Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I was promised a recession.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

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

The revolution will be supervised.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

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

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

You are here: Home / Politics / Media / Monday Morning Open Thread: Here We Go Again

Monday Morning Open Thread: Here We Go Again

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This used to be one of the slowest weeks of the news year, when reporters and political cartoonists could go on vacation with little fear of missing a big story. I’d like to go back to those halcyon days, thank you!
 

Mangy Jay phrases it well:

Reader Interactions

231Comments

  3. 3.

    Mary G

    Great thread. Tom Nichols is getting on my last nerve. I’d stop following him on Twitter, but Charlie Pierce and other people clapping back is full of win.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    If the Never Trumpers want to tell us what to do, the least they could do is run a candidate in our primary.

  8. 8.

    Raven

    Here we go again Country Joe and the Fish.
    When dawn comes to touch my purple haze
    And evening’s drowsiness to carry me away
    I know once again that there is nothing we can save, So I’ll pack up my things, I’ll be on my way.
    Yes, here I go again

  9. 9.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Greetings from Denmark where the cheese is plentiful and good. And, oh yes, blech.

    P.S. I forgot to mention the prices: they are high. But the hiking is beautiful.

  15. 15.

    O. Felix Culpa

    The Europeans I’ve spoken with are…quizzical…about Trump. Somewhere between aghast and pitying.

  20. 20.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @NotMax: Infidel! The herring is excellent. At least the local preparation our friends served us. Yum.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: My first experience with pickled herring was after a 12 day backpack in Wyoming. On the last day or 2 of any such trip, one begins to have cravings, some are standard middle of the road- pepperoni pizza or Oreos. Others are somewhat off the wall like Brussels sprouts or head cheese. One guy was craving pickled herring.

    Gotta say, after 12 days of trail food and fresh caught mountain trout, pickled herring was pretty damned tasty.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    @OzarkHillbilly

    Unpleasant experience involving herring in cream sauce being forced on me during the most impressionable years led to a lifelong aversion.

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A state department office tasked with negotiating and implementing nuclear disarmament treaties has lost more than 70% of its staff over the past two years, as the Trump administration moves towards a world without arms control for the first time in nearly half a century.

    The Office of Strategic Stability and Deterrence Affairs, normally a repository of expertise and institutional knowledge that does the heavy lifting of arms control, has been whittled down from 14 staffers at the start of the Trump administration to four, according to the former staffers. The state department declined to comment.

    The state department has instead focussed its arms control efforts on “creating the environment for disarmament” (CEND)shifting the onus for disarmament from the nuclear weapons powers to non-weapons states.

    An invitation to a 2 July state department conference on the subject invites non-nuclear states to come up with “measures to modify the security environment to reduce incentives for states to retain, acquire, or increase their holdings of nuclear weapons”.

    The stupid. It hurts.

  28. 28.

    Baud

    Of the 547 employees the department wants to move for the two agencies combined, 253 are with the Economic Research Service, 77 percent of its 329-person workforce. An additional 294 are with the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, 93 percent of its 315-person staff. News of the move prompted a surge of support for the union. Employees at the National Institute voted 137-2 to join AFGE two weeks ago. Last month’s vote at the economic service was 138-4.

    Too late now.

  29. 29.

    Suburban Mom

    @NotMax: You and me both. I tell my family that our ancestors left the old country so that generations to come would never have to eat herring in any form.

  31. 31.

    HinTN

    Never Trumpers: You don’t just get to smash everything in a store and drool racism all over the damage and then prance back in and be like, “Here’s what I think you should do w/ the store.”

    THIS, a thousand times this.

  32. 32.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A freak hail storm has struck Guadalajara, one of Mexico’s most populous cities, burying vehicles in a deluge of ice pellets up to two metres deep.

    “I’ve never seen such scenes in Guadalajara,” said the state governor, Enrique Alfaro. “Then we ask ourselves if climate change is real. These are never-before-seen natural phenomenons,” he said. “It’s incredible.”

    Guadalajara, located north of Mexico City and with a population of around five million, has been experiencing summer temperature of around 31C (88F) in recent days. While seasonal hail storms do occur, there is no record of anything so heavy. At least six neighbourhoods in the city outskirts woke up to ice pellets up to two metres deep.

    While children scampered around and hurled iceballs at each other, civil protection personnel and soldiers brought out heavy machinery to clear the roads.

    Nearly 200 homes and businesses reported hail damage, and at least 50 vehicles were swept away by the deluge of ice in hilly areas, some buried under piles of pellets. While no casualties were reported, two people showed “early signs of hypothermia,” the state civil protection office said.

    If a picture is worth a thousand words, there’s 2,000 words worth. The video leave me speechless.

  33. 33.

    satby

    Good morning, morning crew and especially @rikyrah!

    Gearing up for a long, hot week. I’m already miserable just thinking about it. And the previous weeks of rain have produced bumper crops of mosquitoes. Most people like summer because they’re outside more. I hate it because I’m inside more. Blech.

  39. 39.

    SFAW

    J1FD

    Just one fucking day where I don’t have to hear about, nor have to think about, the destruction the Traitor-in-Chief and his enablers (both voters and votees) are wreaking on this country and the world.

    If only Brodie Van Wagenen were the biggest of my worries. That would be a pretty decent world. If only …

    J1FD

  42. 42.

    PST

    @NotMax:

    Unpleasant experience involving herring in cream sauce being forced on me during the most impressionable years led to a lifelong aversion.

    Funny, but a delightful experience involving herring in cream sauce being offered to me during the most impressionable years led to the first inkling that I needed to ditch the Chef Bor-Ar-Dee and Jello salads of my small town midwestern boyhood, move to a big city, find some real food, and maybe even marry a Jewish girl.

  43. 43.

    SenyorDave

    I posted this in the middle of the night because after I woke up to pee (what I shock since it was hot and I drank water and juice all day) I couldn’t sleep because I started thinking of the whole Ivanka thing and it was making my blood boil.
    I was at the gym on Friday morning and a guy who had the locker next to me asked me what I thought of the debate. This guy is an older gentleman, probably 75 – 80, very affable, will talk to anyone. I’ve chatted for a few minutes with him on a few occasions. Before I could answer he kind of mumbled that all they did was whine. So I started off by saying I am not a Trump person. He then asked if I was a veteran, and when I said no, he told me that he was in the military for 28 years, served in Vietnam, then was in Europe for a large part of the rest of his military career, and if you ask anyone in the military they will tell you that Trump is the best thing that has happened to the military in the last 50 years. He also said the military is still recovering after Obama’s attempt to destroy it. He almost spat the name Obama.
    I decided immediately I wouldn’t address his points about the military because that was his territory, and he would just say I don’t understand since I wasn’t a veteran. I brought up the rape allegation against Trump and said it is very telling that a rape accusation against the POTUS doesn’t even seem to be a major story. I said IMO it is because most people just assume it’s true, and while some of his supporters think she’s lying, most don’t even care. I then said he is a lying, corrupt, racist, amoral pig, and that is an objective statement. I was pretty calm, didn’t even raise my voice. I finished by saying I watched most of the debate, but I don’t rely on very much debates to make my decision as to who to support, and I would vote for pretty much any human being over Trump. That was the end of the conversation, I could tell he had no interest in further engaging me.
    I live in blue Maryland, in a town that is planned community with a high amount of diversity, so finding a Trump supporter is unusual in itself.

  44. 44.

    debbie

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    Yum, cheese! This is a bit north of you, but I”m working my way through this. (I can’t believe Amazon charges more than double what Whole Foods does!)

