Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

This blog will pay for itself.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

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

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

It’s the corruption, stupid.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Biden-Harris 2020 / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Beyond Thoughts & Prayers

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Beyond Thoughts & Prayers

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Well, unfortunately, that’s pretty much all we can offer those of you in Laura’s path right now. But sincerely!

Check in when you can, and let us know if (when) there’s something we can contribute…

I usually try to keep these early-morning open threads fairly upbeat, but there’s not much use in that today, is there?

Okay, *one* good reason to keep plugging through today:

Reader Interactions

295Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    I’m still laughing from an NPR interview where an undecided voter said he hoped during his acceptance speech, Trump would admit he’s lied in the past.

  4. 4.

    Princess

    The thing that all those pundits get wrong about Kenosha, saying it will help Trump with “suburban Moms” is that one of the biggest nightmares suburban Moms have right now is someone like Kyle Rittenhouse being in their kids’ schools. Kenosha being burned down is, sad to say, for them someone else’a problem. Worrying about their kids being shot up by some disturbed guy with an assault rifle feels much more present to them. And these women have become allied with women whose children have been murdered by gun violence in the cities. It’s why they together have powered the anti-gun movement and why that movement was instrumental in winning suburban seats that had been GOP forever, over to the Dems in 2018. It’s why Black women like Lauren Underwood and Lucy McBath are sitting in the House right now. And it is a phenomenon almost completely ignored by pundits because it is led by a broad coalition of middle aged women.

  6. 6.

    PsiFighter37

    @debbie: Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 20,000 times…maybe he’ll change? That person probably still believes in  Santa Claus.

  12. 12.

    trnc

    I caught the tail end of a CNN interview with someone who says the democrats aren’t offering anything to counter the police abuses and that dems are just relying on Biden not being DT to appeal to black voters. I’m guessing that the host at no point mentioned that DT did away with police reforms put in place by Obama and Biden.

  13. 13.

    Jeffro

    @debbie:  holy cow that’s pathetic. There’s still someone in America holding out hope that trumpov will admit to lying, ever?

  15. 15.

    sanjeevs

    @Immanentize: 

    Interesting thread thanks.

    I had one FB friend who did a 180 on Duterte in the space of 2 or 3 weeks.

    All it took was losing his job after Duterte shut down the TV station he worked for.

    Which Duterte has been saying he would do for the last four years.

  17. 17.

    gene108

    @Immanentize:

    Good read. Thanks for sharing.

    @Princess:

    For reasons I do not understand, a large segment of the media still thinks the lessons of 1968 are relevant today. This is especially concerning since purveyors of this line of thinking were either too young to really be into politics or not born yet.

    Anybody under the age of sixty really does not have much engagement with 1968 politically. I do not know why such narratives exist.

  18. 18.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: I was talking with a co-worker who’s been watching the RNC these past few nights.

    Co-worker (who’s 30): “How can Republicans sit, watch, and swallow lie after lie?”

    Me: “um…some of these folks have been in the RushBubble and FoxBubble for longer than you’ve been alive.  They may as well be in North Korea.”

    Co-worker: (gulp)

  19. 19.

    Kay

    Nick Gourevitch
    @nickgourevitch
    ·14m
    Latest
    @NavigatorSurvey
    results assess Trump on day of his speech at the RNC. This one says it all:
    61% say Trump wants what is best for himself
    39% say Trump wants what is best for the country
    In February, pre-coronavirus, that was 56%/44%.

  20. 20.

    sanjeevs

    @Baud: No one likes to admit they’re wrong.

    That’s why Facebook is so noxious. It’s the only place on social media where ordinary people share their political opinions using their real names. The normal democratic processes of a leader gradually losing support (GWB or Tony Blair) can’t happen.

    There’s a book ‘Influence’ by Cialdini where he describes how reeducation camps in North Korea (or maybe North Vietnam) weren’t really violent. They simply forced the prisoners to write notes praising the Communist leadership and criticizing their enemies. Then they had to read these out in front of the group.

    That’s pretty much a description of FB

  22. 22.

    Geminid

    Politico had an article yesterday morning about how the Biden campaign is way ahead in TV advertising purchases in battleground states. The figures were for the second half of August and the first week or so of September. The trump campaign manager said, well, we’re holding back because the advertising will be more effective later, but that may be bullshit, they just might be short of cash. It’s expensive to fuel a ponderous gravy train.

  23. 23.

    clay

    I haven’t been watching the RNC. But from the coverage, it seems that Trump has not been speaking each night like the originally said he would?

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    Journalist Olivia Nuzzi, whom Anne Laurie correctly identified as a “professional assassin” a while back, has a piece in NY Mag containing an interview with the Third Lady’s ex-BFF and an excerpt from that person’s upcoming tell-all, “Melania & Me.”

    Here’s a link but not a recommendation, even though I’m usually fond of puerile political gossip. TL;DR version: the Trumps are every bit as tacky, gross and trifling as we already knew they are.

    Example: the Third Lady’s bestie was in charge of the scammy inauguration planning effort, but she and the Third Lady spent most of their time on “Operation Block Ivanka,” scheming to cut Princess out of the TV shots of the swearing in and feuding over White House office space. It’s all so petty and repulsive.

  25. 25.

    gene108

    @Baud:

    Being stuck in the 1980’s would be an improvement. I think too many are stuck in the 1960’s, when Nixon’s platform worked. Even the ones who were not alive.

    At least in the 1980’s, politicians would be held to some account for being as openly racist as Trump.

  28. 28.

    Steeplejack

    @Immanentize:

    Very good thread. Thanks.

    For skimmers:

    Originally, I used it to mean you had an ideology and media ecosystem that would enable you to reject new contrary information.

    So an “echo chamber” just means you never hear any contrary information. The idea of “epistemic closure” was that you would hear new and contrary information, but you have mechanisms in your belief system that reject anything that might force you to update your beliefs.

  29. 29.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: What really interested me was the analogy to T-cells.  That the right wing has set up an immunity defense to contrary information.  A couple days ago I was wondering aloud about the belief path to really ridiculous conspiracy theories (like hospitals are counting car accident deaths as Covid deaths).  That thread helped me think through that process.

  31. 31.

    Immanentize

    @gene108:

    a large segment of the media still thinks the lessons of 1968 are relevant today.

    The biggest myth still pushed today is that social unrest and violence helped the Republican (Nixon) win. That sentence contains so many wrong assumptions and historical misreads that it is itself dangerous propaganda.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I haven’t been around much this week and it’s not changing any time soon, so I am taking this opportunity to say I finally saw the Woofmeister post and wanted to say thank you for all the kind comments.

  34. 34.

    Gin & Tonic

    @gene108: 

    At least in the 1980’s, politicians would be held to some account for being as openly racist as Trump.

    You mean like when Ronald Reagan gave a speech about “states’ rights” in Philadelphia, Miss., in August of 1980? I must have missed the part about being held to account.

  35. 35.

    Immanentize

    @sanjeevs: That describes the Soviet societal control mechanisms of public self criticism sessions. A combination of public self shaming plus confession and proclamation of future obedience.

  36. 36.

    Princess

    @Baud: The main problem for Trump with mail-in ballots, or any other kind of mode of voting that leaves a paper trail, is that they can’t be hacked by Russia or anyone else. I think he is signaling his plan here — he always says the quiet part loud.

