I’ve just had an afterglow the entire day I feel so good after the convention, and I will talk about that more later on, but I wanted to highlight what was, for me, at least, a very special moment of the convention, when the crowd cheered so much for Elizabeth Warren that she was moved to tears:
It feels like so long ago but Warren was my absolute first choice in 2020 and I don’t think I will ever see a set of plans and platform as accessible and understandable as hers were, and on top of that, the way she explained extremely complicated things to people and just the overall kindness and decency that came through when she spoke just made me love her. She apparently didn’t have the rizz or the it factor and years of coalition building that it takes to become President, but she is an absolute gem of a person and as I have stated elsewhere she is one of a handful of politicians who I would run headfirst through a brick wall for- there was just something that I found special and different and kind that I liked about her.
So it was super nice to see her get that reception and meant a lot to me. We are just so lucky that we have so many people like Harris and Warren and Big Gretch and Dana Nessel and Elissa Slotkin and Hakeem Jeffries and Max Frost and on and on and on who are rising to the occassion.
And while we are at it, parasocial relationships are so fucking weird with the way we project our own feelings onto other people. Having said that, I want everyone to know that if anyone says a mean thing or does anything to harm Ella Emhoff I am here to tell you I will fucking throw hands without hesitation. She’s just so sweet and she has that long neck and long arms and is gangly and at times awkward and has that adorable goofy smile and thick glasses she’s just so vulnerable and open and without a mean-spirited bone in her body and just carefree and happy and I will cut a motherfucker who tries to harm her or change her in any way. You know she’s the most supportive friend in her peer group and is just the kind of person you want to be around in a crisis- not because she will fix everything, but just because she gives you a reason to fight and understands the value of just being there for someone.
I mean look at her:
Like Hope and Gus Walz, she is the type of kid that every time I see them I mentally say to myself “these kids need to be fucking protected at all cost.”
TBone
A direct contrast:
trollhattan
Same. Her inner-teacher was always able to connect me to complicated ideas she was presenting, such that I (usually) got it. And she’s forthright and somebody who I can’t imagine being corrupted or fooled. As if.
And now, we’re about to have a teacher VP.
Suzanne
What I always loved about her was that she took the time to develop a plan for that. Actual content.
scott (the other one)
Elizabeth Warren was absolutely my fave in 2020. but I was also torn: I didn’t want her to run or win because I thought her seat was so valuable and as we learned from Brown surprisingly precarious. So I wasn’t disappointed when she dropped out, although I was surprised she didn’t do better.
Harris was my second choice. Biden was about fifth. I’ve never been so pleased to be so wrong.
TBone
@TBone:
dlwchico
I always thought Warren was one of those people who went into politics because she felt a duty to do so, which we need more of.
KatKapCC
Whenever I recall Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, I think of this glorious TikTok video. Makes me snort with laughter every time. And the line about Kamala hits different now!
Fair Economist
I thought Warren was really good in 2020 too, and it was moving to see her get such a (well-deserved) reception.
Also, while I’m onboard with protecting Ella Emhoff, and while she seems like a sweet and likeable young woman, with those shoulders and those tattoos she might be the one protecting *us*.
SatanicPanic
I like Liz but I really did not think she was a good candidate for us. Too much policy talk.
TBone
@SatanicPanic: I put too much weight into what side of the table she sat on when she was practicing/teaching law (long ago). That caused me to overlook her many great qualities as a candidate. I stand with her now that she proved me wrong!
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/10/786314251/elizabeth-warrens-journey-from-pro-business-academic-to-consumer-advocate
pacem appellant
You come for Gus, you come for me, and my son, and every other father and son.
pacem appellant
Harris was my first choice in 2020 and I have the bumper sticker still on my car to prove it. Let’s do this!
Baud
I was taken aback by the cheering because it seemed like she has been less visible lately. It was nice to see.
Old School
Here’s an Emhoff video from the day Doug spoke at the convention:
oldster
“Having said that, I want everyone to know that if anyone says a mean thing or does anything to harm Ella Emhoff I am here to tell you I will fucking throw hands without hesitation. ”
That was my reaction to Gus Walz. I did not know that he had any learning disabilities, I just watched a kid channeling pure love for his dad, love and admiration.
And if you have ever had a kid who was older than the age of 4 or so, then you will know how incredibly rare that is. Any parent in the world should feel blessed to have a child who loves them that way.
It’s not easy raising a kid with a learning disability. But I bet there are a lot of parents out there who would trade a learning disability or two for a child who is still emotionally connected in that way.
I’d sure as hell take it over the smartass know-it-all hateful ingrate that I was at his age.
John Cole
@Old School: I saw that the other day and it was just so real watching them talk about their old man saying “is it as weird for you as it is for me seeing his goofy face on tv” like it doesn’t matter what you do kids will cut you down to size
M31
ella brings out the worst in the Maga loser shitheels, one of them was online beefing that ‘natural females don’t have armpit hair’ or something (they got roasted of course) but that’s so fucked up
Suzanne
@M31: There has been a lot of hating on Ella on Xhitter because certain terrible men don’t like women to have tattoos and they are under the catastrophically mistaken impression that anyone gives a fuck what they think.
Kristine
Normal families who actually love one another—one of the major things I will remember about this convention. Teenagers who look like teenagers instead of American Psycho/Stepford Wives-in-training.
oldster
@M31:
“‘natural females don’t have armpit hair’ or something”
See, but that’s a natural mistake to make if you have never been within 15 feet of an actual female human being. And what woman would allow these guys within 15 feet of them. So, it’s really not surprising.
The Audacity of Krope
Wow. Just, I mean, wooooooowwwwww… 🤯
zhena gogolia
@pacem appellant: I just had to trade in my car with the 2020 “Joyful Warrior” sticker and i have a sad
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
@TBone:
Only the best people
trollhattan
@Old School: Ella could easily blend in with my kid’s college running teammates.
And this generation are so unselfconsciousness on camera, being in front of them their entire lives. Not me, I’ll be behind the camera, thanks.
Tony Jay
Wasn’t it Warren that the Party of Hench accused of being a sexually dynamic LOMYILF who broke hardened Marines with her powerful lovemaking?
I would really have liked to have been a fly on the wall at that after-action review.
“Run that by me again. This is supposed to hurt her campaign? Can you… and I say this as the person who can snap your career’s neck with one phone call… can you explain to me what you were thinking, you moronic donkey’s dick-tumor?”
zhena gogolia
@Tony Jay: That was such a funny moment.
E.
@KatKapCC: That is a funny video! I had just about forgotten the debate incident she is mimicking.
pacem appellant
@zhena gogolia:
Everytime I hear “Joyful Warrior”, in my head I convert it to Peaceful Warrior, a yoga pose.
Anyway, where can I find that bumper sticker?
cain
@Suzanne:
Lol .. have they looked around ? I feel like women with tattoos are the norm not the exception.
Harrison Wesley
@SatanicPanic: Perfect for the Senate, though.
cain
@M31:
Lol.. so what? The attack is that if you have armpit hair you are transgender?
TBone
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: right??? That predatory lender wife and father assaulter guy needs curb stomped. He’s the enforcer for the “loan” outfit that used physical threats on the regular.
Especially galling in light of the TV ads I see ad nauseum of a blonde insisting that Kamala “pardoned and released” her immigrant attacker.
Chris
@scott (the other one):
I thought she was such a strong voice for the economic left, and in contradiction of all the stereotypes (thoughtful policy making rather than shouty activism), that I was really torn on the idea of her being President instead.
hrprogressive
The right doesn’t like Ella Emhoff because like most other women, she’d never show them any interest.
Just sayin.
M31
@cain: who even knows, they’ve somehow got the idea that the fox news bimbo look is ‘natural’ and uh, I don’t think so
also one one them said something like ‘if your daughter looks like this it’s a parent’s worst nightmare’ LOL she’s on TV wearing a hat with her dad’s name on it saying “I love you Dad” to the camera lolol that’s the biggest win you could ever have
what a bunch of loser weirdos
terraformer
*everything* John said. All that right there.
Kelly
I was between Warren and Harris in 2020. Warren for her well thought out ideas. Harris had ok ideas and a deeper resume of multiple levels of election wins plus experience running a large government agency, Harris dropped out and Biden was clearly winning before the Oregon primary. I just went with the flow. I thought Biden was too old. He’s had plenty of energy really showed me the value of his lifetime of government experience.
Very happy with Harris/Walz
Mike E
I cast my Super Tuesday primary ballot for Prof Warren (just before she ended her run) and I feel proud of my association with a MA politician all the way down here in NC.
West of the Rockies
How confident is everyone about Walz vs. Vance in the debate? Vance sure seems to lack social/emotional intelligence and is thin-skinned as hell. But he is educated and far more articulate than Clump.
trollhattan
@cain: From the laboratories of parenthood, let me share the time spent on “What’s it going to look like when I’m forty?”
>.<
That much time. Invest in the laser removal industry, now.
