Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

Come on, man.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

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

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The words do not have to be perfect.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

This really is a full service blog.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

We still have time to mess this up!

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2018 / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Be the Mongoose

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Be the Mongoose

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This is an older clip, but new to me. If you look carefully, you can see those are teenage boy lions, which explains a lot. The Daily Mail thought it was a marsh mongoose who won the challenge, but I’m not expert enough to judge (although, of course, I want it to be a honey badger).

Reader Interactions

228Comments

  2. 2.

    Jeffro

    @satby: I was gonna say (mostly) the same thing ?

    That GA governor’s race, with the unrecused Secretary of State purging thousands of people from the rolls for previous non-voting…sad and sick. As if that’s a reason to cancel their registrations.

  3. 3.

    satby

    Bill Penzy’s latest letter:

    Kindness can’t just sit down simply because anger has stood up. Never in our lifetimes has there been an election that’s been a better chance to stand up to anger than the one coming this November 6. Now is the time to say no to those who would take health care from families in need, promote fear of minorities, sell off our environment to whoever offers the largest campaign donation, and to giving anger towards women a lifetime appointment to America’s Supreme Court

    Good thoughts for the day everyone! Gotta get going myself.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A ways back when I was still reading Sports Afield and Field and Stream magazines one of them used to run articles by an Alaskan hunting and fishing guide (Russel something, wish I could remember his last name, hell of a story teller) who wrote of the Alaskan bush and it’s denizens with great love and admiration. He once told of a wolverine challenging a full grown male grizzly over a moose carcass, fighting it, and winning.

  7. 7.

    Raven

    In Georgia

    Early in-person voting continues to surge. The secretary of state’s office reported that about 75,000 people voted in person on Tuesday — up from the roughly 70,000 that voted on Monday.

    All told, about 145,000 early in-person votes have been tallied and 69,006 mail-in ballots returned and processed.

    That 214,171 total vote count is roughly three times higher the number of early votes cast over the same period in 2014.

    Democrats are enthused by the numbers, which show roughly one-third of the early voters didn’t cast ballots in the midterm. That’s the heart of Democrat Stacey Abrams’ strategy to win the November race.

    But Republicans are pumped up, too. And a breakdown of the numbers by GOP strategist Todd Rehm explains why.

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven:

    Fulton County officials say any investigation would be up to the Secretary of State. A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Brian Kemp says the office has gotten no complaint.

    Don’t hold your breath.

  10. 10.

    Raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: I was hangin with my buddy last night. His deceased wife was a Quaker and he’s very progressive. His daughter is an attorney and she’s been family friends with Kemp for years. Her claim is that he’s a really great guy who is just pandering ? There’s a Quaker spinning in her grave.

  14. 14.

    Raven Onthill

    I’ve been watching all the splits in the opposition to Trump and the Republicans and – I’m scared. so many people are unwilling to sacrifice anything, to compromise to defeat the fascists. What the original Antifa (Antifaschistische Aktion) knew in 1932, we have forgotten.

    I’m scared.

  15. 15.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Polling place gets out of Dodge

    Dodge City, Kansas, is losing its only polling place ahead of November’s election for governor in the state. The city of 27,000, once an icon of the wild west, has since 2002 had just one polling site at the local civic center, the Associated Press reported. Now local officials have moved the site outside of city limits, to a location more than a mile from the nearest bus stop.

    Why is this happening? Local officials say it’s because road construction has obstructed the old site in a city once notorious as a symbol of frontier lawlessness.

    Is that really all there is to it? The governor’s race pits Republican Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who has faced accusations of voter suppression and championed harsh immigration restrictions, against Democratic state senator Laura Kelly. Dodge City’s economy is buttressed by two huge meatpacking plants which have drawn Hispanic immigrants as workers. The city is now 60% Hispanic.

    Geeez… How in… convenient.

  17. 17.

    MazeDancer

    Two words: Heidi Heitkamp

    We have addresses to write PostCards for Heidi Heitkamp!

    She stood up for Dems when it counted.
    The least we can do is stand up for her.

    And write a few PostCards.

    Or, since early voting has begun in CA,
    write a few for Harley Rouda.

    Or Elaine Luria, or Xochitl Torres Small, or Vangie Williams,
    or Antonio Delgado, or your choice of choice BJ Candidates.

    It’s PostCard Weekend, people!

    Don’t just sit there, write someone.

    PostCardPatriots.com

  18. 18.

    Raven Onthill

    @Raven: What do you mean? As far as I can tell, my views will never become law or policy in my lifetime. I have been politically active anyway. I’ve literally canvassed until my feet are sore. For 3 years I have advocated for unity. For the sake of unity in the opposition I have supported Democratic candidates I personally dislike. Because – in the end, all our factionalism doesn’t matter if the monsters from the id take over. We’ve had 2½ years of fascist rule and we are teetering on the edge of disaster. I want no more.

  21. 21.

    MazeDancer

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Harley’s got a good new ad up.

    Harley runs a good campaign PostCard wise. We’re on our 5th and final refill. They get the names back in hours.

    I have come to judge all campaigns by their PostCard game. It only takes one volunteer or intern, shuttling out voter addresses to groups, to impact thousands of voters – for free! Not playing seems dim.

    Write for Rouda! (Just click my nym)

  22. 22.

    Geeno

    @OzarkHillbilly: That wolverine may well have been defending its own kill. They have been known to take down moose. All of the mustelids – from weasels to wolverines – punch above their weight.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The rise of the robot farmer

    Ben Scott-Robinson, co-founder of the Small Robot Company, is a genial 44-year-old who talks about what he does with a Tiggerish enthusiasm. He is new to the world of agriculture and still surprised at what he has found. “I expected farmers to be quite luddite about the adoption of new technology,” he says, as he packs Rachel away. “Some are, but there are a load of them who understand that new things need to happen.”

    If food-growers embrace this new way of farming, it will end their dependence on a ploughing process that reduces the fertility of the land, and huge tractors that not only compact the soil but restrict growing seasons to times of the year when big machines won’t get bogged down in mud. By tending crops at the level of the individual plant, robot farming will also lead to a big drop in the money farmers have to spend on pesticides. The developers claim they can increase arable farming revenues by up to 40%, and reduce production costs by as much as 60%. The agility of agricultural robots means small farms with compact fields will no longer be at a disadvantage; independent shops and restaurants will be able to grow their produce on smallholdings efficiently tended by Rachel-like machines.

    There could be equally big environmental gains. Mega-scaled agriculture often leads to the ripping out of hedgerows, to pesticides contaminating rivers and streams, and soil erosion that can exacerbate flooding. The alarming decline in the number of bees in Europe, the US and beyond is linked to the use of insecticides; the equally sobering fall in bird populations has been traced to the same source. According to its prime movers, robot farming offers alternatives to all these things, and hope of an eventual ecological renaissance.

    “Many farmers’ main focus is to leave their business to the next generation,” Scott-Robinson says. “And because they go out in the fields every day, they’re aware that they’re not hearing thrushes and skylarks. They’re aware that there are not so many bees, and pollination rates are going down.”

    Scott-Robinson offers them not just a cure for these problems, but a new world of profitability. So what are the downsides?

    He cracks an awkward smile. “Erm… well, at the moment, we can’t see any.”

    OK, sounds good, but the Law of Unintended Consequences will inevitably rear it’s ugly little head.

