Beware the Ides of March pic.twitter.com/VOzpPFMVc4
— Chris Swart (@BwanaChris) March 15, 2024
NEW: The DNC is building its first-ever team to counter third-party candidates, hiring ?@Lis_Smith? and ?@mattcorridoni?.
Meanwhile, outside groups are preparing for open war with third party candidates like never before. https://t.co/PO8rdh5tdm
— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) March 14, 2024
Taking that warning to heart... Alex Seitz-Wald, at NBC – “Democrats prepare to go to war against third-party candidates”:
The Democratic National Committee is building its first team to counter third-party and independent presidential candidates, people involved told NBC News, as the party and its allies prepare for a potential all-out war on candidates they view as spoilers.
The DNC has hired veteran Democratic operative Lis Smith, best known for her work guiding the 2020 presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, to help oversee an aggressive communications component of its strategy, which also includes opposition research and legal challenges.
Underscoring how important Democrats view the effort, it is being overseen by Mary Beth Cahill and Ramsey Reid, two veteran DNC insiders, who have already started issuing rare public statements rebuking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“We’re facing an unprecedented election and we know the GOP is already working to prop up third-party candidates like Robert Kennedy Jr. to make them stalking horses for Donald Trump,” Corridoni told NBC News. “With so much on the line, we’re not taking anything for granted. We’re going to make sure voters are educated and we’re going to make sure all candidates are playing by the rules.”
The move comes as a coalition of outside groups — which includes Democratic and anti-Trump Republican organizations — stockpile money and work to stymie third parties…
When you send me terrible quotes of Biden saying stuff from 50 years ago, it doesn’t make me think, oh no, Biden is terrible, it makes me think, wow, the guy who said this grew so much that he came around on trans rights. Sounds like a great person I would want for president!
— LadyGrey ???????????? (@TWLadyGrey) March 14, 2024
https://t.co/LOs5HENokq pic.twitter.com/M0dHmXUAk7
— Pragmatic Obots (@PragmaticObot) March 15, 2024
It's over. Let it go.https://t.co/MbjkwWj2Ay
— Derrick Martin (@blackthorn28) March 15, 2024
Speaking of things that should be wrapped up & thrown away… per the Washington Post, “White House counsel urges House speaker to end GOP impeachment inquiry” [gift link]:
White House counsel Ed Siskel is sending a letter Friday morning to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), urging him to close the impeachment inquiry into President Biden following an investigation that has stretched for more than a year and has yet to uncover clear evidence of wrongdoing.
“I write to you today because it is clear the House Republican impeachment is over,” the letter reads, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post. “The House Majority ought to work with the President on our economy, national security, and other important priorities on behalf of the American people, not continue to waste time on political stunts like this.”
The four-page letter notes that House Republicans have collected 100,000 pages of records, interviewed dozens of witnesses and held several public hearings.
“The investigation has continually turned up evidence that, in fact, the President did nothing wrong,” the letter reads. “In fact, it has shown the opposite of what House Republicans have claimed. The House Oversight and Judiciary Committees have heard from not one, not two, but more than 20 witnesses who have all confirmed this.”
House Republicans have been pursuing claims of shady business dealings by Biden for virtually his entire presidency, but they have yet to produce a set of specific, evidence-backed allegations. Their inquiry has unfolded as former president Donald Trump, who will face Biden in a November rematch, faces criminal trials over his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
House Republican leaders continue to say that they have uncovered evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Biden and his family, as they seek to show that Biden used his position to help relatives drum up businesses and benefited from their financial doings. But some GOP lawmakers concede privately, and in some cases publicly, that the investigation has yielded scant evidence that would justify an impeachment…
“It is obviously time to move on, Mr. Speaker. This impeachment is over,” the letter reads in closing. “There is too much important work to be done for the American people to continue wasting time on this charade.”
OzarkHillbilly
Et tu Brute?
More like, wrapped up and burned at the stake.
Butch
Washington Post, what’s with this weasel wording – “yet to uncover clear evidence?” The GOP has yet to uncover any evidence.
Danielx
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes, even him.
Old Man Shadow
Yeah, some people change. They evolve. They grow.
I was a fundamentalist white Evangelical asshole 20 years ago. I would be… I am ashamed of some of the things I said and the harm I caused other people directly or indirectly with my words or actions or votes. Can’t change the past, so I try to be better now.
So yeah, Joe Biden grew. When presented with new facts or new stories from people, instead of doubling down, he had empathy.
That’s a great quality for a leader to have.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
rikyrah
That first tweet 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
One of the best running gags in Asterix is Caesar ending every meeting with other Roman bigwigs by giving his orders to them, then adding “you too, Brutus!” Leading to Brutus grumbling darkly about how he’s getting really tired of this shit and one of these days he’s just going to…
RaflW
Not anything bit a random tidbit, Peter Sagal got curious about the name Siskel and found that indeed, the WH Counsel is the nephew of the late film critic Gene Siskel.
Delk
12 years ago today my husband and I were legally married. I never thought that same sex marriage would happen in my lifetime.
October is the non-legal anniversary. That will be 25 years.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chris: Heh.
Chris
@Old Man Shadow:
I was a neocon twenty years ago (though thankfully also too young to vote).
Watching modern-day Republicans is an interesting exercise in that it’s an endless back and forth between “oh man, I remember when I was dumb enough to believe that” and “yeah, I’m sorry, but even as a stupid teenage right-winger I knew better than that.”
NotMax
In light of the day, Ides of March spin up You Wouldn’t Listen on the digital jukebox.
OzarkHillbilly
@Delk: Congrats, I hope I live long enough to accomplish the same with my wife. (currently @ 14)
Caveatimperator
The bottle of Caesar dressing doesn’t have enough stab wounds. :P
RaflW
@Butch: They’ve ‘uncovered’ garbled evidence?
But yes, this sort of shit really pisses me off. The absolute worst example this week was the NYT saying about Nex Benedict “But it has never been clear wether Nex’s gender identity was a factor in the altercation…”
Fuck you, editors. I get that in the olden days, this construction was meant to indicate that it isn’t settled. But especially with the insertion of ‘never’, it’s a fucking whitewash that the OK officials want. It hasn’t been ‘clear’ because those Republican thugs have endlessly muddied the investigation.
It’s just the worst of the press being unwilling to say what’s plain: Republicans obfuscate, and it fucking works. Because a supine press buys the ‘unclear’ framing.
