Wapo: No Labels, the centrist group planning a third-party presidential bid, plans to announce a nominating committee Thursday that will be charged with selecting a presidential candidate in the coming weeks, Joseph Lieberman told Washington Post https://t.co/pVzDVoAfWd
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) March 13, 2024
If I ever hear the name Joe f*vking Lieberman again, it should be in conjunction with his obituary, preferably one that involves words like ‘to be buried in an unmarked grave’. However, Lieberman’s found his natural fit with the attention-seeking grifters — per the Washington Post, “No Labels announces committee to select presidential candidate”:
The centrist group No Labels announced a committee of 12 people Thursday who will decide in the coming weeks who should appear on the group’s potential third-party presidential ticket.
Led by co-chairs of the group — including former senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), retired Navy Adm. Dennis Blair and civil rights activist Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. — the committee will then take its recommendation to a separate group of No Labels supporters that is prepared to formally nominate the ticket on 48 hours’ notice…
The announcement comes a day after the resignation of another co-chair of the group, former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory (R), for reasons that have not been fully explained in public. “I wish them the best,” he said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.
It also comes days after No Labels started serious conversations with former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan (R). Duncan traveled to Sea Island, Ga., last weekend, where leaders of the American Enterprise Institute think tank were holding their annual donor retreat. He held off-site meetings there with potential supporters about a possible No Labels candidacy, according to multiple people familiar with the meetings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations…
Lieberman said in an interview on Wednesday that the group would have the ability to stop a candidacy from moving forward after a few months if it failed to gain traction and appeared to be a possible spoiler that could help elect former president Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee.
“We want to give the American people the third choice — bipartisan, moderate — that they say they want,” Lieberman said. “But if for some reason after two or three months, they say they don’t want it, we have got to be realistic and say, ‘This is not the year.’”…
#Spoiler4Trump
No Labels has no candidates to run and their plan is unraveling. Even Fox is calling bullshit & holds Joe Lieberman’s feet to the fire.Lieberman regurgitates the same stale talking points and it’s starting to sound like Trump‘s healthcare plan. ‘We’ll have the… pic.twitter.com/FR6kQvIJbM
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) March 9, 2024
Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory is stepping down as national co-chair of No Labels just days after members of the independent group voted to move forward with a presidential ticket. https://t.co/IBcYW7MrCL
— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 14, 2024
Pat McCrory can sense a trainwreck coming when it’s close enough to hear the engineer yelling:
… The group will launch a group called the Country Over Party Committee to aid in vetting potential nominees ahead of No Labels’ virtual convention this spring. The group showed photos of a few members of the committee in the release video, including No Labels attorney Dan Webb and national co-chair Ben Chavis, and Lieberman, who represented Connecticut in the Senate first as a Democrat and then as an independent, noted that he will be part of the vetting committee, as well…
To be considered for the No Labels Unity Ticket, the candidates must agree to the organization’s six core beliefs, Rawlings said, including “that we care about this country more than demands of any political party.”
And candidates “must endorse the key elements of the No Labels commonsense policy booklet, which includes 30 ideas to address our nation’s most important challenges, ranging from immigration and border security to the budget flexion and growing threats from abroad,” Rawlings added.
Lieberman said Thursday in an interview with CNN that a candidate could be announced as soon as next Thursday.
Last week, No Labels said it would be “accelerating” its candidate outreach after its delegates voted to put forward a ticket for November.
