I think one of the things that is becoming very clear to a lot of people is that this upcoming administration is going to require unprecedented resistance. Let me make this crystal clear- one of the ways the Republicans and the bobbleheads like Kurtz, Todd, and others are going to rely on is hoary old bullshit like “this is a departure from tradition” or “decorum is at an all time low.”
Fuck them. We are in uncharted waters here, and you need to take your lead from John Lewis and not the media courtesans. We need a departure from whatever fictional tradition they have in their heads (and it is fictional because the last eight years of Republican obstruction threw everything out the god damned window). SNL, I am happy to say, is taking no fucking quarter:
“Nazi Germany at least had the guts to take on Russia.”
Bravo.
Also on SNL last was an artist I had never heard of before, Sturgill Simpson, and I am buying ALL his music today. Here is Keep it Between the Lines (the SNL recordings on youtube are shit):
I actually like his rendition last night better because the pacing was faster. Here’s Call to Arms:
This shit hits all my sweet spots. Brassy with baritone sax, good lyrics, and anything with a Hammond organ, well, sign me up. Although I am not sure why he has Joey Ramone playing the keyboards.
Baud
If you care what they think, you might as well care what Trump thinks.
Patricia Kayden
This is why I wanted Secretary Clinton to state unequivocally that she will not attend Trump’s inauguration. Precedence be damned. Ditto President Obama, for that matter.
Off topic:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/14/us/women-voters-trump.html
Why some women voted for Trump. **ROLLS EYES**
Corner Stone
Patricia K – your reply is linked to your NYT link.
I think PBO kind of *has* to be there as it his last official duty (I think).
And for HRC, while I do not *want* her to go, I think it would give Trump more lasting satisfaction if she did not attend. He would mention it a thousand times, along with the word loser and grapes and bitter and all kinds of things. Yes, he is going to continue to attack her for years anyway – but she can fight back with a sense of decency and high ground. Especially as more of the Russia ties come out. And they will.
For all other D politicians and luminaries – stay the fuck away.
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
Before I go read that, let me do my Kreskin impersonation: they’re anti-abortion and racist, and there’s a mysterious “something” about Hillary that just didn’t make her seem “presidential.”
Now to go see if there’s a single surprise in the actual article.
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
If people are still wondering who the hell voted for Obama, supported Bernie, and then voted for Trump, they just have to follow your link. One example:
Corner Stone
They have already started. McConnell already went on record saying “the American people would not stand” for Democratic obstruction of Trump’s SCOTUS pick. The fucking balls on that guy ti be able to say that out loud! Like he actually meant it!
We are going to be hearing 24/7 how Obama disgraced the office by doing XYZ and now the R’s are trying to bring a sense of honor back.
Michael Bersin
It’s not just at the national level, the republican controlled Missouri General Assembly is a piece of work:
HB 600: suppose there was a brand new state park named after Jay Nixon and you wanted to change the name (January 14, 2017)
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources named one of the newest state parks (relatively small, not developed yet) after outgoing Governor Jay Nixon (D) who was and is a strong supporter of the state park system. One week after that a republican member of the House introduced a bill to rename the park and make the Department of Natural Resources pay those costs out of their budget.
“…Man, that’s just mean. That’s mean, man…”
Adam L Silverman
@Patricia Kayden: @Corner Stone: I’ve fixed it.
chopper
I love the tv bobbleheads’ talk about ‘decorum’ and ‘comity’. like they’ve been in a cave for the last 8 years. like birtherism never existed.
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: I am so over the top angry about the election results that I really don’t care much for the high ground. I understand your point but I don’t see the point of having the high ground when you’re dealing with a megalomaniac like Trump. What difference does it make if she has the high ground when she has zero political aspirations having just had the election stolen from her by an unqualified nincompoop with the aid of a foreign country?
Seems like people on our side are so polite. But again I understand your point and will sulk to myself and grumble incoherently about our side acting with decorum while the other side gets away with interrupting President Obama’s first SOTU with shouts of “you lie” and claiming that he’s not even born here. Sigh.
P.S. I just hope Secretary Clinton doesn’t have to endure any humiliations while attending the inauguration, i.e., Trump supporters shouting “lock her up” right to her face or Trump calling her out of her name during any of his speeches. She should duck out of this charade ASAP.
Patricia Kayden
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks Adam.
Michael Bersin
Senator Claire McCaskill (D) is exhibiting some resistance:
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): at least in Tom Clancy novels the Russians always lost
She tweeted this morning: “Am I living in a Tom Clancy novel?”
Baud
@Patricia Kayden: I also hope she is treated with dignity, but she is stronger than all of us put together.
OGLiberal
@Patricia Kayden: They can all go fuck themselves. All if them. Their opinions are all for shit…crazy stuff. I’d rather lose elections than appeal to them…and read between the lines…almost all of them are racist, even if they think they aren’t. One mentioned Vince Foster, for the love of pete. Hey, privileged white ladies…go fuck yourself.
burnspbesq
Simpson’s first album, “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music,” is quite splendid. ‘Sailor’s Guide to Earth” didn’t grab me.
What a fucking morning of football. Everton tosses Manchester City in a dumpster and lights it on fire, and then Liverpool and Man U put on a show.
Baud
I miss Amir.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jeremy Peters of the NYT and MSNBC just now: People are moving on from the question of Russian influence in the election.
Ksmiami
@Patricia Kayden: They do not deserve civility or sympathy as they wreck the country. Fuck the GOP and make them fail.
burnspbesq
@Michael Bersin:
In a Tom Clancy novel, Clark and Chavez would have taken care of Assange, Wikileaks, and the Russian hackers a long time ago.
Emerald
Alex Baldwin is brilliant as Sunkist Stalin, but one thing about these sketches has bothered me from the start, and it isn’t Baldwin’s fault—he’s performing the sketches as written. The sketches portray trump as coherent, and trump is not coherent. The dialogue makes sense, and trump does not make sense.
