Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Fight them, without becoming them!

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

You know he’s going to shit a cat.

How stupid are these people?

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

… gradually, and then suddenly.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Tick tock motherfuckers!

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

When we show up, we win.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread

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Another DNC debate — this time in Houston — tonight. Not sure my mind has been sufficiently strengthened to survive this performance again…


The important question, IMO, is which Repub grifter(s) are getting the rakeoff on this stunt? Per ABC:

… President Donald Trump’s campaign intends to counter-program the Democratic primary debate hosted by ABC News and Univision with an ad blitz that includes two full-page newspaper ads and flying a massive banner in the air that blasts socialism just before candidates take the stage.

“Socialism will kill Houston’s economy!” the ad reads, along with a number to text, according to a rendering provided to ABC News by a Trump campaign official.

The campaign is spending around $7,500 for the flight and production of the ad, which is scheduled to fly from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. local time — an hour before Democrats are set to square-off in their first one-night debate this cycle…

Speaking of dumb stunts, and the Media Village Idiots who love them:

If your mind immediately goes to full-frontal strip-tease, too late — a Libertarian candidate already tried that back in 2016. (He didn’t win, either.)

Speaking of MVIs, Yang’s got a new fan:

Still, keeping it positive:

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  5. 5.

    JPL

    Some Bahamians traveling to the U.S. are being asked for additional paperwork, e.g. utility bills or pay stubs. Imagine that.

  8. 8.

    Kay

    ROCHESTER, Minn./CHICAGO (Reuters) – American farmers helped elect President Donald Trump in 2016 on hopes he would shake up Washington and turn around a struggling agricultural economy, but many of his policies have actually stung farmers, notably his trade war with China and biofuel waivers for oil refiners.
    Many farmers are angry, and some are directing their anger not at the Republican president, but at Washington’s bureaucracy.
    Yet polls show that while Trump’s support in farm country has slipped, it remains substantial.
    Instead of directing their anger at Trump, dozens of farmers interviewed by Reuters blasted the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other Washington institutions they believe are thwarting his true agenda. Unsubstantiated conspiracy theories involving USDA staff are circulating in farm country and gaining traction online.
    Farmers are struggling with how to emotionally process their pain from the Trump administration’s policies, and anger at the USDA may be a coping mechanism, said Ted Matthews, a Minnesota psychologist who has spent 30 years counseling farmers and rural residents across the Midwest.
    “The question I hear from farmers who voted for (Trump) is, ‘We believed him when he said he would help make the farm economy better, that we could save our farms. Now, who do we blame?‘” Matthews said.
    Many farmers told Reuters they intend to support Trump again in his re-election bid in 2020.

  9. 9.

    Patricia Kayden

    Democrats have so much to slam Trump for tonight during their debate. I hope they focus on tearing him down. Imagine inviting the Taliban to the U.S. or contemplating giving $15 billion to Iran? Or lying about the part of a hurricane? There’s so much fodder.

  10. 10.

    Kay

    Other disgruntled farmers have also alleged, without offering evidence, that federal agriculture employees are overestimating corn plantings as part of a plot to hurt Trump in the 2020 election.

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    Speaking of grifty shit-stains, The Post gave Ed Rendell op-ed real estate to trash Senator Warren. He also manages a dishonest sideways smear on PBO, all while acting as surrogate for the candidate running primarily as Barack Obama’s White Friend. Not a good look.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It’s not stupidity. It’s dependency. Trump fights hard for their status. Without him, who would be their champion? Trump can do no wrong because the consequences of him doing wrong are unthinkable.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Well, it makes some sense. Trump is literally handing them 28 billion dollars in public funds, for which we will get absolutely nothing back. The entire stimulus was 800 billion – public schools, infrastructure, rescue the economy from a collapse…this is just a straight-up gift:

    Senior Trump administration officials are reportedly concerned that the president’s $28 billion bailout for farmers hurt by his trade war exceeds the limits of the Commodity Credit Corporation, the government corporation founded during the New Deal that is distributing the funds.
    While attorneys at the Department of Agriculture have reportedly signed off on the bailouts, some experts say existing laws may not apply to such a large and ongoing operation. “There is little precedent for an open-ended farmer bailout of this nature,” says the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein, who reports there is strong political pressure within the federal government to distribute the bailout funds quickly.
    Joe Glauber, who served as the chief economist at USDA in the Bush and Obama administrations, said he had doubts about the legality of the program. “This is an incredible amount of money and sets a terrible precedent. What’s unusual is the magnitude: It’s just enormous.”

