@rikyrah: Democrats have been utterly doomed and unelectable since 1965… except for 1976, 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and depending on how you count them, 2000 and 2016. :/
18.
Tenar Arha
Going through mail. My late father’s GOP 2018 Congressional District Census came & now I’m mad & sad. He’d still fill parts of it out the past ? years; occasionally he was willing to fill out the questionnaire in full, but recently with the ones I had to help him with he’d tell them off, with comments like “get rid of the gd holy rollers.”
I’m trying to decide how to respond, while telling them to stop sending any mail to my late father. There’s a “Political Profile” section that lists Facebook & Twitter as equivalent media sources. One choice is FOX News listed separately from NBC/CBS/ABC which is separate from CNN/MSNBC. The “General Issues” section is a nightmare of leading questions to undermine faith in government & to make people suspicious of it. Including
Do you currently trust the federal government bureaucracy to act in the best interest of the citizens of our nation?
⏹ Yes ⏹ No ⏹ No Opinion
Some of the “Domestic Issues” questions aren’t even neutral enough in the ordering of the multiple choice answers.
Do you believe Obama care should be repealed and replaced or simply fixed?
⏹ Repealed and Replaced ⏹ Fixed ⏹ Unsure
I don’t know whether to shred it, correct it, or just write
ALL the rock ribbed or occasional Northeastern Republicans who used to live here are dead or driven away.
Kinda relatedly, WHUT (Howard University’s public TV station) is showing a great show now.
In THE ASCENT OF WOMAN: A 10,000 YEAR STORY, Dr. Amanda Foreman journeys around the world to study the experiences and expectations of women living in various societies throughout history.
“I’ll just stay on this and I’ll roll tape of Jimmy Kimmel every night for the rest of my career,” Hannity vowed..”.
Hannity, that poor soul. Both humorless and friendless. Because no real friend would sit back and watch a friend embarrass himself in such bombastic fashion, while Kimmel feasts and America laughs.
No doubt at all Kimmel has touched a nerve with Trump himself. His stormy marriage has surely been made no less so by a team of comedy writers taking aim at his already pissed off wife and her ridiculous accent. Maybe she doesn’t appreciate being turned into an international laughing stock, a source of amusement for the slack jawed yokels around the planet. Maybe there is such a thing as a final straw with her. Maybe she’ll reach a point where she no longer cares whether Trump makes good his threat to poison the water supply of the village where she was raised. And should she reach that point, Trump will be finished, over and out. So go, Jimmy, go. Remind your writers that throughout history, plenty of villages have suffered catastrophe and risen from the ashes.
If Trump-Russia is Watergate on bad acid, it actually makes a certain sense that an American comedian can blow a conspiracy of treason led by a president of the United Staes sky high with a few wisecracks, doesn’t it?
Do you currently trust the federal government bureaucracy to act in the best interest of the citizens of our nation?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] No opinion
[x] You ARE the federal government, numbnuts.
27.
Brachiator
I saw this SNL clip earlier, and it is very cool to see it featured here. Not only is it damn funny, it is very well written, and tight, not something that the show does consistently.
I think that the audio gag that signals the end of the segment has a witty sting.
The sound of white people shopping nearby for real estate means that the fun is over.
Sly reference to gentrification.
I also think there might be a nod to “Coming to America,” another film about an African ruler, in the skit.
28.
Mike in NC
I got tired of The Atlantic way back when they still published crap from the likes of Andrew Sullivan and Michael Kelly, and refused to renew. People on Twitter want to know if the magazine was bought out by the Mercers.
29.
MomSense
The sound of white people shopping for real estate means the fun is over.
I love SNL.
30.
Ohio Mom
@Tenar Arha: I’ve done all three at different times with the surveys my Congressional Rep sends us. When I opt for correcting, it’s with a red pen of course.
Which of the three I end up going depends on my mood at the moment.
Did the Democrats doom themselves by embracing Civil Rights
This is in exactly the same vein as “Democrats should listen to the white working class more.” Has any member of the MSM ever stated that maybe SOMETIMES people should listen to Democrats?
32.
Ladyraxterinok
@No Drought No More: A friend was amazed and admiring that Melania knows so many lamguages.
I told him that she was not unusual, that most Europeans know probably 3 or more languages and that Ameriacans are an anomoly and often ridiculed for only knowing one. He then said, well why should we know any more? Even if we leave the country, we can find someone who speaks English.
He’s a nice guy but works very had to support his extended family and is quite incurious about other countries.
His comment showed me how GOP propaganda is making apolitical Americans think Melanis is some sort of wonder woman intellect.
Hannity reminds me of an ugly bird with his little mouth and expectant look, like he’s waiting for a fat worm to be crammed into his twisted pie hole.
Honestly, I have long thought that Hannity was the most obviously stupid among the talking heads and would be recognized as such… Instead, he’s somehow ended up more influential than Rush, Coulterwocky, Beck, etc.
Axelrod says we shouldn’t normalize impeachment, but the Republicans already did that. Clear cut case? Republicans used the high crime and misdemeanor of lying about an extra-marital affair during a deposition in a bullshit lawsuit also based on extramarital sex. The Beltway Courtiers loved it.
@Ladyraxterinok: Have you heard interviews with Melania? When she’s not reading a script, you realize that she’s not actually fluent in English. And this is pretty shocking given that she has been in the States for almost 20 years. She has a lot of difficulty expressing herself and conveying complicated thoughts. And, while I haven’t heard her speak German or French, I imagine her mastery of those two languages is just as rudimentary.
43.
chris
@Matt McIrvin: Guess who wrote the book that is first in line on my Amazon front page. Yup, the world’s foremost public intellectual! WASF
@Tenar Arha: Condolences on the passing of your father.
My poor dementia addled mom would get those and I would take them away when she wasn’t looking. Fox news really damaged that woman. And our country.
45.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig: In six out of the past seven presidential elections, the democrat has received more votes than the republican.
46.
JPL
@James E. Powell: The republicans plan on getting out the base by saying the dems will impeach the dear leader. If the democratic candidates are smart, they will address it. Do the republicans believe a president should never be impeached? What if the president interfered with the election by seeking Russia/Iran’s help? Does the republican candidate believe it is not their responsibility to oversee the executive branch?
Anyway you get my drift..
47.
stinger
@Tenar Arha: I’d let them keep spending the money to print and mail their questionnaires. It’s simple for me to toss them in the recycling bin, and meanwhile it does a little bit to keep USPS profitable. Even better if you want to mark up the questionnaire (some great suggestions above) and send it back to them in their postage-paid envelope! Let the GOP pay for it all.
1. Notion of Fossilization
Selinker first put forwarded the notion of fossilization in the paper Interlanuage in 1972. He noted that 95% of L2 learners failed to reach the same level of L1 competence from his observation. This kind of phenomenon is defined by Selinder (1972) as fossilization. Fossilization, a mechanism…underlies surface linguistic material which speakers will tend to keep in their IL productive performance, no matter what the age of the learner or the amount of instruction he receives in the TL.
Selinker and Lamendella (1978) redefined fossilization as a permanent cessation of IL learning before the learner has attained TL norms at all levels of linguistic structure and in all discourse domains in spite of the learner’s positive ability, opportunity, and motivation to learn and acculturate into target society.
eta
Fossilization, Interlanguage (IL), Target Language (TL)
Democrats have been utterly doomed and unelectable since 1965… except for 1976, 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and depending on how you count them, 2000 and 2016. :/
We kind of are, though. Republicans won giant fucking landslides where they ran the table of the whole country in 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994 and 2010. Democrats arguably got one in 2006, after Republicans had been blatantly screwing the pooch for six solid years–and all that did was to almost but not quite undo 1994. All our other wins have been, not necessarily squeakers–Obama and Clinton’s wins were solid–but hard-won and soon undone. Electing Obama gave Republicans rock-solid control of the vast majority of state legislatures and Congress after the next midterm.
Why? Because America is totally racist. That is 100% the reason. Fight racism in this country and you will lose most of the time.
Now, look at the progression of dates, and you can tell that this is changing. Republicans haven’t gotten a presidential landslide since 1988 because racist whites are no longer enough of a majority. They could still get them in midterms as recently as 2010. Long-term, doubling down on the racism is a bad strategy and it will eventually bite the Republicans in the ass–but only if the United States survives that long as an approximate democracy, which it may well not.
Edit: OK, I guess I forgot 1974. But, again, it took Watergate to induce that.
@chris: I hadn’t seen the picture of Obama and the eagle before — wonderful!
54.
gene108
There were calls for Obama’s impeachment:
Allen West wants President Obama to be impeached over the Taliban prisoner swap.
In a blog post titled, “The case for impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama,” the Florida Republican and former congressman wrote that exchanging “traitor” Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Afghan Taliban members should be an impeachable offense.
SNIP
Here’s a short rundown of other White House scandals (or “scandals”) that have led Republicans to call for Obama’s impeachment (and for the full list, Wikipedia has you covered):
In 2010, Rep. Darrell Issa said Obama could face impeachment after Rep. Joe Sestak claimed the White House offered him a job to prevent him from challenging Arlen Specter in a primary.
