Today started off with a bang. I went to the gym at 9 am to get my miles in on the track and laps done early so I could come home and watch the Olympics with my friend who is here for the weekend. Got done stretching and walking, some light workout on the machines, and headed to the dressing room to suit up. As I was entering the pool area, I was alerted by the lifeguard that the pool was closed until noon to disinfect because someone had shit in it.
This is the perfect metaphor for my life.
Came home, did a little work work for the job despite the fact I have not received a paycheck for a while and it will be another month before I get one (TEACHERS HAVE IT SO EASY THEY HAVE THE SUMMER OFF), and then Breyana and I went down to Wheeling to the Italian Festival aka the “Tally Rally.” Unfortunately, could not find any Italian Roast Beef sandwiches, which is odd, so I went for an Italian sausage and a fresh squozed lemonade. Breyana had the same and we split a cherry cheese danish and a piece of baclava. Brought some stuff home for my friend and for Gerald, and they were pleased. It was a fun day!
I have a confession to make. I am actually moderately excited about the election coming up, and not filled with existential dread. There is an energy out there, and I do not know if it will make a difference on the election, but it can’t hurt and I have felt so shitty about politics for so long I am just gonna ride the sugar high. I guess I didn’t realize it, but I realize now I have been going through the motions. I did the voting and the some volunteering, but it dawned on me I haven’t been EXCITED about an election since I was volunteering long hours for the Kendra Fershee campaign in 2018. She was such a great candidate and such a wonderful person and she would have made SUCH a difference representing the people of WV, and her loss just took the piss out of me. And there hasn’t been much to get excited about for me, at least, the last couple of years. Everything felt motivated by fear and existential dread. But there is so much energy out there right now that if you have an empathic cell in your body you are going to pick up on it. It’s thrilling!
While at the Italian Festival, I stumbled across this:
That’s my crew of local Democrats, the ones I worked with 2012 to 2018, and it was nice touching base with them and seeing them next to the union guys. I didn’t realize it and had forgotten about the whole cat lady Vance remarks, but I was wearing my “Cat Daddy” t-shirt, and that tickled a bunch of them. Touched base with Teddie and said I am reporting for duty, and she’s gonna reach out to me next week and start getting me back into the loop. I do a lot of driving for the office- heading to different parts to drop off signs and pick up supplies, and this year they are partnering everyone with a senior citizen who has trouble getting to the polls, and turning it into a sort of buddy system. I will be assigned one or two senior citizens and it is my job to keep in touch with them and get them where they need if they volunteer and to make sure they get to the polls on election day. Kinda stoked about that.
And like I have said over and over and over again, you go to any Democratic HQ anywhere around the country, and this is what you see:
A bunch of ladies doing all the work, with one token old dude there just doing what he is told to do when he is told to do it. Exactly the kind of role I am perfect for- tell me what to do and when and I will do it. At any rate, all of them were in a great mood, and Teddie said she just counted and they had registered 30 voters today alone! That’s a big deal!
In other news, for you menfolk in the comments, this should be on your radar:
White dudes overwhelmingly voted for Trump and it's time to organize and redeem ourselves.
"White Dudes for Harris" is Monday, July 29th at 8:00 p.m. and i'll be there.
Join me?
Share this far and wide. #WhiteDudesForHarris https://t.co/lA0aLkuvBB— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) July 27, 2024
I signed up and so should you.
That’s it for me. Gonna go hang out with the friends and watch the Olympics, and maybe tomorrow the pool will not have been freshly shat in and I will be able to swim. Take care.
War for Ukraine Day 885: The Butcher’s Bill from Last Night’s/This Morning’s Russian Attacks
HumboldtBlue
Sen. Ossoff: VP Kamala Harris has ‘put Georgia in play’ and will win the state
SomeRandomGuy
Well, the last 8 years have been the worst nightmares anyone ever had about the RPUSA, and now, there’s some energy we might win, and maybe even win big enough to force an enema into RPUSA and hopefully, their heads will slip out once all the crap’s cleared.
Um. Speaking of ruining pools by defecation.
zhena gogolia
@HumboldtBlue: Good!
Jeffro
@HumboldtBlue: by Jove I think he’s right! 💙 🇺🇸
raven
Really nasty TFG ad about Kamala.
chrisanthemama
@raven: You could have stopped at three words there.
SatanicPanic
This energy feels real. And Harris is so good. I feel like so many people are going to love her when they hear more.
Hungry Joe
I always feel better — energized, even — when I finish my daily Postcards to Swing States. I look at the growing stack and fantasize about how many extra votes they’ll pull in: Five? Eleven? Eighteen? Then I think about the tens of thousands of people with THEIR growing stacks of postcards, and how many extra votes we’ll all pull in, and I feel A LOT better.
zhena gogolia
@raven: What does it say?
Scout211
I’m feeling positive about this election, too.
Speaking at a fundraiser today, Kamala Harris shined bright like diamond.
Hungry Joe
Deleted
Scout211
Thanks for not linking to it. I might have been tempted to click.
But remember, it’s not nasty, it’s weird.
Hungry Joe
@SatanicPanic: Are you the SatanicPanic who used to comment a few years ago — my fellow San Diegan? If so, welcome back! If not, well … welcome anyway.
eclare
@Hungry Joe:
I have my postcards, I have my stamps, I have my addresses, and I’m going to get some stickers on Tuesday when I will be near a Dollar Tree. Two hundred to write!
Hungry Joe
@eclare: The messages are a lot shorter than they were in 2020 and 2022. You can really reel ‘em off.
dmsilev
@raven:
Wow, so out of character for him…
Tomorrow will be the one week mark of this particular leg of the roller coaster. Sure as hell feels like longer, doesn’t it?
bbleh
It is EXACTLY this kind of person-to-person outreach that will win it for us.
MAGAts have their closed-circuit stuff where they’re amping it constantly (to the point that I gotta wonder whether some people literally burn out), but it ain’t the Base that’s gonna win it: it’s the leaners, the haven’t-really-thought-about-it, the dunno-a-lot-about-it-yet folks. And when they see actual people who are like them and willing to engage, rather than weird TV ads, they’re more likely to respond positively, to engage themselves, and to VOTE.
If you have ANY time to do it, think about doing that sort of thing — in person, via postcard, somehow somewhere — and if you don’t, consider donating to fund those sorts of efforts. THAT’s what’s gonna win it for us!
Jay
They are so weird.
Speaker Moses and his “Son” are porn watching monitoring buddies,
Dolt 45 and sharks, batteries, Hannibal Lecter,
JD Vance downloading the Couchsurfing App.
They are weird.
White & Gold Purgatorian
Democratic Women are the life of the party!
Nice pictures. I have put in quite a few hours behind tables like that. It is so much more fun when people are excited about the next election instead of dreading the outcome. Good on you, John C., for signing up to help. You will have fun.
JCJ
I like that they are pointing out that these people are weird. Some of Tammy Baldwin’s ads that point out some of her opponents previous statements conclude with “Eric Hovde, what the hell is with this guy?” The first time I heard that I laughed.
oldster
I absolutely feel the same difference in enthusiasm. Night and day.
The choice now is between an upbeat, exciting future versus a tired and bitter past. I think we just made it possible for a lot of low-info voters to vote Dem.
KatKapCC
I’m excited, too. I’m a little scared about it, because I was excited in 2016 too, but I don’t know…it feels like something different. Maybe because in 2016, it was possible for some dummies to still think Trump wouldn’t be that bad, and now we know he was not “that bad” — he was a million times worse. And I loved HRC but I know that a lot of people didn’t (often for unfair reasons), but it seems like a whole lot of Dems are just jazzed as heck about Harris.
(Also, I assume “squozed” was a typo and not some local lingo that a West Coaster wouldn’t know, but it made me giggle.)
Chet Murthy
John, about pools and poo. I started back swimming a ton around 2010, at my local YMCA. And every now and then they’d have a poo incident. They’d be closed for a half-day, and then reopen (apparently enough for the filtration equipment to get the count of whatever-it-is down to acceptable levels). I found that that wasn’t really enough for me to, uh, y’know, reliably avoid getting a GI tract infection, if get my drift. So I typically wait an extra day-or-two before I go back. B/c you don’t want those GI tract infections, they’ll fuck your shit up.
Jackie
@raven:
It’s going to get worse. We Dems have to have her back. I also expect she’s ready and her campaign staff is ready. We can also count on The Lincoln Project and other anti-TCFG republicans to have her back.
I’m already reading some so-called TCFG supporters are rebelling against some of the over the top slurs he’s using against Kamala – saying he’s turning his own supporters off.
Thank doG, there’s only 100 days left before Election Day – not counting early voting!
VFX Lurker
Thank you for posting your postcard progress in these threads. You rock. You’re also inspiring me to write more Postcards to Voters.
Keep going!!!
stinger
@KatKapCC:
“Squoze” is a Winnie-the-Pooh type of word, used lightheartedly.
MisterForkbeard
I really wanted to sign up for this, but it takes place when I have a work function.
Is there a donation link yet
ETA: I had a very weird morning. Had to drive my brother to the airport at 3:40am this morning, got back and it had just gotten light (around 5:30). Decided that there were no cars on the road and this was the best time to get on my bike and go for a ride.
Which I did, for 35 minutes. Cold air really screwed up my lungs, but it was a great ride. Came home and one of the kids was up, and first thing in the door she says “DAD, the cat threw up all over the floor. Also, I’ve got cat poop on my arm, should I clean that off?”
Sigh.
Quinerly
Love this post! I have been dancing around today doing yard work (High Desert Gardening…..ask me about my design for pedestals for my rain barrels). Now is time for yard beers….canned PBRs and Dr. John’s last album released after he passed. Great musician. Nice guy. Miss him. Proud to say that I hung out with him in the 1990’s when my little group brought him in to play a free concert at Union Station in St. Louis.
Great remake of a classic…with Mr. Neville. It’s all right….we’re going to “The End of the Line.”
(Kamala’s got this.)
