Sewer swimmer and family disgrace RFK Jr. appeared before a Congressional committee yesterday to answer questions about HHS budget appropriations. It did not go well.
In this clip, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) notes several instances where Kennedy made commitments to protect public health in earlier appearances and then undermined public health via subsequent actions as head of HHS.
RFK Jr starts having a tantrum as Chris Murphy details how he lied during his confirmation hearing about his anti-vax views
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 14, 2025 at 2:45 PM
I like the way Murphy slipped in the phrase “whether you know it or not” because claiming ignorance about what’s happening under his watch is Kennedy’s preferred brand of squid ink. Also, kudos to Murphy for using “panoply” correctly in a sentence, which seemed to increase Kennedy’s confusion.
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) cuts to the heart of the matter in this clip by extracting an admission from Kennedy that Congress is supposed to have the “power of the purse.” She then tries to pin Kennedy down on a commitment to restore billions in illegally rescinded NIH funding.
DeLAURO: Are you planning to break the law by impounding appropriated funds?
RFK Jr: If you appropriate the funds, I'm going to spend them
D: We have! You're cutting the NIH by $18b. Congress appropriated those funds. How can you justify cutting billions from the biomedical research budget?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 14, 2025 at 10:20 AM
DeLauro wraps up her remarks by muttering “unbelievable” in response to Kennedy’s dissembling. It applies to every word he says. Kudos to both Nutmeg State lawmakers for exposing the repulsive fraud!
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) also extracted a startling admission from Kennedy (CBS News):
When asked hypothetically if he would vaccinate his children today for measles during a House hearing Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said “probably,” but added he doesn’t think people should be taking medical advice from him.
“My opinions about vaccines are irrelevant,” he said in response to the question from Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin during the House Appropriations Committee hearing. “I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”
When pressed, he repeated he didn’t want to give advice to other people.
“But that’s kind of your jurisdiction, because CDC does give advice, right?” Pocan asked. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is under HHS.
So basically Kennedy admits he’s not qualified for his current job, which was probably the one true thing he said yesterday. There’s something deeply off about RFK Jr. The Trump administration is a full employment program for wealthy and connected sociopaths.
Open thread.
On The Road – frosty – 2024 National Park Road Trip – Canada (2/3) Lake Louise and Moraine Lake
Baud
That’s why I’m a professional failure. I’m not wealthy or connected.
Bunter
The fact that the garbage in the White House manged to put together a Cabinet of stupid, evil people who hate the United States amazes me. I’m not sure why it does, since I was around for the first iteration of this horror show but it does. Though I guess Republicans have shown how much they hate the country for quite some years now.
pajaro
I agree that there is “something off” about RFK Jr. He seems different than the narcissists, thieves and sociopaths that are the norm for appointment in this Administration. I think he’s really damaged
rusty
It’s all an extension of the president’s ego. At yesterday’s press conference Trump rambled on about fighter design. I guess he wants an updated F-35 (a F-55!), but with two engines since Trump doesn’t like one, and not stealth because Trump thinks that makes an ugly plane. The utter lunacy of having a rambling turnip deciding on our next fighter plane. But this is where we are. RFK Jr. is just a smaller version of the same, his next random thought becoming policy, his overwhelming ego making him master of everything. It will take a generation to repair, and only even then if we can make systems strong enough to survive the next whack-job that wins an election.
Ten Bears
He thinks, RFKj, that this is his ticket to the White House
Mark my word: RFKj is running for president …
Betty
@Ten Bears: That sounds pretty nutty.
prostratedragon
@rusty:
Insert link to Rube Goldberg cartoon here.
Nettoyeur
@Betty: Wormbrain is that nutty
Geminid
@pajaro: RfK Jr. served his purpose though. Trump’s team knew the election would be close, and they had to scrape up votes where they could. They brought RFK Jr. into the campaign towards that end. He didn’t have that big a following, but it may have been large enough to make the difference.
Librettist
@Nettoyeur:
Some big money interests will fund him as a stalking horse.
Steer those voters to a third party line, or not voting, because the “system”.
Citizen Dave
Coincidentally one thought about RFK Jr popped in my head during my morning commute: He is just so fried.
prostratedragon
Starting to make the rounds:
Baud
Good advice for when they issue their anti-trans, autism, and anti-vax screeds that pretend to be science.
gene108
I oscillate between doom and gloom and trying to maintain some optimism. I’m in a pessimistic mood this morning.
My gut feeling is if Trump hadn’t started the trade war with the rest of the world, he’d have a positive approval rating.
Republican voters are mad they’re being hurt by the trade war, they aren’t mad about anything else Trump’s doing.
Unless a large number of Republican and right-leaning independents can be converted into Democratic voters, I doubt there will be any long term way to fix this country.
We’ll swing from one backlash election to another switching between Democrats and Republicans being in charge.
narya
I’m gonna go get an MMR vaccination today. I actually found my vaccination record, and it only has one date for a measles vax, though it’s possible I had two doses. (The date recorded is later than the window for only receiving one round of it.)
prostratedragon
Somehow timely:
Bought it for $27 back in 1946, which probably way beats Chicago Art Institute getting Nighthawks for a couple thou arounf that time.
Suzanne
Everything FFOTUS and his minions touch dies, but there are specific things that probably irrationally offend me disproportionately. The EO to return to plastic straws was one of them due to its sheer pettiness. RFK swimming in sewage water is another one.
That’s so fucking gross. I’m going to sound like an judgmental white over-educated elitist coastal liberal asshole looking down on everyone else, and I’m proud as fuck of it: swimming in sewage is goddamn nasty and he should feel bad about his choices that have led him to this point.
Soprano2
Murphy did make RFK Jr. get defensive, claiming that all of his lies are the truth. That lie about vaccines containing fetal material is particularly damaging, it pisses me off.
OT, I bought a new car! I’d been thinking about doing it for awhile, because I was having too many problems with my 2019 Sonata that no one could seem to figure out or fix. So now they’re the dealership’s problem. I bought a 2025 Sonata Hybrid. I had a hybrid before and really liked it, and they’re much improved now. The inside screen is insane, they’ve taken the screen for the instruments and the one for the entertainment system and combined them into one big screen. I’m going to have to sit in the car with the quick reference manual to figure some things out. It’s white – I never thought I’d like a white car, but I actually like this one. I’m just glad I don’t have to think about adding oil every 500 miles or worry about what’s wrong with the brakes (my 2019 has had 4 brake jobs in two years, something is wrong but no one can seem to figure out what, and it’s not my driving because that hasn’t changed!).
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I suspect you’re right. I never saw it coming because I just don’t get the appeal of woo peddlers, but people who do appear to be a committed if small subset of voters.
gene108
@Geminid:
I don’t think anyone has put hard numbers on this but Ive read stories of a number of crunchy granola new age types, who normally do not vote for Republicans voted for Trump because of RFK, Jr. joining Trump’s campaign.
Librettist
The corporate media is sure trying hard to prop up Trump’s world tour as something other than a failure failing. I mean.. a hundred days in, and Ooof.
