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Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

T R E 4 5 O N

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

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The willow is too close to the house.

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

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Come on, man.

This fight is for everything.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Saturday Morning Open Thread: I’m Beginning to Blame Their Parents

Saturday Morning Open Thread: I’m Beginning to Blame Their Parents

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I can only imagine that some peoples’ parents foolishly indulged their every childish tantrum. Unfortunately, the GOP Death Cult response to I DON’T WANT WHAT YOU’RE SERVING will never be ‘Well, guess we’ll have to fix Junior a special serving of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets’ or even ‘There’s cereal in the kitchen.’

So, of course, these pampered adult babies don’t blame the Republicans responsible — they whine at Nonna Pelosi, because it’s much easier to whine at Democrats than to negotiate with sociopaths…

But there is good news out of DC, too!

Neera Tanden was named the next White House staff secretary on Friday morning, putting her in the nerve center of the building charged with overseeing the paper flow for President Biden, according to a White House official briefed on the move.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain announced the move in a morning staff call. Tanden has been working for Biden since May and will also retain her current title of White House senior adviser, which has allowed her to advise the president on a wide range of issues, the person said…

The staff secretary, who reports to the chief of staff, traditionally plays the role of both traffic cop and honest broker in the White House, with control over the documents that make it to the president, whether they be briefing books or decision memos laying out the arguments on major decisions…

Biden nominated Tanden last year to become his director of the Office of Management and Budget, but the White House withdrew her nomination in March after it became clear that she lacked the votes to get Senate confirmation. Multiple lawmakers, including Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), objected to partisan comments she had previously made on social media…

Tanden previously served as a senior adviser for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services and a policy adviser to the 2008 presidential campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

In the current White House, Tanden has helped lead the external political effort to pass the Biden economic agenda. She has also been overseeing a review of the U.S. Digital Service, a group of technologists who design and maintain the federal government’s technology infrastructure.

I laughed out loud, not gonna lie…


The NYTimes, predictably poor-mouthing its butthurt:

… During the four years of President Donald Trump’s administration, Ms. Tanden fashioned herself as a fierce and outspoken liberal critic of the administration and lawmakers — in both parties — who she felt were not adequately supportive of the causes she believed in.

On Twitter, she often expressed her views with unsparing language. Once she was nominated to lead the budget office, those comments proved challenging to explain away…

In February, a spokesman for Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, said it would be “hard to return to comity and respect with a nominee who has issued a thousand mean tweets.”…

The Grey Lady’s unofficial motto: If it weren’t for hypocrisy, we’d have no ethos at all!

Reader Interactions

186Comments

  1. 1.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Youngkin is going to win Virginia based on the votes of suburban white women, isn’t he?

  3. 3.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Also, too, I’m wondering if Baldwin wasn’t set up by a Trumpist scab (IATSE had been run off the set) who put a genuine bullet in a prop gun? That whatever projectile passed through the dead woman and injured another person is mighty suspect.

  5. 5.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud: Oh, I could go on and on and on and on about the voting habits of suburban white women.

  6. 6.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Survey

    I’m getting ready to go to the author fair at the Schaumburg Library. I have three of those clear plastic display thingies. I have stuff in two of them. What shall I put in the third?

    A. some reviews of my books

    or

    B. a sign that says FREE BOOKMARKS

    ETA: Also, my washing machine just quit.

  7. 7.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Jeffro:

    My suspicion is that they’re nastier and even more racist than the awful men in their lives – they’re just not as prone to do YouTube rants about it in a truck, wearing Oakleys.

  8. 8.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Since we are doing open threads, they were talking about Sir Edmund Verney, who was a Royalist during the English Civil War noted for his refusal to carry weapons into battle. This was became Sr Edmund’s son was on the other side and he wasn’t going to kill his own child. So something to bring up when some twatwaffles wanks on about a civil war now, kill your own children.

  9. 9.

    sab

    Well there goes Manchin’s vote. He has a grudge against Tanden who badmouthed Manchin’s daughter’s epipen activities.

    I have a niece-in-law who needs epipens. Go Tanden.

  11. 11.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Vaccine refusal is a form of killing your children–along with everyone else, including yourself.

    I can’t understand MAGA folks at all. I’ve given up trying on the grounds that I don’t care what they think, only what they do. And what they do seems to be affected only by force. Sometimes the force is as mild as a mandate. Sometimes it’s jail. When school integration was enforced it took the National Guard.

