Sticking to their own side.https://t.co/STdWx4gtvP pic.twitter.com/d5dNVxTHMT
— Tom Toles (@TomTolesToons) July 27, 2020
Gonna be hard for the Friday Doc Dump to top yesterday’s headlines, but I’m sure the GOP Death Cult will do their best!
Here’s the day so far: it’s 11:22am pic.twitter.com/iUKAH3qYza
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 30, 2020
BREAKING: Senator Ron Johnson once again just blocked legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
As nation watches funeral service for John Lewis.
— Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) July 30, 2020
Summary of the week:
Monday: McConnell unveils his plan
Tuesday: GOP senators trash the plan
Wednesday: Meadows/Mnuchin/Pelosi/Schumer meeting goes nowhere
Thursday: objection theater on the floor
Friday: alcohol, pain, tears
Next week: deal??— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) July 30, 2020
Notice – "The house passed their bill" and the Senate has't, but Americans have lost faith in "government."
The problem is the Republican Party. The problem is that it's often presented as "congress" or "washington gridlock" or "government." https://t.co/jr2ExLVjmn
— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) July 31, 2020
if you're a reporter who is unable to accurately communicate that senate republicans are the incompetent failures here, then you're a reporter who can't do your job any better than they are doing theirs. https://t.co/KMrqEaw4uP
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) July 31, 2020
It’s long past time to take action on the COVID crisis
Today, @SenSchumer and Senate Democrats demanded passage of the Heroes Act, House-passed legislation to provide financial support and PPE for American families and frontline & essential workers
But Republicans objected pic.twitter.com/vCbXKKRJ2n
— Senate Democrats (@SenateDems) July 30, 2020
Baud
Hey Ozark, do you know this guy?
waynel140
Anne Laurie should get a Pulitzer Prize for coronavirus raptor blogging. Amazing effort, and I am glad she’s doing it. Outstanding work. Thank you.
debbie
@Baud:
I disagree that what they hate is weakness. What they hate at heart is other people having good, decent lives. They don’t think they’re superior; they think they’re true Americans.
Ken
Toles cartoon trivia: In “SS GOP” the SS stands for “steamship”, not as many might think “Schutzstaffel”.
Ken
In the old days of paper news, the compositors would leave this set in type because it was repeated so often.
gkoutnik
Open thread musings:
Nightmare hypothetical:
In 2016, a few hundred thousand votes go differently, and Hillary wins a close election. For four years, the Party of No continues to obstruct progress, so there are no significant policy or legislative achievements. The House does not flip in 2018 because, why should it? Just like in most midterm elections, the party out of the White House gains seats. The right wing noise machine has four years to tell all Americans, daily, why they should hate Hillary.
Fast forward to July, 2020. Hillary is running for reelection. She has reacted competently to the virus, which means that we’re on a path to some sort of control, but the economy has taken the massive hit it would have to take to keep the virus from running out of control. Republicans successfully downplay the virus and emphasize the poor economy. And Wilmer has, of course, run a noisy and distracting primary campaign, and lost. The Bros are even more pissed than in 2016, for obvious reasons.
And who is running against her? Donald Trump, again, because why not? He came close, he loved the limelight, and he’s been rallying and campaigning for four years now, bashing Hillary daily, raising fund and running his grift. The political environment is much better for him at this time than it was in 2016.
January 2021 – Donald Trump is inaugurated and begins four years of chaos with a damaged economy and a only barely-in-control pandemic.
Did I get anything terribly wrong? Maybe, here in the middle of 2020, we should count our blessings.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: No, but he’s my brother by another mother.
Baud
@gkoutnik:
Pretty much all of it is wrong because alternative timelines are inherently make-believe.
ETA: The one thing I’m confident of, however, is that Hillary would have handled the virus more competently.
prostratedragon
“Romance de diablo,” Astor Piazzolla
Gin & Tonic
@gkoutnik: Not sure what the point of this exercise is.
Ken
Yes indeed.
Another nightmare hypothetical: Trump gets beaten, he runs again in 2024. The nice thing is that the nightmare would be for the Republicans, who I’m sure come January 2021 will be trying to pretend they never heard of the guy.
I’m fairly sure it’s still completely hypothetical, though. Between his children, Putin, the state attorneys general, covid, and carryout fast food, there are too many actors and factors for Trump to be both alive and not confined to some sort of institution by 2024.
different-church-lady
@gkoutnik: Why are you doing this to us?
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ? ??
trnc
@gkoutnik: The economy probably would not have taken such a huge hit because the pandemic team (The Global Health Security and Biodefense unit) would not have been disbanded, and competent leadership would have worked to put us more inline with S Korea. The contrarian right wing states who did not follow the guidelines probably would have been hit harder, too, so it would be difficult at some point for them to smear Clinton on the response, although I agree every problem would be amplified by the mighty wurlitzer. We would also have a much better looking SCOTUS.
I doubt four years of DT braying his nonsense would endear him to more people, and he’d have loser stench. I think they’d run someone else.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
zhena gogolia
@waynel140:
I agree.
gkoutnik
@Gin & Tonic: Thought experiment. Wondering where we’d be if our 2016 desired outcome had occurred. Better? Unintended consequences? I’ve also found that this kind of thinking prepares one for making choices that have long term consequences.
Also – big fan of scifi alternate history yarns.
rikyrah
@gkoutnik:
President Hillary Clinton would have handled COVID-19 like every other woman Head of State-successfully.
She would have never disbanded the Pandemic Infrastructure in the Government that 43 & 44 set up.
The person on the ground in China that Dolt45 fired, would have been in China when this all broke out.
Hillary Clinton would have followed the Pandemics for Dummies guidebook that Dolt45 ignored.
NO WAY would we have 150,000 dead.
Dr. Fauchi would be on TV everyday, giving us real updates.
Whatever emergency procedure’s that needed to be done , Hillary would have done them.
Would NEVER have been any Hunger Games bullshyt competition between the States like there was in the early months. Because I there would have been A FEDERAL RESPONSE.
OzarkHillbilly
It is not weakness they hate, it is the appearance of weakness. That is why they work so hard at appearing manly and strong, brave and patriotic. When they look in the mirror, all they see are these virtues that they clothe themselves in to hide the truth. They carry guns to cover up their vulnerability, without one they might be nothing other than a victim. They fly the flag everywhere they go because their patriotism is so shallow that all they are capable of is unrestrained worship of their country, not the work of making it better.
And they do think they are the true Americans and that only people who look and think as they do are deserving of that distinction, and that being American is what makes them superior.
All of the above is true of many of the people out here in varying degrees. They don’t all carry guns, they don’t all fly the flag every where they go, some of them even acknowledge there is a larger world out there and that quite a bit if it is rather nice. But there is at least a bit of each in most of them.
Such is what I have observed.
rikyrah
@waynel140:
?????
Baud
Via Reddit, cool time lapse for cat people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpIeKn1LFA4
narya
Kitchen reassembly, Day 1. I don’t want to do everything, because there’s still tile to install and touchups to do, but I’m gonna start putting things in the cabinets. Gotta say, I HATE THOSE LITTLE PLASTIC SHELF CLIPS. There are a handful of shelves that need to be moved or eliminated, and I have yet to successfully move even one shelf. I suspect I will be breaking the clips, on purpose (they left some extras behind, and I grabbed them), just so I can do what I need to do. Avian side note: they cleaned and stained our porches this week. Last night a pigeon was sitting on a step, pretty much not moving, even when I walked past it. I figured I’d find it dead today, perhaps from the fumes. Instead, this morning it had moved a bit, and was gone by the time I went out a second time–leaving pigeonshit all over the newly cleaned and stained step. The VOCs (and dust and mold and more dust) to which I have exposed myself in the past month are unpleasant. At least it’s summer and the windows can be open.
rikyrah
rikyrah
rikyrah
germy
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
??
