Europe to rescue them they’d be completely hollowed out. We have no such parents.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Zinsky:
It is, but we have time, and it’s now that we have to call this shit out. Maybe it sounds hokey, but I do tell myself this every time Trump or any of those other shitbags say or do something awful: They Can Only Win If We Let Them. This has become my mantra. Let us shout it from the rooftops: They Can Only Win If We Let Them!
FEMA Camp Counselor
@Suzanne: See, my problem with this is that implies we retain “America as something meaningful and special” through slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, the systemic eradication of Native Americans, both Red Scares, our government ignoring AIDS because its a “gay & druggie disease”, Japanese internment, Operation Wetback, Nixon, and W and we’ve only now lost it because of Trump?
I don’t buy it. The man is a cancer on the ideal of our democracy, but he’s only the symptom of a disease that’s been with us from the beginning.
Honus
@gogol’s wife: great book. I love all the Nero Wolfe stories.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t know. I just don’t see any point in this kind of outlook. We let ourselves think this kind of shit and we’re doing they’re work for them. This is up to us. We can roll over and tell ourselves it’s all over, or we can do what we need to do. If we care about the country, or about each other, we can’t do anything but do what we can.
Major Major Major Major
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): good motto.
I’m not saying we don’t stay and fight and mitigate, just that the historians will find that the 20th century finally ended in 2016, like the 19th ended in 1914.
Yoda Dog
Im still here. I hope everyone is hanging in there.
This newborn kept me up the entire night last night. Im hoping to avoid an encore but he’s sleeping hard right now which bodes poorly for my prospects.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Major Major Major Major: But who gives a shit what historians will say? They won’t be writing about this for twenty years, at least. In the meanwhile, we get to say what they get to write. We get to write the script, right now. Fretting that people will look back on us in disgust isn’t only pointless, it’s demoralizing. We are the writers here, not somebody writing history in 2064. We get to write the story. Let’s make it one worth reading about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s fine. It can be argued that the 18th didn’t end until June of 1815 in Belgium.
Doug R
@Major Major Major Major: Hey, Canada had to slap ya sensible in 1812, don’t make us do it again.
mai naem mobile
We’re done. This century is going to be the Chinese Century. They are cleaning our clocks. Whole we were stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan spinning our wheels and throwing money around like a drunk sailor,they were busy in Africa making friends and taking control of a lot of natural resources. Mean while you had the GOP saying no to everything for eight years so that’s almost another decade flushed down the toilet. A crazy amount of news in Africa comes from Chinese news agencies and they’re free or cheap. Think of it like the Russians not just influencing the US but Canada,Mexico and Central America. The Chinese have even made inroads into Southe America. This is shot the US used to do but we’re too busy yelling about Benghazi!,pizza gate and repealing Obamacare.
Major Major Major Major
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I get you’re trying to do the motivational thing and I appreciate it but I’m not actually one of the glum Gus’s here. I’m a librarian, and a data miner, it’s my role to catalog and discover and organize.
But this is a worldwide inflection point. America will not be the same America in the future. It’s happened before.
Friedersdorf had a good piece in the Atlantic this week about how liberalism needs to find its clarity of voice again, have you read it?
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: the 1980s didn’t end until 1993, when the Pet Shop Boys came out of the closet.
debbie
@gogol’s wife:
McMullin is the guy who ran as the NeverTrump candidate. I think he won in Utah, but no place else.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major:
They were in the closet?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@mai naem mobile:
Well, I give up for the night. I say again, we can either stand up and speak out about what we think needs to be done, or we can throw up our hands and tell ourselves that we’re done, and there’s no point. I know which one I’m going to do. What other people do, well, that’s up to them. I can’t make people do anything. It’s all up to each one of us to choose for ourselves. But in the meanwhile, if you think all is lost, why broadcast it? That not only doesn’t do any good, it hurts the cause. Why turn people off doing something by making them think it’s hopeless? It won’t be easy to begin with? Why make it harder? If you think there’s no point and no hope, well, I think you’re wrong, but that’s your right to think so. But why throw sand in the gears? It doesn’t help.
Anyway, I’m off to fight with the children and try to get them in bed.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: officially. In the same way Rob Halford was.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Seconding everything you said.
mai naem mobile
@debbie: he didn’t win.Orange Douche managed to carry Utah.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Okay.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: lots of Priest fans still haven’t gotten the memo about Halford. It’s sad.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: I personally have never been to a leather bar, but I know they exist. Halford’s stage costumes would fit well, yes?
debbie
@mai naem mobile:
Argh, couldn’t edit in time, but thanks.
