24 winners of the Turing Award, sometimes called the Nobel Prize of computing, endorse Biden. They cite Trump's anti-immigrant policies that are keeping out students, scientists, inventors.
First time Turing Award laureates have endorsed a candidatehttps://t.co/UWLJGw6xFM— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) September 20, 2020
Joe Biden, the Democratic National Committee and affiliated joint fundraising committees entered the month of September with $466 million cash on hand, a Biden campaign official confirmed to @ABC News on Sunday evening. https://t.co/mnz3nQLImG
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) September 21, 2020
The Biden Campaign vastly outraised Trump’s Campaign in August – and that was *before* the massive $100 million in ActBlue donations to Democratic candidates this weekend. https://t.co/CQdxChXwEG
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) September 21, 2020
“We have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now,” Speaker Pelosi tells @GStephanopoulos when pressed on what Democrats would do if Pres. Trump and Republicans push a SCOTUS nomination ahead of the Nov. 3 election. https://t.co/JhU93KY3iQ pic.twitter.com/HOmI8AxREN
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) September 20, 2020
Democrats very coordinated on messaging, from Biden to Schumer to Pelosi — making scotus all about health care rather than cultural issues https://t.co/t8NTgzgFgZ
— Blake News (@blakehounshell) September 20, 2020
On The Road – Albatrossity – Summertime in Scotland – #1
debbie
I woke up with retribution in my heart.
OzarkHillbilly
That’s a funny way to say, “hatred of people not like me.”
Baud
I spoke with a couple of normie friends this weekend and it’s fascinating to me how much their information bubble differs from ours, even though we are all solidly Dem voters.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: What was in their bubble?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: I admire that.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s hard to explain. It’s just that the nature of the conversation was very different from the type of conversations we have on this blog.
debbie
@Baud:
You kids and your slang. Normie = normal?
Baud
@debbie: Yes. People who don’t follow politics on a day to day basis like we do.
OzarkHillbilly
I went outside to pee a moment ago and I heard a great horned owl calling. It’s been years, barred owls are far more common. I think I’ll go out and listen some more.
debbie
@Baud:
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t follow politics closely. Even the Trump lovers in my family.
Danielx
@Baud:
I get that, and it is hard to express. The metaphor I came up with in my own mind is a variation on the frog-in-the-pot-of-water idea. We’re the frogs that are paying attention, they’re the frogs who haven’t noticed the water is starting to steam. That’s not quite right either, but….
gkoutnik
Been away from news, etc., since Friday – too depressed, but also: family visiting. So – sorry if this has already been said, but:
I’m so sorry that RGB’s passing is being marked not by a considerate period of national mourning focused on an appreciation of her participation in, and contribution to, American life, but instead on messaging, court packing, political strategy, and warlike talk like “arrows in our quiver.” I know, I know, it has to be done, but it’s not fair that her legacy gets lost – at least in what I’ve been reading last night and this morning.
Thanks, RGB. Thanks for your wisdom, compassion, service and especially for your awesome courage in the last few years of medical difficulties.
MagdaInBlack
@debbie: I do. Its a whole ‘nother level of conversation. They don’t know what we know, you bite your tongue to not try to tell them too much, because they’ll just get bored, and just TG they’re voting for Biden.
And I’m nowhere near as well informed as most folks here.
Baud
@Danielx: It’s not like I think they are unaware of the dangers. They are solid Dems not as a result of rote behavior but because they understand the differences in the parties (one of them was a former Republican who switched years ago). It’s more a difference of style and expression, and perhaps reflective of different sources of information and different social networks (for example, perhaps not spending as much time on Twitter or on a blog that reposts a lot of twitter hottakes).
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
I think one thing is that normies don’t make the same inferences we do because their knowledge base and experience is different, so things we see as clear as day, they are more skeptical of.
debbie
@MagdaInBlack:
I was thinking more about passion than informed. I never feel I’m as informed as I should be. There’s just too much to know!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Just got back from a week in Misery at our still unsold B&B (sobs). No masks, Trump signs everywhere (to include one on a massive billboard on US-50 as you enter Cole County from the east paid for “By an Osage County Family).
Friends back there in the reddest or second reddest county in the state (where our B&B is) have had their Biden signs stolen out of their yards. They chuckled because starting about 2 months ago, Trump signs up and down Route A were being taken down by their embarrassed owners. Oh, they’re still voting for the Orange Fart Cloud, they just don’t want to proclaim it.
Nobody wore masks. The only stores that apparently made employees wear them were bigger corporate places like Lowes or somewhat locally, Schnucks (grocery chain).
The entire time we were there we were so thankful we weren’t living their. On the plus side, I did see a Pileated Woodpecker and hummingbirds.
OzarkHillbilly
@OzarkHillbilly: Turns out it’s 2 GH Owls, no doubt a mated pair, talking back and forth to each other on the other side of the holler. Here’s hoping they take up residence for the winter. The rodent population around here can is due for some serious thinning.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: My wife doesn’t. She says she married me so she doesn’t have to.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Most less extremely online Democrats don’t even have much of a notion that the Democratic-Party-hating far left exists. Which is, in a strange way, reassuring to me.
But they also have a blithe faith in the normal functioning of politics and look at you like you’ve got two heads if you talk about the more “Seven Days in May” possibilities, and that worries me because they’re going to be caught completely unawares when/if something like that happens.
Steeplejack
I’m feeling a bit perky this morning. Slept almost six straight hours last night, a record in the coronavirus era. Yee-haw, I guess. Might be because the weather has turned here in NoVA. The HVAC is slumbering, and the inside temp has dropped to 68° from the 76° where I have the A.C. set in hot weather. Good sleeping weather. Outside it’s 46°, going only to 67° today. Highs in the mid-70s the rest of the month. So that’s nice.
I’m having a cup of coffee and waiting for Morning Joe to repeat the show open at the top of the hour. Already apparent that we’re going to be getting sage analysis from Andrea Mitchell and Doris Kearns Goodwin, among others.
evodevo
@Baud: Yeah, same here…I never saw so many uninformed people…I would take them to the mat about it, but I don’t want to antagonize helpful votes lol. It’s even worse with what I call “apoliticals” – the ones at work are continually astonished when I bring them up to date on the latest info about Repubs and whatever the issue of the moment is….they have NO clue. I guess they only watch Dancing with the Stars and gardening shows or whatever…they just totally tune out anything political.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: Is that the secret to your garden success?
scribbler
@OzarkHillbilly: Can I ask about the going outside to pee?
BellyCat
Over the weekend I was in Hundred, West Virginia, about 60 miles from Cole’s place. In case you are wondering what Cole is up against, let me tell you there was not a mask in sight at the local gas station and convenience store. Drove past Cole’s town on the way down and passed countless Trump signs and flags on trucks. Saw not one single Biden Harris sign anywhere.
scribbler
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: So jealous about the pileated woodpecker. I’ve always wanted to see one!!
Matt McIrvin
@debbie: I avoid using “normie” because it’s a word I first heard used in connection with the fascist alt-right putting down everyone who wasn’t them. But my daughter uses it to mean people who aren’t weirdos like her and us.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: The peeing? Pee kills. You can easily see where I and the dogs like to pee.
A couple years ago I was sitting at a picnic table with some city friends at the Festival of Nations. A middle aged black woman was sitting there too tho not conversing with us.
