Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The willow is too close to the house.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

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

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

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Nothing worth doing is easy.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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

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

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Cole is on a roll !

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

No Justins, No Peace

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

I really should read my own blog.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Election Year Open Thread: Another Note Before the Florida Primary

Election Year Open Thread: Another Note Before the Florida Primary

by | 182 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Maybe it’s ideological commitment, or maybe it’s just a stubborn inability to see beyond his own point of view. The Cuban government was treating Bernie Sanders very nicely — why should anyone else have complaints?

From the local Miami Herald:

… “I don’t know what’s so wrong about this country,” Sanders said during a one-hour meeting with the prisoner and two other members of Congress visiting Havana, Gross told the Miami Herald.

“I thought it was a pretty insensitive thing for him to say,” Gross said. “Couldn’t he see, with his own eyes, what was going on around the country that he’s been traveling through? And I was a hostage to the government of the country that he didn’t see anything wrong with.”

Gross said he didn’t reply to the senator. Although there were no guards present, Gross suspects Cuban authorities were recording the conversation…

Sanders’ campaign did not respond Wednesday to Gross’ comments, published first by NPR Wednesday less than two weeks before the March 17 Florida Democratic primary…

Sanders’ comment on Cuba in 2014 came almost at the end of an hour of an “engaging conversation,” said Gross. Sanders was part of a congressional delegation that visited Cuba in February 2014. He met with Gross along with Sens. Heidi Heitkamp and Jon Tester.

Sanders was not “really involved” in most of the talk, Gross said.

Gross does not remember the details of the discussion other than that the subject of U.S. policy towards Cuba came up. Being imprisoned with little food available, he said what he remembered the most was that Heitkamp and Tester brought him two bags of cookies and a “giant” package of M&Ms with peanuts.

“I appreciated the visit,” Gross said. “Each one of them wanted to see me free. I had no contact with any of them before that time or after.”…

At the time he was imprisoned in Cuba, Gross was working as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development in a project to expand internet access for the Jewish community on the island. He was not the only one sneaking in internet technology banned by the Cuban authorities. Radio and TV Martí, two US government stations broadcasting to Cuba, also introduced satellite communication equipment into the country.

But Gross, a U.S. citizen, was the only one arrested in 2009 and charged with espionage. He was sentenced to 15 years. He was finally released on Dec. 17, 2014, in a prisoner exchange in which the Barack Obama government returned three Cuban spies to the island…

Reader Interactions

182Comments

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    Senator Sanders is toast in Florida. Between this and the rest of the Castro/Cuba, as well as Maduro stupidit; his picking a fight with AIPAC (regardless of the fact that I can’t stand AIPAC), which has now got him crosswise with a lot of the Jewish community in Florida, and the fact that anything with socialism in it just won’t play anywhere in the state, he’d cooked his own goose here. This is the most recent polling:

  6. 6.

    Adam L Silverman

    He’s so done here that Andrew Gillum, who Sanders endorsed in his gubernatorial run in 2018, makes it clear he’s got no chance in Florida.

  9. 9.

    Adam L Silverman

    @patrick II: Watching her describe the toxicity and implicit violence of Senator Sanders supporters to her professional staff, to her supporters, and others should open someone’s eyes and ears. Unfortunately he doesn’t want to see it or hear it.

  10. 10.

    Archon

    Now that Sanders isn’t gonna be the nominee can we stop pretending he doesn’t have Marxist sympathies?

    Asking for a friend.

  13. 13.

    joel hanes

    @Archon:

    Marx was pretty good at identifying problems with nineteenth-century capitalism.

    Not so good on predicting the course of events or prescribing solutions.

  14. 14.

    patrick II

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Considering that Warren and Bernie are often described as allies on many issues her frank answer surprised me a little — but it shouldn’t have. She is first and foremost a truth teller.

    I liked her description of her conversation with Bernie – – “short”.

  18. 18.

    kindness

    Just wait till the footage of Bernie & Jane reviewing the May Day parade in Moscow get’s wide play.  You know, it doesn’t bother me.  But I also get how much of the country will see it.  And they won’t think it pretty.  The kicker is the one they’ll vote for is Putin employee.  Yea, I don’t think Bernie is as easily elected as he thinks.  Part of Bernie & the Bros problem is the amount of epistemic closure they exist in.  It’s as much as Republicans seem to have.  That’s another odd parallel.

  22. 22.

    Adam L Silverman

    @joel hanes: Yep. Marx was an excellent diagnostician. He was terrible at prescribing a solution. Though, in his defense, he never expected someone to attempt a Marxist revolution somewhere that had not overcome scarcity. He expected the experiment would be tried in Germany or maybe the US. If someone had suggested Russia to him as the place to try it, he’d have collapse laughing. The only thing Russia had a surplus of was peasants, snow, and inbred hemophiliac nobles.

  24. 24.

    sdhays

    I think there’s an honest point to be made that we’re very picky about which brutal regime is evil and must be destroyed and which brutal regime we prefer not to talk about. Saudi Arabia is an ally, and it’s just about literally medieval. But it’s Iran’s brutality we talk about. Similarly with Cuba – it’s a brutal regime, but so were a lot of fascist regimes we supported in Central America. As a country, we don’t much care about a regime’s level of brutality, just whether they do as they’re told/make the right people a lot of money.

    Of course, that’s not really the argument that Sanders was making. And it’s not an important point to make to a political prisoner suffering under a brutal regime, regardless of whether it’s “friendly” or not. But, of course, he’s “not a people person”, so it’s too much for us to expect him to understand how insensitive he was.

  25. 25.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: Good.  Let the Bros, pundit class, and trumpov try to spin that kind of result.

    I don’t see him giving up, but I can see a nice downward spiral where he steadily discredits himself and his blessed ‘movement’ all across the spring, and that’s fine too.

  26. 26.

    joel hanes

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The inevitability of history did not pan out.

    ETA:  Brad DeLong did an excellent long-form discussion of Marx’s writings sometime in the last year, IIRC.

  27. 27.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    There’s video of Sanders in 1984 denouncing President Kennedy, saying his views on opposing a dictatorship in Cuba made him want to “vomit”.

    Never mind that those are nominal views for a politician trying to get elected (especially during the McCarthy period) and that Kennedy had evolved far away from that by 1963 and tried to normalize full relations, which Ike had severed.

    On November 5. 1963, JFK ordered aides to discretely explore what Castro’s terms for normalization. You can hear JFK approve of sending UN diplomat Bill Attwood to talk to Castro on this White House tape recording, obtained by the non-profit National Security Archive at George Washington University.

    (Be patient, The conversation, garbled at first, becomes clearer at :25 in the recording when someone says “Bill Attwood.”)

    If you listen carefully you can hear Kennedy approve on the condition that Attwood is “off the payroll”–meaning not a U.S government employee. For political reasons, JFK wanted to be able to deny he was open to negotiations with Castro.

    But he was. Seventeen days later, JFK was dead, and so was the idea of peace with Cuba.

    Now, fifty four years later, President Barack Obama is seeking to complete the policy change that Kennedy privately sought to advance.

  28. 28.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sdhays: We’ve always had an “our bastard” problem in our nat-sec and foreign policy. A lot of that was the result of the anti-Communism politics of the Cold War. Better a fascist or a rightist military dictator than a communist or leftist.

  29. 29.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Sanders’ comment on Cuba in 2014 came almost at the end of an hour of an “engaging conversation,” said Gross. Sanders was part of a congressional delegation that visited Cuba in February 2014. He met with Gross along with Sens. Heidi Heitkamp and Jon Tester.

    Sanders was not “really involved” in most of the talk, Gross said.

    This doesn’t sound like Bernie at all – not interested in a conversation that doesn’t focus on him or that demands depth.

