Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

He really is that stupid.

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

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

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

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

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

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

The willow is too close to the house.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

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

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

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

Let’s finish the job.

You are here: Home / Climate Change / How about that weather? / Monday Morning Open Thread: Hot Hot Hot

Monday Morning Open Thread: Hot Hot Hot

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I understand that the heat wave has broken for some of you lucky Jackals in the upper midwest, but here north of Boston, we’re still trying to breath warm steam. Not to knock other peoples’ lifestyle choices, but triple-digit heat indexes are among the reasons I chose to move to Massachusetts instead of Florida!

Hot takes, on the other hand:

More hot takes:

The crowd of 800 roared when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took the stage Friday at the Young Democrats of America’s national convention in Indianapolis.

Pelosi spoke for about 20 minutes, drawing standing ovations multiple times, including for the House’s likely futile passage of a $15 minimum wage bill, defending abortion rights, for saying Democrats would hold President Donald Trump accountable and for saying Democrats would sweep the House, Senate and White House in the 2020 elections…

Whatever its flaws, she said, she believes there is no institution in this nation that has come up with better ideas, more creative thinking and been more willing to meet challenges than the Democratic Party.

She noted that 60 percent of House Democrats are women, people of color or part of the LGBTQ community.

“That’s a beautiful thing,” she said. “The beauty is in the mix. Our diversity is our strength. Our unity is our power.”…

“We do understand the urgency of the challenge to this country that we love … and to the Constitution,” she said, suggesting Democrats must defend against “those who would degrade our beautiful land from sea to shining sea, those who would disrespect newcomers to our country and those who would undermine our values.” …

Maybe, just maybe, the future *is* female…

Reader Interactions

225Comments

  1. 1.

    Brachiator

    The warmth of the greeting for Hillary was good to see .

    A little tidbit.

    Biden 25 (-6)
    Warren 20 (+3)
    Harris 16 (+6)
    Bernie 15 (-1)

    Everyone is referred to by their last names, except Sanders. He still has that warm, folksy “everybody’s uncle” thing going for him.

  2. 2.

    cokane

    Those four candidates are basically your top tier at this point. Unless there’s some major shift, that’s pretty much the only candidates who will stay in the race after Iowa and definitely New Hampshire.

  7. 7.

    Aleta

    I counted 22 lies that Republicans and his campaign planted in the first part of a cooperative WaPo article yesterday,

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    Phew. Midnight and packing accomplished, save a couple of items in the fridge which get stuffed in at the very last minute.

  24. 24.

    Baud

    She noted that 60 percent of House Democrats are women, people of color or part of the LGBTQ community.

    I didn’t realize this. That’s great.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    @rikyrah

    Can’t help it. Since a similarly appellated singer hit the scene, always pronounce it “Blar-day.” Endlessly funny.

    ;)

  30. 30.

    satby

    It’s a gorgeous 64° out right now, with a less humid 72° expected as a high. Going to slather on the Deet and get some deferred yard maintenance done.

  34. 34.

    daveNYC

    @cokane: Super Tuesday is even superer this year, so I think there will still be a fair number of people around for that. After that though, everyone will probably drop except for Inslee. He’s not trying to win, so minor things like not winning won’t stop him.

  36. 36.

    germy

    Man, you guys are going to be pissed when you see Jane Mayer’s latest piece on Al Franken.

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @plato: No shit Sherlock. My point is only that the GOP is loud and proud with their racism now, and that 47% of voting Americans either want exactly that or don’t give a rat’s ass as long as they get their tax cuts and nobody tells them where they can’t pollute or what poisons they can put in the fields or foods they sell, or how they can build, or who they can put on the Federal benches, etc etc.

    And like it or not 47% is a steep hill to climb in the Senate.

  44. 44.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I had a good birthday yesterday. We went to our son’s house to have dinner and meet their new rescue dog. They don’t know the dog’s history, but the poor baby has obviously had a hard time. He’s leery of strangers, especially men, and panics when left alone. They’re practicing going away and coming back, so he knows it will happen, but they’ve been videoing him while they’re out and he’s very unhappy.

  45. 45.

    Scotian

    It is always nice to see HRC getting any of the massive credit due her. After all, the main reason the VRWC kept her in their sights is because they recognized the very real and capable threat she posed to their long term agendas by not just her foresight but also her ability to find and then show a better path. They had to destroy her credibility, they had to destroy her in all ways, yet she never gave up, and in the end it still took Russia and Comey to cost her an election where she STILL managed 3 million more votes than the “winner”.

    HRC was and is a hero of mine, she deserves not just mad respect, but all honours as well. The greatest tragedy politically of my lifetime for the western world I would submit is the way craven and venal white people allowed their fears to be so manipulated they allowed their greatest political enemy of the Cold War to “elect” their President. NO ONE who believes in democracy should EVER find such a thing acceptable. That shows the GOP truly is the party of treason because for them it ended up being better red than led by a domestic political party and leader like HRC.

    The world suffered a loss beyond words when Vlad’s candidate won the election with GOP blessings all because they feared one woman. One can judge a person by the nature and quality of their enemies, and HRC on that front has the best references possible IMNSHO.

  48. 48.

    Betty Cracker

    @Scotian: Every word true. History will be kind to Secretary Clinton. That’s far less than she deserves but far more than her enemies will ever receive from that source.

  49. 49.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: Everyone needs credibility. It’s just that what their base looks for in determining credibility is whether the GOP speaks the “truth” about race and race traitors. That is their truth.

  54. 54.

    Kay

    @germy:

    It is bad.

    I had no idea how closely the accuser was tied to conservative politics and Fox news- that she had made tv appearances as a professional Right wing activist. I knew she was/is a Republican. I didn’t know she was a professional Republican activist. I also didn’t know Franken had been sued by Fox. It seems clear she lied about essential parts of the story-maybe the essential part, since Mayer saw the CD and original packaging and postmark. It shouldn’t surprise me that no one who ran with the story verified it all or did any of their own work (CNN) but it does.
    I’ve felt for years that Jake Tapper is insanely overrated as a serious journalist. His Benghazi work was objectively terrible. He’s almost solely responsible for promoting the idea Clinton did something wrong, based on absolutely nothing.

    What a shame.

  55. 55.

    plato

    India has successfully launched its second lunar mission a week after it halted the scheduled blast-off due to a technical snag.