No Labels President, Mike Rawlings (former Mayor of Dallas) is blaming the Democratic Party for choosing President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr as the party’s leader. This clip here indicates why I can’t trust some of these fake moderates like Mr. Rawlings. pic.twitter.com/rLhc3QWVuc
— The Chanteezy Is Real ♉️ (@iamchanteezy) March 12, 2024
No Labels was born as a way for Nancy Jacobson & Mark Penn to keep collecting money from the shady & the gullible. It’s in the news right now after charming a handful of obscure attention seekers and the worst of Our Very Serious Mainstream Media (see: gullible) into arguing that it’s more than a rightwing billionaires’ stalking horse. Ed Kilgore, at NYMag — “No Labels Green-lights 2024 Bid With No Candidates”:
… Former Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings, the chairman of the virtual convention that made this decision on Friday, put out a statement saying: “They voted near unanimously to continue our 2024 project and to move immediately to identify candidates to serve on the Unity presidential ticket.” At some point in the next couple of months, assuming the group can identify qualified candidates to fill out the “unity ticket,” it is expected to reconvene the delegates for an up-or-down vote that will conclude the deliberative process. Says Rawlings: “Now that No Labels has received the go-ahead from our delegates, we’ll be accelerating our candidate outreach and announcing the process for how candidates will be selected for the Unity Ticket on Thursday, March 14.”
The political logic of this two-step process is pretty simple: The idea of a bipartisan “third option” has always been more popular than any actual ticket. A poll from Monmouth last summer showed support for such a ticket dropping by half when specific candidates (in that case, West Virginia senator Joe Manchin and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, both No Labels leaders) were identified…
… This contest is too volatile to tell exactly how a future No Labels ticket would affect the outcome, though Third Way and other Democrats will continue to warn of its perils. For now, it does make sense for No Labels to make every effort to show support for a no-name presidential ticket before taking the final plunge, even if it knows an identified ticket is likely to lose altitude once the blanks have been filled in.
At the moment, No Labels claims presidential ballot access in 16 states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah. ABC News reports the group believes it is still on a trajectory to secure a post on the ballot in 33 states ultimately. It’s a high-stakes, dangerous game No Labels is playing, and there remains a chance it will flip the board at the crucial moment and back off the unity-ticket plans. Everyone connected to No Labels claims to be revolted by the idea of playing spoiler, and most say they’re particularly horrified by the idea of Trump as the 47th president. But the lack of empirical data that their “third option” would actually work with real candidates is a problem these self-styled “problem-solvers” need to address definitively very soon.
News –> We've obtained audio of No Labels' meeting today where they voted to move forward. News orgs are treating this as significant, but the audio suggests something else: They have zero idea whether they'll find any serious candidate at all.
Details:https://t.co/RjzAbFVckb
— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) March 8, 2024
No Labels is moving forward with its plan to offer a third-party ticket in the 2024 election.
More: https://t.co/jhfvYOG734 pic.twitter.com/0MKmXgdv3I
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) March 8, 2024
… The No Labels pitch is, on its face, fair: Americans want and deserve an alternative to the presumptive 2024 nominees, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. But while No Labels presents itself as a centrist voice for Americans who “feel politically homeless,” in reality the group is a front for billionaires and corporate executives — a Washington influence machine that fights for their financial interests in the halls of Congress. With Robert Kennedy Jr. also running as an independent, Democrats believe the No Labels third-party effort could undermine Biden and help throw the election to Trump.
Over the past year, the dark-money group has been leading a reported $70 million campaign to secure ballot access nationwide for a potential 2024 “unity” ticket. No Labels has refused to disclose who’s funding this effort, claiming that this is to protect its donors from “agitators and partisan operatives.” Thanks to a quirk in America’s broken system of campaign finance laws, the group will never be required to disclose who funded its ballot access effort — and would only have to start reporting donors if it were to formally back candidates…
Part of the reason they don’t have a nominee is the referenced raging dems are working hard at providing an extremely credible promise of dropping an incredible amount of oppo on anyone who tried to step up, because of the massive potential harm it would cause to the nation https://t.co/B5IuXPdL4d
— Pat Dennis (@patdennis) March 8, 2024
Fox News,,,, welcome to the resistance pic.twitter.com/lfTQUCLg6n
— Pat Dennis (@patdennis) March 8, 2024
Shalimar
noxious diphthongs
Baud
That name sounds vaguely familiar, but I’m disappointed anyone associated with civil rights would lend credibility to No Labels.
I would also like to take this opportunity to preemptively turn No Labels down. I’m Ridin with Biden.