JPL
@Delk: Congratulations!
Spanky
Ides of March! Today is the 5th anniversary of my retirement, which is going noticably better than Julius Caesar’s.
I wasn’t happy about the pandemic hitting almost exactly a year later, but was real glad I was already staying home.
RaflW
@Chris: It pains me to admit that at 18, I foolishly voted for Reagan’s second term. I regretted it within a year, and graduated from college a flaming lib. I just hadn’t detached from my dad’s pro-business, laissez-faire analysis at that young age.
Funny enough, it was in part a talk given by former MASH star Mike Farrell at a church across the street from campus that started to open my eyes. I don’t recall the topic, but suspect it was peace related (I guess he spoke on refugee issues in that time frame). Damn Hollywood libs wrecking everything! lol
eclare
@Old Man Shadow:
Yes, as most people get older their views become more calcified, Joe has shown the ability to grow. And so have you. All we can do is be better than we were.
Or as nature proves, evolve or die.
eclare
@Delk:
Congratulations!
satby
@Delk: Happy Anniversary Delk!
Mary
@Delk: Congratulations to you and your husband. I wish you many more happy years together.
Shalimar
Q: How do you wage informational war on a Kennedy?
A: Remove the trees from his maps of the ski route.
HumboldtBlue
A group of 31 former House Republicans sent Speaker Johnson a private letter urging him to bring the Ukraine aid bill to a House vote, The Bulwark reports:
NotMax
@eclare
“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday, and I love today.”
– Adlai Stevenson
.
satby
I can see why the White House Counsel Siskel would request that the House quit wasting everyone’s time since it would be the responsible thing for the House to do. Since they’re all (the Republicans) trapped in oppositional defiant disorder though, they’ll still put on a few trainwreck hearings and continue to highlight just how inept they are.
Chris
@RaflW:
I can’t even blame my parents; Dad was a liberal, albeit a very moderate one who had voted for Republicans in the past (including Reagan’s first term) but hasn’t voted for one in this century.
Blame the 9/11 zeitgeist plus reading too many Tom Clancy novels.
eclare
@NotMax:
That is a great quote.
satby
@HumboldtBlue: It’s adorable that former House members assume anyone cares what they think.
Chris
@HumboldtBlue:
Can somebody clarify for me what the rules are on the dispatch petition and what it would take to get it through?
Shalimar
What is Hannity smoking? “Are you better off now than 4 years ago?” just gets more dreary for Republicans as we get further into the despair of 2020. November of 2020 was awful.
Layer8Problem
@Butch: The Post can’t use “Clouds and Shadows”, that term of art’s owned by the FTFNYT.
dmsilev
@Chris: My understanding is that an absolute majority of House members need to sign the petition for it to work, so it needs at least some Republicans who think it’s worth the raised middle finger to Speaker Johnson.
dmsilev
@Shalimar: Four years ago right now, Trump was trying to convince the country that the small but increasing number of confirmed COVID cases were just a blip and things were going to turn around soon. Less than a week later, states were issuing lockdowns (California was the 19th of March).
Shalimar
@HumboldtBlue: So even former House Republicans don’t have the balls to call for current members to sign the discharge petition. It’s all just theater Johnson will ignore.
Scout211
I have been reading news reports that the failed Biden impeachment committee is planning the exit strategy of sending the DOJ “criminal referrals.”
Excuse me a moment while I LOL.
Yeah, turn it over to the “deep state” DOJ and blame them for not prosecuting the “Biden crime family.” Win win. 🙄
Chris
@satby:
The trend of “Republicans do the right thing, but only when it’s safely too late for their opinions to matter” is a spectacularly consistent one.
Eisenhower made that famous speech about the military-industrial complex that everyone loves him for… It was literally his farewell address, putting a bow on eight years of feeding raw red meat to said “military-industrial complex,” after riding the Red Scare into power with everything that did to anyone who might’ve been inclined to rein in nationalist and militarist tendencies in the government.
Barry Goldwater gave speeches denouncing the religious right… in the eighties, long after anyone stopped caring what he had to say, and long after he ran the first presidential campaign that brought the very racists who would eventually form the religious right into his party.
Colin Powell said nice things about gays in the military… years after he retired from politics, and after he himself had led a very public media campaign against his commander-in-chief to prevent gays from being allowed to serve, back when he was actually Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and in a position to do something about it himself.
James Comey, of course, there’s that fucking “elect more women!” T-shirt.
I feel like Reagan, of all people, actually deserves some credit here: even if he made the Cold War immediately worse during his first term, at least he reversed himself at a time when his opinion actually still mattered (and against the advice of all the hawks in his cabinet). Most Republicans would’ve spent the entire decade doubling down on the Cold War, then long after they were retired, shaken their head sorrowfully about how man, that Gorbachev guy was a real missed opportunity, why couldn’t my successors have done something with him?
Scout211
Here is an explainer on indivisible.org.
rikyrah
@Delk:
Happy Anniversary :)
Chris
@dmsilev:
@Scout211:
Thank you both!
In theory, with a House this closely divided, it shouldn’t be difficult to peel off the extremely bare minimum number of Republicans needed, but the party’s turned into such a cult you can’t count on that.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris:
Well, unless they couldn’t do that because they’d been converted to superheated plasma in a thermonuclear fireball first.
NotMax
@Chris
Some 30 House Rs have already announced this term will be their last. Nothing to lose.
mrmoshpotato
The GOP?
zhena gogolia
@dmsilev: By Easter!
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
So hard to wrap a turd.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
You can probably also blame getting a college education and perhaps being exposed to critical thinking, as well as to people outside your tribe.
There’s a reason Republicans hate education.
Jay
@NotMax:
paper bag, lighter fluid
Bow and card, optional.
Old Man Shadow
@Delk: Congratulations!
Old Man Shadow
@Chris: Oh, man, I know that feeling well.
Jackie
@Chris: This is my go-to resource for easy to understand the ins and outs of the discharge position rules:
https://politicaldictionary.com/words/discharge-petition/
BC in Illinois
Ah, yes. The Ides of March.
At least when Caesar died, he was surrounded by his friends.
topclimber
@BC in Illinois: A proven laugh-getter since March 16, 44 BC.