  30. 30.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jeffro: If he has as bad a night in the next cluster of primaries over the next two weeks and it is clear, once again, that he cannot win enough delegates to be the nominee and still refuses to concede and says he’s going to fight on to the convention like he did in 2016, then he should be expelled from the race. Flat stop. And Senator Schumer should strip him of his leadership position, his committee assignments, and forbid him from caucusing with the Senate Democrats. We have a chance to actually have almost 8 full months of directing unified political fire at the President as the incumbent up for reelection, but that requires that the remaining candidate who cannot win the nomination actually gets out of the way and stops damaging the person who will be the nominee. I expect VP Biden would do this if the results turn out the other way and Senator Sanders rebounds and emerges as the nominee apparent. That’s Senator Sanders actual test of leadership. He failed it in 2016. I’ve seen nothing to indicate that he even realizes there was a test, let alone that he failed it or that he should learn something from that failure.

  32. 32.

    Redshift

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Watching her describe the toxicity and implicit violence of Senator Sanders supporters to her professional staff, to her supporters, and others should open someone’s eyes and ears. 

    I was pleased that she was straightforward about it and didn’t sugarcoat it. It may exist in various camps of online supporters, but not at anything like the same scale.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Redshift: Only two national politicians in the US have followers like this, in this amount. One is the President, the other is Senator Sanders. I saw a tweet today that said that the difference between the President’s supporters and Senator Sanders’ supporters is the latter are MAGAites who like government provided health care.

  35. 35.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I don’t care if a staffer wrote it:


    Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330)     @JoeBiden
    Get real, Bernie. The only person who’s going to cut Social Security if he’s elected is Donald Trump. Maybe you should spend your time attacking him.

    Bernie Sanders @ BernieSanders
    Here’s the deal: Joe Biden has repeatedly advocated for cuts to Social Security. I’ve fought my whole career to protect and expand it.

  36. 36.

    sdhays

    @Adam L Silverman: Yep, and I get that foreign policy is messy. That was the main thrust of the argument for Obama’s normalization of relations with Cuba – they aren’t a bigger monster than lots of other countries that we have normal relations with. But Sanders seems to to be trying to excuse Communist brutality, and that’s not any better than excusing the brutality of “our” dictators.

  38. 38.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sdhays: I have long argued, and I taught it in seminar at USAWC too, that we’ve been running two long term experiments about the ability of hard diplomatic, information, military, and economic power to effect change in states and societies where we want to see change. The first is Cuba and we’ve been running it since the 1950s and the second is Iran and we’ve been running it since the 1980s. Neither experiment has ever produced any of the positive results we wanted. As a result, perhaps we should try something different. Like lifting sanctions, opening up travel, and see what happens when Cubans, Iranians, and Americans all get to meet each other. When the Cuban and Iranian governments can no longer keep out American culture and political ideas. When dollars start flooding in. Perhaps it won’t work, but it can’t work any less well than what we’ve been doing. And trying this has nothing to do with how I feel about who is running those government and how those states and societies are organized.

  40. 40.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’ve seen nothing to indicate that he even realizes there was a test, let alone that he failed it or that he should learn something from that failure.

    After watching Sen. Sanders for the past 5 years, I’m not sure he’s learned anything since 1965.

  42. 42.

    Ken

    @WhatsMyNym: Wall Street Stock Pros Fess Up: ‘We Don’t Know What’s Going On’

    ‘But Fortunately We Have Program Trading to Amplify the Effects’

  43. 43.

    hitchhiker

    @Adam L Silverman:

    If I remember it correctly, the rationale for Sanders to keep demanding donations in 2016 after he’d been eliminated was that CA was still sitting out there with its giant pile of delegates.

    He claimed that he could catch up to her by winning CA.

    The calendar was rearranged for this season, so that a candidate who’s behind by 200 delegates AFTER CA (and TX) have voted has no path to catch up. It would require shutouts in every state left, or something like that.

    I suppose he could enter the FL contest — in theory — with a big cushion courtesy of MI and WA … but MI isn’t looking like a blowout, and I’m in WA, where the coronavirus has pretty much sucked all the political oxygen right out of the air. We’re told we might have as many as 2000 people infected right now, but they just don’t know.

    Both amazon and microsoft (and many other companies) have told employees to stay home until further notice. A 22,000 student school district just abruptly closed today, for two weeks. The customary traffic jam has vanished.

    And our ballots are due on Tuesday. I’m guessing that there’s not a lot of appetite for risking what’s left of our institutions on Bernie’s claims about how easy it will all be if we just tax the billionaires.

    Right now a lot of things feel quite difficult. We could use some adults who know what the hell they’re talking about.

  45. 45.

    Lyrebird

    @Adam L Silverman:  I’ve seen nothing to indicate that he even realizes there was a test, let alone that he failed it or that he should learn something from that failure.

    In a nutshell!!!  That was my problem w/him even in 2016. Rep. Clyburn’s politics weren’t any more aligned with his back then, but did he go and build other alliances? no!  Did he get some staffers on board who could wax eloquent about African American socialists and build bridges that way?  He did not.  Hint, maybe you have heard of James Baldwin, or WEB DuBois, or Richard Wright, and that’s just from what little I know.

    I wouldn’t care about the hand-waving if he showed more ability to listen.  People criticize his boring clothes?  Fine, he looks like a member of my family.  But if he thinks he’s running to govern the whole country, he oughta act more like more of the country matters.

    Note: I do relate to the pros that John listed for BS’ candidacy, and I know lotsa good folks who support him for good reasons.  I will vote for him if he wins the nom, but…

  46. 46.

    joel hanes

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m so old that when I was in engineering school, we had a large contingent of Iranian students.   By and large they loved the US as a nation and as a culture, deplored the CIA, and hated the Shah.   (Think anti-SAVAK protests with paper bag face masks.)  Younger people in Iran were going secular, and Tehran was reputed to be developing a nightlife.   Some of the Iranian engineers with whom I worked were excellent, and delightful people, and I missed that in later years when there were fewer of them.

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    Shot:

    Chaser:

    Consistency, hobgoblins, little minds…

  48. 48.

    Barb 2

    @Adam L Silverman: Sanders isn’t a Democrat – he should never been allowed to run. He hurt Clinton’s race in 2016.

    Sanders has many of the same personality traits as Trump. Good people on both sides when speaking of his favorite dictators. He isn’t empathetic – he can fake it. The npr article is really a good observation of Bernie’s personality. He didn’t interact with the prisoner.

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @hitchhiker: No argument here. As I stated in a comment last night in reply to someone else (I’ve placed the comment I’m replying to in quotations since I can no longer put a quote within a quote):

    “@dww44:

    Mom is also sad because she cannot understand how we ended up, after such a promising start, with a 77 year old white man and a 78 year old one, both of whom if nominated and elected will be a year older at inauguration.”

    We ended up here because of a combination of four things. The first is that Senator Sanders has been running non-stop for president since 2016. He never really stopped running when that election ended. The second is Vice President Biden’s name recognition and connection to President Obama. The third is the sad reality of our news media, especially our political news media and how they frame and shape and weight things in a campaign. The fourth and final reason this happened is that the 2020 presidential election is not about Medicare for All or any other specific policy or plan. It is solely a referendum on the President. On whether he gets four more years and the Republic is fully transformed into a white Christian herrenvolk democracy where the rest of us are either considered white on sufferance – for instance Jews – or become some variant of second class citizens if not actual unpersons or whether a hard stop is placed on what he and his administration are trying to do. And because this is the reality of the campaign, and a good part of the context of it, the 2020 presidential election becomes one of “more Trump” or “make it stop”. VP Biden, partially because of his connection to President Obama, partially because of his personal biography, and partially because of his ability to be really and genuinely publicly and privately empathetic and sympathetic personifies this choice.

