Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

We still have time to mess this up!

The words do not have to be perfect.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: It’s Never A Sprint, It’s Always A Marathon

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: It’s Never A Sprint, It’s Always A Marathon

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… A nonbinding referendum conducted by mail found 61.6 percent of Australians in favor of allowing gay couples to wed. Even though the measure was expected to be approved, the size of the win and the unusually large participation of 12.7 million Australians out of the 16 million eligible voters added to its political legitimacy.

Though the vote isn’t binding, all major political party leaders have promised to implement the decision, which would make Australia one of approximately 26 countries that allow gay couples to wed.

“The people of Australia have spoken, and I intend to make their wish the law of the land by Christmas,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said. “This is an overwhelming call for marriage equality.”

In a wealthy, urbanized country where 52 percent of the population regards themselves as Christian, according to a census last year, the vote marks a defeat for Australia’s two big churches, the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church, whose leaders were behind a well-organized campaign to defeat the referendum…

GLAD!

Apart from sneaking a slab of rainbow cake, what’s on the agenda for the day?
***********
.
SAD!


Possible candidate:


.

Reader Interactions

143Comments

  2. 2.

    Chet

    Gme1. Long day and a lot to do, but tonight I have parent-teacher conferences. I love them because my kids are great students and it’s nice to hear people say so.

  7. 7.

    BlueDWarrior

    Clearly McConnell and Ryan have declared that they should damn the torpedoes and power on, full steam ahead. At some point, voters themselves have to let it be known that politicians should actually act the way that voters ostensibly want them to, and that’s not by springing stuff like this out of the blue during a committee hearing.

    That is, unless the voters actually want this but just cannot admit it to anyone else; and if that’s true, then we got a lot of issues we need to be trying to solve on the political back end, as well as the front end.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “In all of my testimony, I can only do my best to answer all of your questions as I understand them and to the best of my memory,” Sessions said. “But I will not accept, and reject, accusations that I have ever lied under oath. That is a lie.”

    He just has a mind like a steel sieve.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “Most of you have not participated in a presidential campaign. And none of you had a part in the Trump campaign,” Sessions said. “It was a brilliant campaign in many ways. But it was a form of chaos every day from day one.”

    Yeah, we kinda knew that.

  13. 13.

    Patricia Kayden

    How nice of Rand Paul to benefit from his government healthcare after taking a beatdown but working hard to make sure that the rubes don’t get access to affordable healthcare at all. And all of this to ensure that his wealthy friends and donors get a bigger tax cut (which they don’t need). Nice move there, Randy.

  15. 15.

    TS

    Following from the Australian vote, the parliamentarians now have to vote on SSM (which they should have done without the vote). Some would think politicians would vote in relation to what the people in their electorate wanted – but this is not going to happen. Our RWNJ ex PM Tony Abbott had 80% of his electorate vote YES. Tony campaigned night and day for NO. He will vote NO. In western Sydney the highest NO vote occurred. Some have said this is because there is a large immigrant population in this area and their values oppose SSM. Most of the politicians from this area belong to the labor party (left wing) and most of them will vote YES.

    So it’s really good that a large majority agree with equality in all things, how folks voted won’t have a large impact on how their politicians vote – and the latter votes will have little, if any, impact on their election chances. Most politicians will vote as they would have without the nation wide vote.

    This all assumes that the parliament will bring in a bill to vote on. Way things are going with our politician eligibility issues and his low approval rates Malcolm Turnbull may not be the Prime Minister for very long.

  16. 16.

    JeanneT

    I’m feeling anxious and sad: this morning I’m driving to Lansing, MI to take my 10 year old dog Raleigh to a vet oncologist. The whole process started in August when he started peeing constantly and drinking bowls and bowls of water every day. His vet found he had high blood calcium and after some testing he was diagnosed with primary hyperparathyroidism, which is relatively rare in dogs. I took him to MSU vet school; to have a parathyroidectomy in September.

    Surgery went smoothly, but the removed tissue was cancerous, which is even MORE rare. There was a decent chance that they had gotten most of the cancer, so I was only mildly concerned for a while – he was feeling VERY good after surgery – but every blood test he’s had his calcium levels have crept up higher and higher. So today I find out the next best steps, and how much it might cost. I feel like our luck has been running consistently bad, so I’m not very hopeful – and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get health insurance on Raleigh. It sure would have paid off in this case.