    The most spectacular innovation Blackmore has worked on is laser weeding. The idea is simple, but mind-boggling. A farming robot, he says, can be equipped with software that can recognise up to 800 different kinds of weed, destroying them with precision targeting. At a stroke, chemical weedkillers would become yesterday’s news.

    “Everybody’s interested in it – but we’ve got the lead on it,” he says. “We can send a laser weeding robot out into the field, and you don’t need anything else to be there: it can work on a commercial farm today.” This technique has been trialled; he says it will be introduced to British farms next spring.

    SIGN ME UP!!!

  24. 24.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Geeno: Yep, but if I remember the story correctly, not in this case. The grizzly was already on the carcass when the wolverine showed up. Of course I read that story over 40 years ago and who knows how many details my mind filled in around the central “wolverine beats up grizzly bear”.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The idea is simple, but mind-boggling. A farming robot, he says, can be equipped with software that can recognise up to 800 different kinds of weed, destroying them with precision targeting. 

    SIGN ME UP!!!

    One day in the not to distant future, the weed will be you.

  29. 29.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: I wonder how much power a laser weeding system consumes. I know they’re not practical for snow removal..

    There are also plenty of weeds that grow back if you don’t get the root, and I’m not sure how a laser helps with that. Might even have a selective effect, for weeds that can tolerate being burned back to the ground (of which there are also already enough).

  30. 30.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A righteous rant from Hadley Freeman:

    “I’m married now into a family that, you know… not a lot of male energy going on,” he said, by way of an explanation for his inexplicable support for Jabba the Trump. “[Hillary Clinton’s] campaign ‘I’m With Her’ just didn’t make me feel… like a guy that could play catch with his son. It was something about when I put this [Make America Great Again] hat on, it made me feel like Superman.”

    In other words, he might be one of the most acclaimed artists of all time, but being in a family with some high-earning women bummed him out a bit. So he looked for something that made him feel like a man again, and that thing was Trump. Feel the pride, founding fathers: America is now merely a macrocosm for the marriage of West and Kim Kardashian.

    West’s outburst might not have been the most eloquent speech ever delivered in the White House, but it caught the era of new chauvinism, which is really just old chauvinism with added victimhood. What has the Trump presidency been but one long wail of aggrieved masculinity? So maybe West is now just another prat in a MAGA hat, but at least he’s still on the bleeding edge of relevancy. Um, yay? Or maybe just Ye.

    He also (possibly inadvertently) nailed the double bind women find themselves in: we make a step forward and then comes a backlash that is as vicious as it is – we are told – inevitable, and maybe even – goes the stronger implication – deserved. See this giant orange misogynist now sitting in the White House, women? This is what you get for daring to support a female presidential candidate who used a female pronoun!
    …………………………..
    In February, after two aides left the White House, President Trump tweeted, “People’s lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation… There is no recovery for someone falsely accused – life and career are gone. Is there no such thing as Due Process?” I am friends with many good Guardian-reading men who would rather club a baby seal than be compared to Trump – and yet in recent months I have often heard variations on the president’s plaint from their own lips. Think of the powerless men, they say! Well, given that one man who bragged he could sexually assault any woman he wanted was elected president, and another, Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused by multiple women of assaulting them, was just put on the supreme court, it looks to me like the men might be… fine? Meanwhile one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, Dr Christine Blasey Ford, is in hiding with her family because of multiple death threats.

    Has #MeToo gone too far? I’ll take a “no” for 10 points, Bob. The real question is not whether women have gone too far, but how do we keep going? How to keep fighting when the fight seems so hopeless?

    When I had twins, people kept saying they didn’t know how I coped, and I’d think, “I didn’t know I had a choice.” That’s what I think now. Some people say, sure, keep fighting – but maybe dial it back, ladies? And when I hear this argument I hear the same brain-splitting hammering in my head as when politicians, on the right or left, insist the only way to fight the far-right Brexiters is to appease them. Yeah, give the other side what they want – that’ll show ’em!

  31. 31.

    Shrillhouse

    Ok, so when can I expect Elon to bring weed-zapping lazer-bots to the masses?

    The misus and recently bought a new house, and keeping up with the weeds is a running battle..

  32. 32.

    HeleninEire

    Two weeks from today I’ll be back in NY for a week. Very much looking forward to seeing everyone. I miss NY. It’ll be a week of debauchery (and doing get out the vote on election day) but debauchery is what I need right now.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ken:

    I’m not sure how a laser helps with that.

    It comes back and zaps it again! All the robot has to do, 24/7, with time outs for recharging, is roam the field blasting weeds into oblivion. Pretty sure that a fledgling root that is never able to put up any leaves that last for more than a day or 2 never has chance to become a big grown up root system.

  34. 34.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    Same as it ever was. In 2004, there was ONE voting machine for the precinct that included Ohio State. They had to wait all day to vote.

  35. 35.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @debbie: When we lived in the city of Detroit, I waited in enormous lines to vote. Then we moved to a suburb and I just walked in and voted. I was shocked. Once we moved to Iowa and now Illinois, I vote early and never have to wait.

  42. 42.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Ah yes, how well I remember Voting while Urban. Since I first moved out here 16 years ago, I’ve had 3 different polling locations and never had to wait more than 5 mins to vote, and that was in my current very rural precinct when the racist misogynists were so energized to get out by the pu$$y grabber in chief.

  43. 43.

    Schlemazel

    @Raven:
    Oh well, that makes it OK then, thanks for clearing that up, honey.

    “Now it is true what the say about Boss Grissom, he was a murderer and a fiend. But he did have a lovely singing voice” – The Joker

  44. 44.

    tobie

    @Raven Onthill: Could you be more specific about splits in the opposition to Trump that are preventing the resistance from coalescing around candidates at the House and Senate level? I just haven’t seen this.

  45. 45.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Paulwartenberg: Go you!!!

    My writers group is hosting a mystery writers panel today. I don’t write mysteries, but I’m going because I always learn something. Besides, it’s actually in a space they rented in my building, so it would be insulting for me not to walk downstairs and go.

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Pharmacist allegedly denies woman miscarriage medication over religious beliefs

    Meijer employee said being ‘a good Catholic male’ prevented him from filling a woman’s prescription, ACLU complaint says

    In July, Rachel Peterson was prescribed misoprostol after suffering a miscarriage. The drug, which can be used in medical abortions or to treat stomach ulcers, was crucial to prevent her from having serious complications and invasive surgery.

    The prescription was made out for a Meijer store in Petoskey where Peterson had been vacationing, the letter states. But as she was leaving to pick it up, she was phoned by one of the store’s pharmacists, Richard Kalkman, who said that he couldn’t “in good conscience” fill the prescription because he was “a good Catholic male” and believed she wanted to use it to end her pregnancy.

    Peterson explained that her doctor had said her fetus was not viable and she was not using the medication because she wanted an abortion. She claims Kalkman responded by saying that he couldn’t trust her on her word.

    Peterson also claims Kalkman refused to pass her on to another member of staff or allow her to speak to his supervisor. Eventually she had to drive three and half hours to have the prescription filled at a different Meijer store. She praised the employee that eventually helped her, but said the experience was traumatic. “When you’re at one of the lowest moments of your life, you don’t expect this sort of demeaning treatment,” she said in a statement.

    I want to start a religion in which abortion is a Holy Sacrament that only the most enlightened women perform, kinda like a Sioux Sundance. Freedom of Religion and all that. I also want it be infused with a another religious practice involving baseball bats and “good Catholic males” who don’t trust women to know what they need.

