.
From the Washington Post, “King was unpopular and demoralized before he died. He pressed on anyway.”:
… In our long effort to moderate King, to make him safe, we have forgotten how unpopular he had become by 1968. In his last years, King was harassed, dismissed and often saddened. These years after Selma are often dealt with in a narrative rush toward martyrdom, highlighting his weariness. But what is missed is his resilience under despair. It was when his plans faltered under duress that something essential emerged. The final period of King’s life may be exactly what we need to recall, bringing lessons from that time of turmoil to our time of disillusion.
Celebrating the march out of Selma, Ala., and his early prophetic optimism made sense in the heady Obama years. Now, we need King’s determined faithfulness.
Once refusing to get on a flight in 1967, King called his wife, Coretta, from the airport saying, “I get tired of going and not having any answers.” His opposition to the Vietnam War cost him support. At a time of emerging Black Power, King’s dream of integration and nonviolence seemed to many insufficient, almost passé. Yet he died still trying to confront “the evil triplets,” how “racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together.”
A week before his assassination, King told performer and activist Harry Belafonte that he worried the civil rights movement was “integrating into a burning house.” But when Belafonte asked what they should do, King replied, “I guess we’re just going to have to become firemen.” As he fought to be heard, to still be relevant, King’s determination awed those close to him, even as they feared for his emotional and physical welfare….
Fifty years later, it would look too familiar to the King of 1968 to see our continued economic inequality, hawkishness, backlash to civil rights gains, and racist violence from Charleston to Charlottesville. His response then was to resist exhaustion from the deluge of issues and to enlarge his work instead, hold firm his insistence.
Every era finds the King it needs. The version we need now is a King who pressed on through doubt to see a radical vision, as we must find one to match the challenges we face. King ran out of certainty but never faith.
Spiro Agnew’s scapegoating of black activists immediately following MLK’s assassination, @risenc argues, hinted at what @KevinMKruse calls the Republican Suburban Strategy: “one that pretends to moderation and equality but feeds on division and prejudice.” https://t.co/TTccw6dwBw
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) April 1, 2018
raven
“At a time of emerging Black Power, King’s dream of integration and nonviolence seemed to many insufficient, almost passé.” One thing that has always stuck with me is the reaction of some “militant” brothers in my unit in Korea. They were not surprised at all that he was killed and they came close to calling him a “Tom”. Non-violent civl disobedience had gotten them nowhere and they just wanted to get back to the “world” and press the fight.
Lapassionara
@raven: I understand the sentiment. I remember thinking, when I heard the news, that “those who live by the sword, die by the sword” had been turned into “those who don’t live by the sword, die by the sword.”
In the immediate aftermath of his death, the business leaders of Memphis got together and pressured the mayor into settling the strike, acceding to at least some of the strikers’ demands. Back then, the garbage men came all the way to the backyard, picked up the garbage can, carried it to the street, emptied it into the truck, and returned it to the backyard. It was hard, physical labor. Someone interviewed one of the current workers last week. He was still working at 85, as he could not afford to retire.
raven
@Lapassionara: “I’d rather die on my feet than keep living on my knees” is one I remember.
NotMax
Was at a rehearsal of Oh, What a Lovely War! when the news arrived. The memory remains vivid and raw to this day. Actors in Pierrot costume bawling their hearts out. More than shocking, the news was immediate visceral torture.
Lapassionara
@NotMax: Yes. And then, a few months later, Bobby Kennedy was killed. What a horrible year.
raven
@Lapassionara: The first time I dropped acid. I was stationed at FT Lewis and we took the bus to Seattle and scored. We took the bus back to the fort and, because it was late and we were tripping, we took a transistor radio into the laundry room and that’s how we heard the news. It wasn’t just MLK and Bobby that were killed in 1968, 16,592 Americans and probably 1/4 million Vietnamese as well.
Lapassionara
@raven: and to ice the cake, Richard Nixon was elected president. Then he expanded the war into Laos and Cambodia. American exceptionalism!
raven
@Lapassionara: I was only 18 so I didn’t get to mail an absentee ballot from Long Binh.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
rikyrah
Thank you, Dr King, for all that you did
Nelle
@raven: That’s a pithy statement that cuts to the quick.
