Warren: "That's Trump's approach — bend down to Trump, Trump will then tell everyone what reality is. That's what authoritarians do, but in a democracy we don't have to put up with it. We have our voices, we have our votes … 2026 could be pretty exciting — a chance to take back our democracy."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 21, 2025 at 10:06 PM
===
Elizabeth Warren: "The one thing I want to remind everyone is when Democrats get in power again — and we will — we've got to change the rules. We've got to change the rules on the impact of money in politics and we've got to pass the voting rights act again and make sure there is true protection."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 21, 2025 at 9:56 PM
===
Warren: "We can't live in a world anymore where we pretend that everybody is playing by the same set of rules … Republicans are determined to rig every rule they can, to break laws in order to seize power and to hang on to it. As Democrats, we have a responsibility to fight back & fight back hard"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 21, 2025 at 9:54 PM
===
BREAKING: California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs legislation setting a November election on the U.S. House map designed to boost Democrats.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) August 21, 2025 at 7:24 PM
===
Illinois is launching a first-of-its-kind legal hotline for LGBTQ+ individuals — Illinois Pride Connect.
As the only state in the nation that will provide free legal advice to protect the LGBTQ+ community, we'll help fight ignorance with information and cruelty with compassion.— Governor JB Pritzker (@govpritzker.illinois.gov) August 21, 2025 at 10:00 PM
===
Harris to embark on tour to promote memoir about presidential campaign, via @amyBwang www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202…
— P.J. Joshi (@pjoshidc.bsky.social) August 21, 2025 at 1:31 PM
… Harris announced last month that she will not run for California governor, keeping the door open for another possible presidential campaign in 2028. The tour could provide a test for whether audiences are eager to hear more from Harris — and whether she wants to jump back into a “system” that she describes as broken…
The tour is set to kick off in New York on Sept. 24, the day the book will be published, and continue on with most stops in large cities. Harris will also travel to two international cities — London and Toronto — and visit a handful of smaller cities including Durham, North Carolina. A few of the stops will be in states President Donald Trump won by large margins, including Texas, Alabama and Tennessee…
Tickets for the book tour will go on sale Friday, according to book publisher Simon & Schuster. Harris has billed “107 days” as a behind-the-scenes look at the whirlwind, 107-day presidential campaign she undertook after President Joe Biden stepped out of the race.
“It was intense, high stakes, and deeply personal — for me, and for so many of you. Since leaving office, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on those days … in essence, writing a journal that is this book,” Harris said in a video posted last month to her social media accounts.
MVP Kamala Harris’ book tour dates have been announced!
Buy the tickets here: www.ticketmaster.com/kamala-harri…— best of kamala harris (@archivekamala.bsky.social) August 21, 2025 at 11:30 AM
On The Road – otmar – A winter night in Klagenfurt
Baud
Unfortunately we’ll need at least 52 senators since Fetterman has become unreliable.
New Deal democrat
California, and other Blue States, need to get their retaliatory maps in place asap, because the GOP counterplay is obvious:
Namely, since Congress itself has the right to set the rules for Congressional elections, they can pass a law blocking any redistributing that take place after, e.g., August 31. That way Texas’s new map is valid, and any retaliatory maps cannot be used in 2026.
Baud
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Ah I remember when he was the progressive darling for wearing hoodies and shitposting on Twitter.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Stroke.
Cordonazo
Kamala Harris making as much money as she can while the world burns is a choice.
Cordonazo
@Baud: Much of his bad thoughts and personality traits already existed, I think the stroke has removed his filter and ability to fake being a man of the people.
Betty Cracker
Every word Warren said in those quotes is true and important. I also like that she’s saying what Democrats want to do with a majority. I hope elected Dems do more of that in the coming days — not just crap on what Trump and Repubs are doing (which is both justified and necessary!) but also explicitly lay out their plans for restoring/shoring up democracy and promoting fairness.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He had held a black man at gunpoint before the stroke. We were warned but many self anointed progressives go for the flash and dazzle.
Deputinize America
At some point, at least one late career lawyer that appears with some regularity before the Supreme Court should shame them during oral arguments. Go down in history as a lion, as opposed to being a mewling supplicant.
”As a judicial body, you people make me sick. Chief Justice, you’re pathetic, possibly worse than Roger Taney, and Justices Alito and Thomas? The term “contempt” doesn’t come close to the feelings I have about your personal corruption and intellectual sloth.”
zhena gogolia
@Cordonazo: She doesn’t owe us a goddamned thing.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Technically, no one owes anyone else anything.
mappy!
@Baud: Interesting that the article uses the terms Denisovan, Neanderthal and human.
Baud
@mappy!:
As opposed to homo sapian?
