Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Republicans do not trust women.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

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

The lights are all blinking red.

Everybody saw this coming.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

In my day, never was longer.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

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

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / NANCY SMASH! / Thursday Morning Open Thread: NO Trust, *We* Will Verify

Thursday Morning Open Thread: NO Trust, *We* Will Verify

by | 184 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

NANCY SMASH is taking no bullshite from Postmaster DeJoy:


Remember, when it comes to social media: Sharing is Caring!

Count on the Oval Office Occupant to stand up for ‘his’ loyal supporters:

Reader Interactions

184Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    That Monday hearing is a nice touch. Even nicer if it bumps live coverage of whatever the GOP has planned.

  2. 2.

    Gin & Tonic

    Mentioned downstairs, where it’s off-topic, but Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been poisoned (again) and is in intensive care in a hospital in Omsk, I believe. Story is developing, of course. Russia is blaming the Americans or the British for doing this to make Russia look bad.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    Praise to everyone who will watch the RNC in order to push back on all the lies.  I shan’t be among you.

  7. 7.

    WereBear

    Well, it happened. Twice last week two different friends asked me when I’d be getting back to work, and I told them I didn’t think I would.

    Tourism got hit very hard, and the skeleton crew at my organization is on part-time and reduced salary as it is. Things are going to get worse when the outdoor eating weather ends. And this isn’t going to get under control for months yet, and we know why.

    So I wasn’t surprised at all when I got the call yesterday. In the short term, nothing will happen, since I’m on unemployment anyway. I’ve got two more months of health insurance. At least I’m in NY.

    So I’m a full-time Cat Guru now! And I’m going to write more books. Neither of which is as pandemic-sensitive as my old job :)

  9. 9.

    SFAW

    It’s a futile hope, I know, but part of me keeps hoping that there will be ONE FUCKING APPOINTEE of his that will NOT need to be a target of the hoped-for Truth and Retribution Commission, a/k/a Presidential Crimes Commission a/k/a Trump “Administration” Crimes Commission.

     

    I might as well hope for three winning PowerBall tickets.

  11. 11.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    I wonder what, specifically, the Trump Administration did to break that. The postal service uses contract trucking companies between states. I wonder if they gave some of Trump’s garbage donors the contracts – I don’t think they’re dying after they get to the offices because people pick them up- they’re only in the offices for a period of hours. They’re arriving dead.

    We’ll find out the contracts went to Giuliani’s former partners or something.

  14. 14.

    WereBear

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m in a very big boat, and at least there’s not a leak right by my seat at the moment.

    If everything else in my life had been the same, except I lived it in Florida… I wouldn’t even have the rescue ring.

  16. 16.

    Ken

    @Immanentize: The whole of Monday is the roll call?  Are we back to ten minute speeches from each state, or are they building in a huge amount of time to get their live Zoom connections up and running?

    (“Arizona – Arizona – you have to unmute.  Unmute.  Look in the lower-left corner, do you see where it says audio?  No, stop talking, we can’t hear you. Move the mouse….”)

  18. 18.

    TS (the original)

    @Immanentize:

    USPS is killing chicks.

    I read this yesterday & remain amazed at what gets sent through the mail. Never could I have imagined that this was a distribution method for the little chicks.

  20. 20.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: BillInGlendale posted a list of speakers last night. It’s a lot shorter than the Democrat’s list, but then, Trump is taking half the time every night.

    I wonder how he’s going to cope with speaking to an audience that’s not there?  He didn’t do so well back in March, when he made the covid announcement. Possibly they’ll rope in some WH staffers to sit in the room with him and applaud.

  21. 21.

    MomSense

    @Immanentize:

    I cried when I read that.  I know so many farmers, tough guys, who heat up their trucks and drop everything to go to the post office when they get the call to pick up their chicks.  During chick season you can hear the peeping while you wait in line at the post office.  It’s one of the simple joys of living in a rural place.

  22. 22.

    trnc

    If we manage to get $25 billion to the USPS, what is the guarantee they use it properly? I’m not arguing against the legislation, but we have a precedent now of the administration spending money in ways that were not intended by congress. I fully expect DeJoy to spend the money setting up extra equipment, facilities and manpower in red areas of swing states.

