Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Thursday Morning Open Thread

Thursday Morning Open Thread

by | 181 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,


.

Apart from working together to lift everyone up, what’s on the agenda for the day?

***********

Reader Interactions

181Comments

  2. 2.

    Mary G

    So happy to see such a surge in ACA participation. A lot of pissed off people if they repeal the mandate.

  3. 3.

    Chet

    Gme1. Went to parent teacher conferences for my son. Teacher said she would love a whole class full of clones of him. ? His report card was nothing but vowels–A’s and O’s.

    Today I have a biweekly meeting which I always miss two-thirds of because of class, but I always go because there is pizza.

  4. 4.

    p.a.

    If they fail to enact any of the deplorables’ agenda, even the deplorables won’t be stupid enough to accept excuses blaming Killary, Democraps, etc. I think. Might be an outbreak of the “Who’s a RINO?” stoning lottery. Popcorn, marshmallows!

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @TS: True. The crazy RWNJs (the 27%) always think the answer to waking up with morning breath is to rip out one’s teeth, tongue and throat.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Papa John’s added that it is “open to ideas from all. Except neo-nazis.” It has previously tried to distance itself from white supremacists who praised Schnatter’s comments, saying it does not want those groups to buy its pizza.

    The company’s stock has fallen by nearly 13% since Schnatter’s comments.

    Consider my Freud to be thoroughly schadened.

  13. 13.

    Schlemazel

    @p.a.:
    You indicate a level of confidence in mouth-breathing morons that experience tells me is unwarranted. I hope you are correct though

  14. 14.

    HeleninEire

    So today is my 1 year anniversary in Dublin. The year flew by. Its been simultaneously one of me best years and one of my least productive. Really; I just piss around all day doing whatever the hell I want.

    It’s been FABULOUS!!!

  15. 15.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    True. The crazy RWNJs (the 27%) always think the answer to waking up with morning breath is to rip out one’s teeth, tongue and throat.

    Goddam snooty Lie-beral — how do you know that doesn’t work? Because it doesn’t fit with your snowflake “beliefs” system? I say we have a bunch of them — say 10 or 20 million –prove you worng. And just to REALLY show you, they can rinse (what’s left of) their mouths with antifreeze.

    THAT will show you, Libtard!

  19. 19.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Loud continuous sniffling and dry mouth. Hmmmm I wonder what could have caused that?

  21. 21.

    msdc

    Whites without a college degree – aka some of those who would be most hurt by this tax plan – give it some of its highest support.

    This is the shit we’re up against.

  23. 23.

    germy

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The crazy RWNJs (the 27%) always think the answer to waking up with morning breath is to rip out one’s teeth, tongue and throat.

    Someone else’s. Not their own teeth, tongue and throat.

    Ours.

  26. 26.

    Baud

    In more hopeful news, recent press reports suggest that the “Unity Commission” may be focused on reducing the number of superdelegates. If that’s the only significant change, I can live with (even approve of) it. Report is supposed to come out next month. Really hope they don’t blow up the party.

  28. 28.

    OzarkHillbilly

    WHAT???? People have rights???? And we have to actually respect those rights???? Who’da thunk it!

    ST. LOUIS • A federal judge issued on Wednesday wide-ranging restrictions on the ability of St. Louis police to declare protests “unlawful” and use chemical agents against protesters.

    U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry’s order says that police can’t declare an “unlawful assembly” and enforce it against those “engaged in expressive activity, unless the persons are acting in concert to pose an imminent threat to use force or violence or to violate a criminal law with force or violence.”

    Police also can’t use that unlawful assembly order or threaten the use of chemical agents to punish protesters for exercising their rights, she wrote.

    Perry barred the use of pepper spray, mace and other chemical agents against “expressive, non-violent activity” without probable cause to make an arrest and without providing “clear and unambiguous warnings” and an opportunity to heed those warnings.

    Police cannot give dispersal orders without giving people specifics about what area they must leave, what chemical will be used, time enough to leave and allowing a way to leave that area, she wrote.

    She also immediately ordered both sides to mediation, something Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Missouri, called unusual at this stage in a case. Rothert said that the ACLU was open to working something out with city officials.

    The lawsuit was in response to this incident: Undercover cop, Air Force officer, med student among those police swept up during downtown protest Some pretty egregious abuse of police powers. Whose streets? I guess they don’t belong to the police after all.

