Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

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

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

In my day, never was longer.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

The willow is too close to the house.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Everybody saw this coming.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

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Reader Interactions

109Comments

  2. 2.

    hilts

    Yeah bitches,

    Chris Matthews is back from his 2 week vacation and later tonight Stephen Colbert is back from his vacation.

  4. 4.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @hilts: Yea! Colbert is back!!

    And Tweety can stay on vacation forever as far as I am concerned.

  5. 5.

    jacy

    I didn’t even get a chance to read the post so I could be incensed! Jeez, go get a snack and stuff happens.

    I saw something about Denver booming, and I will say The Boyfriend and I were talking about moving to Denver in a couple of years, and we looked at the housing prices in Denver proper and they were crazy. Denver looked as out of reach housing-wise as California. So now we’re thinking New Mexico.

  7. 7.

    hilts

    TaMara,

    On a scale of 1 to 10, how great is the Tattered Cover bookstore? Have you attended any memorable author readings there?

  10. 10.

    Patricia Kayden

    @hilts: You’re one of the few people who likes Tweety, I see. My nerves can’t stand his yelling and brashness.

  11. 11.

    Ohio Mom

    @jacy: Yeah, I missed the thread too. Just as well, I have enough drama in my life as it is, don’t need anymore.

    What are you looking for in a place to move? Urban and walkable? Mountains and scenery? If I could move anywhere, I would move back to the East Coast, Maybe Boston or Philadelphia.

  12. 12.

    Kay

    Oh, we probably were too hasty Tamara and for that I apologize. I’m sensitive to what I see as the too-easy idea that it’s just a matter of reaching an agreement. If he says more than that, I’ll listen.

    I think we really disagree about policy, liberals and conservatives, and that’s why it’s so hard. If it really involved just tweaking and “meeting in the middle” then someone would have succeeded already.

    But, again, he may have more to say than what to me has become the pat answer “we just need to agree!” Well, YEAH, but we don’t. So then what?

    It’s almost circular to me- “we disagree so…. we need to agree” – there’s the whole middle hard part they’re leaving out :)

  13. 13.

    Mnemosyne

    Hickenlooper seems to be more qualified than the other white dudes who have announced so far, but wevs. I don’t have a horse in that race.

    @hilts:

    I made time for a trip to the main branch of the Tattered Cover when I was in Denver for a conference this summer. It was very nice. If you’re staying downtown, it was really easy to get there using the free trolley.

    If you take the train from the airport to Union Station, there is also a mini branch of the chain as soon as you get off the train, which gave me a nice feeling about the city.

  15. 15.

    JDM

    @The Midnight Lurker:

    What was the post? I missed it!

    It was a complaint that people were being naive about Hickenlooper’s political abilities. The comments, mine included, pointed to Hickenlooper’s comment about sitting down with McConnell and problem solved. And that “naive” was an ironic insult to throw at people who were pointing out that Hickenlooper was indulging in some classic American political naivete.

  18. 18.

    Ohio Mom

    @Mnemosyne: I’d say Sherrod Brown would be much better than Hickenlooper but he hasn’t officially announced yet. I have very mixed feelings — part of me knows we need him to stay in the Senate.

  20. 20.

    Mnemosyne

    @JDM:

    Well, sure, but referring to a successful two-term governor as a “businessman” was kind of weird. It seemed to imply that he was an amateur like Schultz or Trump when he actually does have government experience.

  22. 22.

    Ohio Mom

    @JDM: Didn’t we just have a Democratic President who tried reaching across the aisle only to find it was a pointless gesture in that there was no reciprocal effort?

    @Major Major Major Major: We were in Denver about twelve years ago and went to two different Tattered Covers. One was the downtown one and the other was in a converted concert hall. I enjoyed the weirdness of that space.

  23. 23.

    hilts

    @Patricia Kayden:

    You’re one of the few people who likes Tweety, I see.

