Within hours of President Joe Biden withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing Kamala Harris to run in his stead, Donald Trump had a response: It was all very unfair.
It’s his classic MO, leaning wantonly into personal grievance when nothing else will do. Biden, Trump suggested, was lying about having COVID. The Republican Party, he said, should “be reimbursed for fraud” because it had been so grossly misled.
And, Trump added, he would no longer agree to the terms of the next debate. He’d rather it be held on friendly turf – Fox News – effectively signaling that he’s dropping out of the next debate as currently scheduled.
It was a cacophony of a reaction from one man, but it’s reflective of the broader response on the far right to Harris becoming the likely Democratic nominee. In the hours after Biden announced that he would withdraw, Republicans from Trump on down flailed for a response. Some Republicans expressed anger, while others were visibly baffled by how to react to the shift. Many reacted by suggesting that the shift from Biden to Harris itself was illegitimate, calling the President’s withdrawal from the race a “coup” and proclaiming that they’re actually running against a system, not a candidate.
Trump’s campaign was sitting around huffing each others’ farts while looking at the polls and high-fiving. Now things have changed and they’ll have to work. Unfortunately, they’re not very good, especially when trying to twist their instinctual response to a black woman into something that doesn’t sound like 1950’s Jim Crow racism. Once they lock in on the exact way that Republicans should hate Harris, it’s going to get ugly, but right now it’s pretty damn entertaining to see them struggle.
Edit: I forgot to mention how JD stepped into it, as mentioned by numerous commenters:
“We’re effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via the corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. It’s just a basic fact. You have Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. How does that make any sense when we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t have a direct stake in it.”
It really takes some jumbo-brained political talent to shit on adoptive parents (Buttigieg) and step parents (Harris) by calling them “childless”. Masterful.
Take a Breath and Take Care
hueyplong
This is pretty encouraging. Thanks for posting.
Shane in SLC
Yeah. All day I’ve been thinking that Joe Biden pulled his last jiu-jitsu move on the GOP with the timing and orchestration of this move. Heather Cox Richardson puts it better than I was able to put it to myself in her Facebook video from last night (about 21 minutes in, but the whole video is very thought-provoking and encouraging, and addresses a lot of John Cole’s and others’ rage from the this morning’s post): https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/videos/507646105045285
John Revolta
LOL “We want my money back!!1!!1”
Next up: Lawsuits for “Wanton Midstream Horsechanging” or some such.
ArchTeryx
Reposted from dead thread.
All I care about is beating the shit out of the fascists that call themselves TCFG’s party. They want me, and everyone like me, dead, and are so incredibly bold as to put out a 900 page document stating just that. If they’re shitting themselves over suddenly having to throw away all their oppo documents, great! I guess the sudden last minute change works against them as much as it works against us, which I was not at all expecting.
I thought Biden would give us our best chance simply because he is the incumbent and so is TCFG, and the press would eat newcomer Kamala Harris alive, just as they did to Hillary Clinton. You do not know how much I’d love to be proven wrong about that.
I truly am agnostic about who wears the title of President as long as it isn’t a fascist. My life and the lives of tens of millions of other people depend on it. The last time they came within a single Senate vote of a backstage pogrom against the poor, the chronically ill, and the disabled – every single person who depended on the Medicaid expansion to keep them alive. Now they’re out, loud and proud about it. All the arguments about process and all the “falling in love” people screaming and bullying everyone else are just moot to me. I don’t want to go down shooting in a hot civil war or kill myself to avoid being shipped to a camp and tortured to death. Is that too much to ask of this fucking country?
ssdd
Schumer and Jeffries put out a statement praising Harris and are apparently going to meet with her “shortly,” so I’d expect endorsements after that.
matt
Vance is the same guy who wants to let parents have 1 extra vote for each minor child.
OId Man Shadow
One, it makes me feel less GRRRRRRR… to hear the bad people are having a bad time.
Two, should they lose, it would be funny for them to try this in 2028… like make Trump the nominee again with the plan to replace him with Greene or Boebert, except Trump refuses to drop out.
RepubAnon
I’m sure the Republicans will settle on a bigoted, sexist response shortly. It’s who they are – it’s what they do.
ArchTeryx
@matt: Because rural people tend to have more kids, so he figures it’s a way to give the rurals even more of a thumb on the scale than they have now. Diabolical. But that wouldn’t necessarily work the way he thinks it would. Vance is not particularly smart.
mali muso
Love that for them. So far, as I understand it, the gripes against Harris is that she would ban plastic straws, that she laughs too much and that she is a childless cat lady? Umm, okay.
Old School
And cat owners!
Unabogie
One thing that has really struck me is that with 100 days to go before the election, I think we’d all be so much better off if ALL elections were 100 days long. They would cost less money and be less grueling for the public.
Fair Economist
I am pleasantly surprised they didn’t have a smear campaign ready to go against Harris. It’s not like this was an implausible development. That, and Project 2025 becoming public, make me think the evil side has gotten a lot less competent. They’ve been relying on the media to pull them through, and the media certainly has been working for the conservatives, but that has its limits.
KatKapCC
It’s especially egregious for someone who is so adamantly anti-abortion to crap on people who adopt, since the anti-choicers are always saying “Adoption is an option!” (even though it’s only an alternative to parenthood, not pregnancy and labor). So they laud adoption when it suits them, and belittle it when it doesn’t.
Mendacity, thy name is Republican.
Mike in NC
Stephen Miller — the suspected reincarnation of Reinhard Heydrich — was said to be losing his shit all over FOX Noise.
suzanne
LMAO. Shitting on stepparents, adoptive parents, people who don’t have kids yet but might want them, people who struggle with infertility…… this is your GOP ticket!
Just batshit crazy.
A side note: Pete and Chasten’s kids look to be mixed-race. I have multiple friends who have not been able to have biological children and who have adopted from foster care, and their children are not of the same race as they are. They don’t need the double insult of being told that they aren’t real parents in addition to the racism that comes out of the GOP.
BretH
FOR KELLY and others in the earlier closed thread – I wanted to post there but comments got closed before I could get to my computer since typing this out on my phone was not going to happen.
SLIDE DIGITIZING
I was faced with a similar situation – many boxes of slides from my father-in-law that I agreed to digitize. Here’s what I did because pricing it out with slide services looked to be several hundred dollars:
I use a Micro Four Thirds format Lumix camera which is a huge advantage because they can use pretty much any vintage lens out there. In this case I found the cheapest bellows with a slide attachment I could find on eBay – in my case it was an old Minolta one. This is a bellows with a slide mount at one end that has a piece of frosted glass, so all you need is a lens and a flash.
I bought a cheap non-auto Minolta-to-MFT adapter to mount the bellows to the camera, then found a dirt cheap Minolta 55mm macro lens (designed to be sharp when shooting flat subjects at close distance) that mounted to the lens side of the bellows. So it’s camera body -> adapter -> bellows -> lens on a rail so you can fine-tune the distance from the macro lens to the slide mount at the far end of the bellows setup.
Set the bellows up on a tripod and set a flash up on another tripod pointing at the frosted glass (could have used a window but I wanted the light source to remain constant, day or night). It was fairly easy to get the magnification and focus correct, which never changed throughout the shooting process, then manually adjusted the exposure for each slide, darker or lighter, although for many I didn’t need to touch a thing between slides.
I set this up next to my work desk and for a week or so did my work while I fed slides through, it was somewhat time consuming to set up, and definitely took time to shoot, but total cost was the same no matter how many or few slides – about $60 in parts.
Fair Economist
@Unabogie: Don’t you long for the British system? 6 weeks of election campaigning and it’s over. Transition done in a day. So much better than this neverending torture.
Indycat32
I want a “childless cat ladies for Harris” T-shirt.
Steve LaBonne
I mean, I knew these RWNJ assholes were really fucking stupid and lazy, but during weeks of a very public shitstorm over whether Biden would drop out they couldn’t find the time to come up with even the rudiments of a plan B for how to run against Harris? A unified Democratic Party is going to crush them.
eclare
@ssdd:
Good to hear.
Morning Joe mocked some Republican official who shouted (do RWNJ’s not have inside voices?) that Democrats were in a freefall. Yeah, a freefall into at that time $50M. I think I saw it’s $90M now.
dm
Harris campaign embraces the “Brat” meme mentioned in an earlier post :
https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/112831811019142187
Another poster mentioned that TikTok is full of Kamalamentum memes, which have replaced memes much less friendly to the Democratic Party ticket.
NutmegAgain
Not to mention the twisted idea that only “parents” have a stake in the country? WTF nonsense bullshit is that? What a small minded jackass he is.
Shane in SLC
@Indycat32: I’d buy one for my wife!
suzanne
@mali muso: Remember that they also called Taylor Swift a childless cat lady. Which is, you know, just how you get the Swifties to align to Harris. Please proceed, Senator.
I feel that women’s identity has been activated in the last few years. By MeToo and Dobbs and the rise of the manosphere and other things.
Lobo
They they go:
Ohio Mom
@Steve LaBonne: I am thinking the same thing. They are not very good at politics.
Nora
For Tamara from the previous thread, which I tried to post only to discover comments were closed: Chrononauts, by Looney Labs, is a fun time travel game that lets you change history (or restore history). I think her family would enjoy it.
Splitting Image
I had a sinking feeling when I heard the news the other day, because the initial report I heard made it sound like the media quislings had gotten their scalp and the chaotic convention they wanted was on its way.
It now seems like Biden and Harris had their ducks in a row and made the announcement for maximum effectiveness. I’m particularly pleased by the idea that they timed the announcement so that the Sunday shows would all be over when it happened.
The delegate questions seem to be settled. Small donations are flowing in. And most importantly, the Republicans and their media pets are crying foul.
Seems like everything is a go.
eclare
@Mike in NC:
I just googled Heydrich and saw a photo. Stephen Miller is definitely the reincarnation of him.
eclare
@Indycat32:
Me too!
EarthWindFire
I can’t tell if this is performative outrage or them actually being caught flat footed. These are people who lie and act outraged as easily as you and I breathe. But I really do hope they’re struggling, just so I can send my thoughts and prayers.
WereBear
The Atlantic but… Too good not to share for the headline alone.
This Is Exactly What the Trump Team Feared
A campaign that had been optimized to beat Joe Biden now must be reinvented.
Should be gift link:
https://archive.ph/nmT77
Archon
I’m actually surprised that the Trump campaign and Republican Party writ large didn’t have a coordinated attack plan on Harris ready to go.
Maybe one can dream that it really was simply about Biden at the top of the ticket…
princess leia
@Shane in SLC:
I can’t shake that feeling either.
Kelly
@BretH: Interesting. Conveniently I have a Micro Four Thirds format Lumix and a macro lens. No bellows. Also I’ve shared a few prints copied with my Pixel Pro 8. Getting the light and angle right is a bit fussy when free handing.
Splitting Image
@matt:
Proves that he is too liberal for the modern GOP. He ought to be demanding 3/5th of a vote. Tradition matters.
JoyceH
@Fair Economist:
When I heard about Biden’s announcement, my first reaction was of course sadness and some anger, but shortly after that, I had to laugh to think of the GOP spending all those millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours investigating the ‘Biden Crime Family’. Think of Rudy gallivanting all around Ukraine accompanied by Putin operatives trying to find or create the killer dirt that would do the trick.
Hoodie
Joe fucks them again. Reminiscent of the State of the Union a couple of years ago. They really didn’t think he would do this and have the whole thing gamed out. They’re going to have to slap a campaign together and odds are it will be an incoherent mess because they don’t have time to focus group it. I could almost see Joe planning this in advance, e.g., “Christ, I’m old and I don’t want to do this shit anymore. How can I get Kamala in there without a convention fight and maximally fuck over the GOP?”
TF79
The waffling back-and-forth between “she’s lazy/incompetent/just collecting a paycheck” and “she’s been secretly running the entire show Weekend at Biden’s-style” suggests they really don’t have their lines nailed down yet.
M31
Time for Harris to leak to the media that her VP pick is Mayor Pete, so then the Magats will prep all these anti-gay ads and talking points, only to have her leak again that Pete is out and now it’s Shapiro, and they’ll pivot to ((Soros)) memes, but oops it’s not him it’s Kelly, time to break out the “actually astronauts are bad” articles and hot takes
mali muso
@suzanne:
The Swifties are a formidable force. In an election when we are in the shadow of Dobbs, it seems less than ideal to be going all in on the misogyny, but for R’s that is a feature not a bug.
dm
@Lobo:
Is always projection with them. What other Trump characteristics as can they imagine applies to Harris, I wonder? Something about makeup, perhaps….
Here is the ActBlue tracker to help you keep track of the Democratic “free all”:
https://observablehq.com/@rdmurphy/actblue-ticker-tracker
WereBear
As a member of the cat rescue community I object to our devotion being used as a slur.
Most strongly.
Hoodie
@dm: I heard she personally led the Bowling Green Massacre.
M31
how many Hunter Biden congressional hearings are still scheduled?
Lyrebird
@Indycat32: Love it.
ETA: With genuine apologies to @WereBear:
I want Taylor Swift to okay and co-design a “childless cat ladies for Harris” t-shirt!!!
I am more likely to give that to someone than the instant cat-photo protest classic,
PUSSY GRABS BACK!
Rusty
The comments on the previous post are closed (rightly so!), but I wanted to thank TaMara for being thoughtful and kind, to have a post to give people a place to recover. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Thank you.
Captain C
@Steve LaBonne:
I think that most of the competent ones have been run out of the party by the MAGAts.
narya
I’m beginning to wonder when Biden started planning this. I think he’s WAY too smart in the ways of the world and of politics to just decide over the weekend. I can imagine him strategizing with some very few trusted folks who could wrangle support for Harris nearly instantaneously (because I can’t imagine Joe stepping down w/o a whole lot of pieces in place), and then biding his time; he could even make those plans contingent, if polls/donations/whatever swung in his favor enough. As several people have pointed out, the announcement came AFTER the R convention and AFTER the Sunday Press the Meat shows, and I do not think that was coincidence. Changing the online stuff (like the campaign website) had to be planned, too, I’d think? Still not excusing shitty behavior from various folks, and still giving Joe agency in this whole thing; I do not believe he sat by, in a bubble, and suddenly changed his mind yesterday or Saturday.
