Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

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

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

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

Battle won, war still ongoing.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

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

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

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

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

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

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

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2020 / Monday Morning Open Thread: I’m With Her

Monday Morning Open Thread: I’m With Her

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(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)
.

Because a girl can dream…

Busy weekend in Iowa:

Another lady whose career I’m very following with interest [mildy NSFW]:

Reader Interactions

208Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Asked in IA what she’d do on day one,

    “Throw that #@%^&!!! Mitch McConnell in the ***#@$!!!@ stocks with plenty of #$%@%^&**!! tar, feathers, and #@**+@!!! rotten fruit where the @#!@^**&@!!! sun never shines.”

  3. 3.

    Mary G

    Elizabeth Warren is full of energy. I worry about her age less and less every week

    And Katie Porter is a treasure. I stopped watching Bill Maher years ago, for reasons including letting men talk over women. She had total control and talked as long as she wanted.

  6. 6.

    tobie

    An acquaintance of mine was at the Cedar Rapids Hall of Fame dinner. Apparently Klobuchar, Beto, Booker and Harris were on fire. Glad to hear Klobuchar gave such a rousing speech. Also glad to hear that Democrats still trust Pelosi’s judgment. I disagree with her on impeachment but I also recognize that she knows tons more about government and politics than I ever will.

  9. 9.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @OzarkHillbilly: It arrived legally, was thrown into a detention center, and died in government custody. What, there’s nothing symbolic about that, what would make anyone think so?

    I would not be surprised to learn it died from neglect, for instance no light or water and no competent caretaker. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

  10. 10.

    tobie

    @OzarkHillbilly: Paris’ Mayor Anne Hidalgo took the chunnel and when she got off in London was asked about Trump’s Muslim ban. She answered, “Donald Trump is stupid. He is so stupid.” She’s with Mayor Siddiq Khan when she says this. Both look so young and smart and like the face of the future. We’re unfortunately stuck with a past we’d rather forget.

  13. 13.

    mrmoshpotato

    @satby: Sooo…going back to bed? Or is the first real-life person you see this morning going to get a satby SMASH! treatment?

  15. 15.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    So I went on rose twitter to see how the cult is reacting to Warren’s rise and Wilmer’s collapse in the Iowa poll and it’s full out hate for Warren. These so called “True Progressives” are calling her a fake indian. They can’t attack her on policy so they’re going straight to the smears.

    Bunch of frauds.

  17. 17.

    hells littlest angel

    Future president Katie Porter is so great I can easily forgive her going on that douchebag’s TV show.

  20. 20.

    Barbara

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I don’t hang out on Twitter, but I have noticed a lot of Sanders supporters speaking to the media have begun to stress that he has been progressive his whole life. I assumed that was a jab at Warren as well as perhaps Biden. “The original progressive!”

  23. 23.

    debbie

    The idea that Pelosi is wildly out of touch with the grassroots doesn’t square with the reality.

    “The idea”? From bots or maybe the GOP?

  28. 28.

    debbie

    What the hell is it with Biden not showing up at events most other candidates attend? Can he really expect to be the Democratic candidate if he doesn’t even show up?

  29. 29.

    Baud

    @Barbara:

    he has been progressive his whole life

    Another reminder that Sanders problem isn’t the policies he supports but his low character and inability to work as a team.

    The team is always more important than the individual.

  31. 31.

    mrmoshpotato

    @debbie:

    Can he really expect to be the Democratic candidate if he doesn’t even show up?

    Can Wilmer really expect to be the Democratic candidate when he’s not even in the party? Well, they’re both old white men, so yes and yes. *rolls eyes that this thought process is probably reality*

  32. 32.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @mrmoshpotato:meh. his campaign was always based on grievance and resentment. exposing them as hucksters, empty suits and frauds is a public service.

    YMMV

  33. 33.

    Kay

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    I’m okay with them going after Warren. It’s a race and she can be criticized. The “fake Indian” thing is dumb and parrots Trump though. It’s disappointing, especially since it came right from the top- from his paid campaign strategists. Ugh. Try harder.

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    No true lefty is above employing right wing smears to bring down the true enemy of progressives — Democrats.

  38. 38.

    debbie

    @JPL:

    He could have scheduled so he could be at both. Did he even send a video message or anything?

  41. 41.

    Kay

    I think it should be encouraging to all Democrats that Warren is running such a substantive campaign and that is being rewarded by voters. Our base voters who are polled, anyway. It needs to be perceived not just as “good” but as a way to possibly win.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Yuck. I saw it on Twitter and I really am ok with them battling – he was up, now he’s falling, it’s expected- and I was just disgusted. That’s the best they can do? Pocahontas? They get paid for this?

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Bernie and Biden do poll better than Warren against Trump and that is concerning to me, especially because a lot of these people polled have either Biden or Bernie as their first choice and the other at their second, which doesn’t really make any sense. They’re interchangeable? Why?

  52. 52.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Identity politics. Both of them are viewed as treating working class white men as the first among equals.

    ETA: Also: name recognition, to be fair.

  53. 53.

    mrmoshpotato

    @germy: “The voters are going to figure out the details of my glorious revolution once I’m in office. Duh!”

  54. 54.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @germy: The question was on his proposal for partial forgiveness of student loans – and he had no idea.

    I’ve said this for 10 plus years, long before 2016, that is: he. knows. nothing.