  29. 29.

    Amir Khalid

    @NobodySpecial:
    Whether they enjoy stepping on their own dicks or not, they’re doing this at the behest of the Billionaires And Yet Still Greedy Club, who seem oblivious to how much people hate their “Fuck the poor” political agenda. I wonder how this group, not all of whom are mere heirs to wealth, can fail to see the need to accommodate hostile public sentiment let alone to figure out work around it.

  30. 30.

    Bruce K

    @Baud: Weren’t the comments leading to the stock drop the ones where Schnatter blamed kneeling NFL protestors for his reduced profits?

    Or did the joke just fly over my head so fast it left contrails?

    (Still, it’s a bit heartening to see that aggravated douchefrigatery turns out to be a net loser, as marketing strategies go.)

  32. 32.

    Kay

    2 Republican lawyers told me yesterday that Roy Moore is okay because Muhammad had young wives. I don’t know anything about Muhammad and I don’t think it’s relevant anyway, but I think this what they say to liberals instead of the Joseph/Mary excuse- like “what about your friend Muhammad?” thinking I’ll rush to the defense of Muhammad, because of course I will.

    I just stare at these people. It’s become wholly one-sided “conversations”. There’s nothing to say.

  33. 33.

    Ben Cisco

    Hello everyone.

    Glad to hear and see Johnny Schnatts AND his manhole cover pizza getting dragged all over creation.

    Mom’s got a brand new knee and she’s doing WORK. Getting pretty close to 100%. I am officially out of excuses for not getting mine done.

    Chatter is WAY up in her area of Alabama for Doug Jones. Also digging the visual memes in favor of his campaign.

  36. 36.

    nonynony

    @Kay: 2 Republican lawyers told me yesterday that Roy Moore is okay because Muhammad had young wives.

    They don’t even know who they’re trying to convince anymore or why, do they?

  39. 39.

    Kay

    @Ben Cisco:

    I still think he’s a huge long shot. I bet they’re lying in those polls- won’t say they’ll vote for the sex offender but they will.

  40. 40.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @msdc:

    Whites without a college degree – aka some of those who would be most hurt by this tax plan – give it some of its highest support.

    #EconomicAnxiety

    I swear all those stoopid left wing fuck heads who said Trump’s base wasn’t racist but suffering from #EconomicAnxiety should be slapped.

  43. 43.

    Caravelle

    @Kay: Hah. Last I knew Muhammad’s child marriages were used by evangelicals as arguments *against* Islam. There’s a Chick tract invoking this.

  44. 44.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @clay: he had a lot of fun with it. Went full Zapruder film (“back and to the left, back and to the left”)

  45. 45.

    Baud

    @Chet:

    Teacher said she would love a whole class full of clones of him.

    Don’t do it. The copies are not as good as the original.

  56. 56.

    Kay

    @Caravelle:

    They do this a lot- use whole groups of people as my “friends” – “but you love lesbians!” – it’s too exhausting to engage on it because that’s the problem, right? That they’re lumping people into groups? I could love some lesbians and dislike other lesbians and still insist they all have civil rights. I don’t have the patience for this. It’s too much work for a conversation.

  59. 59.

    Amir Khalid

    @Kay:
    Yes, according to tradition he did have young wives, including some who would today be considered far too young to be married. As a political leader he would also have entered into marriages arranged for the sake of political/diplomatic alliances. In the 7th century welfare assistance for widows and orphans was not a thing, so a widowed mother’s only hope was to find a new husband, and a man of adequate means night do that for a widow. Per tradition, the Prophet was no sexual predator.

  63. 63.

    different-church-lady

    @NobodySpecial:

    At some point people have to realize the GOP enjoys stepping on their dicks.

    The fun part of the way you constructed that sentence is that “their” could refer to “people” or “the GOP” and it still works.

  65. 65.

    Sab

    OT Charlie Pierce calls Kasich a “moderate”. What the phuck is wrong with our punditry. I am a seventh or eighth generation Ohioan and the first Democrat in my family. Politically I am not that different from my Republican ancestors. They were party of Lincoln. Some of them were abolitionists. Many of them fought on the Union side in the Civil War. They were fiscal conservatives and social moderates.

