I almost did a post about brokered conventions, but then I remembered something my old gran used to say about “borrowing trouble” and thought better of it. Instead, here is quite possibly the coolest song ever recorded, Só Tinha de Ser Com Você, from Brazilian singer Elis Regina and singer-songwriter-pianist Antônio Carlos Jobim:
Ah, that’s better.
Did your old gran have a saying about borrowing trouble? I had two old grans and was lucky enough to keep both decades after most of my peers lost their old grans; both of mine died within the last 5 years. They were very different women.
One was a ferociously judgmental yet adventurous school teacher, Baptist preacher’s wife and health food nut who lived in town and only listened to Christian programming on the radio. The other was the occasionally foul-mouthed, cigarette-smoking wife of a long-haul trucker who lived out in the country and listened to Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline.
They had one thing in common: both were known for making cutting remarks. (Maybe it’s an old Southern lady thing.) Oh, and the other thing they had in common: all the vegetables they cooked were bacon flavored. In fact, until I was an adult, I thought all vegetables just were.
Schoolteacher Gran once took a look at me and asked if I used a lawn mower to cut my hair (it was the late 80s, and my ‘do was quite stylish for the time, thankyewveramuch!). Country Gran once informed a plumpish cousin that while the top the cousin was wearing might be sold in that size, that didn’t mean she should wear it. Ouch!
PS: If you do want to read something about brokered conventions, Charles P. Pierce covers it here.
mrmoshpotato
Listen up? Oh crap, we’re in trouble.
MattF
Since open thread, here‘s a ‘well, that’s strange’ WaPo story from Northern Virginia. An Episcopal priest suddenly left his congregation, and now parishoners (and everyone else) are trying to figure out what happened. It’s… complicated. And different people are all telling somewhat different stories.
zhena gogolia
Betty, back to Raskolnikov (I saw some interesting suggestions in this morning’s thread) — I came up with Young Johnny Depp or Young Nicolas Cage.
Someone said James Norton — he was a brilliant Prince Andrei, but I don’t see him as Raskolnikov.
I still haven’t thought of a good Katerina Ivanovna.
Eric U.
Borrowing trouble is a good name for it. I have resolved never to tell someone something they don’t want to hear. At least not in the context of politics or cilantro.
joel hanes
Did your old gran have a saying about borrowing trouble?
From a sign I saw in a bar, not from my old gran, but :
De 100 problemas tienes
10 por pendejo
90 por metiche
prufrock
My granny taught me about borrowing trouble.
She was a Floridian southerner too. Must be a thing.
thebewilderness
Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you was my Gram’s favorite saying as I blithely trundled off on a jousting match with trouble.
Mr. Longform
Charlie Pierce says:
Right. But I don’t trust the guy who isn’t really a Democrat to play by the rules. And his cry-baby following would all rather see Trump re-elected than see their Stented Candle snuffed out.
robmassing
One of my old grans was highly neurotic and narcissistic and like to talk about us in Yiddish so we wouldn’t understand. The other had borderline personality disorder with a soupcon of paranoid schizophrenia. They didn’t have many sayings
LuciaMia
One Gran’s saying, “You gotta eat a peck of dirt before you die.” Don’t remember what prompted it.
hitchhiker
Here’s my gran story.
She was a Finnish woman who always told us she was Swedish, because apparently Swedes look down on Finns or something like that. She had to marry my grandfather because she was pregnant with my dad … scandalous in the small Upper Michigan town where they lived. She was snippy with me and my 7 siblings, probably because the only time we saw her was when she got roped into looking after us.
My mom told me that when this gran was near the end of her life, she and my dad went to visit her for what they all assumed would be the last time. When my mom got a chance to be alone with her, she made a nervous little speech about how grateful she was for my dad and thanked my gran for bringing him up, blah blah … and my gran looked at her and said, “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
I smile every time I think of that moment.