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=_87UySpRnqc&si=QrrlLx3lIne1pSH0
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Genocide Joe people are back, with a new alliterative qualifier for Harris.
Quinerly
@raven:
I ain’t scared. Said it once here. Misquoted. Will say it again.
Dems and Kamala are back in the game.
And, thankfully, I’m not on pins and needles every time she speaks.
Love to see her strut off her plane.
BR
Someone posted the Veterans for Harris zoom link earlier — here it is:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/5017220224711/WN_3e_i9Qa8QJKbc8K2aTrm3A#/registration
Quinerly
@Jackie: 💙💜🩵🧡💛
Randal Sexton
I have been telling my wife that if there is not a ‘grumpy old white guys for Harris’ pretty soon I’m going to have to create it. I signed up for the dudes and for good measure kicked in another Hundo.
brendancalling
We were gonna do a follow up to the podcast with Bill tomorrow, but may have to reschedule to Monday. I gotta get $250 together to get my (other) upright out of the shop, so I signed up to do Instacart. Then I’m canvassing for Kamala (Ka-BLAM-ala) from 3-6.
Let’s fucking GO.
Quinerly
@Jay:
Oh, Baby!!!
H.E.Wolf
@Hungry Joe: [postcards]
@eclare: [postcards]
@VFX Lurker: [postcards]
I wrote 5 yesterday. Walked ’em down to the P.O. today. Y’all are keeping me motivated – thank you!
Jackie
@KatKapCC:
Voters weren’t excited about the expected Clinton vs Bush election. Of course TCFG dashed Sleepy Jeb’s expectations.
I was a Hillary fan, but too many Dems weren’t, or were meh, and too many Dems in the battleground states didn’t vote – assuming Hillary “had it.”
This time IS DIFFERENT – in much the same way it felt in 2008 – Kamala has that certain SOMETHING that TCFG definitely doesn’t have! He’s not the unknown candidate of 2016. And, frankly, IMO, outside of his MAGA base, republicans aren’t that “into him,” anymore.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: Oh, great.
JiveTurkin
It’s got be a turnout election. If you are for Trump there really can’t be much that is going to change you, you know he’s an amoral pig and you are fine with that. Maybe some women who lean to Trump can be pushed if you keep reminding them of what the Republicans will do about abortion if Trump wins. Hopefully no October surprise, because I don’t see that there could ever be a surprise about Trump.
BR
@eclare:
There are a couple postcard writing options, right? There’s “Postcards for Swing States” and some others? What are the pros/cons between them?
Quinerly
@schrodingers_cat:
“I ain’t scared.”
We are back in the game. Energy. Excitement.
I know it can be hard sometimes. BUT Be positive. New narrative. Reset.
All in this together.
H.E.Wolf
John – I love that you signed up for that particular volunteer task. You’re a role model always. And a mensch.
BR
I had asked this question in a previous thread, but does anyone from MN know if there are concerns about Walz regarding his response to the 2020 BLM protests / national guard / etc.? Seems like something he could get hit from both the left and the right.
Frankensteinbeck
The press. Seriously. It’s some abuser dynamic shit. I don’t think most of them even know it, it’s driven by Pundit Brain and herd dynamic or something. They spent years beating on Joe, and it became a lead weight, then turned to despair when it looked like they even might be right. This has been a replay of 2016, where the press have done their damnedest to sink us.
But in one of life’s most ironic plot twists, they lost by winning. With Biden out we’re not being beaten by the press abusers anymore. They don’t have time to do it to Harris. They have to congeal into a Narrative, and then repeat it enough to to depress us.
Quinerly
@Jackie:
And a 100 day campaign works in our favor.
Believe that with all my heart.
Quinerly
@Frankensteinbeck:
THIS!!!!!!!!!
persistentillusion
@eclare: I do postcards as well. My instruction asked us to avoid stickers as they ould jam postal sorting machines.
Just FYI, not trying to steal your joy!
Princess
@raven: Not surprising for a creepy weirdo like Trump.
caphilldcne
@Chet Murthy: apparently when I was a baby I pooped in the officers club pool and they made my mom clean it up. This story still surfaces (pun intended) at family gatherings. It’s been almost 60 years. Jeez.
Shalimar
I was always of the opinion that Biden has been a great leader, deserved a 2nd term, and nothing in his debate performance was even remotely bad enough to change that. That said, his critics are right that it was a huge let-down after we were promised he was preparing and would do great. It was depressing, and there is massive, renewed energy now that we settled on Harris so quickly. What I really dreaded was wasting time in-fighting for a month or two rather than focusing on how awful Trump is, and we avoided that.
Geoduck
@JiveTurkin: He makes large yearly donations to Planned Parenthood?
Jay
@schrodingers_cat:
@zhena gogolia:
They wern’t going to vote anyway, no big loss. Purity Ponies.
The Palestinian protests are not driven by their Xshits, they are driven by what is happening in Gaza and the Occupied Territories.
They are just carpetbaggers.
caphilldcne
@Quinerly: aww Dr. John. This thread’s got everything.
Jackie
This is so infuriating! That Musk can blatantly use manipulation and post deceptive videos on shitter with impunity…😡
Renie
@eclare: I got 200 to write also for North Carolina. @HungryJoe I’ve only done 25 so far.
catclub
The people that Trump attracts are EVEN worse than he is. When the nazis and the white supremacists and the Qanon crazies are all on your side, it is time to reevaluate your life choices. The most normal people on his staff were Javanka. and they are crooks and opportunists.
eclare
@BR:
I signed for Postcards to Swing States because they supply the cards and script. I think another popular one wanted to see a photo of an example that you did before they mailed addresses to you. And for one you supplied the postcards. This is my first time doing this, I’m sure others with more experience will have many more pros and cons
BR
@Jackie:
It’s great that Musk is so addled that he pulled this nonsense this early and with something that blatant. He won’t get another chance. One bitten twice shy.
BR
@eclare:
Thanks!
eclare
@persistentillusion:
I’ll double check the instructions! I was going to get the permanent stick to the card kind, not the peel off kind. Basically about as thick as a stamp.
caphilldcne
@BR: oh man. Now I need to decide which of my various identities should I lean into. My service days are a long time ago. Unfortunately missed the lgbtq one (mainly just forgot about it). Might just roll with white dudes for Harris one. I did some research on who was behind that one and one of the founders of “Run for Something” is the only person i could figure out but enough for me to decide it’s legit.
KatKapCC
@BR: I can’t speak directly to those concerns around Walz, but Dem voters need to be realistic: Any person she chooses is going to have something they can be hit over, because there is no politician in the world who matches up perfectly to the views and values of every single voter. No matter who it is, the purity putzes will find some reason to say “But they don’t fit my personal definition of perfect so therefore I don’t like them”. The question is not, Is this person perfect? The question is, Is this person better than JD Vance? And I’m hard-pressed to think of a single person who could be on Harris’s list where I’d answer “no” to that second one.
Jackie
@Quinerly:
100% Agree! LOL, I have the Pointer Sisters “I’m So Excited!” earworm going, and I don’t care!😁
eclare
@Renie:
I figure I’ll start August 1 and do three or four a day. I’ve read that they want them mailed on October 15th, so that will give me plenty of time.
SatanicPanic
@Hungry Joe: I am, and hi! Yes still living in SD, I work in a library now. How have you been?
Martin
@Jackie: Yeah, Dems in 2016 definitely underestimated the competition. There were a huge number of people convinced that there weren’t enough Americans gullible to buy Trumps shit, probably because we’d forgotten or never bothered to learn how the religious right think and what they care about.
NotMax
Tonight’s WTF video.
:)
cain
@Jackie: he is going to lose his shit.. he hates women and to lose to a woman? It can’t happen.. he will go insane.
Jay
@BR:
He’s not getting “bitten” in any of the media he really cares about.
A little while ago, he posted that everybody should get their news from the Dead Bird site and not the “lying Media”.
and one of the comments to that, using a screen shot of Felon Husk’s post, replied with, ” so I went to the dead bird site and found out that JD Vance fucked a couch”.
He’s turned what used to be twitter into a neo-nazi, troll farm, nudes in bio swamp, and is wallowing in it.
Kyle Rayner
@Frankensteinbeck: Yes! That’s also why I love that she came out swinging. There’s so much for the press to catch up on, they’re not able to doom and gloom at their peak performance.
rikyrah
@Jackie:
There is an entire group
The Khive
They have her back, and refuse to be bullied into silence.
They are a fabulous social media presence.
laura
I just got home after a week of caring for a dear one. Spouse made Chile Verde and the beagle danced like he had ants in his pants. Everyone’s ate, the laundry is slooshing around and there’s been a real cool breeze. Feeling pretty lucky, wishing upon a star, just because.
BR
@KatKapCC:
Yeah, definitely Walz or anyone would be better than Vance. I’m just weighing, in a game of inches, who will net the most votes in places that matter without losing votes elsewhere.
Villago Delenda Est
Instant Caddy Shack vibes.
caphilldcne
@MisterForkbeard: I just signed up and it directs you to an Act Blue contribution to the Harris for President campaign. So yes, the fundraising part is already set up.
rikyrah
@BR:
The most important thing is that the killer of George Floyd was tried in Minnesota first. The DOJ Did not have to take the lead
BR
@Jay:
Oh I agree Musk may not care, but that also means that he’s lost sight of the goal of helping Trump win. Anyone who believes his tweets is at this point a true believer or someone who follows him for shock value. But if he were to have hyped in advance an October surprise and then spread a subtly faked video in October, it could have done real damage. Now the media won’t take him seriously.
BR
@rikyrah:
Good point — Walz was good about that.
Pennsylvanian
JC, I’ve been here since you were a Republican, and I love you unconditionally.
i have to share that, in my experience, men waiting to being told what to do is a sham. If the litter needs to be scooped, you know it. If the dishes need doing, you know it. The “just tell me what you want me to do” position means you are still laying a joint responsibility on another person and it is bullshit. Same here. Men sitting around waiting for instructions? As if.