Princess
@Cordonazo: I wonder who the audience is for it. I read most of Hillary’s post mortem after 2016 and I think there was a kind of longing for it from her fans. But I personally feel 2024 is ouch too painful for me ever to want to read about it. This feels like a miscue both from a Harris’s future pov, a saving America pov, and even a making money pov. But that’s just my opinion and if I’m wrong, I’m sure someone here will tell me.
Baud
@Princess:
I couldn’t read Hillary’s book. I am weak.
Princess
@Betty Cracker: Warren has been very consistent and vocal in a positive direction. I really appreciate it.
Betty Cracker
@Princess:
You can always count on that, and not just once either — in perpetuity! ;-)
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
That’s not true. ;-)
French Onion Soup
nypost.com/2025/08/22/us-news/patels-fbi-raids-john-boltons-home-in-high-profile-national-security-p…
Here we go.
Betty
@Baud: While Fetterman is somewhat unpredictable, there does seem to be a pattern. He is very belligerent about Israel and Iran, but remains okay on some issues, such as protecting the rights of people with disabilities.
mappy!
@Baud: Denisovans and Neanderthals aren’t humans? Bias in usage is sometimes revealing (unintentionally)…
Baud
@mappy!:
No, I didn’t think so.
Suzanne
Seen a lot of commentary wondering why people are calling the Cracker Barrel rebrand “woke”. I saw this comment on Xhitter and I think it’s a pretty good analysis:
Also some good observations about the minimalist, Apple Store-esque style is associated with the aesthetic preferences of urbanites and others that are sort of culturally coded to the left.
p.a
I’ve seen mention that a poll of Cali Dems shows them not very enthused about redistricting. That’s 😳 to me.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I was never a Fetterman fan, but he must have had support across the board to win his primary with 50%. He had a couple strong opponents too, in Conor Lamb and Malcolm Kenyatta. The way I see it it, Fetterman bamboozled plenty of liberals and moderates also.
People were like, “It’ll take someone spicy like Fetterman with his secret sauce to win a state like Pennsylvania!” I was like, “Wait a minute. Bob Casey Jr. won his 2018 reelection there by 600,000 votes, and he’s as bland as turkey/white bread sandwich!”
Anyway, I expect Democrats of all kinds regret their votes for Fetterman now. The good news is Fetterman won’t run for reelection; at least, he sure doesn’t act like he intends to.
The bad news is, Fetterman’s only halfway through a six-year term, and he has no reason to retire early. He’s got a job where he doesn’t have to work any harder than he wants to..
AxelFoley
@Baud:
I always say we need 60, because there’s always–ALWAYS–a handful of Dems who are spineless or conniving or both.
I remember when Biden was running in 2020 and Dems were like we need just two seats to win the Senate, and I was like, “No, we need like 5 or 6 more seats because of the possibility of a few backstabbing Dems.”
I remember the bullshit President Obama had to deal with because of four or so Dems kneecapping him.
*coughcoughLiebermanLincolnandacoupleofotherassholesIforget
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: @Princess: Love Warren. Have appreciated her good work for years.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) had an insane take on the Cracker Barrel rebrand:
The Pope Hat guy on Bluesky said the bolded part sounded like the filthiest euphemism ever!
p.a
Raid on Bolton: SS getting busy with SA
AxelFoley
@Cordonazo:
Someone always gotta have their business in black people’s pockets.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: “Heh heh, ‘gave your life to Christ’, is that what we’re calling it now? Heh heh!”
schrodingers_cat
@AxelFoley: True but even the worst Ds are better than the best Rs.
So I would take Manchin, Fetterman over Suzie from Maine and Lisa from Alaska.
AxelFoley
@Baud:
Don’t you owe me a dollar?
prostratedragon
@Betty Cracker: He is not wrong.
Cheryl from Maryland
@French Onion Soup: Benjamin Wittes is live-blogging the raid.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I look forward to the increased tofu options.
Betty Cracker
@AxelFoley: Backstabbers are a problem, but given the map, there’s a more structural question that every sitting Democratic senator and all Democratic candidates for a senate seat need to answer in public: Will you commit to ending the filibuster if elected/reelected?
Because if we can’t elect enough senators who will do that, the reforms that could save U.S. democracy are off the table. I’d really like to know the answer before I waste another goddamn second thinking about how we might recover from the current authoritarian takeover.
Suzanne
@Baud: I think we here don’t fully grok how alienate a lot of the right-wing MAGA people feel aesthetically. MAGA controls our politics but essentially nothing else, and there is a lot of primal screaming going on about that.
JPL
@French Onion Soup: Wonder who’s next?
Ben Cisco
@Cordonazo: As opposed to sackcloth and ashes, begging in the street?
