Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Everybody saw this coming.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

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

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

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

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

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

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

The revolution will be supervised.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2020 / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Happy (OK, Fierce) Thoughts

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Happy (OK, Fierce) Thoughts

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Gonna be another busy, strife-ful day in politics, so…

And furthermore:

Reader Interactions

136Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Been awake since 1:15. Tried to fall back asleep. Twice I got close only to get hit with a charlie horse each time. Finally gave up at 3. Blech.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    In case you were wondering why Bernie didn’t top Indivisible’s progressive wish list.

    Senator Sanders receives very strong scores in the policy platform section. He has not committed to enacting democracy reform as his top legislative priority in 2021, or to eliminating the filibuster. Although he plans to attempt an alternative strategy using budget reconciliation, this omission poses a significant barrier to enacting his legislative agenda.

    Biden and Amy came in last (although they didn’t respond to the questionnaire).

  5. 5.

    JPL

    @OzarkHillbilly: blech indeed.   I woke at 2:30 and read my favorite news site for awhile.   I noticed Baud was commenting at 3:00 so figured that insomnia was attacking  a few of us.

  7. 7.

    JPL

    @Baud: Bernie mentioned that he was going to release his medical records in two weeks.   He’s using trump’s definition of two weeks.

  9. 9.

    Sloane Ranger

    OK. So I voted in our UK general election just now. It’s raining felines and canines here but the polling station was seeing a steady throughput.

    I voted Labour, even though I prefer the Lib Dems clearer position on Brexit, since Labour came 2nd in this constituency last time. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely to make a difference. This is a safe Tory seat with arch Brexiteer Peter Bone winning by over 19000 votes in the last election.

  10. 10.

    satby

    @Baud: huh, look who outscored Wilmer on “Day 1 Democracy agenda”, whatever that is. I didn’t bother to dive deeper. I left the local Indivisible group after about 8 weeks due to the constant whinging about “Bernie woulda won” in early 2017. And never regretted it.

  13. 13.

    HinTN

    IG Horowitz literally begged the Senate to give him the authority to investigate AG Barr.

    Process that for a sec.

    Mrs H watched the hearings and that was her immediate hot take.  He begged them to give him the authority. I’d that isn’t clear condemnation of the AG I don’t know what is.

  15. 15.

    satby

    @JPL: like he released his taxes? I doubt it. He’s not gaining traction, I think he’s going to stay his usual irrelevant irritating self for the rest of the election season.

  16. 16.

    Betty Cracker

    I’ve been up since 3 AM or so too, thanks to the stupid dogs. Been reading about the British election a bit and will probably put a post up about it later.

    @Sloane Ranger: Steady turnout is good! Fingers crossed for y’all.

  25. 25.

    Betty Cracker

    Regarding Horowitz, I don’t know what to make of him. Josh Marshall says he’s a hack who’ll do the bare minimum to fulfill his job requirements while doing everything in his power to avoid pissing Trump off.  He pegs him as a bureaucrat who has more integrity than someone like Bill Barr but lacks the real courage needed to take these institutional vandals on. So, akin to a Rod Rosenstein. Marshall cites the moribund FBI New York Field Office investigation as an example of Horowitz’s hackery and cowardice.

  28. 28.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:

    I think that lot tend to be ein Bisschen trigger-happy when it comes to disagreeing with the party leadership, in particular Nany Pelosi.

  30. 30.

    Betty Cracker

    Speaking of the thoroughly corrupt hack Bill Barr, Eric Holder wrote a WaPo op-ed about his successor:

    As a former U.S. attorney general, I am reluctant to publicly criticize my successors. I respect the office and understand just how tough the job can be.

    But recently, Attorney General William P. Barr has made a series of public statements and taken actions that are so plainly ideological, so nakedly partisan and so deeply inappropriate for America’s chief law enforcement official that they demand a response from someone who held the same office….

    The American people deserve an attorney general who serves their interests, leads the Justice Department with integrity and can be entrusted to pursue the facts and the law, even — and especially — when they are politically inconvenient and inconsistent with the personal interests of the president who appointed him. William Barr has proved he is incapable of serving as such an attorney general. He is unfit to lead the Justice Department.

    Well said, sir.

  31. 31.

    Tony Jay

    @Sloane Ranger:

    Good God, that Mr Peter Boooooooooone? You poor thing.

    Still, I salute your vote and hope there are many, many like you. All of the ‘political experts’ are expressing shock at the exceptionally large turnout* they’re seeing at the polls, despite the crappy weather. I will, of course, be up all night watching the returns come in, so an absolute state tomorrow morning no matter what happens.

