Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

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

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

We will not go back.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

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

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

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

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

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

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

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Good Choices

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Good Choices

by | 150 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

Of course the NYTimes is sniffy about this — how dare those Democrats presume to defend themselves?!? — but I’m feeling pretty good about donating to Rep. Davids last year.

… Desperate to maintain their one perch of power in Washington, House Democrats are moving aggressively to defend their majority. Incumbents, under intense pressure from the party to begin their campaigns, raised a record $11.6 million in the first quarter of the year and are moving quickly to protect the 31 seats they hold in districts where President Trump prevailed in 2016.

“We have a solid operation,” said Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, who runs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to the House. “We are investing in field operations already — we have never done that this early — and we know how we are going to spend our resources. Everything is front-loaded.”…

And a little update on best business practices….

… I took Ms. Sanders aside and politely suggested she leave. She agreed, equally politely. She may or may not have expected this day would come, but she never showed any sign of outrage, or even much surprise. We’d drawn a line; she’d accepted it…

When I awoke the next morning, social media was on fire. The incident had gone from a Facebook post to a tagged tweet to nationally trending news with the whoosh of lighter fluid to a flame…

When we opened after a 10-day hiatus, our dining room was full. In the following weeks, people who had never been to the Shenandoah Valley traveled out of their way to eat with us. Hundreds of orders for our Red Hen spice blend poured in. And the love spread far beyond our door, as supporters sent thousands of dollars’ in donations in our honor to our local food pantry, our domestic violence shelter and first responders.

After nearly a year, I’m happy to say that business is still good. Better than good, actually. And besides the boost to our area charities, our town’s hospitality and sales revenue have gone up, too.

Our haters may have believed that there were more of “them” than of “us,” but it turns out we have more than enough to keep us cooking. And to everyone who might be fearful about taking a stand, I say don’t be. Resistance is not futile, for you or your business.

Reader Interactions

150Comments

  1. 1.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Nonessential State Department personnel are now being ordered out of Iraq.

    Of course, Hillary was a warmonger.

  2. 2.

    Steve in the ATL

    Lexington, Virginia: best college town in the USA!

    I’m still mad that no one showed at the B-J meet up at this very restaurant. I get that the place in Seattle was closer for most of the Seattle people, but the Red Hen is our kind of place.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Trying to rain here. Again. Probably won’t get much tho the distant thunder begs to differ.

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    @Steve in the ATL: I’d be good w a Red Hen meetup. Got to throw them some support

    Lexington is beautiful. Anytime late June to end of October for me.

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Was wondering about the Comte just the other day. And hello to you.

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    Phew. Was taken out to a nice restaurant by a friend for a belated birthday dinner.

    Stuffed to the gills. Really should have eschewed dessert.

  7. 7.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’ve been buried in the worst case of my career for months (worst as in “the most hideous set of facts”). A keyword summary would go as follows:

    rural, custodial grandma, enabled addict, 12 year old daughter, 10 year old daughter, noncustodial biological mother, multiple overdoses, grandma’s Mayberry political connections, lazy social workers, antiquated localized court system, autism spectrum, adhd, whiskey, maternal incest, sex toys, family viewed pornography, clueless judge, lazy court adjunct

    Anyway, that’s been sapping time and emotional health. I’m seriously considering changing careers.

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    ‘Terrifying’ Ebola epidemic out of control in DRC, say experts

    An Ebola epidemic in a conflict-riven region of Democratic Republic of Congo is out of control and could become as serious as the outbreak that devastated three countries in west Africa between 2013 and 2016, experts and aid chiefs have warned.

    New cases over the past month have increased at the fastest rate since the outbreak began last year, as aid agencies struggle to enact a public health response in areas that have suffered decades of neglect and conflict, with incredibly fragile health systems and regular outbreaks of deadly violence involving armed groups.

    “I’m very concerned – as concerned as one can be,” said Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust, who called for a ceasefire to allow health teams to reach the sick and protect others in the community.

    “Whether it gets to the absolute scale of west Africa or not, none of us know, but this is massive in comparison with any other outbreak in the history of Ebola and it is still expanding. It’s remarkable it hasn’t spread more geographically but the numbers are frightening and the fact that they are going up is terrifying.”

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: Who cares? It’s just another shit hole country. Besides, by the time it gets to this hemisphere we’ll have a big beautiful wall to hide behind.

