Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

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

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

This really is a full service blog.

No one could have predicted…

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

I was promised a recession.

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

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Watch & Enjoy

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Watch & Enjoy

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The clip is from Chris Hayes’ interview with Hillary Clinton last night. Well worth watching!

So I spent last week helling around with my old friend, and only skimmed the news. My mood is much better, but it’ll take me a while to catch up on all the current outrages…

Sounds like the latest attempt to gut Obamacare may be (no so) quietly being put to rest, so that’s one good thing, yes?

***********

What else is on the agenda for the new day?
.

Reader Interactions

132Comments

  7. 7.

    Cermet

    So, what will the thugs do next? They will not rest and will devise another attack soon – the kock sucker brothers will not give up no matter the cost; they have deep pockets and this is their number one priority bar none. Maybe, removing black and brown voters will be their next push so as to rig congress.

  8. 8.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax:

    McConnell is a not so closeted full blown masochist.

    He’s certainly not the legislative genius that some people think he is.

  9. 9.

    Bruce K

    @NotMax: McConnell is smart, unprincipled, and at this point, desperate, so I won’t trust this repeal attempt is dead until it’s buried six feet under with a stake in its heart and the coffin filled with lye and depleted uranium (or something equally unpleasant and inimical to re-animation).

  10. 10.

    Kay

    A comprehensive study released today suggests how many missing votes can be attributed to the new law. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison surveyed registered voters who didn’t cast a 2016 ballot in the state’s two biggest counties—Milwaukee and Dane, which is home to Madison. More than 1 out of 10 nonvoters (11.2 percent) said they lacked acceptable voter ID and cited the law as a reason why they didn’t vote; 6.4 percent of respondents said the voter ID law was the “main reason” they didn’t vote.
    The study’s lead author, University of Wisconsin political scientist Kenneth Mayer, says between roughly 9,000 and 23,000 registered voters in the reliably Democratic counties were deterred from voting by the ID law. Extrapolating statewide, he says the data suggests as many as 45,000 voters sat out the election. “We have hard evidence there were tens of thousands of people who were unable to vote because of the voter ID law,” Mayer told me.

    The laws should be challenged but Democrats raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars in Presidential elections. Take some of the millions and millions allocated to tv advertising and hire people who live in these cities to help people get ID.

    TV coverage of election sucks anyway. Stop pouring donor money into garbage and divert some to hiring regular people to do
    on the ground work with voters. 20 people to help 1000 voters each at 32k per organizer = one block of tv ad time. Best money you ever spent.

    Imagine if you had a voting expert residing and working in each targeted precinct for 9 months prior to the election. You could even do part timers at 16k each and double the coverage. If you’re a Democratic donor wouldn’t you rather your money be spent IN MILWAUKEE by regular people making 15 dollars an hour rather than pumped into media outlets?

    We already spend the money. Spend it differently. Try something else. Hire DOWN instead of up. Take one 300k consultant contract and move that money into 10 bottom tier organizer positions.

    Democratic small dollar donors could do this- they could insist their donations be allocated differently.

  16. 16.

    Bruce K

    @NotMax: This sounds remarkably similar to my contingency plans against the only conceivable means of ever again getting me to vote Republican (which involves re-animation of my corpse after about seven months of post-mortem brain rot)…

  18. 18.

    TS

    MJ show will NEVER be anything but a joke while he has Halperin on. Just discussing how Trump receives information and how he managed to decide that Iran was test firing a ballistic missile and Halperin completely changed the conversation to discuss NK

    Whenever Trump is attacked – Halperin ALWAYS changes the subject. Sycophant X 10

  19. 19.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Hire the same people who volunteer as poll workers. They’re sort of pre-screened for sincerity and trained in election laws.

    Scott Walker would be paying to train your organizers :)

    Every year people call me at the law office with voting questions- strangers- people I don’t know personally. Word gets around. Anyone with a problem would know to go ask the local.

  23. 23.

    Sherparick

    McCain is I’ll with a terminal disease & Arizona has a RWNJ as a Governor. Heitkamp & McCaskill are running as Democrats in two very pro-Trump states. The Republicans may have a very good chance to kill ACA & Medicaid in 2019.

  24. 24.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    That was my big disappointment with Bernie. Well, one of them. He raised all that money from small donors and then spent it exactly the same way– on consultants and tv ads. It’s as if they put all the creative people on raising the money and then lose all interest and hand it to people who have been spending it the same way for 30 years. It’s really odd, the drop-off between raising and spending. Coming IN it’s a million small streams and then they direct it into the same narrow strait to be spent. It’s like we stop thinking some time between raising and spending.

