On a flight back to Baltimore.
Flight attendant welcomes passengers flying to the “spectacular, beautiful, amazing city.”
Passengers cheer.
— Annie Karni (@anniekarni) July 29, 2019
"Web traffic and new subscribers to https://t.co/P6UWTbyXOT were double what’s typical on a Saturday. And subscription orders are on track to hit quadruple of what the paper receives on a normal Sunday." https://t.co/FsG08m3yEL
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 28, 2019
Guess where House Republicans are planning their retreat for later this year? Baltimore! Via @mikedebonis @PKCapitol https://t.co/nyjwZPd3Aw
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) July 29, 2019
Pity the poor staffers stuck with trying to rebook this monster, again, with only six weeks’ advance notice…
… The Republicans spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe arrangements that have yet to be made public. The website for the hotel, the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, and multiple third-party hotel booking sites show the hotel as sold out for the days of the retreat, Sept. 12 to 14, while showing availability at other nearby hotels.
During past congressional retreats, Capitol Police have cordoned off the premises to all but lawmakers and authorized attendees, meaning no unrelated guests are permitted.
The House Republican Conference handles the retreat planning in conjunction with the nonprofit Congressional Institute. Jeremy Adler, a spokesman for the conference chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), did not respond to a request for comment Monday. Congressional Institute President Mark Strand did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment…
The Marriott Waterfront is not in Cummings’s district, though just barely — it is four blocks inside the edge of Democrat John Sarbanes’s circuitous 3rd District in Baltimore’s Harbor East neighborhood.The GOP retreat was originally scheduled for the remote Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., in late January, but Republican leaders postponed it because of the then-pending government shutdown…
The important thing is that he doesn’t care. https://t.co/rqud7rbPNT
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) July 28, 2019
He agrees with Trump. Governor Hogan turned down $900+ million for Baltimore's Red line, 10K jobs for a light rail line serving African American areas. https://t.co/BkcOePxusR
— KD (@Fly_Sistah) July 28, 2019
So weird that Trump never tweeted about Elijah Cummings before July 27th, and then he couldn't stop. pic.twitter.com/aLoziUcJHs
— Schooley (@Rschooley) July 28, 2019
[tapping head guy]
Can’t be racist if you also would have talked about vermin and infestations while attacking a Jew!https://t.co/Vf0Z3HstMp pic.twitter.com/3H6ttWLNWC
— Jacob T. Levy (@jtlevy) July 28, 2019
Remember when the POTUS was responsible for Baltimore? pic.twitter.com/RtrrHQ8WT9
— Schooley (@Rschooley) July 28, 2019
Next person who interviews Trump should ask whether Tower Grille has corrected the conditions that found "evidence of live mice" there. https://t.co/APG7EOtPhs https://t.co/0dz2ABHmKd
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) July 29, 2019
This tweet not making any sense aside, he doesn't consider Baltimore residents or refugees to be human beings, just rhetorical devices against (other) people he hates. Don't let politics turn you into someone like this pic.twitter.com/QN6FnjTYAq
— Almaqah (@_Almaqah) July 30, 2019
smike
“May you live in interesting times” is a curse I think I’m coming to understand.
mrmoshpotato
@smike: What about ‘fat, orange, facist, Soviet shitpile, mobster, conman times’ because 77000 purity morons and Hillary haters couldn’t be fucking bothered to keep this pile of shit crime family out of the White House?
Mike in NC
We just docked in Dover, England and there is an outstanding view of the famous white cliffs from the upper deck. Later today we tour Dover and Canterbury by coach. This is probably our last overseas trip due to our age (65+) and my wife’s health, so we’ll make the most of it!
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC:
We’ll expect tales. :)
rikyrah
@Mike in NC:
Have a great time ??
hervevillechaizelounge
The Nazis’ favorite film studio, Deutsche Film Gesellschaft, produced an entire documentary comparing the chosen folk to rats: The Eternal Jew.
Hitler told the director he didn’t want the film to overtly demand Jewish genocide; he wanted the film to depict Germany as a shithole due to Jewish malfeasance—then the lumpenmittel would call for Jewish eradication and believe it was their own idea.
Seems like old times . . . .
daryljfontaine
Can we arrange for the retreat to be overrun and devoured by rats? As opposed to merely attended by vermin.
D
JoyceH
What gets me is the news narrative that Trump just went off on Cummings and Baltimore because he’d seen a Fox News segment about it. Gee, you mean the fact that Cummings is investigating and planning to subpoena Trump’s daughter and son-in-law for the very same thing that Trump insisted for years Hillary Clinton should be locked up for had nothing to do with it?
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mike in NC:
Have a great time and keep us posted on the sights you see!
Charluckles
I can’t get over how terrified a subset of Americans seems to be about cities. Baltimore is beautiful, with a million fun and interesting things to do and a friendly population. My kids have an uncle who lives there and we have had a number of fantastic trips to visit his family.
But what really kills me is the substantially chunk of my own city that seems frightened about heading downtown. I live in a city that is about as safe and “white” as one can get and yet there are a constant barrage of letters and comments about how things are unsafe and the degenerates are taking over. It’s bizarre.
OzarkHillbilly
Now we need to do something about the disgusting rat and rodent infested mess that is in the White House.
JPL
@Mike in NC: I hope that you share the pictures.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mike in NC: Pictures or it didn’t happen.
