i'm sorry, an american religious nutjob is building a compound in guyana? www.notus.org/congress/sup…
— Sky Marchini (@sky.skymarchini.net) June 10, 2025 at 6:13 PM
When Rep. Mark Green announced his retirement from Congress on Monday, citing a mysterious job opportunity he couldn’t pass up, most members were surprised and confused. Green is already a very wealthy man, according to his personal financial disclosures, and he is extremely powerful as the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
But not everybody was so surprised.
During his time in Congress, Green has been pitching people on a foreign business opportunity in South America, five sources told NOTUS.
Specifically, Green has mentioned a potential investment in Guyana, a country on the north Atlantic coast of South America that is currently experiencing a massive oil boom.
He has also made at least one trip to the country. On Monday, when he announced his resignation, Green was in Guyana, three sources told NOTUS, causing him to miss votes. He remains in Guyana, these sources said, also missing votes on Tuesday.
The sources told NOTUS that Green was “cagey” about the opportunity — “super cagey,” according to one of the sources — never disclosing specifically what the business was and how he’s connected to the venture. He simply pitched the idea as a way to make money, two sources told NOTUS.
Additionally, Green has used his powerful congressional connections to try to land meetings with potential investors, according to these sources.
On at least two occasions, according to a source briefed on the situations, lobbyists who were visiting Green for what they believed were legislative meetings were surprised to find themselves on the other end of the conversation. It was Green who had something to sell them: a mysterious business opportunity…
Green has been notably guarded about why exactly he plans to leave Congress once reconciliation is finished. In his press release announcing his intention to resign, Green simply said he was recently “offered an opportunity in the private sector that was too exciting to pass up.”…
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‘The People’s Temple but make it right wing’ sounds about right for 2025.
— Testudo Aubrei (@ritterteufeltod.bsky.social) June 10, 2025 at 6:26 PM
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GOP Rep. Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has announced that he intends to leave Congress after the House votes again on President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy package.
— CNN (@cnn.com) June 9, 2025 at 7:30 PM
… Green will be resigning in the middle of the 119th Congress, and his term was set to end after the 2026 midterm elections. Green said in the statement there will be a special election to replace him.
His departure will leave the GOP with a slimmer majority in the House. The current party breakdown in the House is 220 Republicans and 212 Democrats, with three vacancies from heavily Democratic districts.
A former Tennessee state senator and an emergency physician, Green was first elected to Congress in 2018. He became chairman of the Homeland Security panel in his third term in 2023, and he led House Republicans’ impeachment of former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas…
In 2017, Green was Trump’s pick to be Army secretary in his first term, but he withdrew his name from consideration following a backlash after his past controversial statements on LGBT issues, Islam and evolution resurfaced.
Green reversed a decision to retire last year after he received encouragement from multiple Republicans, including then-candidate Donald Trump, to stay in Congress…
When first announcing he wouldn’t run for reelection in February 2024, Green said he had accomplished what he set out to do in Congress, pointing to the House voting to impeach Mayorkas, an effort he helmed from his committee, and a sweeping GOP border security bill that did not move forward in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Asked after his first announcement what it said about the state of the House Republican Conference, Green argued that any dysfunction is due to the slim margins in the House.
“The other side votes their ideology, and it makes it very hard to get stuff done with a thin majority,” he said in February 2024. “That’s just the way that is. What we need to do is win more seats, and have a bigger majority, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
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Mark Green had an eventful year last year, for those who aren’t familiar-
nashvillebanner.com/2024/09/13/m…— Aaron Fritschner (@fritschner.bsky.social) June 9, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Contested divorces can be expensive, but the heart (or some other organ) wants what it wants. Per the Nashville Banner…
Republican Congressman Mark Green has filed for divorce from his wife of 35 years after having an affair, according to a dispatch from his wife.
In a note obtained by the Banner, Camilla Green accuses her husband of having an affair with a 32-year-old woman after being corrupted by his time in Congress, warning that his peers may become “intoxicated with power and adoration.”
“He is living life greatly deceived. I have offered reconciliation, and he wants nothing of it and has insisted on a divorce. Satan has rewritten our marriage in his mind,” she wrote. Multiple sources tell the Banner that the letter was sent to members of Congress…
According to Camilla Green, the 59-year-old congressman is living life “deceived” by the affair with what she described as a 32-year-old woman from a Washington-based news organization.
“I want to make others aware of how readily available ‘predators’ are for our husbands. If my story can prevent this tragedy from happening to someone else, I will tell it,” the note reads.
POLITICO subsequently reported that Camilla Green had misidentified the real mistress, who does not work at Axios, and reports that the real mistress, who works in politics, confirmed the reporter was not involved…
Mark Green filed for divorce in Montgomery County at the end of August, citing irreconcilable differences. No response has been filed as of Friday. The couple would celebrate their 36th wedding anniversary next month..
(There’s already multiple Repubs jockeying for Rep. Green’s seat, unsurprisingly.)
War for Ukraine Day 1,203: Unfortunately the Quiet Won’t Last
Betty Cracker
Gonna remember that line for next time Bill is wrong about something.
cain
Cool. The devil made him do it.
His wife is a loon as well.
