Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

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

Their freedom requires your slavery.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

The lights are all blinking red.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

You cannot shame the shameless.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

This chaos was totally avoidable.

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

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

“But what about the lurkers?”

Let there be snark.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

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

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

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Reader Interactions

112Comments

  5. 5.

    Spanky

    Maybe you should check out the post downstairs:

    … There is, I find, only one thing that soothes my galloping anxiety, and that is talking to women who are actually doing the work of campaigning. The people who are knocking on doors and organizing rallies tend to be much more cheerful and confident than those who spend too much time on Twitter obsessing over each new poll.

  6. 6.

    Vicki Harrison

    Colorado has vote by mail & I did. On the ballot sleeve there is a way to check the progress of your ballot & I did. So far they can’t verify my signature. I’ll keep checking.

  7. 7.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    Everybody hang in. We’re going to make it. We’ve dealt with worse shit than this before, and while it’s going to be hard and messy and ugly, we can do this. We have to.

    At times like this, I look at the history of Black people in America. They’ve seen shit far worse than what we’re dealing with now, and they just kept their heads down and did what they had to do to get through and make things better. Black Americans have never given up, not on themselves, not on this country, not even on us white people. When I feel down, I look to their history for inspiration. Nothing I have to get through is anything like what millions of them have gotten through. If they made it through 250 years of slavery, and then another 100 of beatings and lynchings, then, shit. I can carry on. We all can. So keep your God damned heads up, and keep on keeping on.

  8. 8.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @EBT:
    I think our only saving grace is that Trump doesn’t have the charisma Hitler had. He’s too easy to hate and despise by a majority of the population.

  13. 13.

    Elizabelle

    Get off this blog and go knock doors.

    I saw the FTF NYTimes website today — all the “Dems should be skeered, they’re losing again.” Didn’t click on any of that. Thought briefly about cancelling the sub. Again.

    Eff that shit. Go meet the people at the doors. Call voters. Do something other than paying more attention than they deserve to the Eeyores and the “horserace — must make this a horserace!” political types who probably pretty much interview each other.

    If you’re an introvert, prepare a delicious dinner and take it to a local campaign HQ. They’ll be in there at all hours, working the data and preparing voter contact materials. They are hungry. (And sleep-deprived.)

  15. 15.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I guess I should be clear here that I’m not saying pasty-assed white guys like me should just sit back and let somebody else do all the work for us. We need to do what we can, too. But when—and I choose that word because I choose to believe that we will make it through this—we’ll have the same old people to thank for it, the ones who always take the most shit and still find a way to help us become a better society in the end, women, people of color, sexual minorities—the usual suspects.

  16. 16.

    ant

    My husband the other day said “If i have to drive down there, I’m not going to vote. It’s too much of a pain in the ass”.

    He has missed the last two midterms, despite my protests about it. Some organizer has noticed this, and on both occasions, (2010,2014) someone has come knocking on our door trying to get him to vote. This time they filled out a vote by mail form, and sent it to him. He sent it in, but failed to include a photo copy of his ID.

    This is what we were arguing about. I was trying to convince him to go downtown and get his ID photocopied, so they will send him a ballet here in Wisconsin. Too much work for him.

    Apparently he can just make a copy at work, and then send it in. So I’m working on getting him to do that. Sigh.

    His idiot brother that lives with us still blathers on about Hillary would be no different than Trump. The last time he voted was for Nater in 2000. I’ve given up on trying to get him to vote. Too much “bad energy”, he says to follow that stuff. To much work.

    My other friend that I’ve known since high school is politically aware enough to drive 10 hours one way to South Dakota (or where ever the fuck it was) to protest the oil pipe line, but voted for Stien or whoever the fuck that idiot was that ran spoiler in 2016.

    People are fucking stupid. Nobody thinks things through. We are doomed as a species.

  17. 17.

    Matt McIrvin

    FWIW, I think I might have just swung a vote from No to Yes on Massachusetts Question 1. It isn’t Congress, but it’s something…

  19. 19.

