I’m in an airport and CNN’s Sunday Show, State of the Union with Jake Tapper, is blaring. Some middle-aged, pasty, pudgy white guy is saying that Trump needs to “take out” a Senator to show the Senate that he’s serious. Apparently he means with an election, not a gun. I can only imagine that he will head home and masturbate furiously, repeating the phrase “take him out, yeahh baby” over and over, while his face forms a grim rictus as his emission approaches.
I don’t know who this guy is, but I hope that he and others like will help Trump turn their masturbatory fantasies into reality. And I would prefer that chickenshit Jeff Flake is “taken out” in the primary so Kyrsten Sinema or another good candidate can paste Chemtrail Kelli Ward in the general. Because this:
Regarding the Arpaio pardon, I would have preferred that the President honor the judicial process and let it take its course.
— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) August 26, 2017
Bago
At least he didn’t say “Rub out”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
twitterNixon is a fictional character who tweets, the guy behind it isn’t really making a prediction, but I do think this speaks to both the clubbiness and fears of the GOP Senate caucus.
I still think the way to put a leash on trump is to have the relevant committee, Intel or oversight or Gang of Eight or whatever, subpoena his tax returns and have an anonymous staffer or source with knowledge leak that they have no plans to make them public unless it is determined that it is in the public interest.
Baud
Meanwhile, Kasich is playing anti-Trump on my TV.
BruceFromOhio
It seems you’ve given this quite a bit of thought.
OzarkHillbilly
Jeff Flake is trying to be the New John Danforth. I predict this road will lead to an identical irrelevance.
Betty Cracker
Twitler this morning:
– Buy psycho Sheriff Clarke’s book!
– We need The Wall because Mexico is a crime hellhole
– I won Missouri by a lot!
– NAFTA unfair!
– Oh yeah, that hurricane thing — many people say it’s the worst hurricane ever, but Team Trump is winning!
gene108
@Baud:
Sigh… the next Republican President who is marginally competent and not prone to random and vindictive 3 am tweets, will be dubbed the most Presidential President ever by the media…the media is so dying to embrace a GOP Daddy to run this country…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I saw he’s making cutesy noises about the “Kasich/Hickenlooper” ticket– “nobody could pronounce it Chuck! haw haw”– which to me is the biggest sign that they’ve talked about it. I’ve read that Hickenlooper’s a huge blue dog/Simpson-Bowles type, but I’d be surprised (but not shocked) if he signed on with a hard right, anti-choice, vote-suppressing, anti-union goon like Kasich.
Mustang Bobby
In Florida, Rick Scott is planning to run against Sen. Bill Nelson and is already sucking up to Trump. That could be an interesting race; Nelson is not exactly Mr. Excitement, but after two terms of Gov. Voldemort and his denial of climate change while Miami Beach goes under (see “An Inconvenient Sequel”), here’s hoping that’s the end of Scott’s political career and he can go back to f*cking over Medicare until he’s busted and pardoned.
BruceFromOhio
@Baud: John gets credit for consistency. He’s never bent the knee to the dumpster fire, and pushed past the two-bit ratfuck soulless criminals that infest the state legislature to accept Medicaid expansion. He terms out in ’18, so no matter what happens, he’s gone. May give him space to call it what it is.
Baud
@gene108: Agree. I see it as the most likely outcome in 2020 actually.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He is a centrist, I believe. Still my general approach is not to believe rumors and whispers about Dems.
BruceFromOhio
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Trump-bashing makes for some strange bed-fellows: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
ruemara
I thought this would be about a more relevant Roger, Roger Stone, and his statement that impeaching Trump would be a threat to congress’ lives. There’s been an ever rising theme of let us overthrow your government and oppress minorities quietly or we will give in to the violence we’ve wanted to give in to for decades. As far as Trump taking out an Senator by endorsing a primary candidate, I doubt he’d do that. He’s far more likely to endorse violence.
bystander
I cannot conceive of any reason the repubs will ever impeach twitler. Nope, none.
I had the weirdest reaction to Yankee Doodle Dandy yesterday on TCM. Aspects of the film that always seemed charming and touching to me, the naked patriotism, the sentimentality of the prewar era that flows through to the eve of WWII, now look like the roots of Trumpism. Or maybe it was the margarita at lunch.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
NPR has a story about some guy helping beleaguered California Republicans move to Texas where they can live beside fellow conservatards. My ex has a cousin and her husband do this just a few months ago. Anything to cling to the dream, I suppose.
chopper
@Betty Cracker:
totes, donnie. I mean the one in 91 killed 140,000 people in bangladesh but yeah this is way worse.