M31
@Lyrebird:
lol these incel weirdos calling Taylor Swift old and unattractive are really something
Captain C
@Nora: Looney Labs has some great games. In addition to Chrononauts, I like Fluxx and its many variations.
TonyG
The “intellectuals” of the American right wing live and work in a bubble — communicating only with people who already agree with them. I look forward now to onslaught of racist, sexist ads attacking Kamala Harris — ad that will be repulsive to the majority of Americans.
cope
@BretH: Same thing happened to me when I wanted to respond to Kelly’s question about old slides. My path was certainly more expensive than yours and probably much more time intensive.
The way I dealt with taking on digitization of thousands of slides, hundreds of prints and film negatives and even my grandfather’s collection of old large-format negatives and even glass negatives was to buy an Epson flatbed scanner that is capable of scanning each of these different formats. It came with Silverfast editing software which is extremely good at cleaning up scratches, hairs, dust and splotches and such as well as adjusting colors. It cost about $250 at the time. The time was 2020 and we had just locked ourselves in the house for quarantine. I spent many, many hours working it all out but found it to be a true labor of love.
All our childhood vacation and holiday and daily pictures were slides, all my pictures from college and grad school were slides and a lot of family pictures were just faded prints without corresponding negatives (though there were also negatives without corresponding prints to deal with). I still have to take on the couple of thousand slides my stepdad took in the fifties while working as an exploration geologist in Saudi Arabia.
So that’s my two cents. More details available on request.
Belafon
@ArchTeryx: He thinks conservatives has significantly more children than liberals.
Mai Naem mobile
@M31: i don’t want Kelly as the Veep candidate because I don’t want to lose a purple state senator but the MAGats are going to go crazy when they find out Mark Kelly has an identical twin brother. Oh, the conspiracies they will come up with.
rodwell
Yes, I think both the Republicans and the media thought that Joe would not withdraw, and they could spend the next month going with the Joe is old stuff. The reason is that they always put their interests ahead of higher goals and were shocked, that Joe would. Also, the announcement after the Sunday shows Joe’s contempt for them. Additionally, he made them all work on a Sunday afternoon (LOL).
KatKapCC
@dm: I admit I’m entirely unaware of Charli xcx and the context of this, but I’m a little unsure about a campaign centered on a woman embracing being called “brat”. Like…what.
hueyplong
@Splitting Image: It was easy to suspect a conspiracy to install a Phillips type because none of the people suspected to be doing the scheming were talking up Harris. Now it looks like they were just waiting until after Biden announced his decision, because they’ve been putting out the Harris endorsements, one after another, in what appears to be an orchestrated piece of timing.
To me, it’s less of a “coup” when the other person for whom we cast our votes is the one around whom the party is rallying. We can go back and forth about whether this last part is merely a lucky thwarting of heavy donor plans, but the point is that Harris appears to be in and Phillips seems no more likely to be the Democratic nominee than is Miller/Heydrich.
And there are few more objective, favorable signs than GOPers whining about how unfair it all is.
Go get ’em, Kamala. As FDR said about our bombing campaign against the fascists, they’ve asked for it, and they’re going to get it.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@BretH: About 8 years ago I got a dedicated slide scanner. I think it was about $300 at the time. I converted all my slides initially to jpg, then 16 bit TIFF
ETA: Actually it was 10 years ago, no longer available on Amazon, but here’s what I have.
dm
@Archon:
Especially since they were joking about how they weren’t going to talk about plans for a VP debate because “they didn’t know who Vance would be debating.” Right hand not knowing what the further-right hand is doing, I guess.
Dangerman
The Gang that could only shoot strokes; perhaps instead of golfing with TCFG (where I am sure he won and brought tears to their eyes) , they should have been gaming out strategies. I see no coherent strategy other than flinging poo like a monkey.
ETA: TCFG could end up losing to a woman (gasp) with African American roots (GASP). Fucker might blow a gasket and go 5150.
Belafon
@Fair Economist: Yes, but at the same time, I don’t like the party in power being able to control elections. A fixed timetable alleviates that. We just need to move the dates closer together.
oldgold
“You have Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. How does that make any sense when we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t have a direct stake in it.”
Mr. Vance, I know you are a hillbilly, but certainly you must have heard of a fellow by the name of George Washington.
KatKapCC
Found a “This Childless Cat Lady is Voting KAMALA” t-shirt on Etsy, complete with raised kitty paw. Pretty cute!
WereBear
@oldgold: Nay, he only plays one on TV.
TBone
Since I’m not in a cult, and I place my loyalty with the collective nation over party, I am able to happily switch gears, despite being among the most stalwart President Biden defenders. I now proudly wave my childless cat lady freak flag HIGH and I hope Stormy Daniels gets a seat at the table too!
TBone
@KatKapCC: 😍 oh that’s purrrrfect!
Ryan
I REALLY want to know how Stevie Two-Shirts is reacting right now.
Captain C
@Ryan: Probably still focused on dealing with his DTs.
M31
@oldgold: and Vance follows that up with “and that’s why we’re outlawing IVF”
also adoptive parents and step-parents are ‘childless’?
there’s a first-rate mind for ya
tam1MI
I would like to add my thanks to TaMara as well. I didn’t get to post in that thread because the abusers came in and started kicking hurt, grieving people around before I could, but it was a kind gesture and should be acknowledged.
I’ll miss the posters who have probably been driven off this blog by those people.
dm
@KatKapCC: I’m puzzled, too, but I expect the Harris social media folks have a better sense of cool than I do.
dkinPa
@Indycat32: Childless Cat Lady for Harris t-shirt — ooo, I want one, too
Apologies to WereBear.
SamR
Pete has 2 kids.
Splitting Image
@Fair Economist:
The funny thing is that the campaign season isn’t really very long if you count it from the end of the last convention. From the end of August to the first week of November is only about 10 weeks.
It’s the primary season that is overly long. The primaries start in January and are mostly done by March, so it’s silly season from then all the way to August. If the primaries were all pushed back to May and June, it would be a lot easier on everyone.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@narya: I’d bet the last dollar in my wallet (but not any of the euro notes I use much more these days) that there’s been a variation of this plan in place ever since Biden decided he was going to go for it this year. I mean, whatever his health, he’s still in an age range where people pass away after a brief illness or simply never wake up one morning, and neither he nor Harris are idiots, so one can almost guarantee there’d be a plan, or more likely many plans, ready to go in case the Grim Reaper came calling. This was probably dusting off a variation of one of those plans. And catching COVID in the middle of a hell month like this could easily leave one uncertain of one’s future.
There will be books written about this past week. I hope I live long enough to read some of them, and re-read them after (knock on wood) President Harris has completed her final term in office.
Raven
@tam1MI: Can you tell me another thread on BJ where the comments were limited to one point of view?
Served
@KatKapCC: It is a bit difficult to explain.
As with many pop culture memes/moments, it’s wrapped in layers of irony. The easiest explanation is that it’s similar to the Barbie moment of last year, but with neon green instead of pink and a bit of an edgier, self-aware slant. Self-empowering, but with self-awareness and a wink.
eclare
@tam1MI:
Wow, glad I missed that thread. Sounds like TaMara was just trying to do something nice.
thruppence
@KatKapCC: Very cute, but it assumes an audience paying attention to JD Vance’s stupid statements, dawg forbid
Yutsano
Waiting for the Republicans in Disarray!!! headlines.
Still waiting…
Any minute now maybe?
No?
Spack off MSM¡
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@oldgold: Oh, I bet he wouldn’t believe it if he was told how many children George Washington had fathered.
ssdd
Fundraising is going well it seems…
gratuitous
Well, at least we won’t have to hear about the Oldest Nominee Ever anymore, now that it’s down to the youngster Harris and . . . a moment, please. I’m getting word that there is a new Oldest Nominee Ever, and it’s Donald J. Trump! A shocking development to be sure, but irrefutable since President Biden was the presumptive nominee, not the confirmed nominee for the Democrats.
So, Magic 8 Ball, should I hold my breath waiting for the popular media to notice this? Magic 8 Ball says, “Passing out from lack of oxygen is not a pleasant experience.” So, is that a yes or no?
M31
@Ryan:
Yeah! Me too! Oh wait, he’s in jail?
Anyway,
zhena gogolia
@Raven: An excellent President was treated like shit for three weeks and then forced out. Those of us who were (and are) shaken and grieved by this tragedy were told to suck it up and get with the program. TaMara was trying to provide a space for us to comment on our feelings without being shit on. It’s kind of like a memorial thread — democracy was killed by the MSM, George Clooney, and the Democrats, and we wanted to mourn it without having someone come in and talk about how they hated the dead person’s movies (as people always do around here).
SatanicPanic
@gratuitous: WaPo is on it:
dm
What did JD Vance’s vulture capital firm (named “Narya”, from Tolkien, like a Peter Thiel spinoff) invest in?
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/every-startup-in-jd-vances-vc-fund
Raven
@eclare: Check the next thread.
MagdaInBlack
@Raven: It was more ‘stop being ignorant.” Had nothing to do with canceling points of view. It IS possible express without being an ass, I’ve seen it done.
ffs
Ridnik Chrome
It’s a small comfort to know that when the MAGAs inevitably start devouring their own, Vance will be first on the menu.
Fair Economist
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Absolutely. Harris taking over was always a possibility, and Biden and Harris are far too competent not to be prepared. And I’m sure Biden has been thinking about the *possibility* of withdrawing since the debate, and upped his preparations for Plan B.
Peale
@Splitting Image: The pre-primary coverage starts 1 week after the inauguration. Its why I want to do away with the system. Anyone of any national importance going to Iowa to give a speech at the 3rd Moravian Church pancake fundraiser is only going there because they are angling to be a frontrunner. And there will be stories that no candidate to secure the nomination ever skipped the West Monroe County 4-H club hog show in 50 years.
Eyeroller
@Kelly: For slides, if you don’t mind spending a little more, I have been very pleased with a device from Amazon, a Magnasonic. It does slides and negatives but not prints. I also have a 20-year-old dedicated Nikon slide and negative scanner but it’s much slower. The Magnasonic is extremely fast. It does a pretty good job on slides, less so on negatives though usually acceptable. Like many of these cheaper “scanners,” it just takes a picture, but it holds the item in position and for negatives, it has software to invert the colors.
For prints, if you don’t have negatives, there probably isn’t a cheap or non-tedious option. Most flatbed scanners can scan them, if you already have one.
narya
@dm: FML. I might have to change my nym.
Martin
@KatKapCC: Let the young people have their culture. They’re taking control of language and ideas and in a way that it’s hard for outsiders to stroll in and steal them. You’re either in on it from the outset and legit, or you try and figure it out after, arrive late, and are fake.
Kudos to the Harris campaign for being legit.
jonas
I know Trump picked Vance hoping to deflect from his own age-related liabilities and possibly also impeach-proof himself next time around with a more horrible VP, but I suspect Vance is going to be a gift that keeps on giving when it comes to making outrageous, sexist, racist, and/or utterly tone-deaf and extremist statements that will get plenty of replay on commercials for Harris.
TBone
@KatKapCC: thank you so much for sharing that, my bright pink T-shirt is on its way!
dm
@narya: sorry. I’d have not mentioned it if I’d remembered your nym.
Splitting Image
@Peale:
Very true. I forgot to mention that I also think that the New York Times (and everyone else who prints those stories) must be destroyed. That would go a long way to helping the situation.
Cato was a lot more persistent than I am, apparently.
ssdd
Ah, I see the GOP anti-Harris strategy is beginning to coalesce:
1) slut-shaming
2) SHE’S A WITCH!!!
https://digbysblog.net/2024/07/22/the-kamala-attack-book/
Eyeroller
@SamR: Children in a family don’t count unless they live with biological mother and father, accord to JD.
TBone
@Lyrebird: ✊🤣😆💖
dkinPa
I’ve been so depressed and in a “fuck every thing” mood since Biden dropped out, and was really fearful the money boys would sweep Kamala aside. That doesn’t seem to be happening, and I’m cautiously optimistic this will all work out. Also felt better after reading this post by Jeff Tiedrich. (Of course, I only found Tiedrich a couple of months ago through someone on this blog.) Also, I cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post after politely telling their guy in that department how disgusted I was. Here’s Jeff; apologies if this has already been posted —
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/chill-the-fuck-out-weve-got-this
moonbat
I have not read all the earlier threads since the morning, so forgive me if this has been observed by someone else already. BTW, no, I have not calmed down and I am not going to be singing kumbayah any time soon.
In case folks haven’t noticed it, we are actually locked in a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. We giggle at Liz Cheney and the Lincoln Project guys and the Never Trumper refugees, but they are currently looking really hard for a new home, as is corporate America. Those Wall Street types know that the majority of this country is not down with Trump and Vance’s 16th century agenda and that they have a really good chance of losing this fall. They also know that Trump has the GOP in a death grip and nothing short of a Jonestown level event will ever break it. The GOP is in its death throes.
So now they want to take over the ready made Democratic Party apparatus and turn it into a corporate friendly place that makes pleasant mouth noises toward ideals of equality and fairness without ever quite getting there. (You know, the 1990s.) Speaking of the 1990s, Aaron Sorkin’s stupid column (since retracted) suggesting that the DEMOCRATIC PARTY choose Romney as their nominee gave the game away. But a pick like that would suit the Wall Street types right down to the ground and allow them to hold their noses and vote D this fall: A vulture capitalist with a friendly face…sorta. (At least he doesn’t shoot the family dog.)
Getting rid of Joe Biden to make room for such a suggestion/takeover was the first battle. And we lost it. I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about Biden’s mental capacity. He was delivering on the promise of a more fair and equal country where everyone has a shot and they had to get him out of there for it. Another successful term like the last could have paved the way for a turning point in this country that we haven’t seen since the ending of the Great Depression/WW II. So cease to wonder why AOC and Sanders were backing him up. He’d done more to deliver on their stated priorities than any other politician in recent memory.
