BY HAND.
SHE CALCULATED ROCKET TRAJECTORIES BY HAND.
BUZZ ALDRIN TRUSTED NO-ONE ELSE, NOT EVEN THEIR COMPUTERS. https://t.co/liVtd8cX8c
— Oli Young (@oliyoung) August 25, 2017
Happy 99th birthday Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician who calculated the trajectory of the Apollo 11 mission https://t.co/aay2OKlxev pic.twitter.com/f04GIFINDU
— Dr Paul Coxon (@paulcoxon) August 25, 2017
… I was so proud of Katherine as I sat with hundreds of other guests in the East Room of the White House and watched as she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama last year. Katherine’s great mind and amazing talents advanced our freedoms at the most basic level—the freedom to pursue the biggest dreams we can possibly imagine and to step into any room in the country and take a seat at the table because our expertise and excellence deserve it. Katherine, now 97, took her seat without fanfare. As far as not being equal was concerned, she said, “I didn’t have time for that. My dad taught us ‘you are as good as anybody in this town, but you’re no better.’ ” I’d posit that Katherine was better—not only at math but also at applying her talents with the precision and beauty possible only in mathematics. She achieved the perfect parabola—casting herself to the stars and believing she could chart the journey home.
Apart from honoring our heroes, and prepping (or praying for those) in the path of Hurricane Harvey, what’s on the agenda for the day?
***********
On a much less elevated level, just to vent…
I avoid Andrew Sullivan’s work as a general practice, but the NY Mag Most-Read sidebar title only said “The Boston Rally Exposed the Left’s Intolerance of Free Speech“. I won’t quote here, but this was an astonishing hat trick of Sully-ness.
First, he bemoaned at length the raw cruelty 20,000 [closer to 40,000, but Sullivan’s not a numbers guy] coldhearted local lie-brals perpetrated upon the FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS!!! of a handful of sweet well-meaning milky-pale young men and the far-fringe activists parasitizing in concord with them. Then he shared rather too much personal detail about how The Online Crowd (in this case, Twitter) had “broken” former BJ front-pager Freddie deBoer. (Possibly because we seemed to have had similarly chaotic childhoods, I never disliked Freddie’s stuff here as much as some. It did badly need an editor, but then I’m in that glass castle myself.) Finally, for the trifecta, Sullivan applauded the Virginia priest who felt called upon, in the wake of Charlottesville, to apologize for his actions during his Klu Klux Klan days… but only to his Church superiors, and his current parishioners, not to the people he’d victimized (and failed to pay court-ordered restitution). But then, those victims were just people of color and Jews — not at all the sort with whom Andrew Sullivan could ever identify.
SiubhanDuinne
I think I will not click on Sully, thanks all the same.
But Katherine Johnson is a wonder (has everybody here seen Hidden Figures, I hope?). I wish her the happiest of birthdays, and hope she’s around for as many more trips around the sun as she feels like taking. If she wants to plot her own trajectory, all the better.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne:
No, I do not partake of the cinema.
SiubhanDuinne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I don’t either, much, but that was a story I wanted to see. I’m very glad I did.
Mary G
I used to defend Sully, because he could write like an angel, printed the daily dissent and occasionally admitted he had been wrong, but that column today was awful. Not even written well.
?BillinGlendaleCA
When did people of an opposing viewpoint cause the abrogation of someone’s First Amendment rights? I’ve not read in a few years, but I remember it talking about “Congress shall make no law…”.
Major Major Major Major
I still remember the day Sully headlined a lengthy SOTU reaction with me zinging him in a tweet. Good times.
Major Major Major Major
I will agree with this bit he wrote.
@Mary G: The Daily Dish was a good blog. It’s how I got here, in fact, and I know I’m not alone in that.
Anne Laurie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yeah, it was pure self-indulgence on my part. Well, mostly pure — it’s worth clicking the final WaPo link about the not-Church-hierarchy victims of that ex-Klansman priest.
Amir Khalid
@Mary G:
This mystifies me: I wouldn’t pick an argument with Sully over calling Freddie “a beautiful writer and a brilliant thinker”, but I didn’t see much if any leftiness in Freddie’s posts here.
OzarkHillbilly
@Major Major Major Major: Ah yes, exercising my right to free speech suppresses the special little snowflakes right of free speech. Poor babies… I guess being a Nazi is not the scintillating experience of white heroism you’d thought it would be.
Same here, tho Andrew always was a little too full of himself.
Anne Laurie
@Major Major Major Major: And moveable print destroyed people’s memories, cuz everyone got lazy once they knew they could go back & read stuff.
Not arguing specifically for Twitter — heck, much as I use its product, I don’t have a Twitter account — but it’s just another information tool. It may very well not last long, outside of some specialized niches (don’t a lot of indie musicians still use MySpace, or is my memory out of date too?). But for someone with my particular “skills” (ADD and OCD, plus insatiable curiosity) it’s a great way to skim the web & pick out gems that I’d otherwise miss. And it gives us such a window into other people’s worldviews, if you know what I mean cough*trump*cough and I think you do…
Amir Khalid
Help me, Anne Laurie. You’re my only hope. I have a comment in moderation because it mentions socialists.
satby
Sully has always been a contrarian misogynist who’d be perfectly happy with an authoritarian government as long as it was run by people like him. And I wandered over here eons ago via a link from “Moderate Conservative” or Atrios, though it was seeing Cole’s blog mentioned so often by other blogs that got me curious. Down from reading about 10 blogs a day, I pretty much now only read here and TPM regularly, though I’m always up for good links to interesting stuff. Which Suly hasn’t been in years.
Amir Khalid
@Mary G:
This mystifies me: I wouldn’t pick an argument with Sully over calling Freddie “a beautiful writer and a brilliant thinker”, but I didn’t see much if any leftiness in Freddie’s posts here.
OzarkHillbilly
Shit. I forgot to fill up the truck.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid:
He was, from what I read of his stuff, an old-school doctrinaire Socialist of the Working Class, at that range of the political spectrum where far-left shades into far-right authoritarianism. Haven’t followed him since he rage-quit here, so I don’t know if he ended up as a professed member of the “dirtbag left” (or whatever the Sanders-sanctifying dudebros are calling themselves this week), but that seemed to be where he was headed. He did, IIRC, have the excuse that he wasn’t raised in the upper-middle-class veal pen from which most of that ilk originates — he could spot classism at a thousand yards, although he had a bad habit of nit-picking minor insults from the ‘wrong people’ while ignoring major injuries from ‘his intellectual equals’.
eclare
@Major Major Major Major: Think I got here through the Dish.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Balloon Juice, TPM, and Outside the Beltway.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It’s out on DVD now.
