Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

This blog will pay for itself.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Let’s finish the job.

So many bastards, so little time.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Don't Mourn, Organize / Sunday Morning Open Thread: If They Can Keep Going, So Can We

Sunday Morning Open Thread: If They Can Keep Going, So Can We

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New Yorkers are pretty blase about celebrities, but they’re also damned tired of Lord Smallgloves and his hangers-on, it would seem.
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What’s on the agenda for the day, and the upcoming week?


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Reader Interactions

299Comments

  1. 1.

    Singular

    Now that this is out of the way, you go and take a rest Hillary. Concentrate on charity and cocktails and not giving a fuck. Because you were let down badly, and you deserve it, and most of the world will realise this soon.

  2. 2.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Sub Delivery Man‏@SubDeliveryMan

    Obama in New York, see people cheering!! this man blessed! (They rarely do this for past & even current president)

    16 replies 644 retweets 619 likes

    NBC New York ‏@NBCNewYork

    Former President Barack Obama was greeted by screaming crowds when he was spotted out in Manhattan Friday

    philip harris‏@pharris830

    Crowd Roaring With Cheers As Obama Spotted In New York Is DEFINITELY Going To Piss Trump Off

    12 replies 108 retweets 177 likes

    McSpocky™ ?‏@mcspocky Feb 24

    Barack Obama was just spotted in New York City and people treated him like a rockstar

    126.3k shares

    I guess he has some kind of magnetism.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Cleaning up the garden today. It’s a real mess as I was unable to clean it up last fall because of my shoulder.

    Picked up the truck yesterday: $430. About what I expected for a fuel pump. These in tank fuel pumps are a real pain in the ass to replace, especially when the tank is nearly full as mine was. It was a lot easier (and cheaper) back when they were mechanical and mounted directly to the engine. It would take me about 30 mins on my old Chevy and even less on the Fords. I didn’t even want to try on this truck.

  5. 5.

    anon

    I own rental houses in a state that doesn’t have protections for political ideology or party. One particular tenant had two trump signs in their window. I still do the same repairs as I normally do, but would it be bad mojo , when their lease expires, to increase their rent beyond what I would normally increase? I’d donate the difference to a cause, say ACLU or PP. Wouldn’t bother me in the least if they moved out and I had a vacancy.

    strange enough, no other tenants had any political signs during the election.

  10. 10.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Since cat and dog stuff is alway on topic, let me put this out there: last night we went to see Kedi, a Turkish documentary about the street cats of Istanbul. Pretty amazing, these strays, rather than avoiding humans, are like pets to the entire neighborhood. I think BJers would get a kick out of this film.

    I also love that in Philly, an artsy film like this has a sold-out house on a Saturday night.

  11. 11.

    Zinsky

    Republicans will never, ever have a president, or any elected official for that matter, as cool as Barack Obama. They just won’t. Republicanism is not cool. It is smug, self-important, shallow and empowered by hate. It represents all of the base instincts of the human animal. Republicans may control the White House, Congress and soon, the Supreme Court, but they will NEVER control cool!

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: My favorite Chevy was a ’72 half ton that I blew the tranny on less than week after I bought it and then had to replace the engine on it less than 6 months later. Put in a rebuilt 350. Wrenching usually frustrated the hell out of me and I knew I couldn’t afford that so I took my time with it and just had fun. After that she ran like a striped ass ape. Called it ‘the Beast’. Drove that thing to hell and back, several times. Once drove thru a knee deep pool of water while off road and splashed water up on the exhaust manifold and the damn thing broke in 2 right at the neck. Popped the hood and there is (of course) fire coming out of it with every piston firing.

    “Ooooohhhh, that’s not good, plug wires won’t last long that way.”

    So I got some bailing wire, pulled it back together as tight as I could, and wired it up that way so as to at least minimize the fire. Than I got some aluminum foil and wrapped the wires with it. Not only did it get me out of the woods, it got me the 100 miles back to home. Paid hell finding a replacement for it. None of the junk yards had any that matched that year. Finally found one still attached to an engine in knee high grass behind a small back roads shop.

    Parts of that truck might break, but she never broke down. Some how some way she always got me home. I last saw her in Bourbon just a year or 2 ago, still running strong.

  13. 13.

    Betty Cracker

    Trump on Twitter this morning:

    The race for DNC Chairman was, of course, totally “rigged.” Bernie’s guy, like Bernie himself, never had a chance. Clinton demanded Perez!

    Anyone wanna be that mofo’s useful idiot?

  17. 17.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Zinsky: Democrats will never have another President as cool as President Obama either. He’s a once in a lifetime President. Republicans actually found someone worse than George W. Bush, which is quite a feat.

  18. 18.

    satby

    I was too tired last night after work to catch up on the afternoon and night threads, and considering that history’s second greatest monster won the DNC chair and the trolls came out to snivel about it, looks like I dodged a bullet.
    I liked the top three, so it’s all good, now let’s start winning some elections.

  20. 20.

    Betty Cracker

    @satby: Speaking of winning elections:

    Tonight’s special election result in Delaware is giving Democrats nationally a boost a confidence. Delaware’s 10th State Senate District was vacated by Bethany Hall-Long, who election as Delaware’s Lieutenant Governor left the seat open. While the district is traditionally Democratic, it is also usually closely contested. A GOP win would have delivered the State Senate into their hands, neutering Delaware’s prior control of the governor’s mansion and state legislature.

    Tonight’s election wasn’t just a 18-point rout for Democrat Stephanie Hansen over her GOP rival John Marino in a district that only gave the Democrat a 2-point win in 2014. This Saturday special election featured turnout that eclipsed that of 2014…

    If Democrats can maintain the sort of momentum on display in Delaware tonight into November 2018, Republicans might well be in for a shellacking of their own–voter suppression and gerrymandering notwithstanding.

    Fired up. Ready to go.

  21. 21.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Heh:

    White House officials said a report disputing the threat posed by travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries included in President Donald Trump’s executive order was “not the intelligence assessment the president asked for,” according to a report published Saturday by the Wall Street Journal.

    “The President asked for an intelligence assessment. This is not the intelligence assessment the President asked for,” an unnamed senior administration official said as quoted in the Wall Street Journal’s report.

    Well Duhhhhh…… He asked for one justifying what he did, not one saying it was a waste of time. I’m actually a little surprised they would admit to cooking the intelligence.

    Unnamed officials said that the report ignored information that supports the travel ban, per the report, and that they have not yet been presented with the report they requested.

    Yes, information from FOX News, Breitbart, and Stormfront.

  23. 23.

    Elizabelle

    @satby: Yes. I’d be tempted to do that to the renters. Let them find a new home in Trump’s America.

    Good morning, all.

  24. 24.

    CarolDuhart2

    Writer question. I have three blogs that I have installed into my site. They are ready for posting, but I have two problems. One is writer’s block. Another is that I do my best writing when I have replies to comments. Catch-22. I also am looking for a way to easily post to my blogs without clunky software. Any suggestions for me?

    By the way, my blogs are on Aquariusmoon.info I have a feed on the front page of my site for all three, which is easier than posting three links (which takes it on this site into moderation)

  26. 26.

    CarolDuhart2

    Another thing. I look for writing suggestions, but just about all of them talk about books and sometimes even short stories. What about blogging?

    Ugh. Trump renters. While I believe in people having their own opinions, Trump seems to attract the most prejudiced people around. Maybe when the lease is up, start hinting that you might rent to “those people”, especially if they have a unit next door. They might just move on their own, especially if “those people” are Muslim. Better yet, Black and Muslim.

  28. 28.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Donald Trump’s new national security adviser has told staff at the White House he does not wish to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” to describe the terrorist threat the US faces, according to multiple sources.

    HR McMaster, a respected army lieutenant general, struck notes more consistent with traditional counterterrorism analysts and espoused consensus foreign-policy views during a meeting he held with his new National Security Council staff on Thursday.

    Some in the meeting left with questions about whether McMaster’s evident disagreements with Trump and his key aides portend further turbulence for the key national security and foreign policy decision-making forum.

    Participants tell the Guardian that they were struck by the contrast between McMaster’s worldview and that of the president, who has repeatedly used a phrase that Muslims in the US and globally feel portrays them as threats to be confronted.

    A participant, paraphrasing McMaster, said: “He said he doesn’t want to call it radical Islamic terrorism because the terrorists are, quote, ‘un-Islamic’.” McMaster, the participant said, indicated that the phrase castigates “an entire religion” and “he’s not on board”.

    At the meeting, multiple sources said, McMaster discomfited White House staffers who view the terrorist threat in those religious terms and who were said to have exchanged awkward looks with each other.

    At other points in the meeting, McMaster laid out a vigorous defense of the post-second world war liberal order, calling it a guarantor of peace and economic prosperity. Staffers inferred that McMaster was signaling to professional staff on the National Security Council that he subscribed to longstanding US foreign-policy goals, which Trump has attacked as yielding a chaotic world.

    One source said McMaster was “very clear” that he viewed Russia “as an adversary”, a position not shared by Trump and which is at the center of a Washington firestorm – one which brought down McMaster’s predecessor, Michael Flynn.

    ……

    William McCants, a counterterrorism analyst at the Brookings Institution, wrote in Politico on Thursday that McMaster’s appointment has worried “America’s most influential Islamophobes,” including the activists behind the Ground Zero Mosque controversy. McMaster’s more nuanced views on terrorism, McCants wrote, are causing them discomfort.

  29. 29.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Betty Cracker: I read the quoted tweet first and thought it was a joke, but no, it’s authentic Trump.