If we can’t get the D nomination to Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party is fucked. Forget about getting corporate cash out of politics. It ain’t going to happen. Forget about getting the wealthy to pay their fair share. Nope. Forget about giving the workers in this country a chance at living wages and decent housing. They like their workers poor and desperate.
I’ll end this rant by saying that our party is going to be under siege by non-D types like this for the foreseeable future until we get another political party in this country that can fill the void being created by the GOP. And god knows how long that’s going to take.
Keep up the good fight/work.
Eyeroller
@ssdd: You will not be surprised to learn that the attacks from the 2019-2020 primary are reappearing (just as the “Biden is senile” attack from the same time reappeared as needed). The most awful one is the “she slept her way to the top.” And the “cop” and the “not really black” and the “she’s out of her depth.” But “she’s a witch” seems to be a new one.
Citizen Alan
@Belafon: Well, if you also take the vote away from black families and invalidate all the adoptions by LGBTs …
TBone
I’m getting hi-top Keds (“Chucks”) to wear with my new cat lady t-shirt. They will have pink, sparkly laces. I got game. No gold lame for me! 😆
Old School
@Raven:
I guess if you want to post pro-Russia views on the Ukraine threads, you’re welcome to give it a shot.
TBone
@dkinPa: I hope it was me who turned you on to Tiedrich! I posted his stuff a lot, missed today because I was at the library.
KatKapCC
@ssdd: The slut stuff has been around her whole career, because men are terrified of a smart powerful woman who doesn’t give a shit what they think of her, and they think calling her a skank is the harshest insult ever.
The “Luciferian incantation” thing was not on my 2024 Bingo card, though. Well hey, my goth niece already liked Kamala, now this will probably make her like her even more!
Other MJS
@Lobo: She forgot “shiftless” and “thug”.
eclare
@Raven:
Thanks.
Kay
We’ve been speculating on this and it seems there’s some truth to it:
She’s also trusted more as a speaker in Muslim countries – the State Dept did a survey.
Raven
@TBone: Chucks are Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars not Keds.
Martin
@Old School: LOL
pat
Exactly. I think it was a great idea to announce this AFTER the RNC, Heheheheheheeee….. All that time spent railing against old Joe, and then this hits them in the face.
rikyrah
@ArchTeryx:
They want to strip away the 20th century and send those who look like me back to Jim Crow. Plain and simple.
SomeRandomGuy
I’m sorry, but, did Vance really say that it’s awful to prevent abortions by being willing adoption parents?
dkinPa
@TBone: It probably was — thank you! Tiedrich is a treasure!
Bupalos
@Rusty: hear hear.
I’m not going to pretend I understand the level of angst and accusations of “bullying” or “treason” or “coups” or any of that stuff, but it’s undeniable people are feeling it and anyone who is feeling that and yet swallowing it for the team, that deserves respect and space.
Here’s an vignette that probably doesn’t really fit and doesn’t have the Hollywood ending it should but which I keep thinking about here.
I once pulled our all-state pitcher in the 6th inning of the semifinal. We frankly overused her getting to that point because she was our meal ticket. We knew we were overusing her and mindful she had a 1A scholarship and stressed she’d get injured. She walked the 7 and 8 batters in the inning, after walking a grand total of 3 batters the whole rest of the season. Gave up the lead. I come on the second visit which means she’s gonzo. This is the first game she’s being lifted ever where we don’t have a big lead and we’re just saving her arm. Instead her arm is done and we’re losing the biggest game we’ve ever been in.
She walked off the mound towards second and stood there for a full 10 seconds and motioned for me to go back to the dugout. Never had that happen and can’t really even process what she’s doing. fortunately there’s muscle memory for the mound trip and I needed a ball to rub up while looking thoughtful and important, so I just turned to the ump and got him to toss one out instead of getting it from our pitcher. Called the other girl in to pitch from second as normal, met her halfway, pointed, and said something like “she keeps that ball, she got us here. You take this one and put it all out there like she has.” And then contradictorilly added my usual line “fill your own shoes.”
I thought that was really good, and I could write a good Hollywood ending there. But in reality we end up losing (though without giving up more runs) and it turns out both the pitchers interpreted what I said like “she got us in this mess, you get us out.” I think because they both expected something confrontational when she went into tantrum mode. Anyway the way it makes a good moral here is that all the best intentions and everyone giving their best and caring a lot can still lead to loses and misunderstandings. And we had a fucking sob session that brought us all a lot closer where all that was cleared up and I explained it was the opposite, that I was saying she deserved to not have to hand over the ball and deserved her feelings because of what we owed her. I also apologized for overusing her and not putting us in the best position to win and she begged me not to tell her college coach that she did that walking off thing…that her mom said she embarrassed me and the team and she couldn’t sleep. with everyone else being “are you kidding?”
Anyway it may not fit in various ways for various people, but it sticks in my head here.
tam1MI
This has been known since the 1980s. Although it is possible the high top Keds referenced in the original comment are a Chucks knock-off style.
Raven
@Old School: I don’t want to do anything and I wasn’t in the thread. It just struck me as strange that a thread would require a certain perspective. I have never commented on any Ukraine thread so I don’t know if Adam has ever closed one because of the comments.
TBone
@Raven: thanks, I got so excited I forgot. I’ve seen so many pairs hanging from the phone wires as a child in DelCo too, I should know that!
Not gold “lamay” is the most important feature for me – LAME!
TBone
@dkinPa: yours in service,
TBone
💙
Kay
Good poll for Harris. If she can consolidate Democrats she’ll be ahead of Trump.
UncleEbeneezer
@Rusty: It’s really telling that we can’t even have one single post to let people be mad, sad, grieve etc., because heaven forbid we ever expect other commenters to give up their precious “free-wheeling” environment for ten seconds. And that’s after a month of the most constant trolling I have ever seen in 20 years hanging out here.
Eyeroller
@cope: I have the Epson V600. I find that positioning slides and negatives for scanning with it is slow, so I use it mainly when I want a better image (I think the color correction software is very good, better than the cheaper scanners). But it handles multiple images at once, which speeds things up. Epson normally provides their own drivers, EpsonScan for this model. If one really has a lot of different formats, a flatbed is probably the most versatile choice. (I have done a lot of photo scanning with different devices, so yes I have opinions.)
For my elderly Nikon, which Nikon no longer supports, I’ve tried both Silverfast and VueScan and have tended to prefer VueScan.
MomSense
@narya:
After we heard the news yesterday on the way back from the store my mom has been watching news non stop again. I’m relieved because the Matlock and Murder She Wrote theme songs are such ear worms. We had Morning Joe on this morning and he said that Pelosi was really turning the heat up and saying she would go public Monday, and finally Biden called two of his oldest advisors and they basically told him the truth about the polls before and after the debate. He was already in trouble in the swing states and some blue states before and it was worse after. Joe Scar said his campaign had been “shielding” him from the polling data.
Like I said after the debate, his campaign really screwed up. If true, I feel bad that they were not being forthcoming with him. That is not fair to do to him.
I know a lot of you think this was some big conspiracy but I really think this was voter driven. They’ve been stating their preferences for a long time and everyone ignored their concerns. The campaign spent hundreds of millions on ad buys in swing states and it made the problem worse. The donors weren’t going to keep giving money to his campaign.
I admit I was not paying a ton of attention for quite awhile – which I feel is one of the benefits of a democratic administration. We get to have some normalcy. It makes sense that the primaries had such low turnout, historically so in some states. We had a major enthusiasm gap and a lot of voters felt the party wasn’t paying attention to their concerns. I had been seeing a lot of bad clips from the D day commemorations but I wrote those off as edited or cropped. In retrospect those clips circulating were not a good sign either.
I think it is in that context that the debate performance was not something from which Biden could recover.
Contrary to what some of you were saying about people who reacted strongly to the debate, I hadn’t read the FTFNYT and I rarely watch the news except for Lawrence infrequently. It is often on in the background but I really don’t hang on what pundits say and I’m doing other things. I had a genuine reaction to the debate in the moment and it was shared by my family and friends acquaintances and colleagues. We all had the same reaction. And I think that’s true for a lot of people.
Eyeroller
@Raven: He’s banned — not time-outed, banned — commenters in those threads.
Bill Arnold
@oldgold:
That is good. Stealing.
zhena gogolia
@Raven: He bans people liberally. As is his right.
Jinchi
Apparently sad that Aaron Sorkin’s dream of a Romney presidency has died, CNN has decided to ask the 76 year old Joe Manchin if he’d volunteer to be Kamala’s VP.
FDRLincoln
Donald Trump is old, orange, a rapist, old, a felon, a fraud, a conman, old, lazy, dumb, ignorant, old,
and old.
HARRIS WILL KICK HIS ASS
japa21
@Raven: Pedant.
Raven
@tam1MI:
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@narya: Yes. I’m beginning to wonder too. Maybe some of those meetings he had with Pelosi and the like were about gaming out the logistics of him stepping down and consolidating around Harris. It all feels cleverly done and coordinated.
Jeffg166
@Shane in SLC: That was good. Thanks.
Raven
@japa21: Nah, there is a lot of stuff here I don’t know but hoops is what I do know.
ets as I sit here watching the USMT play Germany!
Frank Wilhoit
@Shane in SLC: No Facebook for any reason; has this been crossposted anywhere legit?
KatKapCC
@Eyeroller: I haven’t been reading long, but he banned someone the other day because that person used an outright slur. I can’t find fault with a ban in that case.
ArchTeryx
@Belafon: Poor people have more children than wealthier people. The poor people he thinks of are all white and rural. However, there are a lot of POCs and urban poor with large families, too. Vance really didn’t game that one out well, but then, he’s a professional asshole, not a statistical analyst like I am.
Ksmiami
So what’s the over under for a timeline on Trump firing Vance? He’s gonna try for Haley isn’t he?
Frank Wilhoit
@ArchTeryx: Vance has the ingredients of smart, but he is an ideologue, which prevents him from putting the pieces together.
Raven
@zhena gogolia: Huh, I didn’t know that. I mean I knew he could but not that he did.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Jinchi:
I think Manchin went to the hat store, bought every hat they had, and started tossing them into the ring yesterday. I think some DNC person said that the nom is only open to Democrats. That was funny as hell.
tam1MI
@Raven: Have “Chucks” really been a nickname for those shoes that long? Because seriously, the very first time I heard them referred to that way was in the 1980s, when they were referred to as “Chucks” and “Chuckie T’s”.
WereBear
@dkinPa: I want one too!
I have scorn for Vance.
TBone
@tam1MI: in DelCo, the boys wore whichever one was less expensive. I think that’s where my confusion comes from. I have Keds low tops on r.n.
In DelCo, the high tops of my childhood were black. Almost no one wore the ones with a star on them.
SomeRandomGuy
They really don’t. They’re *willing* to, and if they get their way, that is likely to happen, but, they really aren’t evil for the sake of evil.
They just agree that certain policies will be better. If a chemical manufacturing plant is poisoning the ground water, why should the EPA get involved? Buy off the two senators, and the governor will take care of it. People DIED? Awww, poor diddums, don’t talk about criminalizing policy differences, cuz that’s wrong and divisive!
And that’s the worst thing about Republicans. They really DO NOT want the expected outcome of their policies, but they’re really too stupid to realize what *will* happen.
ArchTeryx
For the record, I’m male, childless, and have an FIV+ rescue cat that is now busy meowing me out. I’m a stupid pinecone and he’s an 18 pound orange house lion that’s starving to death. Cats are such drama queens, and oranges especially.
The cat quacks, too.
Screw the assholes who think “childless cat lady” is a slur. Should I put on a wig and take care of the cat in drag? Would that make those assholes precious fee-fees feel more vindicated?
Kelly
Biden has been major government official for a very long time. The transition to Harris went so smooth I’m inclined to think he had this as a plan B all along. Not necessarily he anticipated a party faction would turn on him but if his health declined.
Raven
@tam1MI: I don’t think they were. This nicknaming everything is fairly recent. They actually used to call players by there names too!
Ksmiami
@ssdd: Never change Repukes, never change… I guess they’re trying for the Women’s outreach approach
Jeffg166
@Hoodie: I think you are right. He went Dark Brandon and played them again.
zhena gogolia
@Raven: TaMara also does it occasionally, not just today. I mean not ban, but removes comments.
M31
AP reporting that Harris has enough committed delegates to clinch the nomination.
Still mad about Joe dropping out, but hella pumped that the NYT/donor/asshole brigade didn’t force a destabilizing shitshow fight for the nomination.
and fuck the fucking NYT and all its works
gvg
@matt: Lets propose the children get the parents vote. It can be held in trust until they are 18. Then the kid can get to try and fix whatever the parent screwed up. Also they don’t have to use the saved votes right away, they can use it when it would do the most good such as when a big climate change bill needs to pass. Or maybe a child abuse protection law.
japa21
I have made my feelings clear in earlier thread. Nobody knows what the entire process was for Joe’s departure, nor what his exact motivations were. Maybe we will learn in time, maybe never.
I do know that, now, Kamala is the only person with a chance to beat Trump. If she is blocked from the nomination somehow, the Democratic Party will have signed its own and the country’s death certificate.
zhena gogolia
@M31: Well, glory be if it’s true. We’d better pray the MSM and weak-kneed Dems don’t try to tank her at the first bad set of polls or if she mixes up a word.
Ksmiami
@Frank Wilhoit: plus he’s convinced of his own brilliance…
Raven
@zhena gogolia: I’m so non-controversial I’d never seen it!
Glau
It’s fascinating to me to see the reactions to this play out, given how close of a mirror they are to how it went down with Bernie’s supporters in 2020.
Just a different part of the coalition getting gored.
Bill Arnold
@dm:
Thanks for that link. This one is Pure Chameleon Vance to me:
Ksmiami
@M31: as I said, the NYT gets the shiv from all of us.
SomeRandomGuy
@MomSense: You do understand that, if a lot of people had a bigoted reaction, it doesn’t make it unbigoted… right?
