Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Let’s finish the job.

Everybody saw this coming.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

In my day, never was longer.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / President Biden / Congratulations, Secretary Haaland!

Congratulations, Secretary Haaland!

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Not gonna lie, I was terrified to post about Secretary Haaland’s confirmation hearings, for fear of jinxing the process. This is legitimately fantastic news!

… Haaland was confirmed by a 51-40 vote, the narrowest margin yet for a Cabinet nomination by President Joe Biden. Four Republicans voted yes: Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Democrats and tribal groups hailed Haaland’s confirmation as historic, saying her selection means that Indigenous people — who lived in North America before the United States was created — will for the first time see a Native American lead the powerful department where decisions on relations with the nearly 600 federally recognized tribes are made. Interior also oversees a host of other issues, including energy development on public lands and waters, national parks and endangered species…

Supporters projected a photo of Haaland, a two-term congresswoman who represents greater Albuquerque, on the side of the Interior building in downtown Washington with text that read “Our Ancestors’ Dreams Come True.”…


From Julian Brave NoiseCat’s Washington Post op-ed last month, “Why Senate Republicans fear Deb Haaland”:

… At her confirmation hearing... Haaland, a tribal citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, introduced herself in her family’s Keres language, which today has only 13,000 speakers. She acknowledged that the land upon which the hearing was taking place once belonged to the Piscataway people — a rebuke of Stuart and the countless politicians and bureaucrats who dedicated themselves to the cause of Indigenous annihilation.

“The historic nature of my confirmation is not lost on me,” she said. Indeed, we have had many interior secretaries with close ties to powerful men in the C-suite and on Capitol Hill. But we have never had an interior secretary who tended to traditional gardens, cooked for pueblo feast days and stood with the Oceti Sakowin Nation at Standing Rock in defense of tribal treaty rights.

Perhaps as a consequence, Haaland’s nomination has proved particularly contentious, as Republican senators, many from Western states, used the hearing to attack, sometimes with remarkable animosity, what they misleadingly portrayed as her extreme views on fossil fuels and national parks.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the senior Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, shouted over Haaland, accusing the congresswoman of wanting to legalize drugs to replace tax revenue from oil and gas. (Haaland backed legalizing and taxing cannabis as a congresswoman, but never advocated doing so instead of taxing fossil fuels.) Montana Sen. Steve Daines — who, like Barrasso, has received more than $1 million in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies — demanded Haaland retract a tweet stating that “Republicans don’t believe in science.” (In 2019, Daines said, “To suggest that [climate change] is human-caused is not a sound scientific conclusion.”)…

What Haaland actually brings — and what the Republican Party seems to consider so dangerous — are experiences and perspectives that have never found representation in the leadership of the executive branch. In fact, Republicans’ depiction of the first Native American ever nominated to the Cabinet as a “radical” threat to a Western “way of life” revealed something about the conservative id: a deep-seated fear that when the dispossessed finally attain a small measure of power, we will turn around and do to them what their governments and ancestors did to us.

This is not, in fact, some sort of continent-size conquest in reverse — but Republicans should fear antagonizing Native American voters…

And now, the work begins…

In October 2019, Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) led a House subcommittee hearing on the effects of anti-government extremism on federal land management officials. The Government Accountability Office had recently documented more than 350 incidents of threats and assaults targeting land management employees between 2013 and 2017.

As the watchdog group noted, even that data did not capture the full picture, in part because not all incidents are reported. Some officials told investigators they “consider receiving threats a normal part of their job.”

Haaland, then in her first congressional term, stressed that these “extremist ideologies did not develop in a vacuum.” She read aloud a quote from former Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) on the 2014 armed standoff between federal agents and militias at Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s ranch, in which Heller praised the militiamen as “patriots.” And she noted that Nevada state Rep. Michele Fiore had supported the armed militants who took control of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016. Fiore, a Republican, dismissed the Bureau of Land Management at the time as “a bureaucratic agency of basically terrorism.”…

Haaland’s ascent comes at a particularly volatile moment, in the wake of a violent Capitol insurrection that included members of many of the same anti-government militia groups that have waged war on the Interior Department. And it comes after four years of the Trump administration, which coddled anti-federal land zealots and prioritized natural resource extraction over all else.

All of this has public land advocates and experts who track far-right groups worried about the risk of armed conflict between federal agencies and anti-government militias…

Reader Interactions

136Comments

  2. 2.

    Butch

    Am I wrong that 40 senators can forget about ever getting the Native American vote again?