They’re portraying him as a sentient person, and he isn’t one.
Maybe they ought to have Baldwin just read out some trump tweets. Also, I await William Shatner’s translation of them into beat poetry.
dww44
When was the above SNL broacast? The one on my TV last night at 10 o’clock eastern was a reprise of a very long ago one from the late 70’s/early 80’s as Carrie Fisher was the guest host and Belushi was still alive. I didn’t stay up til the end though, so maybe the one above was afterwards?
The Ancient Randonnuer
I can see why you like Sturgill Simpson, he’s got that Lowell George thing going on.
As far as decorum and comity? I say fuck them. We take back the country. Period. Right now we have a president-elect who recievied almost 3 million votes less than his oponent, the Senate majority represents about 1/3 of the population, and the House majority got 48 percent of the popular vote. We are, in fact, being lead by a minority government. The system is broken. Winning at the state and national level in 2018 is imperative so an overhaul of the electoral process can begin. Double the size of the House and bring on a national popular vote for the president.
beth
@Patricia Kayden: I commented on this article last night that I was struck by the nurse complaining about the Iraqi immigrant who needs dialysis because “he’ll never be productive here” and “we need to take care of our own first”. This is a nurse displaying absolutely no compassion for another human being – he is one of “ours” for god’s sakes. How in the world can you ever think to get through to people whose souls are so empty?
Thoughtful David
Honest question: I’m looking to buy some of the faux Trump bumper stickers, the ones that look just like the Trump/Pence ones, but instead say “Trump/Putin”. Asking for a friend, who wants to replace the originals with these on the back of some pickups around here.
I’d like to know a reputable place to buy them from, and it has to be a place that I can be sure is owned and run by Democrats.
I also want a campaign button that says “I didn’t vote for the pervert.” So I can have all Talibangelicals explain to me what “golden shower” means and why it’s so closely associated with the new president.
dww44
@Baud: I too miss Amir and I’m obviously out of the loop as I’ve not seen any mention of why he isn’t commenting.
Mart
I did a rare for me purchase of the Simpson album after the bands second SNL performance. They are classified as “country”, seemed to me more like rockabilly on massive levels of cocaine while tight as shit. Works for my wife and me too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dww44: NBC has been running reruns at that hour, and then a new show at the usual time. Tina Fey came on last night, a hologram in a white dress, to do a quiet tribute to Carrie Fisher
JPL
@burnspbesq: MomSense said it was LeCarre novel, if he wrote it while taking acid.
Baud
@dww44: He had some health issues that limited his commenting, but I don’t recall seeing him for a while now.
Peale
@Baud: what happened to Amir. I checked out for a few months. Is he just “the missing despondent” or did his health turn bad again?
XTPD
@Patricia Kayden: Salon’s Best Damn Columnist roasted this column to a nice turn via tweetfisking.
Corner Stone
@Patricia Kayden: I am also insanely angry about it all as well. And I try to temper my anger with President Obama for being a decent man who respects the office and tradition. But I more and more have come to believe that this was a situation that called for balls out action. They knew everything. Everything for six months or longer! And played pitty pat around it.
I mention this because not only am I angry at the whole thing, I think if Obama did recommend or follow a path of social resistance against normalizing Trump then I would also strenuously agree with HRC not attending the inauguration. As is, I think she damages any future resistance efforts she may engage in and open the door to being called a “hysterical woman” much more easily (if she does not attend). I am sure they will call her that anyway, but this takes a peg out of the playing board they can use against her.
I am just so pissed it’s hard to put into words.
Corner Stone
Thank goodness for the Travel Channel’s food and food travel shows. Only thing allowing me to escape into a decent and normal world any more.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
You know that if the Clintons didn’t attend, there would be a greater chance of Trump immediately starting up again with tweets about sending her to prison.
Tazj
@chopper: Right, exactly, the last eight years plus Trump in the election and right now. Every tweet and his ridiculous press conference just show what an ignorant, mean and despicable person he is. But some in the press will whine the rust belt!, trade!, some people are paying more for healthcare and they’re upset. He speaks to them, the press will say. They’re cowards, I have no respect for anyone in the press who’s talking about comity in regards to Trump right now.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Stephanie Ruhle of morning MSNBC said out loud repeatedly how much she wished the “Russia story” would just go away.
Corner Stone
@Emerald:
Or John Lithgow. His reading of a Newt Gingrich statement was fucking genius.
Angh
I want Hillary to show up holding a bottle of Old Spice.
“Look at your man. Look at me. Sadly he isn’t me.”
debbie
@dww44:
It was from the 2nd season. Amazing how much longer some of the sketches were.
Goblue72
@OGLiberal: If you’d rather lose and be “right”, you aren’t serious about politics. You’re just a fan.
SiubhanDuinne
@dww44:
I had a brief email exchange with him a few weeks ago. He said he was busy moving, that he continues to lurk here and sees FP posts and comments, but isn’t commenting much at the moment.
Amir, assuming you see this, we miss you and look forward to the time when you rejoin the jackals.
burnspbesq
The description of the inauguration in the TV listings in the Sunday Herald (the Scottish paper) is bloody brilliant.
OMFG, I’m dying
waysel
Being civil, honoring rules, traditions, and laws, being honest, being the ‘adults in the room’, no longer seem to be elements of winning elections. Democrats need to get nasty and mean, methinks.
Peale
@beth: they are not Christians. There is something wrong with these Christians. It’s always been there, I know. But this fear of dependency when it applies to anyone foreign or African American overwhelms all fucking concern that their souls will ever be found wanting by God for anything else they do. The act like they can escape judgement. A ruthless decay in moral thought, and it isn’t the secular humanists and faggots they fear that’s caused it. It’s their own Christian ministers.
Corner Stone
@beth:
It is amazing how many nurses, almost exclusively white females, are hard hearted hardcore Republican assholes.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Baud: I want Amir to talk me down.
worn
Sturgill IS awesome, John. I was fortunately turned on to him a couple of years ago via ‘Turtles All the Way Down’. I immediately went out and purchased a copy of ‘Metamoden Sounds in Country Music’. It is definitely a record worth owning.