Soprano2
Not just nasty but dangerous! We post signs every time a manhole overflows so people know not to go near it, and we clean it up and lime it too. People don’t understand that just because it doesn’t stink doesn’t mean it’s not contaminated. Sewage contaminated water is nothing to mess around with. He probably thinks it strengthens his immune system to expose it to that crap!
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Excellent point!
@Suzanne: It is fucking gross, and the worst part is he took his grandkids with him! I mean, I don’t give a shit if RFK Jr. huffs brain-eating amoebas in a polluted creek. I encourage him to do it daily! But he shouldn’t drag innocent children with him. That’s on their parents too, of course.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: But you have the support of The People!! BAUD2028!!!!
Librettist
@Soprano2:
Knew a custodian that got drenched in brown water from a plumbing issue. There were lots of shots.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: My rational brain agrees that it is dangerous. My lizard brain is grossed the fuck right out. Far more primal response.
Congrats on the new car! That’s so much fun!
Professor Bigfoot
@Bunter: They don’t hate the United States.
They hate a multiethnic United States. They would LOVE an Apartheid United States; they’ve already started moving back towards a Jim Crow United States where no immigrant darker than a blank sheet of A4 is allowed in— except, perhaps, as a slave.
They hate the very idea of sharing this country with anyone who isn’t white.
Baud
@Suzanne:
At least the water didn’t have fluoride in it.
Professor Bigfoot
@Betty: On this timeline the fact that it sounds nutty is evidence that it will really happen.
prostratedragon
@Soprano2: Not to mention clearing an olympic-sized pool when a four-year-old has a little accident.
Baud
Time to stock up.
Betty Cracker
@Soprano2: Congrats!
Parfigliano
@Suzanne: RFKj can swim in whatever raw shit he wants. I encourage him to continue the practice.
Leave the grandkids at home.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
You are correct. But there’s another level….. they also want to unspool some of the “whitening” that various groups went through. Italian, Jewish, Irish, Eastern European. The people who talk about “Heritage Americans” consider the Ellis Island era a mistake, and the descendants of those immigrants would become the new lower class in their fantasy America. White people who don’t see this are either deluded or uninformed.
Professor Bigfoot
@prostratedragon: So basically there is no due process for whatever that mango MF does to people OUTSIDE the US, is there?
Disloyal, dishonorable, and dissolute. Monstrous.
The Republican Party could stop this shit yesterday.
Trump isn’t really the problem anymore. The problem is the GOP.
They invited the segregationist neo-Confederates in as part of the Southern Strategy. Those neo-Confederates eventually took over the party (John McCain may well have been the last national Republican who was not an outright neo-Confederate)… and have now morphed into outright Nazis.
The entire Republican Party is our problem. They’ve turned on the Constitution just as much as the OG Confederates did.
(I’ve no doubt if they were to re-write the Constitution it would look much the same but there’d be a clause saying only straight white Christian men were qualified to hold any office.)
David_C
He appeared before two committees, and I caught the Senate HELP Committee hearing. That was enlightening since the Republicans sometimes show moments of sanity.
His lies and half-truths were infuriating. Medical research is being cut around the country, but his answer about the cuts only applied to NIH intramural, but everything has been made more difficult because of the loss of admin staff.
He claims that the RIFs came about because of bloat and duplication of administration – but nobody knows (and nobody asked about) the plans for consolidation, and employees are left hanging, as it looks like everything comes to a screeching halt in two weeks. He lied about indirect costs, too, claiming that it’s just to target well-endowed universities that could just pick up the slack, but nobody’s seen that plan, either.
The Audacity of Krope
If you didn’t get a foreign government to buy it for you with promises of endless grift, you’re a sucker.
Professor Bigfoot
“First they came for the trade unionists…”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
There’s something deeply off about RFK Jr. The Trump administration is a full employment program for wealthy and connected sociopaths.
The Kennedy’s have always been their special brand of crazy. Remember, John Kennedy had whole list of diseases and used his father’s connections to get that PT boat command in one of the most primitive places in the world, when he could have spent the war in some staff position in Washington, and had access to medical are.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: One thing that I wish more Americans could recognize is that we don’t have to like each other to be in a political party together. There are most assuredly parts of our coalition that drive me up a wall.
So many of our electoral problems stem from our problems with one another. It’s so depressing.
chemiclord
@gene108: What we need to start fucking doing is going to “battle” with the electorate we have, not the one we want to have.
Which means all you centrist Democrats stop trying to court the moderate right. They’re never coming over. It doesn’t fucking matter how many times you present Liz Cheney or try to “reach across the aisle.” It doesn’t fucking matter how many times you preach comity. Anyone you could have bled off of the GOP voting bloc has already been grabbed.
It also means you progressives and leftists need to stop your shitty little forays looking for closet socialists out there among the MAGA cult. Stop knifing Dems in the back to prove your cred amongst the “white working class” who would totally be on our side if we just focused on “class, not race.” They will always have an excuse to keep voting “against their own interest.” Again, anyone you could have won has already been won.
This is what we are. This is the army we have. Stop trying to change it because you don’t want to compromise on anything. This bullshit we always do every single election where 10-15% of us get pissy and refuse to vote because of whatever fucking little reason we want to manufacture has to fucking end.
We have the numbers. We need to start fucking using them.
Harrison Wesley
I have the scientific knowledge of your average MAGAt. Will a Brita filter out the crap they’re going to allow back into the water? TY in advance.
Baud
@Suzanne:
100%
cmorenc
@Soprano2:
Worse than that, RFK Jr. doesn’t believe pathogens (germs, viruses) are actually the cause of diseases, but that unhealthy diet and toxins are the main drivers of illnesses.
Mai Naem mobile
I was at a store yesterday which is at the one end of the shopping center. The trash dumpster for the shopping center was near where I pulled into to park. Somebody had sprayed on the dumpster DEPOSE T
TRUMP.
I don’t know if they meant to spray ‘deposit’ Trump or ‘depose’ Trump but it made me laugh.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: @gene108: It’s particularly striking that this contingent who believe that all disease comes from contamination with “toxins” signed on with the pro-toxin party. Somehow, we’re being poisoned by medicine and by (often imaginary) chemicals deliberately introduced into vaccines, airplane contrails, food and drinking water, but industrial pollution in our food and drinking water is OK and in fact overregulated–we need to allow more of it.
I guess it comes from the conspiracy mindset? We need to stop the cabal that is deliberately poisoning us, but pollution from a factory is something that happens “naturally”, people just going with the flow.
It’s a lot like the idea that the way to stop the raping of women and children is to beat down on LGBT people, because a rapist must be someone you think looks or acts weird.
Geminid
@gene108: Some if the people you describe may have voted Libertarian in 2020. I think Jo Jorgensen got 1.8 million votes on the Libertarian line that year. Last November, the Libertarian candidate won less than 800,000. A lot of those 1 million voters the Libertarians lost probably went to Trump.
Baud
@cmorenc:
We do have an unhealthy diet though. But I’ve learned that a Republican who says something that has a kernal of truth is unlikely to fix the problem, but will keep talking about it while making things worse in other areas.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Excellent point.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: But to get the support they need for a majority coalition-(to the extent that they even need a majority coalition, and to some degree they would even in a dictatorship) they need to continue the historic expansion of “white”. White-identifying Hispanics were a huge source of support this time around.