They could certainly be some diner fodder for the FTFNYT. Send them to the diner?
Full disclosure, I am sad and cranky right now.
Jackie
@cain: Like this?
https://youtu.be/1e13YjTPb_0?si=MMAspuDpWAV05SEL
Jay
@BR:
Even the Stock Market isn’t taking him seriously. When he announced a week or so ago that Tesla plants would be manned by Tesla Humanoid Robots by 2025, the stock price fell again, and that was before the latest layoffs.
caphilldcne
@BR: screw it. I signed up for both. Will share both links with appropriate people
@brendancalling: I appreciated the podcast. I’m going to donate to Progress Pond and tune in a bit more often. .
Ohio Mom
@Martin: That certainly describes me. In my eyes, Trump was such a ridiculous figure, I thought it impossible that he could win.
But what you leave out is sheer sexism. Hillary lost in large part because of misogyny. Too many voters were not ready for a woman president. We can hope they’ve gotten over that.
Quinerly
@Shalimar: Excellent observation.
piratedan
@BR: I had seen some posts on BlueSky that certain progressive MN House members were grousing that they had herded the cats to get all of those Progressive policies signed and Walz was a less than enthusiastic backer, but happy to take credit at the positive press.
not sure of the validity of the carping, just noting its existence. iMho him not signing it would have been a flag.
On the other side, I have heard (via his own office) that Kelly is in SUPPORT and plans to vote for the PRO legislation for union organization.
Jackie
@rikyrah: The Khive are awesome! 🥰
Glidwrith
@H.E.Wolf: Gotta go buy more postcards. Count is at 48….
Ohio Mom
@Pennsylvanian: Hoping tomorrow is better for you.
Quinerly
@caphilldcne:
Here’s one for you.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=pJVGzcauUSo&si=7Of_4Kcawb11XueM
BR
@caphilldcne:
Awesome.
caphilldcne
@Pennsylvanian: sending virtual flowers and a hug! Hope your sadness and crankiness pass. But yeah, we guys should just pitch in as long as we’re staying coordinated with campaign leadership. No need to overthink it. That said love everyone’s voluntarism here. I need to signed up for one of the voter protection groups around here. Maybe can go to Pennsylvania for the election. In the past they’ve sent me to deep red sites in VA. Ugh.
Pennsylvanian
@Ohio Mom: That is the nicest thing anyone has said to me this week besides my spouse. Thank you. I hope it is too.
eclare
@Ohio Mom:
I don’t know why, but for 2016 I always had the thought “there is a non-zero chance that TCFG will win.”
Maybe it’s because I’m a UT alum and fan. I can’t tell you how many football games we won on paper before the game, we had every advantage, only to get beaten by a GA State (inner voice: GA State has a football team? It’s a commuter school in downtown ATL.)
BR
As a Californian, I’ve been aware of Harris for a long time. I was never an enthusiastic supporter, though, and supported Warren in 2020, because Harris at the time seemed over-coached and unsure of herself.
She’s gotten a lot better at this, and now I’m 100% on board. She’s just allowing herself to be comfortable with herself, and speaking off the cuff really well.
As a random anecdote of the surprising breadth of her support: in 2020, my grandfather-in-law, a WW2 vet who was 100 years old at the time, said that she was his top pick for the primary.
Mousebumples
@BR: we have 4 or 5 or 6 different options listed on the Postcards link (under 2024 Activism on the top menu/hamburger menu on phones).
I’ve only done Postcards to Voters (*of those options) – which I like since they’re a year round operation. If it’s March in an odd year, and I want to do *something* because {politics}, they’re running some campaign.
But there are lots of options right now!
I’ve been doing postcarding for my local WisDems group for the August primary constitutional amendments. (VOTE NO, in case anyone is wondering) 55 down, 35 to go.
I was hoping to grab more to write (Election Day is August 13), but they might be out?
Very very specific For This Election postcards, so very plausible.
I’m hoping to get these 35 ready for mailing Monday. And I have emailed offering to use my own postcards since I’d bet they have more names to contact… We’ll see what they say.
BR
Many Nevada voters may get kicked off the voter rolls if they don’t take action right away:
https://nevadacurrent.com/briefs/150k-nevada-voters-may-soon-be-set-to-inactive-status-sos-announces/
For those who know someone in NV.
caphilldcne
@Quinerly: Love that song. I’ve always been partial to this one: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=ylZ635QtyGc&si=rlA_W4nqbf46_xcL
BR
@Mousebumples:
Oh wow — I’ve been at this site for two decades and never noticed any of those links. Now I’m wondering what other treasures I missed. Thanks!
Kelly
@Ohio Mom: Same. I saw a life long obvious con man dumb enough to lose money running a casino. No way he’d win.
Quinerly
@Jackie: The Pointer Sisters!!! The song. Great show.
Any East Carolina University alums (Greenville, NC/Pitt County, my undergrad) will remember THE SHOW. 1981. THE ATTIC. I still have my t shirt.
There’s still some great video of that show floating around. YouTube has some stuff. Small college town loving those gals.
John Cole
@Pennsylvanian: At the Democratic County HQ, I do what I am told because they all have other things to do. It’s not the same as being at home with the missus.
BethanyAnne
I just clicked over here, and checked out the front page. I love that press release the Harris campaign sent out about TCFG’s speech. It reminded me of the old “Bugs Bunny Election Theory” – that in every election, one candidate plays Bugs Bunny, and the other plays Elmer Fudd. Kamala is clearly in the Bugs role, and I’m so here for it.
Mousebumples
@BR: WaterGirl just added/updated/refreshed the Activism link. But agreed! It’s way less obvious on my phone so I usually don’t look at the hamburger menu. 😅 Happy exploring!
Pennsylvanian
@caphilldcne: Thank you. I am grateful for your thoughts and comments. It amazing to me that an online community can feel so much like a touchstone and a source of support. Facing a personal and emotional time of need, I am grateful. Thanks, fellow jackals.
Quinerly
@laura: ooooooh
Chile Verde. enough said.
KatKapCC
This comment on an MSNBC video about Harris’s campaign kick-off made me snicker:
Jay
@Kelly:
I thought he had a shot, just because of the decades long trashing of Mme. Hillary Clinton in the media, misogyny and double standards.
I didn’t see Comey coming.
While I didn’t think that she would be a good candidate, (see above) I thought she would be an excellent President.
Funny how those are not the same thing.
Quinerly
@Jay: 💚
catclub
This was pointed out in the NYT Buttigieg interview as a reason that some women think a woman will never be elected. I will point out that Hillary won the popular vote by huge numbers, and an archaic system robbed her of a win.
Jay
@Pennsylvanian:
Sorry you are having a rough time, anything we can do, or if you just want to vent,……
rikyrah
Joe. Biden= Obi Wan Kenobi?🤔🤔🤔
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRoad2w6/
Scout211
Lassen National Park is now closed due to the Park fire. 😳
Latest report: 353,000 acres, 10% contained.
Ohio Mom
@Randal Sexton: I do t know if they are grumpy but apparently there’s a “White Dudes for Harris” group: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfv8CbvFVggb-D6bQ1-oPUNULwk6f1qzkjufYGIWFiCQ0Z8RA/viewform?pli=1
Ohio Mom
duplicate
danielx
@stinger:
I happened upon some Pogo comics earlier and realized that I hadn’t seen the word ‘blaggard’ since the last time I read them over thirty years ago.
Jackie
TCFG wants to enact a law requiring one year imprisonment for burning the American flag.
Ironically, this link opens with a photo of him humping the American flag – which grosses me out more than anything. THAT act should be punishable by law. TCFG and Vance have a lot more in common than we thought.
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-jingoistic-flag-burning-jail-free-speech/
Pennsylvanian
Thank you so much. The BJ community is so responsive to people and our companions in peril. My situation is neither dire, nor putting any people or animals in peril. But a rough time is a very good description. Thanks for your offer of support.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: It was a lot of us.
So, I think the way to contextualize these moments is that in 2008 Democrats had a big internal debate about whether the country was actually too racist to elect a black president. And just having that debate leaves us (and some republicans at the time) feeling ashamed of our country. And we decided to go for it, throw everything we had into it, and winning made us in that moment proud and gave us hope that one day we could stop asking that question.
In 2016, Republicans did something kind of similar. The religious right have wanted their own king for a long time. Trump was not a natural vehicle for this, but he was nakedly transactional and I think the religious right saw their opportunity to close a deal – they’d throw everything they have at him, and he’d give them the white christian homeland they’ve always demanded. And Trump doesn’t care if he’s king of a bunch of weirdos, he still gets to be king. And this doesn’t just make them proud of America, this fulfills a religious belief among a lot of white protestants. So yeah, they went at it fully, and we didn’t understand the dynamic, and underestimated it.
Jump to 2024 and yes, we like Biden a lot, but he’s not that transformational figure. He doesn’t signify a redemption of one of our national sins. But Harris does. Not only does she reinforce that we can overcome that racism, but she tackles the sexism sin in the same move. And we’re energized all over again imagining how proud we’ll be of this country that they were able to elect a woman.
But the GOP are still in this transaction. They’re still just as committed to it, just with fewer people. One is just their ranks have shrunk – their desperation is a product of their shrinking numbers, but also that a lot of people who went along for the ride in 2016 and 2020 weren’t really on board for _that_, and Jan 6 opened up some eyes and trimmed off some support.
I think we better appreciate in this moment what we’re up against. At least I hope so.
Jackie
@Scout211: I hope you’re safe!
Hungry Joe
@SatanicPanic: All good . Which library? I’ll swing by sometime.
prostratedragon
@Jackie: The grossest thing he’s done in public, for me. All the analogies of exploitation of the land to rape, rolled into one nasty image.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: I think a lot of us wanted 2016 to be transformational in the same way 2008 was, that we could prove we could elect a woman President.
But one thing Hillary Clinton never had was the kind of youth enthusiasm than Obama did. As I think Kay and others have said, youth turnout was actually higher for Biden in 2020 than for Hillary Clinton, probably because they were turning out to vote against Trump. But he wasn’t stoking it in 2024.