Baud
I don’t plan to invite any Republicans to the 2021 inauguration.
Corner Stone
@Mart:
Since our resident pedant may not have the juice in him to respond I will take this one on:
“Phrasing!”
Gelfling 545
@Mnemosyne: This is what I can’t wrap my mind around. They trusted President Obama to be president and would have trusted Bernie but when they say that HRC is the best choice they suddenly can’t be trusted in this one area?
Yoda Dog Democrat
Im only getting angrier. Obama will still be my President after Friday. This is a fucking abomination. I can accept a President Pence. But not this piece of shit. Not now and not ever. To accept this is the cowardly and anti-american and his supporters are all nothing more or less than traitors to the United States of America.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
… and moving towards asking about Russian influence in the government.
I’m going to a Rise Up Los Angeles meeting after my writer’s group this morning. Because fuck these assholes.
Aimai
Im at a rally with Elizabeth Warren right now. Rallying for health care in Boston. Any other balloon juicers here?
In re the clintons going I think they. Should have their secret service detail refuse to let them go because of the firing of the national guard commander.
Mnemosyne
@Gelfling 545:
Misogyny is a hell of a drug.
Baud
@Gelfling 545: Hate trumps love.
Goblue72
@beth: That is a caricature. What she said is she’s conflicted. There’s homeless people in her community who she thinks we should be helping and who aren’t getting the help, and it seems wrong to her that those folks aren’t getting help but we are spending money on someone who isn’t borne here and won’t ever be able to contribute back.
I disagree in part with her position, but I can under it.
patrick II
I keep mixing up the Trump transition with an Onion article. I thought the announcement that Trump had talked to Steve Harvey about HUD referred to in the opening monologue was a joke — it turns out to be true. It also seems to be true that nearly 63,000,000 Americans voted for this clown, which is an idea I am still not sure I can deal with.
dm
Dredging up some random thread from Thursday or Friday, probably: I had forgotten about this, until this afternoon:
Ivanka Trump vacationed in August with Putin’s girlfriend.
Small world, isn’t it?
Aleta
Ethical Correctness was destroying the nation.
LibraryGuy
Indulge me. I took a sampling from almost all of the women in the NY Times piece:
___
But after eight years, I saw there was much more racial divide than there had ever been, I didn’t like the way the economy is going and I didn’t like the stance he took on police.
And I read all these things about people where their religious liberties are not being taken seriously.
Do I think Trump’s trying to send women back to the kitchen? No, his daughter is a great example. She ran the women-who-work campaign long before he ran for president.
From what I’m understanding, he’s only really wanting illegal immigrants that have committed crimes to be deported, which I agree with.
He speaks his mind and because of that, he’s not going to lie to you.
Benghazi. The emails. The I.R.S. She’s a liar. The Clintons got wealthy because of their position. I’d rather have someone there who doesn’t need the money.
Someone who has a big bravado is not as concerning to me as someone who might kill people who get in her way.
That’s not the feel I get from feminists today, they want extra privileges.
___
A fundamental problem for liberals and Democrats and progressives is that the right-wing has won the messaging war. Every quotation from these women is at best a misrepresentation of reality, and at worst a total lie. We are fighting for our country and our values and trying to reach voters who are convinced that Hillary kills opponents, that feminism now is a grift, that Trump is too rich to care about money, that Trump is honest, that Ivanka is a true feminist leader, that the growing racial divide is because of Democrats. I’m not sure what the answer is, but at a minimum we have to recognize that they are fighting an existential war against us and our values, and they’ve defined the battleground in a hell of a lot of ways.
debbie
@Emerald:
I disagree. I think the way Baldwin’s portraying Trump better shows both the absurdity and terror of the man. It’s more effective to be poking fun at Trump because that is exactly what drives him crazy.
Aleta
@patrick II: Nous sommes tous l’oignon.
mai naem mobile
I had my teevee on the local NBC affiliate last night waiting for SNL. The local news was on. There is a teaser for SNL a few minutes before the show. So they had a quick teaser with Felicity Jones and the musical guest and one of the SNL people. And then it clicked to a story out of Russia about some new snow sport. For a moment I thought this was the beginning skit of SNL ,with the Russians hacking SNL but they went to the Ken and Barbie anchors. It was funny.
BudP
Love Sturgill esp. this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWx6csgGkg4
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: But she probably had zero problems with the endless email/Benghazi witch hunt which dogged Secretary Clinton, amirite? These idiots are working overtime to spike my blood pressure. So glad I gave up tv news.
Patricia Kayden
@LibraryGuy: Yep. We’re also dealing with people who don’t understand that Obamacare = the ACA. Aaaargh! How are we supposed to even talk to people like this?
LibraryGuy
@Goblue72: She’s conflicted in part because she doesn’t see the Iraqi as someone who is probably here because they had to flee the country her fellow Americans and government helped destroy. And we are rich enough as a country that we don’t have to choose between helping “our own” and helping immigrants. I can understand her being conflicted, but her conflict is born out of a limited understanding of hwo the world works and how that person came to be in the ER.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Have you considered 1) having your eyes checked? 2) Working on your aim?//
Villago Delenda Est
@Goblue72: :You’re a disgusting excuse for a human being. Please find a fire to die in.
Thank you.
SiubhanDuinne
I don’t plan on watching or listening to any part of the inauguration if I can avoid it. But I am curious about one thing: Obviously, the inaugural address will have been carefully scripted, and T will be reading it, not ad libbing it. But during the campaign, I seem to recall that even when he was delivering a written, prepared speech, sooner or later he would ignore the script and go into one of his riffs before returning to the words on the TelePrompTer — sometimes at length, sometimes for just a moment or two.
So what are the odds that he’ll have the self-discipline on Friday to deliver the address exactly as prepared for him? I’m guessing that at some point he’ll go off-script, even if it’s just to brag about the size of the crowd or something.