Botsplainer
Right now, I’m hammered, watching Galaxy Quest on Netflix and in a decent mood, which is a little different.
I like where I’m at. My only problem is that the damn dog is barking.
Omnes Omnibus
@Botsplainer: Bark back.
randy khan
@Omnes Omnibus: @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Indeed, we can’t let them win.
Botsplainer
Oh, I’ve invited a bunch of people to a cookout/card game in a few weeks while spouse is away.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: they’d be a bit over the top!
@Omnes Omnibus:
also good advice in a leather bar!
Lyrebird
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Thanks for your point about our words.
I’ve been wearing a safety pin on my main work jacket… and yes I’ve read arguments pro and con, but I live in a rural area, I’m white, and I wanted to do SOMETHING visible… Still wanting to send contributions and still a little lost re: what I can afford and re: where to start: ACLU NAACP ADL Southern Poverty Law Center CAIR Planned Parenthood RAICES La CASA dear Heaven…
So thanks for your inspiring words. When Adam said, “we hold the line”, that kept going through my head with the Lemonheads’ cover of Victoria Williams’ “Frying Pan”, “we walk the line…” (yes probably a hat tip or two to Johnny Cash in the song).
We have words, and even though I still cringe away from thinking about an inauguration of that horrid hate-monger, I am GLAD to see the ways people are also using their phones and cameras. All I wanted to say on Nov 9th was WHAT THE F*@, WHITE PEOPLE??? (yes I mentioned I’m one of them, though not one who voted for the Republican candidate…) so when I see evidence of some other/fellow white people with a conscience recording and calling out little acts of hate and disrespect, I feel a bit more hope.
With my luck today, I’ll finally hit “post” and there will be two new threads already, but here goes…
Suzanne
@FEMA Camp Counselor: I felt like, during the Obama era, we really made some great progress. Like, we were genuinely improving people’s lives and we truly were something exceptional. Now I feel like we are just the same corrupt, shitty backwater as, say, Venezuela. I realize this is an entirely emotional response, and that everything you noted above is correct and accurate.
Omnes Omnibus
@randy khan: I get the the depression and horror. I feel those too. I just can’t accept the view that everything is over. Even if Trump breaks everything, we can and must fix and rebuild. FIDO.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Like I said, never been in one. Bark back is almost always good advice.
Mnemosyne
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I have a weird metaphor: we’re currently in the same position that the people on Flight 93 were in. They were aware of what could happen (plane being flown into a building) and they acted to prevent it from happening.
We know by now how fascism and autocracy ends. We need to short-circuit that cycle, starting now.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Neither have I, although late 1970’s-early 1980’s NYC, when I was there, had plenty of places with subtle names like The Mine Shaft or Ramrod. Actually all in a neighborhood known as the Meatpacking District (truly an un-ironic name, as there had once actually been butchers in that area.)
Couldn't Stand the Weather
I hope that a few people, here or elsewhere, are too mad to be defeatist.
Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld turned my fucking stomach. For 8 years. Der Trumpenstein is very similar in one way…he is a lying sack of shit. And he is deeply, fundamentally st00pid. He shows everyone this. Incessantly. Which means he and kakistocracy can be beaten.
End rant.
Omnes Omnibus
@Couldn’t Stand the Weather: Mad as in crazy or angry? I’ll buy in on either.
Jeffro
@gogol’s wife: Charles Blow and Evan McMullin’s 1-2 punches really made my week and it’s only late Tuesday. Resisting is not only necessary, it’s fun to read when well-written!
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: there’s one out here called Moby Dick’s, next to the Sit ‘n Spin laundromat.
Steve in the ATL
Any Minneapolis juicers here? I’m ok with the cold and the snow, but can you do something about this wind?
Also, @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): well said and well articulated. I couldn’t think of more than “Buck up, little trooper!”
Dadadadadadada
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): And for all the frustrated Juicers looking for some way to contribute:
provides a list of GOP state chairs, so you can hassle them about flipping their EC votes.
provides a list of relevant newspapers to write to in the hopes of swinging popular opinion.
Possibly all a useless gesture, but it’s something to do so you aren’t stuck doing nothing.
FEMA Camp Counselor
@Suzanne:
Now see, that I get. I still feel slapped in the face and it’s been a month.