Patricia Kayden
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
What does that even mean? Why would Trump be impeached if he actively supports Flake’s opponent? Trump will be fine.
Kay
Sheriff Joe is already cashing in on the pardon.
They’re probably hoping he quietly goes away. Hah! Fat chance. I wonder if Trump gets a cut when his cronies fleece the GOP base?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: yeah, always taken with a large grain of salt
@BruceFromOhio: trump-bashing is oysters and green M&Ms, ambition is the champagne. Or something.
Kay
A huge city is flooding and the President is selling rip-off books for his political cronies.
Don’t these people ever work?
debbie
Someone, please ask Kasich if he can please go back to his state and do his god damn job already.
chopper
@Kay:
“and for an additional 50 dollar donation, get this commemorative plate”
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Pardon my ignorance, but who is the old John Danforth?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Mustang Bobby: So do the Miami wingnuts swimming down the street at high tide believe the sea levels are rising?
We just watched “Inconvenient Sequel” and one of the big messages Gore is explicitly pushing is don’t despair, there is hope and there is progress. But that despair is really hard to avoid.
japa21
Wow. I just saw a clip of the interview Tillerson did with Chris Wallace on Fox this morning. Wallace was asking about the UN negative comments on Trump’s reaction to Charlottesville and how the world viewed our values. Tillerson went on to say he thinks the world understands the values of the US and its government. Wallace added, “and the President’s?” Tillerson said “The President speaks for himself.”
Two things. First is that it sounds to me as if Tillerson is distancing himself from Trump.
Secondly, he did noty say that the President speaks for the US. Basically, he is saying Trump only speaks for himself and does not represent the country. I know Tillerson would disagree with that interpretation, but that is the message I got out of it.
So Tillerson will be gone when?
Villago Delenda Est
@gene108: And this is yet another reason for my nym.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Schlemazel
@Patricia Kayden:
What he is suggesting is that attacking a Senator of his own party would not scare the rest into silence but would, in fact, solidify the GOP rat patrol into a force to remove the threat to them all. That is arguable but certainly one of the likely outcomes.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
I doubt the good people of his state want him back
Villago Delenda Est
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Despair is pretty difficult to avoid when you have the ignoramus of all ignorami at the helm of the greatest military and economic power in the world, and dead set on navigating straight into the iceberg because MAGA.
Villago Delenda Est
@WaterGirl: The guy who championed disgrace to his race…the HUMAN race…Clarence Thomas.
WaterGirl
@Patricia Kayden: The idea is that if you come for one senator, you are coming for all of them. They are clinging to the gentleman’s club that the senate used to be, but only the parts that only serve themselves personally and not the parts that serve the country.
I do think there would be an uprising in the senate if he truly goes after one of them. “How dare he?” Trump can go after blacks and “mexicans” and trans and women and gays – none of that makes a difference. But come after a senator, “that, sir, is a bridge to far!”
WaterGirl
@Villago Delenda Est: Totally agree with your assessment of Clarence Thomas. But how is that connected to the name John Danforth?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Twitter Nixon’s statements are based on assumptions about the Senate that are 20+ years old. It’s a moot point anyway because the House will never bring articles of impeachment. If they did, they’d lose their Crazification Factor voting block and even in the most gerrymandered of districts, they need that to get re-elected. Senators would be even more vulnerable. Flake could get “taken out” and it wouldn’t matter.
Ah, John Danforth, he left office the year before I moved to Misery. Another one of these “old school” Republicans who current ones like Kasich (at least verbally) and the guy from Utah who ran for President, all would like to be…at least perceived to be by the Villagers. They’re all still knuckle draggers in terms of policy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: @WaterGirl: What WG said. Like I said, the Nixon thing is performance art, but trump’s hold over Republicans is that he will unleash his hordes on them in their home states, and even then there are only a few states, and probably not that many districts, where the GOP incumbents are actually vulnerable, but things are pretty tight, and he could cost the GOP organizations– the NRSC, ‘CC and the states– a lot of money. Flake is vulnerable, Heller even more so. I’ve seen tweets that say Collins could lose a gubernatorial primary to a trump/LePage type, her best bet might be to go indy. If trump starts encouraging or endorsing primary challengers, the congressional Rs lose a lot of their incentive to treat him with kid gloves.