My buddy said, “So tom, what do you do for entertainment out there in the country?”
“I pee in my front yard. Why? Because I can.”
A whole can of soda came out the poor woman’s nose.
@scribbler: See bolded part above.
satby
@gkoutnik: Her legacy hasn’t gotten lost, her legacy is to continue to fight to protect our rights. I saw a lot of young women in the farmers market on Saturday wearing RBG shirts, masks, etc. Mourning in action, you know those college kids will vote.
Baud
@evodevo: The vast majority of them aren’t going to start following politics day to day like we do. I think we should rethink how we communicate to them, instead of expecting them to become holy warriors in the cause. I don’t have the first clue how we go about that, however.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@scribbler:
Our place is right on the Osage River and it’s a birders paradise. The pileated peckers are year round residents but I didn’t see them constantly. You had to learn their call as they were mostly down along the river.
I haven’t seen a red headed woodpecker there in years. Not sure why.
gene108
On the bright side, I lost 40 pounds over the last two years, with a fair bit of loss during quarantine.
On the downside, all my pants are too loose*, and I have to wear a belt to keep them up, which I find annoying.
The problems I am dealing with because of the cooler fall weather.
* I am not buying new clothes. Those pants are in perfectly good condition.
Steeplejack
Big news on the horizon. The Guardian: “Leak reveals $2tn of possibly corrupt U.S. financial activity.”
Also covered in this Twitter thread (which contains links to BuzzFeed stories):
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I feel the opposite. To me, their unawareness suggests that when they see a lefty attack on Dems, they think it’s a sincere and legitimate argument of Dem failures instead of a left-wing version of what Republicans do.
I agree. In some ways, that’s how we ended up with Trump in the first place. Awareness seems better now than in 2016, but there’s still a lot of muddle out there, and I don’t think we’ve fixed the problem over the long term, which may be a problem for the new Dem majority.
OzarkHillbilly
I saw one this past summer, the first in a while. Not sure why they’ve gotten scarce either.
Baud
@gene108:
That’s good. I recently lost a lot of weight, but I’m having trouble getting rid of the last bit of belly fat.
NotMax
Strictly for amusement value. Tabulating liquid debauchery, from a tome published in 1811.
Gee, ya think maybe brewers had a hand in putting it together?
;)
satby
@Baud: The Lincoln Project has got some of that covered. Those ads get shared widely on the old people social media (Facebook).
And I wish there were more avenues to that communication, because lots of people consider *me* a far leftist only because I am extremely online so extremely informed. After a while, we sound almost as nutty to normies as the Q idiots do.
John S.
Trump may not believe in polls, but he believes in money. And he knows that Biden has a LOT more.
He is absolutely terrified knowing that he is done, and just about anything he does at this point makes that more certain.
His ads are ridiculous and desperate attempts to shore up his base — which is not enough to get him re-elected.
He is going to be even more dangerous than usual these next few weeks, and it will likely cost the GOP everything.
Let’s keep running up the scoreboard and make sure we have enough clout to undo the damage!
donnah
My mom, age 85, has never been interested in politics, doesn’t watch even local news, and gets most of her info from the local newspaper. I have been selecting key points about the election and about what Trump and his party are doing and giving them to her when I’m visiting her a couple times a week. And I give her points that are directly relevant to her: the potential for losing Social Security, changes in Medicare, the lack of help for the virus, and how this Covid problem has kept her from going to church and dining out. She’ll never reach my level of outrage, but she knows what hangs in the balance and she’ll vote for Biden.
If you need to engage others who don’t see politics the same way you do, keep it simple, keep it calm, and point to the facts. You can usually connect on some level.
Just One More Canuck
@gkoutnik: The appreciation of her legacy is there, but I think that she left us knowing that there was one last chance for her to make (to borrow from John Lewis) good trouble.
Matt McIrvin
@debbie: My family of liberals follow politics closely but it’s in a more… conventional way than I do. Mainstream media. Were gutted by RBG dying, maybe more than I was. But they don’t worry about the fringe online things that bug me like, say, the pro-Trump Intercept Marxist vote. They are 1000% fired up about voting Democratic, talk about it all the time.
And then on the other hand I have my circle of clinically depressed extremely online weirdo leftist friends, most of whom seem rock-solid-convinced that Biden is on track to lose because he doesn’t personally appeal to them, just like the awful Hillary Clinton, and they kvetch about this constantly.
And then there are a few NPR-centrist types who hate Trump but insist on their “independence” and will give a respectful hearing to right-wing cranks as if they have some sort of novel argument. One of them is a local elected official.
Oh, well, humans gotta human. I guess I’d still rather be in our situation than the other side’s right now.
Kay
Mueller investigation prosecutor speaks:
I think a lot of the Trump-era books are worse than useless for the public – although hugely profitable for the authors- but I think Americans are owed an explanation of what happened in the Mueller investigation and this is one explanation. There’s nothing new, it follows the same pattern as all the other institutional failures around Trump- they were afraid of the people they were investigating, so they did a bad job. Not a grand conspiracy, not ideological, simply an inability to function effectively when faced with Donald Trump and his giant, screeching band of loyalists due to fear of them.
Baud
@satby:
Right. And the “both sides” quality of our media and U.S. culture reinforces that idea — that there must be some equivalent on the left to what is happening on the right.
I’ve been feeling for a while that we need to make changes to our approach to politics. But I’m not sure how, and I’m not even sure there’s the will to do it. I think our side tends to double down on things that we feel should work even in the face of evidence that they don’t work (or don’t work that well).
satby
@donnah: The SS and Medicare in danger is a big one and it is moving the needle on the olds toward Biden. We need a simple issue that moves the young in the same way. They’re philosophically more Democratic, now to activate them to vote in higher numbers.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: I think they’re not frightened enough. And I don’t mean we should give into fear. Just that I don’t think they realize how bad it is.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s been puzzling and concerning because if one thing I noticed in 22+ years of living there was how bird populations seemed to get better over time. Certainly the Bald Eagles were a major success (I went from seeing them rarely in the winter to having two nesting pairs year round) and many others.
Monarch butterflies virtually disappeared over those decades but that’s a well-documented tragedy in the hemisphere.
Not that I saw red headed woodpeckers often (and never learned their calls).
Your owl encounter is something we’d also get from time to time. Once, maybe 7 years ago, we must have had 6-8 in various sycamore trees along the river all calling to each other one night.
Kristine
Spent the last few days in Door County, Wisconsin. Slept in a sleeping bag in the loft of my friends’ cabin, and enjoyed feeling 8 years old again. Amazing views of stars at night, especially on Newport Beach.
As for signs, possibly 2-2.5:1 Trump to Biden in Door County proper. But if I add in the Trump signs on all the farms and fields along the way, bump it up to about 3.5:1. Which makes the apparent Biden lead a little surprising, until I remember that I drove through Kenosha and Racine counties. Outskirts of Milwaukee.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s probably the key. One size does not fit all, and we need to figure out how to deal with that.
Immanentize
@gene108: too bad your mother’s not a tailor. She could sew you some new blue jeans.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: I think COVID-19 actually gained Trump some youth support–namely, apolitical young assholes who want to party and not wear masks–to make up for the loss of the olds, which is why it hasn’t moved his overall numbers much. That’s an issue they can understand. Of course, these kids are also less likely to vote than retirees.