    Gretchen

    @Major Major Major Major: Yeah, Me too. I started the day feeling pretty upbeat about the long lines in Texas to early vote. Then read Stonekettle Station’s post about the similarities to 1930’s Germany, and Cole’s it’s hopeless Twitter, and started feeling hopeless. Then went to a rally for my candidate in an R+4 district, and we all walked across the street to early vote together, with cars honking encouragement at us, and I’m feeling hopeful again. I wish I could just delete Twitter until after the election. I really don’t think the pundits and pollsters get the amount of on the ground anger, fear,, and determination to change things. They’re handwringing about not getting to Hispanic voters. This campaign plans to contact every winnable voter in the district in the next two weeks. One question on my walk sheet was Spanish or other language speaker. They’re on it. I asked if they needed data entry help since we used paper sheets last weekend. The surprising answer? No thanks, we have enough. Ever heard of a campaign that had more help than they needed? There were a couple of hundred people at the office opening, and a good half of them were volunteers who have never volunteered for a campaign before. The grass roots energy is amazing. If it’s a fair election, we’ll win. They’re cheating every way they can, so we’ll see. I’m going to write a few postcards for Heidi Heitkamp tonight just for good measure.

  21. 21.

    JMG

    I honestly think you need to relax John. You may be proven right, but I don’t see any evidence that if Democrats don’t win, it’s because of lack of effort. This whole website argues otherwise.

  22. 22.

    Rick Taylor

    One of the advantages I’ve gained by being wrong so many times about what voters are going to do is that I’m now completely convinced I have no idea what’s going to happen. I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic. We’ll all find out soon enough.

  23. 23.

    Gretchen

    I got at least one vote for Dems last weekend. I was Door-knocking, and an older lady answered. I asked if had decided who she is going to vote for. She said « Yes, and I don’t have to tell you ». I said, no, of course not, sorry to bother you, would it be ok if I just left you some literature to look over? She said sure, fine, and then got interested in talking. I’m walking neighborhoods with my (former) son-in-law, so I introduced him, and we had a nice chat about why we like Sharice Davids. She told me that I got her vote. Yay!

  24. 24.

    ant

    @John Cole:

    lysistrata

    No go. We’ve been together 15 years, never happens anyway.

    In any case, I have to pick my battles. And that one I can only fight so hard on.

  25. 25.

    Gretchen

    I talked to another moderate Republican. He said I probably couldn’t understand that. I said sure, I’d voted for moderate republicans too. I think I may have convinced him to vote for the Dem governor candidate, since no moderate likes Kris Kobach, but am still kicking myself that I didn’t do well enough about congress. He didn’t think Sharice had firm enough proposals. My son is in the restaurant industry, and has had a lot of jobs that didn’t provide health insurance. We did stuff like making him take a class so he could get student insurance. It was such a relief when the ACA passed and he could get good, affordable insurance on the exchanges. Cong. Yoder voted 40 times to repeal the ACA. Why didn’t I tell this guy my story – he was willing to listen – instead of dithering? Lesson learned for next weekend.

  26. 26.

    GregB

    I think the fascists have weaponized social
    media with pinpoint accuracy.

    They know how to sow discord, accelerate anxiety and foment literal hysteria. One of the latest memes is an old photo of a bloody police officer with a blurb about the members of the caravan causing his injury.

    The media is feeding this story in the same way they fanned the Ebola story.

    It is an active information warfare campaign designed to juice one group and demoralize another.

  29. 29.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @EBT: We were indeed.

    Remember that famous photo of Nazis burning books. Many of the books were the archive of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, which had advocated for LGBT people, and its head had successfully lobbied for more humane treatment of trans people.

    I’m defiant, but I’m not made of steel. I’ve spent the last two days alternating between crying and rage and trying to figure out the best way to fight the bastards, given the limitations of my recovery. (Between work and after care, I still don’t have much energy to do anything else, although im slowly improving week by week. But it’ll be another three months before I feel 100% again.)

    Hoping that I don’t need to think seriously about contingency plans to leave the country.

    And yes, I know that trying to terrorize me is precisely the point:

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-trauma-of-the-trump-administrations-attacks-on-transgender-people

    for transgender and intersex people, having rights taken away is just not a return to a time before those rights were gained. It is worse. It is traumatic. It can have the effect of leaving people exposed because they don’t have a closet to return to. It can create absurd legal situations—if, for example, state-issued identity documents are not recognized by the federal government. The revocation of rights feels violent because it Is violent, in part because the effort is aimed at preventing the rights from being reclaimed.

  30. 30.

    Brachiator

    I don’t know if anyone wrote about it yesterday, but last night’s Doctor Who episode, “Rosa,” was brutal, sad, and dramatically and emotionally satisfying. The Doctor and her friends go to 1955, the day before Rosa Parks, sat down and stood up for her rights.

    The Doctor’s companions, including a young black man and an Asian woman, experience Jim Crow directly as they help the Doctor prevent history from being changed.