JPL
@narya: When do we get to see the big reveal?
germy
Kushner’s axed coronavirus team shied away from a national strategy, believing the virus was hitting Democratic states hardest and they could blame the governors, report says
germy
OzarkHillbilly
They are a pain, tho I am unsure exactly what is giving you difficulty. Try this: with one hand push the shelf up. With the other hand depress the top of the front clip, then do the same with the rear clip. Once one side is free just lift it until you can pull it free of the other side. If it is the pushing on the clip that is hard for you, than just go ahead and break it. Once the shelf is loaded that upper clip is superfluous. The shelf isn’t going anywhere.
I always use brass “L” brackets. They look better than cheap plastic to me and they are almost as cheap.
MattF
Repeating comment because I did something to my nym:
Dorothy A. Winsor
Soprano2
@Baud: I live in the same place where he does, and he’s 100% correct. I keep saying, over and over, that Trump hates the same people they hate and gives them permission to hate them openly. They hate anyone they think is weak, and they think liberals are weak. They think wanting gun control is weak. They think if the man isn’t always the head of things, he’s weak. If a white person is under a non-white person, they’re weak. If a man takes orders from a woman, he’s weak. And so on. (Here at work we had a situation where a man who should have gotten a promotion didn’t get it because he has a stutter! See, he’s “weak”, not as good. That person’s boss got in trouble, and the guy got the next position in that job that opened up without having to interview for it again.) It’s not that they think being nice or kind is weak, it’s if you direct the niceness or kindness to the wrong person or do it in the wrong way. (Compassion for those put-upon police is 100% OK, compassion for black people who are hassled by police is not good, because “why don’t those black people just obey the law!”) It’s hard to explain if you haven’t experienced it, but I 100% recognize everything that person said to be true. That’s why I laugh in the face of anyone online who tries to tell me I don’t understand Trump voters, because I’m surrounded by them. At work, at the pub, everywhere I go – surrounded by them!
Baud
Trump virus.
germy
Maxwell wanted to be released on bail because she hadn’t had any contact with Epstein in over 10 years.
Chyron HR
@germy:
Would you believe they meant “in the current decade”?
cmorenc
@gkoutnik:
IMHO your alternate hypothetical history is spot-on correct. Unfortunately, a disastrous reckoning with the dark ID of a substantial portion of the country that the GOP has been tapping into (which is exactly what Donald Trump is, in especially malignant form) was inevitable in some form or another. We are only fortunate in that Trump has proven so spectacularly incompetent and the timing of his coming was not even more disastrous – the country needed to have its ass so obviously kicked before it would be ready to come to a reckoning to reach a better place (alas, we’re not successfully past the reckoning just yet, but at least the more positive end is reachably in sight).
MattF
@germy: And so, the court will regard any future statements from her with suspicion.
Honus
@rikyrah: that’s all true. I also have no doubt we’d be hearing incessantly about how Hilary had blood on her hands and should be locked up for conspiring with the Chinese to create the virus and bring it to america to kill hundreds of Americans and wreck the economy. The NYT would print stories “raising questions” every day and in 2024 we’d have President Cotton.
Baud
@Chyron HR: I read that in Maxwell Smart’s voice.
Also too, I believe the decade officially starts on the ones, but no one pays attention to that rule.
germy
@MattF:
Meanwhile, Dershowitz is sputtering with righteous indignation.
Baud
@Soprano2: So what you’re saying is that they’re economically anxious. :-)
Sloane Ranger
Has anyone seen the CNN advert for the upcoming Conventions? It has an elephant reminding a donkey about the importance of social distancing.
Given everything I found it both deeply ironic and wildly inaccurate, to such an extent that I am tempted to complain to CNN everytime I see it. The only reason I don’t is that I don’t think they’d be interested in a complaint coming from some random woman in the UK.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@debbie: Prosperity Christianity; the rich are wub by Jesus and the poor are wicked and must be punished.
The irony is of course almost everyone of European descent family came over to get away from the damage this doctrine was doing in Europe.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Ding ding ding ding ding ding! I agree with this, too. Their biggest fear is that someone will think they’re a “girly man”, as they say. It’s not a coincidence that they reserve their biggest scorn for male homosexuals.
germy
OzarkHillbilly
Here’s where you and I differ a little. I said above that it is the appearance of weakness they hate. What I didn’t say in so many words was that that they hate that appearance because they know they themselves are weak, so they go over the top in trying to cover it up.
shrug… tomato, tomahto….
ETA I now see your <a href=”#comment-7798142″>@Soprano2</a>: to me. ;-)
gkoutnik
@cmorenc: I agree regarding the necessity of an ass-kicking. I just wish it hadn’t involved people – so many! – dying. And – I’m not sure it’s a complete (therefore useful) ass-kicking yet.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: I’ve seen a lot of doomy talk (e.g. from Paul Campos and Erik Loomis) about how we’d be in exactly the same place with COVID-19 if Hillary had won, because Americans are just dumbshits and would have spread the disease to spite her.
Surely there would be some of that. But I know we’d have been better off in the Northeast without the federal government actively trying to kill us. And federal guidance and coordination actually matter in these things.
I think people get a bit too hung up on “Trump is the cause” vs. “Trump is the symptom”; he’s both; it’s a feedback loop. If the President is modeling poor behavior and actively encouraging people to do foolish things, that matters.
germy
Soprano2
@Baud: Yeah, LOL, I’ve always said that argument was bullshit. None of the Trump supporters I know are “economically anxious”.
Chief Oshkosh
@germy: That’s just one of the horrors that Jared’s task force committed. I recommend the original article that Vanity Fair just published:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: There’s a wide range of outcomes between New Zealand’s gold standard and where the U.S. currently is. America under Hillary almost certainly would have been within that range and, I suspect, on the New Zealand side of the average.
germy
@Soprano2:
I’ve noticed over the years that many of the “tradesmen” (contractors) I’ve hired over the years are wealthier and own more property than I do. The ones who spouted right wing radio talking points while they made problems worse in my plumbing or masonry.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Ok, I do think you’re right about that. They’re the men who constantly have to prove they’re “real men”. One of the things that attracted me to my husband was that he didn’t feel the need to prove he was a man, because he was (and still is) secure about who he is.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: Things would still be a shit sandwich because GOP would fight her every step of the way and be carrying on just as they are now. The blue states however would be in much better shape because they would have had FED help. Our hospitals would be in much better shape because they would have the masks and PPE and meds and respirators etc etc that they need.
Patricia Kayden
MattF
@Baud: There’s multiple phases— a part of the damage was done in the initial surge, and a part in the aftermath and long tail of the initial surge. The exact damage mechanism is different in the two phases, Trump made them both worse, although in different ways.
Mousebumples
@Baud:
I’d argue that President Hillary would have stopped this in China and kept it from becoming a pandemic. Or have we already forgotten how the Trump admin cut funding to prevent this sort of stuff and ignored warnings for months in 2019?
Might be too optimistic but since it’s a hypothetical, I’d rather spread more blame on Trump and Co.
PPCLI
In all the chaos emanating from Trumpland it’s easy to forget, but Trump did promise a new, super-duper health plan to come “in two weeks”. Well over two weeks ago. With a pandemic raging, such a health plan would be a great thing. I’m sure it is coming any day now….
Mousebumples
Yup. I’m a tall woman (over 6′),and I have a Doctorate, so I make good money. I dated so many guys over the years that couldn’t deal with being shorter or that I didn’t need them financially (and often made more than they did).
My husband is a inch or so shorter than I am and makes good money – but not as much as I do. And he doesn’t care. It’s glorious.
narya
@JPL: I think probably the end-ish of August? Door is slated to be delivered to the store 8/14, so done by the end of that week, perhaps.
@OzarkHillbilly: I can’t get two of the tabs to go in at the same time, and enough, to lift a side of the shelf. I decided to make some tea and step away for a bit (and check in here :-) ). Mostly, I’m willing to work around it, except I need a high-clearance shelf next to the stove to put olive oil, honey, vinegar, etc.
