Roseanne Cash, in the NYTimes — “Country Musicians, Stand Up to the N.R.A.”:
I’ve been a gun-control activist for 20 years. Every time I speak out on the need for stricter gun laws, I get a new profusion of threats. There’s always plenty of the garden-variety “your dad would be ashamed of you” sexist nonsense, along with the much more menacing threats to my family and personal safety.
Last year, I performed at the Concert Across America to End Gun Violence with Jackson Browne, Eddie Vedder, Marc Cohn and the Harlem Gospel Choir, and we got death threats. People wanted to kill us because we wanted to end gun violence. That’s where we are: America, 2017.
For the past few decades, the National Rifle Association has increasingly nurtured an alliance with country music artists and their fans. You can see it in “N.R.A. Country,” which promotes the artists who support the philosophical, and perhaps economic, thrall of the N.R.A., with the pernicious tag line “Celebrate the Lifestyle.”
That wholesome public relations veneer masks something deeply sinister and profoundly destructive. There is no other way to say this: The N.R.A. funds domestic terrorism.
A shadow government exists in the world of gun sales, and the people who write gun regulations are the very people who profit from gun sales. The N.R.A. would like to keep it that way…
I encourage more artists in country and American roots music to end your silence. It is no longer enough to separate yourself quietly. The laws the N.R.A. would pass are a threat to you, your fans, and to the concerts and festivals we enjoy.
The stakes are too high to not disavow collusion with the N.R.A. Pull apart the threads of patriotism and lax gun laws that it has so subtly and maliciously intertwined. They are not the same…
Marissa R. Moss, in Politico, “How Las Vegas Shattered Country Music’s Consensus on Guns”:
… [W]hile there’s no reason to expect major country stars to suddenly risk their fan bases by speaking out in favor of new gun control legislation, the country music industry is changing, thanks to streaming services that are breaking radio’s stranglehold on the industry and a newer cohort of more under-the-radar Americana artists who are more outspoken than their mainstream counterparts.
For at least one mainstream country musician, Sunday night was in fact a turning point. Guitarist for the Texas-based Josh Abbott Band, Caleb Keeter, was at the festival on the day of the massacre, and living through the experience of a mass shooting firsthand was enough to make him rethink his own stance on gun control. “I cannot express how wrong I was,” he said in a Twitter post on Monday morning, still reeling from the shock of the attack after shielding himself from the gunfire on the floor of his tour bus. “We need gun control RIGHT. NOW. My biggest regret is that I stubbornly didn’t realize it until my brothers on the road and myself were threatened by it.”…
There’s a reason for those mainstream artists’ reticence: The blessing of country radio is still vital for their careers, especially those with a small or burgeoning fan base, and they have seen what happens when you get on the wrong side of the DJs and the fans they represent.And those fans still love guns. Pro-gun culture is as entrenched in country music culture as never before, thanks in part to the marketing efforts of the NRA itself. A relatively new organization, NRA Country was founded in 2010 to promote, according to the website’s mission statement, “a lifestyle and a bond between the best and brightest in country music and hard-working Americans.”
Perhaps NRA Country’s most effective tactic is connecting support for gun rights with an idealized rural lifestyle with its own values system, which includes central tenets like strong support for the military and law enforcement. Just as the NRA itself put out an ad with former Navy SEAL Dom Raso explaining why he “stands” during the anthem amid a national debate over NFL players’ kneeling protests of police violence, so NRA Country has wrapped itself in patriotic symbolism…
Several in the industry who support gun control measures, speaking anonymously, believe that if anyone challenges the industry’s dominant, no-compromise stance on guns, it will be artists like Price and Hoge and others outside of the establishment machine in Nashville. Yet many of these musicians are already distinguished as being more closely aligned with Democrats on policy issues, as one publicist for some of Americana’s most prominent names noted. “If we’re going to open up a thoughtful dialogue in the mind of the public,” he told me, “it can’t come from a source they already dismiss as liberal.”
Perhaps that’s why some think that country’s newest generation of young major-label stars, like Brothers Osborne, Charlie Worsham, Maren Morris and Kacey Musgraves, who remain mostly politically neutral and have a fan base of both conservatives and liberals, might be moved enough by the Las Vegas massacre to at least start asking new questions about whether America’s gun laws make sense, when anyone can amass a private arsenal and mow down dozens of unsuspecting music fans who just wanted to enjoy a concert…
Amir Khalid
Steve Earle’s cover of a Johnny Cash classic that is probably never played at NRA gatherings.
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: or his own classic “the devil’s right hand”
Chet
@Amir Khalid:
Seriously, that needs to be said twice. Johnny Cash would be ashamed? He literally wrote a song about how carrying a gun makes you more likely to get shot and killed.
rikyrah
Good Morning,Everyone ???
Steve in the ATL
@Chet: it’s almost as if you can’t believe anything that right wingers say….
Baud
Based on my expertise from watching Dukes of Hazzard, BJ and the Bear and any number of Burt Reynolds movies, I can confirm that this is bullshit.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
Bring that receipt!
geg6
@Chet:
They know their audience of troglodytes has no idea what Johnny Cash wrote his songs about. They don’t listen to Johnny Cash. They are into bro country. Not exactly “roots” country music.
Kay
This is true. “Roots” music is much cooler among young people than commercial, mainstream country music. I don’t think it’s “streaming services” though if by that they mean subscriber. I think it’s you tube. They think they’re discovering this genre, which I suppose happens every generation- it’s new to them.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Our local meth heads certainly have a lot of (cough) respect (cough) for law enforcement.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: And the Bundy gang!
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
But, as you know, that’s part of it. The idealized “culture” can and does encompass an “outlaw” faction. Meth was a perfect fit because you make it yourself. Meth is very bootstrappy. They’re using the contents of fire extinguishers now- I have no idea how it works but that’s a raw material now.
The first time I heard that heroin was out there I didn’t think “urban drug”, I thought “exotic, expensive rock star drug”- it didn’t seem to fit. It was as if you told me they were all drinking imported champagne. I literally said “heroin, like from poppies?”
eclare
@Baud: Yeah, they love the revenuoors…My aunt worked for a census count in rural Arkansas in 2010, now asks what the hell was she thinking?
Kay
@Baud:
If the Bundy gang called the police themselves then they’re like the Bundy gang. This scenario is a constant- they call the police on someone else and then get picked up themselves. There’s some kind of basic misunderstanding of “outlaw” status- they think they’re entitled to police protection from other criminals and they somehow will be held harmless if they’re also in the “victim of a crime” role. OUTlaw, I want to tell them. OUTside the law. Stop calling the police because you are also a criminal!
Kay
As it turns out, none. No safeguards. Good question though.
I actually think Trump is a blowhard coward and won’t attack anyone- he’s really brave on Twitter and when he’s suing contractors thru his horrible lawyers but that doesn’t mean anything. The problem is he’s dealing with a whole host of other people and no one knows what he could incite.
Baud
@Kay: Even the undocumented know not to call CIS.
Baud
@Kay:
That’s always been my theory. But his cowardice is our only hope.
Baud
@eclare: Was she threatened?
Kay
@Baud:
Right, and this may be getting too far into it, too much guessing- but I see it so much I have thought about it and I think it goes back to privilege- the sense that they are the people law enforcement is intended for- their rights will be protected no matter their own status or behavior. Because something is going on there- they know they have a warrant out or are on probation and yet they get in a fight or whatever- someone steals someone elses phone- and they call the police. I feel like saying “you’re bad at this criminal thing- you’re going to have to be tougher”.
bystander
Moanin’ Joe is incensed about Harvey Weinstein. Who knew that Hollywood producers would ever seek sexual favors in exchange for film roles? Who would ever think that a Hollywood producer could be ruthless and a sexist?
I feel dirty that Hilary took his money. I’m sure she has an email on her private server congratulating Harvey for hitting on Rose McGowan, if not an outright offer to hold her down.
If so, I think the only solution is for Hillary and Al Gore to incinerate themselves in front of the National Cathedral.