My daughter was actually out of the country over the past crazy week so I didn’t really talk to her about the current situation until now. But she says her social media feeds are filled with young people just spontaneously posting happy Kamala memes and hounding people who are on the fence about voting to vote. It’s like night and day. It sounds more like Obama 2008 than 2016, at least for them.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: It’s been pointed out that most countries got their first women leader when something happened to the male leader and she was the line of succession, that kind of thing. It eliminates the attack that ‘she too ambitious’ because she never sought the office – they lost their leader and she was next in line.
That’s Harris story as well.
Ohio Mom
@Kelly: When Trump stalked Hillary on the debate stage, I laughed. It was so ludicrous. How could someone who was acti g like an elementary schoolyard bully be taken seriously ass presidential candidate.
Ohio Dad kept warning me Trump could win; to his great credit, he has never said I told you so.
SFAW
@Jay:
Fixed your typo
KatKapCC
@Ohio Mom: I remember watching that and wishing she would have stopped mid-answer, sniffed the air, and asked the audience, “Do y’all smell something foul in here?” I know it’s childish but it would’ve been funny.
TS
@Frankensteinbeck:
The press forgot two things in their hunger for the kill
When someone tells you who they are – believe them and you get what you ask for.
President Biden & VP Harris played them to perfection.
danielx
@Pennsylvanian:
Actually that’s not all that uncommon, depending on situation and circumstances, and some will even die doing just that. For a variety of reasons I’ve been reading a bunch about the Eastern Front in WW2 of late. One of the things that amazed me was the transcriptions of radio messages from Soviet border guards when invaded by Germany in 1941: “we are being fired upon, what shall we do?” They died because they were waiting for instructions.
Chet Murthy
@Martin: Martin, you’ve been writing a lot about this, and …. I think it’s slowly getting thru. There’s something I remember from 2008: “The Audacity of Hope”. Remember that? I guess …. this last near-DECADE of just … hit-after-hit-after-hit had snuffed out Hope in my heart. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but I feel like we’re fighting a rearguard action, not hoping to win. And so I clung to Biden, b/c it felt like he might be acceptable to White America, and that might save us. But it was fundamentally a pessimistic vision of America, of our future.
It takes audacity to hope. And maybe, you’re saying, it’s time to do it again. I’ll think on it.
Ohio Mom
@Martin: I didn’t know about that pattern, though I had long imagined Biden would step down during his second term, putting that dynamic in place.
I also have imagined that for the 2028 election, so many Democrats would throw their hats in the ring that three night of debate would be needed. I don’t know if I still think that, now that Harris is actually running for the top spot and not just inheriting it.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: Heck, that’s what happened in Massachusetts. Jane Swift was Acting Governor for a couple of years when George W. Bush made Paul Cellucci Ambassador to Canada. We didn’t elect a woman Governor until 2022 (current governor Maura Healey, also our first out LGBT governor).
wjca
The United States Code stipulates that “When a U.S. flag is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, it should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.” Who can be surprised that TCFG is ignorant of this legal detail?
Quinerly
I miss the old late Saturday night music threads. Way back BJ. They evolved into some great discussions.
Dr. John at his best.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=B2fqUt7KVjA&si=CXfs1CUYo_Cc2r9r
Pennsylvanian
@John Cole: Just thankful you are out there! I think your instincts are spot on.
And screw the naysayers about the willow. it sounds like it gives you solace, and I wish I had that willow right now.
Maybe you should start a diner brigade at dem HQ. You are SO not the organic Harris voter that might be expected.
Belafon
@Ohio Mom: I’m gonna be vindictive here: We have to destroy Dean Phillips over the next four years, because I don’t want him even trying a “Don’t you feel like we need a difference president?” race in 2028.
Jay
@Martin:
There is a huge difference between a Great Candidate and a Great President. It’s a vibes thing.
President Joe Biden was not a great candidate, but he was a stable hand contrasted to Dolt 45 and people were tired of the drama, dysfunction, cruelty and stupidity.
President Joe Biden was and is a Great President.
MVP Kamala Harris is a great candidate, if only for the joy alone.
Pretty sure she is going to be a Great President.
Belafon
@wjca: I have no problem with someone burning a flag in protest, but I jumped on some kids at a high school football game a few years ago who had some small flags and were trying to throw them around like darts.
Belafon
@Jay: If Biden doesn’t want to “retire” she can send him out on lots of envoy missions, both domestic and abroad.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@BR:
My go to line since the couch dude was selected has been:
“JD Vance is the Sarah Palin of Dan Quayles.”
Quayle would be better than Vance. The GOP was bad enough back then with a pick like Quayle but now?
Cole’s ‘Tire Rims and Anthrax Analogy” holds true. It’s one of the guiding concepts from this Almost Top 10000 Blog along with Cleek’s Law.
Jay
@Belafon:
Yup, The Dude is highly popular outside of the USA, y’know, in most countries.
mrmoshpotato
@Belafon: Joe can also be an amazing advisor to Madame President Harris – like the way Bill could’ve been an amazing advisor to Madame President Clinton.
brendancalling
@rikyrah: I was saying that a week before he stepped down. He totally pulled an Obi-Wan. The whole timing, the rollout. “If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine.”
Our dude knows his strategy. He took the hit for the team. God bless Joe “Obi-Wan” Biden.
Jackie
@wjca: Exactly. And once TCFG humps an American flag, it should be burned immediately!
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: I think so too.
Remember the story about Obama deciding that if was going to run for president he’d have to do right then. It’s counterintuitive to conventional political thinkers – why not wait until you have this storied career? Why do it as a junior senator just elected? And I think the answer I that if you are going to try for this transformational act, you need to do it as a candidate that is new to the public, before the GOP has defined you to the public.
And that I think was the problem in 2016. The 2016 election wasn’t a referendum on the first woman president, or womens rights, or even Donald Trump. It was a referendum on Hillary Clinton. And that’s the campaign that the NYT waged because they had 25 years of reporting and interviews and anecdotes about her personally. She would have been a good president but she was the wrong candidate to try and break that ceiling. Given it was just a race between her and Bernie, we never really gave ourselves a robust field to pick a better candidate – foreshadowing for 2024.
Harris is back to the Obama script. This won’t be a referendum on her, but on Trump. She has room to define herself, the late entry helps with that. She avoids all of the problems that the electorate had with Clinton.
And to be fair, we didn’t do the work in 2016. We win when we do the work.
Belafon
@brendancalling: Someone else has done Joebi-Wan, right?
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie: 🤮
Agreed!
brendancalling
@Matt McIrvin: Kamala is 59? She’s about 6 years older than me. Most of my friends in Philly are in their 30s/early 40s and they see me as a peer (i DO have babyface and look young).
Point being, they don’t see KH as old. She’s in the Venm diagram. Whereas TFCG? He’s OLD.
Jackie
@Martin:
That, in a nutshell.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: It’s worth noting, my argument has been that Democrats would have been better served by a robust primary in 2024. That would have undercut this dynamic – Harris would have had to chase the presidency. It would have better ensured we didn’t need to change horses mid stream (which I still think is a problem we need to return to later) but it narrowly helps Harris because of who Harris is. If an Andy Bashar had been VP and inherited this, it wouldn’t have mattered.
This might be one of those things that Democrats kind of fucked up and win because they kind of fucked up. Note: I don’t advocate for doing things this way.
brendancalling
@Belafon: I have already seen the meme on IG.
A musician buddy of mine contacted me out of the blue yesterday saying “I think he pulled an Obi-wan.” I replied that I’d been saying that he was gonna do that for a week. He said “me too, great minds etc.”
I don’t know if that was the thinking at 1600 PA Ave, but it sure worked out that way (so far).
Gvg
@Martin: it’s part of why I backed Obama over her before, but I thought her popularity with us from her Secretary of State term had overcome that, at least with democrats. I thought it had redefined her. Also in 2008 we had had Bush, Bill Clinton, then Bush II and it was not ok with most people to elect a Clinton. 8 years later when she had more visibly done her own work it seemed fine. But the right had taught hate to thoroughly for her specifically. Hindsight is perfect.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Are you surprised? I’m not.
HumboldtBlue
Somethin’ may be rumblin’.
Chet Murthy
@Martin: I continue to think over your posts. I wonder if part of why us Biden Remainers were so hard to dislodge, is our experience of the pandemic. I know that I felt like he saved my life, that of my mother, our family. And the fear back then was so suffocating, and he relieved it. I wonder if that was part of why it was so hard to give him up: the fear that he was the only thing between us and death. It has been written that many/most Americans suffer from some form of PTSD from the pandemic. Maybe this is an aspect of that.
Idunno.
Martin
@brendancalling: She’s technically a boomer but close enough to GenX to have GenX energy.
That is the photo that my daughter just came downstairs and told me has ruined her life.
Gvg
@Martin: historically that has never worked well. It’s like you want to start an inter party war when we can’t afford to show any weaknesses to the enemy. Think Hillary v Sanders or Carter v Ted Kennedy. No. Only Biden’s skill pulled us through this. We got lucky.
Chet Murthy
@Martin:
uh, can we ask why? Just out of curiosity?
Jackie
@HumboldtBlue: I’ve been getting calls and texts the past few days… I think it’s more than a rumble.
I sense an earthquake and/or a volcano…🤞🏻
brendancalling
@Martin: what photo?
Jackie
@Martin:
Baahahahaaa!
Quinerly
@Gvg:
Plus, a charismatic VP. She’s got the skills
Pennsylvanian
@danielx: That is heartbreaking. I’ve not been a deployed soldier, but I do know uncertainty. Very sad, and a good reflection on perspective for me right now.
thank you.