  3. 3.

    H.E.Wolf

    Excellent news indeed. My maverick History teacher in high school, who taught a rigorous elective in the history of Native Americans, is out there somewhere, kvelling.

    Thank you to all the people who helped turn out the Democratic vote in 2018 and 2020, to make this possible.

  5. 5.

    Skepticat

    This makes me both happy and hopeful. It’s such a relief to see cabinet officers whose mission is not to destroy the department they oversee.

  7. 7.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Not gonna lie, I was terrified to post about Secretary Haaland’s confirmation hearings, for fear of jinxing the process.

    I am now transferring that anxiety to the confirmation of the three new Democratic members of the US Postal Service board of governors.

    One thing The Former Guy did, is raise our awareness of the importance of the thousands of “boring” political appointees who we never gave a thought to before. Have any jackals ever known the name of the Postmaster General before DeJoy? Let alone knew about the whole Board of Governors thing?​

  9. 9.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    One happy thought this morning: A Native American is now in charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which for some reason is still called the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

    I also relish the idea of the next Cliven Bundy taking on the Interior Department.

  10. 10.

    Geminid

    @Butch: Many of these Republicans live in states with few Native Americans. The two from Oklahoma have greater numbers of Native Americans in their state. But that state is heavily Republican so some dropoff in support may not hurt them. The Native American vote is a factor in Arizona and New Mexico, but those states have Democratic Senators who voted to confirm.

    Both Republicans from Alaska voted to confirm. Alaska’s Native Corporations swing a lot of political weight. Lisa Murkowski’s 2010 write in victory was made possible by strong support from Native Corporations as well as labor unions.

  11. 11.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I am surprised that 4 Republicans crossed over.  Murkowski depends on Native American voters, but in general I think Republicans hate Native Americans even more than they do blacks.  They just haven’t been scared because they feel Native Americans are thoroughly under their thumb.

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Great point: just as wars teach Americans geography, maybe demagogues provide a civics lesson? Let’s not test it again! Anyhoo, I was reading about the nominations last night. Sure hope they get seated so DeJoy can be fired, preferably into the fucking sun. What a smirking, crooked mediocrity he is.

  13. 13.

    cain

    Looking forward to seeing some new policies that will help how we manage our public lands and hopefully some stricter rules and reduce our carbon footprint. Go Madam Secretary Haaland!

  14. 14.

    raven

    I’m glad I retired from this motherfucker:

     

    Former Gov. Sonny Perdue is under serious consideration to lead Georgia’s higher education system, one of the most powerful and influential jobs in state government, five people with direct knowledge of the search told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

    The Republican has not yet formally applied to lead the University System of Georgia, which oversees the state’s public colleges and universities, and officials say the national search will be an open and transparent process. Still, people involved in the search who spoke on condition of anonymity acknowledge the former two-term governor is a strong contender.

  16. 16.

    Phylllis

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I mentioned the PLUM book to my middle school principal a few weeks ago & her initial response was “What?”. To her credit, she got her social studies teachers right on it & they worked up lessons related to it.

  17. 17.

    germy

    GOP politicians who represent extractive industries are outraged by this nomination.

    Can someone explain the non-votes to me, though?   The ones who didn’t vote at all… is that common?

  19. 19.

    germy

    Fox News just ran a segment with white farmers angry about "special benefits to minority farmers"…Fox said they looked for a minority farmer that would talk to them about this and couldn't find any but theyre still looking for one so here's hoping pic.twitter.com/7jUBjyRwH2— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) March 16, 2021

    Conservatives are so stupefied by their Trump wipeout that they’re just recycling their Shirley Sherrod/Pigford playbooks. https://t.co/xth528gXXY— Roy Edroso (@edroso) March 16, 2021

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @germy:  The two CO senators supported Haaland but were stuck in CO by the storm which caused their flight to be canceled. One assumes that, had their votes been needed, Schumer would have rescheduled the vote.

    ETA:  It is not uncommon for a senator to miss a vote on something.  It is also no big deal as long as it doesn’t screw over their leadership.

  24. 24.

    karen marie

    Feels disrespectful to use this as an open thread but thought others might be interested:

    “The Show the Pentagon Couldn’t Stop!” In 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland toured an anti-war comedy show across Southeast Asia. It was directly engaged with and inspired by veterans against the war and, naturally, it upset U.S. military higher-ups. The F.T.A. tour was highly controversial and was a huge success among stationed soldiers. In spite of positive reviews and business, director Francine Parker’s film version was quickly taken out of circulation due to political pressures and has been difficult to see for decades.

