Republican donors are such suckers. https://t.co/X7TcBwky4d
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) September 16, 2020
The ‘Democrat’ (not Democratic) is a signifier, of course: They don’t want to risk being mistaken for actual Democrats, but they do want to pretend that their animosity towards Biden has a basis beyond DEM MAN BAD.
… Democrat Voters Against Joe Biden is a project of an existing nonprofit advocacy group called Americans for Responsible Government, meaning it can engage in limited politicking and is not required to disclose its donors. Curiously, though it is not explicitly political, the group’s online donation page includes disclaimer language required only of registered political committees advising donors that they can only donate $2,800 per election. No such donation limits exist for nonprofits.
DVAJB set up a website in July and began running Facebook ads this month attacking Biden. The former vice president’s “mental state is slipping and we can’t let him become the most powerful man on Earth,” one of the ads declares…
Crossover partisan appeal, or the appearance of it, is an asset that presidential campaigns and their supporters frequently seek. And DVAJB’s formation comes as a pro-Biden counterpart, Republican Voters Against Trump, gathers and publishes its own video testimonials of GOP voters who say they won’t back the president’s re-election bid. DVAJB appears to have been created as an explicit answer to that group. Language on its website is copied nearly verbatim from the RVAT website, with some minor stylistic changes and Biden’s name switched out for Trump’s…
In Trumpworld, parasitism is the sincerest form of flattery.
…[DVAJB founder Steve] Nickolas said the group hopes to begin gathering testimonials that it can then use to produce ads knocking the Democratic presidential nominee. He said he also hopes to recruit like-minded individuals from across the aisle to serve in leadership roles for the group. “We don’t have Democrats right now serving in a board capacity,” he said. “But we certainly will invite that type of input as soon as we possibly can.”
As for funding, Nickolas said he’ll be relying largely on grassroots donations. One of his most prominent political projects, an advocacy group called Americans for Responsible Leadership, “had some support from the Koch Brothers, but this one is totally on our shoulders here in Scottsdale.”
Nickolas founded Americans for Responsible Leadership in 2011 along with a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party. And it soon found itself at the center of a major campaign finance scandal. In 2013, ARL and an affiliated group paid a $1 million fine to California authorities to settle allegations that they illegally laundered $11 million in contributions to a political group in the state.
Nickolas said his experience being targeted during that ordeal by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Biden’s running mate and at the time California’s attorney general, has given him “a personal stake in this election.” Harris, he said, “ran us through the wringer… Her tactics were appalling and I was very upset with how it was handled.”…
I’m sure he was, yes.
Over on the ‘intellectual’ side of the anti-Democrat movement, former unrepentant Jesse Helms staffer Danielle Pletka scored a Washington Post op-ed complaining that she could not possibly vote for Joe Biden, because he was entirely too friendly with… a dark-skinned outside agitator woman! The horror!
Pletka in 2008: “it turns out that living under Saddam Hussein’s tyranny for decades conditioned Iraqis to accept unearned leadership, to embrace sect and tribe over ideas, and to tolerate unbridled corruption.” https://t.co/b0HuPbVGnF
In 2020: https://t.co/3BbPTu7vcx
— Matt Duss (@mattduss) September 15, 2020
The second-most-popular Washington Post opinion story is openly, specifically, savagely mocking the editorial in the top spot. pic.twitter.com/YB552ogdlU
— Stephen Thompson (@idislikestephen) September 15, 2020
(Petri’s satire of Pletkin is, of course, hilarious.)
if you still take the time to logically refute hot garbage like the pletka troll column in wapo you’ve failed to understand the gentry class think tank right and the pro wrestling cokehead right are playing a game where they pretend to be somehow different just to eat your time
— kilgore trout, non mini-stroke haver (@KT_So_It_Goes) September 15, 2020
Ian
From the wiki-
West of the Rockies
@Ian:
So, clearly a guy who leans Blue…//
My take is that this Dems Who Hate Joe group is trying to be The Lincoln Project for Republicans. It ain’t working. They’re lazy and incompetent.
Jay
Marmot
I’m usually not a fan of Petri’s schtick. But ohmygod is it perfect this time. I just want to shake her hand.
Roger Moore
@West of the Rockies:
The laziness and incompetence aren’t the most important factor. The most important factor is that there is a group of prominent disaffected Republicans who despise Trump to the point they have been willing to turn on their party in order to stop him. Those people formed the Lincoln Project organically, as far as I can tell without prompting from, or even consulting with, the Democrats. There simply isn’t a corresponding group of prominent Democrats who see Biden as so far beyond the pale that they’ll break with their party and support Trump, and no degree of effort and cleverness on the Republicans’ part could conjure one.