  45. 45.

    SFAW

    @SenyorDave:

    He also said the military is still recovering after Obama’s attempt to destroy it. He almost spat the name Obama.

    “Really? How exactly did he do that? Promise service members a raise that he reneged on? Promise veterans benefits that he then reneged on? Gave away secrets to our main adversary? Brought in a National Security Adviser whose sole reason for living is to get hte US into a pointless war?

    “Or was it even worse: Presidenting While Black?”

    Hilarity would probably not ensue.

  49. 49.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW: I recommend morphine. You’ll probably still hear all the noise but it will be beautiful noise.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    National Park Service acting director P. Daniel Smith faces plenty of looming priorities this summer, from an $11 billion backlog in maintenance needs to natural disasters like the recent wildfire damage to Big Bend Park.

    But in recent days, another issue has competed for Smith’s attention: how to satisfy President Trump’s request to station tanks or other armored military vehicles on the Mall for his planned July Fourth address to the nation.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/trump-asks-for-military-tanks-on-the-mall-as-part-of-grandiose-july-fourth-event/2019/07/01/e9d274ee-9adc-11e9-8d0a-5edd7e2025b1_story.html

  56. 56.

    Ken

    @Baud:

    I heard there’s something rotten there.

    If you mean the herring, that’s in Sweden and technically fermentation is not rot.

  64. 64.

    Bruce K

    Over here in Greece, there’s an election coming this Sunday, with the apparent odds-on favorites being the New Democracy party: the Greek center-to-right conservatives, who I think might also call themselves liberals. I don’t know exactly where they’d land on that New York Times comparative-ideology chart that was front-paged sometime last week, but I suspect they’d be a bit to the right of the median, somewhat to the right of the US Democrats and way the hell to the left of the US Republicans. They’re up against the currently-in-power SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) party, who are very distinct from the Panhellenic Socialist Party, even more distinct from the Greek Communist Party, and extremely distinct from Golden Dawn, the Greek neo-Nazi party.

    The ND-friendly press seem to have decided to stick the entire blame for the ongoing Greek economic crisis on SYRIZA, when in actuality, all of the parties that have recently held power bear some of the blame, going back decades. It’d be like blaming Lincoln for the Civil War when the root causes went back to colonial times.

    I’m actually legally obliged to vote on July 7, and I’m feeling weird about wanting to cast a ballot for the River Party (a small centrist party that seems to have sensible policies, but no chance to get more than a couple of seats in Parliament). Then again, it’s a parliamentary election in a multi-party system, not a two-party system like back home, where there’s only one sane political party any more, and it’s not the party currently calling the shots…

  70. 70.

    SFAW

    @Ken:

    If you mean the herring, that’s in Sweden and technically fermentation is not rot.

    Rotten to-MAY-toes, rotten to-MAH-toes.

  71. 71.

    Ken

    @Gin & Tonic: I knew that, but I never miss a chance to promote the many wonderful and terrific Scandinavian fermented herring dishes. (I am using those words in the old senses, of “causing one to wonder” and “creating terror”.)

  72. 72.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I recommend morphine. You’ll probably still hear all the noise but it will be beautiful noise.

    I had PCA morphine for the first couple of days after bilateral hip replacement(s). That were some good shit.

  73. 73.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW: My one experience with morphine followed emergency surgery for a collapsed lung by a terrified medical student sans anesthetic. After it finally was over, they wheeled me into my room, rolled me onto my side and gave me that first shot of a beautiful golden wave that washing over me and turning

    Everything is beautiful,
    In it’s own way.    ..

  76. 76.

    artem1s

    @SenyorDave:

    he was in the military for 28 years, served in Vietnam,

    that’s the tell. a whole generation of vets who think that losing Vietnam was the Democrats fault. But more importantly, this was the first generation of white men in the military who had to compete with Blacks; serve along side them; serve under them and just generally wait in the same lines they did. then the Dems really ruined the military by asking that we stop ignoring the gay’s already serving and allow the women already serving to get in line too. It became SOP in the military to opening hate and speak against the President because Clinton didn’t serve in Vietnam. Al Gore paid for Clinton’s broaching the subject of allowing gays to openly serve. Kerry’s loss had a lot to do with anti-gay marriage hate the GOP riled up in retired vets who couldn’t abide ‘those’ people defiling their military (but Tailhook, that was unfair). Poppy’s downsizing attempts after the end of the cold war and base closings were blamed on Dems. Karl Rove dog whistled Vietnam Vets very very well. Obama only got Vets votes because Karl “blackened” McCain’s reputation in 2000 against W even better than he did the Dems.

  80. 80.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @O. Felix Culpa: Have you been to Tivoli? And Roskilde? Isn’t there a museum there with a Viking ship that was found submerged in the bay?

    Absolutely love Denmark.

  83. 83.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW: I can’t stand that song either, it’s an earworm just waiting to burrow into my head.

    @Ladyraxterinok: Oh yeah. My wife talks about getting sent to the bakery for a loaf of bread, and returning with said loaf that had somehow or other acquired a rather significant divot in the bottom of it. Her mother always yelled at her for it but then the next time she’d send her back for another loaf. I don’t think the yelling was in earnest.

    And don’t forget the fresh enseimadas etc.

  84. 84.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I can’t stand that song either,

    OK, I feel reassured. I was worried about your sanity for a second.
    “Worried about your sanity” more than usual, that is.

  85. 85.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Dump is so good to the military that Mattis resigned in protest

  86. 86.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s campaign raised over $24.8 million in the second quarter of 2019.

    This will get him a news cycle, That said his campaign has plateaued the last month or two. Not sure how he breaks out.

  87. 87.

    Leto

    @SFAW: @OzarkHillbilly: I’ll third (fourth?) that morphine recommendation. Had to have it, along with some other pain meds, for my Wound Vac packing material replacement. Though by week four, I think I was becoming used to my dose so the floating on cloud experience wasn’t quite there anymore. But I definitely understand why people become addicted to it.

  89. 89.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Never Trumpers: You don’t just get to smash everything in a store and drool racism all over the damage and then prance back in and be like, “Here’s what I think you should do w/ the store.”

    More like fix the store and apologize the whole time for letting the Conservative break it.

  93. 93.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @O. Felix Culpa: But they don’t call it “Danish.”

    In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, the term for Danish pastry is wienerbrød (or wienerbröd), meaning “Viennese bread.”

    (You could look it up.) Knowing that back in 1980 1984** won me (via call-in to the FM station running the promo) 4 tickets for a harbor buffet cruise onboard the Carlsberg “tall ship” then visiting Baltimore. Skøl, kids!

    ** ETA. Dang, my memory is getting hazy…

  95. 95.

    germy

    After two weird days as one of the few journalists inside the Four Seasons in Bahrain, I was left speechless by the Davos-esque Conflab on Palestinian Prosperousness, or “economic workshop,” hosted by Jared Kushner & co. Where do I begin? A thread.

    — Jack Moore (@JFXM) June 27, 2019

  97. 97.

    neldob

    It’s still early but I can choke up a brief list of what Democrats have to offer Americans:
    better and safer schools, less expensive college and tech schools, health insurance, better healthcare for women, children and men, rational and humane border enforcement, good faith discussion of problems, climate crisis problem solving, cleaner environment, fair and clean elections, reality based and fiscally responsible economic policies and foreign policies (that include having honorable friends and discouraging human rights abuses), and modernizing infrastructure while creating jobs.