Couldn't Stand the Weather
@Omnes Omnibus:
Both, Omnes.
And Smedley, thanks for throwing it out there.
Jeffro
Just a note that this might be why some people are legitimately fed up and feeling like they’re going nowhere: they aren’t
Why, it’s almost as if something happened around 1980 or so that caused most of the economic growth in this country to flow into the pockets of the well-off. So strange!!
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: Well, I haven’t been there, either. But I have been to the Japanese bathhouse on Geary (?) – although that’s a way different thing,
Dadadadadadada
@debbie: He came in 3rd in Utah, not far behind Clinton but well behind Trump.
Omnes Omnibus
@Couldn’t Stand the Weather: Like I said, I am all in on both. We have two choices here. To accept an alt-right takeover of our institutions or to resist it. Resistance can take many forms. Good people just need to choose which form of resistance they can do.
Suzanne
@Major Major Major Major: A friend of mine in DC goes to a gay bar (not leather) called Homo Erectus. I laughed so, so hard. That is funny shit.
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
It’s a mystery, that is. Must be Hillary’s fault.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: That’s amazing.
SiubhanDuinne
@Suzanne:
LOL! That’s great!
Gin & Tonic
For those of us suffering from feelings of confectionery inadequacy, here is an Advent calendar to end Advent calendars.
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic: I wish I was that fucking funny. Lord.
Feathers
@gogol’s wife: They have it at the local library! As well as multiple entries of a children’s book of the same name about people who come over looking for cookies. A mashup could well be in order. I’ve been reading through the Maigrets, recently reissued by Penguin. A good mystery novel which can be read in an evening is a joy forever!
@Major Major Major Major: @Omnes Omnibus: I’ve usually heard of the “Long 19th Century” referred to as 1789 to 1914, taking in the French Revolution, up to the outbreak of World War I. I’m sure some of that is having to go over the French Revolution if you are going to talk about what was happening in Europe in 1800.
@Omnes Omnibus: I remember when Boy George was in the closet.
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne: I believe she mentioned this in her emails…
ON A SIDE NOTE: between Mike Pence calling Trump’s voter fraud lies “refreshing”, Mike Pence calling Trump’s win a “mandate” and a “victory of ideas”, Mike Pence lying about Flynn Jr’s status on the transition team, and Mike Pence saying that (in regards to Trump bullying Boeing with his lying tweets earlier today) “[Trump] was pushing fiscal responsibility”…perhaps it is time for us to get focused on Mike Pence.
Long regarded as a dimwit even within his own caucus, pushed to the verge of losing his own gubernatorial re-election until Trump plucked him from disaster as cover with the religious right, Mike Pence is a lying shithead and needs to be rhetorically beaten about the head daily. Let’s push on our media to note all this guy’s lies, all together, so that voters can see the ‘theme’ with him – L. YI. NG.
Mary G
With apologies to Winston and his speechwriters, here is how I feel:
#RESIST
Omnes Omnibus
@Feathers: I say that the French Revolution was a pure 18th century thing and it came to an end at Waterloo.
Boy George was never in the closet.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: Thank you. Agreed.
dww44
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Thank you. Just the picker upper that I need. In the meantime, has everyone heard about this petition? A bit of political trickery, but it makes me smile at the very possibility of it.
Renominate Merrick Garland so that the Senate can confirm him at noon on January 3rd (with a temporary D majority)
Omnes Omnibus
@dww44: Why does he need to be renominated?
max
@Suzanne: I agree with you. It’s done. America is done. At least, America as something special and meaningful is done.
American Exceptionalism has always been bullshit. So no point in panicking.
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s fine. It can be argued that the 18th didn’t end until June of 1815 in Belgium.
Or we could have a short 19th – 1815 to 1870, and the long 20th, 1870-2008 as Brad DeLong suggests.
max
[‘And Joe Biden is suggesting we gotta give Trump an even shot.’]
Omnes Omnibus
@max: I don’t really care. Draw the lines where you want. Historians will make the call. Thanks for bitching.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: We are saying be positive. Push good news. And! Point out how Trumpworld is not doing what it has promised. Let’s do it everyday.
KS in MA
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I’ll have what you’re having.
Mary G
Urban vs. rural America has been at odds since Hamilton vs. Jefferson. I just finished the Chernow biography of Hamilton, and he and Jefferson were both dicks in their own ways, and fought about much the same issues we are fighting about today.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: Jefferson justified slaves. Hamilton and Burr did not.