A huge crowd gathered outside my large high school the morning after King was shot, then entered, breaking windows, smashing what the could find, beating anyone in the way while the vice principal , on the intercom, begged teachers to lock the doors (before we had ever heard the words lock down -I’ve never even associated my experience with what kids go through now).
I was a proctor in the study hall, the cafeteria, and the doors didn’t lock . When the angry invaders arrived, on top floor, and saw 300 students sitting quietly at the tables, watching them, there were shouted slogans of black power, they ran through and down the other stairs.
School attendance was optional for the next week or so. I went. The next year was rough. Wichita Kansas was a tough segregated town. My father, an immigrant, said he didn’t grow up with that sort of thinking and wouldn’t accept it. He worked construction sites and while black men were not allowed to be carpenters, only laborers, he went into their “section” of town, giving his friends rides to and from work.
Does anyone know the best books to read on the year, 1968? I wrote my first protest Letter to the Editor, at the age of 17, that summer. My teachers used history and literature to draw analogies to current events and we were a ripe field for what we could learn.
raven
@Nelle: 1968: The Year That Rocked the World
by Mark Kurlansky
I started the year in Korea, spent the middle months at Ft Lewis and went to Vietnam in October. I feel like I was just an observer in the middle of an insane world but it so impacted the rest of my life that I continue to say we still have a way to go before shit is as bad as it was then.
raven
@Nelle: Also you might read Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South by Andrew Maraniss.
Immanentize
@raven:
I believe you. And I hope we just don’t go that way.
evodevo
Reading that article and looking at the pic of ole Spiro, I am reminded that the Repubs were as corrupt and racist then as they are now … only then Agnew got prosecuted for it and had to resign ..
Mustang Bobby
I was fifteen and a freshman at a boarding school in New England when the dorm master, also the school chaplain, brought us into the dorm’s common room and said, “Well, they killed Martin Luther King tonight.” He didn’t say who “they” were, but I knew what he meant. And then two months later it was Bobby Kennedy. That was the year I became politically active, built on the hurt and feelings of being ineffectual. Something had to be done somehow, and I would try. Fifty years later I still feel it.
Nelle
We are a read aloud family. My husband read The Coldest Winter (Halberstam) to me, about the Korean War. The R’s were full of bad faith in the 40’s and 50’s. I tend to think that Eisenhower was the sanest face that the party ever put on, but really, how far back do you go to find a good actor with an R behind the name?
NotMax
@Lapassionara
And come late August, the 50th anniversary of that painful, shameful Democratic convention.
glaukopis
I was a senior in high school driving to a college entrance exam. Pulled off the road and cried. His and Gandhi ‘s message of nonviolence was an inspiration to me.
ETA for better English with a bit more coffee.
Aimai
I was eight. I don’t remember that year. My six year old sister was dying of a brain tumor. I di remember being told my uncle, who was a young white guy in his twenties, pulled over his car in a small calufornia town and made them lower the flag for King.
debbie
@raven:
What a profound misunderstanding of civil disobedience.
debbie
@Lapassionara:
I remember watching television the night of the Kennedy assassination and thinking that the world had lost its mind.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Woke Up to Wisconsin news. Best thing I’ve heard out of that state in a while.
NotMax
@Baud
‘Blue’ cheese.
;)
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: And then you woke up to trump as president and knew the US had.
Lapassionara
@debbie: It had. I was in Mexico then, and I did not speak Spanish. Church bells started tolling, and I saw people walking down the street in tears. I still did not know what had happened until we found a bar with a TV. Seeing people in another country grieve his death had a real impact on me.
Baud
@debbie:
Any long term nonviolent strategy runs the risk that people will get frustrated and fantasize about the efficacy of a violent strategy. By contrast, people rarely get frustrated with the failures of violent strategies. It’s how we’re wired.
MattF
What I recall about MLK’s murder is that it was no surprise. He was a marked man.
OT. About Mary Chapin Carpenter– Her best songs are incomparable, e.g., Jubilee. Another is ‘The Last Word‘– which is a wee bit complicated, because the theme, the pointlessness of getting the last word in an argument, is never stated explicitly.
debbie
@Baud:
Which probably means we’ll really never all come together.