  12. 12.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I have another suspicion as to why DOJ seems to be moving at a snail’s pace on everything:

    1. Trumpist leave behinds gumming up gears.

    2. Careerists anticipating administration shifts and not wanting to be caught in any future career limiting conservative media maelstrom.

    Were I to ever collect a terminal cancer diagnosis, some things….

  14. 14.

    Joe Falco

    “hard to return to comity and respect with a nominee who has issued a thousand mean tweets.”

    You’re right, Mittens. She should have issued a thousand more about you lily-livered waste of space Republicans.

  18. 18.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Because no one talks about suburban white men. We have two categories- white working class men and (possibly turncoat) suburban white women.

    No one talks about white working class women, either. Only the men.

  19. 19.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    I get your point, but it generally depends on the “where” as to that cross tab. In south and mid-south collar areas, they’re simply awful, and pretty well devoid of empathy. While their terrible men at least have the theoretical power to be able to advance, they are far more limited and do incredible damage to themselves and their daughters.

  20. 20.

    Nicole

    @Kay:

    Sort of interesting you don’t focus on suburban white men though, considering they’re majority Republican.

    Well, you know, boys will be boys.  So that’s okay.  And if it’s not, blame their mothers.

  22. 22.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    Suburban white men and “working class” white men are truly a lost cause. Most efforts directed at helping them yield returns so piddling as to be not worth it, because for them, the cruelty is the point.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    Mentioned as people who liked Downton Abbey might want to check it out as a depiction of the non-upper crust.

    Noticed the British series The Village (itself an adaptation of the decades-spanning German show Heimat) is on Prime (and also Tubi, the Roku channel and Britbox). Has its flaws – a penchant for wiggling its toes in soppy melodrama and oversalivating (IMHO) on who is sleeping with whom, yet still manages to be compelling as the two seasons which were completed (12 episodes in total) unfold to follow residents of a piece of rural Derbyshire from the lead up to WW1 on into the roaring 20s. Period detail is spot on.

  28. 28.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Nicole:

    Nah – I blame the toxic legacy of Jean Calvin and the ridiculous, pervasive bullshit of Borderer culture, which is deeply flawed.

  32. 32.

    Baud

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    See, this is a dumb take.  Our goal is not to win the majority of any particular demographic. It’s to win a majority of all demographics combined.  We have no shot of winning the rural vote either, but if there were a way to get even a 5% improvement, the GOP would be in trouble.

  34. 34.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: I’m guessing it was a head on shot of him shooting a gun straight into the camera . The director of photography is nearly always around the camera.

  39. 39.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @raven:

    It was rehearsal, and a lot of angles involve pointing toward the camera. They’d been having significant safety problems from short cuts as had been complained about by the union, and they’d been run off the set a half day before, replaced by scabs. An assistant producer thought the pistol was empty and pronounced it “cold” (unloaded) when it was handed to Baldwin (there’s a whole protocol on safety with live firing of prop weapons). A projectile passed through the cinematographer and then injured the person behind her.

    Looks like the set armorer was a nepotism hire, 24 years old. There’s supposed to be a two sets of eyeballs check on whether something is loaded, which clearly didn’t happen.

  41. 41.

    Nicole

    @raven:

    Whatever it was what the fuck is he doing pointing and firing a weapon at the director of photography?

    It’s possible (and I say possible because oodles of information is still not out about what happened) that they were rehearsing a shot where the gun was to be fired facing the camera, which is why the director and DP would have been in range.  That said, there should have been a protective barrier (among other things) and it sure sounds like this low-budget production was cutting corners.

    The showrunner of Mare of Eastwood talked about how all the gunfire on that was CGI, and while it certainly looks less realistic than the actual thing, it’s a tradeoff they feel all TV shows and movies should make.  I agree.  Far safer to train actors how to act a recoil, and if the flash looks fake, who cares?  IT’S ENTERTAINMENT; IT’S ALL FAKE.

  42. 42.

    Starfish

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    This was an interesting thread by someone who does armory on movie sets that you might like.

    A lot of people are messaging me about yesterday’s tragedy that was an on-set firearms death (because I am a film armorer, for those who don’t know).

    As both a human and a professional, it is extremely upsetting. My thoughts are with Halyna Hutchins’ loved ones
    — SL Huang 黄士芬 (@sl_huang) October 23, 2021

  44. 44.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @raven:

    This is what bugs me – previous accidents regarding prop weapons have been freaks – usually debris. I’ve not seen one where debris passed through a person and into another.