  38. 38.

    Betty Cracker

    @Winston: It’s a good thing there’s no natural disaster occurring right now that will require a massive mobilization of FEMA resources to deal with major hurricane damage and potential widespread flooding. Oh wait…

  41. 41.

    Chyron HR

    @Baud:

    Does he think the federal government counts ballots on election day?  Does he plan for the federal government to confiscate the ballots at gunpoint and count them on election day?

  42. 42.

    Baud

    I should have made all of you write “I ♥️ Baud! 2020!” over and over again.

    But I had to go high. Never again.

  46. 46.

    John S.

    @Chyron HR: Trump thinks a lot of deranged thoughts that are completely unmoored from reality. And because he has no filter, he also says them out loud.

  51. 51.

    sanjeevs

    @Immanentize: Right thanks.

    Katrina was moment where the Bush personality cult collapsed – bears out his point about the ‘strong but brittle’.

     

    Not sure if that would happen now. Back then people could just pretend they had never supported W. It’s different now .

  54. 54.

    Immanentize

    @Winston: I think the Republicans won because there was a Democrat in the Whitehouse, Vietnam had become wildly unpopular, the incumbent had dropped out of the race, chaos in and out of the party (Bobby Kennedy?); yet the economy was pretty good (my Dad used to say 1967 was the best year for the family in his life).  So a change election was almost inevitable.  The amazing thing is how close the Democrats got which was probably due to lingering revulsion regarding Nixon from the ’50s.

    So we may see it differently.

  56. 56.

    Jeffro

    @Immanentize: it’s all to avoid the mental pain of admitting that they were suckers/willing accomplices to this creature.

    He hammered on their fear buttons, their worries about ‘the other’ and their perceived loss of status, and it worked.  He has consistently demonstrated a willingness to go all-in in order to protect white privilege/supremacy, and it worked – they are all-in for him.

    The problem for trumpov is a) a few of them have seen the light and don’t support him anymore, b) he has completely repelled most of the blessed ‘independents’ and mushy-middle voters, and c) he’s not bringing in anyone new.

  57. 57.

    Mary G

    Devastating testimonial by former Trump voter:

    ???NEW: Elizabeth Neumann, former Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at DHS in the Trump Administration.“I do not think we can afford four more years of President Trump. We are less safe today because of his leadership.”pic.twitter.com/KOFjHMJN2A— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) August 26, 2020

  59. 59.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize: My ex-MIL told me about how she would pinch her baby (my ex’s younger brother) to make him cry, so she could excuse herself when it came her turn during the self-criticism sessions in the Cultural Revolution.

  62. 62.

    Jinchi

    @Princess: one of the biggest nightmares suburban Moms have right now is someone like Kyle Rittenhouse being in their kids’ schools.

    Right. He decided to play cop in Kenosha. He could have just as easily played out the Columbine massacre.

  63. 63.

    Winston

    @Immanentize: That was the first year I was eligible to vote. Had the Dems nominated McCarthy, I think I would have voted. As it was I was tear gassed in Chicago by Democrats. And Nixon just was such an ass.

  64. 64.

    Bruce K

    @Baud: You’ll get my vote if you can convince the National Radical Meadow Party of Bloom County to endorse you. :P

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    President Donald Trump is shifting his focus from the U.S. Postal Service

    Guffaw. Of course he is. In the war Trump launched with the post office, the post office won. It’s much, much more popular than he is.

  67. 67.

    A Ghost to Most

    When my children’s eyes look at me and they ask me to explain
    It hurts me that I have to look away
    The powers that be are in for shame and comeuppance
    When Generation Lockdown has their day
    They’ll throw the bums all out and drain the swamp for real
    Perp walk them down the Capitol steps and show them how it feels
    To tramp the dirt down, Jesus, you can pray the rod they’ll spare
    Stick it up your ass with your useless thoughts and prayers

  69. 69.

    Mary G

    Is our media learning?

    Avoid the vague "officer-involved" for shootings and other cases involving police. Be specific about what happened. If police use the term, ask: How was the officer or officers involved? Who did the shooting? If the information is not available or not provided, spell that out.— APStylebook (@APStylebook) August 25, 2020

  72. 72.

    Joe Falco

    @debbie:

    I’m still laughing from an NPR interview where an undecided voter said he hoped during his acceptance speech, Trump would admit he’s lied in the past.

    That sounds much better than the one NPR interview this morning with an older female Trump voter that liked him because he’s such an “entertainer” and loved the way he “joked”. And then when asked about Trump’s calling Sen. Harris “nasty”, she agreed with him. It all comes down to lauding being assholes as a virtue with these people, I swear.

  73. 73.

    Jeffro

    @sanjeevs: that was the point when all the folks I knew who called themselves ‘Republicans’ started calling themselves ‘conservatives’, with the occasional ‘libertarian’ thrown in for good measure.

  76. 76.

    SFAW

    @Steeplejack: 
    I know it’s too much to ask, but I want JUST ONE FUCKING DAY where I don’t hear/read yet another vile, disgusting, fascistic, evil, insane vomiting from the Liar-/Murderer-/Fascist-in-Chief

  77. 77.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Don’t remember if it was mentioned here, but at least some of the new citizens who were sworn in on Tuesday were not aware that their naturalisation ceremony would be featured RNC programming.

    Oh, and to follow on an item that I know was discussed yesterday, it seems Dr Fauci is saying* that the WH COVID task force approved the new CDC testing guidelines while he was undergoing surgery and under general anæsthesia. They did this behind his back.

     

    *ETA: Fauci told this to Dr Sanjay Gupta. Per CNN via Wonkette.

  80. 80.

    Betty Cracker

    @Immanentize: Really great thread. We’ve implicitly seen the closure mechanisms in action but I’ve never seen anyone identify them so explicitly. So, how to counter them?

    Maybe just by pointing out what they are, i.e., attempting to judo-flip them back into an upright position. For example, “Isn’t it awfully convenient that Trump calls media reports “fake news” unless it’s something favorable to himself, in which case we’re supposed to trust these same outlets? Is it fake, or isn’t it?”

    Or pointing out that Trump personally hired many of the Republicans who are now denouncing him, dismissing them as idiots or swamp creatures. So why did he hire them, after promising to only hire the best people? Also, isn’t it convenient for Trump that he can blame every fuck-up on the “deep state?”

    It’s such a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation. Most people can see through that bullshit. It’s a cult, so hardcore Trump fans will follow their idol off a cliff, but maybe explicitly addressing those mechanisms is worth a shot with people on the margins. I don’t know.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    Tom Bonier
    @tbonier
    · 1h
    During the Democratic National Convention last week, over 300,000 American voters requested a mail ballot for the November election. These voters were +29 Democratic.
    Thus far, during the Republican National Convention, the mail ballot requests have been +33 Democratic.

  84. 84.

    Suzanne

    @sanjeevs: The strong-but-brittle thing stuck with me, too.

    I will freely admit that I have an over-developed sense of fairness, and I find it fairly intolerable when people do not admit that they were wrong or apologize. I can be really forgiving after a good apology…. but not before. And I really, REALLY want Trumpy people to fucken grovel. Admit that they were so unbelievably wrong and full of shit and that they have terrible judgment.

