Pelosi: "Thug" Putin is not welcome to address Congress if he accepts Trump's invitation to the White House https://t.co/W63ukmf9j2 pic.twitter.com/s5HBnV7zTj
— The Hill (@thehill) July 21, 2018
You come at the queen, you best not miss. Tim Dickinson, in Rolling Stone, interviews “the House Minority Leader on the midterms, impeachment, her own party, sexism and the sexist-in-chief”:
… Pelosi is one of the most powerful women in global politics. She gets credit for securing passage of much of the legislation in the Obama legacy, including the Recovery Act, Wall Street reform and especially the Affordable Care Act. “Nancy Pelosi has been one of the most transformational figures in the modern Democratic Party,” says Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez. Pelosi also spearheaded the takeover of the House a dozen years ago in 2006 – an achievement that has become fodder for her critics. “Leader Pelosi has talked about how we need to do what we did in 2006,” says Rep. Seth Moulton, an ambitious Massachusetts Democrat who argues for a “new generation” of House leadership. “I mean, we barely had iPhones in 2006 – it was a different world.”
But for all the talk about Nancy Pelosi, less time has been spent actually listening to her. Rolling Stone sat down with Pelosi for an hour on a May evening in Des Moines, Iowa, where she was raising money for the local Democratic Party. At the fundraiser, standing before a wall-sized American flag, Pelosi sought to flatten the difference between President Trump and GOP candidates. “He’s their guy,” she says of Trump. “Make no mistake: This election, it’s not – well it’s about him in certain respects, we can’t ignore that – but it’s about them.”…
I want to dig in on 2018 and understand how you’re thinking about the election and how the angles break.
When Hillary didn’t win, people said, “Can you win the House?” And I said, “I’ll tell you in a year.” Because it matters where the president is a year out. If he’s under 50 [percent approval rating], we can win it. Just to put in a little historical perspective. In ‘05 and ‘06, [former Democratic Senate leader] Harry Reid and I said, “We’re going to win the Congress.” People said, “No way. It’s going to be a permanent Republican majority.” Bush had just won. In January of ‘05, he was at 58 percent in the polls. The war in Iraq; people in the streets; he’s at 58 percent in the polls. We would have to bring his numbers down. And he gave us a gift: He was going to privatize Social Security. [That] helped take his numbers down, into like the 40s. What other difference did we want to emphasize? It was “Drain the swamp.” That was ours. [Trump] stole it from us. “End the culture of cronyism, incompetence and corruption.” That was our thing. They were getting indicted, subpoenaed all over the place. And then Hurricane Katrina: Cronyism and incompetence. Thirty-eight percent in September.With Trump, he’s done the heavy lifting for you?
We can’t take credit for taking his numbers down, but for taking advantage of the opportunity it presented. To keep [his numbers] down we had to make sure people understood what Republicans were trying to do with the Affordable Care Act, what they were doing in terms of inequality and the disparity of income. Anyway, he was at 38 to 40 percent a year before the [2018] election. So, they get the retirements. I think it’s 46 today. And we get the A-Team on the field. We would like to say we recruited [our candidates]. Trump recruited them for us. [Laughs.] We’re in a very good place now…We’ve seen consecutive Republican speakers flame out, essentially, because they couldn’t deal with the insurgency on their right flank. What is your secret to keeping Democrats united?
I’m really good at what I do. I’m a legislative virtuoso. I really love legislating. It takes knowledge, and experience, institutional memory. I was forged in the Intelligence Committee and especially the Appropriations Committee. I know how you can reach agreement…
Your critics say you’re too liberal–
I’m [pro-] LGBTQ, I support those issues. I’m proud to. But they use that – they go into these districts and they say, “Too liberal.”San Francisco values–
Which are the values of Saint Francis – “Make me a channel for thy peace.” You have a problem with that? I’m proud of all of that. I don’t think the [Democratic candidates] who say, “I’m not going to vote for Nancy” are disassociating themselves from the progressive agenda, or LGBTQ equality. They’re just responding to an ad in their district…Is there a margin you need to secure that gavel? You talked about wanting to win 35 seats.
No, no. You only have to win [the leadership vote] in your caucus – and then you go to the floor [for the speakership vote]. People vote for the Democrat or they vote for the Republican. So I feel very comfortable about that. But I don’t feel like talking about it. My time is money, and mobilization and the rest. Part of it is messaging – and talking about me and what happens to me is the least important part of all of it.I think some of it is a little bit on the sexist side – although I wouldn’t normally say that. Except it’s like, really? Has anyone asked whatshisname, the one who’s the head of Senate?
[Aide Jorge Aguilar who is sitting beside Pelosi] McConnell.
McConnell. I mean he’s got the lowest numbers of anybody in the world. Have you ever gone up to him and said, “How much longer do you think you’ll stay in this job?” Nobody ever went up to Harry Reid and said that. Nobody ever says that to anybody except a woman. But it’s a thing.
And you know what? You get the upside and the downside of it. The one thing I want women to know is that you don’t walk away from a fight. You don’t let them make your decisions for you. I don’t mean to sound arrogant. But I am confident. I am confident.
“Whatshisname.” SHADE THROWN!
Corner Stone
Damn that pesky vagina-enabled American!
Baud
Why won’t she just go away and take up knitting?
(That’s not exclusive to Hillary, is it?)
dmsilev
And that’s why so many people hate her.
PST
I’ve never once heard a Pelosi hater explain himself (they’re mostly men) in rational terms. You ask what they don’t like about her and they look at you like you said pigs could fly. “She’s just awful!” It’s an axiom. No justification needed. The worst thing you can say about her is that she’s not a charismatic face of the party — a job she never asked for. As leader of the party in Congress she’s proven herself over and over.
debbie
Woe to anyone who badmouths her in my presence.
pete
I want to see Pelosi managing impeachment. She’d enjoy her work.