I really wanted it to win the Hugo this year. I was not nearly as impressed by Arrival as my fellow voters.
OzarkHillbilly
I wonder how long before Kelly forces trump out of the White House.
mike in dc
@OzarkHillbilly:
Stephen Miller has sucked up to Javanka and will hang in there a while. Jeff Sessions is not going to resign. Trump…
That said, there’s still one viable target for removal, Michael Anton. One of the other Islamophobes.
Mary G
@Amir Khalid: Freddie is every right-winger’s idea of a “good leftist,” i.e. not really leftist at all. He is also Rod Dreher’s favorite “liberal.” I’m with you, I’ve never seen him as a liberal at all. Although, I must admit that I never made it through a whole piece of Freddie’s. Or Glenn Greenwald’s. They are both wordy.
sharl
Based solely on his politics, Freddie probably is a good fit somewhere on the spectrum between the dirtbag left and the tankies, although maybe a bit closer to the former. But there’s a full range of opinions on him among the lefties. As so many have observed, he often doesn’t play well with others – the description of him as an asshole is not wrong – and in my opinion there has been a Jekyll-&-Hyde aspect to the degree of his assholishness that never seemed to be predictable from a distance (at least I could never predict it). He has his supporters who respect his intellect and are willing to cut him a break on the attitude, and he has detractors who want nothing to do with him, even if they mostly agree with his politics. So it goes.
ETA: I see there is disagreement on FdB’s politics. That’s fine by me, I don’t have strong feelings about the guy, beyond hoping that he deals with his issues in a way that will render him at least a bit less of an asshole.
OzarkHillbilly
@mike in dc:
So many Nazis, so little time. Don’t even know him.
mike in dc
@OzarkHillbilly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Anton
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I see Trump is pissing on the legal system now and pardon Apario, everything Trump touches turns to shit.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: Why use 10 words when you can use 500?
OzarkHillbilly
trump is coming to Misery.
So many Nazis, so little time.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: My condolences. Even though Trump has a property here, I don’t think he’ll ever show his mug here in LA.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Like no one saw that coming. It’s sort of getting to the point with the douches it would only be surprising if they didn’t instantly run to the morally wrong side of a position now.
Baud
I don’t wish mental illness on Freddie. But IIRC he was one of those lefties who couldn’t vote for Clinton. So he hardly cared about other people the way we are now expected to care about him.
OzarkHillbilly
@mike in dc: A real peach of a human being. A maggot ridden peach that is.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: You know what you have to do.
Anne Laurie
@sharl: How to phrase this… I got the feeling, reading deBoer here, that his politics were a little too strongly influenced by his family history, and his family history had been warped by his parents both politically and biologically. Lots of people who grow up in chaotic families end up as authoritarians, frequently of the leftist variety… and families are often chaotic because there’s a strand of bad biochemistry that not only warps individuals but causes them to pass on their suffering.
Look at the Kennedys, for instance. Members of that family have done tremendous things, and terrible things. Some of the terrible things were related directly to the biochemical tendency to substance abuse; some of the terrible things (Rosemary’s lobotomy, Jack’s compulsive womanizing) were more about the rigid patriarchal habits of Irish-Americans of their time — which evolved, in large part, because so many of us read it as a choice between authoritarianism and drunken decline. Sorting out which parts of one’s own bad habits are genetic and which are merely inculcated can be a lifetime’s work!
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Trumps’ ego must be fed. Since he is doing weekly rallies, there must be a level of concern among his staff about his health.
Anne Laurie
@Baud:
Hardly “expected” — more in the “there but for fortune” mode. I have always suspected I could’ve ended up as a Freddie if I’d been born male instead of female. Just as Sullivan might’ve been 87% less aggravating if he’d grown up female instead of male!
Baud
@Mary G:
Actually, I don’t think ideology has anything to do with it. I think that usually happens when the leftist is ineffective at anything except hurting his own side.
sharl
@Anne Laurie: That all seems plausible. I know he has written about his personal history, and I seem to recall having read at least some of that content, but damned if I can remember anything about it now. I’ll just hope he finds a more satisfactory path in life; one which doesn’t further burden those around him.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
This is Great News for Drumpf
Seven months into office, with the unemployment rate at 4.5% and a $433 billion deficit (3% of GDP).
At this point in 2009, Obama was at 52-40, while the unemployment rate was at 9.7%, 188,000 troops were in war zones, and a $1,413 trillion deficit (10% of GDP).
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I doubt I can afford to. My eldest is getting married next month.
@JPL: His ego will get mainlined in Springfield.
Baud
@Anne Laurie: I really never understood Sully love. He obviously hates us.
@OzarkHillbilly: Didn’t know. Congratulations!
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: He found a good one (I mean a really good one). He’d better not fuck it up. They’re getting married at the STL Zoo. Should be fun.
OzarkHillbilly
Hadley Freeman:
Words fail me.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Sounds like the wedding will be a real zoo.
Lavocat
Live long and propser. She’s livin’ the Vulcan dream.
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly: SMH
Mike J
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Meh. Great story, mediorce after school special of a movie.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Money trumps everything.
Kay
Here’s Trump’s crony, that great public servant, Sheriff Joe:
He cost that county tens of millions of dollars over the years. He bled them dry, and all of it was either to cover his own blunders and incompetence or promote his career as a far Right hero.
Now we’ll see him cashing in on far Right media, free to grift for another few years. He’s already soliciting for his “legal fund”, which probably goes straight into his pocket.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
When Sullivan is dragged off to gay reeducation camp by drawling thug paramilitaries acting on “orders” (along with Thiel, Jenner, Drudge and some others), I hope there is a video crew around running a national news feed so that I can at least take cold comfort in their shrieks of surprised anguish.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
Does Hezbollah run a GoFundMe? I could be persuaded to contribute.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Somewhat related, I just found out that Australia is currently debating gay marriage. I don’t know why I assume they are more liberal than they are.
Raven
@Baud: my dear friend and her wife had to move back there even thought they were legally married in New York.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Kay
Good story on how the Trump Family are cashing in on the Presidency:
And, this guy again, good Lord:
Mnuchin is like a cartoon of a horrible rich person.
