I’ve always hated “when they go low, we go high”. I prefer this (from The Untouchables): “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”
While I don’t know if that’s exactly the right attitude for Democrats to take, there’s no doubt that Dahlia Lithwick (via rikyrah) is certainly onto something:
This isn’t a call to become tolerant of awful behavior. It is a call for understanding that Democrats honored the blue slip, and Republicans didn’t. Democrats had hearings over the Affordable Care Act; Republicans had none over the tax bill. Democrats decry predators in the media; Republicans give them their own networks. And what do Democrats have to show for it? There is something almost eerily self-regarding in the notion that the only thing that matters is what Democrats do, without considering what the systemic consequences are for everyone.
[….]In the event that you doubt that the war is asymmetric, ask yourself how long it took for the same GOP that was disavowing Moore a month ago to embrace him, and to embrace him again in the face of new evidence. Ask how long it took from when Trump made it clear that he would wage war on Robert Mueller for Hugh Hewitt—purporting to speak on behalf of “a large swath of responsible center-right observers”—to call for an investigation into Mueller. This because a former FBI official sent pro-Hillary texts that now raise, according to Hewitt, “the possibility of shattering public confidence in a number of long-held assumptions about the criminal-justice system generally and the FBI and the Justice Department specifically.” The president just claimed the FBI is “in tatters,” but it’s the former official, who Mueller pulled off the investigation for the texts, who shatters confidence in the agency?
[….]Unilateral disarmament is tantamount to arming the other side. That may be a trade worth making in some cases. But it’s worth at least acknowledging that this is the current calculus. It’s no longer that when they go low, we get to go high. They are permanently living underground. How long can we afford to keep living in the clouds?
I think some of the nasty shit Republicans are doing is short-sighted and will bite them in the ass. Democrats are now winning the 18-29 age group by 30 points in elections. It could be that in ten years, the national Republican party will be in the kind of shape the California Republican party is now, and that Democratic supermajorities are commonplace at many levels of government.
But, even if that’s true, will our country still be here after Republicans are through with it?
I’ll tell you this: when Democrats get control of states in 2018 and 2020 — and they will — they need to gerrymander back, not turn things over to a panel. And I’d like to see some measures taken to make it so that older people are less likely to vote. Maybe schedule a Matlock marathon on A&E on election days.
Jeffro
You and me both. Heck, make it possible to vote by phone and you’ll simultaneously quadruple millennial voting and halve the senior vote. Making the polls open at 10am and close at 10pm would do the same.
BruceFromOhio
Actually, it was ‘send two of his to the morgue.’ And I like your Matlock suggestion.
Corner Stone
Was this some of your patented subtle troll, or are you somewhat serious?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Obama’s schtick– and I mean that as short hand not a slag, I am an O-Bot– doesn’t transfer to other pols. I hated “I feel your pain” and the earnest listening face, but it worked for Bubba. I hope there’s a Democrat out there who can make “Oh, fuck these fuckers” work, but I don’t see it. I like Tom Perez well enough, but his swearing on stage came to feel forced and performative, related to my general disdain for the way grown ass adults in the political media get giggly when a pol says a swear like a bunch of fucking seven year olds.
germy
cernovich and the other alt-right ratfuckers, the milo fans, the young breitfart readers, the young white supremacists who march, the young thugs at the drump rallies… they all love matlock and will stay home on election day to watch a marathon?
Doug!
@Corner Stone:
I’m completely serious. I think gerrymandering is bad but you don’t end it by disarming yourself, you end up by making Republicans realize you’ll just do it back to them, so one gains from it. Then they’ll happily agree to have panels oversee it.
Emerald
I’m not all that sure we will win in 18 and 20. Sure, we’ll have the voters, but will our voters be allowed to vote? They’ve got the suppression laws in place already and are getting the judges in place to uphold their laws. Even if the SCOTUS stops ’em, they’ll still be running the elections on a local level and can engage in all sorts of interesting activities.
They’re counting on voter suppression and gerrymandering to keep them in power forever. They’ve worked hard to set it all up and they have the power to do it now. Can our own increased turnout overcome it? Maybe, but there are also those local interesting activities to overcome. (And nobody yet has even bothered to ask questions about the three interesting counties in the last election that flipped the EC, much less do the forensics.)
That said, we did pretty well in California with impartial panels doing our redistricting.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I loved that face! That thing was freakin’ killer! Like an oppo Medusa head, it melted whoever saw it focused on them.
ETA – “I like Tom Perez well enough,”
I’ve about hit my Team Tom quotient. Which is sad because just a few months ago I was pretty high on his future in politics. Now, not so much.
The Moar You Know
The CA Dem party is in woeful shape when you get below the state level. Completely broken at the local level. The CA Republican party has a bunch of ready-to-go well-funded psychotic assholes who are just itching to come off their very deep bench and get into the game. Our benches are in shit shape. We will lose the supermajority in one if not both chambers 2018, although from a practical viewpoint that won’t amount to much, not for a while, since the budget is in great shape at the moment. But we have done a terrible job of grooming and keeping good people, and that is going to become a very large problem starting the day Brown steps down.
I 100% agree. And one thing that the CA Dem party has failed to do is any redrawing of district lines, which should have been done years ago. We have panels. Fuck the panels. The GOP won’t keep them, why should we? I don’t know what the CA Dem party is waiting for, maybe the next GOP takeover? Fuck.
Nicole
I think working to increase turnout will take care of the elderly voting problem (though I’m not opposed to the Matlock marathon idea). I think someone here yesterday mentioned that by 2018 or 2020 there will be more eligible Millennials than Baby Boomers in the voting pool (I know I saw two Baby Boomer relatives off to the Great Beyond in just the past 3 years).
Now, the systemic sexism and racism is going to a shit-ton more work, but this fall has been… somewhat encouraging that maybe things are crawling forward. I think a lot of women were really affected by seeing a mediocre white man beat out a supremely qualified woman on the biggest stage in the nation. Maybe it’s a single blip on the radar of history; maybe it’s an actual beginnings of a third wave of the women’s movement (one that I hope will not focus itself on only white women). But despair don’t do anyone good for too long, so I’m choosing to believe it’s not a blip.
mike in dc
The 2013 GOP postmortem told them that racially polarized voting was a doomed strategy in the long term, so naturally the base rebelled and doubled down. They won in a (hopefully) one-off outlier type election, so now they feel vindicated in their rebellion. But the numbers are still turning against them. Even with gerrymandering, voter ID, voter roll purges, and race baiting, it’s only delaying the inevitable. And it’s not inevitable in a passive sense, it’s inevitable because there are millions fighting back against it. And their numbers grow steadily.
schrodingers_cat
From the last thread. This is what I said.
Everyone needs to read the Mahabharata. Where Pandavas make one compromise after another to avoid going to war with their cousins, who they have grown up with. Even after repeated compromises they cannot avert the inevitable war. Krishna who is a cousin to both Pandavas and the Kauravas becomes Arjun’s charioteer and gives advice on the battlefield which eventually leads to Pandavas being victorious after a lot of carnage. His advice and tactics are the opposite of when they go low we go high, its do what it takes to win because you can’t compromise with those who want you dead. You kneecap your enemy every way you can, not depend on same vague cosmic justice thingie, which you guys wrongly call “karma” which just means action.
ETA: In Pandavas case the enemies were his cousins, great grandfather, teacher, half brother etc.
A Ghost to Most
“Sometimes you wonder
Why you’re still talking.
I passed that point long ago”.
Corner Stone
@Doug!: I’d be happy to have them drawn fairly and some formula for when they can be changed (beyond the census dates). In that situation, we would kick their ass all over the place.
Derelict
There are still plenty of Democrats and vast swathes of the American electorate who simply cannot bring themselves to believe that conservatives are as venal as reality shows us they are. It’s like when people are shown the GOP party platform or Paul Ryan’s publicly stated plans regarding Medicare and Social Security–people simply refuse to believe that such plans exist, that the GOP wants to destroy those safety nets.
So I’m not sure what going low would actually do beside make more people more disgusted with politics, thus driving voter participation to even lower levels.
Major Major Major Major
Don’t worry, the democrats will find a way to keep this from happening. As TMYK said at #9, just look at what’s really happening in California. The party sued itself earlier this year, for Christ’s sake.
Tim C.
@germy: I don’t think the Alt-right is decisive that way. It’s the casual Republican voter. The one who doesn’t have the time or whatever to pay attention to a steady right wing media diet. Just the asshole who hates “those people” they tend to run older and more rural. I think making some kind of effort to make polling places more remote in rural areas would be a nice match for the confusion and long lines in urban areas.
ChrisS
Is there any evidence that younger voters retain their partisan lean and don’t just turn into crotchety old GOP voters once they hit their 40s*.
*I didn’t, but christ it seems like we’ve been waiting on this youth movement to roll the GOP into the grave since Clinton in 1992 and they’ve just been hauling ass to the right even faster.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I haven’t been thrilled with is performance*, but I don’t know if anyone could have handled Wilmer’s demanding petulance any better. I thought he would be a good, behind the scenes administrator, but he’s a lousy pundit/talking head, and I think in our TV infested politics, I think he’d be a poor candidate. And I think he wants, or wanted, to run for something.
* what I’ve seen, hopefully that behind the scenes administration stuff is going better.
Wag
This
@Doug!:
And this, too
schrodingers_cat
DougJ I approve of this message, unlike the periodic self flagellation posts that you have been putting up
Dave
@germy: The thing about them is that they are loud and extreme and ugly and there are far too many of them is that proportionally there aren’t as many of them. It’s not surprising that the portion of the younger cohort that shares their views has grown more extreme they are am outlier amongst their peers. Not enough of one as I’d like but an outlier nonetheless. Look at the dynamic in Evangelical churches. As the more moderate members are turned off and leave those churches the remaining are the most extreme now without any brakes. So they become pure if you will. Same with these guys.
I’d watch a Matlock marathon.
Matt McIrvin
I don’t agree. If we answer tit for tat, we’ll have absolutely no purpose left; it’ll just be an empty game about winning.
A lot of the things they do are literally about making the children of Democratic voters die at elevated rates. I don’t want to do that in reverse.
low-tech cyclist
Like I said in the last thread, I think it’s worth distinguishing between honoring stupid and meaningless rules that have been around forever that the Republicans cheerfully ditch the moment it becomes convenient, and doing the right thing because that’s who we are – and if we don’t do the right thing, we become something less.
Sure, when we take the Senate, let’s block their judicial nominations wholesale, and we gut the filibuster or abolish it entirely. When we take the Senate and the White House, fuck the blue slip. When we take state legislatures, let’s gerrymander to massively favor Dems, and ratify the National Popular Vote compact. And so forth. Yes, let’s tilt the board in our favor, so we can do lots of good stuff for the people of America.
But let’s still throw out Dems who are sexual predators. Let’s still kick corrupt Dems like Menendez to the curb. Sure, let’s do our best to time it so that we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot. (Better to get Menendez to step down in 2018 than 2017, for instance.) But let’s still do it.
ETA: I approve of this thread’s earworm!
rk
What exactly are the democrats supposed to be doing here? Republicans disavowed Moore and then embraced him. Democrats called on Franken to resigned and he resigned. This is on him. Maybe he should not have resigned. Insisted on the ethics committee. I like Al Franken. Did not believe Tweeden at all. But 8 women? Are they all lying? If they are then Franken should have stuck around. It’s Franken who’s weak. Maybe he should be more like Roy Moore. Is that what we want as a party? A bunch of women accuse a senator or congressman and they stay put regardless. Conyers gave hush money, resigned and wants his son to take his place. Democrats have to fight, but does fighting mean that they should also give predators their own network? Just because Franken was a champion for women he does not get a free pass on anything. A couple of years ago he could have ridden this out. But not today. If Democrats did not say anything to him, then they have no credibility on a very important issue.
schrodingers_cat
If we wait for cosmic justice our wait time is going to be infinite.
piratedan
…. is sure my snarkometer needs adjusting but I don’t want the field tilted, I want it to be fair. I’m not going to suffer under the possible delusion that Dems will always be good and honorable, elections need to be fair. period. It’s supposedly a foundational pillar for democracy.
Roger Moore
I understand and agree with this point, but I would counter with a different one. The biggest problem we face right now is an outright Republican attack on democratic norms. We need to repair the damage they’ve done to our democracy, but we can’t do that by adopting the same tactics that damaged it in the first place.
I accept the desire to counter their gerrymandering by gerrymandering ourselves, but mostly because it is the best way of getting the courts to rule that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. But most of the rest of the Republican tactics we should counter directly rather than adopt them ourselves. If we’re worried about voter suppression, we need to protect everyone’s right to vote rather than trying to suppress Republican voters. If we’re worried about Republican lies and propaganda, we need to work better at getting the truth our rather than retreating into our own bubble of lies and propaganda.
rikyrah
This works well for me too.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: We don’t have to emulate all their policies and tactics but do we have let them walk all over us all the fucking time?
Kelly
Next time we get the trifecta we change the tax code to treat inheritances as regular income in the year received. Capital gains become regular income with a basis step up calculated with the same inflation calculation as Social Security. Limit tax deductions to the average adjusted gross income of all returns filed in the previous year. Cut off their ammunition.
mike in dc
We should hold hearings on reinstating some form of the Fairness Doctrine(spoiler alert: we don’t have to actually do it), bring a bunch of people up to testify, subpoena folks from Breitbart, Fox, talk radio, etc, and ask them to distinguish themselves from agitprop. Talk about looking into antitrust actions against News Corp, and other actions against various behind the scenes funders of rwnj media. They’ll get the message.