Gelfling 545
@debbie: Same here. She and Shumer have been the heroes of the Trump era.
Corner Stone
I want to see Pelosi with her hand on a bible being sworn in as POTUS after Trump and Pence are tossed/dragged out of office.
hueyplong
Pelosi has been my hero for decades.
NotMax
Obviously fake news. Everyone knows it isn’t a real interview with a woman unless she is asked about her favorite cookie recipe. //
:)
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
Exactly.
Conservatives don’t want the government to work.
When the government works they don’t get to control the flow of all the money, they don’t get to be as racist or even own people and they have to pay taxes for things they don’t want.
A working government, one that actually supports the people, provides for the needs of the people, respects the people, doesn’t attack and kill the people, that is a government that is 100% opposite of what conservatives want. Has always been so and will always be so.
SFAW
@Corner Stone:
Seconded. Although part of me wants her to name Hillary as her VP, then resign.
(Of course, a Rethug Senate would never vote to confirm Hillary, but it’s nice to dream about it. And, yes, I’d rather have Hillary as POTUS and Nancy Smash as SOTH.)
J R in WV
I’m a Pelosi Democrat, have been for years. She’s great, a leader of the legislature. People who don’t like her aren’t Democrats, they’re rat-fuckers.
Hope we get to see her running the Impeachment of Trump/Pence, tied together by yards of Russian ribbons. Then the swearing in, in the House Chambers, right after the two jailbirds are thrown out. There’s some news for the ages!
debg
@dmsilev: It’s also why I find her so impressive.
Chip Daniels
Yes, they come after her because she irritates the right wing, which is uncivil, especially for a woman.
B.B.A.
@pete: She says impeachment is still off the table – and I think she’s right on this. It’s unlikely to be more than a stupid distraction from all the other stupid distractions.
She’s Speaker for life, and that’s a good thing. But I do think we need younger voices in leadership than Hoyer and Clyburn.
Juice Box
Women, particularly older women, will always be discounted, but women who challenge men will get hit even harder.
Mnemosyne
Any Juicer who has Seth Moulton as their rep needs to call his office tomorrow and ask his staffers why he’s such a fucking moron:
So the way legislation gets written and approved in the House has completely changed because we have iPhones now? Get the entire fuck out of here and let the adults work, Seth.
Wag
@Corner Stone:
@SFAW:
Thirded!
Barbara
@B.B.A.: Republicans want someone else to get rid of Trump so that they don’t risk alienating their base, whether it’s Mueller or Democrats, and they are not above demonizing them for doing so even as they are secretly delighted they did so. I think Pelosi is wise not to play the impeachment game.
Mnemosyne
@B.B.A.:
Link? Because I’ve never seen her say this about Trump.
Aleta
It also seems like the ‘because you’re old your experience is not needed’ routine on top of the misogyny. Which pisses me off because her skill and mentoring and smarts are badly needed.
smintheus
@Corner Stone: Pelosi refuses to allow impeachment proceedings. That’s one of my biggest concerns about her. She told us back in 2006 that impeaching Bush was “off the table” just because it would get in the way of her legislative agenda. She has said similar things recently about the traitor in chief.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Give him a break, he barely had an iphone in 2006 and having an iphone and a twitter account is the only way to tell if we are a modern society. Plus his parents gave him the middle name Wilber, what kind of an upbringing could he have had with that?
smintheus
@Mnemosyne: Here’s one of several times where Pelosi said she’s against impeaching Trump (5/31/18):
gene108
Nancy’s dad was in Congress. She has been around this a long, long time.
Young Nancy at JFK’s inauguration
Humdog
@Mnemosyne: there are several articles from April and May of this year quoting Pelosi as saying impeachment is not a good thing to campaign on and would be a distraction.
Unless the Senate somehow finds 67 Democrats, impeachment will not remove Shitstain from office. The best that can happen are house hearings, and they can happen without being impeachment hearings.
germy
“Dems In Disarray!”
Ruckus
@smintheus:
She’s great at her job.
She knows that unless we have at least 67 D senators or drumpf actually does start personally shooting people, impeachment is not going to happen. So doing anything but taking it off the table is politically idiotic. And just because it’s off the table doesn’t mean that it can’t be served again.
B.B.A.
@Mnemosyne: It’s in the part of the Rolling Stone interview that AL didn’t quote – wisely, since it lets us indulge in our absurd fantasies.
germy
Is there anyone in the country who is an enthusiastic voter for McConnell? Or is it just Cleek’s Law when they line up to vote for him? He’s loathsome. Who is he a hero to, other than his donors?
Llelldorin
@Ruckus: This is exactly it. Unless we overwhelmingly control the Senate, we’d impeach Trump and then fail to secure a conviction. At that point, Trump would claim that he’d been vindicated by the Senate, and his base would eat it up.
I think we have to start with a series of public hearings into Russian influence. With subpoena power, that might actually get somewhere.
smintheus
@Ruckus: I’m so old that I remember when the congressional hearings on Nixon’s crimes began – there weren’t enough votes to impeach him either. Until after a while there were.
In fact, when the hearings on Nixon began there wasn’t even the evidence to make a case for impeaching, as there already exists with Trump.
There would be zero excuse for not proceeding with hearings directed toward the ultimate goal of impeachment of Trump. Failure to do so would virtually guarantee that future (Republican) presidents would feel even freer than Reagan, Bush, and Trump have felt to violate laws and norms of governance without ever having to fear impeachment. It would be an utter disaster for American democracy if Democrats take back the House and do not proceed with impeachment hearings.
Frankensteinbeck
@PST:
I have heard the argument that she is so unpopular that she is dragging down the Democratic Party. I believe that is mainly a totebagger take because television and radio news absolutely hate Pelosi, and go out of their way to scrape up the few Democrats who don’t support her. This includes very liberal reporters like Rachel Maddow. Your totebagger has been led to believe that it is seriously in doubt that Nancy could get the speakership if Democrats regain the House.
