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.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

The lights are all blinking red.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

“But what about the lurkers?”

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

So many bastards, so little time.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

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

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

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

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2020 / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Scaring the GOP… White

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Scaring the GOP… White

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I’m not gonna argue with the woman — she’ll do what she feels is best. Although it wouldn’t surprise me if she stuck with the earlier plan…

… Outside of a White House bid, Abrams’ name has been floated as a potential challenger to Georgia GOP Sen. David Perdue, a Trump-ally up for re-election next year. CNN reported in January that Abrams had met with top Democrats about a Senate run.

 
On a different topic, wise words from Marcy Wheeler:

Reader Interactions

161Comments

  4. 4.

    JPL

    @rikyrah: It’s not a given that Stacey can beat David Perdue, and her political career is probably over if she loses two high profile state races. I wonder if that is what Beto is thinking also.
    I do want her to run for Senate though.

  6. 6.

    HinTN

    I sometimes don’t agree with Marcie’s conclusions, but there’s no doubt that no one digs harder into the available general evidence than she does.

    ETA: She’s right far more often than not.

  7. 7.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Monmouth Poll — March 11, 2019 (link)

    West Long Branch, NJ – Looking ahead to a second term, President Donald Trump has a significant deficit in the swing counties that were crucial to his 2016 victory.

    ***
    Just under 4-in-10 registered voters (38%) say that Trump should be re-elected in 2020. A majority of 57% say it is time to have someone new in the Oval Office.

    ***
    In approximately 300 “swing” counties, accounting for about one-fifth of the total U.S. electorate, only 33% back the incumbent’s re-election compared with 61% who want a change in the Oval Office. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the cumulative vote in these counties by just a single percentage point.

    In the nearly 2,500 “red” counties that Trump won by an average of 36 points in 2016, his current standing is a comparatively narrower 58% for re-election and 39% for someone new. In the remaining 360 “blue” counties that Clinton won by about 35 points on average, only 21% of voters support Trump for a second term while 74% want someone new.

    This poll reflects the results of the midterms and special elections. The red precincts remain steady. Meanwhile the blue precincts have exploded upwards from 2016 (from +35 to +53) and Drumpf’s support in purple districts have collapsed (from -1 to -28).

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Common sense in Washington state, ‘Give back to the earth’: Washington plans to legalize composting of human remains , is not immune to a ration of ratfucking.

    The process faces some opposition from the Catholic church, which says it would be an undignified process, according to Pederson.

    Unlike those wholly dignified processes of pumping a body full of chemicals poisonous to life of any kind or cooking it beyond a crisp.

    If the bill is approved in the legislature and signed off by Inslee, a process which could take months, there is still more work to do before human composting can be offered as a service. There will need to be discussions with the funeral board and other officials about the specific rules, explained Carpenter-Boggs.

    Yes, we must insure they get their cut of the pie.

  10. 10.

    Betty Cracker

    I really want Trump to lose Florida in 2020. It’s personal. He eked out a win in 2016 with 49% of the vote and struts around the state as if he won by a Saddam Hussein-like landslide. I hate the way that Queens-spawned bag of shit claims Florida as a “home state,” further sullying our already dubious reputation. I want him to lose the state’s 29 electoral votes in stinging, humiliating fashion in 2020, and then I want an extremely localized category 5 hurricane to scrub his tacky-ass Palm Beach estate off the beach.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Heh: Musher loses huge lead in Alaska’s Iditarod Race after dogs go on strike

    Musher Nicolas Petit lost a huge lead in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Monday when his dog team refused to keep going after he yelled at one of the animals. A dog named Joey had been fighting with a younger dog on the team during a break on the way to the Bering Sea checkpoint of Koyuk when Petit stepped in.

    “Joey was behind him, and he’s been kind of picking on him most of the trip, and he got a hold of him at one point … I yelled at Joey, and everybody heard the yelling, and that doesn’t happen,” Petit told the Iditarod Insider website. “And then they wouldn’t go anymore. Anywhere. So we camped here.”

    Several mushers passed Petit’s team on the trail, erasing his five-hour lead in the race. Pete Kaiser of Alaska was the first musher into Koyuk, followed 11 minutes later by defending champion Joar Ulsom of Norway. The checkpoint is 827 miles into the 1,000-mile race across Alaska.

    Petit said his dogs are well-fed and there’s no medical issue keeping them from getting up and running. “It’s just a head thing,” he said. “We’ll see if one of these dog teams coming by will wake them up at all.”

  18. 18.