    For me, Trump’s 2016 win was an outrage and a travesty, so for now I’ll tolerate any cable host as long as he or she is a reliable Trump basher. If Trump loses in 2020, I’ll be happy to see Matthews retire.

  24. 24.

    jacy

    @Ohio Mom:

    Probably urban and walkable. The reason we were looking at Denver is that DU would be a good fit for his skill set (He works for LSU right now and just switched to Web Development, and DU is one of the few top-teir universities that uses the same set up.) And the fact that I would kill for season tickets to the Colorado Avalanche. And my brother lives in the Springs. I would love to move back to Colorado.

    However, The Boyfriend is a Louisiana native and not certain how he would fare with the climate difference. He has no concept of cold winters and snow….or altitude. I would be happy in Santa Fe, tho. I love it there too.

    We’re going to visit this summer so he can get a feel for the place — he’s never been. And it would be a couple years at least till we would move anywhere, because we’re tied here with kids. But it’s nice to think about something in the future when the present is so fraught.

  25. 25.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Mnemosyne:

    Well, sure, but referring to a successful two-term governor as a “businessman” was kind of weird.

    And mayor! Maybe people not knowing who he is explains most of the reactions. They do tend to be coupled with making fun of his name.

    @Ohio Mom: There’s also a major candidate right now who said he would convince McConnell to fill a Supreme Court seat by having people protest outside his office. And he’s a Senator!

  26. 26.

    Kay

    @Mnemosyne:

    OTOH, anyone who watched Obama try to work with these people and get rebuffed at every turn – Obama, who had considerable political talent and charisma, well, it’s hard to hear. So why would Hickenlooper have more success with that approach? Why wouldn’t they do the same to him? Start screeching that everything is a socialist plot and inventing things like “death panels”? Bill Clinton was an across the aisle-er. They tried to remove him.

  27. 27.

    Brachiator

    @JDM:

    It was a complaint that people were being naive about Hickenlooper’s political abilities.

    Ah. I don’t like Sanders. Other than that I don’t have a favorite or preferred candidate. I don’t even know how many have declared. What are we up to, now, a hundred?

  28. 28.

    Martin

    @Kay:

    I think we really disagree about policy, liberals and conservatives, and that’s why it’s so hard. If it really involved just tweaking and “meeting in the middle” then someone would have succeeded already.

    Well, none of it actually policy, though. We generally agree on ends, and then we disagree on means because means invariably involves some people losing something and some people gaining something – even if what’s lost is control or privilege or whathaveyou. Policy just winds up being a proxy for shit we refuse to talk about or deal with. Higher minimum wage means giving a louder voice to the people that don’t pay for the campaigns of the people talking about how horrible minimum wage is. It’s not a policy disagreement, its a disagreement over whether candidates should be funded from people’s whose interests are tied up wages being low, by people that want those most likely to earn minimum wage to not have a voice, and by those making just barely more than the proposed minimum wage feeling like they’ll be left out and move from 2 rungs up the ladder to the bottom rung. It’s entirely a debate about class because we refuse to talk about class.

  29. 29.

    ruemara

    Oh, Tamara. I’m sorry. You’re allowed to have an opinion and I’m sorry if you felt you were getting a lot of haranguing for it.

  30. 30.

    Mnemosyne

    If different-church-lady is around, I have an answer to your philosophical question from last night:

    Yes, joy exists, but it is by definition a fleeting moment, a peak experience. People who claim that they spend entire days in a state of joy either don’t know what it is or are taking hallucinogens that make them joyous every time they see their fingers leave a trail of light in the air.

    Does that help?

  33. 33.

    Kay

    @chris:

    Thanks. I liked the article. I like even the contemplation of “passing the baton”, and I’m a middle aged, white “traditional” Democrat, in that I’m active in a county and state party and sort of a conventional…person – I’m not a bomb thrower. It took me a long time to get comfortable with “passing the baton” but I’m there.

    I’m simply ready to try something different. Another approach.

  34. 34.