Keith G
I moved across town a week ago and I’m enjoying my new digs. Unfortunately, starting last night one of my wonderful and priceless cats threw up immediately after eating her meal. She repeated the behavior again this morning.
I really love this new place but I wonder why anybody puts light solid color carpets in any residence. Luckily, immediate action and finesse with a scrub brush shows no noticeable residue. Worryingly as of this moment I am still able to perceive a wafting scent of cat stomach contents and bile.
I don’t know where it is, but I’m afraid I will find it later on today after it has metastasized.
As far as Meredith the cat goes, all her other behavior indicators are normal so I’m wondering if this is just some type of temporary digestive irritation or possibly she has a bit of a hairball in her stomach.
Hopefully later on today she will be able to do a great big arp, hopefully on the parquet floor in the TV room.
eclare
@Baud: No, just remembers a lot of driveways, way in the boonies, with people who were armed, and here she was repping the government. All miles from anyone else.
Kay
This is exactly how you handle a toddler.
Frankensteinbeck
The only surprise in this article, and I admit it’s a pleasant surprise, is that there is a small counterculture in country music defying the conservative brand. Otherwise this all fits everything we know already.
Conservatives are hateful, and routinely resort to threats and harassment of anyone who disagrees. Popular country music has overwhelmingly become a tribal identifier centered around rural white male fantasies of themselves. Something like 90% of top country songs repeat tropes like ‘painted on jeans’ and ‘dirt road’ too specific to be coincidence. Guns have become a conservative marker, and they hate liberals enough to angrily attack any liberal position (despite polling on their theoretical positions on gun control). Racism is deeply a part of all of this, as it is the entire meaning of the kneeling controversy.
@Baud: l
Oh, and they support law enforcement only to the extent they want the police to brutalize blacks and Latinos.
eclare
@Keith G: Congrats on the new place! Prediction for next cat vomit: couch or bed. Parquet floor? Where is the joy in that?
Baud
@Keith G: Hope she’s ok. Was wondering how you fared in the flood.
Steve in the ATL
@Frankensteinbeck: country music fans can’t be racist because Charlie Pride!
Boatboy_srq
Is it too early to make note of how no tragedy, no injustice, no oppression, is real to Conservatists until it happens to them personally?
OzarkHillbilly
More proof that you can’t fix stupid: Elk selfies gone wrong: Two gored at St. Louis County park prompt more safety warnings
I love this at the very end:
JPL
The president is having trouble focusing this morning. He has already tweeted four times and the topics are immigration, health care, jamille hill and the nfl. Nothing about Tillerson calling him a moron or North Korea. In the olden days, a president would be concerned about the massive wildfires out west, or the slow progress restoring power in Puerto Rico.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Hillary must have put up that sign.
Steve in the ATL
@JPL:
Quit spreading fake news—Tillerson called him a FUCKING moron!
Frankensteinbeck
@Boatboy_srq:
When your entire creed is ‘fuck you, n***** and n*****-lovers’, it’s pretty much a straight line in your thought process to ‘only my problems matter.’ To bring it back to how this is all one thing, Obamacare repeal was a moral necessity, because fuck that black guy who dared to be better than them, until the voters had to face actually losing their health care. But their congressmen, totally insulated from that risk, were baffled and angry at the push back they were getting on what was obviously the right and necessary thing to do. This is our entire political debate. It’s ridiculous and disgusting.
Baud
@JPL: Video of the aftermath on GMA is incredible.
Boatboy_srq
@Kay: LEOs aren’t public servants to them, but more like the enforcers of their gang. Which, too often, they are – but they’re not that thing often enough that the Reichwingers can be taken by surprise. Witness, for example, the stupefaction among the marchers in C’ville when the local PD didn’t immediately jump in and join them, and actually had the nerve to try to protect the counterprotesters.
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: Tillerson and Mattis are having lunch with the President today, so I’m sure the exact wording will be discussed.
debbie
@bystander:
Yeah, so was Glenn Beck yesterday. It’s the new Distraction of the Moment. I especially love how they differentiate Harvey Weinstein from Roger Ailes. HYPOCRITES!
Kay
@JPL:
Tillerson is just as bad as far as I’m concerned. I read the first page of the New Yorker piece on him and stopped- he’s a slightly different breed of bellicose bully. He isn’t qualified to do that job. He’s out there parroting Right wing theory on foreign policy and everyone has to pretend these ancient tropes are somehow “his ideas”. Another over-rated, over-paid CEO. The one and only reason he’s “better” is because Trump is a fucking disaster. In a normal administration he’d be an embarrassing flop.
Frankensteinbeck
I should take down those tweets. There’s just nothing new to this. I’m repeating myself, because it’s the same every time, on every issue.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
As if.
debbie
@JPL:
You know, this being America and all, if public figures like Jamele Hill can be suspended or fired for inappropriate remarks, Trump has to be held to the same standard. He should not be allowed to use Twitter like a bat to beat his opponents bloody.
Frankensteinbeck
@debbie:
The point is to discredit being against sexual harassment/assault/abuse by painting the people who try to stop it as hypocrites.
EDIT – @debbie:
That’s his goal, but like everything else, he’s too incompetent to pull it off.
Baud
Oh, GMA says that the security guard was shot before the LV shooting started.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: One of our dogs is a frequent puker (nothing wrong with her, per the vet — she just has a sensitive stomach, I guess). We don’t have carpeting in the house, but our puker will find an area rug to yurk on every damn time. It’s puzzling. I’ve learned to buy short nap rugs and Scotch Guard the hell out of them before deploying. Hope the kitty feels better!
OzarkHillbilly
Headline of the Day: After screw-up, St. Louis again reigns as STD capital of America . We’re #1! We’re #1! We’re #1!
Kay
@Boatboy_srq:
Exactly. That’s exactly the mindset I’ve seen. I just finished a book about Bonnie and Clyde- they were basically just poor people- I think Clyde would have remained a thief (not become almost a casual murderer) had he not entered the Texas prison system and been absolutely brutalized by older, bigger prisoners and had to kill one and I do mean “had to kill”- the guards weren’t there to protect the lower classes.
One thing they didn’t expect was police protection. They knew they didn’t get that. Not for them.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
I was really surprised when I found out Clyde was gay, and their famous sexual insatiability wasn’t for each other, but for whatever guy they had kidnapped at the time.
Baud
@Kay:
@Frankensteinbeck:
Interesting.
Betty Cracker
I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t understand how Trump is not in violation of the First Amendment here. He’s urging Congress to change tax law specifically to punish private businesses for their employees’ protected speech.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: It’s not a violation unless they do it.
satby
WaPo editorial this morning: What to do with an unfit president.
Edited to add: strangely, impeachment isn’t considered a viable option.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie:
OK, I’ll bite. What inappropriate remarks? I can only recall her speaking truths.
JPL
@Kay: In a normal administration, he wouldn’t have been nominated.
Baud
rikyrah
@Kay:
The Secretary of Exxon, in a normal Administration, would never have made it past the vetting process. Too many messy conflicts of interest.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Where was the security guard?
Baud
@rikyrah: Near the shooter’s room, I think.
MomSense
On Saturday one of my son’s housemates got word that his friend was shot. This was the second tragic thing that happened to this group of five in two days.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: 6 minutes before the shooting. Somebody dropped the ball.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: What tax laws is he referring to?
rikyrah
@satby:
Uh huh
Morning satby
Baud
@MomSense: I’m sorry.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Vindictive fat fuck. He is in violation, period.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: He’s also very confused about the relationship between “the NFL” and “NFL players.” He’s confused about every last fucking thing and I hope he’s gone from the earth soon.
Amir Khalid
@Boatboy_srq:
The Conservatists (lovely coinage, by the way) believe that no one is real but they themselves, hence no one’s suffering is real but their own.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
So sad.??
TS
@JPL:
Are there any qualified people who would work for this president? He and his advisers/family have/had a very limited choice – as shown by the selections. The senate should never have confirmed most of them.