    Chandrayaan-2 was launched at 14:43 local time (09:13 GMT) on Monday from the Sriharikota space station.

    India’s space chief said his agency had “bounced back with flying colours” after the aborted first attempt.

    India hopes the $145m (£116m) mission will be the first to land on the Moon’s south pole.

    For the first time in India’s space history, an interplanetary expedition is being led by two women – Muthaya Vanitha, the project director, and Ritu Karidhal, the mission director.

  56. 56.

    plato

    Credit score agency Equifax has agreed to pay up to $700m (£561m) as part of a settlement with a US regulator following a data breach in 2017.

    The Federal Trade Commission had alleged the Atlanta-based firm failed to take reasonable steps to secure its network.

    The records of at least 147 million people were exposed in the incident.

  61. 61.

    Another Scott

    @germy: I’ve only skimmed it so far. Thanks for the pointer.

    It’s about what I expected.

    But it really doesn’t change anything about the way it played out, IMO. How long has it been? Going on 2 years? The Senate Ethics Committee would still be investigating it, and it would have been toxic for Democrats in the Senate, and Democratic candidates, to have to address it every day.

    Unfortunately, unless the Senate (and House and every other similar institution) has a faster process to address accusations like these, then the press (and the GOP and their minions) will continue to weaponize them and never let them go. It’s easy to say “well Biden survived, so Franken should have held on.” Biden could hide in a bunker for a few weeks and see if things blew over, Franken couldn’t. Biden didn’t have to wait nearly 6 months to take his Senate seat because of the coordinated campaign against him – a campaign that never ended. Etc.

    Maybe his colleagues threw him under the bus too quickly. Maybe he resigned too quickly. I don’t know. But, ultimately, power in the Senate depends on support of your colleagues and when he lost that he had to go.

    With any luck, he’ll be back in some sort of capacity beyond his podcast.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  62. 62.

    Baud

    @Another Scott:

    The ultimate problem is a culture that says that Dems always have to prove themselves with symbolic acts, and if they don’t, they’re just like Republicans.

  64. 64.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: There were interminable discussions here on that topic — Tweeden was/is definitely a wingnut operative. If not for that photo, Franken would almost certainly still be in the Senate because without it the media would have had to focus on her credibility.

    Toward the end of Mayer’s piece, there’s a Rebecca Traister quote: “One of the troubling things about this is that there aren’t easy answers. When you change rules, you end up penalizing people who were caught behaving according to the old rules. But if you don’t change the rules they will never change.”

    Sounds about right to me.

  65. 65.

    Brachiator

    @SFAW:

    He still has that warm, folksy “everybody’s uncle” thing going for him.

    You forgot to use the sarc/snark font.

    Nope. Even the text of the CBS polling story refers to Sanders by his first name in places. He’s more approachable, cuter, etc

    If we consider a 15% threshold as the minimum support needed to win convention delegates, then across the early states, four candidates would meet that benchmark: Biden, Warren, Harris and Bernie Sanders. ..

  66. 66.

    Kay

    @germy:

    No. He doesn’t. I’m not happy with Schumer. I think he’s been wholly ineffective against Trump. People who knew Trump before his rise to real power seem incapable of seeing the real threat of him- it’s like they cannot change their 40 year long opinion of him as harmless. I think the NYTimes suffers from the same syndrome. They “know” him and that has so clouded their work that they’re incapable of doing it. It’s counterintuitive- I thought it would work the other way, but it hasn’t.

    This does happen with changes in norms, though. It happened with child abuse. False allegations were not verified the way they should have been. In those instances people didn’t just lose their jobs- they went to prison for decades. There’s a whole body of work on it in juvenile law. The child abuse panic in the 1980’s.

    I’m on a school committee and we ran into this with bullying. We set what are new standards for bullying and there were false allegations and too much rigidity on the part of school personnel who adopt a “zero tolerance” approach that is way too blunt an instrument, because that’s what happens. It will get better- people learn to better sift the solid cases from the bullshit- it did with child abuse- but there are victims along the way. “Zero tolerance”, IN GENERAL, seems to lead to abuses, whether it’s law enforcement or anything else. People use it as a way to avoid thinking thru the facts.

  69. 69.

    low-tech cyclist

    Pelosi spoke for about 20 minutes, drawing standing ovations multiple times, including…for saying Democrats would hold President Donald Trump accountable

    Cool! When’s she gonna start?

  70. 70.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I confess I didn’t read many of them. It seemed too “hot” to me at the time- like I wouldn’t be able to sort it out and upset people wouldn’t help with that.
    I thought he should resign because it seemed out of control and like something he wouldn’t recover from, so I’m as guilty of prejudging as anyone. I did really like him, though. I thought he should run for President, and said it.
    Bring Harry Reid back. He was a hard ass, in a good way. He’s a tough individual. He might have handled it better than Schumer did.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Yup. We’ve seen this again and again. The net gets cast too widely and malicious people take advantage of the panic and chaos and the fact that no one knows where the line is for a while. There are victims.

  77. 77.

    germy

    @Kay: The Right has been successfully co-opting the language of social justice warriors. They started doing it ironically, and now they’ve weaponized it.

  78. 78.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    He’s terrible. Benghazi went off the rails when he ridiculously promoted the idea that he had some “scoop” when Susan Rice recited diplomatic boilerplate on his show. Go read the transcript of that interview. She said NOTHING- not damning, not exonerating- nothing.

    Pure careerism. He flogged that for months, years and he never had anything. He had the bare accusation that “something” had happened and he never once provided anything to back that up. It didn’t matter. It kills me how much they make. They make tens of millions of dollars a year for this crap work. That market is broken. It rewards junk and bad work.

  79. 79.

    Brachiator

    @germy:

    Man, you guys are going to be pissed when you see Jane Mayer’s latest piece on Al Franken.

    Is this the New Yorker article. I’ve run out of free views and guess I have to jump through a few hoops to get it.

    I read a couple of excepts elsewhere. Does the story get into the motivation of those who brought him down?

  80. 80.

    Kay

    @germy:

    Did anyone ever ask Franken’s accuser if she wants to withdraw her public endorsement of Trump? If Franken is unfit, surely Trump is.

  81. 81.

    germy

    @Another Scott: I wonder if there’ll be a “mea culpa” from the folks at LawyersGunsMoneyBlog?