    I shared someone else picture on FB yesterday. It’s a split screen. The top half is headed “What Canada’s Leader Does When He Sees a Handicapped Person” and shows Trudeau helping carry a person in a wheelchair down some steps. The bottom half is headed “What America’s Leader Does When He Sees a Handicapped Person” and shows Trump waving his hands around, mocking that disabled reporter.

    It’s bizarre but I needed that shocking contrast to remind me not to grow numb and forget what it was like to have a decent person as president.

  30. 30.

    Raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: I had a crate 350 put in my 66 10 years ago and he cracked an exhaust manifold taking it out. Lil dicey finding a replacement but we did. After driving it for 28 years without syncro I found a place in Texas that sold rebuilt Saginaw’s and I put that in. Runs like a bat outa hell!

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    CNN is in high dudgeon over this, as are other outlets, which is entirely understandable. But I’d like to make a basic point about how we should see this, how journalists and news organizations should treat this. I think it is both more accurate and more productive to see this as cowardice rather than some sacrilege against journalism.

    -Josh Marshall.

  32. 32.

    WereBear

    @CarolDuhart2: My cat blog will turn 10 years old this coming October. Of course, I have four “staff members” who continually contribute ideas :)

    Blogging is about being passionate about something so much that we keep coming up with new thoughts and angles on the subject. And while we are building an audience, that often has to be the only reward — the lurker to commenter ratio is very high.

    You just have to not care about the feedback from others if that lack is holding you back. Just get it out there. Feel pleased about crafting a good piece. This is a process, and staying in the Zen of Now and letting yourself have simple pleasure in the Act of Creation is the reward.

  33. 33.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: For a while in the 90’s I tried to keep simple cars that I could work on myself. I had three rules when buying a used car:
    It had to have found headlights
    The rear windows had to roll all the way down and
    You had to see the ground beyond the engine when you lifted the hood.

    Wing windows were a bonus but not strictly necessary.

  34. 34.

    Central Planning

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    My favorite Chevy was a ’72 half ton that I blew the tranny on less than week after I bought it and then had to replace the engine on it less than 6 months later.

    What do your sexual exploits have to do with replacing the engine in your truck?

    Thank you, I’ll be here all week! Try the veal!

  35. 35.

    Lurking Canadian

    @anon: You have to weigh the choice to kick them out against the risk that they’ll wind up on Fox News telling their sob story about how they were discriminated against by an intolerant liberal. There’s no butthurt like wingnut butthurt, and if your name & address wind up in the news, you might be looking at butthurt wingnuts with guns on your front lawn.

    On the one hand, we shouldn’t let violent assholes intimidate us. On the other hand…that’s an easy thing to say when the violent assholes are intimidating somebody else.

  36. 36.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker:

    Anyone wanna be that mofo’s useful idiot?

    Trump’s just a colossal dick. I get that’s why his people love him…it’s also why he’ll never have anything other than a minority of support in this country.

  37. 37.

    Jeffro

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    At the meeting, multiple sources said, McMaster discomfited White House staffers who view the terrorist threat in those religious terms and who were said to have exchanged awkward looks with each other.

    At other points in the meeting, McMaster laid out a vigorous defense of the post-second world war liberal order, calling it a guarantor of peace and economic prosperity. Staffers inferred that McMaster was signaling to professional staff on the National Security Council that he subscribed to longstanding US foreign-policy goals, which Trump has attacked as yielding a chaotic world.

    Well, um, this should be exciting when Mr. Vigorous Defense clashes with Mr. Deconstruction…ain’t no way they’ll both be there at the end of March…

  38. 38.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven: The 350 is one hell of a strong engine, but I think my favorite is still the old Ford straight 6 300. I owned a couple of them and those engines just did.not.give.up. I drove one with a cracked head/gasket for 3 weeks while I looked for a replacement truck (the body was falling apart). Was still running when I drove it to the junkyard.

  41. 41.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: I’ll take the ‘over’ on Dems shellacking the Reps in 2018, please.

    Hey, speaking of heading for a long-overdue shellacking, this is highly encouraging: Barbara Comstock skips out on an activist town hall in her NoVA district.

    Worth a read-through…quite a few VA congresspersons are taking heavy fire (and rightfully so) including major league douche Bob Goodlatte.

    Money quote on Comstock:

    “That woman would show up to an opening of an envelope, so the fact that she would not show up tonight is incredibly insulting to me and to all of us,” said Kona Gallagher, 36, from Ashburn.

  44. 44.

    Taylor

    @anon:

    would it be bad mojo , when their lease expires, to increase their rent beyond what I would normally increase? I’d donate the difference to a cause, say ACLU or PP.

    I like this idea, particularly ACLU. A lot of state-level anti-protest laws are going to have to be challenged in the next few years.

    You don’t infringe on their right to live where they wish, but you are making sure that they at least help to clean up the mess that they’ve made.

  46. 46.

    CarolDuhart2

    @WereBear: Good ideas. For a long time I focused on a possible audience. But keeping going is a good idea. Just write. Just write (even if it’s about writer’s block)

  47. 47.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven: Found these quotes:

    “Ford inline 6: 300 cubic inches of raw, low-end torque.” –Coty M.

    “OK, I’m not a Ford guy, but I have to be honest: the Ford 300 I6. Can’t kill those.” –Lyle G.

    “Ford’s inline six–the 4.9L, I think. They may not be for racing, but they never die, and they’ll pull down a house with ease.” –Jaide Z.

    “Ford 300 straight 6. The rest of the truck will rot away before you ruin one of them.” –Bobby G.

    “Ford 300 inline six. Those motors will never die. Knew a guy who ran one with no oil for 6 months. He put oil in it and drove it for another three years.” –Scott E.

    Only the last is hyperbolic. The 3rd one made me laugh because I really did pull down a garage with mine.

  49. 49.

    Steeplejack

    @anon:

    Strange enough, no other tenants had any political signs during the election.

    Gee, maybe they were afraid their landlord could be a bigoted asshole.

    I’m all for smiting the Trumpniks at the ballot box and in the arena of public discourse. And I have no problem with cutting them out of your private life. But if you’re going to be “open for business” in the marketplace, you have to be open for everybody. Otherwise you’re no better than the bigots who won’t bake a cake for a gay wedding or, to take a more relevant example, won’t rent to Negroes or Muslims. And jacking up the rent to the point of risking a vacancy is just a subtler form of that.

  50. 50.

    Raven

    @Immanentize: I became quite adept at taking the doors of my truck apart. I put new wings in and it was a challenge since some genius decided to hang the thin door panel with hardened stainless screws. The tack welded nuts rusted and it was impossible to take the screws out because the heads stripped.

  53. 53.

    anon

    @Lurking Canadian @CarolDuhart2 @satby Unlike some mainly blue places, my state allows me to refuse to renew anyone’s lease for any reason (as long as not federally protected, so far, race religious sex). So I can just straight up tell them , its because of TEH FREE MARKET . AND CAPITALISM.

  54. 54.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    @anon: no,my sister has a rental property and she made the mistake of talking elections with the guy. He’s a Trumpkin and told my sister “too bad, I don’t give a shit if you get your insurance through O-Care and O-Care hurts SS and I am on SS.He actually does a little side work for my sister which will stop and,yes, she is planning to increase the rent which have never been market rates anyway.

  55. 55.

    anon

    @Steeplejack , here’s the funny part. Do you think Trump supporters , Republicans, and business people will want these regulations protecting tenants? Heck, they don’t even want protections for LGBT, why should they have protection on political views (blue states such as CA have many of these protections)

  56. 56.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @anon: I was cheering you on until I read Steeplejack’s comment above and realized they were right. In the Era of Trump, every day is a struggle to remain a decent human person.

  57. 57.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven: HA! I never did get on board the brand loyalty thing tho I did have a few favorite trucks. One of them was an old (all my vehicles are “old’) 2wd Chevy S10 that my wife called “the Goat” because it could climb damn near anything and practically swam thru water.

  58. 58.

    Immanentize

    @Raven: respect! But I never did get the way they put some of this stuff together. I assume they never thought anyone would try to take them apart. The average life of a car was about 50K tops (especially in the snow and road salt in the north).

  59. 59.

    dr. bloor

    I’d pay cash money and actually turn on my teevee if CNN could wrangle Obama to make a competing address to the nation while Trump addresses Congress on Tuesday night. The ratings trolling would be magnificent.

  62. 62.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    @Patricia Kayden: that’s one of the things that drives the GOP nuts about Obama. It’s like when you see a really attractive person and then you find out they are very smart,hard working ,kind, carries themselves well,have their shit together and their family is cool. Obama is the whole package so the GOP picks on stupid shit like his birthplace and his golf playing habits.

  65. 65.

    Betty Cracker

    @Steeplejack: On the other hand, what if the tenant had put signs in the window proclaiming that women are second class citizens whose worth is measured in terms of fuckability, immigrants are a uniquely evil group bent on killing “real Americans” and black lives DON’T matter? Because anon’s tenant kinda did. I can see both sides of the argument, but it strikes me as somewhat facile to write off anon’s proposal as the moral equivalent of refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

  66. 66.

    frosty

    @Central Planning: LOL! Proper terminology people. I was taught that you lunched the tranny and blew the engine.

    Did both on my TR-3. My dad crated a used tranny and shipped it across the country for me. Easy car to work on, fortunately, since it was British. You could pull the tranny out from the top between the seats. No lift needed.

  67. 67.

    Patricia Kayden

    @dr. bloor: President Obama is way too classy for that. I just hope Trump’s SOTU is the least watched ever. Then Spicey can come out and lie about Trump’s SOTU being the most watched SOTU ever. Period. lol.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @anon:

    but would it be bad mojo , when their lease expires, to increase their rent beyond what I would normally increase?

