Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

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

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

“woke” is the new caravan.

This really is a full service blog.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Republicans don’t trust women.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Because of wow. / Sunday Morning Open Thread

Sunday Morning Open Thread

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I am trying to hold the wonderment these children express so well — especially considering that, for example, California would be infinitely grateful to have such troubles — but nine inches of wet snow in mid-November is TOO GODSDAMNED SOON.

And speaking of positivity, there’s this:

Reader Interactions

196Comments

  2. 2.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    Actually a storm is expected to move though California mid-week, though the predictions are still iffy for the southern half of the state. Weather Underground is still predicting a 1/2 inch of rain for the southland. That’s probably just the right amount, enough to put out any hot spots and get some ground cover growing and not too much and cause the hillsides to flow into the Pacific.

  3. 3.

    Ohio Mom

    Biden definitely looks apprehensive as he ponders the enormity of pet parenthood. Here’s hoping it’s so satisfying and all-ecompassing that he leaves behind any thought of 2020.

  8. 8.

    RedDirtGirl

    This is a thing the orange fart cloud said while visiting California.

    “No, no, I have a strong opinion,” Trump replied. “I want great climate. We’re going to have that and we’re going to have forests that are very safe.”

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    but nine inches of wet snow in mid-November is TOO GODSDAMNED SOON.

    My season in Ontario ended with a foot of snow, in mid October. The prediction was, “Yep, won’t see the ground again until April.” That was in ’76. I suspect things are different now.

  17. 17.

    Betty Cracker

    @RedDirtGirl: That was painfully idiotic, as were Trump’s comments about raking the forest floor like they allegedly do in Finland. Stupid, evil AND arrogant — way to hit that trifecta, America!

  18. 18.

    satby

    It’s snowing here now but not really expected to accumulate that much over the next two hours. My suddenly busy life combined with the abrupt arrival of winter weather instead of the autumn we were expecting left me with spring bulbs still unplanted. I have a short window of time over Thanksgiving day and the week after where it will be sunny and enough above freezing that I hope to finish planting them. That’s never happened to me before.

  19. 19.

    magurakurin

    @Mary G: I welcome him to the race. More people should have entered the race in 2016. Let the best woman win, I say, for 2020…cause while I welcome Joe to the race, I ain’t votin’ for any man this time in the primary.

  20. 20.

    Betty Cracker

    @magurakurin: I hope we have several 2020 candidates but worry that too crowded a field might yield a bad result for us as it did for Republicans in 2016. We wouldn’t end up with someone as awful as Trump, of course, but we could end up with Sanders.

  22. 22.

    LaNonna

    Saw this video of the children last week, made me smile through my tears. Auguri to Canada for doing the right things on asylum and refugees, making the US look like pikers. As my parents spent years in concentration camps and DP camps, before making it to Canada (mom), and the US (dad), the scandal in the Southwest really hits home, too.
    Trying to stay calm by cooking and feeding friends a big Sunday lunch.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The immigrant doctors practicing in Trump country amid a crackdown

    Foreign doctors in the deep south have found themselves in an unusual position: beloved in communities that voted for Trump and where anti-immigrant sentiment can be rife

    I know the Gallery Of Doctors wall at my local hospital here in the heart of trump country would be might empty but for the immigrant doctors. Of the 16 or 18 portraits, I think 2 are white.

  24. 24.

    MazeDancer

    Mike Espy can win the Senate seat in Mississippi.

    GOP are sure Dems won’t show up at the polls.

    You know what increases turnout? PostCards!

    They have to be mailed by Tuesday. So today is a great day to help fight racism in Mississippi. Write!

    Get addresses: PostCardPatriots.com

  28. 28.

    Betty Cracker

    We’re having a big family cookout today. Some of hubby’s family just arrived from upstate NY and want to see the new place, plus his family who migrated here ages ago are also coming over. It’s a perfect day for it — highs in the upper 70s, clear skies, and low humidity. My task will be to impress upon everyone the importance of keeping the gates that lead to the river shut. I will frighten them with gator stories.

  30. 30.

    Amir Khalid

    @Betty Cracker:
    Sanders amd Trump have this in common: they are good performers at campaign rallies, and that is all. They lack the detailed knowledge and the skills, executive and political, that POTUS needs to do the job. I know I’m a bore on this, but the public and the media need to focus on these things most of all. (Also, neither is the most shining example of personal integrity in American politics.)

  31. 31.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amir Khalid: Agreed on all counts. The other thing they have in common is a devoted base of cultists. That’s what scares me about the upcoming 2020 primary. Too many not-Bernies could split the vote and allow his base to form a plurality. And then we could be looking at eight years of Trump, a prospect too awful to contemplate.

  33. 33.

    Gvg

    @OzarkHillbilly: they resent that too. And to be fair, why the heck aren’t US schools turning out enough doctors? What I overhear isn’t emigrant doctors are beloved. The ones reporters interview may be, but people vary, some are good most so so. This includes doctors and patients. Strong accents impede communication too.
    Anyway immigration has always been an American strength not a weakness, but fear of it does rise in cycles. At the same time, we are screwing up by allowing college to get so expensive and something is wrong with the med schools that we aren’t producing enough doctors here.