     

    But apparently expecting mea culpa is humiliating, and I am mean.

  88. 88.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Oh, and to follow on an item that I know was discussed yesterday, it seems Dr Fauci is saying* that the WH COVID task force approved the new CDC testing guidelines while he was undergoing surgery and under general anæsthesia. They did this behind his back.

    As if his presence would have made a difference.  They had their marching orders.

  90. 90.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize: Yes, it would, although I would have a hard time watching the brutality of the Cultural or any other revolution. My ex-inlaws (who were peasant farmers) were lucky to escape to Hong Kong.

  92. 92.

    Kay

    southpaw
    @nycsouthpaw
    ·17h
    “Last night, the 17yo individual from Antioch, IL was involved in the use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict was in place,” the chief says here.
    This stilted language is usually reserved for police officers, now extended to a white teen charged with first degree murder.

    They have to get rid of him. He announced he can’t do his job. He doesn’t understand the basic premise of the job.
    Whatever’s going on with him, I don’t think training will fix it. Just hire someone new. Can’t be salvaged.

  96. 96.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mary G:

    I don’t disagree with her, of course, and glad to have her vote — but where the fuck were all these people over the past 3-1/2 years, when their statements might have made a bigger difference?

    Or maybe it all would have ended up the same, regardless. I dunno.

     

  97. 97.

    Soprano2

    @debbie: I’m still laughing from an NPR interview where an undecided voter said he hoped during his acceptance speech, Trump would admit he’s lied in the past.

    Oh God I heard that too, I want to say to those people “Have you paid attention at all since 2015? There is zero chance that Trump will ever do anything like that”. *shakes head

  98. 98.

    Immanentize

    @Betty Cracker: I think that what the thread was suggesting is that you can’t pull back the curtain with the kind of logic you suggest.  It has to be some small inconsistency that worms its way in — past the T-cells.

    That made me think of the arc of the AIDS crisis — people were just awful in the beginning. There were serious plans to round up HIV positives and bannish them; create leper colonies under military guard.

    Then people started finding out they were talking about their sons or brothers….

  101. 101.

    Danielx

    @SFAW:

    To dream the impossible dream….

    Although I’m with you. It’s like there’s this constant mental background noise – a distant scream of “Me me memememe…..it’s all about MEEEE!”.

    Wears my ass out.

    ETA: for four fucking years.

  102. 102.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    It’s wholly voluntary, too, his announcing they have a big thumb on the scale toward the white shooter.

    There’s plenty of dull legal language available to him to describe the arrest. He doesn’t have to freelance and offer his opinions. I feel like cops and prosecutors used to know this but no longer do. They’re just out there, saying whatever, offering opinions. I see it in police incident reports. I’m like “what is all this SHIT cluttering this up in here?”

  104. 104.

    sanjeevs

    @Suzanne: I had to resist the urge to message my FB friend who turned on Duterte – “But Duterte told you he would vaporise the company you work for. And you cheered him on”

    Probably wise to remain silent though

  105. 105.

    gene108

    @Gin & Tonic:

    That was a dog whistle, with plausible deniability that it was directly intended to be racist.

    In July 2015, Donald Trump declared he was running for President by saying Mexicans in America were literal rapists. And that propelled him to the top of every poll in the primary.

    In the 1980’s (maybe early 1990’s) Republicans distanced themselves from David Duke’s candidacy for LA’s governor.

    Trump would not reject Duke’s endorsement of his candidacy.

    I am not saying Reagan, et. al. were not racist, they were. But they had the decency to not trumpet the quiet parts out loud.

  106. 106.

    Another Scott

    @Immanentize: Thanks for the pointer.

    I’m not sure that it’s some sort of genius move (and he doesn’t say that it is), but more another example of him lying about everything.

    As in the DPRK example, probably the best way to fight it is to point to things in a person’s life that they know are true and cannot be spun.

    “Have you been having issues getting packages delivered?  I ordered something on Amazon via the USPS, and man, it’s been 2 weeks and I still don’t have it.  That’s never happened before.  Have you had similar experiences?”

    “How are your grandkids?  I’m sorry that you were not able to have your family reunion on the beach this year.  You’ve been going there for, what, 35 years?”

    “You know how my deck looks so horrible?  Well, I was going to power wash it and stain it this summer, but I’ve looked everywhere for disposable gloves and they’re almost impossible to find for a reasonable price.  I’ve even checked industrial supply places like McMaster-Carr and they’re out of stock of vinyl gloves.  It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

    Etc.

    Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    I got a new appreciation for how sick Trump is when the whistleblower from his team said Trump was insisting on using some kind of process that burns the skin of border crossers.

    Too bad his wealthy parents never addressed his psychological issues. Shame they sucked at their job that much.

  108. 108.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Everyone is a pundit.  Even people who really shouldn’t be.  Part of it is that these low quality hires are being thrust into spotlights once reserved for big city professionals. Those police chiefs and prosecutors learned how to talk a lot without really saying anything, coming up in the system.

  109. 109.

    rikyrah

    @Geminid:

     

    The trump campaign manager said, well, we’re holding back because the advertising will be more effective later, but that may be bullshit, they just might be short of cash. It’s expensive to fuel a ponderous gravy train.

     

    Especially when you’ve been stealing from it all along.

  110. 110.

    Geminid

    @Immanentize: The 1968 presidential race was pretty close, and Humphrey was gaining at the end. In The Making of a President 1968 Theodore White speculated that Humprey might have won had the election happened two days later. A Humphrey win would have been a reprise of Harry Truman’s 1948 victory. Truman also had to contend with a Dixiecrat as well as a republican, but he held the Roosevelt coalition together one last time.    I think that had he not been murdered, Robert Kennedy would have beaten Humprey and gone on to beat Nixon. Kennedy was just hitting his stride as a campaigner.

  111. 111.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize: Couldn’t watch it. By all reports a good movie, but violent images just haunt me and don’t go away. It’s as much as I can do to read about these events.

  113. 113.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    It’s so funny because it’s so easy to use legal language to protect from accusations of bias. That’s what it’s for! :)

    I don’t know if it’s just lower level, either. Comey made this same error. I personally think it’s ego and not understanding the basic job- who and what goes where. They insert themselves personally in a process that is deliberately designed to make the individual irrelevant. You should be able to switch one of them out for another and it goes the same. That’s the whole thing. That’s the process protection and it protects both law enforcement and the public.

  114. 114.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sanjeevs:

    Katrina was moment where the Bush personality cult collapsed – bears out his point about the ‘strong but brittle’.

    It may have seemed like that, but the drop in Bush’s popularity as measured by polls was more gradual. Dissatisfaction with the Iraq war and the worsening state of the economy was all part of it. But he didn’t seem to have as hard a floor in the low 40s as Trump does.

    I got into some prolonged arguments with conservatives at the time who were really insistent on the Katrina disaster being anybody’s fault but Bush’s.

  116. 116.

    Jinchi

    @Kay: Too bad his wealthy parents never addressed his psychological issues.

    I’m pretty sure he inherited them, and his parents probably viewed them as life skills.

  118. 118.