Geminid
@Chris: There’s a lot of scepticism about the feasibility of a discharge petition. But according to a Politico article,* Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole thinks it’s a real possibility:
* “Johnson faces make-or-break moment on Ukraine aid as pressure mounts,” Politico March 14. The article touches on the two different discharge petitions that are gathering signatures.
“
Jackie
@Shalimar:
Fixed it for you 😉
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
That too.
The anti-nuclear movement became easier to ridicule once the Cold War was over, but the plain fact is, they were right: there were several times during the Cold War where we came this close to nuking each other to a cinder. It’s as much dumb luck as anything that we all came out of the Cold War alive.
UncleEbeneezer
@Chris: One of my favorite films, Little Children (written and directed by Todd Fields) ends with my favorite movie line: “You couldn’t change the past but the future could be a different story. And it had to start somewhere.”
Nobody is pure. We’ve all made mistakes or started out on the wrong paths. It’s really who seeks out and embraces change and who doesn’t that really matters. I used to tell bigoted jokes, thought feminism was the real enemy and even voted for Nader (blech). Now I preach Feminism, Anti-Racism and LGBTQ Rights to anyone who will listen. To use a cheesy quote from Rocky IV: if I can change, you can change. We all can change! There’s really no excuse for anyone not to.
Matt McIrvin
So apparently a family friend of the Boeing whistleblower claims he told her “if I’m found dead, it wasn’t suicide”.
And these smart people I follow on Mastodon are saying this is slam-dunk evidence that Boeing had him assassinated.
Am I morally obligated to not regard this even a bit skeptically, because it’s a sympathetic victim and an unsympathetic putative conspirator? Do we have to do it this way?
rikyrah
Did anyone watching cable news shows yesterday, get anything resembling a good reason as TO WHY the SDNY didn’t turn over that paperwork to Bragg’s office? I watched a few shows, and I got nothing Bragg’s office asked for them ‘ way back when’, and SDNY sat on its azz about those documents?
UncleEbeneezer
Love seeing that the Dems are finally gonna bring some fight to these third party assholes. Long overdue. Between Nader and Jill Stein, they have been complicit in so much of the backsliding we have suffered. They are egotistical, toxic, shit-stains (and useful idiots for Putin) and should be treated as such.
Eunicecycle
@Chris: right now there are a bunch of Democrats who haven’t signed it. Some big names, too. I hope it’s just a matter of getting it to them (I am assuming it is an actual paper petition).
rikyrah
Nick Knudsen (@NickKnudsenUS) posted at 0:30 PM on Thu, Mar 14, 2024:
Wow. UAW President Shawn Fain isn’t mincing words.
“People just don’t want to work…I agree…The people I’m talking about are the Wall Street Freeloaders: The Masters of Passive Income.”
This is worth a watch. #UnionsForAll https://t.co/gFJUuU88yK
(https://x.com/NickKnudsenUS/status/1768328965738135560?t=IzCjeN9sXq02eO6Dd284lA&s=03)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Zero courts would convict Boeing on the basis of that “slam dunk evidence.”
The circumstances are worthy of a real investigation, but the internet hates process because it’s slow.
Baud
@Eunicecycle: A few won’t because of Israel.
Eunicecycle
@rikyrah: no, but both Lisa Rubin and Andrew Weissman said Bragg should be livid about it. Maybe there is a Trump mole in SDNY.
rikyrah
The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) posted at 4:00 PM on Thu, Mar 14, 2024:
.@StuartPStevens on @MSNBC breaks down how the roadmap to autocracy begins with the Republican Party’s unwillingness to lose. They cannot accept defeat so they attack every institution in America created to hold them accountable and elect a strongman like Trump. https://t.co/Wv3tT0gfoa
(https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1768381740215677076?t=N9pqJHoD3R1FtWCWuOxMJA&s=03)
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: This isn’t the first time No Labels has made noises about running a presidential candidate. But then they don’t actually do it. It’s hard for me to gauge whether this is getting any further or not.
In practice, the third-party candidates who get traction usually aren’t doing the “Center Party of Sensible Moderates” thing; they’re presenting as more pure or extreme in some way, like Nader or Stein, or running a campaign about one or two specific issues, like Perot. I think the last time the third-party guy really was the centrist was John Anderson in 1980, and he ended up functioning more as a gateway to voting for Reagan than as an actual spoiler.
NotMax
@Baud
I blame the RadarRange.
//
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) posted at 7:28 PM on Thu, Mar 14, 2024:
Publicly Homophobic, Trump-Endorsed Candidate Allegedly Sought Out Men in Private
For Republicans eager to regain the Senate majority this year, Ohio offers a prime opportunity to pick up a critical seat.
But ahead of Tuesday’s primary election, there’s mounting anxiety inside the GOP that Bernie Moreno may emerge with the nomination.
After vaulting into the top tier of contenders with a coveted endorsement from Donald Trump, Moreno — who has shifted from a public supporter of LGBTQ rights to a hardline opponent — is confronting questions about the existence of a 2008 profile seeking “Men for 1-on-1 sex” on a casual sexual encounters website called Adult Friend Finder.
“Hi, looking for young guys to have fun with while traveling,” reads a caption on a photo-less profile under the username “nardo19672,” according to an Associated Press review of records made public through a massive and well-publicized data breach of the website. Records also show the profile was last accessed about six hours after it was created.
https://t.co/r6uQTiPiLB
(https://x.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1768433989239353585?t=YmhviV1d3W77yYNQYvKIwQ&s=03)
Eunicecycle
@Baud: oh you’re right (of course!) All I think of is Ukraine but it included support for Israel, too. But also humanitarian assistance for Gaza?
Baud
@Eunicecycle: I think yes to all that. Also money for Taiwan.
ArchTeryx
@Chris: Knowing that series, probably feed him to the lions – only to have the lions get thoroughly sick. Either that, or just bribe Obelix to yeet him over the horizon.
Sure Lurkalot
@Delk: Oh happy day! Congratulations!
Jeffro
@Delk: congratulations!
frosty
@Chris: I’ve been calling my R Rep who has a 100% positive record on votes for Ukraine and telling him to vote for the discharge petition and vote for it if it gets to the floor.
I think my next call will be to remind him of all the D Reps who voted for the ACA knowing that the vote meant they wouldn’t be re-elected. Country over career as it were.
Baud
@Delk: Happy day!
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: For a little while after 9/11, I ended up at least mentally joining the “liberal hawks” who were at the time supporting George W. Bush’s military adventures, and this extended to supporting the invasion of Iraq for period of several months in 2002-03. It never actually affected the way I *voted*, so my degree of complicity for the invasion is kind of indirect.