In 2011, Rep. Michael Burgess told a local Tea Party group that Obama’s impeachment “needs to happen,” without specifying why.
In 2012, Sen. Jon Kyl said “impeachment is always a possibility” over Obama’s immigration policies.
Last May, Rep. Jason Chaffetz said he was not pushing for impeachment, but didn’t rule out that Obama could be kicked out of office over the Benghazi affair.
In 2013, Sen. Tom Coburn told the audience at a town-hall meeting that Obama was getting “perilously close” to qualifying for impeachment. Coburn’s fellow Oklahoma senator, James Inhofe, agreed.
In 2013, Rep. Kerry Bentivolio said his legislative dream would be to impeach Obama.
During the debt-ceiling crisis, Rep. Louie Gohmert told an interviewer that defaulting on the U.S. government’s debt would be an “impeachable offense.”
While Sen. Ted Cruz has demurred on calls for Obama’s impeachment in the past, but has called it “a good question” and “a question for the House to assess.”
Few things get tea-party conservatives’ blood boiling faster than Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and the Affordable Care Act. But it’s not just middle-class Joes at tea-party rallies who get exercised about the idea of impeaching the president. Last week, McKay Coppins wrote about upper-crust conservatives’ efforts to join the Impeach Obama movement. At a tony event at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, elite conservatives celebrated the release of a new book titled Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case For Obama’s Impeachment.
GOP propaganda is making apolitical Americans think Melanis is some sort of wonder woman intellect.
You could tell that she’s a brilliant intellect just by her defense of Trump’s birtherism. Or her declaration that a Jewish reporter deserved the anti-Semitic attacks launched at her for writing a less than flattering profile of Melania’s dubious family.
It’s a long piece, and I think reaction to it may merit it’s own thread.
The article, at least the parts I’ve skimmed, bristles with the worst kind of paternalistic liberal racism.
Also odd is a bit in the first section that seems to throw raw meat to the Bernie Bros.
Humphrey and his ADA colleagues worried deeply about the appeal of Henry Wallace, the third-party candidate who opposed the Cold War and endorsed European-style s@cialism. Idealists were shearing off from the Democrats to Wallace. A bold civil-rights plank in the Democratic platform would go a long way to blunting Wallace’s appeal.
It’s almost as if the author is saying that if it were not for ungrateful Negroes, America would have achieved the s@cialist Paradise that Bernie is now offering.
The republicans plan on getting out the base by saying the dems will impeach the dear leader. If the democratic candidates are smart, they will address it.
They should shout “FUCK YEAH we’re going to impeach him”.
if you want to mark up the questionnaire (some great suggestions above) and send it back to them in their postage-paid envelope! Let the GOP pay for it all.
Add something heavy to the envelope to increase their postage costs since they’re paying for it. I know someone who did that and he never got another mailing from them.
If a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and a person who speaks three is trilingual, what do you call a person who only speaks one language?
An American!
Melania is no intellect but she does have a sort of native intelligence centered on self-preservation.
@Brachiator: Bigotry with a patina of intellectualism is still bigotry.
63.
Amir Khalid
@Ladyraxterinok:
I knew a guy from Cleveland who grumbled to me that he couldn’t find anyone to practise his Malay conversation skills with, because the locals (including his in-laws) all preferred to speak English. That is especially true in the cities, but I think the rural areas are catching up because everyone here watches foreign TV shows.
Axelrod says we shouldn’t normalize impeachment, but the Republicans already did that.
Yep. Republicans talked about impeaching Obama, and some hinted at impeaching Hillary at the exact moment that she took the oath of office, had she been elected.
Hannity, that poor soul. Both humorless and friendless. Because no real friend would sit back and watch a friend embarrass himself in such bombastic fashion, while Kimmel feasts and America laughs.
Hannity and the other Fox News hosts have been given their marching orders by their management. They have to fight back, even if they become laughing stocks.
Fox News long established itself based on the fierce loyalty of an angry, ignorant hard core base. They can’t give them up.
@Tenar Arha: If it’s any consolation, it’s definitely not a real survey where they’re trying to decide any positions based on the responses. It’s either a push poll to promote and reinforce their existing positions, or message testing to see what messaging gets the strongest response.
So from a practical perspective, the best response would either be to check the answers they obviously don’t want to hear (telling them their messaging isn’t working) it send it with your final response.
THAT IS HILARIOUS! I am pretty much done with “laughing” at Trump, but this is brilliant.
71.
lamh36
Been laughing at that skit all night & still this morning.
Chadwick keeping the accent throughout and even Leslie and the other young man (his name escapes me sorry) were solid but also too Keenan’s reactions and goading of T’Challa in the “potato salad” answer had me LMBAO just as much!
@rikyrah: I think all Axelrod is saying is wait for all the dust to settle. When there is solid evidence of the collusion and whatever else, that is the time for impeachment because then it can’t be contested. Circumstantial evidence isn’t enough. We have one chance and we want to succees, we don’t want Trump off on a technicality.
That isn’t to say that there isn’t a role for Maxine Waters and everyone else calling for impeachment NOW. They are building the momentum, adding to the pressure, and moving the Overton Window.
When it is time to begin impeachment proceedings, there will be more acceptance that it was inevitable.
I don’t believe Melania has ever presented herself as anything more than what you see. A very attractive woman who used (or tried to use) her attractiveness to her advantage. She clearly was unprepared for the role her dickhead husband thrust upon her.
I’m more than happy to mock her fashion choices, but not her inferiority.
I’m more than happy to mock her fashion choices, but not her inferiority.
Unfortunately, she hopped aboard the birther train and tries to defend her husband. But I understand those who want to cut her some slack.
76.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ohio Mom: I tend to think candidates know their own constituents, and I’m fine with people calling for accountability and oversight, “full hearings that will show us all what’s going on” or something like that, rather than impeachment. What I don’t like about Axelrod’s tweet is the Village-y concern for propriety.
I don’t pay much attention to Axelrod— I don’t need one more podcast to litter up my phone– but he seems to draw a lot of criticism. I’ve heard through the grapevine (so FWIW) of friends of friends that was kind of a jackass back in Chicago, and he seems to carry a big grudge against the Clintons from ’08
ETA:
David Axelrod @ davidaxelrod
Dems should NOT commit to impeachment unless & until there’s a demonstrable case for one.
also, too, I’d like to ask him how exactly the Comey firing and subsequent events– the “tapes” tweet that was effectively witness tampering, the McCabe affair– don’t constitute obstruction of fucking justice. “Demonstrable”? He went on TV and bragged about it.
I think only because it seems to be expected of her. Anyway, she isn’t part of the problem, at least to my mind.
78.
Shana
@stinger: My late father, who was never a Republican, would get that sort of stuff from time to time. He’d usually stuff the return envelope full of other direct mail, as much as it could hold, and send it back. He wanted them to have to pay for the postage. A difficult man in many ways, but I always kind of liked that one.
79.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: I think the guy is right that embracing civil rights is the root cause of most Democratic electoral losses.
Where he’s wrong is thinking there was a moral or even a practical political alternative. The New Deal coalition that united African-American voters and Southern white supremacists was inherently unstable–it was already starting to crack up in 1948. A right-wing party could choose to double down on racism; a herrenvolk-democratic-left party would not have survived because over the long term it needed minority voters, unless the US became a national apartheid state and denied them the vote entirely. In which case, why play this game at all? Winning is losing.
Also, he’s taking Trump’s negative-three-million squeaker win as a novel sign of an effect that is fifty years old and fading.
80.
Ohio Mom
@debbie: That is what I meant by a certain native intelligence centered on self preservation. I wasn’t born with a body and face like hers but even if I had, I don’t know if I could engineer a modeling career that would in turn propel me and my family to a foreign country and then manage to marry my way into riches.
Is it too mean spirited to compare her to the squirrels in my attic? Not smart but very cunning.
I do agree that First Ladydom calls on skills and talents she doesn’t have and can’t fake.
I suspect we’re seeing a feedback loop at Fox. If you want to make a go of it there as a pundit, you have to buy into a certain amount of the RWNJ world view. If you’re successful at that and start making nice money, you must push things a little further, become a bit more extreme and controversial. That leads to Hannity-type dollars, which to maintain, of course one must keep shoveling the cray-cray.
82.
glory b
@Amir Khalid: Richard Pryor did a stand up piece about Africans asking him what Americans spoke at home. They told him “everyone” speaks English but speaks another language at home, what do Americans speak?
83.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ohio Mom: I do agree that First Ladydom calls on skills and talents she doesn’t have and can’t fake.
I don’t like the whole idea of “First Ladies*”. Smacks of Royalism! and I can kind of sympathize with her position as a mother, and if I had to bet I would bet that the stories about her planning a post-election divorce were true. But the history of birtherism is the deciding factor for me. She deserves him– even if the poor kid doesn’t.
* speaking of which, the stories about Mrs Popeo calling herself “First Lady of the CIA” pissed me off. It really is like a corrupt royal court where the ministers think their position is a license to set up mini-courts of their own, and to grift
84.
