what is happening pic.twitter.com/ISaR6k4XwQ
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) October 14, 2018
… which is libel against fake predatory dinosaurs, of course. An explanation, such as there is one:
… SB Nation spoke with ISU band director Christian Carichner about how the best marching band moment in years came together.
Iowa State hatched the dinosaur plan after watching something Michigan’s band did with dinosaurs in 2017.
Last year, the Wolverine marching band did a tribute to John Williams, the composer who scored Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Home Alone, and Harry Potter movies, among many others. The Wolverines’ routine involved dinosaurs hanging out on the side of the field, like wide receivers flexed out beyond the numbers just to draw a defense’s attention…
Band leaders started putting together their routine in June, when they ordered 60 inflatable dinosaur costumes on Amazon.
You, too, can own this dinosaur costume. The Rubie’s Adult Jurassic World Inflatable Dinosaur Costume costs about $50 per ensemble. ISU purchased 60 of them for an estimated cost of $3,000, using a budgetary surplus from last year…
“Frankly, it costs more money just to feed the marching band than it does to outfit them in dinosaur costumes,” Carichner says.
The costume purchaser has the option to buy a version of the outfit that will also make its own dinosaur noises. The band was frugal in this regard.
“We did not get the sound,” Carichner says. “We just got the regular T-Rex.” …
Disaster almost struck during the performance. The dinosaur costumes seal tightly. They need to, because a small fan inside of them keeps them inflated. In the cold air and while doing rigorous physical activity, the small windows for sight fogged up, partially blinding dozens of on-field dinosaurs. Some third-party dinosaurs had to step in to help.
“So the kids couldn’t really see,” Carichner says. “If you watch the video, there’s two guys; we call them the ‘dinosaur wranglers,’ wearing different dinosaur costumes, kind of poking around and making sure that they were all in the right spot.” …
Further detail at the link. The dinosaur wranglers, if you can’t quite make them out, are the heavyset guys in bright green pants — those are actually man-riding-dinosaur / hobby-horse-dinosaur costumes.
From the replies to the original tweet:
We had planned a field show like this during the Alamo bowl: The Field Show of How Oil is Made. All of our dinos would die and get churned into oil. Needless to say our sponsor Valero was not excited about this idea
— Stanford Tree (@DaStanfordTree) October 14, 2018
HinTN
Valero didn’t like that dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now? (h/t Charles P Pierce) Color me shocked.
CaseyL
IIRC, paleontologists are now agreed that most dinos were covered in feathers, or at least fine down. I’m waiting impatiently for that new CW to trickle down to the movie folks, so we start seeing Triceratopses, T.rexes (rexi?), Brachiosaurs, Iguanadons, and everyone else tricked out like psychedelic pheasants.
Then I can truly, and with a full heart, welcome our Terrible Lizard Overlords.
NotMax
Repeating from this morning as many here do relish a good cat tale.
Marking an anniversary.
It was 108 years ago today when the first words crackled from the sky:
“Roy, come and get this goddamn cat!”
NotMax
Maybe yes, maybe no. Didn’t Dubya sound an alarm about human-animal hybrids?
They’d be college age now. Just sayin’.
:)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@NotMax: Read the story when you posted it this morning.
In one of the other timelines, those are the first words spoken on the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. Or maybe the first words spoken on the moon by Neil Armstrong.
Amir Khalid
@CaseyL:
Terrible? Lizard?
One: dinosaurs were not lizards. They were more like modern-day birds, who are their suriving relatives.
Two: if you dress in colourful feathers, you are not terrible; you are fabulous.
A Ghost To Most
Did they hire the bouncers from Ken Ham’s creepy christian fascist horror park?
Mai Naem mobile
Paul Allen died. The only recent thing I knew about Paul Allen was that he had donated big bucks to help keep the House for the GOP. I remember reading stuff about him years ago and between him and Bill Gates he seemed to come across as the nicer person. Anyhow, he contributed a lot of money towards elephant conservation and a bunch of other stuff. Allen was only 65. Way too young.
Matt McIrvin
All my centrist, “Independent” and leftier-than-thou online friends are driving me insane right now in different, opposing ways when they talk about politics. They all seem to agree that Elizabeth Warren is blowing it in some way but it’s a different way for every one of them. Also this is going to lose the midterm for the Democrats, or something.
johnny gentle (famous crooner)
That’s the Stanford Band for you. Always needing to horn in on the act whenever they’re not the weekend’s “wacky, irreverent center of attention.”
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
Here, I’ll translate for you: she is a powerful politician who has a vagina.
You’re welcome.
jl
Why no TRex noises? ISU Brass section not up to snuff or too squeamish?