  49. 49.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Immanentize: Massachusetts got early voting in 2016, and I got out there on the first available day (for in-person early voting). I didn’t really have much practical reason not to wait until Election Day, but I was interested in how it worked.

    It had the interesting effect that my presidential vote was banked before the whole Comey letter nonsense broke. That reinforced my belief that any news that breaks at the last minute as an October Surprise is likely to leave you less informed than you were before you heard it.

    I think early starts on Monday this time. I may go do it again. Judging from the sample ballot on the town website, it looks like no obscure “nonpartisan” downticket elections are up where I’d need to do more research; I already know how I’m voting on all the races (Democratic) and ballot questions (yes on 1, 2 and 3).

  50. 50.

    Amir Khalid

    I found out today that no one sells a replacement strap for the watch I bought online. Boo. So now I’m wearing it on a lanyard.

  52. 52.

    MomSense

    @Ken:

    High intensity fires can cause soil to become sterile at least in the short term. Just how hot are these lasers?

    Call me crazy but laser wielding robots in the garden sounds like it could go very wrong.

  54. 54.

    p.a.

    @OzarkHillbilly: Old internet meme: “If men got pregnant abortion would be a sacrement.”

    Open Thread Q for computer-philes: Dropbox on iPad constantly downloading /string files. Dropbox says issue is with OS options, but except for upgrading OS when they’re issued I haven’t done ‘nuttin’. Not much info gleaned via google. Any ideas appreciated; I’m going out, so I won’t be able to respond.

  55. 55.

    MomSense

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’ve gone from pro choice to pro abortion. Seriously. In my world there are too many women who think becoming a mother will magically make them well. The grandparents end up raising their kids if they are lucky enough to have healthy, able grandparents. We have constructed a fantastical mythology about the joy and beauty of motherhood while at the same time attaching so much guilt and shame to abortion. It’s causing too much suffering.

  58. 58.

    ericblair

    @tobie:

    Could you be more specific about splits in the opposition to Trump that are preventing the resistance from coalescing around candidates at the House and Senate level? I just haven’t seen this.

    I don’t know what he’s referring to, because I’ve seen all hands on deck for the midterms including Bernie. There seems to be a real effort to downplay the level of engagement on the Dem side. The goopers are doing it to try to dampen turnout, of course, but the media in general seems so gunshy of getting the outcome wrong again that they’re putting the most pessimistic spin on everything they can.

  59. 59.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @tobie: this is someone who’s worried we’ve forgotten the lessons of (scrolls up)

    What the original Antifa (Antifaschistische Aktion) knew in 1932, we have forgotten.

    and that all those retired machinists in Rustberg were dissuaded from voting for HRC by articles in Jacobin
    it’s kind of a niche view

  60. 60.

    ericblair

    @chris:

    More than half a million people have taken to the streets of London to protest Brexit. Will anyone listen to them?

    This is more than expected, and showing the total lack of leadership in the UK right now. The Tories are still using this impending disaster for playing internal political games with no solution in sight. Meanwhile, Corbyn the supposed opposition leader and the Voice of the People is off in Switzerland meeting with a Pinochet opponent, because that’s what’s important to the British people right now.

  64. 64.

    Ken Shabby

    @satby:

    Came in here just to say that.

    There’s guns and there’s votes.
    Unless you like owning human beings. Then, it’s just guns.

    See also: Rump Crime Cindy Kate

  65. 65.

    JPL

    @OzarkHillbilly: @MomSense:I have no problem with folks who are pro life as long as their beliefs don’t endanger other females. The pharmacist was endangering the life of another, and needs to be replaced. I do hate the hypocrites that preach their pro-life beliefs when in fact they are only pro fetus.

  69. 69.

    Amir Khalid

    @JPL:
    I seem to recall that over there, the law actually allows a pharmacist to refuse a prescription if they feel that the medication’s purpose clashes with their beliefs. Is that true?

  70. 70.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Ms O and I are going to Early Vote this afternoon (after completing garden clean-up). We will reward ourselves with the best green chile cheeseburger in town. Tomorrow we write postcards to voters and then it’s door knocking nearly every day through November 6. We must win these elections.

  72. 72.

    Amir Khalid

    @chris:
    Could conceivably be for reasons of Parliamentary tactics. Could also be that Corbyn isn’t that anti-Brexit, which I agree is strange given how obviously damaging it will be to Britain, Europe, and the West at large.

  73. 73.

    debbie

    @Amir Khalid:

    They can, but they have to allow another pharmacist to fill it, either at that location or at another location that is convenient to the customer. This hasn’t been working out very well, at least so far.

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: My mother was a pro-life converted from Southern Baptist Catholic. Then she started volunteering at Birthright (crises pregnancy call center) but by the time she was done she was counseling some women to have an abortion. Not surprising to me as she always took reality’s side when it clashed with Catholic dogma and reality for some women is that they are in horrible situations that they plain and simply can not bring a child into.

  76. 76.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MomSense: The antinatalist moral philospher David Benatar describes his position on abortion as “pro-death”: he believes it should be obligatory for all pregnancies (since everyone should work for the extinction of humanity).

    I don’t think I agree, but it’s a position that nags at me.

  77. 77.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I have never seen Democrats angry, not even at the end of the Bush administration, when we were merely disgusted and grateful for a chance to turn things around. Not as a movement. Traditionally, anger and fear are Republican motivators. What I have seen over the last two years is unprecedented, which unfortunately means I have no idea where it’s going.

    I have a guess, but it’s only a guess. This process looks one HELL of a lot like California right when Republicans went batshit. Including a tax law that screwed the state over for decades. If the comparison is correct, the future is bright, but it’s going to take awhile to get here.

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    a ploughing process that reduces the fertility of the land, and huge tractors that not only compact the soil

    This is HUGE. I have an agriculture degree (because someone decided entomologists are farmers and not biologists) and I cannot sufficiently stress how much environmental damage large farm equipment does through soil compaction. A chance to stop that would be amazing.

  78. 78.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid: The law is foggy. Most pharmacies have religious exemption policies but they also have rules that state one has to hand that script off to another who doesn’t or forward it to another nearby store. This asshole refused to do either.

  79. 79.

    MomSense

    @debbie:

    He’s back. He has some long scheduled gigs for the next three months and then I think he is moving out to LA. He had a great time out there and has a legit producer (he invited them to a concert to see one of his new bands) who wants to work with them. There may also be a model/actress in the mix.

  81. 81.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The antinatalist moral philospher David Benatar describes his position on abortion as “pro-death”: he believes it should be obligatory for all pregnancies (since everyone should work for the extinction of humanity).

    I guess he hasn’t noticed that we are headed for extinction w/o mandatory abortion.

  83. 83.

    Elizabelle

    @MomSense: What a wonderful start to a new life in a new place. I love LA. And would guess you raised your son to have more sense than the usual bear musician heading to LaLa Land.

    Good luck to him!

  88. 88.

    MomSense

    @OzarkHillbilly: @Matt McIrvin:

    I’ve seen what happens when it all goes wrong. The “pro life” fanatics are nowhere to be found when the grandma who is raising the kid gets cancer and we need to find someone who will raise a kid who has already been saddled with abandonment and health problems.

    The latest climate change projections aren’t exactly describing the kind of world we want to bring more people into.

  90. 90.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Frankensteinbeck: I saw a lot of anger online, among political junkies on political blogs, during the Bush years. But out in the world it was more weariness and desire for a change–and some hope, in 2008 when Obama appeared.