  25. 25.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    No other entity does this, either, other than campaigns. “We worked really hard to make all this money so now let’s just burn it in a pile on the sidewalk by sending all of it to tv stations- the same tv station owners who hate us”

  30. 30.

    Kay

    I’m waiting for the announcement that the FBI has opened an investigation into the White House staffers who are using private emails and messaging apps to avoid record retention laws.

    Will we see the same retroactive classification of information, or was that exclusively applied to Hillary Clinton?

  34. 34.

    satby

    The sad thing is that the study won’t matter. Facts stopped being the basis of people’s decision making decades ago. If facts mattered on anything, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

  35. 35.

    Kay

    The Purdue Pharma connection to the opiate crisis is under-reported:

    Connecticut drug manufacturer Purdue Pharma hired Giuliani Partners in May 2002 as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration began investigating a wave of overdose deaths attributed to the firm’s powerful and lucrative painkiller, OxyContin. The agencies had started looking into the pain product’s illicit use as a recreational drug, and probing lax security at the company’s manufacturing plants in New Jersey and North Carolina. A week before the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the former mayor joined then-DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft for the opening of new exhibit at the DEA’s traveling museum and lent his star power to luncheon that day that raised about $20,000 for the DEA Foundation. In June 2004 U.S. prosecutors announced that the Purdue Pharma affiliate that ran the Totowa, New Jersey plant would pay $2 million to settle the investigation and the drugmaker would not have to admit wrongdoing or take its product off the shelf.

    It’s interesting that it’s under-reported because it’s not at all a secret. States have sued the company and it’s all public record. The case against Purdue is very well-developed and documented. It would take no work at all to report on it. You’d just be repeating what state AG’s found.

    A lot of very fancy people on the Right are hooked into Purdue Pharma. One can’t help but think that’s why they’re named in state lawsuits but rarely mentioned in the opiate crisis stories.

  37. 37.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    It isn’t either/or. We get back to back ads in Ohio. They’re pouring money into media. I’m talking about taking 5 million dollars out of a billion dollars and diverting it.

    Media don’t even cover election law changes and inform voters. If they won’t cover it then Democrats have to pay for voter info.

    We can’t have another election where we did nothing to address this. It’s urgent. They have to fix it.

  38. 38.

    TS

    And dipstick Halperin – “it’s quite OK for trump staff to use private email” – a pox on all their houses – every last one

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: Today is the 4th Tuesday in September.

    We all know what that means, right?

    [blink]It’s National Voter Registration Day.[/blink]

    LWV activities

    VoteRiders information on ways to get voter IDs.

    There are lots of groups out there working on the problem. We need to support them and not expect the Party to do all the work.

    (Though I agree 100% with you on the waste of money on TV ads. Part of the problem, though, is that TV is big media and they shape the memes and want to be paid. Paid ads get treated as “news” and replayed many times for free after being paid for once…)

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who donates regularly to LWV and VR.)

  41. 41.

    Another Scott

    @Sherparick: Maybe.

    On the other hand, VA and NJ are voting this November. Every election since January has gone much, much worse for the Teabaggers than one would have predicted based on Donnie’s results in the same area. 20+ point swings have been common.

    It’s far more likely for 2018 to be a bloodbath for the GOP than the other way around.

    But we have to work every day to realize the future we (or at least most of us here) want….

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  42. 42.

    But her emails!!!

    Hillary’s been pretty solid in most of these interviews and generally more informed and informative than most of her interviewers. Wonder if any network has considered offering her a position on the other side of the table.

  43. 43.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Kay: I would bet money on retroactive DE-classification of things that turn out to be spillage of currently classified info.

  44. 44.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    I thought the same thing during the last election. Equip a bus (like they do for mammograms) that travels around the country where people can obtain photo IDs which can be used for voting.

  46. 46.

    Another Scott

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: But Donnie’s people are so competent and have so much experience with federal rules and norms?!?!!! Plus, they’re rich, male, white people who aren’t Democrats, how could they possibly do anything wrong?!!1!

    :-/

    (sigh)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  49. 49.

    hueyplong

    I could see them capturing Paul (as always) by rolling out Graham-Cassidy III Electric Bugaloo, the most draconian, Hobbesian version possible (repeal and salt the land, keeping the bribes on the downlow). Either they win or Murkowski steps up, after which Yertle is positioned to make a pitch to the Koch brothers that their wet dream was brought up and ruined only because of these 3/4/howevermany RINOs, concluding, “Please fund the hell out of the yes votes and the primary challengers to the no votes with your sweet $400 million.”