    The 2020 presidential election is about whether the house (the US) will continue to be burned down by the President, his administration, the GOP, and the conservative movement or whether the fire will be put out, the structure assessed for damage, a determination made about what can be salvaged and refurbished versus what has to be thrown away and replaced with something updated and better. That’s what the election is about. The President obviously represents the arson and burn down the house side of the analogy. VP Biden, better than almost anyone, represents the put the fire out, everyone take a deep breath, assess the damage, and make repairs side of the analogy. Senator Warren, as impressive as she is, doesn’t convey this. Senator Sanders is the representation of someone who always thought the house was an eyesore and structurally unsound so he wants to accelerate the fire because he has this completely different idea of what should replace it.

    For the vast majority of Americans they just want this administration to stop. They don’t want to have to pay attention every minute of every day to what the President, his administration, his party, and the conservative movement are doing because failure to do so could lead to a terrible outcome. They want to be able to go back to not paying attention to who is or is not president for days at a time. They want the pain to stop. They want the horror to stop. That’s it. And for significant groups within the Democratic coalition they can’t afford to take a risk on revolution. Because they know that it isn’t easy, isn’t safe. And that it is always met with overwhelming resistance and pushback from those who want the US to be a white Christian herrenvolk. And that’s why VP Biden has reemerged this week despite his age and his baggage and his malapropisms and occasionally Munchausian stories, why the people with the most to lose in the Democratic coalition who have been its back bone for decades are supporting him and rejecting Senator Sanders and why for all that she would be the best of the three as president, Senator Warren can’t get any traction.

  51. 51.

    Bluehill

    @hitchhiker: Markets are unsurprisingly jittery right now. Too much uncertainty about covid-19 and the economic impact and no good priors. Just beginning to see some of the consequences in terms of travel and that hasn’t fully rippled through the rest of the economy.  Another knock-on effect is reduced productivity from working from home. A large VC firm sent a note to its portfolio companies advising them to prepare for a recession, which means to cutting costs and limiting hiring. Strong coordinated action from the government would help reduce some of the uncertainty, but oh well.

  52. 52.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Lyrebird:

    Hint, maybe you have heard of James Baldwin, or WEB DuBois, or Richard Wright,

    James Baldwin, WEB DuBois, and Richard Wright are examples of somebodies who’ve done an amazing job and are being recognized more and more, I notice.//

    More seriously, no argument from me.

  53. 53.

    Barbara

    @Adam L Silverman: At least she understands that you catch more flies with honey. After hearing that Warren opened up about the toxicity of the Sanders camp it’s hard to think she would endorse him.

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: Given the current majority on the Supreme Court, which never misses an opportunity to punch down while self-righteously lecturing and hectoring the rest of us about morals and values and their warped understanding of the Constitution, I am not surprised that they lifted the stay. Had Nathaniel Woods been a wealthy, well connected white man, the stay would have remained in place and the new evidence would be considered. But he was not and because he was not, they simply did not care. And they will not care the next time and the time after that and the time after that either.

  57. 57.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: Have to agree.  Didn’t we defeat the USSR primarily by letting them bankrupt themselves in Afghanistan and with the cold war arms race, plus also carpet bombing them with Levis and rock music?

    Not really kidding here.  We can outspend them and out-culture them any day of the week, if we’d just stop stepping on our own, ahem, all the time.

  58. 58.

    glory b

    This is an open thread, so I’ll mention that I just saw Hillary Clinton being interviewed on Bravo TV, Watch What Happens Live. There were three drag queens doing a runway show as Hillary Clinton in college, as first lady, and today. Lots of funny questions, it was a really nice interview.

  60. 60.

    opiejeanne

    I just watched Pence and Seema Verma on our local news, lying their heads off about instating new safeguards regarding infection risks in nursing homes.

    they had a meeting with WA governor Jay Inslee, and the press conference after was almost calming until Mike Pence kept saying that we in WA would be given access to the coronavirus. He said this at least three times. There was also a moment when Redford  said that they would be working with the state of Washington. That was a tell, because we’ve been thumbing our collective noses at the CDC for several days, and now they’re agreed to let us keep doing what we’ve been doing.

    Then they lied, about this: (Politico)

    “…  CMS has received criticism for a proposed rule the agency says would reduce burdensome requirements on long-term care facilities. Under the rule, facilities would no longer require an infection preventionist to work part-time at facilities; instead, they would have to ensure the infection preventionist spends “sufficient time” at the facility.
    Verma said the agency is still reviewing the proposal, and that “we want to hold nursing homes accountable for outcomes.”
    That last bit was because the spotlight is focused on the nursing home that has become a Petri dish for the elderly, trapped in a place teeming with infection. But she took credit for the Trump administration creating a system of infection prevention, a New and Improved version.

    Bah.

  61. 61.

    Jude

    @Adam L Silverman:

     If he has as bad a night in the next cluster of primaries over the next two weeks and it is clear, once again, that he cannot win enough delegates to be the nominee and still refuses to concede and says he’s going to fight on to the convention like he did in 2016, then he should be expelled from the race. Flat stop. And Senator Schumer should strip him of his leadership position, his committee assignments, and forbid him from caucusing with the Senate Democrats.

    @Adam L Silverman:  Whoa. It finally happened. This is the first time I’ve ever not agreed with you, Adam! I live in WI and know far too many Berners. But they’re nice ones that will vote D in Nov. That is, unless we do what you described. That kind of scorched earth approach might be warranted and certainly would feel good, but oof. We’d lose some good votes in exchange.

     

    It doesn’t matter anyway. FL will be an even bigger boon for Biden than it already seems and it sounds like Bernie’s about to get his ass handed to him in MI too. Good. Social media might be a toxic cesspool, but it’s our toxic cesspool and we’re using it to fight back this time. The BernieBros have been getting pushback this entire time and we’re not done.

  62. 62.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: If he has as bad a night in the next cluster of primaries over the next two weeks and it is clear, once again, that he cannot win enough delegates to be the nominee and still refuses to concede and says he’s going to fight on to the convention like he did in 2016, then he should be expelled from the race. Flat stop. And Senator Schumer should strip him of his leadership position, his committee assignments, and forbid him from caucusing with the Senate Democrats.

    I like this…but I like the ‘soft power’ version of this better.  He only gets stronger (and the MAGAts and their Russian twitter troll allies too) if he gets smacked at hard and obviously like this.  Amps up the grievance and the martyr quotient, for lack of a better term.

    Better to just have the entire Democratic Justice League publicly disavow him as not – not ever, then, now, or in the future – a real Democrat, and refuse to work with him or support him in any way.  Let his support collapse even further until he’s a rump of a rump and maybe even helps unify the D party by making it clear that we do have values and standards, and we also absolutely must put unity first in the face of this existential crisis.

  63. 63.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Barbara: I’m not sure what she’s going to do. I’m not sure even she knows yet. She is a deliberate person in a good way. And she will think through what she wants to do and why she wants to do it and when she’s done that, then she will act.

  64. 64.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jeffro: It is a different approach than to the Soviet Union. Americans would travel to the USSR under specific conditions and Soviet citizens, from a variety of countries could sometimes, under specific conditions would travel to the US. But there was never an attempt to just let American culture and spending power overwhelm and undermine the Soviet Union in the manner that I’m suggesting we should try with Cuba and Iran.

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    I can’t help but think that a robust investigation of the federal government’s failures in responding to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico might have helped to identify some of the issues that are hampering the federal response to coronavirus on the mainland.

    — southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) March 6, 2020

    That’s just crazy-talk!!1

    :-/

    ‘night all. Back to the barricades tomorrow!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  68. 68.

    Juice Box

    I’m arguing with my 84 year old mom tonight. She says she won’t vote in November if she has to choose between Bernie and Trump. My only argument is that Bernie wouldn’t be worse than Trump and might be a little better. I’ll vote, but can’t say that I blame her. Her preferences were Harris, then Klobuchar.