WereBear
@debbie:
Yes, a bigger one! Watching Joe Biden knock it out of the park with another fine speech about RGB and the Supreme Court.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: I think the main character in Corelli’s Violin used to pee on his herbs (rosemary?) to make them grow? Or was that in Zorba the Greek? Brain is melding fictions now.
Jeffro
@Baud:
This whole ‘normie vs inside-baseballers’ thing is fascinating, will have to think about that a bit!
Maybe the Dems’ focus on health care access/cost is a good step overall? It’s a clear difference between the parties, ties in to family budgets & health.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin: I’d love to hear a novel right-wing argument at this point. I don’t think I’ve heard anything resembling a coherent conservative position articulated in years.
scribbler
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
@OzarkHillbilly:
We’re lucky that we live relatively near Necedah WI (where they have restored a savannah habitat) and we routinely see many red-headed woodpeckers in September before they migrate. I know their numbers are diminishing overall though, sadly.
Geminid
@Baud: I have three liberal Charlottesville friends that I often talk politics with. Age, sixty something. They are into political podcasts, blogs, any and all breaking national political news. I have another friend, ~50. She’s a very good retail manager, and with her wife raises a high schooler. Stephanie would watch a crappy ballgame before she’d watch the best political talking heads. But she does catch the evening news, local news, and the radio news on the hour during her commute, and always votes, always Democratic. Aside from her particular interest in sports, Stephanie is probably a more “normal” Democrat than my three Charlottesville friends.
Immanentize
@Kay:
I read that. I sure wish LOA* were still around to tell us more Weissmann stories.
*Is that right? It seems like the wrong nym?
narya
My 85-year-old mother called me yesterday to inform me she’d left a message on Toomey’s (R-PA) voicemail badgering him to do the right thing (no SCOTUS nom), and then got two of her friends to do likewise. Gotta love it. And my parents are voting by mail–already have a plan.
OzarkHillbilly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I have been personal witness to the decline in numbers of several species of birds. It might well be overly simplistic but I blame pesticides. Even birds whose prey populations aren’t targeted are affected by the residual poisoning of the environment by them.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: The arguments are all ancient and stupid. But people who haven’t been banging their head against some particular wall sometimes hear them for the first time and think there might be something to them, because the better trolls are good at adopting a reasonable tone of voice.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Fear can be paralyzing, too. Maybe it’s better to let them go ahead without it.
narya
@Jeffro: Yes, I think the focus on health care is extremely smart. At this point, a much greater number of people have experienced the benefits of ACA, and anyone who’s lost their job is experiencing it as well. And it doesn’t have to be a big complex argument: “Since it passed, the Rs have tried to attack it and chip away at it, and, despite the promises, have yet to detail any alternative that won’t make things worse for most people. On top of that, Covid-19 may be regarded as a pre-existing condition, and we now have more than 6 million people who’ve had it–that we know about. So if you had a blood test showing you had it, but had no symptoms, you might become uninsurable, even though you didn’t get sick.”
Immanentize
@Baud: I am very happy the the unified Dem message about RBG is about healthcare, not something like abortion or other very important rights. Health care is a universal concern. So too maybe is abortion, but people of all political stripes will deny it is their problem directly.
Playing focussed small ball* works with voters.
*Not that healthcare is small! Same with education. But they don’t require people to pick a side in the same way the death penalty for juveniles does, for example.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: The minerals etc it contains can help in the garden, but it has to be composted, otherwise the uric acid kills..
Soprano2
Sometimes I tell people something like “I know this sounds crazy, but it could happen because of “x”. I’m fully aware that to many people I sound like a raving crazy person when I start talking about the things we on this blog know Trump could try to do, or that he’s signaled he’ll do. I usually say that Trump has said he’s going to do ‘x’ y’ or so numbers of times, how many times will he say it before he actually tries to do it. Honestly, I don’t talk to most people about this stuff just because I know to people who don’t follow politics you sound like a raving looney
ETA – I heard a communications expert on the OGuys podcast last Friday who said it was bad to talk about Trump as a strongman, that instead we should all emphasize how weak and desperate the things he says he wants to do are, so I’m going to start talking about it that way, for example “The reason Trump has a guy messing with the post office is because he’s so weak he knows he can’t win if he doesn’t try to cheat”. I think that’s sound advice. She said it also drives Trump and his supporters crazy, so that’s a side benefit of it.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Good morning! ?
Soprano2
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I live in Springfield in Greene County, which doesn’t support Trump quite as much as Cole County does (I had to look that up to make sure, though). Lucky for me the city of Springfield has a mask mandate, so as long as I stay in the city people at least have to wear masks in public.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
Basically the asymmetry we have to deal with is this: there is a nutty far left, but whereas the nutty far right hates liberals, the nutty far left… also hates liberals. To the point where some actually prefer Trump for some overcomplicated accelerationist reason.
Immanentize
@NotMax: Thanks for this! I’m sharing it with my Crim law classes.
PS. I want one of those prefab houses you posted up the other day. How cool was that? I’m sure the material was junk, but so fine!
Soprano2
@gene108: A good alterations shop could be your friend. When I lost weight I had several of my favorite pairs of pants taken in for the exact same reason.
Betty Cracker
I’d love to figure out how to become a “normie” again. I’m sick of worrying about all this shit constantly. It’s bad for me.
My sister seems to have a healthier attitude toward it. She votes in every election, hates Trump with the fiery heat of 10K suns, etc., but she doesn’t obsess over it. She worries that Trump will be reelected, and she gets angry at his supporters when they spew ignorance at her. But she doesn’t HATE them, at least not in a corrosive way, all the time, and she doesn’t regard America as a shithole country for having elected Trump via the EC.
I think she’s happier for all that, and I wish I could figure out how to not…take it so personally, I guess? But I don’t know how to get to that space.
Jeffro
A little OT (and perhaps this has already been covered in the past day or two): I was swimming laps this morning when it dawned on me…the overriding reason trumpublican leaders are so willing to endure the charges of hypocrisy and even potentially fire up the D base by confirming RBG’s replacement before the election: they want an ironclad R majority on SCOTUS for when trumpov tries to litigate his way to re-election.
I know we want a big victory regardless, and of course it will help somewhat with the public at large, but just like trumpov discounted all the blue-state COVID deaths, he’ll easily discount a hundred EVs (or more) as being illegitimate due to “illegal voting” – mail-in ballots, early voting, all of it. He’ll take it to SCOTUS saying that states X, Y, and Z – those with Republican legislatures, I’m sure – should be allowed to disregard the vote and name their own slates of electors. Either that, or he’ll say that they should be thrown out altogether and only states that he and Barr ‘approve of’ should count.
For this kind of nonsense, and for the balls to have a 3rd PV-minority, EV-majority in 20 years, he needs some seriously committed Rs on that Court (plus the Republican Noise Machine cranked up to 11).
So…throw a Barrett up there along with Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch, (trumpov surely senses that Roberts might not go along with this)…and we’ve got another 5-4 SCOTUS decision handing the presidency over to a Republican who didn’t win the popular vote.
This is why he’s hustling to get his nominee in there before the election. Heck, trumpov might petition SCOTUS before the election, to try and get the above scenarios in play early and cast doubt on the whole thing before the results start coming in (which obviously he’s already doing in various ways). Or he might have Barr try and do it.