That’s the fallacy known as “appeal to the gallery”.
“I’m right, ain’t I right?” (applause) “I’M RIGHT!”
It could just mean a lot of stupid people made the same stupid mistake. Bigotry is contagious – a friend watching didn’t think it was so bad, but YOU thought it was so bad, so, your friend thinks it must have been worse than s/he realized.
I mean, geez, that’s one of the most fundamental perceptual fumbles.
M31
and yes, I think absolutely the timing of this — after the RNC, on a Sunday afternoon after the gasbag shows, with the perfect rollout of endorsements, too fast to counter, with no internal leaks, etc. — was Joe’s doing.
The Covid pause was perfect cover — I wasn’t expecting anything for days (though I was hoping for fightin’ Joe to bounce out and kick ass).
zhena gogolia
@M31: Too bad we’ve lost his political wisdom by forcing him out.
MomSense
@SomeRandomGuy:
You obviously hate me and you think I am bigoted. Nothing I could ever say will change your mind.
We disagree about his debate performance.
different-church-lady
My god, their reasoning is all completely incoherent.
Chris Johnson
@tam1MI: I pied a guy based on one post of his I saw. Unforgivable and deeply sus. For fuck’s sake, I’m quite autistic and even _I_ am better at being human than that.
I continue to assert that there are trolls, working ones, and they’d be no use if there weren’t some implanted on either side of any issue. It’s not that much trouble, though it’s a lot easier to get real people to parrot what the trolls feed ’em.
Litmus test is simple: is it unity, or is it ‘let’s immediately have a war and banish everybody who’s an evil enemy!’. This is why I pied some people, and then have shifted the pastry around quite a bit in the last day.
I learn a lot about how people handle stuff by how they process distress and fear. I was homeless once, and grew up very unwell to the point that all this more or less feels like ‘home’ to me, no matter how ugly it gets. But that’s a signpost that something is wrong. It’s the normies that are supposed to feel at home. If I, with my really weird set of emotional skills, get vibes of ‘this is familiar to me’, I might stay clearheaded but it means something’s wrong with the situation.
But then all you have to do is see how the New York Times has acted in recent weeks and you know something’s wrong. And so, we brace ourselves against storms of bad faith, but I’m here to tell you just because they’re evil does not mean they automatically win. I think overreach is a real thing, and I think Joe and Kamala have seriously fucked the evildoers, between ’em.
Buckle in because we got this: for ourselves and those we love.
Quinerly
@Raven: good question.
WereBear
@ArchTeryx: Always been a backhanded dig at women.
tam1MI
To me the more apropos comparisons are the angry Bernie voters in 2016 and the angry Hillary supporters in 2008.
And just like in those years, the Republicans are already making a play to peel angry Biden supporters away from the party.
SomeRandomGuy
@moonbat: I’ll be tempted, if Ds lose, to see if I can earn wingnut welfare by pretending. Maybe I’ll get close enough to Trump to utter a single, uncontestible fact and his flaming pants, charged with the roaring of ten times twenty million lies, will safely ensconce him in the earth forevermore. We’ll dump 300 metric tons of sewage, to purify the (very grateful!) earth, afterwards.
dm
Here’s another Mastodon gleaning:
different-church-lady
I bet Trump and his people are really really happy some of us are still punching at each other instead of him.
rikyrah
Skeptical Brotha![]()
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(@skepticalbrotha) posted at 2:27 PM on Mon, Jul 22, 2024:
Kamala Harris is 700 delegates from clinching the Democratic nomination and stepping into history. #KHive
(https://x.com/skepticalbrotha/status/1815468733428867239?t=PCN6_x4bDfmy2qG7Bjm4sg&s=03)
rikyrah
President Biden remaining president is another genius chess move. He’s going to run this country while Vice President Harris criss cross this country rallying Democrats as she prosecute Trump and Republicans.
(https://x.com/WonderKing82/status/1815488924023726132?t=t5spSSK7CWTpN-bMHOedzg&s=03)
zhena gogolia
@Quinerly: It was answered in the subsequent comments. The answer is yes.
rikyrah
Rob Flaherty (@Rob_Flaherty) posted at 2:40 PM on Mon, Jul 22, 2024:
880,000 people have given to the @KamalaHarris campaign in the last 24 hours — 60% new.
$81 million in, and we are still raising (a lot).
Democrats are fired up!!
(https://x.com/Rob_Flaherty/status/1815472057246748750?t=cqxIYM6tISYjz1xqHyqEBQ&s=03)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@moonbat:
That’s exactly how the tidal wave of entitled, white, professional self-professed “progressives” that have moved here over the last 10-12 years operates.
They think that because they (maybe) voted for Obama and support abortion rights it makes them something like Bernie Sanders but they’re the first ones to put their kids in charter schools or flee back to a burb when little Liam and Emma reach school age because gentrification ends at the school house door.
Denver/CO is “blue” but only in a pale sense given the underlying hard-core Reaganomic approach they take to everything while paying lip service to issues that actually matter to the *base* of the Democratic Party, black folks. It’s the operating template for the city of Denver’s Great White Dope of a mayor and a compliant city council.
And this picture is found in lots of metro areas nationwide.
different-church-lady
I’m pretty sure they’ll solve this problem by just going for 1950’s Jim Crow racism and saying it isn’t.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: Now that is a good point.
But then, how can he run the country when he’s a “doddering old fool” (quotation from one of the comments in the thread TaMara felt she had to close).
Omnes Omnibus
NFLTG Biden.
Yes, I know it’s a parody.
gvg
@Splitting Image: You can’t prevent people from in effect campaigning all the time. You can move primaries and voting up. I am not too in favor of that because sometimes we need time for the other shoe to drop (edwards for instance). I think we could put the primary closer to the election. I don’t think we can prevent the papers and people from talking about it endlessly.
I hate the whole idea of a non fixed date that is called by the party in power to their advantage but I think it is the faxed cycles that make our cycles so long.
rikyrah
Skeptical Brotha![]()
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(@skepticalbrotha) posted at 3:20 PM on Mon, Jul 22, 2024:
The Black community is mad as hell about how the donor class and their politicians did Uncle Joe, but is on fire for Kamala Harris. Black women raised $1.6 million in a few hours on a massive zoom call. The brothas call is tonight. #KHive https://t.co/vzqiV6HdoR
(https://x.com/skepticalbrotha/status/1815482064965423435?t=IpsnCnSEILiKZ9tySGP0zQ&s=03)
TBone
This smaht lady is also running with it!
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/07/best-campaign-year-crazy-cat-lady-congress
ArchTeryx
@WereBear: One I never signed on to. Instead, I joined ’em. (I’m a critter agnostic person; it doesn’t matter the animal, I’m good at making friends with them. Dog? Cat? Rabbit? Parrot? Doesn’t matter).
To my little group of friends “Crazy cat lady” is a high complement. Bigots gonna bigot, but we know the truth at least.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
J D called Peter Thiel a childless cat lady?
different-church-lady
Describing Pete Buttigieg as a childless cat lady is sure to peel away the gay vote.
TBone
@Omnes Omnibus: 😆💖
Quinerly
@MomSense: excellent comment and analysis. Thank you.
rikyrah
Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) posted at 2:07 PM on Mon, Jul 22, 2024:
For the last decade, I’ve had the privilege of calling Kamala Harris a friend, a Senate colleague, my Vice President — my sister. I cannot wait to do everything I can to help her make history, and call her Madam President. https://t.co/aUjwv9q5nY
(https://x.com/CoryBooker/status/1815463767570084324?s=03)
BR
The RNC’s attack press release on Harris is hilarious, including highlights like (seriously):
* She co-sponsored Bernie’s Medicare for All bill
* She laughs a lot
* She sympathizes with Palestinians
They’re not making much of a play for the horseshoe left who at least at the moment seem to be ok with Harris in a way that they weren’t ok with Biden.
TBone
@ArchTeryx: I have many cat refrigerator magnets – one with cartons of cats:
ETA I too love all animals.
rikyrah
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) posted at 11:37 AM on Mon, Jul 22, 2024:
Me: I… feel funny.
Andy DuFresne: It’s called hope.
Me: What… what do I do with this?
Andy: Just roll with it, man.
Me: Feels dangerous.
Andy: No. It is the best. It’s actually the best.
(https://x.com/ElieNYC/status/1815426011724390852?t=QlFyhz-cFLUVHuJCAc3TqA&s=03)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Why should we expect that? Hair Furor has enabled the modern GQP to fly it’s freak flag fly so I wouldn’t expect them to dial it back. Okay, they might channel some of their remaining inner Lee Atwater & conservative messaging techniques (Goebbels 2.0) perfected with over 50 years of practice and refinement because they know how to dog whistle like nobody’s bidness.
But it’ll be up to the line in every case.
SomeRandomGuy
@MomSense: Didn’t call you a bigot. I mentioned that “but other people had the same reaction” doesn’t purify it.
If you can’t admit to being caught by bigotry, you can’t get yourself out. You’ll keep insisting you were right, right, even if you weren’t.
What you do with this message is up to you; I’m some weirdo you met on the internet who is telling you, you can be wrong, and you might have been wrong. WTF would I care for you more than that?
If you say something, I remember you once thought I thought you were horrible, it would be awkward to remind you, wouldn’t it? So, just trust me. Here’s an exchange, where everyone can see that I’m not just attacking. You wanna cop to how, okay, yes, if a group of people have a negative reaction, there’s contagion?
And, that just because a bunch of people had it, it doesn’t mean it’s the right reaction, though it’s still a *true* reaction?
The true reaction is the one you had. You’re human, you’re entitled to have that reaction. But you don’t get to say “my bad response to his debate performance trumps everything else, and I’ll just argue that incessantly” because that’s giving into bigotry. You’re not even *testing* your initial reaction, to see if it *is* the correct reaction, e.g., “Biden (is/is not) doing fine”.
You didn’t base your judgment about Biden’s fitness on BIDEN… you worked entirely on other factors.
That is why the word “bigot” keeps coming up. When you’re both irrational, and hateful, you’re a bigot. If you’re just hateful, you’re not a bigot, but you might be worse.
it’s the IRRATIONALITY. That’s what makes it bigotry. When you show NO signs of being persuadable, because OMG you saw his debate performance.
TBone
@rikyrah: awwww! 😍
rikyrah
Fernand R. Amandi (@AmandiOnAir) posted at 2:09 PM on Sun, Jul 21, 2024:
I hope it’s slowly dawning on the MAGA Republicans that Joe Biden is now a President with total immunity and legal protections for official presidential actions as granted to him by the Supreme Court — and unencumbered without the electoral concerns of seeking re-election.
(https://x.com/AmandiOnAir/status/1815101764590571659?t=p_nE7N1Nl2QwN2vjDd7LFA&s=03)
ArchTeryx
@TBone: If you’re starting a Crazy Cat Lady club my homies and I would be glad to join. We have Gogurt-style cat treats, which are so popular among the feline population that they’ll try and growl and nom at the same time when we clip their murder mittens. It’s hilarious.
different-church-lady
@BR:
Give them time, they’ll figure something out.
different-church-lady
@rikyrah: Silly rabbit, only Alito gets to decide what qualifies as an official act.
Matt McIrvin
Counting adoptive and stepparents as childless is how a fascist naturally thinks. Only blood children count. Blood and soil and genetic stock.
A lot of religious American conservatives are way into adoption, though, so it actually won’t play well with them.
rikyrah
JM Rieger
@RiegerReport
Vice President Harris arrives to cheers and applause at campaign headquarters in Delaware
https://x.com/RiegerReport/status/1815490695324438725
hueyplong
@tam1MI: I can tell you they were called Chucks in the 70s.
And in actual, full court action, they were blister machines.
The invention of Addidas and the like was a godsend.
rikyrah
Hasan Kwame Jeffries
@ProfJeffries
I keep hearing “Will
@RepJeffries
endorse
@VP
#Harris?
Will he?!?!?
Let explain something – his wife is an #AKA, his momma is an AKA, his parents and his brother (their mom’s favorite) are all #HBCU grads.
Trust, he understands the assignment.
8:33 AM · Jul 22, 2024
https://x.com/ProfJeffries/status/1815379753056038946
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Trump is legit afraid of debating Harris because I DO think she has an answer to his gish gallop ridiculousness. All she has to do is give him that look she has, and say, ‘Donald, I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t think anyone does. You’re just rambling like a drunk uncle.’
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@different-church-lady:
I’m not seeing any great love of Harris by the Horseshoe Left and ugh, I spend a lot of time in that circle.
Yeah, they think (aka pull out their ass) that somehow Harris will be “better” than good old “Genocide Joe” on I/P but that has no basis in observable reality. And they then ping her on a lot of the older issues about prosecuting black folks more than whites, etc.
They won’t vote for her because they never vote for Dems but you know that and anybody who’s observed left politics since 1999 knows that.
Chris Johnson
@rikyrah: Hell yeah! I’d hoped we’d get to that 81 million in a day. Or it could be in total, but it seems like there was already more.
EarthWindFire
Their concerns were ignored because you can’t beat someone with no one. Their only concern has ever been Biden’s old, get him out. Now he’s out and we apparently have the candidate of his choosing. This could have gone much worse. IMO, these longtime concerned voters owe Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a big debt for getting this transition through in spite of their indecision.
brantl
@Fair Economist: You live in an alternate universe, where Republicans have brains, and know how to use them constructively. Both are baseless assumptions.
Kay
BR
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
There is actual reasons to believe her stance on Gaza is to the left of Biden’s. Probably a generational thing more than anything. Multiple reports on that. Of course it’s all access journalism, so we have to trust the sources, but several of them are named sources who quit the state department in protest.
SomeRandomGuy
@tam1MI: They actually became “a thing” sometime in the 90s, I think – multi-colored packages.
@ArchTeryx: Vance has the ingredients of smart, but he is an ideologue, which prevents him from putting the pieces together.
Don’t be intimidated; the law isn’t as hard as most people think, and really intelligent people are often bored with the law. (Doesn’t mean they aren’t lawyers – boredom can be a help in some jobs.)
