On this auspicious occasion, we wish a #HappyVaisakhi to sangat across the world.
This year, we'll miss our Nagar Kirtans and Vaisakhi programmes – but we each have to do our bit to protect the sangat we love, by staying home.#VaisakhiAtHome #Vaisakhi2020 #Vaisakhi pic.twitter.com/7b9mTyG4v1
— Sikh Tories (@SikhTories) April 13, 2020
It’s the traditional Sikh New Year, another Spring festival / solar new year I didn’t know until now. (And it’s the traditional Punjabi season for bhangra, if anyone’s looking for a way to recharge their lockdown exercise routine.)
Love this video! It’s currently doing the rounds on Whatsapp #Vaisakhi #Sikh #LookASingh pic.twitter.com/Zn6y9dTxR1
— Look! A Singh! (@LookASingh) April 13, 2020
Other uplifting news:
Ok so a reporter called my collaborators and boss and made a story and I’m crying, cause loveeeee…
The woman leading COVID-19 vaccine trials is ‘not your average pocket-protector scientist’ https://t.co/plLyZYyUcg via @nbcnews
— KizzyPhD (@KizzyPhD) April 12, 2020
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam makes Election Day a holiday and expands early voting https://t.co/zreCzHgRCa pic.twitter.com/Q9YUDAMnRv
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 12, 2020
BREAKING: Democratic presidential candidate and former South Bend, Indiana mayor @PeteButtigieg is joining our new virtual series, #FrontRowSeat! Join our host committee and grab your seats today: https://t.co/gUsAAzKilC pic.twitter.com/gvMPwPGl6S
— Run for Something (@runforsomething) April 11, 2020
Baud
A couple of interesting Biden pieces.
An NYT interview with AOC about Biden (warning: she spreads one piece of bullshit about 2016)
zhena gogolia
So we get to have thunderstorms and high winds and lose our power today, on top of everything else. Just typical mid-April weather.
debbie
@Baud:
Not sure what he could do as a VP he will be able to do as a president. Micromanaging and getting bogged down in details did in Jimmy Carter.
Baud
@debbie: I think the experience will help him in his new role.
p.a.
The magatariat has Fauci in their sights. The puke funnel is on ‘high’.
JPL
@p.a.: trump will try to push him into retirement, because his aides won’t let him fire Fauci.
debbie
@Baud:
Oh, absolutely. It’s a very low bar at this point.
OzarkHillbilly
There go those do nothing Democrats again.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Toss in losing one’s pension as a consequence, and it’s got my vote.
A Ghost to Most
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s corrupt fucking snapping turtles all the way down.
Is there any institution anywhere that isn’t a grift? I got nuthin.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: The AOC story is pay-walled. What did she say that’s untrue?
Baud
@A Ghost to Most:
The current House of Representatives.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
SFAW
@Baud:
I don’t know — I’m willing to give the “a President who doesn’t do anything depraved, evil, infantile, bullying, or dickish” mode a chance for awhile. It may take me a bit of time to wean myself off the “yelling ‘Fuck you, you lying motherfucker!’ ” mode, however. I’d estimate about a nanosecond.
satby
Happy Vaisakhi! The largest Sikh temple in Delhi is amazing, and feeds thousands of people each day. This video by a young couple shows some background on volunteering there, and bonus, in the beginning they walk by the hotel I stayed at in Old Delhi near the train station (no Western hotels for me). If you ever have a chance to travel to India, that temple is a must see.
Baud
@SFAW: Same here. In any event, nothing about Biden’s proposals say we’re going back to the way things were, and that’s true even before his recent moves to the left to appeal to Warren and Sanders supporters. The only “going back” is going back to an era of a competent administration that put the American people ahead of personal grift.
SFAW
@Baud:
Did you know Speaker Pelosi caused the COVID-19 outbreak in San Francisco all by herself, when she told people in Chinatown to go out and infect real Americans? Although I guess that’s not technically a grift.
SFAW
@Baud:
I’ve read about that in science fiction and comic books.
