Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

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

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

People are complicated. Love is not.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

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

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

We will not go back.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2018 / Friday Morning Open Thread: Spring Will Come, in Its Own Sweet Time

Friday Morning Open Thread: Spring Will Come, in Its Own Sweet Time

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Happy Holi to those of us who celebrate the Indian festival of colors!

… The Holi festival has a cultural significance among various Hindu traditions of the Indian subcontinent. It is the festive day to end and rid oneself of past errors, to end conflicts by meeting others, a day to forget and forgive. People pay or forgive debts, as well as deal anew with those in their lives. Holi also marks the start of spring, for many the start of the new year, an occasion for people to enjoy the changing seasons and make new friends…

.

Speaking of new starts…

Reader Interactions

306Comments

  1. 1.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    In new USA Today/Suffolk poll, Democrats lead Republicans by 15 percentage points on generic ballot. by 58%-32%

    but, but… the tax cut!

  2. 2.

    OzarkHillbilly

    It’s happened again. The OtR post is up for some time, preceded by a late night open thread. And then, somehow, someway, the AM open thread appears inserted between the two.

    How dey do dat???

  3. 3.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    AP Poll —- Feb 18, 2018 — (Link Page 14)

    Do you think Donald Trump is a racist?

    Yes……………….57%
    No………………..40%

  8. 8.

    Zach

    When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!

    “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.” If DJT survives that far, he’ll be asked to revisit that quote in retrospect in the 2022 debates.

    Nah, just kidding, he’ll be asked about some nonsense controversy-of-the-moment.

  9. 9.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    You know how Wilmer’s son is running for congress in a district he doesn’t live in.

    I know this will come as a shock, but he supports the NRA (photo), the Confederate Flag (photo), and … wait for it… Drumpf (photo)

    It turns out a nut really doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  12. 12.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    His campaign says [Wilmer] also would impose countervailing tariffs on imports from China and Japan “until they stop dumping steel into the United States and stop manipulating their currencies.” (link)

    Surprisingly Wilmer hasn’t commented on Drumpf imposing tariffs. Funny that.

  13. 13.

    Anne Laurie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    How dey do dat???

    You can set the time of publication when you’re ready to publish a post (‘schedule’). When I’m late putting together my morning post, rather than push down Alain’s post before people can see it, I sometimes ‘cheat’ by setting the ‘scheduled’ time back to 4:55am (Alain almost always schedules his morning OTR post well in advance.) Since I know you guys will find me *anywhere* :) .

    Now I’m off to bed!

  14. 14.

    Mustang Bobby

    Good morning, friends, and please allow me a moment of shameless self-promotion (like you can stop me…) Tonight is the opening of “All Together Now” at the Willow Theatre in Boca Raton, Florida. It’s my first full-length full-tilt (sets, lights, costumes, paid actors, paid playwright) play in Florida, and I haven’t been this keyed up since I had a play open off-off-Broadway ten years ago.

  15. 15.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Levi Sanders @Celentra

    [There’s video of Trump saying the N-word]. I assure you, most working class families don’t care about this issue.

    7:15 PM – Oct 9, 2016 (link)

    I wonder who taught him to be so indifferent to racism. Hmmmm, it’s a real mystery.

  16. 16.

    mali muso

    Good morning! Been tossing and turning all night as crazy winds have been swirling and screaming around the house. Here in the Northern VA/DC/MD area, we are getting a swirly mix of gales related to the Nor’easter. 30-40mph winds with gusts up to 60mph. And I have five student groups heading out on international trips from Dulles today. Good times! Fingers crossed that all the flights make it out on time.

  17. 17.

    Central Planning

    Spring is coming in like a lion here in Rochester, NY… thick, heavy snow, with wind gusts 30-40mph. I think we’ll end up with 10-12″ of snow.

    I guess breakfast at my local mom-and-pop joint is off today :/

  23. 23.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    According to “True Progressive” Wilmer’s kid, we need to stop criticizing Drumpf (photo) and concentrate on criticizing …….. wait for it…… wait for it…. Obummer (photo)

    Like father, like son.

  24. 24.

    woodrowfan

    @mali muso: yep. Govt is closed and so us my university. I’m off anyway since dental work gone wrong resulted me be on such heavy antibiotics and pain killers that I cancelled my 8 am class and found a proctor for my later exam

  25. 25.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    Raining here in Beautiful Downtown Glendale; Weather Underground says were supposed to get 0.35″ today, my rain gauge says we’ve already received 0.45″.

    ETA: I have an appointment to take in the Prius for an oil change(why, yes I’ve been procrastinating); today is 1 year since I bought the car.

  28. 28.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Chyron HR:

    Levi Sanders @Celentra

    Stop using this white privilege garbage. The white working class is getting crushed economically.

    10:07 PM – Dec 1, 2016 (link)

    It’s like Drumpf – there’s a tweet for everything.

    eta: also, too – like his father, he only cares about white people getting crushed, not the non-whites who are getting crushed.

    Total DISASTER!

    Sad!

  30. 30.

    Immanentize

    Hello all. We have a nor’easter today in Beantown, but with rain. 1-3 inches. Flooding expected, then it will snow and freeze.

    Happy happy joy joy.

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: It’s worth mentioning that that AP-NORC poll tends to have a pretty anti-Trump lean compared to most other polls out there; their Trump job approval number always looks like an outlier.

    The job-approval polls have a particularly stark spread in them right now: Rasmussen and Politico/Morning Consult insist that Trump is close to 50% approval, everyone else has him in the thirties or low forties.

  37. 37.

    Amir Khalid

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
    With those poitical positions, I wonder why Levi Sanders is not a Republican. Also, given the geographical and political distance between them and the states of the old Confederacy, do Vermonters really have strong feelings for the Confederate battle flag?

  38. 38.

    Kay

    @ChrisCoxNRA
    Follow Follow @ChrisCoxNRA
    More
    I had a great meeting tonight with @realDonaldTrump & @VP. We all want safe schools, mental health reform and to keep guns away from dangerous people. POTUS & VPOTUS support the Second Amendment, support strong due process and don’t want gun control.

    They should probably stop televising Trump meetings because everything he says in the meetings is a lie. This is the second time- the immigration meeting was the first.

    It does not matter what he says because he doesn’t tell the truth. It isn’t complicated. I know it’s hard because they have to cover what the President says but they could stop covering the meetings, because he’s obviously using the meetings to lie to the public. It’s a show. Fiction. Made up.

  39. 39.

    Baud

    WaPo

    “The tension level is high, higher now than it was several months ago, in part because the Russians have gotten past the phase where they thought with President Trump they would be able to move the relationship in a different direction,” said Thomas Graham, senior director for Russia on the George W. Bush National Security Council staff and now managing director at Kissinger Associates Inc.
“

    This is qualitatively worse than any post-Cold War period,” Graham said.


    Trump appears to be the only senior member of his administration who still believes in a thaw. He has praised Putin’s honesty and directness after meeting with him in person and recalled his own campaign aspirations for closer ties. He has yet to take a stand against the election interference that U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed, largely because he fears it will undercut his own legitimacy, according to administration officials.

    
But as he has failed to move relations forward, “the Russians basically see the Trump administration as a lost cause,” said Andrew Weiss, who held senior Russia policy positions during both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and is now vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

  40. 40.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I was convinced that this time he was really going to be to the left of Hillary. Oh well, hope springs eternal.

    (Hope Hicks, not so much.)

  41. 41.

    JGabriel

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    Do you think Donald Trump is a racist?

    Yes……………….57%
    No………………..40%

    So, 43% of the country is too dumb to know what racist means, too ashamed to admit they voted for a racist, or too oblivious to know what the fuck is going on.

    I’m assuming some small percentage of the people who said yes are, in fact, self-designated racists who are proud that Trump is POTUS.

  42. 42.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid: Vermonters are nearly all white. In such a population it is guaranteed that more than a few will see the flag as a symbol of pride.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    WaPo

    Russian trolls used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to inflame U.S. political debate over energy policy and climate change, a finding that underscores how the Russian campaign of social media manipulation went beyond the 2016 presidential election, congressional investigators reported Thursday.


    The new report from the House Science, Space and Technology Committee includes previously unreleased social media posts that Russians created on such contentious political issues as the Dakota Access pipeline, government efforts to curb global warming and hydraulic fracturing, a gas mining technique often called “fracking.”

  44. 44.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    I agree, and I suggest they play bouncy polka music whenever Trump opens his mouth. It would make more sense than the words that actually come out.

  45. 45.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    The Smoot–Hawley Tariff was an act implementing protectionist trade policies sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and was signed into law on June 17, 1930. The act raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods.

    The consensus view among economists and economic historians is that the passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff exacerbated the Great Depression

    Sadly, Neo-Liberal FDR caved and sold out these brave true progressives

    The 1932 Democratic campaign platform pledged to lower tariffs. After winning the election, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the now-Democratic Congress passed Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934. This act allowed the President to negotiate tariff reductions on a bilateral basis, and also treated such a tariff agreement as regular legislation, requiring a majority, rather than as a treaty requiring a two-thirds vote.

  50. 50.

    Patricia Kayden

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Those 40% who can’t figure out that Trump is a racist must themselves be racist because he hasn’t hidden that side of his character and has given us multiple examples of his bigotry. And his racism predates his run for President.

  52. 52.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    That’s exactly it. It’s not fair to people to give him a platform to lie. Democrats will keep going to these meetings because it’s all upside for them- they state their position and Trump agrees with it. They know it doesn’t matter what he says.

    They have to cover what the President says. They don’t have to give him a reality show meeting to say it.

    In the meantime we’ll have to keep an eye out for NRA-drafted “mental health reform”. That will be state law. I fucking shudder to think what gun nuts will do to mentally ill people in their frantic efforts to protect The Gun.