  98. 98.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Leto:

    But I definitely understand why people become addicted to it.

    As do I. When I got it, it felt great, other than the broken hip, of course.

    Fen ta nyl, on the other hand, didn’t do shit for me. Maybe they were just too conservative with the dosing, but they were going for fast-acting and short-term, because I had to drive myself home, about 150 miles, after they were done.

  100. 100.

    Immanentize

    @neldob:
    At one point during the Bush II privatization bugaloo to end social security as we know it, Nancy Smash was asked, well what is the Democratic plan? She said, “Social Security. The Democratic plan is maintaining Social Security.”

    One can add Medicare and Medicaid too.

  102. 102.

    raven

    @Gin & Tonic: I May of 75 I broke my back in a wreck in Atlanta. They had to wait 10 days to do the surgery so they kept me demerol’s out while I watched the fall of South Vietnam on the tube. Some hazy shit there.

  104. 104.

    Jeffro

    @Baud:

    If the Never Trumpers want to tell us what to do, the least they could do is run a candidate in our primary.

    Hickenlooper, Delaney…plus Schultz running as a blessed “independent” just in case one of those two are not the D nominee

  105. 105.

    raven

    @SenyorDave: I spend a good bit of time on a Georgia Football blog and the owner has instituted a “playpen” once a week where he asks for the political stuff to be confined. There are a couple of “visible” vets there and they are heavy rwnj’s. I brought up scumbags draft dodging and asked how they could support this motherfucker? They both had a long rant abut what a coward he is for letting someone take his place but then said he fucks with libatrards and that enough for them

  107. 107.

    Kay

    A positive thing they could do is all support Klobachur or Bennett. It would backfire and the two would probably hate the idea in a D primary but if they actually would find a Dem acceptable they have two. That would serve as an experiment, too. We could measure if they actually have their finger on the pulse of the American people. They have huge media platforms. If they don’t gain in the polls with all of them promoting them then maybe they’re wrong and they don’t have their finger on the pulse of the American people after all.
    This theory can be tested, and it can be tested in a primary which is supposedly why we have primaries.
    We have two perfectly qualified centrists and both of them are acceptable to a large group of Democrats because both of them have won before. That they ignore this makes me think they’re not sincere and would not find any Democrat acceptable or far Right enough.

  108. 108.

    Leto

    @Gin & Tonic: Same, felt great other than the wound/Wound Vac treatment.

    @raven: I recently bought a tome about the final days of Saigon and our efforts to get south Vietnamese people out. I’ve watched the documentary about that period a few times, but I’ve wanted to read more about it. The book is in the pile but I’m more confident I’ll get to it this year.

  109. 109.

    Gin & Tonic

    @raven: I had to wait a week for surgery after the arm thing, but all I had was v1c0din or something like it.

    I may have mentioned I have an old friend who was a “civilian” at US Embassy Saigon, left on the last or second-to-last chopper out.

  110. 110.

    rikyrah

    ????

    I cannot stay on Twitter today because I have a draft due, but @esglaude and others PLEASE stop saying tht busing failed. Busing for school desegregation worked in many, many places. It helped move the South from complete apartheid to what remains the most integrated region of US

    — Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) July 1, 2019

  112. 112.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    Exactly. We have centrists. They could support them instead of bashing the other candidates or opining on the D Party in general. That’s what polite visitors would do. Not bust up the party they crashed but go sit with someone they like.

  113. 113.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    We have two perfectly qualified centrists and both of them are acceptable to a large group of Democrats because both of them have won before. That they ignore this makes me think they’re not sincere and would not find any Democrat acceptable or far Right enough.

    let’s get the answer……

  114. 114.

    SFAW

    @neldob:

    better and safer schools, less expensive college and tech schools, health insurance, better healthcare for women, children and men, rational and humane border enforcement, good faith discussion of problems, climate crisis problem solving, cleaner environment, fair and clean elections, reality based and fiscally responsible economic policies and foreign policies (that include having honorable friends and discouraging human rights abuses), and modernizing infrastructure while creating jobs.

    What REAL American would want THAT shit? That stuff’s for the commies and bocialists

  115. 115.

    Leto

    @Kay: Don’t forget Seth Moulton. Checks off many of their wish list items. But he has a -D after his name so he’ll never be considered. Which is strange because they loved Lieberman, but I think the difference there is they didn’t love him until after 1) he helped hobble the public option with the ACA and 2) he started slagging his own party.

  119. 119.

    rikyrah

    ???

    Liz DeCou

    A grandmother in Fairfield, CA arrested trying to deliver toys and books to children who were separated from their parents and detained at the border.

    She asked them “Why am I being arrested for wanting to offer comfort to a child?”

    KNOW HER NAME

    Retweet pic.twitter.com/sHTePIWJJX

    — StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) July 1, 2019

  121. 121.

    rikyrah

    ???

    I hope Americans will not forget how absolutely bizarre it is to have the daughter of a president (1) work at the WH (2) attend G20 summits and bilat meetings with world leaders and (3) give these content-free readouts. https://t.co/aCJ1DogygP

    — Michael McFaul (@McFaul) June 30, 2019

  122. 122.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Kay:

    That they ignore this makes me think they’re not sincere and would not find any Democrat acceptable or far Right enough.

    Well, they remained Republicans post-2016. They are paid for this – it’s their job. They are not sincere and should not be trusted. We should stop giving them attention. No more TV, no more Twitter.

  123. 123.

    Immanentize

    @raven: I love me some Christopher Walken.
    Hey Raven — what was the Korea/MacArther book you recommended? Shopping for books today.

  124. 124.

    Leto

    @raven: The book is “Honorable Exit” by Thurston Clarke. Can’t remember the name of the documentary about the same subject but it’s been on both PBS and the History Channel. The Army captain (at the time) who was in that doc was also in Ken Burns Vietnam doc.

  125. 125.

    rikyrah

    ?????

    Don’t know if you know this but Eric Swalwell was a prosecutor with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office–just like Kamala. How many black ppl did HE lock up. Jay Inslee was a prosecutor and Amy Klobuchar prosecuted Kirby Puckett on a rape charge. https://t.co/4MOHt5uMKe

    — Ebony Edwards-Ellis (@Eedwardsellis) June 30, 2019

  126. 126.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: @Kay: @rikyrah: Great points. Let’s put it on the #NeverTrumpers to get active in supporting their preferred Dems in the primaries instead of carping about candidate X or Y being too liberal and dragging the whole party – the sole means of checking, if not removing/defeating trumpov – down.

  128. 128.

    Ruckus

    @SenyorDave:
    I don’t know your history or if you have a military one so I don’t want to sound like I’m saying you don’t know, only that this is my take.
    If he’s that old he’s been out of the military for a long time. To me that means that he probably really doesn’t know what is going on and there are a lot of agendas that are not what they appear at first glance. I work with a 23 yr old guy in the CA NG who just got back from the middle east for a year. His pay for that year was better than he could have made doing anything he’s capable of in normal life. My pay for my 4 yrs in the navy 50 yrs ago was far less than I was earning in civilian life at the same age. (turned 24 a week after I was discharged) Sure the military is stretched even more than it was in my days but it doesn’t seem to be any worse than any other time without a draft. At least not from what my co-worker has told me. My take is that a lot of lifers have a different take on the military than other people do and that doesn’t seem to square with observable issues. They spent a career there and value that time differently than those of us who did 2-4 years or none at all. I think it clouds their judgement.
    That’s my take.

  129. 129.