Long story short, Dems need to try and pre-empt this. They definitely need to go to the public now, loudly, about how this would all play out. They have to go to the mat and insist that every legally cast ballot will be counted no matter how long it takes or how it was cast. And if it comes to it, they should consider impeaching both Barr and trumpov not just on the merits but to gum up the works in the Senate and make their stand, before Barrett is confirmed.
Kind of a shame, all the abuse our democracy is taking just to keep a known con man, rapist, racist, Putin lover out of jail.
mrmoshpotato
@debbie: I woke up singing the Dinosaur Train theme.
Kay
@Immanentize:
I think it’s good he’s talking. I hope others on the team do too. I know it’s probably considered bad form but the time for one side worrying about “norms” is long past. You can’t defend something that doesn’t exist anymore- we have to start over. Just tell us what happened. That can help inform us on how to go forward.
Soprano2
I do worry about that, which is why I don’t talk much about politics to most people. One evening on the patio at the pub I did have a good conversation with a man who is quite a bit more conservative than I am but doesn’t much like Trump. It was instructive to others, I think, that we could have a civil conversation about politics for over an hour! In the end he thanked me and said that we probably agree about more than we disagree about. I wish more people could do that, disagree without getting angry and unpleasant. It was kind of freaking the other regulars out.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro:
Yes, this is the drum I’ve been banging for the past few days. The thing we have to worry about the most in the short term may not be any of the court fights we’re accustomed to, but, purely and simply, Trump trying to get his Electoral College loss nullified in SCOTUS. All the fear-mongering about mail-in ballots is probably preparation for that–he’s going to claim that the election should simply be considered null and void, because of some imaginary flood of fake ballots as revealed by researchers from the University of Some Guy on the Internet, and hope he’s got a large enough Court majority of hacks to make that stick. This may be his most likely way to stay in office at this point.
Immanentize
@Matt McIrvin:
@Soprano2:
Real experience about a month ago — I was on the phone with my Fidelity contacts, trying to figure what I should do with my meager retirement savings. I asked, well, what if things go really bad — like COVID continues, we get into a bad second wave and Pres. Trump refuses to accept the results of the election and there is chaos and street violence everywhere. That would cripple our economy right? How can I protect what I have?
One of the two guys — whose name was “Chad” (no shit) — became all incensed and started saying, “well that just a hypothetical, etc.”
I pointed out their entire jobs were based on hypotheticals. They make money off me by spinning out hypos. I just wanted a financial plan for worst case scenario.
So, I guess I shouldn’t have suggested THAT possibility to THAT financial planner. I am sure he thought I was a crank.
NickM
@satby: My 15-year-old daughter started crying when told me the news that RBG had died. All of her friends were worried about it. Their reaction is sad but also a hopeful sign — the young people are so much better than the olds they are replacing. The only problem is all the damage the reactionaries can do before the newer generations come to power.
Immanentize
@Soprano2: more than one person has said, “Trump’s not trying to win, he’s just trying to get close enough to cheat.”
Baud
@Immanentize:
Right. The goal needs to be to make this not close.
Soprano2
https://www.crooked.com/podcast/herd-mentality/ This is the podcast I listened to with the communications expert who talked about how to talk to voters more effectively. Anat Shenker-Osorio is her name, and she had several excellent points about how to reach voters who aren’t all online like we are. If you don’t like the OBros skip to the last 25 minutes, that’s where the interview was. It was so interesting that I listened to it twice.
jeffreyw
@OzarkHillbilly:
We saw this one last year. Wish I could have snapped a closer shot.
Jeffro
I’m dying here…”U of SGI” totally made my day. =)
That aside…great points and I hope Biden & Co step it up in this regard. Ads, nightly speeches about it, whatever. “We’re not going to let this happen a 3rd time – every vote will count” etc etc.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: We’re faced with the possibility that “close” may not even matter this time.
But even if an obvious landslide can be overturned, it will help maintain a posture of legitimacy in the revolutionary struggle to retake the country that follows.
Immanentize
@Kay: Dreeben left the DOJ in August, too. He should be saying something. He’s a self righteous prat, so I thought he would want in on this action
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
If it’s not close and the Supreme Court does something, I do think that’s the end of the Court. Maybe not immediately, but in time.
Jeffro
Exactly. 350 EVs for Biden becomes 100 EVs if the orange moron casts doubt on states that mailed out absentee ballots, had drop-boxes, etc etc. The legal challenges would be nearly endless, and the pressure on certain states to name R slates of electors by the deadline will be enormous.
It’ll be mass chaos. A big win helps, but as we’ve seen a million times before, both trumpov and McConnell have absolutely no shame about this. They both have way too much riding on staying in power.
Betty Cracker
@Soprano2: I heard that podcast too, and that rings true to me. I also think it’s true apart from its strategic value, i.e., Trump really is a cowardly, weak cheater and has been all his life, so of course he’s trying to cheat now too.
I wish I had faith that we’d stand up, as a country, and refuse to accept it if Trump stacked the court before the election and successfully pressed his minions to ram through a decision that improperly disenfranchised millions of Americans.
I don’t, though. I can easily imagine a situation where the media creates enough smoke as cover and people just accept it. I remember a colleague back in 2000, after the SCOTUS handed Bush the presidency without counting all the votes, expressing pride that there were no widespread demonstrations and civil unrest. That was the consensus view.
MomSense
I’m the spirit of good news, late yesterday my youngest son’s school friend came over- he is quarantined at his dad’s place which is 10 minutes from my dad’s place where 2 of my kids are. Anyway he brought his drum kit and they did a jam session out in the barn. Neighbors were dancing outside and people walking by stopped to listen and dance. It was really nice. Even the 80 plus neighbors were boogeying.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Bush v. Gore was bullshit, but that was stopping the recount. Bush was the certified winner in the initial count. To prohibit counting would be crossing the Rubicon. I don’t know what would happen if the court did that.
Jeffro
@Baud: if Biden wins big and the Court overturns it, I think that might be the end of more than the Court.
debbie
Does anyone better informed than I know how many hours McConnell waited after RBG’s death to announce he was moving forward on confirming her successor?
Steeplejack
@Kay:
Ugh. “Nice polite Republicans,” country club edition.
Gone crooked?! The signs were there from Barr’s first go-round as attorney general, when he operated the turnstile for everyone getting out of the Iran-Contra mess.
Mueller, Ben Wittes et al.—bad judges of character. At least Chuck Rosenberg has fully admitted his mistake. On one of the MSNBC shows Friday night he said it again. (Can’t find a clip.)
Baud
@Jeffro: True. It’ll be a brave new world.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
I saw (but cannot verify) that it was about 70 minutes.
Ohio Mom
Gene who lost 40(!) pounds
Two options
1. Buy/borrow a sewing machine and put darts in the waistband
2.Take pants to the tailor at the dry cleaners, who can put the darts in for you
Anyone who has lost as much weight as you have deserts to have clothing that makes them feel good. Show off that new waistline.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: You’re right, but the certification was hinky from the get-go with GWB’s brother and an overtly partisan SoS in charge of it. As others have observed, if the same sequence of events had played out in another country, Americans would have rightly concluded it was a banana republic.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: I do think the general situation has changed since 2000. That fight took us all by surprise–the election campaign had been this boring, enervated thing; there was a widespread perception that the stakes were low. That’s not today. There’s a lot of mainstream talk about the President trying to cheat or whip up a coup d’état, even if the average Democrat doesn’t rate it highly as a possibility.