Kay
This is such a nice post, AL.
satby
@evodevo: Agnew had to resign, but Nixon got away with treason.
debbie
@Lapassionara:
I remember starting out the year 1968 as a “peacenik,” getting a detention for drawing a peace sign on my notebook (they thought it was some kind of secret sign); but then after the Democratic convention, what with the crap in Vietnam, assassinations, etc., I went all anti-peace and tried to join SDS (they had no interest in high school kids). I got another detention for scribbling “Fuck Nixon” on my notebook.
Uncle Cosmo
@Nelle: Well, we all know just how far back you have to go to find a shitty actor with an R behind his name…
Books about 1968? It’s long out of print & probably hard to find, but one of my favorite reads is An American Melodrama: The Presidential Election of 1968, by Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, & Bruce Page – 3 journos who covered it for the London TImes. Written very shortly after the events described with the insight of outsiders to the process (who seem to have forgotten more about the USA than most USAns of the day could remember).
Baud
@debbie: Obviously. How much we could have achieved if we could.
Kay
Cecile Richards:
I question only “confirm”. Do they have a reputation as “savvy dealmakers”? Cleary they want one.
Baud
Ugh. Today show’s MLK video tribute has Tom Browkow as the narrator.
aimai
@debbie: That’s a bit rude. People have different attitudes towards the idea of suffering without pushing back. People have different experiences of actual abuse and death. This is not merely a rhetorical construct.
debbie
@Baud:
I guess the obviousness is what still depresses me. Too much Star Trek, I guess.
Sab
@raven: When I first voted absentee at age 18, Ohio made me get my ballot notarized. That was in 1972.
aimai
@Baud: Thank goodness! wouldn’t want to hire a black person to do a white person’s job!
Baud
@aimai:
I would accept a white reporter who’s not Tom Browkow.
Lapassionara
@debbie: Even with everything that happened, I still come down on the side of nonviolence. I think it is the most effective long-term strategy for citizens to use for attaining positive change. Going up against the world of Fox, Sinclair, and Russian bots makes it particularly challenging. But, even so, whenever I consider the alternatives, I dont want to give Lord Littlefingers any reason to declare martial law.
Kay
Baud
@Kay:
The Association of Nonviolent Teachers for Income Fairness and Advancement?
MattF
@Kay: Hmm. Those outside agitators– they just refuse to shut up and go away.
Kay
@Baud:
It always makes me laugh how scared they are of teachers. Teachers are such solid citizens here.
Me too! I saw one, I went the other way. I was in 7th grade though :)
Brachiator
@debbie:
This was a sentiment ascribed to Malcolm X who, of course, was murdered in 1965. Malcolm profoundly understood the merits and perils of civil disobedience. And Malcolm and Martin had the same goals with respect to the liberation of black people, and of humanity.
MLK left a powerful legacy. It was thrilling to see his spirit in his young granddaughter Yolanda Renee King, who spoke at the March For Our Lives rally.
gene108
@Baud:
The people, who would get frustrated are dead or captured.
Kay
Here’s your daily reminder that no one in political media actually gives a shit about email security, and they invented a different standard for Hillary Clinton, alone:
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Kay: I know someone who has worked with Fallin and says she’s a conspiracy crazy who knows enough to be somewhat discreet who she speaks to about it. Sounds like she’s losing control of her tongue.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I was just reading about Richards’ encounter with the Borgia wannabes. The arrogance of that pair of know-nothing dilettantes is staggering. They fancy themselves deal-makers on the basis of nothing, as far as I can tell, and I suppose they imagine they’re business savvy since their first language is PowerPoint.
I want Trump to go down hard because I’m an American and a patriot, but I’ll admit I’m longing to see Javanka disgraced, shunned and pauperized. I want justice and sweet schadenfreude! Is that too much to ask? Probably.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: That was quick!
germy
What’s going on with the iron stache?
ixnay
Just read Travels with Charley – the last few chapters, from Louisiana on, brought me to tears. Here we are almost 60 years on, and the hate-spewing white folk are still out there, spewing hate. Honestly: the “Cheerladies” shouting hateful chants at the black school kids; the self-admiring blonde guy ranting about the Jews from New York and the ni**er-lovers (I would use the actual word, but am wary of moderation). Steinbeck, to his credit, dumped the guy on the side of the road. Are we ever going to get past this mess?
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
They truly believe they are infinitely superior and special people.
NotMax
Whoa. Error, error.