    When I used to say this in 2016, people would say I was going to far, and then he had his infamous interview with the NY Daily News were he revealed he had no idea how to break up the banks, nor how they would be regulated.

  56. 56.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Nice profile of the author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: Ocean Vuong: ‘As a child I would ask: What’s napalm?’

    He also wanted to say something about where the cost of war falls, not from the vantage point of the grand historical epic, but from inside the small, cramped sadness of a house still flattened decades after the conflict has ended. “It’s the stories of our species that men create these wars and women clean them up. They clean them up emotionally, they have to deal with the PTSD that comes home, they have to postpone their own healing, forgo their own self-care, in order to hold these households together. They literally nurse these broken bodies back to health. I wanted a book to honour that without romanticising it. To say women have been doing this and they’re not necessarily these heroic legends. What’s the mental cost of the women who do these extraordinary things? In the book, the cost is their own private life.”

    A few months ago, Vuong’s mother was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer and he has been commuting back and forth to Hartford to accompany her to chemotherapy. After a dire admission to hospital, during which, he says, she was in so much pain “it sounded like warfare and I was ready to bury her”, she is responding to treatment and even hopes to come to his book launch. He thinks of something she said to him when he first left for New York. “She told me: it’s OK for people to think you’re a fool.” Vuong laughed and said: “Really? Why?” and his mother replied: “Because then they’ll tell you everything about them. You can see them from all their angles.” It’s the wisdom of his life. The subversive power of being “a small, queer, person of colour” is that Vuong has the ability to see everything. He smiles. “Nobody hides themselves from a fool.”

  59. 59.

    Kay

    When Republicans get a high profile convert, from liberal to conservative, they send them out on media tours to bash Democrats. They consider it a validation of conservatism. How many thousands of fawning words were written on the “Obama-Trump” voters?
    When we have converts we call them “Goldwater Girl” or yell that they used to be a Republican (Warren) so are insufficiently consistent over decades. It’s not smart. The idea is growth. Adding, not subtracting.

  60. 60.

    mrmoshpotato

    @rikyrah: I hope Kruse sticks out his tongue like Jordan when dunking on D’Felon. I doubt Kruse can make a lay up or free throw anymore.

    So.
    much.
    dunking.

  61. 61.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @mrmoshpotato: because I’ve been a blogger for 17 years and he’s been in washington for 30 years.

    your math may vary.

  62. 62.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: There are legit criticisms of Warren on this issue. Many of the ones you hear, though, aren’t.

  65. 65.

    Matt McIrvin

    @mrmoshpotato: I’d known who he was for a long time from his unusual tenure in the House of Representatives. He often stood out on charts of Congressional ideology as an outlier.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    The Wall Street Journal
    ‏Verified account
    @WSJ
    9h9 hours ago
    More
    The South spent a century catching up to the rest of the U.S., but decades of lower education spending have left southerners ill-equipped for a major economic shift

    Low taxes come with low wages, which keeps low wages in place, because people can’t afford to pay increased additional local taxes for education and additional infrastructure with most people making low wages. It isn’t sustainable.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    We have skilled trades people here who get recruited to go down to southern manufacturing facilities. They don’t move there because the plants are set up on a bonus system rather than a higher hourly wage. So they go down for 6 months or year, retool, whatever, specialized skilled work, collect the bonus, and then go back to a job up north. They say that southern “operators” (plant workers) are really unhappy working 2nd or 3rd shift or weekends, which they think is a cultural thing. I don’t know if it’s true but I thought it was interesting. I don’t really disagree with it- 2nd and 3rd shift and weekends are harder for families with children because children are “on first shift” as a general rule, so you want to be home when they are, but it would be a problem.

  71. 71.

    Chyron HR

    @Barbara:

    I have noticed a lot of Sanders supporters speaking to the media have begun to stress that he has been progressive his whole life.

    Bernie marched with MLK rioted at Stonewall!

  72. 72.

    germy

    @rikyrah: She’s working through her grief by exposing these people.

    Depressing to see two female cops, and the one female aims briefly at the woman with the camera.

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Back when I was working I knew a lot of millwrights who made the big bucks touring the country, retooling factories and assembly plants. They’d work 7/12s for 5 or 6 weeks at a time and make so much money they could take 2 months off. Not for me. I hated 7/12s and 6/10s.

  76. 76.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay: Sometimes shift work can help with kid care. My sister is a nurse, and when her kids were grade school age, she worked third shift. So she’d sleep while they were at school, be with them when they got home, and leave at night, when my BIL was home. But I don’t think her body ever got used to it. It’s hard on a person. I may be misremembering this, but I think auto plants used to pay slightly more per hour for third shift.

  77. 77.

    germy

    Biden’s campaign is such a giant disaster I’m surprised Elizabeth Warren doesn’t have a plan to fix it— Jess Dweck (@TheDweck) June 7, 2019

  82. 82.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @germy: Is it a disaster? He is in the lead. I guess they had to backtrack on the Hyde Amendment. Mostly his campaign feels non-existent to me. As in he says he’ll figure out his policies later. WTF?

  85. 85.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: @chris: I would like somebody to do a study on how much our refusal to adopt the metric system costs the US economy every year, just so old fucks like me don’t have to be troubled with trying to figure out the Temp in F.