To roll that back is also to overreach, which is interesting.
Birdie
The true DEI is for conservative white straight Christian men. Compare every one of Trump’s white male appointees to their predecessors. It could not be any clearer.
Mai Naem mobile
@prostratedragon: tfg will try and get that from Harvard in his war with Harvard. ‘Nice MAGA Cart you have there, shame if something would happen to it!’
The idiot has a copy of the Declaration of Independence in the Oval office and wanted the original.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: I didn’t say these people had a good strategy.
Matt McIrvin
(hell, STEPHEN FUCKING MILLER is himself in a group that is on the chopping block if the “Heritage-American” folks get their way, and he doesn’t seem to care.)
kindness
RFK Jr is doing exactly what TrumpCo wanted him to do. Primarily to carry out budget cuts laid out under Project 2025, but equally important, deflect attention away from Trump & his main minions towards the bumbling fool Kennedy. Trump got a nice twofer there.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Birdie: Exactly. Every accusation is a confession
Matt McIrvin
@Mai Naem mobile: He can go over to the Archives and take a look at it, but he’d be disappointed–the fancy manuscript copy is badly deteriorated from centuries of indifferent handling.
Not that that is really “the” Declaration of Independence. I mean, the printing press was a thing in those days. Most people saw the typeset copies that were printed up and widely distributed, and he probably can have one of those in the Oval Office. Might do him good to read it except that the part about the “merciless Indian savages” might give him more terrible ideas.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Stephen Miller is a Rodent-American.
jonas
@cmorenc:
What’s next? Bloodletting and purgatives? When did medieval humoral theory suddenly become vogue again?
TONYG
@Baud: Well, Junior told the world that within a month or two he’ll be figuring out the cause of autism. I guess we should ignore that?
jonas
@Birdie: The opposite of DEI is corrupt cronyism and nepotism and given that everyone from Trump on down is low-quality white trash, well, everyone in the administration is going to be spouses, sons, and cousins of low-quality white trash.
The Audacity of Krope
@jonas: Make Medieval Great Again!
Then, what no one expected, the Spanish Inquisition…
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: No, but we DO have to RESPECT each other.
To have enough respect for each other that we are willing to accept each other in leadership positions.
I don’t have to like them, but I have to respect them enough to believe that they won’t decide my rights are secondary to their socialist ideals.
I will die on the hill of trans rights, because I read Pastor Niemöller’s poem. Sooner or later those motherfuckers will come for me, too.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: I sometimes wonder if the Harris campaign should have found a way to flatter him and neutralize him. But I guess that would have been hard.
Mai Naem mobile
@cmorenc: i think these people have taken the extreme of the legitimate discussion of some parents not letting their kids get dirty playing around and overusing anti-bacterial soaps, hand sanitizer etc.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: That’s because you’re a good person with more than a modicum of pattern recognition.
Ella in New Mexico
“if you appropriate it I’m going to spend it”
Except when I let Vough and Doge sit on the money already approprated and not spent long enough for the House to pass a new budget explicity stating that money goes away retroactively.
He’s playing dumb for a reason: he’s in on the plan
Thor Heyerdahl
@Librettist: I worked for a few months as a baggage handler. There was one unfortunate guy who, while was emptying the lavatory into the “poop truck”, had the hose disconnect and he got covered in sewage.
He got washed down very quickly, and I think taken to the chemical spill shower. There were, at minimum, hepatitis precautions taken – possibly more diseases.
The ramp was washed down and sawdust was spread out. It stank for a couple days as the hot sun shone on the concrete.
Mai Naem mobile
I know a woman who I believe voted for tfg because of RFK Jr. She’s got a young autistic son and listens to Joe Rogan. She was definitely RFK Jr curious. I tried to give her some RFK Jr facts but it’s difficult to compete with 3 hours daily or however long Jor Rogan’s disinformation. At different times she’s brought up Paul Pelosi’s attack and the LA fires. I don’t follow Joe Rogan at all so I only see what he’s discussed if it’s something that’s gone viral.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Indeed. To me, the words in the Constitution and the Declaration and the ideals embodied there, imperfect and only partially realized though they are, are America.
Early in my professional career I received a fine piece of advice: you don’t have to like someone to work with them. The same goes for a political coalition.
sab
@Matt McIrvin: Stephen Miller doesn’t care as long as his behavior irks his family.
schrodingers_cat
I am trying to revive my old artist grade watercolors that I brought with me when I first came to the US. They are from the 90s. I have bought gum arabic and a tube squeezer and an airtight watercolor palette. Wish me luck
I have used about a third of these tubes. Except the greens (Viridian and Sap green) which are about half over. The Ivory Black is mostly untouched. My art teacher used to say don’t use white or black or at least keep their use to a minimum. I used to love these paints and have painted many a landscape with it.
jonas
@Baud: They’re not wrong that environmental toxins, our factory-farmed, food-industrial complex, ubiquitous screens, and other things are not good for us. The problem is that every single policy they advocate is designed to make all those things worse because their donor class makes its money pumping petrochemicals into the air and our consumer products, through heavily subsidized commodity monoculture, and getting us addicted to the next shiny social media product.
Also, the “cleanse your body of X toxin” stuff almost always = some kind of grift. So it’s ok if we disband the EPA and let DuPont chemical do whatever it wants at its fertilizer plant; you just drink this $20 organic colloidal silver smoothie from my company every day to counteract the carcinogens and promote neuro-cellular vitality and aural resonance!
Soprano2
I called SiriusXM to cancel my satellite radio because my new car has a complimentary period for the satellite radio, and I got actual customer service! The guy on the phone said he would transfer my subscription to the new car and it would start when my free trial ended, so the date I would be charged for a renewal would change too. I thought I’d have to call them back to reinstitute my service. Yay I don’t have to! It’s so rare these days to feel like they’re actually trying to help you instead of keep you from getting something.
tobie
I learned a lot at yesterday’s hearings about how admin officials prep for hearings.
RFK, Jr feigned ignorance about budget cuts, staff cuts, etc. Noem filibustered the whole time making it impossible for anyone to pose any question.
Both found ways to deflect. They didn’t come off looking good but it was hard to land a punch either. I was heartened to see how effective 82-year-old Rosa DeLauro was and hopefully this will put to bed some of the ageism that’s become rampant in Dem quarters.
Mr. Bemused Senior
A ray of hope, nice to see. Alas, most customer support operations don’t reward this behavior, instead they actively punish it, evaluating agents by how quickly they dispose of a call. Short sighted and in the long run destructive. Like a lot of things I could mention.
The Audacity of Krope
A distinct phenomenon from his legitimate ignorance on other matters…
Suzanne
@jonas: Their idea of health is also very masculine/libertarian. Like, lift weights to gain strength to fight off disease! Weakness lowers sperm count!
Captain C
@pajaro: It’s been said that he has a serial killer vibe to him. I would not be surprised if eventually it comes out that he is in fact a real, hands-on* serial killer.