  53. 53.

    Cermet

    @woodrowfan: Sorry to hear of your issues; I too am officially off here in DC but came in any way. Have a project that I really want to complete (so far, going very well. But need to do some tests to confirm.)

    Hope the young demographic’s attitude holds as these people age: some can’t all achieve the level of greatest that we jackals have manage as we aged – unlike the phony “greatest generation”, these current young teens/early twenties get to tackle the worlds greatest threat – corporate global destruction of the world and along with it, growing fascism caused by the 0.001%.

  55. 55.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Amir Khalid: Vermont and its immediate vicinity (western NH, western MA) is a politically anomalous little wedge of the US characterized by super-white rural liberalism. Economic leftists who like guns and are more clueless or apathetic than usual about racial issues.

    That most of Bernie Sanders’ political career happened there is the reason why I was always skeptical of his viability as a national candidate.

  56. 56.

    msdc

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: So the country wants a Congress that will stand up to Trump by a 26 point margin… but only plans to vote for Democrats by a 15 point margin.

    That missing eleven percent would be the dumbest motherfuckers in the nation. Even the Trump supporters know what they want.

  59. 59.

    SFAW

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Those 40% who can’t figure out that Trump is a racist must themselves be racist because he hasn’t hidden that side of his character and has given us multiple examples of his bigotry. And his racism predates his run for President.

    no No NO!!! The 57 percent who call Shitgibbon a racist are the TRUE racists! Please endeavor to get your wingnut BS memes correct, young lady.

  60. 60.

    msdc

    @Cermet:

    unlike the phony “greatest generation”, these current young teens/early twenties get to tackle the worlds greatest threat – corporate global destruction of the world and along with it, growing fascism caused by the 0.001%.

    Um, I think the “greatest generation” knew something about fighting fascism.

    Also, they were the most liberal generation in American history until the millennials came along. (A lot of our problems in the 2000s came from the greatest generation dying before most millennials were old enough to vote.) It’s their successors, the “silent generation,” who went full Fox News and are now frantically trying to pull up the ladder behind them.

  62. 62.

    Aimai

    @Kay: not much—if you aren’t a mentally ill GUN OWNER you aren’t a danger. And if you are a gun owner they will protect you. We should campaign against “special rights” for card carrying members of the NRA.

  63. 63.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: alternatively, the Russians are disappointed that our intelligence agencies have not bent to Trumpov’s will or bought into his delusions. Putin is actually quite happy with Trumpov himself

  64. 64.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    IMO, Howard Dean was the same type of Democrat, which is why I always felt he was over-rated as a national leader for Democrats. It isn’t just Vermont- there’s a strain of Democrats like this in Appalachia. Not as socially liberal but they really went for the guns and pickup trucks appeal. In their case it’s probably more authentic because some of them grew up with it- Ted Strickland in Ohio is an example of that. Strickland was never really embraced in urban areas in Ohio and since that’s the vast majority of D votes come from he was always weak.

  66. 66.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Since we’re talking about Wilmer…

  67. 67.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid: Not a New Hampsherite so take this with a ton of salt, but the google tells me not very serious at all. His wiki page is 4 sentences long:

    Levi Sanders (born March 21, 1969)[1] is an American legal services analyst[2] and politician. He is contesting the election for New Hampshire’s 1st congressional district,[3] which is an open seat as incumbent Democratic Representative Carol Shea-Porter is retiring.[4] Unlike his father, who has sat as an Independent in Congress throughout his career, Levi Sanders is seeking the Democratic nomination for the seat.[4]

    Sanders is the only biological child of Bernie Sanders, the incumbent United States Senator from Vermont, longest-serving Independent in the U.S. Congress and 2016 presidential candidate.[5]

    He’s a blank slate that has grabbed on to his father’s coat tails in the hopes that there is some nepotistic grift there.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @Aimai:

    I’m glad it concerns you. I hear them blaming this on “mental health” and I just shudder. Have you seen their school “hardening plan”?

    We’re going to turn schools and the mental health system over to gun nuts? Great! What else can we give them?

  69. 69.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Trump still doesn’t understand how trade works.

    When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!

    One response was

    Reed Smoot agrees enthusiastically!

  70. 70.

    msdc

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Huh. That Trump endorsement came the same day as the Women’s March, and that principled, teary-eyed apology for Confederate flag license plates came just days after Charlottesville.

    Shows you where his priorities are.

    If this guy gets any “progressive” support, I may have to amend my previous comment about the dumbest motherfuckers in the nation.

  72. 72.

    Gin & Tonic

    @OzarkHillbilly: there are, IIRC, eight candidates for the Democratic nomination for that seat.

    Levi Sanders is not, unfortunately, a blank slate. Judging by his Twitter feed, he uses racist tropes with as much facility as his biological father.

  73. 73.

    Waynski

    Since it’s an open thread. I think Trump or one of his fam/crew is shorting the stock market.

  74. 74.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Pundits always saw them as the secret lever that would break the national salt-of-the-earth antipathy toward Democrats, by “What’s The Matter with Kansas?” reasoning–they swung right on some divisive cultural issues, or lacked a scary San Francisco liberal image, and surely that would be enough! But of course with Dean it wasn’t enough; he got painted as a goofy commie moonbat the moment he went national. They were going to do that to Sanders.

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    I fucking shudder to think what gun nuts will do to mentally ill people in their frantic efforts to protect The Gun.

    Well that’s easy, Kay. Sell them even more guns.

  77. 77.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: The thing is, the NH 1st isn’t Bernie Sanders land. It’s much more recognizable Northeastern political territory–the rural and suburban areas are hardcore Republican, the cities are more Democratic.

  78. 78.

    hueyplong

    @Patricia Kayden: You are misinterpreting how Trump supporters read the poll question. They see it as a “trap” and, with knowing glances at one another, answer “No,” as in no, racism isn’t actually a bad thing.

    Literally no one thinks Trump isn’t a racist. His supporters love him for it.

  79. 79.

    Chyron HR

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    A few corrections to the Wiki:

    He is contesting the election for New Hampshire’s 1st congressional district

    He’s competing in the election. Once he loses he’ll start contesting it.

    Sanders is the only biological child of Bernie Sanders

    I believe that “only begotten child” is the preferred expression.

  80. 80.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Cheryl Rofer: Somehow not all that surprised that Sanders benefited from Putin trolls during the Democratic primaries. Unfortunately, it looks like he plans to run again. I hope Democrats have some great candidates to run against him because I don’t care for Sanders at all.

  84. 84.

    Another Scott

    @Cheryl Rofer: This is my Shocked, Shocked face.

    I hope they continue to go after him on issues like these.

    Jon Svitavsky seems to be a very long-shot candidate. (Folasade Adeluola, “a resident of Greenfield, Indiana” doesn’t seem to be serious.) Bernie should retire and go on an apology tour, but there needs to be a serious challenger from Team D for his seat if he’s going to leave.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  85. 85.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Moscow cancels new round of strategic consultations with US

    An ambassador accuses Washington of hampering cyber security consultations with Moscow

    In other news, Al Capone accuses Eliot Ness of hampering bootleg consultations. .

  86. 86.

    Kay

    @Aimai:

    I really resent that this gun lobbying group now feels they can draft public school and mental health policy. We’re really going to do this? We’re going to turn over some of the most vulnerable people in the country- children and the mentally ill- to a weapons lobbying grift operation?

    Someone needs to back them the fuck off. We have sufficient expertise on schools and the mentally ill. We don’t need policy written by them. The gun fetish gang need to stay in their own lane.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Ugh. What’s the Matter With Kansas. Right up there with Howard Dean and his Fifty State Strategy as cherished myths of the Democrats.

  89. 89.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin:

    the rural and suburban areas are hardcore Republican, the cities are more Democratic.

    Where in America does that not apply?

  91. 91.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    Dean’s popularity, such as it was, came from two things: he was against the Iraq invasion and he called out Bush as a fraud when every other Democratic candidate was taking turns shining Bush’s shoes. The people who thought he was the party’s savior divided into two groups, those who still think he was and those who don’t like him because he wasn’t. I will always give him credit for having the guts to say what the rest of them were to scared to say.

  93. 93.

    eric

    @hueyplong: i think the numbers tell us something very important. One of the ways that people tell themselves that they (and others like themselves) are not racist is that they define “racist” in a way that it does not apply to them. So, they say things like “I am not a racist because…[insert].” One easy example is that the may say “I am not a racist because I dont think that black people are genetically inferior.” While at the same time thinking that black people are lazy, immoral, and more prone to criminal behavior. What you and I would call “racist.”

  95. 95.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Amir Khalid: It appears there are 9 Democratic candidates running for the nomination, and most of them are probably actually from that district. The district is also fairly culturally different from Levi Sanders’ home territory. I suspect he isn’t a natural frontrunner.

  97. 97.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    We already have a terrible school to prison pipeline. It’s going to become school as prison and executioner pipeline.

  98. 98.

    Kay

    @James E Powell:

    I don’t give him that much credit for bravery on Iraq because he was a governor. I don’t hate him but this myth that he is uber liberal has to die. He’s not that liberal. I saw the 50 state strategy. It was just not that good. As a practical matter Dean’s 50state strategy (even if it had been well executed, which it wasn’t) wouldn’t have had TIME to affect that election. A 50 state strategy takes years.

    2006 was a wave year for Democrats. We dominated in Ohio not because of opposition to Iraq but because Republicans were corrupt.

  99. 99.

    ET

    It feels like the GOP of today and tRump are turning the younger generation more liberal, faster.

  100. 100.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    Because we have to protect The Gun. Everyone else has to take a hit to protect the fetish object of a million people.