    Everyone knows the Kochs would do that, because they don’t want a Democratic majority or this current majority that is insufficiently infused with the spirit of National Socialism. It’s feasible to come up with Graham-Cassidy 3.0 in 45 minutes or so because that’s about how long it took to cook up Graham-Cassidy 1.0 and 2.0..

  51. 51.

    Lapassionara

    @Kay: Agree. These are great ideas.

    I am going to an meeting on voting rights in a few weeks. I will be interested to see what ideas people have for addressing the problems. Several years ago, I helped do election protection for several election cycles. My takeaway was that Election Day is generally not when people’s problems can be solved. We need more advance work.

  54. 54.

    Jeffro

    Whoa nellie, easy there Ms. Rampell, you’re sounding a little…shrill: ‘Reasonable’ Republicans Are Betraying Us Too

    Trump may be a toddler, we keep telling ourselves, but at least some (comparative) grown-ups on Capitol Hill are thinking things through. Maybe we don’t agree with them all the time; maybe they have a different vision for the role of government than many of us do. Still, at least a few thoughtful, moderate, principled, solutions-oriented people in the legislature are working to offset the White House’s abdication of policy leadership.

    The flaming turd that is Cassidy-Graham should disabuse us all of that notion.

    What’s been threatening the health-care coverage of tens of millions of Americans isn’t Trump. It’s the entire Republican Party.

    This garbage bill, currently looking dead but with a few days left to revive itself, should teach us two things: Republicans don’t care about process, and they don’t care about policy. You could be forgiven for also concluding, as they’ve increasingly suggested this week, that they don’t care about regular Americans, either

    YEOWCH! Perhaps an award of the Order of Balloon Juice is in order here, ’cause this sure reads like something I’d read here… :)

    Have a great day everyone!

  57. 57.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @NotMax:

    Ironic that you mention McConnell and closet in the same sentence.

    He’s fairly well known for his fondness for chicken when he was in his middle years.

  58. 58.

    Denali

    @Kay,

    I learn so much from your comments. I am a poll workers-not in a swing state- but I am still very interested in how to address voter suppression as well as the Russian hacking of the last electioin and the Facebook targeting of voters in the swing states. These issues need to be addressed now, and I don’t see it happening. It is frightening and in itself discourages participation when the process is compromised.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Denali:

    Right. The second part of that story is how turnout in Wisconsin is down. The focus needs to swing TO voters. What do they need? How can they be served better?

    Voting is a state recording process. It should be focused on helping voters, not helping politicians.

    If Republicans would even treat it as customer service they’d be on the side of access. The point ISN’T to turn people away. It’s to serve them well. Give them excellent service. That aligns with Right wing thinking, supposedly.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    @Denali:

    I have a small town law practice and I am continually amazed at the messes people get it. These stories! “SO I moved and then I didn’t get the letter so I lost the chance to get the document and then my mother died so I had to move again…”

    They have complicated lives! Especially poor people. Their daily lives are like this losing battle with..events.

  64. 64.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay: Enjoy your comments, Kay, and learn a lot from them.

    I wonder if, in some market, a Democrat could face the camera and say: You may have noticed I am not running as many commercials as my opponent. Negative commercials, tearing him/her down, making you despair of our political system.

    Well, rather than hand this TV station a bundle of money, my campaign is spending it on YOU. You, your right to vote, making sure you have all the ID you need, coming to meet you door to door. To make sure your vote is heard, and counted, because your voice is important.

    So, if you see us out there, walking in your neighborhood, stop by and say hi. We are there for YOU. Not the owners of this fine television station. They have enough money.

  65. 65.

    satby

    @Kay: When you have absolutely no cushion of time or money, the smallest inconvenience becomes an enormous derailment. And continues to balloon with extra penalty fees or interest payments or triple time needed to unfuck whatever got messed up in the first place. Our system is vicious to the working poor especially.

  67. 67.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @lamh36: When you lose Rod Dreher.:

    My view is that the country is so divided already over issues that really matter; why on earth would any president wish to make it worse? Secondly, if we are going to go to pieces over Colin Kaepernick’s gesture, how would we feel if Tim Tebow took a knee to protest the mass slaughter of the unborn in the US?
    ….
    It frustrates me that Kaepernick and Trump have now made professional football and the National Anthem a culture-war battlefield. But Colin Kaepernick conducts himself with dignity, and more to the point, he is not the President of the United States. To whom much is given, much is expected.
    ….
    It’s true. Only Donald Trump could make taking a knee during the National Anthem a patriotic thing to do.