    I think it would be. Republicans hire me all the time and I’m publicly political- in the local paper at events and such. In 2004, 2006 and 2008 we had employees at the local medical group who wanted to help. We would have meetings on Sunday at the law office and they would park across the street because they didn’t want anyone to see them there. Paranoid, I don’t think anyone is driving by “hmm-SUNDAY at the Democrat’s law office- probably a political faction!” but it still made me sad, that they were afraid of repercussions at work.

    When you are the political minority this stuff can look different. We did an election process event at the high school this year and there was this female student who stood up to (shakily!) proclaim her opposition to Trump and I felt like she did that because I was already there, and I was fine- like it was okay to say it.

  71. 71.

    anon

    I forgot about a non-profit I was involved with many years ago , it is located in a large metro of a deep red state that provides supplementary educational K-12 services . The demographics happen to be minorities, including many non-english speakers (you get my drift). Will be cutting another fat-ish check to them this year .

  73. 73.

    satby

    @Steeplejack: @Iowa Old Lady: @Betty Cracker: Or if the tenants hung a Confederate flag, or displayed other racist signs? Anon isn’t restricting those tenants from living anywhere, and isn’t refusing to rent to them based on protected class reasons. Anon is simply deciding he doesn’t want them as tenants based on a behavior they displayed. Landlords are allowed to do that, though I wouldn’t tell them it’s because of their sign. I’d just want them out because I wouldn’t want to deal with them or trust their judgment anyway.

  74. 74.

    liberal

    @anon:

    Do you think Trump supporters , Republicans, and business people will want these regulations protecting tenants?

    This is exactly the point. Let these free market-worshipping douchebags eat their own dogfood, as they say.

    If they didn’t want their rent jacked up, they could have begged for a longer lease. Fuck ’em.

  77. 77.

    liberal

    @Steeplejack:

    But if you’re going to be “open for business” in the marketplace, you have to be open for everybody.

    Nonsense. It’s not a fucking retail store. It’s a rental. There are lots of reasons you don’t rent real property to people.

    Otherwise you’re no better than the bigots who won’t bake a cake for a gay wedding or, to take a more relevant example, won’t rent to Negroes or Muslims.

    Hardly. These are political views. Race and sexual orientation are innate characteristics; they’re not chosen. Religion is nominally chosen, but in reality not really, since it’s mostly the result of brainwashing by one’s parents, and besides, it’s a protected class.

    Fuck ’em.

  79. 79.

    debbie

    @dr. bloor:

    I’m binge watching the 6th season of Game of Thrones and figure it will be less bloody than what will be coming out of Congress Tuesday night. I’d like to ignore Trump’s address, but it would be so wonderful to see him being heckled. I can’t choose.

  84. 84.

    MazeDancer

    @Betty Cracker:

    We were speculating yesterday if the increase in anti-Dem tweeting about the DNC vote was due to paid Russian trolls. And this AM, the biggest Russian troll tweests and shows why, yes, it was.

  90. 90.

    different-church-lady

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: When he enters his end-of-Citizen-Kane phase (lonely and isolated in a gigantic mansion with his alienated trophy wife), which of his properties do you think it will be?

  92. 92.

    Kay

    I was talking to a GOP Bd of Elections member. Ohio Bds of Elections have to pull a sample of ballots after the election and do a manual count. It’s a check. Pull X number of ballots and if the margin is 60/40 a certain size sample should be 60/40 or thereabouts.

    Anyway, he said ballot after ballot with Clinton at the top were “undervoted”- Democrats weren’t voting at all downballot.

    I wonder about this. I wonder if Democrats vote LESS downballot than Republicans do. It might just be because I had suspected this and what he said validates that, but especially with young people my sense is they only know the Presidential race. So if older voters skew GOP they would get more downballot VOTES out of 100% of voters. There’s a “swing” county close to here with a big public college. The college students are essential to swinging the county in Presidential races. I’d love to look at that county and see if they vote downballot. I don’t think they do.

  96. 96.

    Baud

    @Kay: Interesting. I thought it was the opposite this time. People leaving the presidential line blank because “they’re both horrible.”

  97. 97.

    DCF

    I’m not suggesting any cover-up by the mainstream media here, just that in the big world of former presidents, it’s not hard to figure out what they’re doing. Obama hasn’t left the political arena, and proof positive of that? He is chatting up Democratic mega-donors. Of course he is.
    So What WAS Obama Doing In New York City?
    http://crooksandliars.com/2017/02/so-what-was-obama-doing-new-york-city

    Democrats Won’t Win Until They Admit Barack Obama Had Horrible Financial Policies
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R6O-AdvzTM

  99. 99.

    Schlemazel

    @Betty Cracker:
    SIGH Michael Moore stepped up to parrot much of what Trump was saying. I had forgiven him for Nader because he seemed to have learned his lesson but, to quote the great don, “This, this I will not forgive”

  101. 101.

    tobie

    @Betty Cracker: The GOTV effort was a thing of beauty. So many people came out to knock on doors from all over Delaware (admittedly a small state) to New York. Above all the voters turned out. They knew what was at stake and on a Saturday, with only a local election on the ballot, they came out in droves.

  104. 104.

    D58826

    Given that it seems like both Ellison and Perez come from the same generally progressive wing of the party, a thought experiment. Suppose Perez had endorsed Bernie and Ellison endorsed Hillary. Would the Bernie bros be complaining that Perez was a sellout to the establishment?

    Trump is already trolling the democrats with his ‘rigged’ election tweet. If the Bernie Bro purity pony types go off in a corner and sulk, then they should be ready for another 8 years of GOP government.

    Just to be clear, I voted for Hillary but would have gladly voted for Bernie in the general. I would sleep much better with a President Sanders then having das Fuhrer in the WH.

    With all of the pissing and moaning about what a bad candidate Hillary was, she still won the popular vote by 3 million and rolled up more votes than any male candidate. If it wasn’t for the archaic EC it would be Madam President today.

    In reading the post election analysis it seems there was a perfect storm of events that lead to Hillary’s loss. Take any one of them away and she probably wins. Given that the margin of loss in PA/WI/MI was less than the number of people who attend a Big Ten football game, I wonder if the outcome would have been different if the unhappy Bernie Bros had not voted third party (assuming they even voted).

    While politically Bernie and Trump are light years apart they share one common characteristic – they both were outsiders who tapped into popular anger but needed to hijack their respective party machinery to get elected. (And I repeat I would be quite happy with a Pres. Sanders).

    And lets not forget that while Bernie is demanding control of the democratic party, he is still listed as an INDEPENDENT on his Senate webpage. If he wants to be a major player in the party I don’t think it unreasonable to ask him to JOIN the party!!

  105. 105.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    I think that’s right. People don’t vote straight party all the way down the ballot anymore, and it takes more of an effort to research all the other races.

  106. 106.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Bernie, SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU FUCKING INCOMPETENT ASSHOLE NONDEMOCRAT!!!!

  108. 108.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Trump had every right to believe he would get an intel report saying whatever he wanted it to. He knows Boy George got only the crap he wanted to justify his invasion of Iraq.

  109. 109.

    Jeffro

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I just hope Trump’s SOTU is the least watched ever. Then Spicey can come out and lie about Trump’s SOTU being the most watched SOTU ever. Period. lol.

    I hate to admit it, but I’ll probably be watching, hoping to see Dems walkout at Trumpov’s first lie. I’m thinking maybe 30 seconds in?

  110. 110.

    Baud

    @D58826:

    Just to be clear, I voted for Hillary but would have gladly voted for Bernie in the general. I would sleep much better with a President Sanders then having das Fuhrer in the WH.

    Juicers can legitimately be judgmental because we’re pretty yellow doggish. I think a lot of Democratic voters would vote GOP if a D nominee proposed the type of tax hikes that Bernie was proposing to finance his proposals. In that sense, it really isn’t just the progressives that are “disloyal.” You and I are just stuck in the middle with them.

  112. 112.

    Pogonip

    @anon: When I have a moral problem like this I find it helpful to flip it 180 degrees. What would you think of a conservative landlord who punished his tenants with a raise in rent because they put Hillary signs in the windows?

  113. 113.

    Baud

    @debbie:

    it takes more of an effort to research all the other races.

    I hope the new team improves online communication and acccess to information. Ours is woeful.

  114. 114.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    If we have “sporadic” voters (and I’m convinced we do) maybe it would be worthwhile making them better, more thorough voters when they DO show up. Up the quality :)

    It’s also maybe tied to not having a candidate in every race. Really good Dem voters say “I was just glad to have someone to vote for” meaning they don’t want a blank line on the ballot because they’re voting the whole thing.

    I often skipped lines when I was younger because not only did I not know who these people were I didn’t even know what they did. Obviously now I’m like “OMG, the county treasurer race? Vital!” but young people just aren’t “attached” to that extent.

    Republicans put a lot of effort into busting up straight ticket voting in MI. Maybe they did that for a reason. They know our voters are skittish and easily distracted :)

  115. 115.

    Hal

    @DCF: Chatting up dem donors? OK, and?

    Also, once again the post election analysis claiming it’s the economy stupid! Meanwhile, nothing Trump or Republicans are, or have proposed, is beneficial to anyone but the rich. Republicans are in the process of potentially dealing a death blow to the ACA, something that will really fuck over the white working class, but sure, it’s Obama’s policies we need to talk about now.

  118. 118.

    Betty Cracker

    @Pogonip: That would be valid framing if Trump were a garden-variety Republican — wrong on the issues as far as we liberals are concerned, but within the mainstream of the American democratic tradition (e.g., any of his opponents in the GOP primary). He’s not.