The Audacity of Krope
I love my Senator and she gave an amazing speech. Even though all I remember is “I wouldn’t trust Trump and Vance to move my couch.” Lololol
Governor Maura Healey spoke too. Liked her policy points, though she lost me with a basketball metaphor my non-sports brain couldn’t handle.
geg6
I read an article about Ella recently. She lives in NYC and she hosts knitting parties in various places and she gets all kinds of people together where she has a project they each work on and they sit and knit and talk and just hang. It’s sounded so lovely. The article said she may not be able to do it anymore because of security concerns, which is very sad. I’m with you, John. I might kill for her.
BR
@West of the Rockies:
I doubt the VP debate will make a difference. I don’t think Walz will crush Vance, because Vance is quick on his feet even if he is smarmy. But Vance also has no charisma and the stuff he stands for is unpopular, so he’s not going to win over anyone.
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies:
As confident as I am that my skull will shatter if I dive headfirst onto a granite slab. There is no there, there with Vance. “Smarter” than Trump yes, so’s my dog, but he has none of Trump’s practiced bluster.
Maxim
@Suzanne: Same. And just her basic kindness and decency that shone through everything she did. She was absolutely my favorite, and I loved seeing her get such a great welcome at the DNC. I got all verklempt just now watching it again.
Anonymous At Work
@scott (the other one): Let’s not forget the most memorable and hilarious attempt at rat-f#cking Warren when Project Veritas accused her of being so sexually aggressive and powerful that she broke a 25-year old Marine into sexual submission.
To quote Tony Stark, “Well, good, because that would be outlandish and, uh, fantastic.
PS: Rather than a selfie, I’d want her to sign my Secured Credit textbook that she co-authored.
West of the Rockies
@BR:
I’d happily take a meaningless draw.
lee
Warren was also my favorite for 2020. Biden was second or third (I don’t remember who all ran at the time).
From that image it appears Ella has a Holstein tattoo. That is pretty adorkable.
Suzanne
@cain:
Yeah, me too. I don’t have tattoos (not out of any strong opinion, I just…. have never felt any desire) but I often feel like a minority on that!
But….. why do men feel like women exist for their pleasure? We don’t. If she’s not your taste, that’s fine, but, like…… just shut up. Lots of people who exist aren’t in conformance to my aesthetic, but that has nothing to do with their right to be out in the world.
MisterForkbeard
A little off topic, but from what I can tell the RFK endorsement of Trump seems to be basically getting crickets online. Most of the major papers have a headline article about it on their website, but it’s basically just shrugging. One of them talks about how “vaccine skepticism lead to changing RFK’s entire worldview”
Comments on Twitter seem to be largely ignoring or mocking it too.
M31
@Anonymous At Work:
I posted this just the other day but have to add that right after that happened Warren tweeted out a shout out to her alma mater, saying “Go Cougars!”
hahahahha
trollhattan
@Tony Jay: Yes, yes she was and that had her later making a reference during a spech to U of Houston–pause–“Go, Cougars!”
Which was as killer then as “Wouldn’t trust them to move my couch” is today. Liz can do no wrong.
lee
@BR: That is my assessment as well. Walz might be able to keep Vance on the ropes if he constantly calls out his lies.
trollhattan
@M31:
Jinx!
M31
I was all in for Warren as well because I’m one of those weirdos who thinks that government is about policy and how it affects people and society.
I’ll never be profiled in the NYT, sad to say
but you know what, Biden WON and he got so many Warren-worthy policies passed holy fuck yes he did
and Warren in the Senate is better she can do more stuff for longer
BR
@lee:
Best strategy for Walz might be to almost completely ignore Vance and instead use the opportunity to speak to folks who might listen to him as Mr. Midwestern Dad but might be hesitant about Harris.
M31
@trollhattan:
lol you know she got a kick out of that
probs says that to her husband to this day, “listen honey, I outfucked a Marine, don’t mess with me”
hahaahhaa love her
TBone
@M31: 😎
ArchTeryx
To continue from the dead thread below:
I had no idea that Pennsylvania Dutch actually meant Pennsylvania Deutsch. Sprechen sie Deutsch? Ja, ein bisschen. That would explain the Pennsylvania Amish, which are basically German religious fundamentalists (and very Republican, despite also living on what are effectively communes).
So Comer really is insulting a core Republican voting group just to get at Tim Walz. There’s a reason why Comer is considered one of the dumbest people in Congress, and I guess that that’s one of them right there.
I come from Swiss stock myself. Germans originally found the town I grew up in, Tinley Park, IL, as an agricultural whistle-stop town, Bremen. And now I live in an area that was genuinely founded by Nederlanders, Albany, NY. And we vote primarily D, unlike most of Upstate NY.
The more you know, I guess!
The Audacity of Krope
@Suzanne: My roommate has been learning to give tattoos. So far, knock on wood, I’ve been a satisfied test canvas.
BR
@M31:
I would love for Harris to staff her administration with Warren acolytes. So far Warren hasn’t missed once.
MattF
Alexandra Petri offers RFK Jr.’s worm’s opinion of The Donald (gift link):
Tony Jay
@zhena gogolia:
They should give that genius a second chance, he or she could suggest smear campaigns like –
“AOC – Did You Know That Party-Girl Used To Get Men Drunk – For Money?!?”
Or try it the other way around and sell the MAGA to the masses
“J. D. Vance comes from an America where men know what women are, and if you ladies would care to take a seat, he’d be happy to explain it to you.”
Come to think of it, are we sure they’re not running Stench’s campaign?
Fake Irishman
@Anonymous At Work:
The best part of that was Warren’s social media team Jujitsued that into a tweet supporting public education and student loan reform by noting that Warren was a proud alumnus of the University of Houston and would always embrace being a Cougar.
That was excellent staff work.
geg6
@West of the Rockies:
I know who I’ll put my bet on…the teacher who has a couple of decades worth of coaching and teaching adolescents over the charmless asshole who can’t even set up a photo op in a donut shop.
K-Mo
@Suzanne: yup.
I mean it’s ok to have an opinion about another person’s style but don’t act like it’s anything more than that. You don’t like tattoos or arm hair? You do you then.
Personally I think TFG dresses like a circus clown, but I wouldn’t think to mention it if he wasn’t also a notoriously awful person.
M31
Walz should go on some Friday night high school football broadcasts in some of those high-school football crazed states (you know the ones) and talk smack about football, he’ll do great
Then Vance will try to do the same thing and fuck up so badly he’ll personally lose Texas, Ohio, and Florida. “Well, The Game is really Harvard/Yale, you know” lol that’d go over great
lol seriously if Vance goes on TV and talks football, we could win Alabama
SatanicPanic
@Harrison Wesley: agreed!
BR
OT: I had mentioned to folks that I tried BlueSky for a week and decided to delete my account yesterday, and I was wondering what the difference is between BlueSky, Mastodon, and X. I think I figured it out — on BlueSky you have to deal with holier than thou scolds. On Mastodon you have to deal with more pedantic than thou nerds. On X you have to deal with bots and nazis.
Maxim
@West of the Rockies: Walz tends to be loud when he’s speaking, partly coach mode and partly not a ton of this type of speaking experience. He can sound a bit shouty at times (not counting the times when he means to be).
I wonder how that will play with normies. I hope that part of his coaching for the debate is to keep his cool at the right moments, and maybe let himself be angry at the right moments. Potentially tricky.
It also depends what the questions are. Obviously Walz is a million light-years better on substance and the moral high ground.
The Audacity of Krope
Ralph Kramden making a poor attempt to be presentable.
Fake Irishman
@lee:
Warren was my 1a in my top group of five. Biden was in my second group of five. Of the roughly 20 serious candidates, I think there were probably 12-15 who could have been a perfectly adequate president and 7-8 who could have been a really good one. It was pretty clear we had a deep bench even then, and this wasn’t counting the wave of newly elected governors in 2018.
Jeffro
Warren was my first choice back in 2020 too.
We ended up getting a Warren presidency (domestic policy-wise, anyway), just with aviator shades on it. =)
I’m going to send her an old-school thank-you note, I think!
Baud
My understanding is that Warren has one of the better Senate staffs.
oldgold
The speeches were great. I rated the top 10 convention addresses in this order:
1. Kamala
2. Michelle
3. Hillary C.
4. Barak
5. Tim H.
6. Bill C.
7. Gallego
8. Crockett
9. Kinzinger
10. Panetta (Would have Preferred Beyonce’)
Captain C
@M31:
“Of course, Saban was overrated. Not only that, the man didn’t even have a proper couch.”
geg6
@Maxim:
No teacher with long experience needs these lessons. The idea that he can’t control himself is ridiculous. They spend all day every debating teenagers. He can handle anything that idiot throws at him. Just because the Sofa King went to an Ivy League school does not mean he is smart. It means he fit a demographic hole they were looking to fill. That’s it. Nothing more to it.
Dan B
OT to Almost Retired: Regarding forest fires we’ve had several days, mostly evenings, of genuine rain. It rained last night and has been raining, not drizzle, all day so the fires are likely done. The North Cascades Highway is closed until October because of potential rock slides and / or landslides but that means there will likely be less traffic on the western – most scenic – portion.
HumboldtBlue
The families of Kamala and Tim really made this week special, and people noticed. There are hundreds of clips like these.
ArchTeryx
@geg6: Yeah, it’s called “legacy admissions.” Which are mostly kids of rich alumni, though they will also slot rich donors’ kids into that as well. Wealth is the #1 demographic of the Ivies.