But whatever. If we can take his seat it’s all good
sab
@Betty Cracker: I feel lucky my guy even puts up with me. Things about me that drove my first spouse incandescent with rage just make my current (for twenty four years) spouse laugh. “That is just you being you.”
Ten Bears
Didn’t the Bushies push a conservative utopia down there?
A Dubai on the North South American Atlantic coast?
I’ve got no problem with those kind leaving …
sab
@sab: And yet, today, I yelled at him when he stomped on our day lilies while cleaning the gutters. He had no idea why he shouldn’t stomp on those green things in our yard.
My not yet step-daughter complains that her guy does no yard work. I tell her you do not want these big-footed men in your yard amongst plants you care about.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
Were Mrs. SFAW to adopt that position (vis-a-vis me, not Bill, of course), she’d get pretty tired repeating that line.
sab
Probate and related. I decided years ago when my parents declined that I would do the right thing and withhold and all that usual stuff so that our nurse’s aides would have some retiement protection.
State of Ohio has bent over backwards to make sure that was a bad choice.
Shalimar
Horny for a woman who wasn’t even born yet when he and his wife got married seems like a difference he will most likely get over in time.
Jay
T told me tonight that “The World Misses Me.”
I have been “hiding at home” since the last job. No contact, other than with T, and her doctors and nurses.
NotMax
Exclusive right to sell Kool-Aid in Guyana?
//
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Did autocorrect change “the first time” to “the next time?”
:)
eclare
@Betty Cracker:
Hahaha…good thing I wasn’t sipping on a drink!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Shalimar: that and the murdered rent bois in the basement is starting to smell and she is tried of explaining Mark’s hobby to the neighbors.
NotMax
@Enhanced Voting Techniques
That’s why God created chest freezers, don’tcha know.
//
eclare
Got to put a plug in for this documentary about Jonestown:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32421513/
It’s very well done, and the parallels with FFOTUS are chilling, down to each man’s obsession with his hair.
eclare
@Jay:
Stress of the past year and T’s illness?
Elizabelle
If not oil, maybe Green can build a TRUMP detention center in Guyana. Who knows?
Dreadful guy.
eclare
Wow. A lot of us either up early or late.
Baud
I knew the media was in bed with Republicans, but I didn’t realize how fat it went.
Jay
@eclare:
Stress of the past two jobs, Orange during covid then getting kicked to the curb, Raider, where I just have to fix stuff, going toxic and mismanaged on a MGMT change.
The final straw for me at Raider, was not the MGR trying to kill coffee breaks, it was a the “Lead Hand” tearing apart a pipe chopsaw, with out documenting how it was put together, a 2hr job turned into 2 days, because idiot.
Followed by “old guy”. Convinced the “widow next door” to sell him, the pressure washer. It did not run. So, new gas, carb cleaning, oil change, checked the oil seals, checked the valves, (okay, not great). Got it running, one hour, $175.
So, I am talking the “Old Guy”, through the care and feeding of a pressure washer, and our “parts guy”, just starts talking over me, sprouting BS unrelated to Pressure washers.
That, was it. Shipper receiver Bailey had a rack of tapes, on a bungee chord. She had a roll of coarse paper, 6 feet tall, sitting on the floor. So I, in my spare time, , made a hard rack for her tapes, easy, made a hard rack for her course paper, made a drop down bin for “peanuts”.
When Giovanni, who left for a better job, Sam and Bailey were “transferred” to “learn” my job became shit.
T’s cancer, any how, we had a minor surgery yesterday. It all went well.
eclare
@Jay:
That really sucks when events just pile on.
Glad the surgery went well.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: Sometimes we just have to “sit a while” and recover.
I am glad to hear T is doing well.
Baud
Plane crash in India. Chilling video if you can stomach it.
prostratedragon
From New Zealand:
— “Nothing Concrete,” ep. 3.2, My Life Is Murder
The plot of this one involves wealthy preppers, some American, down there. Just happened to be watching.
eclare
@Baud:
OMG
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: That’s ‘cause Mr. Sab is a damn good bloke, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
rikyrah
Whatever opportunity it is, it’s more than likely evil😠
rikyrah
@Baud: 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽😪😪
rikyrah
@Jay:
🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽 for T
eclare
@Baud:
Morning Joe just said people were being taken to hospitals? Maybe people on the ground?
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: It’s a 787 and it looks from the video like the flaps maybe weren’t set correctly for takeoff (as some noted). But that wouldn’t really explain this by itself. Very odd and I suppose we’ll have to wait for the investigation to know why this happened.
Another shocking accident; Indian commercial aviation is generally quite safe.
WTFGhost
@Betty Cracker: https://www.reddit.com/r/StandUpComedy/comments/7ac2yf/stewart_lee_taxi_driver_argument/
… is a 2.5 minute comic engagement with the *BEST* way of winning an argument, assuming the other arguer won’t hold it against you for the rest of your life.
It’s also hilariously funny.
WTFGhost
@cain: Eh, I wouldn’t say “loon.” At one time, every Catholic was told to map every sin to the 10 commandments. Getting a speeding ticket was dishonoring the (4th, I believe, for Catholics) commandment, “honor thy father and mother” = “accept all worldly authority placed over you” = don’t break the law.