  20. 20.

    hueyplong

    Trump being exposed as stupid and arbitrary, his campaign promises as nothing but empty slogans is… proof of a liberal conspiracy abetted by Washington bureaucrats.

    A dime spent on outreach to these people is a turnout dime wasted.

    They can’t be converted. They have to be outnumbered.

  21. 21.

    OzarkHillbilly

    President Trump is considering issuing a $15 billion line of credit to Iran to help them weather the financial chaos created by the sanctions we placed on them after Trump tore up the Iran nuclear deal, according to a new report from the DailyBeast. We would be doing this to get them to come back into compliance with the deal that Obama negotiated and which was working and being complied with until Trump abrogated the deal. That led to sanctions and to Iran eventually ‘violating’ the deal.
    ………………………
    Whether or not it’s US money though is really besides the point. We’re now considering giving Iran a bailout to get them through the damage caused by our sanctions which we put on them after we tore up a deal the US had agreed to and all to get the Iranians to come back into the deal.

    So a huge, colossal screw up for no purpose at all.

  22. 22.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    No wonder they’re going broke

    I’m with you. I hope they all lose the ground and it’s sold at bottom. Let’s see some market remedies. Bring in some new people. Perhaps some of the immigrants they use as employees can purchase it and “revitalize the sector”.

  26. 26.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    This screw up isn’t all on Trump. The entire Right screeched about the Iran deal. Now watch them all back this. The whole movement is bankrupt. They had no alternate plan! None of them!

  27. 27.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @OzarkHillbilly: The hostages was a major problem. And then the rescue plane failed. Heard yrs later that there may have been some sabotage from people supposedly on our side. Ted Koppel’s nightly TV show ticking the days off didn’t help.

    He was mocked for putting up sun panels on the WH. Reagan gleefully tore them down.

    And then he suggested there should be no outdoor Christmss lighting. That was simply unChristian, if not unAmerican!

    From his yrs in TV selling that TV show and various products, Reagan had developed a folksy persona and a whole team of master selling/advertising artists who could really sell him to the public/his adoring fans.

    Interest rates went way up in the last part of his term. My dad loved the rate on his savings, but they hurt many people.

    He was mocked endlessly by ‘the pundits’ for his rather simple, straight-forward presentation of his Christian faith when asked. He was the 1st national figure to talk publically about being a ‘born again’ Christian. Many Americans had never heard the term before. I always thought it was weird how the ‘good Christian folk’s voted for a divorced, nominal Christian at best over Carter. He was up against the beginnings of ‘the vast right wing conspiracy.’

    Falwell started his ‘Moral’ Majority just before the election period, which galvanized the people angered by the Civil Rights Movement and what progress blacks had made.

  28. 28.

    OzarkHillbilly

    More than 1,000 US polling sites closed since supreme court ruling, report finds

    Jurisdictions once monitored by the justice department for racially discriminatory voting practices have collectively closed more than 1,000 polling places since a watershed 2013 US supreme court ruling released the jurisdictions from oversight, according to a new watchdog report. In 757 counties and county equivalents that formerly had to pre-clear voting practice changes with Washington, 1,173 polling places disappeared between 2014 and 2018, a study by the Leadership Conference Education Fund, part of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights coalition, found.

    The closures could disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color, especially when combined with restrictive voter ID laws, gerrymandering and aggressive voter roll purges, the report warned. Last month, a separate study found that US election jurisdictions with histories of egregious voter discrimination have been purging voter rolls at a rate 40% beyond the national average.

    The top three states for polling site closures were Texas (–750), Arizona (–320), and Georgia (–214), which all have Republican leadership.

    The trend has also accelerated with 69% of the recorded closures occurring after the 2014 midterm elections. Thirty-nine per cent of the jurisdictions in the study had seen an overall reduction in the number of polling places between 2012 and 2018.
    ………………………………….
    Elections officials mostly did not reply to requests for information about polling closures, the report said.