    We had a corruption scandal about ten years ago when we ran out all the Republican hierarchy . So we got rid of the guys with ethical standards who were embarrassed by their occasional ethical lapses( Robert Taft, Jim Petro) and now we have shameless grifters (Kasich, Mary Taylor, Josh Mandel). Republicans have no bench because the shameless grifters ran out the mostly decent but ethically slightly challenged.

    Democrats hoped it would help us but Ohio is mostly tribally red.They don’t care who policies hurt as long as it hurts the other. Their communities are clobbered but they don’t care as long as blacks in Cleveland and Columbus are also hurt.

    Very very sad.

  68. 68.

    Matt McIrvin

    All I want for Christmas is for Republicans to lose their precious tax cut because they got greedy and couldn’t resist taking one more shot at Obama’s legacy.

    They couldn’t really do it any other way, right? (Short of abolishing the filibuster, or amending the reconciliation process itself.) To pass it with 50 votes they need to get it through the reconciliation process. To get it through the reconciliation process, they have to somehow find money to fund it in the budget. Pulling part of the ACA was the least painful way they could see to get there.

  69. 69.

    Patricia Kayden

    @p.a.: The irony being that if Republicans actually enacted all of their horrible proposed legislation, the Deplorables and White Working Class would be screwed. Thank goodness that Republicans are so horrible at getting things done and are only experts at obstructing.

  71. 71.

    ArchTeryx

    From what I hear, the Senate has 50 votes on the floor for their monstrosity of a bill, which would mean that the individual mandate is doomed and giant cuts to Medicaid and Medicare are inevitable. I’m hoping that what I hear is wrong.

    In the meantime, been working furiously to help a very old friend of mine get the word out on a pair of novels she wrote and got successfully crowdfunded to publish. It’s very, very dark stuff and has a truly smart and ruthless villain, which suits me perfectly.

  72. 72.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Christopher Steele believes his dossier on Trump-Russia is 70-90% accurate

    Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who compiled an explosive dossier of allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, believes it to be 70% to 90% accurate, according to a new book on the covert Russian intervention in the 2016 US election.

    The book, Collusion: How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win, by the Guardian journalist Luke Harding, quotes Steele as telling friends that he believes his reports – based on sources cultivated over three decades of intelligence work – will be vindicated as the US special counsel investigation digs deeper into contacts between Trump, his associates and Moscow.

    “I’ve been dealing with this country for 30 years. Why would I invent this stuff?” Steele is quoted as saying.

    One of the reasons his dossier was taken seriously in Washington in 2016 was Steele’s reputation in the US for producing reliable reports on Russia, according to Harding’s book.

    Between 2014 and 2016, he authored more than a hundred reports on Russia and Ukraine, which were commissioned by private clients but shared widely within the state department and passed across the desks of the secretary of state, John Kerry, and the assistant secretary Victoria Nuland, who led the US response to the annexation of Crimea and the covert invasion of eastern Ukraine.

    The sources for those reports were the same as those quoted in the dossier on Trump, which included allegations that the Kremlin had personally compromising material on the US president, including sex tapes recorded during a trip to Moscow in 2013, and that Trump and his associates actively colluded with Russian intelligence to influence the election in his favour.

    Years earlier, Steele shared the results of his investigation of the global football organisation, Fifa, with a senior FBI official in Rome; that led to an investigation by US federal prosecutors, and ultimately the arrest of seven Fifa officials.

    “The episode burnished Steele’s reputation inside the US intelligence community and the FBI. Here was a pro, a well-connected Brit, who understood Russian espionage and its subterranean tricks. Steele was regarded as credible,” Harding writes.

  75. 75.

    different-church-lady

    @Kay:

    It’s become wholly one-sided “conversations”. There’s nothing to say.

    It should have started being like this years ago. Because these idiots want one of two things: (a) agreement, or (b) argument. What we should have started giving them a long time ago is huge doses of shunning, because that’s the only thing that gives them even the first clue that they might be wrong.

  79. 79.

    Patricia Kayden

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “There are pockets of extreme poverty next to extreme wealth,” he said. “It’s my job to have uncomfortable conversations, be an agent of change and get the work done now.”

    I wish him all the best. It’s great to see him in a position of authority now and I hope he’ll be able to get some good things done. Hopefully, we’ll see a wave of similar fresh candidates running next November.

  80. 80.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    2 Republican lawyers told me yesterday that Roy Moore is okay because Muhammad had young wives.