Her saying “Satan rewrote our marriage in his mind!” is a very similar thing, working from a different theological basis. “My husband has fallen for Satan’s deceptions!” would be another way of saying it, as would “my husband is violating his oath of marriage, how can you trust him to keep his oaths to ethics, and justice, and, and, and…?”
It makes sense, assuming that’s the religion she follows, and that she believes other people follow, e.g., assuming she, and they, are “evangelicals” = “Republicans with religious dress”.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: glad Ts surgery went well.
I relate about hiding, pulling back from things. I wonder what part of the world T believes is missing you, and where she hopes you’ll reenter or reappear.
IOW it’s perfect you’ve been available at home to help T through. And it sounds like at that job you described, they were lucky to have you.
WTFGhost
@Matt McIrvin: A 787 is the plane Boeing engineers said might have unexpected metal fatigue, due to the mismatched parts that were coming from other sources. Things that were supposed to “just fit” were kicked, jumped on, hit with rubber mallets, etc., to force them to fit, and that’s the sort of thing that could cause problems.
Could it cause *this* problem? Beats me – flap misdeployment doesn’t sound like a metal fatigue problem, until some engineer says “actually, metal fatigue makes perfect sense!”
Gloria DryGarden
@WTFGhost: i was just consulting with a friend about those 10 commandments. Wondering why there isn’t one for thou shalt not lie. Closest thing is thou shalt not bear false witness, which seems to be about testifying in court, or perjury.
i said maybe god could talk to Moses by a burning one of those cars, thou shalt not lie to a nation of people and drag them all under the rubble of the mess you make. Write it on a clay tablet, bake it in the same fire. Commandment 11.
I just hate all the lies, manipulating and convincing the public. Partly I’m referring to an earlier thread, the things congress people are saying that promote the lie about violence in LA, and who is inciting it. Just mad, I guess.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
Remember, five of the commandments were lost when Moses dropped the third tablet.
lowtechcyclist
@cain:
It’s an R+10 district, so it’s a long shot even in a ‘wave’ year.
As someone (eclare IIRC) noted yesterday, the TN Republicans split up the Nashville area between three different districts so that none of them was winnable by a Dem. Green’s district, TN-7, is one of those three.
Nelle
@prostratedragon: Peter Thiel bought citizenship in NZ.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: watching it, urging that airplane to climb and… damn.
International flight, fully loaded, fully fueled… damn.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: that explains it!
god, I didn’t get that memo!
( how could Moses have let us down like that? Sound tracks cuing up in my mind. The Beatles, don’t let me down….. and then “ go down Moses” by can’t remember.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: I can testify to this; I spent a few years in India multiple times a year and took Air India pretty regularly.
Indian aviation in general is pretty safe; hell, India is pretty safe.
(India is the only thing I miss about my working life- the people, the food, the music… ah well. I do NOT miss being the enormous, fat assed American among them even though I actually was)
lowtechcyclist
@Jay:
Glad to hear T’s surgery went well.
Sorry to hear the rest of your life has gotten so rough. Hang in there.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
I learned about it from a documentary on world history.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: “Brooks World History” ?
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin:
@WTFGhost: One commentator said this crash could have a matter of an incorrect entry of weight in the plane’s computer before the take-off.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Jesus, that’s awful. :(
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: for real? You’re making this up… wait, what?
ok requesting link, if this is a thing.
if I’m being gullible, you don’t get any points
Matt McIrvin
@WTFGhost: I’m not going to spend too much time speculating. It’s an 11-year-old plane (it always surprises me how long the 787 has been flying, since I still think of it as the new model–but for all the 787’s teething problems, this is the first hull-loss crash of one).
Boeing’s recent quality-control troubles have led to news stories drawing a line between them and every incident involving one of their planes, even if the plane is decades old and it obviously has nothing to do with that, so I’ve been reluctant to play along.
MagdaInBlack
@Gloria DryGarden:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8ihcq4hzR4
Go ahead and give him points, its Baud being Baud =-)
eclare
@lowtechcyclist:
Yes, that was my comment. I think there is still a lawsuit pending over the redistricting, but you don’t hear much about it. I know one was filed.
Gloria DryGarden
@Nelle: will he leave? Will he run jd Vance from over there?
nz might be sorry….
worrisome
Gloria DryGarden
@MagdaInBlack: lol
thx
giggle. If he could pull the other leg, now, so I’m even..
Baud, not giving you points, but you can have all my olives, and this beer.
prostratedragon
@Nelle: I know. Pretty sure they were running a bit of satire on that.
Another Scott
DNC is redoing the vice chair elections and Hogg isn’t running again. A sensible decision.
More at your favorite news outlet.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Read about that yesterday. Finally got clarity about what’s going on.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
Beer and olives for breakfast?
WTFGhost
@Gloria DryGarden: For Catholic schoolkids, “thou shalt not bear false witness” was “don’t lie.” Technically, it means “don’t lie about other people,” though I’ve heard speculation that, under Jewish law, it is (as you mention) a prohibition of perjury. Jewish law is actually very strict on what you can, and can’t, say, and even gossip is a sin, for which one must try to make amends. Still: most Christians I’ve spoken to do take it as (at least) “don’t lie about other people,” and don’t think it excuses non-sworn lies about others.
