Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

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

People are complicated. Love is not.

The next time the wall wtreet journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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

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

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

I was promised a recession.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

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277Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Overdid it yesterday. Not much sleep last night. Gonna overdo it again today. Blech.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: She’s been knitting together conspiracy theories for over 2 years. How can you not have noticed?

  6. 6.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Raven: I wish her well but I hope she’s not thinking about entering the Democratic primary. It’s crowded enough already and, as a foreigner, I worry that the more candidates, the more chance of splits and general bad feeling, especially when you factor in preferred media narratives and Republican rodent fornication.

    The counter though is that women tend to be able to work together with former rivals more easily than men are. Less testosterone driven thinking?

  9. 9.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    We understand why some may have been upset seeing this listing, because we were, too,” the company’s co-CEO, Ashwani Mayur, said.

    Misguided attempt at diversity?

    ETA:. Or maybe they were looking for someone to get contracts from the Trump administration.

  13. 13.

    WereBear

    Been doing so many Way of Cats projects I haven’t been doing much else. After a long hiatus, I am updating the site look, advertising my own products, and the tons more stuff to do as an online business.

    Yes, I have a friend who knits hats and sells them on etsy, but she makes something that a photograph can be taken of. By comparison, I have abstract ideas and cats with varying levels of cooperation to work with.

    And I can’t knit. :)

  14. 14.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Biden Opens Commanding Lead (link)

    (CNN) Former Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement of a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination earned him an 11-point polling bounce, leaving him head and shoulders above the rest of the Democratic candidates.

    A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS after Biden’s announcement on Thursday shows 39% of voters who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents saying he is their top choice for the nomination, up from 28% who said the same in March.

    That puts Biden more than 20 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont — who holds 15% support in the poll — and roughly 30 points ahead of the next strongest candidate, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (8%).

    Warren ranks about evenly with South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (7%), former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke (6%) and Sen. Kamala Harris of California (5%), who round out the list of those earning 5% or more in the poll. The remaining 17 candidates tested all held the support of 2% or less.

    So much for the blog meme that Biden would fall the moment he announced.

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: The story even notes that his company has 60% minority employment, which led me to think it was a white employee (no doubt male) getting his panties in a bunch over being surrounded every day by those people.

  18. 18.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    The training really is:
    Ask, demand, shoot.

    Of course, most people don’t know what they police are asking them to do or whether it is them that is being asked. Then, people are shocked and confused by just why the police are yelling at them; and by then, well, the police have no other choice than to shoot them for not complying.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Prominent sports radio host Mike Francesca appears to have blamed New York Giants draft pick Corey Ballentine for a shooting in which he was injured and his college teammate Dwane Simmons was killed over the weekend.

    Simmons’s family say police told them the two players were about to leave a party early on Sunday near their college, Washburn University, when a vehicle pulled up to them. They talked to people in the car before shots were fired and Simmons was killed. He was 23. Police in Topeka, Kansas, have not suggested Simmons or Ballentine were culpable for the incident.

    On Monday, Francesca chose to focus on whether Ballentine was “the right kind of guy”.

    “Listen, you can have an off-field incident with any draft pick any time,” Francesa said. “But when you finish your draft and stress how you went out of your way to take the right kind of guys, guys that you want on the team, guys that are going to be great character guys and you stress that as strongly as the Giants did, it looks pretty bad when one of them gets shot on a Saturday night. It does not look good. It’s just more of the same for the Giants, who just can’t get out of their own way, no matter what they say.”

    Mike? You are not one of the right kind of guys.

  26. 26.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Bernie Sanders
    ‏Verified account @BernieSanders

    The good news is that Trump is getting nervous, corporate America is getting nervous and the Democratic establishment is getting nervous. They’re worried that we’re going to win this thing, and they should be.

    5:20 PM – 28 Apr 2019

    And he wonders why actual Democrats dislike him.

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    @David Merry Christmas Koch

    …what Biden doesn’t possess, no matter how many times lazy reporters and pundits say it, is a steel-like grip on the rust belt states that could decide the general election. No matter what you think of his politics or personality, the electability debate is – as the candidate might say himself – a bunch of malarkey. Source

  37. 37.

    CliosFanboy

    @Baud: Ugh! Why do all the best astronomical events happen in the middle of the night?

    you joke, but back in 1987 I was in a museum in West Virginia and the docent told us that people were complaining that they scheduled viewings of Haley’s Comet too late at night…

  43. 43.

    Immanentize

    I am not worried Bernie will win. He took 60% of the New Hampshire vote last time around. He is hovering in the 20’s now. That is BAD for an incumbant winner in his home state back yard.
    (And Biden is currently crushing him in Iowa)

  45. 45.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @NotMax: I’ve never said Biden is going to win. I like all the candidates, except the usual suspects. At the same time, I do think some underestimate Biden’s viability.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Bernie has some explaining to do.

    Bernie gets on my nerves but I don’t think this is bad. They all collect information. The voter files (rolls) are a public record and they all keep elaborate “lists” which they freely hand out to all manner of volunteers and staff and if Russia or whoever wants them they can certainly get them, or just compile their own. People often end up on weird lists. I was on Sarah Palin’s organizing list in 2008, I think. I got phone calls about getting people to her rallies 50 miles away.

    They sometimes use the lists to exaggerate their support- Bernie might be doing that. He would say all those names are supporters or even active volunteers. I think that’s what Palin did.

  52. 52.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @rikyrah: my grandparents are Democrats. My parents are Democrats. My sisters and I are Democrats. I joined the Democratic Party at age 19 – went down to the post office and filled out the paperwork. A multi generational family of card carrying Democrats. I guess that makes us the “establishment”.

  53. 53.

    gene108

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Looking at who owns the company 60% minority are probably mostly H1-b’s*. I assume most of the management staff are working in India.

    The ads asking for caucasians and a woman, for account manager, were probably posted by someone in their recruiting team, in India, not understanding U.S. rules on job advertising.

    Basically, the poor chap in India, not knowing better said the quiet parts out loud, about who the owners wanted to hire.

    * I have nothing against H1-b visas. It is pretty much the only way for people from India, who want to come to the USA, to do so. Considering immigration from India was mostly banned prior to the end of WW2, there is a lot of pent up demand for people to want to come here.

  59. 59.

    gene108

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Once Trump announced, with his role out speech calling Mexicans rapists, he immediately jumped to the top of the polls and stayed there.

    My fear with Biden is he will instinctively try to work with Republicans, and run a campaign that will not slag the hell out of Trump. I think Biden maybe stuck in the era where liberal was a dirty word.

    What I like about Warren and Harris is they seem to understand there is no compromise, and they are aware how deep the rot is in this country.

    I think, for better or worse, Biden represents the past of the Democratic Party, both the good and the bad, which is known and therefore comforting to many voters

  61. 61.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I think it’s kind of amusing because the Bernie supporters might be horrified, that he’s building a huge marketing database. Like a corporation :)

  63. 63.