NotMax
Not new by any means yet still kind of keen and enough to instigate a slight smile (and who isn’t in need of that).
schrodingers_cat
It’s the 100th anniversary of the Jalianwala Bagh massacre
Baud
@SFAW: There are real Americans in San Francisco?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Oh wow. That’s a big one.
We need an adjective for “Anniversary” that isn’t “Happy.”
A Ghost to Most
@Baud: Slightly over 1/2 of 1/3 of our government makes them the resistance movement in a corrupt institution. They impeached, but the fascists shut it right down.
I have no expectations for a fair election, or that the election will even be held. They ALWAYS double down.
SFAW
@Baud:
Damn! I was hoping no one would notice that one.
Immanentize
I texted a friend this morning:
“Rainy days and Mondays. With a storm warning to boot!”
Her reply: “At least we get to stay in!”
Humans are generally optimists.
Except Ozark.
Baud
@A Ghost to Most: I guess it depends how broadly you define the “institution” then.
Given our “both sides” media culture, I hesitate to lump the House with the Senate and White House as one indivisible corrupt “government.”
glory b
Pennsylvania is still horribly gerrymandered, in spite of our lines being redrawn by our Supreme Court. We’ve only had one election with the new lines, some of the legislators haven’t run in the new districts yet.
Our statewide elected officials are Dems, but we have a Republican majority in the legislature.
So, our repubs have decided to vote tomorrow for a bill that would give them the power to decide what can be designated an essential business, crippling the governor’s authority.
He’ll veto it, I don’t know if they will have enough votes to override. They usually vote in lockstep.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: I read about it in the newspapers. for about 8 years or so. Starting right after the Texas imbecile went back home I think.
JPL
@Immanentize: At least your storms are moving in during the daylight. just sayin
Soprano2
I swear, I’m in NFLTG mode over the stupid crap I’m seeing on FB from some of my friends about the virus. “We should do what Sweden did” got the answer from me that businesses can come back, but unfortunately dead people can’t, and besides don’t you know you’re part of the herd? “The freedom of healthy people is being impeded unnecessarily” got “But we don’t know who’s healthy since people can be infected and spreading it and not know it, and don’t forget dead people cannot come back to life”. I swear, the experts were exactly right that as soon as distancing started to work the idiots took it as a sign that we can stop now. I’m more and more convinced that “Idiocracy” was a documentary.
It was 32 degrees here this morning, which isn’t unusual for April here, but they were saying the dreaded word “snow” on the weather this morning. We have a 20% chance of snow flurries tonight! I’m so done with winter weather, I wish it would go away. I guess I should be grateful that we didn’t have tornadoes yesterday; when that storm went through here it just dumped about 1″ of rain.
OzarkHillbilly
I’m what most people call a cynic but I prefer the term “realist”. Always expect the worst in your fellow human being and you’ll never be disappointed. You will however be pleasantly surprised quite often.
Immanentize
@glory b: In Mass., We luckily have a very long history of Supreme Judicial Court rulings making sure that there is a serious separation of powers. It’s in the Constitution of the Commonwealth…. That would exceed legislative function by a parsec.
Soprano2
OH, and after taking my temperature twice a day for the past week I’ve discovered that my average temp is about 97.5 degrees.
Immanentize
@JPL: Did you get mailed? Is all OK there?
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Optimist the the pessimist’s word to describe a realist.
:)
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s true. You have never disappointed me.
OzarkHillbilly
@Soprano2: That rain was a disappointment here, little more than spit. And the below freezing temps they were predicting for this week? They’ve all been taken out of the forecasts now. Weird weather, so normal for here.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I try to fulfill the lowest of expectations.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: ?.
My Dad often said, “Realists look at the moon.”
A Ghost to Most
@Soprano2:
Feature, not bug.
Immanentize
@Soprano2: Mine is 97.7. I’ve know that for years because when I get over 99.5, I start having chills. I just recently read that the base temp. of people has gone down. Or maybe 98.6 was never that accurate.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: At least you are trying!