FlipYrWhig
@Barbara: Antitrust exemption. Stupid idiots on the right have been caterwauling about this in their media.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Her remarks have been termed as inappropriate. As you know, broadcasters are supposed to be neutral. As much as I agree with what she said, calling the president a white supremacist isn’t a neutral statement.
debbie
@Baud:
He was investigating an open door alarm, from what I’ve heard.
rikyrah
@Baud:
A guard gets shot, and it takes them 72 minutes to find this guy after he has broken two windows out? Where are the sensors on the windows? Where was their security?
Baud
@debbie:
@rikyrah:
Curiouser and curiouser.
debbie
@MomSense:
Sorry, how horrible for them.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Quietly editing and omitting facts to suit current prejudices, not just moral biases but ideas of what must be true based on current societal assumptions, is huge in how history is recorded. Always has been. Especially about sex, and sex-based issues. Despite the idea being extensively repeated in ancient oral histories, only in the 21st century is it starting to gain traction that there were women Vikings. The circular logic involved in viewing the evidence is blatant. “This grave must be a man because the skeleton* has weapons. Only men were warriors because we only find weapons in men’s graves.” Even today, the primary argument against women Vikings – repeated by women historians, even – is that the idea of women warriors being more than the tiniest fringe is inherently ridiculous.
*One surprise for me while learning about this is that it’s impossible to confidently sex skeletons. There is no part of the bone shape that doesn’t have a spectrum of variation with major male/female overlap.
Humboldtblue
We see a lot of wildfire activity in northern California but it is rare indeed to see the devastation caused by the fires in built-up areas in Sonoma and Napa.
debbie
@rikyrah:
12, not 72.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
She wasn’t suspended for the White Supremacist remarks???
She was suspended for tweeting that, if you have a problem with Jerry Jones, and telling his players that they better not kneel,then contact the advertisers.
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: @Baud: Right outside the shooter’s door. He heard drilling inside the room and stopped to check.
Las Vegas gunman shot security guard six minutes before mass killing began .
ETA: “The Las Vegas gunman opened fire on a security guard six minutes before he rained down bullets on a crowd and killed 58 people, officials said on Monday in a change to the timeline of the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.
Stephen Paddock, 64, shot and wounded a security guard who came to his floor at the Mandalay Bay hotel to investigate an open door near Paddock’s suite, Clark county sheriff Joseph Lombardo said at a news conference, providing new details on what occurred immediately before the mass shooting on 1 October.
The sheriff said the security guard, Jesus Campos, heard drilling from Paddock’s room. Paddock, who had installed three cameras to monitor the approach to his suite, opened fire through the door, spraying 200 shots down the hall and wounding the guard, who alerted other security officials.”
Another Scott
@Kay: I refuse to believe that there are “no safeguards”. It may not be codified with respect to nuclear weapons, but there is the “must refuse an illegal order” stuff that military officers have drilled into their heads. And all the various false alarms over the decades indicate that those with their fingers close to the launch buttons aren’t automatons who act without thinking.
Yeah, there’s the no one can stop him arguments. But there are lots of steps, and lots of real people who were picked to be in their positions because they have the ability to think clearly under stress, in the chain between Donnie and the launch buttons.
By all means, we should change the law to make it clear that a first strike is no longer national policy and cannot be the President’s decision alone. But we’re not doomed, even with the way things stand now.
At least that’s my hope and expectation… :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@debbie:
I had heard 72. 12 is a lot better, and reasonable.
Baud
There’s officially been more coverage of Weinstein than of Trump’s sexual harassment history.
MomSense
@Baud: @rikyrah:
The police found multiple casings at the scene and now this poor kid is fighting for his life. He’s only 25.
So many of these gun nutz have fantasies of being some kind of defense league against government tyranny but they are actually subjecting all of us to the tyranny of gun violence.
I’m st the point where I want to get rid of all the guns.
rikyrah
@Humboldtblue:
Heard that the fire up there went from 2,500 acres to 25,000 pretty much in 24 hours.
Baud
@MomSense: As Kay has said, their freedom comes at the expense of ours.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Why you bringing truth into this.
Frankensteinbeck
@TS:
I don’t think it’s a lack of qualified people who would take the job. Trump could have started from day one with qualified people if that were true, before the stink became ubiquitous. Remember, the list of possibilities is giant in a nation of three hundred million. There still has to be a long list of qualified and willing, even if the vast majority of qualified aren’t willing. Trump has consistently hired for extreme bigotry, corruption, and ignorance, presumably because that reflects what few beliefs he has.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: Sorry this is happening. Want to say “Watch him.” My youngest went into a deep depression after holding a friend as he died.
Baud
@rikyrah: I hope BJ doesn’t suspend me for my inappropriate remarks.
MomSense
@debbie:
My son’s response is non stop cooking for everyone. So he’s definitely my kid.
NotMax
Every breath you take…
satby
@rikyrah: morning! Have a cup ☕!
Amir Khalid
@debbie:
Trump is urging Congress to violate the US Constitution. This is stupid and wrong, among other reasons because, as Frankensteinbeck points out, the NFL =/= football players. But Trump does have the Constitutionally-recognised right to say things that are stupid and wrong, same as the spiteful morons who voted for him.
Frankensteinbeck
@NotMax:
Trump is the poster boy for Cleek’s Law and trying to erase the fact a black man became president from history, but having heard him speak on the subject, he has a virulent personal hatred of regulations. It’s one of the few topics he gets passionate about.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
Thank you. I was thinking I should find out if the college has a crisis counselor. It’s a very small school.
Kay
@Baud:
Rex Tillerson loves the Boy Scouts. Credits the Boy Scouts with some of his success. That was his red line with Trump- when asshole made a fool of himself at the Boy Scout event.
I’m not giving him credit for this. It’s too low a standard. Tillerson didn’t object to the racism or the sexual predator behavior or the sleazy businesses or the constant fucking lying. NONE of that was enough to get him to question Trump’s character. But get near his issue- the Boy Scouts- and watch out! He’s fighting mad. Fuck him. He fails the test. Low quality.
OzarkHillbilly
‘I know I’ll never be the same’: A St. Louis man injured in St. Ann police chase sues department, city
Do you feel good injuring people who haven’t committed a crime over a fucking expired license plate? Asshole. The money that city gets from mining poor people is more important than people’s lives.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Holy crap. I go away for a few peaceful days and come back to see that Trump is apparently pushing for war with NK. Will this fool actually take us down that road?
satby
@NotMax: I guess it should comfort us that they’re hoping to kill white people too, just slower? Equal opportunity murderers.
raven
@Steve in the ATL: And Johnny Rodriquez
Frankensteinbeck
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
No. Witness his warlike bluster on every other international conflict, and how every time he’s been too chickenshit to do anything. Of the two things he’s given credit for, the Syrian airbase bombing turned out to have had Putin’s approval ahead of time, and the MOAB in Afghanistan actually had nothing to do with Trump at all.
@satby:
The attitude of the regular Republican, but in Trump’s case, he just fucking hates regulations. Presumably because he’s been slapped down by them so often.
Baud
@Kay:
I think we need to institute the GOP challenge. Dare every Republican to utter these words on camera:
“Donald Trump upholds the dignity of the Office of the President of the United States.”
Let’s see how many are brave enough to say that.
Steve in the ATL
@Barbara: neither MLB nor NFL should have an antitrust exemption, so in this rare case trump’s petty vindictiveness aligns with good public policy. Blind squirrel, acorn.
Steve in the ATL
@MomSense:
He’ll make someone a fine Jewish mother one day!
JPL
@MomSense: How horrible for him to have to experience this. Ozark gave wise advice.
Kay
@Baud:
It could take a really long time if Trump has to offend each American personally before they get it. Tillerson was ashamed, but only because Trump revealed himself to an organization Tillerson respects-the Boy Scouts.
I mean, seriously, isn’t this WHY we have imaginations and fiction and plays and things- so every person doesn’t have to experience everything personally before they get it?
A Ghost To Most
Has anyone listened to the song in the embedded video? This song has kept me going this summer.
Baud
@Kay: A lot of people struggle with the conflict between the desire to protect their own interests and the joy that comes from hurting others.
NotMax
Who’da thunk it? A star of the dismal science with a playful streak.