@Matt McIrvin: You may have missed what I was getting at. I was saying “if there’s a 787 problem, that we should speculate about, it’s metal fatigue. Otherwise, we shouldn’t, because no other warnings have been issued, even unofficially.” I didn’t see any way that metal fatigue could cause the flaps to be wrong, but, I didn’t know that it *couldn’t*, either.
Someone else mentioned the wrong weight might have been loaded into the plane’s computer. That made a boatload more sense than “metal fatigue,” but I didn’t read it and digest it until after the 5 minute edit window had closed.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: Very helpful!
zhena gogolia
@sab: Same here! I used to get the silent treatment for letting the cat out after I’d let him in a few minutes earlier.
zhena gogolia
@Jay: And BJ!
Suzanne
That Satan, what an imp.
geg6
@Another Scott:
I have no faith in the DNC at this point. They can “do over” all they want. But they’ll never get another penny from me. This new chair (Martin???) seems weak and his ideas are old based on everything I’ve read.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I’m just pleasantly surprised the Dems weren’t blamed for once.
They Call Me Noni
@Betty Cracker: I read that it crashed in a residential area. Tragic.
brantl
WTF is NOTUS, and it looks like his head is photoshopped into that picture in the House?
Geminid
@Another Scott: David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve PAC has endorsed Virginia Delegate Irene Shinn in the race to succeed the late Gerry Connolly (VA11).. There will be a “firehouse” primary conducted by the Democratic party later this month, with the special election in September. Connolly endorsed former aide James Walkinshaw for the post.
This is the second Leaders We Deserve endorsement in a House race. The other was also for an open seat, in the Illinois 2nd CD.
Baud
@Geminid:
Thanks. Seems too early for endorsements for challengers to incumbents, but I suspect they’re coming.
I’m just glad the conflict of interest issue is resolved. I hope Martin still pushes for the rule change.
Baud
Important reminder
Shalimar
@Suzanne: I suspect she was already participating in a lot of evil with hubby during the last 35 years before Satan got involved.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: I am glad he is out of the DNC.
Kosh III
@Ten Bears:Didn’t the Bushies push a conservative utopia down there?
I seem to remember that Shrub bought 20,000 acres in Uruguay.
Suzanne
@Shalimar:
I would be shocked — SHOCKED!! — to hear such news.
Baud
@Shalimar:
@Suzanne:
Trouples are inherently unstable.
Matt McIrvin
@WTFGhost: Fair enough.
It’s almost always more than one thing. I like watching Mentour Pilot’s videos on YouTube, and he emphasizes the “Swiss cheese” model of disasters: there are all these different, imperfect safety systems with specific gaps in them, and an accident results from the holes in all the slices of Swiss cheese lining up by some chance combination of circumstances. Often complacency has set in, little lapses of procedure that people make because they get away with it 99 times out of 100, but it widens those holes and makes an eventual alignment more likely.
Suzanne
@Baud: Throuples are for people who have room in their lives for dramatics. That is very much not me, but y’all do y’all.
Of course, I have been trying to pick some tile for my entryway for the better part of a year now, and I still can’t do it. The carpet is old and worn, and any selection I make would be an improvement, and yet there’s two boxes of samples and I haven’t made up my mind. This is why I’m a planning and technical architect, and stay away from interior design, man.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: I am too. As has been discussed previously, it is unethical for party officers to insert themselves into party primaries. (It is also against our county and state party rules–we had to remain strictly neutral in contested primaries–and I’m surprised it wasn’t in the DNC rules.) Hogg has every right to do what he wants as a political activist, but not as a party officer.
Also, why is he going after sitting Dems as opposed to vulnerable Republicans in swing districts? Wouldn’t those be great areas for young, progressive Dems to prove their electability as well as increase Democratic representation?
Another Scott
@Suzanne: A Democrat too, no doubt. Why to Democrats insist on causing so many problems for fine, upstanding, Christian American white men with “good hair”??
[ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ]
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
They should get AI to evaluate plane safety protocols to find the gaps.
Geminid
@Baud: One district I’m keeping an eye on is the Georgia 13th, where 79 year-old Democrat David Scott has yet to say if he’s running again. It’s right on the eastern edge of Atlanta.
There are already three Democrats in the race, including state Rep. Jasmine Clark. I wonder if any of them would even want David Hogg’s endorsement
Ed. A Leaders We Deserve PAC endorsement would be accompanied by funding, but it would also come with David Hogg’s baggage. He’s got a lot of people mad at him.
Baud
@Geminid:
I’m sure the calculations are candidate and district specific.
prostratedragon
@Kosh III: Was thought to be a water play. Those acres sit on much of the surface over the Guaraní aquifer.
Baud
@Another Scott:
If Jesus is a Republican in this country, then I suppose Satan would not only be a Democrat but also the deity people should worship.
Another Scott
@Baud: Speaking of “AI”…
ArsTechnica.com on the latest Apple study in the news.
They’re still mostly page-level autocomplete. They won’t always be, of course, but people need to look beyond the hype.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@O. Felix Culpa:
I don’t know what their plans are, but those are two different elections. Primaries against incumbent Dems and the general against Republicans.
Elizabelle
Good morning, jackals. Signed off on this thread last night with Jim Jones/Guyana chatter, and wake up to the Air India tragedy. The Guardian reporting the plane came down on a hostel/lodging for doctors working at a nearby hospital. So, an extra layer of loss is possible.