    F.T.A. has now been fully restored in 4K by IndieCollect and is preceded by a new video introduction by Academy Award-winning actor and activist Jane Fonda, which provides historical context and explains the impetus that sparked the creation of the F.T.A. troupe.

  26. 26.

    citizen dave

    @raven: National search, right.  WInk wink.  Our former Bush bean counter guy and Gov. Mitch Daniels moved over to Purdue U president, a job then making $400K range (guessing around 500K now).  Seems like he’s been a great president, though, I have to say.  He is a bean counter after all–he held tuition constant for some years.  Every once in a while he violates his pledge not to engage in politics with an insipid WashPo Op-Ed.

    Saw in the WashPo summary that the Republicans have introduced 18 bills relating to climate change.  Looked it up–Hansen’s report was in 1988, which is when the IGCC was created.   So, 1990s–nothing.  2000s–nothing.  2010s–nothing.  Now the R’s are concerned…

  27. 27.

    Soprano2

    @germy: I think all the Democrats who didn’t vote were gone for some reason or other. Sen. Hirono said she was absent due to a family emergency. Some people seemed to believe the two Colorado senators were absent due to getting snowed in. Too bad the Senate doesn’t have distance voting.

  29. 29.

    raven

    @karen marie: Same with the film Winter Soldier, it was shown but not much

     

    WINTER SOLDIER – THE FILM
    Winter Soldier documents the “Winter Soldier Investigation” conducted by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Detroit, Michigan in the winter of 1971. A call went out from VVAW to veterans all over the country saying, in effect, ‘everyone is talking about the war that you know from the inside. If you want to have anything to say about it, come to Detroit and tell it like you saw it.’ At the investigation, over 125 veterans representing every major combat unit to see action in Vietnam, gave eye-witness testimony to war crimes and atrocities they either participated in or witnessed. The purpose of the investigation was to bring to light the nature of American military policy in Vietnam.
    THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
    The Winter Soldier Investigation was held around the time of the trial of Lieutenant William Calley, a trial involving the massacre, by American soldiers, of civilian inhabitants of the village of My Lai. The veterans at the Investigation were attempting to give testimony to the fact that My Lai was not the only time or place where such treatment of the Vietnamese people took place.
    In the winter of 1776, almost two hundred years before, Thomas Paine wrote “These are the time that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Seeing themselves as the “winter soldiers” paraphrasing Thomas Paine, whose battle was, in part, to make their experiences common knowledge to the American and world public, the veterans who came, presented their own personal testimony concerning the commonplace atrocities, supported by documentary photographs often of their own taking.

  30. 30.

    germy

    @karen marie:  Francine Parker’s film version was quickly taken out of circulation due to political pressures and has been difficult to see for decades.

    Cancel Culture!

  32. 32.

    L85NJGT

    That leaves Labor, HHS, US trade rep, SBA, science advisor and OMB for cabinet level positions.

  34. 34.

    germy

    The FBI is facing new scrutiny for its 2018 background check of Brett Kavanaugh, the supreme court justice, after a lawmaker suggested that the investigation may have been “fake”.

    Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator and former prosecutor who serves on the judiciary committee, is calling on the newly-confirmed attorney general, Merrick Garland, to help facilitate “proper oversight” by the Senate into questions about how thoroughly the FBI investigated Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.

    I’n glad Whitehouse is pursuing this, but I’m not sure it’ll go very far.  Maybe I’m wrong.

  35. 35.

    Minstrel Michael

    I was extremely pleased to see the name “Bundy” in this post. Definitely want to see that family prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  36. 36.

    p.a.

    Job 2 for all these folks (job 1 being set an agenda) is ferreting out the tRumpublican, Fed Society moles seeded in their departments.  If they can’t be outright dismissed, put them in charge of building maintenance/landscaping/office supplies.  If that.

  37. 37.

    Geminid

    Deb Haaland was a member of the very talented Democratic House Class of 2018. Maybe ten of these Representatives are well known nationally, but I think we’ll hear a lot more from the others in coming years.

  38. 38.

    RaflW

    It’s great! A native friend of mine has been over the moon the past 24 hours. My partner joked that his entire FB feed yesterday was Alfred posting about Deb!

    Weird and vaguely frustrating that the two CO senators couldn’t vote yes for her because they were unable to fly out of the state because of the epic snowstorm (hello, 21st century? Can you have a word with the Senate about online voting. K’thx). It looked like one other Dem didn’t vote or didn’t vote yes, I haven’t seen who that was. I hope it wasn’t Manchin voting no?!