Jackie
@brendancalling: Martin linked 😁
Sally
@Pennsylvanian: It’s ok to be grouchy (with pic of Oscar the Grouch and his trash can)
Jay
@brendancalling:
Click on the hypertext of “this photo”, it’s the blue text.
hitchhiker
@Jackie:
A couple of days before that election Chelsea and a couple of others came to do a little rally in my neighborhood in Seattle. I walked over to see her, and what sticks out to me is the merch they were selling that night included tee-shirts … black with “Hillary” in deep gray letters. I wanted some kind of memento of the campaign’s last days (assuming, of course, that she was about to become president), but it struck me that they were being extremely subtle — like, let’s not get too shouty and call too much attention to ourselves here. Black with dark grey message.
I can’t imagine the Harris team doing that. Her whole thing is, look this way! We’re full of joy and energy and warmth! Her tee shirt would be bright yellow with white letters forming the message.
Geoduck
@Martin: “Never sought the office”? C’mon. She ran a campaign for president. I still support her 100%.
frosty
@Hungry Joe: A few elections ago I heard it took 12 touches to get one vote. So look at the pile and divide by 12.
It was really depressing how few votes I might have gotten with all the doors I knocked. But that’s the game.
Belafon
@Pennsylvanian: In my experience, most people don’t actually know what to do in unfamiliar situations, and therefore get paralyzed by it. So all of these calls, for black women, for white women, and the upcoming one for men, are to give them the opportunity to hear what they can do. And, as was said before, sometimes people don’t know what they don’t know.
KatKapCC
@Martin: As a lady who loves ladies and knows many others who do too, every one of us saw that photo and was like YES INDEED.
KatKapCC
@hitchhiker: I wonder if they’ll make shirts in the brat color. It’s not a shade I think most of us would look too pretty in, but it would certainly be eye-catching!
brendancalling
@Jay: Aah. Yes, gen X or adjacent, for sure. My guitar player is KH’s age. Gen X as they come despite being technically a boomer.
im happy to let her into our neglected and ignored generation. She reminds me of my dear friend Lieve who worked for Factory Records (look ‘em up). Someone who’s technically a boomer but is way more Gen X.
Sally
@Gvg: I do agree. I argue with husband about this. He thinks Pres. Biden should have declared he’d serve one term. I disagree strongly. Dems would have spent these three and a half years tearing each other apart for the nomination. Even if he’d pulled out a few weeks earlier that would’ve happened. Timing was PERFECT. Now, we have this joyous competition, amongst friends, for the VP spot. PERFECT. And taking the spotlight off the Repubs and their strange poodles. No post convention bump for the weirdos.
wjca
I’m guessing Harris has absorbed the lesson, especially about the timing. Which is, don’t let them see it coming.
That’s why I figure all the speculation, and supposed insider information, about who is under consideration fot VP, who is on the short list, etc.? All based on nothing. The first time anyone outside the inner circle knows anything real will be when Harris blindsides us with her choice.
After which there will be a flood of “I knew all along…” reports.
Matt McIrvin
@hitchhiker: 2016 was also the first election where I really worried that I might be a target of violence for visibly supporting the Democratic candidate. There was a really ugly vibe, like someone might really just burn down or shoot up the houses with Hillary signs. And part of that was Trump and his generally fascist proclivities–I’m sure the actual threat is as high now–but part of it was also the amazing depth of loathing fed by 20 years of concentrated hate material that some people had for Hillary Clinton.
HumboldtBlue
Trump out here detailing his agenda and the key planks he expects the GOP to nail down.
I’m a liar.
He’s talking about his golf game.
Jay
@brendancalling:
“technically”, I am a “boomer”. Never had the “boomer” experience. Graduated from High School into 27% interest rates, no jobs, Post Secondary Education slashed. 14 years of crap jobs, couch surfing, squats before I got my first “real” job, (good pay, decent benefits, some security).
Yeah, I was a punk.
Boomer, GenX, etc are really all arbitrary.
Chet Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: In 2016 and every cycle since, I’ve asked my mom to not be at home in TX during the election. Just in case.
Martin
@Chet Murthy: Yeah, I get it. Biden’s been a really good president. And incumbents have advantages especially when things are going pretty well. Per the traditional political science thinking of the last 30 years, Biden is exactly the right candidate.
But the moment isn’t defined by Covid any more, but by Dobbs. It’s not about restoring the status quo – a country without Covid where we didn’t have huge aspirations for cultural change, we just wanted to not die, as you note. The current moment is aspirational – elevating women to fully have the same rights and opportunities as men in response to a crisis that has thrown us backward – and that just requires a different messenger. Yeah, everyone loves Biden – that doesn’t change – but we gotta win.
This was probably easier for me because I don’t hold any real deference to people in power. The more powerful you are the less sympathetic I am to you – your feelings are more expendable by virtue of you having authority or money or fame or whatever. The boss’ job is to fall on their sword if necessary to protect the team, the organization, etc. So the ‘this must have been really hard for Biden’ doesn’t land with me at all – his job is to do what’s best for the nation. So if Harris (or whoever) is better for the community, I have no hesitation on that. But I know I’m the weird one on that.
NotMax
@Jackie
If you squint your ears a bit, it sounds like “Yes We Can, Kam.”
:)
Belafon
@Chet Murthy: In simple terms: What happens when Harris has an off day? What happens when Harris gets frustrated at Trump on stage?
Martin
@Chet Murthy: So, we were talking about the election and my usual expression of enthusiasm and whatnot. And I asked her about her thoughts on Harris – and she’s kind of excited. We talked a bit about whether Harris energizes her enough to volunteer. <shrug>. So postcards, maybe not door knocking (she has some social anxiety, so that a difficult bar to cross anyway). We talked a bit about what VPs would be exciting to her – AOC and Pete. Nobody else. I pull up the photo and ask her if this candidate would energize her and she lets a look slip out. She gives the ‘I would do a LOT for that person’ and I mention that was Harris in college, and she loses her shit.
From that interaction I hereby declare myself the best dad ever for knowing my daughter so well.
Anyway, there’s a whole separate dem activist campaign that could build just off of that photo.
Sister Golden Bear
I still expect it will be rock fight, but for the first time in years, I’m actually feeling a bit of hope we’re not constantly fighting a rear-guard battle.
Although it’s tempered by knowing that after we defeat the Shadows, we’ll still need to defeat their dark servants in Red States.
Soprano2
@Jay: I’m the same, they say I’m a Boomer but I never felt like one. I felt more like Gen X.
Chet Murthy
@Belafon: Ehhhh, no, that’s not a problem I worry about: I understand nobody’s perfect. I’m just ruminating on the extent to which my Biden Remainer stance was driven by my fears, the experience of the pandemic, and his role in bringing us out of it.
All this is backward-looking. As for the future, we have a candidate, and I’m no fool: this is the horse we done rode in on, either we fight on this horse, or we die.
Martin
@Geoduck: But she didn’t in this moment. She didn’t shove Biden out, she stood by him and when asked to take over, she dutifully did so. She did the thing women are supposed to do. That’s the point. That’s what lets her duck that one particular attack that gets directed at women.
BR
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Speaking of Palin:
https://bsky.app/profile/heyfren.bsky.social/post/3kycqgllxij2c
Chet Murthy
@Martin: Too funny. Too funny.
Soprano2
@Sister Golden Bear: You’re right, but I never forget they also had to throw off the yoke of the Vorlons, and tell them all to go the hell away and quit trying to control us. I’m not sure who the Vorlons would be in our scenario.
Gretchen
@eclare: yes, Postcards to Voters wants to see a sample card before you’re approved, but that’s easy. You supply your own cards. They supply a mandatory message, and some possible add-ones if you want. You text them the number you can finish in the next 2-3 days, and they send you addresses. I’ve done quite a few cards for them and find them easy to work with.
rikyrah
@Martin:
That she didn’t betray Biden matters a lot. So much.
I still say her running for President this way is peak Black woman, but it is what it is.
We have a democracy to save.
SomeRandomGuy
@Ohio Mom: Nate Silver called a 33% chance of a Trump victory. You folks who don’t roll dice in your RPGs might not have as good of an appreciation of how easy it is to roll a 5/6 (or 1/2) in a d6. But not many people did, and I really did fall into wishful thinking on election day.
Thankfully, I was too tired to stay up to watch the returns.
When I was a younger man, and a far less informed man, I voted for Ross Perot. I hoped he might “shake shit up” and I figured he knew what he was doing. He was weird – I mean, seriously! – but he was *competent*. Now, I know that I didn’t accomplish anything useful, but, I feel I made an honorable choice.
Not Trump. He’s just barely a “successful” businessman, and his biggest success recently has been making sure *he* gets paid. He’ll be CEO, and run a company into bankruptcy, but *he* will get a special bonus for shepherding the company through such difficult times. He’ll also get some big consulting fees, I believe…
Anyway: the point is, Trump was never really successful, at anything but self promotion. He’s the Bob Ueker of business. (No offense intended, Bob.)
He cheated contractors. He abused the courts. Lots of people think he laundered money.
That he won makes me feel more than a bit ashamed that I *ever* hoped someone would “shake shit up”. I never assumed there was a bottomless pit of dishonor that the Republicans could draw from, as needed, so I never realized how dangerous it could be to “shake shit up”. Messy and biohazardous, yes, I’m not… okay, never mind the literalism, this is too important.
tam1MI
Generation Jones
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin: It’s a little known fact that in her early days Harris played synth with a German New Wave band in the 80s. /s
Martin
@Sister Golden Bear: That’s one read. She also kind of looks like she just stabbed some dude in an alley and doesn’t care what you think about it. And I’m there for that energy.
Gretchen
@Martin: In 2018 there were about 7-8 candidates to challenge our Republican congressman in suburban Kansas City. There were several teachers running in a place/time where education was a big concern, and I thought that was the way to go. My son-in-law favored a gay Native American woman who was a former Mixed Martial Arts fighter. I thought that might be a stretch for our relatively conservative district. He said “go big or go home” and shamed me into canvassing for her during the primary and every Saturday morning leading up to the election. She won, and she’s been doing a great job ever since. Of course, she’s also a Cornell law grad and daughter of a career military mom, and is great for veterans and local businesses. But I was afraid it was too much of a leap at the time.
