Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

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

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

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

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

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Second rate reporter says what?

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

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

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

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

Hot air and ill-informed banter

People are complicated. Love is not.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Because of wow. / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Notre Dame Is Still There

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Notre Dame Is Still There

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  3. 3.

    rikyrah

    I read a story yesterday about the Priest who led the way to save the artifacts. He had spent time in a war zone, so maybe that’s why he didn’t panic about the fire. And, the firemen?????

  6. 6.

    Chetan Murthy

    The steeple and the beams supporting it are 160 years old, and oaks for new beams awaits at Versailles, the grown replacements for oaks cut to rebuild after the revolution.

    I remember a colleague who grew up in Normandy was telling me once about an armoire that had been in his family for 400 years. And he wasn’t some nobility or some such — just a middle-class guy from a middle-class family. This idea of time, of history, of planning ahead for centuries, is so cool. It’s a pity we can’t do that for climate change …. I mean, even a few decades out. Sigh.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    Black women have been raising alarms for years about being forced to undergo intrusive, degrading searches of their hair at airport security checkpoints. After a complaint five years ago, the TSA pledged to improve oversight and training for its workers on hair pat-downs.

    But it turns out there’s an issue beyond the screeners: the machines themselves.

    The futuristic full-body scanners that have become standard at airports across the United States are prone to false alarms for hairstyles popular among women of color.

    https://www.propublica.org/article/tsa-not-discriminating-against-black-women-but-their-body-scanners-might-be#160294

  8. 8.

    opiejeanne

    Good morning.

    I should be asleep but tonight sleep eludes me, as it sometimes does.

    I read that Notre Dame has $400 million pledged for rebuilding, and the three churches in Louisiana have $400,000. The contrast is stark. It’s going to take more than $400k to restore those three churches.

  9. 9.

    opiejeanne

    @Chetan Murthy: Those oaks probably aren’t old enough to replace the 12 x 12 beams that burned, but the beams can be replaced by a lighter-weight steel structure similar to what was used when Chartre lost its roof in a fire not too many years ago.

  11. 11.

    Jay

    @opiejeanne:

    It’s worse than that.

    Some 400 years ago, a forest was replanted for the restoration of Notre Dame de Paris. Foresters bent and shaped oaks for genereations, filed reports, which were ignored.

    Kinda reminds me how the RSSA discovered climate change in 1912.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    The group’s name, Future Now, is as generic as its glass-enclosed work space, surrounded by the start-ups, freelancers, free coffee, beer tap, and networking events that define the co-working experience. Exactly one block away is the building that housed the campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton, whose defeat in 2016 inspired the launch of Future Now and so many other like-minded organizations dedicated to harnessing the fear and anger of the activist left.

    But you won’t hear much presidential talk from the crew at Future Now, even as the Democratic Party’s energy, operatives, and dollars flow into the free-for-all primary to oust Donald Trump. Future Now was inspired by Trump, but its goal isn’t—in and of itself—to defeat him. If anything, the organization’s entire raison d’être is to break the Democratic Party’s obsession with the presidency and redirect its focus back to the places where, Future Now’s founders argue, conservatives have amassed their most durable power: state legislatures.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/future-now-democrats-2020-state-legislatures/587314/

  14. 14.

    Jay

    @raven:

    At the end of one of the major renovations, a Forester was appointed, and the cut over area, was replanted. The forester, and those who worked under him, applied weights and other aspects to the trees to create natural curved beams and crooks, to restore the ceiling.

    When you cut a curved beam out of straight wood, it’s much weaker , ( up to 97%) weaker than a tree grown into a matching curve.

    The Forester got a stipend, got to issue an annual report, and was ignored.

    All the trees that are needed to restore the church, were planted and tended, a long time ago, and ignored.

    Almost a metaphore for some thing.

  16. 16.

    Immanentize

    @Jay: I’m still unclear too. Are those trees now available? Or not? Sometimes being ignored is the best thing possible.

  18. 18.

    Jay

    @Immanentize:

    They have been available for a while.
    200 some years.

    Nobody talked to or paid attention to “the tree guy” or read his reports.

  23. 23.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: ?
    @rikyrah: Good morning ?!
    Looks like decent weather with no frost predicted, so today if it doesn’t rain I already have to mow my lawn ?
    If it’s too wet I can still start planting some of the things that were delivered too early because I made another raised bed on the south side of the house where the most sun is. Going to ignore politics today.

  24. 24.

    Lapassionara

    @rikyrah: The Parisian firemen are very nice looking. It is good to know that they are also good at their jobs.

    Good morning, everyone.

  29. 29.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Baud: I got a really strange call yesterday from a union president complaining that we were paying too much for certain jobs. As Napoleon noted, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake….

  30. 30.

    OzarkHillbilly

    ‘Calling bullshit’: the college class on how not to be duped by the news

    Academia being what it is (a place where everything is contested), there has been considerable debate over what exactly qualifies as bullshit. Most of that debate centers on the question of intention. Is bullshit considered bullshit if the deception was unintentionally presented? West and Bergstrom think that it is. They write, “Whether or not that usage is appropriate, we feel that the verb phrase calling bullshit definitely applies to falsehoods irrespective of the intentions of the author or speaker.”