MattF
@robmassing: Hmm. Sounds like my grans. I’ll omit the details, but my father’s mother used to tell people to ‘go shit in the sea’, in Yiddish. And my mother’s mother was… strange.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Okay, this sounds unlikely, but hear me out: what about Helena Bonham Carter as Katerina Ivanovna? She can do crazy (Bellatrix Lestrange), and she can do lovable (Lucy Honeychurch), and she can do crazy AND lovable (Princess Margaret, at least in The Crown). She’s a very different type than the woman I saw in my mind’s eye as I read the book, but I bet she could pull it off.
Cacti
Especially not one who styles himself the leader of a revolution.
Betty Cracker
@hitchhiker: Wow, what a great story! :)
Ajabu
@Betty Cracker:
here is quite possibly the coolest song ever recorded
Nope. Aguas de Marco. Same album .
Trust me on this one…
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: I saw Ivanova and thought we were talking about Babylon 5. Then I realized the discussion had gone high brow on me. I have no suggestions. Mr DAW makes fun of me because I’ve never heard of any actors.
Mnemosyne
Pfft. I come from a long line of midwestern Catholics. We don’t just borrow trouble, we keep it in our basement until people stop asking for it back.
AliceBlue
I don’t remember my mom’s mother–she died when I was very young. But there are plenty of family stories about her. She had been baptized as an infant and her Baptist neighbor kept telling her that wasn’t enough, she had to be immersed all over again as an adult. “Well, I think a few drops of water sprinkled on my head did me as much good as dunking you in a muddy creek.” When the woman persisted and told her she would never get into heaven, she said that if people like her were in heaven, she’d just as soon not go.
Don’t remember any stories or sayings from my dad’s mother. It’s her voice that stands out in my memory. She spoke in that soft southern accent that you rarely hear anymore. Words that end in “r” sounded like “ah” (supper was suppah and water was watah).
PJ
The whole Elis and Tom album is fantastic, but I particularly love Modinha and O Que Tinha de Ser. And the way they crack up when they’re singing Aguas de Marco at the end.
Betty Cracker
@Ajabu: I know and love it well, but for my money, Só Tinha de Ser Com Você is tops on that album. It may be because I first fell in love with the Susannah McCorckle version of Waters of March.
JPL
@MattF: The comments mention that he’s a homophobic, abusive minister. The article was interesting and for a few seconds, I was afraid he was going to run for president.
piratedan
thought the song was nice and pleasant… cool…. ummm…..
this would be my nomination as something that qualifies as “cool”…. naturally, ymmv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqyG8-euggQ
Butch
My parents were in their 50s when I was born and I never knew any of my grandparents. I know that one of my grandfathers disappeared several times to go live with younger women and always came back home eventually, but that’s about all I can tell you about them.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
I see Katerina Ivanovna as more emaciated — but Bonham Carter does have the acting chops! I have been trying to think of a Brit.
Martin
That’s a new phrase to me. My grandmothers couldn’t have been more different (but both were wonderful). My maternal grandmother worked in an insurance company in Manhattan, never drove a car once in her life, was a wonderful cook, always had a little toy for me when I visited, and regularly knit me things that not once fit, and enjoyed a laugh at herself that she could never figure that out – but never stopped. You could never meet a sweeter person. She taught me to be kind to everyone.
My paternal grandmother had a terrible childhood, became a nurse, enlisted in the war, sort-of dated Clark Gable, was a recovering alcoholic, and traveled the world. She enjoyed cooking but wasn’t very good at it, couldn’t knit, never had a toy for me, but would take me down to the military base and ask the soldiers to show me around, and tried to send me a blowgun from Peru but it was confiscated by customs, which was probably for the best. She taught me to break the stupid rules, and help those being pushed down by those rules.
JPL
Congratulations Betty because you didn’t put the cart before the horse and write about a brokered convention. just sayin
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Claire Bloom was great as the other Katerina Ivanovna, the one in The Brothers Karamazov (with William Shatner as Alyosha). I bet she could do it.
zhena gogolia
Both my grandmothers were dead long before I was born. One was a Slovak peasant. One was a mother of eight from Indiana. I don’t know much more than that.
Betty Cracker
@Martin: A fine inheritance in both cases!