  26. 26.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: It’s gonna resonate more with red state farmers. Even if they themselves do not raise birds they can see that the handwriting on the wall says, “Fuck you.”

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: During chick season you can hear the peeping while you wait in line at the post office.

    I can be hard to get hold of so I’ll call to see if they are in or not. Tis a joyous sound to hear the peeping in the background of the call.

  37. 37.

    germy

    “Build back better” is just “MAGA” but it sounds dumber and it’s less effective.

    — Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) August 20, 2020

    Tell us more about your years-long admiration for Ann Coulter. Why don’t you talk about that anymore. You used to talk about it all the time. t.co/OIZm0pTnDx

    — Tentin Quarantino (@agraybee) August 20, 2020

  38. 38.

    PsiFighter37

    @SFAW: Jay Powell at the Federal Reserve is the only one that comes to the top of my head. And to be fair, Obama was the one who appointed him to the Fed board in the first place…

  39. 39.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    It is nice. We would call them and tell them the chicks arrived. There was this whole thing among postal employees about them not getting “chilled” so you take them off the dock and out of the sorting room (which is cold) and into the actual office :)

    We once got a full grown swan, but we knew he was coming.

  41. 41.

    TS (the original)

    @Immanentize:

    My education was definitely lacking. The only farm I had much to do with belonged to an uncle – moons ago. From memory he had hens & a couple of roosters and raised his own chicks.

    The USPS sounds amazing – hard to believe a party that supposedly helps the “country” folks is trying so hard to dismantle it.

  42. 42.

    PsiFighter37

    @germy: Kind of odd since Nuzzi has generally done pretty good work. Guess it goes to show that shitting on Democrats is going to be back to business as usual for most of these hacks once Donnie is booted.

  45. 45.

    Ken

    @PsiFighter37: There’s a reply to the Tentin Quarantino tweet that seems spot-on:

    it’s a convention entirely run outside of their lens, it isn’t lavishing them with exclusive parties and you can feel the rage and entitlement at being cut off in every single tweet

    (In case it’s not clear, “they” refers to the political commentators.)

  46. 46.

    satby

    The Post Office slowdown is devastating to us small business owners too. Packages I send out aren’t always being scanned in on the day they’re dropped off, and both the Grand Rapids and Indianapolis hubs are targeted by the slowdown. I haven’t even gotten mail three times this week.

    Add that to the supply chain misery and it’s just awful. I just ordered jars and tops from Uline at an ok price but not what I would normally use because they’re really (ugh), but the shipping fee was almost $34.00. That’s the future for rural America and a lot of smaller cities and towns too. Less choices, higher cost. Plus dead plants and chicks.

  48. 48.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    I honestly was so upset about it I cried.  I can imagine the postal workers receiving silent boxes of chicks and being devastated.  The entire Republican Party is sociopathic.  I don’t think I will ever get over it.

  49. 49.

    Tony Jay

    @Gin & Tonic: 

    Russia is blaming the Americans or the British for doing this to make Russia look bad.

    In Putinist Russia, traditions maintain you.

    Meanwhile, as we all know, but aren’t supposed to talk about for reasons of etiquette and cringing subservience, the current British Government is owned lock, stock and the well-scraped bottom of all of the barrels by Russian money.

    The Kabuki industry should sue for copyright infringement.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    b-boy bouiebaisse
    @jbouie
    QAnon will be GOP orthodoxy in at least four years, two years if Biden wins and takes office.

    Trump endorsed the theory yesterday. To clarify, Donald Trump endorsed a cult that proposes that Donald Trump arrest and then execute most of the prominent Democrats. It got about as much play as Donald Trump’s efforts to put Goodyear out of business- same day.

  51. 51.

    germy

    Kancel Kulture is really out of kontrol

    Goodyear is a 121-year old company that was founded in Akron, Ohio, and has never left its home, opening a new global headquarters building in Akron in 2013. It employs tens of thousands of Americans. And the President is leading a boycott of it. t.co/7dpAtSCdGD— Michael David Smith (@MichaelDavSmith) August 19, 2020

  52. 52.

    germy

    Colin Powell and Joe Biden worked together to start the Iraq War. That’s it.