    The reason for the class’s existence comes down to a simple and somewhat alarming reality: even the most educated and savvy consumer of information is easily misled in today’s complex information ecosystem. Calling Bullshit is not dedicated to teaching students that Fox News promotes “fake news” or that National Enquirer headlines are fallacious. Instead, the class operates under the assumption that the structures through which today’s endless information comes to the consumer – algorithms, data graphics, info analytics, peer-reviewed publications – are in many ways as full of bullshit as the fake news we easily recognize as bogus. One scientist that West and Bergstrom cite in their syllabus goes so far as to say that, due to the fact that journals are prone to only publish positive results, “most published scientific results are probably false”.

    A case in point is a 2016 article called Automated Inferences on Criminality Using Face Images. In it, the authors present an algorithm that can supposedly teach a machine to determine criminality with 90% accuracy based solely on a person’s headshot. Their core assumption is that, unlike humans, a machine is relatively free of emotion and bias. West and Bergstrom call bullshit, sending students to explore the sample of photos used to represent criminals in the experiment: all them are of convicted criminals. The professors claim that “it seems less plausible to us that facial features are associated with criminal tendencies than it is that they are correlated with juries’ decisions to convict”. Conclusion: the algorithm is more correlated with facial characteristics that make a person convictable than a set of criminal inclinations.

    By teaching ways to find misinformation in the venues many of us consider pristine realms of expertise – peer-reviewed journals such as Nature, reports by the National Institutes of Health, TED Talks – West and Bergstrom highlight the ultimate paradox of the information age: more and more knowledge is making us less and less reasonable.

    As we gather more data for mathematical models to better analyze, for example, the shrinking gap between elite male and female runners, we remain as prone as ever to misusing that data to achieve erroneous results. West and Bergstrom cite a 2004 Nature article in which the authors use linear regression to trace the closing gap between men and women’s running times, concluding that women will outpace men in the year 2156. To take down this kind of bullshit, the professors introduce the idea of reductio ad absurdum, which in this case would make the year 2636 far more interesting than 2156, as it’s then that, if the Nature study is right, “times of less than zero will be recorded”.

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    May I take a quick moment to say how much I Ioathe the appellation Mayor Pete? Makes him sound like the on air host of a two-bit after school cartoon show on a high number UHF station.

    Full disclosure: He is not currently near the top of my list; broken glass and all that.

  34. 34.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Chetan Murthy: There’s a church I visited in Rohatyn, western Ukraine. An average parish, nothing monumental. Wooden church. Built in the 1590’s. History is on a different time scale in Europe than in the US.

  35. 35.

    cleek

    The steeple and the beams supporting it are 160 years old, and oaks for new beams awaits at Versailles, the grown replacements for oaks cut to rebuild after the revolution

    i don’t beleive this is actually true, the person who first said it has retracted it.

  37. 37.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Predictable: Iran parliament brands US troops in Middle East as terrorist

    Iran’s parliament has overwhelmingly approved a bill labelling US forces in the Middle East as terrorist, a day after Washington’s terrorism label for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard formally took effect.

    The defence minister, Gen Amir Hatami, introduced the bill on Tuesday authorising the government to act firmly in response to “terrorist actions” by US forces. It demands authorities use “legal, political and diplomatic” measures to neutralise the American move, without elaborating.

    Donald Trump and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, announced last week that the US had designated the guards as a foreign terrorist organization, marking the first time Washington has formally named a branch of the armed forces of a foreign government as a terrorist group.

  38. 38.

    NotMax

    @OzarkHillbilly

    the year 2636 far more interesting

    When it comes to choosing candidates, horoscopes, tea leaves and chicken entrails (‘randomly’ 3-D printed, of course) will be fully back in vogue.

  39. 39.

    satby

    @NotMax: that’s what he’s been called in South Bend for 8 years, and of course it’s because his last name is hard to pronounce. It’s not a new thing.
    Edit: and please let’s not do another thread about him.

  40. 40.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Amazing to see that picture of the rose window intact. Because when I heard “the windows have melted” that’s the one I pictured collapsing.

    The Louisiana church fund has hit nearly $1 M in 6 days. We are still that country of good people. The deplorables are not winning.

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    @satby

    Not to belabor the point but that’s what I don’t capische. It’s still a conundrum after 8 years? How are people supposed to learn how it is pronounced unless they hear it?

  45. 45.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Deutsche Bank faces action over $20bn Russian money-laundering scheme

    Germany’s troubled Deutsche Bank faces fines, legal action and the possible prosecution of “senior management” because of its role in a $20bn Russian money-laundering scheme, a confidential internal report seen by the Guardian says.

    The bank admits there is a high risk that regulators in the US and UK will take “significant disciplinary action” against it. Deutsche concedes that the scandal has hurt its “global brand” – and is likely to cause “client attrition”, loss of investor confidence and a decline in its market value.

    Deutsche Bank was embroiled in a vast money-laundering operation, dubbed the Global Laundromat. Russian criminals with links to the Kremlin and the KGB used the scheme between 2010 and 2014 to move money into the western financial system. The cash involved could total $80bn, detectives believe.