    During the episode, one of the characters asks Mrs Parks why she persists when every day is a fight. She replies that the promise of tomorrow is what you have when today is rough.

    Great episode. And this is where we are now. Nothing is guaranteed except a fight to try to make it better tomorrow.

  31. 31.

    feebog

    Dems are going to pick up 44 seats. You can take that to the bank. And Cole, don’t you have some naked mopping to do?

  32. 32.

    Mary G

    Somehow I’m getting the feeling that we’re not the only ones nervous and stressed:

    Secret Service had to break up fight between Kelly and Lewandowski: report https://t.co/Gxpa1Jw4El pic.twitter.com/NMsdEsCTSO— The Hill (@thehill) October 23, 2018

    I’d bet on the old guy, if I wasn’t rooting for mutually assured destruction.

    ETA: I didn’t read far enough down in the story to see that this happened last February, but still. Who does this kind of shit in the White House? Can you imagine Obama tolerating this kind of crap?

  33. 33.

    Ohio Mom

    As someone famous and dead, I don’t know who, said: It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.

  36. 36.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mary G:

    Sheryl Gay Stolberg @ SherylNYT
    Fisticuffs outside the Oval! Lewandowski and Kelly nearly came to blows. Secret Service broke it up.

    killjoys

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    @Patricia Kayden: I am hearing the local office is getting a bit tired of … chili. But all food gratefully accepted. Veggie options and a lovely salad on the side are good.

    We will persist. We will vote. We will win.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    Something to chew on. For the ‘Peoples Are the Kwaziest Animals’ file.

    · A new website called Who Paid 99 Cents will show you everyone else who paid 99 cents — after you pay 99 cents.
    · Every time you want to see an updated list of who paid 99 cents, you have to pay another 99 cents.
    · That’s all the website does, and it seems to be made by a computer entertainment studio called Thinko.
    · The Thinko team made the website mostly for a quick laugh, but people are actually paying.
    Source

  43. 43.

    ruemara

    @ant: I don’t like your husband at all. I can’t believe any decent human could be that lazy, but I know how many are. It’s a cruelty to sit their and act like that.

  44. 44.

    patrick II

    I mentioned on the late night post last night that I had been cavassing for Elaine Luria over the weekend and the difference in the gender breakout. I would say over 80% of women I talked to were voting Democratic, with nearly the same for men voting Republican. Small sample size I know, but still remarkable to me.
    For those of you canvassing, I hand wrote the postcard URL on the handouts, and people who would not canvas or do phone calls said they would be happy to do postcards. People have good intentions, but one lady signed up on her cell phone right in front of me.

  45. 45.

    Nicole

    I’m sorry. And I feel you. I’m mad about everything Russia, too. And mad that so many people are so miserable that their only joy comes out of hurting others. If one can call that joy.

    But, as others have said, Americans who are not white have experienced this kind of America for longer and much worse than us white libtards, and the least we can do is keep our heads up and not give up. We are on the correct side and they are not and they know it. Ergo all their anger.

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    Footage obtained by Turkish broadcaster A Haber late Monday showed Saudi consular personnel burning documents a day after Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance. Source

  48. 48.

    Marcopolo

    Whelp I just spent 6 hours w/ a room full of amazing Indivisible folks writing & stamping GOtV postcards one final time before they get mailed tomorrow. We had a full house, had to set up two extra tables, and had used 10,000 postcard stamps before we ran out. The rest of the postcards will get stamped tomorrow but all told we’ve written & will mail over 200,000.

    I have no fricken idea what the final outcome will be but everyone I know is giving (and leaving) everything out on the field.

  49. 49.

    patrick II

    Daredevil season 3 started on Netflix this past Friday. ( perhaps everyone here already knows it). Vincent D’Onofrio is back as Kingpin, and he is tremendous as the Devil’s Kitchen version of Donald Trump, but smarter (I just watched him call the press Fake News and saying he was falsely accused by the elite in a press conference). And while D’Onofrio gets widespread credit for his work as Kingpin, Charlie Cox is just as good as Daredevil — a quieter but complex part Cox does a great job with. Actually the whole cast is very good. Recommended.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    Psst. Please don’t tell Musk about this lunacy.