    I’m actually fairly confident Democrats will refuse to allow the NRA to direct public school and mental health policy both at the national level and in the states where there are sufficient Democrats to block them. I think Democrats will (rightly) believe these are policy areas they know and they’ll protect them.

  101. 101.

    germy

    Levi is getting more attention than his step-sister.

    While Driscoll is a more conventional political figure than her step-brother (despite her independent status), and so far as we know is not in the habit of saying dumb things on Twitter, she raises another problem for herself and her family: she’s been linked to the controversy over her mother’s financial stewardship of Burlington College, which closed under a massive load of debt five years after the end of Jane Sanders’ presidency of the school, during which the small private college expanded its campus significantly.

    Turns out Driscoll’s own Vermont Woodworking School formed a partnership with Burlington College during Jane Sanders’ presidency that funneled about a half a million dollars to the off-site facility where Burlington students took classes. Sanders’ successor as president at Burlington and chief critic of her tenure, Carol Moore called the partnership a “sweetheart deal” for Driscoll that ended up “gouging the college.”

    linky

  102. 102.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I am shocked, shocked I tell you!

    A Vatican magazine has denounced widespread exploitation of nuns for cheap or free labour in the Roman Catholic church, saying the male hierarchy should stop treating them like lowly servants.

    The article in the monthly Women, Church, World is remarkable for an official Vatican publication – describing the drudgery of nuns who cook, clean and wait on tables for cardinals, bishops and priests. The article, based on the comments of several unnamed nuns, described how some work in the residences of “men of the church, waking at dawn to prepare breakfast and going to sleep once dinner is served, the house is in order and the laundry cleaned and ironed”. It said their remuneration was “random and often modest”. In many cases the nuns, who take vows of poverty, receive no pay because they are members of female religious orders and are sent to the residences of male church officials as part of their assignments. In the past most of the nuns working as domestic help in male-run residences or institutions such as seminaries were local nationals. But in recent years many have come from Africa, Asia and other parts of the developing world.

    The author of the article wrote that what most saddened one of the nuns she talked to was that “they are rarely invited to sit at the table they serve”, instead being made to eat in the kitchen by themselves. One nun said she knew of fellow sisters who had PhDs in subjects such as theology and had been, with no explanation, ordered to do domestic work or other chores that had “no relationship to their intellectual formation”.

    I mean, whocouldanode the Catholic Church would treat women so horribly?

  103. 103.

    Baud

    @ET: We really won’t know until at least the 2022 election, assuming we control everything after 2020.

  105. 105.

    msdc

    @Kay: That’s a bit like saying Obama shouldn’t get credit on Iraq because he was a state senator at the time. Maybe, but they had the wisdom and the courage to oppose it when too many national Dems were running scared.

    I thought Dean was much better as an outsider than he was as a frontrunner (kind of like another Vermont politician I know, only without the destructive egotism and the Russian trolls), but he was right about Iraq and that counts for a lot.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    It’s funny because if the NRA really wanted to weigh in on mental health, there’s an area where they can helpful. I know a lot of gun nuts. This goes beyond guns. There’s something wrong with them. The level of FEAR is just way out of rational. They genuinely believe they cannot safely leave their house without a weapon. Our office, like most businesses in Ohio, has the Ohio statutory exception posted on the door, where you can’t bring a gun in. They’re ignoring this. I can tell they have a shoulder holster or something on their ankle. What am I supposed to do? Pat these people down? Get a metal detector? If the NRA is worried about mental health they might want to focus on their members. There have always been gun nuts. They were never THIS nuts and there are more of them.

  108. 108.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    I think this is a winning issue for Dems. It certainly was in Virginia last year. Please Democrats look at the number of gun owning households and compare that with the number of voters who support gun control legislation for expanded background checks, closing secondary sales loopholes, ban on large capacity magazines and “assault rifles”. I’d like to see a buyback program as well.

  109. 109.

    satby

    @rikyrah: Good morning ?!

    @Mustang Bobby: Congratulations! Hope everyone breaks a leg.

    @eric: they define themselves as “not racist” because they don’t use the N word to black people’s faces. That’s the action (in their minds) that makes someone a racist.

  112. 112.

    Kay

    @msdc:

    That’s a bit like saying Obama shouldn’t get credit on Iraq because he was a state senator at the time.

    I supported Obama in the 08 primary v Clinton but I thought that was a valid criticism by Clinton- that it is easier to oppose foreign policy from the state level. Obama wasn’t a saint. The campaign he ran on trade in Ohio v Clinton was brutally unfair to her. Remember where she (famously) got mad and came out and denounced his trade mailers? That was 100% deserved.

    Obama ran tough campaigns. Hope and change, sure, but they really hit people hard.

  114. 114.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Wilmer had to issue a statement distancing himself from his Drumpf/Confederate loving son.

    Levi will be running his own campaign, in his own way, with his own ideas. The decision as to who to vote for will be determined by the people of New Hampshire’s first district, and nobody else.

    Levi who?

  116. 116.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    The NRA doesn’t give a shit about mental health. They just want to sell guns.

    Gun sales had been slipping since Trump was elected so his “gaffe” of take the guns first and do the due diligence later is working out well for them.

    The other thing to keep in mind is that the NRA is really about creating market for military weapons manufacturers. They have gone after small gun manufacturers who questioned the wisdom of selling these “assault weapons”. They no longer challenge the NRA.

  118. 118.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    If the NRA is worried about mental health they might want to focus on their members. There have always been gun nuts. They were never THIS nuts and there are more of them.

    This is why you don’t have to worry about any NRA metal health initiatives. They know who and what their customer base is and why.

  119. 119.

    germy

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    WASHINGTON — Dozens of Catholics, including men and women religious, were arrested near the U.S. Capitol Feb. 27 in the rotunda of a Senate building in Washington as they called on lawmakers to help young undocumented adults brought to the U.S. as minors obtain some sort of permanent legal status.

    Some of them sang and prayed, and many of them — such as Dominican Sister Elise Garcia and Mercy Sister JoAnn Persch — said they had no option but to participate in the act of civil disobedience to speak out against the failure of Congress and the Trump administration to help the young adults.

    “I have never been arrested in my life, but with the blessing of my community, I am joining with two dozen other Catholic sisters and Catholic allies to risk arrest today as an act of solidarity with our nation’s wonderful, beautiful Dreamers,” said Sister Garcia. “To our leaders in Congress and in the White House, I say ‘arrest a nun, not a Dreamer.'”

  121. 121.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    Yes but the voting follows the political winds. This is an opportune time for us because liberals are much more fired up now to fight back against trump.

  123. 123.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Do this.

    Eww, no. I’m not touchy. I like AMPLE personal space. I’m making the sign bigger. By the end of this it’ll be a billboard.

  125. 125.

    msdc

    @Kay:

    I supported Obama in the 08 primary v Clinton but I thought that was a valid criticism by Clinton- that it is easier to oppose foreign policy from the state level.

    Sure, but it’s still better than getting it wrong at the federal level.

    If she’d voted against the Iraq war, she would’ve been elected president in 2008.

  127. 127.

    hueyplong

    @msdc: If it was so easy for Obama to oppose the Iraq war, we should easily recall the long list of other, non-Congressional Dems who did likewise at the time. Oddly, I’m struggling to do so.

  128. 128.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: …oh, and I think there might also be some majority-black rural areas in the South that vote very Democratic, but for a different reason.

  129. 129.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    My son told me his class mates were discussing the walk out among themselves and a group of them said the walk out just gives a shooter sort of a head’s up for an attack. They’ll be out at a specific time by the flagpole, hence, vulnerable. I feel like this is a typical kid discussion – kids spend a lot of time talking about danger scenarios- and not some indication of trauma, but isn’t it such a weird world they live in? They have this whole concept of A Shooter that we didn’t have.

  131. 131.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Kay:

    they really hit people hard.

    “Please proceed, Governor”

    remember the coffin ad he ran against Mittens in Ohio.

    He was the best.

  132. 132.

    Schlemazel

    @James E Powell:
    I agree & am in the same camp. I will add that he was also exuberant and an unapologetic Democrat who seemed happy to take on Boy Blunder and the crew. We need more of that not less.

  133. 133.

    germy

    We have VPR on the radio right now.

    They’re saying Sanders is paying a fine for using Australians in his 2016 campaign.

    They’re really polite over at VPR, but they’ve been quietly reporting every story about Wilmer. Good for them.

    Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign has paid a $14,500 civil penalty to the Federal Election Commission to settle a complaint the campaign improperly accepted the services of volunteers from Australia

  134. 134.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:
    I lived in an Urban area, went to a public high school, and the stuff your son is discussing never crossed my mind when I was in high school.

  135. 135.

    No Drought No More

    “Also means Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton are right”.

    “The era of big government is over”; “Richard Nixon taught me what it meant to be an American”. Bill Clinton said that, and I don’t recall Hillary ever contradicting him, not even when she supported the massive investment of American blood and treasure in March of 2003. Ronald Reagan was Barack Obama’s beau ideal of a president, a point Obama he often made in speeches. Not FDR, no- it is Ronald Fucking Reagan he chose to laud time and again.

    My point being democrats must shoulder their share of the responsibility for Trump as president.

  138. 138.

    Amir Khalid

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    Businesspeople run a business, not a national economy. Those are two different things. Even a successful businessman, which Trump is not, can’t be counted on to understand the difference in scope. Trump has never run a manufacturing or construction business, so he is unaware that he just blindsided these sectors by jacking up their raw materials costs. And he did it out of petulance.

  139. 139.

    JR

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: The Vox explainer is interesting. An excerpt (sorry, don’t have the link handy) mentioned that Levi told David Weigel that he “Sent out a lot of tweets.”