    It’s different now. The anger and fear isn’t “netroots”, it’s everywhere.

    One thing that happened in California was that Hispanic voters mobilized, right? I still don’t see that happening in this cycle. It’s the dog that didn’t bark. Part of it may be that even eligible citizens are actively being scared away from the polls by thuggish immigration-enforcement behavior. I personally know of Mexican-American citizens who are skittish about getting passports right now–interacting with the government is fraught with risk and worry.

  92. 92.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: They really aren’t farms. They are more like early industrial age food production lines. Michael Pollan’s description of large scale potato production in completely dead medium (soil?) Is, dare I say it? Harrowing.

  93. 93.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Miss Bianca: Santa Fe Bite, which tragically is slated to close October 26th, much to our collective dismay. However we recently discovered Blackbird Saloon in Cerrillos, which also makes a good burger, with the atmospheric benefit of being in a little wild west-type village.

  94. 94.

    dexwood

    First day of early voting here and we will vote. Mrs. dexwood is thrilled to be voting for Deb Haaland for Congress, a member of her mother’s Pueblo.

  95. 95.

    chris

    @Amir Khalid: I guess. I do know that Corbyn is hobbled by some of his trade union base who are pro-Brexit. Maybe this march will bring some of those to their senses but I won’t hold my breath.

  96. 96.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @dexwood: Yay you and yay Deb! We’re in CD-3, but are thrilled to support Deb’s campaign and Xochitl’s too. Fingers crossed.

  97. 97.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: Some day when I am really bored I am going to head down to the STL planned parenthood and tape my attempts to get protestors to sign up to financially help a mother raise a child to adulthood she is looking to abort.

    Why do I think none will sign up?

  99. 99.

    dexwood

    @O. Felix Culpa:
    We’ve met her a few times. Mrs. dexwood’s cousin is a longtime supporter of Deb. And, hell yes, a green chile cheeseburger and a local beer after voting is now our plan, too.

  101. 101.

    CarolDuhart2

    @debbie: Moments like these make me want to see people put up something like the Robert Ingersoll or The Humanist Hospital & Pharmacy. (Robert Ingersoll was a 19th Century Athiest, not very well known today). “Medicine, without Sect or Superstition”.

  103. 103.

    rikyrah

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    IF you don’t want to do your phucking job..
    THEN GET A NEW JOB.

    PERIOD.

    But, if you take the six fucking figures for this job..
    and, the medicine is LEGAL…
    then, DO YOUR PHUCKING JOB.

  104. 104.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: The few I’ve come across have been neurotic egotists to the nth degree, constantly being told how stunningly beautiful they are and all the while being constantly reminded with every incessant criticism how ephemeral their present exalted status is. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone first or second hand.

  107. 107.

    dexwood

    @chris:
    In her ads, the pronunciation sounds a lot like social. Apologize for jumping in. We are not in her district, but we’d vote for her if we could. She’s in a tough contest in a red corner of NM.

  110. 110.

    ericblair

    @chris:

    I guess. I do know that Corbyn is hobbled by some of his trade union base who are pro-Brexit. Maybe this march will bring some of those to their senses but I won’t hold my breath.

    Most of the union leaders are pro-Remain, because they’ve got a fairly good idea about what Brexit means to their membership. They were ignored and booed at the Labour conference a few weeks ago by the professional lefties.

    Corbyn wants Brexit, because he considers the EU a neoliberal cabal that stands in the way of true soshulism in the United Kingdom. This has been clear since he whipped Labour MPs to vote for Article 50. But, the majority of Labour wants to Remain, so he’s been waffling and lying about it since then. He wants to bring down the current government to force an election, then have the great Lexit that he’s dreamed of since the 1980s.

  112. 112.

    Immanentize

    @dexwood: @chris: In Texas, it’s pronounced Szo-chee. But when I lived in Albuquerque, more folks pronounced is Szo-chill. But, as in this case it’s someone’s name, for all I know, they pronounce it “Smith.”

  114. 114.

    BlueGirlFromWyo

    @OzarkHillbilly: My father managed to have a wife and two daughters without becoming a toxic asshole. President Obama had Kanye dead to rights: he’s a jackass.

  116. 116.

    zhena gogolia

    Here’s how crazy I am. I have teetering stacks of People and New Yorker magazines I don’t have time to read. But I just bought a magazine called “Closer,” which I never heard of, because I saw it in the checkout line and it had a big picture of Cary Grant on the cover.

  117. 117.

    OzarkHillbilly

    All I wanted was breakfast.

    So I went to the kitchen. The stove still held last nights pots and pans. OK, I’ll stick them into the sink. The sink is full. OK, I’ll put those in the dishwasher. The dishwasher is full. Sigh, I’ll empty it. So I empty the dishwasher. The dish strainer too. Then I start rinsing the dishes in the sink. The sink fills up with water, more water, more water… The strainer is stopped up. I stick my hand in the water. There is nothing in the strainer. Then I notice that the other sink has also filled up with water. Sigh… Grumble grumble… Take all the wet dishes out of the sink. Get the plunger. Put the stopper in the 2nd sink. I have to be careful here, I’m as likely to blow the plumbing under the sink apart as I am to actually unplug it.
    Once.
    Twice.
    Thrice.
    Nothing. Try it a few more times. Still nothing. Go out to the shop to get my snake. It’s not there. Look in the shed. Not there either. Look again in the shop. Still not there. Then I remember, I left it in the garden shed. Yep, there it is. Go back to the kitchen. The sinks have drained.

    So I do the dishes.

    What was it I wanted?

  118. 118.

    Aleta

    Mongooses play an important role in the ecosystem of the Resistance savannah.

    When referring to the USA, I will always capitalize the word Country!

    When referring to Donald Trump, I will always add air quotes to the word “President”!
    — Billy Kapcoe (@BKapcoe)

    When referring to president I will always mean Obama
    — Trice (@61Trice)

    Let me rephrase this one for you. Consider it my gift to you today.
    “When referring to the USA, I will always capitalize on our Country!”
    — Jack Stansbury (@stansburyj)

  120. 120.

    dexwood

    @Immanentize:
    Yeah, in my head the pronunciation was closer to your Albuquerque one, but once the ads started running I hear it more like the word “social”, but my ears are old.

  124. 124.

    Mike R

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think you might be referring to Russell Annabel, spelling may not be correct. Remember him from earlier Sports Afield. Yes he was a very good story teller.

  125. 125.

    ruemara

    @MomSense: Hey, some of them are good & normal. Some are needy, shallow & destruction leeches. This is how it goes in pretty people careers.

  126. 126.

    gene108

    @JPL:

    I do hate the hypocrites that preach their pro-life beliefs when in fact they are only pro fetus.

    They aren’t pro fetus. They deliberately shut down women’s clinics, because one out of a hundred might perform abortions, which denies women access to prenatal care.

    They are forced birth.

  128. 128.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Raven: @Gelfling 545: It parallels the MSM excuse for not calling out racist voter suppression for what it is: “Well, they’re targeting black voters, but their goals are partisan, so it’s not racist.”

    As with so many things, like the children prison camps, the fact that it’s not a scandal should be a scandal in itself. The moral rot in our polity predates trump’s escalator ride by a long time.

  132. 132.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    David Cay Johnston @ DavidCayJ
    No polling place exists in Dodge City, Kansas, a majority Hispanic city of 27,000. Voting takes place at just one location. Not only is it outside of town, it’s a mile walk from the nearest bus stop. To vote you have to get the hell out of Dodge.