    Baud

    @gene108:

    Biden isn’t my first choice, but if he ends up president, I’ll laugh my ass off at every so-called progressive who thought Hillary wasn’t good enough. Hillary’s administration would have been far more left than Biden’s would be.

  64. 64.

    zhena gogolia

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    My husband’s answer to this is, “He hadn’t been a two-term Vice President with a popular President then.” He was getting all tingly about a Biden-Harris ticket until I pointed out that Biden was born in 1942.

  65. 65.

    Immanentize

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: This whole thing about Biden doing poorly previously sort of ignores the fact that, since then, he was Vice President of the United States twice. He might have even brought a few votes into Obama’s column.

    ETA Or what zhena said.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    But what is the data to be protected? Can he get something that isn’t easily available to anyone else? The scale is larger- I get that- but if he’s just plugging in names and linking anyone can do that. I would think the risk is he would end up with a “bad list”- a giant list, but not one that reflects his actual supporters, which sort of negates the point of “targeting” but might be helpful if someone wanted to say “I have 12 million names on this list so therefore am quite popular”.

  69. 69.

    JPL

    @Baud: I’d be okay with him if he put Kamala on the ticket. My next choice would be Abrams. Although Warren is great, Biden needs someone younger to energize the crowd.

  70. 70.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gene108: I don’t think you have to worry about Biden not slagging the hell out of Trump. The big theme of his campaign seems to be that Trump is personally the problem, a one-man anomaly. He’s trying to drive a wedge between Trump and people who might otherwise be inclined to vote Republican.

    I think his diagnosis is wrong in principle, morally suspect since it basically involves taking core Democratic constituencies for granted, and it might be bad for down-ticket races. I’m not convinced it’s the best strategy for the presidential election either… but it’s one you could at least make a defensible case for. Trump was elected to a large degree by people who publicly stated that they disliked him, they just hated Hillary Clinton more. Probably at least 50% of that was pure sexism. Suppose you take them at their word and try to get those votes back? I don’t know, it might work, though I’m skeptical.

  71. 71.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    It may be all publicly available info, but people don’t care about that when it comes to data security. They still want their information protected.

  72. 72.

    Another Scott

    @rikyrah: And Donnie is still making them eat cold fast food. Ick.

    Good for the women for showing their disapproval.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I agree and I think that might be especially true of Bernie supporters, who have a conspiratorial bent and are very attached to the idea that his organization is “grass roots” and unsophisticated. What always surprises me about his campaigns is how conventional they are. The ad he’s running about Trump is like boilerplate Dem “populist” ad. I’ve seen that “testimonial” ad with the shuttered factory tens of times in Ohio. For a “revolution”, they look like every other campaign. Sort of prickly and reactive and hyper-angry, but an ordinary campaign.

  80. 80.

    johnnybuck

    @JPL: In the poll cited above, Harris leads the field on the question of “which candidate would you like to hear more about?” which suggests to me that she has the most room to grow. Interestingly, Sanders came in dead last.

  85. 85.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Biden’s age is sort of a stand in for what I object to about him. He’s an old, white guy who talks like Chris Matthews. He’s a decent person and would be a thousand times better than Trump, but he’s just as likely to lose mental and physical sharpness.

  87. 87.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Biden worries me because I don’t think Democrats have the organizational infrastructure an older, conventional candidate may need, or worse, assume. He isn’t going to win organizing in a Steelworkers hall. He referenced this in his speech- he went after UPMC which is the Pittsburgh health care behemoth which is a huge employer and which is basically a monopoly and where employees are trying to unionize, so maybe he knows if his campaign is based on workers he needs ALL workers and he is going to have to find them because they aren’t on a union hall list.

    My daughter and son in law are both in health care and one of the reasons they left Pittsburgh (he’s a native) is because UPMC owns the entire health care industry there, and they hated that. They say that one company controls the whole market.

    UPMC has since evolved from this modest, charitable hospital to a $16 billion global health enterprise. Somewhere along the way, the institution seems to have lost track of its stated mission to serve the surrounding community.

  97. 97.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    That’s actually much more common.

    And too much to ask in our present circumstance. I’m feeling lazy this morn and not looking to deep into anything.

    And heading out the door.

  100. 100.

    Elizabelle

    Good morning, jackals.

    Sad that director John Singleton did not get a longer life. Only 51. Would bet he had a lot of good projects and work still ahead of him. I have not seen much of his work, and will get on that this summer.

    Rest in peace, or power.

  101. 101.

    Chyron HR

    @gene108:

    My fear with Biden is he will instinctively try to work with Republicans, and run a campaign that will not slag the hell out of Trump.

    That’s really funny considering that the alleged “left” are the ones who’ve been exalting the superiority of Republicans over crummy ol’ Democrats and warning us not to say anything bad about Trump.

  102. 102.

    JPL

    Imagine standing near the president when he says this
    TO NCAA WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM: ‘I LOVE THOSE SHORT SLEEVES, SUCH BEAUTIFUL ARMS, GREAT DEFINITION.’
    Imagine him wearing the shirt..

  103. 103.

    gvg

    @gene108: Biden’s roll out attacked Trump by name for Charlottesville “good people on both sides”. So Biden is NOT playing nice with some Republicans. He surprised me with that. We’ll see if he can address the rest of the issue. If he names McConnell, I’ll be even more impressed.
    Theoretically, it might be possible to split the republican party. I don’t see how, but I wasn’t a senator for 30 years.
    I am not thrilled with him, but my goals are get rid of Trump and do it with some significant punishment to deter future grifters, and 2nd force the GOP to change or die. They need to lose power for a while, get new leaders at all levels.

  104. 104.

    Immanentize

    Trump
    Obama
    GW Bush
    Clinton
    GHW Bush
    Reagan
    Carter
    Ford
    Nixon
    LBJ
    Kennedy
    Eisenhower
    Truman
    So, five of 13 Presidents since WWII (and the passage of the 22nd Amendment) were former VP’s. This can be sliced and diced to fit one’s argument, but that still is a pretty powerful ascedency rate.

    And like I said above, Gore should at least get an asterisk

  107. 107.

    JPL

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I hope someone does because I think that Deutsche already turned over material to NYstate Congress has just as much right to investigate. At least that’s the way the Constitution was interpreted in the olden days.

  109. 109.

    Immanentize

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:
    He will not succeed. But he may be able to slow things way down. I think that was one of Cohen’s threats on behalf of Trump — that they would bury opponents in endless litigation.

  110. 110.

    Dave

    @rikyrah: I do wonder how much credit he garners from how enthusiastically and effortlessly he embraced the VP role to President Obama was and how much that might be overlooked as a factor. It’s why one of my fantasy isn’t going to happen tickets would be Abrams/Biden he’s a good VP and it’s a less stressful role for an older person.