  119. 119.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Betty Cracker: Well, he does have a library to build and a foundation to run. Those aren’t cheap, and he probably hasn’t set things up for ordinary supporters to donate yet.

    Knowing the Obamas, they will also want to do this tastefully, and not sell the kind of cheap tskotes (?) to raise quick money. So give him a break.

    Not to mention he wants to start raising funds for the Democrats in 2018. That stuff has to start early so that those funds are available when needed.

  120. 120.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @D58826:

    Had lightning struck Bernie won the primary, I don’t know what I’d have done. Emigrated out of the country, probably, due to a conclusion that nobody in the US had any sense.

    Listening to him this morning, it is apparent that he intends to fuck is in 2018 and beyond. I also have questions as to his vaunted powerful email list, and assume that most of his money came from Putin, and that he’s such a raging dickbag asshole motherfucker fraud that he knows it and isn’t telling.

  121. 121.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    Right. In my area, I got an awful lot of postcards and mailing pieces. Aside from the fact they’re marketing pieces and not position papers, I’d bet most people tossed them. Dems at every level need to come up with Websites with actual information. Also, the League of Women Voters used to publish a voters’ guide, but I had difficulty in locating it this year.

  122. 122.

    Schlemazel

    @Baud:
    I go to our Secretary of State’s web site and download a sample ballot for my precinct about 2 weeks ahead of the election. I research every one, particularly the judges since there are often only 2 candidates & neither is well known. It is worth the couple of hours I spend because there are some real nut jobs running for some of those lower races

  123. 123.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Read this and thought of you: These St. Louis charter schools have struggled for 14 years, but continue to evade closure

    Of the more than 10,400 children who attend charter schools in St. Louis, few perform worse as a group than the 2,800 who attend Confluence Academies. The network of five schools on four campuses has lagged far behind state averages on Missouri standardized exams throughout its 14-year history.

    That kind of persistent failure is supposed to be at odds with the very concept of charter schools. The independently run, publicly funded schools are founded on the idea that, if they fail in their promise to provide a better alternative to traditional public schools, they should be closed.

    And yet on Tuesday, Missouri’s Board of Education said it had no choice but to grant the schools a fresh five-year license to operate. In fact, Missouri law generally gives the board, which is the state’s highest authority in K-12 education, no direct oversight of charter schools. Its role is more about making sure paperwork is complete than it is ensuring students are learning. It’s a reality that makes some board members fume.

    “We’ve been baffled. We don’t like what’s going on, but we can’t do anything about it,” state board Vice President Victor Lenz said last week. “We’re tired of having to approve something that obviously shouldn’t be going on.”

    Accountability my ass.

    In 2012, Confluence was under threat of closure when its then-sponsor, Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, placed the school on probation. That probation was lifted a year later, triggering complaints from the State Board of Education. Confluence gained sponsorship from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2014. Tuesday’s vote marked the third time the State Board has renewed a five-year charter for Confluence.

    But even as that vote was cast, board members rebuked Mizzou as the school’s sponsor for what they said was lax oversight. Many directed their comments to Gerry Kettenbach, Mizzou’s director of charter school operations, saying he should have the guts to close Confluence. “You have the responsibility to make sure they’re doing what they need to do in order to continue,” Lenz said to Kettenbach. “This is 2,900 kids. That’s not something we can take lightly.”

    Kettenbach holds to the belief that Confluence is improving and deserves another chance, or at least that closing Confluence would be worse than keeping it open. Kettenbach argued that abruptly closing Confluence would be traumatic, like it was for Imagine students, suddenly leaving 2,800 students without a school. If Confluence closed, those students might have to attend neighborhood district schools . “School closures are always the last option,” Kettenbach told the board. “It’s a moral issue. And it’s a public responsibility issue.”

    The Horror, to have to go to a district school that isn’t any worse. As far as morality and public responsibility, what about educating these kids? Isn’t that a responsibility? A moral thing?

    He also claimed a closure would “become a litigious thing,” echoing a complaint by charter-school sponsors that their efforts to revoke sponsorship have been met by lawsuits.

    A lot more at the link, but I suspect you could have written it.

  124. 124.

    CarolDuhart2

    I’m hoping there a DNC podcast. Even if it was just informational: letting people know what elections there are this week, how things are going there, or giving a platform for local candidates, it could be of some help.

    Also, please find a way to get the online version of voter guides by zip code. At the ballot box is too late to find out who to vote for.

  125. 125.

    D58826

    @Baud: Probably true. It wasn’t that I was jumping for joy at Bernie’s proposals since I think many were cut from the same wishful thinking cloth that motivates the GOP ‘tax cuts for the rich help the poor’. It’s just the 2016 version of the GOP is uniformly awful. Now if the election had been between Bernie and say Nelson Rockefeller or William Scranton (look him up in Google for those not old enough to remember the 1960’s), then I might well have voted GOP. But that GOP died a long time ago.

  127. 127.

    Barbara

    @anon: I wouldn’t do it. Maybe you have other information about them that lets you see this as something other than an abuse of privilege, but I don’t. Exercise your landlord power some other way, like asking them why they support Trump or even telling them you don’t want political signs you disagree with on your property (it might scare other tenants away). But don’t go for raw and peremptory power.

  129. 129.

    tobie

    @D58826:

    I would sleep much better with a President Sanders then having das Fuhrer in the WH.

    OK, I’m going to be a total grammar nazi and in the spirit of pure priggishness and in the service of nothing note that it’s “der Führer,” not “das Führer.”

    Other than that inconsequential fact, I agree entirely with your post!

  131. 131.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    So, has anyone else been looking at the Cloudbleed list? Some big names on there: Uber, 23andMe, NYTimes, Patreon, Dropbox for iOS….

  134. 134.

    The Pale Scot

    I guarantee that 99% of those people are tourists or tunnel trolls from Staten Island with a sprinkling of Gotti enthusiasts from Ozone Park. Staten Island is the W.V. of NYC, so to speak :). Probably a few Russkies from Brighton Beach who’ve come to say the equivalence of Louise in Being There.

    It’s for sure a white man’s world in America. Look here: I raised that boy since he was the size of a piss-ant. And I’ll say right now, he never learned to read and write. No, sir. Had no brains at all. Was stuffed with rice pudding between th’ ears. Shortchanged by the Lord, and dumb as a jackass. Look at him now! Yes, sir, all you’ve gotta be is white in America, to get whatever you want. Gobbledy-gook!

    Edit for grammar

  135. 135.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:

    Thinking seriously of Californication. I’d also consider being a Masshole or ducking the murder-rape gangs in Chicago while pumping my arteries with sausage grease, but I despise winter with the white hot passion of a thousand suns.

  136. 136.

    Betty Cracker

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I don’t watch the Sunday shows for health reasons. But I may have strained some ocular muscles rolling my eyes at Sanders’ tweets yesterday in which he lectured Perez — an accomplished progressive DOJ and DOL official who worked his way through college as a garbage collector — about welcoming working people to the party. ETA: That said, I’d have voted for him had he won the primary. Donated, door-knocked, etc., just as I did for Clinton. Whatever his faults, he’s Not-Trump.

  137. 137.

    Kenneth Kohl

    @CarolDuhart2: Carol, WereBear @#32 is spot on. I started my blog about six months ago after writing/editing at other blogs for 3-4 years. I have a couple thoughts. First, as WereBear suggests, be passionate about your topic(s). My topics lean heavily to Ohio State athletics, so that’s my passion. When I was an editor at previous site, I told “my” writers, not to give me a game recap – if I want a box score, I’ll read the newspaper. Your article should be your opinion, a narrative of events. Writing is story telling. Tell your readers a story.

    In terms of “how to”, just write like your in a conversation. It is you being you. And, I’ve found it helps me get past bouts of writer’s block. The next thing is to be somewhat regular with your articles. You’ll “train” your readers to stop by on a regular basis. Classical conditioning works on more than Pavlov’s dogs. And, as WereBear recommends, don’t worry about reader comments. Take satisfaction in the quality of your work. I rarely comment here at BJ, but I enjoy daily the articles,

  139. 139.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Patricia Kayden:

    More than half the voting populace has sense, as we’ve seen. A Bernie-Trump race would have indicated that the entire country was off the rails – Bernie is that bad, that incompetent and that fundamentally dishonest.

  140. 140.

    bemused

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    Oh, would I love to be able to link to that image (how leaders treat the handicapped) and send it around to friends. It’s brilliant. Any suggestions where I could find it?

  141. 141.

    The Pale Scot

    @anon:

    I’d go for it, tell ’em you need to cover the expected extra expenses of not being able to hire immigrants for landscaping and maintenance.

    Plz take video or audio if you do

  142. 142.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @tobie:

    OK, I’m going to be a total grammar nazi and in the spirit of pure priggishness and in the service of nothing note that it’s “der Führer,” not “das Führer.”

    I don’t see why you would object to neutering him.

  143. 143.

    Schlemazel

    @Baud:
    40 years ago I would vote for the occasional Republican because I thought they were better than the Dem opponent 30 years ago I saw some small number of Republicans in office I respected & who agreed with me on at least a. few issues. for the last 25 years I have not voted for a single Republican and I will never vote for one as long as the party is this insane. American two-party politics is broekn & it is broken because the GOP is unmoored from reality

  145. 145.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @CarolDuhart2: By zipcode won’t work. I have a Sullivan MO zip code, but not only do I not live in that town, I don’t even live in that county. And actually, Sullivan is in 2 different counties, neither of which is the one I live in..

  146. 146.

    Barbara

    @Betty Cracker: Sanders and Sarandon sound like perfect soul mates. They exemplify the Dunning-Krueger effect for progressives. How can Sanders not know that Perez tried to implement the most meaningful advances in protecting workers in a generation? It’s just a stunning lack of self-awareness, especially from a guy without any real non-elected employment history.