  133. 133.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: I have had the pleasure of knowing quite a few musicians, but mostly in folk music which is a rather humbling pursuit in that even if you make it “big”, 999 out of a thousand people will walk right past you without even a look, never knowing or appreciating the genius in your fingers. They tend to be really nice people who just want to share their music and appreciate fans who feel the same. I have also known several blues guitarists who for the most part are the same but a few have been egotistical pricks.

    The one musician I have known who really did make it BIG, was a bass player who hit the big time with a very well known band whose leader is now in the R&R HoF. One night while eating/partying after a gig my buddy was walking across the hotel room with a pair of salad cruets when he tripped and fell. The cruets shattered in his hand cutting every tendon and ligament holding his fingers and hand together.

    The end of his musical career. They wrapped his hand in a towel and put him on a plane for home, all of them afraid to even look at this embodiment of the fragility of the life they were living. F resented it for a long time but slowly came to realize that it wasn’t him, it was what he represented. Years later they reestablished contact and buried a few demons.

  134. 134.

    germy

    @ruemara:

    some of them are good & normal. Some are needy, shallow & destruction leeches.

    Same thing can be said about 2016 presidential candidates.

  139. 139.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodingers_cat: As with most such things, some people can handle it. Your friend is using it as a tool to a larger goal. I briefly met one such as well but never got to know her well.

    I never dated a model and mostly the few I came across were so offputting I kept them at somebody else’s arms length. In later years I came to realize the pressures they were operating under and so am more understanding now than I was then. I still wouldn’t date one.

  142. 142.

    germy

    So Mitch McConnell was confronted by angry constituents in a Cuban restaurant in Louisville. They yelled “Get out of here!” at him.

  143. 143.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Oh my fucking Gawd, is this rich or what?

    Julian Assange launches legal action against Ecuador

    Julian Assange has launched legal action against the government of Ecuador, arguing that new house rules for his stay in the country’s London embassy violate his “fundamental rights and freedoms”, his lawyers said on Friday.

    Assange’s lawyer, Baltasar Garzón, said the WikiLeaks founder was suing Ecuador’s foreign minister, José Valencia, for “isolating and muzzling” him with the new rules, which order Assange to avoid making online political comments and to take better care of his cat.

    “He has been held in inhuman conditions for more than six years,” Garzón said, describing the conditions regarding the cat as “denigrating”.

    He added Assange had not had his internet restored even though the new rules allow him to use the embassy wifi for his personal computer and phone.

    The ego he must have.

  145. 145.

    Brachiator

    @ericblair: Coming late to this thread (enjoying my California morning), but your remarks on Cornyn hit the mark. Labour seems to be very coy about revealing any detailed position on BREXIT, but love to call for new elections without considering deadlines to leave the EU.

    Also, everyone on all sides of the question in the UK seem to believe that they can pretend that they don’t have to deal with BREXIT at all, because they hope or believe that Europe will cut a deal to maintain stable markets no matter what.

  149. 149.

    WaterGirl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I keep seeing this. I nearly wrote “why isn’t someone organizing vans to take these people to vote?” Then I thought, at this point in time if I were hispanic, would I get into a van to be driven somewhere “to vote”? Not at all sure I’d risk it.

  150. 150.

    BC in Illinois

    @chris:
    @ericblair:

    And from the northern end of the UK:
    1) Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon sent a video address to the People’s Vote March, pledging Scottish National Party solidarity with their demand for a vote on Brexit; and
    2) FM Sturgeon pulled out of a BBC event in Edinburgh, when the BBC invited Steve Bannon to be one of the speakers. The article includes discussion of the “normalisation of fascism.”

  154. 154.

    BC in Illinois

    @BC in Illinois:

    And while looking at things Scottish . . .

    The Ferret, “an independent media co-operative,” did a fact check on the claim by a Tory MP that you can get cocaine faster than pizza in Glasgow. They rated the statement as “Half True.”

    Ferret Fact Service verdict: Half True
    Ross Thomson’s claim that you can get cocaine in Glasgow faster than a takeaway pizza may be accurate in some cases. However, the report from which he is basing his claim does not say that cocaine is quicker to get than the fast-food staple, merely that 37 per cent of cocaine users can receive cocaine within 30 minutes of ordering.

  155. 155.

    Kelly

    We watched a mother river otter send off a mink one evening. Her kits were just a bit smaller than the mink. She was 3 or 4 times the mink’s size. A lot of noise and sinuous whirling for 5 minutes or so. Kinda cat fight noises. No visible damage we could see 50 feet away from the mustelid on mustelid action but that little mink took some convincing.

  156. 156.

    Wapiti

    @NotMax: I saw one of my grandfather’s schoolbooks (from the early 1900s, but it might have been older); it explained that we didn’t know what the sun was made of, but it wasn’t coal, because coal couldn’t produce that much energy.

  157. 157.

    Brachiator

    @germy: Wow. Yep. A great clip. I hope that voters recognize that the GOP has consistently lied to them about health care reform.

  160. 160.

    JPL

    @OzarkHillbilly: Among likely voters the race is tied between MacArthur and Kim. Kim was up by ten a month ago, so the negative ads against him must be working.
    Thank you google for the infor.

  161. 161.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JPL: Kim should run excerpts of that confrontation with Ginter coming on at the end saying “I’m Geoff Ginter, and I approve this ad.”

  162. 162.

    germy

    @Brachiator: The clip I posted made me choke up. The unedited clip Ozark found put tears in my eyes.

    He’s on twitter:

    Deficit scaremongering has been a political staple for 47 years and it must stop! The #Deficit isn’t a problem. Unemployment is a problem! People dying because they can’t afford medication is a problem! Humanity being wiped out from #climatechange is a problem! Fix the problem! https://t.co/yQw4AA7v71— Geoff Ginter (@geoff_ginter) October 17, 2018

  163. 163.

    WaterGirl

    It’s a slow day on BJ today. Don’t forget vote for the bunny rescue TaMara put in a plug for earlier this week. Top vote getters get hay products, which apparently have gotten quite expense.

    Colorado House Rabbit Society is the one TaMara has a connection with. Vote here.

  165. 165.

    schrodingers_cat

    @OzarkHillbilly: One famous person I personally knew as a child was a retired cricketer, a household name, who was a well known spinner for the Indian team. He was one of the most down to earth people I have met. In India, test cricketers are worshiped like Gods.

  167. 167.

    JaySinWA

    @Amir Khalid: I discovered NATO style straps when looking for a replacement strap for my Casio watch. There are inexpensive versions and may be sourced close to home for you. Fairly generic for sizing.

  168. 168.

    germy

    I remember when my watch band broke and I made the mistake of having it replaced with a velcro band.

    I now have a collection of shirts with the left sleeves shredded.

  169. 169.

    mad citizen

    Must have been an earlier thread, but thanks to the jackal who posted Bill Penzey’s latest email/offer. Made me check in to my hotmail account to find it, and since I was already going to Trader Joe’s, in same center as Penzey’s spices, I stopped in and got a free spice (Chicago Steak Seasoning) and the Kind spice box with 3 spices, all for free. Not sure how giving stuff away will be a sustainable business model, but the clerk remarked how they had been “slammed” in the last hour, so lots pro progressives showing up at the spice store today.

    The card included in the box says, in part, “Our Kindness is Our Strength” listing these points:
    “Turning Back Textbook Racism”
    “Equal Treatment for Women”
    “Our Environment”
    “Is the President Above the Law”

    I’m voting Monday.