NotMax
@OzarkHilbilly
Keanu, is that you?
:)
Amir Khalid
@Soprano2:
When I went to the grocery store on Saturday, the security guard pointed one of them infrared thermometer guns at my forehead and said, “35°.” [I.e. 95°F]
I’m cool with that.
OzarkHillbilly
The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized
The whole of it is well worth a read.
A Ghost to Most
@Amir Khalid: My wife the RN and former respiratory therapist got a pulse oximeter to keep track of our oxygen levels. She says she that is the number that would tell her somebody is in trouble.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I guess they’re never going to let go of the superdelegates BS. While failing to note that Sanders asked superdelegates to overturn the will of voters as the 2016 primary wound down…
Dorothy A. Winsor
One of my fellow Inspired Quill authors is a PR person who’s been getting requests from editors for “positive” spin stories. She wrote a release about a “scrappy” small press whose managing director got trapped locked down in an apt in Madrid, while its authors are locked down all over the globe. She put in quotes from different authors including me. She has UK contacts but asked me for suggestions for the Chicago area or the US in general (haha). The only thing I can think of is the suburban Daily Herald.
So, suggestions?
Chyron HR
@Baud:
It’s true; Bernie’s plan to go scorched-earth so that the superdelegates would be forced to give him the nomination really fucked up the primary in 2016.
I love that these mentally diseased pieces of shit are still going “tHiNGs wEre bAd UNDEr obAMA too” even after we’ve reached the “contaminated bodies buried in mass graves” phase of the failed Trump presidency.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Also, I blogged about what I’ve learned about writing during a pandemic. Warning: It’s pathetic.
Spanky
@Amir Khalid: I see what you did there.
Baud
@Chyron HR:
In fairness
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
It’s disappointing. You can compromise on policy. You really can’t compromise on lies.
satby
@Amir Khalid: thought you’re pretty cool all the time ?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Soprano2: DO they not understand Sweden has (at LEAST) 10,000 infected and almost 900 dead, so far? And thats if you believe their numbers. Which since I don’t know how much they are bothering to test, and how many deaths are not being counted as COVID-19 because the person wasn’t tested before they died…I kind of don’t.
gene108
I wonder how many men are going to go back to paying someone to cut their hair?
Seems like a lot of guys are settling on getting clippers and DIY haircuts
OzarkHillbilly
James Joyner has taken note: Virginia’s Stunning Transformation
A disgraced governor is signing a wave of progressive legislation
He goes on to list all that has been done by the DEMs in VA. All I can say is, I’m jealous
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Elections have consequences.
Amir Khalid
@gene108:
I’ve been doing that for years. I’m fine with a buzzcut.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Here’s hoping Virginians appreciate that singular fact in addition to all that has been done.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Chyron HR: I do not understand people for whom it’s everything or burn it all down. Yes there are some things we need to really get moving on , Climate Change being one of them. But the attitude that absolutely NO ONE before them ever tried to improve things or get anything good passed really pisses me off. The screaming MEDICAL FOR ALLLLLLLLL!!!! eleventy!! is a prime example. We have the ACA, protect it , build on it, improve it. Do Not tear it all down and start over.
And people before AOC was every born were trying to get a national health care plan passed. Teddy Kennedy, Orrin Hatch and First lady Hillary Clinton are largely the reason we got CHIP, no it was not what they wanted but they fought for a long time and it was what they could get passed. Lacking a magic wand they fought for everything but took what they could get rather than saying if I can’t get exactly what I want I am going to take my ball and go home. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and many other social programs have been added to and expanded and strengthened incrementally for decades.
Amir Khalid
@Immanentize:
I think the notional average is 37°C and that’s just the Fahrenheit conversion. By the way, 98.6°F is probably more precise than it should be. There might well be some individual variation in resting body temperature.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Dorothy A. Winsor
@gene108:
It’s funny to me that the men I know look shaggy before the women do. Of course, we’re finding out what a lot of women’s natural hair color is. I’m not sure I’d dare to cut Mr DAW’s hair.
phdesmond
@Baud: “solemn” might work instead of “happy.”
gene108
@Amir Khalid:
I was looking into getting clippers and giving myself a buzz cut. Clippers are out of stock online, with restocking about two weeks away, at the earliest.