    VeniceRiley

    When Obama said “Why don’t YOU have a beer with Mitch McConnell!” he was pointing right at Hickenlooper, thinks Hickenlooper.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kay:

    I don’t have a problem with criticizing his actual political takes or strategies. It was the oh look, another white businessman! thing that rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed like people had no idea that he was a former mayor and current governor in Colorado.

    It is entirely possible that what Hickenlooper has been successful with in CO doesn’t translate nationwide, but he’s been a pretty successful politico in CO.

  36. 36.

    Kay

    @Martin:

    I don’t really believe that, Martin. We don’t agree on “ends”.

    Martin- at the time that conservatives were attacking Obamacare poor people in the United States were waiting on line to get basic health care in the livestock pens at county fairgrounds.

    So tell me- do they care if people get healthcare? No, they really don’t. Not the same “ends” either. It’s very harsh and probably insulting but it’s also true. That happened.

  38. 38.

    hilts

    @JDM:

    The comments, mine included, pointed to Hickenlooper’s comment about sitting down with McConnell and problem solved. And that “naive” was an ironic insult to throw at people who were pointing out that Hickenlooper

    Given the size of the field, Hickenlooper might be gone from the race if he doesn’t finish high enough in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina rendering this discussion moot.

  39. 39.

    Brachiator

    Any Canadians out there? Funny how what’s happening up North is often largely ignored.

    Is this as big a deal as the BBC suggests?

    Jane Philpott: Trudeau crisis grows as minister quits

    One of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s top ministers has quit saying she has lost confidence in the government’s handling of a corruption inquiry.

    Treasury Board President Jane Philpott said: “I must abide by my core values, my ethical responsibilities, constitutional obligations.”

    Mr Trudeau has denied political meddling to shield engineering firm SNC-Lavalin from a bribery trial.

    Opposition Conservatives last week called on the Liberal PM to resign.

    A number of opinion polls indicate Mr Trudeau’s popularity is slipping in the run-up to a general election scheduled for October.

  40. 40.

    Kay

    @chris:

    What most worries me with “The Left” and Bernie is it’s a big bet, and if they lose, they lose big. Because if they run Bernie and Trump trounces him Democrats will RUN back Right. They’ll lose everything. I hope they know that.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I don’t believe in taking turns in politics. I’ll support whoever wins the primary. If it’s the left’s turn, then they should prove it by getting the votes.

  44. 44.

    hilts

    @Ohio Mom:

    We were in Denver about twelve years ago and went to two different Tattered Covers. One was the downtown one and the other was in a converted concert hall. I enjoyed the weirdness of that space.

    In an episode of No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain visited a huge independent bookstore in Cleveland (the name escapes me) that was formerly a factory of some kind.

  46. 46.

    Ohio Mom

    @jacy: Ah yes, it *is* lovely to contemplate moves and different futures.

    Our circumstances are such that we probably will never move out of Cincinnati but I do enjoy thinking about our next home, after we are done with the suburbs. There are a couple of neighborhoods with good bus lines that look good to me.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Well, sure. I’m for VOTING, Baud. I wasn’t talking about planning a coup. I am actually “the establishment” so I wouldn’t be invited into the coup faction anyway, thank God :)

  50. 50.

    chris

    @Brachiator: @Brachiator:

    Is this as big a deal as the BBC suggests?

    Tempest in a teacup I think but we’ll see. It’s an election year and the Conservatives have nothing much to run on except racism and climate change denial so they’re flinging poo.

  53. 53.

    Plato

    We will know by super tuesday, won’t we? Is CA going to be an early primary state as it was touted?

  55. 55.

    Kay

    @chris:

    The result, he argues, is the nature of the Democratic Party needs to shift. Rather than being a center-left coalition dominated by market-friendly ideas designed to attract conservative support, the energy of the coalition should come from the left and its broad, sweeping ideas. Market-friendly neoliberals, rather than pushing their own ideology, should work to improve ideas on the left. This, he believes, is the most effective and sustainable basis for Democratic politics and policy for the foreseeable future.