MJS
@WaterGirl: And Trump won’t be able to stop himself. No way he keeps his yap shut during Flake’s primary race.
gene108
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
As long as they need him to sign off in tax cuts for billionaires, the kid gloves remain on.
Schlemazel
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I have not seen the sequel but I will take a break from my normal, positive, up beat nature to note that the poles are warming faster than the rest of the Earth (less ice = less reflection = greater increases) and that huge stores of CO2 are stored in the permafrost. It won’t take much more to thaw that & if that happens the truth is going to be a hell of a lot worse than inconvenient.
Patricia Kayden
@West of the Rockies (been a while): That’s perfect. Man, would I love it if all the Republicans left Maryland. LOL. Californians can get rid of jokers like Issa if all of his constituents pick up and go to Texas. Better for California, I say.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@gene108: I don’t think trump is smart enough to know– or mature enough to follow through if he figures it out— that the best way he could fuck with Ryan and McConnell is to just start talking about bringing Dems into negotiations about “tax reform”
Amir Khalid
That’s gangster talk. Is this national politics in America, or The Sopranos?
pat
@Schlemazel:
I had a flash of insight the other day that the turning point was the 2000 election and we are fucked.
Patricia Kayden
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Trump has attacked McConnell, Flake, Graham, McCain, etc., via tweets so I don’t see why Congressional Republicans are waiting for him to endorse primary challengers to do something about him. I’m almost middle aged and I don’t recall Presidents attacking members of their own Party with such vigor and so publicly ever before. I guess we’ll all find out what magical action Congressional Republicans are going to take against their President when he starts campaigning for primary challenges because by that time it will be too little, too late.
debbie
@Schlemazel:
I know I don’t; however, he’s getting paid to be here. I want my money back.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: Danforth was Uncle Clarence’s primary sponsor in the Senate.
Laura
@japa21:
So Tillerson will be gone when?
When the ruskies determine that he won’t be able to get sanctions lifted and/or open up the deep water drilling operations.
MomSense
@gene108:
I have a hunch Biden is going to run on a unity ticket with some former republican or republican lite.
JMG
Republicans will never leave Massachusetts. At least the ones I know love wailing about how they are a persecuted minority.
Patricia Kayden
@Schlemazel: We’ll see then because I have no doubt that Trump has every intention to bring down any and all Republican Congress Critters who have had the temerity to criticize him. Trump loves and adores Trump so if you attack Trump, Trump is gonna get you. He has no loyalty to anyone who criticizes him just because that person happens to have a (R) behind his/her name.
mai naem mobile
@WaterGirl: he shephered Clarence Thomas’ SC nomination through the Senate.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: John Danforth US Senator from Misery, the voice of respectable conservatism, the sponsor of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme court.
Amanda in the South Bay
@gene108: Hmm…maybe, but I have a hard time seeing the path by which John Kasich in January 2021 is that person.
Schlemazel
@pat:
I am pretty sure that was it. We might have had a chance if we had started then.
I see one of two outcomes now. We continue doing nothing & we get a CO2 runaway. The assholes who have been screaming climate change is fake suddenly get scared & demand the government do something expensive & untried which will set a series of unstable conditions into motion and make things worse
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel:
Worse than that is the methane.
Schlemazel
@MomSense:
Joe would be 78 in 2020. Aint.gonna.happen
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid:
What’s the difference?
Schlemazel
@Patricia Kayden:
I agree with you about the Clown in CHief the question remains what will the rest of the GOP do about it if he comes for them?
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Right, right, right! thank you
Ocotillo
The idjit in the terminal is echoing what Roger Stone said. Over at Political Wire, Stone is quoted as saying they need a scalp and the other thugs will fall in line.
Conservative Californians moving to Texas? As a liberal Texan, not sure if I should run up the white flag and move to Cali or dig in and register more Hispanics. Texas seems like such a lost cause living here.
lgerard
@OzarkHillbilly:
And GWB’s original choice for VP until Cheney got involved
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I hope you are wrong, just this one time. :-)
We don’t need appeasement. The Trumpsters will be angry no matter what if Trump is out. This would be just like an abused wife thinking/hoping that if she can get everything right today, he won’t beat her when he gets home from work. Even with perfection, that’s just not possible.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Now someone like Biden for experience and gravitas with one of the Castro brothers, that would help address my concerns about Biden’s age.