  19. 19.

    Central Planning

    @Chet: Yesterday the school nurse told my kid (and another one in the office) that their moms should not be working and that they should be staying home so they can pick up their sick kids. That on top of telling my daughter she wouldn’t graduate because she was missing a class (she is getting all As and Bs).

    We wrote the emotional letter last night. Tonight we re-write, make less emotional, and send to principal and superintendent.

    Who says that kind of stuff?

  20. 20.

    msb

    @ JeanneT
    Best wishes for you and Raleigh.

    @ Republicans
    You creeps. Off to phone “my” senators and suggest (again) they resign because they are violating their oath of office.

  23. 23.

    p.a.

    So yesterday I sliced some bread for toast, and was like “hmmmm I don’t remember that air pocket from the last slice… hmmmm I also don’t remember the bag being torn. Goddammit gotta buy glue traps tomorrow.”
    This morning was ‘down cellar’ (hi fellow New Englanders!) where I saw, at the bottom of a kitchen trash bin (empty & w/o bag as yesterday was trash day), a likely suspect. Escorted him/her outside. Still buying glue traps in case he/she is stubborn, or in case the rest of the family made the move too.

  24. 24.

    Kay

    In apparent expectation of a Trump loss, the trolls began sowing seeds of doubt to make voters question a win by Hillary Clinton. But when Donald Trump’s victory began rolling in, they changed their tune and began tweeting about the Trump success.
    Kremlin propaganda tweets using the “VoterFraud” hashtag first appeared in August 2016 and slowly ramped up to an Election Day blitz, according to the NBC News analysis of some 36,000 archived tweets from a single anonymous source with knowledge of social media data.
    The “Moore” account was retweeted at other points in the campaign by political figures in the Trump orbit, including Donald Trump Jr.; the son of Michael Flynn, Trump’s fired national security adviser; and Trump associate and political consultant Roger Stone.
    The account was also retweeted by conservative media commentators like Fox News host Sean Hannity, Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs, author Ann Coulter and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

    It makes me wonder how far it goes back- whether they were involved in the voter fraud bullshit from the get-go. Republicans were being sanctioned for voter suppression as early as 1993, but “voter fraud” really exploded in 2000. It was treated as legitimate until about 2012, when that fact that 99% of it is bullshit started to reach mainstream outlets. So an arc of 12 years with the peak about 2010. Or, of course, Russians could just read US outlets and said “these dopes believe this, let’s manipulate them”

    Assange told Trump Jr the Trump campaign should promote the idea the election was stolen if Trump lost. I wonder what would have happened with that- how insane would the Trumpsters go if they believed that.

  25. 25.

    Immanentize

    @Central Planning:

    Who says that kind of stuff?

    Bitter self- righteously dead enders who hate their jobs and the success that others achieve. Maybe you can help her move on? (Question: Can you get the other kid’s parent to complain, too?)
    I know how that all feels. I am sorry for you and mostly for your kid. I wonder if she would ever have said that to a boy?

  27. 27.

    Baud

    Back to Oklahoma, if there’s one group of people I admire more than Juicers, it’s the people who stepped up to run, especially in red areas. I’d like to think I would have done the same if I were in a red area, but I don’t know. It’s hard.

  28. 28.

    satby

    @Central Planning: assholes, but you knew that.
    When I was a young single mother with a deadbeat ex one of my kids principals said something equally snotty to me about my “career” being more important than my kids to me. Even though she knew I was an hourly worker who didn’t get paid days off or any benefits at all. All the bullies in schools aren’t the kids, lots of the adults are too.

  29. 29.

    satby

    @p.a.: I hate to say it, but get the snap traps. They’re more humane than the glue ones because they kill faster. My friends told me once they found just a little mouse leg left on one glue trap and they quit using them then, because though they hated mice they didn’t hate them so badly that they wanted one to suffer so much it would chew it’s own leg off.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    This is my favorite part of the Don Jr./Wikileaks coordination:

    October 21: Wikileaks asks for a tax return to publish, trying to establish impartiality

    It’s funny that they’re asking for a tax return from a Trump- fat fucking chance on that- but it’s also amusing that this “transparency” org is actively working to conceal the fact that they’re helping Trump by trying to procure and “release” something they got FROM the campaign. The plan was to “release” what Don Jr. gave them so people would believe they were “impartial” so that perception of impartiality (gone now) was important to them.