Steve LaBonne
@Jeffro: I was Warren 1, Harris 2, the list ended there. I even voted for Warren in the Ohio primary after she had dropped out. Biden was, let’s say, nothing like I expected. Thank goodness!
KatKapCC
@M31: Wait…what? They……they think women don’t have hair under their arms? Are they not aware that razors and waxing exist? Lordy.
zhena gogolia
@pacem appellant: I have no idea, but it was gorgeous. It’s just her face, smiling.
Matt McIrvin
The chuds are going after Ella Emhoff. It’s apparently supposed to be obvious why she’s some kind of absurd nightmare child but they don’t come out and say it. I suspect it’s gender-norm bullshit, and don’t want to elaborate further.
zhena gogolia
@pacem appellant: I still have my “DUDE GOTTA GO” T-shirt, my favorite, which was one of her lines during the 2020 presidential campaign. But it’s hard to wear it now. May God grant it never again be relevant.
The Audacity of Krope
@Matt McIrvin: Damn; when it’s Trump, Dems are deemed out of line for going after his adult offspring who are actively working in his administration.
BR
We were all in on Warren in 2020, and unlike others here we were not at all on board with Harris then (despite having known about her for 20 years). I think she didn’t get a good campaign team together back then and/or was listening to advice from well-intentioned but clueless family members (according to a campaign postmortem). But this time those doubts have been erased — she’s a much better candidate and is running a much better campaign.
Highway Rob
@lee: Comment deleted as inartfully worded and possibly inarfully thought, since I can’t find a way to word it right.
Jeffro
As long as Walz goes in knowing that Vance will straight up lie the whole time and not let himself get caught up flat-footed by it (a la Tim Kaine in 2016, trying to deal with Pence’s lying…or even Joe Biden two months ago, trying to respond to trump’s lies), he’ll be fine.
I’ve mentioned this before and it applies to both Harris and Walz in their upcoming debates: they shouldn’t actually try to ‘debate’ either clown. And they should say that, right after the moderator’s first question:
“I’m not actually here to debate _____, since he lies like he breathes and doesn’t actually know anything anyway. I’m not going to respond to his nonsense, lies, or weirdo FoxBubble insults. I’m just here to talk straight to the American people. Here’s my position on X topic : _____________ Next question?”
Jeffro
Yup. As it probably should.
It’s a wash at best for trump…I’m not sure being closely associated with RFK Jr and all of his insanity is any sort of benefit to him. (trump being trump, though, did say that he was aligned with RFK Jr’s anti-vax positions and 9/11 conspiracy theories, LOL)
Everyone here should take a victory lap: we all saw it for the GOP-billionaire-funded, Democratic-Party-kneecapping effort that it was months ago.
ArchTeryx
@Matt McIrvin: Of course they are. They go after anyone who publically speaks out in favor of Democrats, liberalism and women’s rights, or any combination thereof. Because that’s who they are, and always have been.
I actually was motivated to look her up and besides fashion design, she also does ceramic art and sells them. I’ve dabbled in ceramics and it takes some serious talent to work in the medium… it’s quite tough and requires a whole lot of patience. Anyone that does that well with them has my mad respect.
Apparently she started a knitting club as well, and no surprise, she kills at knitting – also an art form that requires a ton of patience.
https://www.ellaemhoff.com/
geg6
@ArchTeryx:
I don’t think he was a legacy, since at their best, his family was solidly middle class (and not the hicks he’s portrayed them as). But as someone who works closely with admissions at a major university, I know that there are certain demographics that they try to hit in order to build their classes. At the Ivies, yes, legacy admissions are a large demographic, but so are not-so-wealthy students a demographic they try to hit. Or maybe geography was a measure. Or they needed more males. Or one of many things. But SATs and GPAs are not the only consideration.
Jeffro
this
HumboldtBlue
Also, here’s Imane Khelif post-Olympics. (JK Rowling hasn’t posted to any social media since spewed her transphobic bile at Imane and has deleted all posts, because the lawyers are gonna get her hateful ass.)
geg6
@HumboldtBlue:
She looks stunningly beautiful there. Terrible what they did to her.
Raven
@geg6: It probably didn’t hurt that he is a veteran.
lee
@BR: I’m still on BlueSky. I started with Cat/Dog pics, and Star Trek and eventually expanded into more politics.
I have not run into scolds yet. I’ve always been a frequent user of the block function of any social media but have not had to block anyone yet.
ArchTeryx
@geg6: That surprises me. Vance is phony through and through, fake enough I figured he had to be a legacy. The idea he might have actually earned his way into the Ivies boggles the mind, even if he did slot in due to demographics.
rikyrah
Freedom Forum
@1stForAll
Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination.
Today, it’s front-page news across the globe.
See how newspapers worldwide covered the events with #TodaysFrontPages.
https://x.com/1stForAll/status/1826957821000184275
lee
@HumboldtBlue:
JK posted today and talked shit about Imane’s make-over/glowup.
M31
@ArchTeryx: and clearly what he learned at Yale was that sucking up to the actual legacies was the way to get ahead
Tony Jay
@trollhattan:
It truly was one of the most astounding political free gifts I can think of. Who on Earth was supposed to be put off Warren by that, uh, scandal?
The same people who’d clutch pearls over “Tim Walz, hung like a bear, and he hangs wallpaper too! Ain’t that weird?!l” but haven’t the MAGAts already got that very particular voting demographic stitched up?
geg6
@Raven:
Yes, I forgot about that. If he went to school after his active duty, for sure that would factor in.
ArchTeryx
@BR: Bluesky folks are not afraid to make free use of the block button. Which is a good thing, because they were absolutely flooded with Genocide Joe posters during the Democratic convention. The timing, I think, is absolutely no accident. Wherever there are liberal politics online it doesn’t take the nazis and purity ponies long to show up, and pushing “FrEe PaLeStInE” narratives is one of their heaviest talking points to try and divide the Left.
ArchTeryx
@M31: That’s why everybody tries to get into the Ivies. It’s not for the education. It’s for the social connections. They help all too much when there are 1000 applicants for every job in your chosen field.
BR
@ArchTeryx:
Yeah, the obvious trolls on BlueSky were easy to block (like elsewhere). The problem I ran into was that there were people who were generally interesting to follow on politics but they would go into day-long tirades about how Harris was insulting the Palestinian community or such, and there was no way to handle that. I think what I concluded is that I get plenty of politics here, and I can get the rest from Mastodon.
K-Mo
@oldgold: ooh this could be it’s own thread! I like your top 4, but I need to think about the rest. There were a lot of good speeches!
Dave
@cain: Yes because everything and everyone they don’t like is transgender which is wild and completely nuts if you take it at face value. Wild, malignant, and completely nuts if you accept that is an attempt and establish themselves as the gatekeepers of acceptable (wonder why weird has gotten so much traction) to other something like 50-60% of the population and does so by targeting a particularly vulnerable group.
For all their reactionary traditionalism these are just utter freaks who have purged any of those “traditional” values that aren’t about hierarchy knowing your place.
KatKapCC
@HumboldtBlue: She has indeed been tweeting, the vile trash.
trollhattan
@BR: Similar, I did not like the Harris 2020 campaign organization and since it was her campaign, extended the discomfort back to the candidate herself. And then it imploded, evidently due to infighting and budget woes, despite having soared early. (There’s also the effects of being in Sacramento and knowing people who know things about pretty much everyone in statewide office.)
Harris 2024 has zero echoes of that run and I think her experience of four years ago is helping inform her today. It’s as though the planets are aligned and each move now seems well considered.
I no longer dread November. Another month and I could even get excited. :-)
Dave
@West of the Rockies: Eh worst case it will be wash; Walz is comfortable speaking and JD in addition to having the charisma of a massive infected rotting limb also really doesn’t have that much experience.
Worst case wash and it improves from there.
The Audacity of Krope
Clearly the way to protect women is to subject them to invasive medical procedures…
ArchTeryx
@BR: Yeah. There’s a big to-do right now about how the DNC refused a particular Palestinian speaker, probably because they only existed to troll the Left. My usual ask of these people are either, “What about the hostages?” or “Doesn’t getting Trump elected guarantee a Palestinian genocide?” That usually shuts them the hell up, or they just go on a rant about the two-party duopoly, which gets them promptly blocked.
HumboldtBlue
In far sweeter news from across the pond, Knowa was interviewed by Sky News.
geg6
@ArchTeryx:
I think if you have several of the demographic features they are looking for, you don’t really have to be spectacular academically. So if he was a good student in high school, it wouldn’t take a whole lot to “earn” his way there. And many of those demographics have nothing to do with anything that student has done beyond meeting the academic requirements. Like I said, it could be they needed more men of a certain economic level from a certain geographic area and, as raven mentioned, veterans are given very high consideration by all schools. At my school, the vets are the best students, hands down, even if they only entered with a GED. It’s about discipline, following instructions and meeting deadlines. The military teaches that better than any other institution in this country.
BR
@trollhattan:
Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. Seriously the only concern I have with Harris, and so far it hasn’t been an issue, is that I do not want her sister or brother-in-law anywhere near her campaign or presidency. They didn’t steer her well in 2019 and fundamentally family should sit it out — she needs pros and only pros.