  170. 170.

    Ruckus

    @debbie:
    In 2004 I lived in Gahanna and we had 2 machines. That doesn’t sound bad but in 2000 we had 4. And in 2004 kenny consolidated several precincts so the wait to vote was over 4 hrs, and I was there when the doors opened.
    They know they can’t win unless they rig the vote. Fewer machines, lies, Russian interference…. Telling me they don’t change the tallies makes me laugh. They aren’t above anything for power. NOTHING.

  177. 177.

    gene108

    @JPL:

    The race has always been a statistical dead heat. I have never seen or read of polls that had Kim up by 10.

    Some of the internal polling info, from local field office staff, indicated Kim can win. But this is going to come to turnout.

    I have lived in this district for 21 years. 19 of them, I have been represented by a Republican.

    I had thought to run errands, but I guess I will head down to the local field office to canvass.

    This is a big flip, if it happens.

  178. 178.

    Ruckus

    @chris:

    Maybe this march will bring some of those to their senses but I won’t hold my breath.

    Good plan, that not holding your breath thing.
    Not good plan, thinking that a march of citizens will change many minds. Or that Corbin has a plan of any kind.

  179. 179.

    lgerard

    I found this example of trumpian management pretty interesting

    Suzanne Israel Tufts was scheduled to be interviewed Friday morning for another inspector general position elsewhere in the government, according to a person with knowledge of the interview. But she did not show up for the appointment.

    Her departure ends a madcap week, as the administration quickly scuttled an arrangement to make Tufts acting Interior watchdog amid media reports and scrutiny from Capitol Hill lawmakers. Tufts did not respond to messages left on her cellphone.

    Tufts, an attorney from Queens who worked on President Trump’s campaign, was serving as assistant secretary for administration at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She had not been at work for at least two months, according to three people with knowledge of her absence, but was still on the payroll.

    To be fair to Tufts, she lacked previous experience as an event planner, golf caddy or muffler shop manager so she probably didn’t fit in with the rest of the hires.

  181. 181.

    Ruckus

    @rikyrah:
    Exactly.
    I noticed that the drug in question has multiple uses, so how does he know which use this is for? And he’s getting paid to dispense drugs but is he a doctor? Or more importantly is he her doctor? And it’s his religious grounds? The fuck? If his religion prevents him from doing his job then he needs a new job, one his religion doesn’t interfere with.

  182. 182.

    chris

    @BC in Illinois:

    FM Sturgeon pulled out of a BBC event in Edinburgh, when the BBC invited Steve Bannon to be one of the speakers. The article includes discussion of the “normalisation of fascism.”

    I saw that! Ban Bannon! The ads write themselves.

  185. 185.

    Tenar Arha

    @Ruckus: Oh yeah. That’s a real thing. “Christian” Wingers go to pharmacy or nursing or medical school, get hired at family planning clinics or pharmacies or obstetrics offices & then work to prevent women from getting unbiased medical advice or refusing to provide services. (IIRC There’s been federal cases dealing with this for pharmacies & nurses).

    It’s not really new either. Did you know that learning how to provide an abortion is an elective in most obstetrics & gynecology programs in medical schools? There’s a 501(3c) charity, a few decades old, called Medical Students for Choice that often ends up having to provide this training to the students who believe they need to know how to do everything for their patients.

  186. 186.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Brachiator: Jeremy Corbyn is well aware that a lot of traditional Labour supporters want Brexit and will abandon the Labour Party to vote for a party that will take Britain out of the EU. If he supports Remain and cancellation of Article 50 (the notification by the British government to the EU that it wishes to withdraw from the EU) he would lose the next election, guaranteed and he wouldn’t be able to stop Brexit anyway in that situation. Worst case scenario, say hello to Prime Minister Farage.

    Being “brave” and “courageous” in 2-party politics means losing power as a number of your died-in-the-wool supporters will abandon you and it’s unlikely you’ll pick up any of the other side’s voters since they’re programmed to regard you as an insane, baby-eating evil monster (See Clinton, Hillary and Trump, Donald for worked examples).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik8JT2S-kBE

  187. 187.

    Ruckus

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:
    The only plan that has much of a possibility seems to be to build a time machine and go back and not hold that stupid vote in the first place.
    They voted to exit. That sets off a series of issues that are out of control of the UK. The EU said bye bye, which is their right after a country holds an exit vote. Really there is no plan, and with the only possible person being able to drum up a new vote and hope that it works, Corbin, not being interested in staying, it’s a done deal.
    I don’t see what the UK will get out of seceding from the union that they belonged to but they seem to think it will magically get them them something, something……… Magic and politics, always a good match.
    And I see that I’ve americanized his name. It’s spelled Corbyn.

  189. 189.

    Raven Onthill

    @tobie: tobie, when I am specific, people start taking sides, and my remarks become part of the problem, so I don’t. And, yes, it looks like we are seeing a unified opposition, but I have seen signs that indicate that the unity is skin-deep.

  191. 191.

    Ruckus

    @Tenar Arha:
    Humans are funny creatures. They go into scientific study, to say, practice medicine and they take all their fears, phobias, and bullshit with them. They study for years, learning scientific facts, proven ideas and then they subject them to review by all that fear, phobias and bullshit and disregard the stuff that has been proven with ideals that are anything but and decide that they are capable of running other people’s lives because it somehow benefits them. Funny creatures, they want to believe in a higher power but convince themselves that they are the higher power.

  192. 192.

    WaterGirl

    @Ruckus: There was significant interference in the Brexit vote, just as there was for the vote here in 2016. I don’t know why they can’t just say “there was interference in our referendum on Brexit; we are holding a new vote.”

  193. 193.

    Raven Onthill

    @Ruckus: Corbyn as the leader of Labour has a problem. Labour has long opposed the more conservative policies of the EU and after the treatment of southern Europe, especially Greece, by the ECB, who can blame them? On the other hand, Corbyn also recognizes that the consequences of Brexit are likely to be brutal in the UK. So, divisive problem. There appears to be no positive short-term outcome.

  197. 197.

    Gelfling 545

    @chris: Bannon is coming to Buffalo – or the outskirts thereof. The original site was to be the Roycroft Campus and a boatload of people had issues with that. Now he’s been relocated to a volunteer fire company in Elma NY for fear of “violent mobs and masked rioters”. In actuality most local groups have decided that Bannon isn’t worth our notice and nobody can figure East Aurora, still less Elma (population 11k) as a big venue for “outside agitators”.

  200. 200.

    chris

    @Gelfling 545: Still too big a town but I hope protesters show up in busloads. Bannon should be muttering to himself while he roasts a sparrow on a curtain rod under a bridge somewhere.

  201. 201.

    Robert Sneddon

    @schrodingers_cat: Britain has always welcomed free-spending invaders, from the Celts, the Romans, the Phoenicians, the Angles and Saxons, the Norse, the Normans, the Dutch, the Irish and Jamaicans and Italians and Indians and Pakistanis and Polish, the list goes on and on. Our standard diet of pizza, kebabs and curry (all of which bear little or no resemblance to their original progenitors) is a tribute to that willingness to assimilate and be assimilated. Heck we even got the potato, a staple of what passes for our cuisine, from one of our early colonies.