    That’s the tweet. #DemConvention

    — Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) August 19, 2020

    Imagine being told in 2003 that the Iraq War will come to be so universally understood as an unmitigated failure that the next GOP president will attack his Dem opponent for going along with it. t.co/l7DeyOzdWr

    — Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) August 19, 2020

    The trump campaign has moved into a “You fucked up. You trusted us” phase.

  53. 53.

    satby

    Happy Birthday to valued (by many of us) commenter O Felix Culpa!

    I’m still in FB jail so can’t salute her there.

  55. 55.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    It’s been frustrating for me because I feel like a lot of the coverage and commentary is missing the point. All of these complaints aren’t coming out of people seeing photos online of collection boxes being picked up. The complaints are coming out of peoples actual lived experience of mail delays. The mail wasn’t delayed and then Trump’s low quality hire took over and it was delayed. That has jack shit to do with unfunded pensions- the pension issue has been there for 20 years and the thing WORKED. Now it doesn’t work. They fucked up the operation of the postal service. It worked and then it didn’t work and this happened over a period of three months.
    Absentee balloting is interesting and possibly a motive but the thing itself is falling apart and we’re getting 2000 word explainers on retiree health care in the postal service. The mail is delayed. What happened?

  59. 59.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: it will be up to our national snooze media to grill GOP elected officials and ask them whether or not they disavow QAnon, in detail.

    And unfortunately, I think we all know how that’s likely to go (or not go, I should say)

    Here’s hoping that somehow, that level of insanity causes what’s left of the GOP to split in two – half QP, half trying in vain to restore “principled” conservatism – while the center-center party works to restore all the damage of the past four years.

  61. 61.

    Amir Khalid

    Speaking of birds, the ravens at the Tower of London are missing the throngs of tourists who used to visit every day. Out of boredom and loneliness, The Guardian reports, they’re spending the day elsewhere, and that’s an ominous sign for the kingdom.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    Follow the chicks from Pennsylvania where they started and Maine where they arrived dead and we will know immediately exactly what Donald Trump did to the postal service to break it because in April (and for the 100 years prior to April) they made it from Pennsylvania to Maine and now they no longer do.

    That’s the story. Not pension experts. Interview the truckdriver.

  63. 63.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:the pension issue has been there for 20 years and the thing WORKED. Now it doesn’t work. They fucked up the operation of the postal service. It worked and then it didn’t work and this happened over a period of three months.

    It’s funny…I was explaining this very thing to my TCNJ dad earlier this week when he started trying to regurgitate the ‘pension’ talking points.  “Those changes happened years ago…but the mail didn’t start slowing down until trumpov started, in his blind panic over his polls, slamming voting-by-mail a few months ago.  How about THAT for a coincidence?”

    Naturally, he had no answer, so we moved on to how DeJoy has huge financial interests in companies that compete with the USPS, etc.  All news to him, of course…

  64. 64.

    PsiFighter37

    @Kay:  I think if the GOP goes down that rabbit hole, even some of the 27% will abandon them. It is so ridiculous that you have to be a complete moron to believe that shit.

  67. 67.

    germy

    @Ken:  They told their employees they couldn’t wear MAGA hats while on the job.

    I’m not kidding.

    Apparently some employees showed up with their campaign gear displayed proudly, and mgmt said “Uh, no, you’re making our other employees uncomfortable.”

  69. 69.

    Mousebumples

    @Ken:

    Why did Trump suddenly decide to hate Goodyear? I haven’t seen a reason.

    They outlawed political apparel – e.g. Maga hats (and blm hats).

  72. 72.

    Jeffro

    @Jeffro: Sasse (?!) already speaking out this morning, saying QAnon is “nuts” but framing it as “if Democrats take the Senate, blow up the filibuster, and pack the Supreme Court – garbage like this will be a big part of why they won”

    Yes, yes, Ben…trumpov going full ‘Q’ is the reason (eyeroll)…it’s got nothing to do with the corruption, the ineptitude, etc etc.  Conservatism cannot be failed…unless the leader of your party goes off the rails into Q-land. (double eyeroll)

    Still, I’m encouraged – rooting for GOP/QP injuries!

  73. 73.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @germy: The Goodyear story reminds me of a paper that once appeared in a professional communication journal I was editing at the time. It was about a study in Northern Ireland about how to defuse tension between Catholics and Protestants on the job. One thing that helped was banning Tshirts and other gear that promoted a particular team, since those were factional.