TenguPhule
I can’t help but recall we were saying the exact same things in 2008.
Cacti
Couldn’t agree more.
The time to fight back is now, while there’s something left to save. Who cares what a big majority we might have 20 years from now, if everything gets hollowed out over the next 4?
Betty Cracker
Steve M had an interesting take on the “high-low” question yesterday. I recommend the whole thing, but here’s a quote that sums it up:
It matters very much how the press portrays things, since the truth is we’re committed partisan teams fighting over a group of apathetic, low-info voters who zig and zag between the two parties like panicky gazelles between competing prides of lions.
Registering voters and countering suppression has got to be a huge priority. We need to pull folks off the sidelines and ensure voters aren’t disenfranchised.
But working the refs is important too. Twitter is good for that. Journalists pay more attention to feedback there than is generally realized. Some will actually read and respond to what you say. Making noise is important regardless.
Nicole
@ChrisS:
You know, I wonder if the “shift” in politics from liberal to conservative as one ages is for real, or one of those “common sense” things that don’t actually hold up to Big Data. Back in 1988, my high school yearbook featured a room full of cocky MOTUs in the photo for the Young Republicans Club and 4 of us sheepishly holding up our Dukakis-Bentsen signs in the Young Democrats. Some of my GOP classmates have shifted to the Dem side since then; none of the Dems I knew have shifted rightward. And plenty of the GOP a-holes are still GOP a-holes.
But I don’t know; it’s not something I’ve studied, and the plural of anecdote is not data.
Yesterday, my son’s school instituted the first of now regular lockdown drills. Violence in schools peaked in 1993 (including homicides). Reality and perceived reality are often not in accordance.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
You sound a little gloomy.
Cacti
@Corner Stone:
Perez showed that he wasn’t a fighter, and that really disappointed me.
And for those who thought Ellison was a better choice, he’s no different. He joined the mob too.
Nicole
@TenguPhule: No we weren’t; it was the gerrymandering in 2010 that really fucked us, and it took the Dems by surprise. I am hopeful ten years is enough to learn that lesson.
bemused
Doug!
Hey now. You don’t think there are enough liberal oldie voters like me to count for much? Or maybe you mean discouraging or hoping the old white wingnut crotchety Foxbots will quit voting or die off.
Lindsey Graham said a couple of years ago that there are not enough angry white guys to keep the Republican party in power.
TenguPhule
@piratedan:
We can talk about fairness once we have an opposition that isn’t actual Nazis and not one damn second earlier.
ginger
I’ve been thinking this way, too.
I can take the constant disorganization and dithering. I can take the in-fighting, to some extent. But what drives me nuts is the Democrats, as a whole but especially at the top of the food chain, seem to suffer from a version of the wingers’ nostalgia for the 50s – that there is some golden age of political normalcy to which we can somehow return.
People, this is our new normal. Perhaps we can have a nicer normal in the future, but now, pretending that getting rid of Dolt 45 or taking congress or whatever is all that is required to Make Things Better is fantasy.
There is a continuum from business – politics – warfare. We are moving to the right on that axis. Things will get uglier before they get better.
What I’m a little disappointed by is that the left seems to have ceded performance art to the Nazis. C’mon folks, the shock is over. These fuckers are begging for humiliation – torch-waving mini-Twitlers shouting about Harry Potter?
And I think lefties need to get a little dirty. O’Keefe is pathetic and Cernovich is a pathetic moron, and look at what they’ve managed. The important part is that “our team” doesn’t need to lie – we just need to publicize. The deception is icky, but it is really more akin to whistle-blowing than what the shitheads at Veritas try to invent.
When the other team starts playing by different rules, you adapt or lose.
But her emails!!!
@rk: Are we actually counting the waist squeeze as a credible allegation? Wasn’t their also a shoulder squeeze? Plus several anonymous accusations. The initial accuser who set the whole ball rolling also accused Obama of being born in Kenya. Exactly what does that leave us with? 2-3 woman who actually stepped forward and accused him of grabbing their butts in photo ops?
syphonblue
Yeah, I don’t think the answer to one political party going shit-flinging crazy is for the other political party to go pants-on-head crazy. There are better ways to accomplish this, like becoming more media savvy. Republicans are masters of the quick easy-to-digest soundbite, while Democrats drone on and on and on about their policies.
low-tech cyclist
@ChrisS:
Well, the GOP has won the popular vote in exactly one Presidential election since then.
I think Doug’s got a point. We honor all these stupid procedural rules and whatnot, whose main effect is to keep us from doing really good stuff for Americans that would perpetuate Dem majorities. If the Senate had ditched the filibuster in January 2009, we could have passed a much better stimulus, one that would have actually gotten a real recovery. We could have passed card check, which would have made union organizing – another source of Dem power – much easier. We could have included a public option in the ACA, and made it less complicated to use.
IOW, we’ll get that youth vote if we do good shit that benefits them. If procedural stuff is an impediment, well, screw the stupid procedural rules.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore:
We have to take all those norms and codify them into law. Make them enforceable with a clear line to a non-partisan organization (like LEO, not Congress committees) that is responsible for making sure they are being fulfilled. Make it a law that a nominee for President *shall* (not *should*) disclose certain documents by a deadline or else XYZ happens. We obviously can’t rely on how things have operated in the past we need more protection for our democratic institutions.
mike in dc
@syphonblue:
I think this is more about being willing to hit back hard once in a while.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: You almost make me want to join twitter, cause I need another way to avoid work….
Seriously, I think you’re right. back in the Iraq War days I used to send angry emails, and I got responses from a few big feet. John Dickerson, Froma Harrop (okay, medium feet) and that awful woman who was the Wa Post’s ombudsman/hall monitor for a few months. Maureen Dowd, oddly enough, has never responded to my helpful suggestions that her schtick is worn out (this was in 2008) and she could use a sabbatical. I never even cussed
TenguPhule
@Nicole: A lot of the fixes to the voting system and a hundred other details to keep out the ratfuckers seem to have been forgotten in the shuffle during the economic meltdown and rush to get the ACA done while we had a working majority. Every election we kept talking about addressing all the considerable problems we saw, only to see them not be put into place.
Brachiator
Only black women should be allowed to vote.
syphonblue
@mike in dc: I absolutely agree we need to be much more willing to hit them back. But, that doesn’t mean we just ignore sexual misconduct in our ranks because that’s what the other side is doing.
Cacti
@syphonblue:
There are no awards for good sportsmanship in a street fight. That’s what we’re in now.
We fight back or we lose.
B.B.A.
@Corner Stone: If you can make a neutral commission stick, it’s clearly the better solution. (Nobody gets it – detente, comrade.) But there’s not a single institution that the GOP won’t try to undermine, so I doubt we can make it stick.
I just hope for more ruthlessness and fewer deals like “we get one house, you get the other house, even if we win a majority in both houses we’ll give you a few so we can keep scratching each others’ backs.” Not that the Democratic Party in a very large, very blue state would ever do a thing like that, right, Governor Cuomo? Hmmmm?
Ruviana
@Betty Cracker: Paul Glastris had something interesting in today’s Washington Monthly. I particularly liked his observations about how the media normalizes the rw polarization, perhaps without even intending to. Then it just intensifies further.
Bobby Thomson
Doug is so deep in white privilege he can’t see that young whites are pretty damn racist.
Cheryl Rofer
@Doug!: This.
On the procedural matters, yes, let’s play hardball. But not to the point of dishonesty, as the Republicans are willing to do. There are plenty of places we can do stuff like this.
Bobby Thomson
@B.B.A.: underrated Bond movie.
Corner Stone
@syphonblue: Who said anything about pants? What kind of a monster are you?
TenguPhule
@rk:
Yeah, its looking increasingly like 4 named and 4 anon women lied or purposefully made mountains out of molehills.
Franken was not weak. Franken WAS sticking around to fight it right up to the point the Fucking Democratic Senate Caucus turned on him. Word is now coming out from people who know him that *that* is why he decided to resign.
Nobody there had his back. They abandoned him.
Kelly
Federal takeover of voter registration and federal vote by mail.
clay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kristen Gillebrand can swear pretty convincingly. I know her name is Mud here lately, but I think she’s still viable.
ginger
@syphonblue:
It isn’t about matching the R’s crazy. We have to punch back. We don’t have to be crazy, but we do have to hurt them. I’ve been thinking the bundlers would make good targets. Any car dealership owner near you that brags about dodging taxes or hits on little girls? Make it dangerous for the money people.
Targeting operatives is a little ugly, But they have been doing it for years, successfully. I can’t speak for anyone else, but exposing truth to fight back doesn’t violate my morals, even though it does feel nasty.
Sometimes, you have to be nasty.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@clay: as I recall she was seen swearing on a phone video, the internet got excited and Perez and a few others thought they’d try it out. Didn’t work. And I say that as someone who is trying to make conscious effort to stop saying fuck in every other sentence.
Major Major Major Major
@Kelly: Do we really want a Republican administration to be in charge of the entire country’s voting?
TenguPhule
@Matt McIrvin:
MAD already worked against the Russians before.
Archon
If American politics ever truly becomes a will to power contest the right will win, period.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker:
These two concepts do not go together. Working the refs the way R’s do means being less than decent. It means planting knowingly false nuggets, anon quotes, setup jobs ratfuck style. Just jumping on a media person and haranguing them is something small D outfits have been doing for decades now. It’s not as useful as one really good false story about your opponent. It doesn’t matter if later the truth is revealed, that candidate is toast if it’s done at the right time.
Corner Stone
We also have to stop having any kind of notion that voters care about decency. They don’t. They want winners.
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone:
Step 1) Stick Together
Step 2) Do not badmouth your party to the media
Step 3) Always badmouth the other party. Fuck politeness.
ginger
@Corner Stone:
No, working the refs doesn’t mean dishonesty, or doesnt’ have to. You can push back hard when the NYT gives a Nazi a sloppy hummer. You get people on CNN to shine a light on the sycophant of the day’s blood-dripping fangs. You hold the journalist’s feet to the fire when they are spreading horseshit.
Cacti
@Matt McIrvin:
You’ve got this exactly ass backwards. First we win, then we restore norms of civility and common decency.
We gave the Nazis lessons in humanity AFTER we pounded their country into rubble.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: We should make the votes of black women supercharged. Like five points for each vote compared to one for everyone else. Or have a “Winner’s Pool” where if a candidate garners more than X% of the black female vote cast they are awarded a bunch of extra votes to their total.
MomSense
I don’t want Democrats to surrender the high ground, but I would like us to be better at recognizing a Republican ratfucking operation.
Kelly
@Major Major Major Major: Yes, once we put it in place bureaucratic inertia would be in our favor.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@TenguPhule:
Which means Dems need to get rid of the enemy trying to frag us. The grand jury may take care of both Wilmers. That FBI investigation has been ongoing for almost 2 years.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
Let me know where we find those hordes of rude, obnoxious, aggressive Democrat talking heads to go out on TV and intimidate and talk over their interviewers.
Corner Stone
So, Nikki Haley pouring more gas on the ME fire Trump started the other day.
PPCLI
Republicans get investigated by straight arrows Mueller or Fitzgerald or Walsh or Comey with a staff of law-enforcement professionals. They are usually Republicans as well. Clinton was investigated by a blindly partisan former Republican Solicitor General, with a staff of blindly partisan up-and-coming, ambitious young Republican sharks like Kelly Conway’s husband.
In the Fox News/Hugh Hewitt/Rush Limbaugh/Devin Nunes world, this shows that the deck is stacked against Republicans.
TenguPhule
@ginger:
The moment the horseshit is out, its already too late.
Lies on Page 1 in Bold Type, Retractions on Page 9, in small print.
And TV is worse. No fact checking and hardly any calling out or follow through.
Doug!
@The Moar You Know:
The fact that Gavin Newsom holds statewide office as a Democrat gives me pause about the future of the CA democratic party.
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone:
What did she do this time?
Kelly
Admittedly it’s a put all your eggs in one basket approach but it would take less resources to protect that one basket than current thousands of local baskets that are currently being managed by obscure partisans.
Kelly
@Major Major Major Major: Admittedly it’s a put all your eggs in one basket approach but it would take less resources to protect that one basket than current thousands of local baskets that are currently being managed by obscure partisans.
mike in dc
@MomSense:
Calling out bad faith acts and arguments is a must. Also, when their guy is down, step on his neck/throw the anchor etc.
Major Major Major Major
@Kelly: That’s definitely true.
@Kelly: We’re seeing right now with the CFPB and FCC that bureaucratic inertia is easily reversed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It ant the Dems, it’s the Democratic base, way to many demand absolute moral purity and refuse to accept the concept that democracy means compromise.
Just look at the blog regulars here; how many were calling for Franken’s head on a pike at the first accusation, dismissed any call for measured approach as appeasement and then were stunned, left wordless when Franken resigned and it sunk in what losing Franken in the Senate meant? Or Humboltblue;, Brown who has been the most liberal and most effective governor California has had in fifty years and listen to Humblotblue, instead of Brown proving you can have liberal, effective government, it sounds like Brown is to the right of Freedom Caucus in the House.