    Their position all along was Franken was a serial groper who was right to resign and that BalloonJuice was unreadable because of its failure to understand that simple fact.

  82. 82.

    satby

    @germy:

    The Right has been successfully co-opting the language of social justice warriors. They started doing it ironically, and now they’ve weaponized it.

    and the purity parade of “progressives” help them by knee capping us. And the rest of us never seem to grasp they really aren’t on our side.

  83. 83.

    germy

    @Kay: She refused to talk to Mayer for the article. She knows what she did. She probably figures “My work here is done” and any further comments would be pointless.

  84. 84.

    SFAW

    @Brachiator:

    Nope. Even the text of the CBS polling story refers to Sanders by his first name in places. He’s more approachable, cuter, etc

    I don’t doubt that there are plenty of zipperheads in the MSM who think of him that way. I was assuming you do not, hence my “suggestion” re: fonts.

  85. 85.

    different-church-lady

    @Kay: It sort of makes you wonder if aren’t a bunch of Dems who secretly enjoy being fucked like rats.

  86. 86.

    Brachiator

    @Kay:

    “Zero tolerance”, IN GENERAL, seems to lead to abuses, whether it’s law enforcement or anything else. People use it as a way to avoid thinking thru the facts.

    Yep. Absolutely correct.

  87. 87.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I feel like deciding what Franken should do was above my pay grade. I liked him. I thought he was good at his job. I wanted him in the Senate. But I’m not tactical enough to figure out the political implications of his going or staying, and right now, who’s in power matters far more than one person’s fate.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Zero tolerance is intended to remove subjective decision making. Like mandatory minimums. There’s an actual equity argument for it that no one makes anymore, but it did exist. The equity argument is this- judges, principals, police will make subjective decisions on punishment and their inherent bias will inform those decisions, so racism, sexism, etc. Zero tolerance was intended to mitigate that by essentially saying “don’t think, subjective human being- JUST follow this rule”.

    The way mandatory minimums were supposed to work was judges would apply the same standard to everyone. That way it would be “equal”. But what they found was the bias in the process started MUCH sooner than charges and conviction and the other thing they found was they were getting ridiculous results- 20 year sentences for a 3rd shoplifting offense.

    But the original idea HAD an equity piece. It was partly well-intended.

  89. 89.

    SFAW

    @germy:

    and that BalloonJuice was unreadable because of its failure to understand that simple fact.

    I thought it was because they thought Cole was too milquetoast-y.

  93. 93.

    Steeplejack

    I guess we’ve survived the heat wave here in NoVA. It’s a more normal 75° now, going up to “only” 92° later. We got some cooling rain last night. But the humidity is 86%, so it’s not quite balmy outside. High of 78° tomorrow, then mid-80s the rest of the week. That’ll be nice.

  94. 94.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’ll give you an example I was involved in. Ohio adopted the entire federal sex offender scheme as written. No other state did that- just Ohio. It called for NO discretion in classifying juveniles. That is a disaster and it was a disaster. We were classifying 16 year olds as tier one sex offenders for life. There was a sepereration of powers challenge to the state supreme court- juvenile judges said “we need discretion and the legislature can’t tell us we can’t have it, because we’re the trial judge and the fact finder” (juveniles rarely get a jury so the trial judge is the fact finder”).
    Judges won and they got discretion and the sentences got much more sensible. But there were victims along the way.
    The norm changes and it takes a while for people to catch up.

  96. 96.

    Brachiator

    @Kay:

    Zero tolerance was intended to mitigate that by essentially saying “don’t think, subjective human being- JUST follow this rule”.

    But don’t we call them judges because we expect them to use their “judgement?”

    I guess I understand the “theory” behind zero tolerance. But I can’t see that it could ever result in a fair outcome in the long run.

  97. 97.

    Immanentize

    @Kay:
    Yes, Ted Kennedy was a big proponent of sentencing guidelines and original minimum mandatories. On just the equity reasons you mention (in the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1988). That didn’t end up going so well.

  98. 98.

    plato

    Samah Norquist, a Trump State Department official and the wife of conservative tax activist Grover Norquist, has violated the Hatch Act, according to ProPublica. It is illegal for federal officials to campaign at work. https://t.co/IcVHFMIlfe— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 22, 2019

    Isn’t he the asshole grifter who wanted to drown the government in bathtub? And his wife was working in the state dept all along? What a fucking hypocritical thug.

  99. 99.

    Brachiator

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    But I’m not tactical enough to figure out the political implications of his going or staying, and right now, who’s in power matters far more than one person’s fate.

    The Senate Democrats weren’t able to figure it out either.

  101. 101.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    If it’s a Windows computer, you can hold the Windows key and press [period] to get the emoji menu.

  102. 102.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @different-church-lady: True. I’d make the same argument about the Ds who knew they were likely to lose their seats if they voted for the ACA and did it anyway. The ACA mattered more. I suppose one difference is that those Ds chose to take the fall, and Franken didn’t. I was sorry when he resigned.

  106. 106.

    TS (the original)

    @Another Scott: I will never understand how trump can “grab em by the p.u.s.s.y” – and it is all “boys will be boys” but if a democrat is accused of anything it will “bring the party down”

    Why is the media so antagonistic against one political party? There is no free press in the US – it is all owned by RW money.

  108. 108.

    Immanentize

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:
    Another successful trip around our friend, the sun! ?

    Happy Birthday! (I complete my latest trip tomorrow — we July-born are the best in every way. Including humility.)

  110. 110.

    tarragon

    I understand that the heat wave has broken for some of you lucky Jackals in the upper midwest, but here north of Boston, we’re still trying to breath warm steam.

    Yup last night. The AC installers have assured us that the install that was supposed to be completed 2 weeks ago will be completed today.

  112. 112.

    Kattails

    @rikyrah: Kattails reads most of Jane Mayer article while drinking first cup of coffee, follows it up with this video, makes strangling noises and considers either going back to bed or adding strong shot of something to coffee. We can’t get these scum out of the people’s house fast enough.
    (thanks, you always pull up great stuff!)

  113. 113.

    Brachiator

    A little UK news from the BBC on upcoming leadership changes

    Voting will close later in the Conservative leadership contest, with the UK’s next prime minister set to be announced on Tuesday.