    Betty Cracker

    @JPL: I will! :)

    Trump said something incredibly outrageous the other day that mostly went by the boards because of the high pressure hose stream of shit that routinely jets from his gob: he tweeted that he’d instructed FEMA to give Alabama “A+ treatment” in the aftermath of the tornadoes there. The implication being that less Trump-supporting states would get less preferential treatment, like when he moronically criticized California’s forest-raking practices and threatened to withhold federal funding after the devastating wildfires in that state.

    He’s so damned petty that he divides the states into win and loss columns and distributes aid and the dubious blessing of his presence and regard accordingly. The 2020 election results will be seared on Trump’s decaying brain in similar fashion, and I want him to feel unwelcome in Florida. In the aftermath of his failed presidency and resounding electoral defeat (please FSM), I want Trump to scuttle between the private jet and self-branded golf resort (until the hurricane takes it out) avoiding everyone but sycophantic rich douchenozzle club members because he knows everyone else hates his fucking guts.

  23. 23.

    Baud

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    What until the media gets it’s teeth into the scandal about how our candidate once threw empty Coke can into the trash rather than recycling it. Trump will coast to reelection. I for one will never vote for the lesser of two evils.

  26. 26.

    Shakti

    @Betty Cracker: Yup, that motherfucker only got a plurality. It’s hard to remember that.

    Meanwhile I’ve got crazy coworkers who think homeopathy is the cure for everything, including cancer and claim to hate the Bushes because they’re “progressive.” And I live in one of the more liberal Florida counties.

    I was voting for extremely localized lightning strike during a golf game since the various sinkholes have not done their job.

  29. 29.

    satby

    @rikyrah: ? Good morning!
    @OzarkHillbilly: ?

    Much as I admire Stacey Adams and several other potential candidates for POTUS, we need a Democratic Senate just as much as we need a Democrat in the White House. I wish some of them would focus on taking the Senate back.

  34. 34.

    Baud

    Interesting

    Why We Need to Rethink Misdemeanor Justice

    We all want safe neighborhoods, but the way we treat many people arrested for low-level offenses does more harm than good.

  38. 38.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: It sure sounds bad if the Politico report is accurate, i.e., Gillibrand personally received the resigning employee’s letter and did nothing about the harasser until months later when informed that Politico was on the story. If true, that is blatant hypocrisy on a signature issue.

  47. 47.

    rikyrah

    The damage being done in the judicial branch ??

    Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) Tweeted:
    Here’s Schumer on Matey, who’s about to be confirmed to a lifetime seat on a US appeals court: He’s “never made an oral argument before a federal court of appeals. Never. He barely has any litigation experience. He’s spent most of his career as a political aide to Gov. Christie.” https://twitter.com/jbendery/status/1105244788297748480?s=17

  48. 48.

    Bobby Thomson

    If all the money that will go into the presidential primaries instead went toward Senate races we’d be a lot better off.

  52. 52.

    Betty Cracker

    @satby: Maybe! I’m reflexively wary of labeling women candidates as “opportunists” because it’s so often used as code for “seeking power while female.” But that’s not to say women can’t be opportunists.

  53. 53.

    Baud

    @rikyrah:

    because you want to woo some of the people who voted for the opposition. 

    That’s not entirely accurate. You also avoid rocking the boat to avoid losing weak members of your coalition. 2016 was an example of just how easily the fringe of the Democratic Party can be manipulated by propaganda.

  63. 63.

    Lapassionara

    @rikyrah: I sense a pattern, for sure. This Florida sex-trafficking, Chinese businessman let’s sell access to the president should be a non-stop story. Instead, it’s down the memory hole.

    Good morning, everyone.

  65. 65.

    satby

    I think that people forget (or weren’t around for) how the Nixon hearings and impending impeachment sucked all the air out of everything else Congress tried to do, and that it was the Republicans (Sam Ervin and Howard Baker) who lead the hearings against their own party’s president. It was bipartisan, and two years in the making.
    That isn’t the case right now, and a failed impeachment would empower the Shitgibbon. And it would fail right now, whether we like that fact or not. I am sick of tossing away our power for gaining better government on purity crusades. Impeachment won’t throw him in jail, may strengthen his party, and will distract (right now) from countering the worst excesses of this corrupt administration. Nancy Smash didn’t take impeachment off the table, she tabled it until the time is right.

  66. 66.

    mrmoshpotato

    @rikyrah: Wow. That’s a hell of a chunk of change for someone who is so so horrible at her job. And she can’t even be bothered to be a lying POS on a regular basis. We get the rare appearance instead of completely ignoring questions on a schedule.