    Oh but they’re innocent, innocent I tell you!

    The bank was entirely unaware of the scam until the Guardian and Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) broke the story in March 2017, the report says. The first it knew was an email from the Guardian and Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper asking for comment.

    “Only with this intelligence received is it now possible for Deutsche Bank to start global investigations,” it notes.

    When an entity rests it’s claims of innocence on the basis that 2 newspapers knew more about it’s operations than it did, the air is pretty thick with the stench of guilt.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Republicans are less dug in in state legislatures too. You still see bipartisan bills. Ohio has a pretty good school funding bill that is moving and it was drafted by a Republican and a Democrat. It might pass. If it’s a big national issue where there’s lots of grifters and orgs on the Right (guns and abortion in Ohio) they’re too beholden to national and won’t move but if it’s something like education or infrastructure they will. States are a good investment for small donors. Unlike the US Congress where you need a majority or you get nothing, just a critical mass of Democrats can get something in a state legislature.

    IMO, the “coordinated campaigns” help a lot, because Democrats (infuriatingly) have “ballot drop-off” where they vote for the top of the ticket and then stop. Voting. They leave the rest of the ballot blank. So if you can tack some state candidates onto the national races and get people to vote down-ballot you’re leveraging the money spent in the national races to get state people elected.

  49. 49.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Democrats (infuriatingly) have “ballot drop-off” where they vote for the top of the ticket and then stop. Voting.

    I hate us sometimes. And sometimes, I understand why other people hate us too.

  54. 54.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I myself use a kind of ratio. I give small donations to national elections, because they have the huge lists, and larger ones to state elections, because they need more from each donor. If we could flip it, where people would “max” on the small races in their area and give smaller amounts to the national races it would make more sense.

  58. 58.

    FlyingToaster

    @NotMax:

    I Ioathe the appellation Mayor Pete?

    It’s actually a common term. Former Congressman Mike Capuano (replaced by Ayanna Pressley) is often called Mayor Mike, after his tenure in Somerville. And his last name isn’t hard to pronounce.

  60. 60.

    gene108

    @NotMax:

    I am not sure pronunciation is the issue. I think the temptation to make butt jokes out of Buttigieg is. Especially, since he has come out as gay.

  64. 64.

    rk

    The fire department in Paris followed a protocol: Save the people, save the art, save the altar, save what furniture you can, then focus on the structure, in that order.

    Are you telling me that hurling buckets of water from flying trucks was not a part of the plan. Sad!

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Democrats didn’t focus on Donald Trump in ’18. Where was Bernie Sanders?

    I love how he eagerly plays right into whatever the media narrative is. Bernie Sanders just happens to agree with everything political media say about Democrats, and he pronounces it like it’s some great, unique insight he came up with.

    What does he think about infighting and his campaign’s penchant for labeling all of his opponents as horrible, corrupt sell-outs? Might that cause a loss?

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    @FlyingToaster

    Perhaps I’m spoiled from living in Hawaii where, when it comes to politicians, last names of sometimes 12 or even many more letters, plus ‘okinas (single quote marks), are on the ballots.

  67. 67.

    satby

    @gene108: as an obnoxious, apparently homophobic commenter has done repeatedly here.
    But this is my third year living in South Bend and I never heard him called anything else by anyone.

  70. 70.

    FlyingToaster

    @Another Scott: NotreDame’s reconstruction is likely to end up between $2 and $3 billion. The lower number if they decide to use steel to replace the roof timbers, more if they use the “Versaille Oaks” option. But to do this in 5 years will be expensive, under the “Pick 2: Good, Fast or Cheap” constraint.

    The big issues are dealing with the remaining vaults (and don’t tell me that that stone isn’t damaged, and how the F are they getting those burned beams off the stone to check), and getting most or all all of the vault stone replaced. And designing and building an appropriate fire-proofing regimen for the space above the vaults.

    Edited for spelling

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    His answer wasn’t even responsive to the question. The question was “have Democrats gone too far Left, like the Tea Party?”

    Sanders responds to that with a generic attack on Democrats, that all “Democrats” do is attack Donald Trump. Which isn’t at all true, listening to the other candidates and watching 2018, but it’s hugely important to Sanders to constantly distinguish himself from “Democrats” as a whole.

  73. 73.

    FlyingToaster

    @NotMax: Better the Hawaiian problem than Croatian; a consonant-vowel exchange between those two languages would work wonders for the rest of us.

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: Wilmer is a troll against Democrats.

    Against Donnie and his minions, he’s a tut-tutting bystander.

    Twitter:

    Bernie Sanders‏ Verified account SenSanders

    Bernie Sanders Retweeted The Associated Press

    The people of Yemen desperately need humanitarian help, not more bombs.

    I am disappointed, but not surprised, that Trump has rejected the bi-partisan resolution to end U.S. involvement in the horrific war in Yemen.Bernie Sanders added,

    The Associated Press Verified account @AP

    BREAKING: President Trump vetoes resolution calling on U.S. to withdraw support from Saudi-led war in Yemen. http://apne.ws/NkbdeDv

    5:18 PM – 16 Apr 2019

    “Disappointed”

    I’m sure Donnie is quaking in his boots.