  39. 39.

    geg6

    This made my heart sing last evening when I first heard it on MSNBC. I have absolutely no Native American blood, so I’m not sure why this hit me so hard (in a good way). But it did and I’m just so happy about this.

  40. 40.

    Jeffro

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: 

    One thing The Former Guy did, is raise our awareness of the importance of the thousands of “boring” political appointees who we never gave a thought to before. Have any jackals ever known the name of the Postmaster General before DeJoy? Let alone knew about the whole Board of Governors thing?

    ​

    No. Between the former moron guy and The Turtle before the moron even showed up, it’s been one fucking rolling civics lesson for about a decade now. I haz had enough (And I used to even LIKE civics…)

  42. 42.

    RaflW

    @germy: We need to know who paid off Kav’s significant debt overhang. That may not be enough to force a resignation (though I feel it potentially should), but a) it has to be investigated to see if there’s potential conflicts that he then must recuse over and b) to put whoever paid in a legal vice.

  45. 45.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @RaflW:

    Couldn’t he just refuse to recuse? I have no idea if he has or not, but he doesn’t seem the type

    Definitely worth pursuing however

  46. 46.

    Geminid

    @RaflW: Manchin voted yes. I credit Balloon Juice for this. Early in the process, Manchin expressed doubts about Haaland. This caused another intense round of Manchin bashing on this forum. The next day he caved, and said he would support Haaland.

  47. 47.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @karen marie:

    There’s a Vietnam vet customer I see every other day. Always wears his leather jacket with patches on it. One of them is Snoopy on top of his dog house in his pilot’s costume. The caption on it says, “Fuck Jane Fonda”

  48. 48.

    randy khan

    My wife works in historic preservation and works with tribes, and she is completely thrilled by Haaland’s confirmation.  Things are gong to be much better with her in place.

  49. 49.

    germy

    @RaflW:

    I always assumed his wealthy parents paid off his debt.  I’m sure it wasn’t the first time they bailed him out.  From what I understand, gifts from family don’t have to be reported.

    I think the bigger issue is all the people who wanted to testify about his behavior, but were ignored by the FBI.

  54. 54.

    Ken

    @Geminid: This caused another intense round of Manchin bashing on this forum. The next day he caved, and said he would support Haaland.

    Balloon Juice must pledge to only use this awesome power for good.  Or evil, whichever way Cole decides.

  56. 56.

    cain

    @citizen dave: ​
    @raven: National search, right. WInk wink. Our former Bush bean counter guy and Gov. Mitch Daniels moved over to Purdue U president, a job then making $400K range (guessing around 500K now). Seems like he’s been a great president, though, I have to say. He is a bean counter after all–he held tuition constant for some years. Every once in a while he violates his pledge not to engage in politics with an insipid WashPo Op-Ed.

     

    I’m a Purdue grad, and my father is a professor at Purdue, so I have strong ties to Purdue. I would say that – he’s been doing good in the role. It’s become of a weird liberal place with transportation and the like. I’m not super crazy about the growth – but most of that was the previous president. The guy who was president when I was in school sucked ass. A medical doctor who I felt was disconnected from the University.

  58. 58.

    cain

    @Minstrel Michael: ​
     

    I was extremely pleased to see the name “Bundy” in this post. Definitely want to see that family prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

    As an Oregonian, I want him to pay for that stunt he did on our lands.

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    Presumably come the special election to fill her House seat the district is a safe D one? Not that she shouldn’t have been nominated, just curious.

  64. 64.

    Humanities Prof

    @germy:  I think one of the front-pagers (Adam, perhaps?) has pointed out that this was much less a case of the FBI ignoring potential witnesses as it was of the FBI being officially forbidden from interviewing them. The “investigation” that they were authorized to conduct had very tight bounds that they were not permitted to exceed. The boundaries imposed were put there to make sure that the FBI couldn’t cast a broad net when investigating the Kavanaugh allegations.

  65. 65.

    Geminid

    @L85NJGT: Yes, Lauren Underwood (IL) and others are getting a lot of good work done, and are starting to get some recognition. Veronica Escobar (TX) got some national news coverage recently for her statements about the situation at the border, a topic about which she is especially knowledgeable.

    Generally, though, these representatives work hard but do not go out of their way to get national news coverage. They do make a point of getting coverage in the local and state media of their districts. So the national media concentrates on a few “stars” from this class, which I think is unfortunate.