     

    *Yes, it all depends on where they’re voting, but the first clues that the 2017 Polling was widely off the mark was long queues at the polling booths. We can only hope.

  32. 32.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Meanwhile, there’s a group that’s actively causing headaches for Pelosi and the party, and surprise, it ain’t the much-maligned progressives:

    House Democratic leaders are bracing for some defections among a group of moderate Democrats in swing districts who are concerned a vote to impeach President Trump could cost them their seats in November.

    I’ll reserve my contempt for those motherfuckers.

  33. 33.

    germy

    Sunrise is not a change in the sun. It’s a change in your perspective. Such is the way of much of the meaning we find in nature.

    Meaning. A sunrise.

    These things exist through you. This fact doesn’t diminish the sunrise. It just means that you have a vital role in your reality.

    — The CryptoNaturalist (@CryptoNature) December 11, 2019

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    They really cowardly since the impeachment vote should be unanimous among all House members, but none of the quotes attacked Pelosi so it’s a different beast.

  36. 36.

    Warblewarble

    FACT. tRUMP committed many impeachable crimes.Censure does not cut it. THERE ARE CRIMES,THERE ARE DANGERS.

  38. 38.

    Tony Jay

     

    Oh, and there’s this.

    Владимир Жириновский
    @Zhirinovskiy
    Mr. Prime Minister @BorisJohnson
    I and the entire LDPR party sincerely wish you victory in the election today. With the support of people, you will quickly bring Britain out of the European Union!

    Always nice to see the Far-Right Russian Nationalists come out to support their ideological fellow-travelers. You can bet both your bum-cheeks on the BBC air-brushing this particular demonstration of support out of their coverage, though. I mean, can you imagine? People might start asking questions about why the BBC hasn’t even bothered pressing Johnson and Co about the Intelligence Report on Russian Interference in British politics they’ve been suppressing, and we can’t have that, can we?

     

    SMH

  39. 39.

    debbie

    @satby:
    That’s all most of the candidates will be: an irritation. I really wish they’d shorten the campaign season. Drastically.

  40. 40.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    It’s unequal because our part of the legislation is popular with all voters (family leave is popular) and their parts of the legislation is popular only with their voters, or, in the case of what Kushner contributed, not popular with anyone outside the far Right. So they get to run on our legislation and we can’t run on theirs. They won’t be apologizing for family leave. Their voters want it. In fact, Kushner and Ivanka are planting stories in the NYTImes promoting their roles in family leave. No Democrat will be planting stories in the NYTimes promoting their role in Kushner’s protection of the Saudis.

    “Bipartisan legislation” pays much bigger dividends for them. They get their shitty unpopular policy and our popular policy.

  46. 46.

    Baud

    @Kay:

     

    I think one thing Dem voters need to figure out is whether we want our elected officials to produce results or to fight.  Republican voters have chosen fight. We seem to want both, and they really are to odds with each other.

  47. 47.

    OzarkHillbilly

    But yesterday was different. At 2.20pm I went to the cliff’s edge for closer inspection. The ash cloud was still climbing. Six-thousand feet. Nine-thousand feet. Twelve-thousand feet. I finally knew something was wrong.

    Steam eventually dissipates. But ash lingers. It obscures. It hugs everything it can hold. You could no longer make out the island’s northern or southern edges. The pit was a nothing; all grey powder. I thought I could smell sulphur, the rotten gas creeping up my nostrils and slithering down my throat. It wasn’t. But the body knows what a volcanic disaster smells like.

    If you dig deep enough anywhere on the North Island’s volcanic plateau you’re likely to uncover tephra layers (rock fragments and particles). The earth’s history book where catastrophe is recorded and preserved in the ground we walk on, build on, is a well for water and geothermal steam. The soil acts as a colour chart – whites, brown, a sulphuric yellow – indicating when and how our local volcanoes blew their tops. In the new subdivision across from my family home in Kawerau the builders turn into archaeologists as they remove monstrous greywacke boulders, serpentine rocks, and crystal-flecked stones to make way for a wastewater system.

    In some ways examining the layers can seem deceiving. Unlike glaciers, the ice mountains that do their violent work over thousands of years, carving valleys and gorges out of the land, tephra can fall gently. It cloaks the landscape in warmth and dust, following the contours of the hills and terraces and valleys. When the rivers eat away at their banks you could mistake the tephra layers for mosaics. All colour and stone. The mosaics reveal the earth’s own double helix, giving us insight into the things that were happening long before we were around.