Spanky
@Steeplejack:
Teeing up (one of) the October Surprise, I see.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Let’s be clear. The threats we’ve identified are a real risk, and it would be devastating if they happened, but that does not make them a high probability risk, especially if the polling doesn’t tighten to what it was in 2000 or even 2016.
ETA: As with COVID, we see that human beings have difficulty when it comes to how to accurately assess and respond to risk and probabilistic events.
Ohio Mom
Betty Cracker:
I remember those carefree days when I was like your sister. I blame blogs for the transformation. I am pretty sure there is no going back to that mindset.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Thanks. ?
ETA: That alone should be grounds to censure if not remove McConnell.
Kay
I also think we need two tracks. It’s okay to talk about structural reforms to limit GOP entrenched power in the entities they control on small “d” democracy grounds, but that’s a longer term plan.
For now let’s think about what we can win and control with our larger numbers of voters, so US House, state government and the Presidency.
They may deny us the power our numbers would justify in the senate thru their use of minority rules, but we can consistently deny them the Presidency. How would it change our approach if we started with the idea that “majority rule” (Democrats) may only apply to the Presidency and the US House, for now?
They get power in the senate (even with a minority) and the SCOTUS, that’s their power center, but ours is the Presidency and the US House? Nothing says we can’t change how we approach what we DO have.
Spanky
@Immanentize:
That’s probably too much nitrogen to be good for plants. Much more effective to pee into your compost pile. YMMV, of course.
Baud
@Kay: We’d have to accept that nothing gets done, and that’s been something our side has had difficulty accepting in the past (“bully pulpit!”, “I need something to vote for!,” etc.)
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: You are a crank.
evodevo
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m thinking they had advance notice of her deteriorating condition…she was friendly with Clarence Thomas, after all, so maybe Moscow Mitch got hints from him…
evodevo
@Spanky: Yeah, no, I remember a LOT of Jason Leopold’s hype back during the dark days of Bush/Cheney…a LOT of it didn’t pan out. So I have discounted/taken with a grain of salt his reporting since then….
NickM
@Baud: If it’s not close and they use the Supreme Court to steal it, it’s going to unleash so many unintended and unanticipated consequences, not all of them redounding to the Trumpists’ benefit. History will get very interesting. I’m sorry we’re going to have to live through it.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I think that if Trump loses, the chance that he will make a legal bid to have the result overturned is 100%. The chance of this succeeding is a thing I don’t even know how to estimate at this point. A committed ideologue like Gorsuch might have a different attitude toward it than a committed party hack like Alito.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: I also think Kavanaugh is young enough that he’s going to be thinking of the future of the Supreme Court 20 to 30 years from now, with him on it. That’s going to affect the level of egregiousness he’s willing to accept. I don’t have that much confidence in Thomas, Alito, and whoever the new person will be.
SiubhanDuinne
@evodevo:
Oh yes, I’m sure both the WH and GOP congressional leadership were getting regular updates on RBG during the last couple of weeks at least. Trump’s wide-eyed “Gosh, she died? I hadn’t heard that!” notwithstanding, I’m certain he was less than surprised. And McConnell had his statement all ready to go.
Kay
@Baud:
I’m suggesting something a little different though. What you’re saying applies under the old “norms”. They threw the norms out the window. How could we use what I’ll call “the majority entities” (Presidency and US House) in ways that are perhaps more effective given the anti-majoritarian power they’ve cemented?
Instead of starting with “they’re denying us SCOTUS!” start with “deny them the Presidency”. Like, for a long time. Explore the advantages of being the numerical majority instead of focusing solely on undoing their scheme.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: Well,. Maybe. Perhaps! Could be a possibility.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I keep thinking about the Trump fans blocking access to an early voting site in VA. They were outraged by people going to a polling place and voting! They’d accept messing with the results in a flash.
Immanentize
@evodevo: I’m sure everyone at the Court knew she was about to die. What has been horrible this term are the leaks! Probably from clerk’s. But I guess Ginny Thomas is a possibility when drunk.
Gin & Tonic
Good thread for those who don’t follow eastern Europe as closely as some other people do.
FelonyGovt
@satby: It’s interesting to me how many young women apparently idolized RBG, made almost a cult of her. They are angry and that might be one thing to motivate the youth vote.
Baud
@Kay:
Right. But have the people who want things done thrown that norm out the window? That’s my question.
I’ve been there for years. If I could convince others to join me, we’d be better of as a country.
...now I try to be amused
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, there are Republicans who won’t take positive action to remove Trump but might decline to act if he loses the election, if there is a big enough fig leaf to hide behind.
Immanentize
@SiubhanDuinne: Actually that clip of Trump at the airport was the most human moment Trump has displayed in every moment I’ve seen him. He wasn’t playing stupid, he looked exhausted and acted like a normie. It was so jarring
Kelly
Going home today!
This is a pic of our neighborhood. Our home is the blue roof at the bottom of the frame.
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/photograph/7001/12/107556
Higher quality images at https://www.facebook.com/BeachieCreekFire2020
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Not that we needed one further shred of evidence to confirm the utter classlessness of Trump and his cult, but I read an account from one of his rallies over the weekend where the new chant is “fill the seat.” Also received an alert a short while ago that said he’ll announce his pick Friday or Saturday, after RBG’s services.
As I mentioned over the weekend, if there’s an ounce of strategery in them, they’ll nominate the 11th circuit Cuban-American wingnut (Lagoa) to shore up the Cuban-American vote in FL. The wild card is which of the women thought to be in contention Trump thinks is more “central casting.”
Immanentize
@Kelly: whoa. Close call, my friend.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I frequently get into the weeds of “what’s the most horrific, perverse thing that could happen, given this system?” because I approach politics/law with the attitude of a coder looking for bugs and malicious exploits. Sometimes I can get carried away with it because this is a system executed by people, not by a CPU. Popular attitudes matter as much as the letter of the law.
On the other hand, this ACA lawsuit is a real “malicious coder looking for the buffer overrun” kind of thing in real life.
Kay
I sent an email to propublica urging them to investigate this Trump Administration “apprenticeship’ bullshit because it’s fucking egregious and someone needs to look at it.
Okay, Congress allocated hundreds of millions of dollars which was intended to FUND apprenticeships.
DeVos (US Dept of ED) and Scalia (Labor) have created this wholly phony appearance of a real program.
It’s ALL bullshit. The website is low wage jobs scraped from one of the job sites – this “marketing” campaign is you tube videos.
858 MILLION dollars. The Trump Administration has pissed that away on complete bullshit. There’s no there there. It’s wholly Potemkin. It’s hollow.
So what did they do with the money? They sure as shit didn’t spend in on real apprenticeships. Where has it gone?
Two corrupt Right wing nuts in the Trump Administration took 800 million dollars that Congress intended to fund apprenticeships and they have spent 100 million on bullshit. Look into it.
The only jobs these creeps have created have been jobs in marketing their fake apprenticeship program, and that should not cost 800 million dollars.
debbie
@Immanentize:
You knew that was fake, right?