WaterGirl
@Patricia Kayden: As far as I’m concerned, Trump is welcome to take down all the R congress critters and senators. Take them all, please!
pat
@Schlemazel:
Actually maybe the war was lost in the 60’s when we didn’t go all in on birth control after the Pill was invented. Overpopulation in areas where the temps are over 100 every day and deserts are expanding and climate refugees are beating at the doors in Europe. None of this can be undone.
Now I’m really depressed. Going to finish the latest Patricia Cornwell “Chaos.”
WaterGirl
@mai naem mobile: @OzarkHillbilly: Ugh. Thank you.
Jim Parish
To be fair to Danforth, he left the Senate just before the Gingrich Revolution, and has been denouncing the rightward and Dominionist trend of the Republican party ever since. He was a strong conservative in the Senate, yes – conservative by the standards of the Senate then, which means RINO or even pinko today.
(On the latter: I saw a former aide to Boehner and McCain denouncing the Arpaio pardon on Twitter, and one reply called Boehner and McCain “globalist swampdwellers”….)
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Ocotillo:
Well, you’re welcome in California! We have a goal of 100% all-energy-by-renewables by 2045 I just heard.
OTOH, Texas voted 43% for HRC and is supposedly turning ever more purple.
Villago Delenda Est
@WaterGirl: As others have said, Danforth was Thomas’ main sponsor in the Senate.
Schlemazel
A happy note! If you saw the video of the ammosexual firing his precious during the Charlottesville white riot you will appreciate this tidbit:
According to Daily Progress Richard Wilson Preston was arrested on Saturday in connection with the incident. He faces felony charges for discharging a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school. If convicted, he faces 2-10 years in prison and would permanently lose his right to own his precious
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@MomSense:
I’d be fine with Joe running despite his age, but I’d prefer he run with Kamala Harris or Adam Schiff or some true liberal.
debbie
@Schlemazel:
Video of his courageous act here. Hope he rots in prison.
Oatler.
@Amir Khalid: ” Is this national politics in America, or The Sopranos?”
It’s all the ‘warriors’ quoting movies and TV to make a point because it’s all they know. They’ll happily post a quote and pic of Van Damme with gun saying something pithy like’Leftism Is Fascism, Colonel’.
Patricia Kayden
@WaterGirl: Yep. Let the taking down of Republican politicians begin. They all supported the Bigot-in-Chief. They deserve it so much.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Schlemazel:
I can picture him now in Cell Block 8 crouched atop his metal toilet, one hand draped over his sweaty, waxy head: “They ssstole our precious… filthy libs!”
debbie
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
I think age will be a problem. I’d like to see Joe out there doing the advance work, giving speeches, holding town halls on behalf of the party, etc. Let him be the Face of the Democrats until an actual candidate has been solidified.
Baud
@MomSense: No Republican would ever take the # 2 position.
Starfish
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I want them to do this. The California Republicans feel so persecuted that they have glorified Republicans. I want them to go some place where they have no welfare state, and the biggest problem is not antifascists having a parade. They can deal with cities that never plan for their regularly occurring disasters.
WaterGirl
@Jim Parish: It would be a shame if they all turn on each other.
//
Law enforcement has a despicable and disgusting phrase – “No humans involved” for when gangs or drug cartels or even prostitutes are murdered. Surely they use this to refer to black people, too, though you don’t see that on TV, yet.
In this case, I would use the phrase “No statesmen involved”. If they bring the whole party down, so much the better.
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Just heard that story. First response: don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out, my fellow county-dweller. NPR’s sly coda was that 43% of Texas voted for Hillary (so don’t get too comfy in your new ammosexual honkie hellhole).
tobie
@Schlemazel:
They also say he’s a Grand Wizard of the KKK. In Baltimore County of all places. People forget because MD is a blue state that there are large pockets of working class, white communities and not just on the Eastern Shore. When Bethleham Steel shuttered their Baltimore plants and the shipping industry became automated, these communities fell on hard times and have never really recovered. Pity they blame those least responsible for their plight. Hope this guy has the book thrown at him.
cmorenc
Yes, and had Flake been Senator during the Emmett Till episode of American history, would have said “he would have preferred” the mob let the judicial process play out, instead of his being lynched.
What a wishy-washy wanker Flake is with respect to a clear-cut miscarriage of the judicial process.