Trump doesn’t go to any restaurants other than his own- God forbid some real business should share in any of that profit.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
Loved Hidden Figures
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
Not among the sainted White Working Class (Peace Be Unto It). You could snatch the last bite of food out of the mouths of their children and they’d be good with it if it meant that n****rs aren’t getting Obamaphones and EBT cards.
Never discount the petty, self-destructive resentments and biases of our depraved and diseased predominant white culture.
Raven
TSYDNEY (Reuters) – Thousands of people rallied for marriage equality in Australia’s second-biggest city of Melbourne on Saturday ahead of a postal survey on same-sex marriage which could lead to its legalisation.
Australia is one of the only developed English-speaking countries not to have legalised same-sex marriage, despite strong popular support and the backing of a majority of lawmakers.
Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, of the opposition Labor Party, called on the conservative Liberal Party-led government to do more to ensure the debate did not turn ugly ahead of the postal survey next month.
Baud
@Raven: That’s gotta be tough, once you are used to equality.
OzarkHillbilly
Taylor Harris- Talking to My Daughter About Charlottesville
“Once your children know that even one person detests their bones and breath, they know.”
As Jessica Valenti said, “a beautiful but heartbreaking piece”. Go read it all, you’ll be the richer for it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
Outside Sydney and Melbourne, they’re pretty parochial and retrograde, I understand. About 20 years behind in terms of great cultural change. It isn’t all homoerotic apocalypse survival costumes and relationships or frivolous wasting of the last carbon based fuel on Earth.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
I never could figure out what kind of asshole would want to go to a Trump restaurant, a Trump hotel, a Trump golf course.
And for the life of me, that saber thing with sparkling wine is just a stupid show.
Raven
@Baud: Jodi is Australian so they were able to go back there and live but they still want to be legal.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Not that I needed reminding, but I appreciate that Kay. Also appreciate the story about charities cancelling at Mara Lago.
Raven
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Jodi is from Safety Bay, look THAT up! They do live in Sydney.
Kay
I read some of Freddie’s stuff and some of it was good- really original- I even gave one of his pieces to my youngest son to read I liked it so much, and since I am constantly giving him things to read and he’s tiring of it not many make the cut these days. But – I don’t think Twitter “broke” Freddie. He says in his goodbye piece (which really is sad) that he has had this illness for a long time and it involves a manic phase. I read it as perhaps indicating the manic state and the obsessiveness that comes with it was what caused him to so focus on his online interactions, not that other way around.
I actually think it’s sort of shitty for Sullivan to slyly slip that in to buttress his thread-bare argument about the “intolerant Left” – not overtly- that would be in bad taste- but he’s clearly tying the two things together. Gross, Andrew.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
They like to go there because it’s all Trump supporters or employees. They say that in the piece.
It just struck me because that photo of the The President in a diner or whatever is such a common part of the Presidency. Obama did a lot of it- but they all do some of it. Not Trump. He must be hermetically sealed in a building with his name on it.
Iowa Old Lady
Between the Arpaio pardon and the transgender ban, I found yesterday depressing. I need to do something cheerful today.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Raven:
We know a guy from Perth, just north of there. He’s OK on a personal level, but is RWNJ curious.
MattF
I’ve recalled lately that my dad had a special category: “People I enjoy staying away from.” I’m comfortable taking a ‘late, but it’s never too late’ lesson from my old man– no more Andrew Sullivan. Over and out.
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
That puts them a couple centuries ahead of Misery.
MomSense
Katherine Harris is the gr. gr. Aunt of a singer I follow on IG. I don’t even think members of the extended family fully appreciated Harris’ accomplishments until the film came out.
It’s quite a family.
JPL
@Iowa Old Lady: It would not surprise me if during his next rally, he announces that there will be no protection for children of undocumented immigrants.
Iowa Old Lady
@JPL: Yes, he seems to be building up to that.
Just One More Canuck
@?BillinGlendaleCA: the wedding party will act like a bunch of animals
Cheryl Rofer
Continuing the “classic blogger” theme, bmaz on the Emptywheel blog has a great post on the Arpaio pardon. bmaz is a criminal defense attorney in Phoenix.
I haven’t always agreed with the Emptywheel bloggers, and we have had a few dustups, but since November 9, we have mostly been in violent agreement. I still think that some of their concerns about surveillance are overblown, but that has decreased to a very minor part of the issues.
ET correct a brain fart. It’s time for breakfast.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Yes because standing up for what one believes in is so intolerant.
rikyrah
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Inching down to the 27%
Kay
@Iowa Old Lady:
The transgender ban shocks me- so intentionally nasty- it’s cruel to do that to those people. It feels like pure dominance- I will do this to you because I CAN. Trump is a nasty piece of work. Nothing positive comes out of that administration- it’s all announcing someone is losing something.
I chuckled when I saw that Trump was crowing about intimidating NK, because I knew it was his usual idiotic premature victory lap and of course it was.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: He’s probably still upset that Google violated the First Amendment when it fired GoogleBro.
rikyrah
@Kay:
So sensitive that he can’t think about going somewhere that he isn’t praised
rikyrah
@JPL:
No shock in the least ??
OzarkHillbilly
@Just One More Canuck: It goes without saying.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I engage a lot with people on the other side in real life and I think Sullivan is just wrong that I have some duty to engage with all of them. No, I don’t. I’m not setting up a meeting with the guy who sent me the weird scrawled letters with Trump slogans on the outside of the envelope. I could, I guess, but I don’t want to talk to him. I have no duty to speak on the Nazi stage at the rally.
rikyrah
Intolerant left my ass.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of repercussions from said speech.
You can be a phucking Nazi, and I have the right to assess that you are a threat to me and mine.
rikyrah
@Kay:
These are people brave enough to put their lives on the line for this country which is something Dolt45 never did.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I like it though because the opposition, the unpopularity, really does bother the Trumps. They’re obsessed with it.
They’re weirdly needy people for being such assholes, but that’s often true, I find. The biggest assholes are always demanding you love them.
Sab
I used to enjoy reading Sullivan because he writes well. It has always been a sore point with my spouse, who says ” Yeah, he writes well but he is always WRONG!” Hard to argue with him on that point.
mike in dc
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
The lowest approval for a 1st term president who was actually re-elected was Reagan, at 35%. Trump is already below that threshold. The lowest first term approval number is 28%, Jimmy Carter, one point below GHW Bush, 29%. So if Trump hits the crazification number, 27%, he’ll be the most unpopular first term president ever.