    Immanentize

    @O. Felix Culpa: It was a good movie.  Did you see The Last Emperor? There is a great scene in which the eponymous character’s previous reeducation teacher was paraded down the street during the Gang of Four period of the cultural revolution. Not violent so much as moving.

  121. 121.

    Gin & Tonic

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Completely OT, but IIRC you have some at least rudimentary Korean. I see the current leader’s middle name in English media as “Jong” but I’m wondering what the correct pronunciation is, because in Ukrainian media it is presented, in Cyrillic, as something which I’d transliterate into English as “Chen.” Do you know how it should be pronounced?

  123. 123.

    Soprano2

    @Joe Falco: That sounds much better than the one NPR interview this morning with an older female Trump voter that liked him because he’s such an “entertainer” and loved the way he “joked”. And then when asked about Trump’s calling Sen. Harris “nasty”, she agreed with him. It all comes down to lauding being assholes as a virtue with these people, I swear.

    I came here just to post a link to that. I found it chilling, the way she said he was just “joking” and how people didn’t understand that. I’m sure she would say she’s not a racist, but that woman is definitely a racist. I wish the interviewer had asked her when she last voted for a Democrat for president, I think that would have been an illuminating answer. She lives in Scottsdale, which is the most wealthy part of Phoenix, so I wasn’t a bit surprised. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/27/906576077/an-arizona-voter-answers-the-question-what-keeps-you-up-at-night

  125. 125.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin:But he didn’t seem to have as hard a floor in the low 40s as Trump does.

    Translation: He didn’t appeal to the racists like trump does.

  126. 126.

    gene108

     

    @Kay:  I am reaching the point that I think the problem with police departments cannot be fixed by retraining.

    We need to recruit better, less racist, people and rebuild from the ground up.

  127. 127.

    Kay

    @germy:

    “In the press conference, I should have kept my comments better directed toward the incident itself and not allowed my emotions to get the better of me at the time,” Beth said in his letter of apology. “I have been involved in hundreds of on camera interviews and press conferences and have shared my emotions before, but never in this fashion or this extent.

    Someone should tell him “sharing his emotions” isn’t appropriate. He apparently didn’t learn because he’s still offering his personal opinions.

    It’s just the level of self indulgence. Me, me, me. If they want to be treated as professionals, they are going to have to start acting like professionals. That means they can’t be buddying up with armed racists and protecting shooters in press conferences. That level of personal involvement is not allowed.

  129. 129.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Gin & Tonic: Jong is probably closer, looking at how it’s spelled in Hangul, Jung(short ‘u’ like in sun) would be better.  The harder “ch” sound is a different letter in Korean than the ‘j’ sound(though it looks like the letter for the ‘j’ sound written twice).

  130. 130.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @gene108: I have come to the same conclusion. Did you see the “reforms” issued by the Minneapolis police force yesterday? Apart from being astonishing that these anodyne policies weren’t already in place, they fall laughably/tragically short IMO.

    ETA: The culture of American policing with its reflexive violence against black and brown bodies has to be rooted out. As one commenter said in response to these “reforms”: “I’m still going back to George Floyd. Was it allowable use of force to strangle him?” I’m going out on a limb here and guessing that the answer is NO, and yet they did it in broad daylight anyway even with citizens witnessing and filming their actions. The best (as in most effective) answer might have to be disband and rebuild from the ground up.

  131. 131.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    I think so too- I’m more sympathetic than a lot of people here because I deal with them a lot and it is a hard job. Hard, not necessarily dangerous, but difficult because you’re dealing with people who are often at their worst or in a bad situation. They’re just hiring for the wrong skill set. You want people who are actually good with other people. That’s the essential skill, not coming in with a weapons fetish and a racist Facebook page. They REALLY need to tame the egomaniacs, too. This strutting around, bullying has to stop. I’m sure you;ve seen the tens of videos of law enforcement damaging the property of people they don’t like. What kind of a work culture leads them to believe this is ok? It’s outrageous behavior.

  132. 132.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Kay: My understanding is that the sheriff of Kenosha, as mentioned in the Oliver Willis tweet, is not the same position/person as the police chief of Kenosha, whom I think you were quoting.

  133. 133.

    patroclus

    Tucker Carlson actually defended mass murderer Kyle Rittenhouse last night on Faux News.

  136. 136.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    My oldest son was a Police Explorer here and he didn’t love it but he did remain in and complete the one year term. They did traffic safety at community events. He likes order and he’s really logical and rather detached, so he did well at that piece but he doesn’t really like most people so I think he figured out he doesn’t belong in a public service job.

  137. 137.

    Gin & Tonic

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: In Russian/Ukrainian/Belarusian the “J” phoneme is not a single letter – the sound occurs, but it’s not that common – whereas the “CH” phoneme occurs more often, and is represented by a single letter, “Ч”

  140. 140.

    Another Scott

    Robust floor debate on my legislation to reform punishments for minor touching involving law enforcement – our caucus stuck together in the face of lots of misleading arguments and distractions @VASenateDems https://t.co/wtlFVQYp2u

    — Senator Scott Surovell (@ssurovell) August 27, 2020

    (via NotLarrySabato)

    Baby steps, but it’s important. Surovell is a great state Senator.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  141. 141.

    Yutsano

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: His name in hangul is 김정은.  You’re right in that should be transliterated as Kim Jung Un or I’ve seen a Korean do it as Kim Jeung Un. The ㅓ character is kind of a schwa, but with more emphasis than we do in English. Your espoused is free to correct me here.

  142. 142.

    Ken

    @Gin & Tonic: The Korean letter is ㅈ, for which the transliteration is “j”.  According to that page, in initial position it would be pronounced /tɕ/ (the second symbol is a voiceless fricative), which is similar to English “ch” so that may explain the Cyrillic transliteration.  However Wikipedia has the pronunciation in Kim Jong-un as /dz/, with voicing.

    Hope I’ve managed to add to the confusion.

  143. 143.

    Subsole

    @gene108: What about the assignment editors and show runners?

    If the masthead at the POSNYT is stuck in 1980, the whole paper will follow suit.

     

    @Geminid: Especially when the conductor and his myriad bastards and their retinues keep raiding the till…

  144. 144.

    gene108

    @patroclus:

    Tucker Carlson actually defended mass murderer Kyle Rittenhouse last night on Faux News.

    1. Never forget Geraldo & Fox News’s take down of Trayvon Martin as not an innocent kid; and

    2. George Zimmerman raised over $400k in online donations for his legal defense.

    This is not the first time Fox News has rushed to defend an unjustifiable use of deadly.

  145. 145.

    zhena gogolia

    So the Times has a front-page article about how the “threats of chaos” coming from the RNC are resonating with voters because of looting in Kenosha. I cannot read it, but what are the chances that it raises the logical problem that the REPUBLICANS ARE IN CHARGE RIGHT NOW? What are these “threats of chaos”? They’re presiding over the chaos.

  146. 146.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Gin & Tonic: In Hangul the ㅈ is a softer sound, more like a ‘j'(that’s the first letter in KJU’s name), the ㅉ is more aspirated so it sounds more like a ‘ch’.  Of course, Koreans don’t have a middle name just a first name(two syllables and a family name).  KJU’s first name in Jong Un(not Jong).