    Immanentize

    @Leto: One of my friends was 8 when his family (Vietnamese consulate employee Dad) got out on the penultimate chopper which almost didn’t make it to the ship. Spent a good long while on the Midway. When my son’s robotics team went to San Diego for a big competition, he was given a private tour of the aircraft carrier. So moving.

  131. 131.

    rikyrah

    ???

    Tucker Carlson is now literally defending mass murder?

    “You’ve got to be honest about what it means to lead a country, it means killing people. A lot of countries commit atrocities, including our allies. It’s silly & stupid to point out KJU is ‘so mean”pic.twitter.com/k5PwASgELP

    — Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) June 30, 2019

  132. 132.

    Immanentize

    @Kay:
    And, considering we are talking Republicans, both Kobluchar and Bennett are white. Bonus!

  133. 133.

    rikyrah

    Didn’t know….

    Lil Nas X Confirms He’s Gay: ‘Deadass Thought I Made It Obvious’

    Anne Branigin

    On the final day of Pride Month—and fresh from wrapping up a set at the Glastonbury music festival in the U.K. this weekend—rapper Lil Nas X officially came out as gay.

    He made the announcement in signature fashion—which is to say, on Twitter—by asking followers to take a closer listen to “C7osure,” the final song of his recently released EP.

    some of y’all already know, some of y’all don’t care, some of y’all not gone fwm no more. but before this month ends i want y’all to listen closely to c7osure. ??✨ pic.twitter.com/O9krBLllqQ

    — nope (@LilNasX) June 30, 2019

  134. 134.

    SenyorDave

    @Yellowdog: I’m actually in Columbia. I’m guessing that you are in Leisure World, over in SS? I know that area fairly well, when I moved to Maryland in 1995 I live din Aspen Hill for a couple of years and then moved to Columbia.

  135. 135.

    PAM Dirac

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I may have mentioned I have an old friend who was a “civilian” at US Embassy Saigon, left on the last or second-to-last chopper out.

    When my mom moved to DC in the early 50s she lived in a rooming house with a bunch of other young women who mostly worked in the government. One of her good friends mostly worked for AID, yet she was on the last or next to last helicopter as well. Hmmmm. My mom also said you could tell who worked for the CIA because if you asked them where they worked, they would look around cautiously and then say “State Department”

  136. 136.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    They won’t though- because for a lot of them THEIR JOB is dragging the whole party. The NYTimes guy is not going to write an article titled “here are some great Democrats I support” because he wants to push HIS agenda, not the agenda of the mysterious masses he supposedly speaks for. They don’t want to test this theory.
    We should assume bad faith until they start telling the truth and the truth is there are 3 or 4 “centrists” and 1 or 2 of them are viable candidates with serious campaigns. Ignoring them is a “tell”, because it’s inexplicable. The whole theory behind this is contradicted by those candidates.

  137. 137.

    rikyrah

    It’s on Amazon right now:

    ???

    Mac Heller, @RiggedTheFilm: People who are being purged and prevented from voting–voting behavior correlates w/income. Republicans know that. If you put up barriers for the poor, they know a hurdle here, a hurdle there, you’re going to prevent… people from voting. #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/IACTfzEOUF

    — AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) June 30, 2019

  138. 138.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    Right! And one from the midwest and one from an absolutely booming state. If they’re actually interested in what a good 21st economy and a well-run state might look like under Democratic governance and social ideas about diversity and rights and freedom, they have Colorado! The Laboratory of the States! Their favorite thing!

  139. 139.

    Gin & Tonic

    @PAM Dirac: Yeah, the Pittman Apartments was where a lot of the CIA personnel lived.

    Sometimes the cover stories are barely plausible. Knew another guy who got a Master’s in Soviet studies at Georgetown back in the day. Lost touch, then some years later through a friend of a friend I heard he was an accountant at the US Embassy in Pakistan. I said yeah, sure. Doubt he’d ever taken an accounting course in his life.

  140. 140.

    rikyrah

    Harris v. Biden: Kamala Won Round One, But No One Should Count Joe Out
    By Spandan Chakrabarti

    Almost six months ago, when I was looking at the Democratic primary field shape up, I was hoping that either Kamala Harris or Joe Biden ran for president, but not both. I admit that was more of a selfish wish than anything else, as the I’d always believed I would personally have a rough time deciding between the two.

    Kamala Harris is my senator, and before she replaced the legendary Barbara Boxer in the Senate, she served six years as California’s attorney general. Before shaping the most critical Department of Justice that is now standing up to the Trump DOJ, Harris was the District Attorney of San Francisco, and even though I do not live in the city of San Francisco, I do live in the Bay Area and got to watch her career closely. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, Harris was perhaps the most effective advocate for the then-candidate Barack Obama among California Democrats.

    The one thing all of us who have watched Sen. Harris for over a decade as well as those who have only got a taste of her as she embarrassed Trump appointee after Trump appointee in senate hearings know is that she is the consummate prosecutor. She prepares her case to be as airtight as can be, she makes her case as effectively as humanly possible, and she is a master at delivering the punchline for her theory of the case. That is what everyone watching in riveting silence saw on debate night last week.

    While Kamala Harris’s star is on a fast rise, it would not at all be a exaggeration to say that Joe Biden is a towering figure of American politics in the league of Ted Kennedy, Paul Wellstone, and John McCain.

    One of the youngest senators ever elected, Joe Biden is nearly omnipresent in every progressive advancement since his first election to the US Senate in 1972. Biden wrote the Violence Against Women Act, was instrumental in the reauthorizations of the Voting Rights Act, and was a critical voice as the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in turning back the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Perhaps no one in present day American politics has done more than Joe Biden to shape the modern-day international order that Donald Trump is doing his best to destroy. Biden’s contributions to nuclear arms control, to transatlantic and transpacific alliances, and to pro-democracy global forces are undeniable.

    Joe Biden was not merely a loyal Vice President to President Obama, but as one of the most active vice presidents in history, he was a force to be reckoned with on his own. He was instrumental in overseeing the Recovery Act that began to save America from the second most horrific economic catastrophe in history. He guided the Affordable Care Act through Congress along with Speaker Pelosi. He led his president – the first sitting president ever to do so – to support marriage equality, and he shaped cancer research moonshot with Congress even as a so-called “lame duck” vice president.

    Throughout it all, Joe Biden has suffered unimaginable personal tragedies, and the grace with which he has faced them alone foretells temperament, compassion, and servitude America would be fortunate to have in our president.

  141. 141.

    rikyrah

    ???

    I love my son man?, everytime he try’s to gts I pat his butt to help him fall asleep .. but ig I wasn’t doing a good job lol..??? pic.twitter.com/cRXml85F8u

    — James Godwin ♐️ (@AyooThatsJG) June 30, 2019

  142. 142.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: My husband thinks that Harris’ background is one of the best things about her. One of the rarely mentioned things about having prosecutors drawn from non-white population is that they will likely take crime against minorities more seriously, and I know that Harris has spoken about that as well. Unless you are seriously advocating that no one should be prosecuted for anything, we are better off having diversity among prosecutors for the same reasons diversity is better in other areas of the political and criminal justice system (e.g., judges).

  143. 143.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    Bennett and Hickenlooper are perfect for these people. And they’re successful. People move to their state. But the fact that we have to play matchmaker and this didn’t occur to them? Hmmm. That’s a little suspicious. It’s almost like they just want to slag Democrats and rant about liberals.

  145. 145.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    That’s a little suspicious. It’s almost like they just want to slag Democrats and rant about liberals.