Brass players are not squeamish, except French horn, which is a kind of woodwind anyway.
Must be the former.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Don’t you do the same thing?
Amir Khalid
@jl:
Per the story, the costumes with dino noises built in would have cost extra.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: At least one is a Native American woman who is offended by Warren’s implicit ratification of colonialist blood-quantum definitions of NA identity. This is probably the most legitimate objection of the lot, but Warren can’t really avoid it without being endlessly dogged by Troubling Shadows and Questions in the political media.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: What I’m seeing as well as that is that she should have consulted with the Cherokee Nation before making the announcement. I have no idea why, but that is what all the hand-wringers are saying.
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: Trombones could have provided some pretty good dinosaur roars.
Jeffro
Truly, I need to go see one of these marching band competitions one day…one day soon!
(I actually joined the band my senior year just to spend more time with the future Mrs. ‘Fro, only to find out that joining the marching band – which she was in – wudn’t quite that simple…)
And that, as Paul Harvey used to say, is the Rest of the Story. ;)
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t retweet Rick Wilson on the subject of what the Democrats should do, which is what one of the others is doing. A really smart guy who should know better…
Jay
In other news,
The West by God Virginia Democratic Judges have defeat the ReThug’s attempts to dismiss and impeach them,
And the Republican Club of New York is proud to associate with violent Nazi’s and will invite them again.
Aleta
Is the thesaurus now extinct?
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
Seconded, upvoted.
NotMax
@opiejeanne
Paint a couple of bass saxes green and call them Rexophones.
;)
mad citizen
I loved the cat story this morning, but on a much darker note, reading about a 1919 Omaha lynching over at Raw Story–why have a never heard of this one, or the 1919 summer riots? History books were lacking when I went to school.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/shocking-lynching-will-brown-100-years-ago-means-white-americans-today/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_race_riot_of_1919#Lynching
Jay
@opiejeanne:
If you google Warren, Still Dead Briebart’s story takes the lead and almost all the other stories are clones.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: This isn’t blowing the midterms. From a strategic communication perspective, however, it could have waited three weeks. Especially as this seems to have upset the leadership at the Cherokee Nation. And given how the Native American tribal leadership feels about DNA testing, as well as the touchy nature of being Cherokee given the Dawes Act, the ongoing damage the Dawes Act still does, and litigation regarding the Dawes Act this was kind of tone deaf.
randy khan
@jl:
I will not permit you to slander the French horn, in part because having tried to play one once, they scare me. (Seriously – I was a trumpet player and to this day I don’t know how you could play one of those things without cutting your lips to shreds. Also, it’s possible my fear has to do with the young women who played French horn in my high school band (but enough about my youthful anxieties).)
Jay
@mad citizen:
They still are.
randy khan
That. Is. Awesome.
NotMax
@Aleta
Judging by too much of the writing on the internet and the lack of diversity of vocabulary and pinpointed expression therein (not to mention the like of bloody Twitter), yes.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin:
This is not my fight but JESUS CHRIST FOR FUCK’S SAKE ALREADY. Does she really have to _also_ woke-ly disavow the entire subject of family stories about Indian heritage as cultural appropriation or whatever?
gwangung
@johnny gentle (famous crooner):
And that’s why we alums LOVE them,
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: Also, you know, I’m a pessimist by nature and the House race has been closer than I’d like for a long time, but it baffles me a little that there are all these portents of doom suddenly appearing at a moment when as far as I can tell the Dems are pulling away and opening up a bigger lead. They’re not doing that in the Senate, but I think the Senate was always a lost cause just because of the map. Those races are still important, but the mission there is just to limit the losses and prepare for 2020.
Trump’s job approval is up microscopically, but that doesn’t really matter at this point.
Ratfucking, fog of war, I don’t know, but it’s odd.
Adam L Silverman
@opiejeanne: Because membership in any of the three recognized Cherokee Nations (tribes) is based on the Dawes Act enrollments, not DNA. And there is ongoing litigation by people of Cherokee descent, whose ancestors were, for a variety of reasons, excluding from the Dawes Act enrollments. This is a very touchy subject and needs to be handled with a fair amount of politesse and finesse resulting from consultation and dialogue withe the leadership of the three recognized Cherokee tribes. That does not appear to have been done here.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: And the Florida Supreme Court has told Rick Scott that his announced plans to pack the state supreme court on his way out of office is unconstitutional.
chopper
@Mai Naem mobile:
seems apt.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: Then perhaps you can get that First Nations professor to cool it up there in the Great White North?
FlipYrWhig
@Adam L Silverman: I’m not saying anything smarter people haven’t said, but has she ever claimed “membership” in anything? Seems like picking a fight over a thing that didn’t happen.