  35. 35.

    Elmo

    @p.a.: No glue traps, PLEASE. Not unless you’re going to check them twice a day and dispatch the trapped mice – it’s a hideously cruel way to kill, and even mice shouldn’t die of thirst and terror.

  37. 37.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    People would have seen it as credibility-enhancing. I read more than one comment here joking about how Wikileaks should release the Trump tax returns. No one would have known any returns they got would have been vetted and placed by Don Jr. which is pretty important context!

    The tax returns didn’t want to be free.

  39. 39.

    debbie

    @Elizabelle:

    I saw your post yesterday about Julia Child photographs. Have you read her memoir, “My Life in France”? It’s wonderful. You can’t help but get caught up in her newfound passion. She died before it was finished, so her nephew wrote the last bits. He did a great job: Julia’s voice shines throughout the book, just as if she was in the room reading it to you.

  40. 40.

    Baud

    @Kay: Absolutely. Assange’s gambit would have worked easily.

    I find it funny and ironic that Hillary is the one who keeps getting exonerated from bogus accusations, while all her haters are being revealed for who they truly are. Even the NYT.

  42. 42.

    MomSense

    @Chet:

    Fantastic!

    @Central Planning:

    Who says that kind of stuff? The kind of person who has no business working in a school. Wowza. You may want to inform a parent group and bring people with you to meet with the administration and superintendent. Do you have a supportive school board member or two?

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I could not believe the NYTimes was flogging Uranium One just as the Trump Administration promoted it. Give me a fucking break.

  49. 49.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @p.a.: @satby: Also, these work exceedingly well when properly placed. In the AM you put it in a 5 gallon bucket of water. Best of all is a good mouser. My pig farming buddy was trapping in excess of 60 mice a week without ever seeing a drop in their #s. Then he got 2 cats. End of the rodent problem.

  50. 50.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Kay:
    @Baud:

    Don’t forget the billion and 1 Trump voter stories that were basically all the same.

    Has anyone directly asked a journalist why they don’t interview Clinton voters and gotten a straight answer? I haven’t heard of it.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    They say they knew all along Wikileaks was a political operation in addition to a “transparency” org. Because of course they did. They’re hugely sophisticated and savvy- no one ever manipulates or fools them. Have you ever, ever known any of these people to admit a mistake? They ARE the fact-checkers and hypocrisy police! It’s impossible for THEM to be manipulated. They’re not the great unwashed. They’re the SAVIORS of the great unwashed.

    So, you know, the less fashionable word for that would be “political operatives” – that’s what operatives do- they look for damaging information and release it to achieve political goals. They’re no different than any other operative except for the aura of mystery and dude-bro coolness. If Wikileaks are managing their public perception of “impartiality” by asking A CAMPAIGN for something to release than they are squarely in the ordinary “operative” category.

  54. 54.

    Betty Cracker

    @debbie: To name one example, Greenwald is now pretending that he always believed WikiLeaks’ primary mission was to bedevil the US — a position he attacked others for holding for years.

    PS: Thanks for the link. I have a framed photo of JC, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck and Max Bugnard in my kitchen. Looks like a lovely book!

  56. 56.

    Baud

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:

    No lie. But the sad fact must be noted that there isn’t a single Democratic politician who has reached out to Clinton supporters specifically, despite the size of our group. I understand the politics behind that, and I’ll settle for politicians not going out of their way to shit on us (looking at you, Warren), but the silence hasn’t gone unnoticed.

  59. 59.

    MJS

    @Baud: I won’t read their article, but I wonder if anyone left a comment that Shep Smith of Fox News thoroughly debunked the story, and that as a result, the NYT now has less credibility than Fox News.

  61. 61.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    I’m disgusted by it.

    Is it just me or is there barely a mention of the shooting at the elementary school in Rancho Tehama? It looks like our stupid president cut and pasted a tweet from the last mass shooting.

  73. 73.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: We’re more like crime victims than failures. Lots of Dems will be running for president in 2020. Are they really going to cede Hillary supporters to Baud!

  77. 77.

    Chyron HR

    @Betty Cracker:

    Greenwald is now pretending that he always believed WikiLeaks’ primary mission was to bedevil the US

    And yet they’re not even doing that anymore, suspicious emoji.

  80. 80.