The realization that I’d been played for a sucker, in part from a desire to bend over backwards not to be a knee-jerk partisan in a time of crisis, was tough.
At one point after this I was reading some political blog (I no longer remember which it was) whose author was arguing that supporting the Iraq war was on the short list of positions for which there could be NO forgiveness. It was a thing you could never walk back from, and your life from then on could never be a moral positive. Too much death and destruction had happened.
There was a commenter there who was in a similar position to me, a former supporter who asked, clearly in a state of anguish: “OK, so what should someone like me *do*? What measure of atonement is actually possible? What would you want?”
And the first guy responded (I think these are close to his exact words): “Well, I would hope that you would have the common decency to consider suicide.”
I spent a long time after that, well, not seriously considering suicide but having these morbid thoughts. Wondering if that guy was right, that a political opinion you had in your mind for a few months could negate all the good you ever did in your life. I still do, on occasion.
And then I step back and think, what the hell, dude? Some rando on the Internet 20 years ago told another guy to kill himself and you regard this as some kind of legitimate moral reasoning? I mean, there’s a reason this kind of behavior is one of the strongest taboos on social media these days.
The Internet is a strange place–if you seek out abuse you can find it in a thousand ways. And it can be not good for your head. But it can seem like some kind of moral profundity in the moment.
Jackie
@rikyrah: As of this morning TIFG is standing by Moreno and is holding a rally with him tomorrow in Ohio.
We shall see…
NotMax
@ArchTeryx
That’s what’s missing from Cole’s Arizona digs. “A menhir dresses up any room.”
:)
TBone
ZOMG 😆 He really posted this 🤣
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F647c8a28-4f40-460a-bb6b-fda3420e5271_1284x1409.jpeg
Here’s a spoon, buddy! 🤣
West of the Rockies
It is abundantly clear after Senator Crazy Eyes rebuttal that the Repubs really want to use “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Sorry, fools. The true answer for the majority of Americans is “Hell, yeah!”
trollhattan
@Chris: IDK if they count as the last meaningful bipartisan effort but Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar were on the side of the angels on nuclear disarmament. Fewer nuclear weapons is always better, and we’ve evidently forgotten or simply aren’t paying attention.
Jeffro
I can’t tell whether I’ve shifted left as I’ve gotten older, or if it’s just that the RWNJs have gotten vastly more nutty over the past three decades. Probably both.
It continues to shock one and all that I am the most vocal liberal on both sides of my family tree.
Then again, given the household I grew up in, it shocks even me!)
(those two things may be related =)
ArchTeryx
@Delk: Warmest congratuations for that. One of the few bright spots from the last several years for me was Obergefell. It also allowed a pair of lesbians I am close friends with to finally get married, and I cried tears at their wedding pictures.
Matt McIrvin
@West of the Rockies: Eh. Four years ago we liberal blue-staters were going into lockdown, but their supporters were just living their lives like nothing had happened. It was cool for them! They were having a great time laughing at the stupid libs!
And then a bunch of them died, but they’re not around to answer the question any more.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That should be a warning on the screen every time someone opens their browser.
Geminid
@Eunicecycle: Some Democrats may be holding out because of the funding for Israel. Katherine Clark and her whip team are probably tracking those member and trying to to persuade them.
On the Republican side, I think the potential signees want Johnson to put an aid bill on the floor, as Tom Cole suggested in the quote at #53. For them, a discharge petition is a last resort, a choice they’d rather not make.
They’ll have to make that choice, I think, because Johnson may not be able to get a bill through the Rules Committee even if he wants to. Nancy Pelosi stacked the Rules Committee with loyal allies, but Johnson inherited the 9 Republican members selected by McCarthy, and 3 of those were imposed on McCarthy by the Freedom Caucus. They have no particular loyalty to Johnson, and that’s one reason he is such a weak Speaker.
Jackie
@West of the Rockies: Four years ago. When almost the entire world shut down in fear because of a pandemic raging.
ArchTeryx
@NotMax: To quote Ice Age, referring to Stonehenge: “Modern architechture. It’ll never last.”
BR
@Matt McIrvin:
I haven’t seen anyone on Mastodon say it’s slam dunk evidence though we may follow different folks. Just that it bears a closer look.
TBone
@RaflW: I love that story, thanks for sharing 💜
Kathleen
@Eunicecycle: Happy to say I didn’t see any Ohio Dem reps on the list of reps who haven’t signed.
Josie
@rikyrah:
That is impressive. I wish someone creative could work some of that into an ad for President Biden.
frosty
This is insane!
@Geminid: I have to give Nancy Smash a ton more credit for passing anything at all!
Matt McIrvin
@BR: yeah, these folks are hardcore “this was an assassination!”
Jeffro
Good point by Jamelle Bouie in today’s NYT: remember, you’re voting for a coalition, a set of values, and a future this November – not “Biden” or “trump”
(and if American voters were grown-ups, or if we had a real media, we’d already know that. but if a frog had wings, etc etc…)
ArchTeryx
@Matt McIrvin: That’s some extraordinarily gross, 8chan-level Scum and Villainy trolling. Telling someone to kill themselves because they made one mistake in the middle of a mad stampede to follow Dubya into the abyss has absolutely zero decency, legitimacy, or moral support. You didn’t order the troops to kill 100,000+ Iraqi civilians, or legalize torture, or any of it. Nor did the person doing the posting. Cheney did all that, and until his bargain with Satan concludes, he’ll still be hanging around proving that only the good die young,
TBone
@TBone: Alex Jones:
😆 Sorry it’s not after dark yet
Kathleen
@Jackie: I forgot Trump was coming to Dayton tomorrow.
Leto
@TBone: something something no kink shaming :
Edit: Avalune and I finished up s3 of Picard yesterday, and in the final episode Worf says, to the effect, “I will be happy to join your threesome.” Which Riker responds, “Do you even hear yourself?”
Eunicecycle
@Kathleen: I know mine did (Emilia Sykes)!
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: The appeasers of Putin are trying to play that angle, saying they’re like the anti-warmongers of the Cold War era, even as Putin waves his nuclear dick around and brags about supersonic nuclear torpedoes or whatever.
TBone
@Leto: 🤣😂 I’m still gasping for breath at the expression on his face too L.O.L.