Elizabelle
Those dinos got Left Shark beat.
Adam L Silverman
@mad citizen: The Tulsa Race Riots? I’m pretty sure that I’ve done a post that referenced them here several years back.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
@opiejeanne:
I am NOT an expert by any means, but apparently the fact that you can now determine via DNA whether or not you have American Indian ancestry is quite fraught, because it’s an actual legal category that determines a lot of other things but requires your family to have registered with the government long ago. You’re not allowed to declare yourself an American Indian and claim any benefits unless your family is on the registry regardless of what your DNA results are.
(Not that Warren is doing that, but that’s what makes it fraught.)
IIRC, some people have been mad all along that she was claiming the ancestry since it’s kind of A Thing for white people to do that to try and be cool. I’m assuming that finding out that she does actually have the DNA doesn’t change that.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Also, perhaps she could have not played into Don the Con’s narrative/new-birther scheme. That would be nice.
“No one would loan this clown a dime…except, as Eric Trump put it, ‘we have all the financing we need out of Russia’. Russia, hmm, where have we heard that before? Could that explain a few things? Well, once Donnie finished squandering the hundreds of millions his dad left him, yeah, he needed money and fast. HUNDREDS of millions! Not hard to understand how Vlad got his hooks into Donnie. By the way, did you ever notice how much Don sounds like a kid trying to impress his dad?…”
Knife, twist, repeat.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Actually, the Cherokee Nation issued a mild statement that DNA tests have no relationship to Tribal Membership.
Your vaunted MSM at work, channeling the Ghost of Still Dead Briebart and the Moron Horde.
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig: On the other hand, a lot of positions earmarked for Native people have gone to people who’s ancestry is as miniscule as Warren’s, but have never been involved in tribal affairs or efforts.
It looks like carpetbagging, trying to to do it on your own.
chopper
@johnny gentle (famous crooner):
that’s stanford for you. fucking up by not realizing that oil wasn’t actually made from dinosaurs.
MCA1
My 6th grader son just got one of those for Halloween. He proceeded to put on rollerblades to go play street hockey with the neighbor kids, then mock chase the 5-year-old next door riding her bike down the driveway screaming in that amazing 5-year-old mix of delight and terror. Had the whole neighborhood laughing hysterically. It’s an awesome costume.
He and 15 of his buddies all got them and plan on basically skipping the whole candy thing to just run around pretending to be a roving TRex Mass Attack Force or something.
Oh, and they have a dance they’re all going to do every couple blocks in the middle of the street.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Name?
Adam L Silverman
@FlipYrWhig: There’s a prominent Canadian First Nations professor whose specialty deals with Native American and First Nations issues who has been slamming Warren and having the slamming rebroadcast on social media all day. The hard core Bernie dead enders hate Warren because she didn’t go all in for Bernie, so this is just more ammo for them.
Similarly, we’re now getting a round of Beto is a terrible person because he’s indicated he’s not going to release any of the money he’s raising to anyone else. Or something. Regardless, between Warren and Beto today was a good day for John McCain!
Mai Naem mobile
I frankly dont give a shit about Warren’s Native American heritage except that it should take the issue off the table. I just wish the Dems had something that would take Trumpov off the front pages. He just sucks all the oxygen out of the room. We sure ain’t getting any help from Mueller right now.
Aleta
Bear opening doors in a CO blizzard
https://video.nest.com/clip/1bfc081df6c24fcfb5ac9c6c5cf6404d.mp4
Amir Khalid
@FlipYrWhig:
You know the Republicans don’t mind doing that even one bit.
Jay
@FlipYrWhig:
Yup.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is not applying for Membership in any of the Indigenous Tribes.
Adam L Silverman
@FlipYrWhig: I agree. She’s never claimed tribal membership, she went out of her way in the video released today to make a big distinction about that. All I’m saying is that this could have waited three weeks. And it would have been thoughtful to have consulted with the leadership of the three recognized Cherokee tribes.
Bill Arnold
@jl:
Even as a introverted trumpet player who quit in 9th grade because the marching band leader was too hyper-focused on precision and (his) control, I probably would have been happy to wear a TRex suit and make appropriate noises. (The ability to buzz lips remained. :-)
FlipYrWhig
@gwangung: And that might be relevant if Warren had used it to get something, but AFAIK she has not. This is going to be the stupid undead email-server story for Warren because it something somethings the something suspiciously and she didn’t something the something to rest which raises further somethings about something. Meanwhile Trump is the distillation of generations of evil and venality and the media covers that by going to diners full of the stupidest possible people and asking why they love him.
opiejeanne
@randy khan: When I was a sophomore and in band, we had a break-in and a lot of instruments were stolen. all of the really old, beat-up ones were taken including the awful metal clarinet I learned on; none of the pretty silver trumpets like the one my boyfriend played or the expensive privately owned instruments were touched. We always marveled at how the thief knew to take only the school-owned ones, and only the ones in bad condition. Teh director speculated that they came down through a skylight on the roof. Hmmm.