    The exchange with Jim Acosta the other day really was something. SNL couldn’t even fever dream up answering a question about toxic rhetoric with ‘I can’t believe the other side loves murderiñg babies so much!’

    “And would you like a soup or salad for your side?”
    “Oak really is the best wood for kitchen cabinets!”

  67. 67.

    hueyplong

    @Betty Cracker: Left unsaid in your posts is the happy consequence that an electoral rebuke in FL might cause him to avoid ever returning, even if the hoped-for Category 5 fails to materialize at his resort.

    If, nevertheless, the storm does come, I’d like to think that President Harris would appear on the scene to toss paper towels to the temporarily de-housed millionaires and Chinese lobbyists.

  68. 68.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    Boeing confirmed late on Monday it will deploy a software upgrade to the 737 Max 8 — the model that crashed on Sunday in Ethiopia and six months ago in Indonesia — making the announcement a few hours after the Federal Aviation Administration said it would mandate “design changes” in the aircraft by April. Source

  70. 70.

    gvg

    @satby: Nope. She has paid a price more often than gained support over pursuing this for many years. She started before it was popular and has taken a consistant position even when it was more advantagous not to i.e. military harassment and Al Franken. I suspect she won’t get any traction as a Presidential candidate specifically because she was the lead face against Franken and quite a few people including women hold that against her.
    Probably she just screwed up this time. I don’t know, I’m only sure it’s not just opportunism on an issue.

  71. 71.

    eclare

    @satby: Agree. Let the House investigations drip, drip, drip, as we pass legislation and force Rethug members to vote. A failed impeachment would only strengthen POS, just in time for 2020.

    TL;DR, I trust Nancy.

  73. 73.

    NotMax

    For the ‘Is it live or is it Memorex’ file, smart phone be dumb.

    Here’s another friendly reminder that if your Android phone doesn’t have some kind of special hardware for face unlock, the feature probably isn’t very secure. The latest phone to implement face unlock with nothing but the normal front camera is the Galaxy S10, and users across the Web are reporting that the feature is easily confused or defeated.

    There are a number of reports that say—surprise!—a 2D image sensor can be fooled by a 2D image. The Verge was able to unlock the device with a video, and YouTube channel Unbox Therapy was able to unlock the S10 just by playing one of its public channel videos in view of the camera. The worst example is probably from AndroidWorld.it, which was able to unlock the Galaxy S10 by waving a still photo around in front of the device.

    The Galaxy S10 can also reportedly have trouble telling different people apart. Security Researcher Jane Wong was able to unlock her brother’s phone with her face. Source

  74. 74.

    satby

    @gvg: I haven’t paid enough attention to her and she only would get my support as last standing Democrat after the primaries, but for her to ignore the issue in her own office until her staffer felt she had to resign? At best that’s really poor management if not hypocrisy, and Presidents need to be very good managers.

  75. 75.

    Betty Cracker

    @gvg: Good points. Soros and other major donors said they wouldn’t donate a dime to Gillibrand if she wins the nomination specifically because they blame her for taking Franken out. If she’s an opportunist on this issue, she’s miscalculated at every turn. Highlighting harassment in the military probably wasn’t a huge vote generator either.

  76. 76.

    Another Scott

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t know enough about the details, but I’m always suspicious of Politico (for good or ill).

    Newsday followup.

    Malik initially was demoted. However, he was fired last week after further allegations surfaced, according to Gillibrand communications director Whitney Mitchell Brennan. The termination also came after Politico said it inquired about the initial complaint.

    “At every step of the process, immediate action was taken by the office,” Brennan said in a statement. “The previous allegations in question were investigated in consultation with Senate Employment Counsel, and included multiple interviews with relevant current employees who could potentially corroborate the claims. A full and thorough investigation into the evidence revealed employee misconduct that, while inappropriate, did not meet the standard for sexual harassment. However, because the office did find unprofessional behavior that violated office policy, including derogatory comments, the office took strong disciplinary action against the employee in question and he was given a final warning.”

    Brennan continued: “Recently, we learned of never-before reported and deeply troubling comments allegedly made by this same individual. The office immediately began another investigation and interviewed relevant witnesses, which has led to the office terminating the employee from staff last week.”

    Politico didn’t name the aide who said she resigned in protest. But it did publish her resignation letter, dated Aug. 30, 2018. In it, she says she informed Gillibrand’s chief of staff, Jess Fassler, and deputy chief of staff, Anne Bradley, and initially stayed on because she “felt satisfied that there had been a fair process.”