Watching the Spanish time travelers. They’ve taken a transatlantic ship in 1924 and are in NYC, marveling at the Empire State Building. Which is a damn good trick as construction on it wasn’t begun until 1930.
NotMax
@ixnay
Kind of odd (in execution, not in message) PSA promoting racial/ethnic/religious harmony – from 1952.
(Link should be cued up to the beginning of the ad.)
OzarkHillbilly
@ixnay: As long as someone can make money off of hate and fear, no.
satby
@germy: I’m not in that district, but Meyers was supposed to be the reg party Dem running until Bryce entered the primary and totally blew past her in fundraising. I see a lot about her on FB, and it’s starting to seem a little desperate for attention.
I’m ok with either Democrat against Ryan, but I think Bryce is the stronger candidate.
Betty Cracker
@germy: Is he trying to cruise to a primary victory by ignoring the competition? I don’t know that district at all, and I’ve only followed the back and forth between Bryce and Myers in a cursory way. Is there any daylight between them on guns? If I were in that district, I’d back whichever Democrat wins, obviously.
ixnay
@OzarkHillbilly: Grr. Retch. Tears. Horrified. I don’t do emogis, but you get the idea. Someone should just blow up FauxNoise (not that I am advocating violence).
satby
@Betty Cracker: a lot of union guys in that district, there was a big auto manufacturer in Janesville that my ex-FIL used to work at. The ones I know feel like Bryce walks the talk and are pretty enthused about him. Meyers is a regular anodyne Dem, just fine but not earthshaking.
I don’t think a lot of policy differences between the two.
OzarkHillbilly
@ixnay:
If wishes were horses my stable would be overfull.
cmorenc
@Lapassionara:
That was a huge terrible turning point in history – had RFK not been assassinated, it was highly likely he would have defeated Richard Nixon in the 1968 Presidential election, and the country might have avoided the dark turn the GOP and the country thereafter took.
Elizabelle
MLK was only 39.
Any blogpost we are discussing him as topic is a post not devoted to wallowing in Donald Fucking Trump. I try to minimize my exposure to him; the man has no class.
MLK and BHO in one lifetime. The arc of justice. I hope what we are enduring right now is the period before the GOP and oligarchs are seen for what they really are, and are swept away. Along with their enablers, business and media.
What is going on now is shameful. It’s the worst backsliding of our lives.
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: Indeed it takes more bravery to face an enemy who would think nothing of killing you armed only by the strength of your convictions. The translation of satyagraha is not non-violence but insistence on truth.
Elizabelle
@ixnay: I agree that we should take down Fox News.
The FCC allowing mega-purchases of local stations; that happened under Trump. It’s a threat to democracy, as is Fox. They need to go. Propaganda organs.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@raven: I sensed that undercurrent in Black Panther in the characters of T’Challa and Killmonger. I wondered if they were standins for the voices of MLK vs, say, Malcolm X, nonviolent cooperation vs violent revolution. I wondered if I was overthinking it.
But as I’m writing this, I’m realizing that’s the basic tension in the X-men universe too. So it’s not a new idea in Marvel storytelling.
Or movies in general. In The Butler the two views were explicitly represented by Forest Whitaker’s character and his son. And at the end of the movie, Whitaker joins his son on the picket lines.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@NotMax: Crossing the Atlantic could take a REALLY long time sometimes.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I don’t think people who have actually lived through violent times care to relive that experience.
ETA: I wonder how many people who comment on this blog who regularly fantasize about the efficacy of violence have actually lived through it.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Elizabelle: The backsliding is comparable to what I’ve heard about Woodrow Wilson undoing the gains of Reconstruction. That was 100 years ago. So it’s not realistic to expect the bigots to die off in one generation. They’re dying off, but it’s more gradual than that.
japa21
Penzey’s as usual has a comment on today and then goes a step further.
He goes on to discuss Waukesha County and not real kindly.
satby
@japa21: I was just coming to post that too!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: You weren’t overthinking it.
Kay
My new favorite thing is Scott Walker’s twitter. It’s been like this for weeks. Did you know he loves teachers? He does!
japa21
@satby: So glad we signed up for his emails.
japa21
@Kay: “The Far Left” is pretty much non-existent. Surprised he didn’t mention Pelosi and Clinton.
Elizabelle
@japa21: Yea, Penzeys.