    Just a little suspicious?
    LOL

  146. 146.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: One of the things my con law professor — from the South — pointed out is that the incidence of busing went way down in many southern states. Busing kids for long distances was deemed totally acceptable when it was used to enforce segregation. Having said that, I doubt if enforced busing would be seen as a good idea now simply because so many parents, minority and otherwise, really, really want their kids to go to nearby schools, at least during elementary school.

  147. 147.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Kay: Yes. It’s almost like that’s the the job they get paid for. Oh wait, it is!

  148. 148.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: I wish there was away to discuss this in a broader way. I know that many on Twitter have pointed out how disingenuous the Never Trump folks are — but that is just people on small islands shouting into the wind.

    Maybe Jane Mayer could interview these Dudes….

  149. 149.

    rikyrah

    Rights Groups Sue After DeSantis Signs ‘Poll Tax’ Bill Targeting Former Felons
    David Boddiger
    Saturday 5:13pm

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday signed into law a bill that equates to a poll tax on former felons whose voting rights were restored last year by a majority of Florida voters who amended the state’s constitution. Civil rights groups immediately countered by suing DeSantis’ administration in an effort to stop the new law.

    DeSantis signed SB 7066, which requires formerly incarcerated people to fulfill all of the legal financial obligations of their criminal sentences before their voting rights are restored. The bill’s signing was the culmination of an effort by DeSantis and Republican state lawmakers in recent months to block Amendment 4, which enfranchised roughly 1.4 million residents with former felony convictions who had completed their sentences, excluding those convicted of murder or sexual offenses.

    Amendment 4, one of the most important expansions of voters rights since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was approved by nearly 65% of Florida voters last year, or some 5 million people.

    …………………………..

    The lawsuit notes that Florida’s Amendment 4 ended the disenfranchisement of 10% of the state’s voting-age population, and 20% of its African American voting-age population.

    As Splinter’s Sophie Weiner previously noted, limiting voter enfranchisement to those who have repaid legal financial obligations could prevent up to 1.1 million former prisoners from voting. And NBC News reported that while court fees vary per person, even small fees are difficult to pay back, given that the median annual income for those newly out of prison is about $6,500, according to one Harvard researcher.

  150. 150.

    Leto

    @Ruckus: It does cloud our judgement the same as any other profession where you have people come in for a short time (4 years) who basically don’t know what’s going on in the organization, never learn, and then move on, while claiming they “know what’s going on”. It’s silly. Of course there’s no other profession like ours where society will give them the same level of credit for “expertise”. Again, silly.

    Sure the military is stretched even more than it was in my days but it doesn’t seem to be any worse than any other time without a draft. At least not from what my co-worker has told me.

    It’s worse today. It’s more than stretched. We’ve had multiple studies by both outside researchers, and our own people, who’ve said: we can’t keep this up. This has to stop. If it doesn’t, there will be catastrophic consequences. The two Navy destroyers are the two most visible signs of this, but their root causes are systemic throughout the military. Adam has written about this multiple times and it’s still true.

    As for your coworker, he/she is NG. As a fellow NG member (20 active/2 ANG), they’re in their own bubble world which doesn’t reflect active duty life at all. Most of them are concerned about issues pertaining to their particular state NG and not about the force as a whole.

  152. 152.

    Immanentize

    @Barbara:
    And perhaps the majority of parents really really want their kids to go to school close by because their neighborhoods are segregated?

    My con law teacher — a black woman from Virginia — thought that desegregation was critical, but forced integration was not the answer. She pointed to DC schools where excellent segregated school teachers (black) were laid off in favor of white teachers when schools were integrated. It was an interesting perspective.

  153. 153.

    rikyrah

    ???

    .@JamilSmith: You can’t necessarily say Obama did the same thing. You can’t say Bush did the same thing. In the past we had policies that were deterrents… But what we have now is torture… What we have now is essentially… a Guantanamo Bay for children. #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/mLEQ3DZvkf

    — AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) June 29, 2019

  154. 154.

    Procopius

    @SenyorDave: Back-of-the-envelope figuring here, but if he’s 75 and served 28 years he must have retired around the middle of the Clinton administration. I retired ten years earlier (about) and by the time Obama was elected he would have been pretty out of touch with active duty people. I wonder what he thought Obama did to harm the military. Certainly pay raises went on regularly, as did spending on flag officers’ retirement supplements (e.g., F-35, F-22, X-1000 destroyer, Ford class carriers, etc.). I’d like to sit down sometime with some of these young guys and try to find out what they’re talking about. The increases Trump got for the military budget (with a lot of Democratic votes) exceeded the military’s capability to use them, which is why there’s so much for Trump to divert to his stupid Wall.

  155. 155.

    rikyrah

    @Immanentize:

    My con law teacher — a black woman from Virginia — thought that desegregation wascritical, but forced integration was not the answer. She pointed to DC schools where excellent segregated school teachers (black) were laid off in favor of white teachers when schools were integrated. It was an interesting perspective.

    I have definitely heard this perspective. There were excellent segregated schools that lacked resources, because Black women, at that time, could seriously only consider 3 professions if they were educated: school teacher, social worker, and if you were scientifically inclined- nurse. You routinely had Black PhD’s teaching in segregated High Schools, let alone the high percentage of Black teachers with Masters Degrees, teaching at both the elementary and high school levels. These were people more than likely, if they didn’t live in that neighborhood where they taught, more than likely, they worshipped there.

  156. 156.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    IMO, broadly, liberals and Democrats suffer from a syndrome where they immediately defend against conservatives so they neglect to think about why the premise of their attacks is just not well thought out and not correct. If the NYTimes writer says “the Democratic field/Party has no centrists” they miss the premise of that (which is factually, obviously wrong) and immediately go to what they see as their vulnerability. We’re not confident in what we are, so we’re vulnerable when they tell us what we are.

  157. 157.

    Immanentize

    @Leto: I think my friend said he was involved in such a project and was interviewed for the documentary although left on the cut floor.

    His father was a big deal in Viet Nam. His mother was a teacher there. When they came here, they were moved to Kansas (yay Catholics!) Where they lived in serious poverty. He tells this really sad but American story about how when he was still a kid the family would go to K-Mart and he, his sister and parents would spread out waiting for a blue light special and then run to be one of the first for whatever deal it was. Picture that….

    But, he ended up at MIT, invented some superior voice recognition software that he sold bigly and now is a very humble, kind, giving, rich person.

  158. 158.

    rikyrah

    Cory Booker Tells Don Jr.: ‘Kamala Harris Doesn’t Have Shit to Prove’ About Being Black

    Anne Branigin
    Yesterday 10:10am

    ……………..

    “Kamala Harris doesn’t have shit to prove,” Booker wrote, quote-tweeting an article from the New York Times about the most recent debacle, which comes—perhaps not coincidentally—on the heels of the California Democrat’s strong showing at this week’s presidential debates.

    The most recent attacks on Harris’ blackness were amplified Thursday, after the second night of the Democratic debates, when one of Donald Trump’s idiot sons (the one with the dark hair) quote tweeted a claim that Harris was “not an American black” because her father originally hails from Jamaica.

    “Is this true? Wow,” Don Jr. wrote. While he later deleted the tweet, it was enough of a boost for the claim to go viral. According to the Huffington Post, an onslaught of bots also helped magnify the racist tweet.

    Harris, of course, was born in Oakland, Calif., to Jamaican and Indian parents; she has always identified as black.

  159. 159.

    rikyrah

    lips so pursed.