Baud
Kudos to them.
SiubhanDuinne
COPC. Sounds like a painful, lingering respiratory disease that produces a great deal of phlegm.
SiubhanDuinne
Also, I’m no graphics designer, but that logo/slogan/whatever on the wall behind those guys is an affront to the eyeballs. (As are the guys themselves, for that matter.)
Nukular Biskits
As I asked my snotty, arrogant, smart-ass, Trump-supportin’ “conservative Christian” Sec of State,
“How the hell can you get on the ballot without having any names?”
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
?
I’m sure the Dems and GOP secure ballot spots before they have nominees.
E.
Are there any women in this organization?
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Positions on the ballot for races, yes. Last year was statewide elections here in MS, so there was definitely going to be a place on the ballot for, for example, gubernatorial spot.
But how does a political party get access to any race on the ballot without a candidate? Write-in technically doesn’t count in MS, so it’s not via that route.
SiubhanDuinne
Can someone explain that final Twitter/X image? Ross Perot has been dead for several years.
ETA: Or maybe that’s the snarky point of it, and I just haven’t had
enoughany coffee yet.Baud
On MSNBC just now, “Congress is gridlocked” on Ukraine aid.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
FFS, MSNBC.
No. Congress isn’t “gridlocked”. To be correct, House Republicans are blocking any such legislation, despite majority support in the House.
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
I don’t know the rules in any state, but I’d imagine a party can say they want a ballot spot for a candidate to be nominated later. There’s probably a separate deadline for submitting a name.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Perhaps, which is why I asked Sec of State. Good luck to me getting an answer out of that sanctimonious asshole. (If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I don’t have a very high opinion of him.)
In any case, the candidate filing deadline here in MS was 01FEB so, again, I’m not sure how that is supposed to work. Once a candidate has filed, he/she has to submit monthly campaign finance reports. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that “No Labels” isn’t doing that.
sab
@E.: Marc Penn’s wife?
glc
Is that a band?
Sid
“If I ever hear the name Joe f*vking Lieberman again, it should be in conjunction with his obituary, preferably one that involves words like ‘to be buried in an unmarked grave’. However, Lieberman’s found his natural fit with the attention-seeking grifters”
It’s possible I’d be mildly saddened to learn Lieberman had been buried alive in that unmarked grave.
OzarkHillbilly
Nothing says, “I am full of shit” like the word commonsense and to make a “commonsense policy booklet” is the height of hubris.
mrmoshpotato
Slumped past assclownery years ago.
mrmoshpotato
@Shalimar: Balloon Juice After Dark – Thongs!
eclare
Did the former Dallas mayor just pronounce Quixote as “quicksotticka”? He talks about “quicksotticka” windmill chasing…
lowtechcyclist
Now, now! How am I ever gonna piss on his grave if it’s unmarked and I can’t find it?
eclare
@E.:
I wondered that too.
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly:
Another sign is to string words together that mean nothing. WTF is a “budget flexion”?
lowtechcyclist
@SiubhanDuinne:
I have no idea, but seeing Lieberman’s and Perot’s names there, I felt like I’d slipped through a time warp into the 1990s.
Madness takes its toll…
eclare
@SiubhanDuinne:
Maybe his son who goes by Ross Perot Jr. dropped the Jr.?
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
What, does it interfere with their precious impartiality to say which party is trying to pass it, and which party’s leadership is blocking it?
Fuck this bullshit, MSNBC.
eclare
@lowtechcyclist:
Morning Joe is not usually shy about calling out Republicans. I am firing up the DVR in a few minutes, I’m curious to hear who said that.
Baud
@eclare:
It was that guy on the show before MJ.
Ramalama
What if Biden gave Joe Lieberman some attention, a minor role somewhere, or say an ambassadorship to Liechtenstein. Would that cause No Labels to go off label?
eclare
@Baud:
Lemire? Or one of his guests?
