Nice alteration on the G train. pic.twitter.com/jVh6oQiigF
— Wesley Verhoeve (@wesley) January 26, 2017
Writers Chatting is scheduled for Sunday at 12:30 est/11:30 cst/ 10:30 mst/9:30 pst – all the time zones for ya whiners! ;-)
As always I have a couple of guest posts and we’ll keep it positive and politics free (as much as we can).
Love the tweet above… my favorite comment for it:
@wesley @hels i love the idea of there being a fascist on the g and being able to point to this like "sorry, i don't make the rules, but"
— Miriam Nadler (@antimytheme) January 26, 2017
Nazi free open thread.
Gin & Tonic
That’s a good sign. Too bad it’s on the G train, where nobody will ever see it.
ArchTeryx
I might have to check out the writer’s group, I’m starting to get back into short story writing.
debbie
What was being banned before the third circle was altered?
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: Boom boxes, IIRC.
Ridnik Chrome
This must be why the G train never runs on time…
JR
Last night I had the misfortune to listen to NPR’s Indivisible. A faux NPR liberal called Kerri Miller spent an hour with two insipid guests trying to tell America that those of us who cannot understand how any sentient human being with a conscience and a modicum of decency and empathy could have voted for the orange douchebag are really intolerant of diversity. That’s our problem, see? We are hurting the fee-fees of Trump supporters by making assumptions about them. We need to be open to them, and listen to them. I had enough whisky to finish listening to the whole travesty. This is the ultimate in false equivalencies. To be against torture, racism, sexism, fascism, etc. is to be as intolerant as those who are actually intolerant. You can hear the whole thing at http://www.wnyc.org/shows/indivisible.
dr. bloor
@JR:
Good post, but honestly, you could have stopped there.
SiubhanDuinne
Chris Cillizza (I know, I know) does not know the difference between “flaunt” and “flout.”
Once again, I grieve the fact that copy editors at WaPo and other major newspapers are a thing of the past.
Monala
This group seems to be pretty good with both cooking and health advice, so I am hoping that you can help me. My husband has to go on a low-sodium diet, and I am struggling with how to cook for it. I am not looking for advice like, “Try adding marjoram (or whatever herbs or spices) to chicken!” Suggestions like that already abound on the web.
Rather, I am looking for specific low-sodium recipes that you have cooked and eaten, that you know taste really good, even with very little salt, and what you add to those recipes to make them so. Thanks!
JR
@ dr. bloor
Yeah, I know… you got a point.
EBT
@Monala: I had a lot of success with flavor cooking from The American Heart Association’s No Fad Diet Low Sodium cookbook.
Yarrow
@Monala: I think efgoldman had to go on a low sodium diet so you might check with him if you see him.
You probably already know this, but avoid using salt in cooking and just add it at the table. The salty taste comes through and you get much less sodium.
Miss Bianca
Wow…I might actually be able to make this writer’s discussion in real time this time!
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: Somebody should mention it on his Twitter. Seems to be about the only thing that “reporters” like him pay attention to these days… https://twitter.com/TheFix
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
lamh36
Ruined her life!! Bitch what!!! YOU LIED and Emmitt Till fuqn died cause of it!!! FUQ her. she doesn’t deserve no damn redemption or sympathy
How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Be careful, or Adam will ban you.
Lizzy L
@Monala: My experience with a low-salt diet is, cook fresh food — prepared, boxed stuff is almost always high in sodium — cook what you like, and don’t add salt. It will taste bland at first, but after a while you begin to taste the natural flavors of the food.
If you have not already done so — forgive me for suggesting what you may already know — I recommend you find out from the doctor exactly how much sodium is okay for your husband. My brother has severe congestive heart failure and is on a low sodium diet, but even he is still allowed to eat 1500 milligrams daily. Most low sodium diets don’t require that much restriction; 2300 milligrams of salt is common. Whatever it is, you may find that you can, indeed, use some salt in your cooking.
I can’t stress the “avoid processed food” advice enough.
And if you don’t already, get in the habit of reading the labels on everything you buy that has a label. Good luck!
Robin G.
Feel good story:
Last night I went to Betty McCollum’s town hall with my 8-year-old nephew. It was absolutely packed, probably to the level of fire code violation, and people were filling the halls outside, too. Mostly it was great (a lot of people saying “What do we do? We’re scared”, which fired McCollum up, and by the end she seemed ready to wield the pitchfork herself), but there were a couple of Trump supporting women making snide comments and rolling their eyes whenever anyone talked about the immigrant community and St. Paul’s status as a sanctuary city.
Anyhow, it’s over, and the guy sitting closest to the Trump women gets in an argument with them. (He was passing out lit to others, and they stepped in and started giving him shit.) I was nearby, finally lost my temper, and shouted, “Go fuck yourself!” at the ringleader.