Overall, there are a few tiny tiny things I would have done differently–e.g., some of the cabinet selections/sizes; the side of the counter next to the wall; another light on the sink side; a different microwave light (it appears to be a halogen bulb rather than an LED, which is stupid)–but it’s the only time I’ve ever done anything remotely like this. It will be/is so much more functional.
Baud
@Mousebumples:
That may be too much to ask of hypothetical Hillary. The virus has spread to the entire planet, and the U.S. president doesn’t control the planet. Would better U.S. international leadership have gotten other countries to take the steps needed to prevent pandemic status? Don’t know, but that seems to be more speculative than the idea that Hillary would have done a competent job in managing the crisis in the U.S.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The US probably couldn’t have been anywhere near New Zealand because we’re not a semi-isolated island country and our ungovernable dumbshit regions are ungovernable. I could see a situation where every place but the deep-red states does at least as well as, say, Italy.
artem1s
@OzarkHillbilly:
I disagree that what they hate is weakness. What they hate is themselves. They know they aren’t superior. They know their kids look at them and see Trump. They know their kids look at Barack Obama and see what we see. A kind, compassionate, thoughtful, intelligent, passionate, human being who has respect for his friends, wife, and family. A leader who leads without the threat of violence and hate. A leader who shares his power with confidence because he didn’t have to rely on tricks, subterfuge, cheating or being born rich to become a leader.
They all know this quote from the bible, but deem it weak.
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
Because they have absolutely no clue what it means. Why being a resounding gong and clanging cymbal doesn’t work for them they way it work for someone like Trump who has the privileged of being born rich and surrounding himself with people who are weak and voiceless.
They hate themselves because they fell for the GOP, greed is good, long con and it’s too late to back out now. Sunk costs and all that.
OzarkHillbilly
Yep, and it gets tiresome. Over the years I had to work with a number of them and everything was always a challenge to their Alpha status. And I do mean everything. Most times I just said, “Yeah, yeah, suuuuuure…” and then laughed at them. A couple times I lost my patience with the BS tho.
Ken
Ahem.
Mousebumples
You may be right but I remember being concerned about H1N1 and SARS and MERS and ebola. All had pandemic potential and I believe 2 of 4 had domestic cases. But all had at least mostly competent Presidential administrations. (i don’t like Dubya, but they were prepared for pandemics, by all accounts)
Hillary would have done better than Trump on all level, but there’s at least a small chance that her admin could have done more to stop this virus in its tracks.
WereBear
@gkoutnik:
I think this is the definition of hellscape. Where even BAD can always be WORSE.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The problem is assuming that the red states would “protest” a Hillary mandated lockdown and a national mask wearing requirement by ignoring it. While that’s plausible and many would do that, it’s to me equally as likely that some would not ignore the mandate but try to use it to increase public resentment of Hillary, and without tens of thousands of people dying, that strategy could work.
At a minimum, having a president who was able to communicate facts clearly would help increase awareness among non-political people. Unfortunately, not everyone resisting a mask is a right-wing “protestor.”
Ken
If we’re talking hypotheticals, can we use the timeline where Hillary was elected, and the cascade of butterfly effects means the virus didn’t mutate and jump from bats to humans?
(Unless the trade-off involves the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, freakishly triggered by a Belgian tourist – unable to enter the US in our timeline – throwing a rock into a geyser. Damn butterflies.)
OzarkHillbilly
Sorry, I didn’t do a very good job above. You don’t get 2 tabs at once. You get one tab in and lift that corner of the shelf enough to hold it in, than do the same at the back and you can lift the whole shelf side up.
ETA <blockquote> a different microwave light (it appears to be a halogen bulb rather than an LED,</blockquote>
You should be able to switch those out. I haven’t seen any halogen in microwaves, just incandescent, but that is not say yours doesn’t. Even still you should be able to go LED.
Matt McIrvin
@Mousebumples: For many years my wife was getting paid substantially less than I was even though she clearly worked harder and was in a more theoretically lucrative line of work. Part of this was career-track stuff that will be familiar to everyone who has read about gender gaps. Anyway, she just caught up and passed me. It’s obviously the just outcome and I’m proud.
prostratedragon
@Ken: Do I recall correctly that there were some kind of monitoring or early warning relationships established with China that in the current stuff and nonsense were allowed to lapse?
Mousebumples
You’re one of those good ones . ?
Mousebumples
Lapse at minimum. I thought I heard something about how bat virus research has been defunded at minimum or Not Allowed by the current US health orgs.
Ken
@prostratedragon: Why yes, yes there were. And not so much “allowed to lapse” as “canceled by the Trump administration”.
Really I don’t see why Republicans are so upset about “defund the police,” it’s just the logical extension of their attitude toward all government spending. I’m not being robbed right now, so why should my taxes go to pay for the police?
Mo MacArbie
@Baud: Oof, you’ve lost my vote. The 203rd Decade begins next year, but nobody says that.
[edit] And…pwnd above. Sigh.
Drdavechemist
@OzarkHillbilly: On Wednesday’s BGinChi thread I mentioned Jared Sexton’s The Man They Wanted Me to Be. It’s a memoir about him growing up around a bunch of those guys in Southern Indiana in the 80s and 90s and how he somehow managed to avoid ending up in the same place. He says a lot of the same things about the reasons behind the manifestation of “toxic masculinity” and offers some thoughts about how to address it as a society. I’m sure that rural MO is pretty similar (except maybe for the obsession with IU basketball).
Central Planning
@OzarkHillbilly:
But how do they know that? Introspection does not seem one of their strong suits.
RedDirtGirl
@rikyrah: Good morning, Rikyrah.
Chief Oshkosh
@Mousebumples: If masking works as well as is currently claimed, then I think that just about all the C-19 deaths in the US, and arguably in most of the world, are because of Trump. Here’s why. Because he removed our early/rapid response team from China, we didn’t understand and monitor the initial spread. If we had, we would not have sent PPE that was already in the US back to China. We would have worked with producers there and in other locales, maybe even in the US (!), to make more. Because we didn’t, there was a huge shortage of masks. Because of that, even our best PH officials lied to the citizens about the need to wear masks. They lied, they say, to preserve what PPE we had, for healthcare workers. We’ve never caught up.
That one relatively simple step, just maintaining a supply of masks, would have saved 90% of the lives lost in the US. Also, if we had led in that effort (as we have led in the past), the rest of the world would have followed. There would have been mask-making marathons, human-interest stories of mask-making grandmas, quilting clubs, etc. We would have met the challenge and literally saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Instead, we got a lump of coal.
OzarkHillbilly
@artem1s:I’m not sure who you are replying to as what you quoted was what Debbie said. I said,
and in another comment I got more explicit when I said,
So, they hate weakness, but it is the weakness inside themselves that they hate. They aren’t strong enough to admit to it’s existence. So yes, there is more than a little self loathing going on.
Omnes Omnibus
@gkoutnik: I have one too. The Old Ones awaken, and the living envy the dead.
It’s just as plausible, and it was easier to type.
Immanentize
@artem1s: “Clanging Symbol” would be a good name for an alt-Xian band.
WereBear
@germy: I think this prefigures what will happen to many Republicans who relied on these same tactics.
It’s the immune-suppressing effect of the drug they take.
Stupidity kills. Absolute stupidity kills absolutely.
rp
If Clinton had won, we’d have had a much, much better response, with a better lockdown, more masks available, and more people wearing them. My guess is that we’d have 10,000 deaths instead of 150,000. And guess what? The hypothetical is right: Clinton would be absolutely savaged for TEN THOUSAND dead Americans, and would be losing badly to Trump in the polls. Every cable show and newspaper would spend every minute of air time and column space talking about Clinton’s failures and how the first female president has utterly destroyed this country
ETA: And would a GOP house and senate have passed even the first aid package? Doubtful.
Betty Cracker
@Sloane Ranger: I’ve seen it and had the exact same reaction. I even complained about it to my husband, and he looked at me like I was talking about alien mind control.
That happens a lot. He’s a Democrat and if anything further to the left on the political spectrum than I am, but he doesn’t follow politics closely, so these things go over his head, even though we live in a community dominated by anti-mask Republican goobers.