Looked at YouTube DIY haircuts. The recent comments are mostly guys looking for tips on DIY haircuts.
I think a certain percentage will no longer pay for haircuts. I wonder how this will effect barbers, when things reopen
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Amir Khalid
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Sweden and Japan have been curiously lackadaisical about managing the pandemic, and the consequences are now catching up to both nations.
WereBear
@Soprano2: Me too! Personal normal is what we should track.
In Cat News, I found a kind of treat our cats will accept, somewhat appeasing the Great Cat Pickle. Our last shipment of the “gudd stuff” was three weeks ago, Chewy has apologized, and the experiments have scaled up to “pricey but anything to make the begging stop.”
I always have sharp cheddar for Mr Siamese Voice. Which, as we all know, is the finest of all complaining voices.
O. Felix Culpa
Good morning from Santa Fe County! We’ve got an inch or more of snow on the ground and it’s still snowing. I’m not sure how the fruit trees will fare since they’re predicting a hard frost for the next two days. All my veggies are still inside, except for the overwintered kale. Thankfully there’s no commute today — or for the foreseeable future — since New Mexico has about three snowplows for the whole state (a slight exaggeration) and black ice is a thing around here.
Jeffro
@OzarkHillbilly: We do. ;)
VA Dems have had a great deal of success. I hope that they keep pointing out, loudly and regularly, that a) all of this progress was made possible by ending gerrymandering – we were a ‘blue’ state long before 2018, and b) it will all be undone if we let the GOP sneak back into power here – they don’t represent the majority of this state, and they can’t be trusted.
Immanentize
@Amir Khalid: You probably know this, but the 98.6 is not a conversion from 37° Celsius. Farenheit — the dude himself — based his scale on 0°F being the point at which a salt-saturate solution freezes and 100 being the temperature of a healthy body.* Mr. F was correct about 0°, because replicable science!, but proved a tad bit off when it came to human temp. After much observation and testing — 98.6. which seems to now be going lower. Or we are more accurate in measuring? Or?
* Celcius is 0° when distilled water freezes, 100° is when that same water boils. It’s much more compact which is why we talk about Kelvin (based on universal norms like absolute 0 and the speed of light, etc.) in terms of celcius because they have the same temperature distance between numbers or degrees.
Immanentize
@gene108: I don’t think there will be a drop off in barbering when/if close to normal returns because a haircut is a moment of being pampered. It is generally a stress-less experience with a barber you know. Plus, it is a community moment as well. Then there is the warm face towel in the winter or the cool towel in the summer…. All of that is worth paying for.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Amir Khalid: Yup. I have heard the same from my in-laws about their neighbors attitudes. “ oh we are a rural part of a red state. We won t get any cases of that here!” My SIL the Democratic) home health care nurse supervisor has to practically stand on her own tongue when she has to be around anyone. I think her head is going to actually explode…
Immanentize
@O. Felix Culpa: When did simple “ice” turn black? It reminds me of this comedian (?) Who talked about his father complaining about everything done to blacks. Why are the green olives in the jar and the black ones in the can? Why does the white pool ball get to hit and push all the colored balls around the table. He said the only sport his father let him watch was bowling.
satby
Come sit by me. It’s beyond insulting to have been involved in political efforts for (me personally over 47) years and be told how we’ve done nothing makes me stabby.
debbie
@satby:
Too much talking and too little listening! /shakes fist at sky/
snoey
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Toole County Montana is a hotspot.
Immanentize
@satby: I don’t think that is what AOC is saying at all. You can read her statements as a Sanders version of critique, or you can read them as neutral and progressive — especially as to race and class. Her statement about super delegates is spot on. The existence of that thumb on the scale allowed the Sanders folks to cry foul over and over. Taking them out of the first ballot was genius.