Baud
@eclare:
I don’t know the name, but it was the host, not a guest.
eclare
@Baud:
Lemire. That is disappointing. Thanks for the info.
glc
How about if Nolly Bells ran their candidate in 2026 when there’s less competition? Then they could fly their freak flag unconstrained by the vulgar carping of mundanes.
In related news, there’s a new blueberry in the Guinness book of records. Not many people know that.
matt
I didn’t know Old Ass Face was still involved in politics. Not that this counts particularly.
Ken
“Delegates” raises the question, “delegated by whom?” I don’t recall hearing of any local primaries or caucuses.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: They are all about Democracy, that’s why they hand picked them.
allium
@eclare:
I think what he said was “quixotic…uh…windmill chasing”. And “kwik-ZOT-ic” is an accepted pronunciation of “Quixotic”, even though Quixote is pronounced “key-HO-tay” (something to do with language drift between Cervantes’s time and ours).
Doesn’t change the fact that he’s a chowder head. 🐟🦐🥣🤪
NotMax
“Outside of traffic, there is nothing that has held this country back as much as committees.”
– Will Rogers
Baud
@Ken:
That’s how you know it’s not rigged.
Geminid
The Taoiseach’s in town! From Politico Playbook:
Vice President and husband Doug Emhoff will treat the Taoiseach and his partner Matthew Barrett to a breakfast scheduled for 8:45 a.m. Barrett, a cardiologist, is now based in Chicago.
Baud
@NotMax:
The Committee on Traffic disagrees.
eclare
@allium:
Well that was my bad, then. I didn’t know quixotic was a word on its own, but if you combine that with chasing windmills, people are going to automatically think Quixote. Thanks for the info! Truly a full service blog.
And like you said, he’s still a chowderhead.
Princess
@eclare: Don Quixote is pronounced key-ho-tay but the adjective quixotic is pronounced quicksotick. Strange but true.
RevRick
@Baud: He was part of the Wilmington Ten back in 1971. He was sent to Wilmington by the United Church of Christ Racial Justice Commission to investigate growing racial tensions in the community over school integration. The KKK entered the fray and fights broke out in the streets. A white grocery store was firebombed and the firefighters claimed they were shot at by snipers from the roof of Gregory UCC church, where Chavis was meeting with a delegation of black students. They were arrested, convicted and sentenced to 15-34 years in prison. The United Church of Christ took up their cause and they were joined by Amnesty International in 1976. Key prosecution witnesses recanted and in 1977 60 Minutes ran a segment saying that the case was fabricated. In 1978 Gov. Jim Hunt reduced their sentences, and in 1980, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the convictions.
eclare
@Princess:
Yep, that was my bad.
eversor
@E.:
It was created by a woman! Who’s still it’s CEO! This is a woman founded, created, and led machine!
Baud
@RevRick:
Thanks. That background info makes me especially sad about his current project.
NotMax
@allium
Yup. “Kwik-ZAHtic” is the usual pronunciation.
It’s a mutated term, much like gerrymander. Elbridge Gerry’s surname was pronounced with a hard “G,” as in “garlic.”
Eyeroller
@Princess: Key-ho-tay approximates the Spanish pronunciation, whereas kwix-ot-ic is Anglicized based on the spelling.
OzarkHillbilly
@Princess: Like I will remember that. ;-)
@Eyeroller: How did I know English had it’s dirty little hands involved in this.
Tony G
Every now and then, a person’s physical appearance matches what he/she is inside. Joe Lieberman — a soul-less shell of a man, a consummate Washington insider who is now trying to avenge his past failures by sabotaging the country — looks like s dessicated fossil now.
Baud
@Tony G:
That explains why I get more good looking with age.
Chris T.
According to QI, in Cervantes’ time the locals would have said “key-showte”, more or less. So perhaps we should just pronounce it “throat-wobbler mangrove”.
Tony G
@Baud: Named the “World’s Sexiest Man” by People Magazine ten years in a row! (Or so I’ve heard.)