  15. 15.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’ve been buried in the worst case of my career for months (worst as in “the most hideous set of facts”). A keyword summary would go as follows:

    rural, custodial grandma, enabled addict, 12 year old daughter, 10 year old daughter, noncustodial biological mother, multiple overdoses, fentanyI, grandma’s Mayberry political connections, lazy social workers, antiquated localized court system, autism spectrum, adhd, whiskey, maternal ince5t, s3x toys, family viewed pornography, clueless judge, lazy court adjunct

    I rep custodial dad.

    Anyway, that’s been sapping time and emotional health. I’m seriously considering changing careers.

    Oh, and I had to edit this heavily.

  18. 18.

    Chyron HR

    Within 24 hours, the restaurant’s phone line was hacked, my staff and I were doxxed, and threats to our lives and families and property were pouring in through every available channel.

    But… but Messiah (f/k/a Bernard Sanders) assured us that these people aren’t deplorable.

  23. 23.

    Immanentize

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
    I think about cases like this, where there really is no clear solution where everything and everyone involved is so deep down the rabbit hole. And it makes me glad that I chose the path of criminal defense rather than family law. Good luck going forward.

  24. 24.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Damn, just damn. A friend of mine who works at MO Division of Family Services has told me some war stories. It is hard to keep caring when confronted by so much indifference.

    My own journey thru the system was rife with frustration at how it was set up to be immovable. Get a caseworker, have her see how bad my ex is and take my sons’ side against her and she is taken off the case because she is “biased”. Same for guardian ad litems, because objectively looking at the evidence and reaching the only logical conclusion means one is biased. The courts bent over backwards, repeatedly, to avoid any complaint of bias by her lawyers. Have her actively obstruct court ordered counseling for my son? Nothing. Blatantly engage in educational neglect? Zip. This went on for over 2 years until she finally went to prison.

    Many’s the time I thought, “If I’d just shot her I would have been out of prison by now.”

  26. 26.

    Frankensteinbeck

    The news, even liberal news, does not want to hear that liberals are motivated, numerous, and effective. Since they don’t want to hear it, they don’t talk about it. If they don’t talk about it, even places like Balloon Juice don’t know the story exists to be happy about. We’re left with the scraps of their snark. Remember the Dems being fools to believe in a Blue Wave? Is ANYBODY less angry at Trump and Republicans now than last November? The next year and a half are going to be a series of surprises for everyone as Democrats at the voter and elected level unite to (figuratively) go for the kill.

  35. 35.

    divF

    @OzarkHillbilly: What – no love for the city by the banks of the mighty Olentangy ?

    When I interviewed for a faculty job there in the mid-1980’s, everyone kept telling me that one of the major perks was preferential treatment on football tickets.

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Josh Marshall:

    Federal officials today briefed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Russian hacking of two county voting networks during the 2016 election. But according to DeSantis, they made him sign an NDA that barred him from revealing the details. “I’m not allowed to name the counties. I signed a [non-]disclosure agreement,” said DeSantis.
    …………….
    Something just seems fishy or at least ill-conceived.

    Let me clear this up for you Josh. The 2 counties are heavily DEM counties which mysteriously reported unexpected under voting in the election in which De Santis barely prevailed over Gillum. Understand now?

  38. 38.

    AM in NC

    @Raven: Lived in Normaltown and visited Allen’s regularly in grad school. Thanks for the happy reminder this morning!

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @divF:

    the banks of the mighty Olentangy ?

    Heh, I had to look that up:

    Olentangy is a funny word, but Columbus residents know it well as our premier stream. It’s a Delaware Indian name meaning “river of the red face paint.

  42. 42.

    MomSense

    Also, too keep me in mind if anyone needs a back way to Canada – in case they need an abortion or to dodge the Iran War draft.

  44. 44.

    debbie

    Talk about fast-moving slime. In Ohio, they’ve introduced legislation requiring doctors to inform patients taking the two-step “abortion pill” (sorry too early to remember the name) that the process can be reversed after the first dose. These idiots insist this has been “peer reviewed” (by clowns, no doubt). Too soon to provide a link for more information.