That was 1966-67. The War on Poverty money paid for a lot of nice shiny new instruments like beautiful Sousaphones, French horns and baritone horns. My boyfriend decided to take up the French horn and it did cut his lips to ribbons at first. He was pretty good but he switched to baritone for parades and only used the French horn for concert work.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: Given that the leadership had refused to comment on this for years other than to state that the President’ calling her Pocahontas was offensive, that they said anything should tell you they were upset. Especially given the President of the largest tribe, the one that made the statement, is a Democrat.
khead
The scene in Jurassic Park where the theme is blaring while Dr. Grant discovers that John Hammond has cloned a shitload of dinosaurs is one of the bestest scenes in movie history. Go ahead and fight me.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: Give me a minute to find the tweet. I didn’t save it.
FlipYrWhig
@Amir Khalid: True, but here the people in question are not Republicans but woke-left academics and other woke-left activists, and some are my friends, and I find the whole thing both righteous in the abstract and a total waste of energy in the concrete.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
Did she do that, though? As far as anyone has ever said, the worst she did was include a mention of that ancestry in a Harvard Law faculty directory after she had already been hired and working there for a while.
It seemed pretty clear to me that the announcement today was supposed to send a message that Republicans should stop fucking calling her “Fauxcahontas” and that’s about it.
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, I understand that but she’s not asking for membership in the Cherokee Nation, she’s answering a bully who called her and more specifically her mother a liar.
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig:
That is not the point.
Though many people think “political ambition” is something.
Fair Economist
@CaseyL: It’s thought that larger dinos often had bare skin, rather like rhinos or elephants. There are skin impressions which show no feathers.
On another note, the idea that petroleum is dead dinosaurs is 99.99% wrong. It’s formed from decomposing algae.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I get what you’re saying and you don’t know how many times I’ve disabused my own family members of the notion that they have ANY NA blood in their genetic makeup.
I think people are picking a fight over a thing that has not happened, as someone above said.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Kim Tallbear?
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4863903
Wouldn’t be great if you guys had a functioning First Estate rather than a pack of baying Clickbait hounds?
gwangung
@Mnemosyne: Well, that just makes today all about Elizabeth Warren, dancing through issues that have continually pissed off and plagued indigenous people.
Seems a tad disrespectful and it seems that a political coalition with indigenous people useful only when convenient for the powerful.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: Sorry, my Mom called…
Here’s the CBC write up about it. The professor’s name is Kim Tallbear.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/kim-tallbear-elizabeth-warren-dna-results-indigenous-identity-1.4863903
And here’s the tweet with Tallbear’s official statement, for whatever that is worth. If you read through that entire tweet thread, you’ll see folks come out of the woodwork.
zhena gogolia
@FlipYrWhig:
I heart this comment.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
That’s the tricky part, though, isn’t it? She doesn’t actually have the upbringing to claim a cultural connection, just a family story and the DNA. So is it better or worse for her to not claim an emotional or spiritual connection she doesn’t feel?
So she was supposed to allow Republicans to continue to call her a liar and mock her ancestry?
Is it possible to turn this into a different race/ethnicity and have the same problem? Let’s say for a minute that she had her DNA tested and, like a lot of white people who turned out to have an “Indian princess” in her ancestry, it turned out that that female relative was actually Black. What would have been the correct way for her to reveal that?
Again: I realize that American Indian issues are very, very complex because of our country’s long and nasty history. But I don’t understand why she was not supposed to try and prove that she and her family were truthful all along.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
It was a very mild statement, with out any anger, and seem to be directed more at correcting the illusions Morons America Incorporated have about Tribal Membership and Tribal Identity.
In Canada, when you start to explain Status, Non-Status, South Indian, Sihks, to the racist wingers their head start to get all splodie over anything more complex than butter chicken.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman:
From what little I’ve seen in the local news, the Warren people made some gingerly attempts to contact the various Cherokee bands & got approximately nowhere. Which may, or may not, have something to do with the ongoing bad feelings between the various Massachusetts / NE ‘wannabe casino tribes’ and the Cherokees. Some Cherokees think that our local Wampanoag groups are less-than-purely Native American, and the Wampanoag have been known (or so I hear) to respond that the Cherokees have been using their ‘Only True Historically Accurate Records’ backstory to gate-keep against groups that are none of their business. As you know, the whole federal ‘Who Gets to Be A Real Indian’ bureaucracy is geared for maximal conflict and minimal actual benefits, especially for the people who need it most — people turn against each other, fighting over scraps, because it’s impossible to win against the U.S. government.