  148. 148.

    Baud

    @Schlemazel: I can’t see voting for a Republican even if I didn’t vote for the D. Even if one somehow presented himself as sane and even liberal, I wouldn’t trust him not to be lying. And I would know that he still has to work with his party.

  149. 149.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The people who pushed charter schools in the beginning approached schools like service providers. This is an attitude that comes from private schools. Parents shop for a private school.

    But what they found out is public schools are different. They have a role in communities and people’s lives that is not limited to “providing school services”. It took them forever to “get this”. Go back and look at the video of people in Chicago when they closed 50 schools. They are attached to the schools. This can’t be ignored. Duncan was saying people “don’t care” which entity provides school services while people in Chicago were showing the opposite- they DO care. A lot.

    So now charters are finding out the same thing. Schools are communities. They’re NOT like a cell phone contract. When you close a school you do more than “close a school”. You bust up relationships – kids form relationships and communities form multi-generational relationships with schools. Is it all love and hearts and flowers? God, no. But no relationship is.

    So I would be sympathetic to the charter people who are saying “our school is more than numbers” but at the same time the philosophy behind their “movement” made this anguish inevitable. Their chickens came home to roost. They never understood the “public” in public schools. They approached it as a market and it’s not that simple. NOW they want to talk about the schools role in the community but it’s too late for that. They signed onto schools as service providers.

  150. 150.

    geg6

    @DCF:

    Jesus fucking Christ. A former popular and successful president is raising cash. Because, of course, cash to fund elections, voter protections and party activities is in no way necessary to political success in the good old USA. We don’t need no stinkin’ cash! We are pure and unsullied by such crass and dirty things as money! We can win elections simply by sharing FB and Twitter posts and wishing really, really hard! Who needs organization, polling, GOTV or advertising when we have purity and an unwavering commitment to nothing other than a single issue that, purely coincidentally, is the topmost concern of a faction that skews white and male? Those damn SJWs and minorities can wait until our pogrom against any money and wealth is accomplished!

  151. 151.

    AMinNC

    @Kay: Democrats absolutely do mark fewer down-ballot races, at least here in N.C. That’s why eliminating straight party-line voting from the ballot was included in the spate of election suppression laws enacted by our GOP General Assembly.

    Turning attention away from local and state races to only focus on the national picture was a major own-goal by the Democratic Party. Glad we are finally trying to rectify it.

  152. 152.

    glory b

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Accidentaly watched an episode of “Lockup” on msnbc and saw a piece about a Kentucky prison where fights have been significantly reduced because being involved in one meant no yard time.

    No yard time meant no hanging out with the stay cats there.

    They now sell cat food and cat toys in the prison store.

  155. 155.

    Baud

    @AMinNC: The big unanswered question continues to be how much ideological diversity we will tolerate to win election in purple and red areas.

  156. 156.

    Michael Bersin

    @Kay: Ballot drop off.

    That’s one reason why the republican controlled Missouri General Assembly did away with
    the option for a straight ticket vote (that is, an option at the top of the ballot to vote straight party without actually marking every race down ballot). This had an impact in Missouri – when in place Democratic Party voters used this feature significantly more than republicans.

    Democratic voters tend to not vote down the ballot. For a variety of reasons. They are less frequent voters, so they also tend to make mistakes in marking ballots that optical scan machines don’t pick up. However, those mistakes can be legally cast votes. They’re only caught in a recount. Missouri has a universal counting standard in the Code of State Regulations. In optical scan ballots voters are instructed to fill in the oval. The scanner will count that. Infrequent or new voters sometimes make the mistake of circling the oval or underlining the name of the candidate. Those are legally cast votes, but the scanner doesn’t catch it or count it. That’s why if the general election race is within a few thousand votes statewide in Missouri the Democratic Party candidate who is trailing should absolutely go for the recount. They’ll gain votes.

    It was a mistake for the 2008 Obama campaign to not go for a recount in Missouri. Big. Huge.

  157. 157.

    glory b

    @AMinNC: Thing to make us go “hmmm,” in PA, the only Dems to lose statewide races in the last THREE elections were Hillary and Katie McGinty (ran against Toomey for Senator).

    But, this also means we have a solid majority on our Supreme Court for 2020, and they get final word on redistricting, here in the most gerrymandered state in the country.

  158. 158.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @anon: I would be more concerned about those renters accidentally burning the houses down by not being able to properly operate a stove. Trump and his supporters are all about being stupid and proud of it.

  159. 159.

    Tracy Ratcliff

    @Kay: I had an undervote on my 2016 since the Democrats didn’t run a candidate for US House in my district, and if I remember some county positions too, so I just left them blank

  162. 162.

    Raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: I was cleaning the carb on my S10 in the parking lot of a parts store when it backfired and set the topside on fire. I ran into the store, grabbed a fire extinguisher and put it out. I felt like I was running in wet concrete but a dude said “man you was stepping!”

  166. 166.

    Seth Owen

    @Betty Cracker: Gerrymandering and voter suppression are important and effective at the margins when it is close, but can’t stop a wave. If we can, for once, get Democratic voters to come out for midterms, we can do this.

  167. 167.

    Monala

    @debbie: a group called Fuse Washington (state) puts together a Progressive Voters Guide each year, giving info on candidates and issues, and their recommendations. I find it very helpful.

  168. 168.

    hovercraft

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    National Security Council that he subscribed to longstanding US foreign-policy goals, which Trump has attacked as yielding a chaotic world.

    One source said McMaster was “very clear” that he viewed Russia “as an adversary”

    This is why he doesn’t want qualified professionals in his administration, they will tell him that he’s is wrong and endangering national security. I’m all for diversity in thought and approach, problem is there is no thought behind this, it’s just Twitlers instincts and his gut.

  169. 169.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It was always deeper than “service provider”. Nobody pickets and cries and attends meetings when a cell phone company closes. There was this pride in being “tough” and “data-based” and insisting that people are “agnostic” about schools and people are THE OPPOSITE of agnostic about public schools :)

    They should have gone to a school board meeting before insisting people are “agnostic” and they could bust up this “market” willy-nilly. “Agnostic” is the opposite of what they are.

    Ohio has limited open enrollment for public schools. When they wrote the law they didn’t consider sibling groups. How out of touch do you have to be to realize families operate in groups of siblings? Do they think kids are independent market actors? WTF? They think families operate like that? The 5th grader goes one way and the 6th grade sibling goes another?

  170. 170.

    PPCLI

    Serious question (though I’m pretty sure I know the answer). In all of this petulant tweeting and blabbing, has Trump said anything at all about the killing of the Indian H1 visa holder in Kansas?

  171. 171.

    MazeDancer

    @different-church-lady:

    I don’t get why it’s got to be Russian trolls when we have millions and millions of the domestic kind.

    Definitely, there are all flavors of left and right wing domestic trollery on Twitter. But the Russian kind are professionals. They’re hired teens who aim for quantity of hits. The BernieBros kind were heavy during the election, then not as evident, until yesterday it felt like the paid professionals were back.

    OTOH, with Bernie on CNN dissing the Dems, as you say, who needs Russians when we have domestic attackers.

  173. 173.

    satby

    @Schlemazel: yep, that’s my hx of voting too. Especially for IL governor back in the day when moderate Republicans tended pro-choice and the Dems tended to be anti-choice Catholics (fyi, recovering Catholic here). I haven’t voted for and will never again vote for a Republican for many, many reasons but the primary one is intensely personal: I had to buy body armor for my kid before his first Iraq deployment because the stuff they were issued was so antique. If we deem it necessary to send young men to war, we can damn well equip them properly. The party that refused to do that has earned my hatred forever.

  175. 175.

    Barbara

    @glory b: I have friends who worked outside polls in Pennsylvania who reported back that they were told by many people they would not vote for a woman. I think gender bias is a complex thing, so I do not conclude that these people will never vote for any woman, but I believe that the willingness to vote for a woman can be fragile thing. For instance, one of the few women to ever get elected to a statewide office in Pennsylvania was Kathleen Kane, who promptly self-destructed. Was this spectacular flame out held against other women, consciously or not? I suspect it was one factor. A male Democrat was elected statewide to replace Kane.

  178. 178.

    AMinNC

    @Baud: Yep. And that is true within states as well. As long as Democrats are voting with their party on procedural issues so legislation can move, and are voting with the party on most substantive issues, we have to be okay with some dissension by Democrats in red states or red regions within blue/purple states. Personally, i’m interested in majority status again, rather than total leftist purity. That said, I think we should be working toward both more and “better” Democrats. But that means convincing voters that a more liberal/leftist agenda better serves their interests, and getting our people out to vote.

    I think a Baud candidacy could do all of this.

  179. 179.

    Another Scott

    @anon: Dunno.

    I live in NoVA. During the election campaign season I would sometimes walk with Sophie past a house that was filled with out and proud Trump supporters. They had a 4’x8′ Trump banner on the back of their house that was facing a neighbor’s house that was about 20′ away. I would have been furious having to face that every day if they were my neighbors… :-( Before they put it on the back of their house, it was on their side-yard fence by a sidewalk. I guess they felt they had to move it because for a while there was a sign with it threats of prosecution for anyone who messed with it (again)…

    In your case, I, personally, wouldn’t take overt action against the the tenants. Maybe do something more subtle like putting up a framed picture in a common area with the location of local Indivisible Groups or something like that?

    Good luck.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  182. 182.

    Schlemazel

    @satby:
    HA! same thing here when my kid went to Afghanistan. Those bastards love to pretend they love them some soldiers but they do not take care of them when it matters.