    I believe I heard Ohio’s up to four bills in six months. Wish they would move this quickly on infrastructure. //

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The secrecy three years into this is ridiculous. Voting is an ordinary state recording process. By doing this they make it more mysterious than it is. They should notify the people on the voter rolls like any other group of people who have had security around their names and identity hacked. I got a letter when my health insurer had a breach- they identified the person in my family who had his health information read or stolen. No one claimed they needed an NDA to investigate or pursue prosecution. We are three years out from the 2016 election and voters haven’t been told anything about this, other than these weird, vague blanket assurances that it didn’t matter. We’ll decide if it matters. These are our names and our votes.

    I would be more comfortable if someone outside the FBI and the candidates who won had access to the information. I want an elections process expert(s) to tell me what happened and if it matters.

  47. 47.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @OzarkHillbilly: Did Trump pull out all health monitoring systems in Africa? So US has no way to note situation or respond quickly as we did in earlier out break

  48. 48.

    satby

    Verklempt. Coffee grinder decided to grind itself. Have just enough for a pot after taking the broken plastic pieces out ?

    Off to shop for a new one.

  49. 49.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    It’s amazing how fast it’s moving toward a total ban. The “heartbeat bill” in Ohio was considered too radical to support by the biggest anti-abortion group in the state less then three years ago. Now it’s spreading like wildfire.
    It is depressing how often doomsday predictions by liberals come true. They’re really right way more often than they’re wrong.

    These abortion bans are actually more extreme than the laws were pre-Roe. We’re going to see miscarriage prosecutions. All you need is one wing nut assistant prosecutor in a county or village or city somewhere. There’s a lot of them.

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: The little I heard about the story on NPR yesterday was that a contracting company that worked on the Florida voting machines was the subject of a “spear fishing” hack (people inside the company were subject to virus-infected e-mails). Years ago the company claimed that nobody opened the e-mails so it was all good, but now they admit that someone did and the company systems got infected. And that’s how they got into the state voting systems.

    So, the usual lessons apply – 1) There’s too much critical information that should be handled exclusively by the government that is being handled by outside companies that do not have the same inherent interests as the government. 2) Elementary attacks still succeed because there’s too little filtering of incoming messages, connections, etc.

    There are real costs in not having expertise inside the government.

    Critical systems have to be isolated from the Internet and from outside access (USB sticks, etc.). How many decades have we known this now??

    And news about this stuff needs to be presented by non-political actors so that sensible people believe it. Having someone who benefited from election chicanery report that everything is fine is not believable by too many people…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  53. 53.

    Woodrow/Asim

    @Baud: Jameela has been amazing as an online activist, as much as she is on the show THE GOOD PLACE — which is her first acting gig!

    Mostly, it’s her balance of actually listening while standing firm around her core values. As fame pushes you into an echo chamber, that’s a brutally hard balance to pull off (see Obama, Barak H.)

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I’m so old when I remember when Udall lost to Corey Gardner because Udall was talking too much about the threat to reproductive rights.

  55. 55.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    I personally am enjoying how media inability to understand the voting process is fucking up oublic understanding of this story, too.

    Why do they end all these reports with there’s no evidence votes were changed. What kind of evidence are they hoping for? I don’t find this reassuring. If soemone’s name is removed from the list of eligible voters and that person is not allowed to vote when they show up at their polling place – that Fucking vote was changed! Denial changes that vote.

    If someone shows up at their polling place and is told they already voted when they didn’t, that vote was changed.

    If someone’s name was stolen and that person then received a boatload of bullshit propaganda about one of the candidates that vote was changed.

    I’m still mad about Acorn. No, Donald Duck’s registration card was not approved. His name was not entered on the voter rolls. Can they not understand why we wouldn’t want registration cards destroyed before they are submitted for review?

    This is why I can’t listen to Fucking NPR while I
    drive.

  57. 57.

    raven

    @AM in NC: @AM in NC: We live in Normaltown. It’s changed a great deal with three nice pubs, Mexican grocery and restaurant, pizza joint and a brand new seafood place opening where the Army Navy was. The Navy School is the medical college campus and the place where Allen’s and Foxy’s were is a parking deck and office complex under construction.

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ladyraxterinok: It used to be the Missouri School of Mines, now Missouri University of Science and Technology. While the school is supposed to one of the better ones for engineering degrees of all (?) kinds, it is mostly known for the wild bacchanal that is their St Patty’s day parade. I never went to the school for any reason other than to build dormitories, halls, etc, and attend a conference or 2. Not surprisingly, a # of MO cavers are graduates of their geology school. The town is nice enough and in addition to MST it is home to the Missouri Geological Survey where the cave files are kept, but Hwy 63 is a really depressing stretch of strip mall after strip mall after strip mall.