Kay
@rikyrah:
It just kills me how mean it is. Imagine that- your whole career torpedoed by this asshole just because he’s lashing out that day. I mean, the ONE thing you get in the military is predictability and process and order. It could have come from anything- he read some bullshit on one of those far Right sites he frequents- it’s just a blow from behind.
ThresherK
That’s the Sulliest Sully that ever Sullied.
By now reading Sullivan is like watching a child in an easter egg hunt who finds everything but the goddamn eggs.
Kay
What will anyone do? Trump just showed his low-quality hires he’ll pardon fucking anyone. I guess we’re all still relying on some hope that he will at some point observe norms, or laws.
Schlemazel
The Fred I remeber would drop ill formed turds here and when challenged by commenters he would obfuscate or quibble over minutiae or pretend he did not say what he actually said. That is WHEN he would reply, mostly he hid and it was apparent he could not defend those glistening turds.
Someone really should send Sully a book on Operation Hummingbird in hopes he could grow to understand what his bedfellows did to supporters like him last time. One area I see he shared with Fred is the inability to defend what he wrote in an intellectually honest way. Yes, he would admit he was wrong but 6-8 months after it stopped mattering that he was wrong. He supported the ‘Bell Curve’ and still thinks it is relevant so his admission of being wrong is just window dressing.
Dev Null
@mike in dc: Julia Hahn. AFAIK she’s still embedded in the White House.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Same here, and sometimes I get into rather… boisterous, yeah that’s the word, “discussions”. But sometimes I just look at them and walk away. Not worth the time.
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
You could say that same thing about his blog.
Kay
@Schlemazel:
The “comments from the author” can be bad though, because the authors of a lot of good stuff are (probably!) jerks.
Makes it harder to separate the person from the work.
I found the Left people annoying in the Left vs The Democrats fights online because the Left came off as offended – like, “this is OUR area of expertise- how dare the rabble weigh in!” which quite frankly isn’t very “Left”. I feel they should embrace the proles who perhaps don’t read Jacobin or whatever. Of course not all Democrats are Left or even liberal. They didn’t know that?
debbie
@Baud:
And that is why you are a better person than he is.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Congratulations!
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
This also allows them to double down on Palestinian oppression. I couldn’t feel more ashamed.
Lapassionara
@OzarkHillbilly: I turned on my TV in the late afternoon yesterday and saw former Senator Danforth urging Republicans to distance themselves from Trump. Evidently, he does not recognize how much his GOP has changed in the years since his retirement. Sadly for Missouri, a fair number of people still think Danforth represents the GOP, and they cannot bring themselves to vote for any other party, no matter how vile the candidate. I just want to scream when I hear them talk.
Lapassionara
Also, I saw that WaPo has suspended their article limit for a few days, during Harvey. So those who have not yet subscribed, like me, here is a chance to read the articles you have heard about.
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
The first thing I heard this morning was that the pardon could be an impeachable offense. I know it’s unlikely, but I’m happy to think that Trump has crossed a legal line that he can’t con his way back over.
Peale
@Major Major Major Major: yeah. I know. The treatment of Leslie Jones for the audacity of being black and being in a reboot where she replaced a man…oh wait. He’s just complaining about loud lefties, like he always has. If conservatives are obnoxious it’s only because Larry Kramer made them so.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: Thanx, but I’m not the one getting married and I got “rid” of him 24 hrs after he graduated from HS. That apple did not fall far from the tree. (I did the same)
NobodySpecial
Why does anyone still click on that racist asshole who thinks liberals are a fifth column?
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I must say I’ve gotten so much better at it over the years. I rarely even get agitated. A lot of it is that you’re familiar with the arguments so you don’t need the intensity of attention – you can distance a little. It’s also just confidence. I’ve thought a lot of these things thru and reached my own kind of equalibrium so I’m comfortable in my views- I’m not as defensive.
I still can’t really engage with them on voting rights- it upsets me. I quit as a pollworker because I was thinking so badly about my neighbors I was really bitter. I can’t sit next to them when they’re grilling some poor soul about an address. The smugness drives me fucking crazy, especially because they don’t read the rules and if they do read them they take the most restrictive reading possible. I used to run into people like that at the Postal Service- they were looking for a way to say “no”, to lord it over people, assert authority, say they did it WRONG. To me it’s just bad customer service. I don’t even have to go to civil rights.
MomSense
@Sab:
I used to read him and found this place because of one of his shame awards (can’t remember the name now). I read the excerpt he found so objectionable and thought this place seemed more suitable for me than the dish.
He wasn’t always wrong. Sometimes he wrote beautifully in defense of marriage equality and a few selective issues. Like many conservatives, he seemed to evolve on social justice and civil rights issues only when he had some stake in them. The exception may have been abortion when his thinking about it changed as he began asking for the opinion of women who had direct knowledge of the subject. And that is what pissed me off about him. On issues where his life wasn’t affected, he sort of expected people to prove the merit of their injustice. Fuck that. I don’t understand how someone whose own experience of being in a marginalized or oppressed community doesn’t cause him to defer to the people in other marginalized communities. Why should he be the arbiter of who is worthy or not of equality and justice?
One of the most horrible things he ever wrote was that fucking sociopathic and awful screed about how some people just can’t have health insurance/access to care because of all of these principled reasons that seemed to have don’t raise my taxes as the underlying concern.
He did add “meep meep” to the lexicon, however and that was a very good thing.
LAC
@rikyrah: me too. The book and the movie. Not “an afternoon back to school special”, as was just stated, but a primer on how woven we are in the history and major accomplishments of this country. In case people are still thinking it’s just “slavery….MLK…obama…stop bothering us with your identity politics”trajectory.
As for Sullivan, a waste of space. Who cares what that twit thinks anyway?
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly:
Do we know if Gorka’s wife is staying?
Quinerly
@Lapassionara:
All well and good but I will never forgive Danforth for giving us Clarence Thomas. No redemption from this St. Louis chick.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve noticed that “we” have pretty much all agreed that Misery and Ohio are the buttmonkeys of the Midwest, for reasons I’m not fully aware of (though I suspect the “Arkansas meets Kansas” stereotype is a big reason for the former’s reputation.)
Also: For a short time I used to semi-regularly rib LGM regular Alex Hazanov by calling Sully a “humanoid panda” (the joke being that Sully and pandas are portly, stupid and fairly useless*), until Hazanov retorted that at least pandas were widely enjoyed across the globe. Hard to argue with that.