  35. 35.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker:

    I will frighten them with gator stories.

    Something about giant lizards eating people will get a persons attention. Be sure to point out the after dark “crunch crunch” of gators snacking on turtles.

  36. 36.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I was listening to Pod Save America yesterday when a topic came up that Kay talks a lot about: Is there some way to cope with Trump’s domination of the media? The discussion is food for thought.

    They basically said a candidate can’t rely on the MSM to get their message out if they’re running against Trump. He controls what the MSM will talk about, partly because he’s president but partly because of how outrageous he is, and how the MSM is motivated by clicks and market. So what you have to do is control how you’re defined outside the MSM. As an example they offered Beto. Of course, it’s easier to avoid Trump if you’re not running directly against him. So there’s that. But what he did was live stream everything and that worked for him. What would work would be different for different people. When asked what HRC could have done, one of them suggested that since her strength was as a policy wonk, maybe they should have had small groups or town halls where she talked deeply about policy and got that out in new media.

    Then Gillum was their guest. He said he responded to attacks but quickly moved on to what he wanted to talk about and tried to lift the discourse. He tried to say, “This thing isn’t about what he wants to talk about. It’s about these issues that matter to you. This is what we will do for you vs what opponent does.”

    So I don’t know if any of that would work. But I liked the basic idea of not relying on the MSM. They’re not structurally designed for Trump.

  37. 37.

    Raven

    @Betty Cracker: Since we are usually at the beach we have zero plans for Thanksgiving and it we the 2 of us and the critters. Athens pretty much clears out for the week so it will be killing time until the hated Yellow Jackets come for a noon kick Saturday.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    When asked what HRC could have done, one of them suggested that since her strength was as a policy wonk, maybe they should have had small groups or town halls where she talked deeply about policy and got that out in new media.

    I thought this is what she did. I recall people knocking her for her small crowd size.

    I’m in general agreement with the idea of finding a way around the media.

  42. 42.

    JMG

    The media will never cover policy no matter how it’s presented. To the profoundly shallow political media, it’s boring. Also, it requires discussing consequences of policy proposals, which gets very close to the dreaded “bias.” Best to interview another babbling Trump rally moron. Snappy and risk-free.

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: That’s his story and he’s sticking to it! There’s a part of me that says nobody is that stupid, but then I remember who is in the White House and how he got there.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    Ridiculously wide awake for 2:30 a.m., so thought I’d throw some time away playing a game (new for me, but not a new one) am trying out for a bit.

    Logged on just in time to see a message that the servers were going down for maintenance in five minutes.

    And so it goes.

    Tried out a French series on Netflix – Transfers. Offbeat concept; first episode was okay, if draggy, interest enough to keep it in the queue and see if it becomes enticing or meh. Teaser, in French.

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    @Raven: Florida vs. Florida State is at noon this year, which I can’t recall ever happening before. It’s a problem for my family because we’re having a memorial party that day on what had been planned as a 100th birthday celebration for my old gran, who didn’t quite make it to triple digits. So, all these folks are arriving at my uncle’s place on the Suwannee in the afternoon. He’ll have the TVs on, of course — my gran would have been watching along with us if she was alive, so that’s not the issue. But the party doesn’t start until well into the game. Stupid scheduling!

  47. 47.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Politics and journalism have denied the public the space to lift their heads and see the road ahead. If they could, they would learn that the right believes suffering is a price worth paying for its utopia.

    Dominic Cummings, the most important contemporary figure 99% of the population have never heard of, accepts that the Brexit he secured as the campaign director for Vote Leave in 2016 has “driven the country into the ditch”. A man with a functioning sense of shame would have paused at this point and asked for forgiveness. Cummings, like so many of his colleagues, believes he has nothing to apologise for.

    On the contrary, he revels in Britain’s breakdown, because it exposes the rottenness of the Conservative party and its “dire cabinet”, and of Westminster and Whitehall for “the whole country – the whole world” to see.

    And once the chaos subsides, Cummings babbles, the whole world will see a new post-Brexit Britain, which “should be considering the intersection of ARPA/PARC-style science research and systems management”. No one knows what he means, least of all, I suspect, Cummings. But the thrust of the argument is clear: the country may be in a ditch, but its suffering is justified if it allows us to reach his techno-Utopia, or the free-trading “global Britain” of Boris Johnson’s dreams, or has the effect of stopping British workers being “the worst idlers in the world”, as Liz Truss, Dominic Raab and other leading Brexiters once labelled them.

    If you didn’t know it already, Brexit should have taught you that nationalists always doubt their own people, always worry that they are too soft for the macho roles they wish to thrust on them. They see a no-deal Brexit as character building, whatever its cost. This is why the anti-EU commentator Iain Martin wrote last week: “The disruption would hurt like hell for a lot of people, but the British have been through much worse. This is a resilient country. If it’s this or caving into the EU’s unreasonable demands, I know which I would choose.”