  66. 66.

    Citizen Alan

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Thomas and Scalia (/spit!) refused to recuse themselves from Bush v Gore even though their wife and son, respectively, were actively employed by the Bush legal team. Other than impeachment, there are absolutely no ethical limitations on SCOTUS justices.

  68. 68.

    Cacti

    Right wingers lose their shit at anything that represents the normalization of non-white rule in this country.

    It’s why they hated Obama so vehemently.

  69. 69.

    Mo Salad

    I love our increasingly diverse world.

    If you Google “Haaland”, half of the items will be our new Interior Secretary Deb, the other half will be Erling, a 20 year old Norwegian striker playing for Bourussia Dortmund who is tearing up the Champions’ League and will be this summer’s prize transfer target, with all of the major clubs trying to land him.

  70. 70.

    dexwood

    I’ve mentioned before that Deb Haaland is related to my wife. We opened a bottle of bubbly last night to celebrate. Mrs. dexwood asked me to say thank you, Anne, for this post.

  71. 71.

    The Moar You Know

     

    Ammon Bundy refused to wear a mask in court while standing trial for trespassing at the Idaho statehouse last August.

    He’s now been charged with ‘failure to appear

    @germy: And arrested and is sitting in jail right now.

  72. 72.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m glad to have this confirmed, as I was one of the CO voters who went, “wait, WHUT?!” when I saw they hadn’t voted.

    Then again, I’m all like, “yo, dudes, you knew there was a heavy snowstorm coming, why the fuck didn’t you just stay in DC over the weekend?”

  73. 73.

    Miss Bianca

    @karen marie: Interesting that even after all these years, Jane Fonda is still “Hanoi Jane” to a sizable if shrinking portion of the population, while Donald Sutherland is uncritically revered as a Hollywood Icon. I had no idea he’d even been involved in a production like this.

  74. 74.

    The Moar You Know

    There’s a Vietnam vet customer I see every other day. Always wears his leather jacket with patches on it. One of them is Snoopy on top of his dog house in his pilot’s costume. The caption on it says, “Fuck Jane Fonda”

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  Both my father and father in law fought there (both combat pilots).  They’re both now registered Dems and pretty liberal by their standards (and reasonable people by mine).  I think either one of them would not hesitate to shoot her on the spot if they got a chance to.  What she pulled over there was pretty fucking unforgivable.

  77. 77.

    VeniceRiley

    @Mo Salad: I hope Man City gets Haaland. His father played for City, and a Man United player ended his career on purpose. Does any other club have the money for him?

  78. 78.

    raven

    @The Moar You Know: What “she pulled over there” was she got sandbagged by the NVA

    Here is my best, honest recollection of what took place. Someone (I don’t remember who) leads me toward the gun, and I sit down, still laughing, still applauding. It all has nothing to do with where I am sitting. I hardly even think about where I am sitting. The cameras flash. I get up, and as I start to walk back to the car with the translator, the implication of what has just happened hits me. Oh, my God. It’s going to look like I was trying to shoot down U.S. planes! I plead with him, “You have to be sure those photographs are not published. Please, you can’t let them be published.” I am assured it will be taken care of. I don’t know what else to do. It is possible that the Vietnamese had it all planned. I will never know. If they did, can I really blame them? The buck stops here. If I was used, I allowed it to happen. It was my mistake, and I have paid and continue to pay a heavy price for it.

    Nearly a half-century later, some veterans still aren’t pleased with Fonda’s actions in 1972. In 2015, about 50 veterans protested her appearance at the Weinberg Center for the Arts in Frederick, Md., holding signs that said, “Forgive? Maybe. Forget? Never.”

  79. 79.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mo Salad:
    I remember Erling Haaland’s dad Alf Inge playing for Manchester City and getting beaten up by Man United’s Irish lunatic Roy Keane in a league derby.

  80. 80.

    Mike in NC

    Pretty disgusting that only four Republican senators voted for such a qualified nominee. Seems like they’re too addicted to raking in the easy money from corrupt lobbyists, especially if they’re from western states.

  83. 83.

    germy

    Incoming Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks publicly for the first time since her confirmation.

    To supporters she says: "I promise I will be fierce for everyone, for public lands, and for all of our communities. Thank you all so much. Again, I love every single one of you." pic.twitter.com/q8D4fYUxbu

    — Indian Country Today (@IndianCountry) March 15, 2021

    Elections have consequences.