I have also heard the argument that she is a neoliberal who has a history of working to destroy the safety net and regulations, and give everything to the rich. As I have mentioned before, the Leftier Than Thous live in their own fantasy world that has no more resemblance to reality than a Right Winger’s.
Elizabelle
Anne Laurie: I’ll read this later, but thank you for putting it up.
My Democratic congressional nominee has pledged to vote against Nancy Pelosi. I plan to ask her why. Like her very much otherwise, but want to find out why, precisely, she is saying that. She may have changed her position.
RE Abigail Spanberger, former CIA operative, challenging Tea Partier Dave Brat this fall. A lot of the district used to be Eric Cantor’s.
Only thing I could find on a quick search: pre-primary article from Real Clear Politics (which I think leans Republican): Dems Aim to Flip the Script on Giant-Killer Brat in Va.
I will find out for you guys and report back when I do.
ETA: Gonna head out for a few hours, to get some exercise, cuz we’re expecting rain and T storms later.
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
McConnell is unpopular in Kentucky, but he is fantastic at campaigning on the ‘It’s me or the browns’ strategy. He is not even slightly subtle about it, and it works.
Doug R
I think she’s more about finding out the truth of what happened-if impeachment naturally flows from that, I think she’ll go along if it’s a really strong case.
Ruckus
@germy:
Of course all it takes is a majority in his state. Not even 4 1/2 million people total, how many actually vote? How many did he need to vote for him? How many people in KY hated Obamacare but loved it when the state changed the name? How many of those people would only vote for a republican, ever? So I’d guess that the number of people needed to elect wasn’t all that much.
Here’s a wiki page on his 2014 election.
He may be electable in a rather red state, he doesn’t seem to be all that well liked, anywhere.
ETA He won with 213,753 votes in 2014
Yutsano
@smintheus: I don’t want impeachment hearings, at least right away. But I want all the oversight hearings. In Public. It’s time for the entire administration to get their grifts to the public ears.
hueyplong
I don’t care for the concept of Republicans picking the leader of the Democrats.
germy
@Frankensteinbeck:
He is loathsome. Whenever the LawyersGunsMoney blog does a story on him, it’s always accompanied by the photo of him grinning in front of the confederate flag.
Remember when his wife confronted those protestors while he hid inside the car. And then he tweeted how proud he was of her.
Chip Daniels
@gene108:
I disagree with Pelosi about impeachment, but she has earned a tremendous amount of trust, and I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
Yes, she certainly sounds like she would never, ever support impeachment regardless of the evidence. ?
I think the same people who blame Hillary Clinton for the Iraq War blame Pelosi for not impeaching Bush. They refused to do the one thing that would have halted the war in its tracks — vote for John Kerry in 2004 — and now they’re thrashing around blaming everyone else in sight for their short-sighted decision.
The fact that they hold two women personally responsible for George W. Bush’s bad actions and give Bush himself a pass has not gone unnoticed.
hueyplong
Impeachment is off the table until it isn’t. She has made a calculation that talking about impreachment activates GOPers without accomplishing anything (recall that she’s not the majority leader). We don’t seem well placed to be certain she’s wrong about that.
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
Always remember, it was McConnell who declared total war against the first black president. He got there before anyone else, and led the battle. Among his many, many evil traits, the man is racist as all living Hell, and an America where a black man can be his boss is an America he would rather burn to the ground.
smintheus
@Yutsano: Problem is that Pelosi has made clear many times over the years that she views impeachment hearings as bad per se for various reasons, especially because they make it impossible to use the legislative majority to legislate. She also thinks they provoke political opposition to the party leading the impeaching, which is not a legitimate consideration as such and is contradicted by Democratic successes in the mid-70s.
The Democrats have been absurdly timid of impeaching Republican presidents since Reagan, and at the time that timidity boiled down to nothing more than Reagan’s popularity. It was craven to refuse to impeach Reagan, and Democrats’ excuses since then for doing nothing in the face of gross wrongdoing have only gotten more embarrassing since then. We’re heading toward political disaster for this country in the medium term if we don’t impeach Trump.
father pusbucket
@Chip Daniels:
I’m assuming she and Mueller recognize they only get one shot at this. The “Coming at the Queen” principle, if you please. I’m also assuming they’re both smarter than me.
Felony Govt
@Aleta: Exactly, the attacks on her combine ageism with misogyny. It’s interesting how being “too old” always seems to be more of an issue for female politicians and candidates.
FlipYrWhig
I am glad Pelosi brought up that no one ever asks Mitch McConnell if he should step aside or if he’s damaging the Republican Party even though nobody likes him, he’s not good on TV, and he has an absurd appearance. Maybe that’s because Democrats don’t run on how $LOCALREPUBLICAN is a rubber-stamp for Mitch McConnell and put their faces together, the way Republicans do with $LOCALDEMOCRAT and Pelosi, but maybe it’s chicken and egg and the demonization has to come before the advertising rather than the other way around.
smintheus
@Mnemosyne:
You avoided Pelosi’s insinuation that she’s not in favor of actually digging up the evidence that would lead to impeachment. Let somebody else bring it forth, our responsibility is to worry about Joe Six-pack.
NotMax
@father pusbucket
The scale is different, to be sure, but all the same by her logic there is no point in passing legislation if it is just going to die in an R Senate. Removing from consideration as even an option one of the powers invested in the House is unwise.
Ruckus
@smintheus:
This is not the same country as it was 40+ yrs ago.
The republicans have shined a light on their bigotry and now act proud of it. And it’s not just that they are bigots, they hate people that aren’t. That of course hasn’t changed but the effect of being very open on it again has changed our politics. We have a political party that wants to preserve and enhance our freedoms, and make all of us part of the whole and one that is willing to destroy everything if they don’t get their way, which is to destroy everything. Working as an effective politician in that atmosphere is not unlike warfare. And yet because we are not out to destroy everything we can’t just lob bombs willy nilly.