So… while I don’t have any inside information… I’m guessing that Senator Warren decided (just as then-Candidate Barack Obama did with his ‘long-form birth certificate’) that getting her “true” history out in the mainstream media was more important than not (further) aggravating some portion of the Cherokee branches and their allies.
Adam L Silverman
@Aleta: Lock your car doors. Bears are very smart!
James E Powell
@Matt McIrvin:
In our world that is wired for Republicans, the portents of doom – as well as “the Democrats are blowing it” Op-Eds – always appear at the moment when the Democrats are pulling away.
FlipYrWhig
@gwangung: If only she had spoken to a group like the National Congress of American Indians about all this in, say, February, so we could see how members of the group might react.
‘Let’s talk about Pocahontas’: Warren addresses Native American heritage claims, slams Trump
B.B.A.
This story has been idiotic ever since Scott Brown invented it six years ago in a last-ditch effort to retain his seat. Today’s announcement SHOULD put it to rest permanently…but it won’t. Il Douche will continue dismissing Warren as “Pocahontas” and screaming “LOCK HER UP” because now it doesn’t matter who HER is. And if we’re lucky, we get two more years of this. If we’re unlucky, it will never end.
Burn it all down. Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill.
Dan B
@Mai Naem mobile: Microsoft’s second employee was Ric Weiland an openly gay guy who’d been in Lakeside Academy’s computer club. Ric spoke about the troubles he experienced as a gay man at Microsoft events, one of the first in tech or big business to do so. So Paul Allen,and Bill Gates, helped with gay rights early on.
We knew Ric who was amazingly square and stunningly handsome. He pestered me to work on his garden. He talked about going to Paul Allen’s place on the Grand Canal (Venice). Ric died at 55. Now it’s Paul Allen at 65. They both made big contributions to charitable causes. Paul donated to GOP who were running against Tea Party types in red districts and to Dems as well.
We’ll see what happens to Paul’s fortune. He never married and Ric never said a word about Paul’s dating.
CaseyL
@Amir Khalid:
I agree they’re not lizards, but “Dinosaur” means “terrible lizards” – blame the early paleontologists, not me :)
H’mmm. What’s Latin for “fabulous birds from Hell”?
Adam L Silverman
@opiejeanne: And that’s exactly what the bully wanted. It allows him to change the discussion and now he’s going to spend the next two years screaming about wanting to personally administer a DNA test to Warren, which his base will love because it is basically stating he wants to physically violate her.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s a very mild statement,
That TwitterNazi’s are running with it should be no surprise.
I’m sure if she still had an account @BlueNavyMom3 would be all over it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
When has Warren ever used an old family story, which seems to be true, to advance her “political ambition”? she’s known as a consumer advocate who was pretty much drafted into politics
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: Yes it would, but we don’t, so…
FlipYrWhig
@zhena gogolia: Thx, I’m getting a cumulative attack of the crotcheties over this.
Matt McIrvin
@Mai Naem mobile:
We want him on the front pages. Whenever he’s off of them for a while, the Republicans get stronger and so does he. When he’s getting direct attention, he’s embarrassing. That was the pattern even during the 2016 campaign–Trump would go semi-quiet for a week or two and his numbers would go up. And, of course, in the home stretch the Comey letter was knocking him below the fold.
Jay
@CaseyL:
fabulosa aves ab inferno,
Origuy
My family had a tradition that there was American Indian somewhere way back. Since most lines of my family tree have been in this country since before the Revolution, it seemed possible. Then my sister and I did the 23 and Me DNA test. No American Indian, but 0.5% Sub-Saharan ancestry. My suspicion is that at least one of my ancestors was mixed-race and found it more socially acceptable to pass as Indian.Impossible to say which ones, but some of my ancestors lived in the Appalachians, where that sort of thing was common. Could have been the Hatfields or the McCoys, they are both on the tree.
MoxieM
@Aleta: “Thanks for running down the battery, Kevin.”
CaseyL
@Jay:
That phrase just about sings…opera, obviously: Fabulooooosa avEEEESSSSS (gasp, sob) ab…..inFERnoooooo” (falls dead)
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
The Insane Clown POSus was always going to “control” the narrative, and was always going to attack Senator Warren one way or another.
Once again, it’s a litmus test. Those who know it’s nothingburger, vs.the venal, the racists, the ignorant, the morons, the mouthbreaters and the Nazi’s.
It’s really nice that the moron crowd are so willing to self identify with so little words.