    (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Speaking of bullshit: Cheating men’s face shapes can give it away, study suggests

    Philandering men have unfaithfulness written all over their faces, according to research that suggests men and women are able to spot cheating chaps just by looking at them. Experts found men with more “masculine” faces were more likely to be thought to be unfaithful, and such men also self-reported more cheating or “poaching” of other men’s partners.

  77. 77.

    NotMax

    @satby

    The name change applications published in the legal notices of the paper are sometimes grinworthy.

    “Bernice Ma’alao’oni Kalaneana’ole-Humumunukunukuapua’a has been granted a change of name to Ethel Ma’alao’wani Kalaneana’ole-Humumunukunukuapua’a.”

  78. 78.

    Another Scott

    @FlyingToaster: I don’t doubt that it is going to be expensive. Hand craftsmanship always is, especially on a relatively quick deadline.

    Macron says it’s going to be rebuilt in 5 years, and I’m sure he’ll find the money to do it. Paris and France will pay whatever is necessary (even if it takes more than 5 years). And that is appropriate. Nearly $1B in 24 hours shows that they can (and almost certainly will) raise the money needed.

    The unstated point I was trying to make is that they’re having absolutely no difficulty in raising the money. We can and should be able to spend a small fraction of that to help people here without all the press coverage who are also suffering. (And we can do both, of course.) It’s not always clear that we (as a people) are as willing to help those that don’t get a lot of visibility in the press…

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  80. 80.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah:

    Bernie Sanders says Democrats will lose 2020 election if they continue to focus on Donald Trump

    Gin & Tonic says Democrats will lose 2020 election if they continue to allow Bernie Sanders to fuck it up.

  81. 81.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Like Trump in 2016, Sanders has a base-only strategy. He figures if he solidifies his base, he’ll emerge with a plurality in a large field and win the nomination. It’s not the dumbest strategy ever, I guess — I mean, it’s possible he could win the primary that way. It’s bad for the party, but he doesn’t give a shit about that. It’s a risk for the country, because a fractured party could lead to a Trump win. Looks like Sanders doesn’t give a shit about that either.

  82. 82.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @FlyingToaster:

    (and don’t tell me that that stone isn’t damaged,

    Apparently “still standing” is the same as “sound as the day it was quarried”//

  83. 83.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Another Scott:

    Macron says it’s going to be rebuilt in 5 years,

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…… And I’ve got some beach front property in Florida. Also trump is the 2nd coming of Jesus.

  87. 87.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    His national press secretary:

    Briahna Joy Gray Retweeted
    Jeff Stein
    ‏Verified account
    @JStein_WaPo
    Apr 15
    More
    [email protected] on some of the enemies he is trying to overcome:

    – Republican establishment
    – Democratic establishment
    – military industrial complex
    – media establishment
    – corporate establishment
    – pharmaceutical industry
    “It ain’t easy”

    Democrats are literally number two on their enemies list. Apparently Nancy Pelosi is worse than the “military industrial complex”. If he had any integrity he would run as an independent.

    I wonder who they blame if they win the nomination and lose the general. Well, I don’t wonder, really. Number Two on the enemies list will get the blame. Now that they’ve bravely defeated Neera Tandens mother it’s on to the other enemies!

  88. 88.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: Maybe we could convince Wilmer and Howard Schultz to run together, since they supposedly have so many enemies in common and so much to offer America?

    Better still, maybe we could convince them both to travel together in a beat up Piper Cub with a dubious maintenance history? That “ain’t easy” either ;)

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Unfuckingbelievable that we have so many younger, newer candidates – people who haven’t been in DC for 40 years like Sanders, people from all over the country instead of a tiny white state in the northeast that isn’t in any way representative of the country as a whole, and yet Sanders portrays them as the “Democratic establishment”.

  91. 91.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Democrats didn’t focus on Donald Trump in ’18. Where was Bernie Sanders?

    I’ll tell you where he wasn’t….going out there, full throttle in support of the Democratic Wave.
    He was NOT THERE.
    Period.

    I said back then, that he was hoping that the Democrats would lose in 2018, so that we would be ‘forced’ to see him as some kind of Savior.

    That we did what we did in 2018, WITHOUT HIM…

    WELL….

  92. 92.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    He should have to name the members of the Democratic establishment who are his enemies. This group consists of people. Who are they? Do they include his opponents in the primary? I have to hand it to Trump. He named his enemies in the GOP. Bernie is too chickenshit to do the same. He’ll just smear every Democrat who is not Bernie Sanders, by association with the hated Democratic Party.

  95. 95.

    Chyron HR

    @rikyrah:

    Bernie Sanders says Democrats will lose 2020 election

    Interesting prediction from the guy who thinks he’s going to be the Democratic nominee. (chin scratching emoji)

  96. 96.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Kay:
    of the enemies list, he never says anything negative about republicans. Just think, when Dubya was president he never said a word of criticism. Oh, but he no problem attacking Obama all the time. Even after he left office, Wilmer still found ways to attack personally Obama, while keeping arms length away from Dump.