Schlemazel
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Yaaaazzzzzzzz!
Rand Careaga
Brave, brave, brave Senator Robin!
Schlemazel
@Baud:
Which is ironic since most of them are #2
Fair Economist
@OzarkHillbilly: Worst of all is the methane hydrates. If the icecaps melt bottom water will heat up and they all destabilize. There may be as much carbon there as in all fossils fuels, and it comes up as methane, which is much worse than CO2 for the 2 centuries it takes to degrade.
Suzanne
Sinema is my Congresscritter. She is the WORST. Calling her “spineless” is an insult to invertebrates.
It breaks my heart that I might have to vote for her. I’ll be voting for Minority Leader McConnell. Not for her. UGHHHH.
gene108
@pat:
Bush & Co set back efforts in global warming by a decade, by killing any hope of the Kyoto Protocols from being adopted here and working against standards to combat global warming.
We were still the number one polluter of CO2 on the planet back then (China is now #1, though we are still #2). If the worst country, in this regard, was not going to do anything, why should anyone else sort of attitude set in.
What impresses me about the Paris Accords is the stemming global commitment to it, which was not the case with Kyoto, with or without us.
Suzanne
@Kay:
Arpaio is already making statements that his “political career might not be over”.
Many of my local activist friends have been deeply concerned that he’d be nominated for Secretary of Homeland Security.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Et tu Baud? Predicting defeat for 2020.
schrodingers_cat
@pat: This Malthusian claptrap in response to a climate change discussion, sounds remarkably Brietbartian, complete with hordes knocking on Europe’s doors.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: It’s early, but if a “reasonable Republican” can win their primary (which is not assured) and our own schism continues to grow, it’ll be hard for us to win.
Kathleen
@Bago: Baby Steps.
Kathleen
@gene108: I agree 100%. That’s why I’m reluctant to focus on impeaching Trump. If only Trump goes down, media will canonize Father Pence and continue to blather both sides as GOP proposes legislation promoting Death Care. All of them have to go down with Trump. Every last one of them.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Neither of which may happen, 2020 is a long ways away. BS is old and getting older and bots on social media == support on the ground. Rs will nominate a centrist is fan fiction of the centrist kind.
ETA: Don’t make me bring out my Patton’s kitteh avatar, 2020 nominee.
gene108
@Baud:
I am still trying to figure out what is driving our schism. The Bernie supporters and the rest of us all have the same basic goals, in theory at least, while we may differ on how to get there.
Yet these minor, to me, disagreements are undermining Democrats, when there needs to be unity.
I don’t get it.
Patricia Kayden
@Schlemazel: Good. I’ve also read that at least three miscreants have finally been arrested for their attack on DeAndre Harris during the Charlottesville Nazi riot. That’s a good beginning.
Another Scott
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Joe did a good job as VP. He needs to stay retired and work on his foundation.
Ever older people sucking up (most) of the national political oxygen isn’t good for our Democracy.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: Rs are not giving up on T, he is still popular among them. We should make T the anchor around institutional R party’s neck.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: All good points. I think the biggest challenge there is a perceived moderate winning the primary. But it’s so hard to predict how Trump will wear over the next 3 1/2 years, if he even lasts that long.
Baud
@gene108: Russia, privilege, and race, IMHO.
Schlemazel
@gene108:
They are living in a fantasy world were if only the Dems would become raving radicals we could all have free healthcare, free college, no poverty, 100% renewable energy and rainbow unicorns and for FREE!
They ignore that those candidates will not win in sufficient numbers and even if they did nobody can make magic.
Mr Stagger Lee
@trollhattan: I suspect their final destination will be Arkansas, I hear that state is kind of White Conservative paradise for retirees. If I heard right, the White population is still growing there.
Schlemazel
@Patricia Kayden:
I choose to believe that the cops decided it would cause a lot more deaths if they had waded in there and arrested him on the spot. They waited until he was separated from his flock and I am OK with that as long as they did get him
FlipYrWhig
@gene108: Hear me out here: it may just be the case that the Sanders supporters who are doing that are dicks.
frosty
@schrodingers_cat: IMHO Malthus had it right. We’ve been able to stall the results for a century with the “Green Revolution” driven by fossil fuels. In the US we burn 10 calories of fuel to make 1 calorie of food.
schrodingers_cat
@frosty: The countries that are the biggest producers of greenhouse gases are not the ones with the most population.