*Wrecking HHS and medical research does qualify IMHO as serial killing, but good luck getting a conviction on those grounds.
terraformer
I wish Pocan (one of my Congresscritters) would have responded, “then why the fck are you in this job?”
mrmoshpotato
Wow. Someone didn’t read the Secretary of HHS job description.
Captain C
@Matt McIrvin: Stephen Fucking Miller is a kapo wannabe who would have happily sold out his fellow Jews to the Nazis for a few bucks.
Professor Bigfoot
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Of course, the “tire rims and anthrax” analogy still applies. It’s hard to work with someone who has contempt for you and refuses to listen or work with you. Who does his best to sabotage your work at every turn.
This I know from bitter, bitter experience.
NotMax
Pleasure to listen to someone whose head is screwed on straight, in this case David Cay Johnston.
schrodingers_cat
@tobie: Ageism, antisemitism, xenophobia and ableism thrive on the DSA left. The bigotries just wear economic justice clothes. That’s all.
Baud
Why would Biden do this?
Professor Bigfoot
Ah, yes, American business ethos; where nothing is so important as next quarter’s “numbers.”
Baud
MAHA
Professor Bigfoot
@Captain C: I begin to suspect that Miller does not see himself as a Jew— he just sees himself as “a man.”
Which, in this country, means he identifies as a white guy, and that’s just right for this lot of spalpeens, omadhauns, and gombeens.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Trivia Man
@mrmoshpotato: i saw the Office Space meme applied here. One of you Bobs asks, “How would you describe what you do here?”
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
@prostratedragon:
That is CRAZY
But…nice..
An original Magna Carta😳😳😳
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Looking for the lie.
See none.
Baud
@Trivia Man:
He need to send in five bullet points every week.
rikyrah
@tobie:
All they do is phucking lie.
If it had been a Democratic Administration, the headlines would be..
Why does the President have these incompetents who know nothing about their department?
The Audacity of Krope
Fixed.
ETA: Who, among DSA associated Democrats were among the coup caucus?
And the anti-Semitism thing is a canard flagrantly designed to stop any questioning of Israel policy.
Trivia Man
@Trivia Man: edit for accuracy:
“So what is it that you’d say you do here?”
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Thanks. Being a microscopic visible minority in the age of open bigotry gives you clarity like nothing else does.
Also I have learned a lot from Black Twitter and there is no group of voters more engaged and clear eyed than black women, present company included.
Mr. Bemused Senior
You and I are in accord.
And again.
Harrison Wesley
@Mr. Bemused Senior: They say “human capital” but they think “human urinal.”
The Audacity of Krope
@Harrison Wesley: They mean human capital. Something under their control they have no specific reason to solicit an opinion from available for them to shuffle around to advance their own power.
Professor Bigfoot
I’m about to start yard work (groan) and I’ve avoided “podcasts” after listening to a bit of “pod save america” and thinking it was the usual bullshit; but I’d like to listen to John and DougJ’s— can someone remind me of the name/location thereof?
Vielen dank!
Professor Bigfoot
@Harrison Wesley: Remember that in 1850 the Enslaved were considered “capital,” that the wealthiest men in the country lived in the Mississippi delta and owned hundreds and hundreds of “human capital equipment.”
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Questioning Israeli policy is one thing.
Declaring that Israel has no right to exist is quite another.
Anti-Zionism is just the assertion that Jews deserve to have no homeland of their own.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Agreed. Antisemites are using the Palestinian fig leaf to demonize Jewish Americans.
I have no love lost for Netanyahu but I don’t condone using him or his government’s policies to attack Jewish Americans.
sentient ai from the future
@Captain C: according to his cousin he drew people into his orbit with drugs, esp hard stuff. Real easy for a psycho like him to cause a death or two in that context even if he wasn’t chopping up bodies Dahmer style
The Audacity of Krope
And…who is declaring this? This is the same strawman people have been trotting out for decades as Israel slowly cannibalizes its neighbor.
ETA: Like seriously, I have heard endlessly from supporters of our current Israel policy how those who don’t support it want Israel eliminated.
I have never interacted with someone opposed to our Israel policy who wants Israel eliminated, nor have I encountered anyone with any sort of following in the US advocating for this either.
Bill Arnold
@Citizen Dave:
“microwaved Mel Gibson” is apt. (Been used since Feb 2025.)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Stephen Miller, America’s* Favorite Himmler
*77 million voters.
@schrodingers_cat:
And yet, we’re being told almost daily by the usual, always wrong, always white, bougie suspects how we don’t know anything about coalition politics unless we’re the ones that stfu and let them decide party direction, etc. And then we lose elections.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: The Judean People’s Front denounces Baud as a fraud for having insufficient ideological purity!
Mai Naem mobile
@tobie: this. I also think RFK Jr will be blamed for anything that goes wrong as far as avian flu, food safety, increase in flu deaths in 2026 etc and at that point he’ll get canned and be labeled by FOX and Newsmax etc as a member of the Democrat party blah blah blah.
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: I just want to see Benjamin Netanyahu eliminated, politically. That could be one of the follow-on effects of Trump’s Gulf visit.
French Onion Soup
@The Audacity of Krope:
If you don’t clap loud enough while the working class keeps falling farther behind and say everything is great you’re DSA, a racist, and a Nazi.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
Who do we hate more than the Romans?
Baud.
:P
tam1MI
It will never be put to bed. Defenestrating Biden was just the beginning.
The Audacity of Krope
@Geminid: That would be nice. Though in terms of American policy it’s just of a piece with Trump tossing out all our old allies, tyrant or not, for a new class of kings and dictators. Not an upgrade.
ETA: Cute how he glommed onto the anti-Semitism thing to start going after universities, though. Watching him leave Netanyahu hanging someday will be fun.
@French Onion Soup: I will say, the establishment over everything Democrats really believe in what they’re selling.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: They even issued bonds with such “capital” as collateral. And as Edward Baptist points out in his book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and American Capitalism, that human capital became ever more productive and profitable as the 19th century progressed. When Southern politicians bragged about King Cotton, the source of just about our trade surplus in the first half of the century, they were of course talking about their exploitation of black bodies.
The dirty secret of American capitalism is that its financial base has always been the fruits of slavery. Indeed, Wall Street is its premier fruit.
J.
People like Murphy and DeLauro are why we moved back to Connecticut. (I met Murphy at an HRC event back in 2015 or 2016. Great guy.) Though MAGAs are everywhere. One of our new neighbors, a young couple with two little kids and an au pair, has a huge American flag hanging off their porch and are MAGAs. (So much for the younger generation saving us.)
Joe Falco
@Baud: Hey, as long as RFK Jr. gets to eliminate fluoride from drinking water, then anything else is fine by me! /s
SNL “Swill”
RevRick
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: This demand for purity has forever been a defect of the left. We are obsessed with ideology.
The right, meanwhile, demands purity of blood, which explains their racism, xenophobia and their obsession with female genitalia.
WTFGhost
@The Audacity of Krope: Jimmy Carter’s big Middle East peace deal was gathering people to agree that Israel had a right to exist. So, today, officially, I think all Middle Eastern countries acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, but, that was not a given at the time the “peace process” started, back in the 70s.