    “Many either did not respond to requests for comment; responded but did not provide meaningful information; or responded with false information,” it said. “By far, the most common justification for closing polling places was no justification at all.”

    Officials have defended polling closures by saying the rise of mail-in voting and other changes means fewer polling sites are needed. But the watchdog group warned mail-in voting was not in wide use and no study had been undertaken to evaluate the impact of voting practice changes on minority groups.

    “Closing polling places has a cascading effect, leading to long lines at other polling places, transportation hurdles, denial of language assistance and other forms of in-person help, and mass confusion about where eligible voters may cast their ballot,” the report said. “For many people, and particularly for voters of color, older voters, rural voters and voters with disabilities, these burdens make it harder – and sometimes impossible – to vote.”
    …………………..
    In some places, officials advanced claims for polling site closures that were highly controversial, blaming laws requiring wheelchair access and citing concerns about school safety in an age of mass shootings, the report said.

    Because the only thing that will stop an old black woman in a wheelchair with a gun is steps.

  29. 29.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The old(est) farmers are less far Right and less angry than the younger farmers. Elderly as opposed to middle aged. They often have multi-generational meetings, where two or three generations attend and I always end up working with the oldest person there, because they’re the most reasonable and least entitled and angry. There was even a Left-leaning farmer group at one time- Farmers Union. I used to see their newsletter when I delivered mail.

  31. 31.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: Well, one thing is clear: if we’re going to hand over money to farmers hurt by an unnecessary trade war…we’re going to have to cut entitlements. A LOT.

    @OzarkHillbilly: Even more entitlement cuts to fund this one, naturally.

    SEEYA, Social Security! Toddler-king tariffs and Iran-deal-whoopsies aren’t gonna pay for themselves, you know.

  32. 32.

    Jeffro

    @BellyCat: @OzarkHillbilly: I think it was the way he visited his peanut farm every three days or so, and charged the Secret Service for riding around the property on his golf carts.

    Actually it was all the fishy overnight stays by Air Force crews at his farm.

    No wait, it was the $30,000 party that his AG threw in his honor at the farm.

    Or the way he would bang on the Fed to lower rates so that he could refinance his farm debt.

  33. 33.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Betty Cracker: The ‘white friend’ who in the early days of the primary praised Obama for being ‘amazingly articulate’!! Or maybe it was ‘surprisingly’! We might forgive, but we NEVER forget!!!

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @JPL:

    I go back and forth now that we’re in the primary. I want less plugged in readers to know who I’m talking about.

  39. 39.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Kay:
    I’m afraid what we will end up with is modern day share-cropping, as I suspect it will be “investors ” who buy those farms.
    Same with the bailout: who gets that money? The farmer or the landlord? its been a long time since I lived in farm country, but even then, they didnt own much of what they farmed.

  40. 40.

    JPL

    @Baud: His mother received his award, because the Secret Service wouldn’t let him in. You’re right the entire thing is odd.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @debbie:

    Trump has kept his word…on the issue that’s most important to these farmers. And that issue isn’t their financial well-being.

  44. 44.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    But they think he’s doing all this tariffing for them. He is not. He is doing this for his corporate buddies. Farmers are the sacrificial goat. They will never get their market share back. Never.

  45. 45.

    Kay

    @hueyplong:

    A dime spent on outreach to these people is a turnout dime wasted.

    This worries me. 60/40 Trump or 70/30 Trump areas where one does outreach to the 30 or 40 is not wasted and is probably essential to win. And has always been essential to win. Every single winning Democrat has both held down totals in rural areas and turned up totals in urban/suburban areas. They have to win states. It’s always been patched together and that hasn’t and won’t change. Smaller cities are also part of this. A shit ton of people live in small cities surrounded by rural areas.

  46. 46.

    Ken

    I’m sure someone will dig up Trump’s tweets soon, but how does this 15 billion compare to the amount in the Iranian accounts that were unfrozen when the Iran deal originally went through? You know, the Iranian money that was characterized by Trump as some kind of outright gift or bribe.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    I’m wondering about the market share. There is one huge Wisconsin dairy operation who are eating the tariff because they think this will end and they can’t lose Mexican and Canadian buyers.