    Sounds like that’s what Goodyear is doing. You can’t wear a MAGA hat, but you can’t wear a Biden one either.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    Lower income people in Philadelphia urban neighborhoods got reliable mail delivery and now they don’t. Now they go three weeks without mail. That happened over five months.

    Mail- Donald Trump’s hire-  no mail.

    It isn’t unknowable. These are tangible items that people are loading on trucks. You can follow the whole trip. If it goes from 3 days to 11 days something happened from Point A to Point B. What happened?

    Or, we can spend another two weeks talking about Donald Trump’s crackpot theories of absentee ballots.

  75. 75.

    satby

    @Ken: Because an internal training had a slide showing (among other examples of political wear) a MAGA hat as a violation of a policy against overt politicalization in the workplace. And one of the whiny snowflakes made a big deal about the “suppression” on conservative media.

  76. 76.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    President Trump blasts Republicans and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the timing of the Senate hearing with the postmaster general.

    I think I get the Red on Red violance now; someone was reviewing one of Ben Shaperos books and there was a line in it were Shapero comes out right and admits he does these stupid arguments because otherwise he would have to admit the Liberal won

    the debate.  Combine that with “Any Republican who doesn’t agree with me is a sekret liberal” then no wonder we are seeing this emerging Republican civil war with these wild mood swings.

  77. 77.

    PsiFighter37

    @Jeffro: Fuck Ben Sasse and his ‘principled conservative’ bullshit. He has voted for every single thing Trump has wanted. A  lot of young asshole white men in the Senate these days from the GOP – Hawley, Cotton, Sasse…all of them suck.

  78. 78.

    Soprano2

    My package is still ‘in transit’ from Kansas City, and has been since August 13th. I could have ridden a bicycle there and back in that amount of time! And the dead chick thing, that’s so awful. Will there be anything the Republicans and Trump haven’t broken by January 21st, 2021?

  80. 80.

    opiejeanne

    @TS (the original):  My grandparents retired to an egg ranch in Los Angeles County and that was how they got chicks, through the mail from Chicago. The chicks were packed newly hatched and could survive for a couple of days without food or water. Grandma told me she used to count them by turning them loose on the kitchen floor and counting them as she put them back into the box. Sometimes one or two died during the trip, and they had to notify the shipping company to get a refund, probably less than five cents per chick, but it was during the Depression

    I didn’t understand why they weren’t getting them from a nearer supplier, but at the time the big companies were in Chicago.

  81. 81.

    mad citizen

    I don’t think the post office debacle or QAnon crap will sway any of those voters at this point.  They are going down with the Trumptanic.  I assume the Lincoln Project is working on a dead chicks spot today–maybe have the sound of peeping chicks for the first half, then silence after they die.

    As for election night, I have one mostly full airhorn, but am thinking I need to get one or two more.  Wake the neighbors, phone the kids!

  86. 86.

    opiejeanne

    @OzarkHillbilly: My grandma cried over the one or two dead chicks in a shipment of 100, every time. It wasn’t about money, it was about that little life snuffed out.

  87. 87.

    PenAndKey

    @satby: Because an internal training had a slide showing (among other examples of political wear) a MAGA hat as a violation of a policy against overt politicalization in the workplace. And one of the whiny snowflakes made a big deal about the “suppression” on conservative media.

    Which is actually kind of hilarious, because how stupid does someone have to be to think that overt political apparel is acceptable in the workplace? Maybe I’ve spent too long as a peon to corporate America, but I’d be more shocked if a place allowed that sort of thing than hearing they don’t.

  88. 88.

    NotMax

    @satby

    Total lie, and I have the tracking info on my cigar reorders from May, June and July to demonstrate it. April the last time they arrived in a timely manner and increasingly more delayed (including entirely disappeared while in transit) month by month since.

  89. 89.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @WereBear:

    I’m so sorry. We’re having to adjust to the 6 figure crater in our household revenue – wife was commission only, and has negotiated some skeleton crew,  part-time pay that is about what previous PUA is, with unemployment. It keeps her next to her files, though, and she’s maintaining contact with her clients until things might open back up next year. She’s pushing her long-time folks into bigger adventures in 2022 for the most part. Even with the part time pay, she’ll be down about 120K by 12/31 – it’s bad, and they just laid off her office manager.