The Audacity of Krope
Communist too. Words don’t have meanings, they’re just all different ways of saying “good” and “bad.”
frosty
@geg6: Agreed. I’m more and more convinced I was a diversity admission. East Coast Public HS grad applying to a selective Southern California school.
Comrade Misfit
@hrprogressive: Well, we all know that there is a large number of bitter incels in the MAGA movement. You know, the kind of guys who use their personalities as a form of birth control.
zhena gogolia
@West of the Rockies: I’m as confident as hell.
lowtechcyclist
@M31:
This. Totally this, every word of it.
BR
@ArchTeryx:
I haven’t tried this argument out yet on folks like that, but I mentioned here a couple days ago that folks on the left may be underestimating how much Harris and Walz see the world differently in their gut than almost any establishment Dems or GOP for that matter, Harris because of her upbringing as the child of two former-British-colony immigrants who spent a lot of time in India, Jamaica, and Canada, and Walz because of his deep interest in geography and the history of genocide plus his time in China. Those are not at all typical of American politicians and it surely embeds a different worldview. I wonder how such folks on social media would take that.
ArchTeryx
@The Audacity of Krope: This evergreen quote comes to mind, because despite coming from the Victorian era, it describes our politics perfectly:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
BR
@Comrade Misfit:
Haha. That is an amazingly good way of framing MAGA.
Matt McIrvin
@oldster: natural feeeemales have naturally shaved legs and armpits, genetically spawned lipstick and spike heels growing out of their feet
SatanicPanic
@KatKapCC: Jesus Christ I had no idea that JK Rowling was so insufferable. Can’t she just say – sorry, I didn’t do my homework on that one- and apologize?
EDIT- i mean obviously not being a transphobe would be optimal, but doubling down on something obviously wrong is unhinged
The Audacity of Krope
@ArchTeryx: I haven’t read that book since childhood and I didn’t understand that to be anything more than flibbertigibbet until just now.
Thank you.
ArchTeryx
@BR: Even though Bluesky seems to be a haven for the Very Online Left and their troll follow-alongs, it’s good to keep those arguments in mind. If we approach November and Harris is in the lead in polls, expect a ton of this kind of crap to explode like dogshit bombs, in every online space. We get our own share of trolls here, despite being only a top 10,000 political blog.
Dave
@KatKapCC: I wouldn’t overthink the ugly idiotic literal words these guys (I can’t even come up with a proper tag for them) put out there.
Some are genuinely so lost that they probably literally believe women don’t grow armpit hair for the rest it’s just a way to enforce their vicious malignancy on the rest of us couched in the language of absurdity.
A lot of if is just to baffle some is to move goalposts so you’ll accept their frame on things and argue on their terms. It’s a particularly toxic and ghoulish version of it but that’s it.
Matt McIrvin
@BR: You could say the same thing about Barack Obama, but the purity-left line about him is that he disappointed them by turning out to be just another Republican-lite shitlib.
The Audacity of Krope
@SatanicPanic: Never back down, never apologize. She’s deep down the rabbit hole, man…
Captain C
@lee: Maybe Imane can challenge JK to a boxing match, proceeds go to the winner’s choice of charity.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
@MisterForkbeard: So you’re saying the story has gone down the wormhole
Dave
@Matt McIrvin: It’s not a matter of suspect it’s a 100% what it is; hence the not that subtle implication that she is a trans woman as if I should give a shit about that if she actually was.
2016 made me recognize that while I wasn’t wrong that racism plays a huge role in a lot of our current and historical dysfunction that sexism curdled into misogyny plays at least as a large a role (don’t get me wrong I thought sexism was fairly ubiquitous but I thought it was on average less intense; I was very wrong).
ArchTeryx
@The Audacity of Krope: Lewis Carroll had these people nailed long before George Orwell started writing about them.
It’s no accident that that exchange gets left out of nearly every adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Too overtly political for people who want a nice Victorian-era fantasy.
KatKapCC
@SatanicPanic: No, she can’t. She’s been this way for years now, very loudly and proudly. She likes being horrible.
BR
@Matt McIrvin:
I thought about that, but Obama’s upbringing in Hawaii was really with his grandparents from Kansas (and negligible time when very young in Indonesia), and by his own account he didn’t really start getting politically active until college. On the other hand Harris’s parents were active in civil rights and her Indian family members were active in Indian independence IIRC.
Kay
JD Vance is a competent debator. Tim Ryan is quick witted and much more experienced than Vance and it was all Ryan could do to hold Vance to a draw. It isn’t going to be some epic trouncing by Walz. At best Walz will be evenly matched.
tam1MI
I’m just praying that Walz and Harris don’t get colds right before their debates.
The Audacity of Krope
@ArchTeryx: God forbid we elicit a thought from our audience. /MoneyedProducers
K-Mo
@BR: agreed. Those 2 were among my least favorite speeches of the convention. There’s a smarm factor.
Dick Durbin was brutal, too.
Baud
@tam1MI:
Doesn’t matter. We have a deep bench.
The Audacity of Krope
Only if you don’t care about facts, logic, or empathy. Unfortunately, this seems to be the norm even among too many Dems.
Matt McIrvin
@Dave: The “transvestigators” are coming for every woman who doesn’t present the way they want, demanding DNA samples and genital inspections.
The Audacity of Krope
…for the children…
ArchTeryx
@lee: So I guess she talked to her team of lawyers and figured that wasn’t going to be used to add to her libel case?
Dave
@The Audacity of Krope: God that’s so creepily perfect.
The Audacity of Krope
@Dave: I credit Wandavision.
Shalimar
Warren was my first choice and Harris was my second. They were the only two I was enthusiastic about. Everyone else was divided into “I guess it could be worse” and “fuck no, no way in hell” categories.
Ilieitz
How can you not love someone who has a cow tattoo on her arm
wjca
Nominated!!!
The Audacity of Krope
Biden was in this category for me along with Bernie, Bennett, and Buttiegieg. The B boys, I called them, three of whom were taking up way too much media oxygen.
Glad I was wrong about Biden. To the point I was devastated when he was ultimately forced out.
Kay
@The Audacity of Krope:
Or if you had, ya know, actually watched Vance debate. Like I did when he ran against Ryan.
rikyrah
Kamala’s Wins
@harris_wins
BREAKING: RFK Jr. just announced that Kamala Harris refused to even meet with him. Retweet so all Americans see this and know Kamala Harris is already putting her incredibly decision making abilities on display.
https://x.com/harris_wins/status/1827063928024662432
scav
@The Audacity of Krope: JK would totally be the head-woman leading the pack for FGM. And apparently mandatory shaving.
The Audacity of Krope
@Kay: I know Republicans. I also know how much bearing facts, logic, and empathy had on your read of this year’s Biden/Trump debate.
tam1MI
I’d go for a hard stare at the moderators and a, ” Are you going to do your job and fact check that?”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@lowtechcyclist:
Thirded or something like that. After supporting Biden from the gitgo twice for president, I felt his time had passed and was a massive Warren fan, then Pete, then probably Biden.
So glad she stayed in the Senate, Biden became president and Pete became Sec Pete.
SatanicPanic
@tam1MI: are you suggesting that Kamala Harris or Tim Walz are going to crumple because of a cold?
BR
@Kay:
Yeah, that’s what I assumed — he is handling the Sunday shows fine if one is a GOPer and don’t mind that he has the charisma of wet socks. He won’t win over people but Walz won’t crush him. I didn’t watch the debate because as a non-Ohioan I won’t subject myself to any more Vance than I already have.
The Audacity of Krope
@scav: Why, oh why, did I just look up FGM?
Any of you out there who don’t know, please spare your innocent mind.
Andrew Abshier
Standing O at the DNC? Elizabeth Warren didn’t have a plan for that.
What a touching tribute.
Suzanne
@Dave:
I usually think about these issues as being really the same but manifest at different scales. Racism is often first learned at the scale of the neighborhood, sexism is usually first learned at the scale of the family.
Kay
@The Audacity of Krope:
Oh, God. Forget it.
JD Vance is good in a debate. That that upsets you doesn’t make it less true. But I assume Walz will watch the Ohio debates to prepare and will therefore have an informed opinion. At least I certainly hope so.
The Audacity of Krope
They would assert that it is not their job to fact check, apparently just read questions. I therefore propose that we replace garbage network anchors with a civically minded high school junior. They can read just fine.
Omnes Omnibus
@trollhattan: Warren was always near the bottom of my list. I never saw her as the star, the one born to be on stage. She is great where she is. She also would be fantastic in a lot of cabinet posts. This is not a knock on her in any way.
The Audacity of Krope
@Kay: I believe you that Vance is “good” in a debate. I’m just pointing out the standards by which debates are judged are utterly perverse.