Tony G
@Princess: The “quicksotick” pronunciation is certainly enigmatic!
Geminid
@Nukular Biskits: Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole (OK) had this to say about the Ukraine aid package:
From yesterday’s Politico article titled, “Johnson faces make-or-break moment on Ukraine aid as pressure mounts.”
The article discusses internal Republican Caucus conflicts, and also the two discharge petitions pressed by House Ukraine hawks.
Fun fact: Tom Cole is an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation.
Tony G
The No Labels masterminds will be going to a “retreat” of the American Enterprise Institute to troll for a candidate. Now that’s a non-partisan group if I’ve ever heard one!
RevRick
Third party runs are the very definition of stupid. They are based in magical thinking that somehow it’s possible to rise above the “corrupt “ world of politics to bring “common sense “ to the situation. But these runs totally depend on a fantasy world.
Our system is designed to offer either/or choices between two parties and two parties only. We aren’t a parliamentary democracy where coalitions can be formed after an election. The very nature of the Presidency demands that all coalitions be established before elections, hence two parties.
Even if it were possible for a third party candidate to win, they would immediately face a Congress full of Democrats and Republicans. In order to govern, this third party President would have to align with one party or the other. Which kind of defeats the purpose to begin with.
OzarkHillbilly
@RevRick: Oh c’mon! Now your talking with facts and logic! Who do you think you are?
Chris T.
@RevRick: Third parties can exist, and even prosper, here, during the interregnum when one of the two existing parties is dying. That’s how we end up with the two parties we have at any given point in time. The Whigs died off, and the Know-Nothings didn’t make it.
It’s true that these are rare. Are we in one of those now? Only time will tell, but I sure hope the Trumpublican Party is in its death throes.
lowtechcyclist
@allium:
A regular at the board where I used to spend most of my time went by the nym of ‘donkeyoatey’ which I thought was a nice play on it.
lowtechcyclist
@Chris T.:
TBF, wigs had gone out of style by the mid 19th century. ;-)
Geminid
I’m glad McCrory’s getting out. He was Governor of North Carolina before Jim Cooper. That state’s 2020 presidential contest was one of the closest in the nation, and it will likely be again this year.
OzarkHillbilly
I think he should have been sentenced to having his mouth peed into by fellow prisoners daily.
NotMax
@Baud
Dialogue between Charles Coburn and David Niven as father and son in Bachelor Mother:
“Did you sleep in jail?”
“No. No, I didn’t sleep at all. I had to wait for the court to open.”
“David, you can’t keep up at the pace you’re going. You’ll crack up. Out every night with women and things.”
“And things?”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“All I need is a shower. Everybody sleeps too much. You take Edison…”
“You take me. I was young once like you. Lived like you. Looked like you. Then suddenly, overnight, I look like this.”
:)
TBone
@NotMax: Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
JML
@RevRick: yeah, I feel like the 3rd party advocates miss the part that in our system coalitions form prior to elections. So it’s not like those aren’t there, it just happens differently and you don’t get to back out of a coalition midstream the same way. It gives you a little more stability and continuity. YMMV on whether that’s good or not, but considering what’s happened in some parliamentary structured nations where they have 4 elections in 5 years and the kind of back-room deal-making that can happen in order for a party to form a government…maybe fetishizing 3rd parties and “additional choices” isn’t as good as these folk think it is.
Geminid
@Chris T.: The Whigs broke up over the issue of slavery that divided them regionally. I think it would take an issue of that magnitude to break up either major party, and I don’t see one now. The Republicans have a lot of internal stress currently, but I think they’ll fight it out among themselves. When it’s over, the losers may stay, become Independents, or drop out of politics entirely, but I very much doubt they’ll start a durable 3rd party.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
Fun fact:
In 1848, the Whig Party nominated [Zachary] Taylor to be president without his knowledge or presence at the nominating convention. They sent him notification of the nomination without postage paid but he refused to pay the postage and did not find out about the nomination for weeks.
opiejeanne
@lowtechcyclist: I was told that the name of the ballet “Don Quixote” is pronounced Don Key-shot, much to my surprise. That may have something to do with the composer, Ludwig Minkus, an Austrian who worked most of his life in Russia.