    Translated: “I am an idiot who won’t take responsibility or apologize for past actions”. More like Trump than his dad, even.

  141. 141.

    Baud

    @No Drought No More:

    My point being democrats must shoulder their share of the responsibility for Trump as president.

    They are next in the line of responsibility after lefties.

  142. 142.

    MomSense

    @Immanentize:

    I’m supposed to drive to the North Shore after work today for a memorial service tomorrow. May have to get up wicked early and drive tomorrow morning.

    The storm surge predictions are wild for this storm.

  144. 144.

    Kay

    @msdc:

    If she’d voted against the Iraq war, she would’ve been elected president in 2008

    I was never as sure of this as other people were. It doesn’t hang together for me. Plenty of Democrats in Congress voted for Iraq and it didn’t hurt them at all. I don’t believe it was as central to voters as it was to the Dem base, specifically, that part of the Dem base who advocate online. Pelosi’s ’06 platform was bread and butter Democratic economic policy. Her biggest talking point was college affordability. She was actually ahead of the curve on that.

  145. 145.

    oldgold

    Trump met with the NRA last night to win their approval of his new school safety idea: arm the crisis actors.

  149. 149.

    sdhays

    @No Drought No More:

    Ronald Reagan was Barack Obama’s beau ideal of a president, a point Obama he often made in speeches.

    Oh, please. Obama praised Reagan as a “transformational President”, but not on the transforming that he did. It’s not Obama revealing his “conservative bias” to use a more recent example of a President changing the trajectory of American politics. He was clear that he wanted to trigger the change to reverse Reagan’s legacy.

  150. 150.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    An interesting anecdote about an exchange I had yesterday with my new California based SEO provider illuminated a change in the wind. It’s serious business on my website, a combo of targeted pay per click and SEO for the annual cost of a Mercedes Benz. Anyway, I was talking to the SEO/Social Media team member, and it went like this:

    Her: “I see that you’ve got a lot of personal content on your Twitter”.

    Me: “Yeah. Twitter is a dumpster fire across the board and I don’t think that anybody looks for my type of practice on it. I did decide to post some fun stuff, some travel stuff and then provocative tweets just so I could harvest some outrage ‘who is this jerk’ clicks to my business site and gain some google elevation. I guess I could delete all the prior tweets in a dump and just do pure business with it.”

    Her: (pause. laugh) “I agree with you. Twitter is awful. It’s so bad, we’ve taken it off our list of “must do” directory listings, because it just isn’t worth the time to curate pushed media to it, and it’s not making anybody any money. Leave it like it is, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  151. 151.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I can tell he’s excited about going to the Cleveland march although he’s not admitting that. He’s really social- he would find a crowd appealing no matter why they were gathered. Which is fine. I want him to see the march anyway. He can make up his own mind. They had a threat here where they took the kid into custody and the other kids know him as kind of an oddball but not a serious threat. They told me “everyone has a story about him”. They mean an odd encounter, but they see him as someone who is harmless. That’s hard for them, I think, seeing what they believe to be an over-reaction by adults. But of course schools are between a rock and a hard place because if they DON’T act and something happens the price of being wrong is so high.

    I wonder if they’re better than we are at discerning which kids are genuinely dangerous. Maybe we should be asking them.

  152. 152.

    JR

    @Cermet: The greatest generation, for all their flaws, defeated the Nazis. They aren’t with us anymore so I don’t think you can blame them for Trump and his attendant problems.

    They were also the people who (as a generation) rated W. Bush lower than anyone else, so they knew something that younger folks clearly didn’t.

  153. 153.

    germy

    I wonder if Wilmer’s half-wit son has a chance in the election? He tried running for public office once before and had his ass handed to him. I suspect he’ll spend the rest of his life trying, like his dad.

    I notice Wilmer declined to endorse Kucinich, although his organization of morons is all for Dennis (Fox News) Kucinich. The revolution!

  154. 154.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @Kay:

    Our office, like most businesses in Ohio, has the Ohio statutory exception posted on the door, where you can’t bring a gun in. They’re ignoring this. I can tell they have a shoulder holster or something on their ankle. What am I supposed to do? Pat these people down? Get a metal detector?

    Ask if they are aware that they’re in a posted place.

    If so, politely point out that they really should not bring their gun in, and if they cop an attitude about it call the cops.

    If not, you’re making them aware of the rule.

  155. 155.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @germy: When I was growing up I experienced some of the best as well as the worst among the Nuns and Priests that were a part of my daily life. I am however, well aware that while a part of it, they are not the Church. Pope Francis is now finding out how truly entrenched certain 14th century ideologues in the Church are, and how difficult and mayhap impossible to exorcise they will be.

  156. 156.

    Another Scott

    @msdc: Of course, the vote wasn’t a vote for war.

    Clinton’s speech gave her rationale for the 2002 vote:

    President Bush’s speech in Cincinnati and the changes in policy that have come forth since the Administration began broaching this issue some weeks ago have made my vote easier. Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first and placing highest priority on a simple, clear requirement for unlimited inspections, I will take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a UN resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.

    […]

    So it is with conviction that I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him – use these powers wisely and as a last resort. And it is a vote that says clearly to Saddam Hussein – this is your last chance – disarm or be disarmed.

    Bush lied.

    Hindsight’s 20-20.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  157. 157.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    I was never as sure of this as other people were.

    Perhaps not, but her Iraq vote was a good part of the reason I voted for Obama in the primary. Although I’m weird, I expect there were others who did the same thing. Did it affect her (not) getting the nomination? Don’t know, it could have.

    I do know that by 2016, it was no longer an issue for me, and the only people who still held it against her were the BernOrBust morons.

  159. 159.

    sdhays

    @Kay: If she had voted against the Iraq War, Barack Obama would have stayed in the Senate, built up a record, and planned to run after Hillary’s two terms were over. Voting for the Iraq War gave Obama the opening, and he took it. And without Obama, the 2008 Democratic Presidential primary would have lacked any drama.

  160. 160.

    germy

    @sdhays:

    Obama praised Reagan as a “transformational President”, but not on the transforming that he did. It’s not Obama revealing his “conservative bias” to use a more recent example of a President changing the trajectory of American politics. He was clear that he wanted to trigger the change to reverse Reagan’s legacy.

    And yet the useful idiots refuse to let go of that lie.

    50 years from now, they’ll still be saying Reagan was Obama’s “favorite” president. They’ll be putting it in the history books. Some of them are liars and some of them are useful idiots.

  161. 161.

    Matt McIrvin

    @germy: As I said, I doubt it. The Democrats in that part of NH (which is basically next door to me) are not a natural constituency for him, and there are 9 candidates running for the nomination, most of whom are not outsiders.

  162. 162.

    msdc

    @Kay:

    I don’t believe it was as central to voters as it was to the Dem base, specifically, that part of the Dem base who advocate online.

    …and who vote and volunteer in primaries.

    Iraq was the primary policy difference between Obama and Clinton. Without that, Obama had nothing to run on other than his personal story and charisma. And while those were considerable, I don’t think they would have been enough to win a tight primary against an opponent with deep institutional support.

    But this is all beside the point. I think it’s odd that you don’t want to give candidates any credit for taking an unpopular but strategically and morally correct position on a life-or-death issue. As hueyplong says, if it were that easy everybody would have done it.

  164. 164.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin:

    and I think there might also be some majority-black rural areas in the South that vote very Democratic, but for a different reason.

    Yes there are but they are gerrymandered into political irrelevance.

  165. 165.

    WaterGirl

    @JGabriel: I find myself wondering what percentage of the group that thinks Trump is a racist actually think that’s a good thing. I suppose they didn’t ask that?

  167. 167.

    msdc

    @Another Scott: It wasn’t hindsight for a lot of us here, and “I will take the president at his word” was a bad bet even in 2002.

    I have no desire to relitigate any primaries, especially 2008, but this insistence on defending an obvious mistake – and denying Obama and Dean any credit for making the right call – is just bizarre. It’s okay, you can criticize Hillary Clinton without turning into Nina Turner.

  168. 168.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: The 2008 primary was pretty close, and a lot of things could have swung it. Obama had a much better strategic plan to collect enough delegates–like Bernie Sanders, he concentrated on swinging the caucus states, only in Obama’s case he had enough of a primary base to win that way. But I know Iraq was the main reason I personally supported Obama over Clinton.

  170. 170.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: District races are very different from national races. The vast majority of people hate congress but re-elect their critter time and again.

  173. 173.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Yes there are but they are gerrymandered into political irrelevance.

    Slightly related: according to TPM, apparently Scottie Walker has decided that the WI special elections should not take place, because November is so close.

    Yet another way they suppress the vote. And, of course, Michigan, Alabama, and Florida seem to be doing the same thing.

    Example #4,382,147 of proof that there is no such thing as A Just God. (Because we’d hear about the lightning strikes taking out Rick Snyder, Rick Scott, Scottie, and the ‘Bama Lege.)

  174. 174.

    Another Scott

    @Amir Khalid: Trump’s idea of the American economy is stuck in the 1850s (along with the rest of his outlook).

    “When it comes to a time when our country can’t make aluminum and steel … you almost don’t have much of a country. Because without steel and aluminum, your country’s not the same,” Trump said.

    The latest net US steel production was 1,783,000 net tons for the week of February 24.

    The USSR made a huge deal about their world-leading steel production…

    Donnie’s lament reminds me of horses and bayonets.

    I expect that these tariffs will be substantially scaled back or delayed or never implemented. But given his love of Vlad, and Vlad’s love of chaos in the West, we can’t be sure.

    We have to fight them every single day. 249 days until election day.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  175. 175.