  97. 97.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    I really have no problem with people who fight. I myself am often oppositional. But I don’t have any respect for people who fight the way Bernie Sanders fights. It’s cowardly and dishonest. I had nothing but sympathy for Clinton in her debates with Bernie. I KNOW that feeling. He would look at the camera and call her corrupt and a liar, she’d look right at him and call him on it, and he’d turn back to her and pretend he hadn’t just done it, often using his hands to portray this patronizing fucking “what am I to DO with this crazy woman?” emotion to the audience. She was furious and she was right to be furious. It’s bullshit. It’s how cowards fight.

  98. 98.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Kay: They asked Comic book guy (his campaign manager who runs a comic book store) that question not too long ago and he named a couple of obscure Clinton staffers (who I’ve never heard off).

  99. 99.

    Kay

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    If it’s just a couple of Clinton staffers then why are they second on the Bernie enemies list? A couple of Clinton staffers are more powerful than the military industrial complex? Wow. Neera Tanden’s mother has a lot of fucking clout. No wonder the NYTimes sought her out to trick her.

  100. 100.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    He should have to name the members of the Democratic establishment who are his enemies. This group consists of people. Who are they? Do they include his opponents in the primary

    That’s right. Name them.

  101. 101.

    germy

    Steve Bannon & his allies have leased a monastery in the Italian countryside for 19 years, where they plan to build a school for budding populists and "modern gladiators." But it's ignited protest from locals, who want Bannon to take his right-wing populist agenda elsewhere. pic.twitter.com/kHWhY86SQu— On Assignment with Richard Engel (@OARichardEngel) April 16, 2019

  102. 102.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah: That is truly an excellent point: the 2018 Dem wave came in and throughly swamped the Trumpublicans and WHERE. WAS. BERNIE? Out there doin’ nothing but complaining as usual.

    REAL Democrats do the work!

  103. 103.

    schrodingers_cat

    Bernie Sanders is as big a danger to the country if he becomes the nominee as the other New Yorker who sits in the WH.
    1. His nomination will destroy the Democratic party.
    2. Even If he manages to win, his vacuous policies will be as bad for the country as T’s are and will give any left of center policies a bad name for a long time to come
    3. He is not a team player, he will not get much passed through Congress.
    Conclusion: He must not be allowed to win the nomination.
    He is the T of the left and a Russian stooge/ true-believer.

  104. 104.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    “The attorney general has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the public … to be concerned about whether or not there is full transparency,” U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said during a hearing Tuesday afternoon on a Freedom of Information Act suit demanding access to a report detailing the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller.


    From Politico

  105. 105.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: @rikyrah: That too: “Name them, Bernie!” Should be a chant/tweet/comment back at Wilmer at every opportunity.

    Back to my previous point about Sanders and Schultz: if they’re so “independent” and have so very much to offer the country…why do they first, last, and always tee off on Democrats? It’s kind of odd, hmm?

  107. 107.

    Kay

    Mark Harris
    ‏Verified account
    @MarkHarrisNYC
    11h11 hours ago
    More Mark Harris Retweeted Jenna Johnson
    Candidates should probably stay away from the “My public service IS my charity” argument Beto tries here. Also, all credit to Elizabeth Warren for leading the Democrats who’ve released their taxes (some haven’t yet) in charitable giving.

    I would just like to register my disapproval of this. It’s nice that Warren gives to charity but the whole idea is it isn’t compulsory and it’s supposed to be “charitable” when means you don’t get to use it to hit other people over the head or elevate yourself. To be clear I don’t think WARREN is doing this- she’s just the comparison.

    I was not taken with Beto but I do not care, at all, that he doesn’t give his money away. I just want people to pay taxes. Other than that, they’re on their own.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    And I feel like people should know how this whole “charity” thing has gotten gross, because Trump and DeVos do it- where they make a big show out of donating their pay. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a bragging right.

  110. 110.

    rikyrah

    @Jeffro:

    Back to my previous point about Sanders and Schultz: if they’re so “independent” and have so very much to offer the country…why do they first, last, and always tee off on Democrats? It’s kind of odd, hmm?

    Very curious indeed. Not a bad word about Republicans…..sigh…

  112. 112.

    Leto

    @germy: Italy has enough problems without that shitheel being there. I’m glad the local village is protesting.

  113. 113.

    rikyrah

    Is it just me, or is she an Old Azz looking 18??
    18???
    The devil is a lie…she ain’t 18.

    …………………………..