  86. 86.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Exactly. They seem to do it when their kids are either grown or older. I can see how it’s tempting. The sign-on bonus is big. I had one client who spent 6 months in Georgia and bought a classic car with the bonus. My son wants to be a “traveler” once he’s a journeyman although I think he’s kidding himself. He’s pretty attached to his girlfriend and her son. Two years ago he might have “traveled”. He did a week away recently inside Ohio – 4 hours away- and he was moping about it.

  87. 87.

    chris

    Looks like the shit’s about to hit the fan in Brazil. IKR, it’s Greenwald (asshole!) but still…

    1/ EXCLUSIVE: We obtained one of the largest & most important archives of leaked material in years: containing the secret chats, audios, videos & documents of the prosecutors & Judge – now Bolsonaro's Justice Minister, Sergio Moro – who imprisoned Lula. It shows vast wrongdoing. pic.twitter.com/opSgTrzQ77— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) 9 June 2019

  88. 88.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Well the metric system non alignment was responsible for the crash of one of the Mars probes. That has to be hundreds of millions alone.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    They all hate second, because they go in while their kids are in school and get home when they are asleep. It’s a disaster for kid-raising, really. They never see them, but for half an hour in the morning. It’s where they put new people.

  91. 91.

    Immanentize

    @Kay:
    Kay, didn’t your son break up with his girlfriend and your favorite not-yet grandson? Or was that just a fleeting moment of tussle?

  92. 92.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “Every so often I think about how strange it is that The Dixie Chicks suffered greater career punishment for being right about the Iraq War than any pundit or politician did for being wrong on it…”

    Peter W Singer

    And men who don’t respect others shouldn’t have their careers ruined just because they can’t keep their dick in their pants.

  93. 93.

    NotMax

    (massive yawn) Evening nap self-extended.

    Woo-effin’-hoo, I guess – flights for NY trip booked. Right now suffering usual buyer’s remorse.

    @satby

    Not that you’ll see this until after the power is restored, the phone (and tablet?) can be charged inside the car, yes?

    As for no coffee – the horror, the horror.

  95. 95.

    Immanentize

    @chris:
    Wait a moment.
    It’s GG after all.
    Are you sure the wrong doing he is about to reveal is not Lula’s evil. After all, that is what he would do in the US

  97. 97.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: It is a young man’s game tho I knew a number of guys who did it their entire careers. It takes a different mindset, one in which “having a life” is not a prerequisite.

  99. 99.

    Barbara

    @chris: Seriously, I hope Greenwald’s passport is current and he has already purchased tickets to a different location. Maybe he should go to Paraguay for the day.

  104. 104.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    It wasn’t fleeting at all! He moved out, I helped find him an apartment- which was fun, I love property searches, and then they got back together. He still has the apartment but just until they let him out of the lease, in July. But they’re back together and he’s not forthcoming so I don’t know what happened. They just showed up one Sunday all together again. He knows this drives me crazy because I want to know and I swear he enjoys not telling me anything :)

    It bothers me. Not for them- but for the little boy. He is attached. I don’t like this unreliability. I think it’s bad for kids. I want them to recognize that. But I said my peace and now I’m trying not to be an asshole about it and harangue them, partly because I’m afraid they’ll stop visiting.

  105. 105.

    chris

    @Immanentize: Just getting into it so I’m wearing full hazmat gear just in case but…

    …the team of prosecutors who handled Lula’s corruption case — who spent years vehemently denying that they were driven by political motives of any kind — began discussing in a private Telegram chat group how to block, subvert, or undermine the Supreme Court decision. This was based on their expressed fear that the decision would help the PT — Lula’s party — win the election. Based on their stated desire to prevent the PT’s return to power, they spent hours debating strategies to prevent or dilute the political impact of Lula’s interview.

    The Car Wash prosecutors explicitly said that their motive in stopping Lula’s interview was to prevent the PT from winning.

  106. 106.

    Leto

    @OzarkHillbilly: They had a chance to fix that (1868-1878) but decided to shoot themselves in the face rather than change. I’m currently reading “Stony the Road” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr (also watched his companion PBS piece). I knew the basics on Reconstruction but this, combined with Isabel Wilkerson’s, “The Warmth of Other Suns”, gives me a much deeper understanding of all the underlying racism that went into virtually every aspect of American life that kept segregation legal for the next 100 years and all the problems we continue to face.

    I have friends from the North who would continually point out how the cost of living was so much cheaper in the South, how they all wanted to live there, but wouldn’t listen to the corresponding fact that they would have virtually no public services down there, or that they would be of substantially reduced ability. People don’t think about how their tax dollars are spent beside the fact that THEY’RE TAKING MY MONEY, OMG! or OMG MY TAXES ARE SO HIGH! I often wonder what would happen if they actually went to a high tax country. Like the Nordic states. Would they still bitch and complain, or would they see what their money was being used for and be appreciative? (Narrator: they would still bitch)

  107. 107.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay: I’m sure he does enjoy not telling you. He knows exactly what buttons to push.

    The little boy sounds so charming. My son is my only child, and he and my DIL say they’re not having kids. I am jealous.

  109. 109.

    plato

    Puppeteer putin doesn’t do “FAKE NEWS”, just arrests the inconvenient journos.

    Three of Russia’s leading newspapers have come out in support of a reporter charged with drug offences, in a case that has caused a huge public outcry.