Of all the takes to give, that’s…one of them 🙄
moonbat
@mappy!: The field is slowly beginning to acknowledge that basically they are all human. Currently the distinction is geographical. Denisovans are from Asia and Neanderthals from Europe. But if they produce fertile offspring when mating with anatomically modern humans (and they did), biologically, there is no difference. That hairline distinction is slowly disappearing.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Maybe if we put a bass fisherman on mifepristone packages, they’ll stop trying to oppress women.
Geminid
@Baud: You can make tofu out of any kind of bean. In an alternate timeline, where I ran an expensive, niche restaurant, I could see serving lima bean tofu and black bean tofu, maybe chickpea tofu and kidney bean tofu. I might add some sushi-type seafood and fancy rice crackers, but I’d call it The Tofu Bar.
I’m talking about a very alternate timeline here.
Soprano2
@Baud: That’s what I think too. The stroke changed him.
Matt
@Baud:
Nah, that’s just the excuse.
He decided he likes dead Gazans more than live leftists and chose his allegiances accordingly.
Soprano2
@Cordonazo: Why are we critical of our people when they do things to make money? No one should have to take a vow of poverty to be a Democrat, this is one of the things people don’t like about us. It makes it seem like we hate success, especially when it comes in a non-white package.
satby
@mappy!: maybe because Denisovan and Neanderthal were hominids.
Melancholy Jaques
@Suzanne:
The paradigm for these things is New Coke. The focus groups overwhelmingly preferred the new recipe until they found out what it was. Some reacted angrily and were so adamant that they convinced other members of the group to change their preference for the new recipe.
Deputinize America
@Betty Cracker:
It will take three generations to get back to where we were in 2008, barring some poorly managed catastrophe (limited nuclear war, New Madrid fault megaquake, Yellowstone eruption).
Soprano2
@Princess: We won’t know until it’s published. I’m sure the “she’s doing it wrong” people will mine it for every criticism they can find.
prostratedragon
Why, it was only yesterday …
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Soprano2
@Princess: She’s also good at explaining things in a way everyone can understand. I guess that’s from her years of being a professor and writing books. She doesn’t sound programmed to me, although I know some people think she sounds like a scolding schoolmarm. I think that’s their own prejudices coming through.
Soprano2
@French Onion Soup: There’s no one to root for in that situation, they’re all bad.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
From the piece you quoted:
Maybe they shouldn’t get quite so sentimentally attached to the way big corporations market themselves!
Soprano2
@Suzanne: That’s funny, and true about their beliefs. The truth about the rebrand is that it was probably done by a high-dollar consultant, and it was probably mostly white men making the decision to go with it. I think the whole thing is hilarious, MAGA’s seem to believe they have the right to demand that the world stay exactly the way they want it to forever.
mappy!
@moonbat: It’s one of those unintentional but enlightening slips of the tongue. If one is talking about contemporary DNA and mentioning Denisovan and Neanderthal the comparison would be to Cro-Magnon, not “humans.” It’s like talking about Asian, Black and Hispanic citizens and Americans. The bias might not be intentional (benefit of the doubt) but it is inherent in a learned social context.
It’s a small point about identifying bias… Back to the regular programming ; – )
hueyplong
@Cordonazo: Being a shitgibbon on balloonjuice is also a choice.
Cordonazo
@Ben Cisco: that’s a bizarre take on your side. She’s already rich, so I’m not sure I’m asking anyone to take her money away from her. Publishing a memoir on a lost, crucial election while hosting VIP dinners seems to have no audience from the people who have been crushed by this election. Taking even a momentary pause between losing an election and asking people to further enrich you would seem to be the better PR move. This comes across as a person whose life isn’t substantially worse from her loss and who is in no real danger blissfully skipping down the politician money grift trail.
She absolutely owes us nothing, but I also can’t see any real point in her doing this at all.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
To be fair, 2018 was a Democratic wave year, and everyone expected 2022 to be a bigger GOP wave year than it turned out to be. Also, Casey had the incumbency advantage, which the 2022 Dem candidate would have lacked.
Ben Cisco
@rikyrah: Good morning 🌞
mappy!
@AxelFoley: Blame Lieberman on the CT Dem establishment at the time. We could have had Lamont.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Oh, I think MAGA controls a lot of businesses now, maybe not directly but indirectly. Think of how many have folded and bent the knee to FFOTUS. Their problem is, they want to control literally everything. I’ve been saying for years that they are uncomfortable in the modern world, so one of their main objectives is to try to make everything be something they are comfortable with, so that they don’t ever have to be uncomfortable again. I remember when conservatives thought businesses should be able to do whatever they wanted without interference from outsiders. They don’t seem to believe that anymore.
Deputinize America
@Suzanne:
Conservatives love them some kitschy clutter and Victoriana. It’s part of why I harbor massive hate toward that “aesthetic” (if you can call it that).
piratedan
@Suzanne: so that means that Byron had his salad tossed by an old waitress in the Cracker Barrell parking lot?