Oh well. It’s a useful check for me; helps me gauge how things that I find infuriating land with people who don’t pay that much attention to what’s going on.
OzarkHillbilly
@Central Planning: How does one know one is afraid? It’s a feeling. Some people when afraid, they get loud and in the other person’s face. It is a demonstration of Alpha that they don’t really feel. They are trying to cover up their fear by denying it’s existence and afterwards everybody tells them how “brave” they were. Deep down inside tho, they know they were an inch away from pissing their pants.
It’s the same with weakness. They don’t carry guns because they feel strong, they carry guns to paper over their weakness. There is a whole industry out there that convinces them that carrying a gun is what strong alpha men do. I remember one ad campaign that said “Got your Man card?” and showed a guy with an AR-15.
Neldob
@Sloane Ranger: complain to them! Don’t be quiet. Part of the political problem in this country is the fools and bungholes wear everyone out. Get your friends to write them too. Good trouble.
Ken
You’ve hit on the center of that horrible, extended argument we had 21 years ago, and will have 79 years from now. Ordinal (21st century, 203rd decade) and named (the 1900s, the ’90s) begin at different places.
I wonder if this was less obvious because we didn’t bother naming two decades.
jonas
This Vanity Fair article on Jared Kushner’s attempt to create a national testing/tracing program with a circle of cronies with no public health expertise, and how Trump basically threw it out the window, is absolutely gobsmacking. Then there’s this graf:
These people belong in prison. We will not be “putting this behind us” for the “good of the country” after Biden is sworn in.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Soprano2: That notion of what is a man is amazingly omnipresent. The central character in my new book was born with a club foot and uses a crutch. A lot of reviewers aid they liked seeing a disabled main character because it’s unusual, especially for the hero. So one reviewer said she liked the book, but didn’t believe Jarka was male. It made me wonder if his disability was party of that because it didn’t fit her notion of what heroic male was.
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: And it comes with a wallet card that says ‘I have a penis.’
Skepticat
What was supposed to be “only” a tropical storm now is a full-tilt boogie hurricane headed this way. It’s so bloody hot and muggy that I’m having trouble just walking around trying to prep. The people I’ll be sheltering with all were here during Dorian and have pretty serious PTSD; I hope I’m not about to develop my own case. Paws crossed that the storm will wind down and/or move farther away. I wasn’t able to get all my salvage under cover, though I did get the cistern tarped, so I guess my cleanup efforts since November may have been for naught. Mother Nature really seems to have it in for us.
Kattails
@OzarkHillbilly: Had to ID a couple of young guys for a liquor purchase. In NH the license has a very fine overall pattern in aqua and pink, part of which creates a flower. So one guy says to the other, “I’m kind of bothered that I have to have pink on my ID”.
That is some fragile sense of manhood there.
WereBear
@Drdavechemist: Read it, loved it, highly recommended.
Betty Cracker
@Skepticat: From the NHC 8 AM update, it looks like the worst of it MIGHT miss Florida and cause trouble further up the East Coast. I’m hoping the track moves further east still and it misses land altogether. None of us got time for this bullshit!
WereBear
@Kattails: Heck yeah. I’ve discussed this extensively with a brother and husband who don’t suffer from it.
Men are also victims of Toxic Masculinity.
MomSense
@waynel140:
I feel like we have all been ahead of the curve in terms of awareness about the virus because of AL’s early and consistent blogging.
rp
@MomSense: I’ll second that. It’s been an incredible resource.
jonas
I remember that one, too! So transparently aimed at insecure men. Finding stuff to assuage white male fragility = $$$. Same with the huge, raised pickups with mud tires and “Rolling Coal” smokestacks. Basically tells me you’ve got an idiot there who likes to waste money on stupid shit (and harm the environment) because he doesn’t feel like a real man on the inside.
Omnes Omnibus
On the toxic masculinity front, does anyone else remember “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” and “The Manly Handbook?”
Nicole
@Betty Cracker:
@Sloane Ranger:
I don’t watch TV news so I haven’t seen it, but maybe CNN (if I’m being kind) is actually trying mind control on right-leaning viewers? Like, if they see the elephant being the one to do the things we’re supposed to be doing, they’ll actually do it? Whereas, if they showed the donkey taking the lead, these right-wing idiots will just dig in their heels harder?
(I’m very mixed on this, even if it’s the reason. The bleeding liberal part of me is willing to see done what’s necessary to save lives, but I tell you, every day I find it a bit more challenging to give a f*ck what happens to right-wingers’ health.)
Frankensteinbeck
My take on the ‘weakness’ thing:
A huge driver of this is that in Wingnut culture, and way too much outside of it, men will be punished for being in sufficiently manly. The more politically right the area, the more brutal the punishment is. Punishment scales up from social ostracization and mockery, through verbal harassment like being subject to random profane insults and threats, through violence, and all the way up to ‘beaten to death’. Manliness is defined as never showing vulnerability, and sexual success. Compassion is vulnerability, respect for others is vulnerability, and there are no riders on sexual success. Consent is irrelevant. The more sex the man gets, the greater his value. Having low value is punished.
Again, this system is absolutely brutal, especially in adolescence. It is direct, sadistic, and omnipresent. Even questioning the system is cruelty punished, perhaps in a permanent, life ruining ways. So, the proponents of toxic masculinity are what they are because they are terrified to their core of what their peers will do to them if they do not meet the standard. It shapes their whole worldview.
geg6
@Soprano2:
Yup. Me too. I’m surrounded by these assholes every day and they have been out and proud ever since 2015. The minute that orange asshole lumbered onto that golden escalator, they felt perfectly free to say and do everything I always knew they wanted to say and do my whole life.
Nicole
@WereBear:
Sociologists speculate that toxic masculinity is the reason men have, on average, a shorter life span than women- all that Type A, manly-man behavior boys are pressured into conforming to is also coronary-inducing behavior. It’s a very stressful way to live, and stress kills.
Anya
@germy: I don’t care how this makes me sound but I wish all of these horrible monsters harming people with their death policies dies from VOVID or suffers great pain. I pray everyday that anyone who had a hand in caging children gets the worst of VOVID and tells about it. I know I should be better but these monsters need to suffer for their crimes.
Shalimar
I don’t know what today’s outrages will be, but i will say, if Trump was a real 2nd Amendment supporter and actually owned guns, he would have shot multiple White House aides during his narcissism-induced rages long before now.
Baud
@Anya: VOVID?
jonas
I wonder how many of these men would still admire Trump if he were married to Ivana?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@gkoutnik: Sadly, this sounds spot on.
cope
@Betty Cracker: That’s another thing trump had done to many of us: expose every single one of our raw nerves so as to make us hypersensitive to what, in normal times, would probably pass unnoticed.
Kattails
@Frankensteinbeck:
And the problem embedded in this environment is “peers”. It creates, almost by definition, a toxic masculine pack identity, which must hunt together, be brutal, gun-toting, rapey, sneering, angry. Fear of what their peers will do to them is channeled outward to do unto others.
germy
@cope:
And that’s what 8 years of Obama did to them.
Jinchi
If Clinton had won we’d have had a different set of problems, for sure. If the pandemic had hit and the US suffered 2,000 deaths (South Korea levels), people would treat it as the worst catastrophe since Benghazi. But the economy would be in pretty good shape. We wouldn’t have millions marching in the streets. We’d have at least two new Justices on the Court (probably 3 – since RBG would likely have resigned). Republicans would have made life miserable, but there’s a lot a president can do on to make the government run well.
And Trump would not be running for president again. Republicans like Paul Ryan had already written speechs decrying his racism and sexism – to be delivered the day after he lost. He was never expected to win and they wouldn’t have wanted to lose to Clinton twice. At best we’d have the advantage of 12 continuous years of a Democratic executive. At worst we’d have a completely different nightmare to look forward to.
coin operated
My (nuptials were last Saturday) wife is an aspiring novelist, and I’m supporting her now that her job essentially vanished thanks to COVID.