  112. 112.

    Immanentize

    @JPL: If Congress is seeking the same information NY received, there doesn’t seem to be any legal reason not to share it.

  114. 114.

    Immanentize

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: see, that’s what I mean about slicing and dicing. Also, they were all younger, so there is no precedent at all! And none were from Pennsylvania — and certainly not Scranton (although Nixon was a Quaker much to that denomination’s eternal chagrin).

  116. 116.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Immanentize: I think ascending to the office on the death or resignation of the predecessor is a fair slice.

    ETA: Remember only Martin Van Buren, Tricky Dick and HW Bush won on their own(not being an incumbent after a vacancy) after being VP.

  117. 117.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Stacey Abrams has decided against running for Senate from Georgia, a Democrat with knowledge tells CNN, and she met with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schemer today to inform him of her plan.

    Fuck. That was the (potential) campaign I was most excited about.

  119. 119.

    Immanentize

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: But 2 of the 3 won a straight up election, so we are back to 4! Also a valid slice.

    My point is — people in this country are primed to think of Vice Presidents (with notable exceptions *Quail cough*) as Presidential. With good reason — they have had some time to act that way on the public stage commanding a big microphone. Being VP to Obama is a huge plus for Biden.

    I am not voting for Biden in the primary, and I really thought he wouldn’t run (made that sorry prediction a couple of times here) I am not sending him money — I’ve already outlined my priorities this time around. But I’m not sticking my head in the sand about Biden’s positives in terms of getting votes.

  122. 122.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    My biggest complaint about Clinton’s campaign is this- it is conventional wisdom (because it’s true) that OH, PA and MI have commonalities on composition of the D electorate. OH is the reddest, but it is, in fact, a bellweather for D’s in that region because the states have a lot in common as far as Right leaning Democrats. So if Clinton was back 6 in Ohio (which Democrats win by 5, if they win) that means she is struggling in PA and MI. And she was. I don’t understand why back 6 in OH wasn’t a flashing red light that MI and PA are threatened. I comforted myself at the time because she had Obama campaign people, but they didn’t see it either and again, this is the conventional wisdom, that these states have commonalities in voter groups and they move somewhat in tandem. That one can look at one of them and guess the others. I think it was a giant error and no one has ever explained it, because political media jumped in with this whole different “Wisconsin” thing that they loved.

  123. 123.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    So now we’ve got to hope for good recruits for Senate races in Maine, North Carolina, Iowa (?), Colorado, and pray for Doug Jones and hope Joe Manchin doesn’t fuck us over. We’ve pretty much got to run the table

  124. 124.

    Immanentize

    @Tenar Arha: I am certain the Baptist asses running Baylor ordered them to go. Certainly Ken Starr would have — and led the delegation. We just need some good reporter to talk to a graduate in a month regarding what actually went down back in Waco.

  125. 125.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Immanentize:

    But 2 of the 3 won a straight up election, so we are back to 4! Also a valid slice.

    I don’t agree with you there, being an incumbent is not a straight up election. As I noted above, the record for non-incumbent VP’s running is 3/45, not a good record at all.

  126. 126.

    Immanentize

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    That is the current constitutional Senate feature (not bug) as far as the GOP is concerned. It seems that the differences were not sufficiently heightened. Get Susan Sarandon on the red phone!

  130. 130.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Immanentize: Well, once those doughty totally non-racist economically-anxious white voters see Bernie’s charts showing that they’ll actually being paying less for health care, it will just be more in taxes, they’ll flock to Our Revolution!

  133. 133.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud:

    Biden isn’t my first choice, but if he ends up president, I’ll laugh my ass off at every so-called progressive who thought Hillary wasn’t good enough. Hillary’s administration would have been far more left than Biden’s would be.

    I don’t know about that. I suspect the 2020 Democratic platform will be as progressive if not more so than the 2016 version, and that’s what the nominee will run on, whoever it is. Someone pointed out the other day that both Biden and Clinton were influenced by their time in the Obama admin in a good way, and I think that’s true. Biden came out in favor of marriage equality a little ahead of PBO.

    If Biden is the nominee, his campaign will have a lot of the same baggage that hamstrung Clinton, including the fact that he’s an older white person who is perceived as an establishment type with some tough votes in the senate to explain. But he’ll also have some of the assets that helped Clinton, including being trusted by rank and file Democrats and a positive association with the Obama administration.

    Two factors that made Clinton’s campaign inspirational for me personally are that she’s a woman and she’s brilliant. Biden is neither of those, but while lacking those qualities might be a drawback for winning my primary support, it may be an advantage in the general election.

  134. 134.

    Immanentize

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I wish MomSense would chime in on Maine — there are some very good possible up there. Including the current Governor. But third party vanity candidates seem to have a way of killing off Dem hopefuls.

  135. 135.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I am a conventional Democrat. But, Obama wasn’t because he approached organizing in a different, better way and it seems it may not be transferable because wasn’t effective for Clinton. So Biden can be a conventional Democrat but he has to better at it than conventional Democrats have been. They have to admit that and work on getting better at being effective “conventional Democrats” if that’s the flag they’re planting. They could be excellent and inventive traditional Democrats, “centrists” whatever. “Centrist” can’t mean “mediocre and unimaginative” and to a certain extent it does. People didn’t make fun of Schultz because he was a centrist. They made fun of him because he sucked.

  136. 136.

    rikyrah

    @Dave:

    @rikyrah: I do wonder how much credit he garners from how enthusiastically and effortlessly he embraced the VP role to President Obama was and how much that might be overlooked as a factor.

    I don’t know about other groups, but, Black people recognize who had President Obama’s back and who didn’t.

  138. 138.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: was Braley a strong candidate before his “Grassley’s just a dumb old farmer” comment, or am I wishfully misremembering? And the guy who came pretty close (didn’t he?) in the last Gov’s race (Hubbell?)?

    @raven: /sigh/ how is it all our stars are in such deep red states?

  139. 139.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    It is amazing how the “Biden is getting back the voters Democrats NEED to win” meme is in full flower.

    Does the next candidate need to appeal to Ohio’s Trump voters? Are there that many Obama to Trump voters in Ohio (and MI and PA?). I just don’t know. Or is gerrymandering and voter suppression as much a cause of the Trump victories in those states? Calling Poblano! (Nate Silver’s original GOS nym)

  140. 140.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Ryan Struyk @ ryanstruyk
    New @CNN 2020 poll by race:
    Among whites:
    Biden 29%
    Sanders 15%
    Buttigieg 10%
    Warren 8%
    Harris 6%
    O’Rourke 6%

    Among non-whites:
    Biden 50%
    Sanders 14%
    Warren 7%
    Harris 4%
    O’Rourke 4%
    Buttigieg 3%

  142. 142.

    JPL

    @raven: If Isakson doesn’t run for reelection Abrams might have a shot in 2022. I assume that Ossoff will run now that she’s out.