Without a majority in both houses impeachment is not possible now and will divide the country even farther. It may be necessary but unless it’s possible and called for, it’s not the right thing to do.
You posted the best political response to calls for impeachment here @smintheus:. Yes I want the shitgibbon gone. A year and a half ago. But that’s not where we are. That’s not who we are. Nancy is right, impeachment is for when a national office holder does something illegal and shouldn’t be in office and it should be a consensus, not a partisan issue. You get republicans to call and want to vote for impeachment and watch how fast Nancy’s tune changes. Let’s not become the opposing equivalent to the republican party. Let’s be better. It’s not even all that difficult to do, being better than any republican.
germy
O. Felix Culpa
I understand that Republicans would revel in hatred of competent older women. It’s mother’s milk to them. What’s more disturbing to me is that self-anointed progressives do the same. I see it not only on the national level, but also locally, where we have a competent middle-aged woman running for governor – against a truly evil Tea Party (male) candidate. The *progressives* hate her. The misogyny amongst our lefty brethren runs deep and loud.
Edited.
PST
@Frankensteinbeck: I forgot about the lefty Pelosi haters. Unfortunately, it’s the RWNJs I talk to, and they can’t explain their hatred.
Ruckus
@smintheus:
You didn’t read the thing you posted, her reply about impeachment. She never ever said it was wrong and should never be used. She said it should be used when and how it was set up to be, a concusses of both sides of the house and senate. We don’t have that now and most likely won’t in January, unless even more shit hit the fan. Which it’s most likely to do of course.
I doubt any one here is against impeachment as a useful tool, and that certainly includes me, used properly. That’s really Nancy’s answer, use it properly and she’s fine with it. Use it improperly, such as President Clinton’s blow job, and she’s not fine with it.
gene108
@FlipYrWhig:
Conservatives invested Int a large media presence. It isn’t just one or two tv ads that trigger conservative Pavlovian hatred of Pelosi. It is the repetition on how nad she is from Rush, Haniity, Fox News, et. Al. that triggers the response.
Liberals don’t have billionaire sugar daddies to buy the more free media exposure. We are not able to saturate the airwaves with repetitive reinforcement that McConnell is Satan incarnate and a vote for ‘x’ Republican is a vote for Cocaine Mitch.
trollhattan
@smintheus:
I would love to have seen Reagan held specifically accountable for his treason wrt Iran, but also allow as to how it could have backfired spectacularly with the nation rallying behind the by-then doddering old coot they remember as the guy who gave that speech after the Challenger disaster.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
Oh noes! She insinuated something!
If you actually think that she would instruct Adam Schiff to not use his committee to investigate Trump, you’re even more of an idiot than I already thought you were.
mike in dc
I would hope that actual illegality and criminality on the part of the president–high crimes and misdemeanors–laid out in great detail and with extensive evidence, particularly regarding conspiracy with Russia, would put impeachment foursquare before Congress and the American people. If Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russians, with an explicit/implicit quid pro quo, and you can show that Trump knew and participated, of course that should be acted upon. I’d hope we could find 15-20 Republican senators to get on board, but I sincerely doubt that a solid case, voted down for purely partisan reasons, would hurt us in 2020. Most likely it would hurt some incumbent R senators, and Lord knows it would hurt Trump too.
Caveats: it kinda would have to happen in 2019. I don’t think there’d be much appetite for doing it in the middle of the presidential campaign–the 2020 vote would essentially become the impeachment trial.
Mnemosyne
@O. Felix Culpa:
Yep. Way too many men hate powerful women, and it unfortunately cuts across all age groups.
JMG
1, All legislative leaders are unpopular and the more effective they are, the more unpopular they are, because people hate Congress.
2, Pelosi is an excellent legislator and a dynamite fundraiser. She is not very good on TV. This gets her bad media coverage because political reporters tend to see TV ability as the ultimate political skill and have since the Kennedy-Nixon debates.
3. I sure don’t see any House Democrats who would be more effective leaders than Pelosi. There may be such creatures, but I doubt it.
Hoodie
@gene108: If that were the only problem, we could probably find enough liberal billionaires to counteract it. But liberal-leaning billionaires are not going to be willing to engage in pure propaganda like the right employs. They are mostly doing their own charitable projects, rather than engaging in party politics. Liberal billionaires tend to think they should be apolitical, and demonization of people like Soros (who understands fascism better than most billionaires) probably makes them avoid taking overt political stances.
The problem is much bigger than how much money the GOP can bring to bear. Republicans beggar the public sector and demonize intellectualism, so we end up with an electorate that has a undue proportion of pig ignorant, fearful people particularly susceptible to the kind of propaganda that rightwing billionaires fund. Fox has a lot of viewers for a reason. The GOP also feeds a cynicism among those who are not pig ignorant, an effort in which they are abetted by major media with its idiotic obsession with “balance,” which was in part engendered by conservative whingeing and subtle career coercion in corporate dominated media environment, i.e., reporters at the Times and WaPo like nice homes, want to send their kids to elite schools and take overseas vacations, so their instinct is to not make waves.
rikyrah
Nixon- who has no chance.
Ocasio – who is from a DEM+20 district.
What’s historic about them?
Nothing.
No Stacey Abrams or Lupe Valdez, or even the high number of Women Veterans that Dems have running. You know that ANY of the women running from Pennsylvania will make history, because PA has NEVER had any female representation?
But, NONE of these women.
I wonder why?