Me? I’m waiting for movie rights so she can support me and I can become the worthless layabout I aspire to be.
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: I remember “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche”, and my response was “I love quiche!”
Baud
@coin operated: Congratulations!
Citizen Alan
@Mousebumples: These what ifs are ultimately pointless. I remain 100% convinced that if Al Gore had become presidentt, 911 would not have happened. I also think I also think that the republicans would have mocked the idea that hijackers would have tried to fly planes into buildings and said the whole thing was Gore wagging the dog to divert attention for whatever made up scandal they were tried to impeach him over.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s more true of Wingnut culture but its endemic in almost all cultures including US culture. Growing up and right now coaches, parents and others using insults like “pussies” “ladies” and “cry like a little girl” were and are common place. Insulting a man or boy or even a toddler boy by calling him girly, etc is still commonplace. the “C” word is seen as the WORST thing you can call anyone, because who wants to be compared to a vagina. Having intestinal fortitude is commonly called “having the balls to ________” . Anything coded as female including films(see the term Chick Flick) , wearing makeup, nail polish, glitter, sparkles, pink and light purple, dolls and playing dress up are considered girly, effeminate or less than by too many people even today. Many of them who consider themselves “woke” and “progressive”.
Even having a higher voice is considered “shrill” “nagging” etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@OzarkHillbilly: who the hell wouldn’t like scrambled egg pie?
I remember a commentary on Weekend Update, I think it was Tim Kazurinsky, mocking a bunch of throw-away best-sellers of the time: “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche? Real writers don’t write this kind of crap!”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@coin operated: Congrats!
Also, speaking as a fellow novelist, don’t quit your day job just yet.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@coin operated: Congrats!! May you have at least as many happy years as we have had! 35 so far and have managed not to kill each other yet.
CaseyL
@cmorenc: This!
The GOP has been a supersaturate of dishonesty, stupidity, malice, corruption, and laziness for decades. Trump proved to be the catalyst that made it precipitate and crystallize. The only people ignoring what it revealed about the GOP are those who benefit from the GOP (this includes most of the MSM).
frosty
@gkoutnik: This is very close to exactly right. Except Hillary would have been impeached and convicted when the economy crashed, if not immediately after the 2018 midterms increased the Republican majorities.
Jinchi
@coin operated: Congratulations and best wishes. Hopefully quarantine will be a strong bonding experience.
evodevo
@cmorenc: Yes. You are correct. Like Soprano 2, I live among Trumpers/MAGAts and interact with them every day. Most are former Teabaggers, and anti-maskers are EVERYWHERE. If Hillary had won, they would have opposed literally every policy she implemented and been out demonstrating with their ARs every day and lynching her in effigy. It’s THEM we have to defeat, and keep defeated, or the next Repub fascist candidate who isn’t dumber than a rock WILL prevail…
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: Your description of toxic masculinity reminds me of how Mary Trump describes the environment Fred Trump Sr. created for his kids. According to her, Fred Jr.’s kindness, good humor and generosity were perceived as weakness, so his father basically destroyed him psychologically, and Donald learned to eschew those characteristics to avoid his father’s psychological abuse. Sounds about right.
germy
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
A few months ago I went through a Shirley Jackson phase. I read all her novels and a few short story collections. Previously, I’d only been familiar with her one most famous short story.
I got curious about her life, and did some reading about her.
Her husband was a college professor, but she provided the main household income from her short stories. (!) Magazine fiction was a lucrative market back then.
The opposite of how it is nowadays. Today, we’re more likely to see a published author being supported by a college professor spouse. Or more typically, a published author being a college professor.
Betty Cracker
@coin operated: Congrats to you both!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Citizen Alan:
Earth tones! back when people paid attention to Maureen Dowd, who as I recall describes herself as a feminist, she did a lot to push the idea that Dems weren’t real men, “the mommy party”, et cetera. I bailed on her for good at some point around ’08, but as Charlie Pierce said, she had a near-obsession with “pink-washing” Obama– Obambi, Barry, etc. And at the same time, I can’t think of anybody outside the self-ID’d right side of the aisle who hated Hillary Clinton more than MoDo (The Dominatrix, et cetera). And as I recall she had real issues with Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy: It’s best if writers write because it’s satisfying for them in some way. People who do it because they think they’ll get rich are quickly disillusioned.
OzarkHillbilly
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think you’re a little over the top there. Ostracism? Sure. Mockery? You bet, but no worse than anything I went thru in HS.
“Verbal harassment like being subject to random profane insults and threats,” I’m not sure exactly how you mean this but it is nothing that I haven’t been subjected to on occasions in my life, both in the politically left city and out here, but those times were in relation to specific situations.
As far as “beaten to death,” sure it happens but that has nothing to with politics. I once stopped a guy who was beating another guys head into the pavement, probably over a bad debt or some such. (no bravery on my part, I yelled at him thru my open truck window and circled the scene, 3 AM on Jefferson ave, STL. He mouthed off at me, threatened me, but got off the guy and walked away)
Jinchi
@Matt McIrvin: Right. I see a lot of people asking what Hillary Clinton would be doing as president right now as though you could just swap the results of 2016 but everything else would have essentially played out in the same way. It’s like the ‘Mirror Universe’ trope were everything in the world is virtually identical, except evil.
But the point of picking a leader is so that things will play out differently. Clinton wouldn’t have been in this position, because Clinton wasn’t an incompetent idiot.
OzarkHillbilly
Everybody’s gotta have a dream. ;-) Congrats.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
George Clinton is trending and twitter really needs to make a NotDead hashtag for celebrities, especially those who are a bit long in the tooth, especially now.
Betty Cracker
@Nicole: Maybe that’s it. I have watched more CNN lately, and they aren’t nearly as both-sidesy as they once were, which is refreshing.
Eunicecycle
@jonas: is toxic masculinity why guys seem to like noisy cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc? I HATE when guys go up and down our street and have to rev up the engines or whatever they’re doing and make loud noises. And they can get off my lawn while they’re at it.
Frankensteinbeck
@OzarkHillbilly:
I have been physically attacked on the street by strangers for not looking manly enough. I have had profanity screamed at me from passing cars for not looking manly enough. I have friends who were dumped in trash cans and locked in lockers in high school for not being manly enough. And, because it’s ubiquitous, they were blamed by authority for their abuse. Gay men are occasionally murdered for being gay. The cruelty they will be subjected to is the whole point of being in the closet. I’m glad you just got some teasing, but it’s bad enough you got it and it gets much, much worse. The mindset created by this kind of cruelty absolutely affects people’s political beliefs, 100%. How can it not? For one example, if forcing women to have sex is how you survived socially, or even the standard you were told you should have achieved, you will be strongly against women having any kind of power or equality.
sdhays
@cmorenc: No. Donald Dump would not be running now if he had lost in 2016. There’s little reason to believe his health would be any better than it is in this timeline, and if he had lost, he would be a loser. Besides, he would have been deep in either legal trouble or Plan A, which was lose and then launch Dump TV.
If you want to do your nightmare right, replace Donny Dump with Tom Cotton.
AnonPhenom
“…Three Census Bureau employees, who were informed of the plans during separate internal meetings Thursday, confirmed the new end date with NPR. All of the employees spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of losing their jobs.
“It’s going to be impossible to complete the count in time,” says one of the bureau employees, an area manager who oversees local census offices. “I’m very fearful we’re going to have a massive undercount.”…”
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/30/896656747/when-does-census-counting-end-bureau-sends-alarming-mixed-signals
Encourage anybody you know who has not yet responded to do so. These fuckers do not believe in Representative Democracy and will take any and every opportunity to cheat you out of it.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s about the only thing they’ve got right: most quiche is awful.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ain’t that the truth. I’ve been both relieved and disappointed, depending on the name. :)
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: It’s early in the day to be this drunk.
danielx
Nice to know my thinking agrees with that of those who know him well.
He would sell out this country for a nickel.
mad citizen
@Eunicecycle: I HATE the sound of a Harley engine, which I read once they had trademarked. To me it sounds like loud intermittent farts and indicates something is wrong with the engine. Why do you want that other than to be as obnoxious as hell?