Kay
@BR:
Vance wasn’t working hard and he easily stayed even. He was the favorite and Ryan needed the debate, Vance didn’t. But Vance is a perfectly competent debator. Tim Ryan is no dummy – he’s quick witted and quite funny and as I said even with all that he probaby didn’t “beat” Vance.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@KatKapCC: Fuck JK Rowling
The Audacity of Krope
Fuck LB Jowling too.
tam1MI
No, I am suggesting that what just happened to Joe Biden could very well happen again if either one of them don’t wipe the floor with Vance or Trump. The bar has been set so that if they show the slightest shakiness, the press will pounce and the Coup D’Etat Caucus will run to everyone microphone they can to trash their own candidate. The precedent has been set.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Has EE gotten any of the “treatment” Cole’s warning us against? Not that he has to warn anybody in this crowd about that.
But it got me thinking, has the right begun it’s typical campaign against the children of Democratic White House occupants? Think Amy Carter and Chelsea Clinton. Admittedly, the right hasn’t typically teed off on VP kids (or stepkids or whatever) but anymore, I wouldn’t put it past them is they have some perceived grievous-angle to hype to the masses via Faux “News”.
And relative to let’s say a group of all-women volunteers (I was the only male) running from their early 20s to 40 (Girls Rock Denver week-long band camp), she’s decidedly under-tatted. I felt I needed to get another one that week just to keep up.
Michael Bersin
In 2019 I had the opportunity cover Elizabeth Warren’s campaign in Iowa. Great crowd, well organized event, and, well, a joyful candidate.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D) – Town Hall – Indianola, Iowa – October 20, 2019
MisterForkbeard
@lee: It was pretty pathetic. “So much easier to get a DNA test and release it than to put on makeup!”
No. No it’s not.
The Audacity of Krope
@MisterForkbeard: Once you consider that makeup needs to be put on every day…
SatanicPanic
@tam1MI: have you considered that maybe you are worrying about something that won’t happen ?
The Audacity of Krope
@SatanicPanic: Trust among a certain set of D-aligned folk for another certain set of D-aligned folk is running reeeeeaaaaally thin.
Burnspbesq
Ella seems like she has a healthy helping of the right attitude. Like, “well, shit, if I have to get all dressed up, I might as well blow all their minds.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Michael Bersin:
And the classic from her Senate campaign:
https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethWarren/videos/586714332064528/
The subsequent articles of fauxrage from groups like the Cato Inst and the glibertarians at reason.com were all I needed to know she was Teh Awesome.
The Audacity of Krope
Ella really looks beautiful in that picture, by the way.
Omnes Omnibus
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Yes, some of the reliably awful people have been reliably awful.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: She was the favorite candidate of the white college educated crowd. In other words the Balloon Juice demographic.
Harris was my first choice in 2020. And then when she dropped out, Klobuchar. After Sout Carolina, I supported Joe Biden and voted for him in the primaries.
KatKapCC
@tam1MI: Something happening once does not mean that thing will happen every single time there is the slightest chance of it happening. And let’s be real — a 60 year old woman with a cold is going to be a hell of a lot different than an 81 year old man with a cold. If you don’t think Kamala is tough enough to deal with that, then you do not know her at all.
I’ll note: Cis women in politics have had to do everything the men have — debates, interviews, hearings, etc — while dealing with cramps and bloating and clots and fatigue and hot flashes and on and on. A cold is a damn vacation compared to that crap.
Omnes Omnibus
@Burnspbesq: Isn’t she fashion student living in Brooklyn? What else would you expect?
SatanicPanic
@The Audacity of Krope: doesn’t make it likely to happen
TBone
Good news for We the People!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/realpage-lawsuit-price-fixing/
DOJ stepped up to the plate, I’m praying for a home run!
West of the Rockies
@Dave:
Lloyd Benson crushed Quayle (“You’re no John Kennedy”) and it didn’t matter. This is Harris (for the people) v. Trump.
Redshift
I love Elizabeth Warren, and I was in the Warren camp until she bowed out too.
The other thing I love about the convention is that we have all these great people, and even the ones who want to be president get along and want to do good things for people, and celebrate the accomplishments of everyone else, because what they’re trying to get done is what’s important. Was there any big name at the RNC who the others cheered on and wanted to succeed? None of them want to do anything that’s not for their own benefit, so they’re like rats in a bag because anyone who’s doing well is seen as an obstacle to their own lust for power.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@KatKapCC: backwards and in high heels.
Antonius
John you remind me of Josh’s line in the West Wing:
“The President’s a good man. He has a good heart. That’s why he has people like me.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wasn’t sure if they’d had time to get around to that yet.
They can’t get campaign HQs setup in a lot of states in order to elect the Orange Fart Cloud but they can begin generating outrage on a 20-something woman who happens to be associated with a Dem occupant of the WH.
Yup, that’s your modern GQP in a nutshell.
EarthWindFire
Because Khelif has to forego medical privacy to make trolls happy? Fuck that noise. Who the hell do these people think they are? Oh, yeah, same weirdos who want to track JK and every other woman’s menstrual cycle.
Dave
@Suzanne: I like that it’s a helpful perspective.
Sid
@West of the Rockies: Clump? WTF?
One thing Walz can do is to put Vance in the position of defending Project 2025 as much as possible, and considering Project 2025 is so all-encompassing, that may not be too difficult.
schrodingers_cat
Elizabeth Warren is quite tall in person. I have heard her twice in person at the Mass Dems delegation. I also collected signatures for her to get on the primary ballot here. To get on the primary ballot one needs signatures of registered Ds and those forms have to be endorsed by the town clerk. IIRC it is 10,000 signatures for a senator. I collected signatures when Markey ran as well.
That said I am not in EW fan club.
trollhattan
@Kay: Remembering that candidate “debates” are not debates in the sense of actual, you know, debates.
Setting, format, rules, panelists, then we can ponder who if anybody has an edge.
KatKapCC
@Sid: I believe Clump means Trump.
Baud
@EarthWindFire:
They’re trolls. That’s what they do. Make demands on people based on fake litmus tests.
Redshift
@Kay: Fortunately, VP debates have pretty much zero effect on the election. I don’t expect Walz to trounce him, but I do expect that they’ll go into it with Walz being seen as a likeable and normal-seeming guy and Vance being seen as an unpleasant weirdo, and come out the same way.
Dave
@West of the Rockies: Exactly I’m not really worried one way or the other barring something truly ridiculous it generates a few days of either negative or positive headlines before fading into the background.
The Audacity of Krope
@SatanicPanic: We’ll see when the full court press comes from the media. Our optics obsessed, mainstream narrative appeasing armchair tacticians are all suspect until they show some moral fortitude.
Sid
@oldgold: Is “5. Tim H.” supposed to be ‘Tim W.’?
Also, you may have missed the speeches by AOC & Shawn Fain.
SatanicPanic
@The Audacity of Krope: no, we won’t see. It’s not going to happen.
trollhattan
@TBone: Just read about that, today.
Soooo much housing in the hands of Wall Street now it’s not hard to envision they’re in collusion with one another (recalling The Kushner Company is a big player) to fix pricing.
Break them up. Break them up. Break them up.
Also, too, they seem to be acting like the airlines WRT pricing schemes. “You want to have luggage? It’ll cost ya. Seat assignment? Cost ya. Flight guarantee? You know….”
Gretchen
@Suzanne: Yes, it took me awhile to figure out why MAGA is so triggered by Ella. They think women exist for them, and that we’re all competing with each other for their admiration. That’s why their first response to challenge is » you’re ugly. I’d never date you. »
So when faced with a young woman who quite obviously doesn’t care if they find her attractive, and it drives them crazy.
EarthWindFire
@Baud: I know. I’m just over these weirdos.
Baud
@SatanicPanic:
Eh, it might not happen before the election because it can take time to create a BS narrative, but it’ll happen if and when she’s president.
Sid
@KatKapCC: Upon re-reading it, I’m certain you’re correct. I read it initially in the context of ‘Vance v Walz’.
TBone
Here’s my shocked face, again 🙄
Ron Filipkowski:
https://meidasnews.com/news/bring-back-trump-cnn-undecided-voter-panelist-has-pro-trump-social-media-history
Michael Bersin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
A tour de force:
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D) – Closing Remarks – Indianola, Iowa – October 20, 2019
The venue was so crowded I got stuck on the cut riser, separated from most of my gear on a table next to the main press riser at the back of the venue.
After the speechifying and townhalling parts of the event ended she remained to speak one-on-one and take selfies with anyone who wanted to. The line had hundreds of people.
Omnes Omnibus
The other thing with people harshing on EE, I don’t always like her fashion choices either. The difference is that I have no expectation that she should dress for me. Mind your own fucking business. Jebus!
EarthWindFire
@TBone: Yeah, he did everything but say I will never vote for a woman ever. No surprise there.
Citizen Alan
@Tony Jay: I am stealing “you moronic donkey’s dick-tumor” and plan to use it at every opportunity.
M31
@TBone: lol another undecided voter that’s actually a GOP activist, hoodoodanoed indeed
this Ohio diner is really something
Kay
@Redshift:
I think Vance has a bit of a mean streak. Maybe Walz can get him mad and he’ll do his clumsy, oafish insults. Really unappealing. Probably just Walz’s presence will make him mad.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@TBone:
And, of course, it begs the question how did CNN go about selecting these “undecided” voters.
Incompetent clowns every damned one of them.