    Because of course, Iain Martin and his fellow travelers would not feel any pain, only those people who deserve it would.

    For all their utopian speculations, the passion that drives them is not a plan for the future but a hatred of the present. Any compromise with reality would mean conceding that their pro-European enemies inside the Tory party and the “remoaner” liberals outside had a case. They might even have to admit that we would have more “control” inside the EU than out. They prefer to bury Britain in a ditch than endure the pain of political capitulation.

    “The passion that drives them is not a plan for the future but a hatred of the present.”

    QFT.

  50. 50.

    satby

    @NotMax: I’m disappointed because the TCM streaming channel Filmstruck is being closed down at the end of this week. I subscribed for a year, and they sent a refund for everything but the one month of access I used. I hope TCM expands to Prime or some other access besides Sling. Maybe they’ve improved the way it streamed there, but it didn’t work well enough for me to subscribe.

  51. 51.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @JMG: Yeah, that was pretty much their point on Pod Cast America. If you wanted policy to matter, you had to get around the MSM.

    Voters seem to have reacted to policy in the mid-terms though. At least, I think they did. It can be hard to tell.

  52. 52.

    Spanky

    @Baud: Well, you’ve got a good head start on that, genetically. Of course, there’s something about your (our) graying hetero white male cohort that suddenly seems to be turning voters off. Can’t quite seem to put my finger on it ….

  54. 54.

    Spanky

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    But I liked the basic idea of not relying on the MSM. They’re not structurally designed for Trump.

    I would say that Trump is structurally designed for the MSM. Or perhaps invented himself to use them. He has shown a certain genius (bear with me) at finding weaknesses in institutions and exploiting them for his own profit, like water seeping into rock and freezing.

  57. 57.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I have some fans here, so I figured I’d hit an open thread or two for this. I’m starting a new book. I think cyberpunk is perfect and too little explored for kids. I wrote the first chapter as a sample and put it on my blog. Any readers of mine here are welcome to check it out and tell me if this would be worth making into a book.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    @zhena gogolia

    Here ya go. Been using that link for years. You might want to bookmark it.

    @satby

    Yeah, TCM is pretty much the only reason I haven’t cut the cable cord. I think they’re on the YouTube TV streaming service, but (a) that is more expensive monthly than Sling and (b) not available in Hawaii.

  59. 59.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: One nice thing about the primary process being so drawn-out, rather than having a national primary, is that it makes results like that unlikely–weak candidates get culled at some point in the process. If Bernie beats all the other Democratic contenders it’ll be because they were no good at campaigning. At this point he doesn’t have broad appeal to the Democratic base in the way that, say, Trump did in the 2016 Republican primary.

  60. 60.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “Senator, Why Are You Being Arrested?”

    An officer didn’t like the way that one of the ladies was talking to him. And he said, ‘I could make an announcement right now to disperse and I could arrest everyone in here.’ Well shortly thereafter, that’s exactly what happened. A massive amount of officers started to encroach on the crowd and went into the middle of the circle. I followed them, because there’s a history of my people not trusting the police and not being treated fairly. At that moment, I noticed one of my constituents standing firmly in her place and not saying a word. And I went and I stood with her. I stood next to her. I wanted her to know that she was seen, that I heard her and I appreciated her being there to raise her voice.

    On her arrest: Shortly thereafter, my arm was pushed behind my back and I was placed in the same zip ties that I just asked the officers about upstairs, and they put me in restraints. There were so many cameras and people—even media was present—and they said, “Senator, why are you being arrested?” [The police] knew I was a senator and it didn’t matter to them that I was there for a special session, that I was supposed to be in the building, that I wasn’t even a part of the protest. I came down to monitor and make sure that my constituents have the right to voice their concerns with what happened around the election.

    ………………………

    On almost being strip searched: I had on a dress, and I didn’t know that if you wear a dress that you are asked to remove your clothes. But that’s what happened to me. An officer at the Fulton County Jail actually told me to remove my dress because she needed to make sure that I was not hiding anything in my vaginal cavity. I refused, because at that point I told her I didn’t even know if I was being lawfully detained. And this felt incredibly invasive, and I was not stripping in front of everyone standing here. I went in and I saw all the other people that were arrested with me sitting there all waiting to know what they were actually charged with and why they were escorted out of their state Capitol. We finally learned that everyone there, including me, got one charge of disrupting the General Assembly. But apparently I was special and someone wanted to make a point with me because I got two charges: Disrupting the General Assembly as well as obstruction.