    The front page headlines in Vedomosti, RBC, and Kommersant read “We are Ivan Golunov”, referring to the investigative journalist.

    Mr Golunov was charged over the weekend with trying to illegally sell drugs. His lawyer said the drugs were planted.

    The journalist was reportedly beaten up during his arrest last week.

    The three business dailies on Monday published a joint statement, openly questioning the legality of Mr Golunov’s arrest.

    “We do not consider convincing the evidence presented by investigators into the guilt of Ivan Golunov,” the statement said.

    “We are not ruling out that the detention and the subsequent arrest of Mr Golunov are connected to his professional activities.”

    The newspapers also demanded a thorough investigation into how police acted during the arrest.

  110. 110.

    Immanentize

    @chris:
    Thanks, Chris. Obviously, no collusion.

    I am willing to bet real money that Bolsonaro will say those exact words.

  111. 111.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Leto: I’m shocked at my SIL and her husband who live in Fla long enough each year that they don’t have to pay RI taxes. They both worked for URI and have pensions from there. They’re otherwise liberal, but taxes get to them.

  114. 114.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Leto: I have had that discussion innumerable times. My position is quite simple: Taxes are the price of living in a civilized society. They don’t like that statement, they just want to bitch.

  115. 115.

    Leto

    @Kay: @OzarkHillbilly: We have people who join the military who want to move right back to their town as their first assignment. I would try to point out to them that Uncle Sam is paying for them to see shit they’ve never seen before, to live places most people save for years to visit for about a week (generally talking about overseas here; nobody wants to live in Maxwell, Alabama FFS), and to have experiences most people never will. They’re basically being paid to vacation, and they better do that shit now before they’re married with kids/mortgage/life because it becomes substantially harder from there on out.

    The people who understood that were generally better workers overall. They were also generally better off once they left the service.

  116. 116.

    Immanentize

    @Kay:
    I know people need to live their own lives, and I also know that what happens in any relationship is a mystery….

    But I think having a doing, loving potential g-ma must be a nice relationship enhancement. Go Kay!

  118. 118.

    Gelfling 545

    @Barbara: Maybe he has been. Who knows? But all his progressiveness has accomplished exactly nothing. He’s not been the one creating and moving progressive legislation.

  119. 119.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Lots of people here in RI do that. They also register their car in Florida, so as to avoid the RI property tax on motor vehicles. So even though RI law requires you to register the car in RI if you’re here more than 30 days, they’ll spend half the year here and still have Fla plates.

    I call those people “assholes.”

  122. 122.

    rikyrah

    This thread is crazy ??
    I didn’t see the ending coming.

    ONE

    My dad died. Classic start to a funny story. He was buried in a small village in Sussex. I was really close to my dad so I visited his grave a lot. I still do. [DON’T WORRY, IT GETS FUNNIER.]

    — sixthformpoet (@sixthformpoet) June 9, 2019

  123. 123.

    rikyrah

    ?????
    The (sort of) rich white man who faked and cheated his way to the White House is now telling you that black people get special treatment.

    Tweets like these seem innocuously stupid until you realize who they’re truly meant to appeal to: white people who see themselves as victims. https://t.co/2qjnOUxKM2

    — Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 9, 2019

  124. 124.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    My daughter was teasing me because I have him help with gardening, which he likes. She said “another kid who likes what you like! That’s amazing!” :)

  125. 125.

    rikyrah

    So the only month Trump did not take a taxpayer-funded trip to promote one of his properties was the month when he shut down the government and had to stay at the White House to clean up the mess he created. https://t.co/4j0NIu4AJ3

    — Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) June 8, 2019

  126. 126.

    Sab

    @Gin & Tonic: What happens if they get in an accident? Are they really insured? A Florida insurance company might have issues with paying a RI claim like that.

  127. 127.

    Leto

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I mean, I get that position on two levels: 1) people want to keep more of their money. It’s natural, especially in retirement age. I get it, I do. I’m sure I will complain like everyone else. 2) it’s a natural reaction to the last 230 years worth of conservative argument that taxes are illegal, they’re going to the wrong things, and point #1. That dogma is thoroughly baked into the American psyche. People who hate government will always be sure to point out every last “wasteful” penny spent as an example of why government/taxation is bad.

    I remember when 60 Minutes ran a piece about why a coffee maker on a B1 bomber cost a million dollars (early 90s) and how that was just OUTRAGEOUS! Why you can go to Walmart and pick one up for $20! Of course later on I learned about all the operational characteristics that a B1 crew has to perform under, and more specifically, how the plane and all of its component parts have to operate. That part of the story was intentionally missing (big surprise). But it served its purpose of ginning up support for “government is wasteful of our tax dollars”.

    Nobody hears about the good stuff going on because it doesn’t make headlines and people expect it to run that way. When the machine is faithfully chugging along with no issues, nobody cares. Also I feel a long screed coming on so I’m stopping now ;)

    @OzarkHillbilly: Exactly. Everyone loves to visit Europe, loves the experience, but when you talk to them about how to make that happen ($$$) they ball and say that can never happen here! Why not? You were just living that, you enjoyed it. Why can’t we make it happen here? Gah!!!