ETA: Per capita production of green house gases is much higher for the so called “civilized” world.
Kathleen
@Patricia Kayden: Yup. One is from Mason, Ohio, one of our execrable exurbs. Locals from the NoKY/Ohio exurban metropolis represented the seamy racist underbelly of No/KY/exurban Cincinnati area.
sdhays
@Schlemazel: HA! I LOLed!
MomSense
@Baud:
Except Rmoney.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: Absolutely. As I said, none of them should escape unscathed.
trollhattan
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Could be. I have a number of Trump-lovin’ Arkansas Ozarks in-laws. My MIL and FIL spent a summer there and bought a hunk ‘o land on some big reservoir for about eight dollars with the intention of building a lakefront retirement villa. They stayed too long into fall and got their RV stuck in a field (shades of Cole’s Subi) and had to overwinter rather than return to Napa.
That cured the idea of moving and we sold the land for my MIL a few years ago. Even made her some money, amazingly. Rednecks, chiggers and rattlesnakes, what’s not to love?
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Assholes leaving CA?
How wonderful!
And moving to TX? Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa………Damn it, I almost fell off the couch. I’ll have to learn to control that joyous laughter.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
Per capita yes, but volumetrically China burst into first place awhile back and today doubles the US.
That noted we in the US can make meaningful personal reductions more easily than a typical Chinese citizen. Insulate the house, install double-pane windows, get rid of incandescent lighting, get a high-mileage car, it all adds up.
James Powell
@japa21:
I don’t think Tillerson is distancing himself from Trump. He’s telling a talking head what the talking head wants to hear, more specifically, that despite the apparent madness & incompetence of the president, there are sane & competent people running the government. The Beltway Courtiers are so desperate to tell that story that they often do so without any evidence.
Ruckus
@debbie:
Could he keep the money and just stay away? Yes it might be expensive but look what you bought, him being gone. That’s worth quite a bit to be rid of that asshole.
pat
@schrodingers_cat:
Huh. I thought it sounded like the facts. Guess I was wrong.
Suzanne
@trollhattan: My in-laws live in Ozarkansas. My MIL was born and raised there on her father’s farm, and she left when she graduated from high school and went to San Francisco. She met my FIL there and they raised their family in the Bay Area, then she got sick of it and moved the family back to Fayetteville (by then, Mr. Suzanne was old enough to stay). My MIL just ADORES Arkansas, and everyone else in the family thinks it’s a pit of despair.
When we go back to visit, she works on us to move out there, and I cannot tell you how much that idea makes my stomach turn. Phoenix feels like a glittering city of paradise in comparison.
Ruckus
@Ocotillo:
As long as you are still there, register and drive them to the polls if necessary. Every little bit helps.
And if you decide, welcome to CA. It’s hugely more than even trade if we get one liberal for every conservative.
Vhh
@JMG: Mass. Republicans also don’t like the heat, humidity, crap coffee, complete absence of hot tea, and greasy food of the South. They hate grits, and find country music boring after a few tunes that are about Momma,railroads, prison, and standing by your man even if he is meth addled wife beater. On the other hand, here in Tennessee, car license renewals are $22/year, there is no income tax, and your mortgage payment is about what you pay just in real estate taxes in Mass.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Not my concern for his age. He may be a great guy but he’s an old and as one myself I say bring on the younger folks. Us olds haven’t done such a bang up job and surly out of over 300 million people there must be at least one who is as good (or even better) and not old. 78 yrs old and president? NFW.
Greg
@OzarkHillbilly:
Our best hope is that the methane release is a burp and steadies out before it starts a runaway process. I’m just an internet goon but we could get lucky for various definitions of lucky. Methane cycles out of the atmosphere in roughly 8 years. It’s 20 times more efficient at trapping heat but Carbon Dioxide has an atmospheric residence time of is roughly a century and there are indications that equilibrium does not bring atmospheric CO2 back to previous numbers. It balances out higher than before.
I always try to show my work.
frosty
@schrodingers_cat: I agree with both these points. I was trying to make a point about the population increase and how it’s been driven by fossil fuel use, not necessarily where the use and greenhouse gas sources were the highest.
One commenter on the now-defunct Peak Oil site had a sig line: “Are humans smarter than yeast?” Jury is out but I’m not confident.