Or, most likely, it was deliberate and they still have the arrogance to think nobody will check up on them on stuff like this.
Still incompetent clowns.
JCJ
Saw a tweet today that had a picture of the Emhoff Children and a picture of the Walz children. The comment with the picture is “I like that the first kids in the White House look like they might band together to start a D&D podcast at any moment. That’s MY America.”
I would agree
The Audacity of Krope
@SatanicPanic: Probably not this year, I’ll grant you. Probably.
Perhaps in the meantime some different circumstance will arrive to give the panic crowd an opportunity to show some growth in that moral fortitude.
TBone
@trollhattan: 👍
Using the personal, non-public data of the individuals paying the rent to feed into their algorithm designed to jack up rental pricing everywhere is especially offensive to me, also too.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I am not a fan of Vt Jesus and his fashion (or the lack thereof) choices either. Or speechifiying with that finger wag. Also no woman in politics would get away with messy hair and rumpled clothing.
Frankensteinbeck
@SatanicPanic:
This is actually Rowling’s biggest thing. It’s not just that she’s got this deranged fantasy that men will do anything to sneak into women’s spaces to commit rape. Rowling is obsessed with her own victimhood. She not only doubles down against any pushback, she yells about how brave she is to stand up for the truth. Having loosely watched the process, the two facts seem to be connected. She went from creepy bigotry leanings to obsessed and insane as she rebelled against anyone suggesting she’s not the perfect hero of feminism.
JCJ
@JCJ: the tweet
https://x.com/tommy_stella/status/1826962430326436122
Love the pictures
Citizen Alan
@cain: I feel like everyone having tattoos is the norm now. I got my first tattoo at age 53 and my second just 3 months later. I’m holding off on my next one to celebrate when I finally get down to under 300 lbs (down 20 lbs from 330 already just from diet changes and better use of rapid-acting insulin).
Gretchen
It’s such an achievement to have grown kids who love and openly admire you. I loved seeing Ella laugh talking to her dad in the audience. Family love must be a foreign concept to these people.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: Tattoos were a norm for Millennials, but I’m not sure young Gen Z is as heavily into them.
M31
ok here’s my story about lazy journalists
years ago I knew a guy from Lebanon, and after he read a NYT article about goings on there, a lavish article with all kinds of interviews with people from all over the country, he said that every single one of those guys hangs out in a specific bar in Beirut, he knows them all, and the fucking journalist went to ONE PLACE and pretended it was a result of in-depth reporting from all over the war-torn dangerous country
it was likely just across the street from his hotel
oh yeah and was a dumb, slanted article
lol
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: I never liked her books much anyway. Its Enid Blyton with some fantasy thrown in.
The Audacity of Krope
@Matt McIrvin: My younger gen Z roommates have far more than I do. I just let one of them give me my second.
Can’t extrapolate that to the broader population, granted.
Citizen Alan
@West of the Rockies: Perhaps, but Vance’s target audience consists of people who are uneducated and usually inarticulate. I look forward to the cognitive dissonance they will experience when the Coach who reminds them of their favorite teacher in high school is up there against a weird, stuck up snob whose biggest claim to fame is the book he wrote that was explicitly a fuck you to people who live in impoverished rural America.
Gretchen
@Frankensteinbeck: Gay podcaster David Ferguson ( on Bob Cesca’s show) is convinced that Rowling secretly wishes she could be a man. See author names she picks and the prevalence of very macho men in her book. He says that the people who attacked him most passionately for being gay always, always turned out to be closeted.
TBone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m with you on the ‘too arrogant to bother vetting’ thing, it seems popular these days! 😉
M31
@schrodingers_cat: there was a throwaway line in an old Ursula K. LeGuin interview where she was asked about the Potter books, and she said they “stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.”
oof, told off by the master
TBone
@M31: arrogance personified.
The Audacity of Krope
@M31: I didn’t really notice how mean-spirited that specifically the Potter books were until I listened to a comprehensive breakdown by Shaun on YouTube. (Warning: nears two hours)
Omnes Omnibus
@Gretchen: I don’t think we need to armchair psychoanalyze Rowling. She an awful person. Fin.
trollhattan
@Matt McIrvin: My sampling, admittedly from California, is they’re still a thing with the Millenials.
I had presumed/hoped they’d have looked at Gen Zs and Gen Xers and think of tattoos as “for old people.” Evidently I was wrong. All I’ve got is a lot fewer earlobes stretched to the shoulder.
SatanicPanic
@The Audacity of Krope: I am willing to admit that yes, maybe someday in the future there will be an unpopular incumbent running for reelection who will have a catastrophic moment that will confirm voters’ biggest worry about said candidate. And Democrats will wisely choose to push that candidate out before the convention.
But this is not happening again this year because Harris is organically popular and her biggest vulnerability is not nearly as important as Biden’s was. And the convention just ended.
M31
there was a great twitter feed, back during the fun twitter times, where people posted what they thought their name would be (based on dumb stereotypes their ethnicity) in a JKR book, and it was so funny, people were like “I’m Guido Antipasto Feldenstein” and other hilarious mashups of stupid mixed up stereotypes (like Cho Chang which doesn’t make sense as an Asian name, etc.)
The Audacity of Krope
@Omnes Omnibus: Agreed. That stereotype of queerphobes of any stripe being that form of queer makes me a little queasy. Can’t put words to why, other than my own personal queerness, sorry.
Baud
@SatanicPanic:
Too many criteria. The situation would be an incumbent who’s down in the polls after the primary is over. Biden’s age was irrelevant. If he were in a hospital bed and polling at 73%, he wouldn’t have been pressured to step down.
Citizen Alan
@geg6: If I’d had different career goals at 17 (and also different parents with whom I had such a relationship that moving far away and cutting ties was a priority), I probably could have gotten into Harvard with my SAT scores, a 1/8 Choctaw heritage, and a good enough sob story about what it was like growing up in Bumfuck Mississippi. But I loved my mom and dad enough to commit to staying in Mississippi while they were still alive, so I went to Ole Miss on a free ride. (Dad was actually somewhat flummoxed that I didn’t actually need the money he’d set aside for college.)
Baud
@M31:
Yes, the names always confused me.
prostratedragon
… and my vehicle makes it ice 9.
SatanicPanic
@Baud: he was polling poorly on account of his age and that’s why the debate mattered.
KenK
@M31: brilliant idea. I just texted a good friend of mine who happens to be in media, who happens to to high school football play by play in North Carolina to try to get Coach Walz to join him in the booth. 😄
schrodingers_cat
@M31: I only watched the first 3 movies and then lost interest. I guess I was never the target demographic for Rowling.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay:
OK, so he’s a master debator. I like you couched that.
The Audacity of Krope
As a voter who was sold on Biden as President; I will, politely as possible, vehemently express pleasure with this statement and the use of “organic” as a contrast like there was anything organic about what Biden underwent. This is not to take anything from Kamala, whom we are blessed to have and was out into a position that isn’t fair to her.
That said, I’ve engaged with this three times here. ‘Nuf for me for this thread.
Baud
@SatanicPanic:
Yes, that’s our reality. I’m saying the reason for the polling slump is irrelevant to the precedent that was set. If he were polling poorly because he was too far to the left, we’d still have faced the same dilemma of sticking with him and risking a Trump win.
NutmegAgain
One of the things I really miss about no longer living in MA is not having Warren as my senator. I mean, I have Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, so not bad. But, not Warren!
M31
@KenK:
OMG Yes! that’s great, hope it works out, I’m sure the campaign is thinking about it, it’s such a natural idea.
lol when will anyone one have time to plan and implement all they have to do? oh yeah, we’ll sleep when we’re dead, that’s the plan hahahahaha
dc
@HumboldtBlue:
I hope she has to fork over millions. She and the other assholes who attacked and sent their evil minions to attack a boxer from Algeria. Evil idiots.
Tony Jay
@EarthWindFire:
Of all the characters in the Harry Potter Universe, I did not twig that Dolores Umbridge was Rowling’s choice of Mary-Sue.
TBone
The World Bank has ceased all paid advertising on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, which was formerly Twitter, after a CBS News investigation found promoted advertisements from the organization showing up under a racist post from an account that prolifically posts pro-Nazi and white nationalist content.
CBS News found a verified X account with more than 115,000 followers that had posted a racist image alongside a post praising Europe’s colonization of Africa. CBS News is not publicly identifying the accounts spreading racist content on X.
A promoted advertisement for the World Bank showed up in the comments section below the post.
Tony Jay
@Citizen Alan:
You are more than welcome, but phrasing!
Betty Cracker
I missed the segment with Warren and am so happy to hear she got a warm reception. I admire her a great deal.
I also agree about protecting the adorable Emhoff and Walz kids at all costs. Also the VP’s sweet grand nieces.
piratedan
@Kay: I suspect there will be a bit of sparring over the “stolen valor” issue that Vance introduced into the campaign. So I do wonder how well the PR flack will handle the Artillery Command Sergeant up close and personal.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Maybe it’s not a bad precedent. Maybe automatically re-nominating a flailing incumbent is not necessarily a good idea, if there is a clear alternative and reason to believe that alternative would perform substantially better. There’s a lot of conventional wisdom that ain’t necessarily so.
trollhattan
@TBone: I suppose Musk is going to sue them in US courts now for illegally silencing his…bank account.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: Well Ryan was probably hobbled by the fact that he was deeply embarrassed to be the Democrat in the debate.