Matt McIrvin
@Origuy: In my case, for similar reasons, I’m wondering if the non-“Indians” were actually Jewish.
randy khan
@Matt McIrvin:
The same thing happened in Virginia last year – the last couple of weeks there were all these stories about how Northam was blowing the Governor’s race with one misstep or another, and he ended up winning by 8.9%, which was a bigger margin than any Democrat in ages.
Dan B
@James E Powell: I blame the Chinese for their claim that Warren has never eaten fry bread…//
I don’t think it would hurt to chalk the “Democrats are losing it.” on some social media bots. It’s the Rovian Putinesque smell about it.
Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
In my case, there were no surprises. My oral family history was bang on.
James E Powell
@Jay:
Didn’t Senator Warren say just that in the video?
opiejeanne
@Aleta: The doors must have been unlocked because that bear didn’t have any trouble opening them. At first I thought he was looking for a place to get out of the snow but it looks like he was just looking for a snack.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: Do you have random cravings for bagels and lox? Do you find yourself ordering a chocolate egg cream for no apparent reasons? If so, welcome to the tribe!!!!
James E Powell
@Mai Naem mobile:
Yeah, it’s almost like he’s following Justice Department guidelines or something.
gwangung
@Anne Laurie:
I sense a certain amount of truth to this…but my feeling is that we speak as outsiders concerning issues we are blithely unaware of, and don’t care to be aware of.
Jay
@James E Powell:
Yup, but the United American Moron’s LLC don’t care.
FlipYrWhig
@randy khan: Yeah that Northam-Gillespie race was like a defining break for me from Internet-lefty handwringing-slash-dogpiling. I don’t understand the continuing popularity of that mode.
karen marie
I think the reason John Cole keeps this blog is so he has a captive audience to say “awwwww!” when he gets a cold.
FlipYrWhig
@James E Powell: And she (Warren I mean) also said it in the speech from February I linked above. And Kim TallBear even acknowledges that she says that but then goes on to say that the “broader US public” will likely be stupid about not understanding the finer distinctions she carefully makes so it’s still bad, or not enough, or still not entirely right in some other way.
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: And she can laugh at him and shrug her shoulders. It will make him look even worse, and frankly his moron followers are just that: morons.We already know what they think about violating women, they’ve made it very clear that it’s perfectly ok.
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman: Who doesn’t?
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: Mazel Tov! Please remember to buy a JNF Israel bond on your way out…
opiejeanne
@Origuy: You’re possibly a victim of the melungeon habit of claiming misleading ancestry to avoid acknowledging a sub-Saharan background. Look it up, it’s a terrific story and totally messes with people doing genealogy on their family. My daughter did the Ancestry DNA test and I was expecting a little African ancestry but there was none. The only bit not whiter than Danish was a smidgen of Mediterranean, and I suspect that came from my Portuguese great X 4 grandfather. Red hair, blue eyes. Born in the US in the mid 1700s. A privateer in the Revolutionary War.
Steve in the ATL
@FlipYrWhig: bingo.
@Adam L Silverman: it’s come up before, as I specifically remember dropping knowledge on people about the GAP Band.
@gwangung: but, again, she’s not doing that, so it shouldn’t be a news story.
Kay
They’re really not in disarray. They talk about 1. health care and 2. how the Trump tax law sucks. They hit with both of those. Health care is a top issue and the tax law is unpopular.
You will never IN YOUR LIFE hear the phrase “preexisting conditions” as much as people in Ohio have heard it in the last 3 months :)
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
As as I said above, as I understand it, having Native American ancestry and being an American Indian are two separate things. I don’t see a problem with making that distinction clear. The Cherokee Nation has an absolute right to declare who is and is not a member of their group and shouldn’t be forced to grant membership to people based on new technology.
I realize that many people conflate DNA and membership, but I don’t think the best way to maintain the boundary between those two things is to deny that the DNA evidence exists. IMO, it’s better to acknowledge that DNA exists but it’s not sufficient to claim legal membership in a group that someone has no other ties with. YMMV.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: to wit
Mai Naem mobile
@Dan B: I had no idea who Ric Weiland was. I had to look him up. Pretty smart strategic thinker. It’s a pity he didn’t live to see the Obergefell decision.
Kay
I want to talk about Melania’s crazy USA hat and why she’s wearing what looks like a military uniform. Like if Miami had an army, that’s what they might wear.
She’s gone from “silently glowering” to “wacky eccentric” in like a month.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Isn’t it hysterical? They’re all defending Obamacare. They’ve been doing it all over the country for months. Mike DeWine has to lie in every debate and claim he didn’t sue to overturn it when IN FACT it was literally the first thing he did as AG. They fact check it every time he says it, but what can he do? He has to deny.
gwangung
@Mnemosyne:
@Steve in the ATL:
I think these are points better done WITH indigenous people. You know, a concrete example of the coalition Democrats claim to have? And not shunting them off to the side?