I’ll admit that I’ve never heard of him before.
lowtechcyclist
@opiejeanne: You’re one up on me – I hadn’t known that there was a ballet version of Don Quixote.
opiejeanne
@JML: That makes me shudder when I look at some of the parties that have to get into bed together to form a coalition government. Strange bedfellows doesn’t half cover it.
NotMax
@TBone
The More the Merrier is a little gem, cuter than a barrel of bug’s ears.
;)
Ohio Mom
Until just now, if I’d been asked if Joe Lieberman was dead or alive, I would have answered, I don’t know, I’ll google him. Which I just did, he’s 82. I guess he was getting bored in retirement.
What I don’t get is, how is it possible to mount a presidential campaign this late? There’s an entire nationwide infrastructure to a campaign, local offices, volunteer wranglers, and so on. From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, it seems to be a nonstarter.
I’m reminded of the novelty candidates of my youth, for one, Pat Paulson. At least those candidates were clearly understood to be jokes.
Suzanne
I cannot adequately express my contempt for Joe Lieberman and other “centrists” like him. Obviously, I hate Trump more, as well as the whole cadre of sniveling weaklings in the GOP.
But these fuckers just make me crazy. If they had their way, they would do almost the same damage, but just be more polite about it. They would (attempt to) gaslight me into believing that my bad feelings are the problem, not their casual cruelty.
zhena gogolia
@opiejeanne: That would be the French pronunciation.
satby
Unfortunately, no relation. I’d like to meet the Taoiseach (tea-shock)
@NotMax: Fun movie, have to see if I can find it streaming.
Hoodie
@Geminid: Roy Cooper. McCrory was fairly moderate when he was mayor of Charlotte but turned more wingnut (but not quite MAGA) to run for governor. He consistently was the lapdog of Duke Energy.
rikyrah
Dems learned a lot of lessons from 2016.
Taking an axe to 3rd party ratfuckers was one of them
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Did you see they’re trying to put the “ballot candy” back in the attempt to gut the initiative petition law? It says something that they think they can’t pass it without making people think they are also voting to make sure people who aren’t citizens can’t vote (there is already a law saying they can’t). They know how unpopular the measure is.
TBone
McAfee said Fani can stay on the case IF she fires Nathan Wade. The Order is not all good but BOY, BYE is a quote from Lisa Rubin just now.
So case can stay in Fulton County but apparently McAfee gave defendants ammo for appeal. Order was written before McAfee had opponents in his election campaign but just released because of security concerns.
opiejeanne
@lowtechcyclist: My girls were involved in dance as kids, and both were professional dancers when they were young, but not as ballerinas. A good way to starve to death (I’m not kidding); the first thing the SF Ballet Company teaches their newly hired dancers is how to apply for unemployment during the off season.
When we lived in the SF bay area, the younger one was offered a spot at the Joffrey summer program when she was 13, but she would have been living in Greenwich Village for six weeks and we couldn’t afford to send her and me too. She was a offered a spot at the Contra Costa Ballet’s summer program that same term and took it. The following year she was in the program at the Berkeley Ballet School, run by Sally Streets.
The cool thing for young dancers in the 1990s was going to the auditions for these summer programs, getting a 90 minute master class with a famous dancer or instructor for $20. Getting an offer was a pipe dream for most of the kids, and so many of these girls were starving themselves from age 11 that it was terrible to see. Neither of my girls were worried about their weight, they both had thin but healthy bodies, but it was so much a part of the culture that these other girls would brag that they had only eaten half a peach all day. One little girl scolded me because I took my youngest out for a hamburger for lunch during a break, said I was a bad mother.
Shalimar
@TBone: It’s like the Hur report deja vu. It’s the worst-case thing the judge could write given the lack of evidence. He basically believed the Trump attorneys. It will be spun endlessly by Republicans against Willis. But losing Wade is no great loss in my opinion so it shouldn’t affect her actual case very much at all.