And they walked the walk. 50th anniversary; employees have day off and call centers closed. That’s not just running their mouths.
Betty Cracker
@japa21: Damn! Penzeys brings the fire — and not just in their pepper products! All my wingnut relatives got Penzeys gift sets for Christmas. They rave about how good they are and have no idea they’re consuming products sold by fire-breathing liberals.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I’m going to do a post about Scott’s Twitter feed later if I have time! :)
Elizabelle
ETA: There is a Penzeys near me. I will be shopping there later this week, to buy some fresh spices. Look forward to it.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Let’s not tell them. Seriously. If they find out on their own, and not from libtards like us, they might have a stunned moment.
El Caganer
@Kay: I’m sure he and his friends have a very positive story. Unfortunately, nobody else in WI has one.
NotMax
@Ceci n est pas mon nym
A slight saving grace is that the password for entry to the NYC speakeasy in the episode is swordfish.
satby
Woke up to an inch of snow. The endless winter endures.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: I picked my first tick yesterday. Calling for snow on Friday with a low of 23.
Kay
@El Caganer:
So negative! Why can’t you be more like Donald Trump and be nicer?
I can’t believe these nasty, mean-spirited, petty assholes are planning on running on how nice they are.
frosty
@satby: Sounds like the difference between Fetterman and McGinty for PA Senate in 2016. She struck me as an anodyne Democrat too. I don’t think that will cut it in this political climate. It wasn’t enough to beat the execrable Toomey.
clay
@Kay: Loves them to death.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I don’t think it is possible for them to even pretend to be nice.
GregB
Donald Trump’s War on America has entered phase 2.
Nelle
@schrodingers_cat:
My dad was 4 when he found a beheaded body in a ditch. He was 8 when he saw collaborators hung in the center of his village. He was 9 when his father disappeared (my grandfather had escaped and was in hiding and then got out of the country – then Russia, now Ukraine). His 23 year old brother was seized and imprisoned as a substitute. My father was 10 when the family was put under house arrest and he had to have a guard to go to the outhouse. When he was 10 or 11, his nephew, my cousin died of starvation during the Lenin induced famiine. At the age of 12, the family emigrated (to Canada as, by then, the US wouldn’t allow immigrants from Russia). He was raised in a pacifist tradition, yet he accepted the draft of the United States in 1942 because he was grateful to this country for accepting him but also because he thought it necessary for those of love and kindness to be present to the women and children who suffer in war. He went as a non-combatant medic and translator (his first language was German) and served on a hospital ship. He was clear-eyed about violence and his opinion was that, no matter how it starts, the worst always hits women and children.
manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: Ha! I bought an assortment of gift sets and distributed them far and wide, paying special attention to those idiots and suckers who never understood my giggling. Everybody wins!
tobie
@satby: @frosty: I actually checked out Cathy Myers campaign website because I didn’t like that it was a foregone conclusion that Bryce was the nominee and that he had refused to debate her. I don’t know what she’s like in person but in terms of her positions she’s definitely NOT an anodyne Dem. Her positions are consistent with the Progressive Caucus in the House; she is to the left of Nancy Pelosi. What she doesn’t have is a Y-chromosome. That’s what hurt McGinty and will hurt her. It frankly turns my stomach to see the left fall for the whole he-man, macho, working-man shtyck that Bryce does. I saw him recently on Maddow or Hayes show and found him to be incoherent. But he’s a guy, he’s got a mustache, and all the pictures of him in a hard hat tell me he’s WWC, so I’m supposed to be enthused.
schrodingers_cat
@Nelle:
Agreed. Wow you have a quite family history. Thanks for sharing.
schrodingers_cat
@GregB: What makes you say that?
danielx
@schrodingers_cat:
Not many. As the horrors of ww2 recede in memory as the vets of that era die off, it’s likely we’ll see and hear more ravings about how war is the answer to various problems. Particularly given the predilections of the current occupant of the Oval Office.
satby
@frosty: I think in a wave election Myers would do fine, maybe even win. But Bryce has out fund-raised her something like 5-1. That’s an enthusiasm gap. He’s got a compelling story, no b.s. attitude, and has been a long time Dem and union rep too.
I’m not so enthused that Wilmer endorsed him, but I view it as Wilmer trying to stay relevant, not as something Bryce was actively seeking.