  184. 184.

    hovercraft

    Maybe the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN should have their own rally. It would be the biggest of them all!

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017

    Um, I think the MAGA hordes have had their own rallies, the first was the inauguration, the attendance to which was swamped by the protests all over the world then next day, and the second one in Florida, which in spite of the inducements offered, garnered only 9K, rabid supporters.

  185. 185.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @DCF:

    I’m not suggesting any cover-up by the mainstream media here, just that in the big world of former presidents, it’s not hard to figure out what they’re doing. Obama hasn’t left the political arena, and proof positive of that? He is chatting up Democratic mega-donors. Of course he is.

    ) Obama is supporting the party he’s been part of his entire adult life and as others have mentioned, that means money. What’s your point?

  186. 186.

    Barbara

    @Baud: Bernie, like Glenn Greenwald, will only get attention henceforth when he is poking Democrats in the eye. It’s his assigned role. He doesn’t have to play it, but he has clearly become an attention whore and, I suspect, wants desperately to keep his wife out of the cross-hairs of what should be, at minimum, a requirement to pay money back to the institution she destroyed. If Perez were less strategic he would have tweeted back something like he was surprised Sanders could spare time from furnishing his newly acquired vacation home in Vermont to pay attention to the concerns of the kinds of people who — unlike Sanders — have held non-elected jobs and can’t afford first let alone second homes. But Perez is a bigger man than Sanders.

  187. 187.

    CarolDuhart2

    @geg6: That’s why I find “corporatist” so annoying and condescending. To win national elections (hell, statewide), while small donations are important, big ones are also needed. HIllary and Bill have been pilloried for not being like the Saints (Bernie and Nader) and living lives of austerity. And not refusing money on the table, and thereby winning elections. A modern 21st century election requires more money than can be found cleaning the couch cushions or passing the hat at rallies.

    Obama knows this, so watch these same people suddenly concur that Obama is less than saintly too.

  188. 188.

    Tenar Arha

    @Zinsky: Yes. You really can’t be cool if you’re that obsessed with being the political equivalent of the neighborhood busybody.

  190. 190.

    Baud

    @Barbara: I see Greenwald as more out-and-out hostile. I think Bernie’s issue is that he’s trying to play coy with both Dems and Dem-disliking progressives. I don’t think that situation is very stable, and will probably come to a head when Bernie decides whether he is going to run in 2018 as an independent or a Dem. If I were a betting man, I think he chooses to run as an independent, and then all hell will break lose.

  191. 191.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Patricia Kayden:

    President Obama is way too classy for that. I just hope Trump’s SOTU is the least watched ever. Then Spicey can come out and lie about Trump’s SOTU being the most watched SOTU ever. Period. lol.

    Considering the train wreck most of Trump stuff is, of course people will watch for the horror of it all.

  192. 192.

    lapassionara

    If we are doing a car nostalgia thing, does anyone else remember the Nash? Built like a tank. We drove one for years, until we could see the street through the holes in the floor.

    And the wing windows were great before cars had air conditioning. They let air in while driving on the highway too fast to have the windows all the way down.

  193. 193.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @anon: Haven’t weighed in because I am of 2 minds about this, but I do want to say this:

    I live in Trump land. Probably 70+% of the people out here voted for him. If I made my decisions about where I shopped based on how people voted, I’d have to drive all the way to STL to be sure I am not supprting a Trumpista. Not feasible. I have an “Impeach Trump” bumper sticker on my truck. I fully expect to get some shit for it every day. But I don’t. When I picked up my truck from the shop, people were decidedly less friendly, but the work was done and apparently done right. When I had ‘Black Lives Matter’ on it I fully expected to lose some glass. I never did. The closest I came to a “Fuck you, Libtard” was a guy who started to warn me about having that on my truck then realized I already knew I was taking a risk.

    Even in the land of Trump, freedom of speech is respected.

  194. 194.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @schrodingers_cat:

    How is the weather in Vladivostok?

    Be fair Schrodinger, he could also be one of Milo’s NOT gay, only entirely heterosexual bromance, buds living in his mother’s basement.

  195. 195.

    Tenar Arha

    @anon: If you want them gone, then raising the rent more than you normally would & telling them it was because of the signs might work or it could get you a disgruntled tenant. Otherwise, I’d raise it a normal amount, give them a new lease, & include a new “no political signs on your property by tenants” clause. Then if you want to drive it home, next election put up your own Democratic candidate(s) signs on the property.

    ETA I suspect you cannot do anything about their car though.

  196. 196.

    jeffreyw

    @Kay:

    Republicans put a lot of effort into busting up straight ticket voting in MI. Maybe they did that for a reason. They know our voters are skittish and easily distracted :)

    In Illinois they killed straight party voting ages ago, now it takes me like 30 seconds longer to vote every Dem individually.

  197. 197.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven: HAhahaheeheheehehee…. Ahhhh, memories. Had something very similar happen to me. Don’t remember which vehicle. Grabbed a rag I had there and snuffed it out. Not sure how much of my eyebrows remained.

  199. 199.

    hovercraft

    @Barbara:
    The fact that once again they would be shown up by the counter-rally.
    For all that he lies and claims huge victories and crowds, he knows that the majority of people are not blind and stupid, they can see that the protests are much bigger than the pro Twitler events.
    Alternate “facts” are not persuasive. I think the same cowardice that caused him to pull out of the WHCD, prevents him from doing it, at least at a hangar he can claim that there are millions outside who the fire chief refused to let in, a rally or a march outdoors cannot be flubbed. Putting out images of Obama’s events also did not work.

  201. 201.

    Kristine

    @debbie:

    I think that’s right. People don’t vote straight party all the way down the ballot anymore, and it takes more of an effort to research all the other races.

    That’s why I’m glad Illinois has a vote by mail option. I can sit there with my ballot at my side and go online and research every contest.

  204. 204.

    Brachiator

    .Former President Barack Obama was greeted by screaming crowds when he was spotted out in Manhattan Friday

    I’m waiting for the inevitable Spicer press briefing claiming that Trump draws larger, more supportive, louder crowds when he gets on the elevator at Trump Towers.

  205. 205.

    Aleta

    @CarolDuhart2:

    One is writer’s block. Another is that I do my best writing when I have replies to comments.

    If it suits you, for your first posts you could type in some quotes. Or interesting questions.

  206. 206.

    PsiFighter37

    @Betty Cracker: Bernie can join the Democrats if he wants to tell us what to do.

    Until then, he can shut the fuck up and go back to being his holier-than-thou self in silence and obscurity back in Vermont.

    I really, honestly hate him, largely because he did nothing for half of his fucking life, and the other half has been spent on the public’s dime, and he has accomplished fuck-all during that time aside from feeling really pure.

  207. 207.

    germy

    But WHY was Obama in NYC??? crooksandliars is on the story!

    I’m not suggesting any cover-up by the mainstream media here, just that in the big world of former presidents, it’s not hard to figure out what they’re doing. Obama hasn’t left the political arena, and proof positive of that? He is chatting up Democratic mega-donors. Of course he is.

  208. 208.

    Brachiator

    @jeffreyw:

    In Illinois they killed straight party voting ages ago, now it takes me like 30 seconds longer to vote every Dem individually.

    I think they have straight party voting in Utah. Republicans use it wherever they think that it works to their advantage.

  210. 210.

    D58826

    @lapassionara: Remember it but never owned one. Neighbor had a Kaiser in the mid 50’s. Only one in the neighborhood so you always knew when the Fry family drove by

  212. 212.

    bemused

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    It definitely is. I had just found it, the same pic, and I have already circulated to a lot of friends.

    I’m very tempted to send to a couple of rightwing relatives but as in so many other times I’ve been tempted, I won’t. Not worth the hassle.

  213. 213.

    Debbie1

    @CarolDuhart2: Yes, by all means, continue solving straightforward problems by using people of color or less favored religions as boogeymen. While White people go around murdering people w/ impunity and no general backlash, or stigma, just keep echoing the idea that Black or Brown people are to be feared (and maybe shot) by “floating” the idea that “those people” may be moving in. Wink-wink. You know what that means right? There goes the neighborhood. What an unpalatable suggestion.
    Quit using Black bodies to hide behind.

  214. 214.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Debbie1: Well, I must be hiding behind myself, then. The truth is that these people already are prejudiced. I’m a “there goes the neighborhood” type as well. But it’s their problem if they are so prejudiced they can’t live with the rest of us. They’ve already enabled Trump’s.

  215. 215.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Barbara: @Baud: Bernie, like Glenn Greenwald, will only get attention henceforth when he is poking Democrats in the eye. It’s his assigned role. He doesn’t have to play it, but he has clearly become an attention whore

    I think in 2016 Wilmer became the second most frequent guest on Sunday shows, the first non-Republican (other than BiBi Netanyahu, which I guess is debatabledf as to Non-R) to make the top five in a while.

    and, I suspect, wants desperately to keep his wife out of the cross-hairs of what should be, at minimum, a requirement to pay money back to the institution she destroyed.

    Yeah, I think the story on those hidden tax-returns is Jane, who strikes me as being a bit off.

  216. 216.

    Patricia Kayden

    @geg6: I thought DCF was engaging in parody so didn’t take his/her comment seriously. Wonder if he/she knows that President Obama won twice (easily).

  217. 217.

    frosty

    @lapassionara: I learned to drive in a Nash Metropolitan, the first US compact car. Running gear by Austin, my first encounter with Lucas electrics.

    So not really a Nash.

  218. 218.

    Brachiator

    @hovercraft:

    For all that he lies and claims huge victories and crowds, he knows that the majority of people are not blind and stupid,

    Trump? He is absolutely certain that a healthy chunk of the people believe his lies. They have willingly blinded themselves and are in sync with the way he thinks.