@satby
Came across this oddity and thought it might be something that could spark ideas (in a scaled down version) about gift ‘bento’ boxes to sell at the market or offer through your online shop.
JPL
Trump’s latest tweet is a book endorsement. The Art of the Donald is a good read, according to him.
Kay
So exactly like healthcare. You wonder what they’ve been doing since Bush. Nothing. Making shit up. All those think tanks and they have nothing to solve any problem of any kind.
NotMax
The law of unintended consequences.
Memo to Big Bird: Austria is a no-no.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Good for him.
eclare
@A Ghost To Most: I have, it is a great song. Last year was a son of a bitch…
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: How would he know? He can’t read.
Baud
@NotMax: Beware of sharkia law.
MomSense
@A Ghost To Most:
I’ve been playing Isbell on a steady loop all summer.
satby
@NotMax: oh, that’s very cute! Thanks for that.
Humboldtblue
@rikyrah:
That’s what happens when you combine fire with 30 mph winds with dried out scrub oak, chaparral and grass.
@Baud:
Beware Shakira Law!
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Be careful, he might challenge you to an IQ test. lol
germy
@Keith G:
Our cat didn’t throw up all summer. And then suddenly when the weather got cooler in the autumn, she started hawking up her food again.
I believe she can’t handle the colder temperature of her canned food. We tried warming her food a bit before serving.
Cats can’t handle cold food. She loves a bit of ice cream now and then on rare occasions, but if she wolfs down a plate of cold meat she can’t keep it down.
Humboldtblue
Also, knowing this community as I do, if you are able, please donate some cash to the organizations working to provide food and shelter for the thousands of animals that have been affected by the fires as well. We’re talking everything from milk cows to ranch horses to small pets and they all need supplies. Donating cash, particularly in an emergency, is far more effective for local groups because they can usually leverage that for state and federal matching grants or use ot buy goods in bulk at far cheaper prices.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Chet: Also Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.
tobie
@Kay:
Tillerson is the incarnation of the ‘good ol’ boy’: the kind of turd that floated to the top by being like everyone else in the world of baseball-and-apple-pie save for his obsequiousness to those who could help advance his career.
What struck me most about him during his confirmation hearings was how incurious he was about the world he would have dealt with at Exxon and would have to negotiate with as Secretary of State.
germy
@tobie: There was an ass-licking New Yorker magazine “profile” of him recently that I won’t link to.
His favorite author is Ayn Rand, stuff like that. Hardworking good old boy who rises from humble beginnings. The really lay it on thick.
d58826
@Frankensteinbeck: If Der Fuhrer would issuer an attack order would DOD obey?. Now in an ordinary world the answer would be yes. But just suppose base on all of the talk leading up to the Iraq war there are three choices:
1. preventative war which is illegal
2. a preemptive attack but that requires some immediate threat level which at the moment doesn’t exist
3. the normal Congressional declaration of war (or its cowardly little brother an AUMF).
Since options 1 and 2 do not seem to apply that leaves option 3. DOD could refuse on the grounds that it is an illegal order w/o some form of Congressional approval.
Obviously in constitutional crisis land at that point
Thoughts?
JPL
Honestly, I have no idea what Trump is tweeting about.
lol
tobie
@germy: I was going to read the New Yorker piece. Thanks for letting me know about the slant. I’ll steel myself for this.
Kay
@JPL:
He’s such a crybaby. He should quit if it’s too hard and he can take his gross, grifting family with him.
Kay
@tobie:
I don’t even give him credit for common sense though,although the fawning NYer piece wants us to think he’s a plain talking common man.
Trump lacks character. He’s a bad person. It didn’t take a graduate degree or CEO salary to figure that out.
Donald Trump is a bad hire.
rikyrah
update
Maddow heard from FEMA about that rural Puerto Rican town.
FEMA said that it wasn’t their responsibility to deliver goods. That it was the Mayor ‘s responsibility.
They are trying to kill these American citizens.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 10/9/17
FEMA: Not our job to distribute food and water in Puerto Rico
Rachel Maddow reports on the situation in Aibonito, Puerto Rico, which has not received any FEMA aid despite multiple visits from FEMA representatives who helped victims with paperwork. FEMA says its the mayor’s job to distribute food and water.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 10/9/17
US tech giants oddly unhelpful on Russia
Elizabeth Dwoskin, Silicon Valley correspondent for the Washington Post, talks with Rachel Maddow about the slow pace of discovery of Russian ad buying and other online manipulations as U.S. tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Google have seemed reluctant to give up information.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 10/9/17
Sen. Corker interrupts Trump ‘silent movie’ with uncommon candor
Rachel Maddow explains that while the things Donald Trump says are often best ignored, sometimes even his petty Twitter fights merrit attention.
germy
@tobie:
rikyrah
PHUCK EVERY DOLT45 VOTER AND THE THIRD PARTY PURITY PONIES.
PHUCK.ALL.OF.THEM.
To ‘contain’ Trump, White House try treating him like a toddler
10/10/17 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
As the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency has unfolded, we periodically hear from people within the White House who suggest conditions, behind the scenes, are worse than Americans probably realize. In April, one presidential adviser said his job was to “talk him out of doing crazy things.” In August, another added, “You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said this week, “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.”
And while that’s obviously unsettling given that we’re talking about the most powerful office on the planet, there’s a question that’s always lurking in the background: how, exactly, does the White House “contain” a confused, amateur president who’s ill-suited for the job?
Six months ago, Politico reported that officials in the West Wing learned that Trump made better decisions when they narrowed his choices down to one. Today, Politico reports that the president can also be managed through a series of delays and distractions.
At the Washington Post, Dan Drezner recently helped document each of the times White House officials have characterized the president in ways that make him sound like a small child. The fact that his list is in constant need of updates is terrifying.
A Ghost To Most
I’d pay to watch this.
rikyrah
Trump approval numbers fall in every one of the 50 states. https://t.co/4MQU5dqH54 pic.twitter.com/nAAFNxHuoV
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) October 10, 2017
rikyrah
BOMBSHELL: US voting infrastructure vulnerable to hacking by Russia, other foreign powers, now and in the future: https://t.co/Ys5J3yy7Ob
— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) October 9, 2017
rikyrah
The Mercers: Taking the GOP Beyond ‘Peak Extremism’
by Nancy LeTourneau
October 9, 2017
In the Buzzfeed article on the connections between Breitbart and white supremacists, we learned that this happened after Milo Yiannopoulos was fired for making comments the appeared to endorse pedophilia:
Why would Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah reach out to provide financial support to the guy Bannon hand-picked to be the bridge between Breitbart and white supremacists? Perhaps it is because, as Christopher Ruddy of Newsmax once said, “[Rebekah Mercer] is the First Lady of the alt-right.” Perhaps it also has something to do with what Robert Mercer’s co-workers told Jane Mayer about some of his political beliefs.
……………………………
rikyrah
Trump’s Rural Base is Drifting Away
by Martin Longman
October 9, 2017
There is evidence in the Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll that the bloom is off Trump’s rose with a lot of rural voters. On a host of issues, folks are expressing much less confidence in the president. In some areas, like his handling of health care, the environment, and corruption, he’s actually in negative territory now among voters in small towns and rural communities. On some subjects where he is still getting modestly positive numbers, the fall from the winter and spring has nonetheless been precipitous.
For example, his net approval is down seventeen points on immigration, sixteen points on his dealings with Congress, thirteen points on uniting the country, and twelve points on employment and jobs. He’s seen a ten percent drop on his handling of the economy and foreign policy. He’s seen the least slippage on international trade, but he’s still lost a net of eight points on that issue.