    FlipYrWhig

    @sdhays:

    without Obama, the 2008 Democratic Presidential primary would have lacked any drama

    Maybe we’d still have trolls today lamenting how Bill Richardson woulda won.

  176. 176.

    Schlemazel

    @germy:
    I always saw BHO’s comment as a clever political dodge. The comment means whatever you want it to. He knew that many of the uninformed have bought into the Reagan myth & for them it sure sounds like Obama was on board. For people paying attention it was just him admitting that Reagan moved the needle more than any recent POTUS & he would try to do the same.

    Lenin was a transformative leader. That does not mean I think he was a good leader or did the right thing. But if you said that in a political setting many people would assume you meant it as a positive.

  178. 178.

    WaterGirl

    @Schlemazel: You pegged it perfectly. Until you wrote that, I had forgotten that I had been called a “nigger lover” in college.

    Until I had that memory just now, I would have said that there weren’t racial issues when I was in college. What an interesting whitewash I did with my memory. Sigh.

  179. 179.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Matt McIrvin: I’m not sure Levi Sanders wants to win. OTOH I am reasonably sure Levi Sanders wants to make money from Internet idiots who venerate his obnoxious father and want to stick it to… someone… for… something and establishment and neoliberals.

  180. 180.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    I wonder if they’re better than we are at discerning which kids are genuinely dangerous. Maybe we should be asking them.

    Eddie Haskell.

  181. 181.

    FlipYrWhig

    @msdc: Oooh, I forgot all about him. Yes, so much that. “He’s the only one who knows how to talk about class! He’s the son of a millworker!” Ew and ew again.

  184. 184.

    Immanentize

    @germy:

    Dominican Sister Elise Garcia

    She was my colleague at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. But hadn’t taken orders yet.
    I guess you can say, I knew her before she was a nun (cue Groucho Marx re: Doris Day)
    She and her partner lived in the Hill Country in Comfort Texas. She used to say, “You have to go through Welfare to get to Comfort. (Welfare was another small Texas town down the road)

    As Ozark points out, the Catholic laity (mostly nuns but brothers too) do most of the service work for retired priests, but get no such treatment in their old age.

  185. 185.

    danielx

    Back in the day, I had a boss who I observed for about three months before classifying him as a firefighter. He loved the rush of staving off potential disasters, imposing impossible deadlines and requests upon the inmates of the office in order to stave off those same self-inflicted disasters. By, say, by requesting “just these few little changes” (complete rewrite of a ten page document) by no later than 9 am the following Friday morning…at 4 pm on Thursday. A document which had required forty odd hours to compile, no less. If there wasn’t a fire around to fight, he’d light one.

    The shitgibbon sort of reminds me of him, with the fairly major differences that the ex-boss was actually pretty bright and knowledgeable – he just loved being a crisis manager and would create crises to manage, if managing is what you call it. He had, dare I say it, a fairly competent staff which allowed him to function that way, at least to a point – the day he got reamed out by the CEO for being twenty minutes late to a meeting HE scheduled is graven in my memory. Trump creates crises because he is an unstable personality and because he has always operated in a state of chaos; he loves being a ringmaster. None of which constitutes a particularly sharp insight, but the consequence of trying to manage a nation of 300-odd million people on this basis is that he bumps from crisis to crisis while leaving his staff to try to clean up the trail of radioactive manure he leaves behind.

    This would tax the abilities of a highly competent staff managed by James Baker, assuming someone like Baker would work for a narcissistic moron. Trump’s staff, with few exceptions, has never been particularly competent because Trump does not care to have truly competent people around him lest they threaten his ego and self-image. A president’s staff is supposed to advise him, help manage his (or her) time, promote his policies, and aid him in performing the duties of office as efficiently as possible; a system which has been developed out over a lengthy period of time because it works, more or less.

    Trump has no need for any of that from his perspective, which is (more or less) the perspective of the shiny ball in a pinball machine. How this ends…..

    End rant. This has been another episode of Flash of the Blindingly Obvious.

  187. 187.

    FlipYrWhig

    @danielx: I think it was Kay who pointed out that it seems like the only Trump who’s ever had an actual job is Melania.

  188. 188.

    WaterGirl

    @WaterGirl: @Schlemazel:

    FYWP wouldn’t let me edit: I pressed Post on the comment above and then remembered that I ended up paying for my last 3 years of college myself because my mom was so angry that the friend from my dorm that I was going to get together with for an evening during the summer was a black guy. She was boiling potatoes for sunday dinner and she threw the lid of the hot pan at me across the dining room, and she told me that as long as she was paying for my college, she got to set the rules, and I couldn’t go. Hence my paying for my final 3 years of college.

    Yep, no racial issues at all. Kudos to my parents, though. There was never overt racism for us to see at home when we were kids, so at least they raised us right. And when 2 black guys rescued me from the side of the road when my Dodge Dart’s engine blew, and drove me the 55 miles right to my door, my parents invited them to stay for Thanksgiving dinner.

  189. 189.

    father pusbucket

    Also means Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton are right.

    About what? I’m not getting the reference.

  191. 191.

    Immanentize

    @MomSense: I’m not sure tomorrow morning will be better. There are already a large number of outages in Newburyport….

  194. 194.

    Immanentize

    @rikyrah: Thanks. We should be fine as long as the big maple by the road doesn’t come down….

    However, if my neighbor’s black walnut tree comes down and any lands in my yard — I’m gonna keep it and sell it to pay for fence repairs?

  195. 195.

    laura

    @Kay: Kay, I’ve got a theory about what’s the matter with Kansas-and every other rural, flyover, exurbs, hinterlands. It’s am radio. Coast to freaking coast nonstop hardcore hate soaked ragefull, hate thy neighbor conditioning.
    That the hate started with women, or feminazis should surprise no one.

  197. 197.

    gvg

    For me, the choice between Obama and Clinton was also impacted by hating dynasties. Bush II’s incompetence made me unhappy with the idea of Bush Clinton Bush Clinton. At that time I also knew that Hillary hate was a real thing in republican trending voters and I was tired of it. to be honest getting no drama Obama was very much more to my taste than any previous President I remember. But the Iraq war vote was a strike against her. At that time, in 2016 and next time, there was no chance I wouldn’t vote democratic. I do think she would have been a good President, I was impressed with her in 2016 and pleased so many others agreed. I also thought Trump would be a flaming failure and the other GOP candidates were also terrible so I thought we would win. However I always would have preferred some other mythical better candidate. someone younger and with better judgement. Because Hillary has made some mistakes I didn’t care for. I also really don’t like the old trend and want more young candidates.
    Everyone assumes she won’t ever have to do with politics again but Trump is wrecking our foreign relations and she was secretary of state. We are going to have a lot of damage repair next win. She isn’t going to run, but we will need her, Dean and Obama to help plus a lot of others. We should be thinking about that and making plans and list.

  198. 198.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Immanentize:

    “Laity” are all the baptized (except for those in Holy Orders or in the religious state). By Baptism, they are incorporated into the People of God, share in Christ’s office, and have their own part to play in the Church’s mission, especially by directing temporal affairs according to God’s will. They must bring God’s enlightenment and order to society.

  199. 199.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    But I know Iraq was the main reason I personally supported Obama over Clinton.

    I initially supported Obama as a kind of game- I knew the Ohio delegate rules would favor my being an Obama pledged delegate in a Clinton district because there were far fewer Obama people than Clinton people in my CD.

    It was mostly about…me :)

    I would have to admit what I found most appealing about him before I knew his positions was his temperament. His way of being in the world. The fact that he is really tough yet not a swaggering asshole. How precise he is. That he has a sense of humor. I think the person is important- what the person IS.

    There’s this kind of sophisticated take that says “I don’t care what the person is, as long as that person advances my position”

    I no longer believe that. Character matters. A lot. Trump is the best example. Voters didn’t have to be well-versed on policy or have a graduate degree to know Trump was unfit. They just had to have good judgment. They admire bad people.

  200. 200.

    Another Scott

    @msdc: One can think she was wrong to vote for the legislation – that’s fine. She said (many times) that it was a mistake.

    But it’s factually incorrect to say that it was a vote for war.

    It wasn’t.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  201. 201.

    Baud

    @gvg:

    I do think she would have been a good President, I was impressed with her in 2016 and pleased so many others agreed.

    In theory, I would have been happy that it would have been Obama, then Hillary, because she was a much better candidate in 2016 than she was in 2008. But we largely took Obama for granted, and we all know how Hillary was treated in 2016, so now I toy with the alternate reality in which we might have been better off with Hillary, then Obama. Impossible to know, however.

  203. 203.

    Immanentize

    @Gin & Tonic: Nuns, brothers and sisters are not ordained. Therefore, they are laity. Ask any nun you happen to meet…. It is a particular point with them.

  204. 204.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I’m a team player so I would have switched to Clinton as a delegate if she won without a second thought. I knew all the Obama people would vote for me as the Obama delegate because they had no other choice in our CD at the caucus level, since the whole Ohio crowd were behind Clinton which essentially guarantees me a slot, but I also knew if she won I could (and would) switch. I was pissed at the Clinton people who said they wouldn’t switch at the convention. I think they’re sore losers. I get being mad at losing- I’m a terrible loser, but I also think you have to drop it when it’s over. Obama lost Ohio in the primary and I didn’t hold it against Clinton. She trounced us.

  206. 206.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I’m kind of dreading 2020 because Trump will rattle Democrats. They’re nervous wrecks on a good day and they all thought Clinton would win so they will be fucking insane with doubt in 2020. It will be unbearable. I feel like we should get it over with now- everyone can say “look what happened in ’16” a million times now instead of later.

  207. 207.