    A guest on the Bill Maher show, a Muslim who voted for Trump repeated a common Trump defense, that the media and liberals always take Trump literally when he is being metaphorical. This gives them a way to excuse anything he actually does, and ignores the fact that he is largely doing what he said he would do.

    And these people have not only blinded themselves, they cheer as Trump tries to stifle reporters and news networks, which are the people’s eyes on events.

    Alternate “facts” are not persuasive.

    . Hopefully they will become less so as the press finally pushes back on this. But not only do Trump supporters eat this stuff up, the Republican leadership will happily use these lies to frame their own responses to their constituents and when talking to journalists.

    It is, though, fun to see how foreign media is not buying any of Trump’s BS. Except of course his extreme right wing counterparts.

  219. 219.

    Denali

    @Anon,

    What Pogonip said. You might not agree with them, but they have a right. They are not threatening you. How would you react if you were punished for your support of a political candidate?

  220. 220.

    Debbie1

    @Baud: If Bernie runs for Pres. again – and let’s face it, the grift is too good to stay away so he will – I agree he will definitely run as Independent. He already explained that his only reason for running as a Dem in 2016 was because Independent candidates have trouble getting money or any TV time during debates. That is the entire extent of his loyalty to Dems: How does it affect me? My guess is that he will figure he has more name recognition now, and that there is no need for a Democratic figleaf anymore. By the way, the newspapers will record it as, “And THAT’S How Trump Got Another Term.”

  221. 221.

    jeffreyw

    @Brachiator:

    I think they have straight party voting in Utah. Republicans use it wherever they think that it works to their advantage.

    Dems try to be fair to everybody. Reps know they can’t do the same or they would never win again.

  222. 222.

    Kathleen

    @WereBear: I really appreciate your beautifully crafted response to @CarolDuhart2: An elegant reminder of the power of creating from the heart, which is something I’m struggling with right now. Thank you so much.

  223. 223.

    CaseyL

    @Pogonip: Exactly! The Golden Rule test.* The hair on my neck stood up when I read anon’s post, precisely because of that.

    *Old Testament version, which says do not do unto others that which would be hateful if done to yourself.

  224. 224.

    Brachiator

    @lapassionara:

    .If we are doing a car nostalgia thing, does anyone else remember the Nash? Built like a tank. We drove one for years, until we could see the street through the holes in the floor.

    I have no clue about this vehicle. When and where were they popular?

  226. 226.

    Aleta

    @anon: Follow up question: Yesterday I received an invitation to the baby shower and registry of a far off 3rd cousin. Her clan loudly denounced Obama at every chance, though I can only assume her views.
    My dilemma: Do I send the onesie that says “Waah, I miss Obama” or the “Hilary fought for me”?
    Or be candidate-neutral, with “I need a change” + picture of WH. or go with the “Republican Congress in action” on the back side, with an arrow pointing down ?

    (I’m joking, these are made up. I’m sending adult diapers for the grandparents’ shit.)

  227. 227.

    WereBear

    @CarolDuhart2: You just write what interests you, and your audience will find you.

    Trying to write about something which doesn’t interest you is like squeezing cement out of a toothpaste tube. After it hardens.

  228. 228.

    Gelfling 545

    @Lurking Canadian: He might. I expect that Trump will feel too intimidated by him to try to remove him. At the moment, he appears to be what Trump is trying, and failing, to pretend to be.

  229. 229.

    Debbie1

    @CarolDuhart2: I’m saying this in the most neutral way possible: It doesn’t matter if you’re Black but still suggest that people go around perpetuating biases. It occurred to me that that someone might say, well So-N-So is Black, so they didn’t mean it that way. It is still an unpalatable suggestion.

  230. 230.

    Tenar Arha

    Rather than raising my blood pressure with teh Sunday Showz, I’m watching the “Movies” channel that now comes in OTA. They’re showing Gentleman’s Agreement & they nailed the problem with the good good people who would never do anything overtly antisemitic but their silence gives the space for antisemitism to flourish. It feels as fresh now as it must have in 1947.

  231. 231.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    If I were a betting man, I think he chooses to run as an independent, and then all hell will break lose.

    There are still too many obstacles for a candidate to succeed as an Independent. And 3rd party candidates are political gadflies more interested in making a point than winning.

    And the success of Donald Trump demonstrates that the best way to win is to co-opt an existing party.

  233. 233.

    Kathleen

    @Kay: A bit ashamed to have to admit this, but I am always grateful for the Ham Co Sample Ballots the Ham Co Dem Party provides and I carry it into the voting booth with me. I don’t know as much as I should about all of the candidates, especially judges. When I was canvassing I always offered the sample ballot to folks I talked to and they were grateful for it as well.

  236. 236.

    leeleeFL

    @OzarkHillbilly: The thread, it is won! Also, too: as a server, I will occasionally have a tip from someone whose politics conflicts shall we say? I try to send that money to a worthy cause that would piss them off to all hell. Just sayin’

  237. 237.

    Debbie1

    @CarolDuhart2: I’m saying this in the most neutral way possible: It doesn’t matter if you’re Black but still suggest that people go around perpetuating biases. It occurred to me that that someone might say, well So-N-So is Black, so they didn’t mean it that way. It is still an unpalatable suggestion.@Aleta: I know you were joking with those onesie ideas, but you, my dear, should send those design ideas to Gerber for a cut of the profit. They sound great.

  238. 238.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    I was referring to his Senate reelection race.

    Ah. Did you mention 2018? I should have paid better attention. It’s still early where I am.

    I presume that he would run as an Independent. Hasn’t he always? Why do you think all hell would break loose?

  239. 239.

    Aleta

    @lapassionara:

    If we are doing a car nostalgia thing

    My grandmother had a Studebaker Lark, which she drove well into the 1970s. She only had one leg, and had it adapted for that in the 60s. I wasn’t old enough to be aware of how it performed mechanically, but I remember she drove it like a tank.

  240. 240.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Debbie1: Third party candidates always do worse the second time around. Nader got nothing like he got in 2000 in 2004. Perot got 19 million in 1992, half that in 1996. Also, he’s going to be 78-79 that year. People will not vote for someone who looks like he might die any year.

    And an independent’s appeal is freshness and a bit of rebellion. Bernie would be just another familiar face this time around, with few achievements to his name.

    And without the already existing infrastructure of one of the two national parties, he would find it harder to simply get on the ballot. Forget mailing lists, volunteers and funding for a national run.

  241. 241.

    SiubhanDuinne

    O/T, sorry, but Bill Paxton has died age 61. Complications following surgery.

    RIP to a fine actor.

  244. 244.

    Baud

    @Brachiator: Because he’s now run for president under the Democratic banner and is now actively speaking on Democratic governance issues. I bet a lot of low-info Dems don’t realize he is not a Dem, and if he runs away from the party in 2018, it will be big news and will rub people the wrong way.

  246. 246.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @CarolDuhart2:

    And without the already existing infrastructure of one of the two national parties, he would find it harder to simply get on the ballot. Forget mailing lists, volunteers and funding for a national run.

    There is a reason Sanders ran in the Democratic primaries.

  250. 250.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @anon:
    I also think it would be bad mojo. Keep your rent at market rates, but also be equally open about your political views and critcal of Trump. After all, they think we are all a bunch of moochers. I think they will probably be shocked to find out you were a Clinton supporter, and a little nervous about you being their landlord. They can’t verbally abuse you for being anti-Trump, because then you really would have justification to ask them to leave. Do the right thing, but let them FEEL the power differential.

  251. 251.

    Kathleen

    @Baud: He’s too lazy to run as Independent. The constant undermining of Democratic Party gives him constant media exposure since mainslimers hold nothing more sacred than its “Dems in Disarray” theme. Exposure feeds anger of his cult, which will continue to fill his coffers. Then he can still file as Dem and use party for funding and more exposure. Win Win.

  253. 253.

    Baud

    @Kathleen: My original comment was not clear apparently. I was referring to his 2018 Senate reelection race, where he has always run as an independent. I agree he would be a Dem again if he ran for Prez in 2020.

  255. 255.

    SFAW

    So I just got done reading a fundraising letter from “Jim Dean” at DFA [quotation marks because I figure it could have been written by some staffer, and sent under his name], lamenting the Perez win for DNC chair. One of the lines that stuck out for me was this gem: “we will be looking for ways that we can work with him without compromising on our commitment to racial equity and fighting corporate power.” He also talked about his concern that the new DNC will not rebuild the Party from the inside or something like that.

    I replied (although I’m sure replies end up in the Trash), basically telling him/them to grow the fuck up. [In fact, I suggested they look up TBogg’s “Mumia Sweatshirt” piece.] I noted that Perez shares 90-plus percent of Ellison’s positions (OK, that number was pulled from thin air, but still …), and asked if they even had a clue regarding his work at DOJ and Labor. Fucking morons pissed me right the fuck off. Which, as we all know, is difficult to do. About as difficult as pissing off Cole, I imagine.

    I didn’t ask how Jill Stein worked out for them. Assholes.

  256. 256.

    Mnemosyne

    @anon:

    I’m with those who think it would be bad karma to raise the rent willy-nilly. I do like the suggestions that you make a new rule that no political signs are permitted by tenants, and that you make it clear to your tenants that you’re a Democrat. If they don’t like that, they can move.

  259. 259.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @DCF: Why would anyone think that Obama left the political arena? He said he was going to take some time off and then get back to work. Do you have a point?

  261. 261.

    Kathleen

    @PsiFighter37: @Baud: Just realized my response was not clear either and I was referring to a possible 2020 presidential bid! Two great minds running unclearly on the same (brillilant ’cause us) track!