  128. 128.

    rikyrah

    Money & status doesn’t protect black People from racial discrimination. The Obamas were called all sorts of gorillas, apes, thugs, ghetto trash etc. Oprah had the door closed on her at Hermes. https://t.co/2aVCLnGosf

    — Veronica McDonald? (@Purify_toast17) June 8, 2019

  129. 129.

    rikyrah

    Brookings Institute confirms $156B in home value stolen from black homeowners today despite our belief in American Dream. https://t.co/11xYCsnbC9 @BMeCommunity @dnbornstein @oneunited @nff_news @AllanLudgate @SusanDavisNY @JessicaPliskaON @VanJones68 @soledadobrien @pamelajolly

    — trabian shorters (@JoinBMe) June 8, 2019

  130. 130.

    rikyrah

    Let’s table impeachment for a moment and discuss contempt of Congress. Steven Mnuchin blatantly defied Congress and he is walking around free like nothing happened. Why isn’t this man sitting in a jail cell? When you let someone get away with something they just get bolder.

    — Christopher Bouzy (@cbouzy) June 8, 2019

  131. 131.

    NotMax

    @Gin & Tonic

    Figuring the costs of gas, lodging, food, etc, for a round trip drive between FL and RI, do they end up saving any moolah at all?

  133. 133.

    rikyrah

    Well…..answer the question ???

    Chris Pine weighs in on “Make America Great Again”: “What period of history are we talking about? Jim Crow? Slavery? Plantation masters?” https://t.co/XZLx36OBCC pic.twitter.com/LsSc0eWCCP

    — Variety (@Variety) June 7, 2019

  135. 135.

    rikyrah

    Keep spelling it out ??

    Earlier this week I wrote about the revelation that the Trump administration’s motive for adding a citizenship question to the Census was motivated by a conscious desire to increase white political power while diminishing that of people of color https://t.co/WiUyGtjUpR pic.twitter.com/cxat96DwbU

    — Adam Serwer? (@AdamSerwer) June 9, 2019

  136. 136.

    Gin & Tonic

    @NotMax: I have no idea, actually, and I’m not about to ask. But legally, they have to be in FL for at least 183 days to claim it as domicile for tax purposes, so they presumably own a residence there.

  137. 137.

    Sab

    @Leto: I had to replace four tires last year due to potholes. I would much rather pay taxes instead of a couple of hundred dollars for a new tire every few months. But my Republican state government doesn’t agree with me.

    Also my Democratic state rep has trouble getting past security into the Capitol building because she doesn’t “look like a member” being young and Black. She’s the Minority Leader in the House but they supposedly don’t recognize her.

  138. 138.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kay: If Wilmer falls below Warren & other actual Democrats, after having that yooooge lead in name rec, can we start calling him Choke-ahontas? Or should we stick with “Brezhnev with half the brains”?

  139. 139.

    chris

    Final, for now, takeaway from Brazil.

    That the same judge who found Lula guilty was then rewarded by Lula’s victorious opponent made even longtime supporters of the Car Wash corruption probe uncomfortable, due to the obvious perception (real or not) of a quid pro quo, and by the transformation of Moro, who long insisted he was apolitical, into a political official working for the most far-right president ever elected in the history of Brazil’s democracy. Those concerns heightened when Bolsonaro recently admitted that he had also promised to appoint Moro to a lifelong seat on the Supreme Court as soon as there was a vacancy.

  140. 140.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Gin & Tonic: Or rent. Either way it’s expensive. If money was an issue for them they would pick one or the other. The fact that it’s both is indicative of wealth.

  142. 142.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    The “fake Indian” thing is dumb and parrots Trump though. It’s disappointing, especially since it came right from the top- from his paid campaign strategists.

    That’s who they are, Kay.

  143. 143.

    The Moar You Know

    No “I” in Baud! 2020! either. Just saying.

    @Baud: Can’t spell “Baud” without “bad”.

    Moar 2020!

  144. 144.

    rikyrah

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    When I used to say this in 2016, people would say I was going to far, and then he had his infamous interview with the NY Daily News were he revealed he had no idea how to break up the banks, nor how they would be regulated.

    I try imagining a non-White or a woman having the kind of interview with the Daily News that he had…AND be taken seriously as a candidate afterwards….

    I can’t.

  145. 145.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: You want to know something funny. Most upper caste Brahmin males who populate the newsrooms in India and write think pieces for Garbage Times and other prestige publications are declaring the end of caste as a relevant factor in Indian elections. This when Modi won about 60 to 70% of the upper caste vote. Brahmin vote for him is probably much higher.

  146. 146.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Kay: Actually if you think of it, calling Native Americans, Indians was the height of stupidity and privilege by Columbus or whoever it was that called them that first. Its like landing in Australia and calling people there Americans.

  147. 147.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    The “fake Indian” thing is dumb and parrots Trump though.

    I have a problem with it, only because she handled it so poorly, and STILL doesn’t seem to understand how to punch back on it.

  148. 148.

    Barbara

    @Gelfling 545: Well, there are multiple rejoinders to this assertion, but in general I don’t like arguments from pedigree. There are actually politicians in Virginia who still accuse opponents of being carpetbaggers or not having lived in Virginia their whole life. Most candidates, however, now understand that this registers as such a negative for so many people that they have to find a different way to dog whistle on the subject. The real issue is authenticity and commitment, which is subject to greater questioning if you have only recently come into the fold, but which hardly requires that you have been such and such “your whole life.” It’s a ridiculous argument when it comes to Warren — okay, 20 years ago or more she was a registered Republican, but her entire track record in public political life is as a proud and passionate Democrat. And I guess it doesn’t surprise me that Sanders’ supporters don’t seem to understand the irony of their position — he is seeking the nomination of a party that he joins and leaves at will based on opportunism. That doesn’t even rise to the status of a fair weather friend for those of us who actually do care about party politics.