  86. 86.

    Soprano2

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There’s a Vietnam vet customer I see every other day. Always wears his leather jacket with patches on it. One of them is Snoopy on top of his dog house in his pilot’s costume. The caption on it says, “Fuck Jane Fonda”

    My husband is relatively liberal, but he HATES Jane Fonda. Won’t watch anything she’s on, doesn’t even want to hear her name.  He was in Vietnam in 1967-1968; he says she’s a traitor.

  89. 89.

    Ken

    @Martin: “We are certain that Justice Kavanaugh welcomes this chance to clear his name and dispel the rumors which have been circulating. We anticipate his full cooperation with all aspects of the investigation.”

    Not up there with the Doctor’s “Don’t you think she looks tired?” but I’d still like to hear it.

  90. 90.

    Amir Khalid

    @VeniceRiley:
    Maybe PSG or Barca or Real, if Dortmund are willing to sell. Liverpool won’t pay top dollar for a striker, given the ones they already have. I’ve heard Erling wants to play for Leeds United, the club of his birthplace — Alfie was playing there when he was born.

  91. 91.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Timurid: Hi there. This totally OT but I was wondering what your opinion of Audrey Truschke was. How respected is she in her research area?

    She is Twitter famous for her feuds with Modi bhakts and no one deserves what they dish out. But I was wondering what people working in the field think of her.

    Thanks.

  95. 95.

    Roger Moore

    @Amir Khalid: ​
     

    You are right. It’s long past time to rename it the Bureau of Native Affairs.

    Except that a lot of them prefer “Indian” to “Native American” as the generic term, which is something we ought to take into consideration. I personally prefer the Canadian “First Nations” to either.

  96. 96.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Frankensteinbeck: Anti-Native racism in the Plains and Rocky Mountain states is intense in a way coastal people hardly even recognize. All over, of course, we do the dumb stereotyping things, treat them as vanished fantasy creatures with colorful headdresses rather than real people, etc. But out there the whites just fucking hate Native Americans.

  98. 98.

    J R in WV

    @Betty Cracker: ​

     

    …Sure hope they get seated so DeJoy can be fired, preferably into the fucking sun. What a smirking, crooked mediocrity he is.

    Actually, I suspect Dejoy is pretty competent at executing the job he was hired to do. He was NOT hired to improve the service of of the Post Office, for example, and thus has succeeded at that part of his mission.

    Kind of, in a shitty way. So maybe not a shitty mediocrity?

    ===========================================

    OT: Just got a phone call from the local rural Primary Care Center, with an appointment for our second injection of Moderna Sars-2-Covid-19 vaccine on Thursday.

    This time will be a drive thru, while the first time was an indoor shot clinic. Weather improvement pretty serious in the past 4 weeks, from late February into late March. Pretty sweet phone call. Daffydills in bloom, other spring flowers as well.

    Also, Wife’s final post-cataract surgery follow-up was yesterday, her right eye is perfect, her left eye is close enough he declined to attempt to prescribe correction. She will be using +1.25 di-opter readers for close work. The Doc was pretty tickled…

    A good week for us! Wife’s eyes have been a challenge all her life, no more, though.

  100. 100.

    Betty Cracker

    @The Moar You Know: I have an uncle (Vietnam vet) who also feels that way about Jane Fonda, and that dumb grudge is one of the many reasons I regard him as a belligerent fool.

    Fonda apologized for allowing herself to be used for propaganda purposes years ago, but you know what? She was right about that fucking war. And IMO, she’s done more over the subsequent decades to promote peace and justice on the planet than every whiny bastard who slags her 50 years after the Vietnam incident — again, for which she apologized — combined.

    To paraphrase Thers, I wish the Pentagon would rename one of the Confederate general-memorializing military bases “Fort Jane Fonda” just so dumbasses like my uncle would lose their entire shit.

  101. 101.

    WaterGirl

    @Humanities Prof: That is true, but the FBI didn’t have to be a willing participant.

    It seems to me that they could have made an announcement of just how limited their boundaries were and included a caveat that with so little information at their disposal, they really couldn’t come to any conclusions.

  103. 103.

    Roger Moore

    @germy: ​
     

    I’n glad Whitehouse is pursuing this, but I’m not sure it’ll go very far.

    I doubt they’ll be able to get anything on Kavanaugh (or that they’d be able to do anything about him if they did), but they do need to find out if the investigation was carried out properly and punish those responsible if it wasn’t.

  104. 104.