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: I have used aspects of KonMari’s approach, particularly with stuff I feel guilty about tossing because it was a gift or because it represents wasted money. It was liberating for me to learn I could just say, This item once was a source of joy and now needs to move on to spark joy somewhere else.
But empty my closet and go through every garment one by one? Nope, too much work.
@zhena gogolia: “Visual” migraine? Do you mean ocular migraine, when the center of your field of vision starts to look jiggly and neon, spreading out in a growing ring until it reaches your peripheral vision, then finally goes away? I get those all the time – more an annoyance than a serious problem.
I purposefully avoid reading about or discussing Baron usually. He’s a kid and should be off limits.
But he’s a Trump kid, and its not a crazy bet to assume he’ll end up like Eric or Jr., or Ivanka: privileged, lacking in self awareness, greedy, and likely to produce similar people as a parent.
I hope I’m wrong. Some people say Tiffany is alright, and one Kushner son is reportedly not terrible, so who knows.
When it is time to begin impeachment proceedings, there will be more acceptance that it was inevitable.
When the house flips, they should investigate anything and everything, openly and honestly.
The real chances of impeachment succeeding are nil. There is no way that any conceivable senate votes 2/3 in favor.
Fox News is the official propaganda channel of the right wing. Hosts are instructed or encouraged to stay on message. And one of their tactics is not to merely disagree with opponents, but to treat them with angry disdain. And this also fits Hannity, who likes to indulge his pugnacious side.
91.
Ruckus
@Ladyraxterinok:
I’m not excusing the stupidity, what you said is true. But…
Some of this is just the shear size of the country.
But most of it is what happened to the rest of the world with WWII. Most countries were affected negatively, we had increased our production, other than PH hadn’t been bombed back a century or two and we had the means to help rebuild those countries. And remember that isolationism was a major concept before the war. It’s a way to also sell puritanical bullshit to people, you will be better if you do it this way and don’t rub elbows with others. I think there is a bit of this in the racism of this country as well. Can’t have others around you, debasing your “culture.” So of course the extremely Ugly American got elected president. This is the result of sticking collective heads in the sand (or bullshit) for decades, of not respecting others, of not embracing differences, but demanding that none exist. My sailings abroad in the navy were very enlightening, we go on liberty in different countries and about 1/3 of the crew would come back and bitterly complain about how this foreign country didn’t speak english, didn’t do things the way we did, was so horrible. OTOH, I wanted to move to many places in Europe. But then I’d already had a number of experiences with working class people from several countries, with blue collar workers who spoke 2 or more languages, fluently, several of whom had fled countries with dictators. We are the pompous outliers in this world.
apparently she ‘liked’ some posts from the March for Our Lives. the three Largest Adult Children are deeply, deeply damaged, I say with the authority of Some Guy on the Internet, but maybe one of the other ones will be the Ron Reagan or Stephanie Miller of the clan. And the Kushner brother trolling the trumps cracks me up.
93.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
First rule of bigotry.
Never say the truth out loud. Someone might mistake it for the desired result.
94.
Schlemazel
@Brachiator:
In his world Insannity is not losing or getting roasted. You got it with your second paragraph, they are pitching to morons who believed Obama was a dictator and Dump has done more in his first year than Obama did in 8. They are ignorant and willfully so. In that world Fox is winning.
I purposefully avoid reading about or discussing Baron usually. He’s a kid and should be off limits.
I agree.
I note in passing that some Republicans go after the children (and wives) of liberal politicians while hypocritically crying foul against any perceived attack on conservative family members.
Just started watching The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Almost finished ep 2. Kinda hate it. I love Tina Fey. Should I continue?
98.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@HeleninEire: I think I made it to episode three. I didn’t hate it, and laughed a few times, but I never got around to episode four and probably won’t. Just kind of meh.
99.
WaterGirl
@Ignatius Donnelly: I have had an ocular migraine, but for me I saw all sorts of geometric shapes floating around. It was a big deal. I couldn’t drive or stand or walk when it happened. Maybe this varies among people?
100.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Isn’t the fox ownership/management fully enrolled in that angry, ignorant hard core base?
re: last night’s SNL. The funny, actually sad thing about that “Black Jeopardy” sketch is how T’Challa describes a world as it SHOULD be – a trustworthy law enforcement that doesn’t shoot Blacks on sight half the time, a nation with free college and encouragement of self-improvement through education, a place where people don’t have to lie or look for loopholes to pay for things like car loans – and how Bernard, uh Kevan responds to such ideals highlighting just how f-cked up America really is.
Also, white people, Ah Hell Naw to raisins in potato salad, what the hell brah?
103.
Uncle Cosmo
@germy: As a former research statistician, “push polls” piss the shit out of me because they are not “polls” – they are doubly deceitful methods of manipulating opinion, not only because they pretend to be something they are not (honest attempts to obtain insight into the views of the population) but because the memes they push are usually flat-out lies as well. Bastards.
I kind of agree with Axelrod in the sense that “the Democrats” (meaning as a primary official message for the election) shouldn’t *commit* to impeachment. Individual Democrats should feel free to, and the main message should be stopping Trump and his awful and corrupt cronies, since that’s what’s powering this blue wave.
Though if be happy if some aspiring Democratic bomb-thrower went with “I’m calling for a total and complete shutdown of the corrupt Trump Administration into we can find out what the hell is going on!”
Everything I know about black cookouts I learned from Michael Harriot, who is very funny (and often challenging) on culture issues.
106.
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies:
Is it also possible that fox only hires people with their world view in the first place?
107.
Luthe
@raven: I have no idea what any of this means, but I can tell you for all my trying I can’t get any languages beyond English to stick. It’s like throwing undercooked spaghetti at a wall: it’ll stick for a second or two and then slide right off. Which is not to say I don’t make an effort when traveling; I find saying “hello,” “goodbye,” “good [time of day],” “excuse me,” “please,” and “thank you,” in the local language combined with some halting attempts to communicate further will put you in the natives’ good graces while also prompting them to switch to English so as to stop further butchery of their language. I would rather be the “Clueless but Trying” American than the Ugly American.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: After the divorce Marla packed Tiffany up and took her as far away from the Shitgibbon as possible, which is why there is hope she may turn out to be a reasonable human being.
And please don’t try no new shit like potato salad with raisins
this is a thing? people are doing this? In the name of god why? I thought it was some stoned SNL writer’s riff on the whole peas in the guacamole thing, which is not even a blip on the radar in a world where people are putting raisins in potato salad.
I think all Axelrod is saying is wait for all the dust to settle. When there is solid evidence of the collusion and whatever else, that is the time for impeachment because then it can’t be contested.
This has been my general take. We should definitely promise to investigate, but until there’s evidence solid enough to present to the public, calling for impeachment is premature. I’m sure the evidence is out there, so for me this is the equivalent of saying we should have the trial before the hanging.
I think the guy is right that embracing civil rights is the root cause of most Democratic electoral losses.
Sorry, I vehemently disagree with this.
For most of its history, the US has been an apartheid state. It may have been concentrated in the South, but racism and discrimination was practiced everywhere.
Also, it wasn’t just that the Democrats embraced civil rights, it is that the Republicans abandoned black people.
The author’s implicit assumption is that Black people are not really citizens with inalienable rights, but inconvenient political pawns. At best, the main role of the historical Republican Party was to pacify or mollify black people, not to represent them.
I suppose someone could write an article moaning that the Democratic Party doomed itself by embracing the union movement, but would immediately get pushback from most people who would insist that workers, or at least white workers, were the heart of America.
G tries it in spurts, but he doesn’t have a lot of free time for it. The one thing I’ve used is her method of folding and storing t-shirts, which is frickin’ GENIUS.
112.
Waratah
@Amir Khalid: Frustrating, the Australians, won’t let me watch things like the Melbourne cup, Commonwealth Games. I know how you feel.
Did the Democrats doom themselves by embracing Civil Rights?
“I knew that as soon as I got the Civil Rights Act, and I still signed the damn thing, ‘cause the God damned Klan can go piss up a rope.”
-Zombie Lyndon Baines Johnson
@WaterGirl: I get those. They hit the center of the visual field, both eyes. I can still function in many ways (except reading), most of the time people around me don’t realize something is going on with me unless I mention it. And they always finish in exactly 30 minutes, just suddenly stop.
@Luthe: A fun book is FLIRTING WITH FRENCH about a American guy trying to learn French as an adult. He put real effort into it, including a language camp in France, and wound up incomprehensible to native speakers.
Part of the problem for Americans is that most of us live too far away to use or even hear other languages regularly. Notice that people who live in areas with many Spanish speakers tend to pick up a fair amount of Spanish, and if they put effort, it does stick. If Europeans could travel from the Netherlands to Turkey and speak only one language, they’d have more trouble too.
117.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
You could, and I know this can be gut wrenching, just grab 6 inches of hangers and whatever is on them and take that to Goodwill/Salvation Army, whatever. Don’t look, don’t decide, just grab and take.
I’m thinking about a closet I fixed for a couple of women I’ve known for decades, one entire wall of their bedroom was closet and was so stuffed with clothes that they could not wear everything in a couple of years, different outfit every day. The load was so heavy that it was breaking the hanger rod supports and the shelf above that. The fix? Can’t clean out the closet, so build supports from the ground. Wonderful ladies, BTW, but I laughed the entire time I was doing the work. One was my best friend, known her over 40 yrs, she passed away a little over a year ago, I’m dog sitting for her partner in July. I have great friends, how lucky is that?