    Possible response:
    “Wait — so you’re trying to tell me that Roy Moore is actually the Prophet of Islam? Or at least is trying to be like him? I thought he was a Baptist?!? But you’re telling me he’s a Bapto-Muslim? Do the voters know???”

    I’m sure they’re jeenyus lawyers, and will have a witty (in their “minds”) riposte … that would make no sense to anyone rational.

    Fuckem

  81. 81.

    ArchTeryx

    @Baud: Good! I’m glad to hear it’s just propaganda at this stage. I do remember that more than once during the Obamacare repeal fight, they said they had the votes and didn’t.

  85. 85.

    Matt McIrvin

    @ArchTeryx: Every round of attempted ACA repeal/sabotage has started with an alarmingly confident pronouncement that they have the votes this time.

  87. 87.

    hueyplong

    We’re closer to my dream of Papa John’s failing altogether, creating internet flame wars over whether its demise was caused by kneeling NFL players, angry alt-righters, or its owner’s general douchery.. The icing on that particular cake would be the temporary crowding out of posts declaring X region’s pizza fantabulous and Y region’s pizza unfit for human consumption.

  90. 90.

    rikyrah

    Maddow had on one of the WaPo reporters on the Judge Pedophile story.
    She asked her if she could find evidence of Judge Pedophile dating women that were age appropriate. The reporter said NO.

  93. 93.

    different-church-lady

    @hueyplong:

    We’re closer to my dream of Papa John’s failing altogether, creating internet flame wars over whether its demise was caused by kneeling NFL players, angry alt-righters, or its owner’s general douchery.

    Then we move on to the next step: The NFL failing altogether, creating internet flame wars over whether its demise was caused by kneeling NFL players, angry alt-righters, or its owners’ general douchery.

  95. 95.

    Baud

    @rikyrah: I was never a big fan of the supers. For the record, I do NOT believe that they had any effect on the outcome. That’s just post hoc rationalizing by the losing side.

  98. 98.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @different-church-lady: My take is Steele is pretty sure there is a sex tape, and I have been reading other reports of sex tapes out there, most of which are obviously doctored but one that appears to be real. Whether there are any golden showers in it is unknown.

  103. 103.

    aimai

    @Kay: Why don’t you say “So–he did it. He didn’t marry them but he pursued and cozened and physically assaulted children and teenagers while in the performance of his duty as a DA? Is that what you are saying? And you are saying that you are ok with him lying to you and his family and Alabama about doing it–because he said he didn’t do it, and now you are defending him on the grounds that he did do it? I’m confused–aren’t you confused? Just tell me straight out: are you in favor of pedophilia as long as it is important men who do it?”

  106. 106.

    Patricia Kayden

    @OzarkHillbilly: The way the police treated the mostly Black protesters stands in contrast to the way they treated the violent White Supremacists who beat up and killed someone in Charlottesville. I’m glad they’re being held accountable for their biased behavior.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    This is a really common argument among dumber conservatives- “liberals” love X group therefore any example from X group can be used against liberals/to defend conservatives.

    I’m used to it and even I am baffled sometimes – “why are they using this example with me?”

  109. 109.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @rikyrah: Thanks, glad you like it. I didn’t do much with that one, just some basic adjustment and saturation. There were quite a few folk taking pictures last night. At least I remembered my head lamp this time(no lights on the trail).

  110. 110.

    Kay

    I’m wondering why the allegations against Poppy Bush aren’t getting more play. I’m okay if they don’t – he’s out of office and ancient, but it’s interesting how no one will go there.

  111. 111.

    Jeffro

    @msdc:

    Whites without a college degree – aka some of those who would be most hurt by this tax plan – give it some of its highest support.

    Good piece by Thomas Edsall out today on this and related: White On White Voting

    Trump’s anti-immigrant, racially loaded messages resonated most powerfully among voters living in the least diverse, most racially isolated white communities. It is in these locales, which are experiencing the earliest signs of minority growth, that anxiety over approaching diversity is strongest.

    Put another way, anger, fear and animosity toward immigrants and minorities was most politically potent in the communities most insulated from these supposed threats.

    Orfield and Stancil’s work complements findings I reported on in a column last month that showed that Trump performed best in states and communities that were heavily white, but which had experienced relatively small increases in minority populations, notably from immigrants. While small in absolute numbers, the rate of growth represented by these increases was often exceptionally high: For example, if the nonwhite share of the population grew from 2 to 6 percent, the rate of growth was 200 percent.