Mart
@Corner Stone: Yeah, phrasing not so good. Maybe should have gone with frenetic. I have not been cocaine fueled frenzy in almost 37 years, nose couldn’t take it anymore. You kids out there, it is a nasty drug. Just say no.
Goblue72
@Patricia Kayden: If you can’t put your spittle away long to do the hard work of wrestling with why you lost the majority of voters outside coastal urban centers, with why Democrats are at their weakest since the fricking 1920’s, and with how an autocratic moron got elected President, then you aren’t serious about this stuff.
Losing sucks. But you don’t get to win if you aren’t honest with why you lost.
Self delusion, smug condescension, satisfied feelings of moral superiority and refusal to engage feel better. But it won’t win shit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Villago Delenda Est: grassroots activist Malcom K Schrute wants us to take the time to understand bitter white people
@SiubhanDuinne: I suspect this may be the shortest inauguration speech in a long time, if not ever.
lamh36
CIA director warns Trump to watch what he says, be careful on Russia via @Reuters
Corner Stone
@LibraryGuy:
Edited to add – and also displays the underlying racist, bigoted, ignorance of those who think this way. And now feel freed to say it out loud to anyone who asks.
I loved the one that was, “I’m not racist. You’re the racist for calling me racist!”
That is fucking comedy gold.
Bobby Thomson
Sturgill Simpson covering Nirvana is brilliant.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Of course he will go off-script. I hope someone keeps track of the sniffing. Even if he doesn’t coke up, the cold weather is sure to be hell on his sinuses. The Weather Channel is predicting shows and 40s. Good. No chance of clearing or of sun.
Baud
Dear Patricia,
I value your spittle. Keep spittling.
Sincerely,
Baud.
waysel
@Baud: Yup. Hate trumps love, dammit.
Ian G.
Around about 2011/2012, I started getting into alt-country. First the Drive-By Truckers and Steve Earle (thank you to “The Wire” for featuring an Earle song in the season 2 ending montage, that’s where it began for me). Then Lucero and Ryan Bingham and Jason Isbell’s solo stuff. Sturgill Simpson is the most recent one that I’ve gotten into. “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music” rocks. Somewhere, Waylon Jennings and Gram Parsons are smiling.
And for those of you who think junk like Toby Keith when you think “country music”, please give yourself a listen to this stuff. And follow Jason Isbell’s Twitter feed. He’s smart, funny, and the opposite of a wingnut.
Corner Stone
@Mart: Hey, if it works for you and your wife, who am I to judge?
LibraryGuy
@Patricia Kayden: Carefully. The only success I had this election reaching people either in person or on social media was to be calm and factual. It drove many of them nuts or to anger, but a couple people (a Sanders supporter, an unhappy Democrat) actually came around when I ran through facts. One never realized how much Obama had done and was stunned by a list of his positive accomplishments. Another finally agreed with me after he realized that every citation for his position was someone commenting on what Trump had said, not what he had actually said. It’s hard. We are all waist-deep in hardened bullshit and we have to fight just to overcome that before we can get into the meat of the battle.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: This was still the best
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cziT5HVIXM&index=67&list=PL3u_sqiDDJZED5qa2k9ndqpIjtPCWIZwu
Unfortunately I can’t find the whole clip, just an excerpt.
Cacti
@waysel:
We’re dealing with fascists. Fascists need to be fought, not hugged.
beth
@Goblue72: Tough shit. We are better than them. I would never be “conflicted” about whether someone needing life saving treatment was worthy of it or not. I would never consider them to be “not one of our own”. We can’t and won’t win over people who feel like that and are willing to openly proclaim it on the pages of the NYT. It’s the people who won’t say it out loud, who have doubts and a guilty consciences and the ones who just can’t bother to vote because they don’t see the good it does them that we need to win over. Fuck the 27%. I’m sick of this shit. This election has broken something in my heart.
pamelabrown53
@chopper: #9
“…like birtherism never existed”. A- fucking- men. I read that Reince Preibus on “Meet the Press” was exhorting President Obama to denounce Congressman John Lewis’s statement for “trying” to de legitimize the shitgibbon. If that isn’t gobsmacking chutzpah, what is?
Oatler.
@pamelabrown53: http://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/01/14/echoing-trump-team-nbc-and-msnbc-figures-dismiss-claims-about-russia-and-president-elect/215015
Corner Stone
@LibraryGuy:
After many years of effort, what I have found is that the people who are prone to believe the kinds of flat out untruths and propaganda that can be factually refuted will fall back under their spell within about 6 minutes of my ending our reality based discussion.
LibraryGuy
@Goblue72: Patricia is wrestling with it. We all are. I think we’re delusional if we start from the assumption that we have so much to learn from people whose self-professed positions are inherently racist and factually deficient. I think it’s a hell of lot more important to figure out and deal with the fact that these Obama voters are now chock-full of lies and RW talking points. I’m not belittling them, but it does no good to ignore that they are supporting functional racism and deceit even if they don’t understand that that is what they are doing.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: 20 minutes tops.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: That’s good. But are you sure it’s better than the convergence of Newt and Sir John Lithgow?
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@Corner Stone:
You have to understand that they really do believe what they say. McConnell absolutely thinks that there are a different set of rules for Democrats than for Republicans.
Whatever they do to advance their agenda and foil the Democrats is the will of the people. And those that disagree don’t count.
sukabi
Superb bit of trolling by the Scots
Villago Delenda Est
@pamelabrown53: One of many reasons why Rinse Shortbus’ head would look much better on a pike than on his shoulders.