118.
laura
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: there’s no end to what some wypipo will put in gelatin and then attempt to serve it to others.
119.
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The 30-minute thing is interesting. Thankfully, I only had a few, then went to the doctor who told me my eyes were SO TIRED because I needed reading glasses, and that was the result.
Mine resembles Ignatius’s, but I can’t do much of anything when it happens except lie down in a darkened room. It always (so far) lasts exactly 20 minutes.
Having to watch several powerpoint presentations in a row also triggers it.
123.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Yes it does.
I was told that I had an ocular migraine once. I went black blind for about 15 minutes. So different than yours. I don’t think, given what is going on in my life health wise that it was an OM but one really doesn’t know. I was given a med once that gave me horrible hallucinations, I was afraid to move because nothing looked like it normally does and everything (walls, solid objects….) was moving and shimmering. Acid? Don’t need no stinking acid to take weird and horrible trips, my doc will write me a script. (I don’t/didn’t see that doc after I told him and he told me to suck it up. My reply is not suitable for this blog.)
When the house flips, they should investigate anything and everything, openly and honestly.
The real chances of impeachment succeeding are nil. There is no way that any conceivable senate votes 2/3 in favor.
I agree the chances of Trump losing office are negligible. I still think it’s worth impeaching him when the Democrats have conclusive evidence of his wrongdoing. We need to get that evidence out as loudly and as publicly as possible, and we need to force the Republicans to take a public position on it. I’m sure the died in the woo Republican base will stick by him and the Republicans in Congress who stand by him no matter what turns up, but I think there are enough persuadable people out there that it’s worth doing for political effect.
Isn’t the fox ownership/management fully enrolled in that angry, ignorant hard core base?
Hmm. I think the owners are angry and myopic, but not ignorant. They just want to make sure that they are always on top and that everyone else, including their viewers, are at the bottom.
i liked that book a lot and was overjoyed to find there were other “older” people whose ability to retain knowledge wasn’t what it used to be.
127.
raven
@Ruckus: I went to an MD for a couple of years who had been a Jar Head officer (1/9 the Walking Dead”) in the Nam. All respect for his past but goddamn, he treated me like I was a boot. I bailed and found a female doc with some fucking empathy!
A) All the Faux presenters are selling a set of lies designed to harm the nation, and they are all aware of the falsehoods and damage they do
B) All the Faux presenters are completely ignorant of what they’re pushing and just do what they’re told by management.
In the first case we have a larger group of deliberate traitors trying to damage democracy. In the second case we have a large group of naive and stupid people doing what they are told to do by deliberate traitors trying to damage democracy. Which case is worse? I dunno…
Is it just CGI on movie screens, or with TV, too? There’s so much CGI in everything now that I’m not sure how you could watch much of anything.
IIRC, TV and movies still use slightly different frame rates (30 frames per second (fps) vs 24 fps), so it’s possible that CGI could bug you in one medium but not the other.
130.
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): The problem is that there is only so far one can go in terms of pronunciation if they try to “learn” a second language. You can “acquire” a language as a child but it’s totally different for an adult. Krashen used Kissinger and Joseph Conrad as people who “knew” English inside and out but would never pronounce it the way native speakers do.
And if it wasn’t him in particular, it would have been someone else just like him, although most likely without the political ambitions. But she would have gone along with whatever else that other fellow believed. If by some stretch this other mega-wealthy hubbie was the biggest Obama fan, she would have been an Obama fan.
132.
raven
@J R in WV: Hey, I wrote you several times about a couple of books about the Sea of Cortez and either you were just a drive by and never read them or you’ve pied me like Kay! which is it?
133.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Well we differ in our estimation/understanding of ignorant then. Mine is that you live in a world, made up of billions of people. Why should you get to decide that your shit doesn’t stink while everyone else’s does? Everyone’s shit stinks, it’s the inability to learn to live with that concept that is ignorance. Not how to make money or how to invent nuclear bombs. We are here on this rock for a short time, making a positive or at least neutral mark in the history of life shouldn’t be that hard because making a negative mark is extremely fucking easy, so just not being an ass would make a neutral mark. It really isn’t that difficult but some seem to make it their life’s work to be an ass. We can all name names.
134.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: You can catch him in biopics 42 or Get On Up. He’s brilliant actor.
Yeah I don’t understand, you go into a career that takes years to learn, that is supposed to be about helping people, you take an oath to do no harm, and then you take a normal amount of empathy and rip it out of your brain and try to practice medicine. Now everyone can have a bad day but if you have constant bad days….. See my comment at #133.
136.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I’m going with equally fucked up. It hurts my brain less, not having to decide between venial fucks and dumb fucks.
137.
Ohio Mom
@efgoldman: You and I may know the details of the complete impeachment and conviction process but most people don’t.
People repeat the Clinton was impeached but don’t know or understand that the Senate essentially acquitted him. As far as they know, the impeachment proves Clinton was guilty. It is seen as a permanent mark against him, as contrived and ultimately silly as the actual charge ended up being.
Considering the circumstances we are in, I will be satisfied if the House flips and mountains of material evidence leads to Trump’s impeachment; I don’t have any fantasies about the Senate. But I want all of Trump’s wrong doing thoroughly and incontrovertibly documented.
138.
raven
@Ruckus: Well, 1/9 at his time was fucking awful, they came by “The walking Dead” honestly and I guess he won’t ever get over it. He probably really dislikes dogface remf’s.
@Ruckus: Yikes. That would be horrifying and terrifying. So sorry you went through that and especially sorry that you had a doctor who apparently has no business working with patients. Sounds like he belongs in a lab somewhere.
141.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: I cannot watch 3-D movies and I really can’t watch IMAX.
We are here on this rock for a short time, making a positive or at least neutral mark in the history of life shouldn’t be that hard because making a negative mark is extremely fucking easy, so just not being an ass would make a neutral mark.
I see your point. The Trumps, Mercers and Kochs of the world reject it.
144.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
He’s my age, he belongs in a retirement.
145.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
It isn’t so much that they reject it as they violently throw it overboard with huge concrete weights chained around it’s ankles.
Just being a fucking ass would be a massive step up for them.
146.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: it makes it easier to see the questioners inherent bias.
Articles / questions like that should be met with articles / questions reframed as you did.
147.
sukabi
@Ohio Mom: maybe she’s a Red Sparrow, and Drumpf is her ‘job’.
148.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: My stereo vision is a little messed up, but the thing I really don’t like about 3D movies is that the glasses seriously cut down the brightness of the image, and the image usually doesn’t seem to be brighter to compensate. I could only get a 3D ticket for The Last Jedi, and there were times when I was taking off the glasses just so I could see what was on the screen, it was so dark.
149.
WaterGirl
@Matt McIrvin: I have read that a subset of people just cannot merge the images or whatever it is that gives the 3D effect. The one 3D movie I sat through I was constantly taking the glasses on and off. It really hurt my eyes and it seemed like days before my eyes recovered. Definitely not doing that again!
My dad, years ago, had lung surgery, and was on a major antibiotic (maybe Cipro) and got very goofy. Thought friend in police uniform was carrying kittens, for example. We mentioned it to his family doctor, who responded by asking if my GOP then 68 Y O father ever used hallucinogenic drugs?!?!
WTF?
So I looked antibiotic up in HIS PDR, and major side effect was hallucinations. WHO IS THE DOCTOR in this room??? Never trusted that guy again for anything, ever.
I’m more than happy to mock her fashion choices, but not her inferiority.
Same. If the First Lady is to be held in the light, let it be on what she says, and what she does, and not who she is.
152.
Barry
@Redshift: “So from a practical perspective, the best response would either be to check the answers they obviously don’t want to hear (telling them their messaging isn’t working) it send it with your final response.”
Check the answers which they want to hear (not all, but 90%), and send it back. They don’t deserve the truth.
153.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
First, sounds like the same asshole. Bet there is more than one of them. Second, been on cipiro and at least for me, doesn’t have any nasty side effects. However that’s why all that wording on the package and in the literature with those big scary things. It happens to some, anyone can have the side effects. That’s why I check out every med prescribed to me before I swallow it and am prepared for the worst.
The med in question for me had been in use for almost 70 yrs and was known for possibly having mild side effects that went away with use. About 5% of users had massive side effects like I did but this doctor, about the same age as me, I would guess had never personally seen that, so in his world I just had to suck it up and get used to it. Fuck that. I didn’t tell him that, no need to get an entire medical system thinking you are an asshole, but I did find out what days are his clinic days and I avoid them. The vast majority of docs in the VA system are good. There is however always a small segment that IMHO should never have or retain a license to practice. Or at least they need a hell of a lot more practice because they suck.
154.
matt
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, having a system that’s undemocratically rigged in your favor is pretty cool.
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debbie
I’m still laughing over “they put strange things like raisins in their potato salad”!
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
That video made me laugh. Wakanda forever!