  68. 68.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Denali: I was just going another round on FB with a Bernie-crazy not-quite-friend who was all excited, and wouldn’t budge, about how not voting is a perfectly acceptable form of social protest. The more that’s accepted, the easier it is to make the leap to assume that when people don’t vote it’s because it’s their informed and empowered choice to opt out, rather than because they’ve been bullied and/or obstructed into non-participation. I feel like it’s one of those places where the apathetic left gets reinforced by the malevolent right and vice versa.

  70. 70.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby: Yes. I remember when one of my sons, who was laid off during the Great Recession from his first professional job, experienced some kind of mess-up with his unemployment benefits – which meant he couldn’t pay for rent, food, public transportation (to find work)…and other little things like that. The payment was delayed and he had NO cushion. It’s nerve-wracking to live on the edge like that and it prevents people from doing what they need and want to do to get ahead.

  74. 74.

    rikyrah

    Trump Is Ignoring the Mounting Catastrophe in Puerto Rico
    by Martin Longman
    September 25, 2017

    The president really should be concentrating almost all his attention on foreign policy and domestic relief efforts. Puerto Rico needs the modern equivalent of the Berlin airlift, but this time on the scale not of a city but of a state or country.

    Planning for something of this scale needs to start immediately because without it, the death toll in Puerto Rico will become unimaginable. The number of people who are out of money, food, water, fuel and critical medical supplies will grow every day. Many areas of the country are virtually inaccessible due to damaged infrastructure, obstructed roads, and lack of communications. There are people already suffering from lack of food and water, and starvation isn’t far off.

    We need new airstrips and all hands on deck to restore power. We need thousands and thousands of cargo flights, probably on an ongoing basis for the next year. We need vast amounts of equipment and manpower to operate it in order to clear debris, clear roads, and get things in a condition to where people can begin to rebuild. We need mobile medical teams that can move in and out of remote areas and evacuate those who will die without supervision.

    Here’s just one example of what’s going on in Puerto Rico right now, and you can imagine how quickly it will get worse:

    The 63-year-old mother, Maria Dolores Hernandez, had cotton stuffed in her ears to keep flies out, since her now screenless windows were letting all sorts of bugs in. The gray-haired diabetic woman spoke with her daughter about her worries: that she would run out of prescription drugs, that they were almost out of generator fuel to keep her insulin refrigerated and to run the fans at night. With all the heat, she feared that her ulcer would become infected…

    …Aldea, who works as a secretary in the mayor’s office, is living with and taking care of her mother in the tiny room downstairs. Darangellie spends most of the days with a relative in town, but at night she sleeps with her mother. The child has asthma and needs to use a daily nebulizer treatment — requiring her mother to turn on their generator at night. They have enough diesel to power the generator for one more day.

    She has a half-tank of gas left and can’t set aside the entire day that would be necessary to wait in line for more because she has to care for her daughter and mother. It doesn’t help that driving to town for her job — which usually takes seven minutes — now takes more than a half-hour because of blocked or inaccessible roads.

    But Aldea remained calm. More than anything, she is thankful to be alive: “If I don’t stay strong, how can I take care of the two people who depend on me?”

    Aldea is brave and determined, but she can’t treat her mother’s ulcer or keep her insulin refrigerated, and she can’t give her daughter Darangellie her nebulizer treatment if her generator is out of fuel. She’s lucky because she has a job, but she won’t be able to get to it for long. How many people have jobs that don’t exist when there is no power? How many businesses can stay afloat when they have no power, can’t get deliveries or supplies, and have a banking system that is on its knees.

  75. 75.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yes, it’s hard work and it’s expensive. People have no idea how costly it is to be poor.

    ETA: Most people who have lived relatively insulated lives have no idea. The poor do.

  77. 77.

    rikyrah

    Obamacare’s Paradigm Shift: Why the GOP’s Repeal Efforts are Faltering

    Republicans voted some 50 times to repeal Obamacare when President Obama was still president and there was no danger of their repeal actually becoming law. They lambasted President Obama’s crowning achievement in office for every problem with American health care and ran for eight years on a promise to repeal it. But suddenly now that they have total political power: the House, the Senate and the presidency – they don’t seem to be able to come up with a plan that has even a majority support in the US Senate, let alone clear its 60-vote legislative hurdle that will kick in October 1.

    The Graham-Cassidy bill that has gained – and lost – steam of late is yet another attempt by the Republicans to take healthcare away from tens of millions of people who now have it and repeal patient protection regulations impacting nearly every American. The bill is hardly different from other failed Republican attempts to turn back the clock on progress, complete with rolling back Medicaid expansion, deep funding cuts, and gutting standards that make insurance affordable for people with pre-existing conditions.