Here’s a great ad from her first campaign: https://youtu.be/vGa5qQsYY-g?si=w4m8R9ztiTAcsW0X
When Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland were sworn in as the first indigenous women elected to Congress, one of them wiped her tears on the other’s scarf. It was really moving.
Jackie
@NotMax: Love it! Yes, we can KAM!
Jay
@Sister Golden Bear:
KraftWerk?
No way,……….
Sister Golden Bear
@brendancalling:
The true feral house and neglect Gen X ethos ain’t about strict adherence to arbitrary rules, so cuspers like your guitar player, Harris and myself, are definitely Gen X and fuck anyone who says otherwise. I mean it’s not like infants born at 11:59 p.m. 1964 were given flowers to wear in their hair and those born at 12:01 a,m. 1965 were handed latch keys.
thruppence
Just got home and signed up for White Dudes Get Off Your Asses, or whatever it’s called. Happens to fall on one of my nights off so yay.
hitchhiker
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes. Limbaugh (still dead, yay!) made himself a massive boatload of money just out of trashing her.
I’m from the upper midwest, where for a very long time the only thing remotely interesting on the radio was Rush. One of my brothers — who once knew better than to believe him — told me that he listened anyway because Rush was funny.
But the constant repetition got to him. He still thinks “both sides” when he thinks about politics at all.
Citizen Alan
@Ohio Mom: The pivotal moment for me was “No puppet! No puppet! You’re the puppet!!!” From that nearly hysterical freakout on live TV, it was obvious to me that Trump was so obviously a Russian asset that anyone who voted for him must have hated blacks or gays or immigrants or whatever more than the loved America.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jay: My mistake, it was actually Depeche Mode. There’s photographic evidence.
Jay
@Sister Golden Bear:
Darkrose
Really good op-ed from Lydia Polgreen in the NYT (gift link):
I’m a little different because Harris was my choice going into 2020. When she dropped out of the race I was happy to see her as VP, but I was looking at her for 2028. As of last Sunday, I was genuinely afraid that the deep misogynoir in this country would doom her campaign, and I was incredibly frustrated by folks who dismissed what I think is a valid concern based on my lived experience as a Black woman in these United States. The energy now is very different than 2016, or even 2020, though, so I’m feeling cautiously optimistic.
Aussie Sheila
@Martin:
‘The boss’s job is to protect the team, the organisation’
Exactly. Biden has been a great President. But when his Party adjudged his time was up, it was.
I’m never sentimental about our Party Leaders. Their job is to unite the Party and win, that’s all.
We’ve had 11 Party Leaders in 44 years.
I don’t care. The good ones won, the other ones didn’t. Among them were some very good men and one woman.
I’m highly partisan and while I pack a strong ideological bent I have never, ever let it get in the way of organising to win, either at the workplace or the polls.
Citizen Alan
@danielx: I’ve never heard it spelled that way. Always saw it as blackguard but with a silent K because something something British.
cain
@Sister Golden Bear:
I was born in 1969 and I say I am the last of the flower children. Summer of love baby !
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin:
Oakland’s property crime rate peaked in the 80s, so Harris just did what she needed to do after she caught the guy who’d just stolen the synth from her apartment, and he refused to hand it back.
And yeah, I’m down for both energies.
Quinerly
@thruppence: 💙
Jay
@Sister Golden Bear:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1xrNaTO1bI
The cowboy hat hides her hair,…….
Jackie
@Martin: I love that your daughter is all in for AOC or Pete for VP!
That’s a great clue of how Gen-Z might be leaning.
Of course, she might be disappointed by Kamala’s VP pick, but I hope she’s enthusiastic about Kamala!
Lily
@Chet Murthy: That’s a good point. I remember how the climate of it all seemed to turn from disorganized to organized (comparatively). Even with the confusion, questions, waiting for shots, tests to arrive, appointment anxiety, the organization was real. Some reliability. I was impressed they pulled it off as well as they did.
Gretchen
@frosty: That number sounds right. When I knocked doors for Sharice I felt like I made real impact on maybe one out of 10 voters, and maybe got another one or two thinking. But if I knocked 200 doors over the course of a few weeks, that was 20 votes for Sharice. And she won, even though it seemed hopeless at first.
Aussie Sheila
@Gretchen:
Never underestimate the power of door knocking. For LIVs it’s often the first clue there’s an election and a candidate.
It works. And in close elections it’s the difference between winning and losing.
Citizen Alan
@Martin: I think 99 times out of a 100, the advantages of incumbency far outweigh the risks of a divisive primary with the Dems tearing each other down for six months. That said, I do think Hillary would have benefited from a stronger primary field, if only because one or more serious and competent rivals would have felt the need to increase their own stature by chasing Bernie out of the race earlier. I remember being disappointed at what weak tea Malloy turned out to be.
Citizen Alan
@Gvg: She was hugely popular as a result of her SOS tenure on top of the rest of her political career. That GOP asshole whose name escapes me but who looked like Draco Malfoy flat-out admitted in an interview that the whole purpose of the Benghazi hearings was to drive up her negatives.
Chet Murthy
@Citizen Alan: trey Gowdy
rikyrah
@Darkrose:
Darkrose,
The one mistake that I made in 2016 was underestimating the misogyny Hillary faced. I admit that I underestimated it.
I don’t underestimate it with the Vice President, but, this is it.
We are literally fighting for democracy in America. So, full steam ahead.
Sister Golden Bear
@cain: Heh.
On a serious note, generational eras don’t have hard edges. In fact, there’s a good argument that your true generational cohorts are the folks who are your age +/- 3 years. I.e. if you went to a four-year high school it ranges from the folks who were seniors when you were a freshman to those who were freshmen when you were a senior — since those are the folks who you’re most likely to have shared cultural references and history.
Birth order is important too. I’m a first born. In contrast a friend who was the same age definitely had a hippie Boomer outlet — but she was the youngest of several children, by about a decade, so her culture references skewed toward the 60s.
Being a Californian also made a difference for me. Not only do cultural trends often start here first—e.g. I was sneaking into punk shows in high school—but things like the anti-gay Briggs Amendment in 1979, and 1978’s Prop 13 which caused severe school cut backs in the years following, so we got an early taste of what happened more widely in later years.
Sister Golden Bear
@cain: Heh.
On a serious note, generational eras don’t have hard edges. In fact, there’s a good argument that your true generational cohorts are the folks who are your age +/- 3 years. I.e. if you went to a four-year high school it ranges from the folks who were seniors when you were a freshman to those who were freshmen when you were a senior — since those are the folks who you’re most likely to have shared cultural references and history.
Birth order is important too. I’m a first born. In contrast a friend who was the same age definitely had a hippie Boomer outlet — but she was the youngest of several children, by about a decade, so her culture references skewed toward the 60s.
Being a Californian also made a difference for me. Not only do cultural trends often start here first—e.g. I was sneaking into punk shows in high school—but things like the anti-gay Briggs Amendment in 1979, and 1978’s Prop 13 which caused severe school cut backs in the years following, so we got an early taste of what happened more widely in later years.
Citizen Alan
@Chet Murthy: Oh yeah. That wanker.
Aussie Sheila
@Citizen Alan:
The GOP had had 25 years to demonise her plus she was associated, unfairly imo, with Bush the lesser’s decision to invade a country that had nothing to do with the Twin Towers disaster.
A stint as Secretary of State had her muddled up in a lot of people’s minds with that world historical disastrous decision.
The elite Press thought she was a shoe in and decided their ‘boff sides’ bona fides would be buffed by going after her for shit.
The FBI is a very right wing institution that needs cleaning out. They assisted in muddying her up.
The likes of Comey should never, ever be appointed again by a Dem admin.
In fact why don’t Dems appoint partisan Dems to these positions?
Thats what we do when they aren’t sackable public servants.
Sister Golden Bear
@KatKapCC:
As a queer trans woman, I definitely swooned and fanned myself.
Martin
@Sister Golden Bear: We also kind of misattribute generations. A lot of the things people associate with boomers were actually led by people from the generation before which the boomers received. So a lot of the early GenX vibe was really set by boomers, which GenX then ran with.
NotMax
@Jackie
The Pointer Sisters (albeit with some different family members in the group) still active.
Would be a gas if they accepted an invite to the D convention.
Ishiyama
Is it too late for a football metaphor? Joe Biden played the part of the Quarterback in the Statue of Liberty; Kamala is the Split End who grabbed the ball out of his hand, catching Trump’s team completely out of position.
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin:
Same as it ever was. Both the Beatles and Rolling Stones made up mostly Silent Gen. Especially at the start of a “new” generation many of the key influencers invariably are folks from up to a decade into the prior generation.
Yeah they were an early influence and planted the seeds, but Gen X also developed a lot of its culture itself.
Martin
@Sister Golden Bear: Depeche Mode are in their 60s now. Just sayin’.
Betty Cracker
@Darkrose: Polgreen is one of the few worthwhile NYT columnists.
NotMax
@Martin
Heck, both Bill Haley and Chuck Berry were born during the Coolidge administration.
;)
Origuy
The Beach Boys are playing tomorrow in San Jose. Only Mike Love and Bruce Johnston are remaining from the 60s band; everyone else is from much later. They’re both in their 80s, as is Brian Wilson. Wilson refuses to play with Love, who is a Trump fan. I was thinking about going to the show until I was reminded about Love’s politics. I decided to go to Shakespeare In The Park instead.
Aussie Sheila
@Martin:
An under researched issue is how much the younger ‘silent generation’ influenced the boomers. People forget that the 1940s , at least in my country was a ‘radical’ decade. Not just a world war, but mass mobilisation at home and abroad. Millions of people mixing and meeting always has a radicalising effect. Plus millions of women ‘drafted’ into industry, and those that weren’t watched.
IMO, the sixties was a ‘delayed’ reaction to that generational radicalisation. It was the 1940’s that created the sixties, not a bunch of teenagers.
Martin
@Aussie Sheila: The teenagers needed to be receptive to the ideas for the ideas to take off. Think of all the ideas that must also have been advanced that never found an audience.