JPL
@Martin: How lovely. My Mémère was a sweet person and made the most glorious donuts. Her sons all catered to her whenever she snapped her fingers.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: I don’t think I have ever watched film adaptation of a Dostoyevsky novel, but maybe I should.
ssdd
Yup. “Don’t go borrowing trouble” was a phrase I heard from my mom and her mom. I’ve passed it along to my daughter, so the chain remains unbroken.
eldorado
no need for that. npr will be along shortly to waste valuable air time speculating (breathlessly) about it instead of informing their listeners about, well, anything that might be useful.
Fair Economist
@MattF:
Make a movie about it called “Rectorman”. Everybody has a different story, but they’re all told in a polite and uptight manner.
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato:
That nuttin’ compared to, “We need to talk.”
piratedan
@Fair Economist: maybe an evangelistic Rashomon in Hollywood pitch terms
trollhattan
@hitchhiker:
Heh. Gran FTW!
Probably would have sounded extra funny in either Swedish or Finnish.
donnah
My West Virginia grandma never learned to drive. She was a coal miner’s wife who stayed home, raised six kids, and was a terrible cook, but we grandkids adored her because she adored us.
I remember that I was newly married and my mom, her mother (the WV grandma) and two of my mom’s sisters were discussing a relative whose husband was cheating on her. My sweet-as-sugar grandma said, “If my husband cheated on me, the next time he dropped his drawers I’d chop that thing right off.”
I was so shocked that I just sat there with my mouth hanging open. My aunts just roared with laughter.
Betty Cracker
When I was a teenager, my country gran used to allow me to smoke packs of her Winston Light 100s (bought in cartons by the trunkful on semi-monthly trips to MacDill AFB) on the theory that smoking a “good old fashioned cigarette” would keep me away from drugs. Of course, I was a major pothead behind her back…
Baud
I’m more of a lender of trouble than a borrower.
The best defense is a good offense.
Mnemosyne
I’m probably going to disconnect from social media this weekend before I go berserk at the number of people who keep insisting that the nomination is all wrapped up now that 2 (two) of the 57 primaries and caucuses are complete. That’s not even 4 percent of the total, people! Calm the fuck down!
prostratedragon
Thank you!
Yutsano
@trollhattan: The big tell for me is if either parent uses my full name. Doesn’t really matter the reason, I need to shut up at that precise moment.
@piratedan: Who’s the demon in that scenario I wonder…
Fair Economist
One of my grandmothers was actually my mother’s stepmother – my grandfather remarried when his wife died in middle age, before I was born. She was extraordinarily sweet and everybody loved her, including both her stepdaughters (my mother and aunt). Once she mentioned to somebody she had 2 stepdaughters and that person asked her “and how many step-grandchildren do you have?” She replied “Six, but they’re not step!” – which was entirely true, whatever the genetics.
Although I *wish* I had her genetics, because she was gardening into her 90’s and lived to be 101.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Not really! I love the 1950s Brothers Karamazov because it’s Yul Brynner, Lee J. Cobb, and Richard Basehart. But it’s not really a great movie. I can’t think of a good Dostoevsky adaptation except maybe a couple of Russian ones. I hear the miniseries of The Adolescent is good but I’ve never had the patience to watch it. Anglo-Americans don’t do a great job with Dostoevsky. I adored the BBC War and Peace, but Tolstoy is easier in some ways.
Betty Cracker
@donnah: It’s always the sweet, quiet ones. ;)
Betty Cracker
Oh, Christ on a crumpet: just got a WaPo alert saying US officials briefed Bernie Sanders that the Russians are trying to help his campaign. This is like Groundhog Day…in hell.
debbie
One of my local NPR stations is hosting a two-night event this weekend: A bunch of local bands performing Johnny Cash covers. Nothing but Cash, and no repeats over the entire two nights. Makes me wish I were younger and could better stand crowds.
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: You were a pothead?!! Just joking. I wish Trump was a pothead. Perhaps he’d be less mean and miserable if he were.
WaterGirl
I never knew any of my grandparents. I had one grandmother who was still alive when I was 4, but she was the grandmother who had been hit by lightning and was bedridden and couldn’t communicate because of that.
Yes, I took that story at face value and repeated it whenever it was appropriate to tell a family story, and I never even questioned until I was 18 and in college and I started to tell that story in college.