The only way to do no wrong is to do nothing but doing nothing is not going to get the agenda we all want.
rk
@TenguPhule:
So what if they turned on him? If democrats have to be as strong as republicans then maybe it should start with Franken himself. Look at Roy Moore. You don’t see him withdrawing from the race. The party stopped supporting him, some called for his resignation, but he’s dauntless. Let Franken play the same game. Everyone asks him to resign, he stays put and says that he will let the good people of Minnesota decide, or that he looks forward to the ethics committee exonerating him. Look at all the mud that was thrown at Hillary and Bill Clinton for over 20 years. Didn’t see them resigning over anything. Also, I see no reason to be pressured into resigning. If you believe in yourself you stay put and fight.
Corner Stone
@TenguPhule: Darling Nikki is at the UN Council and gave a speech telling all our allies they can fuck right off if they don’t like our decisions and we feel just fine with Bibi’s hand up our collective ass, tyvm.
Or words to that effect.
Betty Cracker
@Corner Stone: I’m not talking about funding scumbags like David Brock, though he’s of the type you’re describing (a wingnut ratfucker who switched sides) and hasn’t been at all effective. I’m talking about regular people — us — raising hell and pushing back. Anyhoo, Steve M gives examples. I think he makes a great point. YMMV.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major:
As I have mentioned to Adam in a few discussions, I have no faith in our institutions surviving four years of Trump. One change at the CFPB altered their whole mission statement. That’s all it took and that bureaucracy is now useless.
Kelly
@Major Major Major Major: Good counter examples but to most people they are kinda obscure agencies. The sheer scale that government needs to operate at these days leave a lot of obscure corners.
glory b
@rk: “Are they all lying?”
That’s what due process is for. There’s nothing wrong with waiting for that.
We mention Shirley Sherrod and ACORN. I remember Emmitt Till, and the Scottsboro Boys.
I’m in Pittsburgh, (actually I’m in Greensburg today), some years ago, it turned out that a couple young college aged women and a teacher decided to accuse Jerome Bettis (a Steeler) of rape. During the investigation, one of them confessed.
My father was a principal. One of his friends, a vice principle in another school district, was accused of sexual misconduct by a group of teenaged girls in the high school where he worked. He was arrested and charged. At the preliminary hearing (I believe) one of them got cold feet and reported that they were upset because of some disciplinary action he took. One of the group suggested doing this, and said she did it to another teacher in a school district she attended in another state. This man was in PRISON!!
The charges against my Dad’s friend were dropped, the teacher in the other state was released.
So yeah, we need due process, and no number of accusers confers truth.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: The only reason half the government is even running is that Trump hasn’t bothered to appoint anybody to run it.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Absolutely. The whole way this played out with Franken was a total LEADERSHIP FAIL.
eclare
@Jeffro: Happy Birthday!
Cacti
@rk:
Agree.
In the end, Franken took the coward’s route.
Bob Menendez, in comparison, fought the criminal case against him tooth and claw, wasn’t convicted and is back in the Senate.
ginger
@TenguPhule:
Only for the immediate lie. You’re missing that this is a repeated game. This is how the Republicans do it – they harrang reporters and editors and talking heads endlessly. They’re a combination spouse-abuser/spoiled child. The point is they never let up, and have taught the media they never will. So the media preemptively tries not to upset them.
You don’t change that by throwing your hands up.
sheila in nc
@Cheryl Rofer: There is already a long history of gerrymandering by both sides. Google the Princeton Gerrymandering Project
Jeffro
@mike in dc: Jennifer Rubin is with you on this! Forget Rust-Belt Diners: Suburban Yoga Classes Matter!
And Republicans, the hot-yoga set is coming. for. your. asses:
Major Major Major Major
I also want to point out that I really like that Leonard Cohen song.
Peale
@rk: Unfortunately, by staying and defending himself, he would have split off a huge chuck of supporters for the party who would take any attempt to defend himself as “slut shaming.” One of the reasons our party is so damn weak kneed is that large groups of it tend to want to exit whenever they feel slighted. Our voters aren’t very partisan and any hopes that they will become so is a pipe dream. “Independent thought” can be as much of a drug as “rage and spite” and our voters seem addicted to the idea that any thinking that involves the concept of “party” when evaluating something is irrational and cynical. OMG, if I for one second think about the party, I’m just as bad as any Republican!
Barbara
@rk: I agree with your comment, mostly. Due process is important, indeed, I would say essential, but when the allegations start to add up it gets harder and harder for an elected official who is not facing the usual judicial process for alleged wrongdoing (for which due process is clearly going to be had) to insist on ethics committee or other investigations by their peers, especially when the actions occurred outside of his official duties or before he was even elected. Honestly, I don’t know exactly what Franken could have done or how he could have responded, but I do think honesty would be the best thing. I am tired of hearing that he took thousands of pictures and doesn’t remember every one of them. When I was a waitress I served hundreds of customers and 30 years later I can still recall the handful that tried to come on to me. He can certainly know whether in making incidental contact he was not intentionally groping someone. He couldn’t bring himself to say that. I will defend him every which way but I won’t be out in front of him making a defense he himself won’t make.
No Drought No More
“Who knows why the GOP has lost its last ethical moorings”?
Their “ethical moorings” were always tenuous, at best. But when the republican party sent Americans to War in Iraq, it severed its allegiance to the American people by dissolving all pretense of its unholy worship of mammon. And the only reason the democratic party still dares not admit it a roll call of the party’s “leaders”- Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Richard Gephart, Tom Daschle (et.al.) ALL took counsel of their presidential ambitions, and for inexplicable reasons, the party was subsequently hijacked by their egregiously bad judgement in supporting the Bush/Cheney treason. It’s been nearly 15 years since the Great Betrayal. Their votes to sanction that war had been declared a “conscience vote”. How much longer does the party tremble to address that historic truth? Why has it kept silent? To spare the feelings of those whose judgement proved so catastrophically wrong? Is the party waiting on them now to all die, before it will clear its throat to declare: “Those democrats that opposed the war were right, and the others were tragically wrong”. Be that as it may, the democratic party bears an even greater shame than those republicans that successfully plotted and unleashed the Big Lie War: because those democrats who profess to “go high when republicans go low” remain silent about that unholy war for unworthy, even sordid reasons. Unless and until the party can speak in honest terms to the American people of its own failings in a matter of war and peace, the American people will never fully trust it. Nor should they. Al Franken represented low-hanging fruit for democratic politicians looking, like movie gunfighters, to “establish their reputations”. Fine, they succeeded. Someone should ask them now if they believe if Bush/Cheney (et.al.) were honest actors in taking the country to War in Iraq. And, if not, what the fuck have they done about it?
rk
@glory b:
I don’t disagree that we need due process. As I’ve said before, I like Al Franken and yes there is a difference between what he did and what Trump and Moore and others are accused of. But if he gets due process then everyone gets due process, that includes Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstein etc. Try making the argument that Franken’s charges are less egregious so he should stay. Doesn’t work. Democrats would look like morons if they made this argument. Your father’s friend fought the charges. Franken should have stayed put and insisted on the ethics committee and facing his accusers.
Barbara
@Peale: I only partly agree with this. He had the correct response to Tweeden, and if it had stopped there life would have gone on. There is something we don’t know here, whether it was possible use of alcohol that impaired memory or something that stopped him from being definitive in his response. You can be gracious but definitive, but you have to be definite or people will infer what you aren’t willing to say.
catclub
midnight voting
Thursday
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, and Atlas Shrugged proves why Objectivism works.
I’m not completely opposed to the lessons therein, but fiction is not proof, it is an argument.
Sorry, I just tend to hate seeing this kind of comment coming up.
To the topic at hand: I’m sorry, I just kinda feel like crying. I’m not some complete totebagger – I hate tepid endorsements, I hate arguing about both sides, all that jazz. But the party I thought I was part of apparently doesn’t exist, and it hurts. Not enough so that I’m gonna take my ball and go home, but so that I just realize there are not arguments I can make in good faith anymore.
We’re supposed to be the good guys. We’re supposed to follow our morals, not when they’re useful like the other side, but because we actually believe them. They actually mean something to us. We think they’re the best thing for society. Real morals are not just chess pieces to be played and discarded when convenient. They’re supposed to reflect how you actually view the world, what you think people should do and be.
If we begin throwing them all to the side the moment we win, what the hell were we? What was the point? We’ll have become the people we hated so much.
“Oh, just a little bit of vengeance to show them we mean business, then we’ll go back to being jolly decent chaps and follow those morals. Just so long as they’re still convenient.”
Jesus people. I’m not advocating inviting Republicans to all our parties, and letting them make half of all our decisions for us because that’s fair. But I am advocating that the words we said a year ago, five years ago, ten – that if we believed them then, we should believe them now, and try to uphold them. Because if it’s only about winning, if it’s not about winning to push a vision of a less screwed up society, of a society we actually want to live in, what’s the point?
I know that’s melodramatic and ranty and barely half formed, but I just do not have it in me right now to do it any better. Sorry.
Jager
My sister is married to a wingnut and, what an asshole he is, every time we’d get together he’d never stop running his mouth about politics. My mom was a hard core FDR Democrat. She kicked his ass on a regular basis. About a year after she died, he went on a rant about Mom at a family reunion. He was yelling about her while surrounded by a family that loved and respected Mom on every level possible. People were horrified. My good brother in law, a 6-5 300 lb ex college football lineman, picked him up and slammed him against the wall, told him to shut his fucking mouth and threw him out of the house. The asshole has never shown his face at another family gathering, my sister comes on her own and seems fine with it. He is not only stupid but he is a chickenshit when confronted. The only thing he understands is power and the implications of getting a good old fashioned ass kicking. I suspect the entire R party is filled with guys like him from top to bottom. I nominate my good brother in law for Democratic party Chairman.
catclub
@rk:
yep. this
eclare
@TenguPhule: Seems like there is some political saying about making the motherfucker deny it…./s
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara: in fairness, he was pretty definitive about the “It’s my right as an entertainer” accusation. And I don’t know what to say about Tina DuPuy. I ‘m seeing her piece retweeted with solemn injunctions to “read it to the end”. I tried. I couldn’t. And those seem to have been the last two straws for Gillbrand. She ought to explain herself, especially in light of her “now is not the time to draw distinctions”. She ought to debate Joy Reid and her own, “if everything is the same nothing matters”. Joy has four hours this weekend and I’m betting would give the good senator at least a couple of segments.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
Doug, I agree with most of what you wrote up top, but I have to dissent from that view. And I’m not dissenting over some “taking the high ground / we’re better than that” naivete.
The truth is that part of the reason the GOP has become so extremist over the past 7 years is that extreme gerrymandering has set up a system where they’re competing against themselves in a self-destructive purity cycle to be the purest right-wing reactionary.
I don’t want us to repeat the same mistake from the left. Setting up neutral/impartial panels to create Congressional districts, local districts, etc., will help keep us from devolving into our own purity spiral.
TenguPhule
@rk:
Moore was ALREADY AGAINST McConnell and all the rest. That’s the difference. He hates them but is happy to take their money to gain power.
Franken was FRIENDS with his fellow Senators. You tell me with a straight face that if 32 of your workplace friends, people you’ve had to work closely with for years in order to get important stuff done, that you’ve relied on and who have relied on your for favors, help, advice and all the other thousand and one things to make the job that much more bearable, out of the blue all turn on you when you’re already fighting one unfair battle that you know is bullshit, and tell you “we don’t care if its bullshit or not, we don’t want you here.” That you would still be able to go on in that place? That the threat of being a complete pariah for the next 3 years and already branded as guilty despite your protestations of innocence would not stop you from going back to that lonely little place?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I love that story.
TenguPhule
@MomSense:
We were warned ahead of time. We saw a failed operation exposed just recently.
Party Heads still fell for it hook, line and sinker.
But I understand its rude to say we might need new party heads.
schrodingers_cat
@Thursday: You misunderstood my comment. We should try all options, but Rs don’t want to negotiate, look at how they treated President Obama. They literally want to kill people who are like me. In their latest “compromise” on DACA they want to take away the ability of a naturalized citizen like my husband to be able sponsor his mother if he wants to for a green card.
BTW since you just equated Mahabharata to objectivism, tells me that you know nothing of it.
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
Cause they got played for the suckers that they are.
TenguPhule
@Thursday:
When fighting actual Nazis we can still keep our basic humanity. This does not mean we can’t be combat pragmatists.
Major Major Major Major
@Thursday: I’m very sympathetic to what you wrote here. Capital-L Liberalism, the Enlightenment theory of governance which I consider myself a believer in, only really works when you apply it. Principles like “one person, one vote” should not be abandoned in a fit of pique, as they are fundamental to the correct functioning of our government. I don’t see how the same people advocating for that can turn around and mock the “we had to burn the village to save it” argument when ideological enemies use it.
Jeffro
Sidestepping the whole “unilateral disarmament” vs “we have to have standards” argument…sort of…why don’t any of these national Dem leaders (or state, for that matter – who cares) grab a little attention, call a press conference or buy 30 min of airtime, and give a nice long “The GOP Has No Standards” speech?
Here’s what I mean: go before a neutral or perhaps even conservative-leaning, #NeverTrump-leaning audience, and note all the ways that the current GOP is off the rails. Not just with Trumpov, either. Being anti-climate-science (or anti-science, period) is stupid. Being isolationist is stupid. Being anti-immigration is stupid. Giving the wealthy and corporations huge deficit-busting tax cuts, then balancing those cuts with cuts to Social Security and Medicare is stupid. Embracing people like Trump, Moore, etc is just one more layer of stupid on top of that.