But never forget: Vance can reason, so, he knows he’s a despicable liar, helping the future biggest, slickest, most overpowering, and only the second in all of US history, our next Benedict Arnold, T F G!!!!(cue music).
ellie
@moonbat: I haven’t calmed down either. In fact, I’m flabbergasted that people think the U.S. is NOT a racist, sexist country. It is.
I can’t see this turning out well. I hope I’m wrong.
Omnes Omnibus
@hueyplong: I am fancy. I have Jack Purcell’s.
rikyrah
President Biden
@POTUS
Sonya Massey, a beloved mother, friend, daughter, and young Black woman, should be alive today.
Sonya’s death at the hands of a police officer reminds us that all too often Black Americans face fears for their safety in ways many of the rest of us do not.
3:21 PM · Jul 22, 2024
https://x.com/POTUS/status/1815482257949282309
different-church-lady
@Kay: At this point I should hope so.
dm
More from Mastodon:
https://writing.exchange/@pratik/112826420410411285
lowtechcyclist
@ArchTeryx:
CITATION NEEDED. You keep saying this, over and over again, but the only thing I’ve seen you point to is that Hitler started off by killing the cripples, so that’s what’s going to happen first here too.
Pardon me, but the whole Nazi business was very much about the purity of the Aryan race and its bloodlines, so they didn’t want to have cripples breeding and (as they saw it) weakening the bloodlines.
And yeah, I know about VDARE, but the Trumpist cult is very much about its collection of real and imagined grievances, and I have to admit I’ve missed the part where Trump goes on about how handicapped persons are undermining America and sucking up resources that should be going to healthy white men.
But that’s where you can surely provide citations if they exist, right? And if it’s in Project 2025, as you just claimed, you can surely give a page number and quote from it.
Quinerly
@zhena gogolia: yep. I caught it later. A place for folks to grieve. When I grieve, I do it privately. Obviously, I am not good at this blog stuff. I read a few comments in that closed thread. Then I put on a load of laundry and walked the dog. Did a Biden supporter wish death on a commenter and his mother? That’s usually when I stop reading and wonder why a thread doesn’t close.
Subcommandante Yakbreath
Deleted
SomeRandomGuy
@ArchTeryx: I’ve heard it said (by Randall Munroe) that it’s false – well to do people tend to have more children.
It’s important to get the facts right – it’s a borderline ugly statement, more so because in the US, when people hear “poor” they often see Black, and welfare queens, and all.
Kay
@ellie:
I don’t think that. I just think not running women or people of color because of that is wrong. Harris is up 4 on Biden today. That’s one poll but it doesn’t seem to indicate a Great White Flight from the ticket. If she stays even or better with Biden thats a direct comparison with a white man. This unusual situation has given us a really perfect comparison with the same electorate. We’ll need state polls to see if she’s behind Biden there.
dm
@ellie:
Well, we did give millions-of-votes majorities to a black man twice and a woman once already, so there’s some hope.
rikyrah
@ArchTeryx:
He doesn’t have to be. The only thing that’s important is that Thiel and Musk’s checks clear.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: Cripples? Come on, man.
eclare
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hahaha…
Quinerly
@Kay: well, lookie there. Maybe some will feel free to again comment here on BJ. That would be cool.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@zhena gogolia: I’m hoping he stays on as an advisor.
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
She’s tied with Generic Democrat, both of whom are 2 points behind Trump in that poll. Not yet “good”; better, though.
Note: Anyone with a social media account, prepare for the onslaught of anti-Harris attacks. (Including from the horseshoe left.) Look at Kamala’s twitter account
KamalaHarris and also her VP account for previews; the Republican replies generally have blue checks and so Mr. Musk sorts them to the top.
nitter.poast.org links: KamalaHarris and also her VP
At least “Kamala the Cop” won’t have much traction vs a convicted white-collar felon with many untried indictments for felonies some (the classified docs cases) for crimes when he was out of office. But I’ve seen it already.
BR
@lowtechcyclist:
It’s part of Vance’s worldview (like the Yarvin stuff about turning the “unproductive” into “biodiesel”). Not sure that it’s actually policy, but the line between those is thin.
rikyrah
@moonbat:
She will get the nomination.
The thing is getting her over the finish line.
It’s peak Black woman that this is how she has to run for President. But, oh well. It is what it is.
EarthWindFire
@rikyrah: I’m white as paper but I’m with them now. I’m scared of how ugly this can get and how it could turn out. But if the people who have it all on the line are in it to win it, then so am I. Onward.
Ivan X
@SomeRandomGuy: Define “persuadable”?
President Biden is running to save our democracy (or at least defend it a little longer). It’s vital that he win.
But, regardless of whether I have sympathy for him and see him for who he really is, as opposed to how he presented himself, he showed up and failed, in the way an elderly person might fail, when we needed him. So yes, he reinforced an existing prejudice of mine, and others I know. It was heartbreaking. After that, I was, frankly, more concerned about his ability to hit Trump effectively than I was about his ability to run the country. Trump is beatable, but he wasn’t beating him.
If you want to call me a bigot, then, so be it. I have sympathy for anyone here who believed in Biden and now feel as though that belief has been unfairly trashed. It was! But I was no longer to sustain that belief, myself, after that debate.
Surely what went down is not fair, but it was one of those cases, from my perspective, where being fair was putting too much at stake. And it’s not as if our opponents have ever even heard of the word.
different-church-lady
I’m gonna say something negative but we need to be prepared for it:
If, a week from now, Harris isn’t up 5 in every battleground state, some of the same characters who publicly knifed Biden are gonna try the exact same shit on her.
Kay
@Bill Arnold:
MOE is good. 2 is good. We were back 5. We can compare her state polls to Biden’s state polling when they come out to see if the race/gender difference from Biden shows up. I don’t know. But if it doesn’t that’s pretty interesting, right? Given that we actually subbed her in for a white man? We’ll never again have a better comparison.
moonbat
@ellie: Don’t feel like you have to give up your anger if you are not ready to. It can be very constructively used. In fact, I’m banking on the universal law of unintended consequences here.
The people who pulled off this coup expected the party to either fracture and give the election to the GOP or swallow our anger and get it line behind whomever they ‘brokered’ to take over at the convention. What they didn’t count on is that the Democratic base would be so massively PISSED and they by-god were not going to allow ANYBODY but Kamala Harris to be in the driver’s seat of this re-election campaign. It also looks like Biden did a lot of behind the scenes work to pave the way for her too because he’s that kind of guy and he has our backs. I only hope that her reach with young voters can exceed the number of old racists in the party. And let’s face it, we got ’em.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
I doubt the Nazis would have described them as “differently abled.”
Quinerly
@rikyrah: I have been watching it. Teared up watching her and Doug leaving the plane. She looked so damn good and very presidential. Perfect posture. He looks like such a kind and good man. So in love with his wife.
I am totally convinced she can win this.
different-church-lady
@lowtechcyclist: They’re Nazis: they would have a color-coded badge.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
Well, put them all in your “pie safe”, because carefully ignoring/denying polls is dumb. If you want to incubate another echo chamber start warning people about what they can’t say. That’s a great idea. Worked so well last time.
This is a competition. People win and lose.
LAC
@lowtechcyclist: https://defeatproject2025.org/issues/disability/
Might help – no hyperbole, but there is impact.
ellie
@different-church-lady: Yep.
This is a nightmare in the making. But, I hope I’m wrong.
Fair Economist
@BR:
Some are trying. I did see one (probably fake) leftie calling the woman who reduced the California prison population, refused to apply the death penalty, and ended the “gay panic” defense “Kopmala”.
BR
@different-church-lady:
Yup. The NYT will have endless op-eds about what a bad choice Harris was, and if we’d only just picked a Romney/Manchin ticket then the election would be done by now.
What I think (hope?) is that everyone gets that we can’t do that intra-party free for all again.
Martin
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: My prediction is when all is said and done, the architect of all of this is going to be Pelosi. Nobody has overseen more elections than her – every 2 years hundreds of house races, clearing primary challenges, telling good, hard working democrats that they aren’t going to get any money because they’re polling too poorly and she can’t afford to lose a better poling district. She’s had to twist the knife on a lot of good people because her job was to get to 270 every 24 months.
If there’s anyone I would expect to go into polling data and make the call, it’s her, not out of disloyalty to Biden, but because Trump tried to have her killed, mocked her husband when he was nearly killed by one of Trumps flunkies, and nobody will get in her way of stopping Trump being re-elected. And because I think she’s been the architect of this going back to the start, she was going to have the plan to get Harris the support she needed. Their relationship also goes back a long-ass time, but she as the nominee solves a ton of other problems, some legal. So when the letter went out, I can imagine Nancy Smash telling her rolodex they had 4 hours to endorse Harris or she would come for them next, because we are going to pull this shit together right the fuck now.
I don’t think Biden had much of a strategy here for that, based on the reporting and I think once he made his decision, he was going to do everything he could to help. Pelosi is the expert cat herder and she’d had weeks to figure out the next steps. Democrats appreciated the moment and rose to it. That part probably wasn’t hard.
SomeRandomGuy
@Splitting Image: It’s not the primary season that’s so long – the campaign continues with the prospective nominees. It’s just, until this year, no one thought “technically, you might be able to change the nominee before the convention” to be a reason to do something never before tried, to solve a problem that happens every fucking time. We’re in the middle of the campaign, or, were; we even had a debate – did you notice the debate? Yeah, lot of news since then.
This was unthinkable, but, Republicans did their best to make it thinkable, and, well I’ve never had much confidence in the thinking qualities of a lot of people. (What, you noticed?)
ArchTeryx
@SomeRandomGuy: If that’s the case then I need to correct my own worldview. My experience has been the opposite, but I’m one guy and all I got is anecdata. Folks who do that sort of analysis for a living, I’ll trust over my own experiences.
lowtechcyclist
@BR:
That may be the case, but again, citation needed.
Jackie
@Lobo:
Her ex-husband, TCFG hater George Conway zapped her right back on Xitter, mocking her by stating “like your well-spoken, hard working boss?”
I couldn’t find the exact quote, but it’s pretty close.
different-church-lady
@Kay: I ain’t talking about here. I’m talking about the real world.
Everyone’s on team Harris today, because it’s new and got us out of the tailspin. But if the going gets tough, we’ll see very quickly who has a spine and who doesn’t.
And just to be clear: I’m hoping spine gets the majority.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: This is why I think I have to go off the internet entirely. ETA: I mean, not because of your comment, because your prediction is correct.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I don’t need or want a curated list of “good news only” comments. If you want that, use your “pie filter” instead of policing comments ahead of time.
pat
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Cleverly done and coordinated, yes. The way it was never clear what Pelosi wanted him to do, frankly until today, as far as I know. She has finally endorsed Kamala.
I am just so so happy not to ever again hear about Biden’s “cognitive decline”. Hopefully they will begin to use that phrase for the felon running against the prosecutor.
zhena gogolia
@BR: “Hope is not a strategy.” — Somebody on the internet
moonbat
@rikyrah: It’s looking better and better for her nomination. And I’m immensely grateful for that. Especially since that was not the original plan (such as it was) of the folks spearheading this coup.
THEN, as you say, it will become a question of getting her over the line. I’m thinking that Biden, still holding the bully pulpit, can persuade the persuadable white voters who might be tempted to come down with a sudden case of “I’d vote for a black woman president, just not THAT black woman president!” to get out and vote for her.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: I am pretty sure you aren’t a Nazi. The KKK uses the full n-word, yet we don’t even when talking about them. But you do you.
dm
This 2020 Harris ad has aged so well they could just put it in rotation now:
https://vmst.io/@User47/112828298706187002
TBone
@ArchTeryx: my feral tomcat, new to my household and now living in the lap of luxury in our finished basement, came with only one tooth! Josey Wales luvs him some of those newfangled treats. He gets the basement to himself because he is not well liked by my existing brother-sister pair AND he is literally the dirtiest cat I’ve ever known. He does not clean up well and will roll in dirt and dust at every opportunity! I had to cover all the nice furniture downstairs.
You’re already in the club, silly!
BR
@Martin:
Eh, maybe so about the first part (pushing Biden out) but I don’t buy that Pelosi made the rest happen. Biden took the first big step of an endorsement out of the gate. That already meant it would be a big deal for folks to *not* endorse Harris. I bet a decent amount of it after that was organic, in the sense that it wasn’t like each person was given a slot in a schedule to endorse, but rather they saw what they were expected to do and did it. I’m sure Pelosi pushed a few to time it right, but still.
different-church-lady
@ellie: I’m not saying that. I’m saying we need to be prepared for the spineless to start shrieking again when they realize the “one weird trick” isn’t that simple. And we need to make sure they don’t create another episode of viral spinelessness.
ArchTeryx
@lowtechcyclist: Start here: https://www.lflegal.com/2024/07/project-2025/
Detention camps – which more than one of Trump’s people (like Stephen Miller) have referred to as concentrating undesirables – are absolutely a part of Project 2025: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/03/trump-mass-deportations-detention-camps-military-migrants
And yes, history shows that the disabled are always one of the first groups fascists start killing. Happened in Germany, Italy, Spain, Cambodia, Uganda… need I go on? The Nazi detention camps were invented in the first place because doctors rebelled against murdering disabled people openly. So they took the murders out of sight.
Add to that that they’ve already made one attempt on my life, and if not for my mother, I would have been dead long before I ever reached high school thanks to repeated attempts to kill me by malign neglect.
Now add on top of THAT that I’ve been subject to bullying and bigotry all my childhood and adult life due to my disabilities. My attempt to start a science career over 20+ years was blocked by open bigotry against my disability. I only got the job I got now because the interview was conducted camera-off, and my current boss STILL tried to veto me based solely on “vibes.” I only got the job because HIS boss overruled him on the basis they needed my warm body in that seat. If I had to actually compete on a level playing field, I would have lost yet again to bigotry.
If that isn’t enough, then you’re just another sealion and fuck you very much.