    Once again, this is what the Republicans campaigned on for the better part of a decade. And yet – despite Cassidy and Graham’s revised bribes to holdout Senators from Maine, Alaska, Arizona and Kentucky – the GOP’s latest effort at repeal appears no closer to passage.

    To hear the pundits discuss it, Republicans are having a tough time having the ends meet on their batshit crazy… I mean “conservative” and slightly less insane (“moderate”) wings of the party. Some GOP senators from Medicaid expansion states are weary of their states losing money (and they would – all 50 directors of Medicaid have come out against Graham-Cassidy), while others are concerned that the insurance market will not be turned into the wild west.

  79. 79.

    rikyrah

    I think that the GOP is creating a hardening among some people. There are the 27% crazyfication factor that will go with the GOP, no matter what. But, there are others, who don’t pay a lot of attention to politics. Who are out there just living their lives. But, healthcare is a part of their lives, and they don’t understand what’s going on.

    Maddow had a piece on Friday, where she showed a clip of a mother of a disabled child in Kansas. This woman didn’t look like any firebrand. She didn’t look like any kind of an activist. She looked like a plain, suburban White mother. But, there was something in her voice. When she stood in Moran’s office. She said, and I’m paraphrasing

    ” I don’t understand why I have to keep on coming back here to ask this Senator not to take away what helps me keep my son ALIVE.”

    She’s but one person. But, as folks have pointed out..Medicaid services 1 in 5 Americans. She is but one of those stories, but all of them have been repeatedly threatened.

    You can only threaten someone’s life or the lives of those they love only so many times before something happens. This battle has cut through the bullshyt. It has made it clear who wants to take away your healthcare. No ambiguity in the least.

  80. 80.

    Elizabelle

    WaPost: Millions of drivers lost their licenses for failing to pay court fees, study finds

    Millions of drivers in the ­United States have lost their licenses for failing to pay court debts, according to a new report, and advocates say the practice unfairly punishes the poor.

    The report, released Tuesday by the Falls Church, Va.-based Legal Aid Justice Center, which represents low-income Virginians, says that 43 states and the District suspend driver’s licenses because of unpaid fines and fees, trapping people in a “vicious court debt cycle.”

    The study indicates that the licenses of more than 4.2 million people were revoked in the five states it studied: Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Michigan. Those states were chosen because of existing litigation or because the numbers were readily available.

    ….. Among all states, just four require officials to determine whether defendants can afford to pay fines before suspending their licenses, according to the study, which says “virtually all” states that suspend licenses can do so indefinitely. In addition, 19 states require that licenses be suspended for unpaid fines.

    “Across the country, millions of people have lost their licenses simply because they are too poor to pay, effectively depriving them of reliable, lawful transportation necessary to get to and from work, take children to school, keep medical appointments, care for ill or disabled family members, or, paradoxically, to meet their financial obligations to the courts,” the report says.

    ….. Advocates for the poor say those struggling under court debts, especially in areas without access to public transportation, have a difficult time getting back on their feet.

    “Suspended licenses can trap people who are poor in an impossible situation: they cannot afford to reinstate their licenses without steady employment, but they are unable to work without a license,” the Michigan suit says.

    Whole article is worth a click and a read.

    I wonder if a suspended license qualifies as voter ID. And, if the license is suspended and expires — you may have a citizen without access to an affordable government ID.

  82. 82.

    Elizabelle

    @bemused: You’ve reminded me I meant to read that one. Back on the list.

    I did read Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed”.

    One of the richest countries in the world. Shame, shame, shame.

  83. 83.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Elizabelle: I was glad to see the part mentioned at the end: having a valid drivers license is often a job application requirement. (I’ve heard that it’s supposed to be a proxy for determining the applicant’s record of drug/alcohol use.)

  84. 84.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: I think that’s absolutely right, and it touches other issues too. Trump is an embarrassing buffoon who constantly sows lies, chaos and division. I thought that would be enough to keep him out of office. I was wrong about that. But the reality of his rank incompetence and the Republican Party’s greed and sociopathy has been a wake-up call for a whole lot of people, in my anecdotal experience. I hope it’s enough.

  86. 86.

    rikyrah

    No Chants of ‘Lock Them Up!’
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    September 26, 2017

    John Dawsey broke this story over the weekend:

    Presidential son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has corresponded with other administration officials about White House matters through a private email account set up during the transition last December, part of a larger pattern of Trump administration aides using personal email accounts for government business.