And I want to believe that second statement too. That isn’t necessarily directed at anyone in the past, certainly not Obama, but is speaking to a present day reality and a hopeful future. I would love to live long enough to see the wage workers and minority neighbors who have both toiled so much and suffered the most during this pandemic to be treated with honor and equality in the future. It is a bit like black men serving in the military in WWII. Hard to put that group — and their communities — back into legal bonds forever once that happened.
Geminid
@Jeffro: you are right that that Republicans cannot be allowed to sneak back into power, but here in the 5th Congressional District they seem to be trying to sneak into oblivion. The Tea Party cranks and Church Militants are planning to roll Congressman Denver Riggleman in a convention, and substitute Bob Good, a Liberty U. fundraising official as their candidate this fall. A small tent strategy for small minded people. Not that Riggleman is much better.
Baud
@Immanentize:
Disagree. There was no thumb on the scale, and there was nothing illegitimate about the 2016 primary. It’s pure conspiracy theory. She shouldn’t have gone there, except to blame Sanders for crying foul (which she will never do).
Immanentize
@Geminid: Will (not so) Good win if he is subbed in?
mrmoshpotato
Gonna spam some threads.
Barbara
@Chyron HR: I will say it again. The unforeseen downside of “heightening the contradictions” is that — wait for it — you actually make things so much worse people get nostalgic for what it was like previously. There is a long joke that I will summarize that reflects this truth: A man at the end of his wits with his wife and kids in a one room cottage asks his rabbi for help, and he tells him to let the chickens live with them. And week by week, he tells him to add one animal after another, e.g., goats, cows, etc. Every week the man is beside himself, and finally, after a month, the rabbis says: take all the animals out. And the next week the man is overjoyed at how much better things have become. Sanders and his supporters should study that joke very closely.
mrmoshpotato
@Barbara: @satby:
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Everyone knows no one tried to change anything before the children started screaming about Medicare For All with no plan on how to implement it! Duh! Der! Gahdoy!
Immanentize
@Baud: Oh c’mon. Although there was nothing illigitimate about it, those were the rules, the number of super delegates had swollen potentially putting the primary system into some plurality, but not necessarily majority position given proportional delegate distributions. Now Sanders lost (badly) all on his own in 2016. But the true observation that the party insiders had a larger personal thumb than voters was a ready-made argument for a sore loser.
Which is why the rules were changed, in my mind, for the better. This year, either the primary would be decisive, or a larger group, including automatic delegates, could weigh in. There was no specter of insiders making the initial decision which so haunted 2016.
Do you think the 2016 system was a better way than this version?
Kelly
@WereBear: Phoebe has decided she needs several minutes of focused lap time throughout the day. She pushes my computer aside so she can have the center of my lap then insistently nuzzles my hand if I try to carry on with my laptop off to one side. She only demands a few minutes at a time then is off to do other things.
Martin is now as tall and long as Phoebe but only half her weight. He’s so floofy he looks just as big as her.
Barbara
@Immanentize: It was never intended as a thumb on the scale in the way that Sanders insinuated. Never. It was an issue seized on by Sanders that overlooked the fact that he was not winning a majority of ordinary delegates even if he was winning enough to keep Clinton from getting the number needed to win (which turned out not to be the case in any event). So it was getting angry over a hypothetical situation that never materialized. It was Sanders who wanted the super delegates to get him over the top. I don’t hate Sanders but his complaints were so contorted and situational that they were complete nonsense.
Barbara
@Immanentize: The word “potentially” is doing a lot of work in your comment. When that potential was understood it was changed EVEN THOUGH it never ACTUALLY mattered. Not to Clinton.
Baud
@Immanentize:
An improved system doesn’t make the original system illegitimate or indicate that the original system had a thumb on the scale. The rules were changed as an accommodation to the whining, not because of any actual problem with the prior system. We can reasonably debate whether we should even have supers, but what AOC is complaining about is a complete fabrication that is not worthy of our respect.