    She’s still in the dark about whether the company survives. She’ll have her book of clients no matter what, though – those are solid gold.

  91. 91.

    PsiFighter37

    @germy: Also, too, strong women don’t feel compelled to throw their uncles under the bus for taking a principled stand.

  93. 93.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    Exactly this.  The delays are not happening because of the pension shenanigans the Republicans put in motion 20 years  ago or even because of the changes to the budget that diverted profits to the general fund.  This is literally a work slow down and sabotage from the very top.

  94. 94.

    TS (the original)

    @opiejeanne:

    I amazed by it all, my world the farmer sets out in his truck & collects the chicks if he buys them from another place. They may also be delivered but I’ve never heard of it being via the mail.

  96. 96.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Sounds like that’s what Goodyear is doing. You can’t wear a MAGA hat, but you can’t wear a Biden one either.

    That’s simple professional conduct since the 19th century; no religion, sex or politics at work.  One of the reasons the Wingnuts whine they are so discriminated against is they get so disruptive with their ranting at work their employees end up firing them.

  98. 98.

    PsiFighter37

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: I am pretty sure that if Goodyear had just said “political attire”, this would have flown under the radar. I am sure that specifically citing MAGA moron gear, as well as Blue/All Lives Matter, is what inflamed the wingnuts.

  100. 100.

    Peale

    @TS (the original): One of the most interesting things I learned during COVID was from a video on “Classic Comic Book Ads” that explained what you actually got when you ordered those sea monkeys, x-ray glasses, submarines, and whatnot from comic books in the 50s and 60s. I remembered a lot of those ads. What I didn’t know was that the advertisements for pet monkeys were actually legitimate. You actually got a live and very angry monkey delivered to you in the mail. I actually remember trying to save for one with my sister when I was a kid. We had actually started fighting about what we would name it. My dad told us that we should stop hoping because the ad was obviously false and that we’d only get a stuffed monkey if anything at all. But yeah, I found out that dad was wrong! Dangerous wild monkeys to kids in the mail was actually a thing.

  101. 101.

    Baud

    @Peale:

    Dangerous wild monkeys to kids in the mail was actually a thing.

    I’m starting to understand why the wing nuts pine for the “good old days.”

    I mean, it’s objectively awful, but as it kid, it would be awesome.

  104. 104.

    opiejeanne

    @TS (the original): In the 30s, the cases with 100 chicks in eachwere loaded into a heated rail car and made the trip in about 2 days, so the chicks were about 3 days old and just about in need of food and water when they arrived. Grandpa took his truck to the post office to pick them up, Grandma counted them while she fed and watered them and let them run around for a bit. Then they put them in a “brooder” to keep them warm.

    Years later, a neighbor two doors down installed a hatching system and I remember Grandpa took me to see the baby chicks that were a day old, when I was about 4. The chicks were in a shallow drawer in a cabinet with a lot of drawers and the sound of them peeping was joy-inducing.

  105. 105.

    WereBear

    @PsiFighter37: I think if the GOP goes down that rabbit hole, even some of the 27% will abandon them. It is so ridiculous that you have to be a complete moron to believe that shit.

     
    I believe the Republicans captured that demographic quite a while ago…

  107. 107.

    catclub

    IF YOU CAN PROTEST IN PERSON, YOU CAN VOTE IN PERSON!

     

    Does Trump think 150 Million people were protesting?

  108. 108.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby:  Why, thank you! I’ve reached a certain Paul McCartney song age. I didn’t realize you were in FB jail. What terrible, heinous, awful thing did you do to incur the wrath of Zuckerberg?

  111. 111.

    Kay

    @catclub:

    Why is he bothering us? We can vote the way we want and it always worked fine before he put his idiot son in law in charge. Just fix the mail system you broke, dummy. Do your job. Hire someone who knows how to get a piece of mail from Pennsylvania to Maine without fucking it all up. See if your thousands of bottom of the barrel employees can manage the same task that every President for the last hundred years did without breaking a sweat.

  114. 114.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: 44 presidents before we found one that could destroy the USPS. He did what no other president could.

  115. 115.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Baud: 2020 DNC delegate = LOTS of Zoom time watching various caucuses; most of which are genuinely interesting. I also get to bundle 4000 postcards to young voters while delegating. My dining table is now covered with stacks ready to go out to our volunteers to address. Thank you for the birthday wishes!