    ……………………………

    On how the experience changed her: I tell people all the time that everyone views life through their lived experience, and this is definitely a different experience for me. The way that the handcuffs or the restraints were placed on people—my wrist is still sore today from the tightness of the zip ties. It was unnerving to see the way people were treated. There was someone on the van with me who repeatedly asked use the bathroom. And at one point he was sitting on the bench next to me and he said he was going to pee on the seat. Most of the white people that were arrested could wiggle their way out of the restraints, but I couldn’t. And they helped him urinate in a cup on the seat of the van sitting next to me. That’s inhumane. That was humiliating for him and all of us that were on the van with him. And we have to do better the way we treat people in our criminal justice system, whether they’re detained legally or not. Everybody deserves to be treated humanely. We also need to do better in not detaining people who should never even be in the criminal justice system at all.

    …………………..

    I’m operating in a system that was not designed for me or people that look like me. But I’m not going away. I was just elected to a two-year term. And if they did anything, they gave me a bigger platform to elevate the issues in our voting system, in our criminal justice system, and make sure that I continue to uplift my constituents. I’m not going away.

    I’m incredibly grateful to be able to serve in this capacity. And I understand that I’m living my ancestors’ wildest dreams, which is why I must continue to fight, because that’s why I was sent here.

  66. 66.

    magurakurin

    @Betty Cracker:

    I hope we have several 2020 candidates but worry that too crowded a field might yield a bad result for us as it did for Republicans in 2016

    That’s certainly possible, but the Dems don’t have winner take all primaries and that’s what really did the GOP in last time.

  67. 67.

    zhena gogolia

    @NotMax:

    It doesn’t work with Chrome any more. I want the “Now Playing” booklet I can hold in my hands and mark my calendar for the month ahead. A book is a superior technology for this purpose than a computer.

  70. 70.

    Amir Khalid

    I have only just discovered that Pringles salt & vinegar potato chips lack the tart, mouth-wrinkling vinegary goodness of Lay’s. Pringles offers only a feeble hint of the taste I expected. I am deeply disappoint.

  72. 72.

    OzarkHillbilly

    When Patricia Fisher sees news stories about Florida election workers comparing the signatures on mail-in ballots with signatures in the state registration database, she can hardly believe her eyes. “I’ve been horrified,” she says. “I turn on my TV and it’s, ‘What are they doing!?’ It’s awful.”

    Fisher, a professional documents examiner from Northern California, has spent more than four decades verifying disputed signatures, and if there’s one core principle in her world, it is this: You can’t just compare a single signature with another to determine a “mismatch.” And you really, really cannot determine a mismatch by comparing a recent signature with one collected years earlier.

    There are lots of reasons for this, document experts say, from natural variations in people’s script to health issues, aging, injuries, changes in mental state, and the circumstances in which a signature was created—a touch pad at the DMV, say, will yield a very different signature than a ballpoint pen at a desk. “You have to have a series of signatures,” Fisher says. “They need to be closer in time, and on similar types of documents, because one signature is not going to represent the full range of variations in someone’s handwriting.”

    ………………………..

    As for what’s been happening in Florida, “It’s definitely concerning, man,” he says. “There’s got to be a better process. And that process is is going to depend on what each jurisdiction is willing to put into it.”

  73. 73.

    tobie

    @Betty Cracker: I’m hoping the party will discourage some from running who are clearly vanity candidates. I expect we’ll see a winnowing of the field after Iowa and New Hampshire but it would be nice if that happened beforehand. I don’t want to have to live through another Ben-Jealous-like candidacy on a national level.

  80. 80.

    germy

    @satby:

    I think Pringles’ original intention was to make tennis balls. But, on the day the rubber was supposed to arrive, a truckload of potatoes showed up. And Pringles is a laid-back company, they said, “Fuck it, cut ’em up!”
    – Mitch Hedberg

  84. 84.

    Schlemazel

    I just learned that tater tots are part of one of my favorite marketing stories. Like bottled water, they couldn’t give the things away in the early days because people assumed if it was cheap it wasn’t good. They raised the price and a star was born.

    We really are that easily manipulated aren’t we?

  85. 85.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    You people are being mean to the technological triumph that is Pringles. They realized that the reason for eating potato chips was salt and grease. So they invented a substance to hold the salt and grease together so you could hold it in your hand. The pure snack experience, no space wasted on “food”.

  90. 90.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel: Over the years I have been self employed during economic down turns. I learned that lesson when I found myself repeatedly getting jobs I didn’t want and usuriosly raised my rates in an effort to avoid them. The jobs still sucked but at least they were worth my while.

  91. 91.

    donnah

    Wow, On Meet the Press, Chuck Toadie is talking to my man, Sherrod Brown, and Brown is eating Chuck’s lunch. Chuck chastised him for saying “stolen” when discussing Stacy Abrams’ campaign, and Sherrod Brown interrupted him immediately, telling him not to make those false equivalencies, especially with a president who attacks the media and Democrats on a daily basis. Shut Chuck up, Sherrod!

  96. 96.

    Paulwartenberg

    I am now at Clermont Comic Con!

    I will sell my wares. I will stand atop a chair and shout BUY MY BOOKS until they shoot me with the phasers.

    Also, I got another short story submission accepted for the next Strangely Funny anthology!