ETA: I don’t want to relitigate this. AOC mentioned the lie in her interview, and I felt the need to flag that because I had linked to her interview. That’s all.
Immanentize
@WereBear:
@Kelly:
I am a bit worried about our cat, Toasty. Since the Immp has been home since his surgery last August, and I have been home since January, Toast has gotten attention whenever (and pretty much wherever) he demanded it.
In the fall, if all goes perfectly, the Immp will be off to college and I will be off to work. Poor spoiled cat will be sad.
Frankensteinbeck
@A Ghost to Most:
What are Trump and McConnell going to do when New York and California declare that Trump isn’t president and congress isn’t legitimate? Because they will. They’re just barely respecting the current situation because as biased as the system is, the system did put Republicans into power. McConnell knows he has no United States government and his red states go up in flames without New York and California money.
Not that it will get that far. If the top Republicans declare no elections in November, every blue state will hold an election anyway and some of the red states will, because that’s not a decision the federal government makes anyway. Republicans will end up losing their majorities in everything as the system declares they have no congressmen. The Secret Service and capitol police will escort Trump out of the building, because he will have lost the election in the states that had one. They don’t respect him, they respect the system.
Trump is an idiot. I’m sure he’s been telling his aides he wants to cancel the election for years, and like when he told them to arrest Hillary and Obama he’s been told that is not merely something illegal to do, it’s literally something he doesn’t have the physical ability to do. McConnell is not an idiot. He has more power than Trump and will have nothing to do with this.
Immanentize
@Barbara: It was an issue on 2008. Or are the Youngs the only people who forget there was a past? PUMAs were all over it as the way to save their candidate — they craved the vote upsetting intervention of supers. Sanders didn’t create or invent the issue about supers. He just harped on it the most. It was always a weakness in the system ready to be exploited or demagogued.
Or do you think the old system of first ballot auto delegates was better than the 2020 model?
Amir Khalid
@Immanentize:
Wikipedia agrees with the account you give for Daniel Fahrenheit’s choice of the 0° and 100° points in his temperature scale. (By the way, the definition of a degree Fahrenheit has changed since he made that choice.) But when you convert 37°C you do get precisely 98.6°F, and I doubt that’s a coincidence.
A Ghost to Most
@Frankensteinbeck: I’m sure the CA and NY National Guard units are really looking forward to a standoff with regulars.
I’ve often said the Rs won’t stop t* until they see mushroom clouds. It isn’t any less likely now.
Gin & Tonic
Interesting development in the intersection of religion and public health. In Ukraine, the Orthodox Church gained ecclesiastical independence from Russia last year. However, on of Kyiv’s sacred sites, the Pecherska Lavra monastery, remained under the control of the Moscow Patriarchate. The leaders of that monastery were slow to recognize the pandemic and basically ignored the government’s quarantine measures. As of today, the monastery accounts for ~20% of all Covid-19 cases in Kyiv, and two of its leaders are dead. The factions of the church under the control of the Kyiv Patriarchate obeyed government guidelines and are not having this problem.
Omnes Omnibus
@A Ghost to Most: Stop being a fucking idiot.
Immanentize
@Baud: I know you have this thing about this thing. Here is the part you quoted:
Here is how I read that because I do not assume the worst about people when being interviewed and not having an opportunity to respond to potential misreads:
Immanentize
@Amir Khalid: Maybe it went the other way?
Immanentize
@Amir Khalid: PS. Mr. Beaver (yes that was his name), my high school chemistry teacher is aligned with the wiki! If he still lives.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: God knows justice but waits.
Frankensteinbeck
@A Ghost to Most:
With who? The military isn’t supporting a coup. They’re also loyal to the system, not Trump. Hell, he’s done the impossible – he’s actually made the military resent a Republican president.