Salty Sam .
Salty Spouse’s head nearly exploded yesterday when she read a FB post by her sister’s Trumpy boyfriend- “If you’re better off today than you were four years ago, you are probably an illegal alien.” She stormed around for awhile trying to formulate a pithy response, but eventually realized it was futile. The guy is as dumb as a bag of hammers, and drinks MAGA Koolaid daily.
Delk
Thanks everybody! Our wedding was just the two of us, two witnesses, and the justice of the peace. One of the witnesses offered to take photographs so I gave her my point and shoot. She took tons of pictures from every angle during the service. When she handed me back the camera she said, “I guess I should have told you that I am legally blind “.
So, if you ever visit you can see a lovely framed photo of blurry shoes.
West of the Rockies
@OzarkHillbilly:
14 wives? Damn, you make Elizabeth Taylor look like an amateur! //
Kathleen
@Eunicecycle: Yup. Greg Landsman did also! Our Dem contingent is small but our members are brilliant, focused and talented. All star line up.
Sure Lurkalot
@rikyrah:
Truth! Wish he would have worn his “Eat the Rich” tee shirt instead of the (Wall Street) suit and tie.
Kristine
@Delk: Happy Anniversary!! 🥂
Leto
@TBone: oh, also reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer receives the wrong vanity license plate. He receives a proctologist plate: “ASSMAN”
Continually throughout the episode: “HEY ASSMAN!” I see no reason not to do this to ASSMAN Jones. :)
Eunicecycle
@Kathleen: yes they are! I continue to be impressed by all the Democrats I hear about. Our team is so much smarter and talented than the vast majority of Republicans. I can’t think of any Rs I am impressed with but I leave open the possibility they exist, somewhere.
Kristine
@Baud:
QFT
Also nominated.
TBone
@Leto: 💙😆
Jeffro
From Jennifer Rubin’s newsletter (I suspect this will be an op-ed from her later today or tomorrow); Democrats Have a Ton of Advantages Heading Into This Election:
(thanks for the reality check/pep talk, Ms. Rubin!)
wjca
Actually, no. At least, not entirely, and the implication here is wrong.
We can change how we act. We may or may not be able to change how we feel about something. Not won’t, can’t.
Let me give a personal example. As a result of the culture I grew up in (mid-20th century America), I’m homophobic (at least as I understand the term) — just seeing two guys kiss makes me really uncomfortable. I know, intellectually, that it’s an invalid emotional reaction. But it has proven impossible to change; and I’ve tried.
That doesn’t mean I have to let it impact my behavior. I have no problem congratulating Delk on his anniversary. Indeed, I was arguing for gay marriage back in the mid-80s, which was definitely ahead of the curve on the subject. Because it was obviously (at least to me) the right thing to do. No matter if it made me twitchy in practice.
In short, don’t assume that, just because you or someone you know changed how they feel about something, anyone can if they try. It just ain’t so.
rikyrah
Sorry,
but that bullshyt with SDNY and Bragg’s office pisses me off to no end.
Why isn’t the head of SDNY having a press conference to explain WHY the office did not do right by Bragg and his request?
TBone
Another mysterious case fell out the window in Russia, in case you missed it:
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/03/yet-another-russian-oligarch-lukoil-dies
TBone
@rikyrah: SDNY:
“Sovereign District of New York” or
“Southern Delay of New York”
I too am very frustrated but that District is not known for good things as per Watergirl’s points last night.
trollhattan
@Matt McIrvin: So true.
The current crop of Russian leadership and their media mouthpieces are hooked on nuclear doom porn, endlessly quipping about the coming nuclear apocalypse in a tone indicating they half want it.
It will be our fault, see, we forced them to. What choice do they have?
TBone
@trollhattan: I noticed that at a tankie website yesterday. They’re all in.
Baud
@trollhattan:
The nice thing about causing a nuclear apocalypse is that we don’t have to listen to them complain about us anymore.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: And one of the problems in the original Cold War was indeed that our side wasn’t the only one with whackaloons on it. If anything, Brezhnev started the re-escalation in the 1970s before Reagan got in.
trollhattan
@Jeffro: Thanks, after that read I’m ready to begin my weekend (typed between a.m. coffees).
Ms Ruben is truly the Real Deal–a keen observer able to frame our current crazy nation in realistic terms.
Matt McIrvin
@wjca: The AA-ish “fake it till you make it” has some wisdom to it.
I used to be really upset when I saw my own internalized racism at work. Now I’m just “yeah that’s just your internalized racism, it lies to you all the time, pay it no mind.” And I think that attitude has even quieted it down.
Geminid
@frosty: Speaker Pelosi sppointed 9 Democrats to the Rules Committee she knew she could rely on: Chairman Jim McGovern (MA), Norma Torres (CA), Ed Perlmutter (CO), Jaime Raskin (MD), Mary Gay Scanlon (PA), Joseph Morrelle (NY), MALark DeSaulnier (CA), and Deborah Ross (NC). Yhey Republicans had omly 4 members with Tom Cole (OK) the Ramking Member.
Now, Cole chairs a committe with 9 Republicans, while McGovern leads 3 other Democrats.
I think Speaker Pelosi’s challenge was wrangling her rank-and-file members, and that probably was harder than it looked. She had already worked out some of the conflicts within her caucus during the previous Congress, and that helped.
NotMax
@wjca
Once met someone who, as a hotel bellhop, claimed he accidentally walked in on Rock Hudson and Tyrone Power together in bed. They were not exactly sleeping, if you get my drift.
His ultimate conclusion: “Such a shame. Think of the children they might have produced together.”
Jay
@Jackie:
It wasn’t fear. It was supposed to be good epidemic practice. Mitigation.
It had some unintended side effects.
On the one hand, as an “essential worker”, once the impact was known, I had the option of taking 3 paid months off, (many of my coworkers did), or, if I didn’t need it for sick time or die on the job, have it paid out at the end of the year.
Because of the shut down, people were at home, but as my workplace was “essential”, we were swamped. Half the staff was gone and home renovations were on everybody’s menu. So the store went nuts. In the beginning, based on the Covid rules, we could have 120 people in the store at any one time, (not including staff).
We had 3 block line ups outside and had to set up tents and shelters for the line ups. I would often start shit at 6AM, and have 10 people in my area already, and 20 lined up outside. (10 was the limit in my area as it was an enclosed space).