  49. 49.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    You’re correct. There are a few disgruntled farmers we can get. We just need to understand that trying to win the group isn’t in the cards.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    @Ken:

    Don’t let’s ask Trump! Let’s ask the entire Republican establishment who all threw a hissy fit over the Iran deal!

    This is their baby. All of them. No reason to just ask Trump. There are thousands of high profile Righties who had opinions galore on the Iran deal. Ask all of them. In fact, JUST ask them. Trump’s a liar and a waste of time to interview.

  52. 52.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Ladyraxterinok: The no outdoor Christmas lighting suggestion was to save energy. Carter was the first and for a long time the only president to take ideas like energy conservation seriously.

    I find it bizarre that Clinton, Gore, Carter—the 3 national political leaders who were ‘born again’ SoBaptists—are the 3 most vilified by the so-called Real True Christians.

  53. 53.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Why would anyone trade with an unreliable partner, even if their stuff was better? There are always other places to go to get your stuff.

    This has gone on for two years now. Relationships have been established and are growing stronger day by day.

  55. 55.

    Ken

    “Difficulties strengthen the mind as labour does the body.”
    Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher

    Spoken to the slave who was writing down his thoughts, while eating grapes from a tray held by another slave, grown by slave labor on his estate…

  58. 58.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I’d like Andrea Mitchell and the rest of them to camp out on Tom Cotton’s doorstep. He was one of the biggest mouths trying to undercut the Iran deal when PBO was negotiating it. He thought Trump trashing the deal was a genius move, and Cotton lies constantly about the unfrozen assets being a giveaway in the form of “pallets of money.” Let’s hear from him on this $15 billion bribe trial balloon.

  63. 63.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Democrats haven’t tried to “win that group” since the 1990’s. There’s no risk they will try that. That’s solely an internet thing.

    They have to try to hold down margins in 70/30 counties. They can’t do it on turn out alone and they can’t do it on suburban college educated women alone. They have an opening with WWC women- Trump has lost substantial ground there. Health care, child care and education. Those are their issues anyway. They can just run on the straight D platform but you have to ask people for their vote.

  64. 64.

    Baud

    @Ken:

    Ipso facto.

    @Kay:

    Democrats haven’t tried to “win that group” since the 1990’s. There’s no risk they will try that. That’s solely an internet thing.

    I agree. But the Internet thing ends up as an anti-Dem meme.

    Which reminds me, how has Thomas Frank blamed the farmers’ situation on Dems?

  65. 65.

    Kay

    I’m not an expert, but vaping is WILDLY popular in my small rustbelt city. We have THREE vape shops in our dying downtown. It doesn’t have a libertarian culture here- it has a proudly working class/low income culture. That group. Not Grover Norquist.

    They’re younger Trumpists, so maybe they’re like our younger voters and only come out at 15% so no one cares about them but the vape ban is NOT going to be popular.

  66. 66.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: My daughter says the proposed vape ban has infuriated her Gen Z peers. If Democrats are asked about it (and they will be since the media will both-sides it), I hope they say ask why Trump wants to ban flavored vape juice after six mysterious deaths and yet does nothing on high-capacity magazines (clips, whatever) and assault rifles after hundreds of mass shootings.

  67. 67.

    JPL

    @rikyrah: miamiherald.com/ It’s on their front page.

    Other documents CBP agents are requesting include proof of income, property ownership, utility bills, employer contact information and proof of pre-purchased return flights.

  69. 69.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker: Somebody should tell trump about the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Americans who are killed and injured every year by firearm addiction.

  70. 70.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Oh, the whole thing is incoherent. The Sainted Howard Dean curried favor with the pick up truck set, and he’s supposedly some Lefty hero. Bernie Sanders too. While at the same time insisting mainstream Democrats are reaching out to Republicans. Which is it? A 50 state strategy or a base-only strategy? They have to decide.

    Thomas Frank is an idiot. He romanticizes these people and certain Vermont politicians seem to fall for it every time.

    Ask WWC women for their vote. It’s as simple as that. I’m not advocating pleading with MAGA hat wearers.

  71. 71.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Baud: I’m out of the loop on vaping except that at cardiac rehab, they said vaping is harmful in the same way smoking is. It could be treated like smoking I suppose, with the same kind of restrictions and requirements. Tax it to pay for health care costs to the rest of us. That’s not an unreasonable position.