*only the portly part applies to Hazanov, btw
Lapassionara
@debbie: I view it as a blatant violation of his oath of office. The opposite of upholding the Constitution. If Republicans cared about such things, I think it would support a Bill of Impeachment, but they don’t.
TS
@Baud:
Like the US, we have governments to the left (labor) bringing in all the social change & those to the right (liberal) attempting to move us back. In 2004 (liberal govt) the marriage act was amended as follows
The 2004 Amendment incorporated a definition of marriage into section 5 Interpretation of the Act as: marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life. It also inserted a new section
Certain unions are not marriages
A union solemnised in a foreign country between:
(a) a man and another man; or
(b) a woman and another woman;
must not be recognised as a marriage in Australia
The current “vote” on gay marriage
1. It is being run by the census office not the Electoral Commission – this means that the result is in no way binding on the government
2. Based on 1, if the vote for gay marriage is Yes, the government will consider that if they ever get around to any sort of debate on the issue; if the vote is NO nothing further will happen (with the current government).
Quinerly
@Kay:
Someone may have posted. I’m reading comments from bottom up. Trying to get out the door to our Festival of Nations. WAPO has a piece up on this subject. Friends, advisers, and family of Trump can just ignore subpoenas, be charged and convicted federally, and he can just pardon them. The die is cast with Sheriff Joe.
OzarkHillbilly
@Lapassionara: I long ago came to the conclusion that Danforth is the epitome of what a “respected conservative” is supposed to look and sound like. He has no problem with all the policies of the GOP, everything from voter suppression to the gutting of healthcare to the ending of social security to the polluting of our air and water to the denial of science that gets in the way of corporate profits to the … ad nauseum. What Danforth objects to is trump’s coarseness, his crude language, his lack of polish, his vileness.
Never forget, he is the one who shepherded Clarence Thomas thru the Senate and onto the Supreme Court.
randy khan
@Kay:
It’s worth noting that the President can’t pardon people who are cited for civil contempt, which generally is the first step when someone ignores a subpoena or tries to resist a warrant. And one of the remedies for civil contempt is putting the person in jail until he or she decides to cooperate.
Baud
@Quinerly: Imprisonment to enforce compliance with a subpoena is not criminal so not pardonable.
randy khan
@Quinerly:
Uh, that’s not really right. The pardon power extends only to crimes and civil contempt is the most likely initial remedy for people failing to comply with subpoenas. See my post @177.
ETA: Baud beat me to it. One more reason to rally behind Baud! 2020.
Baud
@randy khan: Actually, your # 117 was first.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The overall message is that civil rights advances aren’t irreversible–if the rules change and now the people in charge claim you’re OK, you’d better not take advantage, because once you’re out in the open the next President could yank it all and get you fired, ruin your life, get you thrown in prison. Keep your head down. Don’t trust anyone.
If I recall correctly, this new rule doesn’t eject existing transgender soldiers. But the message that they’re some sort of national-security risk is contained in it.
It’s going to poison our society even with a better administration in.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Kay: I think the major problem with Jacobin is that the good writers aren’t regulars and the regular writers aren’t that good, more or less. I also find the “get out of OUR bunker” mentality incredibly grating.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
Wondering if this is going to shift the judicial calculus on civil contempt – they’ve typically been loath to use jail on high profile political probes, preferring to wait for prosecution. Could well be that he’s fucked underlings for a long time to come.
Jeffro
@Kay:
We aren’t relying on that, but it does seem to be the hope of most of the GOP, and half the Villagers. Still. Somehow.
I know this is just pointing out the obvious, but…a guy who prioritizes putting a transgender military-service ban into force and pardon a nationally-noted racist sheriff while a Category 4 storm is bearing down on the U.S. is really, truly, and completely in irrecoverable rage-fest mode. In both cases, he short-circuited reviews and processes in the service of his spiteful, psychotic lizard brain. He needs to be taken out of office immediately.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
He’s a lousy human being and all the General Kellys in the world won’t fix that. The core of that administration is rotten.
Donald Trump’s lack of character is the problem. It all stems from that. The incompetence even stems from that- he doesn’t learn anything. He was a fundamentally bad hire and those never get better- they always get worse.
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly:
Meant to give you a a heads up a few days ago…If you are coming in for the Festival of Nations today, you could come early. Our friends, Charlie P and Lydia R are playing at Tower Grove Farmers Market, 10-12. That’s where I’m landing before the eating and shopping frenzy begins. Probably will go back to the fest tomorrow after breakfast. I’m rushing around but if you want to connect again, I’ll drop by the Venice after 4 if you think you might pop in to see Red. I hadn’t planned on it but can breeze though. Have a great day!
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Ignoring subpoenas isn’t the half of it–members of his administration are now completely immune from the law within the bounds of Washington, DC, unless Congress is willing to impeach them.
In principle that isn’t even a problem, since they could just shoot any members of Congress who showed up in the District to vote for impeachment, and get a pardon for that. Probably it would be open civil war before arriving at that point, but this is the direction Trump is moving.
randy khan
@Baud:
I swear I saw them in the opposite order at first. I probably need my morning orange juice.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
I wish I could say the same. I try to remain civil but sometimes… My latest outburst came when someone said of trump, “We needed a guy who is tough.” and I went off about what a complete and total pansy trump is, that all he does is whine about every living thing, that his years of having his lawyer beat up people not as rich as him might be a lot of things but “tough” ain’t one of them, that….
The poor guy was just shell shocked. (i know it doesn’t compute, but IRL he is a very sweet older gentleman who speaks with a very pronounced stutter, I’d really like to ask him how he squares his trump vote with trumps ridiculing of the NYT reporter but I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance)
They are everywhere.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
I don’t think so–I think that is just a symptom. We wouldn’t have made that bad hire if there wasn’t a far deeper rot in this country. The transgender ban was probably Mike Pence’s doing. Trump could get away with pardoning Arpaio because millions and millions of Americans love that. They love torture, cruelty, hurting the Other.
The rot, the evil, the hate, is everywhere. It’s in the eyes of all those fine young men marching in Charlottesville. When Trump is long gone the stink of it will be all around us. It was revealing something that had been there for centuries in the heart of America.
Maybe there are more of us than there are of them. Maybe we can prevail. But we’ve always got some of the rot in us too. It’s deep.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: Not making it in to town this wkend. My son, fiance, and granddaughter are at Onandoga Cave State Park for the wkend sooooo…. Baby girl wins every time.
also, tried that email addy you gave me and google said it was bad.