A story requires both an author and an audience, and both are contributors to the story – the author in the telling and the audience in how it’s received and interpreted and incorporated into the culture. So, you need both.
Aussie Sheila
@Martin:
Agree completely. My parents were both the offspring of the comfortable, not rich, middle class.
The war saw both of them ‘drafted’. My mother into the women’s ’land army’, which required single women to go to rural areas and perform work that the rural land labourers no longer did because they were drafted into the AIF (Australian Infantry Forces), and my father suspended his University studies to join the AIF because the Japanese were a skip and a jump from a successful invasion of Australia.
Both my parents were obviously more radical than my grandparents. I could see it once I could ‘see’ adult conversations.
opiejeanne
@Sister Golden Bear: Prop 13. Fuck Jarvis!
I was very involved in PTA and volunteering in elementary school classrooms, and the absolute shit buried in that bill that no one knew about is still stunning to people when I explain it to them, about how every inch of enclosed or COVERED space is considered classroom space. That includes covered walkways and outdoor covered lunch area, the principal’s office, nurse’s office, (they did away with nurses in the budget cuts, the janitor’s closet, and heaven help you if your school has an auditorium or a library.
There are other terrible things about prop 13, but that’s enough to be going on with.
Darkrose
@rikyrah: NGL, hearing you say that, and seeing lamh back here and enthusiastic about Harris has definitely lifted my spirits.
Darkrose
@Betty Cracker: I’d missed her somehow. I’ll have to see if she has a newsletter like Bouie, Krugman, and McMillan-Cottom. I’ve been avoiding engaging with the op-ed section directly because some of them–looking at you, Bret–make me want to do violence to my computer.
(Not unsubscribing since I don’t pay for my subscription.)
WereBear
@Frankensteinbeck: And their side doesn’t have a Gandalf to go down and fight the Balrog.
Brains! It’s a tough sell in a lot of America.
WereBear
@rikyrah: The logic is impeccable. I’m on board.
WereBear
Here’s the thing that is also helping us: Vance is too skeevy even for MAGA.
He comes off like the android in Prometheus. (It’s a horror movie. The man makes horror movies, ok?) He’s soft spoken and polite and handsome and talented and faking all those “feelings” an expert actor can make slightly not believable.
Vance makes everyone’s spidey sense tingle in this latest incarnation. Even people who have been trained to mindlessly obey authority aren’t doing it with Vance.
He’s simply repulsive. He can only fool people fanatically focused on their own goals, which they think he will be a useful tool in the getting.
Best stealth agent ever, and they built it themselves.
bjacques
@WereBear:
@WereBear: uncanny valley boy, or AI VP.
The White Dudes For Harris call is past my bedtime, since I live in a Foreign Speaking Nation, but at least I can feed the kitty that evening to boost the fundraising score.
rikyrah
President Kamala’s Hand (Again) (@myronjclifton) posted at 0:34 AM on Sun, Jul 28, 2024:
A great thing about VP Harris running is that republicans and trump are so intractable in their hatred of women they can’t mount a campaign against her that isn’t the most vile misogynistic tripe.
& young people seeing them for who they are- incel women haters- is perfect
(https://x.com/myronjclifton/status/1817433465064710386?s=03)
rikyrah
Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) posted at 4:30 AM on Sun, Jul 28, 2024:
BREAKING:
The Harris campaign says more than 170,000 new volunteers have joined the campaign since President Biden’s endorsement last Sunday.
(https://x.com/kylegriffin1/status/1817492700456779821?t=Mz6pfgyfi6FK0BwdSA6eDA&s=03)
rikyrah
Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) posted at 10:29 PM on Sat, Jul 27, 2024:
Even as most media accept the idea that Trump doesn’t support a national abortion ban, he’s telling right-wing media this week abt his plan to impose one. GOP trifecta and we cld have a national ban by next spring. https://t.co/dVdKWuqAiX
(https://x.com/joshtpm/status/1817401980836311517?t=ChrXVEzLnCm2L91FuenVgw&s=03)
rikyrah
Ahmed Baba (@AhmedBaba_) posted at 6:18 PM on Sat, Jul 27, 2024:
I think Republicans underestimate how many Americans are tired of the negativity. That’s why Harris’s candidacy of joy and pro-democracy competence is such an effective contrast against Trump and Vance’s weird, dark, vindictive authoritarianism. The choice has never been clearer.
(https://x.com/AhmedBaba_/status/1817338684196463001?t=uBojXXNHFLRyAYIRPujLKg&s=03)
TBone
Woke up smiling broadly. Great day in the morning! 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gUUsYurcCZw
It’s been in the 50s overnight low for a few nights in a row, fresh and clear every morning. Chilly! 55 degrees now and I can almost see my breath.
WereBear
It’s the same impetus that picked Uncanny Valley Boy, proudly removed the right to medical care for women, and gleefully brought that up with their favorite internal epithet, “Childless Cat Ladies.”
What I am seeing and hearing is that they went full MAGA. And completely lost track of what normies would think.
And the normies who are paying attention are rightly horrified.
TBone
A female Quaker attorney gave me a button one day after she read the grievance I filed against Alberto Gonzalez.
LFG!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@rikyrah: Wow!
WereBear
This situation reminds me of a true crime story that happened in the jet-set Hong Kong finance markets. Americans working there form tight ex-pat clubs like a small town country club.
Ruthlessly competitive, money is everything, status and toys for the executives, invariably male at that time. Wives who are trophies and have servants. Children are trophies and have servants.
And, below but doing well in Hong Kong, are the admin assistants, number crunchers, etc. Who are never going to get into the country club. Handymen in their homes who wind up having affairs also figures into the tale.
They are the source of most of the information, because the high level people were clueless about anything that wasn’t money. The man who was murdered by the wife kept getting warned by his staff. She was unstable, there were mysterious happenings, they kept urging him to get her mental help.
But he got her a new Mercedes, instead. Did not end well.
I think that same disconnect has reached the MAGA cult. They have no apparent idea how they are coming off and they all have the Vance touch of making everything worse by explaining.
TBone
https://www.ign.com/articles/kamala-harris-gets-a-surprise-comic-con-appearance-with-a-video-message-at-the-simpsons-panel-sdcc-2024
Ruckus
@Scout211:
I’ve been on this rock for quite a few decades and this is one election that we really have to win, because the other side only has one gear – and that is reverse. And past that their vision is one of this country is one that has never existed.
Kamala Harris is the future. shitforbrains is the not even the past. He’s the deranged son who thinks he’s the only normal one – and he’s not normal in any way, shape or form. This old, white guy has seen a lot of politics from before I was even old enough to vote. This is the most existential election of my life. The republican party is trying to take this country back to a time that never actually existed, to form a government that is nothing of what this country is actually about. This country is about the people – all of the people, not just the wealthy or the land owners who overcharge for providing as little as possible and making their bank accounts as big as possible. It is about the people that come here for a better life, it is about the people that have been part of the whole for their entire lives, not about the people that value money over everything else. We live in a world far different than when I was born, in the first half of the last century and a country that really shouldn’t be any different than it was in that first half of the last century. A country about ALL the people, not just the one’s with bank accounts worth far more than most people’s homes and who maybe own several homes, you know the people that own much more than those that get paid by the hour and get their hands dirty. This has almost become the opposite of the country whose military I served in decades ago, the one of that common citizen. And it’s all because of greed – as it has been in most every country throughout history. It’s always come down to greed that eventually ended most countries. But we have history to show us this and we have the process and ability to fix this to enough of a degree that we do not go down that road.
WereBear
I have been wanting to say:
I couldn’t have made it through this week, with the sanity I have now, if it weren’t for all my fellow Jackals.
Thanks a big bunch. Feel the power. Share it.
Ruckus
@cain:
Too late he’s already gone bye, bye.
WereBear
It would seem that a lot of political normies are discovering Project 2025…
Via J D Vance videos talking about it.
We know their greatest hits. But to come across Vance talking about women staying in abusive marriages, and how blood is what counts, and if he’s sitting on furniture it has a definite “theater of the absurd” quality.
If we were going for head explosions we couldn’t have crafted a better piece of video, in the Dada political tradition.
Bravo.
Hoodie
@WereBear: Everyone should be wary of declaring peak wingnut. The GOP is well aware of how Vance is flopping, e.g., the WSJ editorial page just excoriated him for the “cat ladies” comments. This was an own goal by the Trump campaign. It probably shows mostly that Trump is slipping, listening to his idiot sons. He apparently overruled his campaign staff, who wanted Rubio.
The advent of the Harris campaign has injected a needed dose of enthusiasm and energy in the campaign but we need to guard against triumphalism. It’s basically brought back Dem voters, which puts us about even. The battle will be mostly over the same ground we’ve fought over for the last several elections. That may be why the Harris campaign is using the “weird” meme. That’s directly aimed at winning the normie vote, trying to shape the definition of normal. Normies don’t like abnormal. The GOP has done that for years with some success, it’s smart to turn it back on them.
TBone
The woman (Kim Davis) who just filed an Appeal to overturn Obergefell due to her sincere religious beliefs:
Wiki – Davis has been married four times to three husbands. The first three marriages ended in divorce in 1994, 2006, and 2008. Davis has two daughters from her first marriage and twins, a son and another daughter, who were born five months after her divorce from her first husband. Her third husband is the biological father of the twins, the children being conceived while Davis was still married to her first husband. The twins were adopted by Davis’s current husband, Joe Davis, who was also her second husband; the couple initially divorced in 2006 but later remarried.
https://www.wkyt.com/2024/07/24/kim-davis-legal-counsel-files-appeal-hopes-overturning-scotus-gay-marriage-ruling/
catclub
@WereBear:
link?
WereBear
@Hoodie: We haven’t come close to peak wingnut yet.
There’s 100 days or so.
And I think we won’t know until it’s over. Because we are so numb to their antics, we’ve also lost track about how that looks to the outside.