Instead of staying home a crap load of people decided to not do “essential work”, like fix a toilet, but instead, remodel. Our store, quintupled sales that first year of Covid.
At the cost of 1/4 of our staff, getting Covid every month.
I would get up at 4am every day to check my messages every day, even if I was on closing shifts, because at least twice a month, the store was closed for a day or a week, because too many staff were out with Covid.
The “essential worker” experience is a far cry from the “work from home” experience.
It didn’t help that people went nuts, fighting over bleach and toilet paper, when we had it.
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
Thanks for that.
Jackie
@Jeffro: Jennifer Ruben has really turned into one of my favorite must read columnists. She is now just as great an advocate for Biden and Democrats as those she listed in her column!😊
Chris
@Jeffro:
The RWNJs getting vastly more nutty has made me shift further left as I go. Or at least more intransigently partisan. I don’t think I’m all that far to the left of where I was when I turned liberal in the late 2000s, but I’m definitely at the point where I’m frustratedly asking “why do we even need a conservative party, sane or otherwise?” which probably wouldn’t be the case if we still had Angela Merkel types conservatives (bad features, but good features too, and in any case not lunatic fascists).
Hob
@Matt McIrvin: Here’s what I have trouble getting past with the “Boeing killed him” stuff. This guy was not a current whistleblower or a recent employee. His case started seven years ago. He had spoken to the press many times since then. If he had some extra terrible information from his time working there, something worth murdering him for… why wouldn’t he have mentioned it in his original complaint or at any time since? I know he was scheduled to give testimony soon, but my understanding was that this wasn’t the original whistleblowing case, but a defamation suit about Boeing’s statements about him. It’s hard to imagine that he was holding onto some bombshell testimony that wasn’t part of his original whistleblowing and hadn’t felt like releasing it after his original case was dismissed.
I guess I can imagine an argument that this suit would’ve brought out some other Boeing secrets in discovery. But it’s being talked about as if his upcoming personal testimony was the imminent threat, like he knew something no one else knew. How could he?
rikyrah
@West of the Rockies:
There really does need to be some sort of DNC Ad response to this.
The ads would be powerful. I remember that hellish time.
Chris
@frosty:
Seconded. It is absolutely batshit insane, and Congress is crammed to the gills with rules like this.
This is the kind of “red tape” and “government inefficiency” that it would do a world of good to actually clear up, but naturally that’s never actually what these words are used to describe.
Josie
@wjca:
You are very self aware and brave to admit this. I imagine it is true of many of us who were raised in that time period. My youngest son just the other day told me that he didn’t think your inner feelings made you homophobic or any other “phobic.” He thought it was your actions that were the determining factor. That made me feel better.
Villago Delenda Est
@Delk: You know, that’s a far more impressive run than a lot of “traditional marriage” couples can claim. Here’s to the big 50 down the road!
rikyrah
@Geminid:
I don’t want to give another phucking dime to Israel, but, I would tell my rep to suck it up, vote for the Israel funding as long as Ukraine is FULLY FUNDED THROUGH UNTIL JANUARY 2025.
Suck it up, and compromise.
NotMax
@Jay
“I know you have some in the back. You’re all just too damn lazy to restock it. Where’s the manager?”
//
West of the Rockies
@Matt McIrvin:
Nuclear Dick… grunge band name?
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: I went through a period, inspired by the reaction to the Bush era I mentioned above, where I was trying so damn hard to pay extra attention to the radial socialist left, because in the post-9/11-Iraq War period they’d been right when most mainstream Democrats were wrong, and they might be right again!
And then so many of these people I’m trying so hard to pay extra attention to fall into the hole of insisting that Donald Fucking Trump was less bad than the Great Satan Hillary Clinton or the quisling Barack Obama. I mean, it was so dumb.
Luther Siler
I am absolutely, totally, 100% better off than I was four years ago, mostly because President Biden forgave $70,000 in student loans since I’ve been teaching for twenty years. It’s amazing how much difference $565 a month back in your pocket can make.
S Cerevisiae
@Jeffro: That is a great pep talk from Rubin and it’s all true. We should be sharing this far and wide, go into this election as team optimism.
tybee
@rikyrah:
not only did they kill caesar but they killed the plant, too.
Geminid
@Chris: I was reading about the House Rules Committee and found that it was established in 1789. I usually don’t hear much about this Committee because normally it just shapes up legislation to the order of the Speakers and their leadership teams. But this Republican caucus is a hot mess and the Committee reflects that. Tom Cole is probably as level headed as Republicans come, but he has no particular power over his members and neither does Johnson.
West of the Rockies
@Jeffro:
Thanks for that Rubin column! I love Meacham and Beschloss.
Kelly
@Old Man Shadow: I was a Libertarian for a year or 2 in my early 20’s. Never voted for a Libertarian so maybe that’s Libertarian curious.
Matt McIrvin
@tybee: I’ll always love the bit in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” where everyone is freaking out after the assassination and someone sees a character named Cinna, and says “It’s Cinna the conspirator! Tear him apart!” Cinna says “no, no, I’m not that guy, I’m Cinna the poet!” and someone else yells “Tear him for his bad verses!”
Everyone’s a critic.
NotMax
@West of the Rockies
“What’s a band name George W. Bush can’t pronounce correctly, Alex?”
wjca
Don’t give me too much credit. After all, I can also admit I’m a sociopath — empathy, as in the ability to feel what others are feeling, pretty much nonexistant. I know intellectually how they feel, but just don’t relate. I’ve got feelings, just nothing like others in the same circunstances.
That’s why it really pisses me off when someone says that someone, Trump for example, does bad things because he’s a sociopath. No, he does bad things because he was never taught the difference between right and wrong. Saying “because he’s a sociopath” is actually giving him an excuse for inexcusable behavior. Lack of morals just isn’t the same thing.
Jay
@NotMax:
Much much worse than that. We had a couple of stabbings and 1 shooting over toilet paper.
Kelly
I can’t find it now but I stumbled across a funny Bluesky thread about the salads different Caesar’s might concoct. Nobody wanted Caligula or Tiberius salad..
Anoniminous
@Jay:
Saw your answer. Thanks
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Part of growing up is just… understanding that not everything’s about you, and that therefore, what triggers your “ick” reaction in most circumstances isn’t anyone’s problem but yours.