    But later she said she was leaving because of “how poorly the investigation and post-investigation was handled.” She also cited Gillibrand’s profile as someone fighting sexual misconduct in Congress and the military.

    Interpreting snippets is dangerous. I don’t know what caused her to change her mind about the process, but Gillibrand apparently had a process and did take action. Whether they were enough and timely enough, I can’t say.

    Things like this are (understandably) a litmus test for voters. Sexual harassment cannot be tolerated. And, ultimately, it wasn’t in her office.

    We’re going to be ruthless in vetting our candidates. Let’s not throw them overboard too soon – it’s still early.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    I don’t like her as a presidential candidate, and, honestly, I don’t think she’s catching fire with voters so this probably takes care of itself, but this is important:

    A full and thorough investigation into the evidence revealed employee misconduct that, while inappropriate, did not meet the standard for sexual harassment.

    There is a standard:

    The United States’ Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) defines workplace sexual harassment as “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature .

    There has to be process. I HOPE he wasn’t fired because of an allegation or because this is her “signature issue” – that would be bad. THAT would be horribly and irredeemably “opportunistic”. There has to be something in between Fox News “hire and promote people for sexual harassment” and “fire anyone on an allegation”. We really don’t have to choose between those two bad things.

  83. 83.

    Peale

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: regarding these swing counties, I wonder how many of them just go anti presidents party every election. These are either the most petulantly angry voters or the most thoughtless…the kinds who just split their tickets to “keep them honest”.

  84. 84.

    geg6

    @satby:

    THIS. THIS. THIS.

    @satby:

    Also this. It’s not as if she hasn’t shown, in her many, many, many policy flips, that she’s completely ready to change her strongly held convictions with the speed of light if it will further her ambitions. I find her completely untrustworthy and uncharismatic. Glad to see she is not getting any traction and it is very revealing that not a single member of the New York delegation has endorsed her. There is a reason for that and her defenders don’t want to talk about it. Al Franken must be laughing his ass off. Or trying to find ways to not want to murder someone. One or the other.

  85. 85.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker: Speaking as an atheist I feel the need to point out that there is not much truth in the gospels. The “truths” the gospels speak of are mostly aspirational.

  86. 86.

    Patricia Kayden

    @JPL: And thankfully Trump has given Democrats and Independents more than enough reason to come out and vote against him in 2020. I keep hearing from people about how they got lower tax refunds and it pisses them off. Just one more reason to hate Republicans.

  87. 87.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay:

    There has to be something in between Fox News “hire and promote people for sexual harassment” and “fire anyone on an allegation”. We really don’t have to choose between those two bad things.

    QFT.

  88. 88.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Speaking of the Bible: South African man escapes jaws of whale

    Just before he jumped in the water he was heard to say, “Hold my beer. Watch this!”

    Like the Bible’s Jonah, a South African marine conservationist has narrowly survived after being caught in the jaws of a whale.

    Rainer Schimpf, 51, was swept into the mouth of a large Bryde’s whale off the coast of the South African town of Port Elizabeth while snorkelling and filming a sardine run last month.

    “Looming up out of darkness below came a Bryde’s whale shooting up into the ball of fish, gulping all in its path,” he told AFP, adding that his legs were hanging from the mammal’s mouth during the incident at the end of February.

    Schimpf’s wife, Silke, and a photographer watched on in horror from their boat, chartered to watch the sardine run, which creates a marine feeding frenzy off Africa’s southern coast.

    “I felt some pressure around my waist and I immediately knew what had happened. [It] accidentally included me in its mouth together with its main meal – the sardines.”
    …………………………….
    “[Then] the whale realised its mistake and opened its mouth, releasing me. I was washed out with what felt like tonnes of water from its mouth,” he said.

    Florida relatives did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.

  93. 93.

    Nicole

    So I gather the same folk angry that Al Franken didn’t stick around long enough to get due process as a Senator are going to scream how dare an employee have gotten due process before getting fired.

    I like Gillibrand fine (full disclosure, with the exception of Gabbard I range from “quite like” to “am perfectly fine with” all the woman candidates), but I think this will hurt because it sounds like it’s complicated to explain and voters, Dems and Pubs alike, don’t like things they have to listen to for more than five seconds. Look at how many continue to assume she was singlehandedly responsible for Al Franken announcing his resignation (letting Warren and Harris completely off the hook for doing EXACTLY the same thing Gillibrand did, just not first). And completely ignoring the fact that Franken could have stuck around for due process if he’d really wanted to; he CHOSE to resign. No one put a gun to his head.