UH HUH
UH HUH
……………………………
Mic
✔
@mic
The two most high-profile women running for office in New York, @CynthiaNixon and @Ocasio2018, sat down to talk progressivism with #MicDispatch. https://mic.com/articles/190335/cynthia-nixon-and-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-hit-cuomo-for-his-womens-equality-party-snub#.5y1mSQmFc …
1:42 PM – Jul 22, 2018
rikyrah
The Daily Beast
Verified account @thedailybeast
EXCLUSIVE: Steve Bannon is moving to Europe to set up a right-wing foundation to hijack politics
Ronnie Simonds
I feel like Pelosi is using the FDR approach here: “MAKE me do it.” Present so much evidence and such a unified majority call for impeachment that she can point to that, and say “It had to be done.” You need to totally take away Republican talking points on impeachment. Not the far left calling for impeachment, but the country.
I think it’s correct that without that kind of overwhelming pressure, Trump can’t be impeached successfully and Pelosi’s forte and mindset is doing things successfully in Congress. The question is whether an unsuccessful impeachment has a point. I think it does. It shows the era of Democrats tolerating terrible, harmful crimes by the President is over. It shows there is at least one party that cares about the rule of law. The Republicans were happy to have impeachment hearings doomed to failure, for nothing but questionable political gain. Can’t we be willing to do the same for a much worthier cause?
Corner Stone
@rikyrah: “I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” the former White House chief strategist, who returned as executive chairman of Breitbart News late Friday afternoon, told the Weekly Standard. “I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”
I wonder who his sugar daddy is nowadays? Still the Mercers but three or four steps removed?
mike in dc
@rikyrah: The Fatherland calls out to his uncorrupted bloodline./s
Chyron HR
@smintheus:
And something as crass as legislating is completely anathema to progressive governance.
HeleninEire
I am losing my shit and I need to calm down. In a restaurant and I am being incredibly ignored. Bizarrely so. She keeps walking past me like I’m not here. She served people who got here 10 minutes after me, before me. And I had to stop her for that. And the one time she acknowledged that she forgot about me IT TOOK HER TEN MORE MINUTES TO GET ME MY DRINK. THAT I ORDERED 10 MINUTES BEFORE SHE ACKNOWLEDGED THAT SHE FUCKED UP. And only because I asked again. She would have gone on ignoring me.
I need to calm down. The last thing I want to be is an ugly American.
rikyrah
Bishop Talbert Swan
Verified account @TalbertSwan
Dear @ScottforFlorida
America wants to know how the hell white folks in your state can harass black people, murder them, claimed to be the victim and be defended by law enforcement.
Stand Your Ground is nothing more than a license to murder people of color.
ENOUGH ALREADY!
6:08 AM – 22 Jul 2018
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Hittin’ the bricks before his indictments I suppose. How will he deal with an Interpol warrant?
Mnemosyne
@HeleninEire:
Is there a hostess? If so, I would walk up to the hostess stand and ask to speak to a manager.
If not, maybe move to another table and see what happens?
smintheus
@Ruckus: Actually, Pelosi is signalling contradictory things to Republican and Democratic voters. She’s signalling very strongly to Republicans that impeachment won’t happen. That’s what they want to hear; they’re not going to be satisfied with ‘could happen but who really knows’.
To Democrats she’s signalling rather faintly that impeachment might possibly somehow happen if Trump is shown to have committed high crimes AND Republicans demonstrate that they’re more or less equally in favor of impeaching him. In other words, somebody else (Mueller) produces the evidence and then Republicans run with it. Democratic voters want to believe Trump will be impeached, and Pelosi is willing to have them believe it might happen.
Democrats are supposed to believe that Pelosi is giving false hope to Republican voters…playing them for fools.
Republicans are supposed to believe that Pelosi is giving false hope to Democratic voters.
So why would I believe that Pelosi is going to do anything to start us along the path toward impeachment? She’s signalling the opposite a lot more strongly, just as she did in 2006 with Bush. That was a pretty clear indication for me in 2006 that Pelosi would scotch any hearings that could lead to impeachment. She has a track record now, and that is the best evidence for what she would actually do if she’s given back power: she thinks impeachment is a distraction and divisive.
I think it is neither, but I’m not going to pretend that Pelosi is less than clear in her thinking.
And for the record, nobody who wants to impeach Trump seriously believe that you would do that without first holding Watergate-like hearings to expose his crimes and make sure the public understands them. That’s the only way to push Republicans to the point of impeaching Trump.
trollhattan
@HeleninEire:
“You know, I can have Trump open a golf course on this very site with just one phone call” is a welcome introduction.
rikyrah
NYT Opinion
Verified account @nytopinion
I try to assure myself that no parent would tell a child that migrant kids from Mexico deserve to be separated from their parents and detained because they are “illegal.” Then my daughter tells me what her classmates have said and I have to face reality.
https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1021018249155276800
donnah
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not just men who don’t like successful and powerful women. Some other women don’t, either.
I think a large number of older women, unfortunately, don’t want a woman for President. My aunt said she would never vote for a woman because they would be seen as weak and she didn’t think a woman would run the country as well as a man. I reminded her of strong women leaders elsewhere in the world, and she said “well, that’s different”.
I also wonder about groups of Evangelical women who don’t approve of women in leadership roles. It’s an uphill battle and we need to figure out how to overcome it.
Ruckus
Can anyone name a good, decent republican politician?
I’m going for snacks while I wait for an answer.
The reason I ask the question is that republicans don’t want any government. The old they want to shrink it so it fits in your bathtub idea. It wasn’t wrong then, it’s even more appropriate now. People like Nancy want there to be a working government, one that works for the people. All republicans want no government, OK maybe the military part, all those massive contracts…. But of course no taxes to pay for it because that shouldn’t be the role of government, to collect taxes and disburse the funds, because of course we have no say in how government runs. Conservatives deny global warming and pollution, bigotry, civil rights, even criminal laws, because that requires government to fix. The extreme deny that government even does exist, other than county sheriffs. Their circular, zero sum “logic” doesn’t need facts, another thing they deny.