    Colorado schools close after woman, 18, ‘obsessed’ with Columbine massacre bought firearms in the state just days before the mass shooting’s 20th anniversary as FBI hunt her and her father begs her to come home
    Schools in Denver have cancelled classes for Wednesday as search continues
    Columbine High School was on lockdown Tuesday due to a ‘credible threat’
    Police are hunting teen Sol Pais, said to be ‘armed and extremely dangerous’
    Her dad Gardi Pais said he thought the teen may have a ‘mental problem’
    ‘They are looking for her. Please come home’, he told DailyMail.com
    The FBI are tonight searching the Florida home she shares with her parents
    Sol is said to be ‘infatuated with the Columbine school shooting’, reports say
    And a neighbor told DailyMail.com she is a ‘strange girl, quiet and withdrawn’
    Described as a white female, approximately 5’5′ in height, with brown hair
    FBI investigated at least 20 other schools days before 20th anniversary
    Mass shooting at the school killed 12 students and a teacher on April 20, 1999

    By BEN ASHFORD IN MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and LAUREN FRUEN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and ASSOCIATED PRESS

    PUBLISHED: 15:40 EDT, 16 April 2019 | UPDATED: 04:43 EDT, 17 April 2019

  114. 114.

    germy

    @rikyrah:

    Is it just me, or is she an Old Azz looking 18??
    18???
    The devil is a lie…she ain’t 18.

    I was thinking the same thing. No way she’s 18. She looks older than 30. Either the press has it wrong, or she was born when she was 12.

  116. 116.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @rikyrah: ahahahhahahahahhahahha

    That’s great, he’s already running away from her.

    He’s so sensitive about the feelings of racist Dump voters.

  117. 117.

    Leto

    @Kay: It’s more gross than that: they don’t even donate their own money! At least Trumpov doesn’t, and he’s been called on it so many times. Even while in office. I think it was 2017 when he said he’d give, approximately, $1M dollars to veterans orgs? And they never got the money? Took the media’s reporting on that to finally make him cough up some money. And then he was using the Trump Foundation to enrich himself.

    He was trying to use all of that “charity” to buy himself into the higher NYC social circles and they still rejected him because he’s a fucking asshole/pig (which is saying something with that crowd).

  118. 118.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rikyrah:

    Is it just me, or is she an Old Azz looking 18??

    I had the same thought, but when I was in 9th grade I had a friend who was 6’+ and had a full beard. He bought all our beer.

  119. 119.

    Kattails

    @Gin & Tonic: First laugh of the morning, thanks, and seconded.
    Re: the timbers, someone told me about Oxford University; a regular maintenance check showed some rot in roof timbers in one of the buildings. Went to the finance office, they looked it up, the replacement timbers had been planted 500 years before. You know, go to lot 3 in the West Forest and cut what you need kind of thing.
    We can’t seem to think 5 years out.

  121. 121.

    satby

    @Kay: I agree. I want people to be transparent on their finances if they run for office and pay their taxes. That’s a minimum requirement. Additional charitable giving is nice, but then you get into all sorts of judgemental bullshit about whether the charity was “worthy” or whether tithing to a church counts. No thanks.
    I’m not a high income person, so I don’t even bother listing my charitable giving on my taxes, it’s irrelevant because it won’t meet the threshold (especially since I don’t track it to begin with. Maybe it would if it did, but who cares, really?).

  122. 122.

    Cacti

    @rikyrah:

    I said back then, that he was hoping that the Democrats would lose in 2018, so that we would be ‘forced’ to see him as some kind of Savior.

    That we did what we did in 2018, WITHOUT HIM…

    WELL….

    Spot on.

    Bernie wants Dems to fail. Period.

  124. 124.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Omnes Omnibus: @Gin & Tonic: Thanks, that’s what I was going to say. Transplanted New Yorker if that makes you happy.
    Also what’s with all the yelling? Another thing he has in common with the Orange, in addition to the crazy hair and weird hand gestures.
    I have not lived in Mumbai for over two decades but at heart I am still a Mumbaikar, its in my blood. I know the old city like the back of my hand and am fifth generation Mumbaikar on one side and sixth or seventh on the other. If I have to point to one place that has shaped me more than any other, it has to be the city of my birth.

  125. 125.

    FlyingToaster

    @NotMax: ?

    We’re about to lose the Dewey Cheatem and Howe building (temporarily) to reconstruction; they’re taking most of that block and doing a gut/replace. I’m pretty sure that the window will be back afterwards.

  126. 126.

    rikyrah

    Maddow spent almost 30 minutes laying out how Barr is a phucking liar and has done this before.

    Tomorrow will NOT be the Mueller Report. It will be BARR REDACTED GARBAGE.

    Barr HAS NO CREDIBILITY.
    NONE,

    Barr record of deception for Bush calls credibility into question
    Rachel Maddow looks back at how William Barr in 1989 as assistant attorney general, declared documents sought by Congress to be confidential and offered his personal summary instead, only to have his ruse exposed years later when the real document was released.

  127. 127.

    kindness

    I don’t understand the need to rebuild Notre Dame exactly as it was. I understand the desire to do so, but the need? Not so much. Honestly I would think that adding modern components to the rebuild would be a good thing. But then again, I’m not trying to live in the mideval era.

    @rikyrah: Don’t worry. The lawsuits are already written up and we now have a Dubya Federal Judge who may well require his need to see the entire unredacted report. The full report will come out. Trump & Republicans are fighting a rear guard battle for time.

  130. 130.