It can be tricky to interpret these numbers. In some cases, people are unhappy that he hasn’t delivered on his promises, but in others they seem dismayed by what they perceive as broken promises or reversals of policy. Health care is a good example. Some are dismayed that he hasn’t repealed the Affordable Care Act while others are upset about the proposals Congress put forth that the president supported. On immigration, some feel like he hasn’t gone far enough or are angry that he hasn’t produced, while others think he sold out to the Democrats to get a deal on hurricane relief and the debt ceiling.
tobie
@rikyrah: Finally…this is getting attention. I’m scared shitless about the integrity of the ballot starting with the Virginia state elections this November and of course the elections in 2018. Yes, I find it very suspicious that Democrats are killing it even in red areas in low-profile local elections but losing anything that rises to national prominence. (See for instance Ossoff’s loss to Karen Handel. It’s possible that it did happen this way, though again it’s odd that every friggin poll was wrong. Every.single.one.)
rikyrah
THE EVER LOVING PHUCK!!!!!
Something else Black people can’t do – defend themselves against an attack by Nazis. He shoulda known better..just let them beat the shyt out of him. But, people don’t understand why players are taking the knee.
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
Black man attacked at white nationalist rally in Charlottesville faces felony charge
By Derek Hawkins October 10 at 5:13 AM
A black man brutally beaten at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville is now facing a felony charge related to the August attack.
A local magistrate on Monday issued an arrest warrant for DeAndre Harris on an unlawful wounding charge after an accuser, whom police did not identify, claimed to have been injured by the 20-year-old during the brawl, authorities told local media.
S. Lee Merritt, a civil attorney for Harris, told The Washington Post the charge was “clearly retaliatory” and described the accuser as a member of a white supremacist group. He maintained that Harris did not instigate the fight.
“We find it highly offensive and upsetting, but what’s more jarring is that he’s been charged with the same crime as the men who attacked him,” he said.
Merritt added that it was “highly unusual” for the warrant to come from a magistrate rather than police, and suggested that the accuser had previously tried to implicate Harris in the violence without success. He said his client would turn himself into police in the coming days.
In a statement provided to WVIR, the Charlottesville Police Department said the alleged victim went to the magistrate’s office in person to explain what happened. After discussing the accuser’s story with a detective, the magistrate issued the warrant.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
If people cover their faces in public without an obvious criminal purpose, maybe it shouldn’t be a legal matter.
rikyrah
Trump’s White House formalizes its praise for itself
10/10/17 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen
For many years, reporters have received press releases from the White House touting various initiatives with “what they are saying” collections. As we discussed several months ago, it’s a straightforward exercise: the White House will collect praise from various corners, package it together, and send it out as proof of a proposal’s merit.
The point is to generate positive “buzz” about an administration priority by presenting the media with evidence that an idea has been well received – by other news organizations, members of Congress, pundits, advocacy organizations, etc.
As The Week noted yesterday, Donald Trump’s White House has an entirely different approach to this public-relations strategy.
Even by Trump World standards, this kind of propaganda is cringe-worthy. The White House went to the trouble of issuing a press release to highlight praise from Trump’s cabinet about Trump’s agenda.
In other words, Trump administration officials alerted the media to the fact that Trump administration officials like the Trump administration’s policies.
Fred Fnord
@Betty Cracker: Dogs instinctively want to bury their vomit, and a carpet seems to offer more opportunity to do so than a floor.
rikyrah
@tobie:
Virginia has gone back to paper ballots. I saw something about that last week. One state down, 49 to go.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You saw that the First Wife got in on this grift this weekend. The ENTIRE LOT OF THEM ARE ODIOUS.
Amir Khalid
@A Ghost To Most:
Translation: “… and I can tell you who’s going to get fired for outscoring me.”
rikyrah
@A Ghost To Most:
BWA HA HA HA HA HAH AH AH A
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
In the strictest interpretation of the law as written, wearing sunglasses in public would be sufficient to get one arrested.
RobertDSC-iPhone 6
@MomSense:
Even better, nothing that is on the market in terms of firearms can stop 25mm cannon fire from an Armored Personnel Carrier or tank main gun rounds.
The Government always has the better guns.
These shitbags wouldn’t last 5 minutes in open rebellion against the US Army.
bemused
@germy:
His favorite novel is Atlas Shrugged which tells me all I need to know about him. I’d like to know what the percentage is of Numpty’s inner WH aides, staffers, past and present, who are Ayn Rand fans.
NotMax
Heckuva year in the Atlantic.
schrodingers_cat
No post yet, on T’s immigration (white nationalist) principles that he wants in exchange for a DACA reprieve.
People will point to Miller but these seem to be Kelly’s and T’s objectives too. And I am going by what they have said and done in the last 9 months.
germy
@bemused: I’d guess all of them. She did quite a bit of damage to this country for such a shitty writer.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
NEVER forget that Kelly wasn’t against separating parents AND CHILDREN at the border.
These are also the objectives of Attorney General White Citizens Council.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: The media has been good about calling Sessions out but seems to be giving Kelly a pass.
NotMax
@schrodingers_cat
Not difficult to imagine which finger is pointing.
rikyrah
Trump struggles to overcome his economic illiteracy
10/10/17 09:21 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump has a talking point that he believes overshadows his embarrassing failures: economic growth, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product, is still pretty good.
Two weeks ago, for example, after GDP for the second quarter was revised up to 3.1%, the president boasted via Twitter, “Many people thought it would be years before that happened.” No one actually thought that – because 3.1% quarterly growth has been quite common since the end of the Great Recession.
But Trump keeps pretending otherwise, either because he’s economically illiterate or because he enjoys pretending to be economically illiterate. During his interview with Mike Huckabee over the weekend, for example, the president added in reference to the latest GDP data, “Everybody was shocked. They said it wouldn’t happen for years.”
Again, nobody was shocked, just as nobody said it’d take years to see quarterly growth that’s been routine for quite a while.
In a new interview with Forbes, Trump went just a little further.
……………………
According to Trump, under Barack Obama’s presidency, the economy never reached quarterly growth of 3.1%. And that’s true, just so long as we overlook what happened in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015. To the extent that reality has any meaning in the debate, in the Obama era, quarterly growth reached or exceeded 3.1% eight times in eight years.
So when Trump says Obama “never hit the number,” it’s the exact opposite of the truth.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: Sorry, I don’t understand your comment. Care to elaborate?
Cheryl Rofer
@d58826: Here’s the first tweet in a Twitter thread that I started last night on the line of authority for an order to send the missiles flying. You can see that different experts have different takes. My own is that the military are thinking hard about this, and that they would see a first strike as different from retaliation. Also, a Russian/Soviet strike would be with many missiles, a North Korean one likely only one missile or a few, which would make a difference in the decision to start all-out nuclear war. Others think that the military is fully conditioned to do what the President asks.
Mnemosyne
I haven’t read the rest of the thread yet, but I just love how gun owners try to prove that they’re responsible citizens by threatening to kill people. Gosh, it sure makes me feel safe to know that other people with guns are one outspoken country star away from doing their own massacre.
NotMax
@schrofingers_cat
The media has anointed Kelly the adult in the room and the voice of reason. Short of him being filmed running naked across the Mall with a nun on each arm and a smear of cocaine on his upper lip, that will stand as a given, however divorced from actuality it may be.
Remember that Paul Ryan is still the so-called serious policy wonk.
bemused
@rikyrah:
Excellent piece by Nancy Letourneau again.
I can’t imagine any Trump supporter who has even heard of the Mercer family funding and close involvement to Trump. I wonder what they would think of Robert Mercer’s belief that if you have a low paid job, that’s all you are worth or that they financially backed a lunatic Oregon candidate who collects urine and thinks uranium danger is over hyped. Never mind, they never care.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
Kelly’s brief tenure at Homeland was a nightmare. He is a RWNJ and a monster like the rest of this maladministration. I think recently it was reported that he thought Mexico was on the verge of collapse and some other wing nut bullshit.
I don’t know why anyone puts faith in “trump’s generals”. Like everyone else trump picks, they are guaranteed to be terrible.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: He also is reported to have said that DACA was unconstitutional. When did he go to law school? He was comparing Mexico to Venezuela. Why? That’s the standard RWNJ trope.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
He means that Miller et al are giving the middle finger to immigrants.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: OK thanks now I understand what you were trying to say.
NotMax
@Cheryl Rofer
Supposed failsafe is that a preset order given through the football must be verified by the Secretary of Defense.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: I got the finger allusion, I was wondering who he was talking about.