In retrospect, I can see that she must have had dementia and that there was really no way to explain that to a 4-year-old.
prostratedragon
@Ajabu: Ah. I wondered if it were the same album. Yeah, check that out, nice interaction between the singers.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: Indeed. Grandmothers can do no wrong in my world. I never knew my paternal grandfather – he was the one with severe PTSD from WWII. But my maternal grandfather was equally wonderful – taught me loads of stuff. As I got older, asked me to teach him how computers worked, etc. He died a few days after 9/11. That was a brutal week for me.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Yeah, I can see where Tolstoy would be easier to stage. I always got the sense that the quality of the translation matters a lot more for Dostoyevsky than Tolstoy for some reason.
SNCO
@MattF: Just to be fair, this isn’t an Episcopal church, it is an Anglican Church, i.e. one of the conservative churches that left the Episcopal Church over various issues, and is now part of the “Anglican Church in North America” – a group with an ambiguous relationship with the Anglican Communion overall, but which do not accept that the Episcopal Church (which IS a part of the Anglican Communion and recognized as such) remains a truly Christian church.
WaterGirl
Forgot to say that the “don’t borrow trouble” expression was most definitely used in my family. And we never crossed that bridge until we came to it.
Other more, let’s say, unique phrases from my mom were:
· “If a boy tries to touch you there, cross your legs and keep talking”
· “If someone asks you a question that you don’t understand, the answer is always ‘no’
· “a kiss should never be given as a thank you”
prostratedragon
I happen to have fallen into a Vinicius Cantuaria hole yesterday. I find him generally quite relaxing, and a bit mysterious. First of his songs I ever heard:
Indio de Apartamento is a good chill album, only 30 minutes.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: That makes me want to bang my head into a wall. Thankfully, I banged it into the soft headrest of the chair I am sitting in, but the banging motion was cathartic.
When we Bernie informed of that?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
“Can the Russians do something about the superdelegates?”
MattF
@SNCO: Thanks for the clarification. However, the story will remain in my ‘Inscrutable Gentiles’ folder.
debbie
If they made those remarks with a sweet smile and a lilting voice, it was definitely an old Southern lady thing. My Mamaw was from Athens and did the same thing. It wasn’t until years after she died that we cousins realized just how nasty some of her remarks were
My other grandmother was Polish-American. She wasn’t as warm, but she was honest and had no nastiness in her.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: This is vastly better – real-time knowledge of what they’re doing, and in the February before the election instead of god knows how long after the election.
This is good news. Now, I’m certain that our president* will want to address the American people about efforts by the Russians to help both him and Bernie and we can all expect a presidential news conference any minute now…
…(obligatory BWAH HA HA here)
But it’s good. I know a few candidates Russia DOESN’T seem to want to help, and they’re all actual Democrats.
Roger Moore
Other than living in San Francisco, the thing my grandmothers had in common was that they were dragged along on someone else’s globetrotting lifestyle.
For my paternal grandmother, it was my grandfather, who stayed in the army after WWII and wound up dragging the family to three continents. It was terrible for her, since her greatest passion in life was gardening, and she rarely got to stay in one place for long enough to have a garden. Once my father and his siblings were established in the world and my grandfather had retired from the army, they got divorced, and my grandmother was finally able to garden in peace.
For my maternal grandmother, it was her parents. She was born in London, moved to San Francisco so the family could avoid WWI, went back to London after the war, and then moved to Paris when the family business had problems during the Depression. She met my grandfather in Paris, moved with him to London to get married, and then moved with her family to San Francisco to avoid WWII. She loved bird watching and took bird watching trips all over the world with my grandfather, but she stayed rooted in San Francisco for the rest of her life.
WaterGirl
at Betty
Double ouch! Still, one made me laugh and the other made me snort out loud. Always such an attractive sound!
Betty Cracker
@debbie: They both had Southern accents, but while one could be described as lilting, the other was definitely twangy, if you know what I mean… A class thing, I guess.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
How about Keira Knightly? She’s looked emaciated from time to time.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Tea.
Denali
Yes, your favorite cool song is a very good one, but I still vote for The Waters of March.