This is also the origin of the semi-controversial “Palestine will be free/from the river to the sea” which meant (at the time) that Israel wouldn’t be there. Since then, people insist it means that Palestinian freedom and self determination should be recognized “from the river to the sea,” and that Israel would recognize it just as truly.
Obviously, there are some haters who still want Israel wiped off the map. But at least officially, I think all nations recognize the right to exist.
schrodingers_cat
@The Audacity of Krope: Orange President is using antisemitism as a pretext, doesn’t mean it is non-existent. Also I carry no brief for the Democrats who pushed Biden out.
Including the podcast bros, did they have an assist from Obama IDK. Or Nancy Pelosi and her favorite Congressional Ds, Raskin and Schiff. They did us a great disservice.
I trust the CBC leadership. They are political pros and have good strategic instincts. I look at Congressional Ds on a case by case basis. I respect my Congressman, McGovern and I am not a huge fan of Warren, for example.
WTFGhost
@Baud: Biden just had to ruin the most beautiful word in the English language. Somehow, he got the Deep State worked from Within THE SWAMP to negatively transition the time-reversed economic flow charts, so that American consumers end up paying the price of tariffs on imports, rather than the reverse… which only worked because Trump held the diagrams upside down, and backwards, and, let’s face it, never actually looked at any of them, but, let’s ignore that, Trump gets graded on a curve.
JML
@WTFGhost: I don’t know how true that is; there’s still 28 countries that don’t officially recognize Israel as a sovereign nation:
Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Niger, and Pakistan. Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Now, several of these it’s more just a paper/official politics thing, but it’s still very much out there. And after the reprehensible and indefensible actions of the Netanyahu government, there’s a lot more people who think Israel has lost it’s right to exist as a nation. (I’m not one of them, but I do understand the feeling) And there’s a lot of people who still believe in the original meaning of the “from the river to the sea…” statement and think that Israel should be wiped off the map in favor of a renewed Palestine.
Mai Naem mobile
@Captain C: I think Stephen Miller is just another damaged guy who is trying to outdo his dad’s success a la tfg and Fred. I know this is just armchair psychoanalyzing but I think RFK Jr has a bit of that too. RFK Jr’s obviously has other issues like his dad being assassinated and growing up with 10 siblings where there’s no way you’re going to get the attention you need for a normal childhood.
schrodingers_cat
@WTFGhost: What the press is doing with respect to Agent Orange is not grading on a curve. He is getting As when he is a failing student.
The Audacity of Krope
@schrodingers_cat: The curve is the same as that of a hand with its middle finger extended.
Mr. Bemused Senior
W was a legacy admission. What prompts people to adhere to Trump mystifies me given his reverse-Midas touch. [ETA perhaps in their arrogance they expect to escape in time. More fool they.]
Gretchen
@Professor Bigfoot: it’s called Personality Crisis. Found on Apple iTunes and similar. The Pod Save boys are too smug for me. I prefer the Professional Left podcast. Two old school Midwestern bloggers who have been warning about Both Sidesism for 25 years. Good luck with the yard work
Professor Bigfoot
@Professor Bigfoot: Och, but nevermind, for I found it.
I agree with the Professor, and I’ve long said that most engineers are well trained, but POORLY educated.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Dogwhistles, my man, dogwhistles.
We who are not white men have grown quite sensitive to the sound.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: SPLITTER!!
I take one short break to drink some water and catch up on the Juice and here you are, making me spit all over my poor iPad. 😂
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: I was struck by contrast between the respect Trump has shown Arab leaders– including Syrian President al-Sharaa– on this trip and the relative indifference with which Trump treated the Israeli PM when he visited the White House last month.
Israelis are watching this trip closely, and I bet they see it too. Netanyahu has always touted his strong support from the Americans, but those pretensions have been laid bare this week. As the acerbic Israeli commentator Iris Boker put it:
I’m not saying Netanyahu’s government is gonna fall next week. But this week has seen a lot damage done to Netanyahu’s political position, and it’s not over yet.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: We should be so lucky. There’s one SOB who deserves a cell in a dungeon somewhere.
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: Oh, see, I thought it was a canard by the pro-Israel policy side to disguise their anti-Muslim (and anti-Muslim coded population) bigotry.
And your side is using a bullhorn. Forget dog whistles.
Professor Bigfoot
@French Onion Soup: Nah, just a typically blindered white man.
Because you CANNOT ever listen to Black people, or women or even Jews. Y’all already know better. 🙄
WTFGhost
@J.: With NO offense intended to anyone, no matter who helped raise them, I never trusted anyone whose job title made absolutely no sense to me for *years* until I finally remembered Wikipedia exists.
“Au pair.” I mean, what would you expect to result from that, if you have a truly imaginative mindset? The daughter of Ming the Merciless? Prof. Charles X. CLaremont’s illegitimate love child who houses the Phoenix force, meaning every time she farts, there’s this huge puff of fire, and a golden egg, from which she hatches in a few hours, which, hey, human mutation, ain’t it amazing?
I pictured nothing normal, nothing sacred, nothing not earth-shattering deadly and nefarious, coming from an “au pair” until I actually found its definition and thought it was pretty lame. “Young nanny, so you don’t have to pay them as much.”
Jackie
Is anyone
watchinglistening the Supremes rip Sauer to shreds?Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: I’m turning anti-Arab, that’s true enough, because them motherfuckers in Dearborn tried to tell us Black people that we shouldn’t vote in our own best interests because of what’s going on on the other side of the world, and I cannot say this strongly enough, fuck them people.
PS— did you know that a significant fraction of American Muslims are Black people?
Have you ever heard the Arabic term abeed?
Belafon
@Professor Bigfoot: In order for us to properly implement trade schools as alternatives to going to college, we are going to have to either require them to teach some college courses, set things up so that people can attend a two year college for free with room and board, or fix the way history, government, and economics are taught in high school.
Paul in KY
@rusty: It’s like Homer Simpson designing a car. We know how that turned out…
WTFGhost
@tam1MI: Hee. Weren’t we just recently arguing about how the oldsters still ruled, Old1 was still in charge of X, Old2 was left in charge of Y?
NB: I’m merely noting irony – not suggesting anyone is on the wrong side of any battle. Yes, “ageism” sometimes cuts both ways.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: I had a Genesis (2016) and had some battery problems and divested myself of it. The Sonata is a sweet looking car. My nephew has a 2022 one and loves it.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Thank you for correcting that. They don’t care too much about the laws/rights etc. if they need to abuse them to turf out the ‘undesirables’.
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: Would I be wrong to assume a lot of those Dearborn residents have family in Palestine or other regions affected by our imperialist policies?
I’m also sick of this notion that our government has more leeway to abuse people abroad than they have power over anything here. Perhaps we need to experience here a little of what Palestine is going through. Not that it’s likely to happen, but your argument is selfish.
NutmegAgain
So very proud of my senator, and reps. (I have Larsen, who is also good, for my rep.). DeLauro is the adjoining district. She’s a firecracker.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: All the more mind boggling that Biden & company thought they had to hug Bibi close & treat him w/ kid gloves.