If all things had been equal, I wish I could be more excited about Myers because I want to see more women in office. I agree with her, and she bores me. I also agree with Bryce, and he slaps around the Republicans like they deserve. I want to see some full throated offense played, not a safe defense.
condorcet runner-up
@Kay: The capitalization of “The Far Left” was a nice touch. The panic there is palpable.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
We should have a live thread on today’s market meltdown.
Jeffro
Sorry to sully this thread, but here’s some news that should cheer every true American’s heart: Trumpov’s Self-Delusion Blinds Him to Legal Peril.
To which all I can say is, please do keep those blinders on, Mr. president* sir!
I’d just like to point out a couple of things here:
1) Mueller most certainly is going to write a report noting all instances (and as we all know, there are many) of the president* obstructing justice, and soon – definitely before the midterms, probably before summer. Congress…oh EXCUSE ME, I meant to say the GOP CONGRESS…can then decide whether or not this will be yet another Trump anvil they have to ‘swim’ with in November.
2) This news story does not preclude Mueller from eventually indicting everyone BUT Trumpov, most especially Don Jr. and Jared, for everything from conspiracy against the United States to money laundering and more. As I have said multiple times, it’s likely to be hundreds of charges against a dozen (or more) people. Picture the effect of Mueller dropping a metric ton of bricks on everyone BUT Trumpov…what will Orangemandias do then? Will any of his actions look like those of an innocent man? Methinks NOT! And I think that will be out before the midterms, too.
3) This story also does not preclude Mueller from making a RICO case against the Trump Organization – and everyone associated with it – for money laundering, fraud, and other criminal charges going back any number of decades. I have no doubt that those charges, or the possibility of them, will be what eventually forces Trumpov from office, either by resignation or impeachment & removal (with subsequent indictment, trial, and conviction – or more likely, a plea deal).
So…happy Wednesday, Juicers! Things are looking up!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@GregB:
His morning tweet indicates so much profound ignorance on economics that even the most cynical vampires had to shit their pants.
satby
@tobie: I have been reading both of them consistently on Twitter. They’re both progressive. And hey, I’m WWC, but not a racist, so let’s not assume that means what you think.
I’m happy with whoever wins the primary, and will support them with donations in the general. But I hope that whoever wins it will apply a beat-down to Ryan, and I see Bryce doing that better. YMMV.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: Totally inappropriate. He’s never gotten on a soapbox about it, but Brokaw is a straight-up racist sack of crap.
danielx
@satby:
High of 66 yesterday, 31 now with 20 mph winds and snow.
I feel your pain.
zhena gogolia
@japa21:
My spice cabinet is overflowing. But on the other hand, my food tastes much better! Their spices are excellent.
PJ
@cmorenc: I was not around to observe then, so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe a Democratic victory in 1968 would have made the white supremacists even more angry, and, judging from everything the Republican party has said and done in the past 50 years, I believe any non-moderate Republican politician (who seem to have been fast disappearing in this period) would have whole-heartedly adopted the Southern strategy that Nixon did. There are few examples of moral decency from Republican politicians in the past 50 years, and while a lot of that decline comes from the “I got mine, f*ck you” side of the party, combining that appeal to selfishness with the terrible fear that underlies white supremacy has been a powerful narcotic for white America.
Yutsano
@Kay: Ah yes. The smell of flop sweat in the morning. Poor Scotty Walker. All his Koch-paid for dreams are about to disappear. Couldn’t happen to a nicer mook.
schrodingers_cat
@danielx: Although my experiences are not nearly in the same league as the ones Nelle narrated or what WW2 veterans experienced, I have a taste of what it feels to live when the threat of violence erupting is always at the back of your mind. When I was a growing up, I saw two of my Prime Ministers assassinated. I saw my city burn for a week in January, and then attacked by a series of bomb at the various nerve centers of the city in March. I was never personally threatened myself, but I do not wish to relive that experience again.