MomSense
@LibraryGuy:
You go to messaging war with the media you have not the media you wish you had. Our Tom Levenson tried to engage with some NYT writers and editors(maybe just writers) and ended up thinking it was hopeless. Right wing messaging works because our media seem to be wired to receive and amplify it. I’m not surprised these women came away with concerns about Clinton. The media portrayal was abysmal and unfair. At the same time they kept justifying trump’s behavior and ignoring actual scandals and conflicts of influence. I don’t know how to get our message through. I don’t even know how to get facts through the media blockade.
beth
@pamelabrown53: My husband had that on – Rick Santorum was on calling President Obama the biggest bully we’ve ever had as president, claiming that he attacked Paul Ryan during the meeting on heath care and the Supreme Court during the State of the Union. I have no idea if anyone disputed his claim, I was too disgusted to watch anymore.
LibraryGuy
@Corner Stone: Yeah, I hear you. It sucks bigly to realize that so many people can’t be reached. Fox and Rush and all their ilk have so much to answer for.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti: THIS THIS THIS.
We fought a fucking WORLD WAR once to deal with fascists. Now the great-grandchildren and grandchildren of those who fought fascism have betrayed them and their sacrifices.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Calouste: I got fifty internet-quatloos that says under ten.
@beth: even more than Li’l Marco, Rick Santorum as always struck me as a middle aged man (he must be pushing sixty by now) who never quite grew up.
And speaking of Sunday shows and bullies, CBS apparently had Newt Gingrich on. The man was driven from office in disgrace almost twenty years ago.
LibraryGuy
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: Exactly. Republicans are in this conflict (cultural and political) to win at any cost and defeat both us as individuals and our ideas for the country. We aren’t bringing a knife to a gun battle – we’re bringing knives to a blitzkrieg.
LookingForACanadian
Sturgill kicks ass live. I was at Eaux Claires music festival the summer of 2015 the first time I heard him. Was just shuffling along and heard this lovely voice, and wondered in my head, is Waylon still alive? I was hooked. Saw him again last summer at First Ave.
LibraryGuy
@MomSense: Yes, and the media we have blows. Like I mentioned, I’ve only had luck one-on-one, and that was hard as hell. And who knows if it stuck. But it helps me to go on knowing that our ideas and the people who fight for them are fighting for fairness, justice, and hope for everybody, even those who hate us.
Lizzy L
Folks in Colorado wanted to talk to their elected representative about healthcare. Turns out, he didn’t really want to talk to them. I hope stories like this are happening all across the country, as folks who’ve benefited from the ACA consider what their lives will be like when it goes away. I think they will not be happy.
http://www.9news.com/news/congressman-coffman-leaves-frustrated-crowd/386167135
jayboat
Sturgill is the bomb.
Raphael Kearns
@Corner Stone: I’m a retired nurse who worked primarily in Emergency departments for many years. You’re right about the number of nurses who are Republican though I think the numbers are skewed due to there being many more female nurses than male. The percentages are probably pretty equal.
I’m male and am a life long liberal. Can’t tell you how many “discussions” I had with wingnut nurses and physicians during the middle of the night shift.
Way back during the first Clinton administration during the health care business I remember a Surgeon complaining that if the Clinton health plan passed he was going to quit practicing medicine. I asked him what was he going to do since he really had no skills other that medicine. He was sort of speechless. I told him he couldn’t really do anything else since all his life he had people who did everything for him.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The problem with these idiots is they’re bitter about the WRONG THINGS.
J R in WV
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Not as long as the Russian puppet and his stooges are in a position of power, able to destroy the coalition that has kept the peace in Europe for nearly 70 years – one of the longest times of peace in Europe in history!
Europe has been awash in blood time after time for centuries, people slaughtered deliberately, or left to starve with their harvest confiscated by their own monarch’s troops on their way to fight somewhere. Religious wars, wars for property, mines, factories, vineyards. And this is what Putin and his puppet, Donald J Trump, want to return to.
For naked power and billions of dollars in wealth, never to be used to the good of the people the wealth is taken from. Trump stands for thievery just as Putin does.
They are despicable, a word I had trouble spelling a year ago, now my fingers do it without any conscious thought on the part of my brain.
K488
@Michael Bersin: Am I recognizing a James Coburn quotation from Pay Back? “Shoot a man’s suits, now that’s just mean!” or something like that. Love that scene!
clay
Sturgill Simpson was the guy who made a new Waffle House song with Stephen Colbert. Seems like a fun guy. See:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yHe_1lOJYN0
and:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L9WBVULoic0
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And the disgrace that drove him from his office was that he nearly lost the House for the Rethugs in 1998. His lack of ethics or morals didn’t play into it.
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: now of course we can bury Russian influence in our government. We’ll bury a lot of things.
OGLiberal
@debbie:
@Goblue72: ok, let me restate. I do want to win, just don’t want to spend any energy trying to win over these women. Energy would be better spent getting those out to vote who would have voted for Clinton but didn’t get out for whatever reason. Tired of trying to win over folks like these women…they are irrational and most are racist…don’t want to win on the backs of racists and you can’t reason with irrationality.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Charlton Heston reading Ice-T’s Cop Killer at CPAC? Yes!
Another Scott
@Mnemosyne: BS, like McCain before him, seemingly can’t get his head around the fact that what he and his campaign said matters. Screaming about Corruption™ (or hanging with Birthers or “He’s an Arab”-types) for months on end isn’t just a campaign tactic. It tells people what you are and what you believe. He shouldn’t be Shocked Shocked when his supporters won’t follow when he said they now need to support someone else (or they’re actually a “decent family man and a citizen”).
We shouldn’t either.
Not everyone who gets involved in politics accepts that words are an importatnt part of the battle to win, but the ultimate aim is to end so that one can change policy. Lots of people take it very, very personally once they commit to a candidate.
Cheers,
Scott.
Felonius Monk
Best Sturgill Simpson song: “You Can Have the Crown”
And the best line from the song for John Cole:
Corner Stone
@Raphael Kearns: My ex was a Pediatric RN. Most of the females in her large extended family were some type of RN. All her family and the people I met that worked with her (that were white) were all asshole Republicans who hated anyone who needed help.
Seemed odd, but after a while I stopped trying to make logical sense of it.
pamelabrown53
@Corner Stone:
Don’t be too hard on President Obama. While he obviously reveres the peaceful transfer of power, this is not over yet!