  151. 151.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: Agree to some extent, and I hope she and her advisers come up with an approach. At this point, I think she should just say the rhetorical equivalent of “asked and answered,” or, possibly, “I am just like a lot of average people who seek to know their heritage through DNA testing.” However, it’s hugely suspect for a bunch of — presumably — white people to sit around and decide who counts as a real or a fake “Indian.” The fact that they are using the term “Indian” strongly suggests a high degree of infiltration by bots.

  153. 153.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    It bothers me. Not for them- but for the little boy. He is attached. I don’t like this unreliability. I think it’s bad for kids. I want them to recognize that. But I said my peace and now I’m trying not to be an asshole about it and harangue them, partly because I’m afraid they’ll stop visiting.

    You are smart, Kay. You’ve said your peace, and that’s good.

  157. 157.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Leto: When I was hired for a military logistics operation in the early 1980s, one of the first things my supervisor told me was an explanation of how charges for small things like toilet seats & Allen wrenches got so outrageous. The gist:

    A lot of the cost for a weapons system (or a test equipment suite, which is what my corp made) is system-wide, i.e., cannot be allocated to specific components. (E.g., operations & repair manuals, training for operators, other documentation. Google “integrated logistics support” for a fuller picture.)

    So how does the manufacturer bill for these categories of services & ancillaries? The simplest method is to count the number of parts in the system & divide that into the total system-wide cost. That was traditional so long as no one was examining a detailed breakdown – because that was how you got entries like $500 toilet seats, $40 for the item & $460 for its share of the other costs. Meanwhile an item priced at $1M would find its cost increased to a whopping $1,000,460.

    The slightly more complicated method was to prorate the non-allocable costs among deliverable components by their costs to produce. If the non-allocable costs were (say) 25% above the sum of the item costs, the $1M item would be priced at $1.25M, and the $40 toilet seat at $50. Which is what they started doing…& the furor gradually died down.

    (Edited to clarify & to fix fuctup arithmetic.)

  159. 159.

    lurker dean

    @rikyrah: if you haven’t, check out parts two and three, which are separate threads. fun little story telling, some folks are getting hung up on whether it’s true or not.

  160. 160.

    NotMax

    So, last night’s Tony awards program (the only awards show I ever watch). Blech.

    First time in years was sorely tempted to give up and change the channel. About the only thing which kept me aboard was switching to “no one could possibly show up in a more ghastly outfit than that” mode and being proved egregiously mistaken five minutes later.

    Whole thing had the look and feel of a cut-rate, bargain basement production. Presume out of his depth host James Corden is somewhere right this minute perched on a barstool, knocking back drinks heavily after the whole sorrowfully served salmagundi. Singing and dancing in front of rows of urinals and toilets? Really?

  162. 162.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rikyrah: Oh, I was curious, I just never asked. :-)

    she seems like a very solid young woman, with a good head on her shoulders.

    I’m not so sure, I mean, she’s dating Kay’s son… ;-) (said in jest Kay, said in jest)

  163. 163.

    chris

    @Immanentize: LOL. I’ve been wondering how Tucker’s going to take this. With his most constipated face no doubt. “You mean this great and wonderful man… cheated? No way!”

  164. 164.

    Kathleen

    @plato: I’m sure GG will jump right on decrying Putin’s violations of the First Amendment and Putin’s lack of transparency

  165. 165.

    chris

    @NotMax: “salmagundi”

    Had to look it up, sounds tasty. Thanks for new word which, curiously, sounds like Solomon Gundy, a name for pickled herring fillets here in Nova Scotia.

  167. 167.

    rikyrah

    THIS lead:

    Just before releasing the Mueller Report, Attorney General William P. Barr … “strategized with Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, about one of his next moves: investigating the investigators.” https://t.co/zBaePWVtH8

    — Heidi Przybyla (@HeidiNBC) June 10, 2019

  168. 168.

    Immanentize

    @chris:

    Solomon Grundy

    Solomon Grundy,
    Was born on a Monday,
    Christened on Tuesday,
    Married on Wednesday,
    Took ill on Thursday,
    Grew worse on Friday,
    Died on Saturday,
    Buried on Sunday.
    And that was the end,
    Of Solomon Grundy.

  170. 170.

    Barbara

    @Uncle Cosmo: This also explains high per item costs in hospital bills. It’s a cheap trick for a politician (only slightly above brain dead in terms of logic) to talk as if they actually believe that if only the toilet seats and aspirin were more reasonably priced everything would be affordable.

  171. 171.

    NotMax

    @chris

    Were edit available would go back and change it to “slapdash salmagundi” in order to more succinctly convey the idea while preserving the alliteration.

    Slapdash Salmagundi may already be taken by a garage band, though.

    ;)

  172. 172.