The ringleader — a mid-fifties woman in a mid-eighties haircut — gasps in disgust. “In front of your OWN CHILD!” she screeches.
And, bless his beautiful heart, the 8-year-old puts on his most winning smile, looks right at her, and says, “I didn’t hear anything.”
Tales from the resistance… uh… such as it is.
(Later I told him that that’s not really a word he should use. His response? “Don’t worry, I really didn’t hear anything. I mean, I really did, but I didn’t want you to get in more trouble. Even though you didn’t seem like you were scared of her. I don’t think you’re scared of anything.”
He got the biggest ice cream sundae Dairy Queen had to offer.)
rikyrah
Trump’s voter-fraud nonsense takes a ridiculous turn
01/27/17 10:41 AM
By Steve Benen
It’s been quite a ride for Donald Trump’s bizarre voter-fraud claims. Three weeks after winning the presidential election, the Republican said he secretly won the popular vote he lost, because of illegally cast ballots that exist only in his imagination. This week, the president repeated the claim, pointing to a second-hand anecdote from a German golfer he knows about people “who did not look as if they should be allowed to vote.”
Trump has cited a report he didn’t read and blasted its author. The White House said it wasn’t calling for an investigation and then the president said the opposite. Trump was supposed to issue some kind of executive directive yesterday on initiating a probe into a problem that doesn’t exist, only to reverse course without explanation.
It’s worth pausing from time to time to appreciate the fact that the new president of the United States isn’t just lying about details he doesn’t understand; he’s also attacking American democracy and the electoral system that put him in office.
This morning, the president made the whole mess even more farcical with another tweet.
Who’s Gregg Phillips and what’s VoteStand? I’m glad you asked.
As Right Wing Watch explained, “Phillips is a longtime conservative activist who, according to his LinkedIn profile, has worked for the Mississippi and Alabama Republican parties and a pro-Newt Gingrich Super PAC, and currently sits on the board of directors of True the Vote, a group ostensibly created to root out the massive voter fraud that it has been so far unable to find. On his Twitter profile, Phillips says he is the founder of VoteStand, an app for reporting suspected voter fraud that True the Vote promoted heavily before this month’s election, despite its previous failure to uncover any evidence of widespread fraud.”
vheidi
@Monala: Graham Kerr (the Galloping Gourmet) put out several cookbooks in the 90s that were low-fat, low-sodium, with great tips on flavor. His wife had bad heart disease, but lived til 2015.
rikyrah
Trump’s White Supremacy on Display…Again
by Nancy LeTourneau
January 27, 2017 10:36 AM
As a result of Trump’s discrimination against people of color in his buildings, attack on the Central Park Five, and revival of the birther movement against Obama, many of us had no doubts about his embrace of white supremacy. That was only confirmed by the kind of campaign he ran last year.
But during his remarks at the Republican retreat yesterday, he went off script for a moment and dove deeply into his racist core.
Aside from his lies about voter fraud, any decent human being would have suggested that we we need to take a look at “who” is registering. The “what” in that sentence is simply dehumanizing. The backdrop to that is the story Trump recently told Congressional leaders about why he is so convinced that there was voter fraud in the election.
…………………………
When Trump admonishes us to take a look at “what” is registering, he is referring to “voters who did not look as if they should be allowed to vote.” In other words, they looked like they came from Latin American countries.
According to this president, people who should vote obviously look like him…the person who comes from a great gene pool.
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
I do not twit, but you’re right that “journalists” seem to be addicted to it. I might get arsed to write a comment on the WaPo column. Or, then again, I might not :-)
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m not a-skeered of him!
SWMBO
@Robin G.: I love this kid.
rikyrah
@Robin G.:
Awe :)
The Moar You Know
@Robin G.: Your child is going to have a great future. That’s a level of strategic thinking and restraint most adults don’t have, never mind eight-year old kids.
Ruviana
@SiubhanDuinne: This is an old one. I used to see it in the LA Times back in the 80s.
Waldo
@Monala: @Lizzy L: I agree with everything Lizzy says, and would add that you should also be wary of restaurants. In my experience, even the so-called healthy places — vegan, organic etc. — tend to load their entrees with salt. The good news is, once you start to ween yourselves off sodium, you’ll notice that a little salt goes a long way.
schrodingers_cat
@Monala: If you add fresh lime juice to your recipes, you can get away with adding less salt. Also use kosher salt while cooking, it has a larger volume compared to table salt. Key limes are the best if you can find them.
Yarrow
@Robin G.: Aww…that is a great story! I hope he enjoyed that sundae!
rikyrah
@lamh36:
she needs to BURN.IN.HELL.