ThresherK
@Ian G.: For some strange and satirical animation, Drive By Truckers and a bunch of other bands and singers are on an incredible episode of Squidbillies from 2010, “America: Why I Love Her”. Not sure if it’s on YouTube or AdultSwim, but worth the while if you like some musical weirdness.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@Goblue72:
You’ve made this exact same point a thousand times since 11/9. We got it. We heard you. If there’s nothing else then? Great…. Feel free to do us all a favor and stay on the fucking sidelines where your scrub-ass belongs.
way2blue
Agreed. Whenever Democrats state a blunt truth or start to punch back, Republicans scold them by saying some version of: “That’s not nice. You’re not being nice.” And Democrats. Most Democrats fold, by responding: “No, no. I’m a nice person. I didn’t mean it… ” And back down. Drives me up the wall.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@pamelabrown53: Also, I think the Clintons going along with Grand Niceties now will make it more effective when they do speak out against Trump, and I think they should wait until their/her approval numbers go back up, as I suspect they will by March, June at the latest.
Citizen_X
@Peale:
Kruschev was right, after all, it seems. Just a few decades early.
SiubhanDuinne
Apropos of not much in this thread except for the awfulness of T and his team, but did anyone see the tone and tenor of some of the questions the transition folks are asking the State Department? Holy fuck, they’re almost as racist as T’s tweets about John Lewis and as xenophobic as, well, every rally speech he’s ever delivered. A few examples:
I’m not linking to the NYT piece, but I am linking here to BooMan, who does link to the Times.
Another Scott
I’m a little conflicted about SNL. Baldwin is great. But I can’t forget (and J can’t forgive – SNL is dead to her) that they had Donnie on as a host, and they treated the nominees as equally horrible (with never-ending commentary on the e-mails).
Satire is wonderful and important, but they seemingly gave no thought to the purpose and the effect of their satire. Trashing a competent and eminently qualified woman while enabling a misogynistic, racist, fascist, brain damaged old man is an almost criminal misuse of their national platform. I think they recognize now, kinda late, that they were tremendously unfair to Hillary (especially the “news” guys).
Here’s hoping they keep twisting the knife in him.
Oh, I see that Donnie (or his twitter minion) now says he’s going to fix everything:
Um, nobody is saying the country won’t change, Donnie. It’s just that it seems clear that you and your minions are going to make it even worse… :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Yoda Dog Democrat
@Another Scott: I agree, Im not a fan of Baldwin and his SNL routine. Its not very different than how they’ve treated any other President. Not different enough for my taste. And therefore its normalization and not ok, IMO.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
The answer to the first question would be a very small fraction of the funding stolen by contractors in Iraq.
debbie
@Another Scott:
To be fair, they had Trump on when he was thought to be the joke candidate. I don’t believe even he thought he’d win at that point.
Ian G.
@ThresherK:
I do love musical weirdness. I’ll check it out, thanks.
Corner Stone
@pamelabrown53: I know a lot of people ask the same kinds of things, “What could he do? What do you think he should have done? What about him and his history do you not understand where you think he would have done anything different?” And etc.
But still, I am angry on this. Trump will be forever enshrined as a President of the United States. No matter what happens next. They knew what was happening. They knew it was factual and could be proven. But did nothing. Fear of seeming to be a political actor, while measured against the safety and security of our democracy is a failing balance.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@debbie: at one point Trump told a GOP pollster (not KAC) that his goal was to get to 15% in a few primaries so that Republicans would have to take him seriously. This started out as his quest to get the media to treat him as a respected celebrity pundit/wiseman like Warren Buffet, not a half-comic call in on GMA and the Fox morning zoo crew. Don’t know how that timeline lines up with his SNL appearance
waysel
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Chavetz will continue investigating Hillary, and probably Obama and all of his administration. It’s their go to dog and pony distraction while they gut democracy and the economy. NYT,CNN, and all the rest will cover those hearings 24/7.
SWMBO
@Corner Stone: My sister is one. She was on a tirade about people who checked into the hospital with pain needing drugs. She said the doctors would write a script and they would get their fix and go home happy. She didn’t want to administer any pain meds because they would just abuse the system. No compassion, no empathy for ANY of her patients. I asked her why she went into nursing and she said “I want to help people and make their lives better.” I called bullshit and told her she didn’t like her patients, she didn’t like her coworkers and she wanted those people to die so she didn’t have to do anything else for them. She quit bitching (that trip) but she’s back to her previous bile levels. Nothing says compassion and empathy more than wishing your patients would die so she didn’t have to administer their meds….
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Google tells me that Trump hosted in November 2015 and that the debates began in August 2015. The November 2015 debate was the fourth one. Thankfully, they’ve all blurred in my memory, but I doubt he was being taken seriously by time of his SNL appearance.
gene108
@Patricia Kayden:
I think what pulled a lot of white folks over to Trump is immigration. White people are not used to being around people, who are different than them. It makes them uncomfortable. And since they are the dominant culture, they can insulate themselves.
But as more brown people flood across the border, it becomes harder to self segregate. White folks are going to end up having to really interact with non-whites.
I’m not sure this is the same as Jim Crow era racism, but rather a subtle, maybe subconscious, desire to not move out of your comfort zone.
Edit: For example, signs that are not in English. How dare someone put up a sign you cannot understand, in your country!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@gene108: in the women for Trump NYT article people have been citing, immigration is probably the single most-mentioned issue. I didn’t sit and count it out, but it seemed like the most common thread among them all. Also, people think Ivanka is nice.
Hawes
If you like Sturgill (and why wouldn’t you) try Jason Isbell or Nathaniel Rateliff at the Night Sweats.
Corner Stone
@gene108:
I am reaching the point where I am hopeful that the white middle class and white working class will completely collapse. These ignorant insular motherfuckers are going to kill everyone if we don’t beat it into our heads that we are not any better or more special than anyone else trying to put food on the table for themselves and their kids. Or at this point, themselves, their kids, their parents and sometimes their grandparents.