My native acquaintances were certainly not fully positive about her announcement. I think it’s a good idea to understand why and not brush them off as inconsequential.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I was even surprised so many people cared about preexisting conditions. Where were these people from 2009 to 2016? They all developed conditions in that period that are now “preexisting”? My God can they just once BE ON TIME? They’re always a day late and a dollar short. Pay attention! We covered this material!
Frank McCormick
“We had planned a field show like this during the Alamo bowl: The Field Show of How Oil is Made. All of our dinos would die and get churned into oil. Needless to say our sponsor Valero was not excited about this idea.”
Not to mention that oil does not come from dinosaurs…
https://www.thoughtco.com/does-oil-come-from-dinosaurs-1092003
Origuy
@opiejeanne: Yes, I’m slightly familiar with the Melungeons; I think that may where the ancestry comes from. There is 0.2% East Asian & Native American, which I’d forgotten about. The analysis originally identified that as “Broadly East Asian”, which could be Genghis Khan, for all I know.
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: Give this a read from Charles Gaba. There’s another 17 tweets so click across, but it is one of the best answers to your questions you’re going to find.
Anne Laurie
@gwangung:
There is a scene in The Last Exotic Marigold Hotel where a character played by Maggie Smith announces, “I’m NOT eating THAT.”
Whenever I stand on the edge of a discussion about other peoples’ histories, that’s the scene that flashes through my mind. (Of course, in the movie, the Maggie Smith character ends up “eating that”, which is part of the parable.. )
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
So I just pushed back hard on another blog at the mouthbreathers who don’t know the difference between ancestory, heritage and Tribal Membership.
Few enough apostrophies ?
Jacel
@CaseyL: @CaseyL: I find it suspicious that scientists didn’t think about dinosaurs having feathers until Marc Bolan dressed in feathers frequently performing with T. Rex.
Redshift
It’s always useful to remember that, aside from any ratfvking and Russian trollbots, two things are always true:
1. Election margins tighten near Election Day
2. All media have a bias toward things that are changing.
“The Blue Wave” is now a things-are-still-the-same story. “Democrats are blowing it” is a things-are-different story, so all else being equal, we’re going to get more if those stories.
Anne Laurie
@Origuy:
You got any known Finns in your family tree? I remember being told (by a Finn) that’s where the last of the Golden Hoard ended up…
Steve in the ATL
@gwangung: I really don’t get your point.
The president of the United States has repeatedly attacked Warren, saying that she is falsely claiming to have any Native American heritage. Warren releases a DNA report which proves her correct and trump wrong.
What role do the tribes play in this?
As noted multiple times above, she is not claiming any rights or privileges appurtenant to a Native American heritage, so who exactly is hurt by this? Who has been displaced in favor of Warren?
The Cherokee can deny her tribal membership, especially since she hasn’t asked for it, but they can’t deny her genetics.
Brickley Paiste
@Adam L Silverman:
Exactly right. I have been a huge Warren fan for decades. I was delighted when she ran for Senate and I will be even more delighted when she wins the nomination and brings the Democrats back to their roots. I think her political message is fan fucking tastic.
But Jeez, whoever is controlling messaging is just brain dead.
Aleta
https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/strike-against-sovereignty-sen-warren-asserts-native-american-ancestry-via-dna-5mJJTl_79ESAQLX8hCckZA/
As I understand it there are several longstanding issues ; they didn’t just crop up recently as a way to criticize Warren. (The communication of these issues to Warren is several years old, too.) A few of the issues:
1–the use of DNA to establish NA ancestry. (Although Warren makes the distinction of not having tribal membership, the objection includes using DNA wrt ancestry as well.)
2–the methods and assumptions used. Tribes in the US refuse to give DNA samples. So the DNA samples that geneticists use to prove native ancestry are Central A and SA in origin. The proof of ancestry is based on archaeologists’ current theory of how the earliest people came to be on these continents. It includes the idea that early people were first present in NA and gradually moved down the coast, etc. to Cen A and SA. The Western assumption is that the DNA of all native peoples is connected, but native scholars and activists don’t agree with this. (Btw, the coastal part is a more recent theory–and is partly being used to explain the presence of much older dating of sites in SA than have been found in NA. Scientists aren’t in agreement about most of the very old dates, or the routes either. There’s always been a lot of imagination and subjective interpretation and disagreement in Western science about early humans. It’s an active field, not settled.)
3–whites defining the identity and origins of tribal peoples continues the terrible history of exploiting and harming.