Robin G
@The Moar You Know: It’s also why he keeps getting in trouble at school — loyalty to rotten friends. We’re working on directing his powers towards good.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ruviana:
Oh, I know people — including professional writers who should know better — have been getting it wrong for decades. It’s still wrong, and it irks me every time.
SiubhanDuinne
@Robin G.:
Great story, great kid!
Miss Bianca
@lamh36: Seriusly? I don’t know if I can bear to actually read the story. But, like…”bitch, *your* life is ruined? You *ended* this kid’s life!”
Iowa Old Lady
@SiubhanDuinne: I always have to stop and think about that one, so I have some sympathy. Now affect/effect misuse makes me crazy.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
Thanks. God, those things were annoying!
Betty
@Lizzy L: And don’t forget that you do need some sodium. When my brother first started his low sodium diet, he went too low and that was a problem.
debbie
@Robin G.:
What a sweetie!
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
Worse, the quote you provide is a sad example of naval gazing.
Wow. What Trump does is less important than how silly journalists struggle to deal with it. They need better grappling hooks, apparently.
ETA: Yes, I did all that on porpoise.
Applejinx
@JR: I won’t get into the underlying political point, even though this is not itself the writing thread.
What I WILL say is this: if you can’t comprehend your villain it’s not likely to be a good villain.
As writers it is our JOB to be able to construct adversarial points of view and argue both sides and come up with better, more plausible motivations than ‘the bad guys are just evil, and also insane and retarded so it’s pointless to even ask about their motivations: it’s random!’
I may not be able to make that case on Balloon Juice in political contexts but damn if I won’t make it in the writer context. This is a crippling failing in a writer. You’ve got to be able to create a sincere villain if you’ve got anything resembling a villain in your story, otherwise you’ll be a lot less Le Carre and a lot more Tom Clancy. And nobody needs more Tom Clancy ;P we have video games for that! :)
Lizzy L
@Monala: What Betty said at 37 is very important. The husband of a friend of mine recently ened up in hospital because he had grand mal seizure — from not having enough sodium in his system. Your brain requires sodium to work. So don’t over-restrict! And what Waldo said is true, take is easy with restaurants.
Brachiator
@JR:
A writer’s thread with an implied recommendation that censorship is a good thing. Who’d a thunk it.
If the guests were truly insipid, what is the harm of letting them have their say, and either showing the flaws in their position, or letting listeners make their own judgments?
unknown known
@Ridnik Chrome: Thread won. Love the throwback reference. Literal LOL, etc.
So good work for a writer’s thread.
Weaselone
@Applejinx:
Trump’s a 70 year old conman with a failing mind who is being manipulated in a not-so-behind the scenes manner by Heath Ledger’s Joker while simultaneously being blackmailed by a Russian strongman.
Shakti
@Yarrow: My mother salts as she goes. So if you decide you only want to use a quarter teaspoon for an entire dish of pasta & vegetables that serves four for example, you’d divide the salt between the pasta, the water and the vegetables. The effect is each bite is salted so you’re less likely to reach for salt at the table.
A Ghost To Most
@rikyrah:
“The devil says the only thing that’s buggin’ him,
is hell’s filling up with Ree-publikkkins!”
Another Scott
@Lizzy L:
Yes, but more than that. Your nerves need sodium to work. Sodium and Potassium are important parts of the chemical signals that jump the gap (the synapse) between nerves. Not enough sodium (or potassium) and things go bonkers. Without your nerves working right, things like your heart don’t work right either.
We generally get too much sodium, but lots of people don’t get enough potassium. Eat your spinach and your bananas (and lots of other things)!
Cheers,
Scott.
Shakti
@lamh36: If ever a case called for doxxing of herself and her family, this is it. If she had any sense or a conscience, she’d never say anything about it as long as lived. As it is, she came out of the woodwork to gloat in her memoirs, coincidentally right after any statutes of limitations expired for her crimes in some memoir and interview.
debbie
@Monala:
It may sound hokey but Mrs. Dash is all spices, no sodium. I don’t generally use salt, but my brother used a lot and when he had to stop for HBP, he found he liked Mrs. Dash quite a lot.
rikyrah
Trump picks leader for federal agency overseeing his D.C. hotel
The White House booted the agency’s designee for his own choice within eight hours.
By ISAAC ARNSDORF
01/26/17 02:55 PM EST
President Donald Trump has installed the head of the agency that has to decide whether to evict him from his Washington hotel.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, an Obama-appointed General Services Administration official named Norman Dong became acting administrator, according to an agency email obtained by POLITICO. Seven and a half hours later, Trump replaced Dong with Tim Horne a Denver-based GSA official who had coordinated the agency’s transition with the Trump team, a second email showed.