    Amir Khalid

    @JeanneT:
    Yikes. Hoping for the best for you and Raleigh.

    As I slowly acquire the motor skills to play the guitar — not too easy for a 56-year-old lefty learning to play righty — I am tempted by cheap electric guitars. That’s what I window-shop for online these days, even though it will be a few more months before I should even think about adding to the collection.
    A China-based maker of cheap guitar parts, Ammoon, is now offering completely built-up Les Paul types for about US$100 (the white one looks gorgeous) and Strat types for US$60, way way below Epiphone and Squier prices. What I’ve seen of them online suggests that with some DIY setup work, plus cheap pickup and tuner and cosmetic upgrades, I could get decent instruments to keep The Girl company for not all that much. These and a Fender Champion 100 amp would make me a happy boy.

  81. 81.

    JeanneT

    Thanks for all the kind thoughts for Raleigh: we’re out the door in 5 on our way to the consult. I’ll report when we know what’s next!

  82. 82.

    Peale

    @rikyrah: yep. It’s kind of nice to be upper middle class and white, you know. You will never be accused of being a racist or having a dumb idea. Nope. If there’s an unsavory element to the Republican Party and conservatism, it’s coming from the lower classes. Joe Sixpack Bunker Lunchbucket has all these awful ideas and the racism in the country is all his fault. Dave who reads spreadsheets for a living and Gladys with the new Volvo get to vote GOP and aren’t the source of any of theses problems.

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @Chyron HR:

    The perception of “impartiality” was essential to the Wikileaks theft and release of the emails. Media treated the emails as apolitical- just some info that wanted to get free.

    There would have been an entirely different approach if anyone had known the Trump campaign was in contact with Assange, because that’s a political operation.

    Assange knows how important the perception of impartiality is to his political operation- that’s why he wants to release something to appear impartial. To now say “well, gosh, all the cool kids knew Wikileaks was a political op” ignores WHY they were given credibility. It WASN’T “the records speak for themselves”- it was “this IMPARTIAL group released information on one of the candidates”

  84. 84.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud:

    We’re more like crime victims than failures.

    Yep.

    Are they really going to cede Hillary supporters to Baud!

    They know we’ll come around. We always do.

  85. 85.

    Baud

    @Peale: Good point. We also tend to focus on Joe Sixpack Bunker Lunchbucket because of the persistent myth that they are more “gettable.” But there’s no basis for that.

  92. 92.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rikyrah: The Guardian had one the AM after the Virginia electoral slaughter. The headline was disgusting enuf I didn’t bother clicking thru and as ridiculous as it was I did not want to link to it here and bring a downer to the party.

  94. 94.

    Matt McIrvin

    @rikyrah: Journalists see the Archie Bunkers as mysterious, exotic creatures, therefore interesting. Comfortable conservative voters in the suburbs are people they already know and understand. Sure, everyone wants a tax cut and some people don’t mind if the world burns as a consequence–where’s the story?

  95. 95.

    different-church-lady

    @p.a.: Please don’t do glue traps, unless you can bear the displeasure of completing the process by your hand. (Voice of experience)

  97. 97.

    Kay

    You have to love how petty these “great men” are, Putin and Assange. “Hillary Clinton attacked me” – so I’ll seek revenge on hundreds of millions of people. People seriously put this forth as justification. “Oh, they HATE Hillary Clinton so they interfered in an election!” Because the whole fucking world revolves around if Julian Assange gets prosecuted for something or if Putin is insulted because he blatantly fixed his own election and she called him out on it.

  98. 98.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Peale:

    Joe Sixpack Bunker Lunchbucket has all these awful ideas and the racism in the country is all his fault.

    Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. It’s all DEMs fault. We made him become racist.

  99. 99.

    chris

    @p.a.: Please no glue traps! The only humane way to kill mice is with Victor traps. Accept no substitutes. And they need to be modified to a hair trigger. Play with it, you’ll figure it out.
    That said, you can get live traps but they need to be checked several times a day. We tried one in the store where I worked and the industrious rodent chewed his way out overnight.
    During the the great mouse invasion of 2008 we tried everything and Victor was the… victor. In the store people made jokes about the trapline and we caught an unknown number of mice. My neighbour counted 62 kills in his old farm house. I got over 30 in my little cabin. Trust me, I know from mouse traps.

    ETA: OH weighs in with a live trap made of tin. that would work.