    Chengdu to launch “artificial moon” in 2020

    Southwestern China’s city of Chengdu plans to launch its illumination satellite, also known as the “artificial moon”, in 2020, according to Wu Chunfeng, chairman of Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute Co., Ltd.
    [snip]
    The illumination satellite is designed to complement the moon at night. Wu introduced that the brightness of the “artificial moon” is eight times that of the real moon, and will be bright enough to replace street lights.
    [snip]
    The testing of the illumination satellite started years ago, and now the technology has finally matured, explained Wu. Source

  51. 51.

    rikyrah

    Cole,
    As a Black woman whose parents grew up in the Police State known as Jim Crow America…. I have a healthy dose of pessimism. But, I also was taught to believe in America. We are the only group that had to find a reason to believe in America. But, believe in it, we do. And, fight for that to become reality is the main reason why a sizeable chunk of White people despise us.

    And, that is ok.

    The bitterness that I have been holding on to since November 2016.. is that it didn’t have to be this way.
    They were mad that a Black man wasn’t just President, but pretty much belongs on Mount Rushmore.

    They believe that non-Whites are going to humor them, as they try to go back to 1948.
    But, nobody is playing with them.

    Uh uh
    Not playing with them in the least.

    So , pound that pavement. Make some phone calls. Write some post cards. Offer yourself up as a taxi, if WV has early voting.

    This country has seen darker times. Maybe not for White people, but, you know….

  52. 52.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator: The episode wasn’t perfect (in one scene the protagonists take quite a while to get rousted out of a place where I doubt they’d even have been able to walk in the door), but it was better than I expected: it portrayed Parks’ act as a carefully planned civil-rights protest, which alone puts it head and shoulders above the standard US school treatment of the event.

  54. 54.

    Marcopolo

    @Ohio Mom: As someone not so famous but most definitely alive (Sarah Kendzior a local St Louisan said in a piece the Globe & Mail published:

    “How do you maintain hope?” an audience member asked me at the end of the talk. This is another question I get asked everywhere I go. I told her that I don’t believe in hope and I don’t believe in hopelessness; I believe in compassion and pragmatism. Hope can be lethal when you are fighting an autocracy. Hope is inextricable from time, and as anyone who has studied the entrenchment of dictators knows, the longer they stay in, the harder it is to get them out. Every day passed is damage done.

    And there is probably no one who knows that more than the migrant parents who lost their children to the Trump administration, who spend every day wondering how their child is growing and changing without them – if their child is even alive. Time has always been the enemy, and hope its cruel accomplice. Learn from the past, fight for the future, but live the present not with hope, but with rage. Rage, unlike hope, knows no timeline.

    That’s where I am at: focused rage. I recommend reading the entire piece. Sarah has been studying autocracies in central Asia for over a decade & her thoughts & writing about the rise of Trump and what is going on in the US has hit the nail on the head over and over and over again.

  55. 55.

    Millard Filmore

    @NotMax:

    Chengdu to launch “artificial moon” in 2020

    2 questions (not for you) …
    1) will it work as advertised?
    2) what are the long term effects on the human body and brain? I read somewhere that we need more than just sleep, it has to be dark sleep.

  58. 58.

    Cacti

    I can understand why Wilmer wants the Dems to fail, and has gone back into his backstabbing routine.

    I don’t get why Tom Perez is going Debbie Downer on a blue wave at this point. I’ve heard the reverse psychology explanation, but I don’t think it’s a smart one.

    Dems are highly motivated, and the margin in the House race hasn’t changed at all. If anything, it’s widened a bit in the past week or so.

    Some Dem officials need a 12-step program for their addiction to losing.

  59. 59.

    Wapiti

    Just finished filling out my mail-in ballot. Postage is covered this year, but there are also ballot drop boxes all over the city and I’ll swing past one of those tomorrow.

    In WA state we have a strong initiatives system. I usually reflexively vote NO because the initiative system can and often is co-opted by corporation-people. But we have some good ones this year: a carbon tax, an initiative to better control gun purchases, and one that might make police more accountable for their actions. (Current state law is that prosecutors have to prove malice to charge a police office, even if they are negligent, breaking rules, whatever. This is apparently one of the worst states for holding police accountable because of the malice provision.)

  63. 63.

    Adam L Silverman

    Here’s some clarification on the temporary hold the Supremes put on the Wilbur Ross deposition:

  66. 66.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sister Golden Bear: We are here for you. Unless I’m away from my work station. Or working on something and can’t check in. Or doing something with the dogs. Or at the gym. Or doing other day to day things. But aside from all of that, we are here for you.

  67. 67.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Marcopolo: Good essay.

    Hope can be lethal when you are fighting an autocracy.

    Hope is what’s hitting me hardest right now. In the last few years trans people had made more gains than I’d ever expected in my lifetime. And that gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, we’d (mostly) be able to live our lives in peace.