I loved the sound of formula one engines (and the smell of the exhaust) when they were in Indy in the ‘oughts. But that is their place, not driving down my street.
JAFD
(reply to Baud at #41)
Too many of us are simply decadent about this.
Baud
Speculation Week begins in earnest.
Ken
I don’t know if it’s toxic, but it’s definitely an attempt to get the female’s attention and intimidate the other males.
Baud
frosty
It’s a low bar, to be sure, but an important one!
Raven
@mad citizen: you’d really hate my 66 Chevy truck with a 350 and Smithy Steel Pack mufflers!
Booger
@CaseyL: Remember, if you;re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.
Nicole
@Baud: That Reddit post made me remember someone I knew through horse racing blogs awhile back (still lives, as far as I know, in Florida) and absolutely fit that to a T- he even bragged about how one of his big goals in life was “owning libs.” And I thought he was kidding because, holy cow, how could anyone be that pathetic, that that was what a person lived for? But he wasn’t. That really is their big joymaker in life.
When the Brock Turner thing happened, he said, if someone had done that to his daughters he’d be relieved first that at least it wasn’t a penis that had been inside them, because that was what made it rape. And, as terrible as I feel for his 2 daughters, being raised by someone like that, I am glad for the world that at least he never had a son. The world’s already got too many like him as it is.
germy
@Raven:
I remember one of Elvis Presley’s favorite expressions, if he found something not amusing:
“That’s about as funny as a Smithy on a hearse!”
trollhattan
@rp:
Yup, Fox News[sic] every hour on the half-hour: “HOW MANY MORE HAVE TO DIE OF THE HILLARY VIRUS???”
Could be a thousand deaths, could be a hundred, she’d still be the Hillbeast.
Has anybody mentioned the Census Bureau ending door-to-door interviews a month early? This would be really, really bad, considering what they need is a months-long extension.
OzarkHillbilly
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is all true. The world has changed such that there may very well be a big difference between urban and rural for gay people, but in my little corner of the Ozarks? It’s far worse being black.
I got a wee bit more than that, I know it gets worse, believe me I know. And no, I don’t know what it’s like to be gay, never will, but you didn’t bring up gay in your original statement, you spoke of “manliness” or a lack there of. My older brother has some “effeminate mannerisms” for lack of better terms and I am sure it was worse for him than it was for me. I was just different. I didn’t fit in anywhere and the school I went to was extremely cliquish. So I fell in with the “hoods” because they were all outcasts too and didn’t care.
As to anything else, shrug.
Eunicecycle
@mad citizen: I hate the sound of Harleys, too! I’ve had other women tell me they love it, though, so I guess that particular sound may not be due to toxic masculinity.
Marcopolo
I always get to these threads late but here is some happy news:
State Democrats mount big comeback in 2020
And good morning everyone.
trollhattan
@mad citizen:
Harley did try to copyright or trademark (forget which) the exhaust note but were rebuffed. Stock Harleys aren’t awful but the modded ones are, and the standard “It’s for safety because when cars don’t see me they still hear me” is fucking bogus, and I expect most of those losers know that.
I’d rather hear a Ducati.
mad citizen
@Raven: No, I’d probably love it. I like the old muscle car sounds, etc. There is just something about the Harley, how it revs up and down, sounds like it’s going to cut off at times, etc. It just doesn’t sound like anything is being optimized there. My best friend bought a late 60s Torino (his dad worked for Ford so they had lots of them over the years) several years ago and kept it a few years (even moved it from IL to Colorado). It was very loud, but you could just feel how inefficient everything was back then when you rode in it.
trollhattan
@sdhays:
“Ted Cruz 2020–this time he means it!”
Jeff Sessions would still be a senator. That would be weird.
JPL
@trollhattan: Wait until they do the documentary on why Obama’s actions caused Ebola to spread. Did Obama hide the hundreds of thousands deaths caused by Ebola?
Citizen Alan
I have often argued that the basic problem with the human race is that, for the most part, we are all strategically shaved chimpanzees that spend our whole live howling and flinging poo at any other chimps we see that don’t look like they fit into the tribe because we’re all terrified that otherwise some other chimps might notice how we don’t fit in and start howling and flinging poo at us.
Omnes Omnibus
@Eunicecycle: Liking loud and/or fast things isn’t toxic masculinity. Despising people who don’t like loud and/or fast things and thinking they are lesser is toxic masculinity.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: A good one could never stay.
Skepticat
@Betty Cracker: I really prefer it just go pop and evaporate. If it goes further east, that puts the eye right over Abaco and me—again. In either case, I guess then it heads to my other home in Maine. And it’s still only July …
Mike in NC
After breakfast I switched on MSNBC where Dr. Fauci was testifying to the House. By Monday Fauci will have been replaced by Dr. Isabella (masks bad and demon semen good!) and Fat Bastard has been tweeting his little orange fingers off about the Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats. Or something. August should be interesting.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: fusing the thread topics of 2020 Counterfactuals and displays of superficial masculinity: Who would have suddenly remembered they’ve always loved Harleys! Marco? Scott Walker?
I can’t remember which TN Senator invented and who copied the red pick-up truck schtick, Fred Thompson or Lamar (?) Alexander, but I think it was Thompson who was said to drive away waving and pull over and toss the keys to an aide and get into the back seat of town car two blocks away.
piratedan
since we’re down the rabbit hole in what if’s…
#1) say Hillary gives China our PPE overstock, she actually makes an order to replenish it
2) she ramps up the pandemic team and tells them to coordinate with the CDC
3) the CDC goes to the public with what they know, best practices to follow etc, media follows SARS template in reporting
4) people travelling to/from the area are monitored for possible infection
5) as its pervasiveness is known, moratoriums on travel are requested, travellers are subject to monitoring to track and trace spread.
6) US doesn’t act as a superspreader instigator state, prolonging the issues for every other nation state
7) GOP carps about the over-reaction and refuses to fund follow up responses due to the rest of the world infecting us…
8) America leads and assists and coordinates global response despite GOP intransigence
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: am I mis-remembering that George W Bush bought his “ranch” in the run-up to 2000 and had it on the market by June of ’09?
I’m pretty sure of the latter, can’t quite remember when he bought it.ETA: google suggests I had it exactly backwards, they did buy it in ’99, but they still own it and use it as a second home.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And the conservatives would have cited her response as a horrible example of Federal overreach and the NYT would stroked it’s beard and solemnly considered their point. Hell, Conservatives are even try to claim this cluster fuck of a non response is dangerous socialism.
The one good thing in this mess it rubs it in the moderate faces what a a bunch of dangerous loons the Hard Right is.
Yutsano
@coin operated: Snuck it in underneath us eh? Well, as I always say in these situations:
MAZEL TOV YA CRAZY KIDS!!!
WaterGirl
@Skepticat: Oh, Skepticat. I hope it misses you. sigh.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ah, Fred Thompson. Bet he went to his grave wondering why he couldn’t pull off Reagan II, the Avuncularization.
Didn’t Scotty Hotpants also do the I’m one of you pickup thing? Am 3,000 miles away and Massholes will better remember his odd time in the spotlight than I.
trollhattan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
You just know they have a Koch-funded cabal of “researchers” busy trying to tie Biden to Epstein.
Kelly
Since the post is tagged Assholes, damn I hate seeing Marc Thiessen’s latest is still on the Wash Post front page. Headline “Schools aren’t that risky” what cold blooded bullshit. Teachers aren’t fucking kamikazes. Children aren’t cannon fodder. School buildings are petri dishes. The idea that a few elite columnists should offer their take on any and every topic has always been absurd but this really sets my teeth on edge.
raven
@germy: Wow, never heard that!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@OzarkHillbilly: And yep, I got relatives like what you described. What I find interesting is some of them a reasonably successful men and that fear your describe is so obvious in them. Why they support Trump is a bit weird to me because it’s so obvious to me that Trump is scared himself.