So…join the Dems, #NeverTrumpers. The GOP you knew is gone, dead, destroyed in the service of the Kochs and Mercers, and willing to embrace the Trumps and Moores of this world in order to further their undemocratic aims. Join up with the principled party, the center-center party, the one that wants nothing to do with Putin, pedophiles, and plutocrats. “We might not agree on everything, but together we can restore American leadership, values, prosperity, and security both here at home and abroad.”
Something like that…whaddya say, Senator Harris? Rep Castro?
d58826
@Peale:
© TheWrap “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski isn’t so sure about the #MeToo movement anymore.
On Friday’s show, Brzezinski said she was troubled by the resignation of Sen. Al Franken (D – Minnesota) over allegations of sexual misconduct and — in a departure from movement orthodoxy — speculated that maybe we shouldn’t believe all women who make accusations of misconduct.
“In this #MeToo environment, you must always just believe the women and I think that there’s a lot of reasons why we need to look at the women seriously and believe them,” said Brzezinski “I’m just wondering if all women need to be believed and I’m concerned that we are being the judge, the jury and the cops here and so did Senate Democrats getting ahead of their skis.”
Brzezinski didn’t stop there, further questioning the motives of Franken accuser Leeann Tweeden, whom she noted was a Trump voter who had appeared on “Hannity.”
“We’ve never really talked about the woman who first came out against Al Franken,” said Brzezinski. “A performer, a Playboy model who goes on ‘Hannity,’ who voted for Trump. I see some politics there.”
The Brzezinski analysis puts her in step with some conservatives on the issue who have defended Franken.
Fox News firebrand Laura Ingraham warned her viewers against joining in a partisan Franken “lynch mob” saying that their brothers, husbands, sons — and president could be next.
On the same show, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich equated Democrats celebrating over Franken’s demise to medieval religious zealots.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/mika-brzezinski-questions-supernumbermetoo-movement-%e2%80%98i%e2%80%99m-just-wondering-if-all-women-need-to-be-believed%e2%80%99/ar-BBGoFZY?ocid=spartandhp
Centerfielddj
@The Moar You Know:
This is weird opinioning. First of all, California CAN’T get rid of the redistricting panel. It was installed by California voters in a referendum.
Second, your assumption that the California Legislative Democratic Caucuses will lose their supermajority statuses is not borne out by any statistical analyses I’ve seen. Trump is dragging the Republican brand down to the bottom of the ocean in California. I’m preparing to help us keep our supermajorities; it’s quite achievable.
Third, the claim that the Party has not built a bench for the post-Brown era is bizarre. There’s three Democrats who are running strong campaigns to take Jerry’s Governor seat, and the general election is very likely to be a Dem-on-Dem top two race. In addition, there’s a bunch of people bubbling up locally to run in Legislative and local elections, many driven by truly liberal policy and social goals.
The assertion that the County Parties aren’t doing anything is an assertion made with no supporting evidence at all.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
Amen. This generational stereotyping gets so tiresome.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat:
Thursday did not equate the Mahabharata to Atlas Shrugged, they (correctly) pointed out that both are stories.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Yes, T and Obama are both Presidents.
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone:
I do not like our role as the new Germany.
Skepticat
@Jeffro: Ummmm, excuse me. This isn’t a function of age (said the seventy-one-year-old), and it isn’t a matter of keeping people out but rather of bringing more of “our kind” in.
Bobby Thomson
So one of Moore’s accusers admitted adding a date and location to his yearbook inscription.
Fuckin’ clients. Losing a case by trying to make good facts better.
rikyrah
@glory b:
All Black folks, I see.
Gonna make the ‘ are you saying that we shouldn’t believe all the women’ people mad, but here it is.
As a Black woman, the history of this country is littered with the blood of Black folk spilled because of a LYING, UNVERIFIED WHITE WOMAN.
Period.
The thing about Franken’s ‘accusers’ is the number that were ANONYMOUS!
How THE PHUCK doesn’t that bother you?
You about to destroy a man’s career, and you’re not going ON THE RECORD?
THAT is the reason why I believed the Moore Accusers – ALL of them went ON THE RECORD. In that horrible state, knowing the blowback they would receive, they went on the record.
Never mind that the original accuser was a ratfuck brought by Roger Stone.
Franken never got the PROCESS.
Now, I am with the poster above that said that Franken should have fought for himself.
But, his colleagues got played – AGAIN – and showed their azzes to be SPINELESS, but he should have told them to go phuck themselves.
TenguPhule
@ginger: The point is you have to be pre-emptive to stop it.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: …which is true, what’s your point?
eclare
@Jeffro: Hillary did that, I think in Nevada last year. She read Breitbart headlines word for word. It was a great speech, no one cared.
Cacti
@JGabriel:
We’re already in our own purity spiral. The difference between ours and theirs is that they’re winning elections.
Remember how 2016 was “an election between Donald Trump and Goldman Sachs”? Remember “show us your Wall Street speeches”?
Remember yesterday when a Dem Senator was mobbed out of Congress because “All women should be believed”?
Purity politics have the Dems in a death grip.
Skepticat
And everyone knows the captain lied.
Major Major Major Major
@eclare: I seem to recall it getting roundly mocked as paranoid ranting.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Something Something….numbers. Something Something….political calculations….Something Something….moral high ground. //
rk
@Barbara:
.
I’m conflicted about the Franken thing. I was a staunch supporter and even now have a hard time believing Tweeden especially as she is a right wing hack and was on Hannity touting birtherism. I know how I would react. I’d be shouting from the rooftops that, no, this did not happen at all, sorry about the picture, none of this is true. Why resign? But the most important aspect of this is that do people really think that a party which is majority female will accept democratic women senators coming out for Al Franken? Does anyone know how politics works? No body cares about progressives. Most people don’t label themselves as progressives. I’ve talked to two women, both democrats, politically aware and neither said that Franken should stay. One has been working for 40 years and has been propositioned by three male bosses over her career. Her words were that “it’s about time we got rid of all these monsters”. The second was of the same view. Most of the democrats I meet are nothing like the people who write on blogs. On the one hand democrats are the ones who keep saying we have to “believe all women” (a statement I don’t agree with by the way). Then Franken gets accused by 8 women and democrats say, we don’t really believe the 8 women, but believe Al. Good luck with that one guys! Of course democrats need to fight, but they also have to know what and when to fight. Fighting for Al Franken is absolutely bad politics that’s too bad, but politics is not fair.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: My point is about their relative merit, if that was not obvious enough with my example.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
And then it became blamed for why she lost.
If only she’d catered to their precious little fee fees a little more, they might have changed their minds! //
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If Gillibrand thought this would make her look strong or good I think she miscalculated.
Thursday
@schrodingers_cat: I was not trying to put them on the same ground, but to directly compare the way you seemed to be referencing it to a very similar way many reference the works of Ayn Rand – “here, read this book, it’ll show you the right answer here”. Because that is most common way I see this particular argument advanced.
Stories can be meaningful, and true, and powerful, and wonderful arguments. But they are not proof in and of themselves of a correct answer. If that’s not how you intended your comment, I truly apologize. I know the example I used provokes a very visceral disgust, to see it compared to something that means a lot to you. But it was the best immediate comparison I could think of to what I thought you were saying, and I hoped the negatives of it could help convey how wrong such an argument can truly be, to show another group that makes (what I thought was) the same argument you were. The Objectivist uses are where I see a similar argument used most often, which is probably why I’m so hypersensitive to its use.
Major Major Major Major
@Skepticat: Everybody’s got this sinking feeling…
@schrodingers_cat: Got it now.
Cacti
@rikyrah:
At the rate we’re going, schools will start teaching that Tom Robinson was the villain in To Kill A Mockingbird.
Ruviana
@rikyrah: This.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
something we forget too often, in terms of what we think of as common knowledge and who “the base” is
On the one hand democrats are the ones who keep saying we have to “believe all women” (a statement I don’t agree with by the way).
I forget who siad– Rebecca Traister? Michelle Goldberg?– a better slogan is “listen to women”
is there a list of individual accusations somewhere? My count is “Right as an entertainer” was six and Tina Dupuy was seven?
MJS
@d58826: Forgive my cynicism, but I’m thinking Mika has some concerns that there will soon be similar allegations about her beloved Joe. The others (Ingraham, Gingrich, et al) are simply setting up their defense of Moore in advance.
TenguPhule
@rk:
FOR FUCKS SAKE WE HAVE BEEN OVER THIS REPEATEDLY.
All eight accusations range from pure unadultrated bullshit to making mountains out of mole hills.
HALF OF THE ACCUSER REFUSED TO IDENTIFY THEMSELVES.
Stop falling for this numbers game and THINK.
Replace Franken in your sentence with Obama. Now try and say it again.
eemom
No. Shit.
satby
@TenguPhule: and that’s why I’m kinda done with it all for a while.
MarkK
@mike in dc: Yes!! And, lets do it, bring down all the nazi propaganda networks because until we do, we are fighting with one hand tied behind our backs
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
1 Republican Ratfucker: 1 rude photo. Bullshitter.
1 Republican: 1 photo that shows nothing. Unverified story
2 Anon Women: Bullshit stories
1 anon women supposedly a politician: Bullshit story
1 Anon women claiming to be a Democratic Staffer: Bullshit story, no evidence.
1 former military Republican: Unverified story, no evidence.
1 Democrat upset about getting her waist grabbed while taking a photo she requested that required them to be close together.
schrodingers_cat
@Thursday: No I did not mean that. No book has all the answers, even one as long and old as the Mahabharata. Its a complex story that not many here know. It deals with what is right and what is wrong and what it means to be human. Hence I referenced it.
From the last thread:
Yes the Mahabharata’s end is sad. Its not just a good vs. evil story, its about the human experience in all its complexity. There are no heroes, righteous don’t always win, the good guys have feet of clay and the baddies are not all bad all the time. Ultimately if one has to take away a lesson it would be the futility of war, even when fought for a just cause.
Kraux Pas
@Nicole:
Sometimes I think it may be an engagement thing. Perhaps liberals engage in politics at a younger age, looking to help people. Republicans aren’t interested in social justice and don’t get as politically involved until they’re pissed about something like taxes or multiculturalism (unless their parents got them involved in politics).
One of my sisters fits this trend. She was never interested in politics but gave off a generalized IGMFY vibe. Then suddenly in the last couple years she’s all into vaccine paranoia, flat-earth theory, “isn’t racist” but says Dems encourage black people to be lazy, and LOVES Trump.
Ruckus
Doug.
No. Just no. We do need to play the game, but there is a reason we aren’t republicans. They do shitty things, they are shit. I don’t want to go there just because they do. Be fucking better, not the same. Because the only way to beat them like that is to be worse than they are. Fuck that noise. Beat them by being better. That’s what CA did. There is a reason that nearly 15% of the population lives in CA. Besides the weather. Yes our taxes are high, but we have something to show for it. Taxes are the cost of a reasonably run government that makes our lives better.
As a society we have been sold on the only thing that matters is low cost. That’s bullshit. High cost doesn’t always get you better, look at the latest iphone. Low cost doesn’t always get you crap. But it’s a lot more likely to get low priced crap than not. But we settle for that because the wealthy know better. Also bullshit. You don’t get better by focusing only on low cost.
This by the way is a parable about taking the low road. But it works for me. The moral is, Be better, not, Be crap.
What we have to do is to show that while we may not all be perfect and none of us are gods, we are a lot better than the republicans. People didn’t notice much before republicans completely melted down into the shit stains they are, but they are noticing now. This is our advantage time, to be better not to sink to their level.
And this brings up Al Franklin.
Is he as bad as say Moore? I’d say no fucking way but then I’m not one of the people on the receiving end. Will we ever be perfect, which is the standard that republicans are holding us to, all the while they are trying to find the sub basement? No we will not. But maybe we have to, right now, be not just better but far better. Is that possible? To be far better than republicans? Easy Peazy. Will it cost us? Yes. Will it be worth it? In the long run, yes.
debit
@rk: Woman. Democrat. RIGHT FUCKING HERE DISAGREEING WITH YOU but no, two people you know are the be all and end all of the Democratic Party. I’m also a constituent. We’re the two paragons of womanhood from Minnesota? Are you?
Kay
Let’s just say over and that they passed a tax bill that benefits no one but the richest and they’re gutting Medicare.
That’s true and it’s simple. It doesn’t matter why they lose. Losing is the same whether it’s Medicare or sexual harassment.
We know there’s a pro-Medicare, anti-rich people tax breaks voting group. No one knows if there’s an anti-sexual harassment voting group, in fact, most of the evidence says there is NO such group.
Why make this so hard?
MarkK
@TenguPhule: Great post. We ought to ban all these idiots who still STILL give Republicans the benefit of the doubt. This is Alfred Hitchcocks (written by John Steinbeck) movie “Lifeboat”. You don’t listen to their side, you throw Nazis overboard!! I am not exaggerating. Watch that movie again and tell me its not right on
d58826
@rikyrah: beginning to think that St Ronnulus the Unready’s view of Russia – ‘trust but verify’ – is applicable here. Don’t dismiss what the woman has to say out of the gate but verify that there isn’t more to the story. I read in a tweet link a couple of days ago that Tweedon was thick as thieves with Roger Stone and the person posting the link knew that the two of them had been rehearsing her press conference for weeks. Now I can’t vouch for the twitter link but…. As to the other women, a nice slow drip of accusations by GOP/RWNJ operatives with the goal of making the D’s crack. Now once the 25+ D’s bailed on Franken he really didn’t have a choice. And I understand the female D Senators saying enough is enough because a lot worse has happens in Congress. They just may have drawn that line a bit pre-maturely. I also wonder if it was Franken who was set up because of the way he flayed Sessions.
schrodingers_cat
I don’t necessarily agree with DougJ’s suggestions on how to take on the Rs but we do need to play hardball too. No more letting the Rs walk all over us.