  147. 147.

    dnfree

    @Immanentize: Fundamentalist religion provides the immunization against facts. This is probably true for other fundamentalists too, but anyone who is already accustomed to believing that the “theory” of evolution is wrong or a plot, despite all the evidence for it, is mentally prepared to defend any belief.
    Free-market capitalists have a similar devotion to their beliefs, and to be fair, so do some on the far left. I think some people are more vulnerable to this than others.

  149. 149.

    Kay

    Because the same Beltway press corps that today waves off concerns had a much different response when Democrat Gore was accused of violating the Hatch Act for making campaign fundraising phone calls from his White House office as Vice President. Compared to Trump’s pay-for-play corruption of today, Gore’s alleged sin seems quaint. At the time though, the story was treated as a Major Scandal. It generated endless, scolding media coverage and was kept in the headlines for years by eager journalists.
    The New York Times editorial page actually called for an independent counsel to launch a sweeping investigation into Gore’s actions. “The extent to which Mr. Gore’s admission dented his own Presidential hopes cannot be known immediately,” the paper warned. “Mr. Gore now bids to be remembered as the Vice President who went a clear step beyond what previous Vice Presidents and Presidents were willing to do.”
    Republicans jumped on the media bandwagon. The GOP-led Senate held three months worth’s of hearings, and Republicans in the House spent $7.4 million investigating Gore’s phone calls.

    When you talk about the incredibly blatant double standard the NYTimes used for Clinton’s emails versus Trump emails, recall that they did the same exact thing to Al Gore and Al Gore isn’t even a Clinton, so shouldn’t be subject to their bias.
    What they did to Gore was generally ignored when they did it to Clinton and it shouldn’t be- it’s an important part of the story.

  150. 150.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Balloon Juice, come for the pet pictures, stay for the free lessons in the Korean language. With bits on Cyrillic.

  153. 153.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I think that’s right. A while back, someone posted a link to an essay purportedly written by an anonymous ex-cop who explained how his training and then on-the-job experiences made him see himself as a potential victim and gave him free rein to bully ordinary citizens. It rang true to me.

    We need to start over. Like you said, find people who are good with people, and get rid of bullies and gun fetishists. I’d be in favor of requiring an extensive social media screening. No Oath Keeper or 3%er types. Military experience shouldn’t be seen as a plus either — it’s exactly the wrong kind of training.

    Not that veterans should be excluded, but it should be recognized that aspects of their previous training have to be counter-programmed. As it is now, combat experience is seen as a huge qualification. That needs to change.

  154. 154.

    gene108

    @Kay:

    Hard, not necessarily dangerous, but difficult because you’re dealing with people who are often at their worst or in a bad situation.

    I have read that dealing with so many bad situations takes a mental toll on first responders (police, firefighters, etc.).

    For example, hearing about someone being seriously injured or killed in a car, on the news, is hard for me to take. Having to be on the scene for several such crashes takes a psychological toll.

    And there are more such incidents regularly for police throughout a career.

  155. 155.

    Gin & Tonic

    Thanks to all who helped confuse the KJU issue. I didn’t realize there were so many Korean-speakers here, which is my bad.

  156. 156.

    Jinchi

    @gene108: It’s long past time for Democrats to just blanket stop giving interviews to Fox News.

    Stop pretending they are just legitimate news site with a conservative lean. If you wouldn’t speak to OANN or Breitbart: don’t speak to FOX.

  159. 159.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Yutsano:

    As long as we’re still the first result when someone types in “skull fuck a kitten” on Google our claim to fame is assured.

    I had to check. Yes, we’re still the first result, immediately followed by a string of porn sites. Make of that what you will.

  160. 160.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Yutsano: The difference between ㅈ and ㅉ is aspiration, you push more air out pronouncing it and it’s a harder sound.  The best we can do in English is a ‘j’ and a ‘ch’ but it’s not perfect.

  164. 164.

    Ken

    @Gin & Tonic: Oh, I’m not a Korean speaker (except for parroting the most basic phrases).  But I do love their alphabet, which someone sat down and invented, and the interesting way  syllables are written as blocks.

  166. 166.

    evodevo

    @Matt McIrvin: Yes.  I remember that vividly – it was the fault of the NOLA mayor; it was the fault of all those POCs; it was the fault of (insert librul here).  And the wingers were happy that New Orleans was cleared out and unsalvageable.   One, I forget who, stated he would like the same process for Chicago…

  169. 169.

    gene108

    @raven:

    On Twitter, which is not representative of the public at large, there’s already a significant number of people saying Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. I just do not know how extrapolate my anecdotal experience reading Twitter comments to the prevalence in the real world.

    But the self-defense angle is already baked in.

  171. 171.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Want to watch something completely different? NASA ISS conference. Totally free.

    Reminds us that: (1) science still has a future that’s pretty cool, and (2) there’s an agency that has not been destroyed by Trump. Yet.

  177. 177.

    raven

    @gene108: There is not very good video of him being chased and a guy throws a plastic bag at him and you see a muzzle flash off to the left and then another shot. The guy he shot in the head is apparently a convicted sex offender and there is footage of him screaming at the vigilantes to shoot him. People run around  a car and you can see the shooter wander out and then take off running. Another vid shows him running and a guy runs up from behind and takes a swing, then he’s on the ground and one guy kicks him and the dead skateboarder tries to grab the rifle and gets shot. The guy who took it in the arm is approaching him with a gun in his hand and the kid shoots him in the arm.

  178. 178.

    Jinchi

    @gene108: I absolutely hate gun nuts and wish the police had enough sense to realize that they’ve been incredibly fortunate that Antifa and BLM protesters have largely marched unarmed, even in the face of severe provocation.

    If they start inviting heavily armed out of town militia types to patrol city streets and make second amendment excuses for outright murder, all while men in camouflage (Police?) pull people into unmarked vans, eventually they’ll be facing more than rocks and graffiti in response.

  179. 179.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @gene108: It’s part of the epistemic closure defense mechanism.  That’s the excuse so they can ignore “17 year old kid wandering the streets with an assault rife at night”.

  185. 185.

    germy

    Anthony Huber was the one to run up on the shooter last night and was shot in the chest and left to bleed out by the cops. He leaves behind his daughter and his girlfriend. His initial reaction was to try to protect others and he lost his life for that. Rest in power, comrade. ? pic.twitter.com/DD71cyYODq

    — Red Bait (@red_baiting) August 26, 2020

    my friend was shot and killed last night. this isnt just people i knew or know, this is someone who i spent summers with, growing to be the person i am now. https://t.co/aiZYkEap4y

    — no good for no one now (@noyeah_forsure) August 26, 2020

  186. 186.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @raven: He drove from Antioch, IL, to Kenosha – a distance of about 20 miles – with an assault rifle.  He was on the streets with that weapon.  You lose self defense as a defense if you are the aggressor.  He’s going to have a tough time proving that he was defending himself.

  187. 187.

    trnc

    @sanjeevs: I won’t argue your overall point about FB being shitty for society, but no one is forcing people to be on FB or to swallow the most outrageous bullshit that others can dish out. I get that some people are too busy to research various political claims, but who hasn’t grown up hearing “Don’t believe everything you read?”