Another Scott
Supposedly Terry McAuliffe is going to be running for President shortly:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@James Powell: Yup. Tillerson knows that trying to be Trump’s translator is a sucker’s bet so he’s not going to play that game. Doesn’t mean that he’s not going to say “sir yes sir” when Donnie tells him to burn down Foggy Bottom or whatever else they have planned to destroy the State Department.
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
Yeesh, i can understand why someone who’d never experienced other regions might like it but to have lived in the Bay Area and retain a love for the Ozarks just boggles. I know my in-laws’ “secret” plan was to build multiple dwellings on their Ozark lake and lure the family out to live with them. They seemed not to comprehend the many layers of wrong inherent in that scheme.
Granny’s October birthday had me visiting her in Iowa in fall, when the state is at its best–rolling hills, fall skies and color, mountains of corn in front of the grain elevators, still warm. Houses on her street were available at prices I could have written a check for. I was not fooled and still thank my parents for decamping there so many decades ago.
pat
@schrodingers_cat:
Years ago I had another insight…. As to what will happen when every Chinese and Indian wants to live the same lifestyle as the US.
In other words, we are fucked.
Citizen Alan
@gene108:
Part of it I believe is that the Bernie crowd is committed to hard core soc***sm as an ideology beyond any actual benefits of instituting it in real life. For them, single-payer isn’t a means to the ultimate end of Universal Health Care but rather a means to the end of nationalizing of the healthcare industry. I’ve had the few Bernie Bros with whom I still maintain contact tell me that they think the New York Stock Exchange should be nationalized! The people like that any politician who takes any amount of money from any Corporation or wealthy person who benefits from the stock market is by definition a corporatist and no better than a Republican
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The problem is they would have to pick one party or the other or start their own … I seriously doubt either party is looking for a unity ticket and good luck starting a viable third-party
Ruckus
@tobie:
Those jobs they automated, they really didn’t. Containers still have to be filled and emptied, loaded on ships and off loaded. Someone has to drive the thousands of trucks that move those goods, operate the cranes and on and on. The big difference is that the work is a lot safer and a lot less physical and the goods are not as much at risk to be damaged by mishandling. Baltimore is still a big port, still employs a lot of people. This guy is a flaming fucking racist. He may be mad because there are POC working near him but mostly he is angry because those POC exist in the first place. He belongs to the far superior race (just ask him) and he’s going to shoot people or at least threaten them till they believe it as much as he does.
Jeffro
@MomSense: again the unity ticket is going to have to be acceptable to one of the two major parties or else it won’t fly … and I don’t see either party letting that happen
I can see a unity ticket if the results of the 2016 election are overturned, and Clinton is declared the rightful winter after the GOP’s treason and collusion with a hostile foreign power… there will be nothing but calls for a unity ticket at that point
Jeffro
@pat: here’s a funny insight I had the other day: Howard Dean was deemed by the GOP, the media, and a majority of Dems to be unqualified for the presidency…
…because he yelled one time
Suzanne
Help.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Didn’t he get roundly defeated for sheriff?
And it may be a “non” political job because no affiliation is given or allowed but how many people would be willing to accept him as a politician now? He’s a loser who will have admitted guilt because he for sure will accept the pardon, because now if he doesn’t do you think the judge will not give him jail time? Plus he’s 88, going on about two thousand yrs old. What office is he going to run for? Would the senate confirm him for Dir Homeland Security? Even for them I’d bet not. Of course I wouldn’t bet more than a quarter.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
Gross stupidity, they go for.
Overt racism, they go for.
Asshole, they adore that.
But yell one time and that line has been crossed. How unfucking civil is it to yell?
Suzanne
@trollhattan: The natural landscape in Ozarkansas is beautiful. The built environment is garbage. Nothing humans have done there has improved it. My MIL is a rural girl at heart, and the Bay Area got too crowded for her. My FIL doesn’t like it out there. But my MIL’S dad died last year and now they have a farm to run.
I will note that my in-laws are real white working class people, Real Murikans, and they are horrified by Trump as much as anyone else here.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There is no such thing as putting a leash on Trump. But thanks for playing.
We are in this mess in part because the Republicans foolishly believed that they could work with Trump, or if necessary channel, manipulate or control him.
They wuz wrong.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
He sounded like an out of control fool. He became an object of ridicule. It ain’t fair, but sometimes that’s the way it is in politics.
Jeb Bush looked like Mr Inevitable, until Trump took him out with mockery.