I want a government that works. And to get that we have to have laws and the laws have to mean something, to be used properly. Quite a bit of the issues that we have in this country come from unequal application of the laws, unequal enforcement. I want that fixed, to be better.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
So, just to be clear, you think that Nancy Pelosi will instruct Adam Schiff to NOT investigation Russian intereference in our elections using his Intelligence committee because she doesn’t want to do anything that might start us along the path toward impeachment?
Jaysus, you’re a moron about this.
Immanentize
@smintheus: It is a different thing entirely to be opposed to impeachment and to, as you say, ” scotch any hearings that could lead to impeachment.”
I saw no evidence that happened in 2006-2008. Can you point me to committee hearings she “scotched?” I think you are making this up.
PS, now Boener was a guy always willing to “scotch” anything. Make mine a double!
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
*investigate, not investigation. I hate not having an edit button on mobile.
trollhattan
@donnah:
Can’t begin to count how many versions of, “Of course I’d vote for a woman president, I just won’t vote for her.” I’ve heard from women since 2016. It’s depressing how effective the anti-Hillary long game was.
Immanentize
@Ruckus: People inthe Commonwealth (God Bless it!) would say that Charlie Baker is a very good Republican politician. Which is why he will never win a federal election.
PsiFighter37
Nancy is really smart. That said, she has been in charge for over 15 years now, and she’s been Speaker for 4 of those. That says something about how effective she is at electoral politics. I have no doubt she is effective as a legislator – we’ve seen it. But she is terrible at getting people in office. For all his faults, Rahm excelled at that.
The way Seth Moulton and his fellow WATBs go about it, though, demonstrate that as late-stage millennials, they are as bad as the younger iterations – they want INSTANT SUCCESS!, as opposed to actually working towards something they deserve and earn.
PF37 +4. Going out for a run before it rains for a week here in NYC
HeleninEire
@Mnemosyne: I asked for my check and asked for a manager to bring it. AND IT TOOK THEM 10 MINUTES. I just said I have never been treated so poorly in a restaurant and I pointed out the server. The manager said sorry but I was beyond sorry.
I paid the bill because I never don’t pay the bill but I told her this shit will be all over social media tomorrow.
Immanentize
@PsiFighter37: When was Rahm speaker of the house? I don’t remember that.
WhatsMyNym
@HeleninEire: I’ve walked out the few times when the wait staff ignored me.
trollhattan
@Immanentize:
After showering with Cole.
joel hanes
IMHO, Nancy’s wisdom about impeachment is about professional political actors, not so much about voters.
Many now-senior Republican politicians and activists thought the Nixon impeachment actions were unwarranted, and they have spent the last 40 years getting revenge : they cite it (with Bork) as one of the reasons they were justified in discarding norms and civility and seizing power by any means necessary, because they saw the Nixon thing as a purely partisan power play. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and many other bad actors of the Reagan and Bush administrations have stated that in their view, Nixon’s crimes did not rise to the standard required for impeachment, and they have successfully sought to weaken and hinder those parts of our society that, in their view, distorted the Watergate and related actions into a public scandal.
Here’s a Politico piece that fleshes this idea out a little (yeah, I know, Politico: I think they’re consistently wrong-headed, but the Republicans don’t, and this is a proposition about how Republicans think):
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/22/donald-trump-james-comey-investigation-watergate-republicans-215175
Immanentize
@trollhattan: And all he got was a lousy speakership?
Ruckus
@donnah:
I believe that a lot of people regardless of race, religion, sex dislike people in power just because they have or feel they have none. In our modern society some people do have a lot of power, McConnell for example was elected by a little over 200 thousand people, yet he gets to decide what the other 99 senators can bring to the floor and vote on. 3 million people voted for my CA senator. Power is unequal in this country, it’s unequal on the street if you are a person of color, it’s unequal in our representation, it’s unequal in most every way in our lives. Some of this can and should be fixed. We can do better, we must do better.
smintheus
@Immanentize: Bush could have been impeached for multiple things by 2007; lying about the evidence re Iraq; violating the terms of the AUMF; torture; warrantless surveillance of Americans. There were no public hearings held in 2007/8 to expose the scope of the Bush administration’s crimes and build a case for holding Bush accountable. Many Democrats wanted such hearings, but Pelosi was very clear that she did not want to get bogged down in impeachment so any attempt to start large scale investigations of administration criminality were scotched before the new Congress could begin. There were some investigations conducted mostly out of public view and fairly quietly, but they were allowed to drag on and get bogged down by Republican obstructionism. They went effectively nowhere while Bush remained in office.
Something similar would happen next year, although because Mueller’s investigations are ongoing and Trump’s treason is a permanent part of the landscape, Democrats would be doing some actual investigating. But they would not be designed to lead to any action to hold Trump accountable, and they’d almost certainly be slow walked into the ground.
Setting up a path that could credibly lead to impeachment via Watergate style hearings? No, Pelosi is not going to permit that to happen.
Mnemosyne
@Immanentize:
You are remembering correctly — Rahm was never the Speaker.
joel hanes
@trollhattan:
It’s depressing how effective the anti-Hillary long game was.
This.
And they’ve played the same misogynist strategy against Pelosi, with a bit later start.
They did the same against Barbara Boxer.
joel hanes
@PsiFighter37:
Rahm excelled at that.
In my view, you are giving Rahm credit for things that Dean did.
tobie
@PsiFighter37: Nancy was party leader in the House when they cruised to victory in 2006 and 2008. There were many factors that led to those victories and to the defeats that followed during the Obama years. Her role as party leader had little to do with them in my opinion.
Another lurker
@Mnemosyne: I would relocate to another restaurant. I would also let the manager know why I was leaving.
Do it calmly.