    Black Patient Arrested After Security Guard Accuses Him of Attempting to Steal an IV and Sell It on eBay

    Anne Branigin
    Yesterday 1:00pm

    A video of a black Freeport, Ill., patient being arrested while taking a walk outside a hospital has gone viral after he shared the incident on Facebook.

    The video shows Shaquille Dukes, 24, walking outside FHN Memorial Hospital on June 9, wearing a hospital gown and attached to an IV. According to Dukes, who had been hospitalized with pneumonia for two days, he was cleared by a doctor to walk outside the building—just as long as he didn’t leave the property.

    But as the Journal-Standard reports, while Dukes and two companions were making their way back to the building, they were stopped a security guard who called them over to his car, taking them off hospital property. The guard then accused them of attempting to steal the equipment, Dukes wrote on Facebook.

    “[The guard] had gotten out of his vehicle and said, ‘What are you going to do, steal that and sell it on eBay?’” Dukes told the Journal-Standard. “I told him, ‘This machine is pumping fluid into my veins as we speak.’”

    Detached from his IV and without his rescue inhaler—which Dukes says was taken by the police—he passed out shortly after being arrested.

    Because their investigation showed what was pretty damn obvious at first blush that Dukes was a patient, and not trying to engineer some elaborate caper to steal one single IV—Dukes wasn’t charged with attempted theft. But he was charged with disorderly conduct, according to Freeport Police Lt. Andrew Schroeder.

  160. 160.

    Leto

    @Immanentize: I definitely know about the blue light special. Not quite waiting for it, but yeah. Did his family select Kansas, or the government said this is where we’re dropping you off? Glad he made it big.

  161. 161.

    Kay

    Robert Costa
    ‏Verified account
    @costareports
    3h3 hours ago
    More
    President Trump asks for military tanks on the Mall as part of July Fourth event…

    Should be interesting to see if the Trump’s double down on the Imperial Family theme inside the US, instead of keeping it overseas. Looking forward to the gross display of the Trump Family and their campaign donors sitting in a luxury box reviewing the parading military as they go by. Just gross people. They should give Jared a special uniform. A costume. Ivanka’s contract labor can make it.

  162. 162.

    rikyrah

    Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! :)

    For those who are unaware, the background of one of the best contracts ever written for an athlete:

    For agent who brokered Bobby Bonilla Day, ‘I’m just happy that he’s happy’
    Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY Published 2:40 p.m. ET July 1, 2018

    Dennis Gilbert woke up Sunday morning at his Beverly Hills home, listened to the congratulatory message, and laughed.

    Yes, he remembered the significance of this day.

    How could he ever forget July 1?

    It’s Bobby Bonilla Day.

    It’s the day that Bonilla will be paid $1.193 million by the New York Mets.

    Well, $1,193,248.20 to be exact.

    Yes, to the 55-year-old man who hasn’t played a game since 2001.

    To a man who will be paid almost as much as the $1.227 million the Yankees are paying to their best player and best pitcher – Aaron Judge and Luis Severino.

    To a man that will be paid most likely after Judge and Severino have retired, with payments due through 2035.

    ……………………..

    The deal was consummated when the Mets chose to pay Bonilla $29.8 million in deferred payments, starting in 2011, instead of the $5.9 million they owed him in 2000. The Mets needed to free up some cash, and figured that it would be cheaper providing Bonilla 25 payments at 8% interest than paying the last year of his original five-year, $29 million contract.

    “It was questioned from the inception,’’ Gilbert said, “because people wondered whether getting 8% interest was a good deal. At the time, we were having double-digit inflation, and people were thinking, “Geez, could he have made more money investing in other things?’

    “Bobby needed to understand how it worked, too, and Bobby is very conservative guy. He wanted to make sure he had money for the future. He was concerned about taking care of his family. But when you look at it now, 8% is not a very conservative number, especially guaranteed.

    “It’s funny, I’ve done more than 1,000 contracts in my lifetime, including the ones for Barry Bonds with all of his incentives, but this one is always talked about the most.’

  164. 164.

    Kay

    Just in case you forgot the Trump Family have a military now. They’ll be reminding you of it here shortly. Send a message to the masses on just who is in charge here. The only bright spot is they all actually have to physically appear for this made-for-tv propaganda event instead of vacationing.

  165. 165.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Should be interesting to see if the Trump’s double down on the Imperial Family theme inside the US, instead of keeping it overseas. Looking forward to the gross display of the Trump Family and their campaign donors sitting in a luxury box reviewing the parading military as they go by. Just gross people.

    President Obama spent the 4th with a picnic at the White House for Military Families. …..

    And now…this….

    A VIP Box…

    Phuck Outta Here

  166. 166.

    germy

    I thought trump asked for a tank parade once before, and was warned the tanks would tear up the road paving.

  167. 167.

    germy

    The July 4th festivities in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Isn’t there something fundamentally un-American about a “V.I.P. Section” at a public celebration like this?

  171. 171.

    Raoul

    Late to the comment party, but Ms. Jay gets it exactly right. Conservatives got to run amok in Afghanistan, Iraq and with our freakin’ economy for eight years under Dubya, then called in the magic negro* to clean up the horrendous mess (just like they got Bill Clinton to enact lots of budget discipline — as he weakened the Dem policy platform, used triangulation etc — after Reagan’s profligacy), then boot him out when skies look blue again.

    Now they want a subservient housekeeper to sweep up after Trump.

    No.

    .

    *Oh, Rush. You are such a horrible racist.

  173. 173.

    trollhattant

    @Baud:
    Now we know what Trump and Li’l Kim talked about. “So tell me Kim, how do you plan a REALLY good parade honoring you?”

  174. 174.

    Immanentize

    @Leto: you may not be old enough to remember the Vietnamese (and Laotian) resettlement in the US, but the Catholic Church was heavily involved and many (most?) Parishes — even small ones in small towns — sponsored families. Our parish in upstate NY sponsored two families…. So, they got to Kansas because of the Pope and Catholic Charities.

    And as for making it, he (and his sister who ended up as an MBA at Northwestern) were not allowed a lot of fun when they were kids.

  177. 177.

    Barbara

    @Immanentize: Well, in said District of Columbia, almost no one is more opposed to closing neighborhood schools than African-American parents. Segregated or not, and particularly with a high percentage of parents in the workforce, people prize being close to schools for young children. That said, my kids have gone to schools outside my neighborhood boundaries for their entire K-12 experience, but my county is geographically small. Still, the transportation provided by the county is so piss poor (given its riches) that we have never consistently been able to rely on buses. This year, if we had to take the bus, my 13 year old would have had to walk one mile to a bus stop to get a bus at 6:30 am, which would spend 70 minutes wandering around the county, and the justification for this arduous and lengthy trip is that he is attending a countywide program. 90 minutes from door to door, when, I kid you not, the school is no more than 10 minutes away by car. He bikes or walks if the weather is fair, and we drop him off if it is not. So on the one hand, we are examples of how people are willing to go outside of boundaries for something they see as better, such as a desirable magnet program, with less segregated schools (kids’ high school is no more than 25% Caucasian), but that inefficient busing makes them less attractive than they could be. People are willing to put up with complicated travel arrangements for private schools all the time, but they do that because they perceive the schools to be better.

  179. 179.

    J R in WV

    @SenyorDave:

    I was at the gym on Friday morning and a guy who had the locker next to me asked me what I thought of the debate.