    The Moar You Know

    1/ EXCLUSIVE: We obtained one of the largest & most important archives of leaked material in years: containing the secret chats, audios, videos & documents of the prosecutors & Judge – now Bolsonaro’s Justice Minister, Sergio Moro – who imprisoned Lula. It shows vast wrongdoing. pic.twitter.com/opSgTrzQ77— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) 9 June 2019

    @chris: Greenwald’s an idiot who must think himself immortal. He doesn’t live in America anymore, and he needs to remember that. Bolsonaro will simply kill his dumb ass for this.

  174. 174.

    rikyrah

    What lie told?

    I have said it before, and I repeat it again: Trump is not a politician. He is a criminal. And he’s using the tools of politics to extend his crime spree.

    — Steven Beschloss (@StevenBeschloss) June 10, 2019

  180. 180.

    chris

    @Immanentize: I know that one! I have always wondered how they got from that to pickled herring but now one can see the anglicised salmagundi. Little things make me happy.

  182. 182.

    Leto

    @Sab: Definitely agree with all of that. I hate to say this but it felt like we came back to a third world country when came back to the States. Idk, maybe California and that area are different but the infrastructure here in PA (outer Philadelphia area) is shit. The roadworks, which is basically everyone’s #1 gripe, is just horrible. Potholes more than ankle deep, miles of roadway just little more than refined gravel… and that’s just the roads!

    @Uncle Cosmo: Totally understand. Military IT project manager here. Part of it is that, the other is just the environment that this shit has to operate in. People want sixth gen aircraft at WW1 balsa wood prop plane prices. Same for everything else in the military. People also don’t understand that when you reduce the number of units purchased, that it drives the overall price for the program up. We were supposed to have 650~ish F22s. We now only have 138~ish. The program cost the exact same but we now have 500 less planes. Same for the F35. Can’t wait for the same thing to happen to the new bomber program.

    I’m just glad that everyone is looking at those and not the IT budget! ;)

  184. 184.

    chris

    Just to be clear I am not a fan of Greenwald at all. But this new stuff is both illuminating and horrifying. Brazil is on the edge of fascist dictatorship and possibly bloodshed and these revelations could push it over the edge. One hopes not but they do have a history and Bolsonaro et al. are surely fans of “the good old days.”

    As to GG’s safety, unless he has a martyr complex he’s not there. I just hope that the Intercept Brazil reporters are also out of the country.

  185. 185.

    Brachiator

    Elizabeth Warren holding a post-gala town hall on Waterloo’s east side. African-American host told crowd that “not many candidates come to our part of town.”

    Good on Warren.

    But apparently Democrats have not learned a goddam thing about who their base is.

    ETA. Some Democrats may think that Iowa doesn’t have any black residents at all. The racial history of Waterloo is pretty sad.

  187. 187.

    Brachiator

    @rikyrah:

    The “fake Indian” thing is dumb and parrots Trump though.

    I have a problem with it, only because she handled it so poorly, and STILL doesn’t seem to understand how to punch back on it.

    This nonsense is becoming Warren’s “emails.”

  188. 188.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Leto – I met a lot of those people when I was in the Navy (and they joined the NAVY !n duh!) I unfortunately could never get orders in Europe or around the Med once I got sent to the Pacific,BUT I got to live in Hawai’i for years, and Guam and Florida and the PNW.

    Got deployed to Korea a few times, Alaska once, and around the Persian Gulf for a little while (mostly Bahrain and Abu Dhabi)

    I totally did not understand the 19 year olds who wanted to get stationed as close to home as possible, go home and marry their high school girlfriend or boyfriend right after boot camp, and have kids right away… but to each their own I guess.

  190. 190.

    Kathleen

    @Aleta: Depends on source’s gender, ethnicity and whether information supports GG’s narrative and agenda.

  191. 191.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    Were edit available would go back and change it to “slapdash salmagundi”

    Hmm. That might be somewhat redundant.

    Love the connection to Solomon Grundy.

  192. 192.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Brachiator: It seems so easily brushed off. In Warren’s voice:

    1. I always took our family stories about Native American ancestry with a grain of salt, but now that genetic testing is available, I thought, why not check?

    2. Tribal councils determine who can claim membership in their tribes. I certainly did not, nor ever intended to, claim membership in any tribe based on the test results.

    3. The other reason I had the test done is that a positive result might shame Donald Trump into putting his money into the hands of some good causes.

    4. That of course was foolish. Donald Trump is too busy stuffing his own pockets with cash he’s stolen from the people of the USA to pay off on a lost bet. He doesn’t even pay his legal debts if he can browbeat or threaten the people he owes into taking pennies on the dollar.

    5. (Drops mic)

    Not that SPW hasn’t said most or all of this already, probably repeatedly, but shouldn’t that put an end to it (for anyone not trapped in the Faux Noise Lie-Bro’ry)?

    (edited for cleanup)

  193. 193.

    Fair Economist

    @Kay:

    That’s the best they can do? Pocahontas? They get paid for this?

    LOL. Says something about Sanders’ teambuilding abilities.

  194. 194.

    Ruckus

    @geg6:
    Katie Porter, first democrat elected in her Orange county district. Ever. And she is good. They voted for her, and they won with a dramatically better representative. Win Win.
    @OzarkHillbilly:
    That metric thread is hilarious. Nothing like american conservatives, working like morons to bring you yesteryear. Yesteryear’s wages, yesteryear’s prejudice, yesteryear’s stupidity, yesteryear’s racism, yesteryear’s taxes…….. Going backwards at the speed of meth. It has to be drugs. No one can be that stupid and breathe on their own.