  100. 100.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Yeah. The headline was something along the lines of “What are Hillary voters doing one year after their epic life changing emotionally destroying loss”.

  105. 105.

    Amir Khalid

    Is anyone else here on Firefox Quantum yet? Mozilla say they’ve souped it up like crazy, and it does feel faster. But they’ve tweaked its appearance in ways that I’m not entirely happy with.

  107. 107.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: Which makes some sense, since to a UK paper, Hillary supporters are themselves sufficiently exotic to be worth reporting on.

    I think the US media ignore Hillary supporters for the same reason they don’t talk much about well-off conservatives: it’s dog-bites-man to them, the default, not exciting or a story. Many of the people involved undoubtedly voted for her themselves. Through the 2016 campaign they figured Hillary Clinton was going to win, and constantly needled her in part because they thought of her as manifestly the next President.

  112. 112.

    Amir Khalid

    @Matt McIrvin:
    The Grauniad’s political commentators are basically the British Wilmerite Society. Which I find disappointing in a mostly sensible newspaper.

  114. 114.

    NobodySpecial

    I’m a bit of a contrarian on the glue traps issue for one reason: When you catch the adults with snap traps, the babies are too small for most of them. That means either the problem sticks around another generation, or either way the babies starve to death. Cruel, yes, but nature is frequently cruel, and just because I don’t see it doesn’t make it less cruel.

  115. 115.

    ThresherK

    Spousal ThresherK and I have finished the first part of our move.

    This life-altering event sees us with a new address five whole miles away. And we still have to clean up, discard, and donate a bunch of stuff. Plus neither of the cats has been moved.

    Best part: Free heat and hot water. Small apartment so my wife will need to address her hoarding. Her car doesn’t need a jack to perform an oil change. Rent’s a lot, lot less. The movers we hired were great!

    Worst part: No garage, having to get rid of some of my grease-monkey tools. (Really pinched for space, so a hydraulic jack, jackstands, even electric drill may be unneeded.) My car does need a jack to perform an oil change. May be getting rid of my litte, little-used guitar amp (Peavey 40).

    Cheers!

  116. 116.

    Amir Khalid

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    There are too many Muslims who believe that to truly emulate the Prophet one should live in the 7th century like he did. Are there Christians who yearn to live in the early first century?

  118. 118.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    I noticed that too. It’s sad. We have a new school and it has cameras all over the place. One of the parents asked last night why there can’t be “cameras in the bathroom”- the shooting was mentioned. The superintendent was like “well, we can’t do that – I don’t know if it’s illegal but if it isn’t it should be”.

    Our old school was built in 1906 and people would regularly defeat the doorbell-intercom-duct tape “security system” by holding the door for the person coming in after them. Politeness was thwarting security ! :)

    Now we check in at the entry door – one door- again at the office-another door- and wear a visitor badge. The design is odd. It’s like they put the front office in as a kind of “buffer zone” for shooters to go nuts in before they get to the kids. They’re almost sacrificial up there. I worry about the 2 we have upfront here sometimes. They have to get past them to get to me, and I’d be the one they’d be mad at.

  122. 122.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @different-church-lady: Yes! In the winning department, Dems took back control of the Albuquerque mayor’s office and city council in yesterday’s elections. The long march to victory continues, step by step.

  123. 123.

    Denali

    As in so many cases, see Sean Hannity, follow the money. When the United States shut off people funding Wikileaks through MasterCard and Visa, Assange found another source-Russia. No question about the pettiness, though. When Assange begin publicly attacking Hilliary, I thought it was wrong of him to try to influence the election, but I did not think he would actually work with the Trump campaign or that they would acutally be so stupid as to collude with him.

  125. 125.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    We had a truly horrible bullying incident Friday. So the punishments were fine, initially- 10 days suspension for the bully, 5 days for the egger-on who filmed it but then they suspended two boys who were watching and left because they didn’t report it. A lot of people were watching. These two left – which is captured on the video- so just the LEAVERS get suspended? The lesson is if you’re not going to report you must watch the whole thing? Stay out of the video frame? What?

  126. 126.

    ThresherK

    @Amir Khalid: At some point the shipping costs would be incredible, but I appreciate the sentiment,

    @rikyrah: I don’t know if the new, tiny, stove and oven can handle a half-sheet pan.