  69. 69.

    lamh36

    @lamh36:

     

    @bshelburne

    More

    Just got off phone with Kimberly Chisholm Simmons, sister of Harley Chisholm III, one of 3 Birmingham police officers killed in 2004. She does not support the execution of #NateWoods. “He did not kill my brother. This is so unjust. I don’t understand,” she told me in tears. 1/5

    She tried to contact @GovernorKayIvey, but was told the Gov was in a meeting. She spoke with a staff member, expressing her deep misgivings about Nate’s death warrant. She asked them to please grant mercy. She was told someone would call her back. No one ever did. 2/5

    @bshelburne 2h2 hours ago

    More

    “They just want him dead. I did at one time too. But when God gets hold of your heart and demands forgiveness and mercy, I have to follow that,” she said. “I hated them but I knew in my heart that was wrong. It saddens me that an innocent man will be executed.” 3/5

    @bshelburne 2h2 hours ago

    More

    She told me her brother was an honorable man. Her family grieved his death and suffered for years after the crime. She is not against the death penalty but believes Nate is not responsible. “He was just a loud-mouthed kid,” she said. “This madness has got to stop.” 4/5

    @bshelburne2h2 hours ago

    More

    Ms. Simmons feels for the family of #NathanielWoods and says she’ll pray for them. “My heart goes out to them. Losing a family member is very hard. I pray God’s mercy on them. I know the pain they’re going to feel.” She was sobbing as we got off the phone. ” 5/5

    https://twitter.com/bshelburne/status/1235758466922356736

  72. 72.

    Shalimar

    @Adam L Silverman: It’s going to be irrelevant, because Sanders is going to get his ass kicked in the next 2 weeks and have no path to the nomination.  His ceiling appears to be 35% in any state this cycle.  That is fine in a 3 or 4 person race.  It gets you destroyed head-to-head.

  74. 74.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jude: I am sorry to have disappointed you in my answer, but we don’t have to agree on everything. I am not suggesting this because it would feel good or even be just deserts so to speak, but because actions have consequences. And if there are no consequences then he will simply continue to destroy the Democratic Party because he really doesn’t think it is that much different than the Republican Party and because he’s too lazy to actually try to start his own party.

    ETA: Though I do take your warning/analysis as most likely correct and I have no actual reason to believe that either Tom Perez on the DNC side or Senator Schumer on the Senate Democratic caucus side would actually have the steel in their spines to even mildly reproach him.

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Shalimar: You should vote for whomever you want. The only thing I have been consistently adamant about is that everyone votes. If you do that, that is what matters.

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: I would argue it is even more disgusting in that of that five person majority, four of the five are very conservative Catholics and one (Gorsuch) was raised Catholic, though he now attends an Episcopalian church. They all seem to have over internalized the bio-ethics on the anti-abortion side of Catholicism’s teachings on the sanctity of life while willfully ignoring the equally important and powerful Catholic teachings about the sinfulness of the death penalty. And they seem to have completely missed every teaching on mercy and justice and compassion.

  79. 79.

    Barbara

    @Adam L Silverman: Yes, agreed, but by not endorsing either and discussing how badly supporters of only one treated her staff she is making clear that her support has to be earned, and IMHO, that message is unlikely to find a receptive audience.

  80. 80.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Adam L Silverman: it’s not even good a conspiracy theory.

    If Sanders and Warren combined their votes in Minnesota it would have amounted to 45.3%.

    If Biden, Bloomberg, and Amy combined their votes it would have amounted to 52.5%

  82. 82.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jude:

    I think Adam’s right. Wilmer is not a Democrat and never really was. The party is just a flag of convenience for his presidential campaigns, and a hostile-takeover target for his movement. It is better off without him pretending to be in the tent. It is also better off without his Wilmeristas, who basically want to make off with the tent. I don’t think the non-Wilmerista Democratic voters who liked him would really abandon the party if he were expelled.

  84. 84.

    Martin

    Bernie is going to get walloped on Tuesday. I think he’ll win WA by a bit, win ND, but lose the others – some by a LOT.

    What’s WAs plan for voting? Voting centers don’t seem like a great idea right now.

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Bluehill: It goes way beyond the markets. As they slowly and clumsily get the testing kits available and actually conduct the tests and we start to get actual numbers that show the true, and I expect very large scope of the spread of the novel Coronavirus and COVID19 throughout the US, people will begin to adjust their own behaviors. Are you really going to risk going to a restaurant or a bar or a coffee shop and ordering food and drinks from people you don’t know, that you don’t know if they’re infected or not, that you cannot observe preparing and handling your food? Are you really going to risk ordering from your grocery store’s deli, butcher, fishmonger, or bakery counters even if the people working them are wearing gloves and hair nets/hats? Are you going to go to the sporting event? Even your kids sport tournament? Concert? Political rally? Movie theater? Gym? Martial arts classes?

    The answer for a lot of people will be no. And the price, if you will, of that decision will be to remove liquidity from the economy because instead of spending money on any and/or all of these things, people will not spend until they are better reassured that the government has a handle on responding to this. And given how these knuckleheads in the administration are doing so far, where they got blind sided tonight when asked about the President’s stupid remarks on Hannity last night, that is going to take a while. And be especially hard for the actual professionals like Fauci who has to combat a whole lot of stupidity.

  88. 88.

    WhatsMyNym

    @Martin: WA is a vote by mail state.   Already 27% of all ballots sent out have been returned.

    ETA: We do have voting machines for those that cannot fill out ballots by hand.

  90. 90.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    @Adam L Silverman:  With regard to your quote last night. Personally it was perfect for the moment and how it was said. I made a personal copy and shared it with a few friends an colleagues.  Is it okay that I share it a bit more broadly?  (I’m thinking like some friendly discord servers.  With reference to you and Balloon juice of course.

  91. 91.

    Cacti

    The problem for Bernie is that the people least likely to be bothered by him rooting for the reds during the Cold War, are also the least like to vote.

    Millennials are about a decade or two from the peak of their electoral influence.

  93. 93.

    The Dangerman

    I know I live in a reasonably quiet area; kinda in the sticks, but not too far from the Big City (actually Cities, LA and SF are basically equidistant). Big Citiers come around and drop some Big City coin because we just ain’t that far away, so there are always some people out and about, even when it’s quiet. Did I mention quiet is good? Namaste.

    But, oh my, it’s a Ghost Town out there tonight. Maybe I’m missing something really good on TV (“Rotten Tomatoes Tossed At Trump, Live At 8”) but if this is a sign of people hunkering down, it’s going to suck if it gets really bad (and it’s probably coming; it would be coming if we had Leadership that was capable, but we don’t, so … oh well … buckle up, buttercup).

    I should probably be more concerned personally given I am at a bit of an increased risk given some health concerns (not pulmonary, but the thigh bone is connected to the hip bone and all that) but I will probably be fine. I do have to plan a bit better, however (I made it a game tonight, call it the “just try to find hand sanitizer challenge” … the game did not end well … people must be at home putting all their supplies of stuff, including hand sanitizer, on the shelves).

    Interesting times.

  96. 96.

    hitchhiker

    Thinking ahead 10 yrs, when –hey!! I’ll be as old as Biden is right now.

    What could happen? Biden gets elected, with Harris as runningmate. If it’s blowout, meaning Ds take the Senate and multiple state houses, we won’t get redistricted out of competition for the next 10 yrs.

    What would the R response be? Do they double down, and if so, does it work? What if my hunch is right, and they really will have destroyed their credibility and authority? How long can an organization structured around contempt & mockery really last?

    Is there some kind of realignment, where we end up with a withering old white evangelical party, a Democratic party that’s increasingly diverse and aging, and some new third thing built by young people stepping up?

  97. 97.

    L85NJGT

    Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer endorsed Biden today. She’s also a possible VP short-lister.