WereBear
@catclub: A year old TikTok exposing it, now a short on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8jjOhMSY-o&ab_channel=RedWineandBlue
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Belafon: Honestly what I want Biden to do is use his new Presidential immunity powers to mess with TCFG in any and all ways he can think of that would help get Harris elected. Like I know certain things might help make the guy a martyr or be viewed as unfair election interference but anything short of that is fair game.
Like, order Treasury to release ALL his tax returns.
One of the reasons I think Harris has caught on is subconsciously Biden and Trump are both linked to the pandemic in our minds. Harris represents a clean break from a harrowing and terrible era a lot of people want to forget for better or worse.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: Nope not a bit
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Chet Murthy: I see you sort of got there before me.
lowtechcyclist
@Randal Sexton:
I’d sign up for the call, except that whatever’s supposed to happen when I try to get into a Zoom call, never seems to happen right. So I’m gonna take a pass on that piece of frustration.
I’ve decided I’m gonna sign up for Postcards for Swing States, though, and I’ll stop by the Calvert County Democrats’ booth at First Friday next week and volunteer.
Ken
@TBone: I do hope a few people send in amicus briefs arguing that, by their own sincerely-held religious beliefs, Mormon (or Jewish or Catholic or non-Catholic) marriage ceremonies are invalid. Just to make it clear that any decision for Davis would be favoring one religion.
TBone
Update from fElon’s trans offspring:
https://www.threads.net/@vivllainous/post/C97w-Kcyw2A
TBone
@Ken: 👍
Dorothy A. Winsor
I can’t keep up with all the comments! If other people are enthused like jackals are, this will be a big election.
Gin & Tonic
My hot take for today: watching competitive swimming is as boring as watching people run on treadmills at the gym.
TBone
A fun read (the happy ending is at the end).
https://www.deseret.com/1990/12/13/18895846/and-they-lived-happily-ever-after-for-a-while/
Anyway
@Gin & Tonic:
Same. I never got why they show hours of swimming every four years. Yawn. Track & Field all the way.
prostratedragon
Golf cart parade for Kamala Harris at The Villages
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Anyway: We tried to watch the Olympics for an hour or so last night and saw two male US gymnasts compete. It was dramatic because one of them was injured last time and fell this time. But mostly the hour was a bunch of filler.
CliosFanBoy
I don’t want to get on a call list, but I sure want an “Old White Dudes for Harris” bumpersticker.
CliosFanBoy
@prostratedragon:
“Tweet Not Found” ??
prostratedragon
@CliosFanBoy: Huh, try refreshing a couple of times.
ETA Just checked. It is there.
TBone
Posted with appreciation
https://angrybearblog.com/2024/07/dr-fauci-is-a-hero#more-153728
🎶
https://youtu.be/QpKWpUJybng
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: This idea of taking away rights from other people by putting in some functionary as a dog in the manger, who can then argue that being disallowed to act as a roadblock to those rights is a violation of their First Amendment religious rights… taken seriously, it’s a recipe for anyone to be able to prevent anything. No one who isn’t operating in bad faith could take it seriously for a moment. Yet here we are.
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: if Obergefell falls, no marriage is valid IMO.
Other than taking your companion by the hand and walking through the maze together, I mean…
prostratedragon
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Saw some of that. After the high bar they then showed just a couple of floor routines, also both TeamUSA. As it goes on they’ll have to show some others. On the USA cable channel there’s less filler but the sports may be more obscure. In an hour yesterday I saw two gold medal fencing matches, women’s epee and men’s sabre, no USA players.
I actually like the swim events, especially the relays, which also are my favorite track events to watch.
TBone
@TBone: I think that was supposed to say “foot fetish” but what do I know? 😆
CliosFanBoy
@prostratedragon:
That worked! Thanks. I was afraid whats-his-face had ordered it deleted.
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: also too, I’m waiting for Dark Brandon to use his immunity so we’ll know what to take seriously 😉
NeenerNeener
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I lucked onto some Peacock app called MultiView this morning which showed 4 different women’s gymnastic events on the screen at the same time. It was 4 teams rotating thru all the equipment, with no commentary. I enjoyed it. It also reminded me of how much I used to hate when John Tesh did commentary back in the 90s and used to perv on the “little girls dancing for gold”.
Dave
@Belafon: Right and that’s magnified in combat particularly when I fog of war is rolling in loke it’s Victorian London. Even more s when you are explicitly part of a formal military.
Even the flexible ones are somewhat authoritarian (can’t imagine that the Soviet military of this time encouraged initiative at the small unit level) and that constrains peoples sense of possibilities often until its too late particularly because its very hard to make a good choice when you have almost no information.
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: The edges that are conventionally defined for a “generation” slip, too, usually toward younger people over time. When people first started talking about “Generation X”, it felt like I was solidly in the middle of it: people born in the 1960s who had come of age to Brat Pack movies in the Reagan era and were young adults trying to start careers in the 1990s. Kamala Harris and maybe Barack Obama would have been GenX by that definition.
In subsequent years it felt like the edges shifted to the point that “Generation X” was ten years younger than me and people started considering me almost a tail-end Boomer. I sure didn’t feel like a Boomer. Yeah, I dug the Beatles, but I also thought of them as before my time, and when stuff came out that was openly pandering to Boomer nostalgia and anxieties, my reaction was that that stuff was for my parents or my aunts and uncles and I didn’t really get it. (And my parents were, themselves, technically not Boomers but tail-end Silents!)
The same thing happened with “Millennials”, who until very recently you’d still see talked about as if they were teenagers even though at this point they ought to be solidly in middle age.
UncleEbeneezer
@Darkrose: Your concerns about Misogynoir are totally understandable, given the way we’ve seen so many prominent Black Women treated in our society when they dare become successful, speak up for themselves etc. If you asked me a month ago if people (even just on our side) would rally around Harris the way they have I would have definitely bet against it. I’m glad that was wrong and they seem to be all-in for her (for now). I anticipate a lot of the love will fade the moment she gets sworn in and has to actually do the messy job of Presidentin’, which by it’s very nature demands things like drone strikes and other ugly realities of leading a world power. But whatever, as long as the love holds until November I’ll be happy.
Kyle Rayner
@TBone: If this overturns gay marriage or even gets any lesser decision in her favor, I’ll honestly be more furious about my rights as a non-Christian than my rights as a gay man. There’s NO freedom of religion in this country if a religious clerk can lord their beliefs over others while performing what is supposed to be a secular bureaucratic function.
UncleEbeneezer
@schrodingers_cat: What is it now? She needs to end all $ to Israel and declare them enemies of America?
Guessing they were unbothered by the Hezbollah bombing of an playground that killed a bunch of Israeli children yesterday.
Matt McIrvin
@Kyle Rayner: Religion is magic! Just assert that your sincere religious belief makes you King and you can do anything to anybody; it’s free religious expression.
TBone
@Kyle Rayner: I agree with that and with what everyone here has expressed.
I have, for a very long time, believed that there is no piece of paper (or papyrus) on the planet that can validate, or invalidate, me or you. Or anyone.
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: Segregationists in the mid-20th century most definitely insisted that race-mixing offended their religious beliefs, so they could get anti-miscegenation in through the back door by the same method.
TBone
If anyone wants to call anyone a ho, I say wear that badge of honor proudly in solidarity with the world’s oldest profession.
Bobbie Gentry was one of the first female artists in America to compose and produce her own material.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VUjNbeAFal8
Take THAT!
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: they’ll wave the white flag of surrender in perpetuity.
frosty
@Anyway: Agreed. Swimming. Boring. Basketball. Yawn. Track and field, yes , but please something more than sprints.
TBone
Someone in the house behind us last evening threw a window open and started screaming “get off my lawn you (slur that means bundle of sticks)!”.
There is a gay man next door to him that just lost his beard (wife) to her long time disability that finally killed her, and although I don’t like the gay guy for several reasons, I made hubby walk back there with me directly intruding on the lawn in question and yelling NO ROOM HERE FOR HATE!
😡
Gvg
I am glad that the weird label is working with other people but I would add, mind your own business. I don’t need to explain my choices to you and you don ‘t need to explain yours to me.
For instance I am childless, but that actually wasn’t my preference or choice, it’s just the way things happened on a long and winding road of life. I am not unhappy and I have other family and nephews in the family that I care about. We were almost all girls my generation and the next is all boys so far. I don’t owe these enslaver want to bes the time of day, much less any discussion of dating, economics, adoptions falling through or cancer diagnoses. Everyone else has their own big and little tender points and doesn’t need to waste their time explaining to an endless supply of busybodies what’s going on. I mean really! That’s more than weird, it’s pervy.
And then they get to judge if the reasons are valid? Our emotions don’t count? They refuse to learn the science and just close their ears when something doesn’t agree with what they think should be true, like an ectopic pregnancy can wait.
Mind your own business.
TBone
@Gvg: Back when I was still on social media, I actually had to argue with females who thought ectopic pregnancies could be viable.
Teh Stoopid, it burned (me out and off of social media forever).
All the gawd botherers can just fuck off.
bluefoot
@Dorothy A. Winsor: From what I saw last night, the prime time coverage sucks. I was hoping to see at least *most* of an event, but it was all blah blah. I say this every Olympics, but I miss non-American coverage. I used to live somewhere where I could get Canadian stations, and when I was in CA, for at least some events were shown in their entirety on the Spanish-language channels.
BellaPea
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, my first thought was about the Baby Ruth in the country club pool. And Bill Murray’s character eating it.
Ruckus
@Darkrose:
I am an old white man and I am also cautiously optimistic. And she was my choice going into 2020 as well. She is smart, and a good human being. And she very much reminds me of a woman I used to know, a great friend for years, who died a few years ago, of Sickle Cell.
Humans sometimes really piss me off, in that they decide that humans have to look, act, and yes, hate, just like they do. That solves nothing, has caused strife and wars and makes life worse. And life is too short for crap like that.
Ruckus
@cain:
He will go insane?
It’s too late for the going, he’s already arrived.
PaulWartenberg
I RSVPd for the WhiteGuys zoom chat Monday evening so I hope to see some of you there.