    Seeing how quickly and completely autocrats are rolling back those gains is crushing. Worse than the days when I knew it was it was going to be a struggle for the rest of my life and beyond. A little hope can be a dangerous thing….

    Working on my focused rage.

    And thank you Adam.

  69. 69.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Marcopolo: @Sister Golden Bear: I will not dispute Dr. Kendzior’s deep expertise in autocracies, nor her right to approach dealing with them based on that experience in her own way. But as someone who has spent a lot of time working on how one actually fights against extremists – religious, political, and both – including helping to plan and carry out counterinsurgencies and counterterrorism campaigns from the tactical to the strategic levels, I would argue that the old saw about hope is true. Hope is not a strategy. And to that I would add, but it is essential for continuing to resist and fight back.

  71. 71.

    gene108

    @Matt McIrvin:

    portrayed Parks’ act as a carefully planned civil-rights protest

    From what I understand, at the time the Montgomery NAACP that planned it, did not want it out as carefully planned. They wanted it portrayed as spontaneous.

    They had another girl lined up to the heroine in the drama, before Rosa Parks, but she got knocked up and the person they were going to base the protest on had to be spotless.

    I don’t know, if 63 years is enough time for white people to get over the fact that the Civil Rights movement wasn’t kicked off by spontaneous outrage over Rosa Parks being wronged, but a carefully thought out protest and public relations campaign to get non-Jim Crow-state whites to support them.

    Part of me gets the feeling there’d be a backlash like what happened when Obama was elected.

  77. 77.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I would argue that the old saw about hope is true. Hope is not a strategy. And to that I would add, but it is essential for continuing to resist and fight back.

    Actually, I agree. As Harvey Milk said: You got to give them hope.

    If I didn’t have some hope, I’d be selling the house and my possessions so that I could leave the country.

    But in other news, the lawyer who fought to ban trans people from bathrooms, a guy who’s spent his life defending discrimination, will lead the DOJ’s civil rights division.

    https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/10/lawyer-fought-ban-trans-people-bathrooms-will-lead-doj-civil-rights-division/

    and the man leading the “erase trans people” effort is the director of the civil rights division at HHS.

    http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trumps-religious-right-team-schemes-to-legally-erase-trans-identity/

    #MakeAmericaBigotedAgain

  78. 78.

    Marcopolo

    @Adam L Silverman: Well, if you read the piece (including just the snippet I clipped) she did say that she had no place for either hope or hopelessness. In their place she suggests holding onto pragmatism & compassion. So yeah, no, I don’t think you are grokking what she is saying. However, I am going to bed but I will leave the ball if you want to keep playing with it.

  79. 79.

    Ruckus

    @debbie:
    That’s the entire point of social media for a lot of people. They get to be obnoxious where no one will knock their block off.

  80. 80.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sister Golden Bear: I’m aware of the unfortunate personnel divisions. These are all being driven by VP Pence and AG Sessions. My take is that Pence has been given carte blanche to push his people into these positions. And in the case of DOJ, that lines up with what Sessions wants/believes.

  82. 82.

    Chetan Murthy

    @gene108:

    the Civil Rights movement wasn’t kicked off by spontaneous outrage over Rosa Parks being wronged, but a carefully thought out protest and public relations campaign

    A friend once told me, lo these many years, that in fact, the people who led the Civil Rights movement ran teach-ins where people were taught how to protest: how to act, walk, talk, react, how to protect their vital organs when beaten, etc. And that in later years, white kids were invited to participate, and then went on to become the vanguard of the anti-war movement.

    No idea if it’s true.

  83. 83.

    Dan B

    @Sister Golden Bear: Take time to feel how awful these days are. There will be resistance. It may take many days. Keep posting here. We need to hear your voice and your story.

    Danni Akini’s story is riveting Seattle. Together all the stories add up.

  84. 84.

    NotMax

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The line of human progressivism through history is nether straight nor narrow. It zigs, it zags, it doubles back, it bleeds into cul-de-sacs.. We as a species don't so much march as we lurch forward towards betterment.

  87. 87.

    NotMax

    Adam, could you fix that incorrect tag in #84 please? Hate when I do that and the eyes gloss over the coding error.

  89. 89.

    NotMax

    @The Lodger

    Gotta mention it.

    Former President Barack Obama met with current Chinese President Xi Jinping on November 28 [2017] at the Global Education Summit in Beijing… but he also took some time out of his visit to ask award-winning science fiction author Liu Cixin for his next book!