    We tossed a lot of stuff on our rise to Empire, stupid ideas like slavery and hereditary caste systems which are still a brake on much of the world, while extolling intellect and achievement. Britain’s heroes aren’t military conquerors but folks like Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Newcomen and Watt and Boulton and Adam Smith and Tim Berners-Lee and Alexander Fleming.

    Sure there’s the aristocracy and old money still around but they don’t run things the way old money runs the US, for example (news just in, Prescott Bush’s great-grandson got elected to a State post in Texas). It helps not having a neolithic slaveowner’s Constitution carved in adamantite to hold us back, just some vague concepts flying in close formation allied to a supreme elected Parliament and a powerless Head of State.

  202. 202.

    Brachiator

    @Robert Sneddon: Farage is never going to be Prime Minister. If BREXIT is going to happen anyway, it’s still an open question as to how Labour will deal with it.

    I’m not in the UK, just an observer. But I find it odd that all of the political parties there try to act as though BREXIT is something that is both there and not there, Schrodinger’s BREXIT.

  203. 203.

    chris

    @schrodingers_cat: Some British are afraid of outsiders but the same can also be said of Indians and Canadians and Argentines.. The world has no shortage of stupid and ignorant people.

  205. 205.

    Bjacques

    @Gelfling 545: you guys should do what my friends and I did when the KKK came to march in front of Rice U (South Main, Houston) July 1, 1990, the Saturday before the G7 summit: wore party hats and played on kazoos such timeless hits as “Springtime For Hitler” and “Der Fuehrer’s Face”. The “United Klans Of America” (snort) enjoyed being heckled by angry leftists—they ate it up—but they hated us. Kicked off the best weekend of my life up to then.

  206. 206.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Brachiator: Not really. It’s a Pratchett reference, about the most successful city on the Discworld, Ankh-Morpork which had been invaded many times but never conquered. Sure the British (not just the Britons from Brittany which make up a part of the current state of the UKoGBaNI and the knobbly bits like the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man etc.) have been right bastards to newcomers in the past but generally three generations in they’ve assimilated like the American Melting Pot is supposed to but in our case coloured folks haven’t been excluded — no Green Books, no Loving vs. Virginia, no Tulsa genocide or lynchings (the monkey doesn’t count, and anyway he was French).

  207. 207.

    J R in WV

    @Brachiator:

    I suspect the EU will wind up forcing a hard exit with visa requirements and customs requirements as if the UK was Soviet Somewherestan, because the Brit PM refuses to compromise with the EU and expects the EU to respect the British Empire, now long gone.

    Eventually the EU is going to stop pretending to go along with that fantasy and shut the UK down, close the Chunnel, slap visa requirements to take a vacation to the Spanish beaches or Italy or Greece, let the Brits go to the beaches of England instead. Maybe that will wake up the great unwashed non-voters of the British people, but I wouldn’t bet on that.

  208. 208.

    Brachiator

    Big-time WTF

    Donald Trump said on Saturday the US will withdraw from a nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

    The Guardian reported on Friday that Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, was pushing for a US withdrawal from the 1987 intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty (INF), which the US says Russia has been violating with the development of a new cruise missile.

    Speaking to reporters in Nevada after a campaign rally on Saturday, Trump said: “We are going to terminate the agreement.”

    Who knew that Bolton would be so influential?

  209. 209.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:
    As I understand it the EU has certain rules about exiting. They have accepted the UK demand to leave and started the process. It is in their best interest as an organization to follow their own rules. And this is similar to when we had secession issues a while back. The EU has a method to secede, probably having recognized that our way was not fully successful. To this day.
    @Raven Onthill:
    Well yes Corbyn has issues. All countries have issues. But the world has gotten effectively smaller while the population has gotten much bigger. We don’t learn to live together civilization, such as it is, isn’t going to last. The EU is too conservative and screws the less rich countries? Change that, don’t just walk away, because really there aren’t many places left that might be self sustaining. I’m thinking none actually, certainly not for the populations that exist and for the life we seem to want to live. Conservative ideas have never been about moving forward, and yet there is no longer any way to move backwards. And continuing to try to move backwards is going to destroy what exists. The concepts of borders is going to end at some point, there is just too much movement of humans, jobs, resources, goods, foodstuffs and ideas. And that movement is going to increase or cease altogether. And ceasing altogether is not going to end well at all.

  210. 210.

    Brachiator

    @J R in WV: The UK is an important trading partner and no one wants the uncertainty of economic disorder. Also, of all the British conservative leaders, Theresa May is the least likely to be motivated by delusions of the old British empire. And she has effectively been betrayed by idiots like Boris Johnson and her former BREXIT chief negotiator, who did nothing during his time in the job.

    Also part of any consideration is the disruptive policies of President Trump, which only adds to instability and uncertainty.

    This is one of those times where I can easily believe that economic policy is being worked on behind the scenes and what we read in the financial press is just misdirection and window dressing.

  211. 211.

    Brachiator

    @Robert Sneddon: Invasion and assimilation in the UK has always been bloody and brutal. And of course, some of the worst outrages have been religious, not ethnic.

    Until recently, the British mainland did not have to deal with large numbers of non-white immigrants, and the worst actions happened in the colonies.

  212. 212.

    schrodingers_cat

    @chris: Yes there are assholes in every group and every nation. That’s not the point I was trying to make.
    Aren’t many of those that the Brexiters consider outsiders in Britain (UK) because the British were there for generations. Filling their coffers and lording it over the natives. Something that is still celebrated in the British national ethos.

  213. 213.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    Major, potentially intractable sticking point involves Ireland and Northern Island. #1 – #2

    Without consensus on the backstop, talks will need to turn to a no-deal scenario, where the UK dumps out of the European Union without any agreement in place.

    There are fears a no-deal scenario could lead to mass disorder and economic chaos including the grounding of planes, transport delays and even a shortage of food and medicines in the UK — a once unthinkable situation.

  214. 214.

    Robert Sneddon

    The British PM can’t compromise with the EU because that would be “brave” and “courageous” and she’d be unseated as PM and replaced by someone like Boris the Johnson or worse (and believe me, there are worse) and any such compromise would be overturned. She fucked up badly by calling the 2017 election that put the odious and execrable DUP in effective charge of Brexit negotiations, especially with respect to the Irish clusterfuck — who knew that having a 500km-long land border with the EU after Brexit would be such a hassle? The Good Friday Agreement is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae the voters delivered to her dining table after the Brexit vote (and note who was the only political party in Norn Iron to oppose the GFA…).

    All she can really do is spin things out until the end of March 2019 and Brexit and then, if she’s still in power, try and fix as much as it can after it all goes to hell (as it will). She’s already resigned to going down in history as the most incompetent PM for a hundred years and more, al she can really do now is keep the real wreckers from the levers of power till that happens.

  215. 215.

    Raven Onthill

    @Ruckus: “The EU is too conservative and screws the less rich countries? Change that, don’t just walk away, because really there aren’t many places left that might be self sustaining.”

    That doesn’t mean the party leader can say it without the party splitting in two. As an outsider, a marginalized Labour back-bencher, Corbyn could say what he wanted. As party leader, he has to do what keeps the party together and supports its long-term strategic goals.

    Politics, it’s a bitch she is.

  216. 216.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Brachiator: The last big religious conflicts in the UK were back in the 17th century, Catholics (the Royalists and Charles 1) versus Protestants (the Puritans led by Cromwell) but that was driven in large part by European political manoeuvering, Catholic Spain, France and Italy versus Protestant Holland and Britain wrapped around global naval trade and clash of Empires. Since then the worst religious disagreement we’ve had has probably been disestablishmentarianism versus antidisestablishmentarianism.