    Trump clearly inflamed and mobilized white voters living in these circumstances. Neither Romney nor John McCain, the previous two Republican nominees, campaigned on racially freighted issues and neither produced the same pattern of support.

    Shorter version: in heavily majority-white areas that saw their relatively small minority populations tick up by large % (but still small enough numbers that it didn’t tip the balance), whites voted…white.

    Or an even shorter version, from above:
    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    I swear all those stoopid left wing fuck heads who said Trump’s base wasn’t racist but suffering from #EconomicAnxiety should be slapped.

  112. 112.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Sab: Perhaps Kasich is moderate in comparison to the extremists like Ted Cruz and Gohmert and Bannon and Judge Moore. The GOP has gone so far over the deep end at the right side of the political spectrum that calling Kasich a moderate may not mean much.

  115. 115.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud: During the primaries I saw Barney Frank give a pretty good defense of the supers. Basically, the elected officials aren’t competing for delegate positions and it brings more people into the process. It’s good for party building in the long run.

  116. 116.

    mai naem mobile

    I saw on the Twitter Machine that the NRSC have a poll which shows Jones leading Moore 51 to 39. That’s the NRSC not a some flakey org.

  117. 117.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    It goes without saying almost but it’s amazing a former state supreme court judge has such a bad lawyer.

    There are lots and lots of competent lawyers and Moore has been exposed to the better ones in his state but he hired an absolute moron. CHOSE him. Said “I must have THIS person”. That’s reason enough he should lose.

  118. 118.

    Matt McIrvin

    Maybe the administration should try to prevent people from signing up for the exchanges every year.

  119. 119.

    hueyplong

    Your most reliable guide to what trusted polling says are the GOP calls for Moore to step aside.

    These are people who have no problem brazening it out when they think that will work.

  121. 121.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Patricia Kayden: Seeing as a lot of the people who were the recipients of the abuse were white people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time or fellow BLM protesters, I’m afraid that the lesson cops will learn is that just because somebody is a ni**er lover, that doesn’t mean you can treat them like a ni**er, you can only treat ni**er’s like a ni**er.

  122. 122.

    Another Scott

    @mai naem mobile: TheHill has a headline that McConnell is contemplating asking Sen. Strange to resign so that they can call another, different, special election. True? Dunno. But I wouldn’t be surprised that they are trying to come up with any way that they can hold on to the seat. All they care about is holding on to power by any means they can control. They showed that with Gorsuch and all their other norm-breaking over the last 8+ years.

    It’s infuriating. Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  125. 125.

    Elizabelle

    Good morning, jackals. Still on this side of the pond. Rebooked for flying out tonight, which is great cuz bus up to NYC was badly delayed, and I had not finished some paperwork that needs to be mailed, etc. Actually rather liked the delay, and get a day to run around in NYC (slight rain and cool, but wonderful). I feel way more organized than this time yesterday. Will window shop and walk, walk, walk.

    Hotel and airport TVs tuned to CNN. No Fox. Yea!

  127. 127.

    Patricia Kayden

    @HeleninEire: You certainly left the U.S. at the right time. You don’t have to suffer the indignity of having Orange Bigot as your Commander-in-Chief. Good on you for reaching this milestone.

  129. 129.

    Baud

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Not sure I understand. The supers do not overturn the results of the primary, so they don’t bring people in that way. Candidates still have to compete for their endorsements. I suppose supers can stand in for non voters especially in caucus states, but that’s only works if they are willing to vote against the primary winner.

  132. 132.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I do think Monica Lewinsky was treated very badly. I regret not thinking more about her at the time-her as a person. I cannot imagine that kind of brutal exposure at that age. I don’t know how she did it- how she got thru it.

    My problem with going back to Clinton is Trump. Why would we look at the ex president when we have a current president with 15 credible accusers? It’s just odd. I don’t think it’s completely irrelevant – you could see it as a re-examination but why focus there since we have one NOW?

  133. 133.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: I see the place for Supers or similar party insiders. People who have spent decades inside the party should have some say on how the nominee is chosen. Why should some billionaire or celebrity who has never “paid their dues” be able to take over a political party for their own gain? Shouldn’t they have to have some substantial support inside the organization? On the other hand, insiders shouldn’t be able to overturn the desires of the actual voters.