    Obama has long been a reader of sci-fi/fantasy and has publicly spoken of the vision and impact Liu’s Three-Body Problem trilogy, starting with the titular first volume, before. The series’ exponentially expansive take on cultures interacting across the cosmos seems to have had a profound impact on the president’s imagination. Source

  91. 91.

    justawriter

    I can dig it. I remember a 70s era Doonesbury comic, maybe even pre Watergate, where (shit, I can’t remember who is speaking, maybe Mark and Zonker, but anyway) one comments on the latest outrage from the Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell and (maybe Zonker) says “Yes, but what about my outrage over Attica.” It seems to me we are being overwhelmed by assholes to the point where it is hard to focus on a given asshole to eliminate his shit with the toilet paper of righteousness because there are JUST. SO. MANY. ASSHOLES.

  93. 93.

    lamh36

    We created a real hotline for a real problem: 1-844-WYT-FEAR (1-844-998-3327). In this satirical infomercial, @NiecyNash plays the inventor of a service for white people to call instead of 911. nyti.ms/2CvWDMc

    The video is funny but sad cause of all the truly bullshit calls.

    Oh and BTW, the phone number is REAL. You can actually call it!

    Go ahead and give it a try!

  97. 97.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Adam L Silverman:

    These are all being driven by VP Pence and AG Sessions. My take is that Pence has been given carte blanche to push his people into these positions

    Absolutely correct. And carte blanche to push the Talibaptists’ policies. As mentioned, these and other moves are in line with a five-point plan by the Family Research Council.

    @Dan B: Thank you. I am heartened by how many people I know on Facebook have spoken up. Yes, I know Facebook activism… But even accounting for self-selection, a large number of people are appalled. There will be resistance.

  100. 100.

    Aleta

    That Norweigian guy who died yesterday at 99, famous because he led a team that destroyed the heavy water production area of a nazi hydro plant on the coast of Norway. (Parachuted into the mts, skiied to the coast, barely escaped.). The story I read said they did not expect to succeed and they thought they would probably die in the attempt. (Allied soldiers had already died trying.). Also they didn’t fully understand the significance, full importance of that piece of effort at the time. He was said to have said that several things that made a difference along the way were just luck that broke their way. I think there’s always an element of ‘you can’t predict what’s going to happen’ especially when there are many variables. To me that’s a way of going forward that is realistic and reason for effort.
    I’ve used it a lot in simpler situations, but I think the truth of it is strong enough to continue on here too, at least for me.

    Also, the feeling of dread, the ‘I got a bad feeling’ is actually a form of anxiety, which for some reason is deceptively close to the feeling of ‘this is true.’ So, we easily confuse the two. (Judging someone for that human response just makes the picture worse for everyone.)

  105. 105.

    Dan B

    @Sister Golden Bear: Just watched the POV about Comfort Women, the young girls abducted and raped by the Japanese in occupied territories in WW II. The common theme was these women felt shame and felt alone and isolated. They didn’t tell their friends or families. When they did the emotions they brought forth in everyone were amazing.

    Be true to your feelings and know that I at least want to hear how you are feeling. The power of autocrats is making you ashamed to feel weak or angry or afraid. Please share your feelings. They resonate and echo.

  106. 106.

    Aleta

    @Adam L Silverman:
    She’s offering practical advice, in response to being asked for that. Your description of the necessity of hope is useful in giving encouragement; not at all wrong, but a more traditional way of talking about hope. Apples vs melons; or maybe experimental vs theoretical loosely speaking.

  107. 107.

    David Evans

    @Millard Filmore:
    1) From what I can see it is possible to build it. The technology of thin reflective solar sails has already been flown.
    2) Living in a city illuminated by this should be no worse for a human being than living with bright street lights. When you want to sleep, draw the blinds. I don’t know how animals will cope.
    I would worry that its pointing system might fail. Then you would have patches of super-bright moonlight sweeping over the Earth at random. Astronomers would not be happy.

  108. 108.

    Dan B

    @Chetan Murthy: Ill address this in an open thread since this is probably a very dead thread, but… your friend was right about the Civil Rights Movement. It was carefully planned. People were taught how to behave. The image and message was precisely managed. Many of these techniques came out of Gandhi and the union struggles. There are many lessons to be relearned for our time.

  112. 112.

    David Evans

    @NotMax: My feeling about Liu, based on Book 1 of the trilogy and on Ball Lightning, is that he is a good storyteller and interesting on Chinese society, but seriously wrong on the science. I don’t just mean that he speculates about we might discover (that would be legitimate), but that he misrepresents what we already know.

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