NutmegAgain
@J.: I too moved back to CT, about 5 years ago. Of course I left the People’s Republic of MA. So despite having terrific congress critters like Murphy (who is awesome), I’m spoiled enough to think, “well of course this is how they should all act.” I’m in sort of central CT, and I think the area is lousy with far right fanatics. But I guess it’s relative.
Professor Bigfoot
@Belafon: I agree entirely; but we both know why white conservatives don’t want actual American history taught.
jonas
@Suzanne: Yeah, it’s like they’ve reached maximum saturation point trying to convince men that stockpiling AR-15s will solve their gender anxiety, so now it’s carnivore diets, supplements, and pumping iron, all guaranteed to turn you into a goddamn sexual tyranosaurus.
“Send check or money order to…”
Geminid
@Geminid: One weird thing about this trip: when the Houthis lobbed another ballistic missile at Israel on Tuesday, the proceedings in Riyadh didn’t skip a beat. The missile’s flight path took it few hundred miles west of the Saudi capital, so there there was no physical threat. But still, US officials in Riyadh might have denounced the attack and as far as I can tell they ignored it.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Considering actual Palestinians were telling us to vote for Kamala, and what we’re seeing right now from the Trump regime, I don’t give a fuck about them. As far as I’m concerned they are either fucking stupid or their some flavor of white supremacists and we, Black Americans, are abeed.
Fuck ‘em.
Edited to add- you goddamn right I’m selfish. White people are already trying to reinstate fucking Jim Crow thanks to THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS.
FUCK ‘EM.
Manyakitty
@narya: better to get it and stay safe. Smart move.
YY_Sima Qian
A big deal, the 1st time that the PRC has seen reduced carbon emissions at a time of rapid expansion in power generation/consumption:
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian: Someone’s planning for 100 years.
Unlike us.
JML
@Soprano2: Ha, the non-hybrid version is what my dealership gave me as a rental while they dinked around with my Kona. I thought it drove very well, looked nice, and had a very stupid gear shift that was the least intuitive thing ever.
Hope you like your new car!
ExPatExDem
I saw that the DNC is trying to use a procedural technicality now to push out David Hogg and Malcolm Kenyatta.
Is the goal to try and get even fewer young voters to turn out for them in 2026? Smh.
Kelly
https://www.consumerreports.org/water-contamination/how-to-get-pfas-out-of-your-drinking-water-a7303943293/
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: Better we finance an apartheid state abroad, with the ultimate goal of elimination, than do it here; amirite?
Christ, Almighty, if Democrats were more even-handed on Israel policy years ago, this wouldn’t be a problem now. Now they’re stepping up oppression everywhere. Good work.
ExPatExDem
@Professor Bigfoot: So, you’re blaming Arab voters for white racism?
Interesting.
ExPatExDem
@The Audacity of Krope: Yeah, I’m not really getting the tut-tutting at Arab-American voters for not being more sanguine about Joe and Kamala wanting to blow up their family members.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Bro, I don’t fucking care.
My rights and my life are in danger HERE, and the motherfucker those fucking Dearborners supported is an existential danger to Black people in this fucking country.
FUCK ‘em.
Professor Bigfoot
@ExPatExDem: They told Black people to not vote to “send a message” or “punish” Kamala.
FUCK THEM FUCKING PEOPLE.
Professor Bigfoot
@ExPatExDem: Good luck with Trump. 🙄
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: So you’re willing to tolerate perpetual injustice for other people as long as things seem more just at home? How does that usually work out?
ExPatExDem
@Professor Bigfoot: You told them vote for Kamala, even though she promised to blow up more of their family members.
Maybe, just maybe, the problem wasn’t them.
How many of your family members lives are you willing to sacrifice in the literal sense for the Dem party?
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: I’m not prepared to see my grandchildren sent to a segregated Jim Crow school for the sakes of people in other countries.
YOU never need worry about anything like that.
Eunicecycle
@chemiclord: Thank you!!!
Professor Bigfoot
@ExPatExDem: Did you think Trump was going to be better for them?
zhena gogolia
@Professor Bigfoot: Forget it, Jake . . .
Melancholy Jaques
@Professor Bigfoot:
Which is crazy & stupid. Multiethnic America is wildly successful & popular worldwide. The pure WASP strain of American culture is probably the least popular.
Paul in KY
@The Audacity of Krope: Theodoric of York will actually be your healthcare provider/barber!
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: One difference now is that the Republican Israel Hawks in Congress are afraid to cross Trump. So is Netanyahu.
Another phenomenon I’ve noticed is that there is a substantial cohort of “America First” conservatives who want US support for Israel scaled back; some even want it ended. I don’t know how influential these people are, but they’re out there. This is a very different dynamic than existed during the “Global War on Terror” and I wonder if it’s a reversion to the norm for these folks.
Professor Bigfoot
@zhena gogolia: Well, we know who thinks Black people should sacrifice their own children on the altar of THEIR choice, so there’s that.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: The diaspora can be nuttier than the homegrown version about politics of their former home. Ask me how I know.
Professor Bigfoot
Well… we are talking about MAGA… 😉
JML
@The Audacity of Krope: how’s it working out for the pro-Palestine folks in MI who voting against Kamala to send a message? Have they advanced their cause one iota? Or are they part or the whole eff up in 2024 that has led to the worst president in modern history getting a second bite at it and being 400,000 times worse?
You never hear or see the current administration and the GOP getting sh!t on half as hard as the pro-Palestinian folks did Joe & Kamala…and everything is worse for them now. So please, remind me again why we should be looking at them with favor now? they made a terrible political calculation (that made have been leavened with corruption in their own ranks, let’s be honest) that helped screw over most of the country, including their own people here and abroad.
Seems perfectly fair for the people getting screwed the hardest by this administration to give them a little side-eye plus. Yes, the GOP is most responsible, but the people who refuse to admit that voting for the supposed “lesser of two evils” results in less evil and not understanding that purity politics LOSE need a reboot.
Paul in KY
@Captain C: He reminds me of Eichmann (that being Miller)
The Audacity of Krope
Would be understandable…if we weren’t directly financing the murder of people and creation of apartheid conditions in foreign countries with our tax money.
I’m here arguing for justice for everyone. I voted for your justice for some platform, it lost. I can understand completely why people didn’t support the justice for some platform, as their families were among those excluded.
JML
@ExPatExDem: No, we told them to vote for Kamala because it was the only chance they had of someone giving a crap about them in the White House. How are they doing with the Current Occupant? Who wants to raze what’s left of Gaza to the ground, remove all the people, and build hotels on it?
Eunicecycle
@Trivia Man: “I’m a people person, dammit!”
Captain C
@Paul in KY: Eichmann with a little more obvious hate in his heart. If he had a medical degree, he’d be a Mengele wannabe.
Geminid
@ExPatExDem: My understanding is this procedural challenge could cost either David Hogg or Malcolm Kenyatta their DNC post, but not both.
Manyakitty
@Professor Bigfoot: YES.
YY_Sima Qian
@The Audacity of Krope:
@ExPatExDem:
Apparently, the outgoing Biden team had developed a plan to neuter the Houthis through a months long military campaign in northern Yemen, but chose not to execute the plan & hem in the incoming administration.