Millard Filmore
@Thoughtful David: For a Trump/Putin bumper sticker, Google is your friend.
google(dot)com/#safe=off&q=trump+putin+bumper+stickers
trollhattan
@Raphael Kearns:
That’s like questioning God about the existence of surgeons!
gene108
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Part of me was really pulling for Ivanka to be nice. I mean one kid, one kid out of four grown kids, with a shred of human decency to somehow reaffirm my faith that you cannot have a family of greedy assholes. That somewhere in that mess of a family human decency can somehow take root.
But I was wrong.
She’s very much her father’s daughter.
And as far as immigration goes, one thing I have observed over the years is minorities – blacks, Asians, etc – may wind up in a group, at work or socially, where they are the only one of their race and everyone else is white.
I have almost never seen the reverse, and when I have some white folks get very uncomfortable, because they are doing something new. And they do not want to go through it again.
Others, usually fairly liberal folks, are cool with the new experience.
trollhattan
@Millard Filmore:
Saw a “Giant Comet 2016” sticker yesterday but the driver wasn’t around for me to congratulate on his/her prescience.
gene108
@Corner Stone:
The problem is they do not see themselves as special. They are normal. Their beliefs are normal. Their eating habits are normal. Their taste in music is normal. And so on.
And everything not like them is abnormal.
I think the real challenge is to get them to see that they are special. They get benefits from being white, like not automatically have store employees keep an eye on you because they think you will shoplift.
That is what a lot of Black Lives Matter movement is about, trying to get white people to see how society gives them the benefit of the doubt.
And of course white people went nuts at the suggestion that they are privileged because they are white.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yup. Just from the few excerpts I’ve read of her book– the lemonade stand they made the servants pony up for, fercrissake– she comes across as every bit as shallow and narcissitic as her old man. I think it’s Vanity Fair that has a write up of the family, and I read the piece on Ivanka and Tiffany. I don’t really care, but I do feel kind of sorry for Tiffany. Even when Ivanka is talking nicely about her, there’s a smug, cold “I love her even though she’s the bastard of that whore who broke up my parents’ marriage” tone to it
ETA: not that I blame them, as kids, for the lemonade stand thing, but that as an adult she thinks it’s a sweet and heart-warming and humanizing story is creepy
Ella in New Mexico
@beth: I didn’t read that she had NO compassion in her comments- she said something along the lines of “I feel bad for his situation”. I heard the unsophisticated and uninformed, frustrated throwing up of the hands of someone who thinks there’s not enough stuff to go around, so why don’t we save ourselves first. (Plus, given that Michigan is suffering financially, she’s probably hurting financially herself-hard to be generous with people you’re being told are “not us” when you do t have enough yourself.)
I think what she is expressing is a reflection of a healthcare system that is grossly, financially unfair to almost everyone right now, and for some, got worse under the changes brought about under the PPACA, like high out of pocket costs or high deductible/HSA plans businesses can use to “self insure”. Those things need and can be fixed if they dont just throw out all the great things about “Obama care” , but Trump spoke to those people’s frustrations, and Hillary was constantly misquoted or drowned out in regards to her ideas to fix things.
I can speak from experience on this as an RN in a border area community. When hospitals are losing dollars to uninsured or undocumented people because the government dumps those costs on local economies, it hurts. And it it immediately sets up an adversarial relationship between the people who are struggling with their own healthcare cost and the ones who get care “for free”, as they are perceived.
We see this all the time in my town. Undocumented Mexican citizens cross the border to “to visit family” with severe, often life threatening illnesses because they know that once they show up in our Emergency Department, we are required to treat them. And because we have some sort of prior agreement status as the first hospital in our town that must take these patients, it often results in lengthy admissions to receive emergent open heart or other serious surgery, cancer treatment, or dialysis. Admissions that are expensive and later written off by our hospital financially, and used as justification for budgets too tight to pay for reasonable staffing ratios or raises, which has the unintended consequences of pitting us against the very people we need to take care of. Making this situation worse in my community are the number of “frequent fliers”- people who are admitted over and over again very sick because they live in a “no man’s land” where they cannot get their care on an outpatient basis because they are not citizens of the US. We see a lot of dialysis patients like this-they live here, under the radar for the most part, but denied the kind of care they’d get as documented citizens until they’re on deaths door and can be admitted to the hospital.
Some of the very decent and caring nurses I know voted for Trump because they think there is no way to deal with issues like this. (I personally think we could, and part of how would be to start helping countries like Mexico improve their own healthcare system for their citizens, but that’s a discussion for another day). They believe the rhetoric that there isn’t enough money to do healthcare right, that we need to stop giving a “free ride” to outsiders ecause we can’t even afford to take care of ourselves.
When you go into the break room and a nurse is sitting at the table crying on the phone because she’s trying to negotiate her unemployed husband’s $8700 bill with her own employer to keep it from going to collections, then see her caring tenderly for the dying ventilator dependent patient from Mexico who’s been in the ICU for over a month because his family won’t discontinue life support because it’s not Gods will, I think you might see how confusing all this shit has been for people like that nurse in the NYT article.
Personally, I see my job as more of a calling to do good and relieve suffering. These patients don’t bother me- it’s the system that makes me crazy that puts average human beings under stress and against each other. Team Trump manipulated and exploited too. Any otherwise decent people with a lot of lies and promises they never intended to keep.
They pitted us against ourselves. And divided we fell.
Truegster
I’m not a fan of Country music, but Metamodern Sounds in Country Music is like the Dark Side of the Moon for country albums. It’s got a psychedelic vibe running through it, it’s cohesive, there’s only one out of place sad love song.
Corner Stone
@gene108:
They will never, ever, ever see that or acknowledge it. They refuse to even understand the broad outline existence of white privilege. What it means to not have to do chin ups just to get to the level of “benefit of the doubt”.