  72. 72.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah: For what it’s worth, he’s taking his knocks on Twitter. Maybe we should thank him for helping unite the non-Biden base behind Warren?

  73. 73.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I knew they would be mad. There’s a female comedianne who has a whole (very funny) bit on her WWC mother vaping. That’s a real thing! She imitates her “mom” blowing out the huge cloud of smoke. If you closed down vape shops and tattoo parlors 1/4 of our town square would be empty storefronts. Three of each.

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    ICYMI, Dick King Smith (c.f. first tweet) wrote the Babe book that inspired the movies (Babe, Babe pig in the city).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  75. 75.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: I’ve heard that half of why kids/teens like vaping is that no one can tell if they’re vaping nicotine concoctions or pot concoctions. (Meaning half of them are actually getting high-high, not just ‘smoking’-high)

    I’m shocked Anheuser-Busch hasn’t come out with a way to vape Budweiser. They’d better hurry up before they lose a whole generation. ;)

  76. 76.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    My son is working for a contractor who picks up the electricians in a 9 passenger van and takes them to the site. He says there’s a choking cloud of vape in there. It’s the same in western Michigan- Trump Country. There’s a vape shop every mile.

  78. 78.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    It is a problem in high schools and it is sad that smoking dropped dramatically and they picked this up, but there are a lot of adult vapers! And they’re not all Grover Norquist’s interns. It’s a WWC thing here, to the extent that there are jokes about it. The fancier kids reject it.

  79. 79.

    Matt McIrvin

    @BellyCat: It was kind of a fluke that Carter got elected in the first place, basically a national reaction to Watergate combined with the way he actually, temporarily appealed to white Southern evangelicals.

    The economy was in the crapper when he came in and it just got worse– so, like Clinton and Obama, he took heat for the previous administration wrecking everything but unlike them, it didn’t get better during his term. The oil crisis went into its second acute phase, there was gasoline rationing and such, and that pissed everyone off. Carter’s reaction was a very rational, eat-your-peas, urging-shared-sacrifice one, and nobody wanted to hear it. The Iran crisis was just the icing on the cake. Reagan came in promising to fix everything and basically MAGA and people ate it up.

  80. 80.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: I haven’t read Atrios in a while, but one of his (many, many) hobbyhorses was that politicians weren’t somehow entitled to people’s votes. They have to ask for them and give voters a reason to vote for them.

    There’s a large element of truth to that, along with the concurrent realization that someone is going to get the office and it’s much better to have someone nominally sensible than a RWNJ that will try to loot the country and turn back the clock 170 years… Purity kills.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I’m surprised that adults in the Trump Administration think adults don’t like candy flavors. These are people who drink southern comfort and coke. Like- ten of them. It’s a 5 pound bag of sugar.

  82. 82.

    Baud

    @Another Scott:

    It’s not wrong, in the same way it’s not wrong to say that no union is entitled to anyone’s support, and no progressive cause is entitled to anyone’s support. But for some reason, Atrios never makes those arguments to encourage unions and progressives to do better.

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    Voters, one on one, are actually nice. In person. People hate phone calls. Me too.

    They’re generous. They’ll hear you out. I don’t know if it persuades anyone but it can’t hurt and it’s a nice thing all by itself.

  84. 84.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I’m surprised that adults in the Trump Administration think

    That would surprise me too.

    Trump’s objective is to react dramatically for the TV. Nothing else matters.

  85. 85.

    Another Scott

    @BellyCat: Lots of Republicans thought that Nixon was on his way to being President for Life after his landslide win in ’72. There was some talk about repealing the 22nd Amendment. An early version of the “permanent Republican majority” meme, so to speak. A “silly 3rd-rate burglary” foiled their plans. Whatever Democrat followed Nixon was going to be demonized – it’s what they do.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  86. 86.

    Sab

    @Kay: Vaping is wildly popular with my stepkids’ friends ( in their mid thirties.) My stepdaughter and her husband vape. They all started it to stop smoking.

    Oddly, my step-son who is a recovering drug addiict (alchohol, cocaine, heroin) is strongly anti-vape because he thinks it’s too dangerous. He quit heroin because fentanyl.