Bill Arnold
@Nicole:
.
Basically what he has going for him is a contrarian intuitive stochastic mental style, which worked much better when his brain was younger, and less damaged by lack of exercise, poor diet, and lack of pushback from the people surrounding him. He’s alarmingly lazy mentally. (And I’m trying hard to be positive here, reasons.)
The Moar You Know
@Doug!: He is the elephant in the room I did not address. Wait until the GOP trots out a few women to give him the #metoo treatment. They’re waiting: they’ll time this to do maximum damage to every CA Dem running in 2018. There are hundreds of women out there who he has victimized, and none of the stories will be made up. The CA Dem party has known about him since the late 1990s and done nothing – oh wait, they didn’t do nothing, they shoved him all the way up the ranks to Lt. Gov. He is the most likely Dem candidate for governor, and the only Dem in existence that I absolutely refuse to vote for.
Cacti
@d58826:
Anyone making an accusation of that nature deserves to have it investigated in good faith. No more than that.
Presumption of guilt of the accused person is a bridge too far.
But her emails!!!
@d58826: I’d look at it this way. Was there a more effective, higher profile, more consistently liberal male Senator than Franken?
Brachiator
@Doug!:
Not entirely true. Again, Democrats cannot hope for demographics to save them without some heavy work.
In 2016, Clinton beat Trump with this group by 19 points, 55 percent to 36 percent. But again, the problem is white people. Clinton lost every white age demographic. Every one.
Among those 18 to 29, Clinton did best, but lost 43 percent to 47 percent to Trump. Also, 10 percent of this group voted for someone else.
Also, among whites 30 to 44, Clinton lost 37 percent to 54 percent, with similar percentages among other age groups of white voters.
Obviously, these are national numbers, and are heavily weighted by the opposition of voters in the South, but still, ain’t no demographic nirvana around the corner, without a strong get out the vote effort and a strong message.
schrodingers_cat
@Thursday: I reread my comment, the everyone read part does sound too strident and preachy. Its just a suggestion guys, perhaps I should have worded it differently.
Neldob
And the Atlantic ‘he felt my waist’ outrage! What the heck!? Ima gonna email some of those lady senators and tell them to apologize and grovel to get him to stay. He doesn’t seem like some senator who would just lay down And wave the white flag. Maybe he’s sick of his thankless seeming job. I always admired how he fought for his place in the Senate.
PPCLI
OT.
It looked like there was a small step forward after the uniformed killer of Walter Scott — on video, as Scott was running away, followed by an attempted planting of evidence, also caught on video — was found guilty. True, it was the second try, after a (simply incomprehensible) hung jury the first time. But let’s take any sign of progress we can…
Then within a day or so, we get a not-guilty verdict for this:
http://reason.com/blog/2017/12/08/arizona-cop-acquitted-for-killing-man-cr
I have no words for this.
Major Major Major Major
@Kraux Pas: In many ways the idolized (and partly imagined) era of the 50’s, at least the how-straight-white-men-acted part, was a historical aberration. We’d just come off a crazy-ass war with very clearly defined baddies (they wore skulls on their uniforms!), we had a new clear enemy in the communists that most people agreed were bad, and the huge post-war Keynesian boom was going strong. There was land for the takin’, resources for the extractin’, and a big population boom to build housing and infrastructure for. For one brief moment, political communication was a little more genteel as well.
It’s bracketed, though, by Congressional canings, slavery, a civil war, Reconstruction, robber barons, and labor riots one one side, and Kent State, Watergate, MLK, JFK, RFK, race riots, AIDS, and blowjobs on the other side. And of course the veneer of gentility is shot through with the red scare, the lavender scare, Jim Crow, women’s subjugation, etc. etc.
rk
Democrats never had to fight for Obama. Obama fought for himself and was more than a match for anyone. I’ll take your word for it that all the accusations are BS. One about squeezing her waist seems particularly stupid.
But then, it’s all the more reason for Al not to resign. Democrats will do their own thing by asking him to resign (at this point can he seriously expect their loud and proud support?) and he should do his own thing and not resign.
Also, I can’t see Obama ever being accused of anything like this. Obama is a rare, rare man who is way too self assured, self confident to resort to such vulgar antics. He’s a once in a lifetime human which this country did not deserve. But, if he was accused of something like this, I can see the democrats turning on him
and him mounting a sincere eloquent defense which will reflect well on him, and at the same time be respectful to the women accusers. Don’t know how he would do it, but he would. He’s just that kind of guy.
Thursday
@schrodingers_cat: No, like I said, I’m probably a bit too paranoid about this particular kind of argument because it can annoy me, so I probably did jump to conclusions.
Also, I totally agree with your other comment – I do want the Democrats to play hardball. I want them to take more stands, I want them to obstruct and fight every last inch. I want them to stand up for what’s right. I just don’t want them to break their own standards in the process.
schrodingers_cat
@Neldob: A campaign to have Franken take back his resignation, I can get behind that!
Cacti
@Brachiator:
Here’s the dirty little secret about Millennials that no one wants to tell:
They’re the least white generation in U.S. history, but the white ones have virtually the same amount of racial prejudice as Boomers and X’ers.
The only group they’re significantly less prejudiced than is the Silent Generation, who is markedly more prejudiced that everyone else, due to being the last generation that all came of age before Civil Rights.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
his first response to the allegations was to apologize and admit fault. that was basically the end of it for him. he wasn’t really “fighting it”. “fighting it” would be what moore and trump have done in the face of multiple accusations.
TenguPhule
@MarkK: Its driving me crazy.
Abandoning Franken and kicking him overboard was not only wrong, but stupid.
We gain nothing. All the blame and none of the credit. Republicans can now say that we both harbor sex fiends AND will lynch innocent men without evidence or trial. The worst of both worlds.
Trump’s base is not impressed.
The mushy middle is not impressed. They see Republicans sticking together looking strong while they see Democrats sticking it to themselves and looking weak. They don’t get purity but they do understand loyalty.
Our base is divided. A lot of people are hurt, angry and disgusted with our Democratic representatives right now. In time this may fade, but it will cost us in enthusiasm, outreach and effort. Don’t expect donations to a party not willing to stand up for their own. If you abandon Al Franken for political advantage, why should we believe you won’t abandon us if it affords you a temporary gain?
Josie
Pretty difficult to see how you could gerrymander according to age. Here in Texas, however, if you could give the population centers a bit more control than the rural areas, you might make things more fair. Right now it’s just the opposite, which is one reason why we are still a red state.
TenguPhule
@chopper: The ethics investigation was the only way to fight it since Franken has a moral compass.
Peale
@rikyrah:Yep. Let’s accept for a moment that #MeToo is strictly “non-Partisan” and hoping to root out sexual assault and harassment wherever it may be. Now lets accept for a moment that there are alt-right groups out there attempting to rid the public sphere of African-Americans, Homosexuals, Jews and DemoRats wherever they may be. If #MeToo allows itself to be hijacked each and every time a right wing rackfucker targets a Jew or an African American politician like they did this week with Al Franken, they are simply going to become a tool of advancing that right wing cause whether they think they are or not. Whether they are ostensibly anti-Semitic or sufficiently “color-blind” in their activities, they are going to be a useful tool indeed. And yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone like Wyden or Rosenthal is next up for the treatment. If your initial response to a ratfucking is to join in, even when warned that it is probably a ratfucking, you are tool whether you think you are or not.
Caravelle
> I’ll tell you this: when Democrats get control of states in 2018 and 2020 — and they will — they need to gerrymander back, not turn things over to a panel.
Must be spoken as someone who doesn’t think partisan gerrymandering is a bad thing. As someone who does, I sure hope your point of view doesn’t win the day.
It’s not even like “once Democrats have an entrenched majority, then of course gerrymandering will be done in the way it should be, along with all the puppies and rainbows that will then be implemented”. A party that gains its majority via partisan gerrymandering has zero incentive to make gerrymandering non-partisan. If they don’t do it right after having been on the short end of the stick from it, they’ll never do it at all. It’s not like Democrats have a fundamental distaste for partisan gerrymandering; they’ve done it to various extents too.
And a party that gains its majority via processes like partisan gerrymandering, that allows one to gain power in ways divorced from the will of majorities of the public, will find its incentives divorced from the public will and by extension the public good (yeah, because benevolent dictators happen so often). Which will make them less likely to be “the good guys”. And the point of them winning at that point will be…
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: Ironically, the headline on that article, “Millennials are just as racist as their parents”, has a silent ‘white’ at the beginning, implying that the only people who really constitute a group are its white members.
Ruviana
@d58826: It was that drip-drip thing that bothered me. In fact a new accusation would appear almost like clockwork right about the time that media interest in Franken had died down and then boom! Everyone was off again. Accusations would appear in odd places–a Facebook page, Politico or Buzzfeed. And then the fuss would drop off. Someone noted, perhaps here perhaps elsewhere, that with other high-profile accusations–Weinstein, Spacey, Lauer, even Conyers–once the first accusations were covered there were many more who came forward, usually by name, not anonymously. A similar pattern happened with Moore. This did NOT happen with Franken. His co-workers on both SNL and in the Senate said they’d never heard anything, which again can be contrasted with the other examples above, where once the story broke it turned out that the behavior was an “open secret” and people who were involved (e.g., Entertainment, news, the local people in Moore’s small city) had known for many years. I watched to see if this would happen with Franken and it did not. It didn’t pass the smell test for me.
Cacti
@Major Major Major Major:
Indeed.
Major Major Major Major
My state senator has an idea.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
horseshit. he could have come out and pointed out that the accuser has a history of making shit up. if your ‘moral compass’ is such that you fold up like a house of cards after an accusation from someone like that, you’re not much of a fighter.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
But the simple things are the hardest to do.
They’re already gaslighting the tax cuts. We are way behind the curve here and need to catch up.
Don’t forget that not only are they going after SS & Medicare next, they’re going for round 2 on the ACA (assuming we beat them on this tax cut insertion) next year.
glory b
@rikyrah: And I’ll add that the women no one is hearing or heard from are the BLACK women who accused Clarence Thomas. If I remember correctly, there were 3 or 4 of them.
And remember, it was good old Uncle Joe Biden who refused to allow them to testify during Thomas’s confirmation hearing.
Harassing Black women, marrying a white one, we need an analysis of that.
Cacti
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s actually a great idea, considering California already gives a lot more than it gets from Uncle Sam.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: That shit drives me crazy.
@Cacti: And what’re people going to do, move the whole family out of state to die? (I wouldn’t put that past some.)
Kelly
@Major Major Major Major:
This
TenguPhule
@chopper:
Yes, he could have. At a time when attacking a woman’s background is now considered out of bounds along the lines of “she was a slut, so how could I have raped her?”.
There’s a reason he had to thread the needle.
sharl
Yep, this exactly. These days I find myself doing more of something I’ll call service tweeting, i.e., linking to source information and articles to buttress the very point you’re making here. It seems to often get the attention of people who are too busy or new to twitter (guessing that based on stats in their bios) or whatever to find the resources themselves. Case in point (mostly NOT my work):
What Matt Bruenig’s attached image shows comes from an IRS public filing, showing that Pete Peterson’s minion (Ms. MacGuineas) pulls down $499,814 per year (including non-taxable benefits, it’s $512,632). That is quite the attention-getter for folks who get lulled into a stupor by the blah-blah of complex econo-speak favored by these slick con artists.
ETA: Forgot to note that my lightly followed twitter account got several favs for the retweet of Bruenig’s tweet in another timeline.
TenguPhule
@glory b:
Rancid Oreo.
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
Am I wrong that Newsom won statewide office, AFTER people found out that he cheated on his wife with his BEST FRIEND’S WIFE?
Am I wrong? Folks didn’t know that?
rk
@debit:
No, not at all. I don’t consider myself the paragon of anything. As a middle aged Asian woman, I have absolutely no say whatsoever in the democratic party. My opinion, nor my issues are ever even discussed. All I can say is that both the women I talk to are white and one cried for weeks after Hillary lost and likes Franken. So take my anecdote for whatever it’s worth and make of it what you will. But I do know one thing, sexual harassment became a thing only when white women started to talk about it. So democratic politicians are going to have to bend over backwards to cater to white women regardless of right or wrong. Every which way whites have to be appeased, whether it’s white men for republicans, or white women for democrats.
Cacti
@Major Major Major Major:
I wouldn’t either, but even if they tried, I imagine a lot of local estate wealth is tied into real property holdings in California. Those can’t be moved.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
bull-fucking-shit. “Threading the needle” ain’t fucking fighting. immediately apologizing and asking to be investigated isn’t fucking fighting. if folding like that makes you an example of a “fighter” then the Democratic Party should just close up shop and go home.
now, not every politician is good at being a “fighter”. but franken certainly ain’t one.