  144. 144.

    Immanentize

    @Kay:

    People didn’t make fun of Schultz because he was a centrist. They made fun of him because he sucked.

    He sucked at being even a pretend moderate. He was just an asshole rich dude out for himself.
    Bloomberg does that moderate for all schtick much better.

  146. 146.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    I don’t know but until someone tells me what replaces PA and MI for Democrats, I think someone has to worry about those states. We can get mad all we want. Until they have GA, or NC, or, I don’t know, Texas, the candidate who wins the primary will pour effort into MI and PA because they need them. It’s no more complicated than that.

  148. 148.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    I think so too. We got the low quality billionaire, even. Not even a good billionaire out of that tiny category :)

    I got a huge kick out of it, because his whole attitude was “petulance”. Such a baby! Bloomberg is kind of stoic in a nice way. He’s like “I’m rich and smart and I don’t really care if you listen to me, although I’m right”

  149. 149.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Immanentize: also, he defined “centrist” according to the Morning Joe spectrum: “We need to get serious about entitlements”, which means cuts and raising age limits and you have to read that in multi-millionaire dimwit Tom Brokaw’s voice. Atrios may have gone around the bend, but he hit the nail on the head when he described the Village consensus as running from Free Republic to the New Republic.

    also, Dave Weigel was at the Biden rally yesterday

    Dave Weigel @ daveweigel
    -Interestingly, in interviews w voters here, the issue they have been citing first as a “too far” lefty pipe dream is free college. Have heard from people who love Warren but part with her on that.
    -They don’t say Medicare for All goes too far, they don’t say the Green New Deal does. They say free college does.

    so the thing that got college kids all excited at Bernie rallies makes their parents– the ones who show up to vote– skittish

    maximalist sloganeering is a double-edged sword, at best

  151. 151.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Braley was my congressman when I lived in Iowa and I thought he was doing all right. I don’t know what he’s been doing since. I also don’t know about Hubbell. 2018 was a hopeful election. Three of the state’s four reps are now D, the exception being Steve King.

  152. 152.

    Tenar Arha

    @Kay:

    I think it was a giant error and no one has ever explained it, because political media jumped in with this whole different “Wisconsin” thing that they loved.

    Wasn’t there a few articles about how the Trump campaign had some kind of access to Clinton’s internals via Democratic Party hacks? Or was it just the Russians? (My google-fu is a failure right now).

  153. 153.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Nevada and Arizona might help balance out some of that, but not all three rust belt states. Maybe NC depending on how crazy the state continues to be. Florida is possible. I think each candidate will have to design their own path with some variables. But Hillary clearly depended on PA, MI and OH.

  158. 158.

    Immanentize

    Well, Biden finally found a way to apologize without saying “I’m sorry:”

    “I was chairman of the committee. I believed her from the very beginning. But I was chairman. She did not get a fair hearing. She did not get treated well. That’s my responsibility,” Biden, the newest 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful, said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America”

    Better than his previous efforts. But I am sure that he did not put it to rest and I am (sadly) equally sure he will have difficulty staying on that message.

  159. 159.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Immanentize: having been a regular reader there in ’09 when the PUMAs and the Naderites joined forces to declare Obama the secret Republican Manchurian candidate et cetera, I honestly think he spent too much time reading his own blog. He also thinks Obama whiffed or worse about helping home-owners rather than lenders. He may have a point, I’ve never seen him try to make the factual or political case, just petulant shit-posting

  161. 161.

    Immanentize

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was a regular there for most of the naughties. I agree with Black on the housing crisis, but I’ve always wondered if it was personal -+ like he expected to be appointed in the admin. but wasn’t. Considering how he has been since about 2010, good move on the part of Team Obama (if that’s what happened).

  162. 162.

    Tenar Arha

    @Immanentize: It’s like, after assuming during the shutdown that all college student athletes would eat like sh*t, he somehow decided to make every college athletic team that comes to visit him eat sh*t. With extra humiliation & thumbing his nose at these women, who probably could hardly eat his cold food at all.

    And nutrition-wise men who play sports often have to “make weight,” so feeding them fast food, including burgers & nuggets, is probably not too harsh on their regular nutritional schedule, as long as they don’t eat a lot. It’s significantly harder for women to eat to put on muscle & not fat. And he decided to feed a women’s team fast food! (That’s not just one cheat day on those tables for those women, it’s a week).

  163. 163.

    Immanentize

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:
    AI driving is already here. It is just a question of how fast the rest happens, I think. And yes, there will be liability issues, but legislatures will fix that to support AI cars. As someone said, the question will not be how quickly will it be before automated cars are a “thing,” the real question will be, how long will regular (non-automated) driving be legal after AI gets a toe hold.

  164. 164.

    Immanentize

    Meanwhile, in the real world, Guido is trying to unseat Maduro with an armed coup.

    ETA. The Russians already have troops in Venezuela to protect their investments. Things gonna get teal, real fast.

    ETAA:. SO MANY typos, but I’m leaving them because they amuse me — Guido for Guaido? Teal for real? Gold.

  166. 166.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Immanentize: Self-driving cars are not going to be good enough to take over the market in my lifetime. They’re going to get 99% of the way there (already almost are). But the last 1% is going to be 99% of the work, and the solution will eventually probably be to redesign the driving environment instead of the cars.

    They probably will, however, be good enough to replace human-driven trucks for long-distance driving on the interstates. A human driver will take over to handle the last few miles in urban areas. Since that will require many fewer people, it will put huge numbers of truckers out of work. That’s going to be a big problem when it happens.

  167. 167.

    Immanentize

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Oh I agree, and the best way for that safety stuff to happen will be large infrastructure investments like sensors (massive redundancy) and new traffic patterns (more one way streets), etc. But some city is going to do that, then hang on!

    Hey, you’re a Bruin. They — along with MIT, Stanford, and Michigan — are leading the way on this brave New world.

  168. 168.

    Steve in the ATL

    @OzarkHillbilly: still a better pick than Daniel Jones!

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Saying the quiet parts out loud: Tech firm apologizes after job ad seeks ‘preferably Caucasian’ candidates

    I assume this point has already been covered in the thread, but this job ad is not just “embarrassing” or “poorly worded”, it’s also flagrantly illegal. As in, not even a top notch labor and employment such as myself could defend it.

  169. 169.

    Immanentize

    @Matt McIrvin: I completely agree about driving environments. See above. But 99% AI OK is better than human drivers.

    I would never bet against fast technological restructuring these days. Sadly that includes warfare

  170. 170.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize: We’d be delighted to have you back in our fine state! Plus it’s closer to Houston. Although academic swamps will be swampish everywhere, I’m afraid.

    Yesterday was my penultimate class of the semester. After next week – freedom!

  172. 172.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Immanentize: I hope that, based on the quality of work they have done designing traffic interchanges in metro Atlanta, that Georgia Tech engineers are not part of this process!