Very sad. Dreamliners are so comfortable and prevalent. Over 1,100 in service; introduced in 2011, and as Matt McI said upthread, this is the first hull (complete) loss of one of them.
Comfort to those involved, and to the first responders.
Seeing photo of that intact tail makes me hope some in the very back were saved. We will find out soon enough.
Baud
@Another Scott:
A good time to remember that AI ≠ LLM.
But yeah, those results aren’t surprising.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: I’ve flown across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in them. Nice planes, from a passenger perspective.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: One of the first things I saw happen when public LLMs became available was mathematicians asking them for proofs and getting pathetic results–very seemingly human, but the human was a freshman who’d attended the lectures but not done any of the homework and was trying to bluff their way through on vibes and buzzwords.
There are projects in the works to produce models that combine LLM-like systems with more domain-specific checking to do better. But I don’t think they’re going to replace human mathematicians soon, though they may help them.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ve used free LLMs to make certain tedious document tasks easier, so I get some of the appeal. It’s just hyped up the wazoo and mostly likely will crash like so many past tech revolutions.
WereBear
AI can be helpful. I will go that far happily. Starting my research on something using the AI aggregator is like starting with a Wiki article. Look, there’s footnotes. Now it’s research!
Likewise, they produce a kind of “crowd wisdom” that may or may not be accurate, but they can’t assess for quality. So the original weasel words are in the summing up, and reveal their weakness.
It shouldn’t fly in junior high, so we should not have it doing adult things.
Baud
@WereBear:
Good analogy. I do that too.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: If Brits can eat beans on toast for breakfast… 😂
Suzanne
@Another Scott: I don’t believe in Satan, but I do kinda picture him looking a bit like Gavin Newsom….. kinda smarmy, really white teeth, visibly works out, obviously smart but also obviously makes impetuous decisions like bottle service, the kind of man who spends more time in front of the mirror than I do.
I want to be clear….. if Newsom is the nominee in 2028 or ever, he’s absolutely got my vote. I’ll vote for Satan. LOL.
RevRick
@WTFGhost: @Gloria DryGarden: @Baud:
Fun Biblical fact: what we call the Ten Commandments never calls itself the Ten Commandments. Instead, it’s the Ten Words or Statements. There is another Ten Commandments that refers to itself that way that has to do with rituals, found in Exodus 34, among which is the command, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.”
The Commandment against bearing false witness has long been understood as being against lying.
The Puritans reinterpreted the Commandment against adultery in the prophetic sense of any breakdown of a covenant, which led them to liberalize divorce laws.
Martin Luther in his Shorter Catechism flipped the Ten Commandments from shall nots to positive shall do’s. I would recommend you give them a gander.
artem1s
Our One Creator Which Flies and is Spaghetti and a Monster, please, oh pretty please have him take the other ‘Green’ with him to Guyana. Match made in heaven!
RAmen
Baud
Two things:
Baud
@RevRick:
Thou shall commit adultery!
Matt McIrvin
@WereBear: They just make up plausible-looking bogus citations all the time (like cites you read in a dream), so check all of those footnotes.
Uncle Cosmo
um, Paraguay, iirc (hard to tell those ‘guays apart, ¿verdad?) and the attraction was supposedly a large & mostly untapped aquifer beneath them. (Of course re the Bushes we know nothing is beneath them…but I digress…)
In the last few decades someone opined that the oil wars of the 20th century would be supplanted by water wars in the 21st, and to some extent we’re overdue.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: I understand the difference between primaries and general elections, thanks. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. My point is that if he wants to run “better” Dems, he might consider doing it in Dem primaries in swing districts, gaining a chance to unseat Rs as well as providing proof of concept that younger, more progressive Dems are compelling to the general electorate.
NotMax
@Professor Bigfoot
Gotta watch out for them beans.
:)
Baud
@O. Felix Culpa:
Understood. I agree, in the sense that that’s what I would try to do.
ETA: It’s a riskier play. And there may be some hesitation because failing to beat the Republican would cause them to lose credibility.
Losing a primary is safer in that respect. And if you win the primary, you’re almost guaranteed a seat in Congress.
frosty
@Baud: “…wasn’t bad, so I had another for dessert.”
Geminid
@O. Felix Culpa: I wouldn’t be surprised if Hogg’s PAC ends up endorsing mostly in safe open seats like it has twice already; and also in some of the primaries in districts with vulnerable Republican incumbents. Tho districts are where its best chances are to help put someone in Congress.
It’s tough to beat incumbents. On the Democratic side, I think only seven incumbents have lost primaries since 2018: Joe Crowley (NY) and Michael Capuano (MA) in 2018; Elliot Engel (NY) and Lacy Clay (MO) in 2020; Curt “Fuvking” Schrader (OR) in 2022; and Jamaal Bowman (NY) and Cori Bush (MO) in 2024. The last two are the ones who beat Engel and Clay in 2020.
I expect Hogg’s PAC will endorse some challengers to incumbents, if only because he said it would. But I think he really should have led with the youth angle, and not emphasized the anti-incumbent mission so much. That got him plenty of accolades at the time, but it also earned him a lot of animus unnecessarily
Ed. But personally, I haven’t had much use for David Hogg’s political activities since he reached the age 21. And when he greeted the news of Mary Peltola’s loss last year with “Good riddance,” Hogg went on my shit-list.