    @NotMax: LOL. Love the water music. Bookmarked and thank you!

  117. 117.

    dnfree

    @Mousebumples: except they didn’t outlaw MAGA apparel. Someone posted one slide from a presentation somewhere, most likely the Topeka plant. The slide presented acceptable (black lives matter), and unacceptable (blue lives matter, MAGA). Context and sponsorship not yet known but it was enough for Trump to attack the entire company, which as a former employee I can verify is not radical left. I would bet that many employees are Trump supporters.

  118. 118.

    germy

    @Kay: Hire someone who knows how to get a piece of mail from Pennsylvania to Maine without fucking it all up.

    DeJoy is a privateer with a financial interest in fucking it all up.  What we see as incompetence, he sees as ruthlessly efficient. He’s helping trump and himself.

  119. 119.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @dnfree:

    When this story broke yesterday, someone on Twitter pointed out (with close-up photos) that the high-security presidential motorcade vehicles are all fitted with Goodyear tires.

  121. 121.

    dnfree

    @PsiFighter37: Goodyear policy does just say political attire. Someone posted one slide from an outside presentation, most likely at one plant, as I noted above. Trump took that and ran with it.

  123. 123.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I’m still marveling at the stupidity of Trump’s call for a Goodyear boycott. I mean, the fundamentals of the election can change up to the last minute — we all know that.

    But right now, Trump is losing to Biden. He not only has to pick up all of the swing states that are currently deemed too close to put in a “lean” or “likely” category (AZ, GA, FL, NC, OH), he’s got to reverse the trend in a leans-Dem state.

    Given that reality, was it smart to call for a boycott of a company that employs thousands of people in Ohio? It’s just mind-boggling.

  124. 124.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    Happy birthday, OFC! Once the convention is over and you’ve had a chance to relax a little, I hope you will consider writing a more detailed post about your experience being a 2020 DNC delegate. I’m sure WaterGirl or Anne Laurie or Betty Cracker would be glad to set up a guest post for you, and I think plenty of us would be interested.

  125. 125.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The United States keeps getting worse for the people who live here. Just on a “services” level the quality is declining, yet we’re paying the same or higher prices. That to me is the direct line one can draw from conservatives in government to the public. They don’t have to be political to understand that.

    The expansions of voting Democrats back are popular. They’re popular because it’s more convenient. It’s a better service process. Donald Trump and conservatives are telling people they need to lower their expectations- they can’t have mailed ballots. They had them before! They just can’t have them now. These are the sacrifices we all must make to allow for the incompetence of conservatives, to accommodate their corruption and crackpot ideology. We no longer get safe schools and now we no longer get mail service. It’s all loss, and on a very personal level.

  126. 126.

    VOR

    @OzarkHillbilly: The argument is Dejoy is improving efficiency. Yep, that’s why they are removing installed, proven, production automated machinery, for greater efficiency. Suuure.

  127. 127.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @germy:

    Exactly. I doubt the Secret Service just hikes over to the nearest Tires Plus location looking for the best money-saving deal.

  128. 128.

    bluefoot

    I am so angry about what Trump is doing the post office.  People aren’t getting their medicines, or they’re being ruined in transit because of delays – they’re not kept cold so thye go bad, etc.  People will die because of the delays.  I suppose to Republicans, what’s another ten thousand on top of 170 thousand from COVID…

    And people seem to forget too that there are laws that prohibit tampering with the mail, and what private individuals or the government can actually do to/with it.  If the Postal Service goes from government to private enterprise, do you think mail to/from BLM activists, for example, won’t be seized, searched, etc?  That some areas (blue states, minority neighborhoods) won’t have worse service, seized or destroyed mail, etc?  Our mail will no longer be private, will no longer be protected.

  129. 129.

    Anya

    There is nothing more widespread and so rarely acknowledged in this country than misogynoir.

    Sometimes, it’s hard to have hope.

  133. 133.

    Anya

    @Gin & Tonic:Russia is blaming the Americans or the British for doing this to make Russia look bad.

     

    Russia is basically Trump. Lie about everything and blame others for your evil actions.