Suzanne
@Ruckus: Yes, he was defeated. God, the local orgs worked SO HARD to defeat him for years.
The pardon is such an unbelievable slap in the face.
Jeffro
@Brachiator: oh please…1 yell = “out of control fool”?
And way to miss the point ??
J R in WV
@debbie:
What is really sad and scary is that the Charlottesville Va police department appears to have done nothing about running down any of these Nazi dogs on their own. They have the same access to the video and the internet, but civilians are the people identifying rioters and violent Nazis, and going to the police, who then have no choice but to request an arrest warrant for these obvious criminals.
I fear that these violent Nazis will show up in court cleaned up wearing a neck tie, and cry about how afraid they were of the Black Block communists who were scary and violent, and they were just defending themselves and their precious America from the scary Commies. And an all white Va. jury will let them skate.
Hopefully that won’t be the end of it. Their identities will be public, their appearance will be public, so they will have trouble getting a job/apartment etc.
The Lodger
@tobie: In many ways Baltimore County is a ring around the City of Baltimore. Remember it was Spiro Agnew’s old stomping grounds back in the day.
Bill Arnold
@Fair Economist:
What Greg said; methane half-life in the atmosphere is said to be roughly 7-8 years. There’s a pile of very active research on arctic permafrost warming (Goddess bless those scientists. Seriously.) and plenty of dispute about methane clathrate deposits, e.g. (at random)
Study finds hydrate gun hypothesis unlikely (June 7 2017)
Methane from tundra, ocean floor didn’t spike during previous natural warming period (August 23, 2017)
(Article has paper links; the first paper is open access; can’t link due to 3 link rule).
Methane releases from melting submerged permafrost, particularly in Siberia, is another worry. Albedo effect (open dark oceans vs ice) mentioned above another. Etc.
Snarki, child of Loki
“Dear Pres. Trump,
The US Senate has TOO MANY FLAKES. Please eliminate one.
I am not a crank.”
pat
@Jeffro:
Not by me.
Your point is..?
BTW, I am not implying that these people in other countries do not deserve to live as we do in the west, simply that it is unsustainable from an ecological standpoint.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
Yeah. Hell, Dean’s yell is still on an audio loop, played as often as the famous scream that is used in movies whenever a character falls off a cliff.
There’s an audio clip of then San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom screaming that gay marriage was coming “whether you like it or not!” His politcal enemies, Democrats and Republicans, tried to use it against him, but it didn’t stick. This was years ago, but the audio clip still fires up right wing nutjobs.
I understand your point. There’s more than one way to look at it.
Brachiator
@pat:
I don’t believe that progress has to be a zero sum game.
Also, given the degree to which the lifestyle of the West often depended on exploitation of India and China, I would even say that the US has a responsibility to help come up with innovation to raise living standards worldwide.
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
Yep. The subtext appears to be to (a) make national boundaries much less porous for refugees through e.g. fascist-style nationalism in richer countries (b) watch, secure in gated countries, as poorer parts of the world bake/starve/etc, and world population (including through lower birth rates) is reduced by several billion.
With “woe-is-me-ism” in rich countries as agricultural regions become dust bowls; who-coulda-known that the scientists really were right, and were not frauds getting rich via climate change scare mongering?
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
Kinda irrelevant at this point; they (e.g. China/India) are pouring gasoline on a fire now. And India and China need to worry about effects on their own populations. China seems to have the political competence to respond effectively (technocrats, one party); out of curiosity, can you explain the basics of India climate change politics/policies?
Deadly heat waves could hit South Asia this century (paper linked in article is open access and worth reading and the figures are scary).
schrodingers_cat
@Bill Arnold: India and China are both part of the Paris accords, they realize the threat climate change is and are not on the denial train, unlike you know who.
ETA: AFAIK there is no major political party that is on the climate change denial train. Alternative energy plans including solar are being promoted but I don’t know the extent and reach of that.
pluky
@Schlemazel: if only CO2 where locked up in permafrost things would be bad enough. the nightmare stuff is methane clathrate.
pluky
@gene108: russian bot agitptop.
MomSense
@Jeffro:
Joe has been making the rounds lately with the righter Dems and lefter Republican money people. He has even made some joint appearances with Rmoney.
Just file it away for now but I think the business class want some stability and I think the establishment in both parties and the money people want to make a deal to get out of the ongoing crisis we are in.