    But Supers have turned into some talisman among too many noisy people. If it weren’t that, it would have been something else… :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  134. 134.

    Baud

    @Kay: I understand why the right is doing it. Why the left is agreeing to engage on those terms is beyond me, especially when few people are talking about Trump, H.W., or Clarence Thomas, and where there’s been no new allegation against Bill.

    I fear Trump’s election has not produced the type of reexamination on our side as I would have hoped.

  137. 137.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud: If there are no supers, elected officials and the like(current supers) will end up as the regular delegates. They’ll crowd out the regular folk. Having supers mean that you bring more folk in as delegates.

  138. 138.

    Baud

    @Another Scott: I’m not vehemently opposed to them. But insiders have influence without being voting delegates, who as you say should never overturn the results. At bottom, I still trust our primary voters, and I would like to focus on making it easier for Dems to vote in the primary.

  139. 139.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    I’m thrilled if Cordray runs. I think the Democratic candidates are weak. Cordray can win. I don’t think any of the others can.

    All of them are fine and it’s great that people run- it’s a horrible job, running for anything, but they’re just not strong enough to overcome in a swing state. I know people deny this but I saw a LOT of sexism among Ohio voters w/Clinton – I witnessed this- and it’s horrible but our strongest candidate right now is a woman and I’m afraid that will matter. Cordray is, frankly, safer and I want to win.

    it’s not women’s fault but it is our problem and it has to be grappled with. This state’s voters have issues with electing women and that includes some democratic voters.

  141. 141.

    OzarkHillbilly

    ‘This is surreal’: descendants of slaves and slaveowners meet on US plantation

    The gathering at Prospect Hill plantation that day, in April 2017, could have been a casting call for a period drama set before the American civil war.

    The location was remote, along a one-lane gravel road in sparsely populated Jefferson County, Mississippi. A group of about 50 people, black and white, stood in front of an archetypal southern Gothic home, chatting amiably about slave owners and slaves.

    At one point, a lone costumed man in a top hat strolled through. Nearby, an elderly white woman held the hand of a black man with whom she was deeply engrossed in conversation. Then a van pulled up and discharged a group of African visitors who were running an hour late, and the crowd broke into applause.

    As she surveyed the scene, Prospect Hill’s de facto director, Jessica Crawford, said: “This is all actually a bit surreal.”
    ……..
    With the arrival of the van, a missing piece fell into place: the passengers were descendants of slaves who had been emancipated from the plantation before the civil war and immigrated to a freed-slave colony in what is now the west African country of Liberia. The contingent had driven all night to attend the event, completing a trip across a chasm that encompassed 170 years and 5,000 miles.

    Their leader, Evangeline Wayne, noted that her ancestors had been taken from Africa during the slave trade. After decades in the US, their descendants had been allowed to immigrate “back” to Africa, though they’d never actually been there before. Then, as a result of Liberia’s civil wars, which lasted from 1990 to 2003, Wayne herself immigrated “back” to the US, though she had likewise never been to the country before.

    At Prospect Hill she found herself being embraced by people she’d never met as if she were a long lost friend. “I didn’t expect this,” she said, smiling and fighting back tears. “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.”

    Wayne cannot definitively document her connection to Prospect Hill because Liberia’s national archives were destroyed during the civil wars, though she remembers her grandmother mentioning a Mississippi plantation and a “Captain Ross”. Isaac Ross, a revolutionary war veteran, founded the plantation and provided in his will for the freeing of its slaves to immigrate to a colony in what is now Liberia – Prospect Hill’s primary claim to fame.

    “To be honest, I’m unsure of who, and what, I am, and where I fit in,” Wayne observed, with visible sadness. “I’m considered a foreigner in Liberia, even though I’m from there, and it’s the same in the US.” When she met James Belton, a descendant of Prospect Hill slaves who had chosen not to immigrate, they both encountered someone whose life represented what their own might have been, had their ancestors made a different choice.

    Unsure what to say, they simply embraced.

    Many more stories at the link.