    That seems very sensible to me and oddly…humble. Because it’s fucking unheard of, right? Giving yourself a lower position? So your tongue in cheek “unamerican”?

    Saying “okay, we were in front a long time- now YOU lead it and we’ll help” No one does that. But maybe they should.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kay:

    Fifteen lashes with a wet noodle for you! ?

    I was just a little surprised that you in particular seemed to be anti-Hickenlooper because he’s a (former, thx M^4) governor just like you’ve been saying for years we need.

    But I do think that the “white businessman” moment in politics has passed, at least for Democrats, and I suspect that independents are wary of that line now, too.

  57. 57.

    Roger Moore

    @Baud:
    DeLong isn’t talking about passing the baton in terms of it being the left’s turn to have their candidate run. He’s saying that the larger neoliberal project has been a political failure, so it’s time to take a different approach. If I understand his point correctly, he’s saying that a core part of the neoliberal project was to try to build a bipartisan consensus around liberal positions by trying to achieve them using conservative mechanisms. He’s acknowledging that approach has conclusively failed and needs to be abandoned.

  58. 58.

    Kay

    @chris:

    Because, chris, they don’t stop. This to me is undeniable. One policy example- public education. 20 years ago Democrats embraced charter schools. At the time they said they had to offer a “market based” alternative or we would get vouchers.

    But we got vouchers anyway. This week, in fact, Ted Cruz and Betsy DeVos introduced a federal voucher program. Because no compromise is enough, on the Right. They don’t stop. You say “charters” and no sooner is out of your mouth as a compromise and they’re introducing a federal voucher. So it always moves Right. Because there is no center Right. There’s only a center Left. And that means the center moves Right. Always.

  59. 59.

    Jay

    @Brachiator:
    @chris:

    Yeah, it’s a “big deal”. Trudeau ran on transparency, inclusion and reconciliation.

    He lost BC and the Environmental movements over incest with Big Oil.

    He lost Alberta over being a Trudeau and not giving Big Oil enough welfare.

    He’s lost a lot of Indigenous support over the MIWI fraud, the reconciliation fraud and how he treated Raybold.

    In Canada, because of the FPTP system, Majority Governments are elected with a minority of the vote.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    @Mnemosyne:

    It isn’t the “business” part I object to. I’m fine with “business”. I like “business”- it interests me and I like to think I have had some (modest) success at it. It’s the facile part. The “this is EASY” part. The part that says “I am so good at deal making that I can get Mitch McConnell to go along with a Medicare expansion”. Obama was pretty damn talented. A generational talent. He failed at that. If Hickenlooper thinks he’ll be better at it he;ll have to tell me why and how.

  61. 61.

    Baud

    @Roger Moore:

    Well, I kind of agree with abandoning any notion of a bipartisan consensus. That doesn’t tell me what you replace it with in terms of both good policy and winning politics, however.

  62. 62.

    Steeplejack

    @jacy:

    I like Santa Fe a lot, although I haven’t spent much time there. But I presumed that it was an expensive real estate market. Not as bad as Denver?

  64. 64.

    chris

    @Roger Moore: That’s my take too.

    @Kay: Whoa! Democrats coming around to the notion that you can’t negotiate with terrorists. I’ve been waiting for this for forty years.

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    @Kay

    And we (collectively) never learn. Back in my blogging days there was a regular feature under the heading of “Give ’em An Inch And They’ll Take The Ruler.”

  67. 67.

    notoriousJRT

    Personally, I find when one FP or comments POV begins to overwhelmingly dominate, this place gets boring fast. But, that’s just me.

  68. 68.

    Jay

    Reposting the stuck in moderation comment with out what may be the bad word,

    @Brachiator:
    @chris:

    Yeah, it’s a “big deal”. Trudeau ran on transparency, inclusion and reconciliation.

    He lost BC and the Environmental movements over being in bed with Big Oil and weak on Climate Change.

    He lost Alberta over being a Trudeau and not giving Big Oil enough welfare.