    The next occupant of Number 10 will be either Boris Johnson – regarded as the frontrunner – or Jeremy Hunt.

    The winner and successor to Theresa May is due to take office on Wednesday….

    Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats will announce the winner of their own contest to find a new leader, replacing Sir Vince Cable.

    Either deputy leader Jo Swinson or former energy secretary Ed Davey will be announced as the party’s next leader on Monday afternoon.

    The result of the pro-EU party’s leadership contest is expected at around 16:00 BST on Monday.

  114. 114.

    Ksmiami

    @Kay: I don’t mean to pry and I know Ohio is your home, but do you ever think about moving somewhere more amenable to your political preferences and acumen? I guess I’m saying that you are talented on this front and could really be influential in a state like Michigan or Pennsylvania. Ohio just seems lost to the Democratic Party.

  117. 117.

    Immanentize

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:
    I am going a little insane in my brain, to be honest. Nothing serious, just spinning thoughts keeping me from sleep. But that just seems like the norm on this here blog. Thursday at 5:30 a.m. we arrive to let the surgeon ply his craft. Ugh.

    Thanks for asking and really do enjoy your day. But no swearing!

  120. 120.

    kindness

    It’s nice seeing a positive portrayal of Nancy Pelosi giving a positive portrayal of the Democratic Party.

    It’s only a matter of time till some ‘Democrat’ tears her a new one for it.

  123. 123.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Baud:

    Already happening. And it’ll keep happening on her timetable no matter how much negative and cynicism the internet speed forth.

    Her ‘timetable’ is to stall until the next election.

    Call me negative, call me cynical, but I have a problem with that.

  124. 124.

    Tenar Arha

    @Kay: Jake Tapper, to me, will always be the guy who took having had a couple dates with Monica Lewinski in the 90’s & wrote an article from them during the impeachment investigation. When I found that out, a year or two ago…well let’s just say it validated my feelings of dislike for him.

  126. 126.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Immanentize:

    Thursday at 5:30 a.m. we arrive to let the surgeon ply his craft.

    I will be thinking good thoughts for you and the Immp. While I recall absolutely nothing, of course, from my surgery two years ago, my wife said the waiting was very hard. I don’t have any advice for getting through it, though, but I wish you good fortune.

  127. 127.

    SFAW

    @Kattails:

    and considers either going back to bed or adding strong shot of something to coffee

    I wasn’t aware that the two are mutually exclusive. Or, as they say in Deutschland: Por que no los dos?

  130. 130.

    different-church-lady

    @TS (the original): Yes, that’s the infuriating irony of it all, isn’t it? Trump opens up a a can of anger, and every man who’s ever slightly crossed a line by accident is going to pay for it more than Trump himself will for his outright molestation and rape.

  131. 131.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Another Scott:

    Maybe his colleagues threw him under the bus too quickly.

    “Maybe” ???

    But, ultimately, power in the Senate depends on support of your colleagues and when he lost that he had to go.

    Yep, it’s right there in the Constitution.

  132. 132.

    MomSense

    You’re all a blur this morning (can’t find my glasses). Happy birthday to all the July Jackals. When coastal Maine is warmer than southern Florida, we’ve got a problem. No breeze even. If this heat wave keeps up, Stephen King is going to have some great material for his next horror story.

  133. 133.

    oldgold

    Recycling from an earlier gardening thread.

    How hot is is it?

    It’s so hot the Jehovah’s Witnesses have gone to telemarketing and the Latter Day Saints are knocking on doors in speedos.

  134. 134.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Brachiator:

    The Senate Democrats weren’t able to figure it out either.

    Well, two of them who are currently running for the nomination sure thought they had it figured out.

  135. 135.

    eric

    @Immanentize: good luck…I emailed Anne Laurie my contact info, if you were to do the same, i asked that she connect us if at all possible. thanks and holding you and Imp in the light.

  136. 136.

    Scotian

    @Immanentize: @rikyrah:

    HRC first cropped up on my political radar in the late 80s with the rise of Bill’s national profile, and I recall that the first thing that told me she was one to watch was her willingness to risk her life for her principles. As I am sure you know better than I ever can when she went segregationist school busting in the South that was placing a literal bullseye on her back as a race traitor in the eyes of those she was acting against.

    There was also no way she didn’t know that at the time either. Courage of one’s political convictions to that extent is not common, and on such an important basic human rights principle even more so. Everything I ever saw from her afterwards only underscored my belief in her, and gave me a real life hero to respect.

  139. 139.

    Rileys Enabler

    Haven’t been commenting but check in daily, because B.J. is the small spot of sanity left. I was ever-so-slightly cheered this weekend when my sister who identifies as “old school R” actually made fun of the squatter in the White House. Out loud. I damn near fell over, but if she sees him as an ill-suited clown? Ray of light. Definitely a ray of freaking light. May it be virulently contagious among her kind.

  143. 143.

    germy

    Yo i can roll with this one all day. She went into the lions den and left still swinging and then ran for Congress and won.— jairus?✌️???? (@blamellors) July 21, 2019

  144. 144.

    Steve in the ATL

    College friends were in town this weekend. One, whom I describe as a modern day John Bircher, made a not ironic reference to half the country suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. Life in the right wing bubble….

    I won’t even mention his T-shirt that has a giant picture of Reagan with the caption “I smell hippies”. Reagan and hippies—can’t they find more recent boogeymen?

  145. 145.

    Kay

    @Ksmiami:

    No. I don’t have any desire to do anything political professionally. The school committee isn’t the school board- we’re not elected. We’re appointed in a back room deal among insiders :)
    Just kidding! You volunteer when they ask. But they only ask certain people, so it’s not at all representative of the place as a whole and in that way is insidery.
    I don’t mind, at all, being a political minority. It used to bother me a lot and as I got older and more confident and less defensive I just became easy with it and now I kind of revel in it.

  146. 146.

    bemused

    @Kay:

    Damn right “zero tolerance” led to a lot of abuse.
    Franken is a big softie. No way is he a sexual abuser. I have male friends that are big huggers, genuinely like and respect women and I feel totally comfortable with them. They’re just my friends. Not so with other guys I’ve met who come across as phony friendly and/or openly dismissive of women.
    He deeply cares about issues negatively affecting average Americans. Anyone who followed his Air America show would know this. He would choke up often talking about his many trips to entertain troops and the unfair struggles Americans are dealing with. He must be so frustrated he’s not in office anymore to help fight the swamp monsters and I can’t imagine how angry and sad he is about the deliberate cruelty to immigrants.