Democrats are already pressuring Horne to terminate the GSA’s lease for Trump’s hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue because a line in the contract arguably prohibits it from benefiting an elected official. The GSA hasn’t indicated what it will do, but the fact that the agency’s chief now owes his position to Trump cements the conflict of interest — effectively making the president both landlord and tenant.
The reason for the whiplash isn’t clear. Political appointees like Dong usually offer to resign at the start of a new administration but sometimes stick around on an interim basis. It appears the GSA’s outgoing leadership wanted Dong to take over temporarily but Trump preferred Horne.
rikyrah
GOP officials revive a scheme to help rig presidential elections
01/27/17 11:20 AM
By Steve Benen
The scheme first crossed my radar in 2011 with a Republican effort in Pennsylvania. GOP policymakers in the Keystone State thought it’d be a good idea to change the way Pennsylvania allocated electoral votes in the presidential election: instead of awarding all of its votes to the candidate who receives the most votes in the state, they’d divvy up votes based on specific congressional districts.
There was no great mystery behind the scheme. Democratic tickets won Pennsylvania, a key and competitive battleground, in every cycle for decades, and Republicans were looking for a way to mitigate the Dems’ advantage by rigging the process.
The proposal eventually faltered – though, ironically, it would have backfired in 2016 – but the idea behind the scheme quickly spread. As regular readers may recall, after the 2012 elections, six states – Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – all considered plans to end winner-take-all electoral models. In each instance, cooler heads prevailed.
The idea, however, isn’t going away. The Washington Post reported this week:
Republicans in two swing states lost by President Trump in 2016 have introduced legislation that would have benefited Trump in the 2016 election, by splitting up their electoral votes by congressional districts instead of awarding them statewide.
In Minnesota, Speaker of the House Kurt Daudt has introduced a bill that would assign one electoral vote to each of the state’s districts, and two to the winner of the statewide popular vote. In Virginia, Rep. Mark Cole (R-Fredericksburg) has introduced identical legislation, and passed it through the Elections Subcommittee on a party-line vote.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: and this – shenanigans like this – is the reason I have finally jumped on the “Electoral College must go, by any means necessary” bandwagon.
James Powell
@SiubhanDuinne:
Shouldn’t he be working on another Hillary email story? Or maybe something about her health?
If I were running the revolution, that asshole would be doing latrine duty in the FEMA camp.
catclub
@rikyrah:
How the fuck did they know??
mb
Here’s what I find amazing and hopeful, in a weird way: it wasn’t that long ago you could not utter the word “nazi” or “Hitler” on the intertubes without being beat about the head and shoulders with Godwin’s Law. Now, not so much. I haven’t seen a Godwin putdown in months but I’ve read a lot about this current crop of nazis/fascists using just those terms. Appears there is a tacit agreement that we are dealing with the genuine article — which I think is true. Seems like a good starting place.
J R in WV
@JR:
NO, I can’t listen to the whole thing. Others may, not I.
Are you sure that’s an NPR show, as opposed to a WNYC show?
Like your nym, by the way.
Calming Influence
@Monala: I had to go low sodium a while back, and my advice is simply this: cut way back on the salt. It takes a little while, but not a real long time, to stop missing all the salt that we routinely put in our food. This my personal experience, and I have heard the same from lots of other low sodium folks. Now, many processed/packaged foods taste unpleasantly salty to me.
It’s like going from whole milk to 2%, then to 1% and to skim; whole milk for me now is like drinking half and half.
I do 90% of the cooking and I will admit to playing around with “Mrs Dash” and other salt substitutes which I suppose have their place, but just cutting out the salt is really not a big deal if you give it a little time.
Applejinx
@Weaselone: And in a striking reveal in the ‘spiral’, act 4, we learn that the Russian strongman IS the Joker!
No argument there. There’s such a thing as evil-ass people and we gots ’em.
What I’m saying (in the context of writing this time) is that you’ve got to come up with convincing motivations for the grunts, the Trump voters. These are not orcs and they don’t consider themselves insane. Generally they can dress themselves, drive cars, tell what color the sky is. If their basic assumptions are so wildly different that their alliances seem insane to US, then we have to get a grip on what the hell they’re thinking and why they got that idea and what makes it plausible TO THEM that they should do shit like this.
Because otherwise, we’re the orcs (to them) and they continue to do that very thing: ‘those lefties, they’re insane, their intentions are just random!’ that we are doing right back at them.
Gotta reach the grunts, the foot-soldiers. Evil leaders can’t do that much without the support of the grunts. And there are no orcs, it’s just us human bozos doing the best we can. :)
Calming Influence
@mb: This is it – Godwin’s law was always about shrill nonsense, not real Nazis.