  103. 103.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah: In some specialties foreign born doctors make up close to 50% of all medical practitioners. This anti-immigrant hysteria led by T is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. And is working as well as can be expected.
    ETA: T’s USCIS is targeting legal immigrants and international students also. General Theranos was lying when he said that this administration is pro-legal immigration. They are not. They are being capricious in denying routine applications and extensions of visas (from tourist to work visas)

  108. 108.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rikyrah: If it weren’t for them, we would have little more than rudimentary care out here. They are so busy I gave up having a primary care doctor a decade ago. I’ve been seeing the same Nurse/Practitioner all these years who has been overseen by, you guessed it, a series of foreign born doctors (usually female too) Robyn is getting ready to retire and I have voiced my displeasure with her (who is she to have a life???). The new N/P is very capable and quite nice but,
    .
    .
    .
    .
    She went to school with my youngest.

  113. 113.

    Tazj

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Recently, I saw Brian Fallon, HRC’s press secretary in 2016, make a similar point on MSNBC. He wrote an op-ed warning Democratic presidential candidates in 2020 what to look out for when facing Trump.

    He talked about how Trump controls the media cycle and how hard it is not to let that distract you from your message. For instance, remember Trump’s horrible treatment of Khzir Khan and his family? The HRC campaign had thought at the time that would be positive for her campaign. However, she had been traveling through Pennsylvania and Ohio at the time discussing outsourcing and ways to put people back to work. Later on, the narrative would be that she didn’t care about these people. Remember how she started her campaign listening to small groups of people across the country? That was forgotten too.
    Fallon was confident that the Democratic candidates in 2020 would not make the same mistakes.

  116. 116.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    It is always tough to figure out the right price point. But I do love products that don’t sell until people assume expensive = good.

    The laborer is worthy of his wages. – 1Timothy 5:12

  118. 118.

    lamh36

    Yes Stacey! Let me know!

    I know a lot of talk is about Beto’s improves national spotlight, but Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum came closer than Beto and if not for the now very obvious and very successful voter suppression efforts in both GA & FL…their outcomes might look different!

    “You are looking for me to say there was no compromise of our democracy and that there should be some political compromise in the language I use. And that’s not right. What’s not right is saying something was done properly when it was not.”

    – @StaceyAbrams to Jake Tapper

    “I will never deny the legal permature that says that he is in this position, and I pray for his success. But will I say that this election was not tainted, was not a disinvestment and disenfranchisement of thousands of voters? I will not say that.”

    @StaceyAbrams to Jake Tapper

  120. 120.

    Aleta

    (From the Del HA facebook) The Bidens have gotten to know Major while fostering him and are now ready to make the adoption official. Best of luck and thank you for being one of our Friends for life! ????
    #DHAMajor
    …
    Major was one of six puppies that was brought to DHA after being exposed to something toxic in their home. The puppies were surrendered to our care due to financial constraints, and working with a local veterinary emergency center, we were able to provide them with lifesaving medical care.
    Their story was shared on social media, seeking fosters to help nurse them back to good health. “We’re happy to say all six have been placed into loving homes, including the Biden Family” – Patrick Carroll, Executive Director

  124. 124.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    But I liked the basic idea of not relying on the MSM. They’re not structurally designed for Trump.

    I disagree. The media favors R candidates not just T. The media, even prestige media are designed for the R party and not just the current occupant of the WH. Have you forgotten what happened to Kerry and Gore before that? The media loves to castigate Ds, Carter, Clinton and even Obama got terrible treatment from media denizens. This is not a new problem.
    MSM had started making fun of Beto too, saying he was more popular outside Texas than in Texas. I remember articles from NYT and Politico.

  125. 125.

    rikyrah

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    I never made the connection. I honestly didn’t know. It baffled me how White folks could be so anti-immigrant when they didn’t know any, and then I found out about the heavy percentage of foreign doctors in rural areas. They are so phucking racist that they are mad about those who are there to give them healthcare??

  126. 126.

    tobie

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Maybe the party should schedule the bulk of the debates after Iowa and New Hampshire. We don’t need 10 debates with 20 people on stage.

    @lamh36: Thanks for this recap. Abrams is tough. I really like her.

  127. 127.

    hueyplong

    @WaterGirl: Perhaps they thought he was going to perform the traditional “centrist” tasks of chiding fellow Dems for excess partisanship and warning them not to engage in the dreaded “overreach.”

  129. 129.

    Captain C

    @Betty Cracker: Hopefully someone will go negative on Wilmer early; there are a lot of true things about him and his record which will disqualify him in the eyes of all but his fanatical cultists, who are too few in number and clue to put him anywhere near, let alone over the top.

  130. 130.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    I discovered Marco Rubio tweets a bible quote every day. I don’t know who does the digging for him but they are good at finding quotes that appear to support his position. This pisses me off so I have been busy tweeting back at him with other bible quotes that don’t support him. All those years of bible training are paying off! But now I find these blips popping into my head unbidden

  132. 132.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @schrodingers_cat: That’s certainly a fair point. The question is given the nature of the MSM, how can a D candidate campaign effectively. They have to start by realizing, as you say, they can’t depend on the MSM to get their message out. So what works? We need a variety of tactics because what works for someone like O’Rourke is different than what will work for someone like Clinton.