BruceFromOhio
Wow. That is hilarious.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
Yep, that line made me spit-laugh! The whole sketch was funny, though.
scuffletuffle
That was wonderful!
TaMara (HFG)
I laughed so hard, I scared the cats. So of course I had to share.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I thought that was a really good episode last night. My DVR cut off most of Baldwin’s opener, but NBC is much less stingy with their clips these days
Was the jazz singing thing toward the end a spoof of Manhattan Transfer?
chris
Video not available in your country. Oh, well…
I miss Obama.
Amir Khalid
“The uploader has not made this video available in your country.”
I haz a sad.
TaMara (HFG)
@chris:
@Amir Khalid:
Try this link, it’s NBC not youtube, so maybe more luck??
rikyrah
ICYMI
The Atlantic Magazine is at it again.
Did the Democrats doom themselves by embracing Civil Rights
If they don’t get the ENTIRE phuck Outta Here ?
https://twitter.com/JamesTraub1/status/982714014869393411?s=19
different-church-lady
@rikyrah:
Which would be a great category for Black Jeopardy.
zhena gogolia
He’s cute. Almost makes me want to see Black Panther, but I don’t do superheroes. CGI gives me a visual migraine.
germy
@rikyrah:
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@rikyrah: Brought to you by the same advisors who tell the Ds to get rid of Nancy Pelosi.
ETA: “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?”
different-church-lady
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): By “advisors” you mean “very serious white people who don’t understand they’re as good at trolls,” yes?
FlipYrWhig
@rikyrah: Democrats have been utterly doomed and unelectable since 1965… except for 1976, 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and depending on how you count them, 2000 and 2016. :/
Tenar Arha
Going through mail. My late father’s GOP 2018 Congressional District Census came & now I’m mad & sad. He’d still fill parts of it out the past ? years; occasionally he was willing to fill out the questionnaire in full, but recently with the ones I had to help him with he’d tell them off, with comments like “get rid of the gd holy rollers.”
I’m trying to decide how to respond, while telling them to stop sending any mail to my late father. There’s a “Political Profile” section that lists Facebook & Twitter as equivalent media sources. One choice is FOX News listed separately from NBC/CBS/ABC which is separate from CNN/MSNBC. The “General Issues” section is a nightmare of leading questions to undermine faith in government & to make people suspicious of it. Including
Some of the “Domestic Issues” questions aren’t even neutral enough in the ordering of the multiple choice answers.
I don’t know whether to shred it, correct it, or just write
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@different-church-lady: You bet
Ben Cisco
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): It must be killing them to see Dems winning election after election this cycle WITHOUT embracing that “philosophy.”
Another Scott
Great clip.
Kinda relatedly, WHUT (Howard University’s public TV station) is showing a great show now.
If you get a chance to see it, don’t miss it.
http://www.ascentofwoman.com/ – it’s also on Netflix.
Cheers,
Scott.
No Drought No More
“I’ll just stay on this and I’ll roll tape of Jimmy Kimmel every night for the rest of my career,” Hannity vowed..”.
Hannity, that poor soul. Both humorless and friendless. Because no real friend would sit back and watch a friend embarrass himself in such bombastic fashion, while Kimmel feasts and America laughs.
No doubt at all Kimmel has touched a nerve with Trump himself. His stormy marriage has surely been made no less so by a team of comedy writers taking aim at his already pissed off wife and her ridiculous accent. Maybe she doesn’t appreciate being turned into an international laughing stock, a source of amusement for the slack jawed yokels around the planet. Maybe there is such a thing as a final straw with her. Maybe she’ll reach a point where she no longer cares whether Trump makes good his threat to poison the water supply of the village where she was raised. And should she reach that point, Trump will be finished, over and out. So go, Jimmy, go. Remind your writers that throughout history, plenty of villages have suffered catastrophe and risen from the ashes.
If Trump-Russia is Watergate on bad acid, it actually makes a certain sense that an American comedian can blow a conspiracy of treason led by a president of the United Staes sky high with a few wisecracks, doesn’t it?
germy
@Tenar Arha: Push polls always irritate me. They’re shameless.
Lapassionara
@rikyrah: or, to put it another way, did Thomas Jefferson doom himself by writing “all men are created equal.”
rikyrah
STFU David Axelrod.
I still contend that every elected Democrat should have the attitude of Ted Lieu or Maxine Waters.
https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/982980607771848704?s=19
Chyron HR
@Tenar Arha:
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] No opinion
[x] You ARE the federal government, numbnuts.
Brachiator
I saw this SNL clip earlier, and it is very cool to see it featured here. Not only is it damn funny, it is very well written, and tight, not something that the show does consistently.
I think that the audio gag that signals the end of the segment has a witty sting.
Sly reference to gentrification.
I also think there might be a nod to “Coming to America,” another film about an African ruler, in the skit.
Mike in NC
I got tired of The Atlantic way back when they still published crap from the likes of Andrew Sullivan and Michael Kelly, and refused to renew. People on Twitter want to know if the magazine was bought out by the Mercers.
MomSense
The sound of white people shopping for real estate means the fun is over.
I love SNL.
Ohio Mom
@Tenar Arha: I’ve done all three at different times with the surveys my Congressional Rep sends us. When I opt for correcting, it’s with a red pen of course.
Which of the three I end up going depends on my mood at the moment.
P.S. Condolences
trnc
@rikyrah:
This is in exactly the same vein as “Democrats should listen to the white working class more.” Has any member of the MSM ever stated that maybe SOMETIMES people should listen to Democrats?
Ladyraxterinok
@No Drought No More: A friend was amazed and admiring that Melania knows so many lamguages.
I told him that she was not unusual, that most Europeans know probably 3 or more languages and that Ameriacans are an anomoly and often ridiculed for only knowing one. He then said, well why should we know any more? Even if we leave the country, we can find someone who speaks English.
He’s a nice guy but works very had to support his extended family and is quite incurious about other countries.
His comment showed me how GOP propaganda is making apolitical Americans think Melanis is some sort of wonder woman intellect.
Bostonian
@MomSense: Yeah, that’s the line that got me.
West of the Rockies
@No Drought No More:
Hannity reminds me of an ugly bird with his little mouth and expectant look, like he’s waiting for a fat worm to be crammed into his twisted pie hole.
Honestly, I have long thought that Hannity was the most obviously stupid among the talking heads and would be recognized as such… Instead, he’s somehow ended up more influential than Rush, Coulterwocky, Beck, etc.
germy
@West of the Rockies: I saw this a few months ago:
Matt McIrvin
Just discovered one of the leftiest-than-thou people I follow on Google+ is a Jordan Peterson fan. WHYYYYY
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: Answer: “yes, they kinda did, but fuck anyone who thinks that was the wrong thing to do”.
James E. Powell
@rikyrah:
Axelrod says we shouldn’t normalize impeachment, but the Republicans already did that. Clear cut case? Republicans used the high crime and misdemeanor of lying about an extra-marital affair during a deposition in a bullshit lawsuit also based on extramarital sex. The Beltway Courtiers loved it.
zhena gogolia
@James E. Powell:
Right on.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
Why is it always expressed this way and never “Did the Republicans doom themselves by embracing racism”?
West of the Rockies
@germy:
You can actually smell idiocy in that picture.
tobie
@Ladyraxterinok: Have you heard interviews with Melania? When she’s not reading a script, you realize that she’s not actually fluent in English. And this is pretty shocking given that she has been in the States for almost 20 years. She has a lot of difficulty expressing herself and conveying complicated thoughts. And, while I haven’t heard her speak German or French, I imagine her mastery of those two languages is just as rudimentary.
chris
@Matt McIrvin: Guess who wrote the book that is first in line on my Amazon front page. Yup, the world’s foremost public intellectual! WASF
satby
@Tenar Arha: Condolences on the passing of your father.
My poor dementia addled mom would get those and I would take them away when she wasn’t looking. Fox news really damaged that woman. And our country.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig: In six out of the past seven presidential elections, the democrat has received more votes than the republican.
JPL
@James E. Powell: The republicans plan on getting out the base by saying the dems will impeach the dear leader. If the democratic candidates are smart, they will address it. Do the republicans believe a president should never be impeached? What if the president interfered with the election by seeking Russia/Iran’s help? Does the republican candidate believe it is not their responsibility to oversee the executive branch?
Anyway you get my drift..
stinger
@Tenar Arha: I’d let them keep spending the money to print and mail their questionnaires. It’s simple for me to toss them in the recycling bin, and meanwhile it does a little bit to keep USPS profitable. Even better if you want to mark up the questionnaire (some great suggestions above) and send it back to them in their postage-paid envelope! Let the GOP pay for it all.
raven
@tobie:
1. Notion of Fossilization
Selinker first put forwarded the notion of fossilization in the paper Interlanuage in 1972. He noted that 95% of L2 learners failed to reach the same level of L1 competence from his observation. This kind of phenomenon is defined by Selinder (1972) as fossilization. Fossilization, a mechanism…underlies surface linguistic material which speakers will tend to keep in their IL productive performance, no matter what the age of the learner or the amount of instruction he receives in the TL.