    Too many people are lazy and willfully stupid when it comes to policy and politics, and they make up a large part of FB’s user base. My hat is off to FB users who spend time trying to counter that, but human nature is obviously making it difficult.

  189. 189.

    Matt McIrvin

    @zhena gogolia: The campaign line is “Democrats ruined their cities”; if anything bad happens anywhere they’re going to try to pin it on whatever Democrats are incumbent at some level of government. Historically, this hasn’t worked–people blame the President for stuff even when it’s unjustified. But it’s what they’re trying.

  190. 190.

    Subsole

    @Immanentize: Really?? Growing up that narrative was baked into my political understanding on an almost cellular level. Danger helps Republicans get elected. And once they get elected well… we durst not say. Because positive feedback loops are totally not a thing at all.

  191. 191.

    Jinchi

    @raven: I never understood why “Stand Your Ground” was being cited as a defense for George Zimmerman. Trayvon Martin was not allowed to walk away and he was literally murdered when he had to stand his ground to defend himself.

    I think it only applies if you’re holding a gun. Punch, kick or stab someone in self defense and you’re out of luck.

  192. 192.

    Caphilldcne

    @Immanentize: thanks for sharing this. I don’t really follow twitter but that was good. Ive followed sanchez since he broke into the reporting game – don’t really like his occasional breaks into weird libertarian (usually from the left) but he’s been good on crim Justice and national security issues.

  194. 194.

    sdhays

    @Immanentize: Don’t forget Nixon sabotaging the peace talks. The analysis I’ve read, since I didn’t live through that era, is that Humphrey coming out against the war started movement toward him late in the campaign. If he had broken with Johnson earlier or if the peace talks had succeeded (which they would have if not for Nixon’s traitorous sabotage), Humphrey would have won.

  195. 195.

    trnc

    @Elizabelle: One thing I’ll say about the Hatch Act violations – I doubt Pompeo’s dick move will change the mind of a single voter because it’s 100% in character for all involved. The naturalization ceremony is more troubling because it’s obviously pandering to other naturalized citizens, but even that seems like it would be unlikely to sway many people.

    That isn’t to say all admin officials involved shouldn’t be prosecuted.

  196. 196.

    satby

    @Immanentize: @O. Felix Culpa: The Killing Fields is a great movie. Because of Pol Pot, one fourth of the population was murdered, and being in Cambodia is a bit erie today, because it’s such a young country. The older adults you would expect to see aren’t around, many were killed during the genocide.

  198. 198.

    SFAW

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    Whut? Did you reply to the right comment?

    Well, of course, but only if you changed your nym/nom to “Baud,” and had authored the comment before yours.

    I thought I was responding to the “local election officials are corrupt” thing. Stupid is as stupid does, apparently. Shit.

  199. 199.

    WaterGirl

    @Immanentize: The Wolfmeister and his buddies were featured in the Furry Friends series a couple of days ago.  Click on Furry Friends under Featuring in the sidebar, and you’ll find it.  It’s the top post.

  200. 200.

    Elizabelle

    @Omnes Omnibus:   That situation reminds me of the Richmond VA area  KKK member who drove into a BLM protest parade.  Weapons (and minor male) in the car.

    He put himself in that situation, and then drove to the next venue for the BLM protest, where he was arrested.

    He got a six year sentence for the parade incursion (misdemeanor charges); up on 3 felony charges in September.  (Malicious wounding; one count for each protester he struck with his truck — no one was seriously injured, thank dog.)

    Also, I don’t see the non-rightwing community in Kenosha and greater Wisconsin/US letting a militia wannabe who crossed state lines with an assault rifle to skate.  17; he will be charged as an adult.  Immature as he is.

    I am betting the kid got partially radicalized on Facebook.  Appalled at what law enforcement and their fans and wanna bes are putting up.

    Agree with Kay, I would do a stringent review of social media and use that information in assessing who stays and goes.  Sickened by people in my expanded circle of contacts who cannot understand the concept of BLM, and they’re affiliated with law enforcement.  Just no.  You don’t have that level of awareness, you need to find another line of work.

  201. 201.

    trnc

    @gene108: On Twitter, which is not representative of the public at large, there’s already a significant number of people saying Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self-defense.

    Obviously, someone carrying a semi-automatic weapon into a crowd should not be considered the initial threat any more than a guy with a gun who beats up a black kid carrying skittles.

  202. 202.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    He at least could have registered his dissent.

    Absolutely no disrespect to Dr. Fauci (or you, of course), but: that and a buck (or whatever it costs these days) will get you on the subway.

    What’s depressing is that I apparently am reaching — or have already reached? — the “oh, why bother?” stage.

  203. 203.

    Hoppie

    @Baud: In his pre-memoir (sorry, don’t have the book to hand, but 1953 I think), Harry Truman ended by saying the only thing that worried him about the future of America was that most of the guys in the advertising industry were republicans.

  204. 204.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @trnc: WI does not have a stand your ground law.  It does have the castle doctrine which says you have no duty to retreat in your own home and it has expanded it to include your vehicle.  Neither of those exceptions to the general duty to retreat apply here.

  206. 206.

    Cameron

    @Matt McIrvin: A couple years ago I read a story about people’s memories of Katrina.  Some of them complained that Obama hadn’t done enough.  The icing on the cake?  They lived in New Orleans.

  208. 208.

    Ken

    @raven: And he’s too young to posses the weapon.

    Which he transported across state lines.

    Though I fully expect Trump to pardon him for any federal crimes.

  209. 209.

    cmorenc

    @Immanentize:

    chaos in and out of the party (Bobby Kennedy?)

    One of the most painful what-ifs in American political history is what-if RFK hadn’t been assasinated by a madman on his way through a hotel kitchen exiting from a speech.  I don’t think Nixon’s “southern strategy” would have been enough against as strong and charismatic a campaigner as Bobby Kennedy.

  210. 210.

    SFAW

    I was listening to NPR’s “On Point” a little while ago. Today’s topic was “Do 2016 Trump voters still support him?” One semi-common reason for their continued support was “he’s a self-made successful businessman, and that’s what we need.” One of the interviewees — a coal miner who thinks Trump is the only choice to make coal great again — would no-way-in-hell vote for Biden, and “I don’t like his running mate.” He didn’t actually SAY any of the words that would make his misogyny/racism obvious, but that he could not even say her name was a “tell.”

    “Successful businessman,” right. I almost called in to ask if the producers went out of their ways to find morons.

  211. 211.

    Hoppie

    @sdhays: Just like the Reagan campaign back-channeled to Iran to sabotage Carter with the hostages in 1980.  They don’t have a lot of plays, do they?

  212. 212.

    cmorenc

    @Immanentize:

    chaos in and out of the party (Bobby Kennedy?)

    One of the most painful what-ifs in American political history is what-if RFK hadn’t been assasinated by a madman on his way through a hotel kitchen exiting from a speech in the 1968 campaign.  I don’t think Nixon’s “southern strategy” would have been enough against as strong and charismatic a campaigner as Bobby Kennedy.

  213. 213.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: I’m surprised by that ad from the Lincoln Project.

    They summed up the RNC without making it clear that the ad wasn’t promoting those things.  That’s an ad that could have been put out by Trump, proudly.