  59. 59.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense:

    Why do they end all these reports with there’s no evidence votes were changed.

    They could end the reports with the opposite:

    “There’s no evidence votes weren’t changed.”

    and it would be just as factual.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Right. The Fearmongering. Banning abortion is just one piece of it. I don’t think any of them have any idea how this will play out as far as the broader area of pregnancy, or even capacity to become pregnant, because a 6 week ban means you would only have two weeks to know you’re pregnant. It’s particularly alarming in the US because we have lousy maternal care stats, so our mothers are more at risk for complicated pregnancies- the kind that need medical intervention and can be reached under these abortion laws.

  62. 62.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby: OMG THAT IS AWFUL…GLAD YOU HAVE ENOUGH COFFEE FOR ONE LAST POT! The Krups burr grinder is supposed to be good. Happy shopping! :)

  63. 63.

    Kay

    Say they were hacking into voter rolls for identity theft. The name and social security number have theft value all by themselves. Law enforcement wouldn’t be demanding NDA’s in order to warn the victims and pursue prosecution.

    This is a crime. They need to inform the victims what happened. How are we supposed to judge the job the FBI is doing if they won’t tell us anything? I mean, that works out well for them, I must say. No one can compare their work to any other law enforcement work because it’s Top Secret?

  64. 64.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: They will mumble something about absence of evidence is not proof of anything and they will be right, and they will also know that that is also a point against their current reporting. The real question is why do they trust the sources telling them, “Nothing to see here, move along move along.” especially in light of the rampant gas lighting occurring now.

  65. 65.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    I’m so sick of the excuse that this will compromise the counter intelligence investigation
    If they disclose what happened THREE YEARS AGO. We are supposed to head into another election and we still don’t know what happened to us in the last one.

  66. 66.

    But her emails!!!

    @Kay:
    They really don’t care. There are also going to be repercussions for making a miscarriage and the assassination of a public official carry similar jail sentences. Oh and implications for the children of mothers who have miscarriages or abortions. They just don’t care.

  67. 67.

    MomSense

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I wish I knew why. It’s probably the old we don’t want to make the public lose confidence or cause a panic – or some bullshit like that.

  69. 69.

    satby

    @O. Felix Culpa: help is on the way!
    Got a new one to replace the old Cuisinart burr grinder. Higher rated on Amazon than the Cuisinart too. Until then I’ll use my bullet blender.
    WHEW! ?

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    I know. Adam will be mad at us! :)

    I think sometimes that the government has been “hollowed out” over a period of years – they have fewer people and resources- and so we rely on kind of an outdated notion of regulation/law enforcement.

    I was the (volunteer) treasurer for a state candidate about 10 years ago. We had a weak-willed and easily bullied Bd of Elections employee, a Republican. who the county Party bullied into harassing me and so she filed a request with the Sec of State and they audited my campaign account. Which was a huge pain in the ass and took hours. I had a good rapport with the lawyer for the sec of state (a lawyer for the sec of state, the worker bee lawyer) and I called him to make sure he had everything he needed to close the case. He laughed and said “I won’t even get to it to review for a year”. They don’t have enough employees to regulate anything properly. I wonder how much of this there is.

  72. 72.

    Lapassionara

    @Baud: Who can afford to have children? Who wants to bring children into a land of no opportunity? Who wants to further burden the planet?

  74. 74.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    Almost 40 years of government is the enemy means all levels of municipal, state, and federal government are hollowed out.

  75. 75.

    Doug R

    @MomSense:

    Also, too keep me in mind if anyone needs a back way to Canada – in case they need an abortion or to dodge the Iran War draft.

    Or totally legal cannabis nationwide.

  76. 76.

    libarbarian

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    I still strongly believe that Trumps personality – his ego and need for adulation – are VERY likely to lead him to want to take credit for a military victory. He will, of course, do it the Trump Way, which means that he would want to pick a country that he thinks (1) is much weaker & will be an easy push-over and (2) will get him lots of love at home from at least 1 party.

    I could be wrong. We have 2 more years to see. I would put better than even money on it.

  80. 80.