  143. 143.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: The whole Poppy Bush thing is so sad to me. Why can’t those around him stop him? He seems to do the same thing Everytime he can get near a woman — tell his stupid magician joke (from like 40 years ago, incidentally when Moore was forcing children) and grab their asses. Please, he is a former president, he had secret service. He can afford any caretaker he needs. Stop him from acting out! The guy is older than Mugabe — born in 1924! Help him be polite.

    Meanwhile, what I find really upsetting about all the serious serial abusers — Moore, Weinstein, etc. Is that we never hear from the girls/women that they successfully assaulted. Only the ones who resisted or escaped. I mean, there have to be victims that could not do so or these bastards would not have continued their escapades.

  144. 144.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I’m just hoping the “Unity Commission” (which earned those scare quotes) doesn’t push expanding caucuses in its final report. If it does, that’s going to cause major infighting right when we can least afford it. I also think it’s absurd that they dragged it out for a year. FFS, the Declaration of Independence was written and edited in three weeks.

  145. 145.

    gene108

    @Kay:

    2 Republican lawyers told me yesterday that Roy Moore is okay because Muhammad had young wives.

    I would have told them that yes he did have young wives, but did they also know Mohammed’s massacre of Jews in Medina was Hitler’s inspiration for the Holocaust. There’s a direct line from Mohammed to the Knight’s Templar to the League of Shadows to Hitler.

    They probably won’t get the snark.

  147. 147.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: It’s the bubble Moore is in — it includes lawyers. He got himself a half smart arrogant Fundy lawyer to represent him because he saw himself in that mirror.

  148. 148.

    Tenar Arha

    @Kay:
    *says many nasty things to these lawyers in my imagination*

    *shudders, now wondering about their families and their children and if they work with youth groups*

  149. 149.

    gene108

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Muhammad having young wives has nothing to do with Moore’s child predation.

    Muslim’s don’t condemn Mohammed, they revere him. Why do we have to condemn Moore?

    The thought process of conservatives.

  150. 150.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: I remember feeling sorry for her and over the years wondering what had happened to her. When she recently reemerged it was nice to see how well she had coped and balanced. A stronger person than I, for certain.

  151. 151.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Baud: The superdelegates in the Democratic Party are a backstop to the regular delegates, an appeal court of sorts. They can override a Trump-style candidate or decide a squeaker vote that’s getting argued about at the convention but they’ve always gone with the obvious winning candidate at convention time and almost certainly will do so in the future.

    The Republicans don’t have superdelegates and they’d give their pool boy’s left testicle to have had superdelegates in the last primary.

  153. 153.

    gene108

    @Kay:

    I’m wondering why the allegations against Poppy Bush aren’t getting more play. I’m okay if they don’t – he’s out of office and ancient, but it’s interesting how no one will go there.

    He is the last respectable and responsible Republican. He is the last Republican, who dared to govern and not just get into government to break shit, deregulate, and pass tax cuts for billionaires.

    If that narrative dies – and he’s just as much of a horn dog as Bill Clinton – there’s nothing for the media to cling to, with regards to seeing how crazy Republicans have become in government.

  161. 161.

    satby

    @gene108: he’s also incredibly old, with all the loss of filters that accompanies that. Was he always that way, who knows? It’s so irrelevant now.
    Standards change, we correctly call things sexual harassment now that used to be just part of the landscape women had to navigate before. Every woman my age was subject to that kind of behavior 40 years ago. I don’t have time or the ability to rewrite history, we know better now and can move forward. But even 40 or 60 or more years ago, what Moore did was assault. And he assaulted young women, some underaged. That’s the conversation we’re having, not Bill, or JFK, or even senile old Poppy B.

  162. 162.

    satby

    @Steeplejack: but it’s not equivalent, because Lewinsky was both an adult and consenting. Certainly not a “nice” situation given the boss-subordinate dynamic, but not equivalent. And I’m sick of the Republicans continuing to pull water out of that bone dry well.

  163. 163.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Elizabelle: Your experience resonates with mine last February when I was heading to NYC to fly to Yerp. Originally I’d planned to bus up, spend a day with friends in Queens & then catch the AirTrain to JFK, but at 3 AM the day of bus departure I was in my usual panic of not being able to find essential items to pack & knowing I had all sorts of things to tie up in the morning. In the morning I called my friends to push my arrival time back & they said, Why not bus up tomorrow & go straight out to JFK, then spend some time with us when you return? The extra 24 hours allowed me to calm down, track down all the misplaced packables & get everything tied up. Of ~40 trips across the Pwned it was the smoothest I’d ever made, & from now on I intend to book cheap flights out of JFK, plan on arriving a day early to spend time with those friends, & pushing departure off a day when (inevitably, it seems) things go missing or need doing..