Yutsano
@Kelly: My response to that?
“Fine Marc. Your kids first. ”
Of course his kids (if he has any and no I’m not researching it) go to private schools which of course aren’t immune from the virus. I predict a mass spreading there.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@trollhattan: Well expect that more Epsiten comes up the more Trump does. It’s like trying to claim Biden is too old.
But in all do seriousness, I am waiting for some conservative to drop their guard and claim Biden is the president and not Trump. It was like in 2012 when according to the Right, Bill Clinton was Republican president tell 2006, Obama was elected in 2007 and GW Bush never happened.
burnspbesq
@Matt McIrvin:
Loomis and Campos can just fuck right off.
Immanentize
@trollhattan: If that happens, almost every state will file to 1) challenge that decision (Texas will lose as many reps as California) and 2) if they keep it on the fast track, many states will soon file for undercount adjustments — this latter happened with some states after the last census and that one was competently done.
Constitutionally, a census MUST be done every 10 years, but it MAY be done every year if Congress so orders (and funds). And although reapportionment is based on the census, re-reapportionment can happen at any time (so says SCOTUS in the 1990s).
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
For what it’s worth, Fred Thompson wasn’t much of an actor. His acting career began with him playing himself in a movie about a case he was involved in as a lawyer. And that’s pretty much what he did for the rest of his acting career: all his characters looked and sounded and carried themselves just like him. He simply didn’t have the range to play the second coming of Ronald Reagan.
sdhays
@piratedan: You remind me: Dump’s actual actions basically created the disaster in New York through his sudden ban on travel from Europe (except the UK and Ireland, where he owns properties, of course). All of a sudden, thousands of panicked Americans in Europe rushed to the airports and churned through JFK and LaGuardia, engineering a huge super-spreader event with the very action that was supposed to prevent it.
If he had just kept saying it was a hoax, we would have all been much, much better off. And, probably, a lot of people who are now dead would be alive.
Kelly
@Yutsano: I’m “Fine Marc, you go teach”
germy
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
I honestly don’t think there is one. They’re just assholes.
gkoutnik
@coin operated: @Jinchi: I like yours better. Although – with McConnell at the helm, what would happen to Clintons SCOTUS nominations? What Merrick Garland mischief could he come up with?
cmorenc
@sdhays:
I agree that the primary alternative version of the nightmare hypothetical has Trump, very narrowly beaten in 2016, getting edged out for the nomination in 2020 by the younger Tom Cotton, who would be a less flagrantly incompetent sociopath and less flagrantly obvious narcissist. With Cotton, the nightmare clusterfuck scenario also would include one or more additional hot wars on top of the domestic dystopia.
We can be perversely thankful that Trump’s one positive trait is that he is vastly more war-adverse than the neocon hawks his Administration has variously been staffed with – Cotton would likely have added John Bolton to a prominent position in his National Security team, with Bolton unbridled with having alienated key parts of the GOP base with his public differences with Trump’s actions. Cotton would be far more likely to willingly follow Bolton’s push toward and over the precipice of another disastrous military misadventure.
Frankensteinbeck
@gkoutnik:
I believe McConnell has said that he plans on not letting a Democratic president seat a Supreme Court justice, ever. That’s a problem for the future. With luck we’ll take the Senate and his desires will be moot.
West of the Rockies
@mad citizen:
I agree about the god damned Harleys… Almost always ridden by a middle-aged or older white fat ass craving attention. “Yook at me, yook at me, I got a motorcycle!”
We are not all out to hear you gunning your engine as you conspicuous consumption your way through the day.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kelly: Why do you hate schoolchildren?
Yutsano
@Frankensteinbeck: Unfortunately, being assholes just might be enough to swing this election.
What we really need to focus on is postal mail delays spoiling ballots because of not arriving by election day even if they were mailed before. Could be a reason behind the ratfucking of the USPS beyond the Dolt45 supporter trying to kill it.
Tom Levenson
@Raven: Imma assert a blanket dispensation for any vehicle old enough to have gone to the original Monterey Pops.
Brachiator
Interesting international news story, from the BBC.
Previously, twelve pro-democracy candidates had been banned from running in the elections.
Trump must be feeling soooo jealous that the Hong Kong officials are doing what he would like to do.
mrmoshpotato
A bazillion times this!
Yell it from the rooftops and all the windows (while wearing a mask – might need a megaphone).
Immanentize
@West of the Rockies: one of my colleagues (who had a big Law) when I was in San Antonio had a cartoon (New Yorker?) on his door that showed a bunch of guys on big bikes and their T-shirts read “Mighty Tenured Professors.”/
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Ken: Eh, I know women who loved muscle cars and motorcycles and guys don’t car about cars at all except as a way to get to work. The way I put it to my daughter was, if you have a car you should know the basics of how it runs and be able to tell if a repair person is bullshitting you because you are a woman.
Liking or not liking something should not be based on ones apparent gender.
Kelly
@Omnes Omnibus: Sticky noisy little weaklings. Watching their teacher, several friends and a parent die horribly will build character.
Raven
@Tom Levenson: Or person for that matter. They interview a woman I knew in the film. Of course I was traveling abroad at that time!
Tom Levenson
@Raven: Her too.
Raven
@West of the Rockies: like this one?
Calouste
@West of the Rockies: Motorcycle clubs are just fancy dress parties for the AARP crowd.
Immanentize
@Raven: that is a LOT of chrome
ETA. Screw you, too.
Raven
@Tom Levenson: she hitched from Champaign and worked cleaning off the seats for admission! Look, someone put it on YouTube! Mary was something, been gone a long time now.
https://youtu.be/W9_cG9wKXnI
gkoutnik
@sdhays: I was apparently unconsciously trying to avoid The Tom Cotton Scenario. Racist, but smart. Er.
Raven
@Immanentize: my bil’s sled. I was the only one he ever let ride it. He was a trucker out of LAX but the dude couldn’t change a spark plug. Rip big Mike
Tom Levenson
@Raven: Amazing!
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: Your truck holds zero appeal for me, but I can understand where the appeal comes from. I would sell one of my brother’s kidneys for a DB4 GT (I’d still need more cash, but that’s another story). It comes down to personal taste in the end.
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
There’s a lot of variation in how private schools are dealing with the pandemic. Some are opting to re-open. Some are giving parents a choice, remote learning or in-school instruction. Many Catholic schools are deciding to re-open.
I suspect that some private schools will desperately try to lie about infection rates.
I didn’t realize the degree to which DeVos is stirring shit up.
Felanius Kootea
@rikyrah: Agreed. Although maybe it would be Dr. Nancy Messonnier, Director of the CDC’s Immunization and Respiratory Diseases division who would be giving us daily updates. Trump sidelined her in February after she sounded the alarm about COVID-19 and I haven’t seen anyone try to interview her since. The CDC usually leads a public health response, not the NIH, much as I love Fauci. It’s another thing this disgusting president has broken.
trollhattan
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Liking or disliking needs to be separated from arguing over. That’s guy territory.
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve had a Chevy or GMC truck for 50 years!
https://flic.kr/p/2dZDYuSu
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I wonder what color a pasty white, manchild’s face turns after a massive beatdown by 65 million+ people.
Amir Khalid
@West of the Rockies:
Sounds just like the typical Malaysian Harley-Davidson owner. Except, of course, that over here, the typical HOG* member is a brown Muslim.
*Harley Owners Group
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
DeVos us unapologetically awful. Worse, she considers anybody who doesn’t buy her particular brand of nonsense to be inferior. “I mean, really, how many yachts do they own?”
She will glide away from Trump, Inc to continue her gilded life unscathed, leaving behind the millions harmed by her four years of maladministration.
germy
@Brachiator:
What usually happens is that the next Democratic administration acts to reverse some of the crazy decisions, and then the RW and corporate media frame the reversal as left-leaning “initiatives.”