Kay
@randy khan:
Thanks- that’s helpful.
d58826
@SiubhanDuinne:
And I have trouble counting to 10 if I have mittens on. :-)
Kay
Now we can all watch Sheriff Joe cash in on his pardon. He’s probably already booked at the next far Right racist get-together. Always remember- they’re all making lots and lots of money off this.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin:
I read somewhere that some conservative members of Congress went to trump with their concerns about a possible rise in medical costs for transgendered members of the military. (I suspect they just didn’t want the govt paying for any sex change operations because the real costs are minuscule) When trump tweeted his ban on TG people in the military, they were “shocked” because it was way beyond what they were asking for. No word on whether that shock was of the pleasantly sort.
eta: actually I read it in a couple of places, don’t remember where tho
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@OzarkHillbilly: Congratulations on getting a good child-in-law. (Don’t recall offhand if you’ve mentioned your son’s preferences.)
Kay
What sleazy, mean-spirited action will the Trump Administration take today? Is there another group they can shit on this week or are they done working?
Mai.naem.mobile
Sully is a racist POS. He reminds me of the old farts in England,when i lived there where for them a brown person was never going to be as good as a white person. Never. The only reason he supported Obama is because of his AIDS diagnosis and that he could never become a US citizen unless the rules were changed and he knew a GOPig would never do it. Shit like this never occurred to him when he was fighting Hillary care in ’94 because he could not imagine not being able to get medical insurance/healthcare . Fuck Sully.
Baud
@Kay: All of them, Katie?
Mai.naem.mobile
@Kay: hes running out of stuff to make his base happy. He’s down to locking up Hillary,the wall and repealing Obamacare. I don’t think his base cares about tax reform. He could do a weekly illegal immigrant hunt with Joe Arpaio for ratings. Kind of like hangings in the public square during Victorian times.
OzarkHillbilly
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Not that it matters but he’s straight. I always wanted a daughter but a daughter in law (or 2) will do just fine. My youngest has been together with his SO for so long they might as well be married.
Quinerly
@Mai.naem.mobile:
or kinda like lynchings in the South about the time all those Jim Crow Monuments were going up
Baud
@Mai.naem.mobile: He actually hasn’t mentioned Lock Her Up in a while. But maybe he’ll go back to it when her book comes out.
Quinerly
@Kay:
just heard a blurb on NPR about pardons like this can’t be issued until 5 years after a conviction. May have been mentioned here but I haven’t caught it. I know Trump bi passed DOJ protocols but the first I had heard about the 5 years. Need to do a little research. Anybody know any details or have a link?
Baud
@Quinerly: I think that’s traditional protocol. Not binding.
Peale
@Kay: joe lives in a very very large house for a lifetime government worker.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@OzarkHillbilly: That was just an apology for not remembering if it would be a d-i-l or s-i-l. We do need a generic term for that now.
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah:
So did I. The book was even better, providing a lot more info about the historical context. A lot of stuff I wasn’t aware of and wish were more broadly known. Those women were amazing in the face of relentless adversity.
Gelfling 545
@Kay: I have wondered if Trump hadn’t gone around crowing about it whether North Korea might have let things lie for a bit; but he had to flap his big mouth. Maybe not but he certainly hasn’t been helpful ( today’s understatement. )
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly:
[email protected] or [email protected]. The latter is old and tied to BJ account. Both work. Maybe a typo. Enjoy! Want to get you to town for Charlie P playing sometime. He’s the reason (good or bad) that I connected years ago that you I and I probably knew each other and/or had common friends. You posted a video of him playing on one of the late night musical threads after I had lurked here over 10 years. As I have said before, you are the reason I registered in order to comment….tried to track you down on that dead thread. Think that musical post was a couple days old at the time. I had no idea how threads died and people moved on. So naive….but I digress.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: A golden oldie, it never goes out of fashion.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Disagree. It was out of fashion the moment it was uttered. Frankly, I’m a bit ashamed not enough on our side was offended.
Betty Cracker
@ThresherK:
Hilarious and accurate analogy!
satby
Well here I am at the Farmers Market, where a booth costs $40 on Saturday. And I knew I should have just skipped it when I couldn’t get a spot inside, but I let them talk me into a tent outside… where I have been for 3 hours now without a single sale. I really didn’t have $40 to just throw away today. Sigh.
OzarkHillbilly
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Meh. People are people and we always sort, men over here, women over there. We just keep adding cubbyholes to put people into. It’s not an all bad thing, it helps people navigate the world and as long as one allows for room to maneuver in the sorting (“I never thought a gay black man would think that.”) I think it’s fairly harmless. Besides it’s human nature and fighting that is pretty damned frustrating.
Baud
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
I propose “Merry Christmas!”
O. Felix Culpa
@MomSense:
You’re kinder than I am. Sully is a solipsistic POS who supports marriage equality…because it affects him. Writing well does not excuse the core selfishness, callous disregard of others, and intellectual dishonesty. The view from my window pix were nice, but I do not mourn the passing of the Dish nor will I read his mendacious excretions now.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Sarcasm.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: I know. I just wanted to say my piece on the subject.
bystander
@Quinerly: I think Katharine Gorka remains at DHS, keeping us all safe from the Mooslim hordes. Other than conjugal knowledge of a neo-Nazi, what expertise does she bring to the job that merits our tax dollars?
@O. Felix Culpa: Yep, on all points.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby:
Bummer. I’ll be putting in a new order soon, FWIW. :)
Villago Delenda Est
Sullivan has always had a wish to be a Kapo in Pat Robertson’s extermination camp for fags.
Quinerly
@randy khan:
I’m in a hurry and can’t fall into the morning BJ party. Take a peek at the WAPO piece. Also, mentioned last night on one of the MSNBC shows….door is opened for Trump to pardon anyone who ignores a subpoena by Mueller and is found in contempt. I’m not that “up” on the presidential pardon power. Could be totally wrong but that’s what the WAPO piece says and a couple talking heads last night said.
Timurid
The Arpaio thing has really hit a nerve. Every last conservative in my twitter feed is both-siding his/her brains out this morning. Because a reckless idiot like Chelsea Manning is just like Hannibal Lecter with a badge.
d58826
And another piece of GOP garb age heard from last May. And why am I not surprised.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ted-cruz-calls-federal-flood-relief-texas-article-1.2238227
But harvey seems a bit different:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hurricane-harvey-puts-cruz-cornyn-201816733.html
In a bit of karmic payback Sen. Schumer should read Cruz’s Sandy statement into the Senate record but substitute ‘Harvey’ for ‘Sandy’. And then add a ‘but New Yorker’s are more generous than that and will vote for funding to help Texas recovery’.