    The Moar You Know

    @Betty Cracker: Sometimes we do shit that ends up being unforgiveable to someone and no matter how much you’d like to take it back or say you’re sorry, it’s not enough.  I have.  I think all of us have at one point or another.

    So, I get (and frankly agree) with what you’re saying, but if you were an aviator over there, I totally get why that was a step too far, and there’s nothing she can do to make it OK for those folks.  Or their families.

    Hard way to learn a lesson.

  105. 105.

    Mo Salad

    @Amir Khalid: This was where I was going with my “Sell Firmino and Salah” play. They will be aging out in the next couple of years and we could still get 130-175 million Euros for them.  Haaland’s buyout clause with Dortmund is only 75 million. The difference could be applied getting another centerback or some wage bumps.

    Evolving Mane/Salah/Firmino into Mane/Jota/Haaland and diversifying the ages as opposed to having a front line all born within 10 months of each other is my thought. They’ll all be 29 this summer. Still time to get premium transfer fees for them, as opposed to riding them all out until 2023 or 2024 and having them all fade at the same time.

  106. 106.

    raven

    @The Moar You Know:  It’s stupid for me even to engage in a conversation about it. I started by saying they would never change their minds and they won’t. Fuck It and Drive On.

  107. 107.

    citizen dave

    @Betty Cracker: My wife (and me) are big fans of Jane Fonda the person.  I was wondering about an alternative view and you captured it.  Anyway, thought I’d mention the great life documentary film on her.

    Not to be too crude, but it’s good that not one of the vets who hold the grudge ever did anything (beyond harassment, I seem to remember some B&E at her house, etc.) violent.  I mean, over 50 years it’s not like it would have been hard to track her down if that was your thing.  She was doing regularly-scheduled climate change protests in DC for a while.

  108. 108.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Betty Cracker: These long-term grudges aren’t necessarily rational, especially the ones that last for generations. As a nation we seem to have forgiven Germany and Japan for WW2 (though I’m not sure whether Koreans and Chinese feel totally friendly toward Japanese).

    Yet once in a dentist chair I casually mentioned an upcoming trip to France, dentist chair conversation, and the dentist (a Jewish guy born 30 years at least after the war) started foaming at the mouth about the “rat bastard collaborators”.

    Southerners in the US harbor resentments going back to the 1860s.

    Once I asked my Greek-American sister-in-law what exactly the Greeks had against the Turks, and she went off on a rant about the terrible things they had done 400 years ago. And she was freshly mad about it, as if it happened to her personally last week.

    And though I shake my head at these kinds of grudges, I’m not immune. I will react for instance if you mention the name Pancho Villa (murdering bandit <spit>). And I don’t know that much about the history of the Mexican revolution or his part in it, other than that one part of my family fled Mexico because of the murdering bandit <spit>.

  109. 109.

    Soprano2

    @The Moar You Know: Sometimes we do shit that ends up being unforgiveable to someone and no matter how much you’d like to take it back or say you’re sorry, it’s not enough.  I have.  I think all of us have at one point or another.

    Planet Money did an episode about how soldiers from WWII have a bad feeling about the Red Cross because they proposed for a few days to charge soldiers a couple of pennies for donuts that had previously been free. They never did it, they just proposed doing it, but in the podcast you heard a lot about how to this day a lot of people in the military have a grudge against them! It’s not logical.

  110. 110.

    Soprano2

    @raven: It’s stupid for me even to engage in a conversation about it. I started by saying they would never change their minds and they won’t. Fuck It and Drive On.

    I’ve learned not to talk to my husband about it – the hatred isn’t rational, but it’s real and deep.

  111. 111.

    Cacti

    @Betty Cracker: Fonda apologized for allowing herself to be used for propaganda purposes years ago, but you know what? She was right about that fucking war

    No, she wasn’t.

    One of the things I will miss least about the Baby Boom generation when it’s gone is the endless Vietnam psychodrama.

  112. 112.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @Betty Cracker: ​ 

    Sure hope they get seated so DeJoy can be fired, preferably into the fucking sun. What a smirking, crooked mediocrity he is.

    Just like the shitgibbon who hired him.

  115. 115.

    Cacti

    @raven: 

    Thanks for confirming my point.

    Blah blah blah Vietnam this, Woodstock that, Summer of Love this, Hippies that. It’s so fucking tedious.

  116. 116.

    Cacti

    @raven: I actually misspoke on that answer.  Fonda was right about Vietnam.

    Insensitive towards the circumstances of the American prisoners, but correct on the merits nonetheless.