    Biden is actually leading equally both in outstate and Metro Detroit. It’s rare to see a statewide race in which Metro and outstate look similar…

    Bernie left Mississippi (where he is likely to fall below viability) and high-tailed it up north. Conceding -36 delegates makes no sense unless the MI internals are at dumpster fire level.

  98. 98.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    As a result, perhaps we should try something different. Like lifting sanctions, opening up travel, and see what happens when Cubans, Iranians, and Americans all get to meet each other.

    Not that I don’t disagree w/ Iran and Cuba, but didn’t we try the same thing with China and look where that’s led? The PRC is changing our society rather than the other way around. The West (which includes other nations such as Japan and SK, etc) are becoming more authoritarian. The PRC has instead used trading relationships with the US and everyone else to export their values

  99. 99.

    Adam L Silverman

    @The Dangerman: See my comment at #85.

    Also, this is all you need. My understanding is you can skip the essential oil in the second recipe, which is good, because that stuff isn’t going to do anything but make it smell nice.

    https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/diy-hand-sanitizer/

    Stats

    Time: literally 2 minutes

    Ingredient cost: $12 (makes 3.5 cups, or 15 of those little two-ounce bottles)

    Difficulty: easy

    Tools

    • Measuring cup
    • Measuring spoons
    • Whisk
    • Empty spray bottles (for WHO formulation)
    • Empty lotion or sanitizer containers (for gel formulation)

    Instructions for the WHO formulation

    Ingredients

    The WHO has a comprehensive guide on how to make your own hand sanitizer—the only problem is that if you follow these instructions, you’ll end up with a lot of it. Like, exactly 2.6 gallons of it. If you want to make enough to last you, your family, and all your friends through a zombie apocalypse, you definitely can. But if you want to keep things on a smaller scale, we’ve adapted the measurements for you.

    1. Pour the alcohol into a medium-sized container with a pouring spout.The WHO’s recipe asks for 99.8% isopropyl alcohol, but since it’s more expensive and not as readily available in local drugstores, we adapted the proportions for 91% isopropyl alcohol. If you happen to have 99.8% isopropyl alcohol or were able to find it at the drugstore (lucky ducky), use only 1 cup. And if you could only get your hands on 70% isopropyl alcohol, you can still use that—you’ll just have to change the amounts.

    The percentages on the labels of isopropyl alcohol refer to the alcohol concentration in them. You’re dealing with almost pure alcohol if you’ve got 99.8%, whereas 70% means the bottle is only a little more than two-thirds alcohol, and the rest is water.

    For hand sanitizer to be effective against COVID-19, authorities have recommended the use of formulations with at least 60% alcohol, meaning 70% isopropyl alcohol will do just fine. But, if you want to stick to the WHO recipe with 70% isopropyl alcohol, use 1 ⅓ cups instead of 1 cup to make up for that remaining 30%. This will also make your sanitizer more liquid and diluted, which means you’ll need to use a little more to get the same sanitizing effect on your hands.

    2. Add the hydrogen peroxide.

    3. Add the glycerin and stir. This ingredient is thicker than both alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, so it’ll take some stirring to combine everything. You can use a clean spoon for this or, if your container has a lid, you can put that on and shake it well.

    4. Measure and pour in the water. If you’re using 99.8% isopropyl alcohol, you’ll need to measure ¼ of a cup, 1 tablespoon, and 1 teaspoon of distilled or boiled cold water and add it all to your mix. If you’re using another percentage of isopropyl alcohol, just pour as much water as necessary to get to a final volume of 345 milliliters, or approximately 1.4 cups. Stir.

    5. Sanitize your spray bottles and pour in your hand sanitizer. Spray some of your leftover alcohol into your bottles and let them sit until the alcohol has evaporated. Pour in your sanitizer.

    6. Label your bottles. You don’t want any accidents where you or anybody else ingests your newly made hand sanitizer. Take the time to label your bottles. Go kill some germs.

    Instructions for gel sanitizer

    Ingredients

    1. Pour the alcohol into a medium container with a pouring spout. What type of alcohol you use in this formulation will depend on how abrasive you want your hand sanitizer to be—and what you can find at your local drugstore. Again, any alcohol concentration above 60% will do, so if you only find 70% isopropyl alcohol, you’re on the right track.

    • Note: Some recipes online use vodka instead of isopropyl alcohol. You can technically do this, but you’ll have to mind the alcohol level of the vodka you’re using. Most highly alcoholic vodkas are rare and expensive, so unless you can’t find a bottle of alcohol in your house or the drugstore and a fancy bottle of vodka is all you have, by all means, adjust your proportions and go ahead.

    2. Measure and pour the aloe vera gel. Alcohol can be hard on your skin, so using aloe is a good way to counteract that effect and keep your hands smooth. If you want to keep things natural, you can use aloe vera gel straight from the plant without worrying about it going bad—the alcohol will act as a preservative. However, you will need to keep in mind that natural aloe gel is thicker than its store-bought counterpart and will thus affect the final product differently—it will make your hand sanitizer more sticky, which means you’ll need to rub your hands more times for it to fully absorb.

    3. Add the essential oil. Tea tree oil is naturally antibacterial, so it makes sense to use it here. But if you’re not a fan of its smell, you can use another type of essential oil, like lavender, lemongrass, or eucalyptus.

    4. Whisk. To fully mix all ingredients, stirring won’t be enough. Get a whisk and beat that hand sanitizer into an homogeneous gel.

    5. Sanitize your spray bottles and pour in your hand sanitizer. Spray some of your leftover alcohol into your bottles and let them sit until the alcohol has evaporated. Pour in your sanitizer.

    6. Label your containers. You don’t want any accidents where you or anybody else ingests your newly made hand sanitizer. Take the time to label your bottles. Continue living.

  103. 103.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Looking at those polling numbers, yeah it’s going to smart hard. So being VERY generous, 2/3rds of Bloomberg goes to Biden, and he splits Warren’s votes. Thats a 75%-25% blowout for Biden.

    (Honestly, Warren voters mostly despise Sanders, and lets get real about anyone who votes for Bloomberg in the first place, Sander’s might not even reach 15%)

  106. 106.

    Adam L Silverman

    @hitchhiker: The initial response will be an attempt to work the refs so the new, but not numerically large Democratic majority in the Senate is shamed by the media into reinstating all the rules, norms, and traditions that McConnell destroyed so that the GOP minority can use them to stymie the Democratic majority and the new Democratic president. This will be accompanied by the same ref working to deny that the new Democratic president and his legislative majorities have a mandate to do anything combined with a sudden overriding imperative to deal with the existential threat that is the deficit and debt. And the third line of effort will be to use the reactionary Federalist Society judges that McConnell has crammed onto the Federal courts to slow everything down to a crawl so that the midterms can be a referendum on the do nothing Democrats who are both doing nothing, but also actively destroying the Republic.

    The long term reality is that the GOP and the conservative movement that supports it has now fully remade itself into a white Christian herrenvolk party. This will continue as demographic changes further erode white dominance in the US. At the same time, the Democratic Party is going to have to grapple with whether it can really handle being a tent so big that it has to encompass just about everyone else from the center to the left of center, as well as the recent supporters who have abandoned the GOP and conservative movement who are right of center. I would expect that the party would eventually split at some point, but it won’t happen until the Republicans make themselves complete non-viable. And every time most informed observers think the GOP has reached that point, it turns out that they’ve been wrong.

  107. 107.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Han Chinese culture is exceedingly strong. That’s why every society that has ever successfully invaded China winds up assimilating to it, rather than having the Chinese accommodate themselves to the culture of the invaders.

  109. 109.