    Ultimately, Gillibrand won’t be the nominee because she reminds people too much of Hillary- blonde, chubby, voice register definitely in the female zone. It’s not about her policies; she’s just the one we’ve picked to vent our misogyny on. She changed her positions! What an opportunist! Never mind Warren was a Republican until the late 1990s. (That’s just to cite an example; as a realist, I don’t care if politician’s policies change, as long as the change goes in the direction towards greater equality) But this’ll hurt her, if not end her candidacy. For the party, not a big deal; we have a good slate of candidates that we could lose several and still have good ones left, but make no mistake, the knee-jerk reactions against her have little to do with her actual voting record and a lot to do with misogyny.

  96. 96.

    StringOnAStick

    I have a bit of anecdotal evidence (screw you kindle for not letting me combine those two works, you spelling authoritarian). My friends the 70 year old couple who we’re all in for Wilmer and bought the “he was robbed” crap well past the final election told me last week that they are totally over him because they so like Inslee. Their rational is that without aggressive action on climate change,none of the other plans and proposals will mean anything. Having your first grandchild can focus the mind and I hope the links I sent her about Vlad’s boys trying to split the left with misinformation helped too.

  97. 97.

    scav

    @satby: This is also day two of front page and elsewhere debate about impeachment where some journalists have rediscovered their rolodexes of Democrats-on-the-street. Bottom-up non-support for the Orange one is being covered? Horrors! That should rattle a few cages or upset a few narratives.

  98. 98.

    H.E.Wolf

    @satby:

    I think that people forget (or weren’t around for) how the Nixon hearings and impending impeachment sucked all the air out of everything else Congress tried to do, and that it was the Republicans (Sam Ervin and Howard Baker) who lead the hearings against their own party’s president. It was bipartisan, and two years in the making.

    You’re right about the eventual bipartisan nature of the decision to recommend impeachment in 1974, and about the two years it took for evidence to be revealed that produced that result.

    Sam Ervin, the Committee Chairman, was a Democrat in a majority-Democratic Senate. According to a memoir of the hearings by one of Ervin’s staff lawyers, Howard Baker (the Republican ranking member) conducted a lot of sabotage behind the scenes while looking all honorable and virtuous in front of the TV cameras in the hearings room. [ETA: Samuel Dash, 1976 memoir, “Chief Counsel: Inside the Ervin Committee”.]

    I was too young to be aware of the disruption to other Congressional activity in 1974, though I was very aware of it during the Bill Clinton impeachment process.

    At this moment in March, 2019, my focus is on (1) voter enfranchisement and (2) winning both houses of Congress in 2020.

    The current president deserves imprisonment for his crimes. I’d be satisfied with that. It has most of the same letters as impeachment and much worse lodging conditions.

  100. 100.

    tobie

    @Nicole: I actually do have problems with the fact that Warren was a Republican until the late 1990s and apparently supported Reagan. I cannot square that one bit with the anti-corporatist, pro-labor populist she has become. I was in high school when Reagan was elected and even I knew how bad he was for workers. Decimating the air traffic controllers union and eviscerating the social safety net were defining aspects of his Presidency.

  101. 101.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    Driving home after a doctor’s appointment, I listened to Glenn Beck’s outrage over Carlson’s remarks. FREEDOM OF SPEECH! CAN’T YOU SOCIALISTS TELL WHEN SOMEONE IS JOKING? Then it came out that someone at Media Matters had done something to Glenn Beck years ago.

  102. 102.

    geg6

    @Nicole:

    Yeah, because I’m a big old woman hater.

    I actually haven’t decided on anyone as a nominee. Currently, of the ones who have announced, I like Harris and Booker (and it just may be that I have residual love for him from when I first discovered him in the first decade of the century). I am only adamantly against Gillibrand, Sanders and Gabbard.

  103. 103.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    this is apparently based on a speech Biden didn’t deliver, so a purposeful leak, a sort of test drive. I’m surprised Biden’s going in on free college and not some kind of M4A public option. I just would’ve thought health care reform, short of SP, would be his big fuckin’ deal

    reg Sargent @ ThePlumLineGS
    Joe Biden appears set to enter the race. Per @mikememoli, his agenda will include:
    $15 minimum wage
    Free public college
    Tax hike on privileged investment income
    Big infrastructure spending package
    But: No Medicare-for-all. Green New Deal unclear.