Vhh
@Kay: Trump, who claims to have a real estate degree from Penn, but does not figure in its list of honors grads, now wants an IQ contest with Tillerson, who has a engineering degree and was CEO of Exxon, which unlike Trump and his 6 bankruptcies, made billions for investors. Dunning-Kruger, I think.
Cheryl Rofer
@NotMax: A bunch of us looked into that question earlier this year, and Alex Wellerstein came up with the most convincing answer: No verification by the Secretary of Defense. Trump can do it all by himself, so if there is any human failsafe, it’s in the chain of command. Or Kelly tackling him before he gets to the football.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
And now we are in the messed up situation of having to hope this monster stays chief of staff so he can hopefully prevent NUCLEAR WAR.
This is the hell we find ourselves in now.
MomSense
@Cheryl Rofer: @MomSense:
I see we are on the same page on this.
NotMax
@Cheryl Rofer
There was a marvelous (and somewhat frightening) documentary shown on PBS many years ago about the key operators in nuclear silos and the training they receive.
Name of the film escapes me.
Short version: By design, they are not the brightest bulbs in the marquee.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: We are assuming that Kelly wants to prevent nuclear war, what is this assumption based on except wishful thinking.
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
Was walking through the housing area of the south rim of the Grand Canyon, that’s what you do if you are a hotel guest and want to do laundry, the laundry is on the other side. (Yes why did the chicken cross the road) Bunch of kids playing, they all start moving away from one house. Out from the back of the house, an elk, walks towards me, shoulders were over my head, let alone the rack on that dude. Not being a complete dummy, I followed the kids lead, walk away. And I see a problem with those instructions. Telling people to use their common sense. If that was so common, more people would have some, even a tiny amount.
Major Major Major Major
@MomSense:
Can’t we hope this asshole goes away and is replaced by somebody less terrible who can also prevent nuclear war? I mean, it’s hope we’re talking about, not planning.
d58826
@Cheryl Rofer: Oh that is REALLY REALLY reassuring. Sorry I asked the question. Not enough white lightening in them NC hills to drown this out:-)
In a sane world I guess it makes sense since might not be time to consult DOD in a bolt out of the blue type surprise attack.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: Compared to the dim Watt bulb in the WH?
Tenar Arha
@rikyrah: Phucking Nazis! I read that and I really felt like this head desk gif.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: But but he is a general, so manly and so strong. So dreamy.. makes our WH correspondents all squishy inside.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: this is also true. His reputation as somebody who doesn’t want to kill everyone comes from the same people fluffing him as the godsend savior.
gene108
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6:
“2nd Amendment Solutions” would never be open rebellion. It will be like the shooting st the Congressional baseball game. Acts of coordinated violence against government offices or people you disagree with.
NotMax
@schrodingers_cat
Even dimmer.
bemused
@germy:
I would guess all of them katie too. Just mind boggling.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
I half-expect Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ defence to be: If you exceed the target number, then technically you didn’t hit it.
MattF
@satby: JRubs is on that one.
bemused
@schrodingers_cat:
I watched John Oliver confederate clip this morning and when the pic of confederate vice president Alexander Stevens came up, I immediately thought Jeff Sessions closely resembles Stevens. Maybe a family connection?
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Frankensteinbeck: “Oh, and they support law enforcement only to the extent they want the police to brutalize blacks and Latinos.”
BINGO. We have a winner!!! Though I’d also add Transgender people, especially sex workers, to that list as well.
Major Major Major Major
Planned Parenthood, Satanic Temple Score Initial Wins in Abortion Fight
The satanic temple one is especially interesting, claiming that the waiting period/booklets/etc. violate a woman’s first amendment rights since “life begins at conception” is a religious belief.
Boatboy_srq
@Amir Khalid: I don’t remember where I found that term, but I can’t take credit. It works nicely, though, to distinguish the idiots from real principled conservatives.
NotMax
@bemused
Stephens.
Curious too how there is a resemblance between Dolt 45’s profile and that of infamous wealthy tightwad and sometime politician Jemmy Wood, whose coffin was reportedly stoned by crowds at his funeral.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
I think the reporting is that he and Mattis are on some sort of 24/7 babysitting coverage for this reason.
@Major Major Major Major:
Trump replace someone with someone less terrible? I doubt it.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: Reporting by whom? Maggie T Flufferman?
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
@Steve in the ATL:
Just arrived and haven’t read much of the thread yet, but I hope you both do know by now that Trump has proposed an “IQ Tests” face-off between Tillerson and himself. Here’s the WaPo link. The person who linked it on Facebook, where I first saw it, had to be very insistent that it was not an Onion article!
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
I doubt she would report that since it makes dolt45 look bad. I’ve heard it from multiple outlets. And again, I have no confidence in any of them which is why I still suffer from trumpsomnia but I doubt we are going to get anything better than Kelly because trump doesn’t do quality hires. It’s like the confederate elf. I loathe him and want him out of justice except that he is probably standing between trump and mueller.
bemused
@NotMax:
I’m not seeing it with Wood but Stephens had that same wizened, evil elf face.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: I hope they are right.
A Ghost To Most
@Mnemosyne: Not all gun owners, but point taken.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: I think it was the AP that first broke that story, and if IIRC, the generals decided to tag-team to keep Trump from doing dumb things that endangered the military. It happened after they were blindsided by the original travel ban Trump ordered some under-qualified ninny to draft up that would have wrecked the military’s relationship with local support staff in Iraq.
NotMax
@MomSense
There’s a market out there for some enterprising soul to put out a Dolt 45 administration version modeled along the lines of Lady Cottington’s Book of Pressed Fairies.
rikyrah
5 years ago, I was shot in an attempt to stop me from speaking out for girls’ education. Today, I attend my first lectures at Oxford. pic.twitter.com/sXGnpU1KWQ
— Malala (@Malala) October 9, 2017
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: FFS, both Mattis and Kelly are standing behind T, in the photo op, as he signed that infamous EO.
ETA: If you ask me this is just PR by the generals.
trollhattan
I need a second shower this a.m. to wash off the stench of Pence and mother, who were in our metroplex for money funneling yesterday. Yeccch.
Miss Bianca
@Humboldtblue: thank you for this. Good morning, BJ! Love and courage to all you jackals facing wildfire and other hazardous issues.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Her journey is nothing short of miraculous.
Cheryl Rofer
@NotMax: The operators will turn the key.
Brachiator
@Kay:
RE: Politico: Senior advisers try to manage Trump by pushing off his demands until he eventually forgets about them.
But Trump ain’t a toddler and he doesn’t forget about his demands. He keeps coming back to them. And he has a cabinet and a core of Congressional Republicans who are in sync with him.
@Betty Cracker:
Good point. Unfortunately, Trump is still able to make a mess of foreign policy, and this also has implications for the military.
There seems to be an internal struggle between those who would restrain Trump and those who want to see him fully unleashed (Bannon was chief among this crew). Unfortunately, most of us can only watch and hope as this mad scramble continues.
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
We’re not directly affected other than the very smoky, ashy air but are literally surrounded by fires. Most up-to-date information can be had here.
Boatboy_srq
@Kay: I’ve heard the blame for the modern perspective on breaking the law applied to Carter’s oil crisis 55mph speed limits: 55 was “practicslly impossible,” “contrivutimg to accidents” etc and “highway patrols never enforced it” so speeding became normal rather than moving-violation-grade exceptional. I’m beginning to think, though, that a lot of it is White reaction to civil disobedience from the Civil Rights movement: if the niCLANGs could get away with it then so could anyone.
rikyrah
a comment from TPV about Corker’s comments:
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s a thread that is a little more encouraging to start the day with:
I’ll particularly highlight this one:
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
So, basically, he’s a Nazi. He espouses the exact same beliefs that Nazis do. Great.
TriassicSands
Very late to the thread. The words quoted above never cease to amaze me. Why should anyone have to live through something to understand its importance and ramifications? Just how mentally dull do you have to be to not be able to get the message without needing to experience something first hand? Is it simply the absence of empathy? Or is it a more general lack of imagination?