WJCA’s self-description pretty much applies to me too, and I grew up in a later time than he did. It just never bothered me that much, because everybody ultimately has all kinds of things they find gross, especially when it comes to sex. You don’t even have to go outside heterosexual cisgender norms; lots of people think of old people having sex and go “ick” (at least until they’re old people themselves). Lots of people think of ugly people having sex and go “ick” (however they define ugly). Lots of people definitely think of their parents having sex and go “ick ick ick.” It doesn’t mean any of these things are unnatural, let alone something we should have political arguments about; it just means that, well, you find this gross, okay, then don’t do it, and leave the people who do alone.
NotMax
Matt McIrvin
After interrogating Karl Marx the watchmaker and Karl Marx the piano tuner (41:14 – 42:46).
rikyrah
TRUTH
Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) posted at 11:04 AM on Fri, Mar 15, 2024:
While Texas is busy kicking Black kids out of school with locs, NASA is hiring skilled Black engineers with locs.
(https://x.com/keithboykin/status/1768669652102603189?t=TAcFHqBMgbJna0QWjcc-Sw&s=03)
eclare
@Luther Siler:
That is awesome!
eclare
@rikyrah:
Great photo! That case in TX was infuriating.
Geminid
@rikyrah: I think Democratic leadership will hold defections on the aid bill to 12 and maybe less. That could take some persuasion though.
I think Republican Ukraine hawks will get enough of their colleagues to make up for the wayward Democrats. They can even brag about how they voted against “The Squad.”
A successful discharge petition is the first step of a two-step process, and I think nothing will be certain until the vote on the underlying bill that the petition to discharge brings to the floor. That bill can be amended to account for last minute compromises, so this could all come down to a dramatic floor vote.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ll always be proud of the fact that even though I was very much an anti-war-on-terror type at this point, I smelled something funny on Assange and Snowden (not to mention their groupies like Greenwald) from very early on. And the entire movement that held them up as heroes. I didn’t take it for granted that they were bad guys right off the bat, but I was a skeptic, and the more I waited and saw, the worse it smelled.
I remember going to a few events held by anti-NSA activists in the 2010s when I was in grad school. And I walked away in every case thinking “these people, at best, have a very vague idea of the difference between opposing government abuse of power, and just opposing government full stop.” And yes, the insistence with which they tried to hang everything around Obama’s neck specifically, and how determined they were to believe that he was just the new George W. Bush, was definitely part of what had my bullshit detectors ringing.
Ruckus
@satby:
They want something to be wrong.
They NEED something to be wrong.
Because they have found NOTHING wrong – for 2 reasons.
1. There is nothing wrong.
2. They are idiots.
All of this is being done by a bunch of 3 graders in adult bodies looking for something that doesn’t exist. Their concept of governing stopped working about 75 yrs ago and they are just too stupid to see that. It might even be funny if it wasn’t so stupid, ignorant, useless, and time wasting. Their world stopped working before they were born but they are trying to bring it back, which also isn’t working. The world has moved on, they just have their heads so firmly stuffed up their exit port that they can’t see anything but _ _ _ _ , and they think the _ _ _ _ they are seeing is real life. If only they knew that their head doesn’t actually belong up their exit port….
Paul in KY
@Old Man Shadow: Glad you got betterer!
Paul in KY
@Caveatimperator: That was what I thought!
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I try so hard to keep considering the possibility that I am wrong and bad, like, not just a little bad but “concentration camp guard” bad, because I’ve learned the idea that failure to consider that is how monsters are created. Banality of evil and all that.
The problem is, there’s always going to be someone out there who will tell you that you are “concentration camp guard” bad, and list the reasons why. (Often because they’re using it as an excuse to do or advocate terrible things, themselves.) So it’s actually necessary to have some filters. But this is very tricky. And social media in particular gives people every incentive to be as histrionically outraged as possible, all the time.
Paul in KY
@Chris: IMO, you weren’t really a ‘moderate liberal’ if you voted for Reagan in 80. You probably would have voted for Anderson. I voted for Anderson, but sure wished later I had voted for Pres. Carter.
I was a callow youth back then.
rikyrah
@Luther Siler:
I hear you.
Ruckus
@RaflW:
What makes you think the NYT is anything close to a left leaning newspaper?
They write for and are part of the monied class in NYC. Sure they may be more towards the center than others, because they don’t mind selling a lot of papers, but their slant is towards the wealthy, the more conservative side.
Paul in KY
@BC in Illinois: I think they were more minions, who became former minions fairly quickly.
Ruckus
@mrmoshpotato:
Do you mean the Got Old Poop party?
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: You were a dumbass back then (as you all too well know), but I know you’ve atoned for that many times over the years and we sure appreciate you fighting the good fight with us!
Paul in KY
@Salty Sam .: She should respond with “Oh, yeah, those halcyon days when we were confined to our homes, lostour jobs, hunting for toilet paper and lysol and fearing any close contact with another human, even our loved ones. Boy, what times they were…”
Paul in KY
@Delk: Best wishes on your coming Anniversary!
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t think any good that any one has ever done in their life could possibly make up for voting for Trump in 2020. I can forgive someone who voted for Shitgibbon in 2016 if they display shame and contrition. But after 4 years of that motherfucker in the Oval Office, if you pulled the lever for him again (or, God forbid, plan to do so next November), then you are irredeemably evil and deserve literally Hell for all eternity.
Paul in KY
@NotMax: Well played.
Paul in KY
@Kelly: I would imagine those salad dressings included bodily fluids…Yick
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: To expand upon my previous comment, the moment I stopped considering Republicans to be functionally human was when they, as a party, made the active conscious decision to ignore and stymy all efforts to stop the spread of COVID once they came to the (erroneous) conclusion that it was more likely to kill POCs and liberals in blue cities than white people in Red rural areas, and they were all, as a party, eager to see us die. Just. Fucking. Evil.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: They were wrongly extrapolating from what was going on at the time–but it was just a little slower to hit Red America. They could have used that time to prepare and gotten off almost scot-free, but no.
That actually connects to the “were you better off four years ago?” question. Where I live, we were dropping like flies during the initial wave in spring 2020. But for a lot of Red America, they weren’t dying of COVID in large numbers until 2021. So they really do associate it with Biden, not with Trump’s time in office.
Citizen Alan
@trollhattan: I would never want to put it to the test, but I am half-convinced that if Putin ever pushed the Button, nothing would happen because all the important technological bits of his nuclear arsenal were all stolen and sold on the black market years ago.