Geminid
@Immanentize: The Democrats have at least two strong candidates. And unlike 2018, we will have a primary, not a caucus. In 2018, Spanberger flipped the 7th after winning a primary with 35,000 votes. In the 5th, a few thousand caucus goers ended up selecting a lackluster candidate who lost to the mediocre Riggleman by 7 points. Interestingly, when Congressman Scott Garrett announced his retirement, two GOP heavy hitters, state senators Jill Vogel and Frank Stanley, passed on contesting the nomination. They aren’t dummies, and could probably see the coming Republican trainwreck. Also, Vogel was one of the three republican senators who helped Northam put Medicaid expansion through. That made her anathema to the hard right.
Jeffro
@Geminid: That’s my district too! Yes, I read a bit about that in the Daily Progress last week. More power to them if they want to purity-test themselves out of yet another seat.
Baud
@Immanentize: When Trump says that he lost the popular vote because Dems allowed non-citizens to vote, should I assume that the existence of non-citizens delegitimized the election?
The only reason the supers mattered is that the Bernie campaign cynically used their existence to stir up his base. The fact that his base had a “perception” of impropriety is as meaningless to me as the “perception” that the 40% of Americans who support Trump have of the Democratic Party.
Jeffro
@Geminid: that’s great to know the Dems have a chance to take the seat. I’ll have to go read more about the two D candidates.
Barbara
@Immanentize: But it wasn’t a problem in 2008. To the extent that it was considered, it was rejected by Clinton’s core supporters as opposed to her fringe supporters. It was seized on by Sanders the way people seeking situational advantage seize on meaningless outlier information (see, e.g., “third trimester abortion”) while ignoring 98% of the actual story. It was, as Baud says, totally a “stir the pot” accusation that had no grounding in reality but insinuated that the Democratic Party was corrupt. I am glad that Sanders’ rejection of the party seems to be one of the things that has bitten him in the butt this year. A party he wants to take advantage of but not be part of.
Gin & Tonic
@Barbara: I, for one, am delighted that the discussion has gone from re-litigating 2016 to re-litigating 2008.
“Forward, into the past!”
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@satby: I know what you mean. Every time I hear the snarky ” party insiders: crack I think, you know how people get to be a party insider or source of knowledge and contacts? Those people show up and do the hard work of making contacts and forming relationships over years and sometimes decades. And yes, sometimes having to settle for half a loaf just to get anything passed. It’s not pretty , it’s sometimes contentious, and exhausting. To have people swoop in and say you are doing it wrong and you are not progressive and pure enough because you have to settle for incremental progress(as opposed to no progress at all) is infuriating. Yes I want to see people come in with energy and enthusiasm, but shitting all over anyone who came before you that is not “visionary” enough is bullshit.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: Yes, the three significant figures in “98.6 degrees F” were always fake precision resulting from a conversion from “37C”. It’s also a bit high, by modern accurately-measured standards. My temperature usually seems to be around 97.1-97.6 F and it slowly rises by a fraction of a degree over the course of a day.
A Ghost to Most
@Frankensteinbeck: There are two minds in the military, just like the rest of us. Nobody knows what is going to happen. We are off the map. Given my faith that fascists ALWAYS double down, they will keep going.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: Thank you for taking apart this bs about T declaring himself the king for life.
Immanentize
@Baud: that is such an apples to oranges comparison. Reaching. The fact of super delegate power was a fact. Illegal aliens voting in not a fact.
It is easier to build an argument from a fact than from a non-fact which is why, they changed the rules, right? You keep ignoring the fact that the rules friggin changed in response to the attack because everyone of any reason saw the super delegate allocations as a potential weakness vis a vis a democratic (small d) selection process.
So. Do you support the rule change? If so, why?
Baud
@Immanentize: I’ve said what I’ve need to say. If I come across AOC or anyone else pushing lies, I will push back. I’m not interested in revisiting the issue otherwise.
Repatriated
@A Ghost to Most:
Likely true. On the other hand, this is actually an improvement. This degree of disaffection is a relatively recent development.
Immanentize
@Barbara: Exactly! It was only leadership by Hillary that prevented a party war in 2008. Sanders provided no such leadership – to the contrary, he seemed to exploit the weakness that was so clear in 2008. Obama could have worked to fix it, and reduce caucuses as well. But he won the latter which helped him win the mom in 2008, and was a little too busy to worry about the former.