How the US would neuter the Houthis w/o substantial boots on the ground, & why such campaign would be any more successful than the KSA/UAE who did put substantial boots on the ground, are anyone’s guess.
One hopes that Harris would have different inclinations when it comes to kinetic military operations overseas, but one wonders if Biden would have called it quits a month in, once it becomes clear the campaign was not accomplishing much.
Dems need to junk large parts of its foreign policy platform & start anew.
The Audacity of Krope
Perhaps, but not nearly to the degree of Palestinians. Nice to see you’re willing to trade away the rights and safety of other oppressed people for your own. I see you. Classy.
YY_Sima Qian
Umm, we are jumping the shark if we only assess Biden’s legacy on Israel’s war of vengeance on Gaza through the lens of its effect on US electoral politics, & whether Arab/Muslim Americans should have held their noses & voted for Harris, anyway (the answer is of course yes).
How about Biden’s policy wrt Israel & its conduct in Gaza (& the WB, for that matter) being utterly ineffectual from the humanitarian perspective, highly damaging to the U.S.’ reputation & soft power in wide swaths of the world, highly detrimental to any notion of a “liberal international order”, & morally bankrupt?
Josie
@YY_Sima Qian:
From your pen to Democratic leaders’ eyes, hopefully.
artem1s
@Ten Bears:
he already did. he’s not going to stop until Citizen’s United is overturned and it becomes economically unfeasible and not profitable.
gvg
@Professor Bigfoot: I think the supreme cout rulings that corperations HAD to pursue stockholder immediate returns over long term company profit or be sued by the stockholders and loose control were very damaging to American businesses. As I understand it there have been a whole bunch of legal decisions AND tax laws that have slanted the direction of American businesses toward short tern “returns” and that penalize considerations like long term profitability. Long term views look at things like is this industry going to last of should the company diversify or be building the NEXT profit center without canabalizing the current one. Or investing in the training of employees as an ongoing normal business expense. Also regular upgrades to factories and equipment and watching local and worldwide trends for both the production side and the selling side. Investing in themselves, not stripping themselves. You don’t grow a company by constantly trying to fire people. You also need to please customers more than competators…I also think being able to “buy” a company using that companies own assets, leveraged in an unrealistic loan at a high rate is just ridiculous. There needs to be MORE regulation of that. And audits.
schrodingers_cat
@YY_Sima Qian:
Which parts and why?
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Like I said, YOU won’t be affected, being a white man and all, so, I don’t think we need to go any further about the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the “genocide.”
I got my own genocide to fight against right the fuck here.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: You seem to think that “punishing Democrats” (especially the Black and Jewish ones, at that) is going to do a goddamn thing for ANYONE other than the white supremacist GOP and of course, by extension, white men like you.
J.
@NutmegAgain: While there are Trump Cultists everywhere, including here in CT, there are far fewer here, even in Central CT I bet, than in Collier County, FL, where we were (and technically are still registered to vote).
Professor Bigfoot
@gvg: Capitalism is either well-regulated, or is completely sociopathic.
Well regulated capitalism yields marvelous benefits (just ask the Finns and the Norwegians and the Swedes, all of whom have private enterprise that seeks a profit); but absent that regulation, you get what we got.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Just googled that slur. I can tell you I’m not shocked about who uses it.
Professor Bigfoot
@Paul in KY: Jews have literally given their lives for the rights of Black people; and these folks expect us to join them in punishing the Black woman who was running for President.
And still cannot see just how disappointing that is to the Black electorate, and how it tells us just how much our lives are cared about.
We said Black LIves Matter, and these folks are saying “oh hell no they don’t.”
Paul in KY
@ExPatExDem: WTF would/will TFG do!!!!! Anyone who thinks Biden/Harris policies vis a vis the Middle East is more or less what TFG does/wants is completely STUPID!
Paul in KY
@ExPatExDem: As many is necessary to keep TFG out of office.
Paul in KY
@Captain C: He’s at a higher level politically than Eichmann ever reached (God help us all).
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: Ah, an expert on my life. Suppose gay folk like myself got nothing to worry about from the Trump administration. Or any of the people around me I care about who…certainly don’t all look like me to say the least.
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: You seem to think that by extending a bit of empathy who didn’t vote for Kamala, which a lot of people didn’t, I’m supporting white supremacy.
Never mind that I, myself, voted for her and did everything I could to get potentially sympathetic people around me to do the same.
Trivia Man
@ExPatExDem: i blame them for thinking orange head was a better choice to stop their family members getting blown up. “Both sides” snd “trump will fix it!” Were absolutely stupid takes that everybody could tell were stupid takes.
Arab voters in dearborn did as much as any single group to dump us in the sewer we are in. To quote the Professor – Fuck them
Trivia Man
@The Audacity of Krope: Pop quiz: would palestine be better iff under a Kamala administration or a Trump administration?
That was the choice. Period. Sending a message, bemoaning past and present disasters… the choice was who will make policy in the future?
Fuck ‘em
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: YOu’re telling me I should be willing to sacrifice my grandchildren’s rights and lives on the altar of a “genocide” on the other side of the world.
You can hide your gayness. Neither I nor my progenity can hide our Blackness.
You will not be affected by Jim Crow 2.0, and you’re safe to say Black peoples lives are easily sacrificed.
You’ll forgive me if I vehemently reject that.
Professor Bigfoot
@Professor Bigfoot: Oh, I just realized— it’s wasn’t disappointing, it was insulting.
I remain offended.
The Audacity of Krope
@Trivia Man: I agree Harris would have been a better choice. For that and infinite other reasons.
Again, all I’m expressing is I can understand why others may think otherwise. Maybe instead of spending every day complaining about a handful of voters in a few states, it might benefit Democrats to take their concerns seriously for once.
Soprano2
@JML: The gear shift on the column is taking me some time to get used to, that’s for sure.
Gretchen
@ExPatExDem: Nonsense! Where did she « promise to blow up » Gaza? That’s pure propaganda and you fell for it against all reason, and got the guy who is fine with no food going into Gaza and lots of bombing. Great work, you!
Trivia Man
@The Audacity of Krope: it is illegal to display a Pride flag in those Arabic majority cities.
Gretchen
@The Audacity of Krope: « Many thought otherwise » because they fell for propaganda rather than using their reasoning skills. I don’t know how you fight against that.
Gretchen
@Professor Bigfoot: I heard something interesting on the latest Professional Left podcast. The host, Bluegal, remembered a conversation she had with a white South African in the 1980s, when apartheid was still in force. This person told her that
« She really understood that her country is going to have to give this up. But the problem that people are having is you don’t understand that the houses that are built today in Johannesburg have a servant’s quarters for a black person to live in and wait on you. This is so ingrained in the culture that you wouldn’t plan a house without this. In the 1980s ».
That’s the culture Elon Musk and Peter Thiel grew up in, and want to impose on the rest of us.
Soprano2
@ExPatExDem: No, the goal is to get rid of someone at the top of the DNC who wants to actively take a side in primaries. He can either be part of the DNC leadership or take sides; he can’t do both.