    Kent

    @Adam L Silverman: @Jeffro: If he has as bad a night in the next cluster of primaries over the next two weeks and it is clear, once again, that he cannot win enough delegates to be the nominee and still refuses to concede and says he’s going to fight on to the convention like he did in 2016, then he should be expelled from the race. Flat stop. And Senator Schumer should strip him of his leadership position, his committee assignments, and forbid him from caucusing with the Senate Democrats. We have a chance to actually have almost 8 full months of directing unified political fire at the President as the incumbent up for reelection, but that requires that the remaining candidate who cannot win the nomination actually gets out of the way and stops damaging the person who will be the nominee. I expect VP Biden would do this if the results turn out the other way and Senator Sanders rebounds and emerges as the nominee apparent. That’s Senator Sanders actual test of leadership. He failed it in 2016. I’ve seen nothing to indicate that he even realizes there was a test, let alone that he failed it or that he should learn something from that failure.

    2020 will be unlike 2016.  If the race is locked up, Biden can probably just shift to general election mode and ignore Sanders and it won’t hurt his numbers in the remaining primary states.

    This is the primary calendar:  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-primary-elections/calendar

    If the race is locked up by say March 24 when Georgia votes, which subsequent states will Sanders stand a chance in?    Maybe Oregon on May 19 but even that I doubt.

    But I agree with you, Purge the motherfucker from civilized company if he does that.

  110. 110.

    L85NJGT

    There are about 100 outstanding California delegates – Bernie promised he’d close the delegate gap with the outstanding CA vote, but his vote margin has dropped 2-3 points since Tuesday night.

  111. 111.

    hitchhiker

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I would expect that the party would eventually split at some point, but it won’t happen until the Republicans make themselves complete non-viable. And every time most informed observers think the GOP has reached that point, it turns out that they’ve been wrong.

    I know. I hold on to hope, though, because of the rate at which the youngs are abandoning Christianity. Using the churches to organize and the pastors to gin up cultural issues was very effective for the last 40 years or so.

    Maybe the Rs will devise some clever new scam to keep the next generation of engaged citizens on their team; if so, they’re a lot smarter than they seem today, or at least a lot smarter than I am.

  112. 112.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Too bad the CCP are totalitarian, homophobic, racist bigots who will help turn the world into a police state

    I still think Xi is weakening the regime. The COVID-19 outbreak has clearly exposed flaws in their current system. Do you think their will be any long-term consequences for the CCP as a result of this debacle?

  114. 114.

    Calouste

    @Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]: I was just looking at the vote totals for Super Tuesday. Sanders only got more votes than Biden and Bloomberg combined in two states: Vermont and Utah.

    Of course we don’t know exactly what people’s second choice was, but given Bloomberg to Biden and splitting the rest 50/50 seems like a decent approximation, possibly too positive for Sanders if anything considering the endorsements.

  116. 116.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I’m aware it was a dictatorship for a lot of it’s history until around the late 80s. Probably shouldn’t have used them as a specific example. Democracy around the world is in retreat in general is the point I was trying make

  121. 121.

    The Dangerman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    …because that stuff isn’t going to do anything but make it smell nice.

    But I want to smell nice (sarcasm; I could give a shit).

    Thanks for the recipe. I was interacting with an apparent homeless soul this morning (I must have an aura visible to animals, children, and homeless folk; they all seek me out like crazy) and, really, I don’t mind sharing a few minutes with them. This guy wanted to talk about Trump, which had me looking for an early exit, but, again, I don’t mind, so I’ll talk for a while, try to brighten somebody’s day at little teeny bit at a cost of nothing to me…

    …anyway, after I found that exit, he wanted to shake me hand, and I almost did, but I pulled away. Normally, no problem, but, right now, obviously, not a non-problem.

  124. 124.

    Sab

    @WhatsMyNym: Most Warren supporters despise Sanders. That’s why I have reluctantly decided to vote for Biden on Tuesday. I would love to cast a symbolic vote for Warren, but all of my stepsons’ friends like Bernie. I don’t want to do anything that allows him to carry Ohio.

    Mnem is right. Follow the AA women on voting.

  126. 126.

    Kent

    @Jeffro:

    @Adam L Silverman: Have to agree.  Didn’t we defeat the USSR primarily by letting them bankrupt themselves in Afghanistan and with the cold war arms race, plus also carpet bombing them with Levis and rock music?

    Not really kidding here.  We can outspend them and out-culture them any day of the week, if we’d just stop stepping on our own, ahem, all the time.

    Russia has a smaller GDP than the state of Texas and their oligarchs are busy stripping the country bare and shipping all the wealth out to London and Abu Dhabi and Dubai and Panama City and NYC real estate and everywhere else they can hide it.  They produce nothing the rest of the world wants except petrochemicals, grain, and weapons.  They are bankrupting themselves in places like Syria and Ukraine.  There is no conceivable way that is sustainable long-term.  And it just astonishes me that we have an entire political party so subservient to them.

  127. 127.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Well, I mean, my wider point still stands. Nations like the PRC are undermining freedom and democracy worldwide. As bad as the US has been, I don’t see the world becoming a better place if American/Western liberal democracy is destroyed

  129. 129.

    Kent

    @Sab: I was out canvassing for Warren last weekend before Super Tuesday here in Vancouver WA.  The Warren HQ was full of middle aged  women who felt like teachers and civic government types.  I’d be shocked if a single one of them will vote for Sanders.  None of them were canvassing for Warren because of her perceived spot on some ideological spectrum.  They were campaigning for her because she is an authentic progressive Democrat.  And because she was the alternative to Sanders.

  130. 130.

    Sab

    @Mnemosyne: I was in the grocery three days ago and they had shelves of wipes. I thought that was funny, and didn’t buy any. Then I thought about spouse’s car Ubering. When I went back to buy wipes they were all gone. So I bought rubbing alcohol in spray bottles and in normal bottles. Ohio here, so we are slow on the uptake regarding our risk.

  131. 131.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    I have another question for the BJ hivemind. Why don’t megalomanical supervillains like in fiction exist in real life? I mean, in the sense, where the global order is directly threatened by them? Why hasn’t somebody succeeded in directly taking over the world yet? Such as a Visionary Villain?

    I sorta know why (it’s complicated by world governments and logistics. Also real life isn’t a Bond novel or a comic book). I just like to hear other peoples’ takes to speculative questions

  132. 132.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m trying to reply with a link to a gif and it keeps vanishing! Help, help, I’m being oppressed!

    (In other words, please release my link from moderation. KTHXBAI.)

  134. 134.

    Redshift

    I remember reading SF writer Frederick Pohl’s memoir The Way the Future Was, and in one part he’s talking about how a lot of the golden age SF writers were communist party members in the 30s because they bought into the idealism of the ideology. The Soviet Union cultivated groups like that in America, and provided a lot of propaganda. When they later found out what the USSR was really like, they pretty much all quit (though many remained socialists.)

    I grew up in the 60s, and I don’t think I had much idea there were people who felt that kind of ideological kinship then, when we knew what it was like in the USSR and Cuba. As far as I could tell when I was older, the supposed ideology of communist countries was just cover for a dictatorship. But Sanders certainly isn’t the only one; the staff of The Nation seems to have a weird anti-Red Scare tic, too.

    Mostly just musing here, but it doesn’t fill me with confidence that one of Sanders’ “consistent” beliefs that he’ll still defend.

  136. 136.

    Mnemosyne

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Not too bad. We have Covid-19 and it’s probably at least a minor epidemic since the morons running the federal government left the barn door open and didn’t bother to look for the horses until like a month later. The only thing in our favor seems to be that the virus is not fond of heat, so hopefully it won’t do well when summer hits next week.

  137. 137.

    Kent

    @hitchhiker:I know. I hold on to hope, though, because of the rate at which the youngs are abandoning Christianity. Using the churches to organize and the pastors to gin up cultural issues was very effective for the last 40 years or so.