    No offense to any rambling wrecks in the audience, of course.

  173. 173.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Kay:

    it seems it may not be transferable because wasn’t effective for Clinton.

    Can’t really compare the two: Obama didn’t have Clinton’s “baggage” of thirty years’ worth of defamation, didn’t have Russian interference (as far as we know), didn’t have Comey. Apples to kumquats.

    ETA: Plus, he’s male. Gender still prevails, it seems.

  174. 174.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    In my experience, just as anyone can hang a door, anyone can crochet. Doing it well on the other hand…

    Um, Ozark — I think they were talking about you being crotchety, not doing crochet.

    Just trying to be helpful.

  175. 175.

    Immanentize

    @O. Felix Culpa:
    Freedom’s just another word….

    Yes, UNM is like every other law school — but smaller! I really had a great time there. Made some good friends, had great trips around the State. I went there the fall of 2000. One of the other Profs had an election night party; the invitation to which included -“From 7:00 until the last vote is counted.” Good party, but I didn’t stay that long.
    My final is being given this afternoon. Then grading. Then gardening? Travel?

  176. 176.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Immanentize:

    I wish MomSense would chime in on Maine

    It’s too late now—doesn’t she usually hit the sauce pretty hard around 9 am?

    I’m kidding! Right?

  179. 179.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize: I’m (almost) embarrassed to say my grading is done electronically. But my discipline lends itself more to that than law.

    I’m trying to catch up on gardening. Little by little. As for travel…New Mexico is nice. :) Ms. O and I are heading to Scandinavia in mid-June. I’ve never been there before, so very excited about this trip.

  180. 180.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @schrodingers_cat: True, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about folk who didn’t vote on a regular basis that voted due to Trump’s racist message sans dog whistles. I’m betting that there were more of them than Obama-to-Trump voters. This also seems to be Trump’s re-elect strategy.

  181. 181.

    Steve in the ATL

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: like MomSense, I’ve apparently also hit the sauce pretty hard this morning!

    Though I am considered to be in top quartile of L&E lawyers in my household.

  185. 185.

    rikyrah

    @Immanentize:

    He sucked at being even a pretend moderate. He was just an asshole rich dude out for himself.

    Amen.It was all about him keeping his tax cut. A tax cut that rank and file Democrats never wanted him to have in the first place. And, all he did was attack Democrats

  186. 186.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Air travel is a hardship these days; I try to limit it. You seem to get around in the great state of California, which has a lot to offer. And then there’s the sky. In the middle of the night. ;)

  188. 188.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Matt McIrvin: Long, long time ago I read a short story in one of the pulp SF mags with one of the premises being semi-autonomous long-haul trucks which had dedicated lanes on the highway where they traveled at very high speeds. Not sure why I recall that

  192. 192.

    Gin & Tonic

    @O. Felix Culpa: You will love it. Just bring lots of money.

    Like the great philosopher M. Allison says, “if you’re going to the city, you better have some cash.”

  195. 195.

    MomSense

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Ha! I wish it were something rebellious like that. Sadly I crashed early and then was wide awake at 3:00 and only fell asleep right before it was time to wake up.

    We’ve got some good people who could run for Senate. The current speaker of the house, Sara Gideon, is considering it but I doubt she will. She is a rising star and doesn’t want to run and lose. I think she wants to be governor after Janet. We have a history of really good candidates like Tom Allen losing to Collins and that was in 2008 when the conditions were ideal. Susan Rice apparently has decided not to run which is a bummer.
    The biggest problem is that Collins is very popular here and people in the state aren’t paying attention as closely as Dems nationally. She has a huge war chest and the support of lots of industry and professional associations. She has focused a lot of effort on constituent services over the years so there are many people who feel that she helped them when they needed it.

    Our governor has a sister and a brother who could possibly pull it off but I don’t think they will for personal reasons.

  197. 197.

    Steeplejack

    I’ve been away from the news for a bit. Has anyone raised the question of why Trump is still dishing out cold fast food to visiting teams now that the shutdown is over and the White House staff is working again?

  200. 200.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I don’t know but until someone tells me what replaces PA and MI for Democrats, I think someone has to worry about those states. We can get mad all we want. Until they have GA, or NC, or, I don’t know.

    I believe that we already have GA and NC. ..but, hanky voter suppression…
    There are 1.4 MILLION unregistered former felons in Florida that can be registered -poll tax be damned. ..I believe a lot of them would be Democratic Party Voters.
    I think Ohio is beyond reach and a waste of time. I don’t think the same of PA and MI.

    I will repeat – AGAIN…
    that the number of REGULAR DEMOCRATIC VOTERS DENIED THE FRANCHISE DUE TO VOTER SUPPRESSION IN 2016….

    in MI, PA, WI…

    Was TWO-TO-THREE-TIMES the margin of Dolt45’s ‘ victory’ in those states.

    We NEED to address THAT.

  201. 201.

    MomSense

    @MomSense:

    I almost wish Stephen King would run. He’s a solid Dem but his corgi Molly, the thing of evil, runs him ragged. She’s definitely not vetted.

  203. 203.

    MomSense

    @rikyrah:

    That’s exactly it! Hundreds of thousands of people in those states were denied their right to vote. Half the voting machines in Detroit didn’t work!

  205. 205.

    MomSense

    @Steeplejack:

    Apparently taxpayers pick up the tab for state dinners but not events like that – hence he served the cheapest most disgusting food to the team.

  206. 206.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Immanentize: I just looked up the publication date, and it’s almost 30 years ago, so I’m not sure how well it will have held up. I may need to take another look.

    De Landa is kind of a polymath. He teaches architectural history and urban design, but writes about AI, history of science, nonlinear systems, lots of other things, kind of from a French “post-modern” perspective – i.e. Guattari and Deleuze. Probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but gave me some interesting perspectives on the Mongol invasion of Europe.

  207. 207.

    scav

    @Steve in the ATL: Having watched a person jump from Obama to Bernie to Trump, it struck me that there’s a largish group individuals that may be putting more effort into chosing between the latest pet rock or beanie baby substitute than anything else in their life. There’s no logical chain of platform or meaning or ethical worldview but merely the sloshing of sheep-like trendiness. Or maybe plankton.

    Not so much a distortion of cognition, but the entire absense of it.

  208. 208.

    schrodingers_cat

    @scav: Sounds like my ex-friend, the Yoga teacher. She voted for Jill Stein but was making excuses for the Muslim ban and was slowly drifting towards T. Wouldn’t be surprised if she has gone over to the dark side completely by now.

  209. 209.

    schrodingers_cat

    @MomSense: RWNJs are claiming on Twitter that other presidents didn’t serve the teams any food at all. So the Orange one is the most generous one of them all. I find this hard to believe.

    ETA: The invited teams should eat nothing.
    ETA2: He is so fucking gross, where I come from you are supposed to treat your guest as if he were God.