    J R in WV

    We got married in 1971, and both remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis of our childhood. Wife’s childhood was atrocious while mine was almost stereotypically sweet, mostly. Nevertheless, we decided not to have children by the mid-70s when wife had a tubal ligation. Haven’t ever seriously regretted that decision.

    Now look at the world: Climate Crisis, trade war, threats of nuclear holocaust in Korea, Iran, India V Pakistan, etc. Fascism on the rise even here in the good ol’ USA, again.

    Shocked the birth rate is dropping like a stone!! Not at all… what do they expect after ruining the job market, saving rates, home ownership, education, prison populations soaring… people want to have kids to be miserable and afraid for? Nope.

  81. 81.

    Baud

    @Lapassionara:

    I hear you, but post industrial societies with better social services have pretty low birth rates too. I don’t want to assume that despair is the cause.

  82. 82.

    chris

    Here’s a little ray of sunshine.

    The state’s teen birth rate and teen abortion rate have dropped 54 percent and 64 percent, respectively, since the devices, known as IUDs, became an affordable option at low-income health clinics, The Denver Post reports. The data were released Thursday by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Link.

  84. 84.

    J R in WV

    @libarbarian:

    [Trump…] would want to pick a country that he thinks (1) is much weaker & will be an easy push-over and (2) will get him lots of love at home from at least 1 party.

    A couple of problems with that plan. (1) Trump doesn’t know enough to identify a country easy to push-over that will (2) also get him love at home. The Venn diagram of pushover countries that are also hated by a significant group of Americans is a pretty small sliver — we don’t really hate on pushovers that much. Iran, which for some reason politicians drum up hate for, is no pushover. They actually have a pretty good industrial base, especially for the Mid-east. Over a million people under arms.

    Not like Iraq, where we had more trouble than the R’s will ever admit, we are still hated there for the terrible job we did “saving” them from Saddam. No one assigned to control arsenals, no one assigned to protect government facilities EXCEPT for the Oil Ministry — there’s a tell~!!~

  85. 85.

    schrodingers_cat

    @MomSense:In this country the most important thing is white people’s feelings, they must never be hurt. The truth, other people’s actual lives, everything else is secondary. If nothing else T’s ascension has taught me that. That’s how the Beltway media operates, for example.

  86. 86.

    Leto

    @satby: The one I bought off Amazon was $20 and is a good workhorse. It’s also a manual grinder. Not sure if you want that or an electric model.

    Ten dollar option.

    Twenty five dollar option. I’m pretty sure this is the one I have, though to be honest I don’t know the difference between the two. They appear identical. I think I went with the more expensive one based off the number of positive reviews.

    Regarding voting, my county just switched to all paper ballots. My local rep posted about that on Facebook, which is good because we have some local elections coming up. She posted what the new process will be, which is pretty straight forward. Is it weird to say that I’m excited to go vote? Probably.

  92. 92.

    Leto

    @Kay: Ronan Farrow’s book, “War on Peace”, talks about the hollowing out of the State Department, though he pegs that starting around the Clinton years and going forward. Basically the end of the Cold War. He speaks/details how more of the traditional State functions have been given over to the military, and the problems that arise out of that. Which of course are numerous. Of course Trumpov’s time, and his appointees, have further exacerbated and sped up the problem.

  94. 94.

    MomSense

    @schrodingers_cat:

    It’s always been like that. It’s just that a lot of white people think it’s only other white people. It’s all of us. I include myself in this problem.

  95. 95.

    Leto

    @germy: Is that the Subaru that the field eventually reclaimed? Or that he abandoned in the field? Reclaimed, abandoned… same same.

  96. 96.

    Leto

    @satby: Np! Went manual because I always woke up earlier than Avalune and didn’t want to wake the kraken. Of course we now get up at the same time so /shrug.

    Which electric model did you get?

  98. 98.

    Steve in the ATL

    @raven:

    the place where Allen’s and Foxy’s were is a parking deck and office complex under construction.

    [trying to hold back tears]

  99. 99.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: The FL voting network hack came up in one of the insomniac threads last night, and Adam agrees with us that the protocols around protecting sources and methods leaves agencies and the public vulnerable to spinning by the very politicians who almost certainly benefited from vote tampering. There’s just no trust, and rightfully so since the head of that party, Trump, is openly derelict in his duty as POTUS to protect national elections.