TenguPhule
Journalists: Forget the Rust Belt diners. Head for the suburban yoga classes.
Jeebus, Jennifer Rubin got the Balloonjuice bug.
Unexpected this is. But not unfortunate.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: I don’t know the details of the bill (this was his facebook post) but I wonder how it handles things like that.
schrodingers_cat
@Thursday: You know something funny considering the topic of the post, its a game of loaded dice that is a pivotal part of the Mahabharata story!
Kelly
@Major Major Major Major:
They absolutely will. I have several wealthy neighbors with a vacation home in a low income tax state as their primary residence. They proudly say it’s for the tax savings.
TenguPhule
/SMH
clay
@rk:
I have to agree with this. My own wife — lifelong Democratic voter — was disgusted with Franken. I tried to mention how some of the accusations seemed fishy; how even if true, his actions (while bad) weren’t on the same scale as Moore or Trump. She told me that my defenses of Franken made her think less of me.
Other lefty, non-crazy blogs, like LGM have been calling for Franken to resign for weeks. They think we’re nuts for defending him.
The problem isn’t that “the Democrats caved”. The problem is that the real Democrats — the party members, the voters, the donors, you and me and all of us — are very divided on this issue. No matter what action was taken, the Democrats in Congress would’ve pissed off about half its base. It’s lose-lose. But I guess they made the calculus that, if you’re going to lose, do so in a way that hopefully allows for a win in the future, by letting women voters (the present and future of the party) that the Democrats take them seriously.
TriassicSands
Wow, Doug, those are some terrible ideas. I don’t support unilateral disarmament on the part of Democrats, but I’m equally opposed to Democrats becoming left-wing Republicans.
If you want to finally ruin this country then abusive gerrymandering and voter suppression by Democrats would be a good place to start.
One of the worst traits of this country is its tendency to OVERREACT during stressful times. We’ve seen it throughout American history: Red scares, McCarthy, internment of Japanese Americans, COINTELPRO, and today the response to opioid addiction. Forcing Franken to resign without hearings is another example. But imitating Republicans is the worst idea imaginable. Democrats are and should be different from Republicans. We need to find ways to accomplish what we need done without trampling the Constitution and human decency.
I’m old, but I would put my voting record up against that of anyone on this site and certainly any “young person.” The idea of suppressing votes among the old is a thoroughly undemocratic and abhorrent idea. We have to win elections fairly and we should want those elections to represent the will of the people. Today, that doesn’t happen because of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the Electoral College. Perhaps, the biggest problem Democrats have had in winning elections is that a significant slice of the natural Democratic electorate doesn’t bother to vote. They can come up with all the excuses they want, and some legitimate reasons, but the fact is if they don’t make it a priority — a near, life and death priority, because for some that is what the stakes end up being (think health care) — then Democrats will continue to lose elections they should win.
The saddest point in all this is that many millions of Americans today are just plain lousy, stupid, ignorant, selfish, or racist people. That’s who we are today (based on the results our system has given us). I have little hope that many of those Amurkins can be salvaged.
Mnemosyne
@Doug!:
Sacramento strongly prefers politicians from the Bay Area. I never hear a single whisper of Adam Schiff moving up to Senator or another statewide office, because he’s here in So Cal. We have the majority of the population but less than half of the power.
Helena Montana
“And I’d like to see some measures taken to make it so that older people are less likely to vote. Maybe schedule a Matlock marathon on A&E on election days.”
Well, sonny, this old broad is 67 years old and I plan to continue voting as long as I am able to, whippersnappers like you notwithstanding. One day you’ll be old, too.
Bill Arnold
@MomSense:
This, but also, helping the press improve their ratfucking-recognition skills and marketing/propaganda recognition skills and lie-sniffing and similar. The US press has been getting rapidly noticeably better but there is still vast room for improvement and way too much lazy stenography. One of our duties as citizens is to point out this stuff when the press misses/ignores/suppresses it, such that the press sees the criticism.
That somebody like RS can still pull off a ratfucking operation (and play the press with timing and etc.) is depressing to me.
Brachiator
@Doug!:
Then you don’t know much about the CA democratic party.
And hell, as problematic as Newsom might be, Antonio Villaraigosa might be worse.
MomSense
@chopper:
He apologized for the photo. He said he remembered the other allegations differently. Also too, it’s foolish to think that he could have said she or any of the women were lying.
The waist squeezing incident, IMHO, is ridiculous.
debit
@rk: I don’t even begin to know how to respond, so I’m bowing out.
Redshift
@Doug!:
I don’t see any basis for believing that. Can you point to an instance when that has ever happened, not just with redistricting, but with any issue?
I think a lot of calls for Democrats to “be tougher” are wishful thinking. Just because being assholes works for them doesn’t mean it will work for us. They’ve spent decades building a base that loves assholes and doesn’t care about anything but winning, and they’ve thrown away nearly everything else in the process.
Mnemosyne
@Barbara:
He did say that yesterday. He said that he remembered the incidents differently and that he did not deliberately grope anyone.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors make up some of the most powerful politicians in America. Statewide office would be a major step down.
germy
Immanentize
@Cacti: @Major Major Major Major:
I have another federal tax law I would like to see passed — call it the “Welfare State Tax Act” — no state need pay more federal taxes than that State receives on federal expenditures.
Mnemosyne
@d58826:
That’s another tell that it was a conservative op from the beginning. And we got played.
Cacti
@Redshift:
FDR was tough. Harry Truman, JFK and LBJ were tough. We didn’t start getting squishy until Jimmy Carter, which also happened to be the time we started getting our heads kicked in nationally.
If you won’t fight for yourself or your own, voters will never believe that you’ll fight for them. Al Gore learned exactly the wrong lesson from the Clinton witch hunts. Clinton fought and won. Al got squishy, made Joe (penis scold) Lieberman his VP nominee, and made the election close enough for Bush to steal.
Cacti
Help. Stuck in moderation hell.
Mnemosyne
@Thursday:
It also borders on offensive to compare someone’s holy book to Rand’s poorly-written screeds. Though I realize that Rand’s fans treat her potboilers with the same reverence that Jewish people treat the Torah, they’re not actually equivalent works.
Brachiator
@rk:
I hear what you are saying, but it puzzles me. I’ve heard some women say that they don’t see the concern for women of color, or that they don’t see the concern for women who are not high profile upper income women.
But certainly, sexual harassment is a problem for all women. I would think that perpetrators would be opportunistic, and hassle any woman they could get access to. And certainly, some of the earliest and most egregious cases involved Asian and Asian American women who work in the tech industry.
And in conversations I’ve had with women friends, some say that more black and Latino women in the entertainment industry have not come forward because they fear stronger backlash against them, that their situations would get tangled up in stereotypes about women of color as good for nothing but sex.
I also wonder whether women of color feel that current and proposed law and policy protect them as well as they do white women?
TenguPhule
@Immanentize:
Sorry, no. An Island in the Pacific is not going to be able to pay for the number of military bases we have out here on our own dime. If you didn’t want a State that needs federal money out here, you guys shouldn’t have conquered us.
Cacti
OT but guess what everybody?
Mahmoud Abbas just said that the U.S. is no longer qualified to broker peace, and that the PA won’t participate in any further U.S.-led negotiations.
This will end well.
debit
@debit: And actually I’ve noticed that I’m being angry and ugly in just about every interaction I’m having online these days so I’m giving myself a self imposed time out for a bit. See you all later.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I called our senator, Dick Durbin and gave the person who answered the iPhone an earful about the failure of democratic leadership on the Al Franken issue, and the stupidity of sacrificing a great senator when most the accusations were either tainted or anonymous, without due process. About the foolishness of thinking that this would give us some sort of moral authority – and I asked if they had not been paying attention to the republicans and that fact that their voters support Trump and are possibly about to vote a pedophile into office. I did not shout or use profanity, but I was clearly upset when I was talking. I ended up asking her to pass on that information to the senator. She was not happy to receive my feedback. A day later and I am still livid.
I am really happy to see that Tim Kaine declined to get on the bandwagon to ask Al Franken to step down. I am disappointed to see that Sherrod Brown was one of those people on the bandwagon.
Six female Democratic senators quickly followed Gillibrand in saying that Franken should step down: Sens. Kamala Harris (Calif.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) and Maggie Hassan (N.H.).
“I believe the best thing for Senator Franken to do is step down,” Harris said.
By early afternoon, Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Democrat, and Democratic Sens. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Tom Carper (Del.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Tom Udall (N.M.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), Gary Peters (Mich.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) had also called on Franken to resign.
I am super pissed at Patty Murray who said this:
RAGE.
Brachiator
OT. Who could have predicted it
gvg
@TenguPhule: What if the accusations were not bullshit? what if Al was hugging and making his fellow democrats who were women uncomfortable? What if they became even more uncomfortable after these stories came out?
I have no inside knowledge.
The first story that came out seemed like a hit job. I think the next two were anonymous which didn’t impress me because of the first one and because the other important men accusations had named accusers. After that we had an established meme that it was ratfucking however some of what I have heard about the later ones seems more credible and we haven’t changed our idea. We also have a past where our reps have a history of letting us down and not standing a firm as we think they should but most of us don’t have the talent, desire or experience to run for office. I myself dread crowds and talking to strangers and could never get up and make all those public speeches. running for office and then being in office sound like hell to me and I know I don’t have the political judgement to predict correctly how other people will see things.
It has occured to me though that it might be significant that his fellow Democratic women Congress people turned on him first. It might not be him though, it might be their experiences. Maybe they have had more shit to put up with than I have. I know from hearing stories here, that my working life has had very little ever happened to me. I’ve had it good, so maybe it’s easier for me to say Franken isn’t a problem nor was Bill Clinton. I also can’t say for sure how the Franken situation looks to the mostly apathetic voters but Congress women might know more voters than this blog has were in danger of not showing up.
When does Al leave the Senate and stop voting and what do we do to get more Dems elected?
Immanentize
@glory b:
I don’t think we really need any analysis, do we? Pretty obvious — and sad. Long Dong Silver indeed….
Draco7
@Matt McIrvin:
This is a tough argument – trying to match those children dying now against a hypothetical. I’ve seen your posts here and on LGM, and I believe you’re a decent person – but for me this whole argument is about my responsibility as an adult. I feel responsibility towards children – who have never had a chance/choice one way or the other – as well as desperately ill and desperately old people. I would like to see a senator forced to resign for supporting policies that result in black men being (in)discriminately shot instead of one forced to resign for unwanted touches. I admit I can’t see Franken as an evil creep, but maybe that’s transference. I’m a straight guy and none of the actions cited would give me any kind of sexual thrill, so I’m having a hard time assigning them as creepy. My responsibility right now is to stop children from dying – needlessly or any other way. That requires being assertive and using a number of the tools of power politics – it *requires* it. Apparently we all just have different priorities, because we can’t change everything at once. I’d love it, but it simply is not possible.
clay
@Cacti: But Jared says they’ll come back after they cool off! //
TenguPhule
@Cacti:
Since Abbas doesn’t exercise real control over the people he’s supposed to be leading, this isn’t a surprise.
geg6
@clay:
Not if I have anything to say about it. And I’m not alone.
WaterGirl
@Peale: #MeToo has already been hijacked.
The Moar You Know
@Brachiator: He knows all he needs to. I lived in SF while that pill-popping psycho was mayor. He is an oppo researcher’s wet dream.
Villaraigosa has some problems. He’s not my first, second, third or even tenth choice (this goes back to my previous comment about California’s shallow Dem bench). But he’s hasn’t done multiple stints in rehab for drugs, nor is he a sexual harasser, or a payer of hush money. All of which Newsom provably is.
They are both charter school supporters and Villaraigosa seems to think that cutting Social Security is a good idea, so fuck him, really, but he is not the catastrophe in waiting that Newsom is. I would have very much preferred Kamala Harris and I think her move to the Senate is good for the party, but very bad for California. We needed her here more.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: conquered is an awfully strong word when you’re talking about Hawaiian statehood.
Spanky
@Cacti: Actually, given what the Trump Administration’s attempt at “brokering” “peace” was going to look like, this might actually be the better outcome.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: Same with “working class” and others, too. The “white” is understood. Ugh.
d58826
@Mnemosyne: How can you tell a Democrat from a Republican? The democrat wears a sandwich board sign that says ‘KICK ME”
Cacti
@Spanky:
I wish it was only Trump who had his fingerprints on this. Chuckles Schumer encouraged him.
WaterGirl
@geg6: Count me in on that.
Immanentize
@TenguPhule: All federal tax money does not come from states — citizens or otherwise. I didn’t say states shouldn’t get more than they pay in, I said they shouldn’t pay in more than they get.
TenguPhule
@gvg:
Except that the accusations so far are bullshit.
So we have to force him out over their fee fees? A simple warning or censure wouldn’t be good enough? I thought these were supposed to be toughened politicians? We have to expect less from the women now?
raven
As soon as you’re born they make you feel small. . .
germy
@Brachiator:
The Me Too movement was started in 2007 by a black woman. I never knew it existed until some white actresses joined ten years later.
Mike in DC
If we’re going to have new rules of engagement, it might be helpful to reach consensus on what they will or should be, and maybe write them.down somewhere. Just spitballing.
d58826
@Cacti:
He seems to forget who pays his salary and what constitution he swore to uphold.!