Cordonazo
Fetterman was always a rich white guy cosplaying as a tough working man. He fooled people in state for years even as people who had worked for him tried to leak out that he was a fraud. Conor Lamb was the boring white guy. Kenyatta, who I voted for, had much less of a profile than those two did, especially compared to his current profile. He also had a major disadvantage running against the boring white guy and the “cool” white guy in 2018
stinger
@Suzanne:
And from a branding/marketing perspective, it means your company has really “arrived”. Look at the Nike swoosh, the Amazon smiley arrow, the Mickey D’s golden arches. When no name or text is needed to recognize your logo, you’re at the top of your field. Cracker Barrel’s stripped down logo is a step in that direction; maybe they hope some day to pare down to just the gold “shield” shape.
moonbat
@mappy!: Like every other field that studies humans, those Victorian bias chains and all the vocabulary that came with it have been slow to go away.
What I think is hilarious is that since it’s been proven that the European gene pool has Neanderthal DNA in it (between 3-7 percent depending on the population), the Neanderthals have suddenly gone from dumb cavemen to extremely innovative and canny survivors who created art, etc. lol
When we could other them they were crude, rude and socially unacceptable. Now that they are one of us, they aren’t so bad. Tribal-level thinking strikes again.
Ben Cisco
@Cordonazo: Nothing bizarre about it. Unless you’re her accountant, you have no idea what she has, her obligations, nothing. Also, I suspect she’s in a much better position to determine the appetite for appearances than you. Not throwing shade here, just stating what I see to be obvious.
YOU’RE not interested. Cool.
YOU can’t see the value in it. OK.
Guess we’ll see.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
This is unfortunately all too true. It’s hard to envision a world where the Democrats ever again have 60 Senators. So unless our hypothetical 51 Senators are willing to do away with the filibuster so they can pass reforms by majority vote, we’ll be stuck in the same system that the GOP has successfully abused.
They must all be asked what their stand is on the filibuster before we vote.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: Maybe, but it seems like more than a little of the Cracker Barrel stuff blowing up has nothing to do with culture or urban vs rural or red hats vs normies but has to do with long-running battles for corporate control. E.g. a bloot noted last night (via Ken White/Popehat)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist:
Well, yeah.
But it makes sense, in a bent way: a corporation that caters to your aesthetics, that “sees you” as a valuable customer…. that’s a form of cultural power. It’s flattery. In late capitalism, that may be the only real power you have.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
The way I’ve been saying it for awhile is that they want the whole world to be their ‘safe space.’
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
I shot a picture of a supernova this morning, in a galaxy far, far away. It is so bright, the galaxy looks like it has 2 cores.
sab
@ Deputinize America: Somebody or some company is paying that lawyer megabucks to get their case before the Supreme Court because their case matters a lot to them. And you think it is somehow honorable and brave for that lawyer to sabotage that case to do some performative bullshit?
Layer8Problem
@Cordonazo: Sounds like time to take action. Send her a sternly-worded note.
Baud
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
Whoa. Can’t wait to see it.
Suzanne
@piratedan:
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Another Scott
@Cordonazo: Um, the election was 9 months ago – more than a “pause”, innit?
Maybe what she’s doing isn’t about you?
Best wishes,
Scott.
Soprano2
@Another Scott: What’s funny is that this is the beginning of a “pump and dump”, I guess you could call it “slump and pump and dump”, where you first drive the price of the stock down, buy a bunch of shares, drive it back up and then sell. Sounds like he’s trying to drive the price down so he can buy a majority stake and take it over.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Just posted it on my Patreon.
stinger
@Cordonazo:
@Cordonazo:
If you don’t have anything good to say about someone, I hope you commented on the Dobson post yesterday.
chemiclord
@AxelFoley: You need 60 progressive Dems if you wanted a truly progressive America.
The simple reality is that the electorate simply isn’t that far left, and probably never will be. There’s always going to be a massive chunk of our elected representatives that are fine with left leaning policy (and will vote for it), but simply doesn’t have the appetite to tear down the “rules” that they are comfortable with – and have “served this country well up to this point” to do it.
They want to believe that if we just be patient, the fever among the right will break eventually, and they are not inclined to believe any evidence to the contrary.
I have no idea what can be done about that.
AxelFoley
@moonbat:
LOL you’ve noticed that, too, huh?
sab
@moonbat: Let’s not forget Cromagnons.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
As one who’s had one, lemme just say conversion experiences can happen pretty much anyplace, so the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel doesn’t seem any more odd to me than the (long-defunct) UCM coffeehouse on north Kings Highway south of Alexandria, VA, where mine took place.
BTW, I’m NOT saying you shouldn’t ridicule Bryon Donalds’ conversion, since he seems to have taken all the wrong lessons from it.