  104. 104.

    debbie

    Again, it’s Glenn Beck, but he’s denouncing Omar because (he says) she is fund raising for a sister group of Hamas.

  105. 105.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @StringOnAStick: I’m thinking of sending Inslee some money just to promote climate as an issue, I don’t think he has a chance (I have gotten just about every primary wrong for the last ten years)

  108. 108.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debbie: you just gave me a premonition of tonight’s Maddow show opening: “Thank you, my friend” to Chris Hayes, then “We’ve got a lot big news to get tonight, an interview with Dem primary candidate X…. but first!” big hand clap “Char-Lie TREE! Does that name mean anything to you? [giggle] Back in the nineties, Charlie Tree was….”

    After five minutes we’ll get to the connection of Tree and Clinton, and five minutes after that the parallels to Ms Yang

    ETA: @Gin & Tonic: there’s a lot of talk of a one term pledge, I don’t know how that would play, much less if he would do it

  110. 110.

    rikyrah

    I’m not being a smartypants, but, what’s the difference between a bribe, and the usual ‘generous donation to the school’, like the one that got Jared Kushner into Harvard?

    Actresses, CEOs arrested in nationwide college admissions cheating scam
    By AARON KATERSKY BILL HUTCHINSON
    Mar 12, 2019, 10:22 AM EST

    Actresses and chief executives are among 50 people arrested in a nationwide college admissions cheating scam, according to court records unsealed in Boston Tuesday.

    Those indicted allegedly paid bribes of up to $6 million to get their children into elite colleges, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and the University of Southern California, federal prosecutors said.

    In most cases the students did not know their admission was contingent on a bribe, officials said.

  111. 111.

    Renie

    @rikyrah: Wasn’t there talk she was going to leave at the end of last year? I guess she couldn’t get another job cuz no one wanted to hire her.

  113. 113.

    waratah

    @rikyrah: I think she has this wrong. The Republicans started on Beto right after the election. They are worried that he will turn Texas blue if he is the nominee. They noticed he was able to get the independent vote as well as a lot of Republicans vote. Just not enough yet. A recent poll in Texas showed he was right there with Trump.

  114. 114.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @rikyrah:

    Matthew Yglesias @ mattyglesias
    -Did they not realize that there are totally legal ways of doing this?

    -You launch a discussion with the development office about making a large contribution in exchange for naming rights to something to something or other.
    At the same time, your kid applies.
    You don’t need to explicitly link the two.

    -Next thing you know your son is off to the races calling plumbers between classes and otherwise impressing the world with his business savvy.

    Yglesias was at Harvard with Kushner, that last is a reference to Jared claiming to been a college “entrepreneur” because he used some of his trust fund to buy rental properties in the Boston suburbs. He offered up calling plumbers between classes as an example of his MOTU mastery.

  115. 115.

    gene108

    Reading a book about Jimmy Carter wrote about growing up during the Great Depression, in rural SW Georgia. When the New Deal laws kicked in that forced farmers to plow under some of their crop, in order to stabilize crop prices, his father never forgave FDR for forcing him to waste cropland, and never voted for FDR again.

    Also, the New Deal was giving remittances to people there, so they would have some money. A lot of attitudes could be ripped from today’s headlines about paying people not to work, and how lazy blacks are and paying them a stipend to survive was just going to make them lazier.

    It’s interesting how somethings never really change.

  116. 116.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah:

    I’m not being a smartypants, but, what’s the difference between a bribe, and the usual ‘generous donation to the school’, like the one that got Jared Kushner into Harvard?

    I read the article you linked to, and I’d say there is a big difference. Paying 500k to have your kid listed as a recruit for the crew team (when she doesn’t crew) so she can get in seems a lot different than giving 500k for a building or for The Center for Whatever It Is That You Care About.

    edit: Or, what our Foolish Literalist said at #114.

  120. 120.

    bemused

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Meghan McCain and Ben Sasse wrote an opinion piece in WSJ about protecting babies who survive abortions. She has freaked out about that on the View but then she is always freaking out on the View which rawstory reports ad nauseam. Rawstory goes overboard with story title embellishments but Meghan seems to be on the verge of a major meltdown and should take a long time out.

  121. 121.

    Betty Cracker

    @geg6: Nicole is right, though. That’s not to say non-misogynist, good-faith critiques of Gillibrand cannot exist; I don’t think Nicole was excluding that possibility. But IMO, 90% of the invective hurled at Gillibrand is of the knee-jerk variety Nicole called out — probably 99.5% if the platform is Twitter. I hold no brief for Gillibrand, but the pile-ons she attracts set off the same alarm bells for me as the bullshit flung at Clinton in 2016.