  210. 210.

    Miss Bianca

    @gene108: You know, for all this hand-wringing about Biden “not understanding” and wanting to work with Republicans and not being hard enough on Trump that I’m seeing from you – and in fairness, not just from you – I look at that campaign video and the response to it and think, “Joe’s on to something here”. And I am not going to be one of those “Joe for the primary” voters – I just think he has a role to play, and if he plays it like I think (hope, pray) he’s going to – that is, using his unique position as Obama’s VP for moral authority to hammer Trump and Trumpism – he’ll be a great addition to the Democratic campaigning. I don’t think he’ll end up as the candidate, but whoever does will likely do so because of, rather than despite, Biden’s full support.

    @rikyrah: I agree with this analysis.

  211. 211.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Steve in the ATL: @scav: They vote their gut. They voted for Obama because the stock market was in free fall and McCain seemed erratic and out of touch. They voted for T because now their stock portfolios had recovered, they hated HRC and were upset by all the Black Lives Matters protests and heard the siren song of Brietbart whispering white genocide in their ear.

    I would like to know how many of these supposed Obama voters were Obama voters in both 2008 and 2012 or had they already bailed on Obama and had voted for Romney. My ex-friend’s husband the Jewish T supporter voted for Obama in 2008 but was back voting for Rs in 2012.

  213. 213.

    Steeplejack

    @MomSense:

    Surely there’s a White House budget for non-state-dinner entertaining. What about when the president—well, not this one—has congressional leaders over for working a reception or a working dinner, etc.?

    This can’t be considered a purely “personal” thing, because the president is now sort of expected to host the champion teams of everything. Well, maybe food is optional?

  215. 215.

    Sab

    Since this is open thread, I am back to ramps, since it’s spring.

    Ramps! Went to our local health food grocery yesterday, and they had ramps with the roots still attached. So instead of eating them I planted them. They look very sad and unhealthy. Should I trim back the leaves? would that give them a better chance or would it finish them off?

  216. 216.

    Sab

    Our rottmix dog is asleep right now, on her back, and is distinguishable from a dead cockroach only because she has four legs not six.

  220. 220.

    JPL

    @Steve in the ATL: My son and his wife got hit by the SALT limit pretty hard and owed. I would assume that in your area that is the case also. Have you heard complaints from neighbors? Truthfully since I’m single I would have if I were still working.

    That might sway a few local repubs to vote dem

  221. 221.

    Wapiti

    @Matt McIrvin: So these self-driving trucks… I guess there will be a booming market for crews putting chains on trucks at winter passes. It will be strictly seasonal work. Except as climate change introduces more and more fluke weather.

  223. 223.

    Sab

    @Spanky: Of course not. I left Florida fifty years ago. She is a rottmix so she isn’t even the size of a rottweiler. She’s only sixty pounds.

  225. 225.

    rikyrah

    Committees for the Defense of the Revolution
    by Liberal Librarian

    ……………………….

    The idea that Sanders rolled out an app which encouraged his followers to report on those who don’t “feel the Bern” is one step beyond for me.

    I’ve not been much on the “Never Bernie” track, because my one overriding goal is to send Donald Trump out of the White House and into jail.

    But this gross totalitarian move by Sanders is one step too far for me.

    This is no different than the Cuban CDR’s, or how the East German Stasi had most of the population spying on each other. This, should Bernie win, is laying the groundwork for informants snitching on those not willing to go to Washington and march to push Bernie’s pet projects.

    That this is an ill-thought out project is a lie. This was very well-thought out.

    Sanders is nothing but a totalitarian in the mold of Trump, just of the left rather than of the right.

    He knows he’s divisive. But his own will to power wouldn’t allow him to sit out this election. He had to run, because he is the only savior.

    Sanders is nothing but a mediocre white man who has drawn sustenance from the example of mediocre white man Donald Trump. If he can “win”, so can Bernie.

    Sanders has accomplished nothing, aside from conning Vermont voters to elect him. And this Gulag Archipelago app, which encourages his followers to snitch on people they know, is evidence of this. He can’t win a fair fight. He had one in 2016, and had his ass handed to him.

  227. 227.

    JPL

    France 24 is airing a press conference with Guaido’s Ambassador to the US. There is no turning back from the take over and the US supports the ouster of Maduro.
    This could get bad real quickly.

  230. 230.

    Sab

    @O. Felix Culpa: When I first moved to Florida at age six, my deskmate had a pet cockroach in a jar. It was an inch long at least. I got my first crush on a boy because he was so attentive to the needs of his pet cockroach. Teacher was cool with it also.

    Florida has always been odd.

  231. 231.

    JPL

    @MomSense: I did read a tweet that mentioned the Obama’s always had a nice spread, but since I read it on the internet who knows. I would believe anything a right wing nut job would say though.

  232. 232.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Sab: My first exposure to Florida was a cute boy who joined our fifth-grade class in New Jersey. Don’t remember what part of Florida he was from, but he said “yes, ma’am” a lot to our teacher, which we thought was quaint.

  233. 233.

    JPL

    Holy crap a tank is charging a crowd. It doesn’t appear that anyone was injured though. Now someone just tossed a firebomb at a tank and here come the water cannons.This is not good.

    I wonder if you can stream france 24 ssince they appear to be the only ones covering the situation in Venezuela

  234. 234.

    Kay

    Dave Weigel
    ‏
    Verified account

    @daveweigel
    3h3 hours ago
    More Dave Weigel Retweeted Michael Arceneaux
    Clinton was the “inevitable” candidate in 2008 AND 2016. A whole generation of women thought that she was going to be the first female president.
    Now a lot of them have electoral PTSD and just want to check their phones without Trump yelling at them.

    This so true. I’m fighting it and will vote for a woman in the primary but it’s risky, so I get their concern.

  236. 236.

    Sab

    @O. Felix Culpa: In Florida, when I was a kid, “yes, ma’am” or “yes, sir” was absolutely mandatory for any child speaking to an adult. When we moved north to Ohio and said that we were punished. The teachers thought we were either being sarcastic or talking like West Virginians. Neither was acceptable behavior.

  237. 237.

    Kay

    @Sab:

    Oh, OKAY. But you won’t like it. I myself do not plant wild things in a home garden. Just grow some nice domesticated onions. They’ll grow beautifully. Eat the ramps and go get some onion sets. That’s my advice :)

  238. 238.

    Peale

    @rikyrah: Yeah. I don’t really want to overemphasize the opportunity for Dems from the re-enfanchised felon vote to help in Florida. A lot of them haven’t voted for decades and we know that non-voting is a habit that’s hard to break out of. Plus many will continue to be poor and jobless and we know that depresses turnout. And these probably aren’t the most civic minded co-hort. If we get maybe 140,000 of that 1.4 million to the polls it will be a miracle. A 65-35 split of that group, though, will go a long way to making up for what we need in Florida to carry the state this time. I just don’t want to get too excited into thinking Florida will have a higher turnout this time around. To win that, we need the voters we had last time, plus Trump voters to stay home, plus new voters of some kind.