  151. 151.

    BC in Illinois

    @Baud:

    About the Illinois GOP putting up (and then — after two days! — taking down) a picture of Congresswomen AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib as “the Jihad Squad,” (holding guns).

    “Political jihad is their game,” the Facebook post said. “If you don’t agree with their socialist ideology, you’re racist.”

    1. Of course, there was only a non-apology apology:

    Mark Shaw, the Lake County GOP chairman who heads the state county chairmen’s group, said the posting was “not authorized by me” and said he was “sorry if anyone who saw the image was offended by the contents.”

    No apology to the Congresswomen.
    “I’m sorry anyone was offended.”

    2. There was no acceptance of responsibility.

    On Facebook, Shaw called the posting “unauthorized.” Then he explained how the group has a “multistage, approval process for all social media posts on any of its social media properties.” That process, he said, is being “reevaluated.”

    The post also displayed the logo of the association.

    3. And, if there is any question what the thinking was behind the people who created, crafted, selected, and posted the “Jihad Squad” picture, go to Twitter and search #JihadSquad. It is a meme with a following and comments as bad as you can imagine.

    That was the group the Republican County Chairmen of Illinois were reaching out to. (After two days of negative comments and one day of Chicago Tribune publicity, they took it down.)

  152. 152.

    Betty Cracker

    @Tenar Arha: I didn’t know that about Tapper — what an asshole!

    I first began to dislike him during PBO’s first term. He wrote a very priggish and self-righteous piece in which he accused Obama of lying about quitting smoking. Which, maybe he (PBO) did fib about, not that it was anyone’s damned business. But Tapper didn’t have any proof except his own extra-sensitive nose, and he was such a prick about it. Also, I’ve never forgotten Tapper’s dumb indignation about the slur on his “sister network’s” honor when PBO’s press secretary rightly pointed out that Fox News is/was a GOP propaganda outlet that shouldn’t be treated as a legit news organization.

    To give credit where it’s due, Tapper has called out Trump in strong terms lately and has righteously criticized Fox News in the Trump era. But he had to be hit over the noggin with a lawless degenerate president putting a target on his own network and with Fox News gleefully joining in to see the light. So the credit extended is limited.

  153. 153.

    Kay

    @Brachiator:

    I guess I understand the “theory” behind zero tolerance. But I can’t see that it could ever result in a fair outcome in the long run.

    Right, but discretion is a trade off. So you get the flip side- the NJ judge who decided the fancy kid had high test scores so couldn’t be punished.
    You run into the same dilemma with standardized tests. Teachers want discretion when evaluating students. Okay, but what we know is black and brown students are evaluated less positively than white students. The standardized test is an attempt at leveling the playing field in an “equity” analysis. It’s really cynical, right, because it says “human beings can’t trusted” which human beings understandably object to- but people ARE biased. That’s a fact.
    So you try to reach some completely unsatisfactory middle ground that harms the least number of people and you bake in tragic mistakes that are brutally unfair and will happen, because the alternative is worse.

  155. 155.

    Gin & Tonic

    I’m sure everybody here is anxiously awaiting a report on yesterday’s snap Parliamentary elections in Ukraine. While they ran pretty smoothly, and the party of the new President gained a majority, it is as yet unclear whether they got an absolute (i.e. not needing a coalition) majority. That is seeming likely, though – which, of course, presents both challenges and opportunities. Quite a few fairly entrenched MP’s who thought that the old way of buying their seat would continue, got turfed out, surprisingly. And contra one of the old friends of the blog, the far-right “Svoboda” party got bageled. Not so surprisingly, their slate was also referred to as a “penis parade.”

    Counting is still ongoing – there were a *lot* of candidates, and the combination of single-seat districts and proportional at-large voting makes things a little complex.

  157. 157.

    Gin & Tonic

    Got moderated, and I know why, so here it is in a sanitized form:

    I’m sure everybody here is anxiously awaiting a report on yesterday’s snap Parliamentary elections in Ukraine. While they ran pretty smoothly, and the party of the new President gained a majority, it is as yet unclear whether they got an absolute (i.e. not needing a coalition) majority. That is seeming likely, though – which, of course, presents both challenges and opportunities. Quite a few fairly entrenched MP’s who thought that the old way of buying their seat would continue, got turfed out, surprisingly. And contra one of the old friends of the blog, the far-right “Svoboda” party got bageled. Not so surprisingly, their slate was also referred to as a “penis parade.”

    Counting is still ongoing – there were a *lot* of candidates, and the combination of single-seat districts and proportional at-large voting makes things a little complex.

  162. 162.

    Mnemosyne

    @Immanentize:

    I haven’t been on the blog as often lately, so I only just heard the worrisome news about the Immp. I’m hoping that his surgery and treatment is successful and this will eventually become a bad dream for both of you. Holding you in the light.

    @eric:

    The same to you — I hope your Emma’s treatment is as comfortable and successful as modern science can make it.

  163. 163.

    Kay

    @Brachiator:

    All professions object to the loss of power and trust zero tolerance rules imply. They have a standardized set of instructions now for hospitals to reduce the spread of disease and infection in the hospital. 1. wash hands, 2…like that. My daughter told me medical professionals were insulted by this because they BELIEVE they are doing these things, but there were so many errors. So they made it dummy-proof.
    When my youngest went for eye surgery every single person who saw him pre-op checked that they were prepping the correct eye- left not right- over and over, out loud, because they now know they make mistakes. They then mark the eye. So they would say “we’re pros! How insulting this is!” They can’t have discretion – they need a process.

  164. 164.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay: The research shows that check sheets prevent errors. That’s why airline pilots use them.

    My SIL is in charge of nursing at a hospital and getting the doctors to wash their hands is a challenge. I couldn’t believe that when she told me.

  165. 165.

    BR

    Warren just came out with a detailed discussion on The Coming Economic Crash — And How to Stop It.

    I’m glad to see her talking about it and more should. Because it will happen for sure (only the timing is uncertain) and she will look prescient, and none of her remedies are things the GOP will do anyway so the “stop it” part is really for Dems to implement in the aftermath.

  166. 166.