TBone
LOVE the new sticker by MoveOn. Hope the link works (I stole the image):
https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NYc3-VWSccVD2gqjB5u_NXY5WBgmscRS-tGruRDKBjhM636IAjqN_XmBjnj9Tp7Vj-_CnyqdI8gZ0c0WX7rJ1AN4Uz09iXTkU9M36SEvagd8HTOmWant0w=s0-d-e1-ft#https://d1tdltywu8qogs.cloudfront.net/images/editor-2024-07-20.png
Had to download to steal it.
PatD
@BR: No, this is likely to be a very competitive election. It is not realistic for Harris to be up 5 points or for anyone to have that expectation. I do expect those races to tighten in her favor.
la caterina
@Indycat32: Childless cat lady here. I want one of those shirts!
SomeRandomGuy
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Um. What you’re doing is called “damning with faint praise.”
Nancy would have made it *look* easy, no matter how fast it was coming, no matter how awkward it would, no matter what the press or the donors were saying.
Please, don’t speculate that maybe she was setting the stage earlier, other than “Joe, if there any way I can help, let me know.”
Now, was she making plans, before the debate? Of course. That’s why she’d have gotten the plane landed, no matter how treacherous the touchdown. He knew she had the plans. But that’s the point! When you’re in that level of responsibility, you wait until asked – if Nancy would never act without clear instructions, Nancy can learn everything from Joe, and he’s not holding anything back, because of that trust.
That quality – making the plans, keeping them hidden, etc., is what counts as being completely fucking amazing.
Um. So, I hope you don’t mind my saying “I think she was even more awesome.” I guess “damning with faint praise” isn’t very nice sounding, but for some reason, names of fallacies are dancing through my head the past couple-three days.
Spanish Moss
I just saw a clip of Jeffries talking to the press about the Republican meltdown. He is grinning the whole time. He is loving it, and I am loving it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Jesus Christ, read the actual words d-c-l wrote.
And FWIW and to forestall the inevitable rejoinder, I don’t use the pie filter.
different-church-lady
@Kay: You are completely misunderstanding what I’m saying.
I am saying that in the world outside this blog, if Harris doesn’t instantaneously start crushing Trump, we’re going to see certain rats start screeching again, instead of having her back.
And if we let them gain control of the narrative again we wind up right back in the same hole.
lowtechcyclist
@Splitting Image:
That would, if anything, stretch things out more. As things are, the campaign for the nomination starts a year or more before the first primary. In the 2008 cycle, Obama declared in February 2007. In the 2020 cycle, a bunch of candidates had declared by January 2019.
If anything, the first primaries should happen in the fall of the odd year before the election. South Carolina in September 2027/2031/etc., Nevada in November of those years. The results of those primaries would weed out a lot of the candidates and get them off of debate stages well before enough delegates had been voted on to determine the outcome.
TBone
@la caterina: I got one in pink at the Etsy link for $24 including shipping. On sale today!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1765564311/kamala-shirt-kamala-harris-shirt-this?click_key=65def9a6fa0c24a926a01a79eb66c5dbf3201fa7%3A1765564311&click_sum=fa80f905&ref=shop_home_active_6&pro=1&sts=1
moonbat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Yeah, we have a bunch of those guys in our community garden. Shake their heads over Trump but are very careful that their precious little ones never see a black kid up close on the playground.
TBone
President Biden just called in to the speech maker !
Future First Gentleman speaking now – MSNBC
Quinerly
@Kay: I have been amazed the last few weeks. I don’t recall the old BJ not being willing to listen to bad news/polls. It’s been bizarre. I said 10 days ago in a thread that I thought some here were going to get a rude awakening. To me it seemed pretty obvious Biden was going to have to step aside. No party/campaign could operate for the next 100 days fighting the daily onslaught of the set narrative. No other message could get out.
Quinerly
@TBone: Doug is tearing up.
different-church-lady
@Quinerly: Emotional management became very complex.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
It;s the same thing. You’re saying “people will say X” and we will have to then “have her back”.
You’re warning people ahead of time that reporting anything negative here will be portrayed as “not having her back” which is exactly what you did with Biden and the reason why all of thought he was doing just great when he was losing. Because anytime anyone said “he’s losing” you all said “stop, pie filter, have his back” but we’re not actually in charge of 100 million voters. We didn’t make Joe Biden unpopular. He did. Is that “fair”, that he was unpopular? I don’t fucking know but I do know I’m not controlling public opinion from my command seat here in western Michigan.
Ivan X
@different-church-lady: I don’t think it’s real likely that anyone’s gonna call for Harris’ ouster at this point. The hour’s late, and no one really wants a clown show except the media and the opposition. Harris might end up be a losing candidate, but her actual consistency is not in question. Merited or not, Biden’s was.
Martin
@BR:
Pretty sure she’s inclined toward a position that doesn’t abandon Israel but holds them accountable for both civilian deaths and settlements, which my sense is where most of the Dem base wants to be.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Former, and still very respected FPer, soonergrunt, isn’t so sanguine about the GQP bowel movement reaction in this moment:
https://twitter.com/soonergrunt/status/1815142473414660393
Good thing we’re raising craptons of money at the moment. It doesn’t solve every problem but it can help mitigate them.
Quinerly
@Ivan X: totally agree
BR
@different-church-lady:
Yes I agree with that.
The media will put unrealistic expectations on Harris — then concern troll about it forever. We have to ignore them. And help others ignore them.
I have Dem relatives already talking doom and gloom about Harris, that she isn’t likeable enough to win, blah blah blah. And they were not lefties or big Biden fans but low info center-left Dems.
UncleEbeneezer
@dm: I texted a friend of mine who is long-time labor organizer who studied under Dolores Huerta, about all of this mess yesterday and she had just gotten through with that zoom meeting and was very excited. She is a white woman, but she has spent decades working in multi-racial coalitions (her deceased husband was kind of a legend in Latinx organizing in SoCal) and has tremendous respect for the Dem Base. She was 100% Ridin’ With Biden, didn’t go around talking shit about him (or writing apologia for those that did) and didn’t need to pivot because she was ALREADY supporting the Dem ticket. That’s how you act as an ally and the reason why she gets invited to calls like that one.
coin operated
@Martin:
@SomeRandomGuy:
I’m somewhere in between the two of you. Nancy Smash wasn’t taking any chances and had gamed out the support structure out way ahead of time. Biden figured out, after the debate, that his goose might be cooked and starting planning the transition. The two of them got together and planned this IN COMPLETE SECRECY. Still an amazing feat of political maneuvering.
lowtechcyclist
@ArchTeryx:
Oh wait, I missed this:
Wait, the U.S. of A. had been engaging in a pogrom against these people for all except for the past dozen years? Holy shit! I was alive for more than half a century while a pogrom was going on in my own country, and almost nobody said boo about it? Good grief! The history books need a serious rewrite, that’s all I can say.
different-church-lady
@Kay: I am not saying any of that at all.
I am saying people OUTSIDE OF THIS BLOG will try to push us back into a doom loop because of unreasonable expectations. They’ll do it even if she gets ahead.
Jesus.
Quinerly
@different-church-lady: absolutely no excuse for some of the behavior exhibited here. If true, then I have to wonder how some of these “valued” commenters hold down jobs and function day to day off line in the real world.
rb
@japa21:
It won’t happen. There isn’t going to be even token opposition except for the punditry, and voters and delegates will welcome the NYT’s scorn as they put her forth in unanimous fashion.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Well, good thing we didn’t willfully create a situation where Republicans could plausibly claim that our prospective nominee hid the “truth™️” about Biden’s mental state…
Geminid
@Kay: I think negative partisanship overides a lot of the old shibboleths relating to gender and race now. Maybe not entirely, but the way Reps. Underwood, Allred and Davids flipped majority-white Republican seats in 2018 tends to bear this out. Rep. McBath beat Karen Handel that year in a plurality white district. All four won in suburban districts which I think are the battlegrounds now.
Both parties have have realigning this century. Republicans have been losing moderates and the Democratic coalition has lost a lot of its misogynists and racists. I’d make that trade anytime.
zhena gogolia
Wow, glad people aren’t making it personal.
This place has gotten so ugly. Guess I really am out now.
different-church-lady
@Ivan X:
Oh, somebody will do it, guaranteed. I just hope by then its so patently ridiculous that they just get dismissed as idiots immediately.
ArchTeryx
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The one good thing about Soonergrunt’s scenario, that he forgets, is that Biden and Harris control the process this time. Yes, the Republicans control the House and will throw as many wrenches into the gears as they possibly can, but if there’s another insurrection with a bunch of openly armed MAGAts, there’s going to be a lot of dead MAGAts on the Lawn, because Biden and Harris won’t tell the National Guard to stand down and leave the Capitol Police hanging out to dry. And the Supreme Court just immunized him for “official acts.” I truly hope if they try something like that again, the order will be given to shoot to kill if they start firing. The military and the Secret Service does not fuck around.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
The doom loop wasn’t imaginary though. It was a reaction to real events. Which it occurs to me is where we’re probably disagreeing. You think it was brought about by negativity and I don’t.
different-church-lady
@Quinerly:
Me, I don’t even try anymore.
different-church-lady
@Kay: Can we agree it was accelerated by negativity?
And given that, can we say that viral negativity is still a danger going forward? That it could stunt momentum at the least?
SuzieC
@KatKapCC: I’m an enthusiastic cat lady but I do have a son. So I want a T-shirt that just says Cat Ladies for Kamala!
Ishiyama
It will take more than craptons; we will need f*cktons.
Kay
@Geminid:
That’s interesting. I also think the GOP is getting more diverse. It’s top-down- much more reflected in their candidates than in their voters – but it is just undeniable at this point that Republicans have made real gains among POC in Florida. That’s good. A less racist GOP is a good thing.
Quinerly
Kamala is giving a great speech. Must see tv.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kay: FYI, when you link to the hashtag and not the actual tweet, people can’t see the source you’re citing.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: You want people who interpreted what they saw differently than you to accept your interpretation, despite what they saw.
You got your fucking scalp but you won’t be happy until everyone who disagrees with you admits they were lying and thought Biden’s brain was mush.
@Kay: Now if only we could have a less racist, ageist, sexist Democratic Party…
gratuitous
@SatanicPanic: And, now that the “intense focus” is off of Biden, I wonder if the Post and other media outlets will now turn their intense focus to the felon, who as they readily acknowledge, has been less forthcoming about his health (and taxes and finances and, and and . . .). Their history over the last nine years is not encouraging for fans of transparency.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I just on’t think people always make great subjective decisions about what is “negative” and are way more likely to include than exclude, so no. Gaza is negative. Gaza is also 1. real and 2. news.
I agree with this: people shouldn’t use false or poorly sourced statements to doom with. If it’s real it’s in.
Quinerly
@different-church-lady: I guess we could drink to that. Bourbon or Rye?
I could even break out my hidden Midletons.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
You guys raise this in every thread, not me. You may of course do that as much as you want and I ignore 90% of it but if you raise it I can respond. I posted articles on 1. Harris position on Gaza and 2. Harris poll.I actually went out of my way to find positive things because, well, I don’t want to set anyone off. I got back a bunch of stuff about how you have been wronged and I’m demanding something. I’m not. Spiral away.
Eyeroller
@different-church-lady: Her polling in the goddamned almighty “swing states” (thankyouverymuch Founders with your Electoral College) was comparable to Biden’s just a week ago. But that was when she was a hypothetical and now that it’s reality, that may change. We can only hope so.
cintibud
@Raven: I don’t think anti-pet threads are allowed in pet threads
Martin
@gratuitous: Most won’t. They’re still evaluating Trump as an entertainer or businessman and not a politician, where they’re going to evaluate the Dem as a politician. This is because, to a large degree, the GOP isn’t about politics, it’s about culture, where the Democratic Party is about politics.
Democrats keep demanding the GOP change, and why should they, this is a winning strategy for them, but haven’t seem interested in themselves changing. We’ll see if this changes that in any way.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: Well, sorry, Tamara put up a dedicated gripe thread and it got overrun by grave dancers.
As for those things you posted, great. I’ll be happy to talk about them with someone who didn’t support kneecapping both Biden and Harris.
BR
@Kay:
Let me put this a different way. You have way more grassroots organizing experience than I do. How do you deal with Dems who are doomers by nature — their personality type, I think, more than anything — and who are easily demoralized by any piece of chaff that the MSM throws out there to crap on Democrats?
These are folks that constantly need to be motivated and easily give up and their negativity is infectious because they whine and spread doom to everyone they know.
What’s the best strategy there?
Just to be clear, I’m talking about people I know personally, not social media contacts.
different-church-lady
@Quinerly: The S.O. has decided on tequila tonight, so that’s where we are.
Martin
@Kay: I think Kropenhagen has made it clear they aren’t available to be persuaded.
Quinerly
@different-church-lady:
Obligatory
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj2700em-JQ&si=y1HsMDUflrtiUJ9V
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
She accepts the bullshit MSM narrative then hammers on it for months on end until she passes out or gets her way.
Kay
Harris speech in DE is really, genuinely good. She has gotten so much better since the 2020 primary. I’m just so glad not to have a ceiling. She could really take off.
Quinerly
@Martin: he’s been a bit overwrought since early AM.
Eyeroller
@BR: Ha! It’s already started. She is the “least electable” of several options, according to a panel of their opinion writers.
lowtechcyclist
@ArchTeryx:
Sorry, you’re just throwing a grab-bag of stuff together and claiming you’ll be shipped off to the camps like the migrants, only you’ll be tortured and killed there.
Yes, I have no doubt that a lot of shit will hit the fan for disabled people if Trump wins in November. But that’s mostly because there was a lot less support for disabled and handicapped people back in the 1980s and before, and yeah, we’d be heading back there.
But there’s a big difference between government doing a lot less for you, no matter how adverse the effect on your life, and being shipped off to camps where you get tortured and killed.
You could explain in detail those potential adverse effects of having support withdrawn, and that would be an important message to bring here. But if you’re gonna go “they’re going to torture me to death” with only the ‘evidence’ that you claim, then I can’t see a reason to take you seriously. Be Dennis the Peasant if you want.
bbleh
@rodwell: The reason is that they always put their interests ahead of higher goals and were shocked, that Joe would.