Mnemosyne
@Mary G:
Did you also get the distinct feeling that there were a couple of times when Chernow would have loved to reach back through history and slap some sense into Hamilton? I especially picked up on the exasperation when Hamilton was running around the streets of New York challenging people to fistfights over the Jay Treaty.
I’ve also become convinced that the Reynolds affair was a totally stereotypical male midlife crisis. I’d bet that in one of Eliza’s burned letters, she told Angelica that he’d bought the 18th century equivalent of a bright red sports car shortly beforehand.
Mary G
@Mnemosyne: Oh, definitely. I listened to the audiobook and it almost sounded like the narrator was trying not to laugh at the more acerbic comments about Hamilton’s inability to STFU.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I still find it fascinating that the only known living descendants of Burr are African-American, the descendants of a son he had with a freed former slave (who was actually from India, not Africa, but had been sold into slavery). He’s one of the few figures of that era who wouldn’t have minded at all.
divF
@Gin & Tonic:
I lived at 7th Ave. and 15th St. for a semester in 1985, and used to take walks in that neighborhood. At least as of that time, there were still meatpackers in that area – burly guys with bloody aprons working the night shift. They were clearly distinguishable from the BDSM types – much grubbier, and wearing white cotton, rather than black leather.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: Also, Jefferson founded UVA. Hamilton and Burr did not.
I try to like Jefferson but I can’t get past that.
TriassicSands
@gogol’s wife:
@debbie:
Evan McMullin is a right wing Republican who ran against Trump in his home state of Utah. He’s probably not the person you want to rely on for political inspiration. And no, he didn’t win in Utah, Trump won, McMillan was third, Hillary second. He was also third in Idaho. His Mormon affiliation gave him the opportunity to run reasonably strong in both Utah and Idaho, but he still only won 20.6% in Utah and 6.8% in Idaho (totals subject to change if the vote totals change).
McMullin is anti-choice, and said he would appoint SCOTUS justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. He supports Republican tax policies, as well as cuts to Social Security. McMullin may be somewhat more moderate than the craziest Republicans, but he’s not someone many BJ commenters would like to see be president (or elected to any public office).
As a Mormon, McMullin may have been deeply offended by the candidacy of a man as immoral, unethical, and corrupt as Trump.
Anne Laurie
@TriassicSands:
McMullin’s also ex-CIA (assuming one is ever ex-CIA, of course).
There were murmurs, prior to the election, that McMullin’s candidacy was partially funded as the CIA’s response to Jim Comey’s FBI’s blatant interference with the election: We know what you’re up to; don’t let your crew-cut Russian-enablers forget that we’re watching.
Don’t know how valid those rumors might be, but certainly the CIA trusts Vladimir Putin rather less than Mr. Comey seems to!
Uncle Cosmo
@Major Major Major Major:
Um…no.
The 19th century didn’t start until the Revolutionary interregnum had run its course (1789-1815) but then lasted to 1914. The abbreviated 20th century ended in 1989 (at best, 1991 when the CCCP went T/U), but it made up in death toll what it lacked in duration. We’ve just been through another interregnum when the kaleidoscope of human society kept getting shaken up before anyone got a good look through it. Welcome to the 21st century’s global-theocorpitalist nightmare…
gogol's wife
@TriassicSands:
I’m aware he’s a right-wing Republican, but if he tells the truth about DJT on the op-ed page of the NYT, I’m thanking him for it. That doesn’t mean I want him to be president (although he’d be better than Trump, it appears).
dww44
@Omnes Omnibus:You probably won’t see this, but I have been gone the entire day and no access to the internet. Good point you make, but here’s the explanation from Daily Kos:
Procopius
I haven’t yet read all the comments, so maybe somebody already asked this. Have you verified that the person who spoke to you is actually an FBI agent, that he is the agent he claimed to be (i.e., he gave you his real name), and that the investigation he claims he is pursuing is an actual, officially sanctioned, investigation? It seems that your employer’s legal department would have an advantage in finding out whether the investigation is official or not, but I would think it would be satisfying to look up the phone number of the field office he supposedly works at, asking them for a phone number to contact him, and then asking if the person who answers is so-and-so, and then asking if he had actually called you. This is so bizarre I would prefer to suspect a hoax, even though I firmly believe in the ideologically driven stupidity that is so widespread among our law enforcement cadres.