    Kushner uses his private account alongside his official White House email account, sometimes trading emails with senior White House officials, outside advisers and others about media coverage, event planning and other subjects, according to four people familiar with the correspondence. POLITICO has seen and verified about two dozen emails.

    It’s not like Kushner is simply taking up space in the White House because he is the president’s son-in-law. In addition to being put in charge of things like reinventing government, solving the opioid epidemic, and reforming the criminal justice system, he has been tasked with sensitive issues like the Middle East peace process and our relationship with China. Dowse reports that there is no indication that Kushner has shared sensitive or classified information related to these tasks over private accounts. But we can’t know that for sure.

  87. 87.

    Elizabelle

    @FlipYrWhig: Story had a single mother in Michigan (?), working as a security guard, who had to turn down a better paying position because she couldn’t get to work due to the suspended license. That happens a lot.

    ETA: and the top rated comments at the WaPost are along lines of “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” Also worrying the poor will be breaking laws with impunity.

    Bit of an empathy — or experience — gap there.

  90. 90.

    rikyrah

    While the GOP is trying to repeal the ACA, They don’t want you to know OPEN ENROLLMENT IS NOVEMBER 1st #MorningJoe pic.twitter.com/4KX7RHc13W
    — #LaquanMcDonald (@ifuaskmee) September 25, 2017

  91. 91.

    rikyrah

    A9: The 866-OURVOTE hotline is a great resource if you run into any issues. (Tweet them too! @866OURVOTE) #MillennialMon
    — NatlVoterRegDay (@NatlVoterRegDay) September 25, 2017

  93. 93.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:
    This is one of the best assessments of what to do to change the picture that I’ve ever read. It is real, it is doable, it is positive and it could make a huge difference. Yes those ID laws are crap. They still are laws and have to be obeyed. Yes we need to work to change those, but until they get changed we need to work within those laws.

  94. 94.

    bemused

    @Elizabelle:

    I also have Ehrenreich’s book on my shelf which I’ve read at least twice. Tirado’s book was even harder for me to put down because she doesn’t hold back telling her story one bit which is the story of so many working poor Americans.

  97. 97.

    FlipYrWhig

    @rikyrah: Democrats should go all in on kicking the butts of lending, credit cards, and credit agencies. They’re lawless and nobody likes them.

  98. 98.

    rikyrah

    I think: By kneeling, players don’t disrespect the flag.They ask US to respect the flag. They ask us to make the anthem true for all of us.
    — shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) September 24, 2017

    Also, the man should stop talking sports and read up on foreign relations and health care so we don’t all die uninsured in a nuclear winter.
    — shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) September 24, 2017

  99. 99.

    rikyrah

    Just got a “stand or kneel” email from POTUS with a push poll and ask for support. He’s using our national anthem to raise cash. Disrespect.
    — Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) September 25, 2017

  100. 100.

    Gin & Tonic

    @chris: Some years ago, my son was working in Canada, legally, as a resident alien with a work permit. He got seriously ill. His diagnosis was complicated and treatment was expensive (I know because I am aware of the price of the drugs they used.)

    The care was first-rate and the out-of-pocket cost was nothing. Given some ups and downs in his employment since then, I’m pretty sure he’d kill to have the health care of a place called Canada again.

  101. 101.

    FlipYrWhig

    @rikyrah: Lee Atwater is still dead, right? Because this is starting to smell like the 1988 presidential campaign. Willie Horton and the Pledge of Allegiance.

  103. 103.

    bemused

    @Another Scott:

    What instantly sends me into high blood pressure range is people I know who have said, more times than I can count, that they grew up in a poor but they managed with good work ethics and determination to climb into middle class or further so why can’t these lazy folks who just want to collect welfare checks do it. Of course, they say this with dripping contempt and angry red faces. I happen know that the majority of these folks if not all of them were not hand to mouth poor going hungry for days at a time with only one change of clothes to wear that their mother hand sewed from other well-used material, etc. Maybe their immigrant grandparents had those experiences but they themselves did not. (I know that an immigrant grandmother of mine took apart a knit tobacco pouch to knit a baby cap for the newest baby.) Anyway, these people somehow imagine they were just as destitute as so many American working poor are. Even if they know they weren’t that desperately poor, they seem to have much higher standards for hand to mouth people who actually are.

    I recently reread a Catherine Rampbell piece from last Dec “Why White Working Class Votes Against Itself”. She wrote that (A) WWC Americans generally associate government spending with undeserving, non-working, lazy people and (B) they really don’t recognize when they personally benefit from government.

    They don’t want to recognize they are government spending “takers” too. Their delusion is that only they are worthy.