It took me a long time to adjust to green beans without the bacon fat in the North. Didn’t seem right, but now I prefer green beans fresher and not overcooked.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Will he be more shouty than Trump, do you think? //
Richard Guhl
Unless somebody stops him, Bernie Sanders will wrap up the nomination in eleven days. After that, he’ll have unstoppable momentum, just like Trump did in 2016 when he won South Carolina.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: Too young.
Brachiator
Voting has barely started. It’s too early for anticipatory speculation or panic. If it ain’t brokered, don’t fix it, or something.
Jamey
Wisest thing my grandmother ever said: “People always say that Easter is early this year or that Easter is late this year. How come nobody ever says that Easter is on time?”
mrmoshpotato
@Cacti: I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or not.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
I remember seeing a rerun of The Possessed on Masterpiece Theaters years ago. Not sure if it’s still findable.
Brachiator
@Baud:
I think the Russians are the super delegates.
Chyron HR
@Betty Cracker:
“99.9 percent of the Russian hackers are good people!”
JMG
My maternal grandmother lived in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania in a town called Lansford. The vacant lot across the street from her house was a giant shale heap of coal leavings, been there long enough to have weeds in it. Naturally we kids thought it was the greatest playground ever. She’d make us strip naked and hose us off in the driveway before she’d even let us in the mud room.
My paternal grandmother spoiled us rotten and when we got a dog, spoiled him rotten, too. She was an outstanding cook in both the Chesapeake Bay and Southern styles. Lived in the same house on E. Capitol St. in D.C she was born in until she died. Checked it out one day a few years ago and the house is going for 1.5 million.
J R in WV
@hitchhiker:
I’m pushing 70 now, and just recently, going through old family photos with my only surviving maternal cousin, learned that my older Aunt was born 5 months after grandma married. Aunt lived to be 94 or 95, never smoked. Her kids, my cousins, all smoked, are all gone already.
But interesting that my grandparents, back in the 1920s had to get married because they got pregnant. The more things change, the more they stay the same; plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose!
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
Wow, Rosalie Crutchley as Varvara — that’s perfect!
janesays
A brokered convention is a nightmare scenario that will drastically increase Trump’s odds of being re-elected, no matter what the outcome of that convention is. Because you’re guaranteed to have a pretty sizable faction of the Democratic base feeling as though they just got completely screwed.
I don’t want Bernie to be the nominee, but given the choice between going to a brokered convention with Bernie as the plurality delegate leader or Bernie winning the nomination outright, I’d much rather take my chance on the latter. There is no chance for party unity in the other scenario
Hopefully one of the not-Bernie candidates wins the nomination outright so this is never an issue.
pamelabrown53
@Betty Cracker:
Does Rachel Weisz fit your mind’s eye?
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Also, my library reminds me John Hurt starred in Crime and Punishment (co-production of BBC and Time-Life Films). I remember this better, and I really liked it. Of course, John Hurt
ETA: It’s a three-parter. Check out the cast!
Brachiator
@janesays:
I don’t think this is necessarily true, or anything much to worry about. Yet.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Of course they are!!!!!
Kent
You mean with a poison-tipped umbrella, or polonium-210, or a Trotsky-esque ice axe? Something like that?
zhena gogolia
Rosalie Crutchley could be a great Katerina Ivanovna too.
germy
Saw a great episode of NOVA. “Cat Tales”
Interesting study and history of felines. I learned a few things.
debbie
@Brachiator:
I’m with you. If they were to accede to BS’s demand that the candidate with the most delegates automatically win, it would be a disaster.
Kent
I don’t think this is necessarily true at all. Especially if they came up with some kind of unity ticket in which all the candidates were standing behind arm-in-arm. That is especially the case if one of the 78-year old geriatrics is on the top of the ticket. Like Say Sanders/Klobuchar or Sanders/Harris or Sanders/Buttigieg or something like that which might not otherwise happen if the Sanders camp is left entirely to their own devices.
That outcome might produce a more electable ticket than if it is simply a Sanders purity party.