    Immanentize

    @Gin & Tonic:
    “Holy orders” only includes Priests and Deacons (well and higher ups like Bishops and Cardinals and Popes)
    Nuns are not part of “holy orders” in the clergy vs laity sense.

  209. 209.

    WaterGirl

    @Immanentize: Which orders of nuns are you familiar with? I only know about Sisters of Saint Joseph because two of my aunts were nuns, but they have a sacred ceremony where they take a sacred vow and are “wedded to christ”, so while I agree that they aren’t “ordained” I surely wouldn’t call them laity.

  210. 210.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I don’t know. People were really nervous about Obama as the candidate in ’08 and Democrats did great in ’06. Half the Party were sure he was gonna lose. Our county chair at the time told me he would lose. He did not believe white Ohio Democrats would vote for a black man. That’s not irrational where I live. It was the conventional wisdom.

  212. 212.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Gin & Tonic: @Immanentize: the Catholic encyclopedia:

    Whereas the word faithful is opposed to infidel, unbaptized, one outside the pale of Christian society, the word laity is opposed to clergy. The laity and clergy, or clerics, belong to the same society, but do not occupy the same rank. The laity are the members of this society who remain where they were placed by baptism, while the clergy, even if only tonsured, have been raised by ordination to a higher class, and placed in the sacred hierarchy. The Church is a perfect society, though all therein are not equal; it is composed of two kinds of members (see can. “Duo sunt”, vii, Caus. 12, Q. i, of uncertain origin): in the first place, those who are the depositaries of sacred or spiritual authority under its triple aspect, government, teaching, and worship, i.e. the clergy, the sacred hierarchy established by Divine law (Conc. Trid., Sess. XXIII, can. vi); in the second place, those over whom this power is exercised, who are governed, taught, and sanctified, the Christian people, the laity; though for that matter clerics also, considered as individuals, are governed, taught, and sanctified. But the laity are not the depositaries of spiritual power; they are the flock confided to the care of the shepherds, the disciples who are instructed in the Word of God, the subjects who are guided by the successors of the Apostles towards the last end, which is eternal life. Such is the constitution which Our Saviour has given to His Church.

    Cleric:

    A person who has been legitimately received into the ranks of the clergy. By clergy in the strict sense is meant the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy. Consequently a cleric is one who belongs in some sense to the hierarchy. For this it is necessary that he have received at least the tonsure. The clergy by Divine right form an order or state which is essentially distinct from that of the laity. (Conc. Trid., Sess. XXIV, De sac. ord., can. i, 6.) Christ did not commit the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments to the faithful in general, but to certain carefully defined persons, as the Apostles and seventy-two Disciples. They also received the power of governing the flocks; which power is represented by the Keys, a well-known Oriental symbol for authority. That the distinction between clergy and laity was recognized in New Testament times is plain from St. Paul’s statement that the bishops have been placed by the Holy Ghost to rule the Church (Acts 20:28), for the right to rule implies a correlative obligation to obey. Presbyters are continually distinguished from the laity throughout the Pauline Epistles.

    Ecclesiastical Hierarchy:

    This word has been used to denote the totality of ruling powers in the Church, ever since the time of the Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita (sixth century), who consecrated the expression in his works, “The Celestial Hierarchy” and “The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy” (P.G., III, 119 and 370). According to this author and his two commentators, Pachymeres (P.G., III, 129) and Maximus (P.G., IV, 30), the word connotes the care and control of holy or sacred things, the sacer principatus. The “Hierarcha”, it is here explained, is he who has actual care of these things; who, indeed, both obeys and commands, but does not obey those he commands. There is, consequently, a necessary gradation among hierarchs; and this gradation, which exists even among the angels, i.e. in the heavenly hierarchy (on which the ecclesiastical hierarchy is modelled), must a fortiori be found in a human assembly subject to sin, and in which this gradation works for peace and harmony (“S. Gregorii Reg. Epist.”, V, 54, in P.L., LXXVII, 786; “Decreta Dionysii papæ”, in the Hinschius ed. of the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, 195-6, Berlin, 1863; “Decretum” of Gratian (Pseudo-Boniface), pt. I, D. 89, c. vii). The hierarchy, therefore, connotes the totality of powers established in the Church for the guiding of man to his eternal salvation, but divided into various orders or grades, in which the inferior are subject to and yield obedience to the higher ones.

    So at the end of this dive into Catholic Church construction there still is no clear designation of whether nuns are laity or not. If you want to know you are free to follow the links to find a more infinite # of links which will no doubt prove to be just as opaque.

    Myself? I feel fairly slimed so I’m going to go take a shower.

  213. 213.

    Baud

    @Kay: Not me. I had a lot of confidence in 2008. Of course, I also thought we would win in 2016, so I’m not a good judge. But at least I’m not a nervous nellie.

  214. 214.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    There’s a documentary about Obama that includes Obama looking at results coming in in ’06. Specifically, he is looking at Ohio/Sherrod Brown. He’s really excited. I think that got lost as time went on- how much he loved politics- the fight of it. I wonder if it got much less fun as President. Probably.

  215. 215.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Myself? I feel fairly slimed so I’m going to go take a shower

    I am very impressed! Your indefatigable curiosity overcame your religious revulsion! You are, you know, a role model for me.

  217. 217.

    Jeffro

    @msdc:

    (A lot of our problems in the 2000s came from the greatest generation dying before most millennials were old enough to vote.) It’s their successors, the “silent generation,” who went full Fox News and are now frantically trying to pull up the ladder behind them.

    Not sure about the ‘silent generation’ but boy my fellow GenXers (Reagan babies) sure are a shallow and IGMFU bunch.

  218. 218.

    Schlemazel

    @WaterGirl:
    It was weird when I was a kid. We were brought up that _all_ people were equal but my relatives used terms like “spearchucker” and “jigaboo” but they never treated people badly & went out of their way to support civil rights (including marching and supporting legislation). The minister that confirmed me was arrested marching with Dr. King. I still have not figured out the conflict between those things.

    I know for what they said about meginous couples that had I brought a black girl home they would have loved her and me but also counseled us strongly not to get married “because the children will not belong in either community” and we “will be discriminated against and hated by both black and white”. In some ways the world has changed a lot over the last 60 years, in others, not so much

  219. 219.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I can’t listen to them because it doesn’t matter. It’s not like if the D candidate is doing poorly I’m switching to the R.

    It just doesn’t matter. The die is set with the nomination for me so I don’t see the point of pre-losing. I think people do it so they won’t be disappointed but I’d rather lose once than lose slowly for 6 months. I genuinely don’t get it.

  221. 221.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: Growing up Catholic makes it easier for me to “research” in order to more thoroughly disparage it. In fact, I feel honor bound to.

  222. 222.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: @Kay: I believed he could win from the day he declared his candidacy. I was sure that if people believed he could win, that he would win.

    That’s what drove me so hard to work for him. I felt if I could just get him through the Iowa caucus with a win, other people would believe, too, and we could win it. What a wonderful time that was, and now we are living through this shitshow.

  223. 223.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: There was some documentary of his first run for President (IIRC) where he’s in some big room with a few aids and gets the news of a big unexpected win (Iowa?) that makes him realize that he really has a chance. He starts running and leaping into the air away from the camera, as I recollect it, obviously overjoyed.

    He was and is a real human being, unlike so many politicians.

    (sigh)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  225. 225.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    It’s not like if the D candidate is doing poorly I’m switching to the R.

    Not as long as Jill Stein is in the race!

    I agree with you. I don’t know why our side behaves that way.

  226. 226.

    Jeffro

    @sdhays:

    If [Hillary] had voted against the Iraq War, Barack Obama would have stayed in the Senate, built up a record, and planned to run after Hillary’s two terms were over. Voting for the Iraq War gave Obama the opening, and he took it. And without Obama, the 2008 Democratic Presidential primary would have lacked any drama.

    Correct on all three counts there.

  227. 227.

    MomSense

    @satby:

    Thank you, I am feeling better. I’m still wearing a brace on my wrist so I don’t make the strain worse but the worst thing was just how tired I felt.

    How are you feeling? I’ve been worrying about you.

  229. 229.

    WaterGirl

    @Schlemazel: Wow, that’s crazy! Calling names like that yet marching for equality. Yikes.

    As for “it’s okay to be part of a mixed couple but I hope you won’t do it because you’ll get hurt” reminds me of the “it’s okay if you’re gay, but I hope you won’t choose that because life will be so hard for you”. People are complicated.

  230. 230.

    Schlemazel

    @Kay:
    I was an Edwards supporter. Neither Clinton nor Obama was as liberal as what I thought we deserved. At that moment I was unaware of how big a scumbag he was. I also assumed a black man with a ‘funny’ name could not win. The came caucus night. On a normal Presidential year we will have ~30 people show up in my precinct. That year I stopped counting at 230! I knew this was the train to hop onto. I also knew that Obama was not the liberal he was made out to be so I was not as disappointed as many but I do not regret supporting him, he was a good and decent President who had done a lot to move us forward before the tangerine tantrum took over.

  231. 231.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel:

    I know for what they said about meginous couples that had I brought a black girl home they would have loved her and me but also counseled us strongly not to get married “because the children will not belong in either community” and we “will be discriminated against and hated by both black and white”. In some ways the world has changed a lot over the last 60 years, in others, not so much

    And they weren’t wrong because in the world they grew up in, that was true. Hell, it was still true of the world I grew up in. Thankfully, it is not true of the world my granddaughter is growing up in.

  232. 232.

    Kay

    THE REAL ESTATE firm tied to the family of presidential son-in-law and top White House adviser Jared Kushner made a direct pitch to Qatar’s minister of finance in April 2017 in an attempt to secure investment in a critically distressed asset in the company’s portfolio, according to two sources. At the previously unreported meeting, Jared Kushner’s father Charles, who runs Kushner Companies, and Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi discussed financing for the Kushners’ signature 666 Fifth Avenue property in New York City.