  118. 118.

    J R in WV

    @Cacti:

    I’m just one more Vietnam-era veteran who agrees with Raven and Fonda about that hopeless commercial illegal war over French colonial ownership of a nation 1,500 years older than France.

    Vietnamese freedom fighters asked for our support in their war against France, which they had pretty much won, and got shown the door post-haste. These freedom fighters, incidently, fought with us against the Imperial Japanese Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere, before we showed them to the back door, as thanks for their effort against Japan in WW II.

    Fuck LBJ, and Tricky Dick Nixon also too!!

    I agree with you (Cacti) about Fonda’s insensitivity towards the prisoners, for which she apologized, and I understand some veterans undying hatred for her, even though she was trying to save their lives by ending the war.

  120. 120.

    germy

    1851: Interior Sec. Alexander H. H. Stuart says "the only alternatives left are to civilize or exterminate" Native Americans

    2021: Deb Haaland confirmed to lead Interior, becoming first Native American Cabinet Secretary in U.S. history.

    It took 170 years to bend that arc.

    — Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) March 15, 2021

  121. 121.

    Raven

    @J R in WV:

    I alert you first to a very good Web site run by an American Legion post in Arizona. The address is http://www.post44.org/misc/fonda.html. From that site it’s also possible to email the POWs who have become part of the stories and ask them what happened.

    To wit: Although Fonda did go to Hanoi, participated in a staged press conference with American POWs and posed for some regrettable pictures, she did not — I repeat did not — turn in the names of American POWs to the North Vietnamese military. There was no passing of pieces of crumpled paper from Americans to her. Her main speech, the text of which follows, simply describes her observations of the North Vietnamese people as fellow human beings.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @stinger: When I was growing up, I thought the English were the fine, cultured people I saw on Masterpiece Theatre. As an adult, I met Irish Americans who had a very different take. I’ve read enough history now to appreciate the Irish point of view. But I attribute responsibility for the damage done by the English to their rapacious upper class.

    Right now I am rereading The Deadly Embrace (1988), by Anthony Read and David Fisher. The book’s subject is the genesis of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact that set the stage for the Second World War. One of the many striking aspects of this story is that British Conservative leaders were willing to enable Hitler’s war machine, so long as he would attack East instead of West. Fittingly, the British people threw the Tories out as soon as the war ended.

    The Conservatives are back in power, but the war they helped start bankrupted England as an international power. Now the only people the Tories can exploit are their own countrymen.

  125. 125.

    Geminid

    @raven: Ms. Cat and I have talked about the British. We may have fallen out, though, over notorious political scientist Rachel Bitecofer.

    You might possibly be interested in a book I saw reviewed in yesterday’s Washington Post. Written by Elizabeth Becker, You Don’t Belong Here follows the Vietnam experiences  of Australian reporter Kate Webb, French photographer Catherine Leroy, and American reporter Frances Fitzgerald, who wrote Fire in the Lake. Becker herself reported from Vietnam and Cambodia, and was later called as an expert witness at the Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal in Phnom Penh.

  129. 129.

    Geminid

    @schrodingers_cat: I was being tongue in cheek, and I hope you do not take me seriously on this score.

    My Bitecoferianism does rub another commenter the wrong way. But he wants to help, and gave me some almost fatherly advice to that end.

  133. 133.

    raven

    @Geminid: Yea, Fire in the Lake was one of the first books I read about Vietnam and gave me a great idea of how little being there for a year meant.

  135. 135.

    JAFD

    In another good promotion:
    “Gov. Phil Murphy announced Monday he will nominate a civil rights attorney and former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to become the newest justice on New Jersey’s Supreme Court.
    Rachel Wainer Apter, 40, director of the state Division of Civil Rights and formerly an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, was fittingly introduced during a ceremony at Rutgers-Newark’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hall — on what would have been Ginsburg’s 88th birthday. Ginsburg was once a law professor at the school.”
    https://www.nj.com/politics/2021/03/murphy-to-pick-civil-rights-attorney-former-ruth-bader-ginsburg-clerk-to-join-nj-supreme-court.html

  136. 136.

    way2blue

    I am so excited to have Deb Haaland at the helm of the Dep’t of Interior.  Sweet.  Having spent my professional career at an agency under DOI, I look forward to the fresh approach she will bring to managing public & tribal lands.  (This confirmation yesterday and Kamala Harris’ swearing in on Jan 20th both squeezed my heart more than I anticipated…  )

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