  107. 107.

    Uncle Ebeneezer

    @But her emails!!!: I was just thinking the same thing. She’s been knocking these interviews out of the park, Imo. So much insight and no hesitation to tell it like it is. It’s very refreshing. And you can see the interviewers’ (Hayes, Joy-Ann Reid) excitement at having such an engaging and wonky guest. Wouldn’t it be the height of irony after all the cries for her to shut-up, if she got her own show or was a regularly featured pundit on the politics circuit?!!

  109. 109.

    different-church-lady

    @Elizabelle: I’ve had income in the low six digits, and income in the low five digits, and the thing I’ve learned from that variety of experience is that it’s really expensive to be poor.

  110. 110.

    FlipYrWhig

    @bemused:

    They don’t want to recognize they are government spending “takers” too.

    Oh, God no, they have no idea. I’m nearly positive that they think because there are taxes taken out of their paychecks they’re funding other people’s benefits. They don’t know the difference between payroll taxes and income taxes and they _definitely_ don’t know what’s happening when they “do taxes,” i.e., file a tax RETURN and get A REFUND.

  111. 111.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Kay: But…but…Kay, the professional campaigners would see a drop in their ad sales commission income if you did this!

    Think of the paid professional political experts!

  113. 113.

    bemused

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Oh sure, doesn’t everyone know that every government safety-net dollar that goes to the moochers comes DIRECTLY out of authentic, hard-working Americans’ wallets! They also believe that there very, very few people getting government assistance in any form that are truly worthy and in genuine need. They think the vast majority are just in for free rides.

  115. 115.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    So the last two days have been a shit sandwich with a piss vinaigrette. Sunday night, 9:45 eastern time, my phone rings, an unknown number. It’s the mother of the loser manbaby who my troublesome middle daughter resides with (there are two houses on the property – her shithole and a worse shithole about 10 yards away. Middle daughter shared the worse shithole with 41 year old don’t-know-if-he-was-ever-employed manbaby. The house is in the vicinity of the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois, and that entire area is economically moribund. She’s been there with him for 4 years, struggling and listening to his insane bullshit about the glories of playing music for tips and sticking it to “the man” by dropping out of the wider economy.

    Mommy goes into a diatribe about how manbaby sent her over to the small house to tell her that he’s breaking up with her, and she has to get off the property that night. Since they destroyed her car (mommy had been using it to transport her dogs and they ate the interior – along with no maintenance or oil changes), mommy conveniently offered to take her to the nearby town of Anna and put her up at a hotel for the night so we could pick her up yesterday. Problem was that middle daughter was refusing to get in a car with her, and if the girl (she’s 23, but a less than mature 23, particularly after 4 years with this loser and his mommy), and if middle daughter didn’t leave right away, mommy would call the sheriff because she “is uncomfortable having her at her house). She was yelling most about daughter locking mommy out of the worse shithole.

    Now, as you can guess, I didn’t take that well. I demanded to speak to manbaby while maintaining a slight veneer of civility, because I surmised I could at least broker an overnight truce and pick her up Monday afternoon. She said she’d have to go get him.

    Two minutes later, the phone rings (her number again – manbaby lost his phone at the punk rock commune in Carbondale where they’d been staying some on his project to music for tips). It’s mommy – he refuses to come to the phone and doesn’t want to talk to me. I advise that I’m putting on my clothes and will be there in about 4 hours’ drive time; she doubles down on the idiot sheriff talk, as if she doesn’t know who/what she’s dealing with. It is also apparent that manbaby has shared every intimate detail of things daughter has told him, because she’s trying to

    Keep in mind that the Countess has gone into a simultaneous with daughter, and we’re trying to translate and facial express what these calls are in the background.

    Anyhow, I went into full vent. It wasn’t pretty, and expressed every thought I had about him, her, their home, their lifestyle. Eventually, I got him briefly on the Countess’ call to daughter and advised that we were coming to their home to get her and a few of her items; he mewled out some fucking shit about loving us all and that they just need to not be together, which I wholeheartedly agreed with.

    Anyway, we piled into the car at 10:10 pm and drove for 4 hours or so (wife made me leave pistol at home – she said that bringing it for protection would be a “bad idea”). Along the way, we get a message that manbaby and mommy are taking the hotel room because they’re not “comfortable” being close to her (what they were doing was avoiding interacting with us – somebody was going to get the living fuck beaten out of him, and it wasn’t going to be me). Also, by now, mommy informed him of every glorious thing I said. He’s apparently shouted at the locked door and is texting her some uglies. Happily, manbaby and mommy leave.