ETA: Coupled with the bullshit announcement about waiting until after her funeral.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us
@satby: We need to make this exact point because it’s a wedge issue among the Republican electorate – a 6 vote conservative majority means 6 Justices who think SS and Medicare are unconstitutional and corporations are people. Make them think twice about whether they’ll really like what they get out of such a majority.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
The person I feel for most in my life is my good friend, Jodi. She married her husband about ten years ago (both were divorced after long marriages and kids). He’s a successful chiropractor and they had a great life–a huge farm with a huge house, horses, a menagerie of pets, grandkids…just everything you could want. He asked her to stop working to take care of it all, built her a luxury barn costing over $250K and they were happy. I always thought he was a little arrogant, but every “doctor” (both academic and medical) I know is to some extent. Anyway, all was good until Trump started running. He started giving him lots of $$, enough that he is invited to any local event that Pence or Trump have around here in Western PA. Jodi is a non-engaged voter but generally liberal, especially on women’s issues, and had no idea her husband, who she thought of as center right, had all these hidden authoritarian and racist ideas. In the before times, she had recently gone back to work as a legal assistant because she decided that she needed to get away from being so isolated from like minded people who weren’t raging Trumpsters like her husband and all his associates. Her husband was not thrilled, to say the least. When COVID came and the state put into effect the mitigation measures, he forbid patients and employees to wear masks at his clinic. He has patients who can’t make it to his clinic who come to his house for appointments two evenings a week and he doesn’t have them mask either. At this point, they can’t be around each other. She says, thank heaven that they have such a huge house because she can go days without even running into him. They don’t speak except to argue about Trump. She hasn’t been able to work since COVID, so she has no money of her own other than the little she had managed to save in the short time she worked before it all shut down. She is working again, but only a few hours a week from home. My heart aches for her. She was setting herself up to get out before COVID and now she’s pretty much stuck. I really fear for her. Whether just for her mental health or the possibility this might all escalate and endanger her physically. I just feel so bad for her.
Kelly
@Immanentize: Very close. Pleasantly surprised by the amount green that survived. The smoke had me expecting miles of black.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Take it from me, it takes one to know one.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@gkoutnik: I too have been on a self-imposed news and blog blackout since RBG’s death sent me into a personal tailspin.
But I’m heartened by the quotes from Nancy Smash. If she says we can prevent Justice Ted Cruz, I believe her. I need to have faith.
And I’m also heartened to hear about the fund-raising.
By all means celebrate the amazing life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I highly recommend the 2019 documentary RBG. It’s on Hulu and Amazon.
gene108
@Jeffro:
States with Republican controlled legislatures, Democratic Secretary of States really worry me, like NC, for example.
The legislature is probably under pressure right now to deliver a win for Trump.
Jeffro
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us: the republicans who are still republicans (still willing to admit they’re republicans, still willing to pull the lever for trumpov) don’t give a shit about that. They don’t think it’ll affect them. trumpov will tell them he’ll protect their Social Security…just not SS for those people.
They just want white people to stay on top in this country, the rest is just details.
AnotherBruce
@scribbler: Pileated woodpeckers rip the merry shit out of decaying trees. They make an oval circle in shreds of wood so if you find this mess on the ground, it’s a clue. Also, they knock very loudly.
Jinchi
Find something specific that concerns them, focus on that, make a single point and back it up.
The fact that the Supreme Court is one vote away from taking away health care from millions of people in the middle of a pandemic is a big one, right now.
Jeffro
@Baud: you think Kavanaugh cares? Seriously?
He knows who put him there and I have no doubt he wants payback on the libs. He’ll do whatever is asked of him by trumpov, I’m 100% certain.
Gorsuch, on the other hand…who knows?
Regardless, it shouldn’t come to this. Not even close.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Would how you think about this change if you accepted this: “Republicans have the SCOTUS and Senate and Democrats have the Presidency and House”. The anti-majoritarian power centers versus the majoritarian power centers. Just don’t get into the weeds of what they can or will “stop”, legally. Just think about those two things as centers of power- the value of each.
The SCOTUS won’t let us have Obamacare? Ok, we need Medicare then. They can find Medicare unconstitutional. I dare them.
Baud
@Jeffro: Yes, I think Kavanaugh cares about Kavanaugh, and Kavanaugh knows that Kavanaugh will be on the court for a long time.
Baud
@Jinchi: A lot of these people aren’t single issue voters.
ETA: Besides, the people I’m talking about are already solid Dems. I don’t need to convince them to do the right thing. I’m saying the nature of the conversation is different.
geg6
@gene108:
That’s the situation here in PA. All the statewide offices are held by Dems but the state legislature is controlled by GOPers. Happily, the state Supreme Court is majority Dems right now and they have ruled all the GOP ratfucking efforts are a no go. And they even agreed to expand the number of days after Election Day for votes to be counted, from 3 to 5, I believe.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: Ugh, that’s awful. I hope she figures out a way to get out from under that asshole’s thumb.
Captain C
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m not even sure it’s that complicated. In a lot of cases, it seems like “Trump will heighten the contradictions on people I don’t like or care about, and eventually they’ll think like (I think) they should, and vote for the Revolution(TM) that I want. My privilege (which I don’t admit to in public) will protect me from the negative effects of contradiction-heightening.”
I was once, a few years ago, at a rooftop party which included a lot of both real and cosplay radicals, and I heard one early-twentysomething say to his companion something like “Well, as revolutionaries, we don’t have to risk ourselves. It’s our job to convince other people to risk themselves.”
Sab
I am glad they are framing the Supreme Court fight as fight for ACA, but I still find it odd to try to think of abortion as a cultural issue rather than a health issue.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I’m not sure how widespread acceptance of the existence of anti-majoritarian and majoritarian centers of power would change people’s thinking and options, but I think we’re going to find out over the next decade. The trends that are making it an increasingly dire problem seem to be accelerating.
Soprano2
I well remember that. I think it upset a lot of people that there was such turmoil about the election; lots of them just wished Al Gore would concede already, so that things could return to normal. The press helped that by making it seem like Bush had won from the outset. I read a couple of books about the whole thing; there was so much fuckery in the various counties, and with the state government that was wholly-owned by Bush’s brother that I think there is no way to know who actually won. You will never catch me saying that Bush was elected in 2000, he was appointed by the Supreme Court period. IMHO they should have stayed out of it, especially after it was reported that Sandra Day O’Connor was extremely upset when she thought Gore was going to win because she wanted to retire and let a Republican appoint her successor. I agree with you, I can easily imagine a scenario where much of the press makes a lot of noise about how we should just settle it already, why are Democrats being such troublemakers, and so on, and selling enough of the non-MAGA public on it that the consensus becomes to let Trump have his way. Of course, that would totally destroy our government going forward, but they wouldn’t actually believe that would happen until it was too late.
Kay
The NYTimes. Bringing the value as usual. The low quality hires wanted it out that Trump favored until “after the funeral” but apparently he’s 4 years old so he can’t guarantee he can wait. They’ll wait or they won’t! That’s the information conveyed here.
50 fucking years this crook played NYC journalists and STILL they line up and spoonfeed us his bullshit.
I never again want to hear about how sophisticated and savvy they are. There are more Trump VOTERS who have seen thru him than NYTimes reporters.
JPL
@Immanentize: That’s the same thing that I thought, since she admires him so. (not)
gvg
@geg6:
Oh my lord….that is bad.