Selinker and Lamendella (1978) redefined fossilization as a permanent cessation of IL learning before the learner has attained TL norms at all levels of linguistic structure and in all discourse domains in spite of the learner’s positive ability, opportunity, and motivation to learn and acculturate into target society.
gene108
@Roger Moore:
Or rather, “Why Have Republicans Benefited by Embracing Racism?”
West of the Rockies
@tobie:
There is such a Stepford Wife quality to her appearance and demeanor. Maybe it’s due to years of exposure to Clump.
Matt McIrvin
@FlipYrWhig:
We kind of are, though. Republicans won giant fucking landslides where they ran the table of the whole country in 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994 and 2010. Democrats arguably got one in 2006, after Republicans had been blatantly screwing the pooch for six solid years–and all that did was to almost but not quite undo 1994. All our other wins have been, not necessarily squeakers–Obama and Clinton’s wins were solid–but hard-won and soon undone. Electing Obama gave Republicans rock-solid control of the vast majority of state legislatures and Congress after the next midterm.
Why? Because America is totally racist. That is 100% the reason. Fight racism in this country and you will lose most of the time.
Now, look at the progression of dates, and you can tell that this is changing. Republicans haven’t gotten a presidential landslide since 1988 because racist whites are no longer enough of a majority. They could still get them in midterms as recently as 2010. Long-term, doubling down on the racism is a bad strategy and it will eventually bite the Republicans in the ass–but only if the United States survives that long as an approximate democracy, which it may well not.
Edit: OK, I guess I forgot 1974. But, again, it took Watergate to induce that.
schrodingers_cat
deleted
stinger
@chris: I hadn’t seen the picture of Obama and the eagle before — wonderful!
gene108
There were calls for Obama’s impeachment:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/a-brief-history-of-gop-calls-for-obamas-impeachment-from-benghazi-to-bergdahl/455544/
Amir Khalid
@TaMara (HFG):
No joy. Somehow the NBC site also knows I’m a foreigner. :(
smintheus
@Ladyraxterinok:
You could tell that she’s a brilliant intellect just by her defense of Trump’s birtherism. Or her declaration that a Jewish reporter deserved the anti-Semitic attacks launched at her for writing a less than flattering profile of Melania’s dubious family.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
It’s a long piece, and I think reaction to it may merit it’s own thread.
The article, at least the parts I’ve skimmed, bristles with the worst kind of paternalistic liberal racism.
Also odd is a bit in the first section that seems to throw raw meat to the Bernie Bros.
It’s almost as if the author is saying that if it were not for ungrateful Negroes, America would have achieved the s@cialist Paradise that Bernie is now offering.
Matt McIrvin
@JPL:
They should shout “FUCK YEAH we’re going to impeach him”.
Yarrow
@stinger:
Add something heavy to the envelope to increase their postage costs since they’re paying for it. I know someone who did that and he never got another mailing from them.
germy
@West of the Rockies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6NqscIsidQ
Ohio Mom
@Ladyraxterinok: You know the old joke:
If a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and a person who speaks three is trilingual, what do you call a person who only speaks one language?
An American!
Melania is no intellect but she does have a sort of native intelligence centered on self-preservation.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Bigotry with a patina of intellectualism is still bigotry.
Amir Khalid
@Ladyraxterinok:
I knew a guy from Cleveland who grumbled to me that he couldn’t find anyone to practise his Malay conversation skills with, because the locals (including his in-laws) all preferred to speak English. That is especially true in the cities, but I think the rural areas are catching up because everyone here watches foreign TV shows.
Brachiator
@James E. Powell:
Yep. Republicans talked about impeaching Obama, and some hinted at impeaching Hillary at the exact moment that she took the oath of office, had she been elected.
schrodingers_cat
@Ladyraxterinok: I am fluent in 3 languages and can understand at least 2 more well enough to follow conversations.
JPL
@Matt McIrvin: Matt yglesias said it best
schrodingers_cat
OT: Has anyone used KonMari to declutter their stuff?
Brachiator
@No Drought No More:
Hannity and the other Fox News hosts have been given their marching orders by their management. They have to fight back, even if they become laughing stocks.
Fox News long established itself based on the fierce loyalty of an angry, ignorant hard core base. They can’t give them up.
Redshift
@Tenar Arha: If it’s any consolation, it’s definitely not a real survey where they’re trying to decide any positions based on the responses. It’s either a push poll to promote and reinforce their existing positions, or message testing to see what messaging gets the strongest response.
So from a practical perspective, the best response would either be to check the answers they obviously don’t want to hear (telling them their messaging isn’t working) it send it with your final response.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
THAT IS HILARIOUS! I am pretty much done with “laughing” at Trump, but this is brilliant.
lamh36
Been laughing at that skit all night & still this morning.
Chadwick keeping the accent throughout and even Leslie and the other young man (his name escapes me sorry) were solid but also too Keenan’s reactions and goading of T’Challa in the “potato salad” answer had me LMBAO just as much!
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Have you tried using Incognito tabs?
Ohio Mom
@rikyrah: I think all Axelrod is saying is wait for all the dust to settle. When there is solid evidence of the collusion and whatever else, that is the time for impeachment because then it can’t be contested. Circumstantial evidence isn’t enough. We have one chance and we want to succees, we don’t want Trump off on a technicality.
That isn’t to say that there isn’t a role for Maxine Waters and everyone else calling for impeachment NOW. They are building the momentum, adding to the pressure, and moving the Overton Window.
When it is time to begin impeachment proceedings, there will be more acceptance that it was inevitable.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
I don’t believe Melania has ever presented herself as anything more than what you see. A very attractive woman who used (or tried to use) her attractiveness to her advantage. She clearly was unprepared for the role her dickhead husband thrust upon her.
I’m more than happy to mock her fashion choices, but not her inferiority.
Brachiator
@debbie:
Unfortunately, she hopped aboard the birther train and tries to defend her husband. But I understand those who want to cut her some slack.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ohio Mom: I tend to think candidates know their own constituents, and I’m fine with people calling for accountability and oversight, “full hearings that will show us all what’s going on” or something like that, rather than impeachment. What I don’t like about Axelrod’s tweet is the Village-y concern for propriety.
I don’t pay much attention to Axelrod— I don’t need one more podcast to litter up my phone– but he seems to draw a lot of criticism. I’ve heard through the grapevine (so FWIW) of friends of friends that was kind of a jackass back in Chicago, and he seems to carry a big grudge against the Clintons from ’08
ETA:
also, too, I’d like to ask him how exactly the Comey firing and subsequent events– the “tapes” tweet that was effectively witness tampering, the McCabe affair– don’t constitute obstruction of fucking justice. “Demonstrable”? He went on TV and bragged about it.
debbie
@Brachiator:
I think only because it seems to be expected of her. Anyway, she isn’t part of the problem, at least to my mind.
Shana
@stinger: My late father, who was never a Republican, would get that sort of stuff from time to time. He’d usually stuff the return envelope full of other direct mail, as much as it could hold, and send it back. He wanted them to have to pay for the postage. A difficult man in many ways, but I always kind of liked that one.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: I think the guy is right that embracing civil rights is the root cause of most Democratic electoral losses.
Where he’s wrong is thinking there was a moral or even a practical political alternative. The New Deal coalition that united African-American voters and Southern white supremacists was inherently unstable–it was already starting to crack up in 1948. A right-wing party could choose to double down on racism; a herrenvolk-democratic-left party would not have survived because over the long term it needed minority voters, unless the US became a national apartheid state and denied them the vote entirely. In which case, why play this game at all? Winning is losing.
Also, he’s taking Trump’s negative-three-million squeaker win as a novel sign of an effect that is fifty years old and fading.
Ohio Mom
@debbie: That is what I meant by a certain native intelligence centered on self preservation. I wasn’t born with a body and face like hers but even if I had, I don’t know if I could engineer a modeling career that would in turn propel me and my family to a foreign country and then manage to marry my way into riches.
Is it too mean spirited to compare her to the squirrels in my attic? Not smart but very cunning.
I do agree that First Ladydom calls on skills and talents she doesn’t have and can’t fake.
West of the Rockies
@Brachiator:
I suspect we’re seeing a feedback loop at Fox. If you want to make a go of it there as a pundit, you have to buy into a certain amount of the RWNJ world view. If you’re successful at that and start making nice money, you must push things a little further, become a bit more extreme and controversial. That leads to Hannity-type dollars, which to maintain, of course one must keep shoveling the cray-cray.
glory b
@Amir Khalid: Richard Pryor did a stand up piece about Africans asking him what Americans spoke at home. They told him “everyone” speaks English but speaks another language at home, what do Americans speak?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t like the whole idea of “First Ladies*”. Smacks of Royalism! and I can kind of sympathize with her position as a mother, and if I had to bet I would bet that the stories about her planning a post-election divorce were true. But the history of birtherism is the deciding factor for me. She deserves him– even if the poor kid doesn’t.
* speaking of which, the stories about Mrs Popeo calling herself “First Lady of the CIA” pissed me off. It really is like a corrupt royal court where the ministers think their position is a license to set up mini-courts of their own, and to grift
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: I have used aspects of KonMari’s approach, particularly with stuff I feel guilty about tossing because it was a gift or because it represents wasted money. It was liberating for me to learn I could just say, This item once was a source of joy and now needs to move on to spark joy somewhere else.