    We arrive in the dead of night. The child has her sitar with broken strings, a guitar missing two strings (he claims to refurb guitars to sell on ebay) and her ukulele in a case in unknown condition. She has two smallish shopping bags of clothes, and a feral female cat that looks like a serval. I think most of her clothes are between the locked other hellhole and the punk rock collective in Carbondale. Also missing is her REALLY nice mandolin (a Christmas gift from me – fuckhead has probably pawned it) and her decent keyboard, stand, foot pedal and amp (also bought by me – that may be in Carbondale – when things settle down, I’ll ask),

    Anyway, we load up her meager remnants of four years along with a cat which has never been indoors (it seemed really important to her) into my hybrid sedan and drove home. Pulled into the drive at 7:40 am, and went for a full day of court.

    Fast forward to last night. Go to bed at 10:10 pm, just to get back on cycle. Manbaby has called so much and so often that daughter is hysterical and is crying so much that she wakes the Countess at 2:30 am. He wants daughter back. Every time the daughter hangs up, he calls again. There were a few conversations and lots of hang ups. Countess asks for phone and tells him to be a man for once to leave daughter alone. He replies “no” and the Countess hangs up, and comes to get me. I manage to get Verizon to say that they blocked the call, but I think he called a couple of times after (daughter was irritated with me over it, but I’m over it).

    If the stupid fuck shows up at my house to win her back, I’ve told the Countess to call 911 and request EMS assistance because I will put him in a full body cast.

  117. 117.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic: We were at a B&B in Banff (Alberta, Canada) a decade or so ago. One morning, an American man who was another guest there came down to breakfast looking poorly and complaining of not feeling well. The host immediately called up a doctor’s office down the way, he went about 10 minutes later, and was treated. As far as I know, there were almost no questions asked asked about insurance or co-pays or deductibles or in/out of network or citizenship status or residency or any of the other crap we have to put up with. He had nothing but praise for the way he was treated the next morning.

    It was amazing.

    And it’s the way civilized societies treat their people.

    Yeah, please don’t throw us in that briar patch!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  119. 119.

    eclare

    @Another Scott: Went to the ER once when I lived in London. Just walked down the street to the closest hospital. They asked for my name, address, and religious affiliation (if I died, I guess). That was it. And I was in and out in under two hours, at night. No bill, of course.

  123. 123.

    satby

    @bemused: I lived it. It took me years to pay off two tickets I got for an expired plate on my mom’s old car, the fees were almost $400 (half my monthly earnings at the time) by the time I could pay. And they had suspended my driver’s license in MI over the unpaid fees, but I still had to drive to get to work, so I risked arrest on that every time I ventured out. I finally was able to pay and get the suspension removed because I inherited some money. I was lucky nothing worse happened, I could have become a felon from someone else running a stop sign and hitting my car.

  126. 126.

    Another Scott

    @Uncle Ebeneezer: The town can be a tourist trap, but the countryside is fabulously beautiful. The railroad hotel is neat too (to get an afternoon snack) – I don’t think normal mortals can afford to stay there.

    We’ve been several times (for conferences, and vacation). Recommended. :-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  129. 129.

    satby

    @Elizabelle: thanks! Security is everything it’s cracked up to be ?

    The reason I had trouble updating the plates was a fluke: mom’s dementia meant we couldn’t find the title to transfer, so I had to forge a letter from her to request a duplicate from the state of IL. That takes time. But that’s the thing, with my old job, I could just have paid the tickets as they came up until I could fix the issue.
    So many people are just one job loss or catastrophic illness away from the Lord of the Flies existence that the GOP wants for us.

  130. 130.

    JAFD

    @Kay:
    Note that Way Back In The Bad Old Days the Evil Political Machines had a Precinct Committeeman and Committeewoman in every precinct / voting district (whatever y’call the area, the voters of which vote in same location) who had a No-Show Patronage Job, but whose real calling was to Help His Constituents Deal With The Government (and maybe the rest of the world, as well.

    My father was one, back in the ’60’s when I was ‘knee-high to grasshopper’

    Is not new idea, but still good idea.

    BTW, y’all may want to read Robert A Heinlein’s “Take Back Your Government” – probably copies of ’96 printing to be found in used paperback dealers or thrift shops. Is great practical advice, even if you agree not with his policits, and wonderful snapshot of Life In The Pre-TV Era.

  132. 132.

    Denali

    @Le Comte,

    My goodness, reminds me of the lots of drama we went thru a few years ago when our daughter went thru a divorce. Try to stay calm-things will get better, and it does appear that your daughter will be better off now.

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