  136. 136.

    germy

    NASCAR’s “Trump 2020” car is keeping its Goodyear tires “despite the boycott”, according to Fox news.

  137. 137.

    Kay

    @VOR:

    The next complaint you’ll here will be from the massive amount of nonprofit mail the postal service processes. UPS or FedEx won’t carry that because they lose on every piece. If the dope can’t move first class he sure as hell can’t move church bulletins in a timely enough manner so the bulletin isn’t completely useless.

    Donald Trump and his employees don’t know how any of this works. There were whole worlds of practical matters they simply never encountered in their privileged lives. They’re unfamiliar with the whole concept of “waiting for a prescription”. They don’t wait for anything.

  138. 138.

    NotMax

    @bluefoot

    Dunno what the critical mass is to set off people being charged fees for late arrival of payments, but have the distinct feeling we’re approaching it at warp speed.

  144. 144.

    germy

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been arrested after being charged with defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors through their campaign “We Build the Wall.” 

    I’m seeing “indicted” in some stories and “arrested” in others

    I remember the old Three Stooges  movie where Moe is on the witness stand.  Judge asks him “Were you ever indicted?”  Moe replies “Not since I was a baby, your honor.

    EDIT:  I see in a new thread that Bannon is in custody.

  146. 146.

    NotMax

    @Kay

    They don’t wait for anything.

    “Abject apologies for the delay in arrival of the oxycontin, sir. The helicopter was in need of refueling. Rest assured that heads will roll.”

    //

  147. 147.

    Eunicecycle

    @opiejeanne:  There’s a farm supply store we go to occasionally that has baby chicks, ducks, and turkeys. I am always drawn to the peeps from the cute little things. The ducks are especially cute!

  150. 150.

    zhena gogolia

    @Peale:

    ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT SEA MONKEYS????

    They were some sort of small aquatic tiny creatures almost invisible to the naked eye. Not wearing a hair bow and sitting on the sand, as in the picture. I wanted them too.

  151. 151.

    mrmoshpotato

    Oh no.  Dump v McTurtle.  Let’s root for injuries – and a crushing Democratic victory at the ballot box in November.

  155. 155.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @SiubhanDuinne: Thank you! This is my first time as a delegate, so I don’t have a basis for comparison. Repeat delegates say they miss the personal contacts that an in-person convention affords, but they don’t miss the rushing around to get into crowded, uncomfortable caucus meetings. There’s a lot to be said for the virtual format.

    @Spanky: Thank you for your kind birthday wishes!

    @Immanentize: Thank you, blog friend!  I’m hoping Immp’s freshman year is safe and everything he hoped for. And that his outstanding dad has almost no cause to worry.

  156. 156.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Peale:

    and whatnot from comic books in the 50s and 60s. I remembered a lot of those ads. What I didn’t know was that the advertisements for pet monkeys were actually legitimate. You actually got a live and very angry monkey delivered to you in the mail. 

    Well that’s getting scratched off my birthday wish list post haste!

  157. 157.

    Citizen Alan

    @PsiFighter37:

    I think if the GOP goes down that rabbit hole, even some of the 27% will abandon them. It is so ridiculous that you have to be a complete moron to believe that shit.

    For some reason, your comment reminded me of a scene from I, Claudius in which Claudius and his friends are chortling with glee at learning Emperor Caligula is planning to speak to the Senate to announce that he is a god and should be worshiped as such. Cut immediately to Caligula announcing his divinity to the Senators who accept his mad claim without issue while nervously looking at all the Praetorian soldiers standing around with their hands on their swords.

  161. 161.

    CCL

    @Kay:  was thinking about this mail fiasco this morning and then it dawned on me.  One of the most effective tactics in wars is to cut the enemy’s supply chain.  Bomb the railroads etc.  Trump’s 2020 war on Americans…cut our supply chain.

  165. 165.

    wvng

    @SFAW: Tim Shea just arrested. You know, the guy Barr put in charge of the DC USA office to drop Flynn charges, and then Trump made acting head of DEA. I believe in the same charges as Bannon.

  167. 167.

    satby

    @germy:  DeJoy has been in the logistics industry since 1983, he knows how to move mail or anything else. He’s not a “low-quality hire”, he has very high level experience to achieve a long term goal of the Republicans: break the USPS and make it dysfunctional enough to have privatizing it seem like a reasonable solution. Dead people or chicks is just collateral damage in the war on America.