    There was a free month at the local YMCA last summer. which has a big pool/gym/tennis facility, so I signed up for a month. I ddn’t know anyone, so wasn’t chatty. But two older guys were in the locker room, which was set up with lounging furniture for guys to hang out. They were both pretty upset with Trump, thought he was ruining the military, the government, everything he touched.

    But the big thing they hated about him the most was the immorality of the man. Both were evidently devout church members, given the town most likely traditional mainstream churches, which are still big here.

    It was the most uplifting conversation I’ve overheard in a very long time.

  184. 184.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Kay: There’s a famous episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies” where Jethro gets drafted. Uncle Jed buys him a tank and special uniform to use during his induction. The military thinks he must be acting because no one could be that crazy, but they like his creativity and decided to make him an officer in Army Intelligence.

  186. 186.

    Leto

    @Immanentize: Unfortunately I’m not. I’m a 1976 baby. There is a large Phillipeano (sp, I know) community in the Charleston, SC region so I kind of know more about them. That makes sense about the Catholic Church resettlement efforts here. I just think about the efforts we made for the Vietnamese versus what we did for Iraqis/Afghanis.

  187. 187.

    Kay

    Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings.

    Can’t tell you how thrilled I am to pay these people. They posted a photoshop of Dear Leader forcing AOC’s head into his crotch.
    Should be easy to determine if they were doing this on work time, don’t you think?
    Is anyone in charge? Could one of the low quality Trump hires get off their ass and supervise their employees? We’re spending billions of dollars a year for this garbage they call “work”?

  188. 188.

    Tenar Arha

    @SenyorDave: I feel this.

    Sometime within November after the election in 2016, in the midst of my father’s final decline, I realized that in about 1/2 the time in Massachusetts I couldn’t possibly talk politics with random fellow white people (especially wo knowing their religious persuasion) bc it was a maybe a 60/40 chance they’d say something vile & I’d lose my temper. Sure, women were a safer than men, but no one white was a safe bet, compared to the better odds if they were Asian, Latino, or Black, or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu etc.

    It’s fascinating how depending on how my hair is dyed every few months, sometimes a conservative person will still try to talk politics in a bar at me. I just usually change the subject or leave.

  190. 190.

    Kay

    ProPublica contacted three spokespeople for CBP in regard to the Facebook group and provided the names of three agents who appear to have participated in the online chats. CBP hasn’t yet responded.

    Let’s ask the President or one of the low quality hires we’re paying if this is what they’re running down there. They want billions more for this? Fuck that. I’d rather pile the money on the sidewalk and burn it than give a dollar of it to any of them. They can all clock out and go home. Party’s over. We’ll find some professionals.

  191. 191.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Immanentize: New from Mattel! – it’s Military Barbie with kung-fu grip. Mix and match berets sold separately.

  192. 192.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: I’m sure this type of stuff has gone on forever. But with FB, et al., It is ubiquitous. And luckily more easily uncovered.

    That said, it feels like some large storm is approaching.

  193. 193.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings.

    UH HUH
    UH HUH

  195. 195.

    Immanentize

    @rikyrah:
    Considering the eagerness some police show in shooting unarmed black men, I have long suspected a similar “club” for officers who have shot or killed innocent black folks.

  196. 196.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    I’m tired of paying Donald Trump’s stormtroopers, whether it’s the NY office of the FBI or Barr or border patrol. They can do whatever they want in the private sector. Go there. Get off the public payroll. I resent every dollar they are paid. They don’t serve “us”, they serve Dear Leader. I should not be forced to pay Donald Trump’s low quality, sleazy hires. They can volunteer for his fucking army.

  197. 197.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @SenyorDave:

    he told me that he was in the military for 28 years, served in Vietnam, then was in Europe for a large part of the rest of his military career, and if you ask anyone in the military they will tell you that Trump is the best thing that has happened to the military in the last 50 years. He also said the military is still recovering after Obama’s attempt to destroy it. He almost spat the name Obama.

    I’d have called bullshit on old “Double-Dipping my Civilian and Military Pensions so I can listen to Rush Limbaugh at the Club All Day like the bitter white man Retiree I am”.

    He’s living in the Faux News Bubble that propagandizes that everyone in the military loves Trump. Truth is, it’s older veterans who tend to be the big Republicans and thus Trump supporters. Polls I’ve seen in the past couple of years show the front line men and women are less supportive of him, particularly those under 30. I think it also depends of which force is polled.

    My daughter’s ex-boyfriend is in the Marines and openly HATES Trump. My husband works with two recently discharged vets in their mid-20’s, one from the Navy and one from the Air Force. They both were R’s and voted for Trump but now are openly vocal about just what a piece of shit he is and will never vote for him again. Anecdotal, of course, but reassuring.

  198. 198.

    rikyrah

    @Immanentize:

    @rikyrah:
    Considering the eagerness some police show in shooting unarmed black men, I have long suspected a similar “club” for officers who have shot or killed innocent black folks.

    I hear you….
    I feel, in the back of my mind, that, sooner than later, we will be finding mass graves…

  199. 199.

    Ella in New Mexico

    P.S. Does anyone know why every time I need to edit my post FYWP denies it and marks my post as SPAM? It’s been happening all weekend.

  201. 201.

    germy

    NEW: Trump’s House allies are planning an all-out attack on Mueller during his July 17 hearing. @replouiegohmert, who infamously asked Pete Strzok about his wife last year, said the Mueller report “reinforced the anal opening that I believe Mueller to be.”https://t.co/F4WEkoIA9X— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) July 1, 2019

    It should be quite a show.

  202. 202.

    germy

    Members like Matt Gaetz, Devin Nunes and Andy Biggs are among the 25 Republicans who get to grill Mueller next month.
    Louie Gohmert has hated Mueller for more than a decade and told us he considers Mueller an “anal opening.” He’ll also get five minutes. https://t.co/6Lc01EvH9J
    — Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 1, 2019

  204. 204.

    Gin & Tonic

    Interesting new (to me) development in Amazon shipping. I looked at the status of an order, and it said “left on back porch” – which is not really an obvious location at my house and not a place delivery people have ever gone – but also included a photo of the package in front of the back porch’s door.

    I’m thinking that with all the stories of packages being stolen from front steps, a) they go around back if they can and b) they take a picture as proof they put it there in case some customer sees an opportunity for a “buy one get one free” sale by reporting a package stolen if it wasn’t. This is the first Amazon delivery where I’ve experienced either of these things.

  205. 205.

    Kay

    Peter Baker
    ‏Verified account
    @peterbakernyt
    17h17 hours ago
    More
    Trump lands back in Washington after an eventful trip to Asia that saw him restart China trade talks, become the first president to step into North Korea (briefly) and meet with Putin, MBS and others.

    To me it goes without saying at this point, but the NYTimes coverage of the Trump trip was glowing. Ahem.

    Today they send the crack political team out to ask Kamala Harris 50 more times whether she supports “busing”, without defining what “busing” was or is or would be. Because they’re the Best In The Business. They all say so.

  207. 207.

    Kay

    Did President Trump actually “restart” China trade talks? Or did he claim he did? How many fucking times are they going to parrot what he says as if it’s truth? They know he’s a liar. He has lied to them thousands of times. Yet every day they play the same script over and over. Can they ask someone else how to do this? How to report when the entire administration lies constantly? They need a new plan. It’s their business and they’re supposedly the professionals. Come up with one. They cannot do what they’ve done for decades. It isn’t working. They are actively making this worse and misleading the public. Try something else.