  164. 164.

    mai naem mobile

    These morons do realize average age of mortality during Jesus’ and Mohammeds time was something like 35.

  165. 165.

    Steeplejack

    @satby:

    Jesus Christ, I’m not arguing the facts. I’m saying that the demented Republicans have to go back to Clinton to find a “high-ranking” analog to Trump and Moore for purposes of both-siderizing the issue as general sexual misconduct.

  166. 166.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Baud: Here’s what you’re missing: Without superdelegate status, Party officials would run for delegate positions in the primary, & even if they declared themselves “uncommitted” would be disproportionately likely to win seats based on name recognition. Make them superdelegates instead & the slots they would have won in the primary will (ideally) be contested & won by people less well entrenched in the Party apparatus.

  167. 167.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Baud: Too messy and rules-lawyering to set a fixed percentage where supers get to count. What about the 2008 convention where the argument was about the eligibility of delegates from two of the states (Florida and, uuuh, Michigan?)? Do they get counted or not counted in the 5% bracket? The supers generally said the rules are the rules, the Dem committees in the two states in question broke the rules about early primaries and they weren’t going to be counted despite the special pleading of the Clinton camp who could point to a late surge in support for her candidacy, cutting into Obama’s early lead all the way up to the final ballots.

  169. 169.

    gvg

    @Kay: The last decade, everytime I read about Bush senior, it was fairly obvious he was sliding into dementia and age related infirmities. I just assumed his filters were gone and yes his caretakers should be shielding him better. I have not read anything about how Barbara Bush is doing but had the impression she was in charge of taking care of him. Perhaps she is failing too and no one is really in charge. Kids should step up but I bet mom is a handful. I don’t think the secret service actually has the authority to filter in that way without specific permission from the Bushes.

  170. 170.

    Elizabelle

    @Uncle Cosmo: Yes. It makes such a difference.

    Got a gentle price on the JFK Holiday Inn Express (via Priceline), 5 minutes from airtrain via free shuttle, and it’s wonderful. Hot breakfast with protein and healthy options; good coffee; they will hold your luggage after checkout.

    @Tenar Arha: Wow. Will look it up and check it out, if possible. Do we know who bought it? (Which oligarch, I guess…)

    @satby: Thank you. Will keep in touch and lurk away. Got to keep up with my jackals (aka schakalen).

  171. 171.

    satby

    @Steeplejack: I should have made it clear that I wasn’t disagreeing with you at all, the Republicans just keep doing the bothsides-whatabout dance and our progressive betters need to stop dancing with them.

  173. 173.

    manyakitty

    @Sab: I’m an Ohioan, too. Relative to many of the other republicans, Kasich looks like a moderate. He has done a few things (Medicaid expansion, attempting to tax the frackers, etc.) that are good for the state, but he’s definitely one of them overall.

  174. 174.

    Citizen Alan

    @msdc:

    One thing that people forget is that this is the same group of people who were spitting mad over how Obama raise their taxes because they were too stupid and ignorant to understand their own tax forms and realize that their taxes either stay the same or went down over the last 8 years. I mainly practice bankruptcy law, and I never cease to be amazed at how completely ignorant some people are about their own financial situation.

  175. 175.

    catclub

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Every round of attempted ACA repeal/sabotage has started with an alarmingly confident pronouncement that they have the votes this time.

    It will be interesting to see what the vote in the House is – where the GOP members from blue states vote. They did get the votes the second or third time in the House for ACA repeal/replace.

  178. 178.

    Steeplejack

    @satby:

    Sorry for my asperity. My anger is the same as yours: that somehow we keep getting bogged down in these pointless “how many abusers can dance on the head of a pin” arguments that the Republicans offer up only to throw dust in the air. They’re not interested in “reasoned debate” or “coming to an understanding.” They’re just trying to evade and obscure the fact that they are enablers and, all too often, enthusiastic supporters of the worst in our politics.

  181. 181.

    msdc

    @Jeffro: That reminds me a little of David Sirota’s writing about the “race chasm” in the 2008 primaries, only not written by a preening jackass.

Comments are closed.