    Trump’s own people aren’t allowed to bring election security up in his presence, as we now know. Whether that’s because the implication that he had help from a foreign power wounds Trump’s big fat ego (at best) or exposes his treason (at worst), it’s just an intolerable situation.

    As a Floridian whose data may have been accessed (I don’t know because the state won’t tell me!), I have zero confidence that this is being addressed. I’m a committed voter, so I’ll vote anyway. But for some folks, this may be the straw that makes them say, “Fuck it, my vote doesn’t count anyway.”

  100. 100.

    germy

    @Leto:

    Is that the Subaru that the field eventually reclaimed? Or that he abandoned in the field?

    This I don’t know. Sounds illegal, though.

    I always see ads for places that will buy junk vehicles, even if they have to come tow it away. I guess they strip them for parts. Easy way to make a few hundred bucks.

  101. 101.

    tobie

    @Baud: Hasn’t Russia’s birthrate also dropped dramatically under Putin? We’re resembling Russia more everyday.

    Regarding war with Iran: I think there’s going to be massive saber rattling, as in the case with Venezuela, and since it’s not in Russia’s interest that the US go to war with Iran, Trump will pull out at the last minute. Maybe that’s too hopeful a spin…

  103. 103.

    germy

    @tobie:

    Hasn’t Russia’s birthrate also dropped dramatically under Putin?

    Yes, but the babies who are being born are all Putin’s.

  105. 105.

    Leto

    @germy: True, but I also remember the difficulties he had with trying to get multiple tow trucks out there to get the thing, and I (personally) thought that he just left it to be a bird sanctuary. A land bound coral reef, if you will.

  106. 106.

    tobie

    @germy: Ah, yes. This reminds me of an Almodovar film from the 1980s where some autocrat gets it into his head that he should be a ‘prodigious progenitor’ and via in vitro fertilization sires thousands upon thousands of children. This must be every autocrat’s fantasy — the whole shtick about being father of the nation.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    and Adam agrees with us that the protocols around protecting sources and methods

    Good! My haranguing work is done then! :)

    We (finally) have a good Dem Bd of Elections worker and she’s holding a series of open houses at the board to show people the machines, answer questions, etc. She also plans to snag some as poll workers too, so she has an ulterior motive but I think it’s smart. It’s not that complicated and mysterious. It’s a boring and rule-bound state recording process. Just show them
    It was very familiar to me as a poll worker because it’s a lot like the postal service. It’s list maintenance. You get the piece of mail to them. They do whatever they do- move, get married, whatever. You figure out how to get them from the door to counted. That’s the assumption- that they’re not there to commit a felony.

  108. 108.

    Kryptik

    @MomSense:

    This operates under the presumption that those are the mothers that the folks who support this bill actually want to “save” (insomuch as these assholes want to ‘save’ any actual lives, anyhow). Bills like these always render the mother herself invisible until they can be punished for being a woman. That black women are especially going to die under this kind of rule is a humongous plus for them usually.

  109. 109.

    Immanentize

    @Steve in the ATL: Dark humor comes with my job — We used to say that murder cases were just like every other case only with one less witness to question.

  110. 110.

    Jinchi

    I took Ms. Sanders aside and politely suggested she leave.

    It’s important to remember that Sarah Sanders had literally praised and defended the right of private establishments to deny service on moral grounds mere weeks before she was refused service, herself.

    Although to be clear, she was celebrating the right of Christian bakers to deny service to gay couples and pharmacists to deny prescriptions for birth control.

  114. 114.

    germy

    @Chyron HR:

    Are they under the impression that normal humans react favorably to Trump speeches?

    “Good news, Democratic candidate. You’re polling favorably with normal humans!”

    “Yes, but I’ll need a majority.”

  115. 115.

    Leto

    @Jinchi: Christofascist gonna christofascist. They’re all perfectly upstanding private business until they deny THEM services! A white, Christian denied service?!?! How dare they!

  116. 116.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud:

    From the article:

    Mr Kaser said he had removed a safety covering at the end of the auger in the winter to make the equipment fit under a grain bin, and told ABC News he was “kind of disappointed in myself that I didn’t think of fixing that thing”.

    “But that’s why they call it accidents I guess.”

    Accidents. That’s how the knucklehead explains a way a horrible injury caused by his own negligence and laziness. Kind of a metaphor for Trump voters. Speaking of which, anyone know who the guy voted for? I need to know before I can decide whether to show any sympathy or compassion.