    He’s lost a lot of Indigenous support over the MIWI fraud, the reconciliation fraud and how he treated Raybold.

    In Canada, because of the FPTP system, Majority Governments are elected with a minority of the vote.

  69. 69.

    Roger Moore

    @Baud:
    Honestly, I think the way to go is to focus on good policy first and worry about the politics later. IMO, the basic problem with the neoliberal approach was that the changes it made to try to win conservative support weakened the policies it was trying to pass. That might have been an acceptable compromise if it had actually succeeded in building a consensus that protected the policies from conservative roll-back, but it failed miserably at that political side while hamstringing the policies it managed to pass. The best thing we can do is to try to pass the best policies we can and hope that them being successful will convince the public to support the party that created them. Working on our salesmanship would help, too, but nothing will do as much good as policy success.

  70. 70.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay:

    OTOH, anyone who watched Obama try to work with these people and get rebuffed at every turn

    Rebuffed is putting it nicely. Obama was more told to take a long walk off a short pier.

  71. 71.

    Jay

    @Roger Moore:

    It also helps that after 40 years of being torn down, and trickle downed, the American public is far more “left” than American governance.

    Socialism isn’t a bad word anymore.

  72. 72.

    Gelfling 545

    I have noticed an unusual amount of fractiousness in our discussions lately. Not that we’re ever slow to dispute but lately it has an edge. I blame Trump. It’s all this hanging about waiting for the next gross of shoes to drop and find out which will give him the boot ?

  73. 73.

    Jay

    @Gelfling 545:

    Many of “us” have been addicted to outrage and all the endomorphines that produces.

    Meanwhile Big Oxy Pharma is considering bankruptcy to evade responsibility and accountability.

  74. 74.

    Baud

    @Roger Moore: That’s fine with me. I would like to see us move leftward successfully. I just can’t help feeling that people have set their expectations too high.

  75. 75.

    chris

    @Jay: Mostly agree about the rest but I’m not sure about this SNC ruckus. Wilson-Raybold did say that nobody did anything illegal. But maybe it was unethical so I guess I’ll vote conservative for the first time in my life because they gotta be better, right?

  81. 81.

    Miss Bianca

    @Ohio Mom:

    part of me knows we need him to stay in the Senate.

    And that’s the part that should be calling Senator Brown and saying just that. Thanks, Senator, but please just stay put. Jesus, all the white guy Dem governors and Senators can just fucking STAY PUT (unless they’re term-limited like Hick. Then they can run for Senate.) It’s not like we don’t need as many Democrats as we can get at other levels of government!

    ETA: And I’m with TaMara on this one, btw. I am not at all sure Sherrod Brown would be a better President than Hickenlooper. I’ve lived in Colorado for 20 years and I think Hick was a fine governor, and hell – he’d probably be a fine president. But I don’t see “Hickmentum” happening out there.

  85. 85.

    Jay

    @chris:

    Not Liberals who voted for Trudeau are not going to vote for Nazi Scheer, but some are going to vote Dipper or Green.

    SNC Lavelan argued that they should get a deferred prosecution on criminal charges of rigging, bribery and influence peddling, because they had changed staff and policies and they didn’t “do that” any more.

    But LavScam shows that the leapard didn’t change it’s spots at all, and Trudeau and many other Liberals are fine with that.

    In Quebec, the Liberals will lose votes for not doing enough, for doing too much, and because SNC is “hurt”.

    How it plays out nationally will vary. In my Riding, enough votes might peel off to the Dippers to ditch the Cons. If it breaks Green, the Con will get re-elected.

    Have you seen the McLeans cover?

    How it and the other issues play out riding by riding, could lead to a Liberal minority, or a Con majority.

  88. 88.

    swiftfox

    @jacy: 25 years ago state employees in Santa Fe were commuting from Albuquerque. If the other half is in web development you might afford it.

  89. 89.

    Scotian

    @chris:

    @Jay: Mostly agree about the rest but I’m not sure about this SNC ruckus. Wilson-Raybold did say that nobody did anything illegal. But maybe it was unethical so I guess I’ll vote conservative for the first time in my life because they gotta be better, right?