TBone
@trollhattan: that was my first thought too. I want to laugh and I wish it was funny but he’s just so…
WEIRD
I’m too tired to type out all the expletives so am thankful, once again, for that blanket adjective.
BR
That’s a direct quote from his endorsement speech with Trump, if you’re wondering how well it’s going.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Who knows? The only low polling president to seek and win reelection recently that I can think of is Obama. Before that, Truman.
Dave
@Citizen Alan: That is a fair point Vance may well perform well it seems like the sort of thing a toady on his life path would be capable, unlike interacting with the public in any way shape or form, but Ryan was playing a very different game than Walz will be.
And has been noted in the comments it would have to be something extraordinary to have any but the most marginal impacts one way or the other.
Gloria DryGarden
@M31: the idea “ females don’t have armpit hair” and other weird misconceptions about what is natural for women, or men for that matter, it makes me want to go on a long, sharply worded rant.
we women have most everything a man has, perhaps less hair, (though more than we’d like), usually less muscle-preserving testosterone, and we have a few things men don’t have. Those people…grrr.
Meanwhile, it seems even more important to highlight that men and boys are just as capable of and deserving of space for emotion, vulnerability, tenderness.
I’m sure nearly everyone was crying at many points during all those moving speeches at the dnc. I want there to be a huge movement in support of emotional vulnerability for everyone, in particular, for men, who in my generation, and apparently still, get a terrible expectation to mask all that, crush themselves, and be “tough”.
I think people are often stronger if they do have room to expose/ express their inner feelings, and take care of their vulnerabilities. I know when I let myself cry I’m stronger than if I suppress it. Whether that’s Simone biles backing out of the Tokyo Olympics for mental health reasons, or someone with suicidal thoughts who reaches out for help instead of killing themselves, attending kindly to hidden vulnerabilities can be life saving. Anyone anywhere in between, or not at those extreme examples, also deserves and needs room, to be human, to feel, to let it be seen, safely.
Gus Walz can be one more role model.
A few threads back several men commented that they want the freedom to have qualities that used to mean they aren’t “real men.” You guys said it better, more clearly. We’re humans, and I don’t think we deserve to be squished back into some box of conformities.
I’m not being as articulate as I’d like. It’s important, though.
Dave
@Baud: Very hard to assess because it’s not like we have a lot of pertinent data points to draw from and at the current moment the strength of negative partisanship means it’s almost impossible to be a truly popular incumbent.
SatanicPanic
@Baud: Not denying that. That’s why I didn’t specify what exactly the catastrophic thing might be. I’m saying that yeah, if something goes really wrong between the primaries and the convention then yes it might happen again. It’s just not happening this year, because the convention is over. And thus far no one has identified anything disqualifying about Harris anyways.
Biden specifically had a problem that he couldn’t fix- you can’t reverse aging.
TBone
@BR: JFC he blew the Meal Team Six vote 😆
eemom
@Gretchen:
Glad to hear David Ferguson is still doing his thing. I’m so old I knew him as TRex at Firedoglake back in the GWB years. He was hilarious.
Baud
@Dave:
Agreed. Hard to know. But who’s going to stop some faction from bringing it up for debate the next time our incumbent isn’t winning the general election polling? Even if we don’t make the switch, we’ll still have people pushing the issue.
JWR
Yikes! Has anyone mentioned this and I missed it amidst all the hundreds of comments? (From Gizmodo)
I’d tell you what I think it’s for, but then I’d have to kill you. ;) But srsly, you guys know what it looks like, right?
PS. And it’s motorized!
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: tonic masculinity!
TBone
@JWR: there is no bottom in the barrel.
Remember Trumpy Bear? These ads ran continuously:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i9qv8RSreIM
I thought it was satire at first…
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Obama also had a bad first debate. But we stuck with him.
But water under the bridge, water under the bridge. God grant we prevail.
Baud
@SatanicPanic:
As I said, the age issue won’t stop people from raising the issue in other contexts of low polling numbers.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Agreed. And maybe against a Republican opponent who isn’t Trump, we take the L.
Gloria DryGarden
@Gloria DryGarden: actually, the long sharply-worded rant could be a book of essays, exposing the humanness we’re all capable of, busting a ton of myths, what is a man, what is a woman, what is natural, what we’re capable of, when “vulnerability” has been welcome and helpful, and connecting. An anthology of experiences, written by people who didn’t fit in the box, or refused to stay there.
celebrating stuff we used to get bullied for.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: take the L, what does it mean here?
all I can think of is the El train in Chicago…
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: take the loss
ArchTeryx
@TBone: Quite directly a tribute to Ashli Babbitt, who was quoted as saying that she intended to participate in the January 6th insurrection because she “wanted her Trumpy Bear back.”
A grift and a dog whistle in one neat package. That’s the MAGAts for you.
SatanicPanic
@Baud: Candidates will probably face questions about running again, and I suspect that next time there’s an unpopular incumbent running there will be more primary challengers.
I bring up age because it can’t be fixed. Obama, for instance, was running for reelection with low numbers, but for the most part those numbers were tied to a slow recovery, which was largely outside of his control. He was still very popular among Democrats, and he didn’t have some major personal issue. So it made sense to keep him as the nominee.
The Audacity of Krope
I spend all day, all week, watching my odometer click.
40,999.7…
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@eemom:
Good lord I remember him well from back then. Had no idea he was doing the whole podcast thing. Glad he still has an audience, he deserves one.
zhena gogolia
@The Audacity of Krope: Are you committing the unforgivable sin of getting older? How dare you?
The Audacity of Krope
@zhena gogolia: It seems inexorable.
TBone
@ArchTeryx: not sure about Babbit being the inspiration for it, I remember the TV commercials airing long before J6 – but I bet they used her for grifting to boost sales after J6. Seems like par for the course!
ArchTeryx
@TBone: She was quoted as saying that long before J6 too, but unsure of the actual timing between the quote and the release of the “Trumpy Bear.” I just found it far too convenient to be a coincidence.
Harrison Wesley
@KatKapCC: I don’t think the dolls they order online have any hair. Or tats.
JWR
@TBone: Do I remember Trumpy Bear? You bet I remember Trumpy Bear! Mainly because it won’t go away. ;) But I’m usually up all night, watching lots of old movies, and that damn thing makes the occasional appearance.
TBone
@ArchTeryx: 👍
TBone
@JWR: STILL???
Who will emerge victorious? Fish or bear?
One thing’s certain. We all lose.
Leto
Never let it be said that Wisconsin Democrats came unprepared to the Democratic National Convention.
ArchTeryx
@eemom: Holy shit, TRex is still around?! I didn’t know what happened after Jane Hamsher deplatformed him (i.e., booted him off Firedoglake). I’m glad he stayed in the political arena even after she did that to him.
JWR
@TBone: STILL!
TBone
@JWR: gah!!
The Audacity of Krope
@Leto: Every time I saw Wisconsinites, I wondered if the convention wouldn’t be better if we all wore funny state hats or none of us.
I’m leaning toward the former.
Mike E
@Omnes Omnibus: even worse for me is that JK Rowling is a boring, graceless disappointment of a person who caught lightning in a bottle and is miserable from all of it… Miss E recently got rid of all her books, sad, considering we enjoyed reading the first three (especially Azkaban) when she was little. Oh well.
jame
Late to the party again, but I just wanted to express my admiration and devotion to Elizabeth Warren, an exemplary human being.
And I feel protective and tender towards Ella Emhoff and Gus Walz, may they be well and safe and happy always.
I already defended Ella’s crocheted garments on one or another of the social media. How many her age are even interested in crochet, or, indeed, any of the home arts?
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: As already mentioned, Obama was still very popular among Democrats, so he would have been unlikely to attract a serious primary challenger. I think the only situation where the Biden precedent could conceivably come into play would be when that was not the case. Several polls showed a majority of Democrats wanting him to drop out after the debate. That’s not a situation likely to occur often, but if it does then maybe this will actually be a good precedent. And I say that as one who for multiple reasons wanted Biden to stay in. Harris’s outstanding debut has made me reconsider my priors. The point, always, is to win.
OzarkHillbilly
Same here John, she was the only one I gave $$ to during the primary, plain and simply because of her work at the CFPB.
It was nothing against the others, just that after she dropped out I decided to keep my *powder dry* for the general election. Who ever won the nomination, I was going to support. Glad it was Joe.
**not like I had all that much to spread around.
Lyrebird
Thank you John!
And @geg6: summed this up so well: “No teacher with long experience needs these lessons.”
I mean, it could be a difficult debate, but if you have taught high school for multiple years, arrogant j-ck-sses are one of many categories of people you have learned to handle.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: you get me. Thank you.
Kay
@jame:
Crochet is popular with young women right now! My youngest son’s GF is in a crochet club. Taylor Swift wore a crocheted dress and it was big news. My sense is it’s a bit of a fad. Kamala crochets too but it sounds like she’s been at it a while.
scav
@BR: Going after kids, Minnesotans, people that like a solid bag of chips . . . Have they really hired Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged as campaign manager? They’re certainly going all-in with the synchronized broad-spectrum charm offensive.