On balance the GOP is well on it’s way to opening a new and lower level of Hades, where they all richly deserve to spend eternity.
Baud
@d58826: Meh. They’ll say they want spending cuts, but all of the cuts have to come from programs Dems like. But since Dems are being obstructionist, they have no choice but to give in.
It’ll be easy for them to deal with.
firusan
Is there not something odd about Katherine’s hand in that photo?
d58826
@Timurid:
But Manning actually served jail time and his sentence was commuted. He was not pardoned. His sentence was commuted, just like W did for Scooter Libby.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/us/politics/obama-commutes-bulk-of-chelsea-mannings-sentence.html
Steve in the ATL
@Lavocat: quick question: are you a lawyer? If not, are you an avocado?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: OK. I agree, but want to add that I find it to be a particularly dangerous bit of “hyperbole”. Quite sure the Secret Service isn’t happy about it.
hueyplong
Trying but failing to understand why anyone picks out a Sullivan item to care about.
d58826
@Baud: And it sounds like all of the tax reform ‘loopholes’ that will be closed will be at the expense of blue states. Things like state tax deductions. They aree also talking about changing the rules on the 401ks. Instead of being tax deferred up front, they will be tax deferred at the back end. Nothing like screwing over the middle class one more time. I wonder how the 60+ million Trump voters think now? No wait, I know, they are happy as clams since even though they are being screwed, somewhere a POC or LGBT person is being hurt more.
Timurid
@d58826:
Sorry, forgot to close my sarcasm tag.
d58826
@Kay:
Maybe he is afraid that at some other restaurant the chief will saute his onions in a bit of hemlock
Baud
@d58826: Facts are irrelevant to those people.
@d58826: They need Dem votes though. They can’t do it with reconciliation.
d58826
@Timurid:
I knew that was sarcasm. I was commenting on the both sidesism. should have quoted that part of your comment
satby
@O. Felix Culpa: no worries! Between the market and my regular crazy ass job I struggle to keep up with the online store.
Just got a sale, so now only down $20. Slow and steady…
d58826
@Baud:
True
Neldob
All this shyt the flaming orange bunghole is doing it’s not just him, it’s republicans. Republicans flouting the Constitution, republicans destroying the rule of law, Republicans supporting Nazis.
Scamp Dog
@firusan: I took a closer look, and I think that she has her thumb folded under her palm, instead of hooked around her waist like you might expect. Arthritis maybe?
d58826
Hello ‘
That’s hitting the nail on the head.
https://twitter.com/newschambers/status/901432632394776576
Gator90
@d58826: They’ll manage. Hypocrisy without embarrassment is a Republican strength.
Humdog
@satby: I thought you quit working for that awful office manager?
Quinerly
@randy khan:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/08/25/if-hell-pardon-arpaio-why-wouldnt-trump-pardon-those-who-ignore-robert-mueller/?tid=ss_fb-bottom&utm_term=.2b914c6ffb67
Brachiator
@Baud:
Trump? He was enjoying chants of “build the wall” and “lock her up” at the Arizona rally.
MomSense
@O. Felix Culpa:
Exactly. We agree on his selective application of equality and justice i.e. when it affects him. I mostly hate read the dish.
d58826
@Quinerly: They were talking about just that last night on MSNBC. He is saying to anyone that Mueller is interested in, that he has their back and will pardon them. This pardon was both a dog whistle (very very loud whistle) and a shot across the bow of the SP.
And given the silence of the GOP, he doesn’t have to fire Mueller, he will just proactively pardon everyone including himself. I know there is speculation as to whither the pardon power extends to Trump himself/family, but who will stop him if he does,
satby
@Humdog: I decided to hang in until January for the sake of the doctor. How to finally move them to electronic records before I leave.
Amir Khalid
@d58826:
Ahem. Manning is a woman now.
Quinerly
@d58826:
Bottom line, he will push every button, every limit until the House impeaches him. Mark my words. Nothing to stop him until that.
JMG
A pardon means Congress can compel a previously pardoned witness to testify under penalty of perjury, since self-incrimination is off the table. I believe that applies to Mueller’s investigation as well. So as a means of self-protection for Trump, it’s a double-edged sword. He may of course be far too stupid to recognize that.
Davebo
Harvey now moving due north at 2mph as of 10:00AM CST. Good news. I just don’t see it moving back into the gulf.
kindness
I used to read Sully even though he would defend people who would have jailed him for being gay. The moxie of his unwillingness to face up to the Tories in England and the conservative Repubs here. He swilled the gusto of the Maggie/Ronnie image and disregarded it’s dark underbelly. Then came the Clinton hating. God how I hated the Clinton hating. It made no sense. Especially since by that point the Republican party had begun it’s transition to the American Taliban. Yet I continued to read him. Sully supported bush43 & the Iraq invasion even though anyone with 1/2 a brain could see the evidence against Sadam was cherry picked bullshit. In fact it wasn’t until the end of dubya’s second term that Sully finally admitted the administration was flooded with self dealing grifters & thieves. Bush43’s economic collapse & Sully’s white guilt are the only reason he supported Obama. And then we got the Clinton hating one more time, even though the opposition was now full on nazi & confederate racist nutcases.
But today, I won’t read Sully. Life is to precious to waste on morons.
O. Felix Culpa
@Quinerly: Truth. He respects no boundaries and has no decency. He will do what he wants until forcibly stopped or ousted. Sooner rather than later, FSM and Mueller willing.
Quinerly
@JMG:
Question that was posed last night on MSNBC…what would stop for continual pardons, after the first pardon? Congress compels witness to testify after first pardon. Witnesses refuses, process starts over. We can really go down the rabbit hole with this. No boundaries….but impeachment and conviction.
Quinerly
@O. Felix Culpa:
OT…send me satby’s info so I can order some soap (email or FB pm). Want to help support her business. Thanks! Gotta get off BJ…great concert at our local farmers market and a fest to get to. Must step away from politics. Really depressed last night.
Amir Khalid
@JMG:
By comparison, pardoning Arpaio shows Trump’s open contempt for the rule of law, but I guess someone judged that it was safe to do: Arpaio has nothing to do with the Russian business and can’t testify against Trump. Which means, I think, that those who are in on it, and who if pardoned could be compelled to testify, shouldn’t count their pardon chickens before they are hatched.