Soprano2
@The Audacity of Krope: So did voting for FFOTUS get you justice for everyone? Or it is less justice for even more people? Which person wants to eject all the Palestinians from Gaza to build a beachside resort for the wealthy? What’s happening to those people’s relatives now? Have their lives improved at all, or have they gotten worse?
The Audacity of Krope
@Trivia Man: Whataboutism worthy of any average Fox zombie.
ExPatExDem
@Gretchen: Scolding people for opposing a genocide is not going to win elections.
Pretending that Biden was qualitatively better than Trump on Gaza would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.
It would be more honest to say that you were willing to overlook Biden’s genocide support because he supported other things that you did like.
I knew Harris was cooked when she sent Bill Clinton to wag his finger at Arab-American voters in Dearborn for not overlooking Biden’s monstrous foreign policy.
Paul in KY
@The Audacity of Krope: If they didn’t vote for VP Harris, they were (intentionally or unintentionally) supporting White supremacy. Exhibit 1 of 1,873,666: (White Afrikaans ‘refugees’ being welcomed with open arms).
Gretchen
@Soprano2: Hogg also wants to spend $12 million primarying Dems in safe seats, in an election cycle where $12 million spent flipping close seats would arguably be more useful.
ExPatExDem
@Soprano2: Yes…because we know the DNC would never take sides in a primary.
LOL
Paul in KY
@The Audacity of Krope: I can’t understand anyone thinking VP Harris and TFG were basically the same thing, etc. etc.
Baud
@ExPatExDem:
Never has, to my knowledge. But I’m not a conspiracy theorist.
The Audacity of Krope
@Soprano2: I’m not defending the position that they were right to abstain or vote for Trump. But going forward we will need people who didn’t vote for Harris. That should be obvious.
These people have a just cause. Spending every day berating them in absentia because you don’t like their tactics isn’t helping anything.
Paul in KY
@ExPatExDem: Man you are one crazy and/or stupid MFer…
Baud
@Soprano2:
I think there are two issues. One is the rule that says DNC officials can’t get involved in primaries. There’s some second issue involving the DNC election. I’m not sure what’s going on there.
The first issue is unassailable.
ExPatExDem
@Baud: Donna Brazile disagrees with your assessment.
Gretchen
@ExPatExDem: Everybody opposes genocide. The question is how best to stop it when there are numerous forces that want it to continue. You love your propaganda because it makes everything simple and you don’t have to think or weigh less-than-perfect alternatives. That’s why folks like Fox News and lefty propaganda: the answer is simple.
Baud
@ExPatExDem:
Lots of Dems try to pander to bad people.
Gretchen
@ExPatExDem: Hoo boy. There’s a blast from the past. A Bernie-bro still holding his grievances from 2016.
ExPatExDem
Biden and Harris didn’t.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: I’ve honestly thought for years that, with my particular skillset, I’d be a multi-millionaire today if I were a sociopath. Hell, I could have made bank in just the last six months by investing heavily in Geo Group the morning after the election because I knew Shitgibbon was going to hire them to build concentration camps.
Bill Arnold
@ExPatExDem:
Just the little Trump/Musk thing of destroying USAID will end up killing seven figures, minimum.
His pro-fossil fuel policies will probably end up killing at least several hundred million humans relative to the track Biden was on (mostly darker skinned, poorer humans).
His gutting of US medical science and epidemic response infrastructure could easily end up with an eight figure human body count.
His abandonment of Ukraine has many countries threatened by their nuclear-armed neighbors talking internally, both openly and behind closed doors, about acquiring nuclear arsenals, increasing the risk of a thermonuclear war, regional or total. (1-2 billion, 2-6 billion respectively, by at least one estimate.)
Interesting Name Goes Here
@ExPatExDem: “What’s it like being a rocket scientist?”
– Jeff Garlin, RoboCop 3
Professor Bigfoot
@ExPatExDem: That is a fucking lie.
Professor Bigfoot
@Citizen Alan: That’s me, too— I coulda done the Prosperity gospel preacher thing; I know just how to do it and I’m pretty good at it.
But I need to be able to look myself in the mirror.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
The way they have PIMPED
and, I do mean PIMPED
just used those folks ..
They will soon be onto their next cosplay revolutionary cause celebre 😡😡😡
ExPatExDem
@Professor Bigfoot: Biden’s Gaza policy was objectively monstrous. Harris said she would have changed nothing.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Obvious typing voices are obvious. So, I take it someone’s new website isn’t turning out.
JML
@Soprano2: lol, I did not love it. happier to have it on the floor than on the wheel. and the flappy paddle gear shifters are a little silly in an automatic SEDAN. not everything needs to be sporty. But the GPS display was nice. and again: smooth ride and comfy car, which is definitely the more important part. Hope you enjoy it!
Professor Bigfoot
@ExPatExDem: Believe as ye wish.
Lily
The false image and lies never stop. Where is the tribute to Mother’s Day in ‘My wet jeans so tight!’ ‘Here’s my chest again!’ ‘A candid shot of my virility in flowing water!’
He staged a precisely located *photo shoot* from above of himself starring in a picturesque pool with small children (way too young to say No, or even know enough to). Other family members peripheral.
Presented this scene to say ‘I took the family on an innocent hike and a dip on this national sentimental day and here we are, so healthy!’ No mother in the middle btw, and he’s directing the kids.
YY_Sima Qian
@schrodingers_cat: Dead thread, but like the part where the Biden Team thinks it is a good idea to wage a monthly long military campaign (Congressional approval, what’s that?) in Norther Yemen to greatly degrade the Houthi threat.
The KSA/UAE had waged years of ruinous war in Yemen trying to defeat the Houthis, causing a massive humanitarian crises (including famine) in so doing, & put lots of their own boots (or at least that of mercenaries that make up their armies) in the effort. A war that Obama & Biden criticized but did not use any of the leverage the US had over the KSA/UAE to alleviate the humanitarian effect, & continued to directly/indirectly facilitate via weapons sales. I assume the Biden plan would not have put a lot of US boots on the ground, as that would be a recipe for a quagmire. However, as the bombing campaigns by both Biden & Trump have shown, aerial strikes w/ “local boots on the ground” do not work.
Yet, it has been inconceivable to the Biden team force Israel to reach a ceasefire in Gaza as the political means to reduce the Houthi threat to civilian shipping in the Red Sea. After all, the Houthis did substantially ramp down their attacks on civilian shipping while the temporary ceasefire in Gaza lasted, & ramped back up when the ceasefire fell apart. Israeli media has been quite open in reporting that Bibi has no interest in a sustained ceasefire, & wants to continue the war indefinitely to save his political bacon, which Biden’s policy wrt Israel does not seem to acknowledge.
chemiclord
@The Audacity of Krope: From what I understand… not really. The Arab population of Dearborn, as I understand it, it’s mostly Lebanese, Syrians, and Egyptians. There’s some Palestinians, but not particularly a large percentage.
My brother, who lives in Troy, actually found it rather fascinating how he didn’t hear terribly much about Palestine until election time, and has gotten real quiet again in the aftermath. What hasn’t gone away is their desire to stomp on LGBTQ people, which they have been doing for years, often siding with the GOP on those issues.