Ruckus
@HeleninEire:
I once had an entire meal dumped in my lap, it was for sure accidental but still the salad dressing wasn’t being just wiped off. And that wasn’t as bad as being ignored. We probably all have had wait staff rush by saying they will be back in a moment and then take a lot of moments but at least they were making an attempt. As I traveled extensively for business I’ve eaten in restaurants by myself a lot. Wait staff knows the tip will be smaller when there is just one person and a few of them will let that show by the service they give. Which of course often results in a smaller or no tip. But letting the manager or at least the hostess know why you left a smaller tip is always wise. Or writing it on the check.
joel hanes
@smintheus:
Pelosi is not going to permit that to happen.
There’s a claim I’m bookmarking.
IF Pelosi is ever again Speaker:
IF Pelosi acts overtly to head off hearings that might lead to impeachment, $25 to a charity of your choice.
IF such hearings take place, and Pelosi has not acted to prevent or derail them, you get to decide the payoff to me that you think appropriate.
hueyplong
So Pelosi has nothing to do with success and everything to do with defeat.
As was the case with Hillary during the various Bernie infestations two years ago, I’m getting more and more enamored with Pelosi the more I see these intelligence-insulting attacks.
The Ancient Randonneur
Hey Seth the iPhone was unveiled in January 2007, but, yeah, I base all my votes and policy decisions on who does tech the best. Jesus, Seth, sit down, shut up, and let the boss get her work done.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Women dining alone often get treated even worse than men do. That’s why, when I do get good service when dining alone, I’ll leave a ridiculously large tip, like 30 or 40 percent, to encourage future good behavior.
And I will say, I got GREAT service from the waiter and manager at Osteria Marco in Denver when I had dinner alone. Everyone in the Denver area should go there.
Mnemosyne
@hueyplong:
Funny how that works, huh?
I especially loved how Pelosi is apparently personally responsible for Reagan not being impeached for Iran/Contra despite the fact that she was first elected to the House in June of 1987 in a special election. She has just that much power, don’t’cha know.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I’d bet all the tips I’ve left over the years that you are right. As some of the, ahem, more experienced women over 29 can tell you, it was even worse before you were born.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Isn’t President Obama responsible for WWII? I thought I heard that somewhere.
smintheus
@joel hanes: Ok, but I have a question. How would you know that Pelosi has put the ixnay on? Is she going to admit publicly that any hearings to be held are not intended to go anywhere? Did she do that in 2007? And yet in 2007 we all understood that impeachment of Bush was ‘off the table’ and no matter what was not going to be on the table.
Gin & Tonic
@Ruckus: Tipping is not the norm in Europe.
The Ancient Randonneur
The two things I am most looking forward to in January 2019:
1–Speaker Pelosi
2–Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Chair, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Trump early morning tweets will be epic.
sdhays
@Ronnie Simonds:
This is the perfect way to understand Nancy Pelosi. Every else is noise. Very well put!
oatler.
Pelosi’s a mandarin, a mandarin who stomped on MJ legalization while the cops ran hog wild. Or maybe I should have said Pharisee. Strictly L-7, daddy-o.
O. Felix Culpa
@HeleninEire: Is this the only restaurant available to you? Much more ignoring and I’d leave…and inform the manager why on my way out.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
Here, ladies and gentlement, we have one of the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory. There is no — zero — evidence that Pelosi actively blocked investigations into Bush’s actions that might have led to his impeachment, and yet smintheus is 100 percent convinced that she did so and will never be convinced otherwise.
Mnemosyne
@The Ancient Randonneur:
The Democrat with the most seniority on the House intelligence committee and therefore would be the next head of it is Adam Schiff. I love Auntie Maxine as much as the next Democrat, but we’re supposed to get rid of a Democrat with 10 years of experience on the committee and a track record of prosecuting Russian mobsters why, again?
B.B.A.
@oatler.: and now rich white people can smoke overpriced pot in a handful of enclaves, the police still run hog-wild over people of color everywhere else… oh, and abortion and birth control will soon be illegal nationwide. Yeah, I’m thinking Pelosi had her priorities in the right place. Fucktard.
joel hanes
@oatler.:
Oat Willie? Is that you?
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SH9crE61pYs/Vy1DFQPPiXI/AAAAAAAABuc/h-_5DEJMQQgPGzkVgE22xNplsSO4-flhQCLcB/s1600/oat_willie.jpg
sdhays
@smintheus:
The Democratic House might have been able to impeach W in 2007, but the Democrats held the Senate by one seat, and all of those things you list were known and were sufficiently partisan-backed that he never would have been convicted by the Senate. Unless there’s a tape out there with W snickering with Dick Cheney how they were going to dupe all those stupid rubes in the South and MidWest to support a war for oil and thin herd of the poor fools stupid enough to sign up for duty, the heat would never have become bipartisan/non-partisan enough to create enough political pressure to remove them both. That’s a fantasy.
Groucho48
So, folks think that if we take back the House and investigate Trump and find out he’s been doing very bad things, 25 or 30 Republican senators will suddenly realize that Trump needs to go and vote to convict?
In my opinion, they’ll start calling the investigation a partisan witch hunt from day 1. The Reps on the committee that’s investigating will issue minority report after minority report full of falsehoods and cherry-picked facts. The MSM will dutifully report them almost verbatim. The Committee will end up with a report that is damning, but, both Reps and the MSM will do everything they can to delegitimize it.
Say, Pelosi then supports impeachment. All Republicans vote no, and, some Dems might, too. It might die right there. If it gets to the Senate, chances of any Rep voting Yea are just about nil. Chances of enough of them voting Yea to actually convict are about the some as my winning the lottery. And, I don’t buy lottery tickets…
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
Nor in NZ. They also don’t allow wages for servers to be less than the minimum wage because of tips. The system of tips in this country has made minimum wage in the food service industry a joke. Now sure a percentage of wait staff make more than minimum wage, but what this really does is create a power play along the lines of slavery, this isn’t the person serving you they are “staff.” They sometimes don’t serve people equally, as Helen’s experience shows and I think it’s often due to tips. And your point that I didn’t ask Helen if tipping is normal in Ireland is well made.