    Jeffro

    @cokane:

    Those four candidates [Biden, Warren, Harris, Sanders] are basically your top tier at this point. Unless there’s some major shift, that’s pretty much the only candidates who will stay in the race after Iowa and definitely New Hampshire.

    Yup!

    It will be interesting to see who the 20+ other candidates endorse as they drop out. My guess is that Sanders will get almost none of them.

  167. 167.

    BR

    @Kay:

    Kay, I shared your thoughts on the rule of law with some prominent folks who really liked them and I would love it if you would at the least start posting on the front page about these things and even better write some op eds about it. Not enough people are saying the things you are saying, and definitely not the way you are.

  168. 168.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah:

    Asked if Democrats need to be more careful about their language, Adam Schiff responds: “We’re not inciting crowds to chant ‘send them back’. This is coming from the president.

    That’s an ok answer from Schiff but come on Dems, how about, “We’re not the ones saying crowds should rough up protestors, we’re not the ones saying our opponents ‘hate America’…and you know what? We’re not the ones whose supporters are mailing pipe bombs, either.”

  170. 170.

    Jeffro

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    …the GOP is loud and proud with their racism now, and that 47% of voting Americans either want exactly that or don’t give a rat’s ass as long as they get their tax cuts and nobody tells them where they can’t pollute or what poisons they can put in the fields or foods they sell, or how they can build, or who they can put on the Federal benches, etc etc.

    Yup. They are ‘all in’. Half of all Trumpublicans are gonna vote for the racist because he’s an out and out racist, and the other half are going to tell themselves they’re voting for the freedom to keep using plastic straws (while actually voting for the racist because he’s an out and out racist).

  172. 172.

    Citizen Alan

    @SFAW:

    Honestly, I just assumed the media refers to Wilmer as “Bernie” to avoid confusion with Sarah Huckabee Sanders. God knows I was constantly shocked and confused when a headline referred to one of them and I mistakenly assumed at first it was the other. I think that’s why they were more inclined to use Hillary’s first name than most of the other 2016 contenders — it avoided mental confusion with Bill.

  175. 175.

    Betty Cracker

    @BR: Just read that Medium piece. Warren was absolutely correct about the 2008 crash — years before it happened.

  176. 176.

    Jeffro

    @Steve in the ATL:

    I won’t even mention his T-shirt that has a giant picture of Reagan with the caption “I smell hippies”. Reagan and hippies—can’t they find more recent boogeymen?

    I’ll see your Reagan t-shirt and raise you one late-teen/early-20-something guy who was – I kid you not – wearing a “Reagan/Bush ’84” t-shirt at the grocery store yesterday. Huh?!?

    What does that even mean? Nostalgia for the relatively quiet racism of the Reagan years? I truly dunno…

    That is the kind of thing libs would never do. “Clinton/Gore ’96” – not a big seller, LOL.

    Ok yeah, I would wear an “Obama/Biden 2012” shirt around if I had one, but that was just a few years ago. What kind of person wears a political t-shirt from 20 years before they were born??

  178. 178.

    BR

    @Betty Cracker:

    Yeah, and the great thing is she was right for the right reasons — she didn’t just get lucky like some doomers who are always saying a crash is around the corner. The upside for her and Dems is there to be pushing this message out there, because they can jump on mistakes the GOP makes on the economy.

    Speaking of which, like I wrote yesterday, everyone needs to call their reps / senators about the debt ceiling — no compromise on spending (no spending cuts), we should get the debt ceiling permanently ended, and the budget if attached should reflect Dem priorities. The GOP will own any shutdown or impasse.

  183. 183.

    TomatoQueen

    @germy: How I wish the news cycle moved just a little less like a TOON car in Roger Rabbit and a little more like an actual wheel. Al has been hard done by, and all the actors in the story bear at least some blame, but that nobody had spine enough to say wait-just-a-damn-minute can’t you tell a ratfck from a hole in the ground is the worst of all. Miss Jane once again gets her gold stars.

  184. 184.

    Steeplejack

    @Jeffro:

    What kind of person wears a political t-shirt from 20 years before they were born??

    At this point it’s just a joke, like people wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.

  187. 187.

    Steeplejack

    That New Yorker article on Franken was depressing. Tweeden’s accusation does not hold up, and the last (anonymous) accuser sounds positively insane.

    And none of the Senate Democrats comes off well.

    Minutes after Politico posted the story, Senator Gillibrand’s chief of staff called Franken’s to say that Gillibrand was going to demand his resignation. Franken was stung by Gillibrand’s failure to call him personally. They had been friends and squash partners. In a later call, Gillibrand’s chief of staff offered to have Gillibrand speak with Franken, but by that time Franken was frantically conferring with his staff and his family. Franken’s office proposed that Franken’s daughter speak with Gillibrand instead, but Gillibrand declined.

    Gillibrand then went on Facebook and posted her demand that Franken resign: “Enough is enough. The women who have come forward are brave and I believe them. While it’s true that his behavior is not the same as the criminal conduct alleged against Roy Moore, or Harvey Weinstein, or President Trump, it is still unquestionably wrong, and should not be tolerated.”

    Minutes later, at a previously scheduled press conference, Gillibrand added insult to injury: she reiterated her call for Franken to resign while also trumpeting her sponsorship of a new bill that banned mandatory arbitration of sexual-harassment claims. She didn’t mention that Franken had originated the legislation—and had given it to Gillibrand to sponsor, out of concern that it might be imperilled by his scandal.

    Soon after Gillibrand declared that Franken must resign, Senator [Patty] Murray, who is in the Democratic leadership, made the same call, sending a signal to colleagues that the push was coming from the top. The Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a friend of Franken’s, recalls being astonished that there had been no emergency meeting of the Democratic caucus. “A reasonably organized group of our caucus decided to do this without giving their own colleagues a heads-up,” he said. “This was about demanding that a member of our own caucus resign from the Senate. It was a big deal.” From that point on, he said, “it was like a slow-rolling stampede through the day, waiting to see who would bolt next, with no meeting, no hearing, no process.”

  188. 188.

    rikyrah

    Love It or Leave It: An Open Invitation to Racists, White Nationalists and Supremacists to Leave America
    BY Spandan

    Dear racists, white supremacists, white nationalists and accomplices:

    You have heard your president, and from the rally chants you have been feeding him back, you are in love with his message about America: love it or leave it. But if you really, truly agree with his message, it’s time for you to pack your bags and get a one-way ticket out of this country. You hate America, and you need to leave.