  133. 133.

    WaterGirl

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I listened to the same podcast. I thought it was great that Gillum say he would address their point for 15-20 seconds, then would pivot to what he wanted to talk about. It made good sense to me You can’t leave their bullshit unaddressed, but you don’t have to let that get you off track.

  134. 134.

    lamh36

    Like I said the other day, all the diversity in the Dem caucus should be talked about not just one popular subject here

    “I feel like for every Native American child who has never ever seen themselves represented in this body of our government, it means a tremendous amount to them,” Democratic Rep.-elect Deb Haaland says about being one of the first two Native American women in Congress. #CNNSOTU

  136. 136.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid:

    I have only just discovered that Pringles salt & vinegar potato chips lack the tart, mouth-wrinkling vinegary goodness of Lay’s. Pringles offers only a feeble hint of the taste I expected. I am deeply disappoint.

    Amir, you silly boy, you know that Pringles aren’t real potato chips! Why would you expect their TASTE to be REAL when they aren’t real to begin with? ;-)

    You funny!

  137. 137.

    Aleta

    @lamh36: She’s keeping on representing the people. Every voter. It’s a national shame that Republicans ignore and refuse the whole point of the job. I’m so grateful to her for laying open this story and showing us about courage.

  138. 138.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rikyrah:

    They are so phucking racist that they are mad about those who are there to give them healthcare

    In my experience, when one is in pain and is given the choice of seeing a funny looking doctor they can’t understand because the accent is so heavy, or dying, they generally decide to see the funny looking doctor they can’t understand. After this Doc saves their lives and begins to give them care that vastly enhances their well being, the Doc becomes accepted, but that’s only because they are one of the good ones.

    How it is they are incapable of extrapolating that experience to the broader world, I don’t know.

  141. 141.

    Avalune

    I’ve been subpoenaed to testify on behalf of the commonwealth against the woman that nearly killed my husband. In addition to having to face her and restrain myself from clawing her eyes out – which wouldn’t be productive, wouldn’t change anything, and would only be 2 seconds of catharsis at best – I will have to miss my work Christmas party. B**** QUIT RUINING MY LIFE!

    Note: Work Christmas parties are not that amazing, the work I do I’d probably just have time to snatch up some food real quick and nothing else just like at every other party/lunch thing. And honestly I kind of feel sorry for this woman. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to … yeah I can’t imagine. But even so, I kind of want to punch her, about 13 times, for each foot over her car he flew? Or maybe 15 for each foot he skidded trying to avoid the accident?

    I’m with Cole. This time of year can bite me.

  142. 142.

    Yarrow

    I know we have book lovers here. This is such a great thread.

    I have just sold a book that we have had in stock since May 1991. We always knew its day would come.— Broadhursts Bookshop (@BroadhurstBooks) November 17, 2018

    Click through for the thread. One of my favorite replies:

    Sarah Todd Taylor @scraphamster
    22h22 hours ago Replying to @BroadhurstBooks @karamina
    The book held its breath. It had hoped so often, only to have that hope crushed. Hands lifted it from the shelf, wrapped it warmly in paper. As the door closed on its past life, the book heard the soft cheers of its shelfmates.

  143. 143.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Tazj:

    Fallon was confident that the Democratic candidates in 2020 would not make the same mistakes.

    Then he’s a fool, but it’s a common foolishness. People understandably want to find some way to force the Democratic message into the MSM, and there isn’t one. You are describing Clinton doing exactly the thing I have heard many, many times on this blog people say she should have done. The national news will not deliver our message except by occasional accident, because they don’t want to. Going around them is tough, but I guess it’s not impossible and we’ll have to figure it out somehow. All that can be managed on TV and in the papers is damage control.

  145. 145.

    schrodingers_cat

    @OzarkHillbilly: WTF? Foreign born doctors can speak English and have to complete a residency in the United States even if they have practiced abroad for years. The popular TV show ER even had a plot about this. How a senior British surgeon had to repeat her residency to be able to practice in the United States.
    That is a significant barrier to entry for many doctors credentialed abroad. A good friend of mine, decided to do a PhD in neurology rather than do his residency again, because that’s what’s needed to be able to practice in this country. People with foreign medical degrees can’t just waltz in and begin practicing in the United States.
    Is funny looking a euphemism for not white?
    ETA: They also have to take the USMLE (Licensing exam with an oral component, to show competency in English among other things)

  146. 146.

    lamh36

    This fool can’t even be bothered to get the fuqn name right ??

    And of course Brown & Newsome were “cordial” the devastation needs govt funds. And we all know how stupid Chump is…and how petty. So I don’t blame them one bit for being there!