  239. 239.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, in the Russian pipeline industry… Reuters:

    MOSCOW/LONDON (Reuters) – It was a quiet Easter holiday at the offices of major European oil companies and refiners when an email in Russian landed. “What the hell does it say?” one manager recalled thinking as he sent it to his Moscow office for translation.

    He was in for a shock.

    The letter was from the state pipeline company in Belarus, Gomeltransneft, telling oil refiners and pipeline operators in Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic that the crude heading toward them from Russia down the 5,500 km (3,400 mile) Druzhba pipeline network was heavily contaminated.

    “We ask you to immediately take all measures to avoid potential losses and other negative consequences,” said the Gomeltransneft letter dated April 19 and seen by Reuters.

    […]

    Contaminated oil has been found in Belarus, Poland, Germany, Ukraine and the Baltic port of Ust Luga, all of which are served by the Druzhba network, said multiple sources involved in trading Russian oil said.

    “This oil is not sellable. You cannot just dump the price and sell it at a discount. No one wants this oil,” a second source at a Western oil company said.

    Buyers who have received contaminated oil now need to store it somewhere and dilute it with cleaner crude to lower chloride levels, an operation that could costs millions of dollars for each large crude tanker, according to oil trading sources.

    The oil at the Ust Luga port, for example, could gradually be loaded onto ships mixed with better quality crude but solutions are less obvious for oil still in the pipeline.

    […]

    For now, there is no explanation as to how the oil was tainted. The scale of the contamination suggests corrupted crude could have been pumped into the pipeline for days, if not weeks.

    Belarus said on Tuesday that the volume of contaminated crude could be as high as 5 million tonnes – equivalent to a month’s exports via Druzhba of about 1.2 million barrels a day and worth $2.7 billion at current prices.

    In a news briefing on Friday, Igor Dyomin, an aide to Transeft’s Tokarev, told Russian media “the contamination was intentional”.

    […]

    Weird.

    About all Putin has going for him is money from oil and gas exports. If this turns out to be deliberate, then it’s going to hurt him, and Russia, in the pocketbook.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  241. 241.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah: He is Russian Asset # 2. This is what communists governments perfected. He calls himself a Democratic Socialist can some reporter ask him what exactly that entails? And no invoking Sweden elebenty times is not the answer. I want to know what his ideology is.

  242. 242.

    gvg

    @Peale: A lot of Florida’s felons were for minor shit. Plus I happen to think it’s a good sign that my electorate decided it wasn’t cool to pick on felons like that. It’s the first time in a long time that republican politicians weren’t able to get their way by scare mongering about ooh scary felons. It would be good if that became a habit and we actually started thinking about felons as people who sometimes need kindness.
    I have no evidence, but I think some of it is people are thinking about legalized marijuana maybe coming and realizing how many were locked up because of such useless charges. Talk about voter suppression also probably influenced some.

  243. 243.

    rikyrah

    @Another Scott:

    Belarus said on Tuesday that the volume of contaminated crude could be as high as 5 million tonnes – equivalent to a month’s exports via Druzhba of about 1.2 million barrels a day and worth $2.7 billion at current prices.

    In a news briefing on Friday, Igor Dyomin, an aide to Transeft’s Tokarev, told Russian media “the contamination was intentional”.

    HMMMMMMMM

  244. 244.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Betty Cracker: and truth be told, no matter how angry and spiteful and stupid I think they were, a ton of voters refused to vote for Hillary based on personal animosity. They detested her viscerally, and could not bring themselves to vote for her.

    But they WILL vote for Joe Biden. In a heartbeat.

    We have to accept they were stupid, stupid people who simply could not imagine what they were doing to our country, but that that dynamic was likely responsible for the handful of votes in an even smaller handful of states that put Trump over the top in the Electoral College.

  245. 245.

    Kay

    @JakeSherman
    1h1 hour ago
    More Jake Sherman Retweeted Ben White
    Tough to overstate how important this comment is.
    Pelosi says she will not bring it to the floor without changes.
    So, put these two things together and USMCA is done.

    Just love her. Since I’m never getting a female President I just look to Pelosi. We all should. Who on the D side is better at this? No one. Trump is afraid of her, and he should be.

  246. 246.

    donnah

    How times change! My mother grew up in rural West Virginia, one of six children of a coal miner. She said only the poorest kids ate ramps, and when they brought them in their lunches everyone could smell them because they were so strong. To this day, Mom won’t eat them.

    Also, she wouldn’t wear denim jeans for years because that’s what the poorest people wore. She finally gave in and bought some jeans when she was in her forties.

  248. 248.

    Immanentize

    At TPM:

    Apparently Erik Prince has pitching wealthy Trump supporters and Venezuelan exiles on a plan to field a private 5,000 man army in Venezuela to oust President Maduro.

    Why not just ask the American Fruit Company to do it? Really? American mercenaries once again invading South America to seize resources? I cannot image better news for Maduro.

  252. 252.

    rikyrah

    @Immanentize:

    Apparently Erik Prince has pitching wealthy Trump supporters and Venezuelan exiles on a plan to field a private 5,000 man army in Venezuela to oust President Maduro.

    My lips are so pursed.

  253. 253.

    Brachiator

    @JPL:

    Holy crap a tank is charging a crowd. It doesn’t appear that anyone was injured though. Now someone just tossed a firebomb at a tank and here come the water cannons.This is not good.

    I wonder if you can stream france 24 ssince they appear to be the only ones covering the situation in Venezuela

    From The Guardian UK

    LIVE UPDATES OF SITUATION IN VENEZUELA

    ETA: Also updates on BBC World News

  254. 254.

    Princess

    @Sab: Don’t cut the leaves. I’ve done this a couple of times, and it works. I know that at least once I kept the ramps in a glass of water for a few days in the hopes their roots would grow. The leaves all wilted, I planted them, they looked sad and the next year and ever after they have come up. However, they have not multiplied the way I’d like. I still don’t have enough for a glorious backyard ramp harvest.

  259. 259.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    They vote their gut. They voted for Obama because the stock market was in free fall and McCain seemed erratic and out of touch.

    Excellent point. McCain’s dubious reputation as a foreign policy and military expert was neutralized by his inability to offer any solutions to the financial meltdown. And his selection of Palin as his VP pick called his judgment into question.

    I would like to know how many of these supposed Obama voters were Obama voters in both 2008 and 2012 or had they already bailed on Obama and had voted for Romney. My ex-friend’s husband the Jewish T supporter voted for Obama in 2008 but was back voting for Rs in 2012.

    Well, Obama won handily in 2012.