JPL
@geg6: A friend use to get extra cash every time she went grocery shopping and stash it aside, just in case. With the pandemic though, I’m not sure how much shopping she does.
trollhattan
@Kelly:
Congrats! You must be massively relieved.
That denuded hill–looks like it had been clearcut and just brush was left to burn? Hope they get some erosion measures done before winter storms hit.
Jinchi
@Matt McIrvin: Let’s not overhype the threats we face right now. This nonsense idea that Trump can simply decide that the vote doesn’t count – and that the rest of us have no recourse to shut him down – will simply push Democrats to a sense of hopelessness. There’s no point in voting if you think Trump gets to call the election, regardless of the outcome.
We’ve had millions of people peacefully marching in the streets repeatedly and continuously all across the country in protest to his actions. They are not simply going to shrug and go home if he and the court decide that we no longer live in a democracy. Democrats are already publicly talking about changing the rules and makeup of the court – it would be a pretty slam-dunk option if they tried anything like you’re describing.
Trump is a threat because he won the 2016 election. The court is a threat against liberal legislation, because there is a conservative majority. That doesn’t mean they have absolute power. Let’s deal with the problems we actually have, not spin fantasies about Trump deciding to end democracy by decree.
M31
@Spanky:
a friend had critters eating her garden and she got her husband to pee around the perimeter every morning on the premise that male predator pee would deter critters. Recommended by some authority or other.
did it work? I can’t remember, but for sure those gift zucchini got washed real good
trollhattan
@geg6:
Shittiest Hallmark movie script yet: “Holidays with My New Husband–the Closet Nazi.”
She needs to GTFU, he ain’t miraculously getting better once Trump loses.
Matt McIrvin
@Captain C: Also, some of them are outright fake leftists–basically cultural Republicans with a long list of racist and sexist attitudes who pose as some kind of Marxists because being a conservative isn’t the cool way to hate on liberals in their social circles. In the Nineties these sorts of people called themselves libertarian, but the cachet of libertarianism has dimmed.
trollhattan
@M31:
Heh.
NB There is no such thing as a free zucchini. They’re penalties for knowing certain home gardeners.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
There were no candidates who could beat McConnell this cycle because my fellow Kentuckians, by and large, are cruel and stupid. I’m kind of OK with him winning one last time so long as he is in the senate minority and is getting crushed in procedure and parliamentary maneuvers, yammering his “in denial” cocksucking trap off about the sacred and holy traditions of the institution.
I want him to suffer. I want his caucus to point fingers at him in backrooms while expressing how much they hate him for where he led them.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: I’ve had that same experience. Sometimes it renders me speechless. Unfortunately, too often it doesn’t.//
JPL
trump is going to give a speech tomorrow at the UN, although virtually. There’s a large pit in my stomach, because who knows what Miller will write for him to say. ugh ugh ugh
Omnes Omnibus
@Jinchi: All of this.
Kelly
@trollhattan: The hill above was clear cut and replanted. The Doug firs were about 6′ tall with dry grass and brush. Not good evidence for the log it all for fire safety folks, but evidence doesn’t reach those folks.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: A “Snapped” episode might be more enjoyable. Come to think of it, there’s a real advantage of being hyper-political: you’re unlikely to find yourself trapped in a marriage with a fascist.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Kentucky elected a D governor which honestly is a huge accomplishment. If we had 40 D governors this would be a different country.
What are the advantages to being the Party with more voters and where can we use the advantage? How is it most effectively wielded?
Jinchi
I’m not suggesting they are. I’m saying that if you’re talking to people who don’t follow politics closely, you can’t just do a full information dump on them. The best way to effectively communicate is when a subject comes up naturally and point out how the parties deal with the problem.
Geminid
I’m encouraged by the fact that Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina now have Democratic governors. That makes voter suppression and outright election theft harder. It also demonstrates a positive voting trend in those states.
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: There’s looking on the bright side! :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: @Miss Bianca: When I have those sort of interaction if I find that the person is a Dem and intending to vote, I pretty much drop it. Time to talk about the Packers. If they are iffy on either, I will talk about this being an important election and then talk about the Packers. Because I know that coming off as a hectoring monomaniac isn’t going to persuade anyone. If I talk to a Trumpie (not that often, thank dog), I get the fuck out of the conversation as soon as possible and seek to avoid the person in the future.
Edited slightly. For more Packers.
geg6
@trollhattan:
Oh, believe me, she knows and she’s working on finding a way out. Unfortunately, she signed a pre-nup that will leave her with pretty much nothing if she goes and he doesn’t want her to. She’s trying to get enough cash together to get out as soon as it’s feasible.
Steeplejack
@JPL:
You don’t have a “pit in your stomach,” you have some sort of feeling—presumably bad—in the pit of your stomach.
This pernicious usage must be nipped in the bud.
MomSense
@geg6:
Can she speak with a social worker and attorney who specialize in domestic abuse? Given some of your description- she may have options but I’m not sure what the laws are in PA.
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack:
To be fair, if you are careless eating the cherries….
geg6
@MomSense:
She is a legal assistant. The lawyers in her firm are willing to help with what will inevitably be a long, drawn out and difficult divorce proceeding. But where she will go and how she will support herself in the meantime is what is in question. She was an only child and her dad died years ago and her mom passed just about a year ago. She is not currently being abused and doesn’t think that will happen, but I do fear any any escalations and hope she isn’t being naive. Her mental health is definitely suffering, though. I’m trying to hook her up with the counselor I spoke with when my ex and I broke up.
MomSense
@geg6:
Financial control can be considered abuse.
Kathleen
@Kay: Somewhat related but lost in shuffle was that some sections of unredacted Mueller report were released Friday night. Can’t link to Twitter because I’m on my phone but from what I gathered pages contradicted statements by Barr among others.
Kathleen
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I agree.
JPL
@Steeplejack: That is correct and thanks dr. ???
Aleta
Because of his ‘vast wealth’ as a financial advisor and how protected he was, I’d wondered about Epstein and banks and laundering. And his connection to D. Bank. His death. Today I reread this:
(NYT in Feb 2020) “In a banking license application reviewed by The New York Times, Mr. Epstein described himself as one of the investing world’s “pioneers” and said he wanted to pursue the “dynamic discipline of international banking.”
Officials in the Virgin Islands, the United States territory where Mr. Epstein set up most of his businesses, approved a license for him in 2014 to run one of the territory’s first international banking entities, a specialized bank that can do business only with offshore clients. The approval was unusual, given Mr. Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender.
The bank, Southern Country International, renewed its license for each of the next five years, but it’s unclear whether it conducted any business or had any customers. Mr. Epstein, who died while in federal custody last summer following his arrest on sex trafficking charges, does not appear to have done any marketing for the bank or hired much staff.
The bank was created under a territorial law that lacked many of the oversight requirements banks are usually subject to, and its regulatory file is largely empty. A lawyer for Mr. Epstein told officials in the Virgin Islands in 2018 that Southern Country had not commenced operations. And regulators in the territory said they did not exercise oversight of the bank because it did not appear to be doing any business.
And yet, after Mr. Epstein’s death, his estate transferred more than $12 million to Southern Country, according to court documents.