    Trump did not self-correct, Brown and Newsome both had to correct him after he called it Pleasure more than once.
    https://twitter.com/janereid5/status/1064107458333831168?s=21

    Hers is local news talking about it:

    https://twitter.com/10newsfirst/status/1064043026857639936?s=21

  147. 147.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    they generally decide to see the funny looking doctor they can’t understand.

    Generally. My mother the doctor has told stories of when they don’t. Emergency rooms regularly get people who literally would rather die than leg a black or woman doctor take care of them.

  148. 148.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel: I’m an atheist but I wish I knew it better. For years now I have had Matthew 6: 5-6 on the back of my truck. It’s amazing how many Christians don’t know their own Holy book.

  149. 149.

    WaterGirl

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    …but that’s only because they are one of the good ones.

    With poor/rural whites, that describes the situation with anyone who is different from them.

    I would say that should be a rotating tag line except that I would cry every time I read it.

  153. 153.

    A Ghost To Most

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    The closest thing to a religious quote I would put on my car:

    The devil says
    The only thing
    That’s buggin’ him

    Is hell’s fillin’ up
    With Republikins

  154. 154.

    WaterGirl

    @Avalune: So sorry to hear that. All of it. Except for the part where you want to punch her and that you totally want to have your life back, because I totally get that. Big hugs.

    They want you to testify — does that mean this is going to trial and that she is pleading not guilty???
    What are they charging her with?
    Might she see jail time?

    This must feel like a nightmare that never stops. Except, of course, for the most important thing, which is the Leto seems to be recovering. He still is, right? I seem to have missed any updates from the past week or so.

  155. 155.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Schlemazel:
    As I’m sure you know, the bible is THE perfect document for out of context quotes. There’s even a verse where he tells his apostles to go arm themselves, if you ignore that a few paragraphs later he gives a furious scolding for trying to use those swords.

  158. 158.

    Yarrow

    @Avalune: Oh, my goodness. Do you have a lawyer that is representing you guys and can prep you? Sending good thoughts for you and also Leto’s recovery.

  159. 159.

    chris

    @Amir Khalid: Here in Nova Scotia, home of the best lobster, a lot of the oldtimers won’t eat it because they had it too often as children. Dad would drop a pot on his way out to the fishing grounds and pick it up on the way in. The lobsters weren’t worth selling but they would feed the kids.

  162. 162.

    JAFD

    Herr’s are ye World’s Best Potato Chips. Unfortunately firm’s owners are major PaGOP contributrs.
    But I am overweight enuf so that.part of diet is only to eat potato chips Someboddy Else has paid for.

  163. 163.

    Betty Cracker

    @lamh36: Good for Abrams, and fuck any media toady who even pretends that was a fair election.

    Like I said in a post the other day, Gillum was robbed too, but as the result of a long-term, structural project to screw over Democrats, a thievery scheme that is in place nationwide. Infuriating, but not shocking.

    Abrams was flat-out robbed in broad daylight. If we can’t be shocked by that overt heist, I truly fear our Democratic experiment is over.

  164. 164.

    Schlemazel

    @tobie: my fav so far

    You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

    John 8:44

  165. 165.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    It is taught to them in sound bites by minister with an agenda. I have seen it done and it is so easy. Take a quote from one place, maybe not even all of the quote and tell the rubes what it means (in your opinion) then take a quote from someplace else that is totally unrelated but if properly edited sounds like it is (and here is where the partial quoting really pays off) and use it to prove your interpretation of the first quote.

    The book is a pain to read and even harder to make sense of. Nobody really wants to read it (trust me, it is a large part of what made me lose faith) and it is so much simpler to be spoon fed bits that prove you are right and those others are evil.

  166. 166.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodingers_cat: Like it or not, a lot of people have difficulties with accents. I know I do, partly on account of my deafness, partly on who knows what. It always takes me 3 or 4 experiences with a person from elsewhere to pick up on the nuances of their voice.

    I remember one incident from way back when I was too poor for any kind of healthcare and ended up in emergency surgery at a public hospital for a collapsed lung. I had a surgeon of I think Pakistani descent, and a gaggle of fresh white faced med students one of whom appeared to be absolutely terrified. Then I saw the scalpel in his hand and I became…. nervous, yeah, that’s the word. There is one phrase the Doc uttered repeatedly that I remember to this day:

    “Ntopfderib!”

    I only know what it means because every time he said it the terrified student who by this point had already cut me open and had his hand half in my chest cavity kept asking, “On top of the rib?”

    To which the Doc replied, again, “Ntopfderib!” ever more forcefully.

    This call and response was repeated so many times I almost sat up on my blood soaked gurney and screamed at the student, “ON TOP OF THE FUCKING RIB YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!!!”

    But of course, I didn’t. I was already dancing with an unanesthetized death, why make it my swan song?

    Is funny looking a euphemism for not white?

    Yes.

  168. 168.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WaterGirl:

    With poor/rural whites, that describes the situation with anyone who is different from them.