  208. 208.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Kay: To be fair, we have heard this from many Balloon Juice front pagers and commenters alike about the great and wonderful work NYT does. Yes their political desk is bad but..

  209. 209.

    Nelle

    @Immanentize: My folks, in Kansas, sponsored two families, sequentially, one from Vietnam, one from Cambodia. Dad moved them right into the small house he built in the late 40’s until they were acculturated enough to handle an apartment and transportation. He worked with getting the kids in schools and getting health care set up. A lot of it fell to Mom, of course, but there was no question that they would do this. He was a refugee from the Russian Civil War and he remembered every kindness shown to him (as well as remembering the exploitative Minnesota Mennonite farmers, eager to take advantage of dire financial circumstances by underpaying him, when, as a teenager, he needed to be the primary support of his parents and ailing sister).

  210. 210.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Kay: You’re assuming they want to do something other than the Trump-fluffing they engage in. Seems to me the misleading of the public IS the plan. They could do better if they wanted to, but they don’t.

    ETA: Don’t want to, that is. It beggars belief that they haven’t figured Trump’s game out by now, therefore they are willing players in it.

  212. 212.

    Leto

    @Kay: Considering the White House press pool gave the Huckerbeast a going away party (she who lied to them/gaslighted them/refused to do her basic job/openly despised them),I doubt we’re going to get better coverage. It’s the frat scene from Animal House: thank you sir, may I have another!

  215. 215.

    James E Powell

    @artem1s:

    The “Obama tried to destroy the military” is just the lies they love to tell because they hate him. It’s just like people who say “Obama raised taxes on everybody and gave free stuff to the N! and the immigrants!”

    That they are veterans gives them credibility with people who are not veterans because they figure veterans know these things. But the truth is that they only know what they believe and they believe what they want to believe.

    You know what really hurt our military? The Vietnam fiasco. You know what else? Invading & occupying Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time with no end game in either.

  216. 216.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: It continues to burn me to the core, that all of our wants and needs should be dictated by the people who were stupid enough to vote for Trump.

  217. 217.

    rikyrah

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I’m thinking that with all the stories of packages being stolen from front steps, a) they go around back if they can and b) they take a picture as proof they put it there in case some customer sees an opportunity for a “buy one get one free” sale by reporting a package stolen if it wasn’t. This is the first Amazon delivery where I’ve experienced either of these thing

    I wish that they could offer the chance for you to write where you want packages left. I don’t have a back porch, but, I do have tall shrubs in front of my house, that I wish they’d leave the packages. I also would want for them to call me everytime they are about to deliver.

  218. 218.

    Another Scott

    It’s of no consequence, but the writing on the box looked fake to me (the E’s are too regular).

    Sure enough…. I’m sure you’re all as shocked, shocked as I am. ;-)

    (via an image search with TinEye.com)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  219. 219.

    glory b

    @rikyrah: Yeah, I’m not really sure about that. There were lots of integrated neighborhoods in the south, that’s why they bused kids! They went to segregated schools, not their neighborhood schools! The neighborhoods were the issue in the North, not so much in the South.

    Some AA comedian (if I remember, I'll mention it) said this was the difference between whites in the North and South: The Northerners don't care how far you go (economically, educationally, etc.) as long as you don't get too close, and the Southerners don't care how close you get as long as you don't go to far (see, "uppity").

  221. 221.

    Immanentize

    @Barbara:

    You are going to see defense attorneys making this a standard part of their inquiry and their questions for police officers involved in arresting ethnic minorities

    DAMN STRAIGHT YOU WILL.

  223. 223.

    J R in WV

    @PAM Dirac:

    One of her good friends mostly worked for AID, yet she was on the last or next to last helicopter as well. Hmmmm.

    I had a v close girl friend many years ago who’s father worked for AID, somehow always where there was turmoil… Africa, Afganistan, Honduras, etc. She was on the last plane out of Tegucigalpa before the soccer war broke out, for example. Imagine that I can spell Tegucigalpa correctly every time w/o looking it up!?!?

    Took me a while to figure out what he really did….

  224. 224.

    glory b

    @Barbara: Yep. I didn’t get the attribution, but someone on msnbc this weekend said currently only about 9% of AA parents would want their kids bused for desegregation.

    My husband was in the first class to integrate his elementary school and his high school. It was hard, he said he came out okay, but wouldn’t make his kids do it. The change in attitudes came though, his first day of school, kids were throwing rocks at him, by his senior year, he was class president.

    Interestingly, my son and daughter went to the same high school.

  225. 225.

    JustRuss

    @rikyrah:

    I wish that they could offer the chance for you to write where you want packages left. I don’t have a back porch…

    My front porch is just a few steps from the sidewalk, so I’m always a bit nervous about getting deliveries. About half the time I find them on my back porch, I appreciate when the driver takes the initiative to do that.

  226. 226.

    Ken B 2

    @rikyrah:

    Amazon has the option for delivering to secure lockers, at least in the DC suburbs.

    You have three days to pick it up after they drop it off. They notify you when it’s delivered.

  228. 228.

    Barbara

    @Immanentize: I believe she was also asked when the Democrats would provide their alternative to the Bush plan and she said something like, “Never. Is never good for you?” Which is channeling a very famous New Yorker cartoon.

  229. 229.

    rikyrah

    @Ken B 2:

    Amazon has the option for delivering to secure lockers, at least in the DC suburbs.

    We have an Amazon drop off facility a block and a half from my work. And, that has worked well, for small packages. I just have it mailed there. But, heavier stuff, I don’t want to have to lug it all the way home. And then, there are somethings that you order, that they won’t deliver to the Amazon drop off facility. I don’t know why, but, it happens.

  230. 230.

    Ruckus

    @Leto:
    I’m going to take a bit of offense here. In my 4 yrs I became the work group senior enlisted on my ship in less than 2 yrs. I was responsible for all the work assignments, watch assignments, equipment – all the ships electronic navigation, ships controls, ships inside communications. The buck stopped here. And I knew more about my stuff than most of the lifers in engineering division. It was like that in most posts I served at. Now I know that a lot of lifers in other branches and other ships, especially other types were as you say, better equipped to do the work required. But the majority of lifers that I ran across were there for their 20 or 30 and were otherwise useless. Now I will say that in my last 4 months I worked a number of temp duties waiting for a ship and ran into some marine lifers who were not in just for their 20 or 30, they were serious about the work. One E6 was one of 4 natural leaders I’ve met in my life. Another was one captain of the ship I served 2 yrs on.
    My comment was about my time in the navy, not the military in general.
    I know that the military is overworked and understaffed for the missions, but it was that way when I was in as well. That ship I served on for 2 yrs was short 50 men of full complement. One work devision of engineering, the firemen – ran the boilers, worked 6 on – 6 off as long as the plants were fired up. Every work group was short handed, some just worse than others. According to others I knew most ships were like this. And yes that included the guys that steered and the officers who supposedly ran everything. That ship I was on for 2 yrs hit a freighter in the Med. Relatively minor damage but it still had to be put into a shipyard in Greece to be fixed so it could get back to the states. None of this is new, I was in nearly 50 yrs ago.

  231. 231.

    Jinchi

    i don’t think it’s certain trump will lose but it is very strange to see pundits act as if trump won a decisive majority in 2016 rather than squeak by in the electoral college by the thinnest of margins while losing most voters.

    https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1145316337327247360

    This is what always gets me. Forget about the Obama-to-Trump voters.

    If Democrats only win the people who voted against Trump in 2016, they end up with 54% of the popular vote, along with victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

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