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
See, this is where this all started this morning. NotMax pointed out a new adaptation of C&P, and when I looked at it, Raskolnikov was once again played by a sickly looking character. John Hurt is a great actor, but no one could call him tall, well-built, and blindingly handsome with mysterious dark eyes, which is what Dostoevsky says Raskolnikov looks like. They never get this right. Young Johnny Depp, I tell you!
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
I do like the idea of David Troughton as Razumikhin, though. Fabulous actor.
J R in WV
@donnah:
My paternal grandmother had to drive, her husband had only a left leg, which back in the day disallowed driving.
My maternal grandmother was a coal miner’s wife and did everything she could to keep her son out of the mines, including aiding and abetting a moonshine business in which my uncle’s role was driving the hooch into town and delivering it to the clubs.
We still have grandma’s Colt pistol he carried to protect the load from hi-jackers. His son, my only surviving maternal cousin keeps it in his safe-deposit box, and brings it out to the farm to shoot.
I think our grandparents would have had a lot in common.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Sorry, I hadn’t seen that thread yet. But Frank Middlemas!
NotMax
Worrisome (as in first world worries) spate of moments yesterday.
Neglected to set the sleep timer on the TV* when finally went supine for sleep, so eventually the Roku screensaver popped on. Nothing too out of the ordinary about that except this time I didn’t bother turning the TV off upon finding that after awakening. Became engaged with other stuff and it was probably a good 14 or 16 hours until I got around to putting some programming on, switching over to cable to check out what was on TCM.
Picture was entirely in shades of fuchsia and lime green, reminiscent of a Peter Max poster. On every channel.
Turned off the set, waited more than the requisite time to let everything discharge, crossed fingers and switched it back on. All back to normal.
Working theory is that there was a voltage drop in the power – not at brownout level but an outside of regular parameters dip nevertheless – while I was unconscious and that confoozled the electronics.
*50-something inch plasma non-smart set. Newer types of TVs have improved but still don’t display a true black (I tend to having a lot of B&W programming playing) as well as the no longer manufactured plasma units do.
Mnemosyne
@Richard Guhl:
Democrats use proportional delegates, not winner-take-all. Bernie literally CAN’T do what Trump did because of that.
Calm the fuck down.
zhena gogolia
@debbie: Oh, I don’t know him!
janesays
@Brachiator: I think a brokered convention will make it much harder for the various factions of the Democratic Party base to unite behind the nominee (who will ultimately be chosen by superdelegates) than it would be if we have a clear nominee heading into the convention.
I would add that the situation would be much worse if Bernie is the delegate leader than if another candidate is the delegate leader in a brokered convention scenario. We saw how bad things were in 2016 with the Bernie Bros when their candidate clearly lost both the popular vote and the pledged delegate race. Imagine how much worse it would be with that mob if their guy goes into Milwaukee with more votes and more pledged delegates than any other candidate and doesn’t wind up being the nominee.
J R in WV
Just my take on things…
Anything to keep Sanders from our party’s nomination, anything at all.
Sanders would be as bad as Trump as far as destroying our form of government.
He has been part of the government for decades, and still doesn’t understand how it works or how to work within the rules. This is why he has no major bills of his own ever passed, he doesn’t know what to do to improve things, nor how to accomplish it if he suddenly gained a clue.
Also, would be a Russian stooge worse than Trump is. They have owned him since he was a very young communist man!
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: Haha, true.
Brachiator
@janesays:
Points noted. But I still say it is too early to care about this hypothetical.
donnah
@J R in WV: Yes, we do share some common themes. My mom grew up in a coal mining community in Sycamore Holler outside of Whitesville, WV. My grandfather was an electrician in the mines and his son, my uncle, worked underground. They both died of Black Lung.
This grandma had a heart condition and when she knew that my uncle was near death, she secretly stopped taking her medication and died on the sidewalk in front of the church. She said she couldn’t bear to see any of her children die.
Betty Cracker
@pamelabrown53: That could totally work! Thank you! ?
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Young Depp’s features too … delicate, IMHO. Plus – on a good day – he comes up to 5’10”.