ETA: An eye for eye will make the whole world blind…
El Caganer
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You don’t think this is a Big Win for America? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-04/china-to-levy-25-tariffs-on-u-s-soybean-imports-cctv-reports
Betty Cracker
@Nelle: He sounds like a hell of a man.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@El Caganer:
In one way, it is – China has aimed with near surgical precision at the most vulnerable House GOP caucus by targeting each one’s most vulnerable voting cohort. In some ways, I don’t know that I like that very much, but the overall effect is going to be marvelous and doesn’t involve gaslighting and psychological manipulation.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: While I think I know who you are referring to, I would not describe anything I have read here as endorsing the efficacy of violence, more like the idea that violence is the inevitable outcome of various extreme scenarios. Even so, I don’t like casual use of violent imagery. It’s a long slippery road that has clearly been traversed many times throughout human history. It’s going on now in Burma and other places. It’s important to stay off that road.
Spanky
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Hardly a meltdown*. It opened ~420 below yesterday’s close, which is not unreasonable given China’s announcement. In the last 40 minutes or so it’s bumbled along, coming up ~ 75 last time I checked.
* Yet. And anyway, I’m thinking we’ll see more of a steady deflation.
schrodingers_cat
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: India and China have dealt with the likes of the East India company and the British Crown that treated them like second class citizens in their own countries. They have not forgotten those lessons or have forgiven the people responsible. Their memories are as long as the lengths of their civilizations.
They know how to deal with the likes of colonial wannabes like T.
Barbara
@El Caganer: I guess there won’t be any new pick up trucks for midwestern farmers this year. And as a bonus, their meat packing plants and dairy farms will be hard pressed to find the labor necessary to keep them running. Like I said in a previous thread, these people are my top contenders for most foolish voters in the last election. They literally voted against everything that makes them prosperous, not because they lack knowledge, but because they are bigots. If I am feeling charitable I might send them thoughts and prayers today.
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: Okay may be not the efficacy of violence, but they do seem to be yearning for various violent outcomes of present day crises.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Spanky:
Dow 20000 is clearly in sight. Looks a lot different on the way down.
Here’s the other kick in the ass – most of the losses will be borne by the sorts of funds that make up 401Ks and the backbone for pensions.
Yarrow
@japa21: I got the Penzey’s email but hadn’t opened it yet. I was planning to go by this afternoon to get some more cinnamon. Guess that’ll have to wait. That’s okay. I love them for what they’re doing and have visited more often and spent more money with them this year because of it. They’re an inspiration.
@Betty Cracker: My friends and relatives have been getting Penzey’s too. Very popular!
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: No doctors too! A lot of rural doctors are from the Muslim ban countries. Winning!
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: Right, and their state universities and colleges will face significant funding cuts because of the vastly reduced number of foreign students.
Leto
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Reichwing radio (Hugh Hewitt) is busy blaming anyone but Trump. While acknowledging this is bad, they’re spinning up the blame Peter Navarro because “leftist love tariffs”. Did OFC say trade wars were easy to win? They’ll blame anyone but him. Much like conservatism, Trump can’t fail, he can only be failed.
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: Tourist and student visas to come here have dropped since last year.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: It often seems like people who predict violence as an inevitable outcome of this or that are not so subtly hoping for exactly that outcome. No, I don’t like it either.
Just One More Canuck
@Nelle: wow
bemused
@Kay:
Nope. We are driven by gaining parity for all Americans and squelching corruption and hatred in all forms.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
Ha, ha. Delicious deviousness.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Leto:
The spin is gelling already to what I saw on Twitter, paraphrased:
“A market collapse was inevitable and Obama’s fault. Trump is the only person to save us, kind of like Obi Wan Kenobi.”
Captain C
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I like how Personal Responsibility Conservatives are always howling that it’s someone else’s fault when things go bad, even when, especially when, it’s blatantly their own fault.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@schrodingers_cat:
Wait until the reciprocal measures kick in on the upcoming 5 year social media review for tourist visa issuance. That’ll be super great for travel.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Ooooh – VIX is up 10 points.
GregB
@schrodingers_cat:
Perhaps too hyperbolic, but he is endorsing a militarization within our borders and is, seemingly taking a hammer to the foundations of every institution that makes a major society function.
We all knew he was unfit and unstable and he is bringing it all home.
schrodingers_cat
@GregB:I missed that yesterday since I was busy doing other thing IRL.
ETA: BTW did you make the gajar (carrot) halwa? I also discovered that the slow cooker is great for the Kashmiri beef stew, rogan josh.
tobie
@satby:
That came out of left field. I was talking about Bryce’s whole macho-working-man image, which leaves me cold. That’s a big part of Bryce’s appeal. I get it, and it may work in Janesville, WI. I just wish he would spend more time thinking about what the jobs of the future will be.