    I taught HS for a decade in the Baptist heartland of Waco TX.  I would have hordes of young suburban white students pass through my classes, often wearing the t-shirts of the local Baptist mega-churches on Weds to self-identify.  And even they were mostly repelled by the retro-grade politics of their elders.  Especially on LGBT issues and gay marriage.  They were still majority McCain and Romney supporters (I left before the 2016 election) but it felt like there was some hope, even among those young.  Maybe they will turn racist and crazy when they hit 30.  I don’t know.  But a lot of them were reasonably decent and mostly associated with Christianity because it was the culture and what their parents did.

    I expect the hard core GOP evangelism to crater over time.  The young just are not particularly into it.  They won’t turn Democrat, but will likely be something else more secular and moderate conservative.

    What I expect to happen over the next 20 years is that the GOP will evolve towards the center until they can start capturing 50/50 elections again and we will reach some sort of new equilibrium.  There won’t ever be some sort of permanent Democratic majority.  We aren’t that country.

  139. 139.

    L85NJGT

    @Calouste:

    48/44 Biden in Missouri – this was done by extrapolating second choice. I guess we will find out if voters actually vote their second choice.

  140. 140.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Mnemosyne:

    That’s what the government has been pinning it’s hopes on I think: summer will save. Apparently, warmer weather hasn’t stopped it spreading completely in Singapore. Or Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia.

    It’s going to be a bumpy ride

    I know you’ve mentioned you have some underlying health issues (respiratory) so for your sake and others’ I hope you’re right

  142. 142.

    Redshift

    @Jeffro:

    Didn’t we defeat the USSR primarily by letting them bankrupt themselves in Afghanistan and with the cold war arms race, plus also carpet bombing them with Levis and rock music? 

    I thought the Reagan “spend them into the ground” story was mostly disproven when the Soviet archives were opened after the collapse of the USSR.

  144. 144.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mnemosyne:

    Except now you can’t find rubbing alcohol or aloe vera gel anywhere, because that’s all sold out,

    is aloe supposed to do anything, or are people just buying it out of habit?

  147. 147.

    Martin

    @L85NJGT: Yeah, as expected, the late votes are leaning Biden. Not enough to close the gap, but enough to dilute the delegate advantage. Lots still to count.

    Specifically, about 3.2 million left to count, with some mail-in still coming. Oh, huh,  maybe there are enough to close the gap. That’s more than I thought – about as many as already counted.

  148. 148.

    Kent

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:is aloe supposed to do anything, or are people just buying it out of habit?

    Plain old alcohol will sanitize your hands just fine.  But if you do it a lot it will dry out your skin.  They add the aloe to commercial hand sanitizer so that you are moisturizing and sanitizing at the same time.  That is the only purpose the aloe gel serves.  If you have naturally oily skin you can probably just use plain rubbing alcohol.  But if you do it too much you can dry your skin out and it might crack and bleed and become even more prone to infection.  But if you use plain alcohol sparingly between regular hand washes it would be just fine.

  149. 149.

    Kent

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I have another question for the BJ hivemind. Why don’t megalomanical supervillains like in fiction exist in real life? I mean, in the sense, where the global order is directly threatened by them? Why hasn’t somebody succeeded in directly taking over the world yet? Such as a Visionary Villain?

    I sorta know why (it’s complicated by world governments and logistics. Also real life isn’t a Bond novel or a comic book). I just like to hear other peoples’ takes to speculative questions

    The Kochs aren’t megalomaniac supervillains?  Zukerberg isn’t a megalomaniac supervillain?

    I guess why do stupid shit like torture people with lasers and sharks in cages when you can just own whole cities and states and whole political parties and bend them to your will?

    The comic book world is one in which the world is basically good and democratic and threatened from the outside by supervillains.  The real world we live in is one in which the supervillains already own and control most of the world and the rest of us look at it from the outside.

  151. 151.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    As everyone else said, the aloe vera is so the plain rubbing alcohol doesn’t trash your hands.

    All of this handwashing has been very bad for my hands since I’m prone to eczema on my hands. I found a tiny bottle of Dr. Bronner’s baby (fragrance free) soap, so I’m carrying that with me to try and use instead of that pink bathroom soap in our office restroom.

  153. 153.

    Kent

    @Major Major Major Major:Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t soap worse on that count?

    Yes you are wrong.

    Alcohol is a solvent that will completely dissolve all of the natural oils on your skin and wash them away.

    Soap is a surfactant that breaks down the surface tension of water and allows it to penetrate under the dirt on your skin and lift it away

    Both will remove the natural oils from your skin but alcohol as a solvent will do a much more penetrating and thorough job of it.

  154. 154.

    Sab

    @WhatsMyNym: I have a neice by marriage who loves cats, except she is highly allergic. I love that she loves them. Most allergic people want them annihilated.

  155. 155.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kent:

    The comic book world is one in which the world is basically good and democratic and threatened from the outside by supervillains.

    Yeah. That can describe a lot mainstream fiction historically, too, I’ve noticed.

    The real world we live in is one in which the supervillains already own and control most of the world and the rest of us look at it from the outside.

    A story/fanfic I’ve been writing (pretty much forever now, at least partly in my imagination) basically has the fictional Earth more or less like this, but the villain is a visionary villain who wants to remake the world in his own image; to overtly take over the world. He’s a xenophobic control freak and in his view free will is the root of all evil and that only he can save humanity from itself as a messianic overlord. Think a neo-nazi Lex Luthor with a god complex who thinks climate change is actually a serious problem. He sees governments and other individuals as misguided, corrupt, standing in his way, and beneath him; including people like the Koch Brothers or Zuckerberg. To such a person, the Kochs and Zuckerberg have no real vision and don’t think about the “greater good”

  158. 158.

    JWR

    @Kent:

    @Adam L Silverman: Well said. Some of the stuff in these comment threads is so good I wish it could be preserved somewhere.

    Seconded!

    Also, I saw a clip of Sanders on local news shouting to, or at, one of his tremendous rallies that if we want to know where his support is coming from, well “just look at this crowd!”, or something like that. So yeah, he’s sounding more like Trump every day.

  159. 159.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Kent: I find this surprising because the last couple of doctors I talked to said that alcohol-based sanitizers are a better go-to than soap since I have eczema on my hands, and soap is more dehydrating. Maybe it’s just an eczema thing and they were dumbing it down?

  160. 160.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Soap/hand-washing is more recommended because the soap removes the oils on the skin, along with all the crap on it, and is washed away with water. Alcohol is convenient but has to kill bacteria/viruses in place. Usually effective when enough is used for at least 30 seconds but a lot of people don’t use enough to cover the hands or for 30 seconds

  164. 164.

    Kent

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):Soap/hand-washing is more recommended because the soap removes the oils on the skin, along with all the crap on it, and is washed away with water. Alcohol is convenient but has to kill bacteria/viruses in place. Usually effective when enough is used for at least 30 seconds but a lot of people don’t use enough to cover the hands or for 30 seconds

    Yes, it’s the running water.  You could, of course, wash your hands in gallons of alcohol which would both disinfect and rinse away the dirt and viruses too.  But that’s not how people use alcohol-based hand sanitizer.  They just rub it on and leave it on so it has to disinfect by killing rather than rinsing/removing.

  166. 166.

    joel hanes

    @Kent:

    What I expect to happen over the next 20 years is that the GOP will evolve towards the center

    This is what would happen if their politics were driven by rational calculation.   I expect, from the example of the  California Republican Party, just the opposite:  the extremism of the GOP base prevents any but the most extreme know-nothing candidates from winning a GOP primary, and the party ratchets itself ever rightward, unable to correct course, even when they are completely driven from power.   Devin Nunes, Matt Gaetz, Matt Schlapp, Ron Johnson, Tom Cotton, Marsha Blackburn are where they’re all going, because they won’t tolerate being told that their priors have been bunch of lies for a quarter century.

    Their only hope is if Rupert Murdoch dies and Lachlan or whoever decides to fold the propaganda operation.  Even then, I think it’d take more than a decade for the misinformation and cultivated hatred to begin to wear off.