This exactly! And I don’t disagree with other posts that a lot of the Loyal Followers of the Felon (LFF) have neither competence nor intelligence, but certainly even the smarter ones have this blind spot.
Joe did the right thing for his country and his party. That is just … beyond those people.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Our local Democrats are all doomers. I tell them the truth, which is usually better than they think but sometimes (as in this instance with Biden) was worse. I live here and I’ve known them for 30 years. I don’t blow smoke up their asses.
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
Does the money from that sale go the Dems or is it just another $ making scheme for exploitative rag trade vendors?
If the money goes to a Dem action committee or like org. I’ll buy one.
Quinerly
@Kay: this speech should be front paged, imo.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Martin: I’ve made it clear that your attempts to persuade me of something I could see wasn’t true with my own eyes for months and your continued efforts to
browbeatpersuade were offensive then, absolutely appalling now.ETA: And I didn’t get this mad about it until Biden dropped out and the lot of you are still out there “isn’t it great, won’t you admit he was a doddering old fool nooooooowwwww?”
different-church-lady
Alright, let me try again:
Hypothetical: Harris starts to dig out of the hole, and starts to gain on Trump. It’s slow but steady. She gets to the point where the odds start looking better, but it’s still not a totally clean ass-kicking.
Some of the same spineless fucks who did a public freakout last time will do a public freakout AGAIN, because they didn’t get the immediate trouncing their emotions require. And that will kill the momentum.
It has NOTHING to do with what gets reported in this blog — it has to do with doom addicts in the real world trying to get everyone else addicted to doom.
Be prepared, and don’t let them kill the momentum. They will try to turn good news into bad news, because it isn’t good enough. And they will go after Harris for it.
Darkrose
@Eyeroller: Yup! She’s a not exciting, risky choice according to their opinion writers. Wonder why…
TBone
@Quinerly: omg that speech 😍
KAMALA IS MY JOYFUL WARRIOR PRINCESS!
BR
@Kay:
Ok, but how do you not end up wasting all your time herding doomer cats? I don’t have patience for it, I guess — it’s like every bad faith NYT headline sends them into a doom loop.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@gratuitous:
No.
Thus endeth today’s episode of One Word Answers to Questions With Obvious One Word Answers.
😉
LMM
@Quinerly: Is this funny to y’all? Do you think this is some kind of joke? Many people are rightfully upset that the Dems betrayed their voters (and Joe Biden) for their big money donors.
BR
@different-church-lady:
Yeah, I think at this point, at least on social media, we can tell off those people who start concern trolling with choice four letter words. They’ll quickly learn to shut up because their schtick won’t be working anymore.
BR
@TBone:
I can’t seem to find a link to the speech — anyone have a link?
TBone
@different-church-lady: 💪❤️💖
Danielx
And if there’s anybody who knows about corporate oligarchs, it’s JD Vance!
Kay
@BR:
Mine aren’t NYTimes people. They’re cable tv/Facebook people. Much worse.
TBone
@BR: it was streaming live on MSNBC. They’ll put up a link in short order.
It was fucking AHmazing!
Ya know what WE got that they ain’t?
L.O.V.E.
Martin
@Quinerly: And all day yesterday.
Kay
@TBone:
I like “start a family” and “build wealth”. Forward looking, directed to younger people. I know “build wealth” is kind of corny financial planner speak but people do actually have to build wealth and all the ladies on IG use that phrase. I want us to start going back to encouraging people to make money and try things – they need to :)
Lacuna Synecdoche
Kate Riga @ TPM 6:19 p.m.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Quinerly: @Martin: I was actually pretty good this morning until you assholes showed up this morning parading Biden’s head like a trophy.
raven
@TBone: Jesus, I switched back and forth to MSNBC and CNN and that shitty feed was on both!
Kay
@Quinerly:
My little sister texed me. She’s watching. She’s kind of an oddball and me and another sister speculated that if there was an RFK Jr voter among us, it would be her. But she likes this speech a lot.
Gvg
@lowtechcyclist: um, not really. It’s called capitalism and for profit health insurance pre ACA. It’s not totally solve either. There has been plenty written about it. Maybe they don’t all call it programs but poor people die of lack of insurance. The unemployed can die. Everyone knows that. Lots of people don’t even think that’s wrong. It does not get said all the time but it does make people unhappy and wanting it to end got Obama elected. It had something to do with Bill Clinton getting elected and Ted Kennedy trying to be.
Indycat32
@Aussie Sheila: Looking at her site, I would say not affiliated with Harris or democratic party or PAC.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
lol
tam1MI
@Lacuna Synecdoche: The Democratic Party does not deserve Joe Biden.
Martin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I wasn’t one of the people calling for Biden to drop out. I have said, for quite some time now, that should have happened in 2022 and we’re a little late in the game to be doing this. But I wasn’t asked who the candidate in 2024 should be. This was always a decision being made by party leaders and not us. I have been resigned to their decisions for 2 years now, not just 2 days.
TBone
@BR: LINK
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/politics/2024/07/22/watch-live-vp-kamala-harris-gives-address-in-delaware-joe-biden-2024-election/74503914007/
Not sure if they caught the moment President Biden phoned in though…that was special
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Your sense of humor is really a redeeming quality among all your horrible qualities.
I want you to know that. From my heart.
raven
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I was for Biden but had doubts about his ability to win way before the debate. When I expressed my perspective I was excoriated constantly here. Quit your fucking whining.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: I didn’t care where the money went today – I’m advertising the Joyful Warrior Campaign IN HOT PINK.
I said it was an Etsy link very plainly at #275.
I make separate political donations.
Ivan X
@Kay: Jesus. Is this warranted?
Lochnessmom
@lowtechcyclist: you are very, very lucky you aren’t disabled or chronically ill. There is a different America that exists where you don’t see it.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@raven: OK, can we get a list of acceptable opinions and under what conditions it’s ok to let someone else know they’re being offensive?
Kay
@Ivan X:
It’s a joke.
raven
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Do what you want to, I am.
Geminid
@Kay: I got the impression that Harris consciously worked on her public speaking skills during her first year as Vce President. This is not a putdown because public speaking at this level is an art. Even “naturals” like Bill Clinton and Barak Obama worked on their skills.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@different-church-lady:
I think any Democratic pols inclined to that behavior will wait until at least a week or two after the convention – i.e., they’ll wait long enough to see what kind of polling bump Harris sees as a result of the convention.
The media, though? Yeah, if the polls aren’t up in a week or two, they’ll start in on the undermining. But I suspect they’ll try do that anyway, because that’s what NYT, and WaPo, and so on, do these days.
Let’s enjoy the enthusiasm while we can and prepare to ignore the inevitable naysayers.
TBone
@raven: yep BUT the audio was 100% ❤️ and she killed it! Regardless!
🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBjKCs5yHsc
raven
@TBone: It did break up some when the picture froze. It was still really good.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Ivan X: She can say what she wants. Just know, whatever it may look like, I’m holding back a lot.
Chris Johnson
@different-church-lady: Agreed with the following caveat: I figure it’s dirty tricks and they’re not even gonna wait a day. I still think it’s Russia as much as it is ‘perfidious Dems’, probably more.
So it’s their literal job, and also we’re an existential threat to them, and they’ve gotta get Trump to win somehow, and the only thing they’ve got is polls and media outlets and trolls. That’s it.
So, much like those who went against the Tories and against Le Pen, we absolutely can win, the thing we don’t get to have is polls and media saying ‘oh hey you’re winning, good job!’
Not until house is cleaned. Find where the money comes from, find how it’s all being financed, find the ones for whom it’s ideological (some of those can be perfidious Dems, at least if you count Manchin and Sinema etc).
Until Ukraine wins and we’re figuring out what peace for a busted Russia looks like (a lot of its people could use help, they live very poorly) we’re going to be looking at a very stupid media environment and that has to be part of our calculus. Simple as that. We won with a younger but still old Joe once before under those exact conditions, we can do it again. They’re really in bad shape but all the noise and garbage will be the same.
SFBayAreaGal
@zhena gogolia: I believe we should name the commentator that said it. I mean he showed his true colors.
Kay
@Geminid:
She’s much, much better. She slowed down for one thing and stopped smiling too much. That’s not really her fault – most women smile too much. We’re trained to soothe, placate, not upset anyone. She also has a really nice, low voice which people always comment on with women. My impression of her is always “warmth”. She just exudes it.
BR
@Lacuna Synecdoche:
I’ve never used this word before, so I may be using it wrong, but that made me verklempt.
Quinerly
@TBone: with a twinkle in her eye.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
It was a compliment but forget it- I take it back :)
Quinerly
@BR: I have been a crying mess for the last 45 mins.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: A backhanded compliment is a compliment of sorts…
ETA: I do appreciate you trying to lighten the mood. You weren’t even the one who set me off today but that one got moved into my pie filter. I’m not gonna carry this off this thread.
TBone
@Quinerly: I was very upset when President Biden dropped out. But I immediately placed my confidence in him, knowing that he was doing what HE thinks is best for our nation.
Now I know without a glimmer of doubt:
We’re gonna KICK SOME FASCIST ASS!
Kay
@Geminid:
And then ABL on Twitter was talking about how black women have to modulate because there’s a rush to “angry” among white people. So the smiling was probably part that too.
Anyway. The President has to look serious and now she does.
Steve LaBonne
@ArchTeryx: @ArchTeryx: With any luck at all Republicans will NOT control the House on January 6 (the new Congress is sworn in on January 3).
EarthWindFire
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m with soonergrunt. I’m not even sure that the GOP bowel movement isn’t faked so they’ll get congratulated for making a good poopy by the end of the week by their media friends.
zhena gogolia
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I resolved not to comment any more, but I have to extend my sympathy to you. I’m hoping the cruelty and mean-girl behavior will subside in the coming days. It certainly has opened my eyes about a few people I thought I “knew.”
Kay
David Weigel
@daveweigel
3m
Johnson keeps referring to state rules that might complicate the candidate switch, but he doesn’t cite any, and sort of yadda-yaddas that it’s complicated. It’s not, though. Every state defers to the party/convention, and convention hasn’t happened yet.
They are actually following up on this lie with him. I’m shocked. They all know it’s a blatant lie and they all just ask him the same question over and over but at least they aren’t just “hmmm. Interesting. Thank you, sir”
zhena gogolia
@SFBayAreaGal: Martin.
beef
@dm:
Bloomberg has a front page top of the fold article about the Zoom 40k.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@zhena gogolia: Thank you, I appreciate that. I do need to get my sensitivity down right now. Not every bit of condescension requires a response.
Quinerly
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I loathe liars. SHOW me where I paraded around Biden’s head like a trophy.
I have to assume you are an adult. You whine like a Trumper. If you are 12, I will cut you some slack. And, what’s with your pie? You were so overwrought this AM…. something, something “on the train” something something pieing me. Toggle away….whatever.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
Just a reminder. You told me to shut up yesterday. My comments annoyed you so that was your response. I have never done that to you although, trust me, your constant tone policing can get tiresome.
Betty Cracker
@SomeRandomGuy: Do you even hear yourself? Christ.
SomeRandomGuy
Please don’t do that.
JD Vance knows good and well that “one vote per minor child” is a dog whistle to rich evangelicals.
He’s not stupid. He knows it won’t come to pass. Don’t *pretend* he’s stupid.
Remind people, “this is the sort of bullshit they hand around in their mental jerk-off-asylums, and then say *lefties* are elitist twits?”
Because he might not *want* to kill people like you, but we know Republicans will gladly let you die, even if you weren’t one of the ones that “needed killing”.
zhena gogolia
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I have to learn this lesson myself. It’s just very raw today — feels like a tragedy to me, so to see all the triumphalism is very hard.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@zhena gogolia: It is absolutely a tragedy. Even with the best possible outcome, a dangerous precedent has been set.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: Haha, yesterday I said way worse to you than that.
Quinerly
@Martin: missed it yesterday.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Yup. So I’m wondering why you feel so unfairly treated. Is the deal you get to insult and lash out at me but I can never come back? No deal.
SFBayAreaGal
@zhena gogolia: Yup. Martin who showed his true colors.
TBone
We just got the AFL-CIO!
WOO HOO!
Eyeroller
@SFBayAreaGal: I’m at great risk of doxxing myself here but I had 25+ years of experience with faculty and faculty governance and university administration, and unless the UC system does something wildly different from every other academic environment I’ve known, something is really off with some of his stories.
Shalimar
@ArchTeryx: Fwiw, I’m male, childless, approaching retirement, and I take care of my mother’s cat. I am thinking about getting any and all “childless cat lady” tshirts and don’t think it should be a slur at all. none of those 3 things hurts anyone.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Should the whole blog have been in sackcloth and ashes today? I posted a poll. Only 17% of Democrats disapproved of this. It’s not that surprising a lot of us are happy.
Ivan X
There’s a new thread up top and I put up a petulant request in there for us to be a little more tolerant of each other right now.
Quinerly
AFL-CIO unanimously endorses our gal!
tam1MI
I honestly think that if certain posters had just let the venting thread run it’s course, things would be in a much better place in all the other threads.
LMM
@Quinerly: You’re the one who sounds 12 right now.
SatanicPanic
@gratuitous: I’m probably the wrong person to ask because I don’t think the media did anything wrong by pursuing stories about Biden’s advanced age. I also don’t think they manufactured concern about his age. (they played it up, sure, but they didn’t create something out of nothing ala Hillary’s emails). Biden is 81. I don’t think most people needed the media to tell them he’s old. Same goes for Trump. He’s old, he looks old and haggard, and he sounds like a rambling drunk. They can ignore the story, but I don’t think they can bury it, even if they want to.
Kay
@TBone:
THAT’S gonna be a bit of a lift, rank and file, though. Trust me. It took a long time to get them to Obama and he was, you know, a man.
But I’m hoping we make up any bleed with the younger browner more female service unions. They might be super excited. I just hope they’re in the right state.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: Again, it was your repeated attempts after you already got your way to convince people Biden’s head was full of rotten tapioca.