OzarkHillbilly
@Charluckles:
Haven’t you heard? There are black people living there.
They watch the local news where “if it bleeds, it leads”. That’s all they ever hear about, all the horrible things that happen there. A while back there was a very brazen carjacking and murder of a pregnant young black woman in downtown STL, a truly horrendous crime. Headline news for over a week, as I recall it was better than 2 weeks of daily articles about it, and dawg only knows what the local broadcasters were spewing out.
It is little wonder modern middle class suburban mom and dad are a little frightened at the prospect of taking their little bundles of joy into the city when all they ever read/hear about is the crime that happens there and they never see the vast majority who just go about their lives, suffering the same petty little indignities everybody else does..
Gvg
I have occasionally checked Fox News website to compare how it presents whatever news is compared to the other mainstream news sites. What has always jumped out at me isn’t how differently they present a particular news story that validates my opinions, it’s how many of their stories everyday are about lurid murders and crimes. It may be true that news has always been if it bleeds, it leads, however at Fox, it’s more all blood, preferably perverse, all the time. They really are creating a set of paranoid watchers. They definitely don’t show how crime rates have fallen for decades. Just count how many stories on the web page are crime, compared to the total. WaPo usually has one click bait crime on their front page every day. The others are simular. Fox will have around 7.
Ken
@Mike in NC: I hear the best thing about visiting Canterbury is the stories your fellow tourists will share.
MJS
@Gvg: Unless, of course, the murder(s) in question were committed by a white person radicalized by Trump. Then Fox wants you to know that corn hole is the latest fad, and it’s sweeping the nation!
MJS
@Ken: Except for that Miller guy. Stay away from him. He’s strange.
Another Scott
@OzarkHillbilly: Yup. Senastionalism is a huge problem.
We don’t have a lot of stranger violence around here, but there is quite a bit of property crime. Our local community paper covers it in small print in a column that is far from the front page. “7500 block of XYZ street, item stolen from car.” It’s the same every week. There’s no gigantic crime wave. TV should cover crime the same way. Even in the most “dangerous” cities, the vast majority of people aren’t direct victims and don’t take their life in their hands when they go to work, etc.
J has some friends that live in Reston some of whom are amazed that she goes in to DC to concerts, etc., on her own. It’s flabbergasting…
Cheers,
Scott.
donnah
@Gvg:
And FOX television is where you find “COPS”, an exhausting and depressing scare show that shows policemen arresting people who are at probably the worst times of their lives. Not making excuses for criminals or drug abusers or dealers, but this is exploitation for the sake of entertainmant.
My own mother watches it and I ask her to give it up because it’s just garbage. When my son moved into an apartment in a large complex, she warned him about keeping his doors locked because there were some of “those people” living there. Yes, I believe the show and FOX news do promote racism. And my mom is a racist, but she’d deny that.
Kristine
@Mike in NC: ::envy:: Have a wonderful time!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Charluckles: Where do you live? I’m in DC now but grew up in Grand Rapids, MI and the folks that live out in the ‘burbs there – at least some of them – say the same things about the city. And it’s not mostly the folks from the toniest suburbs (who regularly go downtown to live the high life) but the folks in the more blue collar suburbs. I think there are two factors going on: 1) seeing any person of color on the street is an indication, to them, that a crime is about to go down – seriously, some people just are not comfortable if they see a black person; and 2) the suburbs they live in are in something of a slow decline, and they’re casting about for proof that their living situation is still better than somewhere else in the metro area. Basically they moved to the ‘burbs so they could look down their noses at the city and they’re going to keep doing it regardless of the reality that the city is actually getting nicer than the ‘burb they chose to move to.
Shana
@Charluckles: It has always been thus.
When I was in my 20s during the mid-80s a friend’s mother came to visit her in Chicago. The friend came from a small down in downstate Illinois and her mother was very nervous about visiting “the big city.” One beautiful Saturday afternoon they were walking around her neighborhood which was a very nice part of the city where lots of young professionals lived. Mom, who was still very nervous about being there asked her daughter why all the people around them were wearing pastel-colored clothing. Without missing a beat the daughter replied they were all in a gang called The Pastellos. I love that story.
Shana
@Another Scott: When my daughters were in high school I acted as a chaperone for a field trip from NoVA to DC. The high school is a couple of blocks away from a Metro station and we walked there to take the Metro downtown for the field trip to a museum. While walking there with the kids I discovered that there were several who had never taken the Metro before and also a number who had never been to downtown DC or been to any of the museums.
Remember this is a fairly affluent area of suburban Virginia and all the museums are free. I was flabbergasted.
bluefoot
@Charluckles: Fear is a weird thing. I had a childhood friend visiting last year. We grew up in the ‘burbs and he has lived in the burbs down South for ~15 yrs, though he spent quite a few years in various cities (and stationed in a war zone). He and his wife were worried about me taking public transit at 10pm in Cambridge, MA. That was odd. I took a self defense course sponsored through work, and there were women there who live in wealthy suburbs/neighborhoods who were afraid to leave their houses at night. Not even to walk the dog. I can’t imagine being that afraid all the time. And I’m not white, and a single woman.
My brother says the same thing in the city he lives in – his friends (male and female) in the suburbs are afraid to meet up with him in the city for drinks/dinner all the time.
MaryL
Resettling refugees in Baltimore would be a boon for the city, which has seen a decline in its population in recent years.