    I don’t get it.

  214. 214.

    Geminid

    It sounds like the remnants of the hurricane will hit Virginia Saturday. The forecaste is for violent thunderstorms, heavy downpours, possible tornados. I guess that goes for Kentucky and other states in between also.

  215. 215.

    Kay

    Really appalling how little regard the police chief has for the victims of the shooter. He’s too ideological to perform this job. He can’t be involved in any credible investigation. He’s declared his allegiance and it isn’t to laws or the public.

    Interesting too how he preemptively denies inviting the far Right to come to town. No one asked him if he invited them. I wonder if we’ll see some social media coordination show up.

  216. 216.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Cameron: I’ve told this story several times before, but one of the things that stopped me from regularly listening to NPR was an “All Things Considered” Katrina retrospective segment that was entirely taken up with an interview with some rando on the Gulf Coast who spent it complaining that the displaced people in the FEMA trailers were lazy moochers with no initiative.

  217. 217.

    SFAW

    @cmorenc:

    Yeah, I think Bobby probably would have won. Maybe not a landslide, but enough. I liked Humphrey — too young to vote in that election — and even with the Johnson and McCarthy baggage, he almost won it. But thanks to the Traitor Nixon and behind-the-scenes shit with NV, that might have been a bridge too far.

  218. 218.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Hoppie:

    was that most of the guys in the advertising industry were republicans.

    The past tense may be appropriate. Anecdata, of course, but of the two people in my fairly close circle of family/friends who are in advertising, one is not a guy and both are good liberals.

  220. 220.

    SFAW

    @Cameron:

    Some of them complained that Obama hadn’t done enough.

    Well, he didn’t. Point me to ANYTHING that Obama did to prevent Katrina from semi-destroying New Orleans. Q, E, and checkmate, libtard!

  221. 221.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I turned on them with the coverage of the Iraq invasion. The breathless excitement was stomach-turning. I had it on on the background and it kind of wormed its way in and I realized I was appalled. Just that “no more of THIS for me” walk across the room and snap it off- revulsion.

  222. 222.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @trnc: The also opened Fort McHenry that’s been closed due to COVID-19 just for Dense’s speach, they rented a government auditorium for the rest of the “convention”* speeches, and of course using the White House for political purposes(legal but unseemly).

    *The actual RNC adjourned on Monday afternoon.

  224. 224.

    cain

    @gene108: Being stuck in the 1980’s would be an improvement. I think too many are stuck in the 1960’s, when Nixon’s platform worked. Even the ones who were not alive.

    The media is still controlled by old white men – these things are probably not coming from the younger folks but from above and they can’t seem to get the sixties out of their heads anymore than the Republican party can’t stop salivating over effigy of Reagan.

  225. 225.

    Jinchi

    @Elizabelle: I am betting the kid got partially radicalized on Facebook.

    Apparently he had a front row seat at a Trump rally, so he got radicalized straight from the source.

  226. 226.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gene108: I think they didn’t have to push the racism quite as overtly because the people who are now Trump’s base were then an actual majority.

    Though Reagan said some pretty shockingly racist things (the big bucks buying T-bone steaks on their welfare checks, etc.) that were called out at the time, but the call-outs were sort of confined to a liberal stratum of discourse.

  227. 227.

    Kay

    Jennifer Jacobs
    @JenniferJJacobs
    · 1h
    Jared Kushner says he’ll reach out to @KingJames today.
    “What I’d love to see from the players in the NBA–again they have the luxury of taking a night off from work, most Americans don’t…I’d like to see them start moving into concrete solutions that are productive.”

    Jared Kushner is scolding LeBron James on working hard.

  228. 228.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: I know at least one Iraq War vet turned cop who doesn’t strut around like a member of an occupying army, so it seems to be possible. In many police forces, I suspect the attitude at the top is the problem: “Oh, you’ve patrolled war zones? That’s the perfect skill set, here’s a badge.”

  233. 233.

    cain

    @sanjeevs: Not sure if that would happen now. Back then people could just pretend they had never supported W. It’s different now .

    One thing is that the communites most affected are all black communities. So I don’t know how many whites are affected at all – and they can simply make excuses because no white folks the real target voters are going to be affected. I think they’ll simply do the minimum and say “it is what it is”

  234. 234.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I’d like to see them start moving into concrete solutions that are productive.”

    Doesn’t LeBron already support the election of Democrats?

  237. 237.

    Kay

    @Jinchi:

    He put video up of the rally. His adult promoters on the Right and in the police force did him a profound disservice though- he’s in real trouble and all the Facebook warriors who egged it on are going on with their lives and he’s going to be in prison.

    He’s not going to have all these friends in a month and at some point in the process it will hit him that it’s real and he’s alone and his life just effectively ended at 17. They’ll have a new hero by the time he attends his first pretrial and he disappears into the giant criminal justice machine.

  238. 238.

    scribbler

    @Gin & Tonic:  I’ve worked in a marketing adjacent field for a long time.  My experience is that men in advertising are mostly conservative or libertarian, with an unacknowledged misogynistic layer underneath.  And the “creatives” are usually men.  Women are pushed mostly to the account servicing side.

  239. 239.

    Jinchi

    @Ken: Why do I think that Jared hasn’t heard about LeBron James’s voter registration drive?

    I don’t think that’s the kind of productive solution Jared is looking for.

  243. 243.

    different-church-lady

    It’s starting to feel like half the country has decided the way to prove they’re not racist by being more nakedly racist than ever.

  244. 244.

    Kay

    Just as a suggestion for those on the Right- best not to tell your young followers that they can kill people based upon “self defense” theories you invented or pulled out of your ass. He’s going to be tried in the real world, not on Facebook. That truth will be hitting him here shortly. Not a game. His real life.

  245. 245.

    different-church-lady

    @Kay: One man has his hands on the levers of federal power, and the other plays sportsball.

    The one with his hands on the levers is demanding that the one who plays sportsball do something about the fact that the levers are not being operated.

  246. 246.

    Subsole

    @Kay: J-kush needs his ass beat.

    A man child. An actual manchild. A 30-something tween. Minus the sense of fairness.

  247. 247.

    Gin & Tonic

    @scribbler: I’ll have to mention that to my daughter this weekend. She’s global creative director where she works.

    As I said, anecdata.

  250. 250.

    Kay

    The driver who plowed his car into a group of counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, killing one and injuring dozens, was sentenced Friday to life in prison on federal hate crime charges.

    All his fellow travelers on the Right carried on, and now he’s all alone and they don’t even remember his name.

  251. 251.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:

    in the NBA–again they have the luxury of taking a night off from work, most Americans don’t

    That is not going to go over the way that Jared expects.  Talk about “taking a night off from work” — that is the Trumps and Kushners and their family money businesses.

    Tone deaf does not even begin to describe that one.

    I can’t even with these entitled jackholes …

  253. 253.

    PJ

    @Matt McIrvin: There’s a big difference in the media since the ‘80s.  Reagan has to use dog whistles (even if they were pretty obvious, like opening his campaign in Philadelphia, MS), because more open racism would have subjected him to criticism from the major networks.  Nowadays, Fox is pretty openly racist with Tucker Carlson and his white power hour, and Facebook and Twitter certainly aren’t going to rein in racist messages.  So racists feel less reason to be discreet.