  128. 128.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    It’s like they put the front office in as a kind of “buffer zone” for shooters to go nuts in before they get to the kids.

    That’s exactly it’s purpose. It is sad that we’ve come to this.

  129. 129.

    Denali

    @MomSense,

    Meant to thank you for the gardening advice re vines for a wall in a previous thread- all suggestions noted for spring planting! Snow predicted for this weekend.

  130. 130.

    Peale

    @Amir Khalid: first century? No. Maybe 3rd century. Even the Amish who forgo as many of modern life’s conveniences as possible don’t really want to be stoned to death by pagans. There are Christians who still actually ritually flagellate and those who hang themselves from crosses during Holy Week. But that’s not the same thing as wanting the Roman legions to come in and feed you to the lions.

  131. 131.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    They have a kind of gallows humor, the kids. They say “school shooter” to mean someone menacing and angry. Like “postal” in the days of yore. A “school shooter” coat is a dressier coat- trench coat, etc. People can adapt to anything- whether they should have to is the real question.

  132. 132.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW: That line is older than my father who got it from his father, which places it in the early 20th century at least.

  135. 135.

    bjacques

    @Kay: The Wilmerites I know have unrealistic expectations of Democratic politicians and take the latter’s failure to live up to them as betrayal and proof that the whole political system is rotten. They hate mainstream Democrats worse than they do Republicans, of whom they never expected anything, and scold anyone who votes Democratic for being in the pockets of neoliberals. It’s all about themselves.

    Assange and Greenwald stoke that emotional immaturity for their self-aggrandizement, while Putin does so for global political advantage. Most teenage pop and comics fans eventually grow out of it, but people who approach politics like pop fans almost never do.

    That said, the right has had a hate on for Hillary since she called them out on their bullshit in the 1990s, and Putin has in the 2010s, and both must have been beside themselves with glee when the progressive left picked it up. There have been a number of other Democratic politicians who could fairly be called neoliberal, tone-deaf or even center-right, but about the attention to Hillary there’s a certain something I just can’t put my finger on…

    Last year we were told that the only real divide in American politics was economic, but the real fault line runs in a different direction and is a lot deeper.

  136. 136.

    Amir Khalid

    @Peale:
    I’ve heard of Filipino Catholics who do that, and it amazes me. Just like the Shiites who practise self-flagellation on Al-Shura. It’s not a Sunni thing, and it’s well outside the Shia mainstream too.

  137. 137.

    Dupe70

    @Kay: It’s even funnier that Trump’s taxes are so bad he could not provide them even on return that wouldn’t make him look bad (or poor.)

  138. 138.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Amir Khalid: I remember that during the campaign, they went out of their way to seek out and publish letters from Guardian-reading Trump supporters in the US (who have to be a pretty unusual population). The majority of the ones they printed, if I recall correctly, were people who had “heighten the contradictions” theories, or actively wanted to punish the country or “shake things up” by voting for the worst candidate, or who just thought of politics as entertainment and saw Clinton as boring.

  139. 139.

    Matt McIrvin

    @bjacques: Some are literally convinced that the Democratic Party is to the right of the Republican Party. This is a tendency that’s been building ever since the Assange/Snowden/Greenwald fans started emphasizing ways in which Obama was worse than Bush.

  140. 140.

    hueyplong

    @Dupe70: Yes, kind of “Hey, I’m ok with treason and democracy-destroying, but I can’t let anybody see my tax returns. That’s the bridge too far.”

  141. 141.

    bjacques

    @Matt McIrvin: I have a gay friend who believed that last year because Trump waved a rainbow flag at a rally by the Log Cabin Republicans or similar, while Hillary is friends with Saudis and supported the nuclear deal with Iran, which executes gay people. Now she’s crazy about Bitcoin.

  142. 142.

    MomSense

    @Denali:

    Oh thanks. Of course I will want to see pics! My neighbor and I cleaned out the berm between our houses and now I’m going to start looking through my gardening books for ideas about plantings suitable for both shade and a slope.

  143. 143.

    Matt McIrvin

    @bjacques: Over on LGM’s thread about the “Zizek Game” somebody posted a long quote from Slavoj Zizek (from 2016, I think) about how, if you looked past the irrelevant clowning, Donald Trump was really an ordinary liberal-centrist politician. There seems to have been a lot of this going around on the counterintuitive-hipster left.

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