Even though in all honesty when the Israeli lobby in DC says jump it is only a question of which of the 535 critters will jump the highest. The entire embassy law passed with over whelming bipartisan support
germy
@raven: …by giving you no time, instead of it all.
TenguPhule
@Immanentize: And guess who’ll get the short end of the stick. The Red welfare states have enough people in them to swing serious weight.
We don’t.
TenguPhule
@Mike in DC:
All’s fair in love and war.
Provided you are not caught.
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
I don’t live in California, never did.
But, I KNOW about the messy personal lives of these men.
IF I KNOW…you telling me that CALIFORNIA VOTERS DON’T?
I’m trying to see the problem here.
It’s not like any of the shyt with these two men is ‘ rumors’. It’s ESTABLISHED, and yet, they still get elected.
Immanentize
@raven: Are you going to Pasadena?
Ruviana
@gvg: You might want to scroll up and see what I wrote @180. If anything the last people Franken would’ve been groping would’ve have been his colleagues in the senate. And his Senate staff (current and former) said they’d never experienced such things and they’d not seen such things. Still not buying it.
eemom
Read that. Then read this thread. Not the same ballpark, not even the same motherfuckin’ SPORT. We are collectively a bunch of neurotic p*ssies who will continue to get rolled by the republicans, every time.
Again: what are THEY doing while y’all are angsting over the “soul” of the party? Moving their fucking tax heist closer to law. Passing even more horrific gun laws. Denying health care to 9 million kids. Getting Roy Moore elected.
It’s fucking hopeless.
Mnemosyne
@clay:
Ironically, my husband thought Franken should resign while I thought he should stay. I honestly don’t think this is divided cleanly along gender lines.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: The original circumstances of the takeover are bad enough. The US was very fortunate that people behaved mostly civilly and eventually integrated into the Union.
Bu there’s a reason why we got a Joint Resolution Apology in 1993.
d58826
@TenguPhule: I think the actual numbers are 60% live in blue states and 40% live in red states. Problem is the population in the blue states is concentrated in a smaller number of house districts. And the red states get the same two senate seats as the blue states. Under that breakdown something like 20% of the population in red states has a 41 vote filibuster proof lock in the Senate
rikyrah
CPS’ Claypool ‘repeatedly lied’ to cover up ethics breach, report says
Politics 12/07/2017, 09:19pm
Dan Mihalopoulos
@dmihalopoulos | email
Lauren FitzPatrick
@bylaurenfitz | email
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s schools chief “repeatedly lied” to investigators and engaged in a “full-blown cover-up” of behavior that he and the top attorney for Chicago Public Schools engaged in over the past 20 months, the CPS inspector general says in a report released Thursday.
In a blistering, 103-page document he sent Tuesday to the Chicago Board of Education, Inspector General Nicholas Schuler said he was “left with no recourse but to conclude” that the board should fire CPS CEO Forrest Claypool.
“Claypool greatly compounded the severity of his misconduct when he repeatedly lied to the [inspector general’s office] through two separate interviews,” Schuler wrote.
But Emanuel rushed to Claypool’s defense after the release of the report. And Frank Clark, the president of the school board — whose members were chosen by Emanuel — also has praised Claypool since getting the report.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/cps-ceo-forrest-claypool-lied-lawyers-ethics-breach-cps-inspector-general-report-nicholas-schuler/
Brachiator
@Cacti:
In a parallel track, UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to form a coalition with the Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has various parties looking at the UK as an unreliable peace broker. It is frustrating to see how expediency or stupidity may unravel fragile paths to peace.
And with Trump, I get the feeling that the great unwashed, who don’t see the point of diplomacy in the first place, cheer Trump’s “plain, ordinary guy no BS” approach in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But these jokers have no clue that East Jerusalem is just as important to Muslims.
More and more Trump reminds me of the know-it-all in the back corner of a bar, who has magically been elevated to the presidency, and who insists that all he needs is his gut instinct and common sense.
Mnemosyne
@debit:
Go play with your new kitten until you feel better. I took the night off to read romance novels on Wednesday and came back feeling much better.
TenguPhule
@eemom:
But we will still have our moral high ground as we march with our heads held high into the ovens. //
I’d like Democrats to stop apologizing and start punching noses. And escalate from there, if needed.
d58826
@eemom: And worst of all packing the federal judiciary that will be poisoning the legal system long after Der Fuhrer takes his place besides Lucifer.
Major Major Major Major
@d58826: Why is everybody so mean to Lucifer?
Cacti
@d58826:
Yep. Israel will continue to be the tail that wags the dog of our foreign policy. Obama was viciously accused of being anti-Israel for not groveling sufficiently before Bibi.
The difference now is that we’ve ceded any pretense of neutrality, and further diminished our standing in the region.
d58826
@Cacti: I think the security council at the UN has scheduled a meeting to pass a resolution condemning this. At least now we can join Israel on the security council s*tlist as we veto the resolution. .
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Lucifer is the original Al Franken. He had to go for the good of the party.
TenguPhule
Why are semi-dressed young black women with bras now bouncing around in the live play ads here?
Is Balloon Juice trying to get all of us here shitcanned for sexual harassment by the Democratic Party?
chopper
@MomSense:
I’m saying he didn’t really fight the accusation. clearly, since the end result was his resignation, it isn’t foolish to believe he could have outright denied it; it’s not like the end result would have been worse for him, and the woman was a known partisan scalp-hunter. it was his choice to cave. my assumption was that there were their shoes to drop that he knew about.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
Villaraigosa is incompetent. Aside from showing some leadership during a transit strike, he spent more time chasing skirts and photo-ops than doing his damn job.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@rk: “but politics is not fair” – kinda sums it up
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Thought I’d drop this here:
The Worst of All Possible Worlds: Did Market Leninism Win the Cold War?
The article was written in early 2015. Prophetic.
The thrust is this: history never ends and we seem to be expecting that authoritarian regimes (UnSwedens) in places like Turkey, Russia and China will eventually become more like the West: liberal and democratic. But China has surpassed our economy to become the largest in the world and doesn’t appear to be ready to end it’s one party rule any time soon. The article does end on a hopeful note. We are not slaves to history and can change our system to become something that is truly great and most optimal for everyone. We just have to want to and fight like hell.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: Russia is probing to see if that’s your or my weakness. The commie bastards are weaponizing everything.
Cacti
@d58826:
Nikki Haley also gave a speech today that basically said to the General Assembly “You’re all just a bunch of Israel-hating meanies!”.
And the post Pax Americana order moves on, full steam ahead.
d58826
A damning report on the spike in post storm deaths due to Administration indifference.
Spanky
Rats. Wrong thread. See upstairs.
The End
Brachiator
@germy:
I did not know this. Is this woman given credit as part of the Time Magazine Person of the Year story?
clay
@Mnemosyne: No, not by gender lines necessarily. My point was that Democrats are sharply divided on this, which means that Democratic leaders had no good way to appease everyone.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Its okay to criticize as long as you know what you are talking about. True about anything really, not just the Mahabharata. That means David Brooks can right no more columns about quantum mechanics or macroecon or even Applebees!
germy
@Brachiator: Yes, she’s the black woman on the cover. I’m glad they remembered her.
J R in WV
@clay:
Kristen Gillebrand is dead to me, was the moment she stabbed Al Franken in the back. Same for Ms Harris from CA, dead to me forever.
All they had to do was let the system work. Say “I don’t know, but we can find out by allowing the system to work, which will take a few weeks.” Have those women ever hugged a young person? Can they prove they weren’t sexually aroused by that hug?
We all know they can’t, because it is logically impossible to prove a negative, which is why we have the presumption of innocence in our judicial system. Unless you’re a Democratic male office holder!! That’s just wrong!!!
Screw them for their “It doesn’t count if I do it, but if a guy does it he’s EVIL…” reaction. If one of these women is the Democratic nominee for President in 2020, I won’t vote for a Republican, but I won’t spend a penny nor raise a finger to help them. Dead to me. Dead! I will just resign from politics and move away, Belize or Portugal, maybe.
Maybe I’ll get over all this, but don’t bet your pension on it. Unfairness is one of my triggers, and that’s what just happened to Senator Franken, unfairness^3!
Cacti
@clay:
So they caved to mob rule.
Smh
Emma
One of the interesting things I’ve noticed is how many men will say: I spoke to several female democrats and they say he should go and that’s good enough for me. Yet in this very blog there are more than “several” of us saying he should stay, and our opinions and reasons are disregarded. It seems to me that this is a game of some women’s opinions making men more comfortable.
geg6
@rk:
Funny, but my experience with non-political junkie friends is exactly the opposite. None of them think he should have resigned. Zero. Zilch.
clay
@J R in WV: Perfectly valid reaction, but for me, I’m done with purity tests. “I erred on the side of no-tolerance for inappropriate touching” wouldn’t be the worst thing a Democratic candidate has to justify. If we want the Democratic party to be as strong as the Republican party, then we need to behave more like Republican voters. Did the Cruz voters get mad when Trump treated their guy worse than Franken got? Maybe, but they still voted for Trump.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Phrasing.
eemom
@Emma:
I’m not sure which thread it was, but sometime in the last week or so, before the current debacle, this issue was being argued here and I asked if ANY of the “Franken’s gotta go”-ers were women. Not one raised their hand.
? Martin
California is now the 2nd bluest state after Hawaii primarily because we didn’t heed that advice.
LongHairedWeirdo
We already know that won’t work. What they’re doing *will not* bite them in the ass – it’s the duty of *someone* to nail it there, so it becomes obvious what they’ve done, and that they’re showing their ass. (How’s that for a mixed metaphor?)
This is one of the things that I think the Democrats fail to get. No, what the Republicans *do* won’t bite them in the ass – if it was going to, it would have. At the *absolute minimumum* it has to be held near their ass so it’s within biting range. (I’m really stretching the metaphor, aren’t I?)
The Republicans will use power to investigate and drive the news cycle in a breathtakingly corrupt manner. They will continue to cynically hunt Franken’s scalp over the despicable allegations while blowing off one of their own 14 year old girls. They will always say that *everything* is good for jobs, or veterans, or religious freedom, when everyone knows that’s just a cover for policies that entitle them to a reacharound from their corporate masters.
The media gives them a pass, so the Democrats have to say it. They need to say “well, remember, as soon as it’s a Democrat in trouble, there’s no such thing as a conflict of interest; they investigated Hillary Clinton to find a smear to use in the election, and everyone knew it was partisan. But suddenly, if any one person donated to Hillary Clinton, they’re clearly biased against Trump, and can’t be trusted in the Mueller investigation.”
They *need* to draw that contrast, because the reporting won’t include it, if it’s not an on-the-record quote. (Or they need to learn to do more off the record, deep background, whatever the hell Republicans use to poison the well, the Dems need to do with some antidote… and a real antidote, which means pointing out the poison, not trying to be respectable.)
TenguPhule
@LongHairedWeirdo:
They need to say it but they need a media to report it widely.
The media won’t report it widely.
? Martin
@Emma:
I thought Franken should go from day 1, and I didn’t care what female democrats said.
My argument for why he needed to go is that this problem, like many others in this country, is one of people in authority knowing they can get away with things. It doesn’t matter if it’s sexual assault or the financial crisis, the behavior will change if we show that there are exceptions for good behavior in other areas. If you allow the exceptions, everyone will assume the exceptions apply to them, and the behavior will never change. The opinions of women aren’t the bottleneck here. No group of women has EVER accepted sexual harassment and assault, and yet the behavior continued. What matters is the calculus inside men’s minds – and if they get the message that their buddies, or bosses, or relatives, or constituents will give them a pass or bail them out, then the behavior won’t change. The message needs to be ‘if you do this, you will be punished, no matter how else we like you’.
Besides, you’re going to have a democrat in an acting role in that seat. This doesn’t change the balance of the Senate and I doubt it changes the attention that will be paid to the issues. All it really does is remove Franken as the personality behind that seat.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
No, he didn’t equate Mahabharata to objectivism, he made the completely accurate and factual point that both Mahabharata and Ayn Ryan’s works are all fiction, and thus not that germane to governing the nation.
Some fiction contains great guides to living a good life, and some is just a good story, fun to read. Some is filled with lures towards evil. But it is all made up stories, fiction, not reality. And that is what Thursday said.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@J R in WV:
I agree with you, holy books should not be used to govern, but be careful. People actually believe what they say and outright calling them fiction, especially comparing them to crap like Ayn Rand’s shit, is insulting.
TerryC
I’ve read the entire thread and think it is correct, although I could be wrong, to say that there is another Franken accuser, one who has not been listed, mentioned, or named so far even though her situation is relevant to the argument at hand.
Do you know who I mean? Does the name Jaime T. Phillips ring a bell.
That’s the fake Project Veritas accuser whose story didn’t get past the Washington Post.
She counts as an accuser, one whose story has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be false.
That should carry some weight in the discussion yet it was never entered into the discussion, until now. I find that strange.
d58826
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Saw a clip on cabled yesterday that a bunch of GOP backbenchers want to re-open the e-mail investigation
Mnemosyne
@J R in WV:
Sorry, I am not a New Atheist, so I have trouble equating a book of mythology that has held up for thousands of years to Rand’s poorly-written screeds. If you want to equate the two because one is a religious book and all religion is lies, then have at it.
TenguPhule
@? Martin:
And so you find yourself all alone, high on top that peak of moral high ground as the Republicans come for you.