4–white assumptions projected onto native people, and whites declaring what the truth is, continue to do measurable harm. The DNA issue seems like more of the same.
Imo, she did what she needed to do for political necessity as she saw it. The people who are raising the issues are saying the same thing they’ve been explaining for years. They need to do this too. They’re also defending their identity for their children. Imo it’s important to respect their right.
Jay
@gwangung:
As the CBC linked story notes, Indigionous communities are trying, very politely, to explain to Moron America, the difference between ancestory, heritage and Tribal membership, with a teaspoon of cultural appropriation and race history thrown in.
Brickley Paiste
@Aleta:
Well put.
Whatever is the NAI community equivalent to mansplaining is happening here. “All ya’ll redskins just simmer down while we explain science to you.”
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: I can’t speak for gwangung, but as someone whose specialty is identity, albeit identity as a driver for low intensity warfare, violence, etc, I think what we’ve got is an emic versus etic issue here. On the emic side, some Native Americans, especially those working in areas of political activism, – and no, I have no idea how you’d quantify the percentages on this – have a view on this that while recognizing that Warren isn’t trying to claim tribal membership, that she’s now engaging in a discussion, for political reasons of her own, that attempts to reduce Native Americanness to a DNA test result. The etic side is that she’s not claiming tribal status, she’s not saying she’s Native American, she’s just refuting the President’s racist hyperbole that she claimed Native American status she doesn’t have for personal and professional gain and that her mother and grandmother were liars. Watch this segment, already cued up, with Charles Pierce and Gyassi Ross, a Native American from the Blackfeet Nation, with Chris Hayes and Sabrini Siddiqui caught in the middle. I especially recommend the final 40 seconds which gets right to the point I made above and starts at the 43:20 mark.
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
I would love to understand what I’m getting wrong in drawing a distinction between DNA and membership. If you can point me to a resource that explains what it is I’m misunderstanding, please point me to it. Telling me that I don’t understand something that you’re unwilling to explain is not helping me to understand it.
And, yes, I am impatient with people who refuse to accept science. I think there are better ways to make the argument about group membership not being dependent on DNA other than refusing to accept or participate in DNA testing.
Brickley Paiste
@Mnemosyne:
A fundamental component of identity is the ability to determine who controls the definition your identity.
The idea that a DNA test makes her in some “percentage” a Native means that you believe that native identity is exclusively determined by some “objective” “colonialist” mindset.
I know we carp at each other and I really appreciate you trying to understand all of this in good faith and I hope you take my comment that way, too.
The Lodger
@Mnemosyne: So in terms of tribal/nation membership, DNA may as well be an abbreviation for Does Not Apply.
Mnemosyne
@Brickley Paiste:
I emphasized the above word because it’s actually the opposite of what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that Native ancestry and Native identity are two separate things. The majority of people who identify as American Indians most likely also have the ancestry to go along with that identity, but the two things are not synonymous.
Elizabeth Warren is a white woman who has some Native American ancestry. She doesn’t automatically receive an American Indian identity once the DNA test comes back, because merely having the ancestry is not enough to provide the identity.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have the oddball case of actor “Iron Eyes” Cody, who was an Italian-American who identified so strongly with American Indians that he married an American Indian woman and they adopted two American Indian sons. Despite his ancestry, he adopted that identity and lived in that community as an accepted member for most of his adult life.
Ancestry =/= identity. That’s how someone can have Native American DNA but not be an American Indian.
Mnemosyne
@The Lodger:
Pretty much. IIRC, historically many American Indian groups would incorporate “outsiders” into their tribes fairly often — the Seminole in Florida are well-known for being a mixture of Native Americans and escaped African slaves (and I’m sure geneticists are dying to get a look inside their DNA) — so relying on DNA to decide who is and isn’t an American Indian would actually be the worst way to do it. It makes much more sense to base it on the family affiliations and connections that each nation’s leadership decides on than on DNA tests.
Waynski
@Steve in the ATL: I think what they are trying to avoid is getting in the middle of a fight between two powerful white people from the East. That has never ended well for them. There’s no upside for the tribe. They’re being smart about this.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Mnemosyne: Geneticists are dying to get a look at Lumbee DNA as well. There was a study advertising for test subjects not long ago that aimed to see if any modern Lumbee match up with descendants of the families of the Roanoke Colony.
BroD
That performance is a fitting tribute to the Trump White House.
Ramalama
@opiejeanne: It’s true. That’s why god made the trombone in the first place. Taking a valve out of the sousaphone so it would no longer be lonely.
Ramalama
Also – have you guys seen this most hilarious music video by SNL called “Trees”? Really dumb in the best way possible about climate change and Al Gore, among other nutritional topics.