DissidentFish
I don’t think pardoning Sheriff Joe means he would pardon anyone. Arpaio and Trump go way back on the birther issue and probably other things based around “law and order” coded racism. We can assume Arpaio has heard Trump use the vilest slurs, and that Arpaio never signed an NDA.
And I pretty much can picture the two of them with a roomful of urinating trafficked women… which is not a good picture, but far from unimaginable.
Trump only takes care of those who take care of him. He’ll burn the others — he’ll burn Seoul, he’ll burn the west cost of the US — if it suit his momentary rage, self-interest, etc.
Gary K
The wife & I made a point of going to “Hidden Figures” on DT’s Inauguration Day. It was a reminder that we can be a great country.
Raoul
Andrew Sullivan is a pathetic degenerate. His spirit was broken by the total collapse of conservatism signaled by the capitulation to Trump. He was interesting for a short period of time around the first Obama election, but since then he’s just become a carnival barker like all the rest of ’em. I am stunningly disinterested in what Mr. Bell-Curve-had-a-point has to say about anti-KKKers. He’s just a gay racist and I find that embarrassing and a discredit to the gay community.
Neldob
Collapse of conservatism? This administration is its peak.
Suzanne
@MomSense:
He’s still a fairly wealthy white man, and obviously thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. It’s what happens to libertarians.
I feel badly for Freddie and obviously hope he finds some meaningful help soon. I’m kind of grossed out, though, but how when a white dude steps away from the internet for his health that it’s seen as this very sad thing, but when women have been fighting to make internet spaces “safe spaces” that it becomes fodder for yet another round of The Kids Are Too Sensitive And The World Isn’t Safe And They Should Grow Up And Stop Worrying About Their Fee-Fees.
Tenar Arha
@kindness: QFT
I found TNC through Sully, & here through TNC’s comments so I suppose he did good there.
However, as far as I can tell, Sully has always had the tendency to make excuses for the powerful at the expense of the rest of us. He’s okay with everything unless it directly affects him. After a while even his mea culpas seemed calculated to make excuses for his previous idiocy (see The Bell Curve) or to punch down some more.
And even his criticism of Twitter is as much due to the fact that Black Twitter had his number right from the start, so he could never get away with his almost congenital need to call everything he approved of conservative and everything he disapproved of liberal/left, when he usually was ascribing to the former something that fit into the latter.
Frankensteinbeck
@d58826:
‘She’, please. This is very, very important to transgendered people. It’s core, even. And it’s retroactive. Very few women want to be remembered as male before they were able to come out. If you believe in transgender rights, please give them the right pronouns.
rikyrah
@d58826:
Make the mofos grovel for the aid package.
Amaranthine RBG
So here’s a guy who announces that he’s stepping away from public life and checking himself into a mental health facility and you fuckwads are taking potshots at him?
This is some of the most despicable shit I’ve seen in quite a while.
Some of you asshats need to take a cold, hard look in the mirror and try to figure out why you’re so damaged.
d58826
@Amir Khalid: oops
d58826
@Frankensteinbeck: Not sure why I said ‘he’ after looking specifically for ‘Chelsea’. My apologies to all
Matt McIrvin
@Amaranthine RBG: Most of the potshots here are at Sullivan, who is using DeBoer’s problems as a means of complaining that The Left is too intolerant of sexists and racists.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Why not ask the guy that de Boer publicly and baselessly accused of being a rapist to be nicer to poor, damaged Freddie, who just couldn’t help himself?
De Boer injured people. He needs to apologize for his years of rampaging around calling people names before all is forgiven. And, yes, even inadvertent injuries or injuries that have an explanation need to be apologized for. If you accidentally trip someone on the bus and they break their ankle, do you tell them you refuse to apologize because you didn’t mean to do it?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Amaranthine RBG: Steve….
Mohagan
@OzarkHillbilly: Me too! I’d kind of forgotten how I found BJ, and this reminded me. I started reading the Daily Dish because of his condemnations of Sarah Palin in the campaign of 2008, and then for a little while longer for some of the features – particularly “where was this picture taken”, but after a while I couldn’t take it any more and found my natural home at BJ. And I’m sorry, but Tunch was far better than those silly beagles.
Redshift
Thanks for taking in the Sully thing, Anne Laurie. It popped up in my Google news feed and for some reason I couldn’t resist the clickbait, even though I’ve never been able to stand Sullivan.
In addition to his cherry-picking of inoffensive people who were signed up to speak (and not even mentioning the really awful ones who only cancelled because of the counter-protest, the thing that struck me was – why are these inoffensive speakers at a “free speech” rally? Who is stopping them from speaking anywhere else? And for Sully, who bemoans that “the intolerant left” is preventing him from hearing what they have to say, has he made any effort to hear them in any other venue?
No, of course not, because he doesn’t actually have any interest in hearing them. He’s only interested in bashing “leftists,” and will make up whatever silly story is necessary to do so.
Or as someone on Twitter put it: “That feeling when there are actual Nazis marching in the streets, and your big concern is that the people standing up to them are being too intolerant…”
O. Felix Culpa
@Gary K: Funny. So did we.
Another Scott
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Whoops. 3 orders of magnitude is a pretty big typo. (The deficit under Obama wasn’t $1.4 quadrillion dollars.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: Thanks for the pointer. I haven’t read Marcy in ages. I’ll have to check in there more often.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Kay: I gave my theory last night that it’s him talking last to the Talibangelicals.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@Redshift:
Yeah, with the “inoffensive speakers,” at what point do you hear, Okay, you’re going to precede the speaker from the Ku Klux Klan and be followed by a guy who thinks that Islam should be banned and not re-think your participation?
d58826
@Mohagan: I found BJ thru the Dish also
Sister Golden Bear
@Kay: Sadly I’m not shocked at all. The “bathroom bills” we’ve been fighting for years now have been of a piece. Likewise, with the legislatures that went out of their way to make it difficult — sometimes impossible –to change their legal ID.
Sister Golden Bear
@Amir Khalid: @Frankensteinbeck: Thank you for reminded people of this point. Every time I’m misgendered it’s like a bee sting to the heart — and enough bee stings can kill you.
J R in WV
@d58826:
A person named Chelsea Manning should be referred to with female pronouns. She and her. I’m an old straight white guy and I know that much – be polite if you’re gonna remark, please. At least until the 2am adults only commenting time period.