    European philosophies and theologies have plenty to say both for and against anthropocentrism and human supremacy. The folly that when we turn the earth to our purposes the mastery over fate is ours. Māori philosophies argue that mastery is impossible and only connection with the environment and ecosystems is possible. You act sustainably.

    It only took Whakaari a moment to remind us that this is so. We are not her master. We are, tragically, at her whim.

  48. 48.

    Jager

    Mrs. J is finishing up the first year of building her furniture wholesale business, it has been a heavy lift starting from scratch. She’s been cranking 55-60 hours a week since she started. She goes to bed between 9 and 9:30, way too early for me. Our new house is a lot smaller than the old one, I have to be quiet. So I read in the guest room or on the sofa and sure as hell fall asleep around 10, that means I wake up at 3 o’ god damn clock in the morning. Anze the Dog, gets up with me, waits on the patio while I drink my first cup of coffee, takes his morning pee and then he goes back to bed.

  51. 51.

    Baud

    The clock is ticking on Cory Booker’s candidacy. He is barely registering in most polls and is struggling to make the December 19th debate stage for the Democratic primary because of it.​ Despite meeting the donor threshold to qualify, he has yet to register at least 4 percent in four early-state or national polls or 6 percent in two early-state polls.

    …..

    It appears that Booker’s problem is that he is well-liked by Democrats across the ideological spectrum, but few love him. This is ironic given his focus on the power of love.

  52. 52.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Broader family leave that will cost something to employers. That’s why this is so narrow. It’s just federal employees. You can nearly always describe centrist policy as “narrow”- it’s the main difference between the two wings of the D Party. Now in that case I would have made the deal- family leave is bedrock D policy- right in our wheelhouse- and it’s worth it, but bipartisan deals benefit them more than us. Always. Their policy is broadly unpopular and ours is broadly popular. They’ll run on space force with their base and conservative media (Fox) and family leave to the broader electorate and elite media (the NYTimes).

    That is exactly what they’re doing, right now.

  53. 53.

    JMG

    The “moderate” Democrats are so dumb at politics (I grant some of them are freshmen/women). They will receive no credit, none, from any Republican for voting against impeachment. All they will do is dampen Democratic support. Fewer volunteers. Fewer donors. So they can spend next fall watching GOP ads in which faces morph into Pelosi’s with fewer resources to respond. Do they honestly think they got elected because their districts wanted a new face to support Trump? They were hired to oppose him.

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @Kay:

     

    Is Space Force unpopular? I haven’t seen polling.

    Family leave is popular but I don’t know if family leave for feds is popular.

  56. 56.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    That’s why their base is always happy and ours is always unhappy. Their base literally gets more. Incidentally, their base will also happily take family leave when they need it and continue to safely back Republicans with no personal cost at all. Maybe this is the “right thing to do” – I don’t know- maybe bailing out Trump with farmers on the trade bill was worth it- but it isn’t going to help Democrats in 2020. It helps Republicans. Republican voters pay nothing for their support of these people, because Democrats ride to the rescue.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    @Kay:

     

    Their base is happy because our base is unhappy. They have sold out their children’s future to that end.

     

    It helps Republicans. Republican voters pay nothing for their support of these people, because Democrats ride to the rescue.

    Do you have a solution that does not require us to abandon liberal policies?  That’s what keeps GOP voters safe and secure. I’m not a good person, but most Dems want to be, so that’s a handicap.

  58. 58.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay:

    Incidentally, their base will also happily take family leave when they need it and continue to safely back Republicans with no personal cost at all.

    Yep, just like they’ll insure their young adult children and not worry about preexisting conditions thanks to the ACA, then vote for the Republicans who want to rip all that away and throw them back to the tender mercies of the insurance companies.

    It’s a problem when only one party takes on the responsibility of governing for all while the other coasts on demagoguery. It warps the crazy party, obviously, but it warps the sane one too, IMO. I don’t know what to do about it.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Our base can stand it when they push and promote only far Right policy because it’s not popular and they don’t want it anyway. Our base is unhappy when they couple narrow popular liberal policy with big far Right policy. Understandably. It’s a better deal for them. That’s a fact – maybe it’s a defect and a difference between the two parties that can’t be helped but liberal criticism isn’t irrational. It’s rational. They get much less substantively and they get substantial downside, politically.