NotMax
Speaking of quixotic, while awaiting the morning thread, a little bon-bon from Ma of La Mancha, “I Like Him.”
@zhena gogolia
Yeah, the Massenet opera is Don Quichotte.
TBone
@Shalimar: 👍 digesting ramifications with coffee. It’s always complicated but apparently the delay tactics and ammunition for appeal are front and center. I’m in Fani’s corner all the way.
opiejeanne
@zhena gogolia: Thank you. I regret not taking French when I had the chance, and couldn’t work out how to pronounce it in German. The French pronunciation makes sense since the composer was working in Russia at a time when French culture was revered there.
Soprano2
@Shalimar: He probably desperately wanted to disqualify her, but like Kay said there was no basis for it in the actual law, so this is what he did instead.
Kay
Ohio Senate:
It’s egregious for Moreno because he used to be a normal person on civil rights for gay people but took this big, dramatic (and completely phony) hard Right turn when he decided to be Trump’s favorite candidate. Moreno has made a kind of speciality out of demonizing trans people too – accuses random people of pedophilia, that sort of thing.
Upshot- Sherrod Brown’s luck holds :)
Kay
4 days ago. Running from Trump’s pick :)
Frank LaRose is also running. He’s dumb as a rock so we should root for him over Dolan.
Shalimar
@TBone: I am extremely impressed by Fani and not impressed by Wade at all, so the decision itself doesn’t bother me. Just so tired of all the shit-flinging that comes from Republicans all the time about every single thing. Of course a Republican judge would give the defense lawyers more shit to fling.
Geminid
@Hoodie: Thanks for the correction. I think I got him mixed up Jim Cooper with a former Democratic Representative from Tennesse, Jim Cooper.
Your description of McCrory fits what I know about him. I would not say McCrory is a “good” politician, but he still has influence in North Carolina. It was not enough to beat the trump-endorsed idiot who now serves as The Old North State’s junior Senator, in the 2022 primary; but I suspect North Carolina could be very close this year so I’m glad McCrory dropped out of the No Labels scheme.
I hope former South Carolina Rep. Joe Cunninham follows his lead. Cunningham’s the guy Nancy Mace beat in 2020. He was one of the 40 Democrats who flipped Republican-held seats in 2028, and I thought he was a promising politician until I saw he was with No Labels. I wonder what they’re paying him.
RevRick
@Chris T.: The old party has to die off first before another can take its place. So, they aren’t really third parties. In fact, it’s easier for a one-party system to exist than a third party. In the first two decades of the 1800s, we effectively had one-party rule with a rump regional party.
RaflW
Those three guys in the first photo @top certainly seem to have their fingers on the pulse of young people. I’m sure they’ll select a vibrant and exciting ticket of men at least 5 yours younger than Joe Biden.
RevRick
@JML: The late Juan Linz wrote a monograph on The Perils of Presidentialism, which we’re seeing played out in real time with Trumpism. Both parliamentary and presidential democracies can, and do, go off the rails.
Can ours hold?
NotMax
@RaflW
“Dean Phillips on line 1.”
“Hang up.”
Uncle Cosmo
Mmm, I believe it has much less to do with “language drift” – since IIUC “key-HO-tay” remains the proper pronunciation in contemporary Spanish – than with the inevitable and ubiquitous fact that English-speakers love to steal words from other languages but inevitably mangle their pronunciation, often beyond recognition (e.g., jerez => sherry).
From Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary (1906):
One of my fondest memories of junior high was when someone in our 8th grade English class cited a local radio personality as an authority for something-or-other . Our teacher (a marvelous instructor in a year of marvelous instructors**) looked disgusted, scrawled on the blackboard the word epitome, turned to us and pointing to it said: You know who [that guy] is? The kind of guy who pronounces this EP-i-tōm. We were all pretty confused – it wasn’t a word kids in a working-class junior high had ever seen – but once we looked it up we realized why Mr. L was so disgusted.