But empty my closet and go through every garment one by one? Nope, too much work.
aimai
@glory b: Authentic frontier gibberish.
Ignatius Donnelly
@zhena gogolia: “Visual” migraine? Do you mean ocular migraine, when the center of your field of vision starts to look jiggly and neon, spreading out in a growing ring until it reaches your peripheral vision, then finally goes away? I get those all the time – more an annoyance than a serious problem.
Oh, and You’re right about CGI.
West of the Rockies
@Brachiator:
I purposefully avoid reading about or discussing Baron usually. He’s a kid and should be off limits.
But he’s a Trump kid, and its not a crazy bet to assume he’ll end up like Eric or Jr., or Ivanka: privileged, lacking in self awareness, greedy, and likely to produce similar people as a parent.
I hope I’m wrong. Some people say Tiffany is alright, and one Kushner son is reportedly not terrible, so who knows.
efgoldman
@Ohio Mom:
When the house flips, they should investigate anything and everything, openly and honestly.
The real chances of impeachment succeeding are nil. There is no way that any conceivable senate votes 2/3 in favor.
oldgold
@Ohio Mom:
Neither was Melania.
Brachiator
@West of the Rockies:
Fox News is the official propaganda channel of the right wing. Hosts are instructed or encouraged to stay on message. And one of their tactics is not to merely disagree with opponents, but to treat them with angry disdain. And this also fits Hannity, who likes to indulge his pugnacious side.
Ruckus
@Ladyraxterinok:
I’m not excusing the stupidity, what you said is true. But…
Some of this is just the shear size of the country.
But most of it is what happened to the rest of the world with WWII. Most countries were affected negatively, we had increased our production, other than PH hadn’t been bombed back a century or two and we had the means to help rebuild those countries. And remember that isolationism was a major concept before the war. It’s a way to also sell puritanical bullshit to people, you will be better if you do it this way and don’t rub elbows with others. I think there is a bit of this in the racism of this country as well. Can’t have others around you, debasing your “culture.” So of course the extremely Ugly American got elected president. This is the result of sticking collective heads in the sand (or bullshit) for decades, of not respecting others, of not embracing differences, but demanding that none exist. My sailings abroad in the navy were very enlightening, we go on liberty in different countries and about 1/3 of the crew would come back and bitterly complain about how this foreign country didn’t speak english, didn’t do things the way we did, was so horrible. OTOH, I wanted to move to many places in Europe. But then I’d already had a number of experiences with working class people from several countries, with blue collar workers who spoke 2 or more languages, fluently, several of whom had fled countries with dictators. We are the pompous outliers in this world.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
apparently she ‘liked’ some posts from the March for Our Lives. the three Largest Adult Children are deeply, deeply damaged, I say with the authority of Some Guy on the Internet, but maybe one of the other ones will be the Ron Reagan or Stephanie Miller of the clan. And the Kushner brother trolling the trumps cracks me up.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
First rule of bigotry.
Never say the truth out loud. Someone might mistake it for the desired result.
Schlemazel
@Brachiator:
In his world Insannity is not losing or getting roasted. You got it with your second paragraph, they are pitching to morons who believed Obama was a dictator and Dump has done more in his first year than Obama did in 8. They are ignorant and willfully so. In that world Fox is winning.
Brachiator
@West of the Rockies:
I agree.
I note in passing that some Republicans go after the children (and wives) of liberal politicians while hypocritically crying foul against any perceived attack on conservative family members.
germy
The Game of Life: DACA Edition sketch was realistic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TWo74L8EiY
HeleninEire
Just started watching The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Almost finished ep 2. Kinda hate it. I love Tina Fey. Should I continue?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@HeleninEire: I think I made it to episode three. I didn’t hate it, and laughed a few times, but I never got around to episode four and probably won’t. Just kind of meh.
WaterGirl
@Ignatius Donnelly: I have had an ocular migraine, but for me I saw all sorts of geometric shapes floating around. It was a big deal. I couldn’t drive or stand or walk when it happened. Maybe this varies among people?
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Isn’t the fox ownership/management fully enrolled in that angry, ignorant hard core base?
chris
@Ruckus:
All the upvotes!
PaulWartenberg
re: last night’s SNL. The funny, actually sad thing about that “Black Jeopardy” sketch is how T’Challa describes a world as it SHOULD be – a trustworthy law enforcement that doesn’t shoot Blacks on sight half the time, a nation with free college and encouragement of self-improvement through education, a place where people don’t have to lie or look for loopholes to pay for things like car loans – and how Bernard, uh Kevan responds to such ideals highlighting just how f-cked up America really is.
Also, white people, Ah Hell Naw to raisins in potato salad, what the hell brah?
Uncle Cosmo
@germy: As a former research statistician, “push polls” piss the shit out of me because they are not “polls” – they are doubly deceitful methods of manipulating opinion, not only because they pretend to be something they are not (honest attempts to obtain insight into the views of the population) but because the memes they push are usually flat-out lies as well. Bastards.
Redshift
I kind of agree with Axelrod in the sense that “the Democrats” (meaning as a primary official message for the election) shouldn’t *commit* to impeachment. Individual Democrats should feel free to, and the main message should be stopping Trump and his awful and corrupt cronies, since that’s what’s powering this blue wave.
Though if be happy if some aspiring Democratic bomb-thrower went with “I’m calling for a total and complete shutdown of the corrupt Trump Administration into we can find out what the hell is going on!”
RSA
@TaMara (HFG): Hilarious.
Everything I know about black cookouts I learned from Michael Harriot, who is very funny (and often challenging) on culture issues.
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies:
Is it also possible that fox only hires people with their world view in the first place?
Luthe
@raven: I have no idea what any of this means, but I can tell you for all my trying I can’t get any languages beyond English to stick. It’s like throwing undercooked spaghetti at a wall: it’ll stick for a second or two and then slide right off. Which is not to say I don’t make an effort when traveling; I find saying “hello,” “goodbye,” “good [time of day],” “excuse me,” “please,” and “thank you,” in the local language combined with some halting attempts to communicate further will put you in the natives’ good graces while also prompting them to switch to English so as to stop further butchery of their language. I would rather be the “Clueless but Trying” American than the Ugly American.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: After the divorce Marla packed Tiffany up and took her as far away from the Shitgibbon as possible, which is why there is hope she may turn out to be a reasonable human being.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@RSA: that piece is from 2015, so…
this is a thing? people are doing this? In the name of god why? I thought it was some stoned SNL writer’s riff on the whole peas in the guacamole thing, which is not even a blip on the radar in a world where people are putting raisins in potato salad.
Roger Moore
@Ohio Mom:
This has been my general take. We should definitely promise to investigate, but until there’s evidence solid enough to present to the public, calling for impeachment is premature. I’m sure the evidence is out there, so for me this is the equivalent of saying we should have the trial before the hanging.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Sorry, I vehemently disagree with this.
For most of its history, the US has been an apartheid state. It may have been concentrated in the South, but racism and discrimination was practiced everywhere.
Also, it wasn’t just that the Democrats embraced civil rights, it is that the Republicans abandoned black people.
The author’s implicit assumption is that Black people are not really citizens with inalienable rights, but inconvenient political pawns. At best, the main role of the historical Republican Party was to pacify or mollify black people, not to represent them.
I suppose someone could write an article moaning that the Democratic Party doomed itself by embracing the union movement, but would immediately get pushback from most people who would insist that workers, or at least white workers, were the heart of America.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
G tries it in spurts, but he doesn’t have a lot of free time for it. The one thing I’ve used is her method of folding and storing t-shirts, which is frickin’ GENIUS.
Waratah
@Amir Khalid: Frustrating, the Australians, won’t let me watch things like the Melbourne cup, Commonwealth Games. I know how you feel.
Citizen_X
@rikyrah:
“I knew that as soon as I got the Civil Rights Act, and I still signed the damn thing, ‘cause the God damned Klan can go piss up a rope.”
-Zombie Lyndon Baines Johnson
WaterGirl
@RSA: That was worth the read!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@WaterGirl: I get those. They hit the center of the visual field, both eyes. I can still function in many ways (except reading), most of the time people around me don’t realize something is going on with me unless I mention it. And they always finish in exactly 30 minutes, just suddenly stop.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Luthe: A fun book is FLIRTING WITH FRENCH about a American guy trying to learn French as an adult. He put real effort into it, including a language camp in France, and wound up incomprehensible to native speakers.
Part of the problem for Americans is that most of us live too far away to use or even hear other languages regularly. Notice that people who live in areas with many Spanish speakers tend to pick up a fair amount of Spanish, and if they put effort, it does stick. If Europeans could travel from the Netherlands to Turkey and speak only one language, they’d have more trouble too.
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
You could, and I know this can be gut wrenching, just grab 6 inches of hangers and whatever is on them and take that to Goodwill/Salvation Army, whatever. Don’t look, don’t decide, just grab and take.