Hell, feel free to ridicule mine; I’m not the least bit bothered by that sort of thing. If the love of Christ is what we say it is, then it’s bigger than all that.
The Audacity of Krope
As good government practice; gerrymandering is bad, m’kay?
I’d support it but only as a retaliation measure. I imagine a lot of Cali Dems are still looking at our situation as low-stakes.
AxelFoley
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
“That’s no core…”
stinger
I was curious about Trump’s “ride-along” last night. Apparently he just made a speech and handed out hamburgers and pizza, as if he were hosting a group of skilled athletes. No ride-along took place.
rikyrah
@Cordonazo:
Yes,it is.
She wasn’t hired for the job
. she has put in her time for public service.
Stay out of her Muthaphuckin’ pockets 😒
Layer8Problem
@stinger: Jon McNaughton is whipping up the painting of this dramatic event as we speak.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Cordonazo: Harris isn’t the leader of the Democratic party. She’s unemployed. What are you doing to stop the world from burning? I’d guess nothing but complaining. Could be wrong.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: I only ridicule religious people and dumb things they say when they behave like hypocrites and use it as part of “brand management” and an attention-grabbing strategy, as Donalds is doing here.
lowtechcyclist
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
But was it a champagne supernova or a red wine supernova? ;-)
Seriously, I’m looking forward to your sharing the photo!
Betty Cracker
@chemiclord:
If pols like that aren’t primaried out in response to the current authoritarian takeover, we’re screwed long term, even if Dems win the House and Senate next year. I think the Democratic base understands this, but I’m not 100% confident of that.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2: MAGA controls a lot of media too. Radio, newspapers, some TV stations, X.
kindness
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: What is that supernova’s designation? I haven’t heard of a new one yet.
The Audacity of Krope
They also benefit from their followers love for evangelizing. Work any random retail counter and Fox News will be relayed piecemeal to you throughout the day.
French Onion Soup
@Suzanne:
It is the only power now because of capitalism. Corporations and money dictate what culture is. The entire freakout is that for all the political power they have corporate America is still socially liberal. We don’t notice it anymore than a fish notices water. To them it’s like a fish living in acid. They are in constant mental agony over it. The only way to make the pain stop is to force corporate America to reflect their culture.
There is no way to find common ground here. In our capitalist society corporate America is the battle that matters.
Feckless
Fuck your book tour tell your husband to quit his fascist law firm and fight.
Fair Economist
@moonbat: It’s not quite that simple. If the gene pools remain distinct even if interbreeding is possible then two groups are considered separate species even if they have fertile hybrids. Birds, for example, are typically able to produce fertile hybrids even at great distances, up to something like 20 million years of separation IIRC, although I can’t find a reference. Sapiens, Neanderthal, and Denisovan remained distinct even though living in close proximity for thousands of years, so they would be considered separate species. I’d still say they were all human, though, based on evidence we have for elder care and jewelry in all three species.
sab
So Ramaswamy running for Ohio governor wants public school teachers to have merit based pay.
Public school teachers I talk to say that curremtly they cooperate. The experienced ones mentor the new ones. When a classroom of kids moves up a grade the prior grade teachers cooperate with the next grade teachers who are learning about their new batch of kids.
With merit based pay the incentives would all be against cooperation and teamwork, and in favor of sabotagin each other. Crab bucket values.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Sure, that was a good year for Democrats generally. But 600,000 votes is a lot, regardless of national trend. What I’m saying is, Pennsylvania wasn’t some “stretch” state where Dems needed a unique, charismatic candidate like– John Fetterman seemed to be– to win.
Scout211
This may have been covered already, but the IRS is now in the FO stage of DOGE.
A family member was employed at IRS for the past few years and took the “deferred resignation program.” The training for their job took many months and the background checks and “onboarding” took weeks and weeks. Unless they are able to hire back trained employees, this could be a complete waste of time and government money. But what else is new?
HinTN
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: That’s what I read this whole damn thread to hear. Woot
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Geminid: It ended up being a good year. But Dr. Oz was popular. The outcome was far, far from certain. Fetterman’s campaign was the most effective at driving down Oz’s favorables. Fetterman isn’t great, but most importantly, he isn’t Oz.
Suzanne
@French Onion Soup:
You are correct. But it also isn’t just corporate America that is socially liberal. Lots of just ordinary Americans are pretty socially liberal. And, notably, most of the people who have enough income to spend on non-essential items are socially liberal.
I linked to it before, but Harris won the voters in the $100K-and-up income range, and FFOTUS won the voters in the income brackets below that. The college degree divide is even more stark, and degrees are highly correlated with higher income in this country. (And before everyone jumps down my throat about knowing some rich people who don’t have a degree and voted for FFOTUS, or that they know people without degrees who don’t make over $70K or whatever…. yes, I am aware. These are overall demographic patterns and not descriptors of individuals, and plenty of exceptions exist.)