Yesterday it was the triumphalism. And I said you can say whatever you want. Just expect a response. If I was seriously offended, I’ve started using the pie filter for the first time ever and you would be in there too.
I’m still only using it lightly. Schrodinger’s Cat and I have an 8 year old beef and she still isn’t in there.
Kay
@tam1MI:
True.
Ivan X
@Kay: No, but it’s also not surprising that a bunch of us here (not me, but obviously plenty) are sad and angry.
japa21
Polls at this point are really meaningless. Too soon, emotions running too high, etc.
Polls in a week will have more meaning.
Also, I did watch the speech. And I also watched Biden’s in Detroit. Biden’s was better.
Nonetheless, I will support Kamala without hesitation.
Lacuna Synecdoche
BR:
Me too. Why I posted it.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
There is nothing more boring to me about this blog than discussions about the blog. Taking the temperature of the blog. Checking the weather of the blog. How is the blog?
I don’t care about the pie filter – not who is in it, not who is going in it, nothing.
This thing runs itself. It doesn’t need management.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: Polls are stupid. They always have been stupid. They will continue to be stupid in the future.
Especially when polling a question based on a years long propaganda campaign. A propaganda campaign that, as far as I can tell, you never pushed back against.
@Kay: And watching you only reply to the last two sentences of my post which reflects less than half the contents of my post and about 5 percent of the relevant point really helps explain how you were such easy prey for a propaganda campaign.
Chris Johnson
@SatanicPanic: I feel that the media were in the wrong because they ran 198 stories about just only Biden, and made a point of not drawing any negative inferences about Trump, even though he was a babbling loon who made no sense :)
So that’d be my take. Regardless of outcomes, I hate the FTFNYT, the fuckers :) and it was weird and creepy how ALL the other media suddenly went berserk doing the same thing, like it was manufactured.
Kay
@Ivan X:
I’m going to drop this because it seems like you think I am not allowing you to feel or say that. I am. I am simply saying that if in the course of saying that or thinking it you attack me personally I will respond.
Not you. You have done none of that. Absolutely – post away.
Chris Johnson
Also… fuck me, it’s been a little over ONE DAY?
No wonder the Republicans are freaked out. I forgive us for being livid and ungraceful, because dear God have we pulled this one off, on Joe’s cue. It’s astonishing. I’m proud of us just the way we are, all of us :)
Quinerly
@Kay: this is too deep for me.😉 I have been outed as a 12 yo.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: At least one polling aggregator has frozen his model until enough legit post-announcement polls come out.
Shalimar
@SFBayAreaGal: I assume Martin is still the same on every other issue, but yeah, he has made it clear that the Biden he has been watching in speeches and interviews since the debate continues to be incapable of speaking on even the simplest subject, and he is angry that we don’t agree.
That is not what I have seen. I have seen the same occasionally gaffe-prone Biden of the past 50 years, just a little slower and frailer. But there is no talking to Martin on this issue.
Geminid
@Kay: It may be not be happiness so much as relief. This controversy has been exhausting and it has gone on too long. A Biden supporter here mentioned that last night he got his first good night’s sleep in weeks. I think that’s the case with a lot of people who were pro-Biden or unsure about the question.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: Makes sense.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Like a dog with a bone!
The reason we can’t agree is you think this entire issue was invented by media/bad people/other people and I don’t. As I have said repeatedly I watched the debate and the Biden events following and I saw a clear decline. So I looked back to 2020 and 2021 and there it was – clear as a bell. A decline. Once that happened I looked back and sure enough, there had been fewer and fewer Biden appearances in 2024. Media knew that. That’s why they pounced. Are they fucking ghouls who went crazy with it? Yes. But they had something, and they knew it.
We’ll never agree.
tam1MI
I should also add that, as far I could see when reading the thread, you were not among the people who came into that thread and caused it to be shut down. I think you are getting hit with some misplaced anger here. Unfortunately, when people are not allowed to vent in a certain direction, they will vent in any direction that presents itself.
SomeRandomGuy
@Betty Cracker:
Well. I’m the guy who can’t always stand up straight. Who can’t always stand still. Who can’t always hold a conversation.
I could continue to list misery poker, if you’d like – trust me, I have you beat, if your hole cards are all aces.
I’m the guy who feels that stare, where someone looks, and says something isn’t right, and rather than treat a person with dignity and respect, decides not to do so.
Is that okay? Since I know people will look at me, and suddenly treat me like an idiot or an imbecile, BECAUSE of what? Facts?
No, because of their emotional reactions. In a world where people think it’s okay to have a shitty emotional reaction, and just shit on the target of your emotional reaction, is not a safe world for minorities.
That’s why I say “bigot”.
Fuck it. I’m out of word.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: I’m not the one insisting everyone agree with me. It’s over. You can stop insisting Biden’s brains are tapioca, scoop some out yourself, and see how they taste. Just like you wanted.
Kay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
One of the Bidenistas made fun of me for writing that there was a clip where Biden couldn’t get into his car, like “look at the lengths she’ll go!”
Except that was true. Cable news let the camera linger as he got into the car and his aide had to nearly lift him in. That happened. And it was all over social media. There is no campaign that can overcome that kind of picture that people were getting. You’re telling them not to believe their eyes.
Kay
@tam1MI:
Thank you. That’s decent of you. I was not in that thread.
TBone
FYI lay off messing with handicapped people or I’m gonna get really fucking rude in here. Deportation doesn’t have to mean ‘outside of our borders’ and it was advertised ad nauseum at the RNC Convention. Project 2025 is not a lie and we aren’t being hyperbolic.
Martin
@zhena gogolia: A link would be nice because I never commented in that thread, quite intentionally.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Kay: No, I’m saying that I believe my eyes and ears when I see him speak knowledgeably about issues and when he has trouble getting in the car.
The first one matters.
The second one matters to shallow people.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Then someone spoofed your nym, The original comment was deleted, but several people block quoted in replies before it was deleted.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Martin: Can’t link because the comments are off but go back one page and it is comment 67.
Or, if it’s easier, search the page for “doddering.” Your post will be the first result.
ETA: You repeated the remark at 72.
SomeRandomGuy
@Betty Cracker: I believe I may have said something that was very offensive in my response to you. I wish to apologize for the joke on “misery poker” because it’s not fair to say that to anyone.
SatanicPanic
@Chris Johnson: that’s a fair criticism for sure. They’ve definitely gone easier on Trump.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: I never posted that. Not only would I not call Biden that, I wouldn’t call anyone that. Watergirl should be able to confirm that wasn’t me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: I believe you. You have never to my knowledge made any comment like that. That’s probably why it struck people as hard as it did. Whoever did it burned up a lot of goodwill that you had built up over the years.
tam1MI
@Martin: https://balloon-juice.com/2024/07/22/take-a-breath-and-take-care/#comment-927807
Doing that for informational purposes and not as a “Take THAT!!!”
For the record, I can believe someone made a nasty comment spoofing someone else’s nym. I saw the same thing happen on other forums in 2008 with the PUMAs and in 2016 with the BernieBro/Jill Stein thing.
zhena gogolia
@Martin:
I don’t know how to link to comments, but it’s #67:
Martin
JULY 22, 2024 AT 2:14 PM
Maybe it’s someone with the same nym.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, apparently not much goodwill if it was torn down that easily. I’ve emailed Watergirl and TaMara.
OGliberal
@dm: But according to the right those votes don’t really count because most of them came from cities and metropolitan areas. They really do think those votes count less.
zhena gogolia
@Martin: Okay, I’m glad, because I was deeply shocked.
You did say the day after the debate that he reminded you of a professor you had to relieve of his duties, so it wasn’t wildly unbelievable.
ellie
@different-church-lady: Fair enough!
I feel better by releasing some negativity by airing my fears out loud.
Martin
@tam1MI: Thanks. I’ve gotten pied a bit myself the last few days. Maybe someone deciding that wasn’t enough. Maybe someone new helicoptering in.
Kathleen
@cintibud: I just got this email from Landsman:
Team Landsman!
This Sunday, join Rep. Greg Landsman, President Alicia Reece, and your friends and neighbors for a rally in support of Kamala Harris and the entire Democratic ticket!
Sunday marks just 100 days until Election Day. There’s a lot of work to do, but first, we hope you’ll take some time to come together as a community and celebrate this historic moment.
Date: Sunday, July 28, 2024
Time: 2:00 PM-3:30 PM
Location: 1330 Tennessee Ave. Cincinnati, OH 45229
Sign Up Here!
Bring your enthusiasm, your friends, and your energy. Let’s make this rally a strong show of support for electing Kamala Harris and the entire Democratic ticket. Together, we can defeat Donald Trump and his allies this November.
Hope to see you on Sunday!
Thanks,
Team Landsman
Looking for an easy way to
zhena gogolia
@Martin: I think WaterGirl has changed the nym on that comment to make it clear.
delphinium
@Martin: FYI-looks like both those comments (#67,72) in the last thread have been updated now to ‘A different Martin/not our Martin’.
Quinerly
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: while you are doing you little searches, please find where I was gloating over Biden stepping down and wanting his head as a trophy.
Martin
@zhena gogolia: I would never have called that professor I relieved that either. And I didn’t say that Biden was incapable of doing the job in that comment, I said it reminded me of an incident that really affected me and as a result I found it hard to watch.
I’ll tell a similar incident. My grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s and dementia before she passed away. Those last months were pretty hard. About a year later I got a call from my aunt – she was sick and needed my help, so I drove over and found her on the sofa in a terrible state with many of the same physical symptoms that my grandmother had. It was like she had aged 30 years in the 2 weeks since I last saw her and it scared the shit out of me. Turns out she caught West Nile. A month later she was fine.
We respond emotionally to things we experience in unique and distinct ways. I can’t control for that. Nobody can. And separating your emotional response to something from your analytical response isn’t always easy (as this place the last two days has helped illustrate). I don’t fault people for that. In that moment in the debate, I had to do some work to differentiate that emotional response and _not_ equate Biden to the person I had to remove from a class, because that’s where my emotions took me. I suspect I was not the only one, though, and that’s a difficult problem for a campaign to address, because sometimes you’ve been commenting here for 15 years and people will read one comment and say ‘boy, guess we know what a piece of shit that guy is now’. Forgiveness or benefit of a doubt is not something you can rely on people to be generous with. That doesn’t just apply to me, it applies to Biden and Harris as well. Mysteriously it doesn’t apply to Trump.
Fair or not, it’s a problem that needs to get solved if you’re in the public relations business. I don’t care that much if people want to think that about me because that will never require me to provide them with evidence. If they want to think I’m a piece of shit, they can invent their own reasons for believing that and there’s fuckall I can do about it. But I did write to TaMara to let her know I didn’t write that because I know she’s having a hard time with this and I don’t want her thinking long-term posters are taking shots. I really want this community to hold together.
I can’t control what people think of me, so I don’t really try. If I avoid saying hurtful things it’s not to make friends, it’s because people don’t need that in their life and I don’t need to be that kind of person. (Well, now and then someone needs a kick in the ass, but not like that).
Martin
@delphinium: Thank you Watergirl/TaMara!
Sorry someone took everyone for a ride there.
zhena gogolia
@Martin: Okay, I’m sorry. I’m very relieved it wasn’t you.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@Kay: A disquieting scenario related to election law has occurred to me, and what I am hoping is that you or someone else who knows more than I do about the subject can explain why any or all of this scenario is impossible.
I take your word for it (and Rich Hasen’s and Marc Elias’s) that there is no possible way our new ticket can be kept off the ballot in any state under existing law. But the italicized phrase is the kicker.
Mike Johnson has already told us the R’s will sue wherever they can to keep our ticket off the ballot, using whatever cockamamie theories they can dream up. As we know, it takes only one loony rightwing judge to bite on one of those theories to produce a decision against us that would strike confusion and dismay into our hearts, even its effect were immediately stayed by an appeal. Alternatively, they might lose in every trial and district court, then appeal every case and do everything they could to make sure that none of the appeals got finally resolved before election day (unless the Supremes grabbed one of those cases, either to issue an instant turnaround ruling against us or to delay things further by asking the parties to brief a new cockamamie theory not raised by anyone).
The question is, if any of these issues are still pending as of election day and not resolved by January 6, and the election is a squeaker for Harris, couldn’t the Rs gum up the transition by refusing to certify Harris as president on the grounds that “we don’t even know if she’s a legitimate candidate”? Along with all the claims of election fraud they’ll undoubtedly cook up by then, this could make the next transition even messier than the last one.
brantl
duplicate.
brantl
@different-church-lady: You ought to be more specific.
sab
@Indycat32: I want one too.
Aussie Sheila
@Indycat32:
Thank you. If someone can point to a site where I can buy something that assists an actual Dem campaign, I would appreciate it. I can’t donate (properly so imo), so a purchase would be a good way round that.
sab
@MomSense: I had to laugh out loud about the Matlock earworm, since my husband has been in a news blackout for a month and that thehe is stuck in my head.
I put my foot down on Brady Bunch, with all those incompetent women and little girls.
The Lodger
@KatKapCC: Like, that is just the wurst.
The Lodger
@raven: it’s low-quality Delaware broadband.
AM in NC
@Glau: I am a left wing of the Democratic Party type and I don’t think this comparison is accurate. Bernie DID NOT win the most votes from primary voters, and did not win the nomination. Biden did. Overwhelmingly. That’s a pretty significant difference, no?
brantl
@SomeRandomGuy: And people who stutter or stammer have greater issues as they get older, without loosing any of their mental acuity. Joe’s having trouble finding words, not thoughts.
VOR
Table sitting behind me at dinner last night was a couple Trump bros who were whining about how unfair it all was. They were basically echoing all the BS I saw on Twitter: Biden is in his basement, how do we know Biden really has COVID, how come Biden isn’t on TV, what about the primary voters, not fair they made Trump spend all the campaign money attacking Biden, etc… Metric tons of butthurt over switching to VP Harris. My sandwich tasted better than usual.