    Don’t you see? America has rejected your beliefs – and you have rejected what America stands for – over and over.

    Your ideological ancestors got their asses kicked in the Civil War by American patriots who wouldn’t stand for your temper tantrum to allow you to secede just because these ideological ancestors of yours thought white people should be able to own black people. You can whine about confederate statues all you want. You can put as many confederate bumper stickers as you want right above your truck nuts. But the fact remains that your side committed actual treason – took up arms against the United States – and lost. Your love affair with the symbols of traitors and losers is in reality a symptom of the fact that you don’t love America.

    So, leave.

  191. 191.

    Miss Bianca

    @BC in Illinois: y’know, when I saw the Jihad Squad meme, I thought it was parody. I mean, they posed these bad-ass women like Charlie’s Angels and made them look heroic. You mean they meant it? Man, Illinois Nazis are even dumber than they look.

  193. 193.

    Kay

    @BR:

    Thanks. I took an official role in the local D Party this year, which I have never done before. I had been a delegate to the state and then national conventions, but that’s a single election- a caucus.
    It was purely happenstance, though, taking the county Party slot. There was an attempted coup, “my” group retained power (the coup failed) and I happened to be sitting there so they did an emergency appointment.

  194. 194.

    Another Scott

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: My FIL had a trach tube for his last few years. We were taught at home how to do suction and keep things sterile. “You put the gloves on this way, now this is your sterile hand. Make sure you only use it for sterile things…” And we always did.

    I vividly remember when he was admitted to the ICU for an episode and him lying in the bed with a pulmonary team around him and a guy started putting on the sterile gloves and setting thing up to do the suction, and then reached over with his sterile hand to adjust the vacuum regulator on the wall… and nobody corrected him or said a word.

    :-(

    And people wonder how MRSA gets spread and is so difficult to control in hospitals.

    :-(

    Checklists save lives. But people have to follow them every time all the time.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  196. 196.

    Kay

    @plato:

    It’s better this way though, isn’t it? Just having an out in the open fight? They’re taking the pro-racist position, Republicans. Proudly pro-racist.

    He lies about them all the time. Makes up whole statements. At least this way, now that they’ve engaged him directly, they can fight back. A lot of the people he smears don’t have a way to fight him. They do.

  197. 197.

    BR

    @Kay:

    I do hope you consider writing on the front page and more prominently in op eds and the like. If I miss your morning comments I find myself digging through old threads and there has to be a better way :)

  198. 198.

    Neldob

    I feel like the media and polling has already chosen our candidates. Klobuchar, Castro, even Booker and a couple others still interest me. Give us a choice of 8 at least. They can focus on more than 4. Did somebody already mention this? Back to reading the thread.

  199. 199.

    Mandalay

    @Steeplejack: This quote from your post bears repeating:

    Gillibrand added insult to injury: she reiterated her call for Franken to resign while also trumpeting her sponsorship of a new bill that banned mandatory arbitration of sexual-harassment claims. She didn’t mention that Franken had originated the legislation—and had given it to Gillibrand to sponsor, out of concern that it might be imperilled by his scandal.

    Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Franken’s resignation, that article shows that Gillibrand is a really vile piece of work.

    Oh, and there’s this….

    The next day, Franken gave a short resignation speech. Gillibrand and other Senate colleagues flocked to hug him afterward.

    She’s fucking disgusting.

  200. 200.

    zhena gogolia

    @Neldob:

    I like Bennet. He’s liberal enough but won’t scare the squishies. Klobuchar is somewhat in that category too.

    Warren is trying to be too much like Bernie for my taste. (but broken glass, etc.)

  201. 201.

    zhena gogolia

    At this perilous time for our democracy and our country, I would appreciate not rehashing the Al Franken case. It’s over.

  203. 203.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Warren is trying to be too much like Bernie for my taste.

    I think she has an exuberant passion and enthusiasm that unsettles some people. Different from Bernie’s rantiness. But both can come across as “too loud for the situation” or something like that?

  205. 205.

    Mandalay

    @zhena gogolia: @zhena gogolia:

    I would appreciate not rehashing the Al Franken case. It’s over.

    Say WHAT??? Did you feel that way when the Central Park 5 were exonerated?

    If any good can still come out of what happened, it is to vigorously revisit what happened to lead Franken to resign.

    If you read the New Yorker article – and I’m certain you haven’t, or you wouldn’t have posted that comment – there are clearly some very important lessons to be learned for the Democratic Party from the events that led to Franken’s resignation.

  206. 206.

    joel hanes

    @Kay:

    I had no idea how closely the accuser was tied to conservative politics and Fox news- that she had made tv appearances as a professional Right wing activist.

    I did. Videos of the Franken/Tweeden USO act were available within 24 hours after she went public with accusations, as was the fact that she consulted Roger Stone before doing so; and even her Wiki article noted that she was a right-wing media creature.

  207. 207.

    joel hanes

    @Mandalay:

    there are clearly some very important lessons to be learned for the Democratic Party

    You’d think that the Democratic Party might have learned some of those lessons earlier, from what happened to ACORN. Or from O’Keefe’s bad-faith attacks on Planned Parenthood.

    You’d think.

  209. 209.

    Nicole

    @Steeplejack: The description of how it went down in the Senate is where the piece doesn’t hold up for me, because, according to what came out at the time, that’s not how it happened. Mayer quotes Whitehouse as saying:

    ” It was like a slow-rolling stampede through the day, waiting to see who would bolt next, with no meeting, no hearing, no process.”

    CNN article, published at the time, said,

    Nearly three weeks after sexual harassment allegations first emerged against Sen. Al Franken, a wave of Democratic senators — in coordination and following a flurry of text messages and phone calls — called for his resignation in rapid succession Wednesday morning. Starting around 11:30 a.m. ET, the senators posted statements in a coordinated effort, one after the other, on social media, saying the Minnesota Democrat should step down…. Within the next 90 minutes, 16 Democrats — 10 of them women — and one Republican senator — Susan Collins of Maine — had publicly urged their colleague to vacate his seat.

    https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/06/politics/senators-al-franken-resignation/index.html

    (Video of both Harris and Gillibrand in the article)

    If it had been only Tweeden, it would have blown over; it was pretty clear she was a GOP operative and all the stuff in the article, about the sketch having been performed previously, Franken’s recollection of the tour, etc., was out in the press then, too (I was a huge Franken fan and I read everything I could trying to find stuff that would clear him, including the rumor someone started that the photographer said the picture was staged and that Tweeden was actually pretending to be asleep. I dug deep).