  87. 87.

    Betty Cracker

    From The Post:

    A former White House staffer and several congressional aides and activists say they’ve been told the Trump administration has moved away from seeking an Obamacare replacement and is instead focused on damage control should a judge rule next month to topple the entire law.

    Trump made waves earlier this year by promising to come up with yet another Obamacare replacement plan, but a high-stakes case before the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is threatening him and other Republicans seeking reelection with a political wild card, as it could result in millions of Americans losing coverage as the election season heats up.

    “There seems to be a decreasing appetite for the ‘big plan’ reveal and instead just focusing on responding to the 5th Circuit with prudence and a minimum of hysteria,” a former senior administration official wrote me in an email yesterday.

    “Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated,” said a blithering idiot in 2017.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @Sab:

    “only children like sweet things!”

    Captain Morgan is like a WWC staple at this point. Who do they think drinks all that pop?

  91. 91.

    Citizen_X

    “Socialism will kill Houston’s economy!”

    That plane should be followed with one dragging a banner that says “IMF: US spends more on oil subsidies than defense!”

    Socialism is Houston’s economy.

  93. 93.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ladyraxterinok: More generally: It was possible to make a convincing-sounding case in the 1970s that the entire program of New Deal/Great Society liberalism had been tried and failed. US involvement in the fucked-up Vietnam War had been started under Kennedy and Johnson, both liberal internationalists. Stagflation, the combination of high wage/price inflation and high unemployment, was something that people had an idea was not supposed to happen under liberal economic theory. The USSR was seemingly on the march and going through this massive, scary military buildup.

    Maybe worst of all, the great advances in civil rights and civil liberties under the Warren Court and the Johnson administration had been followed by a huge and seemingly uncontrollable increase in crime–today, a leading theory is that it was the delayed result of leaded gasoline emissions, but of course racists and law’n’order fanatics made hay over it. Surely the problem was that we started coddling Bad Guys.

    Nixon was really the beginning of the conservative-movement backlash. But Nixon was less ideologically pure than some of them, and the wave was interrupted by Nixon being revealed as a total criminal; Carter was the backlash to that. He couldn’t reverse the bigger trend, though; he was just a blip. Reagan’s election cemented it.

  94. 94.

    rikyrah

    @Betty Cracker:

    I hope they say ask why Trump wants to ban flavored vape juice after six mysterious deaths and yet does nothing on high-capacity magazines (clips, whatever) and assault rifles after hundreds of mass shootings.

    that should be the only answer they all give

  96. 96.

    sdhays

    @debbie: He’s not doing for anybody, really. There’s no coherent idea of what he wants in a deal, because he started the trade war without any concrete goals. That’s why it’s doomed to failure. There’s no actual goal except for “winning” and “fairness”, and there’s nothing the Chinese can offer except total surrender to check those boxes. Negotiating with Dump is a fool’s errand, and the Chinese are better off twisting the knife and hoping for a sane President to take office in 2021.

  99. 99.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay:

    Now, who do we blame?

    The person who forced them to vote for Dump against their will. Good luck in their search.

  103. 103.

    rikyrah

    Sick immigrants make case in Congress to protect medical deferral

    Rachel Maddow reports on testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee by immigrants who are in the United States legally under Medical Deferred Action and who would likely die if they are deported by the Trump administration’s elimination of that program.

    Medically fragile immigrant appeals to Congress in fight for life

    Maria Isabel Bueso talks with Rachel Maddow about fighting for her own life and the lives of others who are dependent on medical deferred action for continued life-saving medical treatments in the U.S., and her advocacy in Congress today in the hope that legislators will prevent the Trump administration from deporting sick children to their deaths.

  104. 104.

    rikyrah

    Reaching new depths, NC Republicans show ‘contempt for democracy’
    09/12/19 08:00 AM—UPDATED 09/12/19 08:13 AM
    By Steve Benen

    In recent years, Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina haven’t exactly honored basic norms of American governance. We are, after all, talking about a group of GOP officials who’ve imposed sweeping voting restrictions, redrawn district lines in ways that were later deemed racist and illegal, and stripped an incoming Democratic governor of his powers, before he took office, because he had the audacity to win an election.