But corporate America and their advertising agencies know who the people are who have money to spend. They care very much about this, and they cater to these people’s aesthetics and values. Having someone want your business is a way of saying that you matter. So MAGA voters are reminded every day in a thousand ways that they don’t matter.
moonbat
@Fair Economist: If they can produce fertile offspring it is a distinction without a difference. Yes, they are all separate breeding populations with adaptations to the particular challenges of their environments, but genetically they are enough alike that they can have fertile offspring they are still the same species.
It’s like calling wolves and coyotes separate species as we have for the longest, but lo and behold we now have what scientists are calling coy-wolves, successful mating between two “separate species”. Or the scary offspring produced now that polar bears and grizzlies are occupying more and more of the same territories. I think a lot of the species identified in the past are in reality just geographic markers/adaptations
In case you couldn’t tell, when it comes to evolutionary biology, I am a lumper, not a splitter.
Fair Economist
@moonbat: I think the recent upgrade of Neanderthals has more to do with internal science battles. There has long been a conflict between those who think human abilities are relatively old, generally based on genetic theories, and those who think they are recent, based on lack of evidence (even when there can’t be any). The “it’s old” group has found some pretty compelling evidence lately for intentional burial, elder care, jewelry implying sophisticated drills, and even long distance trade. So they have been getting the upper hand.
drdavechemist
@Scout211:
Last I checked, the IRS still hadn’t cashed the check I wrote during tax season, which means they haven’t even opened the envelope I sent with my paper return, so they must be badly understaffed. (I’m not a Luddite, but I refuse to pay a private corporation for the “privilege” of being able to pay my taxes electronically. If I become benevolent dictator, federal and state tax forms will be free, fillable online forms that do all the calculations for you and you just fill in your numbers.)
Spanky
@piratedan:
I rather think it means he was ball gargling out between the pickup trucks.
French Onion Soup
@Suzanne:
Exactly. It reflects in adds, in movies, in series, in music, it is everywhere. We don’t see it. To them it’s a non stop onslaught that causes them trauma.
They can’t turn on the TV, watch a movies, stream a series, listen to music, and not be assaulted by it. So there is no way to calm them down. And each societal change makes the trauma worse and increases their frenzy and desperation to make it stop.
It’s not shocking that they are willing to suicide the nation over it to make the pain stop. That is exactly what they are doing. And we are extremely smug about it and they know it.
Scout211
Trump announce that the EU gave him a “gift” of $600 billion that he could spend any way he wanted. But as usual, that was a lie.
Fact check: Trump and the case of the nonexistent $600 billion EU ‘gift’
(web archive version)
. . .
HinTN
@lowtechcyclist: Dayum, kickstart my day why don’t you.
The Audacity of Krope
Imagine having the same response to the latest Superman movie as one of us might to, say, Fox News. But then it’s everything else too.
jonas
@stinger: The only thing left to do is try to rebrand with a catchy, street-slang-style abbreviation of their name, like “Mickey D’s” or “Dunkin'”. Cracky-B? The CB? Crack’s?
I’ve eaten at Cracky-B’s only once in my life and all I remember is that I think they served you iced tea in a mason jar or something like that.
Fair Economist
@moonbat: Well, no, there is an important distinction between two groups that can maintain separate gene pools and adaptations and two groups that can’t. And if any groups that could produce fertile hybrids are one species then there’s only one species of duck on the planet even though generally different species are very resistant to interbreeding and will only do it if forced, and most would consider that a ridiculous definition.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Pretty sure the haters on this thread want VP Harris to go away and never come back. Anything she does is going to provoke these same reactions and vitriol.
Kamala kept her head down and stayed out of the news for nine months. Is that not long enough for you? Clearly not.
moonbat
@Fair Economist: The whole stereotype of Neanderthals vs. Cro Magnon was as much a product of colonial European rivalries as it was science. The French wanted to lay claim to the mantle of “inventing art and culture” and wanted to cast the Neanderthals (discovered in Germany) as mindless brutes.
Yes the evidence for ‘civilized behavior’ such as burial of the dead, elder care, and symbolic thinking was always there but the acknowledgement of that behavior for what it was in our broader cultural context didn’t accelerate until the genetic evidence showed our relatedness.
The Audacity of Krope
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: This demand seems to apply to all Dem losing Presidential candidates, but seems especially pronounced with the women. It’s almost like a coordinated effort to sideline the Dems’ best and brightest.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cordonazo: What, in your opinion, should she be doing instead?
moonbat
@Fair Economist: A biologist wouldn’t.
Species (n.): A group of closely related organisms that are very similar to each other and are usually capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. The species is the fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus.