    One quick comparison: Obama got 65,915,795 votes in 2012. This was about 3.6 million fewer votes than in 2008. Romney got 60,933,504 votes in 2012. But this was only 985,000 more than McCain got in 2008. Maybe more people stayed home than vote for Obama the second time around, but there was not a big surge for Romney in terms of popular vote.

  260. 260.

    Aleta

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    Momsense is more knowledgeable and involved than I, but here’s a little info about Maine:

    Maine Rep. Sara Gideon might run against Collins. (She’s Speaker of the Maine House. From southern Maine, not yet well known elsewhere in the state. She says she won’t decide until after the session ending in June, at the earliest.)

    We hoped that Susan Rice would run against Collins, but a few weeks ago she announced she will not.

    Helpful Joe Manchin says he would love to come campaign for Collins’ reelection. Collins has been rewarded by big donors for all her work and votes for T with millions of early, out-of-state big donor $. Her press office has always been formidable.

  261. 261.

    rikyrah

    So, Biden has come out against Medicare for All, but for a Public Option.
    It makes sense that Biden would be for strengthening Obamacare and for the Public Option.
    I would like to point out that all the ideas about healthcare are on the Democratic Party side.
    The GOP only has-too bad, I’m coming to take your healthcare away from you.

  262. 262.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Brachiator: I am pretty sure that my ex-friend’s husband voted for Romney in 2012. So what is the estimate of these so called Obama to T crossovers, do you know.
    Also 985000 is more than T’s winning total in the 3 states combined that he flipped OH, PA and MI

  265. 265.

    J R in WV

    @Sab:

    My ramps still need advice.

    In my experience, just water them often the first few days, so they don’t dry out. They’re pretty hardy, I have even planted the trimmed off roots and had them come up the next year. Wild greens, so really hardy.

  268. 268.

    tobie

    This is off topic, and probably a bit trivial given the US-instigated-coup underway in Venezuela, but it occurred to me this weekend that we may have missed the significance of the effort to blackmail Bezos. I suspect he made public what others, like Rosenstein, have hid — that the GOP will use any tactic to dig up someone’s dirt to have them pledge undying loyalty to dear leader. I don’t know what the skeletons in Rosenstein’s closet might be, but I’d bet good money he was willing to sell out his country to keep them secret.

    ETA: Yes, I’m in full tinfoil hat territory but how else to explain the shameless groveling?

  269. 269.

    rikyrah

    UH HUH

    McAleenan is a carbon copy of White House adviser Stephen Miller, relying on fear-mongering, tearing families apart, and other barbaric practices to further Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. #FamiliesBelongTogether https://t.co/6ERsew3B6M

    — Raul M. Grijalva (@RepRaulGrijalva) April 30, 2019

  270. 270.

    rikyrah

    @tobie:

    ETA: Yes, I’m in full tinfoil hat territory but how else to explain the shameless groveling?

    I don’t think you’re in tinfoil hat territory at all.

  271. 271.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah: It is open season on immigrants. That poor 13 year old girl in Sunnyvale is fighting for her life. T is teaching people to hate immigrants, Muslims etc for the sin of merely existing. BS is no better. And our media is enabling both these Russian stooges.

  272. 272.

    Aleta

    Last year I finally followed a great tip from AL and planted tomatoes in big fabric pots. Now I’m recklessly thinking of using a couple to start some potatoes early, and maybe some garlic, since I have both sprouting. I can use an old SAD lamp indoors on the pots.

    I’d rather put the garlic outside where I used to have it, but the ground is just too wet right now. Don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard that if garlic is planted when the ground is too wet, the harvested heads may end up not keeping very long– turning to black powder.

    Whatever the reason, the garlic at the farmer’s market the last few years has turned powdery black after a short time. (It’s been the thin-skinned kind, which may be part of the problem? It seems to be all that’s sold there. It is delicious when fresh though.)

  273. 273.

    Aleta

    @tobie: We know they are capable of anything, and that what has been exposed (after being hidden, blocked and guarded by the entire group) is a tiny piece of the whole and the history. Your head looks cool and level from here.

  274. 274.

    Aleta

    @Kay: John will be making aspirin and willow salve long after bay er is torn apart by ro*und*up scandal. (jk)

  275. 275.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I am pretty sure that my ex-friend’s husband voted for Romney in 2012. So what is the estimate of these so called Obama to T crossovers, do you know.

    Unclear. Clinton got 65.8 million votes in 2016. That’s only about 60,000 less than Obama’s 2012 total.

    Trump got 62.9 million votes, about 2 million more than Romney in 2012. I would guess that a chunk of these voters may have been people who stayed home in previous elections, people who voted for Obama in 2008 or 2012, and people who had not voted before. But I am just looking at popular vote totals and no deep analyses of election results.

    Also 985000 is more than T’s winning total in the 3 states combined that he flipped OH, PA and MI

    True, but I didn’t look at any state votes at all, so can’t say anything about how this vote difference compares across the different election cycles.

    OTOH, Democrats have had a popular vote advantage the majority of the time. The thing is to win key swing states and to counter voter suppression tricks and other dirty tricks employed by the Republicans.

  277. 277.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    So the MSM pundits don’t have a number for this group of O to T voters they keep incessantly harping about.

    I was just looking at some of the raw numbers and applying a little logic. I did not look for any pundit analyses. I think that some pollsters may have done a deeper dive into the data. There might even be a few pundits with some good insights.

    But … doing a quick google search, I immediately ran into an important caution:

    We looked at three sources to try to gauge the raw number of voters who backed Obama in 2012 but then voted for Trump in 2016. Unfortunately, the 2016 exit poll did not ask respondents about their 2012 vote, having last done so in 2008. While exit polls are imperfect, it at least would have served as another data point.

    After a lot of back and forth, this site came to the following conclusion:

    Different sources offer varying estimates of Obama 2012-Trump 2016 voters. The ANES found that about 13% of all Trump voters cast a ballot for Obama in 2012. Meanwhile, the CCES found a slightly smaller figure of around 11%. Lastly, the UVA Center for Politics poll found that about 15% of Trump voters claimed to have backed Obama four years earlier. Using these percentages (not rounded) and Trump’s overall 2016 vote total, estimates of the raw number of such Obama-Trump voters range from about 6.7 million to 9.2 million. That’s a wide range, and considering the caveats regarding voter recall of past votes, it is important to be clear about the relative uncertainty of these figures.

    Nonetheless, these surveys offer additional evidence about a critical part of the 2016 equation: the millions of voters who switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. Given the extremely close margins in some states, particularly the Rust Belt trio of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, these voters played a crucial role in handing over the White House to the GOP.

    I think that some of these raw numbers estimates are too high, in relation to looking at popular vote totals.

    However, if you look at electoral maps, there are clearly a number of counties in swing states and elsewhere where significant numbers of voters switched from Obama to Trump. There is nothing controversial about this. Whether there is a burning need to try to appeal to these voters is a separate question.

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