    This is really bad. This is scary levels of corruption. The idea that “it won’t happen here” is arrogant. PLENTY of places are horribly corrupt and we could be, too. This kind of assured elite notion that these people won’t run wild and take the country down with them is the height of arrogance. You’re not better. Look who you elected.

    How beautiful would it be if this privileged, spoiled NEPOTISM takes down the Trump family? I will cheer. It won’t be just the Trumps losing. It will be the whole concept of merit winning.

  233. 233.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    It is a frightening world they live in and I do think it means they are in a constant state of low level trauma. We are conducting a terrible experiment on that generation. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that they will develop all kinds of health conditions associated with stress at a younger age than previous generations.

  236. 236.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    I got completely involved and committed once I was in – I’m either in or out. I don’t have a middle position. I don’t see the point of that, except avoiding being wrong and I don’t care if I’m wrong- I never said it was a guarantee.

    That primary was fun. Much more fun than the Clinton/Bernie primary which was a miserable slog that literally never ended.

  238. 238.

    Immanentize

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Ok, I see where you are at now. Vatican II seemed to suggest that those in religious orders are distinct from the laity. But that has been stomped on since, it seems.
    Here is the understanding of nuns currently from the US Catholic Magazine:

    Priests and deacons receive the sacrament of Holy Orders. They are ordained. Religious brothers and sisters are not. We are part of the laity.

    I wish your version was right. Because then the church might feel some obligation to take care of sisters and brothers in sickness and in retirement like they do priests, etc. Nuns are the moral center of the church, IMHO, but they are treated with suspicion and sometimes outward contempt by the Church. Like Ratzinger’s investigation of American sisters’ supposed apostasy….

    Also too, I knew some nuns who were wicked quick — ninja-like — with a ruler.

  239. 239.

    Barbara

    @WaterGirl: I think this was pretty standard. People were afraid, and especially afraid for their children. Circa 1968, my (white) cousin married her fellow art student, who was African-American, and her parents were fully supportive but asked them to think about what it would mean for their future children. Recognizing that the world around you is full of racism isn’t the same thing as being racist.

    ETA: They did get married, and they did have children, and whatever problems the kids had seemed pretty typical to me.

  244. 244.

    Kay

    The Securities and Exchange Commission late last year dropped its inquiry into a financial company that a month earlier had given White House adviser Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm a $180 million loan.
    While there’s no evidence that Kushner or any other Trump administration official had a role in the agency’s decision to drop the inquiry into Apollo Global Management, the timing has once again raised potential conflict-of-interest questions about Kushner’s family business and his role as an adviser to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump.

    First a trickle and then a flood. These people are corrupt. What they own and what they owe should have been investigated and revealed before they got this far. It’s ludicrous that we are just looking at it now.

  245. 245.

    Schlemazel

    @WaterGirl:
    I don’t think they imagined it was bad as long as they never said it to a poc. But it was very odd. Now my mom would shut people down for telling a racist joke but not my dad or uncles. I also don’t think she ever used any of those terms. It was the 50s and people got away with a lot of crap I guess. White privilege.

    To tie the other threads in here. We lived in St. Paul, a Catholic majority city and have an Irish sounding surname. Because we went to the Methodist Church it was assumed we were “fallen away” and I was told on several occasions I was going to hell for it. I also got beaten up on the way home from Sunday School. It was a great education in the impact of irrational hatred. I also made it a point to learn a lot about the Church.

    Then the last theme. When Gene McCarthy was running for Senate I went to a small rally for him held at St. THomas University. He assume he had a homogenous group and went on at length about the moral superiority of Catholics. I dropped out of supporting his campaign that year and saw him as the phoney he was long before ’68

  246. 246.

    Immanentize

    @Kay:
    Kelly versus Kushner!
    Texas Death Match!!!
    Loser leaves town!

    It really is like a sick dime novel. But this is one in which Kushner will lose, then Kelly will also have to leave town. Kelly probably helped push Hope Hicks out the door ( not a woman worth reverence or worship or whatever he said). But it’s an elimination bracket. Ivanka and Donald are the next to enter the cage.

    PS. If McMaster gets tossed, and Kelly leaves, how can Trump say “my generals” plural again?

  247. 247.

    Barbara

    @Kay: And the reason why it didn’t happen has more to do with the Qatari party’s flash of insight about how corrupt this might seem to the rest of us, and basically to look more than two inches beyond their own nose. And, of course, it’s not a good investment. No one forced Jared Kushner to move to Washington or work for the White House.

  248. 248.

    Just One More Canuck

    @germy:

    Some of them are liars and some of them are useful idiots

    Some of them right here on this site

  249. 249.

    Kay

    We have SUCH low standards. It makes me sad.

    Jeff Sessions never defended the people who work for him against Donald Trump. Jeff Sessions only found his voice when Trump attacked him personally. They’re all so fucking selfish. Me, me, me.

  251. 251.

    Immanentize

    @LAO:
    One must wait for such a fabulous gift.

    So, first we will see indictments of the Russians (and maybe Assange — my fantasy) for the hacking and conspiracy to hack. Then you have the opportunity once the reality of that criminality sinks in to the popular imagination, to indict all the post-hack co-conspirators, or if you prefer Trump talk, colluders.

    PS I think Jared and Co. Are a whole distinct path of indictments. So too is the heating-up NRA/Russia links. So much work for Mueller and gang!

  252. 252.

    Barbara

    @Schlemazel: It might have helped you to know that a majority of Americans claiming Irish descent are in fact Protestant, not Catholic. The Irish (unlike the Germans) were more likely to “keep moving” even after they came to the U.S., and frequently dropped their affiliation with the Church when they moved to traditionally Protestant communities, especially when they intermarried. I used to subscribe to a genealogy website called Catholic Trails West, which is actually kind of misleading because it was specifically concerned with the movement of Catholics west from Philadelphia or Baltimore into Western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley. Every once in a while someone from a state like Alabama doing genealogical research would unearth an ancestor in a family being tracked on this website and would profess shock at finding out that their forebears were actually Catholic.

  253. 253.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Now this particular investigation is squarely in Schneiderman’s jurisdiction. I don’t think he has been twiddling his thumbs….

  254. 254.

    Kay

    @Barbara:

    No one forced Jared Kushner to move to Washington or work for the White House.

    That’s what kills me. I think I would be grateful if I were a rich crook and I would keep my head down. Really? You’re gonna flaunt this sleaze?

  255. 255.

    BruceFromOhio

    Also means Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton are right.

    At first this made me smile: yes, they are!

    Then I return to this reality where the two-bit ratfuck soulless criminals are destroying my country, and I get really, really, really fucking angry again.

  257. 257.

    Kay

    @Schlemazel:

    But why did you think Edwards was liberal? He wasn’t particularly liberal as a Senator. Obama and Clinton were more liberal senators across the board than John Edwards.

  258. 258.

    WaterGirl

    @Kay:

    Much more fun than the Clinton/Bernie primary which was a miserable slog that literally never ended.

    Perfect description!

  259. 259.

    Barbara

    @Kay: It’s hard for me to fathom the hubris and sense of entitlement being exhibited by Jared and Ivanka in particular. Ivanka’s attempt to be the pretty face for the ugly, racist chaos is particularly galling to me, but I get this sense that they both thought that being a ruling elite would either be easy or just come naturally to them. It’s astonishing to me that they ever thought that Trump himself would be fit for the presidency.

  261. 261.

    WaterGirl

    @Schlemazel: Those were definitely different times. Sometimes I think that there are catholic school kids praying for me as a fallen away catholic, just like we did when I was in catholic school.

  262. 262.

    Immanentize

    @Barbara:
    Former Senator Jim “I’m a crabby man” Webb re- Catholic/Protestant values of the Scotch/Irish:

    Webb’s book “Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America,” celebrates his heritage, and notes that even though many of his ancestors’ had Irish as well as Scottish blood, “at some point they all became Protestant.”

  263. 263.

    Barbara

    @Kay: My mother used to tell me that with Edwards, the whole was somehow far less than the sum of his parts would have led you to believe. I think Marco Rubio has the same problem. They should be the ideal candidate, but their biography exceeds their actual abilities.

  266. 266.

    Amir Khalid

    @Schlemazel:

    I always saw BHO’s comment as a clever political dodge.

    Or a polite nothing, like Hillary saying die Trumpenkinder turned out well.

  267. 267.

    Immanentize

    @Kay:
    They really thought that being President meant ruling it all, including justice itself. They would be the Capo di tutti capi.

  270. 270.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Immanentize:

    I’m picturing National Security Advisor John Bolton, but I’m struggling to figure out the most revolting person as possible Chief of Staff. Maybe one of his disgusting spawn?

  271. 271.

    WaterGirl

    @Barbara: I finally saw the clip of Ivanka doing her coy “it’s inappropriate to ask a daughter about sexual assault accusations against her father”. What a god-awful performance, it was appalling.

  274. 274.

    Schlemazel

    @Barbara:
    That is interesting, I have never heard of that site. I love genealogy, particularly when it uncovers family history that had been ‘forgotten’. One of my favorite pieces of info is that immigration had people working on Ellis island who spoke just about every language the newcomers might have, Nobody got their name changed by blundering, insensitive, bureaucrats., they chose to leave the past behind. Now changing religions would be a lot tougher (I assume, at least at that time).

    I know my dads family was Protestant since their arrival prior to the Civil War. They did intermarry with French Canadians and Natives so about 25%of that side was Catholic when I was growing up. Moms side was protestant in the old countries also.

  275. 275.