… … ”
CapnMubbers
@MomSense:
@geg6:
@MomSense:
Could the exposure to COVID-19 due to non-masking at his place of work AND in her home also be considered abuse? It is putting her life in danger.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: Right. Obviously don’t be an ass. I guess what I was getting at was that, if there as such differences in worldviews and conversation styles between like-minded Democratic voters, we should really think about how we communicate in general, because most voters are even further afield from where we are.
mrmoshpotato
My new go-to. Thanks Rude.
Aleta
@geg6: My relative (whose bones were broken) said the emotional abuse was much worse than the physical abuse, for her. Controlling behavior can be a sign of domestic abuse according to the literature.
Aleta
@Steeplejack: Sometimes I wake up with a crater in my stomach, Doc.
Steeplejack
@JPL:
Thank you for your gracious reply and not inflaming me, which would have led to me ranting about “stepping foot” instead of “setting foot” and who knows what else.
Kathleen
@Kay: They’re not paid go see through him. They’re paid to see him through.
zhena gogolia
@Immanentize:
Hmmm . . . I also spoke to a financial planner named Chad right after the 2016 election and was spinning similar Trump-related scenarios, and he got pissed. But you’re not in CT, are you?
Geminid
@Aleta: One explaination of Epstein’s wealth is that he used sex trafficking to compromise wealthy men, and instead of extorting cash payments “persuaded” them to place large sums of money under his management, so he could rake off big fees.
Matt McIrvin
@Jinchi:
Trump just declared New York City an “anarchist jurisdiction”.
I don’t know how we overhype this kind of thing. To be blunt, I think there’s a nonzero probability that there will be troops in the streets gunning down voters on Election Day.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: There is a non-zero threat of a lot of things.
Kay
@Kathleen:
It won’t matter. Mueller only had one chance. He blew it.
Just as a lawyer I have to say no group has performed as poorly against the challenge of Trump’s corruption as lawyers. We just sucked. So not up to the challenge it’s not even funny. There was this almost childlike devotion to the “institutions”. Even when it was CLEAR the institutions were falling like dominoes we refused to admit that and clung to them like a blankie.
Kay
So if you were giving some serious thought to what it might mean to be the “majority of the voters” Party, you might look at this:
#Presidential Tyson Group polls
You can use it in a presidential race, sure, but where else?
Kay
So you could say “the senate is undemocratic and designed for Republicans so let’s not put all the money there- let’s put some in margin of error Texas (!) (with the people there) and try to flip it in 2024.”
They can be the senate party and we’ll be the president party.
JPL
@Steeplejack: ? ? ? ?
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I don’t think this the year for Texas, but, man, it’s so close you can smell it. Definitely a place to push hard for the future.
Ksmiami
@satby: climate change and fairer education pricing will help with the yoots
Kay
I will say this- I took Tues thru Fri out election week, in case, um, we have to appear in the streets. Just tell me where to show up.
That’s as far as I get. I have the time out if I need some. I recognize this is incredibly boring revolutionary activity but I hate surprises :)
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
They deny us the courts? We deny them the presidency. Works for governors too.
2liberal
get suspenders.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Texas is dreamy but you could also contest Alabama.
Alabama. Georgia’s already a swing state. Put all your money and energy into making sure they never win another Presidential election.
Jinchi
Hope it’s a week full of celebrations.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
There is a tipping point, different for everyone. The point I’m talking about is the level of disgust/hate/bile that each of us is able to stand. I’m less able than I used to be somewhat because of my health issues, stress shows up in several ways rather rapidly and effectively makes my life a lot tougher, stress works on my tremors. Last week it made it much harder to operate a machine that I normally do regularly and that I had to operate for an entire day. It makes typing a lot more difficult and much more error prone. I can overcome the stress but it gets more difficult. And it’s not like we aren’t in a rather stressful time right now. So my adding stress to that by just being aware that all the crap is happening and coming to a head within the next 4 months really, really isn’t helping. And I imagine that even without my extra health BS, many people are just overwhelmed by the shear level of trumpshit. It is/can be difficult to believe just how bad he and the republicans really are. It’s like we are dealing with a racist, moronic cult that has tremendous power over all of our lives and is screwing every pooch within a 1000 miles of where ever they are. Oh wait…..
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Seconded. No fate is horrible enough for him. Though there is a certain appeal in watching his humiliation in being the minority leader.
Kay
@gene108:
Good for you, Gene. Go buy nice pants! You don’t want big baggy belted pants. All bunchy. Buy pants that fit. If you need slimmer later get those then.
Jinchi
Democrats have had the Senate more often than not in my lifetime. Let’s not be so quick to give up on winning red states these things change over time if we work for it.
JPL
@Kay: GA is a swing state? That’s news to me. I hope McBath holds on to her seat, but that depends on turnout.
Kay
@Jinchi:
If no one needs me I’ll go to work but I didn’t want to be “I would have gone to the uprising but I had a pretrial” :)
I’m a follower. Just tell me where to stand.
Ksmiami
@Jeffro: ding ding ding break the country apart. We are a failed state in so many ways
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@OzarkHillbilly: Thank you. I needed a giggle. It’s been a bit of a Monday.
Elizabelle
@Baud: And never forget the Palm Beach butterfly ballot. Thousands of Gore votes from elderly Floridians went to … Pat Buchanan and probably some others.
Uncorrectable mistake, once the vote was mistakenly — but clearly — cast. Put Bush in position to steal, with the aid of JEB! and the chicken dance lady.
Scuffletuffle
@OzarkHillbilly: pics of the outhouse or it didn’t happen…
willw
@gkoutnik: @gkoutnik:
+1
James E Powell
@Kay:
It was the same pattern with investigations of Bush. It’s strange that they are never afraid of Democrats.
J R in WV
@AnotherBruce:
The call of the Pileated woodpeckers is a scream that would fit into the soundtrack of Jurassic Park. They are small dinosaurs flying in the woods. They need heavily forested woods with old trees infested with bugs. They also tear up trees lying on the ground. They’re pretty common here on our wooded hillsides.
We have a pretty good permanent resident flock of Barred Owls, which will talk with me in the evenings. They’re pretty shy about being close enough to photograph, I’ve never seen one close enough and still enough to photograph. They will fly away from being on the far side of a tree, so the first glimpse you have is them leaving at top speed. Impressive for sure, but impossible for me to take a photo of them.
J R in WV
@Kathleen:
OMG — you can’t be serious!!!//
Of course they did, Barr lied in his teeth about the Mueller report, over and over!!
Kathleen
@J R in WV: I know! I lobbed a big fat slow ball right down the middle LOL!
Miss Bianca
@Captain C:
Yeah, that’s the mentality, all right. Just like with the IRA or any other revolutionary/terrorist movement. I mean, sure, they want to know whether you are prepared to die for their beliefs – but the next big important step that they’re *really* interested in is, “are you willing to KILL for their beliefs?”
The Lodger
@Kristine: Here in Oregon any farm sign over a certain size is either Republican, 2nd Amendment, or “Get US out of the UN.”
The Lodger
@Immanentize: Now I’ll have to be careful where I get my rosemary. Thanks, Imm.
...now I try to be amused
@The Lodger: There is a big “US out of UN!” sign on a property facing Route 15 north of Frederick, MD. It looks like it’s been there a long time.
Kathleen
@…now I try to be amused: “Get US Out of UN” and “Impeach Earl Warren” were very popular billboards when I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s.