  260. 260.

    Kay

    @different-church-lady:

    LeBron James created a traditional public school – inside the existing system- to serve the bottom quarter of a school district that has something like 20% proficient. And he succeeded. The school works. It’s the most difficult thing there is to do and he did it. They just expanded into housing:

    AKRON, Ohio – The LeBron James Family Foundation has welcomed its first group of I Promise School students and families to a renovated apartment building that provides rent-free transitional housing for families experiencing homelessness, domestic violence or other unforeseen circumstances.

  262. 262.

    catclub

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: The vice president rejected the idea of systemic racism, instead focusing on the protest and demanding its end. He blasted “violence and chaos . . . rioting and looting . . . tearing down statues” — with no mention of why those things might be happening.

     

    No mention that Trump is president NOW and all those things are happening under his watch. Why should we re-elect him if he cannot fix those now?

  265. 265.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kay: that is pretty funny coming from Jared since he’s pretty much the poster boi for obnoxious and useless trust fund baby.

  266. 266.

    catclub

    @Hoppie: Just like the Reagan campaign back-channeled to Iran to sabotage Carter with the hostages in 1980. They don’t have a lot of plays, do they?

     

    I was listening to the Fresh Air interview of Rick Perlstein on Reaganland.

    Perlstein does not think there was a (direct)  back channel.  He thinks that they had every GOP ex-CIA member they could find listening for any hints of an october surprise release negotiation. it was playing the refs by claiming a hostage release would be unfair, ahead of any release.

  268. 268.

    Jinchi

    @Kay: You notice the protests never meet the requirements.

    Considered out of bounds for protesting includes:

    • Saying you don’t like the president
    • Kneeling silently
    • Not putting your hand on your heart during the national anthem

     

    Not much left after that.

  270. 270.

    Jeffro

    A little OT but after reading through the long, long list of Pence’s shameless lies, Harris should prepare herself and not get “Kaine-ed” (ie, so flabbergasted she’s unable to respond)

    Just assume he’s going to lie, point out that he’s lying every time, and point out who he’s doing it for, Senator Harris.  Keep laughing at him and point out that not one word of what Pence says is remotely grounded in reality.  But please don’t get Kaine-ed!

  271. 271.

    patrick II

    @Geminid:

    In 1964, while running against hawk Barry Goldwater, Johnson had promised that he wasn’t going to let any more American boys die in Vietnam.  Then he was reelected and sent more troops. So anti-war democrats could no longer trust Johnson.  As his vice-president, Humphrey could not speak out against Johnson’s Vietnam policy until the campaign.  Meanwhile, Nixon had a “secret plan” that would get us out of Vietnam. It took most of the campaign for Humphrey to convince voters he wasn’t another Johnson, he was gaining and would have won had the election been held later.

    And I agree Bobby Kennedy would have won had he not been assassinated.  Sirhan Sirhan changed the course of American history when he put the vile Nixon in a position to win with his southern strategy, the beginning of Republican corruption that we see the results of today.

  272. 272.

    Jim Appleton

    @gene108:

     

    Yes and no.

     

    I’m a former fire chief, lots of experience with law enforcement.

     

    Good training and support emphasizes the value of the service.  This is someone else’s bad day.  I’m here to serve.  If I’m troubled, there are resources.

     

    That requires good people who care most about service.  Bullies and blowhards don’t typically have healthy responses.

     

    That said, there are scenes which are going to leave a mark.  Child fatalities and anything that touches personally.

     

    I took great pains to ensure my crew either didn’t get close (no reason for them to see pedestrian vs. train …) and/or had the temperament, training, and resources to manage safely and healthy.

  278. 278.

    James E Powell

    @Matt McIrvin:

    If memory serves, Bush’s approval headed down when he started talking about proposals on social security and immigration that the Republican base hated.

  280. 280.

    CarolDuhart2

    @rikyrah: I don’t believe  that either.  This is crunch time-every day matters now, especially since early voting starts about a week after the pause.  Nobody not in trouble gives up two valuable and irreplaceable weeks unless they are ill or  something terrible is happening at home.

    If it weren’t for the pandemic,  Joe Biden would be living out of his suitcase now and having as many rallies as he can stand.  And if this was a good strategy, Joe would be doing the same.

    So Trump going to social media?  But that’s a strategy aimed at people who are already going to vote for him.  Or is that the problem he’s havingnow-keeping the base from not turning out?

  282. 282.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @WaterGirl: At the beginning of the movie, Ted is a cab driver and pulls the cab onto the curb, at the end of the movie the fare, still in the cab says “I’ll give him a few more minutes”.  That’s Howard Jarvis, he and Paul Gann where the folk that promoted Prop 13.

  284. 284.

    Ken

    @PJ: There’s multiple Fox networks. The over-the-air one shows The Simpsons. The cable one shows different cartoon clowns like Hannity.

    It’s also important to note that in several court proceedings, Fox-the-cable-network has argued that they are not exclusively a news network, and many of their programs are opinion – so those cannot be held to any factual or reporting standards.

  286. 286.

    MisterForkbeard

    @germy: The enraging thing is that this movie is going to make Comey into a straightshooting hero rather than the guy who violated policy TWICE to sandbag Clinton’s campaign.

    Ugh. At least it paints Trump in a very mob-boss light.

  291. 291.

    Soprano2

    @SFAW: I listened to that show, too. It was obvious to me by the end of it that the woman lied to get on the show; she’s a 100% Trump supporter, and is not going to change her mind. I didn’t hear her say one thing in favor of voting for Biden. That 3rd guy sounded like a man who came to a painful awakening about the person he voted for in 2016, and decided he loves his country more than he loved Trump.

  293. 293.

    J R in WV

    @SFAW:

    @Steeplejack:
    I know it’s too much to ask, but I want JUST ONE FUCKING DAY where I don’t hear/read yet another vile, disgusting, fascistic, evil, insane vomiting from the Liar-/Murderer-/Fascist-in-Chief

     

    This is actually easy.

    Go to your power box and disconnect the main supply to  your house, either by pulling the fuses or flipping off the main circuit breakers. Then go back to bed and rest in peace and quiet, or sit on a porch and read an old novel from before times.

    Leave your cell phone turned off. See? Not so hard, was it?

    ……………….     ;-)

  294. 294.

    J R in WV

    @gene108:

    I am not saying Reagan, et. al. were not racist, they were. But they had the decency to not trumpet the quiet parts out loud.

     

    Think you’ve got the wrong word there, it wasn’t decency, they were trying to hide their virulent racism because they knew or suspected it would lose votes from decent people. So they stuck to the dog-whistles that white supremacists would notice and that would slide right past decent Republicans.

    So maybe  shrewdness?

  295. 295.

    J R in WV

    @Kay:

    …When you talk about the incredibly blatant double standard the NYTimes used for Clinton’s emails versus Trump emails, recall that they did the same exact thing to Al Gore and Al Gore isn’t even a Clinton, so shouldn’t be subject to their bias….

    Oh, Kay, Gore worked for Bill Clinton, and never once called for Clinton’s immediate impeachment, conviction and execution for his high crimes. Not once! So he got treated as if he was Bill’s twin brother.

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