  196. 196.

    Fair Economist

    @Barbara:

    Yeah, there is no mileage trying to insert yourself into your kids’ love life.

    Can somebody please convince my husband of that? He was scheming on how to get our teen son to dump his current girlfriend and go back to his previous one (who my husband thinks is a better influence). I tried saying “It’s none of your business who he loves” but that seemed ineffective.

  198. 198.

    Fair Economist

    @Aleta:

    I hope [Greenwald] has treated his sources’ safety as an equal to his own.

    That would be a first. Ask Reality Winner about how he treats sources.

  199. 199.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    They’re interchangeable? Why?

    They really aren’t good in different ways. They are ineffective in different ways. BS inspires some people with his style, because he has no substance. JB is a likable guy with a sad story and a smile. And at least he has history of doing something. But everything he’s got is from his 8 yrs as VP. Because if you add in his history before that…… It’s short term thinking. Sort of MBA electioneering, don’t look at the effects, don’t look at history, look only at profits for the next quarter, we’ll worry about the quarter after that, next quarter, running a country is just like running a large corporation. Sort of like DT is running a large corporation. Into the ground.
    I think that people are looking at JB and going President Obama was very good. President Obama chose Joe Biden, therefore Joe Biden must be good. The known is better than the unknown. Success breeds success. Once the debates get going, once the speeches get really going, JB is going to do as he always does, speak well with his foot in his mouth. Those who should be the front runners will come forward and those who shouldn’t be will retreat. That’s happening to BS already, his numbers are from those who have swallowed the bs, they are looking for a knight in shinning bs, they found their bs. People who see the bs are not swayed. JB has support that is a mile wide and an inch deep. It will dry up as soon as it is exposed to sunlight.

  201. 201.

    vhh

    @Baud: That ain’t the half of it. The French revolutionaries tried to change the calendar to 12 months of 30 days each (eg Thermidor ~ August), ten day weeks, and decimal time. None of these caught on, but the metric system of weights and measures did. Which says something.

  202. 202.

    Ruckus

    @Uncle Cosmo:
    Part may be how budgets were/are done. I was told that the ship I was stationed on had a total yearly budget of $5 million. This was in the 70s and was supposed to include all costs, payroll, upkeep, parts, tools, etc. At the end of every July we were given free rein to go to the tool store on base and buy any and everything we wanted. Because they figured that if we didn’t, the budget would be cut and a need might come up and they would have no budget. We could’t purchase the tools we might need at any other time, only at the end of the budget year. It isn’t logical, it isn’t practical, it isn’t reasonable but that was part of the system. I imagine that it was pretty much like that everywhere in the federal government.

  204. 204.

    Brachiator

    @Gravenstone:

    figure out the Temp in F

    (2C – 10%) + 32 = F

    You’re welcome.

    I confess that I am lazy and rarely formulatize anymore.

    I just google it.

    So, 30c to f gives 86 degrees F

  206. 206.

    J R in WV

    @debbie:

    He could have scheduled so he could be at both.

    Nope, When the date of one event is the same day as another event a thousand miles away, you must pick one.

    Unca Joe picked the right one, his granddaughter’s graduation is a once in a life time event for her, and for Joe.

  207. 207.

    Miss Bianca

    @NotMax: That would make sense if they were highlighting “Urinetown”, but I’m guessing that that show wasn’t part of the line-up for this year’s awards.

  208. 208.

    Another Scott

    @NotMax: Never’s a very long time. ;-)

    Nature:

    […]

    At positive temperatures, such a reversal would be unstable and the atoms would collapse inwards. But the team also adjusted the trapping laser field to make it more energetically favourable for the atoms to stick in their positions. This result, described today in Science1, marks the gas’s transition from just above absolute zero to a few billionths of a Kelvin below absolute zero.

    Wolfgang Ketterle, a physicist and Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who has previously demonstrated negative absolute temperatures in a magnetic system2, calls the latest work an “experimental tour de force”. Exotic high-energy states that are hard to generate in the laboratory at positive temperatures become stable at negative absolute temperatures — “as though you can stand a pyramid on its head and not worry about it toppling over,” he notes — and so such techniques can allow these states to be studied in detail. “This may be a way to create new forms of matter in the laboratory,” Ketterle adds.

    If built, such systems would behave in strange ways, says Achim Rosch, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cologne in Germany, who proposed the technique used by Schneider and his team3. For instance, Rosch and his colleagues have calculated that whereas clouds of atoms would normally be pulled downwards by gravity, if part of the cloud is at a negative absolute temperature, some atoms will move upwards, apparently defying gravity4.

    Another peculiarity of the sub-absolute-zero gas is that it mimics ‘dark energy’, the mysterious force that pushes the Universe to expand at an ever-faster rate against the inward pull of gravity. Schneider notes that the attractive atoms in the gas produced by the team also want to collapse inwards, but do not because the negative absolute temperature stabilises them. “It’s interesting that this weird feature pops up in the Universe and also in the lab,” he says. “This may be something that cosmologists should look at more closely.”

    tl;dr – temperature is a statistical quantity of collections of atoms, and when one messes around with those collections then one can change the temperature distribution in non-obvious ways.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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