Ksmiami
@Frankensteinbeck: With luck, he’ll die of Covid and we’ll be lining up to piss on his grave…
Omnes Omnibus
@Kelly: Okay then.
opiejeanne
@MomSense: Absolutely. I tried to discuss the pandemic with my nutritionist back in March and she laughed at me, said it wasn’t going to be a big deal. The next day she got on a plane to visit her mother in Moscow.
Our next meeting was online and I asked how her visit was and she told me she had to scramble to get a flight back early because Trump said the country was going to be closed to anyone outside our borders. She suddenly saw that the danger wasn’t just from the illness. Her biggest complaint, though, was the unavailability of toilet paper.
Mo Salad
@Amir Khalid: I thought hogs were haram.?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I have fantasies about lame-duck (for whatever reason) legislators deciding to ride into the sunset with their empty fuck bag lying in their wake. I don’t know what Engel knows, but maybe he’ll raise some hell
bemused
@germy:
Spiers whole thread was great.
germy
@bemused:
Brachiator
@germy:
her intention to reroute millions of dollars in coronavirus aid money to K-12 private school students.
There has been a long, persistent trend of conservatives giving tax breaks to private schools, especially to what are de facto suburban segregation academies.
On the federal level, Democrats have not be especially strong at undoing this. But I also note that they have faced huge degrees of obstruction by Republicans.
And of course, there are parents who believe in public education, but who are also happy that the tax law now lets them use 529 plans to save for K-12 schools, where previously these plans were limited to higher education.
A lot of action takes place at the state level, where red state governors give tax breaks for money used for private K-12 education and for contributions to private schools.
mrmoshpotato
Fucking death cult.
Kent
I’m late to this thread. But what you are kind of saying is that the Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon types were right. And that things needed to get worse before they could get better?
I don’t buy it. I think you always fight on every single front in every single election and they chips fall where they may. But things never get better by getting worse.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
From the beginning,Trump picked people for cabinet positions who were either incompetent or totally opposed to the mission of the department they were selected to control.
The precision with which Trump made negative selections is amazing.
And the media and Beltway political establishment just takes this for granted.
Perversely, in many ways I do not think that Trump made these choices for standard ideological reasons. That is, his choices fit nicely with the conservative wet dream of making the federal government so small that you can drown it in a bath tub.
But Trump grew up in a world of private privilege where public institutions were irrelevant, except of course, when you could steal money from them. Otherwise, he doesn’t care about the public sector because it serves no purpose for him. So if it withers away or is done away with altogether, nothing fundamentally changes for him and his plutocrat buddies, aside from the fact that they no longer have any institution or law that might ever oppose whatever they want to do.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@OzarkHillbilly: The thing is, yes in many places it can be more dangerous and oppressive to be black than to be gay. BUT look at it this way, many gay men and women are taunted , harassed and beat up, especially but not only in more rural areas. If one is black and gay, or black and trans* they are at a much higher risk of abuse in many cases.
Brachiator
@Kent:
I hate stuff like this. I call it the Idiot Hypothetical. A person simply constructs whatever scenario they need in order to prove themselves “right” about empty speculation.
Just a waste of time.
And the idea that we should somehow count our blessings for the hate and misery unleashed on the country so far is abhorrent.
Eunicecycle
@Brachiator: It seems to me that is a dangerous game, though. Getting rid of all the regulations, sure, but the agencies are also big spigots of money that they know how to get. Wouldn’t they want the agencies to exist at least to get the money?
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: I can’t tell you how many people, both men and women, I’ve heard boast that they could shoot someone dead if they came in their house to rob them. These are people who don’t regularly practice shooting, they just have a gun in their nightstand or in the closet. They have no idea what it means to actually shoot another human being, let alone being able to actually get the gun, aim it, and pull the trigger, plus they have no idea what the fear and adrenaline will do to them. My husband actually shot and killed people in Vietnam, and he says these people have no idea what they’re talking about. There’s a reason you have to train people to be able to shoot other people, because most people can’t actually do it.
Soprano2
@MomSense: I totally agree that we’ve been way ahead of the curve as far as knowing about the virus because of those daily posts. At the beginning of March when I talked to people here about how bad the virus was, and soon we’d probably be shutting things down, they looked at me like I was crazy. Then it happened…..
Brachiator
Once again, the British people cross their fingers and pretend that the virus will not hurt them, because they simply must go to the beach. From BBC news.
Brachiator
@Eunicecycle:
That’s just a bonus, on top of a tax code that gives preference to big business.
arielibra
I read this as, have not managed to kill each other yet.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: all right, read tje attached article to answer my “who the hell is Karen Bass” question, but at the end I am still saying, “bullshit justifications for going with herover Harris”.
Robert Sneddon
@Brachiator: Today is officially the British summer and it is forecast to be summer for the whole afternoon. The temperatures have soared into the mid-20s and it’s likely it won’t rain AT ALL! The sky is an unnatural blue colour according to astronomers — comet NEOWISE is being blamed for this once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. The BBC has issued warnings not to look at the blue stuff overhead for too long as it may cause blindness, a desire to drink iced tea and maybe even put a hankie on your head.
In circumstances like this Britons are impelled by evolution to head for the beaches to mate, lay eggs and then die, like cicadas (or was that turtles? salmons? I’m not sure. It was on a David Attenborough show a while back.) It’s part of the Circle of Life. Cue Elton John soundtrack…
dopey-o
@OzarkHillbilly:
No, they hate America. I live and work among them just like you do. Spent lot of smoke breaks listening and trying to understand their feelings. Seeing black people, uppity women, rebellious gays makes them uncomfortable. They are only at ease among white people.
Amerika once was all white and they were comfortable. That’s changing, and they don’t want to change.
They just hate America. They hate the same people that Trump hates. They hate 21st century America.
J R in WV
@Raven:
I once changed out a starter on my ’71 C10 Custom Delux Chevy truck (meant it came with an SM radio!) in February, laying in a gutter a couple of blocks from campus, in my early 30s. I was lucky enough to have parked just a few doors from an electrical rebuild shop, who allowed me to bring them the old starter after I put their rebuilt starter on the truck, and loaned me two wrenches to do the twisting with.
It was about 12 degrees, so not wet, all frozen hard. I vowed to not do that again, and to work hard to be able to afford to hire a pro to do that in the future. Now I don’t recall if that came true right then, I think not for 4 or 5 more years… farm truck needed work AT THE FARM, for one thing, but it’s been a long long time since I’ve done more than recharge a battery. On a car.
Now, the tractor/backhoe… that needs maintenance every 100 hours, so 10 gallons of transmission fluid, 7 quarts of syn oil, filters, grease gun air compressor to run the grease gun, etc, etc. So I’m still pretending to be a mechanic. Mounting the hoe, dismounting the hoe, fixing the brush-hog, tractors are easy to work on, they have to be!
ballerat
Isn’t that the truth? And all sucked up into themselves. Cosplaying at being gang thugs, losers and hardcases.
And I also hate the sound of harleys. Plosive wet flatulence.
ballerat
HELLO!
ARE YOU
THE BRAIN SPECIALIST?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Robert Sneddon: OMG now I have the visual in my head..MY EYES! It BUUURRRNNNSS, curse you…
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@arielibra: Well, I DO read a lot of murder mysteries, or used to. The ones about the lady who knew a lot about poisonous plants and stuff DID make spousal unit a wee bit nervous. I learned about nicotine, roses and aphids. Nothing to see here…!
Ken
And the British can’t say they haven’t been warned about the consequences of that.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Baud: Very cool. Thanks!
They grow up so fast! Although as a foster parent, I’m glad I only have to dedicate about 2 months to get a litter to adoption size.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Baud: The C is right next to the V, on the left, on a typical keyboard. Positional typo.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@different-church-lady: I had a period when I made a few quiches myself and quickly realized the richer the dairy, the better (creamier, smoother) the quiche was. That is, if you make it with heavy cream, it’s better (IMHO) than with half ‘n’ half, and made with half ‘n’ half is better than with whole milk. I don’t know what it’s like made with low fat milk because I didn’t want to find out. And of course, most places don’t want to use heavy cream, so you’re right, most quiches are mediocre or worse.