Emma
@? Martin: sure. You will have a democrat with no seniority. And most likely without Franken’s scorched earth approach to dealing with republicans.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
Please detail a time and place where a zero tolerance policy actually worked and did not merely result in people who committed minor offenses being punished more harshly than the ones who had committed major offenses.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
Also: please explain why seniority in the Senate no longer matters, particularly since it cuts across party lines. Franken’s replacement does not inherit his seniority.
Chip Daniels
FWIW-
Here in California we have a bipartisan panel for reapportionment, and still hold supermajorities, with not one statewide office held by a Republican.
ETA: I see Martin beat me to it.
Lets also remember that gerrymandering is in opposition to the second part of “more and better Democrats”.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne: “Admirals, Ensigns, they both wear uniforms. What’s the difference?”
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: yeah, facts are for jerks ?
Jeffro
@eclare: thanks!
Michael A Harkless
@Jeffro: As a 63 year old lifelong democrat I find your comments offensive. If you think this is OK to reduce voting rights for seniors then your no better than a republican.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
JR in WV basically said that quality doesn’t matter. The Great Gatsby and The DaVinci Code are exactly the same because they’re both fiction. There’s no discernible difference in quality of writing or storytelling between the two, amirite?
Note, Thursday backtracked above because s/he realized it came across as equating one of the great works of world literature with Rand’s barely literate droppings.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I mean, the point was that fictional stories, no matter how worshiped by some, should not be used for analysis when you can instead use real events. Whether that argument has merit or not is a different question. Thursday clarified that this is what they meant.
Cacti
@TenguPhule:
There’s no difference between Shakespeare and Danielle Steel. Both are authors.
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
Your discussion of cheap crap and high priced crap is interesting, on the money too. We try hard to buy wisely. We can afford expensive, but no one with any wits wants to spend big money on a crappy vehicle.
That’s why the IIHS crash tests expensive cars and inexpensive cars. Some of the expensive cars get terrible safety ratings because their structure is poorly designed and not well executed if it were well designed. For many years Cadillacs were fabulous examples of design and execution, same for Lincolns. Then Cadillac AND Lincoln went with bigger is better and all other design elements went away.
Cadillac decided to take back the design game and win it, and did so. Lincoln doesn’t know what design means anymore. Notice that Subaru had more 5 star safety ratings than any other manufacturer. Not the most expensive, just the best designed.
Throwing money at a problem is NOT the answer. This is why our military isn’t getting a good deal, they were captured by the contractors long ago and now the design benefits the contract people and not the sailors, soldiers, marines and airmen. The F-35 is a flying brick that was supposed to meet all requirements anyone could dream up, and thus won’t be able to meet any of them well. But it costs a trillion dollars, and every military contractor in the country makes book from their piece of the action.
The Zumwalt destroyers are a catastrophe. They are intended to sail and fight without a crew of sailors, and can’t do either WITH a full crew. And why does the USN need ships that can sail and fight without a crew? Because money spent on sailors is money that can’t be spent on a contractor!! And this is why the 7th Fleet has ships that run into things, there aren’t enough sailors because the money has to go to the contractors. Otherwise the admirals won’t get those great honey-pot high-pay jobs with the contractors when they retire with a great pension and nearly free health care.
Here in WV, in some counties, new pavement on a busy road won’t last a winter, because the specs for laying new asphalt are only followed when an inspector is actually there watching.
On the big 4-lane roads pavement seems to last longer, because there is nearly always an inspector drifting by to take a look, unlike a road between one valley full of farms and another valley with a hardware store, which won’t ever get a pavement job up to specs.
By the way, here in WV we build roads to support 120,000 pound vehicles, and that is the weight limit. Except if you’re hauling coal, then 150,000 pounds is the legal limit, even though those roads are built to the same 120,000 pound specification. Wonder why those roads need so much maintenance work???
Coal can’t go away too soon for me, it seems to make people exposed to it crazier than a Republican in a bank vault. Although Republicans seem crazy without coal dust OR bank vaults, so maybe that isn’t a good metaphor.
I’m thinking I need to get busy with my hands and brain on stuff that’s non-political.
Miss Bianca
@rk: So, just curious: were these Democratic women saying Al Franken needed to get shit-canned without an ethics committee hearing? No process, nothing, just go? Because as a woman and a Democratic Party functionary (albeit in a very minor role), I say that’s a bullshit stance to take.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
And I disagree with that proposition. There is very good evidence that our brains use fiction to make sense of the world and it’s common for people to use fiction as a guide to how they should think or feel about things. Though it doesn’t hold up as a novel today, Uncle Tom’s Cabin really was hugely influential in getting people in the North to think differently about slavery and be willing to fight to end it.
Please note, I’m dropping Thursday out of this argument (unless s/he decides to chime in) because they’ve already hashed it out with SC in later comments and they both know what the other one meant. Now this is just a discussion about the good and bad uses of fiction.
Sophie Montane
I regularly lurk here and at LGM, and the reason I decided to comment on the Franken thing here was because LGM was full of dudes chewing up the threads like crazed Chihuahuas, posting over and over again that “he MUST go, he MUST go, this is black and white and if you don’t see that you need to shut the fuck up and sit down.” Actually I think there was one dude who posted pretty much the same thing like 50 times. Reminded me of how much noise a single Chihuahua can make.
A common refrain I see from men in cases like this is, “well do we believe women or not? WHICH IS IT?” That’s why I mused aloud the other day that I think a big part of the problem is that many men are still struggling to just perceive and evaluate women as normal human beings.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Also, too, I’m partially basing this argument on the latest writing craft book to sweep the nation, Lisa Cron’s Story Genius. Get it. It’s great.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: Dammit. Michael Bennet was one of the 32? I am definitely contacting *his* office.
MomSense
@J R in WV:
You should hear what the old timers say about them here where they are built. They are so top heavy they can’t stand heavy seas. Lobstermen called it at first sight.
CindyH
@Emma: excellent point – my reading around the kangaroo court internet is that many women, including survivors of assault, wanted him to stay until there was an investigation – my husband and I argued respectfully about it – I definitely think the resignation should have only come after an investigation. I haven’t found any of the allegations to warrant stepping down without further info – this is a teachable moment and we’ve lost it
debbie
@rikyrah:
Thanks for sharing this link. I’ve always really liked Dahlia’s analyses.
debbie
Damn, did I miss a readers’ thread?
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: Good catch!
*write not right
Note to self: Read before hitting enter.
SgrAstar
@Doug!: totally disagree. You don’t win on gerrymandering, you win by delivering better policy to the voters. Gerrymandering works by excluding and marginalizing huge swathes of voters. We don’t have to do that, because more voters want what we offer. if we can insure fair voting- big if- we win. This is one of the only cases I can think of where there actually exists a moral high ground that’s worth defending. My 2 ¥
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: You’re welcome.
kattails
@Michael A Harkless: Seconded, with appreciation. At 66 years old, I get in from one of my jobs at 1AM, maybe get to bed by 3, and get up at 8AM, so your timeline won’t work. Matlock? Who? I was present at the two Beatles’ Shea Stadium concerts, and the Mayday anti-Vietnam war demonstrations. I’ve voted Democratic in every election since eligible. My slightly younger sister regularly gets mandated to work 16 hour straight shifts in a halfway house for mentally challenged adults, where she can get sworn at, and have to physically take down out-of-control adult males. People who are not able to fully function in society and whose families are not able to care for. And she shows up, where the younger crew call off. WTF IS THIS block seniors crap?
Doug and Jeffro’s comments are unbelievably hurtful. Just like being dissed as a female as no longer attractive (i.e. sexually useless) after about the age of 30. Just like being groped when I WAS deemed sexually attractive and thus fair game for groping. I intend to remain fully human until I’m out of this body. Maybe you should go along with the Republicans’ plan after all, it will kill off all us useless oldsters quicker.
As for the Dems tactics, I think it would pay to review the scene in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” where Butch and Sundance been away from Hole in the Wall for a while. Logan challenges Butch for control. Butch is like hey, wait, not until we talk about the rules. Logan stops, incredulous–“Rules? In a knife fight?” At which point Butch kicks him in the crotch. (Don’t know how to link to the scene on youtube.) I’m thinking this is the appropriate attitude for the party to take at this juncture.
schrodingers_cat
@J R in WV: I disagree that fiction and stories we tell have nothing to teach us and are irrelevant IRL. As for comparing Mahabharat to Ayn Rands’s works, I believe I have addressed that in my earlier comments. YMMV, obviously.
Caravelle
@Doug!:
Wow, you go around with this pose of “Republicans are so unambiguously awful that Democrats need to fight dirty to win” and then say quasi-idealistic nonsense like this?
We already know they won’t do that. Because they haven’t done that. They already justify all their anti-democratic, party-before-country actions with the claim that Democrats started it/do it too/are worse. They pull this off via extreme epistemic closure and confirmation bias, given it usually isn’t true at all. But you think that making it true will make them backtrack? It won’t, because they’re the bad guys. Or rather, they are the bad guys as evidenced by the fact that they’ve consistently escalated all those anti-democratic measures, even in cases where “both sides did it” to begin with (as with partisan gerrymandering, abusing the filibuster, etc). And given this has been their behavior so far, there is no reason to assume that will change in response to the same stimulus (real, perceived or falsely claimed “bad” actions by Democrats).
I mean, in the same vein as my previous answer, it could happen if Democrats taking power via illegitimate means led them to being the kind of people who take and maintain power via illegitimate means, i.e. people who do not meaningfully represent the public will, and Republicans reacted by opposition by trying to become representatives of the public will and promoters of democracy. I.e. if Democrats became the “bad guys” and Republican became the “good guys”. Problem with this scenario is, the bad guys would still be the guys in power. In terms of bringing positive change to the country it would be a complete failure.
I guess the concept is that if Democrats take anti-democratic actions, and successfully harm the Republicans through those actions, Republicans won’t draw the conclusion “we need to be better at anti-democratic actions than Democrats are” (the conclusion they’ve been drawing so far), but “we must limit everyone’s ability to take anti-democratic actions”. This is already pretty strange; maybe we’re figuring that Republicans currently don’t perceive Democrats as doing the same thing they do or worse (i.e. that they’re lying to others when they claim that, but not lying to themselves), and so Democrats doing those things would be a genuine new stimulus that could warrant a novel response. But even if that happens, for it to be effective Republicans need to have lost badly enough to induce change, but still be powerful enough to be able to effect it. Or Democrats need to have won via anti-democratic methods, but decide despite this to curb the anti-democratic methods that helped them win. Considering that in this scenario, the reason they resorted to those methods is at best a feeling of absolute urgency because of how awful the Republicans are, and at worst a feeling that anti-democratic methods aren’t really that bad; in both cases the incentives to give up the methods are pretty weak.
That’s a very narrow razor to balance the end of the partisan gerrymander on. Especially considering the alternative, where Democrats, having just now been losers because of partisan gerrymandering, end it right after their first wins, while they still see it as a cause for their losses more than a useful tool for future wins, which 1) results in fairer, more representative and thus better elections and politics, and 2) in the short term also results in better results for Democrats than they currently have, because the results they currently have come from the field being rigged against them.
There’s still ways that can go wrong, but it still looks to me like a more robust scenario, and one in which the actual desired outcome (fair elections, representative representatives, decent policies) is much more likely to arise.
TenguPhule
@Caravelle: Win first, debate after.
craigie
“Unilateral disarmament” is exactly the phrase I have been muttering to myself, especially over the Franken issue.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
The Charles Adams class of DDGs, designed in the late 50s, built early 60s had pretty much everything above the main deck in aluminum. It kept the weight low and they rode pretty well for a ship that size, even in very heavy seas. I’m talking swells of 30-40 feet. Days of that. But they were steam powered, expensive to run and maintain. I believe that they were the last petroleum based steam powered ships for the navy.
No One You Know
@bemused: Represent!
I have ZERO confidence in people looking to disenfranchise voters.
Period.
If you want to live in that kind of country,
you’re already leaning Republican, and you’re just fine with discrimination against the target group of the moment.
And you are exactly what the old white anti-information, anri-intellectual racist misogynists want: proof that you are only waiting for your own opportunity at the top.
Caravelle
@TenguPhule: DougJ is the one who made a specific policy recommendation here, maybe tell him that?
That also assumes that specific statements of “what we will do with a win” aren’t themselves part of winning. Winning elections involves rallying people to (a) cause(s), so what the cause actually is does play a role. “We aren’t Republicans” is certainly all people should need given the current state of the Republican party, but it only takes you so far in the long term. Even possibly, I would argue, the short term, if we explicitly call for doing the same thing as Republicans once we win.
Come to think of it, if someone were focused just on winning the election it seems to me this is exactly the sort of thing they would avoid saying, even (especially?) if they meant it, because it undermines the main winning argument (“we’re better than those other guys”). It seems to me that in this post DougJ was focused on winning if “winning” means “positively affecting the country after we win the election”. Which I think is fair, since one’s favored party winning and then failing to implement one’s favored policies is a thing that happens, so focusing on getting those favored policies implemented is also a valid win condition. Which I why I replied in kind. You seem to disagree that should be our focus, which is also fair but tutting a commenter who is engaging in a debate started by the post they’re commenting on doesn’t seem like the most productive way of expressing it.
Caravelle
@SgrAstar:
It’s like we sometimes don’t make the connection between morality as a mental abstraction, and morality as sets of actions and situations that are beneficial to people, and important for that reason. And then we accuse others of virtue signalling.