You too missed answering my question. Do you think the new rules regarding automatic delegates are better rules?
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: I am trying to support the future. And look who is talking, Mr. “Russia kept a monastery and are now suffering” regarding a schism centuries in the making.
Immanentize
@Barbara: I mentioned that. But we build durable narratives on potentials all the time as lawyers, no?
Barbara
@Immanentize: You mean like the right to life movement has built a durable narrative on the idea that abortion rights will result in women killing viable fetuses? I like to think we encourage people to be better logicians and not fall for bullshit arguments like that. So yeah, I will never agree that arguments about super delegates should give rise to the Democratic Party’s governance priorities.
A Ghost to Most
@Repatriated: It started over 40 years ago. My last 6 months in were truly fucked up my my superior nco, badgering about me about Jebus, and trying to force me to go to his bible study. A true dickhead.
My step-brother and BIL are both retired USAF, and they are both crazy ass MAGAts.
Miss Bianca
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I feel a bit smug that I buzzed my hair off last summer after my gig as Lady Bracknell was over, just so I could see my actual natural hair color for the first time in…hmm…twenty years? Am now so pleased that I decided I could live with the grey.
Brachiator
Goddam, I love this idea!
Make it so across all the states. Simple and practical.
LivingInExile
I have cut my own hair for 45 years. Three eights of an inch head and beard. Use the same clippers.that I use on my cairn terrier. She does not seem to mind sharing.
WereBear
@Kelly:
@Immanentize:
Yes. Though what is preoccupying my cats now is the Treats Crisis, where their favorite is nowhere to be found, not even online.
Who knew!?
Origuy
I heard somewhere (sorry, no cite) that the average body temperature of a healthy person has dropped because of antibiotics and other medications. When the original measurements were taken, many people had mild infections like toothaches that they just lived with. We get those taken care of now, so fewer people are walking around with fever.
J R in WV
@A Ghost to Most:
Yeah, I got one of those not long after wife was released from the hospital, where she recovered from pneumonia and septic shock, had lung surgery to clean up necrotic damage to the third/bottom lobe of her left lung. Still works well… we both score well.
A Ghost to Most
@WereBear: We’re getting emails from Chewy as well. Luckily, our autoships have left us a bag ahead on the Annamaet (sp?) our cats eat.
Martin
Happy Vaisakhi everyone. When I was young and my grandmother was traveling the world, I visited her between trips and she spent days recounting where she went and did. At one point she stopped and told me “If you are ever in trouble and need help and don’t know who to turn to, find a Sikh and they will help.” I’ve had the good fortune to know quite a few from my days in NY as well as CA – CA has a large, and quite old (for CA) Sikh community up in the central valley – Sikh came here 100-odd years ago to farm the central valley – and they’ve all been among the most wonderful people I’ve had the pleasure to know. That was good advice my grandmother offered me.
J R in WV
@Miss Bianca:
Wife and I went to NYC for 10 days or so, one of the many nightclubs we hit up was BB King’s Place, where we had a great steak dinner and saw Jimmy Vaugn. While eating dinner, a beautiful young woman came up to wife and complemented her on her wonderful natural silver hair, which at the time was long, in a ponytail, silver.
This is something that does not happen in NYC — wife was beside herself with having a great time in the big city. And the music was great.
The last show we saw the night before flying home was Judy Collins at the Carlyle… a tiny venue with great food. It was like having her play and chat in your living room… ;-)
The waiter had worked there since 1968 and put 3 kids through SUNY level college — got a huge tip, because he was a great guy AND a great help with dinner and wine. Not cheap, but how often do you get to do that?!! Worth every $$…
bluefoot
My family is celebrating Vaisakhi virtually with each other. We’re going to try zoom later in the week too. I’m also treating myself to listening to apollo13inrealtime. We’re approaching The Problem. Is anyone else listening?