  168. 168.

    satby

    @O. Felix Culpa: You’ve no doubt seen my right wing stalker on some of my posts. She periodically complains that my posts are “hate speech”. The last one was when I said how much it obviously chapped her ass that the black guy, his wife, and his daughters were smarter, better looking, kinder, more capable, and all around superior people to the white trash trumpies.”

    Or something like that. FB missed or ignored my other post calling Trump white trash, I was slammed specifically for my answer to her. Which called the trumps trash, not her. When I get free I’ll block her.

  171. 171.

    Oklahomo

    I do first class mailing for a living.  Have done so for almost 30 years now.  I went through the Classification Reform of the 90s, the intelligent mail barcode that  pushed out the old Postnet barcodes.  The poison pill of the pension funding wrecked the system that had developed, a system that could take mail I entered in Arkansas and have it anywhere in 2 days.  The cost cutting closed a lot of sorting centers, when meant the 4-tiered price/sorting schedules went from 4 tiers of first class (5-digit, 3-digit, AADC, and Mixed AADC) to 3 tiers of 5/AADC/MIXED. Not only did that cut out a discount tier, it meant more mail to fewer sorting sites.  I could mail utility bills from 729 to 749 and have them there the next morning because 749 3-digit was pulled, sorted, and sent to the 749 3-digit site directly, instead of it going to 727 AADC to be sorted the next day and and sent to 740 AADC and then to the 749 post offices.  Sorry if that’s long-winded. It boils down to a system that had been fine-tuned since the late 90s being wrecked.  By cutting hours and removing sorters, everything will pile up at the AADCs.

  174. 174.

    J R in WV

    Regarding the shipment of Peeps — little chicks are called that normally — by mail, that’s how most farmers who ARE NOT chicken farmers for Tyson or Perdue get their layers. Small farms in rural America who do truck gardens, orchards, etc, they like to have farm fresh eggs. Yet chickens don’t lay eggs forever, you need young chickens every so often.

    You need a warm, dry spot for your new peeps, we used a big washtub in a corner of the kitchen, with a couple of low wattage incandescent lamps clamped on the side of the tub, and newspapers in the bottom to make clean up easier. And there was that incessant peeping in the kitchen, for a couple of weeks. Then we introduced a couple of responsible broody hens (those are hens who will try to hide their eggs to brood on them so they would hatch) to the couple of dozen baby chickens to teach them how to be yard birds.

    For a shipment of peeps to arrive dead… that’s pretty horrible. Like receiving Omaha Steaks all rotten and slimy… how’s that gonna work out for beef farmers selling mail order steaks>???

    This is just one more reminder that everything Trump touches dies!!!

    He finally touched a part of the government that matters to everyone, that touches everyone nearly every day. I think the Democratic Party should beat this drum every day for the rest of the year, because killing off the post office really does affect all of American daily life. Trump may have killed any chance he may have had to get re-elected with this stunt.

    And Louis Dejoy needs to be informed that he is breaking federal law with regard to interfering with the timely delivery of the mail, and every item not delivered in a timely manner is another count in his future indictment. Maybe we could raise enough money for a quarter page in the WaPo for a kind letter to Postmaster General Dejoy, to inform him of the many laws and regulations he is breaking on a daily basis, and to which he has confessed publicly, as if the law doesn’t apply to him…oops! It does~!!~

  180. 180.

    greenergood

    @Amir Khalid: Good – love the ravens – they can move elsewhere – the air pollution in London isn’t good for them anyway, and the dissolution of the monarchy and the United Kingdom would be a bonus … ;-)

  181. 181.

    Miss Bianca

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Russia is blaming the Americans or the British for doing this to make Russia look bad.

    Riiiiight, because America and Britain are *so well known* for poisoning people to get them out of the way…

    ETA: At the risk of straying into NotMax territory, I’m ready to call that a “false flagon” report.

  182. 182.

    Miss Bianca

    @MomSense: I am so with you on that one, the peeping of little boxes in the post office in the spring is one of the joys of rural living.

    God DAMN these people. I was afraid this would happen, I remember feeling that clutch of fear when Ozark Hillbilly talked about his chick shipment!

Comments are closed.