    Please tell me you are kidding right? Scheer, Harper’s choice for Speaker for his majority, ethically better than anything we have seen come out of this affair? Voting CPC currently is voting for GOP North in a very real sense these days, thanks to Harper’s alignment with the same GOP radicals that ended up creating the monstrocity we see before us today. So far the thing I think keeps being ignored about this issue is that there is another basis besides jobs for wanting to keep the most severe sanction which could kill SNC-Lavalin which Trudeau is likely factoring for but is not saying, to keep the Sovereignists from getting a new lease on life by using that destruction of Quebec prestige as well as jobs as proof of Canada’s failure. I have lived through far too many decades of that nonsense to want it back again, and my region of the nation was the one that paid the biggest price because of them, for who wants to long term invest in a part of a nation that might get physically separated, right? But if he lets that become a public basis for this he also fuels it, so he would need to stay mum, and leave it as an unspoken or at most ambiguously worked around as part of the pressure pitches that were being given within Cabinet.

    One of the things I keep in mind about Canada is that we are not the rule of law absolutists Americans are, and that our politicians do get a certain amount of leeway in matters like this, just not easily and nor should it be, else we would not have things like the Notwithstanding clause in our Constitution. That is why this may be distasteful, arguably a bit ethically dubious, but not illegal nor truly improper. Frankly from what I can tell the way Trudeau is handling it is more politically damaging and dangerous than the actual initial matter. However it is clearly something the Official Opposition parties can use in an election year, we shall see how it goes though, I recall similar things over bill C51 which had Mulcair looking to be the next PM and Justin left far in the dust in early 2015, and by October we got what we got.

    So please, do not help Scheer and company, the CPC should be off limits until they remove their Harperian philosophy and standard bearers like Scheer from power within their party let alone its leadership.IMHO.

  90. 90.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Kay: They did that on immigration too. Bill Clinton signed the awful immigration bill passed by Newt Gingrich and company in 1996. It was not enough. It is never enough. Bipartisanship with the Republican party as it exists now is fool’s gold.

  91. 91.

    Jay

    @Baud:

    After decade after decade of having “moderate” politicians tell voters that “you are going to get a shit sandwich and like it” because otherwise the Corporations and Billionaires will take all their money and runnoft,

    It’s nice to see aspirational proposals for nice things in politics.

  92. 92.

    Baud

    @Jay: Glad you’re enjoying it. I’ve never personally experienced the former so the current situation is lost on me.

  93. 93.

    Kris

    @chris: I’ve always had the impression that Delong is an intellectually honest and decent person, who is willing to change his mind if presented with the right facts. On the other hand, I have also come to the conclusion that a lot of his fellow neo-liberal travelers are either corrupt ( Summers, Rubin etc) or clueless, or maybe both.

    It’s easy to talk about getting along with center-right colleagues and formulating “compromises” involving entitlement “reform” when one’s financial security is assured. It’s also incredibly naive to think that one’s counterparts are serious, when at the same time republicans having been starting costly wars and giving tax cuts to their rich friends. This is something that has been happening since Clinton left office, so the recognition that neo-liberalism has failed is pretty belated.

    I think AOC put it best when asked about how one would pay for universal health care- she pointed out that this question is rarely if ever asked when someone advocates for tax cuts, or a new military adventure, but it is always asked when a proposal is made for the public’s welfare, like health care, education etc.

  94. 94.

    Jay

    @Scotian:

    Chris isn’t going to vote for Scheer. He was dismissing the effect of LavScam, because non-Liberal Trudeau voter’s arn’t going to vote for Scheer.

    The reality is that LavScam and other policies are going to play out differently riding by riding, and there are going to be non-Liberal Trudeau voters, who are going to vote for the Greens, Dippers or the Soverignitists.