  262. 262.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @SFAW: Charlie Pierce has a good rundown on what Republicans said about Tom Perez before he stepped out of line with St Bernard and became the enemy of all things good, decent and pure.

    HuffPo had a piece up in which they actually talked to the DNC members who did the voting. The arguments for Perez were his experience running and improving large organizations, especially the Civil Rights Division at DOJ that Bush left in a shambles. Also the fact that Ellison’s most vocal supporter was a guy who refuses to join the Democratic Party. Turns about people who have devoted their careers to building said party thought that was kind of odd. (I like Ellison, and I was/am ambivalent about the chairmanship– I’m hoping he can take some of the bitterness out the situation).

  265. 265.

    zhena gogolia

    @hovercraft:

    The utter, abject, disgusting lack of dignity, class, self-awareness, self-respect of our “president” continues to astonish me. I am so embarrassed that he is representing us in any way, or that he has a scintilla of power over my life.

  266. 266.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    a couple more tweets on Wilmerites vs Perez

    Dana Houle ‏@ DanaHoule 13h13 hours ago
    Perez was the best Sec of Labor since Frances Perkins.

    Percentage of people convinced Perez is a neolib sellout who’ve heard of Perkins=1%

    TBogg ‏@ tbogg 18h18 hours ago
    Bernie who has never had a real job outside of office, told labor’s best friend, Perez, to “welcome” working people.Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

  271. 271.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Gelfling 545: And I suspect for a lot of good reasons like not scaring potential tenants away. Some signs may also be unsightly, tasteless, whatever, and it’s easier to just say no to anything not related to real estate than to try to police taste or politics.

  273. 273.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SFAW:

    Hilary Clinton Apartments or some such.

    “Stolen Election Apartments”? “Putin’s Puppet Flats”?

    E-mail Estates?

  277. 277.

    D58826

    Saw this tweet from Nov. 2016 by Robert Klain on every vote counting.
    If Hillary had gotten 4 more votes per precinct in MI, 7 in PA and 9 in WI, she would be Madam President today.

    So please spare me the Hillary was a terrible candidate. Bernie is the savior of the party (that he won’t join) and all of the other Bernie Bro stuff. She got caught in a perfect storm of events. Yes some of her own making like the e-mails but every candidate has baggage so you can’t develop an election strategy based on the perfect candidate.

  280. 280.

    ThresherK

    @Gelfling 545: Can you tell me more about the Studebaker?

    I’m of the age that there were darn few left as daily drivers, here in the northeastern suburbs, and seeing one or two Larks, or the post-Lark models they wrapped up with (Commander? Daytona?), was a big deal. A neighbor had a ’59 Lark late in its dotage which he sold to someone pretty serious for parts in the ’70s, and I always liked the cut of their jib.

    All the other disappeared marques from the ’50s (Hudson, Nash, Packard) I’d seen on the road were collectors’ pieces.

  281. 281.

    artem1s

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “The President asked for an intelligence assessment. This is not the intelligence assessment the President asked for,” an unnamed senior administration official said as quoted in the Wall Street Journal’s report.

    August 8th Memo. the GOP never fucking learns

  282. 282.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @anon:

    but would it be bad mojo , when their lease expires, to increase their rent beyond what I would normally increase?

    Yes, it is bad mojo. It reinforces exactly the kind of crap the other side wants people like them to to believe about liberals. And it plays right into the hands of people who want these schmucks to remain angry, wounded victims. Don’t forget, lots of otherwise good people with NO power voted for this guy because they have the equivalent of a cognitive disability: they’re just not that smart, they want simple, easy to understand answers and they’re gullible. It won’t be long until he starts hurting them and they’ll feel the sting of their choices. Let Karma have it’s effects on them, not you for acting like a petty asshole.

    Focus your anger and your actions against those in power, those who are accountable, those who betray all of us.

    @Steeplejack:

    But if you’re going to be “open for business” in the marketplace, you have to be open for everybody. Otherwise you’re no better than the bigots who won’t bake a cake for a gay wedding or, to take a more relevant example, won’t rent to Negroes or Muslims.

    Exactly.
    Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
    -Friedrich Nietzsche

  283. 283.

    Pogonip

    @CaseyL: Anon didn’t say if they pay on time and don’t trash the place, but if they are good tenants he’d be a fool to push them out over a couple of signs 4 months ago.

    Every place I’ve ever rented has not allowed you to put up commercial signs, but I don’t recall any lease clauses about political signs one way or the other. Some years ago someone knocked on the door and wanted to put one in the yard. I explained it was my yard, but not MY yard, and referred them to the landlady. A couple of days later, there it was. I don’t remember which office the candidate was running for, something local, but I do remember voting for his opponent, so if the parties track voting habits by yard signs, I sure goofed up their data that year!

  284. 284.

    ruemara

    @Kay: This is very key anecdata. If you don’t mind, I’m going to share this nugget and see if we can collect more info on it. Perhaps we need to teach people to fill out the whole ballot. Heck, I know in CO people came out for the weed vote and didn’t vote on anything else.

  285. 285.

    Citizen Alan

    @Pogonip:

    Personally I would think such landlords were assholes who never-the-less were acting completely within their legal rights.

  286. 286.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @SFAW: Given his brother Howard was DFA’s founder, a supporter of Hillary Clinton and now Tom Perez, I really have to wonder what holiday dinners are like in that family.

  287. 287.

    Pogonip

    @Gelfling 545: I’ve had that clause in all my leases, although it was always selectively enforced. No landlord ever bothered me for putting holiday cutouts on the windows, but I remember seeing a life-size bikini babe in a window the next street over, and she didn’t last too long.

    In Columbus, Ohio, home of THE Ohio State University, there was a case a few years ago where a little old lady refused to stop flying the U.S. flag in her yard. The landlord had a policy against anything in the yard. Instead of waiting it out (she was 85) he started fining her $200/day. In court he explained that if he let the LOL fly her flag he’d have to let people fly Isis flags and whatnot. The expected settlement occurred and now his tenants can’t put anything in the yard except a U.S. flag.

  288. 288.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ella in New Mexico: Dean’s been kind of all over the map in this race, he was in the race early on, I think that’s why Schumer endorsed Ellison. Dean dropped out, I thought endorsed Ellison, then endorsed Buttigieg I think just last week. Buttigieg dropped out and endorsed Ellison, and I just saw Dean on MSNBC being very concern trolly about Perez. I wonder if it isn’t some old bad blood between Dean the Obama people.

  289. 289.

    Shell

    these strays, rather than avoiding humans, are like pets to the entire neighborhood.

    Like they say, cats have staff.

  290. 290.

    Anya

    @anon: Totally a bad mojo. One thing that separate us from Trump and his ilk is that we don’t discriminate against people based on their political ideology, no matter how stupid.

  293. 293.

    BCHS Class of 1980

    @OzarkHillbilly: Address should be doable with zip as a first screen. My zip crosses counties and I’m pretty sure also FL Congressional districts as well.

  294. 294.

    sheila in nc

    @Schlemazel:
    Yikes. I’d forgotten about that. Cheney was definitely trying to do the whole Afghanistan/Iraq thing on the cheap. (“We will be greeted as liberators… The oil revenues will pay for it… yadda yadda”)

  295. 295.

    sheila in nc

    @ruemara:
    I’ve been a Dem polling place volunteer here in NC for the last few cycles. As mentioned by a commenter above, NC has no more straight-ticket voting (they did when I first moved here). Moreover, judge races were NEVER partisan — the names on the ballot appear with no party affiliation, so if you haven’t done your research, you have NO CLUE whether any given candidate is a RWNJ or not. Our polling place literature ALWAYS includes a sample ballot showing the down-ballot candidates endorsed by the local Dems (who are pretty progressive where I live). Also, anybody voting in the Research Triangle area of NC should always refer to the voting guides in the Independent Weekly newspaper. It’s a valuable resource — the only paper around here that isn’t corporate-owned.

  296. 296.

    DCF

    @Betty Cracker:
    You kinda/maybe/sorta missed the point of the post, BC…put plainly, the Democratic Party needs to develop (and utilize) alternative funding sources – akin to what Sanders did in his primary race.
    SMH that such an obvious point is ignored or dismissed here: when you take monies from a wealthy individual or accept largesse from a corporation, you are then beholden to their influence(s).
    Clinton Advisor Says Dem’s Should Keep Poor People In Poverty
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ2aQR6IZC4

  297. 297.

    J R in WV

    @anon:

    You could ask them how they feel about the new administration… are they still so sure Trump is the right man for the job? If they still are into him, then raise the rent past what they can do, and wave goodbye when their last truckload of shit passes into the distance.

    They may already be starting to think the Donald can’t do the job…. going to lose health care, the cost of lumber is going up so construction jobs will go away, so many reasons to be unhappy about The Donald.

    If not, then adios, assholes.

  298. 298.

    J R in WV

    @Pogonip:

    What would you think of a conservative landlord who punished his tenants with a raise in rent because they put Hillary signs in the windows?

    Well, if Hilllary Clinton was a FUCKING NAZI, I would tell him to stop renting to tenants who had her signs in their windows. or if she was running on a Stalinist communist platform. But not. Trump is the Nazi in this picture.

    So, your turn this on the head idea, while often a useful concept, in this case doesn’t fit the conditions at all.

  299. 299.

    Wayward David

    @frosty: The first car I ever rode in (from the hospital where I was born to our home) was in a Nash. I think it was a 1953 or ’54 model – the ‘bathtub Nash’. And the first car I ever owned was a thrashed 1959 Nash Metropolitan, a car remarkable for combining mid-’50s American styling and handling with British power and reliability.

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