Jay
HumboldtBlue
I like interesting cooking videos, don’t watch these if you’re hungry and you’ve just smoked a bowl and haven’t eaten because man O pomodoro they’re good.
Mallard Filmore
@Jay: Brian Cates (my brother sent me a link to his Twitter about 6 months ago) is scoffing at the idea that there are hysterectomies going on.
Hysterectomies leave women bedridden for weeks afterwards.
Have the victims been allowed to see outside doctors? Have these operations been confirmed by more than accusations?
Chetan Murthy
@Mallard Filmore: IIUC, the concentration camp inmates are not allowed visits from third-party organizations with sufficient frequency and safety that such questions could be definitively answered by those third-party organizations. Clearly we can’t trust the government that runs concentration camps, to tell us all is well inside.
If Cates fails to understand this sort of simple point, really, what’s the point in engaging with him? Or with anybody who parrots his line?
Chris T.
@Mallard Filmore: That’s simply not the case. See medical news today article.
thalarctosMaritimus
@Mallard Filmore:
Interesting. That’s not how I remember mine, but who am I to argue with Brian Cates about what women experience?
Steeplejack
@Mallard Filmore:
This appears to be bullshit.
I have not read what type of hysterectomy these women had. Also, I’m sure there are some Balloon Juice readers who have had a hysterectomy and might be willing to weigh in.
Jay
Mallard Filmore
@thalarctosMaritimus:
@Chris T.:
@Chetan Murthy:
Thanks all for the replies. I surf into Brian’s twitter every few months to check the insanity my brother is into.
A recovery time of about a day blows Cates’s arguments away.
Chetan Murthy
@Mallard Filmore: My evident … ire … wasn’t meant at you. Idunno, it’s very, very hard to remain even slightly hinged, with news like this about the hysterectomies. Or the ripping of infants from their mothers. It ….. makes it difficult to see straight for the red-tinged haze of anger.
Darkrose
That was true when my mother had hers in 1982, but I’m pretty sure medical science has advanced a lot since then.
Darkrose
@Jay: But we can’t put any checks on police unions because slippery slope!
Mallard Filmore
@Chetan Murthy:
Right, and I did not take your reply that way.
Mary G
I went to check Cates out and found I’d blocked him. Read part of one thread he retweeted and it was bonkers. That’s two minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
Mallard Filmore
@Darkrose:
I did a quick peek at what Google has to say, and when it mentioned a recent advancement using robots I gave up.
Robots assist? Sounds expensive. What doctors would have that equipment? If this is like an MRI monster, could a doctor do these hysterectomies on the sly, nobody else in the office knows?
I’ve been too healthy all my life to pick up on what doctors can do in the privacy of their own offices.
Mallard Filmore
@Mary G: Yeah, my brother sent me a link to Brian’s tweet back in January, when he claimed that Rudy would come to Trump’s impeachment rescue with evidence from Ukraine.
Amir Khalid
@West of the Rockies:
Idle question: if you wanted a presidential namesake for an anti-Biden version of The Lincoln Project, whom would you pick?
Jay
Jay
Chris T.
The machines are expensive, but the assist ends up lowering the cost overall provided one gets to use them often. A big hospital with a lot of procedures will spend a couple of million on these things, then make it back within months (not even years).
(Surgery is big money. A heart bypass is easily $40k.)
Mag
@Amir Khalid:
Dixiecrats.
Jay
Aleta
(NYT) Sept. 16, 2020
Amir Khalid
@Mag:
Nope. Has to be a president’s name, as in The Whatsisname Project.
Jay
https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/k7qjde/we-tried-to-obtain-footage-of-michael-reinoehls-killing-police-say-it-doesnt-exist?__twitter_impression=true
Extrajudicial execution, not “killing”.
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
The Roosevelt Project
Jay
Chris T.
@Aleta: Oh noes! The US could find itself irrevocably committed to democracy!
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: Heh. Obviously TR, not FDR. But even TR is problematic: he was a bit of an environmentalist, was he not? And wasn’t he a bit of a Progressive, back in the day?
If we expand the list to vice-presidents, the obvious choice is Calhoun (*grin*)
Redshift
@Aleta: Barr is such an appalling theocrat. Federal prosecution being an executive branch function doesn’t mean the AG gets to decide what the law is. And his other appalling comments that federal prosecutors are “agents of the attorney general” (direct quote) and as underlings, shouldn’t expect to have a say in what’s legal or appropriate or anything.