    There are going to be non-Liberal Trudeau voters in Alberta who are going to vote for the Con’s because TransMountain wasn’t “enough”, and there are going to be non-Liberal Trudeau voters in BC who will vote Dipper or Green because TransMountain is a bridge too far.

  97. 97.

    PJ

    @Gelfling 545: Trump would be an incompetent tool of Putin already impeached and ready for his trials if the GOP had not supported him every step of the way. The GOP is fundamentally corrupt, gladly pursuing the destruction of this country so long as they can remain in power through illegitimate means and are able to pass more tax cuts and get more right wing assholes on the Supreme Court. That is the immediate reason why this country is currently fucked (there are obviously deeper sociological, economic, and institutional problems), and anyone who thinks they can just sit down with Mitch McConnell and hammer out a “grand compromise” for the benefit of all Americans is someone who hasn’t paid any attention to national politics in this country over the last 11 years (and really, over the last 25 years, since Newt Gingrich figured out all he had to do to win was prevent the government from working) and is a rank fool. Gods help us if someone like Hickenlooper or Delaney wins the primaries.

  98. 98.

    Anne Laurie

    TaMara, I’ve been away from the internet — from what I can tell from the comments, I apologize if I seemed to be badmouthing Colorado or Coloradans!

    But Mitch McConnell remains of deeply bad intentions, and anyone saying they could ‘sit down with him’ and come to an agreement with results that would be other than disastrous is … well, IMO, over-optimistic.

  100. 100.

    chris

    @Scotian: Sorry, forgot the snark tag. I’ve been a social democrat for nearly 50 years and the last election was one of two where I voted Liberal.

  101. 101.

    rekoob

    @Steeplejack: @swiftfox: @jacy: For what it’s worth, great admirer of both cities. I lived in Santa Fe from 1997-2008 and Denver 2008-09 before moving back East. Santa Fe and Denver, in their urban cores, are about equally expensive (MSA populations 150K and 2.8 million, respectively). Public transportation in Santa Fe is poor; Denver’s is really pretty good (and got better with the direct rail link from the airport). If I were heading back (and I plan to someday), the Railyard District in Santa Fe is pretty interesting, although the more affordable housing is going to be farther South. Nob Hill in Albuquerque is close to UNM and popular for commuters (it’s 65 miles/about an hour, timed correctly). Placitas is another possibility near Rio Rancho. Washington Park in Denver is very nice, and the rail system makes suburbs South (traditional) and North/East (newer, towards the airport) accessible. Stapleton, on the site of the old Denver airport, is an interesting area, too.

  104. 104.

    Sab

    @Mnemosyne: So we should vote for the guy because you liked his bar?!

    I used to be married to a bar-owner. He had a nice bar. He and his whole family were a bunch of sociopaths. They all had nice bars.

    Not criticizing Hickenlooper, but that is an extremely low bar.

  106. 106.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:
    This.
    The differences in political outlook and desires are actually astounding. Basically the left wants everyone to prosper to a reasonable minimum amount and the right wants all of us to die. It’s rather difficult to have any kind of meeting of the minds when the right’s ideals are anything but ideal or doable. It’s why the hardcore right likes trump, he’s one of them. Their position makes negotiation impossible.

  108. 108.

    EthylEster

    @Brachiator: Is this as big a deal as the BBC suggests?

    There was an article in the NYT yesterday so I got to read comments written by Canadians.
    JT ran on being different. Got elected because folks wanted something besides “politics as usual”. A bit hope and changey IMO.

    But then he evidently suggested to his AG that the law not be applied to a matter very important to his re-election (big Montreal company got caught paying bribes to get business in Africa but JT evidently prefers they get off with slap on the wrist). Some people noticed and are mentioning that this looks a lot like “politics as usual”. Others say “politics ain’t beanbag”. Two female cabinet members have resigned in disappointment.

  109. 109.

    Eugene Hill

    @jacy: I live in New Mexico, and cost of living is affordable and housing is reasonable. It is however high desert country, so more brown than green, but the pace of live is leisurely, and the people are nice. We went completely blue in 2018, and it is wonderful!

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