  168. 168.

    joel hanes

    @Mnemosyne:

    Bronner’s lavender liquid soap is a good choice for women, and readily available.  (Oil of lavender may be a weak estrogen analogue)

  169. 169.

    Dan B

    @lamh36:  It’s heartbreaking reading your posts.  Sometimes the story of one person hits home about the heartache and grief of millions.

  170. 170.

    Dan B

    @Martin: It’s probably already been said but WA is 100% vote by mail.  It’s a great system with high participation and high confidence.

    It’s excellent in face of Covid 19.

  171. 171.

    Dan B

    @Adam L Silverman:  There are economic effects based upon completely irrational behaviors.  Chinese restaurants – hundreds – in Seattle are reporting 20% to 60% reduction in business.  And there is an urban legend that Corona Beer is in trouble.

    On the plus side people will have less risk if they are on a flight with few passengers.  Winners and losers right?  Darwinian economics right?

  172. 172.

    PJ

    @Adam L Silverman: This thread is likely dead but:

    I am convinced, dollar for dollar, that they most effective weapon against Communism in Eastern Europe in the 20th Century was American (and more broadly, Western) culture.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t have had troops and tanks in West Germany, but what people behind the Iron Curtain responded to was the freedom of expression in our movies, books, music, and fashion, in part because we were making a lot of good stuff at the time, but also because their own freedom of expression was so hobbled.  We regularly sent the Jazz Ambassadors to play behind the Iron Curtain, and sent authors like Philip Roth and Kurt Vonnegut to talk to dissidents, and agents distributed cassettes of punk rock bands to kids in small towns.  When the revolutions happened in 1989, while a large part of it, of course, was a rejection of the stupidity and horrors they experienced under Communism, a good portion of their aspirational wishes was to freely participate in culture like this (and, less nobly, to get their hands on consumer goods and get rich.)

  174. 174.

    Mary G

    Three senators visit the American guy in the Cuban jail. One brings him cookies, another a big box of peanut M and Ms, the last nothing. If course it was Bernie.

  175. 175.

    WhatsMyNym

    @Major Major Major Major: They work by two different processes.

    1. Soap and water – the soap loosens germs and the water flushes them away.

    2. Rubbing alcohol – kills germs but has to evaporate, which will dry skin.

  178. 178.

    PenAndKey

    @Adam L Silverman: But there was never an attempt to just let American culture and spending power overwhelm and undermine the Soviet Union in the manner that I’m suggesting we should try with Cuba and Iran.

    I’m not sure how familiar you are with the game franchise Mass Effect, but the writers for the series studied geopolitics quite heavily and it shows. There were three main species on the galactic stage when humanity reached the stars:

    • Turians: species whose ordered stratocracy-style government was so focused on upholding the law they’d willingly attack a newcomer for breaking laws they had no knowledge about.
    • Salarians: a short-lived technocratic species with three main solutions to problems: study it, find someone else to do the grunt work, and “shiv all the leaders first, then consider diplomacy”. Think Roswell alien meets Bond.
    • Asari: a long-lived species that used their cultural and economic superiority to run the show.

    So what happened when humanity reached the stars? The turians tried to “show us our place” and we gave them a massive bloody nose for their efforts. The Salarians tried to spy on us. The Asari? They welcomed us with open arms and within a generation had major influence on human society. They played the long game.

    Why do I mention all this? Because I’m nearly certain you’re right. You don’t successfully influence a society long term without influencing their hearts and minds, by using “soft” power. Hard power might win fights, but unless the opponents culture is utterly destroyed and erased it’s an unstable win. Soft power though? That doesn’t destroy adversaries, it absorbs them. Or, if not, comes so close that the bulk of both populations can’t conceive of attacking the other.

    If I had to pick which route I’d take with places like Cuba and Iran I know which ones I’d pick. Being Turians hasn’t gotten America anywhere in the world but a long list of enemies and “allies” we’d be better off without. I’d rather try my hand at being the Asari and see how that works out for us. I’m guessing we’d all (well, except for guys like Bolton) like the results more than the status quo.

  179. 179.

    artem1s

    Looks like Wilmer might actually be getting the vetting he never got in 2016. About time. I hope to jeebus that the Democratic party kicks him to the curb after FL. Time to stop the notion that just anyone can use the Democratic Party as a platform for a third party run. They need to put some standards in place about who gets on the debate stage that are about more than internet polls, rallies, and gifting abilities.

  180. 180.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @joel hanes:

    Marx was pretty good at identifying problems with nineteenth-century capitalism.

    Not so good on predicting the course of events or prescribing solutions.

    Marx promoted (what he thought was) scientific socialism, in which (like 19th-century science) there would be a single set of solutions to all problems, valid everywhere & for all time. He swept under the intellectual carpet the inconvenient detail that circumstances could change – & in particular individuals (human & corporate) could alter their responses to the situation.  Marxian analysis depended on, inter alia, the capitalists in control of great wealth continuing to respond stupidly to pressure from the workers. Whereas even a confirmed absolute monarchist like Bismarck advocated (successfully!) for things like unemployment insurance and workers’ pensions, as a chess move to take those pieces off the board.

    What Marx needed to process the economic landscape was a mature & elaborated game theory. If he had somehow managed to develop it & apply it to the economies of his time, he truly might have towered over the field. Unfortunately it was over 60 years after his death before von Neumann & Morgenstern started to systematize it – by which time “Marxism” had become encrusted with many of the worst trappings of a religion.

  181. 181.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Adam L Silverman: If someone had suggested Russia to him as the place to try it, he’d have collapse laughing. The only thing Russia had a surplus of was peasants, snow, and inbred hemophiliac nobles.

    Just for curiosity, how many “hemophiliac nobles” were there beyond Crown Prince Alexei? (Of course in that autocracy, one was probably two too much.)

    One (among many) of the significant impacts of a counterfactual in which the Great War never happened** is that an embittered, ineffectual & obscure V. I. Ulyanov probably stays holed up in Zurich until a stroke kills him off in early 1924. Think of what a difference that would have made!

    ** Or for that matter happens long enough before or after August 1914 to become a short sharp war that doesn’t completely overturn the fin-de-siècle order. There were a number of ways the Western Front stalemate might have been (& in the end, was) avoided or broken that were just beyond the technological and/or doctrinal imagination of the warring powers. Don’t get me started on that…

  182. 182.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @PJ: Respectfully disagree about 179 percent. What broke up the Warsaw Pact was West German TV – which showed folks on the other side of the Iron Curtain a society awash in consumer good(ie)s that most of them could only dream about.

    I recall that after November 1989 one of the hottest items in the East was the lowly banana – Chiquita and Dole shipped ’em in by the freighterful & those folks just, um, ate ’em up.

    Another thing was consumer electronics. For awhile in 1990, between Wallfall & Reuni, Berlin-Alexanderplatz was Europe’s (if not the world’s) largest outdoor electronics market. Those whose passports allowed them to cross into West Berlin (Poles, Czechs) would change zlotys/korun/etc., buy up electronics & take ’em back over to be sold to those who couldn’t cross (Romanians, not sure who else).

    Poles also worked a trade with their countrymen who couldn’t travel: Cross to the West, exchange, buy up electronics, take back to Poland (border only ~50 mi east) & sell to countrymen at a markup, then return to the West. From a platform in the Lichtenberg Bahnhof, I watched people shoving box after box in through the windows of a Berlin-Poznan-Warszawa train where an accomplice stashed them. Had no idea what was going on until a Pole on my platform (also waiting for the next train to Leipzig) enlightened me. It seems that this railroad commerce, by tuning zlotys into Deutschmarks into consumer goods into more zlotys, was one means to preserve the value of their cash in the face of hyperinflation caused by the economic shock therapy being administered in Poland at the time. A very entrepreneurial & intelligent approach. Despite all the jokes circulating in my youth, Poles have never been stupid.

Comments are closed.