    At times, it’s seemed as if North Carolina Republicans went out of their way to identify the democratic norms that undergird our political system, so that they’d know specifically which principles to attack.

    Take yesterday, for example. The News & Observer in Raleigh reported:

    In an early-morning move that shocked and angered Democrats in the chamber, the N.C. House of Representatives voted to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the state budget. Just over half of the 120 members were present to vote.

    Rep. Jason Saine, a Lincolnton Republican, made the motion to reconsider the state budget, and chaos in the chamber quickly ensued. Democrats in the chamber vehemently objected to the bill being brought up, saying they were told there would be no votes during the 8:30 a.m. session and that the session was just a formality so work could begin.

  105. 105.

    Gelfling 545

    @BellyCat: I always felt that he had to give the country a lot of bad news about energy that nobody wanted to hear. There were other things but mainly this.

  107. 107.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay: Let’s send Iran all the Republican a-holes who signed that damn letter.

    On second thought, sending them Tehran Tom, etal might be seen as a massive insult.

  110. 110.

    BellyCat

    @Matt McIrvin:

    …[Carter] actually, temporarily appealed to white Southern evangelicals.”

    This is the most baffling part. Did they somehow realize that Carter was the “real deal“ when it came to Christian Values ™ and would not tolerate their buffoonery?

    Carter’s founding and continued role in Habitat for Humanity is nothing short of amazing, as far as humanitarian action is concerned.

    Americans do a great job proclaiming “sacrifice“ but they want to hear no message about this unless it is wrapped in hate and bigotry.

    “Sparrows on curtain-rods if necessary — but only if my sparrow is plumper than ‘theirs’!”

  112. 112.

    CaseyL

    JFTR, I vape. It saved me from “real” cigarettes. I like the flavors. (I was very happy that the vape company I order from, which Juul closed down, reopened and is selling again). And I am an old.

    So the anti-vaping thing has me pissed off, too.

    PS: One thing I have noticed, is that the vapes targeted at younger people are VERY high in nicotine. I smoke 1.8%; the new, more powerful vapes apparently start at 5%. That’s incredibly dangerous.

  113. 113.

    Matt McIrvin

    @BellyCat: Carter was one of them– he could talk a good line about God and Jesus, and they responded. But at that point in his career he wouldn’t give them racist red meat, which was what they REALLY wanted, and Reagan would. That became clear by 1980.

  114. 114.

    Calouste

    Well. you can lend 15 Billion to Iran, or, like Boris Johnson, you can plan to use 15 Billion to build a bridge over one of the largest ammunition dumps in the world.

  115. 115.

    rikyrah

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Why should their response be hysteria? They’re not the ones losing their health insurance. I hate these people.

    Did you see Maddow’s show last night. She did a segment on the immigrants who have serious illnesses that have been told that they gotta go and die. She said that the GOP was like, ‘ why all this hysteria. That’s not happening, and why don’t the Democrats have a hearing on the REAL issues.’

    These muthaphuckas !

  121. 121.

    The Moar You Know

    The economy was in the crapper when he came in and it just got worse– so, like Clinton and Obama, he took heat for the previous administration wrecking everything but unlike them, it didn’t get better during his term. The oil crisis went into its second acute phase, there was gasoline rationing and such, and that pissed everyone off. Carter’s reaction was a very rational, eat-your-peas, urging-shared-sacrifice one, and nobody wanted to hear it.

    @Matt McIrvin: The political class took note, and they’ve never forgotten: if you try to solve a problem in a way that requires an American to sacrifice anything, you will be booted off the stage and cursed for the rest of your life as “history’s greatest monster” – for real.

    Reagan then proceeded to prove that doing the opposite would earn you the worship of most of the country.

  125. 125.

    germy

    Andrew Yang’s campaign manager just called to tell me that at tomorrow night’s debate, Yang will be doing "something no presidential candidate has ever done before in history.” He declined to go further than that.— Sam Stein (@samstein) September 11, 2019

    Admit he has no business being on that stage?

  127. 127.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @debbie:

    He is doing this for his corporate buddies.