Redshift
@Chetan Murthy: Jackson. Like Lincoln, considered a founder of the Democratic Party. Unlike Lincoln, stopped being honored once we clued into how awful he was.
greenergood
Totally OT: BBC Radio 4 news this am @6:45 reported that the Trump administration was investigating reports that Iran was plotting to assassinate the US ambassador to South Africa. Since then, nothing … any ideas why this little news snippet was aired?
smike
@Amir Khalid:
Let’s see… nothing but lies, full of bullshit…
The Trump Project (in big gold letters).
Chetan Murthy
@Redshift: Oh, well-done! Nice!
Jay
@greenergood:
ajitprop. That’s why it was “laundered” through the BBC.
prostratedragon
@Steeplejack: Haven’t had one but know someone who did several years ago. Her job was physically somewhat demanding, but she was back at work within a few days, though restricted in heavy lifting (25lb or more, say) for a couple of weeks. Definitely was not bedridden for more than several hours.
opiejeanne
@Mallard Filmore: Hysterectomies do not usually leave women bedridden for weeks. When I had mine in the early 80s I watched other women being discharged within 24 to 48 hours. I was stuck there for five days because, stupid me, I hemorrhaged and needed a trip back to the OR, but I felt pretty good within a day or two of discharge. No idea why I’d feel good after I scared the nurses and the surgeon so badly.
A friend took about two weeks before she felt recovered, but she wasn’t bed-ridden, just moved slowly and was uncomfortable for a couple of weeks.
opiejeanne
@thalarctosMaritimus: Haha! I love you and miss you.
greenergood
@Jay: so is this the beginning of an October Surprise type campaign, or just a balloon sent up to see if Anyone will run with it?
opiejeanne
@Darkrose: My hysterectomy was in 83 or 84 at Kaiser Hospital in Fontana, CA, It was vaginal, which is less invasive which may have made a big difference, and even though I had a complication that kept me in the hospital for 5 days I felt really great within a couple of days after I was discharged. Other women who were smart enough not to have a complication that required more surgery were discharged the next day.
Mary G
I’m sick of politics. Here’s a story from the Cut about the discovery of ancient giant sperm.
Jay
@greenergood:
it’s illegal for the US IC et al, to push ajitprop to US Media.
so what they do is farm it out to offshore Media, and wait for the FNYT to repeat the story citing Foreign Press.
That’s how they pushed all the Afghanistan, Iraq lies.
So this is a “move” by somebody who hasn’t kept up to speed,
Now adays, one can just get the POSUS to retweet QAnon bullshit.
Amir Khalid
@greenergood:
If there really is an Iranian scheme to assassinate a US ambassador, why the one in South Africa?
opiejeanne
@Mallard Filmore: Hysterectomies aren’t out-patient surgeries, and this guy had at least one nurse and an anesthesiologist in the room while he worked.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: Back in the day, this was called the “Puke Funnel” IIRC. RW groups in the US would plant stories in compliant UK press, which eventually got reported in mainstream UK press, and then US news outlets would cover it, b/c hey, it’s news in the UK, there’s gotta be something to it, riiiiight? Sigh.
Jay
opiejeanne
@greenergood: Who is our ambassador to South Africa? And why would that person in particular be a target.
greenergood
Thanks for this didn’t know this was a standard MO. So now we wait for the FNYT to write a story? It’s sort of the journalistic equivalent of Trump’s ‘Some people are saying …’@Jay:
opiejeanne
@Mary G:
She got railed? I have never seen that expression before.
Chetan Murthy
@opiejeanne: https://za.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/our-ambassador/#:~:text=Ambassador%20Lana%20Marks%20was%20sworn,South%20Africa%20on%20October%204.
Born in SA, so that’s something. Speaks Afrikaans and Xhosa. Overall, compared to some of Shitler’s more (ahem) controversial picks, she seems …. perhaps solid.
Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Because South Africa is a scary lawless place to Deplorable Americans, and Argentina don’t play that game no more.
And Bibi is busy trying to avoid jail.
Did you check under your bed for IRGC ?
27% of ‘Merkins” do it every night.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkin
Jay
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: Yay! I sent him a check last week!