    FlyingToaster

    @OzarkHillbilly: Oddly enough, the only people who seem to think that are the US press. When I read BBC/Guardian or HerrDoktor reads the French papers, they seem to think that they have two shortcuts: the imaging from Professor Tollan and the source quarries and trees are already available. The leaded glass folks need work. So now it’s just going to be the next year clearing everything the hell out, making sure the upper walls aren’t damaged (no visible cracks, which means dick-all and they’re going to be up there with structural engineers and ultrasound to make fucking sure), and then they think 4 years of rebuild. But they haven’t discussed the spire, and they haven’t discussed fireproofing. So while design work can go on while they’re clearing and diagnosing, it’s going to have to change depending upon what they find, and that pushes the timeline down the road.

    I do believe it can be done in 8 years. I don’t think it can be done in 5.

  131. 131.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Cacti: He literally doesn’t even know how to use the subway.

    As if you needed more proof that Bernie Sanders is essentially your grandfather at the Seder table, it’s been so long since the Brooklyn native regularly took the subway, he still thinks we use tokens. Bernie Sanders is adorable.

  133. 133.

    Citizen Alan

    @gene108:

    It takes enormous self-discipline for me to properly pronounce Buttigieg’s name (I hope, anyway — I’m going with Buddha-Judge for the moment). Personally, I think it’s because there are no English words that end in a G pronounced like J, and damned few where a G situated between two vowels is. Consequently, whenever I see his name, my brain says BUTT-gig, which would be problematic even if he weren’t gay.

  135. 135.

    Aleta

    (Wapo, re Zinke) U.S. Gold announced Tuesday that it has appointed the former interior secretary to its board of directors.  … U.S. Gold’s chief executive, Edward Karr citi(ed) rtd Zinke’s “in-depth knowledge of the governmental regulatory and permitting process for mining and exploration companies.”

    In tandem with his position on the board of directors, Zinke was retained by U.S. Gold as a government relations consultant, for which the company will pay him $90,000 per year.
    But for now, Zinke’s work for U.S. Gold is constained by “revolving door” law. He is prohibited from communicating with his old colleagues to influence policy during a two-year “cooling off” period.

    “I don’t lobby,” Zinke told the Associated Press. “I just follow the law, so I don’t talk to anybody on the executive side.” … “I am excited to work closely with management and the Board to help make mining great again in America.”

    …  As of January of this year, none of the company’s properties contain proven and probable reserves of gold and other precious metals it is seeking to extract, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    This is the second post-administration job for Zinke, who just two weeks after resigning from office in January became a managing director of the technology and energy investment firm Artillery One.

    Got a very bad feeling about expansion of US mining rights “in tandem” w/ gutting the EPA and going after public lands. US mining co’s in Central America …. .

  136. 136.

    NotMax

    @rikyrah

    More accurately, she spent 30 minutes giving 6 minutes worth of information, the rest spent repeating the same backstory in multiple ways. Then the guest she had booked to speak to it got maybe 3 minutes. Not her program’s best presentation.

  139. 139.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @kindness: Yeah, let’s take advantage of the fire and just knock the whole thing down. Maybe replace it with something modern with plenty of underground parking.

  140. 140.

    Aleta

    @FlyingToaster:

    (Bus. Insider) “We’ll use modern methods, but it should be done by the books,” Rössler said. “Which includes a lot of craftsmanship.”
    The French timber industry is offering to lend a hand with that.
    The Fondation Fransylva, which is a French federation representing private timber growers in France, has already asked all its members to offer up an oak tree for Notre-Dame.
    “Loggers want Notre-Dame’s ‘forêt-charpente’ re-constructed with French oak trees, in keeping with the same traditions and good quality of the first builders,” Fransylva’s press release reads in French.
    Groupama insurance company is also offering to pay for 1,300 oak trees to re-build the church frame, which the company says would come from the forests of Normandy, in keeping with the original construction.

    Prob big debate about wood of course.

  141. 141.

    NotMax

    @schrodingers_cat

    Find myself growing more and more fed up with her producers’ apparent assumption that her audience was born yesterday, especially when it gives short shrift to knowledgeable guests.

  142. 142.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kay:

    Also, a thought experiment: What would be worse for most political candidates and especially for candidates (of either party) who want to appeal to moderate voters? Little to no charitable giving? Or sizeable donations that included money given to groups that were in any way controversial? For example, here in Mississippi, I think any candidate who gave even a penny to Planned Parenthood or NARAL would be completely unelectable.

  143. 143.

    FlyingToaster

    @Aleta: Wood, especially hardwoods like oak, is only a problem if you don’t also add some kind of fire-suppression system to the attic, as it were.

    If you could have a fire alarm go off and they flood the attic with fire-retardant foam, that works great. Or you could use steel and foam, or a combination of every damn thing. So long as you can starve an incipient fire of oxygen, you can make it all work. But you need to figure out how to integrate a fire-suppression system into this, and that is not a trivial enterprise. And note: I’m not talking water. I’m pretty sure that water, while preserving the roof frame, would damage the replacement vaults. So something that can pump, expand, and then (hopefully) be sucked out would be the goal, We may be in for some cutting-edge material-science here.

  144. 144.

    FlyingToaster

    @Cacti: Bernie isn’t a Democrat. I don’t know how many times we have to repeat ourselves, but at this point, I think the party needs to enforce some internal discipline and make sure that our candidates ARE Democrats. Dammit.

  145. 145.

    rikyrah

    DA PHUQ??

    Teresa Todd was driving near Marfa Texas, when she was waved down by two siblings who’d not had food or water for two days; a third sibling could barely walk. They were also undocumented & now Todd could be indicted on federal charges of harboring aliens. https://t.co/ETYSekRDCs

    — The Appeal (@theappeal) April 17, 2019

  146. 146.

    Kay

    @Citizen Alan:

    Oh, it’s awful – “the percentage of charitable giving should be higher”

    What? Was this why we wanted their tax returns? So they could compete on charity? It plays right into the argument the returns should be private, if all we’re going to do with them is inspire dumb questions. The goal was that Beto would spend the next week on this idiocy? What’s his mortgage interest rate and I’ll also need his assessed value versus a market comparison.

  147. 147.

    Gravenstone

    @NotMax: You’re giving me very unpleasant flashbacks to some of my contemporaries in college absolutely gushing over that shitshow abomination of a movie. Fuck David Lynch with a rusty pitchfork for what he did with the property.

  149. 149.

    Aleta

    (WaPo) Attorneys general of 14 states and the District of Columbia are chastising the president over his proposal to roll back the Waters of the United States regulation.

    They say the move would mean the Environmental Protection Agency would no longer have oversight over 15 percent of streams and more than half the nation’s wetlands. “In comments filed Tuesday before the end of the public comment period, the state attorneys general said that the Trump administration’s proposal in December for a more limited rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act and runs contrary to the Clean Water Act’s objective of restoring the nation’s waterways,” The Post’s Steven Mufson reports.

    “Given the interconnected nature of national water systems, state attorneys general worry not only about pollution their own states generate but also pollution originating from outside of their jurisdiction, potentially threatening their drinking water.”

  150. 150.

    Gravenstone

    @Kay: This of course being the same “Democratic establishment ” that he sucks up to when he needs their national infrastructure for little things like running for president.

  151. 151.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @rikyrah: Why did @HardballChris allow him to interrupt and condescendingly dismiss @ZerlinaMaxwell ?

    Sullivan has been the “Hey, look, I’m cool and woke” (even if we weren’t saying woke back then) gay friend to a certain kind of older white guy professional centrist/conservative pundit for twenty years and more. Joe Klein gushed (with self-congratulation) for what seemed like months about how happy he was to attend Andy’s wedding. Also, did you know he went to Oxford? For somebody with Tweety’s status-anxiety, deferring to him is key to getting treated as a peer by someone who triggers his inferiority complex.
    (anybody else notice Joe Klein seems to have fallen off the face of the pundit world? I am not complaining)

  152. 152.

    germy

    So tomorrow is Redaction Day

    I am totally vindicated by a 400p document that I have not read and also my attorneys are preparing a point-by-point rebuttal, my staffers who might be quoted in it are freaking the F out, and I'm going to send 50 tweets dripping with flop sweat before it comes out.— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) April 16, 2019

  153. 153.

    plato

    @FlyingToaster: Yup, DCCC, DSCC, DNC, etc. all had years to sort out this BS mess and yet here he is kneecapping dems all over again against the worst traitorous thug in office. Pathetic.

  155. 155.

    Another Scott

    @FlyingToaster: One thing we should remember – Notre Dame was crumbling before the fire. That’s why they were doing the restoration in the first place.

    BBC:

    Notre-Dame: Cracks in the cathedral

    In 2018 the Catholic Church in France launched an urgent appeal for funds to save Notre-Dame cathedral.

    Parts of the 850-year-old Gothic masterpiece were starting to crumble, because of pollution eating the stone.

    At the time, Michel Picot, head of fundraising, took to the rooftop to show the extent of the challenge ahead.

    No doubt that the fire made things worse, but a lot of repair work was already planned and underway.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  157. 157.

    Shana

    @Kattails: I remember reading a few years ago about some structure in Japan, perhaps a temple (?) made of wood where parts of it are regularly replaced. The structure itself has been there for centuries but no part of it is original.

  158. 158.

    Leto

    @NotMax: @Gravenstone: As a Dune-head, I love how spectacularly awful Lynch’s movie is; I also wonder how Jodoworsky’s Dune would’ve been actualized (the conceptual art is amazing), and I’m really pleased (so far) with how the new Dune movie is coming along. Great cast, but how are they hanmdlimg the material, script wise?

    Obligatory: Fuck Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert from here ‘till eternity.

  159. 159.

    r€nato

    @Baud: from the story to which you linked:

    that doesn’t mean that all big businesses are pleased with the increasing likelihood of a higher minimum wage — especially franchisees of those big businesses, who might own a handful of storefronts. After McDonalds’ announcement, former McDonalds CEO Ed Rensi wrote in Forbes about how the company’s choice “aggravates” its franchisees, who formed their first-ever national association last fall in order to negotiate over issues like menu pricing with corporate headquarters.

    so business owners can organize to promote their interests, that’s just fine… but employees wanting to organize to promote their interests? COMMUNISM

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