  60. 60.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I guess I don’t view the world in the same way. But you’re view is probably more in tune with how most of our voters feel.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    It does get discouraging. I was watching “Wall Street” last night with my youngest. He was jeering at 1980’s hairstyles, btw. Puffy. Lot of…air in those hairstyles.

    In that movie the Wall Street villain gives a passionate speech to the naive working class newbie Wall Streeter and in that speech he says “1% own 50% of the wealth” (it’s like a ‘get real!’ lecture- ugh- awful) and I’m thinking, 1987. We were saying this in 1987.

    We were too. Or I was. Going on and on about it :)

  63. 63.

    Elizabelle

    I suspect a lot of us might suffer insomnia because of a feeling of despair.  Especially those of you who watch much MSNBC or televised news.  Caught a bit of BriWilliams last night, and those “Pulitzer-prize winning journalists” who were there to assure us that no way Trump would be removed.  Click.  But the damage was done.

    Events can change, and when they do, they will catch everyone “by surprise.” You have to do the right thing, even if you do not get credit for it.

    One sleep aid:  Youtube:  I love this City Confidential episode on Salt Lake City.  Yeah, there were a few pipe bombs, a car bomb, murders … but the narration is so soothing.  Mountain views.  Older white people.  Lots of discussion of the Mormon church. Its history. Documents purportedly about the Mormon church. Another frame of a Mormon temple. Zzzzzzz……

    Put it on at the lowest volume where you can make out the words, and the screen lighting one notch above darkness.  (Ozark, I don’t know if this would work for you, since there’s the Mrs. who might not like laptops in bed.  Maybe just earbuds for you??)

    To this day, I have no idea who was setting off those pipe and car bombs.  Blessedly.  (And the following video is a City Confidential about Nashville and the Old Opry.  Who the hell is Stringbean?)

  65. 65.

    Betty Cracker

    Looks like some newspaper editorial boards are finally getting around to saying Trump should be impeached and removed. The Orlando Sentinel — a conservative paper — did today

    ETA: One thing I appreciate about the Sentinel impeachment/removal editorial is that they called out Florida Republicans for being in the tank for Trump. I don’t think it’ll make a difference. The Republicans who don’t fully share Trump’s desire for Putin-style ethnostate oligarchy are too cowardly to oppose him. But it’s gratifying to see them called out for it.

  67. 67.

    No One of Consequence

    @germy: Thank you. That is a great quote, and a helluva first engaging thought of the morning.

     

    Much appreciated,

     

    – NOoC

  68. 68.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:   Events have not played out.

    No one talks about it, but there are those tax returns and financials, and it’s likely John Roberts does not want to set the POTUS above the rule of law.  Besides which, Trump is toxic for his [Roberts’] party.

    Do the right thing.  Also, can they bring up more charges of impeachment, even if the Senate refuses to convict over Ukraine?

    And: I don’t think this impeachment is on the GOP’s and corporate media’s time table.  Nancy and managers could slowwwwww this down considerably, right?  Just like Nancy Pelosi was never going to be on board with impeachment … never.  Corporate Nancy. Not.

    We are told so much shit that is totally Republican-spin, but presented as inevitable.

  73. 73.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:  But could they add in more charges as it proceeds?  And McConnell really will fast track this?

    Is this Trump’s only dance with impeachment?  It should not be.  [You can see that I have not been following politics much lately, for my own sanity.]

    I read your WaPost article on moderates possibly declining to support impeachment, and was relieved to see that my own Congresswoman is not among them.

  76. 76.

    Elizabelle

    @Betty Cracker:   It’s entitled “President Trump is Defending Jewish Students.”  Cannot tell you more, cuz not giving them or Jared a click.  Would guess that Adam Silverman will weigh in later.

    Let us not forget, a Jewish student was among the dead, killed in that Jersey City kosher supermarket, by the Black Hebrew Israelites. Body riddled with bullets.

    Speech:  protect.  Guns:  you’re on your fucking own.

  77. 77.

    joel hanes

    @OzarkHillbilly: 

    Māori philosophies argue that mastery is impossible and only connection with the environment and ecosystems is possible.

    “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
    The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, 1949

  83. 83.

    Elizabelle

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:   Trump is advising someone else on Anger Management.  LOL.  If he even wrote that one.

    And congratulations on the anniversary, and the successful marriage.  That’s wonderful.

  84. 84.

    mrmoshpotato

    @debbie: Bring on the British campaign laws!  Shorter campaigns?  Yup!  Drastically less cash allowed to be spent campaigning?  Oh yeah!

  89. 89.