This is an affliction that seems to be shared by most, if not all, Republicans today.
rikyrah
Jerks and Twerps: How Popular Culture Normalized Hatred for an Entire Generation
What happened?
In the 11 months since Election Day, Hillary Clinton, 65.8 million Americans, and billions of people around the globe have been asking that exact question. How did the most powerful nation in the world elect a human tire fire with as much eloquence and grace as a steaming pile of manure? Since that infamous November day, a picture has emerged of how and why this happened. It was a perfect storm of a rogue FBI director, a failed media, a plethora of complicit third party and independent candidates, an apathetic electorate, and an open and hostile collusion with a foreign adversary. Yet, despite all this, the first woman candidate for a major political party still managed to get more popular votes than any White man in history.
But what about the nearly 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump?
The ones who supported a man who called Latinos rapists and thieves? The ones who supported a man who wanted to ban all Muslims? The ones who supported a man who mocked a disabled reporter? The ones who supported a man who openly ripped off students at his very own fraudulent university? The ones who supported a man who criticized a prisoner of war and a Gold Star military family? The ones who supported a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women after having previously committed adultery? The ones who supported a man who denigrated, degraded, and debased his opponents with childish nicknames and wild conspiracy theories? The ones who supported a man who (rightly) claimed he could commit murder and not lose any support? And the ones who supported a man who had a history of lying, cheating, and stealing and who was openly running the most dishonest campaign in American political history?
What is it about these voters that made none of those things a deal-breaker in voting for Donald Trump?
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
In many ways, Trump has already lost by even proposing such a thing. My God, he is a petty, insecure little shitgibbon.
Steve in the ATL
@bemused: Stephens’ great or so grandson is (or was, when I lived there) a judge in Athens. Maybe raven knows him and can feel out his opinion of his famous ancestor.
jonas
@Kay:
Trump may have a room temperature IQ, but Tillerson’s the one still voluntarily working for the “fucking moron.” So who’s really being the stupid one here?
rikyrah
When Your Only Political Strategy Is Division
by Nancy LeTourneau
October 10, 2017
…………………………………….
It is important to note that all of this came on the heels of Trump cutting a deal with the Democrats about the budget and the debt ceiling as well as a promise that he would work with them to protect the Dreamers. There was a lot of talk about the president finally doing that longed-for “pivot” towards the center of the political spectrum. As that talk was reverberating through the political world, this attack on players protesting against police violence was in the works.
Since then, Trump has issued an executive order that removes the insurance mandate for birth control coverage and AG Jeff Sessions released guidelines on protections for religious liberty—which many have described as giving license to discriminate. He followed those up with a list of hostage demands that must be met in order for him to protect the Dreamers.
Whether it is inherent to his personality or a planned political tactic (or some of both), it is clear that the president is betting on a strategy of division. This certainly isn’t the first time Republicans have done that. For example, in 2004, Karl Rove was credited with developing a “base strategy” in which he calculated that 50 plus 1 percent was good enough for the win. One of the tools he used in his efforts to get Bush re-elected was to place the question of gay marriage on as many state ballots as possible in order to inflame the base.
Trump and his strategists have taken that kind of thing to a whole new level. The so-called “culture wars” not only include the agenda of the “court evangelicals,” but also Trump’s intention to exploit Islamophobia and the age-old issue of racial fear-mongering for political gain.
This is why I’ve been saying for a while now that those who claim that Democrats are hurting themselves by embracing “identity politics” are, at best, naive. The Trump administration is doing everything humanly possible to attack women, people of color, immigrants, Muslims and LGBT Americans. That is their strategy right now. It is one that is based on nothing but fear, hate and division. To stay quiet or ignore those attacks is to be complicit.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: I think trump does forget about his demands, all the time. The ideologues and grifters he’s surrounded himself with are the ones who remind him.
rikyrah
Trump administration questions birth control’s health benefits
10/10/17 10:43 AM
By Steve Benen
The Trump administration rolled back the clock last week on contraception access, declaring that any health provider can refuse to cover birth control if they have “sincerely held” religious or moral objections. But what went largely overlooked is how officials made the case in support of their new policy.
As we discussed after the policy’s unveiling, the practical effects of the change are obvious: some American women who receive contraception at no cost will, as a result of the Trump administration’s new policy, have to pay higher out-of-pocket costs for birth control – because their employer says so.
It was largely assumed that Donald Trump and his team would make the argument about principle: the White House would say this change is about protecting “religious liberty” and the moral choices of conservative employers. But as it turns out, they also went after birth control on the merits.
Indeed, as Bloomberg Politics reported the other day, administration officials actually questioned “the links between contraception and preventing unplanned pregnancies.”
Boatboy_srq
@SiubhanDuinne: Something tells me there will be a repetiton of the “12 vs 72” discussion upthread – but it won’t be regarding response times.
Major Major Major Major
@jonas: are you asking us who’s being more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows the fool?
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Facts are facts.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: You don’t have to think highly of the generals’ characters to recognize that they viewed the initial rollout of the EO as a gigantic clusterfuck that caused chaos at airports, inadvertently ensnared U.S. military allies, etc. It seems plausible to me that they’d team up to try to prevent that sort of thing from happening again, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather because it was embarrassing and made the entire administration look amateurish.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@rikyrah: Interesting piece but it never even mentions the 30+year campaign of EvilHillary!!1! promoted by the MSM, with BernieBros/Jill Stein etc., happily adding fuel to the fire in 2016.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: are we to assume they’re totally ok with the new worse-but-less-chaotic ban on being the wrong kind of Muslim?
rikyrah
In defense of dissent ‘in a time of war’
10/10/17 11:29 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) have been trading criticisms for months, but the intensity of their dispute escalated quite a bit over the last few days. After the president said the Tennessee Republican “didn’t have the guts” to run for re-election, Corker lowered the boom.
“It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center,” the senator wrote. “Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.” In a New York Times interview, Corker went quite a bit further, explaining his “concerns” about Trump’s stability in more detail.
Not surprisingly, Trump’s boosters are not pleased. Kellyanne Conway called the senator’s criticisms “incredibly irresponsible,” adding in reference to Corker’s rebukes, “World leaders see that.”
It’s that last part of Conway’s reaction that came to mind while reading about Breitbart’s Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, calling on the GOP senator to resign.
MattF
Apparently no one has challenged Trump about his high IQ. I suspect it’s a lie– yeah, yet another one. Trump noticed at some point that the claim of a high IQ makes people back off, and so he makes the claim. I’ve seen someone claim to be a physicist after he saw me chat up a pretty girl in a bar. One just needs to picture Trump’s claims coming from a guy sitting at the end stool of a bar, deciding he’s going to claim to be a physicist, thinking ‘I want that’. It makes the whole thing a lot clearer.
For the record, doing well on IQ tests is highly correlated with the amount of reading you do. If you’ve never read a book, you’re not going to have a high IQ.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I am cynical about the claim that they did not know what was in the EO, when the two are standing right behind T.
ETA: If they were surprised by the fallout after knowing what was in the EO, then I have doubts about their supposed competence and intelligence.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I picked up on that. ?
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
Those weren’t bugs, they were features. They didn’t amount to a dealbreaker for those voters because they voted for everything about Trump that was the opposite of Hillary. They were offered in Hillary perhaps the most qualified candidate in the history of the republic; whose vision for the country was comprehensive, progressive and inclusive; who had been investigated again and again and come out squeaky clean. They chose instead Trump, the most unqualified, the most retrograde, and the most openly sleazy candidate in the race. (Also the dumbest and the laziest, but that’s not important right now.) It’s not that they overlooked the many serious flaws which the rest of America found disqualifying. They wanted this.
Major Major Major Major
On the radio now: “we told you earlier about a potential new fire on the shoulder of 101 by [somewhere], but it turns out that it’s just that the guardrail is still on fire from one of the other fires.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Boatboy_srq:
Wasn’t even Carter. It was Nixon in 1974. Link. But it doesn’t surprise me that they would try to put the blame on Carter.