    As far as I can recall we never had anything like the genocidal anti-Mormon religious wars that the enlightened Americans had in the mid-19th century. Over the past few centuries we certainly never had a Tulsa or Ocoee or even the prejudiced neglect of what happened to New Orleans during Katrina.

  217. 217.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    Major, potentially intractable sticking point involves Ireland and Northern Island

    Recently, an Irish comedian on the satirical show the News Quiz had a great reply to a BREXIT related question about border issues.

    You are talking about the British border in Ireland. You know what the Irish call the border?

    The beach!

    Ironically, Theresa May complicated future negotiations when she entered into a coalition with the Northern Ireland party the DUP in order to save her government after calling for an unnecessary election.

  218. 218.

    Brachiator

    @Robert Sneddon: The British murdered Native Americans until the United States took over. Britain was responsible for horrors in the Americas, Australia, Africa and India.

    What was recently done to the Windrush Generation in the UK was shameful.

    No nation is free of perpetrating atrocities.

  219. 219.

    Ruckus

    @Raven Onthill:
    So in the middle of a massive, country wide fuck up, he takes the easy road? Man that’s real leadership, that is.
    Sometimes the hard road is the only road. But normally one has to recognize that there are more roads than the one with the sign Career Ahead.

  220. 220.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Brachiator:

    What was recently done to the Windrush Generation in the UK was shameful.

    But not lethal, unlike, say, the aftermath of Katrina or what happened to Puerto Rico (an integral part of the US) after the recent hurricane there or indeed the Tusla and Ocooe massacres I mentioned above (there are probably a lot more such racially-motivated massacres in American history which just aren’t commonly known about). The Windrush Generation situation is a documentary mess, basically coupled with a doctrinaire approach to citizenship and right to remain in the UK that has evolved legislatively over the past couple of decades. We’re not rounding the Windrush Generation up into concentration camps like the current US government is doing to undocumented people, separating children from parents in wire cages. We don’t have oubliettes for brown-skinned people like Guantanamo Bay or government-run sex torture institutions like Abu Ghraib in Iran. You can stop that any time you like, really, and come into the enlightened 19th century like most other civilised countries. White Americans are too fond of slavery and racial purity too much to do that though, I think.

  221. 221.

    Raven Onthill

    @tobie: Maybe it’s just nerves. But I’m starting to remember how we felt before the 2016 election, how Trump couldn’t win and then he did, and feeling nervous. As before, all it would take for the Democrats to fail is one big piece of bad news before the election. And, gods, the rapist vote.

    Ah, well. We ravens are flighty. Hope I’m wrong.

  222. 222.

    Ruckus

    @Raven Onthill:

    Hope I’m wrong.

    In this case I hope so as well. I have no idea what happens next if we lose, especially if we lose big. And I really, really don’t want to find out.

  223. 223.

    J R in WV

    @Robert Sneddon:

    So, Robert, are you British>?

    I would remind you of the “famine” in Ireland, caused by the export of most food raised in Ireland back to England for the profit of the “landlords” of Ireland, who stole that land from the Irish by force of arms. Yes, there was a crop failure in Ireland, but there was also increased exports to England of far more than enough food to make up for that crop failure.

    I would also remind you of the similar “famines” in the British Raj, causing the deaths of millions of Indians from starvation. And that Boer war, when concentration camps were invented to control the original people who first stole South Africa from the actual Africans, so that England could steal South Africa from the Boers.

    Imma gonna stop there, not that the list is finished, far from it. I don’t think anyone has ever been drawn and quartered in North America, for one more of an inexhaustable list…

    You take care, Robert.

  224. 224.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Ruckus: Actually, wealthy fundies have been paying for their co-religionists to attend pharmacy school for decades, offering scholarships to anyone they can recruit from the churches they’re associated with.

  225. 225.

    Robert Sneddon

    @J R in WV: The famines in Ireland[1] and India and a number of places in Africa too were colonial events, not things that happened “at home”. America’s own colonial past is littered with massacres and famines, in the Western Territories, the Philippines and the Caribbean but it’s what a country does to its own people, its homeland that marks it out and down.

    The only way that Tulsa and Ocooe could happen is that black people, American citizens by any Constitutional test were not considered to be real people, not real Americans by their neighbours. The way the events were whitewashed out of the history books by the white folks reveals a lot about America in the recent past and even today, something Americans don’t like to think about or face up to much. If there was a turning point, a Big Mistake, it was treating the Second Slaveholders Treasonous Rebellion in 1861 as a minor disagreement rather than lining the road from Charleston to Washington with traitor’s gibbets. After that decision to forgive their white brethren the coloured folks in America were doomed and they still suffer today from that attitude.

    [1] Ireland was widely regarded in Britain as a colonial enterprise even while it was an integral part of the United Kingdom, all the way up to Independence.

    I don’t think anyone has ever been drawn and quartered in North America,

    Last time that happened to anyone was back in the 17th century, I believe. I don’t think anyone has been hung from a tree and a fire lit under their dangling corpse in living memory in the United Kingdom. Of course we don’t treat coloured citizens the way white Americans commonly do.

  226. 226.

    Fair Economist

    @Robert Sneddon: May fucked up by invoking Article 50 before she even had a vaguely doable goal for the exit agreement and before doing any studies of the consequences of various exit scenarios.

  227. 227.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Fair Economist: the Real World (as opposed to Brexit Fairyland) exit scenarios were all dire, ranging from really bad to catastrophic. PM May’s problem was that she was the leader of the Tory party and had to follow through with an Article 50 declaration or fall on someone else’s sword repeatedly, in her back. She’s an authoritarian through and through, it’s something that comes with having been a Home Secretary and the idea of giving up the PM-ship and handing off the radioactive hot hand-grenade of Brexit to someone else to deal with didn’t enter her mind. She had two years to fix the exit agreement, after all but she lost several months to calling a snap election — “Back me or sack me” as her illustrious predecessor famously said and the result was not to her eventual benefit.

    Before the Brexit vote less than 1% of the discussion was about the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and the ramifications of a hard border between the EU and Britain, separating Northern Ireland from the Republic in a manner the GFA expressly forbade. Now that the Brexit deadlines are looming the GFA is more than 50% of the problems left to solve (the rest are book-keeping or can be dealt with by throwing money at the problem) but it’s one that will result in dead bodies if it isn’t fixed properly. Backstops and electronic borders won’t cut it with assorted Brexiteers, a solid border between NI and Britain (the Irish Sea solution) will not be countenanced by the religio-fascist DUP who keep PM May in power.

    Reunification of Ireland is a solution but the Republic doesn’t want a million militant Unionists doing to a united Ireland what the militant Republicans did to Northern Ireland for fifty years and more. A Rwandan-style genocide would fix that problem, or maybe mass deportations and ethnic cleansing but they are frowned upon in today’s world.

  228. 228.

    J R in WV

    @Robert Sneddon:

    You arrogant prick…

    I hate it that I agree with you about anything, but I do agree that we should have hung every slave master in about 1865 — owners and overseers and dealers and catchers at least.

    I see you have commented something like 230 odd times in your career here. So almost certainly not just an arrogant prick, but a paid troll, or perhaps just a troll for the pure enjoyment of trolling, which would be even more perverse than just working for Mother Russia.

    But I won’t ever see anything out of you but inane remarks about pie. Thanks to Major^4 and cleek for that miracle tool !!!

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