    Elizabelle

    @mrmoshpotato:  I think radically shortening the campaign cycle and the cash allowed within would strengthen our democracy.  As it is, it enriches the wrong folks, depletes good candidates, and bores the fuck out of the public, who get negative ad upon negative ad.

    It’s not like a long campaign in 2016 saved us from Donald Trump.

    There are so many reforms we need to make, when we take the Senate as well.  It will happen.  It must, or we are done. [I wish that could happen in 2020.]

    We need to start a groundswell for dumping or radically changing the Electoral College, which perverts election results at present.  That issue may outlive us, but we need to try.

    I want to throw up when I hear the GOP howler monkeys talking about “overturning an election.”

    The Electoral College did that for them.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m just glad Democrats in the House set a marker- set the water line. If they hadn’t have done this the corruption would be bottomless. The standards have dropped dramatically since Trump took office. We would have had no standards, which is really scary.

    One institution functioned. It functioned imperfectly but it’s the only one that is holding. The rest were weak and collapsed.

  92. 92.

    Betty Cracker

    @Elizabelle: Have you heard about the movement afoot to get states to pledge to allocate their electoral votes to the popular vote winner? It’s still a long shot since rural states don’t want to give up their over-representation, but it’s more likely than a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College, IMO. The total EC of states that have agreed to the compact equals 196 now.

  93. 93.

    JPL

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Wasn’t it just last week someone was criticized for mentioning that Barron couldn’t be a baron?

    When I saw that tweet, I realized that there is no hope of redemption for the asshole.

  94. 94.

    Kay

    When this is over we need to take stock and look at which institutions and organizations held up and what it was about them that made them more resilient and able to take body blows and still stand. That should be the template for rebuilding. What was the culture, leadership, rules and process that they had the others didn’t? Partly of course it’s the individuals – you don’t get a whole that’s worth anything when it’s composed of low quality parts. But that’s probably self-selecting, to a certain extent.

    Our rebuilt institutions need to be stronger if one man can topple so many.

  95. 95.

    tobie

    @Betty Cracker: The Republican base has no objection to “free stuff” as long as they’re the recipients and don’t have to pay for it and can rest assured that “those people” don’t get it. There is no more subsidized place than rural America as far as I can tell. We should all have it so good.

  96. 96.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:   You have been so good on this topic.  It’s true.

    And agree with you about conservatives benefitting from Democrats’ hard-fought victories on policy, and not giving one iota of recognition to that.

    We live in a really sick society.  We should follow Canada’s example and not allow Fox News and Rush, etc. to poison the populace so thoroughly.  There’s a not zero chance they will win all of this, for the rest of our lives.  We cannot let that happen.

  97. 97.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend!

    Oh Dump…

    Should it be an old noir where Bogart is slapping the hell out of some woman?  Then Thunberg might decide to slap the hell out of Dump!  (Wear gloves Greta.  Who knows what’s in that orange crap.)

  98. 98.

    Kay

    So far, I would say, the State Department is much more resilient than the DOJ. Which makes me a little sad as a lawyer but seems to be obviously true, judging by the public face.

    I’m a little shocked at how corruptible the DOJ was. Jesus. Get off your knees, you cowards. Embarrasing.

    Needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. There was structural rot there or it wouldn’t have collapsed.

    I always thought the FBI was insanely over-rated, so no surprise there for me. The FBI has a very good PR department, not so much on the crime-fighting. They “couldn’t find” Rudolph, the anti-abortion terrorist and he was leisurely camping and hiking for three years.

  101. 101.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Here’s Greta’s morning tweet. God, I love this girl.

    A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.

  102. 102.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:   And Comey didn’t have the balls to take on his own NYC FBI field office.

    Clean that rat’s nest out.  Toxic environment.  Perhaps the FBI needs to rotate assignments more than they think.  Bring in some fresh eyes.

    Yeah, what’s happened at DOJ is tragic.

  104. 104.

    tobie

    @Elizabelle: when I get discouraged, I remind myself of the election results in 2018 and more recently in Louisiana. You think these voters won’t vote in 2020? No, they want Trump gone and order restored.

  107. 107.

    SFAW

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    The day the country no longer has to hear/read the vileness spewing from that asshole’s piehole or “keyboard” should be declared a National Holiday. He is such a sick, evil, vile, stupid bastard. It’s draining.

  110. 110.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: Not to pick on you and Kay, but note that what was approved in the DoD budget isn’t really “paid family leave”, it’s “paid new child birth/adoption” leave.  There were proposals to make it broader (including for care of sick relative, etc.), but that was stripped out.