    The rich and corporations hate the tariffs too. He’s not doing it for them. To echo…
    @sdhays:

    There’s no actual goal except for “winning” and “fairness”

    Trump has believed in tariffs and trade wars all his life. Like white supremacy, it’s one of the things he’s on record and consistent about. He’s a bully and is positive that America is the biggest kid on the block, so shoving everyone around ought to win. It’s what he did in real estate. It’s not working, but as a conservative he responds to his (very few) principles failing by doubling down on them. Same with racism. The more trouble he has, the harder her works to hurt brown people. I know, it’s bizarre to think Trump believes in anything, but he really does have a couple of principles, of the ‘say what you like about National Socialism, it’s an ethos’ kind.

  128. 128.

    Gin & Tonic

    @germy: Weird hyper-local thing about Yang. I guess he went to Brown Univ, so some time recently in some context I can’t remember, he issued a photo of himself holding a cup of Del’s Lemonade (a RI delicacy) with a straw in it – immediately losing any potential votes from RI, because real Rhode Islanders know that you never, ever, consume Del’s with a straw (it’s a soft-frozen treat, approximately the consistency of slush or very, very wet snow, and you do *not* use any utensils, you just slurp it from the cup.)

  131. 131.

    Kay

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I don’t mind Yang. He’s very positive and energetic and he has this interesting thing going on where he looks like he’s both watching the debates and also in them. It’s a very strange thing that he’s involved in! I like him for recognizing how it’s basically an absurd process. The youths like him, too, if the high schoolers who drift sullenly thru my living room are any indication.

  132. 132.

    Kay

    @germy:

    I think he’s going to say he will serve one term. Either that or have a bipartisan ticket. Look- they have to do something. There are the front runners and the rest. There isn’t that much one can do :)

    I fully expected him to be an egotistical unbearable asshole bidnessman and I’m so relieved he’s not I give him an A just for that.

  133. 133.

    Kay

    Is Tulsi in the debate? Tell me “no”. I don’t want to alarm anyone but I think she’s a malevolent force in the world and should be opposed. This is my gut! I warned you.

  134. 134.

    James E Powell

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It was everything you said, plus the fact that the New Deal Coalition finally fell to the Southern Strategy. Carter tried to straddle it and it didn’t work. Beginning almost immediately after he was elected, Kennedy worked to sabotage Carter. Reagan began his campaign with anger at the Panama Canal treaty being the centerpiece of his foreign policy. Then the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis fell into his lap.

  135. 135.

    germy

    @Kay:
    Candidates who didn’t qualify:

    Colorado Senator Michael Bennet
    Montana Governor Steve Bullock
    Former Maryland Congressman John Delaney
    New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
    Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard
    Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan
    Philanthropist and activist Tom Steyer
    Author Marianne Williamson

  136. 136.

    catclub

    @The Moar You Know:

    Reagan then proceeded to prove that doing the opposite would earn you the worship of most of the country.

    The opposite being having the recession early and sharp in your term, so that the nation’s GDP is rapidly expanding in 1984. The economy contracted 5% in 1980. That would have killed Reagan, or anybody. It is better to be lucky than good.

  139. 139.

    Kay

    @germy:

    Oh, thank God. Also no Delaney. I have come to loathe him. I removed him from our local poll. I had to leave Tulsi in because she has an idiot fan on the central committee. He’s also on the Bd of Elections and he sometimes votes with the Republicans because he’s an asshole. He’s a part time DJ and (not kidding) he transports corpses for the state of Michigan, which is apparently some kind of 1099 gig people can do for that state?

  140. 140.

    germy

    @Kay:

    He’s a part time DJ and (not kidding) he transports corpses for the state

    I wouldn’t trust someone like that. Probably takes selfies with the deceased for laughs…

  141. 141.

    The Lodger

    @Kay: He transports corpses AND he’s on the Board of Elections? I see an interesting moneymaking opportunity there…

  142. 142.

    evodevo

    @OzarkHillbilly: Well, at the time this happened and fun was being made, I sympathized with Carter….Swamp cottontails are larger than the bunnies you see in your yard, and they can swim like fish…and if alarmed or being chased by a predator, they will head right for your canoe/skiff and jump right in. A panicked large male wild rabbit is definitely NOT something you want in the boat with you – they can do a lot of damage with their hind feet if you try to grab/hold them and are not averse to biting you with their big teeth…

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