    Thats why I’m thinking that somebody put a genuine bullet in to set up Baldwin – likely one of the scabs.

  49. 49.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Can’t say based on that alone. It occurred to me that someone may have spiked the gun for reasons beyond my comprehension. I learned many years ago that even a gun with blanks can kill when an official at a track meet accidentally killed a bystander. (head injuries)

    In my mind the lesson here is still, never point a gun at another person, and the gun is always loaded.

  51. 51.

    Quinerly

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: 
    One year out here (l’m in Santa Fe presently, but downtown) I rented for a month near Bonanza Creek (in fact, earlier this week l drove by to see what was being filmed and to visit with friends). Over the years have met many people who live out that way and have been extras in films and/or provided horses for films… (One of my besties helped Mark Harmon with his riding for Wyatt Earpe and then rode with him for pleasure on his days off). Anyway, that circle of friends can’t fathom how this happened. So many restrictions and rules in place. It will all come out. No one who has worked on these movies even is daring to speculate.

  53. 53.

    Another Scott

    I'm embarrassed to say it took me a while to see the endgame of institutional GOP support for the antivax movement, but it's obvious to me now that it's about deregulation and removing administrative barriers to corporate profits, the same motivations they've had my entire life. https://t.co/xfJk8Hfd6D

    — Respectable Lawyer (@RespectableLaw) October 23, 2021

    That’s a big part of it, sure. MotUs always want to be outside the rules, except for the rules that protect their status. (Insert Frank Wilhoit’s aphorism here.)

    (via LOLGOP)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  61. 61.

    lowtechcyclist

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    In my mind the lesson here is still, never point a gun at another person, and the gun is always loaded.

    This.  I’m pretty much an ignoramus about guns, but this is basic firearms safety, is it not?

  62. 62.

    debbie

    @debbie:

    If there was time, I’d maybe put the reviews in a binder for people to flip through and then “advertise” the bookmarks.

  70. 70.

    NorthLeft12

    I never realized that Mitt Romney had such a dry and sarcastic wit.

    Either that or he is completely fucking delusional.

  72. 72.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Good morning, folks. Here are my thoughts on the upcoming The Batman. Spoiler alert: This Batman is more insane than the bad guys. Sigh. I miss the days of the Denny O”Neill/Neal Adams Batman comics.

  73. 73.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:  The “yes” was bad, Baud.  Unless you know something not apparent to me.

    I would love to see Redshift weigh in on this.  Ask him, when you all see him.

    I don’t get where we can disparage vast swaths of fellow American voters.  “White suburban women” is also the engine for Democratic candidates.

    I see what is put up on this blog, and I often think “you would never get away about saying that about people of color or anyone considered to be a minority.”

    Slagging white women and dividing them:  who does that benefit?  Who might have started that shit??

    Why don’t you naysayers make some calls into Virginia to likely voters?  There is no shortage of apps that will let you do so.

  74. 74.

    Groucho48

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    From what I’ve read, most of the crew was away from the set, with a few around, fiddling with cameras and mics and such. Baldwin was practicing drawing the gun from its holster when it went off.

  75. 75.

    debbie

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I apologize if I have come off as pushy. I probably have too many national book conventions in my blood to scale down to a smaller size. I know whatever you do will be fine.

  76. 76.

    Josie

    @raven: Exactly.  My guess is that, in the interest of saving money, people in certain positions were hired who were not using proper protocols and caused a massive screw up.  Always follow the money.

  77. 77.

    Quinerly

    @Starfish: my friend l mention above who has been around that area 50 years and has been on a lot of sets as an extra or with her horses is mystified. She and I met BJ’s Cheryl Rofer for a late lunch yesterday and it became a topic of conversation. My friend even knows the people involved in making the realistic fake guns used on sets….how they are made, so much lighter, etc. Like I said, pretty much everyone in my circle out here is talking about it. Had the pleasure of meeting my friend’s friend, Cathy Smith, yesterday. We were in Nambe where Cathy is. Cathy got her start researching and designing the costumes for Dances with Wolves. Was at her place before lunch. Both she and her daughter who is also in the business can’t fathom how it happened. Very prickly about any speculation.

    As an aside, if you want some interesting, uplifting reads about a successful, self made, brilliant woman, Google Cathy Smith and Nambe Trading Post. Several articles on her background and wonderful story. I was in awe of her abilities and her costumes yesterday. First Emmy award l have ever seen in person. ?

  83. 83.

    debbie

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    That kind of Batman sadly seems pretty representative of where we are today.

    Maybe I’m getting too old, but I’m more excited about the new Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch.

  85. 85.

    Geminid

    @Baud: My prediction: former President Barak Obama will speak at a McAuliffe rally in Richmond this afternoon, and he will be very good.

  86. 86.

    The Thin Black Duke

    When the safety of working-class heroes isn’t a priority, bad things happen, it doesn’t matter if it’s at a film set or a McDonald’s. Paranoid as I am on occasion, I don’t think we need to put on the tinfoil hats this time.

  90. 90.

    debbie

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    No, especially when all I’m interested in is how they depict the sandworms!

    The only reason I’m handling longer movies now is by watching them on DVDs so I can take breaks without missing anything.

  91. 91.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @debbie: The French Dispatch is a movie for grownups about real people living in the real world struggling with real problems. The Batman is another cinematic revenge fantasy circle jerk for pissed-off adolescents.

  93. 93.

    Elizabelle

    @Another Scott:   Thank you.  Those were informative articles.

    I hope Terry Mc wins by a lot more than 50.5%.  Especially in these days of “fake news” and “stolen elections.”

    Pressing people to vote early, in person.  Bank it, and you put your ballot through the scanner yourself.

    One small complication:  this year’s absentee ballots require a witness’s signature.  Some voters are sending them in without.  Which means each voter has to be contacted, to “cure” (in this case have a witness sign) that ballot so it can be counted.

    I don’t know how prevalent that problem is, but you’re always chasing down some absentee and provisional ballot voters.

  98. 98.

    Geminid

    @Elizabelle: I have heard there are a lot of unwitnessed absentee ballots. The witness requirement was suspended last year as an emergency measure because of Covid. It was reinstated for this year’s election, but evidently a lot of people did not get the message.

  101. 101.

    artem1s

    interesting that ‘you get nothing’ statement coming from Nancy Smash.  She typically plays her cards pretty close to the vest, unless she knows she has the votes or some sort of leverage.  Does she know there are GQPers who are so desperate to get some of that stimulus money that they are willing to break ranks with the MAGAts? They didn’t have to pay any political price for boasting about getting money the Dems brought in the last time around. Have they finally realized the can vote for the bill, tell bald face lies about their votes on the floor, use the stimulus money to get re-elected, and McConnell would have absolutely no way to punish them for breaking ranks?  I’m pretty sure Cheney would have no problem talking pressuring her caucus on the Senate side into doing this. It was far more typical of the Old Guard GOP (Bush Crime Family Cronies) to reluctantly vote for a pork barrel bill to get a particular part passed for their state and then spend the campaign season promising to overturn the parts they didn’t really want in there. It was a twofer strategy that both sides used to employ to get the sausage made – back when there were two sane parties.

    There is a pretty good upside for her too. She gets to look like a leader that can negate the crazy side of the party, and keep the WallStreet guys happy.  They will continue posturing about the deficit, but they have to know at this point that their stock prices would skyrocket if this gets passed. They have demonstrated pretty well that they don’t really give a shit about deficits.  They need an actual infrastructure boom economy to prop up Wallstreet before the inevitable correction (and when their Fuckerberg portfolios tank).

  104. 104.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Thavolia Glymph’s Out of the House of Bondage shows this rather well with accounts and letters from Southern plantations during Slavery.  In many cases, it was the White women who demanded the harshest punishments and acted the most petty and cruel to the house slaves.  Karens before there was a Karen concept.

  105. 105.

    Another Scott

    @Elizabelle: Yes, the extra signature requirement was waived earlier in the pandemic, so some may think it is still waived.  I hope that it ultimately doesn’t affect enough votes to matter, but it needs to be fixed (the witness requirement is bogus).

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  108. 108.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @debbie: Wes Anderson is an acquired taste for sure, but I like the flavor. And I admire his unapologetic commitment to his vision, and his refusal to fit into a predetermined slot. Hollywood needs more auteurs like Anderson.

  109. 109.

    Ken

    @Groucho48: practicing drawing the gun from its holster when it went off

    You do see that in the news a lot. Though usually it’s a Florida man, and he’s managed to shoot himself in the dick.

  110. 110.

    Starfish

    @Another Scott: This is not as comforting as you think it is. There were piles and piles of cash burned in the last election on U.S. Senate candidates that did not have a snowball’s chance. Would that money have been better spent on down ballot races than stuffed into candidates that had not a chance and plenty of cash on hand? Probably.

  111. 111.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @germy: The brother keeps working. Wright reminds me of the veteran baseball player who doesn’t hit grand slams, but reliably gets on base.

  113. 113.

    J R in WV

    @raven:

    It “went off” when he pulled the trigger.

    That is how it is supposed to work.

    I wonder if it was a Glock, home of “safety free pistols are us!” which appear to go off by accident more often than more typical pistols. I won’t have Glocks around at all on that account.

    Not going to speculate, there should be plenty of facts, no speculation needed. I Hope so anyway!

    ETA: Wife was talking about scabs last night… hard not to wonder if someone with nearly no experience replacing an experienced union safety leader… and now I”m speculating again… sorry!

  115. 115.

    mrmoshpotato

    So, of course, these pampered adult babies don’t blame the Republicans responsible — they whine at Nonna Pelosi, because it’s much easier to whine at Democrats than to negotiate with sociopaths…

    But both sides are equally as bad!  Just ask Upchuck Toddler!  (Speaking of pampered adult babies…)

  116. 116.

    Kay

    Went to the ftf training for poll workers this morning. This is a 65% Trump county and the difference between the training I took in ’06 and the pollworkers then and the training now and the pollworkers now was really stark.

    The entire focus was on fraud. Nothing at all about serving voters, nothing at all about an efficient process or a friendly and welcoming process. Nearly every question from pollworkers was about fraud. Could a voter theoretically scan a ballot twice? Could the ID scanner be “connected the internet” and therefore corrupted? How do we know people who ask for a curbside ballot are actually disabled? What if they’re lying?  The presenter mentioned TWICE that he’s trying to avoid “calls about fraud”. He also said that although Ohio law forbids wearing campaign swag inside a polling place, it may not be “worth” asking the person to take their “hat” off – not hard to figure out what that’s about!  The coddling of angry conservatves continue- we may no longer require that they follow polling place rules, lest they get mad and I don’t know, attack someone.

    They’ve taken this from a “presumptively yes” process to a “presumptively no” process, where pollworkers are being trained to essentially look for a way to say “no”. Just poisoned.

    I’m glad I went to see it, but they’ve really turned what used to be a positive, civic minded “service oriented”  process into a paranoid, nasty process. It’s a shame. I hope this is exclusive to red counties.

  118. 118.

    Barbara

    @J R in WV: The moral of the story is that you always have to assume a gun might be loaded. I witnessed several horrible accidents and near accidents when I was in high school. Never point a gun at a person as you pull the trigger. This is a terrible tragedy whether it was totally accidental or not.

  122. 122.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @germy: It’s like they assume the other side is cheating, so they have to do it as a defensive measure. Maybe that’s even why they assume it.

    ETA: Another way to put this that we often judge what other people would do by what we would do. So all these cries about cheating are what they would do.

    EETA: Or what Barbara said below.

  123. 123.

    Barbara

    @germy: Projection is the answer to  nearly any question about conservative grievance politics sort of like vinegar is the answer to just about any question about household dirt.

  124. 124.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Elizabelle: Suburban White women have a long history of not voting the right way.  They are part of the reason we are in this mess to begin with, and only started voting D in the last few years.  Hopefully they will continue to do so, but we really don’t know how stable that voting group is gonna be yet.  People (especially people of color) have every right to be dubious about them.  It takes more than just a couple good election performances to change a long-standing reputation.  I’m hopeful that they will continue to be strong voting block for progress but that really remains to be seen.

  125. 125.

    germy

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Nowadays, realistic sound effects and muzzle flashes can be added in post production.  There’s no reason to use blanks or any functional guns on set.

    Even if no one ends up shot, guns are still a hazard.

    I read yesterday that Linda Hamilton and Bruce Willis are both deaf in their right ears from years of firing guns in their movies.  The blanks are loud.  Earplugs are always distributed to crew members.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    @germy:

    One of the slides, heading, all caps:

    YOU CANNOT TELL SOMEONE THEY CAN’T VOTE.

    The slides are in-house- made by the local bds of elections. They have to remind pollworkers that the jobs isn’t “telling people they can’t vote”? This is a problem now? Jesus.

    We’ve come a long way from the not-distant past where the Voting Rights Act got 98 senate votes. The focus is not getting them voted- it’s policing for fraud, and it’s going to attract the people who live to tell someone else “no”.

  133. 133.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Kay: It illustrates what a small, narrow, isolated world these people exist in. They can’t imagine anyone else who votes, lives or thinks differently than they do. Evidence of deviant behavior (my candidate lost!) must be fraud, there’s no other explanation possible.

  135. 135.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: My wife and I got letters from the county this week asking us to confirm our voter registration info. My first thought was, “Are they setting us up for an automatic disqualification of our registered voter status?” I’ve only lived here for over 10 years now, never missing an election, primary or general. They can’t know how I vote, but they probably can know I always ask for a DEM primary ballot.

    After inspecting it, it doesn’t appear there is anything untoward going on. Just a standard fill in the blanks form letter with plenty of time for it to make it’s way back to Potosi within the allotted 30 days. My paranoia is a sign of our times tho. And now just to make sure DeJoy doesn’t fuck it up, I’m going to call and make sure they’ve received them by the deadline.

  137. 137.

    The Dark Avenger

    Sorry about this, but she is more a sinner than sinned against:

     

    Faiz Shakir, then the chief editor of ThinkProgress, asked Clinton about her support for the Iraq war. Tanden didn’t appreciate this and, according to one witness, punched him in the chest. “I didn’t slug him, I pushed him,” Tanden unapologetically clarified to the New York Times last year. As if that somehow makes things better.

     

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/05/neera-tanden-bullying-joe-biden-cabinet

  138. 138.

    danielx

    @J R in WV: ​
     
    There’s a local police chief who became semi-notorious for shooting himself in the leg with a Glock on two separate occasions. Both times he was trying to reholster his weapon and caught the trigger on one of the drawstring thingies of a fleece jacket.

    Go figure….

  139. 139.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    When I dropped off my absentee ballot at the BOE yesterday, I was paranoid enough to double-check with a poll worker about the drop-off box, and she couldn’t have been more helpful. Hats off to you all!

  140. 140.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I’m listening to this and I haven’t done the work since ’06 and I’m thinking “that happens now? You tell them to take the hat off and they say ‘you can’t tell me what to do”?

    Luckily, our response is to just coddle them and throw the rule out the fucking window, because “the safety of the pollworkers” is his concern. They brought about the environment they feared- they’re now more afraid.

    Rest assured Kay will be teling the Trumpsters to take their swag off. I think rules apply to everyone. The solution to their bad behavior is to allow it?

  143. 143.

    Kalakal

    @sab: Does your neice know about AUVI-Qs? They’re epinephrin  autoinjectors like epipens. Do exactly the same job just as well, are covered by insurance unlike epipens. They cost me about $70 as opposed to $700

  146. 146.

    japa21

    @Kay: It may be because of the fact that my area is more Dem than GOP, but I have never had to tell someone that. Had to push back on a couple poll watchers who were a little too enthusiastic a couple times (both GOP), but they backed off pretty easy.

  147. 147.

    Honus

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: it’s probably the switch on the washing machine.  You used to be able to replace the pump but now it seems like it’s the switch that always goes bad.  Unfortunately, a switch costs like $300 so it makes sense just to get a whole new machine if the one you have is a few years old.

  149. 149.

    Citizen Alan

    @The Thin Black Duke: Um, just how many black actors do you need to cast in a film apparently about American journalists in Paris in the 1960’s (based on a quick read of Wiki) to avoid charges of tokenism?

  150. 150.

    Geminid

    @raven: Do you know if the old western revolvers had safeties? Despite my extensive research in Louis L’Amour novels, I don’t know.

    Not that this would excuse drawing a revolver with it pointed at other people. If the actor wanted to practice his draw, there are gun ranges for that. When the facts come out, and I believe they will, this tragedy may turn out to result from sloppiness in three or more areas.

  152. 152.

    Jay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    if it’s a newer model, ( last 20 years), try unplugging it or shutting the breaker off, for 20-30 minutes, then powering it back up.

    Newer appliances are computer controlled. Quite often, the computer has a “brain fart”. Powering it down, then turning the power back on, causes a reboot of the computer, and often fixes the problem.

  153. 153.

    WaterGirl

    @Barbara: I thought Uncle Eb was addressing something in particular that Elizabelle had written about white women voters.

    I don’t assume for a second that that means he is saying that only white women voters are the problem.

  154. 154.

    germy

    @Citizen Alan:

    Have you read James Baldwin?

    There were many Black writers, artists, journalists and actors in Paris in the 1950s and 60s.

    African Americans as well as Africans.

  155. 155.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Honus: Unfortunately, a switch costs like $300 so it makes sense just to get a whole new machine

    Welcome to the tech revolution where even just On/Off requires at least 3 computer chips.

  157. 157.

    Chyron HR

    @Starfish: ​
     

    This is not as comforting as you think it is. There were piles and piles of cash burned in the last election on U.S. Senate candidates that did not have a snowball’s chance.

    You may be surprised to learn that VA has more in common with CA and NY than WV and FL.

  158. 158.

    Honus

    @OzarkHillbilly: yes, focusing on Baldwin misses the point.  There should be no live firearms on a movie set.  There are numerous wranglers to prevent just that.  It’s not Baldwin’s job or responsibility in any way.  Unless he was ridiculously and recklessly cowboying around, which I doubt, it’s not his fault, and the right wing tweets attacking him are despicable.

  159. 159.

    Honus

    @raven: hard to believe a wad from a misfired blank would do that, and there’s no way in hell there should have been a live round on that set.

  160. 160.

    germy

    @Honus: It’s not Baldwin’s job or responsibility in any way.

    Baldwin was the producer, not just an actor.

    It was being filmed through his production company, and his company cut every corner it could – wages as well as safety.

  161. 161.

    Mike in NC

    We just came from a large community yard sale, the first held in three years thanks to the pandemic. People trying to get rid of old golf clubs, books, DVDs, and bric-a-brac. I usually make a quarterly trip to the local Habitat for Humanity to drop off stuff we no longer want to look at. Fortunately none of the old white people today were wearing MAGA hats or t-shirts.

  162. 162.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Geminid: Do you know if the old western revolvers had safeties?

    Most were *single action* revolvers that required one to physically cock the hammer back before the trigger could drop the hammer and fire the gun. Some models needed the additional precaution of keeping an empty chamber under the hammer because a sharp blow to the hammer could cause an accidental discharge.

    **most modern revolvers are double action and one can fire it either cocking the hammer first or just pulling the trigger. The advantage of cocking the hammer first is a lighter trigger pull. (say 3 pounds of pull as opposed to 7 pounds in double action)

  163. 163.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @danielx:

    “Glocks do have safeties! That little spare lever on the trigger is the safety! (derpy right wing noises follow).”

    What police contracting procedures always forget is that the Glock as developed and manufactured is a military sidearm, without much caution.  It’s durable with a light pull and rapid action – the worst possible weapon for the sort of guy who topped out in life as a high school junior.  Frankly, you need safeties and steps – there were much fewer accidental discharges when they carried .357s with speed loaders.

  164. 164.

    Jay

    @Geminid:

    on a single action revolver, there is a half cock safety, ( hammer is pulled back half way, trigger locks), but the hammer has to be pulled back manually, every time, to fire.

    on a double action, pulling the trigger both cocks and fires the gun. Post 1900 revolvers often had a push button safety that would lock the trigger closed.

  165. 165.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @germy:

    He was A producer as billed, not the only one. Wonder what his points were in it.

    Chances are, the dodgy finance company that was supplying capital had a rep on set and was calling some plays. I hear that’s a thing.

  168. 168.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @germy:

    Yup. I also heard an interview with the nepotism hire armorer. She sounded like an idiot.

  169. 169.

    L85NJGT

    No big mystery.

    There had been two accidental discharges on the set prior, by a stunt double who had been told a weapon was cold. The assistant director tasked with safety was dismissive of establishing a safety culture on the production.

    Then they booted the union crew off the set.

    Deadline claims that legit film industry armorers looked at the budget, and the amount of gun work involved, and said nope.

    It is always about the Benjamins.

  171. 171.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Chyron HR: In last year’s Presidential vote, Virginia was actually midway between Florida and New York. Biden lost Florida by 3.5%, won Virginia by 10%, and won New York by 23%.

  172. 172.

    Another Scott

    @Starfish: My point in mentioning the ad stuff is that supposedly TFG was doing lots of on-line targeted ads and Team Blue was caught off-guard.  That’s not happening this time – if anything, it appears to be the reverse.

    Yeah, ads aren’t votes.  But Team Blue is doing everything it can to win in Virginia, and (apparently) isn’t limited by a shortage of available funding.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  173. 173.

    PST

    @Geminid:

    If the actor wanted to practice his draw, there are gun ranges for that.

    If course I don’t know this to be true, but I wonder whether he was practicing his draw for the benefit of the cinematographer and director in preparation for shooting a scene. That would explain why the two of them were in front of him. They could have been planning the shot in which he would draw and wanted to see him do it. Obviously mere speculation, but I don’t want to assume that Baldwin was acting negligently.

  176. 176.

    Geminid

    @PST: Yes, and apparently all three may have been told the gun was “cold.” I believe we will know who was standing where and what they were doing before too long. As to how a live bullet got in that gun, that may be harder to establish, but investigators will try hard.

    But it sounds like this was not a well-run production. I am reminded of  baseball manager Leo Durocher’s maxim: “Luck is the residue of good planning.” In the case of this tragedy, bad luck may have been the residue of poor planning.

  177. 177.

    Ken B

    @raven:  Also, even if someone did deliberately load a bullet into the weapon, it would have been detected on a set that was following the rules properly.

    And it would have been very difficult for almost anyone to load a live bullet into the weapon on a set following established safety protocols (unless it was for a scene calling for a live round, in which case nobody would have been allowed to point it at anyone). The people with access to the weapon would by definition been the first people looked at and probably become unemployable on safe sets forever.

    The set armorer was apparently an unqualified nepotism hire.

  178. 178.

    MomSense

    @MagdaInBlack:

    The problem I have with my own cohort is that I guarantee you that all of us have experienced some form of discrimination, misogyny, harassment, etc because we are women. Even still the majority of us do not decide to band with WOC, POC, immigrants.  Nope a majority of us decide to punch down with our vote and our behavior. Our status is more important.  We even attack affirmative action even though we are the biggest beneficiaries.
    My cohort defend white supremacy. We are actually the worst because we experience enough oppression to know exactly who we are hurting.

  179. 179.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: Your comment makes me think of all the high-status white women who wrote their letter of support for Justice Rape & Beer.  They gave him credibility because he was in their club.

    Disgusting.

  180. 180.

    eddie blake

    @The Thin Black Duke:  starting pretty much from those denny o’neil issues in the sixties, the modern batman has ALWAYS been JUST as insane as his rogue’s gallery. the one, supreme difference is that because of what happened to his parents, he is obsessed with the idea that NO ONE dies on his watch.

    every one of the movie batmen kill people left and right. make of that as you will, but i think it comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of the character.

    eta- yes, alan moore DELIBERATELY fashioned the character of rorschach as a sour commentary of the underlying ethos of the vigilante outlaw.

  181. 181.

    eddie blake

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:  dune was a thing of beauty. a magnificent achievement.

    i had one or two aesthetic quibbles, but the movie was jut stunning.

    and it’s literally only HALF of the first book.

  182. 182.

    eddie blake

    @germy:  as depressing as that movie ultimately is, it ALWAYS makes me want to paint.

    (and bowie was kind of stupendous as andy warhol.)

  183. 183.

    Ruckus

    @sab:

    I have epi-pens. I got them from the VA. I doubt seriously that they would provide me another box of 2 at well over 8-a zillion times the pervious price so that a senators daughter could make quite a few bucks more per unit. I still wonder why Joe Manchin considers himself a democrat.

  184. 184.

    brantl

    @raven: The only thing that I can come up with is demonstrating a scene, but why with a non-empty gun (and that should be checked, just before using it).

  185. 185.

    VFX Lurker

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I’m looking at Dune and thinking there’s no way a movie can justify a 2.75 hour run time (unless it’s LOTR, of course).

    I had the pleasure of watching an advance screening of Dune in IMAX. Those 2.75 hours whipped by. It felt much shorter than its actual length. Beautiful as Frank Herbert’s writing. ✨

  186. 186.

    VFX Lurker

    @The Thin Black Duke: The brother keeps working. Wright reminds me of the veteran baseball player who doesn’t hit grand slams, but reliably gets on base.

    I recently watched Marvel’s What If, where Jeffery Wright voiced Uatu, the Watcher. I later recognized him in the Audible adaptation of The Sandman – Act II as Destiny of the Endless. He does an amazing job voicing both characters. ❤

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