Mnemosyne
@MattF:
As someone with diagnosed ADHD, I would be curious to see the full results of an IQ test on Trump. Apparently one of the characteristic results for people with ADHD is that the memory portion is much lower than the rest of the results. When they did my testing pre-medication, I had above-average results in every section except memory, which was average. It was a very marked difference.
Of course, with Trump that could also point to a dementia issue.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
Part of it is that is often takes him hours, if not days, to come up with his insults and proposals.
I mean, I can easily imagine a political rival calling, say, Harry S Truman a moron, and Truman immediately flying off the handle and saying something like “Oh yeah? I’ll show him who the moron is!” — but Trump saw/heard the reporting, chewed on it, got madder and madder, and finally, days later, suggested an IQ Test in a formal magazine interview.
Nothing about this President is normal. NOTHING.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I would not be at all surprised if he had a two-digit IQ.
Kay
The best news I heard today was this- there’s only 31 congressional work days left in the year. Every day the douchebags are golfing is a win.
They have to fail on tax reform! It’s their Katrina! :)
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: That’s my assumption. Anyone who agrees to work for Velveeta Voldemort is complicit in his policies, IMO, and Kelly at least (maybe Mattis too) is on the record praising the ban.
Monala
@Baud: Liberal Redneck has a video making just that point. “Since when do rednecks like the po-lice?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l71Pvvnp3oE
rikyrah
@Kay:
I feel you, Kay.
Their laziness does have its advantages.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
THIS! The BATFe should make it their single threaded purpose to identify everyone making a death threat, indict them, convict them, and remove their right to possess firearms. Just like felony domestic abusers, these people should not ever have any access to firearms.
They proved their irresponsibility the moment they uttered a death threat. If it isn’t a felony to threaten to kill someone you disagree with, it surely needs to be made a felony, and a felony that prevents gun ownership under all circumstances.
schrodingers_cat
T reneges on the DACA deal and who does the GQ reporter covering that beat blame? Pelosi and Schumer.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s most likely the case, but IQ itself is not a single number. It’s a total of (IIRC) 4 different numbers that test 4 different abilities (though most of them, as someone said above, are dependent on reading ability, which is why you have to be careful when interpreting IQ results).
J R in WV
@OzarkHillbilly:
When we visited Yellowstone every park service sign, you know, the big dark wood signs with engraved and painted bright yellow signs that say “Old Faithful–>” — they all had stapled signs telling visitors to Stay Away From the Buffalo!! They Are Not Tame!
Then they had the running total of people who had been fatally stomped into the ground, like 12 so far, in mid May, so many more tourists to go in the season. A motionless buffalo looks so harmless, except for the dumb animal weighing 2300 pounds and able to hit 30 MPH in 10 seconds parts.
We walked way around them when we came around a corner and saw one lying by the boardwalk. They looked as dangerous as an unexploded WW II bomb to me, because I know that even a dairy cow that has lost her cool is dangerous. And they’re been bred for mellow stability for 2000 generations, unlike wild buffalo.
Mnemosyne
@J R in WV:
I got the heck scared out of me by a bobcat that barely came up to my knee, so I just don’t get these people who are unfazed by an animal as big as an elk or a buffalo.
I have a photo of myself standing in front of a meadow where some elk are grazing, but there’s a sturdy fence between me and them, and they’re pretty far away.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: These people are like the JS and T voters who wanted to inject some unpredictability in the system.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
They played that well, though. It divided the GOP base and made Trump look like he preferred dealing with them, which he probably does. They probably knew he’d renege. He lies constantly. You can’t make a deal with someone like that. His word means nothing and at the end of the day that’s all he can
give them- his word. He doesn’t have a vote in Congress.
rikyrah
NorCal fires, what we know:
Zero or limited containment on all fires
44 people rescued by air
Untold number of historic structures gone
— SFChronicle (@sfchronicle) October 10, 2017
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
I disagree. Trump is not some harmless, befuddled old man who drifts around the White House being pulled this way and that by his advisers.
He’s like an angry dog who has been gnawing at the bones of “illegal immigration” and “keep the Muslims out” ever since he began talking about running for office. The racism and personal animosity towards Obama has long been stewing and is behind his obsession with obliterating Obama’s record.
There is a pattern to his vindictive behavior, and this has been apparent in the way he treats people who cross him when he was just a “mere celebrity New York real estate tycoon.”
Trump is an author of evil. He has a checklist of vile shit that he wants to get done. And he keeps returning to that list whenever he can.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Agreed no fucking way I am giving T a pass. Xenophobia and racism have been the two constants about him.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
Like unpredictable is a good thing when planning your life, your next project at work, your medical issues, your retirement, a new home, a vacation, ANYTHING!
I want to be sure my hotel is there, the roofer finishes his job right on schedule, the doctor is always a good diagnostician, and the car won’t break down. I want totally predictable for all those things I listed. Also Border Patrol, ICE at the airport, taxes, insurance, etc.
Everything needs to be predictable. That’s what we expect from government, they make things predictable by regulating insurance, construction codes, medical facilities, etc, etc. So people who voted to inject unpredictability into the system [ THE SYSTEM!!! ] were and are morons. The whole point of a system is predictability, I say that as a guy with years of experience as a systems analyst / designer!!!
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: They did, they made the best of the weak hand that they have been dealt with. I was criticizing the GQ MSM botlet.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: That is indeed great news — fingers crossed for another massive fail! Could be a bonus double-fail if the Politico report I read about Ivanka is true. According to this report, she’s allegedly “staking her reputation” (what reputation?) on inclusion of “her” child tax credit expansion into the reform package. So if tax reform goes down in flames, maybe that useless, vapid twit will go back to Manhattan and quit pretending she has an important job at the White House.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I know. I heard the same thing on Detroit public radio. “Heavy sigh- we almost had a bipartisan deal on DACA but for Nancy Pelosi” They’re such clowns. Democrats can’t agree to fund that wall and Trump knows it. The deal was bullshit because Trump is bullshit.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
RE: Nothing about this President is normal. NOTHING.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: They want far more than a wall, they want everything in Cotton-Perdue plus the wall. They want all immigrants to live in constant fear.
AnotherBruce
@Uncle Ebeneezer: No, it doesn’t mention those factors, but I think it does raise awareness of the role our popular culture contributed to this mess. I have a memory of Carroll O’Conner being taken aback by how Archie Bunker became a hero to a large number of All in The Family’s audience.
SFBayAreaGal
@Humboldtblue: Copied and pasted on my Facebook page.
Citizen Alan
@Baud:
Setting aside the fact that all of those sources are from the 1970s and early 80s, they all involve corrupt law enforcement going after good-looking white people. When people talk about Southerners and country music fans supporting Law & Order, they are referring to law enforcement’s traditional role of keeping a foot on the throat of minorities and the very poor.
Tenar Arha
@TriassicSands:
Oh wow, this sparked some thoughts….
My working, with tons of caveats, hypothesis for this inability to imagine others’ viewpoints without experiencing the same problem(s) is that you need to initially be an outsider of some kind to be able to do this. You need to have some sort of experience in your own life of being shut out, deprived, being hurt, you need to already be some kind of different…. So if you’re some flavor of WASP-man (/snort), considered the norm in our culture, you’ve never been forced to even imagine another POV.
With all the above in mind, IIRC there’s now studies that fictional worlds help some people imagine other experiences. But even fiction can’t help if we never recommend those books to all the little WASP-boys (/not sorry for this). Consider the prototypical recommendations to boy readers (and to the people who write for them) we don’t usually give them books where they only have the “girl’s POV.” Girls are given this all the time! The paucity of a boy never being recommended A Wrinkle In Time or Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret always makes me sad. And that’s just basic level stuff of what we’re dealing with when trying to teach empathy for other POV’s.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
I didn’t say that.
Tarragon
@rikyrah:
NY uses paper ballots with optical scan.
Shana
@Keith G: I have found that Incredible Cleaner works really well on pet stains. I can only find it at Bed Bath & Beyond. It’s not particularly expensive, less than $10 I think.
The Lodger
@Tarragon: Not to mention Oregon, with 100% mail-in paper ballots.