    Shorter: if the shoe don’t fit, don’t wear it, but Nicole is right that a lot of the anti-Gillibrand sentiment is sexist, and it’s worth noticing even if you aren’t particularly a fan of Gillibrand because that same pile of garbage will eventually land on a woman you do support. Again.

  122. 122.

    tam1MI

    @Kay: “Unwelcome sexual advances”, “Requests for sexual favors”, “Verbal conduct of a sexual nature” are EXACTLY the things the woman who quit documented and had other witnesses to corroborate. Gillibrand’s office saying otherwise is a lie.

  123. 123.

    Baud

    @bemused:

    Meghan McCain and Ben Sasse wrote an opinion piece in WSJ about protecting babies who survive abortions. 

    By giving them universal health care?

  126. 126.

    Nicole

    @geg6: So you’re okay with Harris having called on Franken to resign, then? Because she did it less than an hour after Gillibrand. Why is it okay with you that Harris demanded Franken resign and not okay that Gillibrand did?

    (Also, FYI, unless I’m calling a person out specifically, my comments are not directed at any specific person. That’s on you that you assumed I was calling you, specifically, a woman-hater.)

    But I am specifically asking you why you’re okay with Harris having called on Franken to resign and not okay with Gillibrand having done it, and I am sincerely curious as to what the difference is for you.

  128. 128.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    the ultimate “root for injuries!” twitter/media spat

    POLITICO @ politico
    Donald Trump Jr. lashed out at Dick Cheney for criticizing the Trump administration’s foreign policy at a private interview with Vice President Mike Pence over the weekend

    “Isn’t it fitting that Cheney is the one mad that Trump is ending his reckless and endless wars?” Trump Jr. tweeted. “I never knew peace would be so unpopular!”

    He should watch his ass. I think Liz Cheney could snap his spine like a dry twig just based on sheer, concentrated mean.

  131. 131.

    tam1MI

    @Nicole: Gillibrand’s apologists really need to stop talking out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to what she did to Al Franken, because the hypocrisy of their arguments is glaring. Either the woman is the Brave Heroine Who Took The Lead On Getting Rid Of That Monster, Al Franken, as they were originally flogging her as, or she was just another lemming charging over the cliff. Pick a lane.

  134. 134.

    tam1MI

    @Baud: I’ve been here a while., thank you. (Can’t exactly blame you for thinking I’m a newcomer what with all the rolls popping out of the woodwork lately). The assertions are from the Politico article, it’s worth reading in full.

  135. 135.

    Nicole

    @tam1MI: I think she’s the one who took the heat for something the Senate women decided to do together- CNN (I think it was CNN) ran an article a few days after the resignation about the women’s united front in calling publicly for resignation. What I find weird is people continually damning her for Franken and at the same time talking about how much they like Harris and/or Warren, who did exactly the same thing she did- publicly called for his resignation. It’s a cognitive dissonance I can’t wrap my own head around.

  136. 136.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Gravenstone: Maybe the Cheneys can cull Jr. and use his for the next spare?

    He’s a generous lad, he already donated his brain to…. somebody

  137. 137.

    bemused

    Quite long presser on msnbc about college entrance exam scheme.
    I wonder how many other famous names will surface.
    Cripes, these people have plenty of money and reputations but still resort to cheating. I feel sorry for their kids.

  139. 139.

    geg6

    @Betty Cracker:

    Having lived through the various permutations of Arlen Specter, I am not fond of flip floppers who change their ideals like I change my underwear. Gillibrand is that and I still haven’t seen an explanation for all her many flip flops. Warren, who is not really my candidate but who I don’t hate, has a much more believable conversion story that shows it was based on her experiences in the world of bankruptcy and commercial law. And it wasn’t an abrupt change, it was a gradual one, which is probably more common to most people who go through conversions.

    I just think she’s not honest about her motivations and positions. She has struck me that way since I first became aware of her, long before Al Franken and that mess.

  141. 141.

    geg6

    @Nicole:

    You obviously didn’t read what I wrote. The Franken thing is not my major motivation for disliking her. I dislike her because I don’t find her honest or trustworthy. This is based on her actual record as a politician and was my feeling about her long before the Franken thing. But go ahead and love her if you’d like. We’ll cancel each other out.