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
Government:
They want to shrink it so they can drown it in a bathtub!
Not quite what you said… more, final! Less American!
ETA, fix Ruckus comment link…
Mnemosyne
@Groucho48:
That’s not a reason not to investigate. Democrats need to investigate the shit out of Trump while not making the same mistake the Democrats made in Iran/Contra of giving out immunity that later bites us in the ass and lets the traitors walk free.
I am skeptical that Congressional investigations will lead Republicans in Congress to turn against Trump and vote for impeachment but, again, that’s not a reason not to do them. This shit needs to be on the record,
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Bitch, bitch, bitch.
What do I look like, a recording secretary for the mime library?
oatler.
@B.B.A.: I looked up Pelosi’s record on Wiki and she reads a lot better than my memory of her in the Clinton years. But this was when employers were randomly drug testing people and whoever the president might have been was keeping mum. I was never tested but saw lives of close friends ruined. That’s where my axe gets grinded.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
I had high hopes for Seth (not my district) but he seems to open his mouth without engaging his brain sometimes.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Well, at least Cole got a blog out of it.
HeleninEire
@O. Felix Culpa: LOL. I live in Dublin. I have probably as many restaurants available to me as I did in NY (well per capita).
Thanks everyone. I am calmer. I vented, here on their FB page and on Trip Advisor. Can’t do Yelp here, but I’ve been told by friends in the business that Trip Advisor pulls a lot of weight here.
Thanks again. Great to have a venting place.
Groucho48
@Mnemosyne:
Investigate…absolutely. Just don’t tie it into impeachment. If the Mueller investigation doesn’t turn up enough stuff to convince reps to vote for impeachment, nothing a House investigation run my Dems is going to. As someone mentioned up thread…do what Roosevelt asked…get other folks to demand doing what he wanted to do but couldn’t on his own.
different-church-lady
@Humdog:
She’s right that it would be a bad thing to campaign on. But only that.
@smintheus:
Joe and Josie Six-Pack will no longer listen to a damn thing a Democrat says about their lives. Especially if the most important thing in their lives is their sense of resentment.
different-church-lady
@HeleninEire: Why are you blog commenting from a restaurant?
Ilefttxwhenannlost
@J R in WV: I have always found that saying to be so domestic violence…who drowns what in a bathtub?
smintheus
@Mnemosyne: All straw men with you…when it’s not ad hominem bs.
No evidence? Pelosi stated repeatedly in advance of the 2006 election that impeachment would be “off the table”. There was never any secret about her intention to block any impeachment hearings from starting.
Bess
I think I would have approached the server and asked if there was a reason why she served me slower than other customers.
She might not have a reason she would be willing to give but having to deal with the question might make her a bit more responsive in the future.
smintheus
@sdhays:
Same thing people were saying in 1973. The way you create political pressure to impeach a president is to hold aggressive public hearings into their apparent crimes. The crimes of e.g. torture under Bush were greater than the crimes of Nixon, isn’t that correct?
Pelosi has learned a lot of good lessons about governance during her years in D.C., but like most people in Congress she has also learned some bad lessons. Too many Democrats have learned that impeaching a president is impossible; that it only can result in self-inflicted harm; that it’s painless and consequence free to bide your time until the next presidential election when a Republican president commits grave offenses.
Biding their time, expecting to win back the presidency because of all the unresolved scandal, is what Democrats did with Reagan; and Bush; and it’s what they’ll do with Trump. Hold a few hearings to embarrass the Republicans but don’t go long, coast to victory. It may or may not be a wise electoral strategy, but it is definitely the Democratic playbook by now because they unlearned the lessons of the Watergate hearings.
smintheus
@different-church-lady:
Pelosi had ample opportunity between 2007 and 2010 to benefit ordinary people and Democrats passed some good legislation. And the thanks they got was the landslide 2010 reversal handing the House back to the jackals who had done nothing for Joe and Josie Six-pack.
Democrats simply are not going to take and hold power just by passing excellent new laws. They also have to take seriously the need to batter the living sh!t out of their Republican rivals by holding them up to scrutiny for the jackals they are.
smintheus
From the linked Rolling Stone interview:
Plain as day: I’m not going to try to turn up evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing; that would make his impeachment partisan.
karen marie
@germy: What’s interesting is that McConnell’s first job out of college was interning for John Sherman Cooper. Both of Kentucky’s senators in the 1960s were opposed to the war in Vietnam. Thruston Ballard Morton, the senior senator from Kentucky at that time, was also a proponent of the Civil Rights Act.
So how did Mitch become the incredibly ugly person that he is today?
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
No one is arguing with you about what Pelosi said about impeachment in 2006, or what she said this year. What we’re arguing is your totally unsupported claim that, from 2006-2008, Pelosi blocked investigations by Democrats that might have eventually led to impeachment, and your further claim that she will similarly block investigations into Trump if Democrats win back the House.
I’ll ask my question again: do you seriously think that Pelosi will tell Adam Schiff to NOT continue his investigation into Russian interference if Democrats take the House this fall? Yes or no?
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
Well, I guess this answers my question — you really are dumb enough to think she’s going to tell Schiff not to investigate Russian interference in our elections.
I look forward to mocking you about this throughout 2019.
Groucho48
I think it would be more productive to investigate Pence. Trump has Mueller on his trail. We need to get rid of both of them. Find something chargeable on Pence. Both of them in jail sounds like a good outcome.
smintheus
@Mnemosyne: What part of
is hard for you to understand?
Again with the straw men?
tybee
@HeleninEire: leave. no tip. just leave.
stan
Preach it !!!!