KatKapCC
@Gretchen: Don’t do this.
Fake Irishman
@The Audacity of Krope:
I seem to recall all the armchair tacticians on here were pretty much stomping on everyone who had the audacity to suggest maybe Biden should consider stepping aside.
Burnspbesq
@TBone:
Bout goddam time we got back to enforcing the antitrust laws.
japa21
@Fake Irishman: Memories are not always accurate. There were a couple Biden should stay folks who “stomped” on the Biden should step down folks, but they were a distinct minority. Far more of the Biden must step down folks were intemperate towards those that wanted him to stay.
Either way, it did get far too heated, and many people took even fairly innocent pushback as personal insults.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
Agree. Not nearly as many tatted kids on campus than there was a few years ago.
Burnspbesq
@eemom:
David’s as feisty as ever. I’m in his FB circle, and catching up with him is usually a highlight of my day.
ETA: nice to see you again, E. How y’all be?
kissel
@trollhattan: I totally agree. She also spends a great deal of time and energy fighting for people like you and me, which is how this is supposed to work.
kissel
@japa21: I’m not sure about that. I recall commentors on Daily Kos bashing anyone who suggested Biden should step aside. The people looking for Biden to step aside were the ones who recognized he would not be able to beat Trump in 2024.
TBone
@Burnspbesq: damn right! To paraphrase clumsily, I welcome hatred from the overlords, it means we’re winning. The harder they cry…
Matt McIrvin
@Gloria DryGarden: If your obligations and roles in society and home life are entirely determined by a gender you’re born with, then anything that blurs that distinction is like a blow to the entire social order. It’s this delicate thing like a house of cards.
So they have to police it constantly, yet also insist that everything about it is inborn and God-given.
And they’ll pursue the contradictions inherent in this to the ends of the earth. Boys and girls are innately profoundly different… but sometimes apparently they’re not… but that’s morally wrong and it’s because a bad person gave them bad ideas. And they insist there are only two genders, and accuse liberals of being the ones who suggest that you’re trans if your gender presentation is a little off stereotype… but then they will hallucinate secret trans people everywhere.
japa21
@kissel: As I said, there were a few, but they were in the minority. And we will never know if Biden could have beaten Trump. I still believe he would have.
prostratedragon
@japa21: I do too. We are fortunate in how things appear to have gone so far, which means — that we are fortunate in how things have gone so far.
Gretchen
@eemom: yes he’s on Cesca every Thursday and still hilarious. His righteous rant about Rowling was so good I had to listen to it twice
Bupalos
@prostratedragon: we really aren’t “fortunate.”
we’ve made our own luck. Or more specifically, people like Pelosi and Harris have made our “luck.”
the reality is we’ve got some absolute fucking warriors on our side, and calling it luck is wrong. We’ve barely created the space for them to do their thing. And they’re putting it out there, and we’re lifting them up.
Personally I feel like Kamala is laying out one of the all-time examples of effort here. We’re low-key watching Michael Jordan will himself into the shape he needed to be. It’s that kind of thing. She is working HARD every second and improving by the hour. Every time you see her she’s sharper and hungrier than you have a right to expect.
that’s your “luck.” Send her a donation because she’s earned that and it isn’t “luck.” You owe that woman.
Gretchen
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Ferguson also has a Patreon blog and is in a band called Astral Summer
eemom
@Burnspbesq:
I’m good burnsie! Turned 62 today, and still rocking with the old hubs here in Vienna Virginny. Kids growed up and doing well too, praise the Lord.
You? Do I recall correctly that you’re one of those Cali expats in Texas? Still practicing Esq?
btw, I DO recall when you were Fat Charlie the Archangel at David’s Treehouse blog post FDL….
NaijaGal
Warren was my first pick in the 2020 primaries, followed by Harris. I remember running into her at Washington National airport and after I got over my shock at seeing her in person, I urged her to run! She was much smaller in person than I expected, her personality made me expect someone six feet tall or something 🙂.
Burnspbesq
@eemom:
Happy birthday!
Yeah, you heard right. Austin’s not all it’s cracked up to be, but I don’t mind not paying CA income tax. Spouse has grandkids here, so moving to Vermont is probably not happening for a while.
Retired at the end of 2019. Need to catch up on CLE so I can get off suspension and help out in November.
sab
@Citizen Alan: Well put.
//
Gloria DryGarden
@Matt McIrvin: your comment is so refreshing that I want to hear more!
tam1MI
Okay, you got me on that one! ;)
K-Mo
@Omnes Omnibus: She came out with a different look every day of the convention. Personally I thought the plaid suit and tie was killer, but what do I know? I’m guessing she is considered very attractive by a lot of people her age. But again, what do I know?
Gloria DryGarden
@Gretchen: I don’t know how to find cesca, to listen to him. I found David Ferguson s music link from his Facebook. Here’s one song from there:
https://astralsummer.bandcamp.com/track/waiting-for-the-world-to-end
the music is joyous, in spite of his comprehensive lyrics
Kayla Rudbek
@Maxim: he’s also got some hearing loss from his military service so that’s probably part of why he’s loud
Kayla Rudbek
@ArchTeryx: the joke about Stanford (which I would say is Ivy-equivalent) was that the hardest part was getting in
Kayla Rudbek
@schrodingers_cat: Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series is far superior in my opinion
Gloria DryGarden
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
and in heels, with complicated face makeup and hairstyling, which takes more time than you think. And sometimes also while wearing pantyhose- if you’ve not worn it, you have no idea what an affliction that is.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kay: as I said last night, if she wins then I shop at the same yarn store as the President. Link to the pin that I should have bought last month https://shop.fibrespace.com/crochet-czar-vp-enamel-pin.html
Gloria DryGarden
@Matt McIrvin: delicate,
or inflexible?
delicate could be a whole subject. What is, what isn’t delicate. Like delicate egos posing as victims while being backed by massive money and power and organizations and societal structures.
I just saw the best anthropology reel, today about trad wives, vs most of human existence, and the author posited that both genders have been very involved in the economics, work, and child rearing. So refreshing. This recent ‘tradition’ is a sliver of our human timeline.
Betsy
@scott (the other one): same!! Same same
Same choices and I was so wrong about Biden holy cow
Betsy
@Kristine: or onstage just “here hold my baby, Bristol, you’re good for that”
Betsy
@Mike E: I just knew there was something slightly southern about her even though she was like all “Boston economics professor” and then when I learned she had a parent from Oklahoma I was all THAT’S *IT*! I KNEW IT!!
Her cadence and the way she said “my mama and daddy raised us to …”
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Who is EE?
Betsy
@ArchTeryx: I think the Amish are primarily and explicitly apolitical, at least as far as participating in elections and voting goes.
Their theology emphasizes they don’t generally want anything to do with “the world” (in the gospel sense of that phrase).
Uncle Cosmo
Cheeto Benito would’ve stomped her flat in ’20. No one but folks like Jackals (a vanishingly small %age of the electorate) trusts policy – among other things, too much can get folded, spindled and /or mutilated on the way to becoming law, and too often the lawyers and lobbyists manage to twist the best-intentioned plans into forms that only benefit the oligarchs.
One of our main problems is that a significant chunk of that electorate responds not to policies but to narratives. Since they don’t trust plans to deliver for them, they settle for stories to tell them who to blame for their troubles. I wish we spent some time pushing back on Trumpish narratives and exposing them for the (mostly) lies they are. E.g., I could write up a couple of pages explaining how the white working class’s lost paradise of 1945-73 was mostly owed to the billionaires’ fear of the immediate return of the Depression plus their fear of 12,000,000 returning servicemen who knew how to use weapons and wreck factories with sitdown strikes, plus the tiny detail that the rest of the industrial world spent most of that time digging itself out of the rubble…
But I digress. I wish we pushed back more and harder against their bullshit.
apocalipstick
@West of the Rockies:
I think tRump is a more difficult opponent because he just doesn’t care. If Harris tries to ‘debate’ him, she won’t look good. She should go in, point, laugh, and mock. That’s about the only way to counter the Gish Gallop.
Timill
@WaterGirl: Usually, the Evil Empire, also known as the New York Yankees.
In this context, I believe it’s Ella Emhoff.
RaflW
Late getting here tonight, lots of regional car travel today. But I too was initially a Warren backer in 2020. Very glad to catch up on her speech, and that welcome for her from the crowd, wow.
While in the car today we listened to AOC and Warnock. I think that was about it for things missed. We saw the Obamas live, and I watched second gentleman Doug’s speech at some point. And of course caught the headline act as well as a fair bit of the whole Thursday package.
Overall, a very solid DNC. Ass in that the room of the ticket changed one month ago and Boom, that whole thing was amazing. Good to see the money rolling in on ActBlue, too. Felling pretty good. Not feeling overconfident at all. LFG.
Jean
@ArchTeryx: Yes! I remember him from Firedoglake and the whole decline of the site. It’s where I first read M. Wheeler, and had a bad first impression of her based on the attacks against Obama. Jane and Marcy were big Clinton supporters. I had no idea he was still active.