** FTR, all males. The only turkey was the Math teacher, but we managed to learn Algebra I despite him.
Tony G
@RaflW: I live a block away from the local high school. It’s amazing how many kids I see wearing Joe Lieberman tee shirts.
Paul in KY
@eclare: Maybe quixotic?
Danielx
@Tony G:
I was surprised to see Lieberman is still alive.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: Must say ‘Varadakar’ doesn’t sound very Irish. Would make a great Barbarian Warlord name, though.
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
Once heard one grandmother describe something as gauche.
Only she pronounced it “gow-chee.”
Battleaxe of a woman corrected at one’s peril.
;)
Mike in NC
No Labels offers us Joe Lieberman and Pat McCrory. I’d label them “assholes” because they are.
JaneE
I think of myself as a moderate not a liberal. On some things I am liberal or progressive, on others close to conservative, on balance maybe a little left of middle. Back in the 50’s, 60’s, and even 70’s there was a place for me in either party. I don’t think I have changed all that much, but there has not been a place for me in the GOP since the 80’s. I am not quite ready to really call myself a Democrat officially, but I might as well since I will never vote for another Republican as long as I live.
The way I see it, Joe Biden is as close to the “bipartisan, moderate” candidate they say they want as anyone currently being named. His live and let live, don’t bully, it’s no one’s business, and make your own choices on abortion and gender/sex may be anathema to conservatives, but that was pretty much the way everyone was in my age bracket where we were. Be nice to everyone, it won’t hurt you. Treat people as individuals, because they are. And no one cares what you do in your own bedroom. The church said “do unto others, as you would have them do unto you”. I want my privacy, and I want to control my own life. When did that become liberal? On fiscal matters I skew conservative, but I also know that some economic theories have some evidence to back them up and some are pure voodoo, as Bush the first once had the courage to say. And every time we get the national debt too low, it doesn’t work the way the GOP seems to think it should. Nor does making unemployed homeless and hungry seem to be any good for anyone at all. After the war businesses make it part of their plan to provide health care because a healthy worker is a better worker than one who is not. That is true for everyone, as most all other developed and even undeveloped nations realized, while we still have one party fighting to let people die.
If there were a chance that some third party candidate might win, sure, toss a hat in the ring. But that is not the case in our form of representative government. And when the choice is between the Democrats and the Republicans, there is only one choice that is not evil.
Paul in KY
@NotMax: When I was a kid, I pronounced it gaw-shay :-)
I also pronounced chaos as chay-ohs
Thank God I was corrected way back when.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: My grandmother told me about taking her mother to visit family in San Diego, and the dispute over how to pronounce La Jolla. Grandma was glad the old lady didn’t encounter the sign for Hueneme.
NotMax
@Paul in KY
Thankful we juveniles didn’t encounter chthonic.
:)
Paul in KY
@NotMax: I’m not even gonna attempt that one :-)
Miss Bianca
@E.: Sadly, yes. I was contacted by one a few months back. But actually running as a candidate? No evidence of that.
Miss Bianca
@eclare: Actually, the English pronounce “Quixote” as “Quick-sot.”
Hence, “Quixotic” = “quick-sotic”
Here endeth the lesson.
NotMax
@Miss Bianca
They also pronounce Gloucester as Gloster. English be weird.
;)
Roberto el oso
The whole No-Labels shtick is sounding faint echoes of the Fyre Festival. Also, the supposed “revulsion” on the part of the No-Labels leadership that anyone might suggest they’ll act as spoilers on behalf of Trump reminds me of Comey’s statement that it made him sick to his stomach to even think that in some way his ratfucking of HRC helped get Trump elected. It feels like pre-insulation from the justified accusations they know they will receive.
In the meantime there’s a certain mild entertainment to be had watching every single one of the possible names they float as candidates being met with either “who?” or “meh”.
Betty
@Nukular Biskits: They insist they are not a political party. They are a group.