    Sab

    @Kay: @Kay: My stepkids were in high school when Columbine happened. My grandchildren weren’t born yet. Active shooters have been part of their reality for their whole lives.What a world we gave them.

  277. 277.

    Schlemazel

    @Amir Khalid:
    People misjudge Obama as somehow more naive or simple than an ordinary politician. I think he was much more clever and calculating (NOTE: those do not have to be bad traits, like any skill they can be used for good or ill. It is much more impressive that he chose to use them for good) and knew exactly what he was saying & how it would be received. I think he knew some liberals would be offended but calculated he would be forgiven while the great mass of disinterested would hear that as a good thing

  278. 278.

    Patricia Kayden

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Surely, Sanders isn’t so obtuse that he doesn’t think that his son’s neo-confederate, pro-Trump stance won’t be held against him by people of color should he run in 2020. There was always something about Sanders that didn’t sit right with me and his son is just another footnote on why he will never get my support.

    And yes, it may be unfair to hold his son’s yammerings against him but tough.

  279. 279.

    Baud

    @LAO: What does “steel-related” mean? Steel stocks when up, stocks of companies that use steel went down. If the confidante dumped steel stocks, he took a bath.

    ETA: I followed the clicks:

    Billionaire investor and longtime Trump confidant Carl Icahn dumped $31.3 million of stock in a company heavily dependent on steel last week, just days before Trump announced plans to impose steep tariffs on steel imports.

  280. 280.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I’ll be honest with you, Kay.

    I don’t have time for scared muthaphuckas in 2020.

    They need to eat their oatmeal and grow some balls.

  281. 281.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    The night I believed he could win the Presidency was the night of the Iowa Caucus. That was the sign…that was the signal to on the fence Black folk…it’s time to come on in.
    I had been there….I did the volunteering, and traveling to Iowa for my entire skeptical family.

    The night he won the Iowa Caucus, they finally saw why I had been working for him the way that I did.

  282. 282.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    The thought…that your NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR

    finds out that not only is Kushner taking private meetings in the White House..
    But, it’s doing it ALONE , without professionals…
    AND, he’s not telling the White House that he’s doing it….

    Someone who CAN’T GET A PERMANENT SECURITY CLEARANCE….

    and, McMaster IS THE ONE WHO’S GETTING FIRED?

  283. 283.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Schlemazel:

    I also assumed a black man with a ‘funny’ name could not win.

    Same here. I didn’t think we’d have a black president in my lifetime; was expecting we’d have a Hispanic one first.

  284. 284.

    But her emails!!!

    @Baud:

    Billionaire investor and longtime Trump confidant Carl Icahn dumped $31.3 million of stock in a company heavily dependent on steel last week, just days before Trump announced plans to impose steep tariffs on steel imports.

    That should mean jail time just as much as if the tip was from a company insider, but it doesn’t ’cause reasons.

  285. 285.

    rikyrah

    @Schlemazel:

    People misjudge Obama as somehow more naive or simple than an ordinary politician. I think he was much more clever and calculating

    He’s a BLACK MAN
    Named Barack Obama
    Who got ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

    and, folks thought that he was naive?
    Come on.
    That he’s smarter than 99% of the people in any room he walks into should be a given.

  287. 287.

    Leto

    @rikyrah: I remember that Adam talked about Lt. Gen McMaster (because he’s still an active duty Army officer) coming up on, essentially, a term limit for his current position as NSA chief: he’s a 3 star general, the promotion board met, they don’t like him, AND they don’t have a position to promote/move him to. I think he could only serve in the NSA head chief position for X amount of time; now did that preclude him from simply retiring as a 3-star and keeping the NSA Chief role? I don’t know. If Adam is lurking around I hope he sheds some light on this.

  289. 289.

    rikyrah

    CNBC obtained 50+ docs through an obscure portal on the website of America First Policies, the dark money group with close ties to Trump.

    The group has hired Trump’s pollsters to conduct polling and research—raising concerns about potential coordination. https://t.co/T4jyrdQ4dk

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 2, 2018

  290. 290.

    Miss Bianca

    @WaterGirl: and yet…seriously, what the hell do we expect her to say? “Yes, it’s all true?” “Yes, i believe the women”? I’m trying to imagine being in the position, as a daughter, of being askedto opine on such a topic. Whatever you think about Ivanka – and i think she’s a spoiled, arrogant, clueless creature who is in way over her head – maybe we can all agree that it’s time to stop quizzing a sexual predator’s female relations about the predator’s behavior, and start quizzing the predators about it, instead?

  291. 291.

    rikyrah

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Surely, Sanders isn’t so obtuse that he doesn’t think that his son’s neo-confederate, pro-Trump stance won’t be held against him by people of color should he run in 2020.

    Then, there’s this…

  292. 292.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: US Steel is down ~ 4.5% today, at the moment. If steel stocks got a bump yesterday, they’re gone now (the price is about what it was a few days ago).

    My old boss was once invested in some stock that would have regular swings of ~ 50% up and down. He somehow knew when to get in and get out. It does happen.

    The chart for US Steel for the last week looks kinda like a “pump and dump”, but who knows…

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (“I’m just speculating – I got no inside knowledge.”)

  293. 293.

    WaterGirl

    @Miss Bianca: Have you seen a clip of Ivanka’s response?

    My point, apparently not well made, was that my issue was with her performance in answering the question. I had heard about what she said and didn’t think that much of it, but to watch THE WAY she responded… it was really appalling. Watch it if you haven’t seen it.

    edit: I completely agree that we should be asking the abusers and not the women around them. On the other hand, she not just his daughter – she is working at the white house, and I believe that changes the dynamic for what is “appropriate” to ask. I still think Trump should be challenged on that every single day.

  294. 294.

    satby

    @MomSense: Honestly, much better now. But I was teetering on the edge of pneumonia and hadn’t been that sick in years. It was a real wake up call about how out of shape I’ve gotten. Diet and more exercise have commenced ☺.

  295. 295.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Schlemazel:

    I still have not figured out the conflict between those things.

    My suggestion: There’s a level of racism where they are able to be completely supportive of minorities as long as they feel completely in charge. They are generous, but it has to be their decision to be generous to a lesser. This showed itself massively when Obama was elected, where people who previously didn’t seem particularly racist went absolutely batshit insane the moment a black man became president. Some of them even voted for him! They could praise and be fair to and treat a sidekick as an equal, but the moment they felt blacks had actual power, they panicked and reversed course. Clint Eastwood remains the perfect display of this, a man famous for how well he treated blacks in Hollywood, who in 2012 lectured an empty chair.

  296. 296.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: @satby: Glad to know that you are both on the mend! Satby, did you end up going to the doctor and getting drugs?

    My first 36 hours with Henry being home after surgery were pretty brutal, but we turned a corner this morning. Now it’s just hard, which I can do. :-)

  298. 298.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: During McCain’s brief 2008 convention bounce, right in between the introduction of Sarah Palin and the general realization that she was an idiot, I knew a bunch of white Democrats who were seriously demoralized and convinced that picking a black man had been a fatal mistake. There’s always a moment like that, even when you win.

    I think that if it’s looking like a D landslide, there will be a bunch of nervous-wreck Democrats anyway, but I’m hoping the mood won’t be like 2016 all over again. The biggest danger is internal party fratricide during the general election campaign.

  299. 299.

    WaterGirl

    @satby: I was expecting struggles in keeping him quiet, but what I got was a pitiful Henry in a lot of pain who cried and shook and could barely hobble on 3 legs to go pee, and he didn’t poop for 2 days. And the epic fights for his liquid painkillers 2x a day. It’s still a battle but this morning I figure out a technique that lets me win. But struggling with a tiny little dog who is in pain is heartbreaking, and it takes 4 separate squirts to get the full dose in, so it’s not just one struggle. He didn’t seem anything like my Henry. Just awful.

  300. 300.

    Miss Bianca

    @WaterGirl: I haven’t seen the clip of Ivanka, thank Goddess. I have no doubt that that makes it much easier for me to feel a shred of sympathy for her in this instance. ; )

    Sorry to hear about little Henry’s travails – hope he gets better soon!

  303. 303.

    Stan

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    [There’s video of Trump saying the N-word]. I assure you, most working class families don’t care about this issue.

    This is so infuriating. As if black people are not part of the working class. And as if upper-income people aren’t the worst fucking racists, which they are. They may stick their pinkies out while they’re being that way but they are.

  304. 304.

    Stan

    @Amir Khalid: do Vermonters really have strong feelings for the Confederate battle flag?

    I never see it in urban areas, but in rural areas of New York, Vermont and Pennsylvania, traitor flags seem fairly common.

  305. 305.

    Stan

    @OzarkHillbilly: the rural and suburban areas are hardcore Republican, the cities are more Democratic.

    Where in America does that not apply?

    Not arguing your general point but there’s one exception I am aware of: the capital region of New York State. The suburbs are a mix with some republican and some very liberal democratic. The small towns are also mixed.

  306. 306.

    Stan

    @<a href=

    “#comment-6779439”>Kay: I can tell they have a shoulder holster or something on their ankle. What am I supposed to do? Pat these people down? Get a metal detector? If the NRA is worried about mental health they might want to focus on their members. There have always been gun nuts. They were never THIS nuts and there are more of them.

    A couple years ago i spotted a guy wearing a pistol in a public school at which I was volunteering. I confronted him, asked him if he had a gun (which he obviously did). He said he did, and immediately followed that up with “I have a second amendment right to carry a weapon” to which I replied, “I respect the second amendment but this is a public school and carrying a gun here is illegal. Don’t do it again”. Then I asked a cop friend to tell him too. He stopped bringing the gun in.

    My wife thinks I’m going to get shot one of these days and she may be right.

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