    As for who I currently like, it is likely to change as the process goes on. I’m not married to any of them. But the three I won’t support will not change. I made my mind up about them long before any of them ever decided to run for president.

  142. 142.

    Nicole

    @geg6: Which flip flops are you referring to, specifically? The two that I can think of are guns and immigration, and Gillibrand addressed both of them pretty head-on, saying she was wrong on both points. As someone who moved from Central PA to NYC, and lived for ten years in a majority-white neighborhood in NYC (I now live in a majority black neighborhood), I found her ignorance on both issues plausible- I know plenty of NYC residents that hold similar views to where she was in 2009, except they’re still holding them in 2019. Which makes them exhausting to talk to.

    Totally agree with you about Arlen Specter, though. I remember his final flip back to the Democrats, and my brother calling me about it, with a sigh: “Ugh. He’s still an asshole, but now he’s our asshole.”

    For what it’s worth, I’ll be astounded if Gillibrand is the nominee, so much like Klobuchar, I think most of this is ultimately a lot of sound and fury from all of us jackals, but I do think she’s being attacked for reasons that have nothing to do with her actual voting record, which, in the end, is the part that actually affects the lives of everyday people.

  145. 145.

    geg6

    Nicole @142:

    Not everyone has to like her. Some people rub you the wrong way right from the get go. I think that is exactly what bemused and I are saying. She strikes us as insincere or untrustworthy or having a bad aura or whatever you want to call it. Seems that any criticism of her seems to strike you as sexist or something. I don’t have to like every woman and I don’t. I don’t like her and really don’t want to vote for her in the same way I don’t want to vote for Sanders or Gabbard. Although I would if they were the only choices.

    As for her flip flops, I don’t have time to look up the others but the guns and tobacco are major changes that came out of nowhere and I have yet to see her articulate how she decided suddenly that she was wrong about. Just not very believable to me.

    Thankfully, none of the ones on my “don’t ever want to vote for” list are, IMHO, likely to be the Dem nominee.

  146. 146.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Nicole: Isn’t it funny watching all the people who were outraged that Gillibrand single-handedly burned Franken at the stake by denying him the Due Process!!1! that was so important he didn’t bother to request it, now fuming at her campaigns efforts to, ya know give due process…

  147. 147.

    Gin & Tonic

    @geg6:

    but the guns and tobacco are major changes that came out of nowhere and I have yet to see her articulate how she decided suddenly that she was wrong about

    Because you can’t be anti-gun and get elected in NY-20 (rural upstate), and you can’t be pro-gun and get much support from NYC once you’re Senator.

  148. 148.

    bemused

    @Nicole:

    Oh lighten up. It’s just another way of saying going with my gut feelings about people which has served me very well since I got out of my teens decades ago.

  151. 151.

    tam1MI

    @UncleEbeneezer: Yes, the way she bent over backwards to cut every bit of slack she could (under the guise of “due process”) for the guy who wasn’t a threat to her Presidential designs, versus the way she threw due process out the window for Al Franken, who did threaten them, has been well noted.

  152. 152.

    StringOnAStick

    @Aleta: Thanks so much! I’m nearly fully weight bearing but high as a kite on pain meds so I’m using a walker around the house for stability. I was told to walk 10minutes out of every waking hour, and our 1.5 year old pair of kitties follows my every lap around the house. Love, love, love our kitties!

  154. 154.

    tybee

    ms. tybee had a knee replaced on jan 2nd. she’s mostly mobile now but she was not and is not a fan of PT.
    she had a different torturer/murderer/sadist knickname for each therapist.

    2nd knee gets done in April. figure it’ll all be over and done with by the end of summer. or at least that’s the plan.

  155. 155.

    StringOnAStick

    @tybee: Yeah, I figure that my current tolerable pain level will change once I get to my first PT appointment this afternoon. PT’s smile sweetly while discerning just how much you can stand. I first looked into becoming a PT before I settled on dental hygiene, that means most of the time I’m not causing significant pain!

  156. 156.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @NotMax: Dead thread and all…

    That’s been the case since Ice Cream Sandwich(Android 4.0), your quote neglected to mention that that OS also tells you BEFORE you enable the insecure face unlock that it’s NOT SECURE.

  159. 159.

    NotMax

    @BillinGlendaleCA

    Difference in this case (if I read the article correctly) being that in this instance the feature is always enabled and there is no way to disable it.

  161. 161.

    RAVEN

    Stolen from a message board

    “The Family Trump has always been extremely concerned with heir worthiness.”

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