I’m thinking about a closet I fixed for a couple of women I’ve known for decades, one entire wall of their bedroom was closet and was so stuffed with clothes that they could not wear everything in a couple of years, different outfit every day. The load was so heavy that it was breaking the hanger rod supports and the shelf above that. The fix? Can’t clean out the closet, so build supports from the ground. Wonderful ladies, BTW, but I laughed the entire time I was doing the work. One was my best friend, known her over 40 yrs, she passed away a little over a year ago, I’m dog sitting for her partner in July. I have great friends, how lucky is that?
laura
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: there’s no end to what some wypipo will put in gelatin and then attempt to serve it to others.
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The 30-minute thing is interesting. Thankfully, I only had a few, then went to the doctor who told me my eyes were SO TIRED because I needed reading glasses, and that was the result.
Got reading glasses and never got another one.
zhena gogolia
@Ignatius Donnelly:
My doctor called it visual migraine. IANAD, as you know.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
Mine resembles Ignatius’s, but I can’t do much of anything when it happens except lie down in a darkened room. It always (so far) lasts exactly 20 minutes.
zhena gogolia
@Ignatius Donnelly:
Having to watch several powerpoint presentations in a row also triggers it.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Yes it does.
I was told that I had an ocular migraine once. I went black blind for about 15 minutes. So different than yours. I don’t think, given what is going on in my life health wise that it was an OM but one really doesn’t know. I was given a med once that gave me horrible hallucinations, I was afraid to move because nothing looked like it normally does and everything (walls, solid objects….) was moving and shimmering. Acid? Don’t need no stinking acid to take weird and horrible trips, my doc will write me a script. (I don’t/didn’t see that doc after I told him and he told me to suck it up. My reply is not suitable for this blog.)
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
I agree the chances of Trump losing office are negligible. I still think it’s worth impeaching him when the Democrats have conclusive evidence of his wrongdoing. We need to get that evidence out as loudly and as publicly as possible, and we need to force the Republicans to take a public position on it. I’m sure the died in the woo Republican base will stick by him and the Republicans in Congress who stand by him no matter what turns up, but I think there are enough persuadable people out there that it’s worth doing for political effect.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Hmm. I think the owners are angry and myopic, but not ignorant. They just want to make sure that they are always on top and that everyone else, including their viewers, are at the bottom.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
i liked that book a lot and was overjoyed to find there were other “older” people whose ability to retain knowledge wasn’t what it used to be.
raven
@Ruckus: I went to an MD for a couple of years who had been a Jar Head officer (1/9 the Walking Dead”) in the Nam. All respect for his past but goddamn, he treated me like I was a boot. I bailed and found a female doc with some fucking empathy!
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
I don’t know which is scarier and more worrisome:
A) All the Faux presenters are selling a set of lies designed to harm the nation, and they are all aware of the falsehoods and damage they do
B) All the Faux presenters are completely ignorant of what they’re pushing and just do what they’re told by management.
In the first case we have a larger group of deliberate traitors trying to damage democracy. In the second case we have a large group of naive and stupid people doing what they are told to do by deliberate traitors trying to damage democracy. Which case is worse? I dunno…
Mnemosyne
@zhena gogolia:
Is it just CGI on movie screens, or with TV, too? There’s so much CGI in everything now that I’m not sure how you could watch much of anything.
IIRC, TV and movies still use slightly different frame rates (30 frames per second (fps) vs 24 fps), so it’s possible that CGI could bug you in one medium but not the other.
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): The problem is that there is only so far one can go in terms of pronunciation if they try to “learn” a second language. You can “acquire” a language as a child but it’s totally different for an adult. Krashen used Kissinger and Joseph Conrad as people who “knew” English inside and out but would never pronounce it the way native speakers do.
Ohio Mom
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Of course Melania deserves Trump — she worked hard to snag him!
And if it wasn’t him in particular, it would have been someone else just like him, although most likely without the political ambitions. But she would have gone along with whatever else that other fellow believed. If by some stretch this other mega-wealthy hubbie was the biggest Obama fan, she would have been an Obama fan.
raven
@J R in WV: Hey, I wrote you several times about a couple of books about the Sea of Cortez and either you were just a drive by and never read them or you’ve pied me like Kay! which is it?
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Well we differ in our estimation/understanding of ignorant then. Mine is that you live in a world, made up of billions of people. Why should you get to decide that your shit doesn’t stink while everyone else’s does? Everyone’s shit stinks, it’s the inability to learn to live with that concept that is ignorance. Not how to make money or how to invent nuclear bombs. We are here on this rock for a short time, making a positive or at least neutral mark in the history of life shouldn’t be that hard because making a negative mark is extremely fucking easy, so just not being an ass would make a neutral mark. It really isn’t that difficult but some seem to make it their life’s work to be an ass. We can all name names.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: You can catch him in biopics 42 or Get On Up. He’s brilliant actor.
Ruckus
@raven:
Yeah I don’t understand, you go into a career that takes years to learn, that is supposed to be about helping people, you take an oath to do no harm, and then you take a normal amount of empathy and rip it out of your brain and try to practice medicine. Now everyone can have a bad day but if you have constant bad days….. See my comment at #133.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I’m going with equally fucked up. It hurts my brain less, not having to decide between venial fucks and dumb fucks.
Ohio Mom
@efgoldman: You and I may know the details of the complete impeachment and conviction process but most people don’t.
People repeat the Clinton was impeached but don’t know or understand that the Senate essentially acquitted him. As far as they know, the impeachment proves Clinton was guilty. It is seen as a permanent mark against him, as contrived and ultimately silly as the actual charge ended up being.
Considering the circumstances we are in, I will be satisfied if the House flips and mountains of material evidence leads to Trump’s impeachment; I don’t have any fantasies about the Senate. But I want all of Trump’s wrong doing thoroughly and incontrovertibly documented.
raven
@Ruckus: Well, 1/9 at his time was fucking awful, they came by “The walking Dead” honestly and I guess he won’t ever get over it. He probably really dislikes dogface remf’s.
Kelly
@Roger Moore:
Love these typos
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Yikes. That would be horrifying and terrifying. So sorry you went through that and especially sorry that you had a doctor who apparently has no business working with patients. Sounds like he belongs in a lab somewhere.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: I cannot watch 3-D movies and I really can’t watch IMAX.
Ugh.
AxelFoley
@different-church-lady:
????????
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
I see your point. The Trumps, Mercers and Kochs of the world reject it.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
He’s my age, he belongs in a retirement.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
It isn’t so much that they reject it as they violently throw it overboard with huge concrete weights chained around it’s ankles.
Just being a fucking ass would be a massive step up for them.
sukabi
@Roger Moore: it makes it easier to see the questioners inherent bias.
Articles / questions like that should be met with articles / questions reframed as you did.
sukabi
@Ohio Mom: maybe she’s a Red Sparrow, and Drumpf is her ‘job’.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: My stereo vision is a little messed up, but the thing I really don’t like about 3D movies is that the glasses seriously cut down the brightness of the image, and the image usually doesn’t seem to be brighter to compensate. I could only get a 3D ticket for The Last Jedi, and there were times when I was taking off the glasses just so I could see what was on the screen, it was so dark.
WaterGirl
@Matt McIrvin: I have read that a subset of people just cannot merge the images or whatever it is that gives the 3D effect. The one 3D movie I sat through I was constantly taking the glasses on and off. It really hurt my eyes and it seemed like days before my eyes recovered. Definitely not doing that again!
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
My dad, years ago, had lung surgery, and was on a major antibiotic (maybe Cipro) and got very goofy. Thought friend in police uniform was carrying kittens, for example. We mentioned it to his family doctor, who responded by asking if my GOP then 68 Y O father ever used hallucinogenic drugs?!?!
WTF?
So I looked antibiotic up in HIS PDR, and major side effect was hallucinations. WHO IS THE DOCTOR in this room??? Never trusted that guy again for anything, ever.
BruceFromOhio
@debbie:
Same. If the First Lady is to be held in the light, let it be on what she says, and what she does, and not who she is.
Barry
@Redshift: “So from a practical perspective, the best response would either be to check the answers they obviously don’t want to hear (telling them their messaging isn’t working) it send it with your final response.”
Check the answers which they want to hear (not all, but 90%), and send it back. They don’t deserve the truth.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
First, sounds like the same asshole. Bet there is more than one of them. Second, been on cipiro and at least for me, doesn’t have any nasty side effects. However that’s why all that wording on the package and in the literature with those big scary things. It happens to some, anyone can have the side effects. That’s why I check out every med prescribed to me before I swallow it and am prepared for the worst.
The med in question for me had been in use for almost 70 yrs and was known for possibly having mild side effects that went away with use. About 5% of users had massive side effects like I did but this doctor, about the same age as me, I would guess had never personally seen that, so in his world I just had to suck it up and get used to it. Fuck that. I didn’t tell him that, no need to get an entire medical system thinking you are an asshole, but I did find out what days are his clinic days and I avoid them. The vast majority of docs in the VA system are good. There is however always a small segment that IMHO should never have or retain a license to practice. Or at least they need a hell of a lot more practice because they suck.
matt
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, having a system that’s undemocratically rigged in your favor is pretty cool.