    I don’t love Mayer’s take on the Senate response; her agenda is pretty blatant in it, and I really don’t like the portrayal of Franken as a clueless kindly guy who doesn’t know any better but to touch people because I think Mayer deliberately downplays women’s experiences. Women get touched a lot, a lot, a LOT in ways that men would never be touched, and we have been told for our whole lives that it’s not a big deal. And for a lot of us, true, it’s not a big deal, and whether that’s because we’re resilient or because we’ve internalized the message that we don’t have a right to our own bodily autonomy I’m not sure (I’m one of those who is not particularly sensitive about being touched, and while it makes life easier, I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not).

    But I think Traister (Traister?) is right at the end when she says that some men who grew up under the old rules are going to be caught by the new rules and when it comes to social mores, there’s no official grandfathering clause. It sucked for Franken, and, in the end, it’ll probably suck for Gillibrand, as, while we are just starting to hold men responsible for touching women inappropriately, we have for a long time, blamed women for calling out men for touching women, and she’s the one who has, for some reason, been given sole credit/blame for bringing him down (to which I say, dude, if she actually had that kind of force of personality, that’s exactly who we should all want for President. Spoiler, she doesn’t have it).

    In the end, the seat is still held by a Democrat (and a woman, so yay for one less white guy in the Senate), so the party didn’t suffer for it. I’d say maybe Biden’s camp should take a page from what the article said about Franken’s camp and appoint someone to stand within arm’s reach of him to watch his behavior in an attempt to keep him from doing or saying anything inappropriate, but I don’t want Biden as the nominee, so I hope no one working for Biden remembers that part.

    Also, men, just treat potential physical contact with women acquaintances the same way you’d treat potential physical contact with men. I’m not uncomfortable with being hugged or kissed, but my life isn’t poorer for not being hugged or kissed by men I don’t know well.

  210. 210.

    L85NJGT

    @Betty Cracker:

    Transport freight volume is in decline – both the year-to-date and year over numbers are down. We have already entered a recession, it’s just a matter where you sit in the economy as to when it bites.

  211. 211.

    BR

    Time for phone calls on the debt ceiling everyone:

    Wait, Dems are going to clear the decks on government funding and debt ceiling for the remainder of Trump's term, forfeiting all leverage, but set up a major crisis point for Republicans in the first summer of a potential Dem presidents' term? This seems like a very bad idea. https://t.co/dKwFKilPyT— Adam Jentleson ?? (@AJentleson) July 22, 2019

  212. 212.

    joel hanes

    @low-tech cyclist:

    Her ‘timetable’ is to stall until the next election.

    Consider the hypothesis, also consistent with the evidence, that her timetable is to stall until the election year, so that the political anvils fall on the GOP at the time when they’ll have the most effect on races up and down the ballot.

    Stipulated: it doesn’t save us from Trump this year, and that’s something we should all desire. However, I suspect that Pelosi has gamed out what can be accomplished with the Democratic caucus in the House and a Republican Senate and a Federalist SCOTUS, and has decided that an immediate direct attempt to take down Trump will possibly boost his chances of re-election, and his coattails, by energizing Republican voters everywhere.

    I don’t like it either. This is the worst damned timeline.

  213. 213.

    Kay

    @joel hanes:

    I did. Videos of the Franken/Tweeden USO act were available within 24 hours after she went public with accusations, as was the fact that she consulted Roger Stone before doing so; and even her Wiki article noted that she was a right-wing media creature.

    I gathered. I didn’t read any of it so I’m not blaming anyone but myself. OTOH, I’m not a multi-million dollar CNN anchor with a huge team. If I have to research original sources what do I need them for?

  219. 219.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:
    I have no idea why he has that folksy uncle thing.
    He’s always struck me as that uncle one invites to the family reunion but warns every adult to keep him away from the kids. Not that anyone has seen or knows exactly why, he’s just not trustworthy.

  220. 220.

    zhena gogolia

    @Mandalay:

    Comparing Franken’s voluntary resignation to the Central Park 5 is pretty obscene.

    The timing on this is rather strange. Dems in disarray never gets old, I guess.

  221. 221.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:
    I’m not sure it was well intended.
    If you are poor/under compensated the plain fact is that you might feel like there is no other option than say shoplifting. And if there is seemingly an across the board effort to keep that pay down, to keep you from having a future, constant police presence, constant police harassment, constant police beatings, constant recurring jail terms, and constant mandatory minimums after all that so as to so semi convincingly be able to say blacks are more criminal no matter how equal they are treated and therefore the racism is justified……
    Yeah I’m not all that convinced that a number of people yelling for mandatory minimums/three strikes and your in were doing it for anything like fairness. The word I’m looking for is RACISM.

  223. 223.

    Ruckus

    @TS (the original):
    It may not all be owned by republican/conservative money. But enough of it is to seem like it.

    Why is the media so antagonistic against one political party?
    Because that one political party is inclusive while the party controlled by all that conservative money is exclusive. The country clubs/golf clubs/walled housing communities/etc they are all exclusive, there to protect the image, the physical safety, the MONEY of the enclosed, and yes even the racism. Only the right people get in. They’ve even co-opted the direction of their views, the right side. Just like when I was a kid, lefties were forced to learn to write with their “off” hand, because that was the right way, the way everyone had to be. They can’t stand different, I think mainly because they can’t/won’t understand, well anything different. It scares them that they are like everyone else, that’s unacceptable, someone has to be better and if someone is better then there has to be a worse. It may be just a simple game of better or worse to them. I have no idea why there is a game or why they play it every day or why they seem to be transfixed in it. Are they so insecure in their views/lives that they have to play?

  224. 224.

    Searcher

    I’m looking forward to, by the time the actual primary election rolls around in another 15 years, the race being between Warren and Harris and a bunch of also-rans.

  225. 225.

    prostratedragon

    @Gin & Tonic: Way late, but this is too true not to amen. Also applies to some older leftier-than-thou types I’ve seen about, though not here.

Comments are closed.