No, they know they are better than that black guy. It’s just that PC society is holding them back from getting what is theirs. Saying what they think. The TRUTH! Having their hard earned money stolen to be delivered to someone less deserving, weak and lazy. I’m better than you and we both know it! But the gubmint wants to give you every advantage while pushing me to the side! It’s not right, and I have had enough!
Now, where’s muh ballot?
Patricia Kayden
@SiubhanDuinne: Wow. But who is surprised that Trump and his people hate Africans given how they feel about African Americans? They’ll quietly cut all aid to Africa since those lazy dark people shouldn’t be getting any of real Americans’ (i.e., White people’s) hard earned money anyways. No different than the thinking of that Nurse who didn’t like the fact that an Iraqi patient (I presume an immigrant) was getting treatment at her hospital.
Patricia Kayden
@waysel: Because while they want to wish the Russian interference issue into the cornfield, the “liberal” media is perfectly okay with helping Republicans hype up the witch hunt against the Clintons.
LibraryGuy
@Ella in New Mexico: Thank you for this. It is the kind of compassionate insight we need.
bemused senior
@LibraryGuy: Exactly! Everyone should listen to Saturday’s “This American Life”, which is segments about Iraqi translators who worked with Americans and then became targets when the Americans left. The Republicans (natch) lowered the number of visas available for these people.
Darkrose
Add me to the list of Sturgill Simpson fans. Metamodern Sounds in Country Music is the first full country album I ever owned. I love driving with “Turtles” turned up and my windows down.
StringOnAStick
I’ve got to add my support for the idea that the last thing we need to do is change the Democratic party to make a subset of white racists think about voting with us. Fuck em. Appealing to them loses us a larger number of the people who are with us now. The electoral college turned on 80,000 votes in a few counties in 3 states, not even getting into issues with voter suppression, broken voting machines, etc. How is a group that small worth tossing our commitment to diversity and equal rights?
IMO, we lost those critical counties because rethugs have been working towards such a setup for years, they just didn’t plan on getting a manifestly unsuited “winner” like we are facing now. We all know he’s tainted and the rethugs do too, so they are trying to make as much hay as they can before Vlad’s tool implodes. The IC needs to either speed this up and stop the transfer of power, or do such a good job unraveling all the connections that at least several dozen implicated lawmakers and businessmen get tightly wrapped up in the roll up of this con.
Mnemosyne
@SWMBO:
This seems to be at least somewhat regional, because all of the nurses I know in IL and CA are nice, compassionate, liberal people (men and women).
Note to self: don’t get hospitalized in a red state.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
It takes practice for a white person to feel comfortable in a predominantly non-white group. Honestly, my lizard brain is feeling a little nervous about this Rise Up meeting where I will almost certainly be in the minority, but I’m telling my lizard brain to STFU and going anyway.
amygdala
@SiubhanDuinne: It might well make their heads explode to learn that it was W who started PEPFAR. Oy.
Mnemosyne
@Ella in New Mexico:
So the professional con man told them what they wanted (sometimes needed) to hear, and they fell for it.
My question is, are those people going to be open to being told that they got conned, or are they going to double down rather than admit they got fooled?
Louise B.
@Ella in New Mexico: Thanks for posting this story. Your insights are really important.
A Ghost to Most
@Ian G.:
Sounds like my personal playlist.
John, ‘Sailor’ has a great cover of Nirvana’s In Bloom, but Meta is better. High Top MTN is more conventional and not in the same league.
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: Damn it, there you go getting us to be all understanding and shit!//
@StringOnAStick: Maybe *you* ought to come to our county Democrats! They’re going to get tired of hearing it from me!
SiubhanDuinne
@amygdala:
Yup. PEPFAR is pretty much the only GWB initiative that I endorse wholeheartedly.
Michael Bersin
@K488:
Yep. That’s the quote.
Pogonip
@Raphael Kearns: Hi Raphael, Did you ever read the “Nurse K” blog? It’s been gone a long time but you might be able to find it archived somewhere. It was all about how none of her patients deserved to live because they were poor or fat or whiny or arrived in an ambulance. I actually had a nightmare about waking up in the emergency room, seeing an evil-looking nurse over me wearing a name tag that said “Nurse K,” and having to fight my way out while dripping blood. I have viewed the medical profession with a cautious eye ever since then; regardless of topic, if there’s one blogger, there’s a hundred readers nodding in silent agreement.
Nurse K went silent very suddenly; I suspect someone who knew her tipped off her employer. What spooks me is they may have told her she could continue to work there as long as she kept her opinions to herself.
LAC
@pamelabrown53: you are kidding right? This is all this dude does here. Other factors are at play here: a media with depth of a sidewalk puddle, dumbasses who want to believe the worst and a left so busy touting its purity that it didn’t have the time to actually put its yakking to good use and question the sources of these anti-Clinton stories. Made fertile ground for this bullshit. Still have never got an answer as to what could have been done by the obama administration that would have changed the outcome? Maybe it is because I am black and a woman that in the back of my mind that I give a side eye to the theory that enough white people would have voted differently if some unformed screamfest about Russia came out. It might have backfired just as badly.
BTW, you got dozens of congress folks not showing up this inauguration- why is Hilary Clinton going? Is it okay to be annoyed at that? Because I am.
LAC
@Mnemosyne: please do. This my lfe every damn day. Even on this blog. You will develop a greater appreciation and be even more empathetic.
john fremont
@Raphael Kearns: Yes. I have been talking to nurses recently who complain about how hard their jobs have gotten because the ACA is stricter about what claims will he be accepted by Mediacare.The nurses have to be much more thorough when they examine patients because Medicare doesn’t pay if the patient returns due to something like an infected bed sore.
scottinnj
@Hawes: I’d add Cody Jinks, Karen Jonas, Lydia Loveless, Chris Stapleton, Tami Neilson and Turnpike Troubadours. I think Cody and Tami are the next Sturgill’s. The alt-country/Americana/Roots or whatever we are calling it is the most innovative music scene out there.