    It’s a good benefit for those who qualify, but given the aging of the Federal workforce not many will immediately be in that bin.  (But it will encourage more younger people to consider Federal employment, so that’s good.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  113. 113.

    SFAW

    @Elizabelle:

    We should follow Canada’s example and not allow Fox News and Rush, etc. to poison the populace so thoroughly.

    I sometimes ruminate on whether Rupert Murdoch, Moscow Mitch, or Putin has done more to destroy democracy in America. I’m currently in the Murdoch “camp.

    ETA: And “All of em, Katie SFAW” is not a permitted response (whether from you or any other Juicer).

  114. 114.

    zhena gogolia

    So Bj is going to totally ignore all the awesome speeches the Dem members of the Judiciary Committee gave last night? Demings, Swalwell, Neguse, Jayapal

  115. 115.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    I don’t think Warren’s (very focused) anti-corruption message has found a broader audience though- there will need to be more and blatant corruption before it becomes a top-tier issue. But it can’t continue forever. There has to be a functioning, enforceable set of rules for a market economy to survive. Ordinary people have to be able to operate in the economy with assurances that they won’t get slaughtered because it’s unequal- sophisticated actors will always beat less sophisticated actors. If you’re a small business person you simply don’t have time to vet every product and service. You make assumptions. The thing runs on trust. Without that it’s too risky for regular people- they’ll be frozen.

     

    An example. I like expensive perfume. It’s one of the (few) things I spend money on. I bought some from Amazon and it’s not the real thing. I know what the real thing smells like. I can’t buy from them anymore. I no longer trust them as a reputable retailer. Now, I have other options, but what if everyone did what they’re doing?  A normal purchase becomes riskier.

  120. 120.

    Elizabelle

    @SFAW:   It’s Murdoch.  And Ailes.

    Putin benefited from the fields they salted.  No Fox News, no Trump.  The Birchers among us would not have their microphone.

    We need to get that shit off the air.  There has to be some workaround WRT the First Amendment.  The Founders could not have envisioned broadcast propaganda.

    Joseph Goebbels sure did.  And he’s clearly been carefully studied.

  121. 121.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:   Anti corruption.  Consumer protection.  Accountability.

    It’s why corporate media is painting Warren as a dilettante but also a severe threat.  Jeff Bezos’ WaPost has Annie Linskey, who is right out of the Amy Chozick playbook.  It is sick.

    Elizabeth Warren believes in regulated capitalism and knows her subject well.  For that she’s getting pilloried by the left and right.  Or ignored, in the case of Jen Rubin, who is puffing up Biden and Mayor Pete and pretty much ignoring EW.  It is sick.

  124. 124.

    tobie

    @Elizabelle: yes, I forgot Virginia 2019 entirely. Now we just need to Bloomberg, Steyer, Buffett, Bezos, Bill Gates et al to buy up the right-wing media universe and turn it over to the public.

  126. 126.

    SFAW

    @Elizabelle:

    I give Murdoch the edge over Ailes, only because Murdoch has done the same thing in Australia and England. [Yes, I realize I had confined the “question” to America.] I don’t recall if Ailes sought out Murdoch to launch Fox, or Murdoch found Ailes. Given Murdoch’s actions in other countries, I’m inclined to think he was the initiator, but I don’t know.

     

    Of course, in the long run, I guess it doesn’t really matter, other than whom to go after if things ever get fixed.

  129. 129.

    NotMax

    In space, no one can hear you clean.

    The ESA’s new, four-armed garbage-collecting robot is on a mission to clean up the atmosphere — and die trying.

  130. 130.

    polyorchnid octopunch

    @germy: This is very much a problem created by fixed election dates. As soon as Harper passed legislation to create fixed election dates (rather than the traditional Westminster ‘elections are called by the Prime Minister with a time limit on when they must be called’) our elections started getting longer and more expensive.

  132. 132.

    Elizabelle

    @polyorchnid octopunch:   I wonder if that is something Canada and the US can regulate with legislation.

    In the US, where money IS free speech (legally, rather than that which drives out free speech), that would be a heavy lift.

  135. 135.

    J R in WV

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Today is my 49th wedding anniversary. I must have been a child when I married

    This past spring was our 48th anniversary, so you’re about 6 months ahead of us. We got married 3 days after wife’s college graduation up at the U. My dad had to sign a permission slip as I wasn’t 21 yet, tho I was in the Navy. Technically still a child by law!

    Happy anniversary, Dorothy!!

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