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: But Mnemosyne, the two states are so fucking white! We other 48 should just call off our primaries.
janesays
My take is do whatever needs to be done to give us the best shot of beating Trump in November. Generally speaking I don’t think Bernie Sanders gives us that best shot, but what I mean by that is that the best case scenario would involve another candidate winning the nomination outright. If there is to be a brokered convention, it would be drastically better if Sanders isn’t the leader in delegates going in, because he really wouldn’t have any claim on the nomination in that scenario. If he’s got the most votes and most delegates, however, that is a messy, messy situation, and I don’t think it is clear cut that picking someone else would be the best route in that situation. I think it guarantees November defeat. We might be screwed either way, but if Sanders gets the most delegates but isn’t the nominee, we’re not going to beat Trump.
So we need to do whatever must be done to keep Sanders from having the most delegates so we don’t have to deal with that situation in the first place.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker:
LOL (sigh)
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
I keep hearing this. Never seen anything to prove it. And if the Democratic Party suspected this, then they are fools to ever allow him to run as the candidate of the party.
Russians own Trump. Russians own Sanders. Shit, might as well elect Putin and eliminate the middle man.
laura
My grans couldnt have been more different. Dad’s was a non-church going Baptist. Sweet and Jonathon Winters level smart/serverly mentally I’ll. ps – a total hysterectomy at 28 will NOT cure severe manic depression. Mom’s mom and her sister May were the two tartest tongues in town. Spectacular failures as Catholics – Aunt May went steady with Seidie the jewish realty broker in San Fran. They lived blocks apart for over 60 years. Grama Foley married a railroad man who lost a leg which may not have contributed to the divorce. She then married her childhood sweety which was the source of great scandal but she lacked shame which she passed down to me.
So many vicious cutting remarks from those two – just as sharp and witty as you could hope to hear. The Women/All About Eve level. If I had to describe Grama Foley, I’d just point to a picture of Selma Diamond.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Naw, he’s way too old. I just love his acting.
Okay, now I’ve read the morning thread, and if you want brooding, how about a young Jonathan Rhys Meyers? He totally brooded his way through Titus.
Also, a young Malcom McDowell.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
How about a young Frank Langella?
Or, modern day, Alosian Vivancos?
debbie
@debbie
Meyers is #14 here.
Kent
Superdelegates only get you about 1/4 of the way to the nomination. They will have to persuade pledged delegates to abandon their candidate.
Under one scenario, a brokered convention could actually produce a more electable “unity” ticket if a say Bernie is forced to take a younger centrist VP like Klobuchar or Buttigieg, or if a Biden is forced to take a more progressive VP. Especially if all the leading candidates get behind their unity ticket arm in arm.
One of the most plausible unity tickets might be Warren who might have the widest appeal of all the candidates at this point. She is probably the one most likely to energize significant numbers of Bernie folks.
It would sure make for some compelling TV that is for sure.
mrmoshpotato
@J R in WV: J R J R J R. It will be our responsibility to tell Sanders how to gover…..oh fuck it, I can’t even sarcastically complete that sentence.
Mnemosyne
@debbie:
Rhys Meyers always comes across more as pouty than brooding to me.
Not crazy idea: what about two-time Oscar nominee Adam Driver? He can do ominous yet attractive brooding well enough that I’d kind of like to see him as Heathcliff in a faithful (non-romantic) adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” where Heathcliff is justly terrified of Cathy’s ghostly revenge for his terrible actions.
J R in WV
@donnah:
My maternal grandparents lived in Eccles, until they could buy their own property in Harper, right next door to Eccles, but not part of the company town.
Granddad died of smoking and black lung, he was a hoist engineer for Eccles No 5 mine, and stood right by the coal skip dump where the coal came up the shaft and was dumped out of the elevator for processing in the tipple.
Grandma kept a country store from 1932 until the mid 1950s, I recall mom dropping me off at the store for Grandma to watch me while mom did mom stuff.
I learned to drive going down Rt 3 and thru Whitesville.
Mom was a school teacher in Clear Creek, up a hollow from Whitesville during the war.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
He’d be good, as long as Cathy wasn’t tiny and petite. Driver’s height can make him look more threatening than brooding.