Chief Oshkosh
Hey, has anybody noticed just how weird these guys are?
prostratedragon
@Professor Bigfoot, @NotMax:
“Beans and Cornbread,” Louis Jordan
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: They do this because they hate the elected Ds more than the Rs. Just look at what they say, you don’t have to take my word for it
Someone made an observation that many of these BS bro types come from Republican families, so hating on Ds comes naturally to them, especially the non-white elected Ds. Plus these mean old codgers are keeping them from their rightful destiny of leading the Ds to light.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s not unusual though. Lots of Ds hate other Ds.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: I miss Norwegian Air’s transatlantic flights. Beautiful 787s. Comfortable flights.
Love Airbus, though.
Suzanne
@Baud: There’s some value, IMO, in replacing “more” Dems with “better” Dems. Example: Gallego hasn’t been everything I want him to be, but he’s miles better than Sinema, IMO. If Hogg wants to work on that kind of effort, the DNC is obviously not the forum for that.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: buen provecho, honey.
Your timing, your choice. Personally I’m having an apple and a Taos bar for breakfast. Maybe some chicken with Primal sauce. (It’s a brand)
Give the olives to the squirrels and racoons. See if they like them. Beer is for catching slugs in the garden…
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: @Geminid:
I agree that it’s definitely the easier play to run in solid blue districts. But if he’s interested in, you know, actually making a difference by increasing the Dem majority with his purported better Democrats (and they could indeed be better), then the strategic play would be to run in swing districts.
While I have compassion for the trauma he and his classmates experienced at Parkland, I do not translate that into respect for his politics. His disrespect for Rep. Clyburn alone was disqualifying.
ETA: To Suzanne’s point at #112, agree that more and better is desirable. However, when facing a fascist crisis, the immediate need is more. It’s delightful gravy if you get both.
schrodingers_cat
Coming back to the topic of this thread. Is Green’s seat gettable for the Dems?
Gloria DryGarden
@They Call Me Noni: that makes it even More awful. prayers
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat:
Word from those in Tennessee is no. It’s a gerrymandered for Rs district.
Baud
@Suzanne:
There’s always value in better just like there’s always value in more. It’s all about resource allocation and how you go about it, and of course, whether you succeed.
Inherently, pursuing better Dems results in more internal negativity than pursuing more Dems, because you have to explain why current Dems are worse. It can be done without resulting in net harm, but it requires more finesse.
Suzanne
@Elizabelle: Have you noticed the very specific squeal in Airbus planes? I asked a friend of mine who is an airline mechanic about it….. he said that Airbus planes have a specific system in them that isn’t in Boeing, Embraer, Bombardier, etc., and that’s what you hear.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: Good points. We don’t want major internal divisions when facing down a fascist crisis. Purging can happen when we’ve won. //
Gloria DryGarden
@Kosh III: in Uruguay. That’s my other country. I need to know more. This is troubling.
I thought the bushes had loads of real estate in Panama City.
Belafon
He’s greedy, his ex is crazy, and it sounds like this is another reason we need to end our dependency on oil.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: more, and also better.both, and.
Also finesse, yes. If that’s what’s needed, we deserve it.
Steve in the ATL
@Betty Cracker:
@cain:
Your comment is clearly supported by the facts. How does one even have a conversation with people who think and talk like that?
“Lovely weather we’re having”
“If Satan doesn’t make it rain because of our sins!”
Baud
@O. Felix Culpa:
People will do what they want. I wish I could control them but I can’t. AOC always faces a lame primary challenge from the center. And some Dem donors wasted $20 million on a bro study. Trump meme coins would have been a better investment.
My beef here was with the conflict of interest.
Steve in the ATL
@Ten Bears: the Bush Crime Family bought up huge swaths of Paraguay because (1) there was no extradition treaty, and (2) it gives them control over the source of fresh water.
They are not good people.
O. Felix Culpa
@Steve in the ATL:
Truth. Ms. O comes from a fundamentalist background. These are hermetically sealed communities and they have no idea how crazy they sound to people on the outside.
Gloria DryGarden
@Uncle Cosmo: good
Completely different places. They don’t even share a border. Para guy then.
Not pleased w bushes buying up water rights in another country though.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Trump’s economic MO is the authoritarian/abuser playbook: come down like a ton of bricks with some damaging measure, spook the markets, then back off when it seems like rich people or his voter base might be hurt badly enough to object. Sit back and bask in the compliments from sycophants about your chessmaster powers, when the market rallies back to slightly worse than it was before. Repeat. The long-term takeaway is “I’m the one who controls your fate”.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: & @Baud: I agree with all the points y’all made but expect a major uptick in primaries because lots of Dems are pissed off. Hoping for finesse, but we’ll see.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: Georgia license plates have the usual 3 or 4 letters and 3 numbers format. Driving to work this morning I was behind a crew cut guy in a pearl Lexus convertible with the top down and oversized sunglasses on his face. Coincidentally, the 3 letters on his plate were “BRO”. Someone at the DMV knew what they were doing….