Jay
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah, there is an opportunity there to get rid of Yurtle,
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: I *didn’t* give any money to McGrath b/c (1) she seemed very well-funded and (2) it seems unlikely she’ll beat Yertle. I also didn’t give money to Doug Jones, even though I really wanted to, b/c …. doesn’t seem likely he’ll win. I wonder if I should revisit that latter decision ….. but it seems like that money could be better-used in GA/NC/SC/TX/AK/etc.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: Something else that really angers me about this time of Kaiser Quisling, is that I used to donate money to various charitable causes (mostly to Planned Parenthood). Since 2016, I haven’t, b/c I figure that if we don’t get rid of him, abortion’s gone anyway. I hate that I have to make such a decision, discarding the needs of women right now who need reproductive health services, in favor of spending that money on ensuring that those rights don’t go away permanently.
It’s really, really angering.
Jay
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
yurp. SARS- Covid 19 has laid so much of the BS about Western Society bare.
When I was a kid, no unhoused, no food banks,
Instead, Social Services.
Jay
rikyrah
@Jay:
?????
rikyrah
@Jay:
Uh huh???
rikyrah
rikyrah
@Jay:
Gritters ALL?
rikyrah
Gvg
@Darkrose: it was true with mine 6 years ago. Very serious surgery. However there probably are multiple kinds. Mine was pretty invasive because they were getting rid of cancer and could not risk cutting up the pieces smaller inside me to remove from small incisions. That would risk releasing cells to colonize cancer elsewhere in my body. If that restriction hadn’t been in place, they told me it would have been a less invasive surgery. They had to cut me way open to remove whole organs.
i also want to wait for more info on this story. I suspect it’s one doctor but unsupervised because all of them don’t see immigrants as having rights or humanness.
ICE needs to go to jail. Disbanding sure, but I want prison sentences.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rikyrah: And, what’s Trump’s point? Trump would be president of a third world version of Canada if all the Blue States left the union. The population of a midwest barely equals that of New York City. The Maths be hard for the Conservative Man.
NotMax
greenergood
Because dead air is abhorrent to broadcasters. There’s as a matter of course some sort of filler foolscap marking time in the wings in case the program runs short, a remote goes technically awry, and so on.
Chris T.
@Gvg: Yes, the slice-it-up, take-it-out-through-small-hole trick is called morcellation and they used to do it with laparoscopic cancer surgery and then realized, oops, not a good idea. (And from the descriptions related on the Maddow show the other night, it occurs to me that this particular doctor is almost certainly using a morcellator, and is not as skilled with it as he thinks he is. I assume it’s a “he” as they usually are in these cases.)
SiubhanDuinne
Pre-order time!!! President Obama’s book is coming out in November (after the election).
Can. Not. WAIT.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/books/obama-memoir-a-promised-land.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
From the NYT article. These numbers are extraordinary.
I have placed my pre-order — the news was still so fresh a few minutes ago that when I entered “A Promised Land” into Amazon search, it came up as “Untitled Book” (although once I placed the order, it showed under the real title).
evodevo
@Chris T.: Yeah…I knew women who had hysterectomies back in the ’80’s, and you WERE confined to bed/low activity level for a LONG time, supposedly because of the danger of hemorrhage. I don’t know if the danger is the same with the new procedures they have now or not…the medical literature is inconclusive…
evodevo
@Mallard Filmore: Yes, “robots” are a thing nowadays…I had a “robot-assisted” hernia operation a couple years ago at a small local hospital…I guess it’s all the rage among surgeons nowadays…
J R in WV
@Mallard Filmore:
This is bullshit! Many of my aging female relatives had hysterectomies and were able to get out and around in just a few days.
Chris Johnson
@SiubhanDuinne: Cue Trump trying to get the US Navy to sink those ships…
The tragic thing is, he might very well be so insane that he tries to do that, or at least asks about it…
Humanities Prof
@Mallard Filmore: Lots of others have already weighed in on this, but let me add another 2 rubles.
I am NOT an OB/Gyn. I’m as far away from being one as it’s possible to be. But my wife is an OB/Gyn, and she’s performed many hysterectomies throughout the years.
The overwhelming majority of hysterectomy patients do not require weeks of hospitalization. Most go home 2-3 days post-surgery, as has been noted by lots of other BJers in this thread. There can be complications that require longer hospitalization post-surgery, but they’re rare.
thalarctosMaritimus
@opiejeanne: <3 .
I promise I’ll be back in the land of the living very soon <3 . Things are getting slowly and steadily better.
I love and miss you, too.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chris Johnson:
Don’t give him any ideas.
Cameron
@Redshift: I thought Lincoln was a Republican. Shows how little I know.
StringOnAStick
@Humanities Prof: I was in my early 50’s when I had mine, and spent just one night in the hospital. I’m assuming ICE has had these done on relatively young women, so out of hospital quickly.
jefft452
@Amir Khalid: “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman