Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

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

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / An Ambassador for his Country

An Ambassador for his Country

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Greetings from the Barcelona airport, where I feel guilty for only knowing some German and Italian. Meanwhile, this fucking guy…

When I was in high school, I was taught that traveling internationally made you an ambassador for your country. I honestly can’t say whether he learned the same. He’s certainly being accurate enough, though the stripes should probably be red.

They didn’t let him into the lounge on what sounded like a made-up technicality.

Reader Interactions

102Comments

  1. 1.

    sab

    Yikes. What an asshole.

    Being rich makes you special. Rules and conventions don’t apply.

  3. 3.

    oldster

    This guy is waving old gory. Man, I hate this new wave of flag desecration. I’m old enough to remember when being conservative meant having some reverence for the red white and blue. Now, it means preferring some grim, monochrome abomination to your country’s real colors.
    I hate these thin blue line flags and their congeners — they are the vanguard of armed fascism. The sight of them chills me.

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    June 8, the day it becomes mandatory to dial 10 digits in order make a freakin’ local phone call in Hawaii, 11 digits to place a call to another county in the state.

    Life trundles on, becoming a smidgen more cumbersome along the way.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    An Ambassador for his Country

    Well, M⁴, you can’t spell ambassador without a-s-s.

    //

  8. 8.

    Montanareddog

    I don’t think this choad can read the room. Most Europeans are going to look on him with contempt and loathing (and fear), wearing a T shirt like that.

    I hope he is not planning on visiting the Netherlands – the famously blunt-speaking Dutch might have a few words to say to him

  9. 9.

    Tony Jay

    They didn’t let him into the lounge on what sounded like a made-up technicality.

    Public decency?

  12. 12.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Montanareddog: pretty sure he can read the room and welcomes their hatred. And I’m willing to bet he knows the language wherever he’s going about as well as I understand Spanish. Well, I guess I do know enough Spanish to know when I’m being cussed out…

    ETA this week a friend of mine saw a southerner (in Barcelona) picking a fight with some brits after they told him to stand further away. He yelled something like “I’m standing three feet away—but I know you people use metric over there, so I’ll say it like you can understand, one meter…” ‍♂️

  13. 13.

    Rusty

    We lived outside London from 2005-2009.  While most Americans are thoughtful and courteous, we certainly had our share of encountering the obnoxious American there or as we traveled Europe.  We looked less like Americans for nothing more than traveling with three, then four children, at least one of them in a stroller.  That is not your typical tourist look.  We found Europeans to be very kind to traveling families.   By their standards our family was huge.  It was a particularly crazy time of our lives, but the best memories.

  14. 14.

    Amir Khalid

    @oldster:
    Did Evel Knievel ever get any backlash for his red-white-and-blue outfits? I always thought they were garish and disrespectful of his country’s flag.

  16. 16.

    Evap

    In Feb 2005 I went to a conference in France.  I wore a t shirt that said  (in the official UN languages):  I’m sorry my president is an idiot. I did not vote for him.   I dug out the shirt again for European conferences in 2017-9

  17. 17.

    Geminid

    Mike Franken won Iowa’s Democratic Senate primary and will face Charles Grassley. It was a relatively easy victory, by around 20 points.

    In New Mexico’s primaries, Gabriel Vasquez is now the Democratic nominee for the state’s 2nd Congressional District and will challenge Congresswoman Yvette Harrell. The district covers much of the southern half of the state; Santa Fe Democrats added Democratic districts when they redistricted and the 2nd is now rated a tossup. Vasquez is a former Los Cruces city council member and a veteran of Senator Heinrich’s staff.

  20. 20.

    lowtechcyclist

    @oldster: 

    Man, I hate this new wave of flag desecration. I’m old enough to remember when being conservative meant having some reverence for the red white and blue. Now, it means preferring some grim, monochrome abomination to your country’s real colors.

    This. I’m one of the least patriotic people you’ll ever meet, but these come across as ugly, hideous parodies of the U.S. flag, as if someone had sent our flag off to Mordor for a redesign, and all the RWNJs are saying, “great job, orcs!” and flying and wearing the results.

  21. 21.

    Montanareddog

    @Major Major Major Major:

    this week a friend of mine saw a southerner (in Barcelona) picking a fight with some brits after they told him to stand further away. He yelled something like “I’m standing three feet away—but I know you people use metric over there, so I’ll say it like you can understand, one meter…”

    Oh, the stupid – it burns

    1. I am pretty sure that Brits still know what a foot is, even the young ‘uns
    2. the official social distance rule is 1.50m so it looks like the Brits had a point

     

    Have a good time in the beautiful city of Salzburg, and go easy on the cream cakes

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    ‘@Geminid

    And according to the grapevine the NM GOP contender for the governor’s office is a TV meteorologist.

  24. 24.

    adepsis

    @oldster: I feel much the same, but there is a silver lining. They’re making it much easier for decent folk to take back the red, white, and blue.

  25. 25.

    jonas

    I’m frankly surprised to see such an obvious cretin traveling internationally. Doesn’t he know they serve weird foreign food there? But yeah, there’s a certain kind of MAGAt-American that was turned on by Trump and the idea that American greatness means simply being massive, aggressively  ignorant assholes. I’m working abroad at the moment and can tell you that a lot of Europeans at least are crossing the US off their business and travel plans in the near future, at least until they see some sanity return when it comes to gun violence. Who knows how many tourist/business dollars this guy is costing someone in Florida or DC or Arizona, where Germans and other Europeans used to love to travel?

  27. 27.

    eclare

    @jonas:   The times I traveled to national parks out west in the mid-2000’s, an overwhelming majority of the other visitors were European.  I don’t blame them one bit for avoiding the US now.

  28. 28.

    Baud

    On Today show just now, the “progressive” DA lost his reelection bid in San Francisco due to crime rates, according to Today show.

  29. 29.

    satby

    For those interested, a great Twitter thread about Republican messaging, and how pointing out their hypocrisy is useless (quote from the second tweet):

    Here is the Republican message on everything of importance:
    1. They can tell people what to do.
    2. You cannot tell them what to do.

    This often gets mistaken for hypocrisy, there’s an additional layer of complexity to this (later in the thread), but this is the basic formula.

  30. 30.

    Matt McIrvin

    @satby: Both Republicans and leftists constantly accuse liberals of hypocrisy because it works. Liberals care about this possibly to a fault. So there’s a nearly-universal attack that every single position a liberal takes is somehow hypocritical or insincere.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    ‘@Baud

    Not reelection, was ousted in a recall election.

    San Francisco voters overwhelmingly voted to remove District Attorney Chesa Boudin from office on Tuesday, favoring a recall effort that argued his progressive reforms were too lenient and made the city less safe.

    Boudin trailed by about 20 percentage points Tuesday evening, according to the latest figures from city elections officials. Around 60% of San Franciscans who cast ballots voted to recall him.

    Boudin will be removed from office 10 days after the Board of Supervisors formally accepts the election results. The city’s more moderate mayor, London Breed, will choose his immediate replacement, and voters will elect a new district attorney in November.

    The result comes as little surprise to residents following numerous polls, almost all of which predicted a decisive defeat for Boudin.
    [snip]
    Boudin will depart the office after serving two and a half years of his four-year term. Source

    No impediment to being on the ballot again come the special election in November.

  33. 33.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Liberals care about this possibly to a fault.

     
    I agree. There is a lack of confidence among mainstream liberalism that is like a free gift to our adversaries.

  34. 34.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The replacement will have the same problem Eric Adams has though, because the crime rates weren’t due to the “progressive DA”. If crime rates were due to “progressive DA’s” crime rates wouldn’t be up in Memphis and Miami and Jacksonville, and they are.

    Crime stats are really easy to massage. One of the ways they “lower” the crime rate is they extend the boundaries of the areas measured. Maybe the replacement will figure that out and claim a drop.

  35. 35.

    NotMax

    ‘@Baud

    “Yes” on recall just north of 60% last I heard. That margin bespeaks more than being outspent.

    California municipal politics be passing odd.

  36. 36.

    satby

    @Matt McIrvin: The point the author is making is that a charge of hypocrisy is useless against Republicans because they don’t care. Well worth the time to read it all, but can’t unroll it, he deleted it from Threadreader.

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Oh, I know.  I think the larger point is that our voters lack the commitment to see things through whenever things aren’t perfect.  It’s been a national problem for Dems since the early 90s.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Maybe it’s good. Now that the boogeyman “progressive DA” has been removed they can start to look at actual crime rates and what causes them to go up and start to ask why they’re also up in cities and states without progressive DA’s. I don’t think they will though- I think they’ll just throw more funding at policing and incarceration. Maybe more blue line flags.

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    ‘@Baud

    Yeah, it’s L.A. (not to mention fictional) but could any D.A. have a worse track record than Perry Mason‘s Ham Burger?

    //

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    That’s a tough one, police reform. There was a full court media press to discredit it aided by centrists in the Democratic Party. The thing for me is if you’re going to base your whole theory on statistics you have to use all of them- you can’t just omit Jacksonville and Miami and Memphis because they don’t fit the template. This completely discredits the “progressive DA’s cause crime” theory to me. It’s junk.

    I agree that a lot of liberals and Democrats aren’t confident though. This is just my personal theory, but I think one of the ways you sharpen your own ideas and think thru why you’re a liberal is being around a lot of conservatives. If you have to defend it you get more confident. It’s been true for me, but part of it could have been getting older and just being more confident in general.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    This completely discredits the “progressive DA’s cause crime” theory to me. It’s junk.

     
    True. But voters, not academics, are ultimately the deciders.

    This is just my personal theory, but I think one of the ways you sharpen your own ideas and think thru why you’re a liberal is being around a lot of conservatives. If you have to defend it you get more confident. It’s been true for me, but part of it could have been getting older and just being more confident in general

    This makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of liberals tend to be in situations where they are surrounded by other liberals online and in real life.

    To the extent I lack confidence in real life, it’s because I always feel like there’s a pertinent fact that I’m not aware of. That’s something conservatives don’t have to worry about.

  45. 45.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    One of my brothers in law is a commercial painting contractor in Los Angeles. He’s not really ideological and I would be suprised if he votes but when he says “crime” and you ask him a couple of questions about which crimes or how crime affects him it turns out he means “homeless people on the street”. That is what is bothering him. I don’t know that more or more aggressive policing will solve that.

  47. 47.

    Baud

    @NotMax: 

    Yes, of course. I think the problem is that we collectively don’t steel ourselves to that fact. Instead, the way our side talks to itself is bipolar: Get really excited about the possibility of instantaneous, revolutionary results and then really despondent when that doesn’t come about and there are obstacles and backlash.

    The exception has been older black folks who lived through the civil rights era. They seem to accept reality better than others.

  48. 48.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Yeah, the Today report on San Fran mentioned the rise in homelessness there.  I bet that’s a big driver.

  49. 49.

    Jesse

    @Baud:  Good way to put it. I think most liberals are, by character, not really able to straight up accept certain propositions, as they are conventionally understood. There’s a certain built-in level of self-doubt in the character of many liberals, even those who aren’t necessarily well educated. I see this in some conservatives, but to a lesser degree. Not to say that liberals are all just proto-scientists or brainy or anything, just that there’s a whole class of ideas that they just can’t straight up endorse. To add to what Kay said earlier, I think that if you’re frequently around those who share different views, you get challenged and strengthened.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    @eclare:

    No, I’m saying crime rates in cities without progressive DA’s are high and often higher than in cities with progressive DA’s. If the issue were “wokeness” or “progressive DA’s” crime rates wouldn’t be really high in Jacksonville FL, and they are. Florida alone has a lot of counter examples to the “progressive DA” theory of crime rates. Just Florida discredits the theory.

    And its odd, right? If “crime” is your thing and you’re pundit why wouldn’t you look at Miami? Why is this analysis so selective? The FBI and the DOJ don’t do this selecting- they collect and report all crime rates.

  52. 52.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Speaking of ugly Americans in Europe; one of my on line friends from England was talking about some American MAGA tourist that got mouthy with regulars at the local pub and got told “This is were the fight starts and your safe word is “Biden won.””

  54. 54.

    Kay

    @eclare:

    And “measurement” is only as good as the input. There was a mini “scandal” in crime stat reporting by cities a decade ago because they figured out that if they extended the boundaries of the area covered by the stats – make “Louisville” into a kind of “greater Louisville” that included less populous areas, presto! The crime rate went down. But I think the FBI and DOJ are onto it now :)

  55. 55.

    jonas

    I think the problem in SF was that even though the official crime stats showed things largely unchanged, or rising modestly in line with most of the rest of the US, a lot of minor property crimes, assaults, burglaries, drug offenses (open selling, if not using), etc. were simply going unreported. The police would ignore them and (or because) Boudin wouldn’t prosecute them. SF has always had a homelessness/drug problem, but it has really gotten out of control over the past 2-3 years. Even liberals want to feel safe walking down the street at night, or at least not have to constantly step over human waste, discarded needles, etc. Boudin just seemed massively out of touch with what was going on on the ground. I expect Gascon will get tossed in LA as well.

  56. 56.

    Jesse

    @Kay: It’s maddeningly illogical. I think it makes sense if you realize that “crime” isn’t being bandied about in some kind of data-driven way. It’s a cudgel meant to prosecute your enemies and acquit your friends.

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    ‘@Jesse

    It’s perception of crime, exacerbated by the local news’ obsession with inflating every police blotter entry wavelet into a tsunami.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @jonas:

    The police would ignore them

    I wonder about that, though. I think there was some “ignoring” going on after BLM that was retaliatory by police. They were angry that they felt they were being demonized so we saw ridiculous things, where they would pretend they needed brand new laws to arrest people for looting or setting fires. They really don’t. They have a full set of tools to arrest people for just about anything. I think there was some “blue flu” going on. It worked to a certain extent too- they’re going to get a ton more funding and less oversight.

  61. 61.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: 

    I think the larger point is that our voters lack the commitment to see things through whenever things aren’t perfect. It’s been a national problem for Dems since the early 90s.

    What do we know about which of “our voters” aren’t showing up in the midterms? Since this has been a problem for us for nearly three decades, surely somebody must’ve studied it. Would be worth having a demographic profile of who stayed home in 1994 or 2010 or 2014 that had voted in the preceding Presidential election if we want to do something about this in 2022.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @jonas:

    I agree that quality of life is really important and it’s a legit complaint. I just wonder if a conservative prosecutor is the answer. Well, we’ll have the counter example if they remove all the progressive prosecutors and we can all see if that was the issue. It doesn’t seem to have been the issue in NYC.

  64. 64.

    Kay

    @jonas:

    I have a friend who is a county judge in Kalamazoo MI. He is a Democrat but also a real liberal. There was so much homelessness and complaints by residents that the (mostly liberal) city government dedicated what had been a fairgrounds to a homeless area. They had tents and cars and campers, but they were cordoned off in this fairgounds in an industrial area of the city so “problem solved”. But the fairgounds area became so dangerous for some of the people living there that they had to break it up, so problem unsolved. They just don’t have housing for them.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @NotMax:

    They don’t even approach to arrest here anymore and they did just a couple of years ago. Now they stay in the vehicle until the suspect is prone on the ground (they order this from the vehicle) – on their belly, spread eagled. What it means to me is they aren’t talking to them at all. There’s none of the exchange of information, explanations, dialogue that went on just a couple of years ago and avoided certain arrests.

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @lowtechcyclist:

    That makes sense.  On the other hand, I can also make judgments based on the nature of the conversations that I see here and elsewhere. I don’t see a lot of long term vision or the patience to see it through.

  68. 68.

    debbie

    Yet another ugly American. I’d have walked up to him and asked if he was wearing the new flag of Russia.

  72. 72.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @zhena gogolia: I thought they might be guns, but I really had to squint to see that.

    ETA: And even then, does that mean guns are shredding the country? Or that guns are essential to the US? I guess the latter, given the reaction of everyone here, but I don’t know

  76. 76.

    Unkown known

    Ah well, makes a break from being embarrassed about the loud drunken obnoxious British tourists.

    (UK and US have a special relationship indeed)

  77. 77.

    Major Major Major Major

    As for the SF situation, in addition to all the things @jonas mentioned, there were some pretty high profile failures to prosecute, I know people were upset that Boudin never filed charges on a particularly bad anti-Asian hate crime for instance, after promising he would. The vibes were bad, yes, but the same bad vibes didn’t prevent various NYC boroughs from electing similar DAs last fall.

  78. 78.

    Kay

    @Major Major Major Major:

    That’s interesting, thanks. I think the challenge for the replacements of Lefty prosecutors is these problems are legitimately hard to solve and if you run as a more centrist “problem solver” you have to solve problems.

    To me, that’s where centrists in the Democratic Party fall down. They’re really good at criticizing “wokeness” and the Left wing of the Party – some of the criticism is earned- but if your pitch is “I’m not an ideologue” – okay, good so far!-  there has to be something after that.

    The Kalamazoo effort to sort of cordon off homeless was controversial- Lefties hated it- but more importantly perhaps for the “centrists” who supported it also didn’t work.

  80. 80.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Kay: yeah. Mayor Adams’s approval rating is in the toilet. Honestly other than bad vibes I think people are most upset about the bail law situation, which neither the mayor nor the DA has any control over.

    ETA overview of that https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/nyregion/new-york-bail-laws.html

    In New York, bail is imposed solely to ensure that people return to court; judges are not supposed to set high bail for defendants who they think might be a public safety risk. New York is the only state without a so-called dangerousness standard.

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Unfortunately I think Adams is right that a mayor has to have a good or at least non-hostile working relationship with police, because police are politically powerful and can make things very difficult for him. So it’s probably a good idea to kiss their ass to a certain extent and if that’s just a matter of rhetoric “our sainted first responders” then it’s probably worth it.

  84. 84.

    NotMax

    ‘@Major Major Major Major

    Spain and Italy are chock-a-block with holidays and official festivals but don’t approach ancient Sparta. Saw one estimate that something akin to 300 of 365 days of the year were dedicated to holidays or other government supported celebrations there.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I went by the fairgrounds area with the judge and TO ME it seemed better than living on the street in front of the library- they had porta potties and the city brought in potable water but the city also doesn’t want to be wholly responsible for it, they’re not the landlord, God forbid, no TENANCY is being established- so it was just whoever wandered in and a lot of bad and dangerous people wandered in.

  88. 88.

    Baud

    @Kay: 

    Yeah, I believe in reform but I feel like the push for reform often gives short shift to ensuring that the job gets done and done relatively well. We tend to hand wave a lot of complexity away.

  93. 93.

    Tony Jay

    @PBK: 

    Sorry, I’ve been away.

    That’s very kind of you, doubly so. I really don’t mind when fellow Juicers venture an opinion. It’s all good.

    Well, not all good, but like I imagine someone once said. Anyone can be rude, but it takes two to argue about it. 8-)

  94. 94.

    Emma

    @Major Major Major Major:  I really hope this guy was targeted by all the pickpocketing gangs on the street, on the train, in museums, etc. And beaten up by soccer hooligans to boot, they start all kinds of shit on match days just for funsies.

  95. 95.

    dww44

    Re yesterday’s election results (all over CNN and MSNBC;can only imagine what’s being said over on Fox and NewsMax) and the progressive losses in California. I like this take from this guy:

    The progressive DA in SF was ousted and so we will no longer hear about made up crime trends in the country’s 18th largest city.
    by Atrios at 09:00

  96. 96.

    NorthLeft

    @Montanareddog: Two meters/+six feet or geddoudahere.

    I personally keep a ten foot distance for extended conversations with people whose vax status and precautionary habits are unknown to me.

  98. 98.

    MobiusKlein

    @dww44: 

    Re: Boudin – As a SF resident for 25 years, and Bay Area for 45+, I know Fox and Fiends will soon pick a new Boogyman to target.

    Maybe back to Pelosi? Or Newsom as a proxy. They already did the school board, so who knows.  Probably mayor Breed.

    Rest assured, there will be a new SF political figure as the chew toy of the month very soon

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