AnneWith
@satby:
The people I follow on Twitter say that the enthusiasm gap is primarily on social media, & that Myers is popular within the district. I offer this for what it’s worth, since I don’t live there either.
Barbara
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I predict that Obama’s influence will be seen to expand in direct proportion to the number of years he has been out of office, assuming that stocks continue to fall. At some point, of course, it is simply too preposterous to pretend that Trump’s actions are not having a negative impact on stocks, and then, the larger economy. The reality is that the so-called “Trump effect” that caused stocks to rise high was based on the expectation that Trump would do the kinds of things that businesses like. Waging a trade war and inflicting uncertainty on labor supply and large sectors of the economy, all at the same time, is not something businesses like so there is going to be a retrenchment that plays out over a much shorter time period than might otherwise have occurred, and that might also be larger than what otherwise would have occurred (or at least that’s what I was told by advisers, who were looking at May as the date by which investors should start thinking about changing their positions in certain sectors because, basically, stocks are priced to perfection).
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Typical abuser talk — they think that the real problem is that they’ve been too nice to their victims. They’re always nice and kind and patient, it’s their victims who push them into being mean.
Kathleen
@satby: And Republicans remain unscathed in eyes of media in spite of decades of demonizing African Americans. I cannot forgive media for its complicity in mainstreaming racism.
Spanky
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Hey, markets go up, markets go down. You can’t explain that.
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: How readily they gave T the benefit of doubt on DACA and memory holed all the obnoxious things he has said about immigrants, including he shithole countries remark.
ETA: And the myth of the sane Marnie General, gatekeeper conveniently forgetting that it was he who got the current deportation machine rolling
satby
@tobie: @AnneWith: well, we’re going to see at the end of the primary. Which is up to the people in the district. And hopefully, whichever of them wins pounds the shit out of Ryan in November.
That’s really all I want to see.
Mnemosyne
@satby:
@tobie:
Could we maybe avoid a vicious primary battle that damages the eventual Democratic candidate so much that Ryan ekes out a victory because one side’s disgruntled voters stay home?
We’ve seen this film before, and we know it doesn’t end well for Democrats.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: I think we have to take action against media. Don’t know what that looks like. Their silence on immigration issues is part of that demonizing the other continuum.
tobie
@satby: @Mnemosyne: I don’t think there’s any deep fight here. Everyone’s on the same page that what matters most is to defeat Paul Ryan. I haven’t made a donation to either Myers or Bryce’s campaign yet, since I’m waiting for the primary to be over to sink in some cash. Mnemosyne, you flatter satby and me in assuming our mild difference of opinion would divide Democrats in Ryan’s district. Does BJ have that many readers?
Jeffro
Wow – called it correctly just hours ago – Mueller’s obstruction report will indeed be coming out in June or July.
Dang, why can’t I pick a bracket the way I do these political things? =)
BruceFromOhio
I struggle with this. I’m weary of investing too much into one person to save us all, and I, too, am running low on certainty. Then I see brave young people stand up to the very worst of us and change the conversation, and I think, the one we must find is in each of us, because at the end of these very long days, it’s all we have.
I’ll never be like Dr King or Senator Kennedy, but I can Gaia-damn sure aspire to it. And these two-bit ratfuck soulless criminals running my country into the Gaia-damned ground cannot take that away from me, ever.
‘If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.‘
Mnemosyne
@tobie:
I didn’t think there was that deep a divide over Clinton and Sanders until things got ugly around here. IMO, we can be a bellwether for how things are going overall.
I, too, am saving my dollars for the general.
glory b
@frosty: I voted for Fetterman, but I have my conspiracy theories about that election.
Out of FIVE state wide races that election, Dems lost to Trump and Toomey. Right after, we way overperformed in the Supreme and Superior Court races.
All those folks were anodyne Dems too (with the exception of our AG, Josh Shapiro, he’s been all in on the state actions against Trump). They all won easily.
I wonder who might have been interested in Clinton and McGinty losing, but didn’t care about the others? I don’t believe that many people split their tickets.
Barbara
@glory b: The men won and the women lost. The take away from that election was clear.