Miss Bianca
@sab: Well…yeah. Shucks, shouldn’t it be obvious by now that some people always want *others* to fall on their swords for the cause?
Suzanne
@French Onion Soup: So I was an art major as an undergrad, took a ton of visual culture classes, and I worked in an advertising agency for a couple of years. This stuff became super-apparent to me as a result of those experiences. I think the most important cultural changes occurring are things like this, they aren’t quantifiable as they are occurring, but are crystal clear in retrospect.
The commentariat here has a lot of math and science expertise, and so we talk a lot about statistics and quantifiable data. Which is great. But I think we often gloss over the power of feelings and aesthetics and perceptions, and those things have a great deal of light to shed on the problems we face right now.
Fair Economist
Harris is doing exactly what she should be doing if she plans to run again: make a case that she ran a good campaign and could do even better in 2028. So I don’t see the problem, except for those who want to “do a Hillary” (drive up her negatives with false accusations). And if she wants to make some money, that’s her prerogative too.
Spanky
Predatory banking, here we come…
Article here.
RaflW
More news that Trumpenomics are failing:
Last month, inventory levels for parts of Colorado not only returned to pre-pandemic levels, but also reached numbers not seen in more than a decade. Active listings jumped to over 33,000 across the state, up almost 23% from last year. The increase in homes on the market was attributed to a slowdown in closing across the Front Range’s metro area and other more remote counties as buyers continued facing high interest rates and broad economic challenges.
In July, the median price of a single-family home fell slightly over 1% [and are relatively equal to a year ago]… The median price for townhomes and condos fell 1.2% from June to July and is down just shy of 6% from a year ago.
HinTN
@drdavechemist: Mr DeJoy’s Post Office has failed to deliver several pieces of mail for me and has been extraordinarily late with others.
The Audacity of Krope
Raising a guerilla army to bring against the Yeehawdi government, of course.
trollhattan
This fukkin’ guy.
Vance imagines himself the grownup in charge here. I can only imagine how he’d conduct himself in a four-year invasion. “Tanks, hey, cool! Did you guys bring me presents? Whaddya got for me?”
Geminid
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I dunno about Oz being popular. Oz certainly had good name recognition, but in most other respects I thought he was a crappy candidate. He barely won his primary even though Trump.endorsed him.
I was very relieved at the time because I thought Dave McCormick would be tougher opponent. And it turns out McCormick is a strong candidate; I don’t think he could have beaten Bob Casey Jr. last year if he wasn’t.
HinTN
@jonas: Many years ago they were reliably good. Not so much anymore.
E.
@Feckless: I’m with you. The book is fine, write the book, that is important history. But the fascist law firm and the fairytale overseas weddings of billionaires, that stuff rubs me more than raw. They have more money than I will ever see. He can get better law firm.
E.
@Feckless: I’m with you. The book is fine, write the book, that is important history. But the fascist law firm and the fairytale overseas weddings of billionaires, that stuff rubs me more than raw. They have more money than I will ever see. He can get better law firm.
Miss Bianca
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: C’mon, Hillary was supposed to go home and knit and shut up forever. Hmmm…sensing a pattern here…
HinTN
CommentingReplying to comments has gone to shit on my phone this morning.Edited
Fair Economist
@Suzanne: I don’t think it’s quite so simple. The wingnuts have managed to drive out almost any positive media representations of trans and drag. There were TV series on drag all over the place a few years ago and now they’re gone. Now they are moving on to gays. The UK is seeing an effort to remove interracial couples. They smeared a black rapper with a white wife as a pedophile because he took her white children by a previous husband to the park. Now he is getting death threats on the street.
The Audacity of Krope
@HinTN: Does it have anything to do, possibly, with the irregular boundaries on this thread?
RaflW
@Princess: I respect what she tried to pull off in a very compressed and difficult timeframe. But I don’t want to buy or read her book. Yet I think it’s fine that she wants to get her perspective on what happened out there.
Better now than closer to the mid-terms, frankly, in terms of any amount of pulling focus away from Congressional races her book tour might cause. Let the MAGAs attack her now – I’m sure they’ll do it with all the racism and sexism we’d expect, and that tees up 2026 as a very clear contrast.
I will wait to see who else seems to be stepping up for the 2028 nomination race before I even think about what I want from Harris. That I don’t want to think about her might be a tell, though.
Geminid
If Kamala Harris covets money she should get a podcast going where she and her guests trash the Democratic Party. That’s where the big bucks are these days.
suzanne
@Fair Economist: Not denying that those things are happening, but I think they are very much a case of attempting to close the barn door after the horses are out.
They are very strongly trying to get the world back the way it was, and they will fail. Just look at the Target CEO. Tried to go un-woke, and all they did was lose money.
becca
John Bolton’s home was raided by the trump fbi this morning.