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: Sadly, neither of us can wield our superior wisdom to control others. :) My primary beef is with the misuse of his position as a party officer. My secondary beef is with his white boy disrespect for distinguished party elders like Rep. Clyburn, which bleeds into his anti-incumbent strategy at a really inopportune time. I can’t control what Hogg does, but I also don’t have to like it when white boys (young men, actually) ostensibly on our side behave badly.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Based on some searching: Seems to be the Power Transfer Unit, which equalizes power between the different hydraulic systems. Boeing planes have them but do not use them nearly as often, because on Airbus planes they kick in when the plane is operating on one engine on the ground.
Geminid
@O. Felix Culpa: The last election precipitated a crisis in confidence in the Party among many Democrats. We probably hit a low point in February, which may be why Hogg announced his anti-incumbent effort then. As someone said, “never let a crisis go waste,” and Hogg was not the only one trying to exploit demoralization among Democrats.
I’m fairly cynical about Hogg and the others, but I’m not that worried about them. We went through something similar after Hilary Clinton Clinton lost, and I was very concerned then. But I haven’t really sweated a primary since Shontelle Brown beat Nina Turner in the summer of 2021. Now I basically trust our primary voters to pick good candidates and not be bamboozled by the opportunists.
Steve in the ATL
@O. Felix Culpa: but is that how we sound when we start talking res ipsa loquitur and replevin and trover and writ of mandamus and collateral estoppel? I hope not!
Suzanne
@Baud:
Agree. Which is why the proper forum is important.
However, apart from the political realities…. I have to say that I have some deeper feelings/principles around primaries. IMO, public service is a privilege and it should be expected for incumbents to have robust challenges every cycle. Districts change and it’s reasonable for their representation to change accordingly.
Baud
@Geminid:
Speaking of primaries, I take it you saw that the NYC primary is getting interesting.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: The people( I am but one example) who are pissed at how Biden was treated or how the purity left undermines elected Ds at every point are called cranks and tone policed by frontpagers and other commenters. And told to shut up on this blog and supposedly friendly forums like this one.
But if purity leftists want to primary members of the CBC then that is seen as a legitimate expression of frustration.
O. Felix Culpa
@Geminid: Good points.
@Steve in the ATL: Never! We are sui generis. And clearly the vox populi.
Steve in the ATL
@O. Felix Culpa: well played.
Gloria DryGarden
@Steve in the ATL: they can pal up with the descendants of Nazis in Paraguay. Not good people.
It Is a place with rain and rivers, and I assume lots of plant growth. But I like sovereign nations to have rights over their water.
Matt McIrvin
@Steve in the ATL: I hear that stuff and just assume I’m watching a Legal Eagle video. He’s going to start plugging his firm at any moment.
zhena gogolia
@Steve in the ATL:
Obligatory Sipowicz!
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Sure, there’ll be an uptick in primary challenges next year, and I’m looking forward to it. I keep hearing, “the Base wants this” and “the Base wants that,” so let’s see what the Democratic base actually wants.
I think the real fights will be in the primaries to replace retirees. There ought be around twenty of them, maybe more.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: The people who threaten to not vote for a party at any flimsy pretext are not the base by any definition of the word.
tam1MI
Hopefully the POC vice chair they screwed over in order to oust Hogg wins his seat again.
schrodingers_cat
@O. Felix Culpa: Thanks its informative to see who is allowed to throw tantrums that could lose us seats and who is not even allowed to express their opinion without pushback.
RevRick
@cain: @Baud:
Since we’re talking about evil and suffering this morning, whether it’s about a certain Congress critter or a plane crash, these are the great mysteries of life. In a perfect world, such things shouldn’t exist, and why didn’t God create a perfect world?
God’s answer to Job (chapters 38-41) amounts to “in a natural world, perfection is impossible, but if you think you can do better, have at it.”
I’m sure every zebra ever eaten by a lion would have thought this is some evil shit. But as the experience of Yellowstone National Park after the reintroduction of wolves shows, apex predators play a crucial role in a healthy ecosystem. Their reintroduction even revitalized the rivers!
It was an evil day for the dinosaurs when that asteroid smashed into the ocean off the Yucatán, but for our mammal ancestors it was party time.
So, we end up with angels and demons (fallen angels), which are non-corporeal beings of pure intelligence and will. They are the personification of the possibility expressed in Lord Acton’s dictum: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” They help us understand that we are all shaped by forces beyond us. Do we have free will or are our lives simply determined?
Personifying evil as a sneaky snake (pythos in Greek), a creature that strangles the life out of us helps us to understand the reality of what evil does. It gives shape to the ideology of empire to which every human is subjected. But I would hope that the existence of evils causes us to reflect, repent, and grow.
schrodingers_cat
@tam1MI: Kenyatta was not even mentioned by name in the Politico article.
White men who don’t even vote D for the most part are more important than all of us who do.
Baud
@tam1MI:
He almost certainly will. But the problem with the election stems from the DNC’s gender parity rules. I’m not sure of the technical details, but the way they conducted the voting disadvantaged the female candidates.
Geminid
@Baud: Cuomo and Mamdani are both polarizing figures. But I expect New York Democrats to come away from this conflict with a minimum of rancor and hard feelings, like they always do!
Baud
@Geminid:
I’m sure. This isn’t something serious like sports.