  117. 117.

    mrmoshpotato

    @satby:

    Need to have a backup for power outages

    “The power is still out. Honey, do you know where the propane-powered coffee grinder is?”

  118. 118.

    schrodingers_cat

    @MomSense: Well I was naive and privileged enough not to have to experience it at a personal level. Obama’s presidency was an eye-opener but T’s ascension has exposed me to the racism, privilege and bigotry of many well meaning people who I thought were my friends.

  119. 119.

    tobie

    Mimi Rocah has a great thread going with lots of lawyers weighing in whether the FBI would have a governor sign an NDA. It starts here. Long story short: some say yes, the NSA sometimes has people outside the NSA sign one-day security clear NDA’s. Others say, no, De Santis would have security level coverage as chief executive of the state. Rocah seems to think the info can be subpoenaed:

    Mimi Rocah
    ‏
    Verified account

    @Mimirocah1
    Follow Follow @Mimirocah1
    More
    This really doesn’t make any sense. A subpoena would override an NDA in any event.

  121. 121.

    Kathleen

    @MomSense: I quit listening 4 years ago. Political reporting is egregious shit. I had way too many almost drove off the road moments.

  123. 123.

    bemused

    @Baud:

    I read this on her twitter feed and I made the mistake of reading the judgemental comments. People are idiots.

  127. 127.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @tobie: Maybe it’s like the “collusion” thing, not using the right legal word? If you are “briefed in” to classified material, that means you are given a briefing on how to protect it, and the applicable statutes and penalties for revealing it to unauthorized people. So you sign an agreement that you understand the law. I suppose you could call that a “non-disclosure agreement”, but what it really is, is an agreement that you understand the standing government law covering classified material.

  138. 138.

    tobie

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I wondered about that, too, but I’m not willing to give DeSantis the benefit of the doubt. A mature governor who doesn’t want to alarm constituents would make a statement about the efforts his/her administration is making to secure the state’s electoral system before the 2020 election. A mature executive doesn’t dangle bait: our systems were breached but I’m not going to tell you which ones. I read somewhere that the county executives briefed on the hacking could go public, even the governor can’t, but I don’t know if that’s true.

  140. 140.

    Timurid

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Everyone wonders how Trump can be so inept, yet so successful… but the one smart thing he did his entire life was figuring out that fundamental source code of American politics.

  142. 142.

    schrodingers_cat(HectoringBully)

    @Timurid: His basic assumption is that everyone thinks like he does. In this once instance that assumption turned out to be true.
    For example he thinks immigrants game the system (diversity lottery, asylum, H1-B you name it) that’s because that’s what he has done as a business owner and continues to do.

  145. 145.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    radiating cheeriness

    She does radiate cheeriness. I think both Warren and Harris have a kind of happy warrior approach that is appealing. I’m wondering if temperament will matter this time- whether Trump’s nastiness and lack of generosity will matter. Whatever else they are, he and his low quality hires are unrelentingly negative – they’re assholes- and they’ll have to get nastier as this goes on to drag him over the finish line. I wonder if people will or have tired of it- not his supporters who seem to revel in it, but normal people.

  146. 146.

    L85NJGT

    So the 2020 strategy is tax cuts, saving the gerber baby, war mongering and voter suppression. Same old song and dance.

  147. 147.

    Kay

    @L85NJGT:

    My husband predicted the warmongering but I disagreed. It’s depressing that he was right. I thought they were too incompetent and flighty to start a war. I didn’t think they could stick with it long enough to start one.

  148. 148.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    That’s true of Biden too. He seems like a happy person. Generally. Like, not insane and seething with hatred. Not a yawning canyon of ego and neediness. That has to count for a coupla points, I would think.

    I love when Trump tries to smile. That rigid …whatever that is. He looks like the Grinch.

  149. 149.

    CaseyL

    @MomSense:

    First: Bless you for that! (Though I’m not a Mom, and frankly don’t know all that many. Amazing how many people of my acquaintance decided not to reproduce.)

    Second: How about if we just plain want out? I’m a totally secular, totally non-observant Jew and I’m getting nervous about the rise of anti-semitism in these here United States.

  150. 150.

    Gretchen

    Rep. Davis is my rep and she’s terrific – just what this district needs. She works hard getting out and about meeting constituents, unlike her predecessor.

Comments are closed.