    I’ve been living out here for 16 years. I intend to die here. I will never be a local.

  169. 169.

    Amir Khalid

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    Going around the mainstream media is indeed hard, as any number of political groups in what used to be the opposition here can attest. But campaigning via social media campaigning helped a lot against an incumbent coalition in government that owned state electronic media and controlled most corporate media through business proxies. (It helped that being under that control and ownership wound up discrediting Malaysian MSM in voters’ eyes.) Part of the problem in the US may be that for the people whom Democrats still rely on for outreach, social media are not yet taken seriously enough to be made a major part of the toolkit.

  172. 172.

    schrodingers_cat

    @OzarkHillbilly: Fair enough. I am just saying that it is not easy for a doctor credentialed abroad to be able to practice in the United States.
    As for funny looking person with horrible English speaking abilities one has to look no further than the person occupying the highest office in the land.

  177. 177.

    Miss Bianca

    @Frankensteinbeck: It’s when I hear stories like this that my inner Scrooge comes out: “then they should die at once.”

    If for no other reason than to decrease the general population of bigots.

  178. 178.

    MomSense

    @A Ghost To Most:

    There is a company up here that takes the shells and other byproducts of processing lobsters, fish, and shellfish and uses it for compost and fertilizers. I use it in my gardens.

  179. 179.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I am just saying that it is not easy for a doctor credentialed abroad to be able to practice in the United States.

    Many years ago Bill McClellan wrote a column about an ER visit with his toddler daughter. The first thing he said was, “Nobody touches my daughter unless they can’t speak English!” because everyone knew that the real doctors were all foreign born.

    As for funny looking person with horrible English speaking abilities one has to look no further than the person occupying the highest office in the land.

    Absolutely. Years ago I took caving trips to the deep south Appalachia. Some of those hill folk were just as indecipherable for me. Was always happy to have an *interpreter* along.

    *interpreter*= local caver

  180. 180.

    Aleta

    (Yesterday, Nov 17) (OTD=on this day)

    Robert ?the baste god ? McNees @mcnees
    The mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius was born #OTD in 1790. He is best known for devising a surface that not even the @nytimes could find a way to both-sides.

  183. 183.

    chris

    @schrodingers_cat: I’ve been out a few times but no more because my hands can’t take the cold. I’ve been in minus 50 weather out west but I’ve never been as cold as out on a boat at 0C in a brisk wind and drizzle.

    The season begins on Monday and runs until May. The best lobsters come from the coldest water.

  184. 184.

    Kathleen

    @OzarkHillbilly: This is one of the most uplifting and terrifying stories I’ve read. What a brave woman! Thanks for sharing this. I should subscribe to Mother Jones, as it is sterling example type of reporting more media outlets should be doing.

  185. 185.

    Kathleen

    @donnah: Uh oh. Methinks Senator Brown will no longer be invited to Chuckles’ Hack Fest. I hope someone posts that clip inn continuous loop somewhere on Twitter. You just made my day! I despise that Chuckerf******r Toddlers The Toad. Hope some other Dems take a leaf from Brown’s book.

  186. 186.

    Kathleen

    @WaterGirl: Brown supported Trump’s tariff position so because Chuck is so lazy he assumed he’d have an “even liberals like Trump’s policies” “Dems In Disarray” moment.

  190. 190.

    JWL

    It won’t work. Sure, Biden in retirement can feed pigeons all day long from that bench, but the dog will scare them away. He’ll figure it out, though. He’s got the time, now. He’s got all the time in the world. Thanks for the memories, Joe, and for making the right call about 2020.

  191. 191.

    Tazj

    @Frankensteinbeck: Well, I don’t think he was blaming Clinton or the campaign, and I could be mischaracterizing the exact nature of his argument or not remembering exactly what he said. He was on before the election took place. What I understood him to be saying was Trump will say something truly awful and it will dominate the news. One would rationally assume that it would hurt his campaign, like other campaigns throughout history have been ruined but it didn’t. He said that during the campaign when Trump criticized Khan they said to each other well, that has to be a 80/20 or 90/10 issue for us, doesn’t it?
    I agree with you that the legacy media’s criticism of Clinton was horrible and they seemed to only report the negatives from her campaign and not cover her speeches or policy proposals while at the same time boosting Trump.

  194. 194.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’ve been living out here for 16 years. I intend to die here. I will never be a local.

    We’ve been on our farm since the 1970s, wife is from the next door county, I’m one county farther away. We will always be foreigners.

    So, now I’m tempted to move to a blue place for my final years after WV stayed ever red this election… fuck these asses!

  195. 195.

    Ruckus

    @rikyrah:
    Those immigrant doctors are stealing those jobs from the hundreds of thousands of young, white, male doctors graduating from medical school each year.

  196. 196.

    Ruckus

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    How it is they are incapable of extrapolating that experience to the broader world, I don’t know.

    Two words.
    Racist fucks.
    They likely have spent their whole lives being the victim. Of something. And like drumpf it can’t be them, it has to be someone else.

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