Belafon
@Another Scott: Maybe this will do to LLMs (which I think have limited uses, mainly that you can ask vague questions and get search results that are relevant) what Perceptrons did to early AI work.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Mamdani has made pronouncements about India, especially the Hindu right, which are exaggerations. I am no fan of the Hindu right but making statements that can be easily disproven ultimately help, not hurt the BJP.
He made a statement saying that people are surprised to learn that he is a Gujarati Muslim because there are no Gujarati Muslims as Modi ethnically cleansed all of them.
Modi has been terrible for Gujarati Muslims especially the poor and lower caste ones but Mamdani’s statement is an exaggeration and can be disproven easily.
Modi even has allies among the Gujarati Muslims (the wealthy Khoja community, for example). Pakistan’s founder Jinnah was a Khoja Muslim, who are predominantly Shia
Khoja and Bohra Muslims are significant minority in Mumbai also. And their cuisine is delicious. Chef’s kiss!
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: I’m once again surprised that the DNC rules awareness is so poor. We have similar gender parity rules at the state and county party levels, and work super-hard to make sure they’re followed. It’s a little complicated, but not excessively hard to do. I’m astonished that no one on the DNC Rules Committee called attention to the gender parity provisions before, during, and after the party elections. That’s SOP.
Baud
@O. Felix Culpa:
Yeah, I didn’t understand the details of the problem. Shouldn’t have happened, however.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: Yes, it shouldn’t have happened. These rules have been around for a while, although they may have been tweaked slightly. No excuse for messing up such a core process at the national level.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: My hunch is that Cuomo will pull this one out.
I’m hoping some City residents will weigh in here about who they voted for and why. I’ll also look to see what Tom Watson has to say at guitarywatson.bsky.social. Watson lives in Westchester County but he follows City politics fairly closely and is a level-headed and loyal Democrat.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: LLMs are built on perceptrons! As one of their many types of component. They’ve come in and out of fashion for decades but it seems they’re back in.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: I think so too. Then DSA will say that the election was rigged.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: What are they? Never heard of them. My programming experience only extends as far as Fortran and C++ and some HTML
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: A simple type of artificial neural network. The book Belafon was referring to was by Minsky and Papert from 1969.
tam1MI
Agreed. I don’t recall the Dems ever spending $20 million to figure out a way to win female votes.
Captain C
@Another Scott: If he got the mailing/contact lists, Hogg got what he wanted out of the DNC.
Captain C
@Baud: Satan is a notorious Democrat.
Captain C
@Baud: Just ask Kapo Miller.
Another Scott
@O. Felix Culpa: +1
What matters is 1) having the majority, and 2) preventing the monsters from blocking the majority to ultimately enact better policies.
#1 (more Democrats) is more important than #2 (better Democrats) at the moment, because the monsters are an existential threat. As long as they have the majority, they can do a tremendous amount of damage. We have to take the majority from them. #2 is a longer-term project.
We need yellow dogs and blue dogs and purple dogs and polka dot dogs at the moment to get the majority. That’s just the way it is.
E.g. Spanberger annoyed me with many of her comments about Pelosi. But she’s a good fit for Virginia and will keep the monsters out of office. That’s what we need first and foremost right now.
Eyes on the prizes.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Captain C
@schrodingers_cat:
“I am the base of the party!”
“Oh, so you volunteer; you work the phones, knock doors, are active in your precinct?”
“No, and what’s a precinct?”
“Okay, but you donate money to the party?”
“No, it’s a waste to donate to those corrupt people!”
“Well, you at least vote straight ticket pretty much every election, including primaries and off years, right, unless the candidate is a total turd, right?”
“No, I hardly ever do.”
“So, what exactly makes you think you’re the base?”
Captain C
@schrodingers_cat:
Didn’t one of the main offenders leave due (in part, at least) due to a skin which was approximately a Planck length thick?
fancycwabs
I have been told by the TN Democratic Party that they have “some exciting candidates.”
I’m not optimistic.
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: The book Perceptrons, written by Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert and published in 1969, was a critique of the single perceptron created by a psychologist, Frank Rosenblatt, and was being pursued by the computing community as the beginning of AI. That perceptron is missing a key feature of modern elements of neural networks, the activation function. The original perceptron was a linear function, and while it was really great at dividing things into pairs that had a solid boundary between what’s in and what’s out, they couldn’t handle complex stuff, like XOR. So, yes, there are perceptrons in a neural network, but there are nonlinear components as well.
I have studied quite a bit of this, not only having done some development, but I know a decent amount of history.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: Yes, and the most common nonlinear component is a function called “softmax” that a physics person will recognize as the Boltzmann distribution (with the input proportional to minus the energy).
artem1s
@Uncle Cosmo:
also, no extradition. The money supposedly came from a secret Pentagon slush fund and the whole Bush Crime family including Darth Sr. was planning to skedaddle from the US if the subject of war crimes or Eron level investigation or charges over the 9/11 shorting of AA/UA stocks and/or 2008 banking and stock market crash ever came up.
YY_Sima Qian
So, Israel just “preemptively” attacked Iran, including target in Tehran. This after the Trump Administration told Israel not to strike before the last round of talks in Oman schedule for Sunday.
Anything to keep Bibi out of jail.
Will we make it through 2025?