Did you see Titus? Rhys Meyers hadn’t learned pouting yet. He was straight up demented.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
While shopping earlier in the week, I came out of the bakery and saw a Mercedes AMG supercar. In the back window was a bumper sticker that said:
I stopped to tell the driver how much I admired his small political sticker.
The silver car was pretty swell too, if you’re into the very best German steel and aluminium.
Regarding Sanders being a Russian stooge:
Look up the video of Sanders and his wife on their honeymoon drunkenly singing “This Land is Our Land” in Russian accented English — not what Woody G had in mind when he sang that song! Different Land and all that…
Plus the mention in the Mueller report — which made it clear that the Russians supported Bernie in 2016!
And the Intelligence report to the House committee where they told Congress that Russia was working for Sanders in the 2020 election as well. How much evidence do you need? That Intelligence report that got the Director of National Intelligence fired seems like way overkill to me…
piratedan
@J R in WV: My paternals used to live over in Oceana (Wyoming Co.) and he worked in the Kopperston Mines until black lung got him when I was 13. Still have family back there that I rarely see…. who knew you would find WVa ties on this here blog?
J R in WV
@piratedan:
Grandma and I (and my RWNJ brother) would go on Sunday drives and frequently passed through Oceana on those drives. The countryside was beautiful, the little coal towns were run down and the tipples and burning slate dumps not so much.
People who lived downwind of the tipples were as likely to get black lung as the miners back in the day.
If we turned left at Bolt we would get to Oceana — if we turned right at Bolt we would get to Whitesville, Donnah’s ancestral home. Small world, southern WV. I’m living just north of the southern coal field now, in an Oil and Gas patch instead of the mines. Same attitude on the part of the industry, O&G and coal, take all you can get and run!
ETA: Given that Cole is a WV boy, not too surprising really. There are others out there as well…
Miss Bianca
Well, I got the phrase “let’s not borrow trouble” from *somewhere*, but not from either of my grans, as far as I’m aware.
But I use it fairly often. And sometimes I go all Biblical with the sentiment and intone, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”.
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia:
Funny, I remember reading C & P in high school, but I don’t remember a physical description of Raskolnikov. Maybe I just didn’t care what he was supposed to look like because I despised him and was a total fangirl for his pal Razumikhin.
Lymie
@Eric U.: I was going to contribute the same. My English mother, was probably close to BC’s grams’ age…..
OzarkHillbilly
My father’s mother died 2 yrs before I was born. My mother’s mother… Was a very flawed woman. As best I can tell lo these 40-50 years later, a very racist woman. And yet, she loved me and my siblings very deeply despite the fact that we were each and every one of us the papist spawn of a “Pollack” from the “south side of Chicago” and I loved her deeply in return.
cokane
@J R in WV: There’s a growing derangement on these boards among some commenters, the Sanders candidacy and Russia. It’s not healthy.
cokane
A brokered convention just isn’t likely to happen. This gets brought up every four years. It just doesn’t happen.
mrmoshpotato
@cokane: BDS or SDS?
donnah
@J R in WV:
Well, that’s cool. Small world! We drove through Eccles on the way to Grampa and Grandma’s. And my mom’s childhood friend Chelsea’s father ran their small grocery in Sycamore. We spent two weeks every summer with my grandparents and it was heaven.
Mom went to Clearfork High School. We used to drive through Whitesville on the way to Sycamore. One traffic light, and the lights went red, yellow, green and back again.
Memories!
BQuimby
My 100 year old friend has two she says: “Never take your pain in advance.” The other is one I have heard before: “Never trust a fart.”
texasdoc
My mother had a saying that she said she got from her mother (who died when my mom was in high school)–if common sense were truly common, more people would have some of it.
janesays
@cokane: The difference is… when was the last time you had five different candidates capturing at least 10% of the vote in the first two states, no candidates with 26% of the popular vote after the first two states, and the leading two candidates essentially tied, separated by less than 1.5% in the popular vote margin and 1 or 2 delegates in the delegate race?
I’ll tell you when… never. At least not in the last 40 years or so.
bluefish
Thank you for posting this. I love the great Elis, gone too soon. Obrigada for the rest too.