NotMax
@Citizen Alan
“Ain’t no chinks in our armor.”
//
(Too blunt?)
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: The trouble with nukes is that even if only 1% of them work, we’re still hosed. And there would be an instant massive thermonuclear response anyway–*ours* probably work, and the effect of that would be bad enough.
Citizen Alan
@Luther Siler: And the oligarchs look at you in bafflement because they don’t understand why you’re so excited over what they pay for a “cheap” restaurant meal.
Citizen Alan
@Kelly: I voted for Nader in 2000 solely because my vote for Gore in Mississippi would have been wasted, but I naively thought a vote for the Green Party could have gotten them matching funds and made them enough of a threat that the Democrats would move left on economic and environmental issues to neutralize them (which happened anyway). I consider that vote to be the greatest source of shame and personal humiliation in my entire life.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
I used to say, and this was before Covid, that we were at a point where we could literally have an alien invasion Independence Day style, and once they got over the initial shock, Republicans would only have two questions: “are you here to kill blue staters,” and “how can we help?” I don’t mean that the aliens would be able to recruit them as quislings; the aliens wouldn’t have to do anything at all. The Republicans would do it all by themselves, just by watching what was going on and headcanoning “holy shit, they’re here to kill the liberals! YAY ALIENS!” and not even think they might be next.
Then Covid occurred, and, well, it didn’t take me long to be vindicated.
Citizen Alan
@NotMax: Reminds me of when George H.W. Bush for some reason made reference to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band but called them instead the Nitty Ditty Nitty Gritty Great Bird Band.
Mart
Clearly Hunter Biden repaying his dad $4,200 was the crime of the century. At least that is what Gingrich and Comer told me.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
The reaction I was seeing was “oh my GOD, sure, Covid is a problem in all these ugly grimy crowded cities where people are all packed together, but out HERE we’ve got nothing but space and beautiful clean air; the virus can’t touch us HERE!”
It was pretty clearly just taking their by-now Pavlovian reflex argument of “well, that might work in the cities, but out here in the country things are different!” and applying it literally everything. Apparently the Black Death completely spared medieval Europe, because medieval Europe was mostly rural; who knew?
wjca
I have a similar suspicion. Although I include nonfunctional due to lack of proper maintenance. Even if it’s something as mundane as the lids on the silos failing to open.
Citizen Alan
@Paul in KY: I lost a Socialist friend back east after I angrily told him on Facebook that nearly every problem facing America today can be traced back to the fact that LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton were not pure enough to satisfy Leftists like him.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: I remember even Andrew Cuomo (who liberals gravitated to as a reassuring authority figure who seemed like he was doing something–remember that?) echoing that line and speculating that we’d have to rethink living in dense cities because of the disease risk.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: Honestly, I don’t think that’s true–purity leftists are just too small a fraction of the electorate; low-info people who vote or stay home for dumb weathervaney reasons are more numerous, and a bigger part of the problem. Purity pony voters are at least engaged though the resulting behavior may be perverse.
Kayla Rudbek
@Delk: congratulations and good luck with many more years!
Citizen Alan
@Chris: I have joked that the single most absurd moment in The Day After Tomorrow had nothing to do with ridiculous weather shenanigans (like “a superhurricane that sucks ultra-cold air out of the troposphere to instantly freeze people solid”). No, the most absurd moment was when the newly installed President of the United States, who was clearly meant to be Dick Cheney, stood in a cheap panel-walled office in Mexico to address the world and said in effect
If anything remotely comparable to that movie ever takes place under a GOP president, we would be much more likely to hear him say
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
The purity left.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin:
I agree with you, but I think Third Parties exacerbate that issue. The truly pernicious aspect of the Green Party under Nader and Stein is not that they will persuade people to vote for them instead of the Democrat. It’s that they will persuade people to buy into their lazy, facile argument that there’s no difference between the Dems and the GOP, that we’re all “Republicrats.” I am convinced that for every person who voted for the Green Party in the last 25 years, at least 3 people stayed home because they accepted the premise that there was no difference between the two main parties but they also knew that Third Parties never win so what’s the point in taking off work on a Tuesday to go vote in a meaningless election.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
As we grow and HOPEFULLY learn more, we tend to drift (or run) to one side of the political aisle. But it takes some amount of attention to see that the sides of the aisle are not now just 2 sides of the same coin. I’m not sure they ever were, just that it wasn’t quite as obvious 50-60 yrs ago. But as communications has (slightly) increased over that time (such as what we are doing right now) it has become a hell of a lot more obvious that where we are today has a wall between the 2 sides which is somewhere on the range of the Berlin Wall. And that one side has a time transmission that only works in reverse. They stripped all the forward speeds trying to insert their heads in their own exit ports. This insertion was the last successful (hopefully) thing they will ever accomplish. But of course their problem is that their entire world looks and smell like shit, because of that self inflicted issue. The real problem is that they think the rest of humanity should follow them. Most of us know that their heads do not belong where they store them, because the operating conditions there are unconventional, nasty and smelly and cloud all possible positive thought. (Any actual thought – actually)
Jeffro
@trollhattan:
@rikyrah:
you’re welcome! it was a nice pick-me-up! =)
Jeffro
@S Cerevisiae: we should (and will!)
@West of the Rockies: you’re welcome!
Jackie
@Chris: I’ll always remember the young woman grieving her dad’s death from Covid. He died alone, isolated and on a ventilator. “He died because he trusted Trump.” That simple heartbroken statement haunts me to this day.
NotMax
@Citizen Alan
When I ran for local office here I remember one town hall session where i grew fed up with the Green Party candidate going on and on and on about total nuclear disarmament until I said, “That topic has nothing whatsoever to do with the office you are running for.”
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: Is true though.
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: How about ‘We have taken over the former country of Mexico and renamed it The Southern United States of America’.
Chris
@NotMax:
All modern third parties are crammed to the gills with people who want to get to the “sitting down with Churchill and Stalin to decide the shape of the new world order” stage of politics, without ever having to bother with the “fixing the potholes on Rhode Island Avenue” stage of politics.
RaflW
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: In my particular case, I went to a very, very golf-club Republican university.
Once I got to know general population upper-middle class Republicans who were not my dad or his friends, I kind of recoiled in horror. And I met a small cell of anti-nuke, anti-apartheid students, and they were much more welcoming than the clique-ish golf clubbers.