Epstein really left a mark.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nukular Biskits: Is it?
The Audacity of Krope
@RaflW: I will wait to see who else seems to be stepping up for the nomination race before I even think about what I want from Harris. That I don’t want to think about her might be a tell, though.
I am very eager to see what she would bring to a more normal campaign. I’m not making any commitments now for 28, though, other than “no Gavin.”
Midterms are and always have been more important at this stage of the proceedings. Hell, one of the reasons I was so eager for a Biden/Trump rematch that no one seemed to want but the people who voted voted for was that it might have been a good opportunity to use the prestige of a Presidential race to stress just how much Congress matters.
I seem to be a huge outlier in more or less everything, though, especially in political matters.
Omnes Omnibus
2028 is a long way away. Let’s worry about 2026 first.
HinTN
@The Audacity of Krope: Exactly
Nukular Biskits
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, not here.
Active shooter event currently ongoing although they may have already arrested the alleged assailant.
Anyway
Oh please. I am triggered by fat-ass trucks that try to drive me off the road and take one-and-half parking spots — but I deal with it. Corporate America caters to them a lot – in real terms.
trollhattan
@becca:
You can really taste the autocracy.
Beginning to sense a pattern. I assert we’re not very far from him directly jailing his political opponents, and he has the stellar examples of Russia, PRC, Hungary, Turkey, Egypt, Burma, et al to copy as models.
Geminid
@becca: That Bolton story led off the 9am CBS Radio news. I’d gotten a heads up on the story from WTOP news, but I was a little surprised it led the national news.
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus:
My prediction, in her book she’s going to confirm that:
1.) Joe’s mind was perfectly fine and it was all a politically motivated, media witch hunt
2.). Biden/Harris was one of the best, most accomplished Presidencies in decades and
3.) A significant chunk of people who claim to be on our side put all of their energy into tearing her and Biden down for four years
In other words, people are getting preemptively mad, in part, because it’s very unlikely that Kamala will throw Joe under the bus the way they wish she would.
RevRick
@New Deal democrat: They’d have to break the filibuster to do that.
Jackie
@becca:
My thought, too. SQUIRREL!!! Look over there and don’t notice Bondi/DOJ sidestepping their obligation to start releasing the Epstein files to Comer today!!
ETA Apparently we aren’t the only ones suspicious of the timing:
RevRick
@Baud: He’s not the only one. King in ME and Warner in VA lurk in the background.
Captain C
@Baud: That article was fascinating. It also shows that like Captain Kirk, most humans will bone anything that looks remotely human, given the opportunity.
Captain C
@Cordonazo: Why shouldn’t she? The electorate collectively told her and her excellent plans to fuck right off.
The Audacity of Krope
Don’t often find myself agreeing with you, but damn right. This is and will probably remain the strongest evidence in my lifetime that we need to get rid of the influence of money in politics.
I don’t even know who they were really trying to appeal to by railroading Biden out. By my completely non-statisical, totally experiential estimate; it was people who didn’t vote in the primaries and wouldn’t have voted in the general regardless, but had real strong opinions about Biden’s age.
CaseyL
I’ve noticed how, when someone loses an election, there is a tendency among many, many people to turn on the unsuccessful candidate. To claim things like: That person ran a lousy campaign; or That person didn’t pay sufficient attention to The Most Important Thing Ever; or That person listened to the wrong people. The most savage critics are sometimes the very same people who praised the candidate as having an excellent campaign, before the loss happened.
I realized, long ago, very little of this was good faith analysis. Let me rephrase that: it’s not bad faith analysis; I think it’s reflexive and unconscious.
I wonder if this isn’t a pre-conscious reflex, going back to our wild ancestry. In the wild, individuals who have lost their status are driven from the group, if not killed outright. Fallen leaders are emphatically shown the door, so to speak. There’s a whole body of biological/behavioral theory on why that happens.
It’s interesting to me, to wonder if an awful lot of the human behavior we think is rational and reasoned, deliberate and conscious, is actually a deeply ingrained instinctive reaction, and we just festoon it with retrofitted justification.
Captain C
@Jackie: At what point do the remaining neocons start talking to their remaining friends with “unusual skills” about what to do regarding the incompetent, corrupt buffoons currently in power and their ruinious, selfish, stupid plans for everyone?
The Audacity of Krope
No, you think…?
RaflW
@sab: Not a teacher, but I’d think merit pay is a freaking minefield in careers like teaching. Metrics like student scores driving salaries? So much beyond a teacher’s skill impacts aggregate scores, esp in districts where different schools have different demographics.
Or principals doing the merit assessments, what cold possibly become abusive or biased there?
The Audacity of Krope
That klatch of chicken hawks don’t got friends with the skills to tie their shoes.
trollhattan
@CaseyL:
IDK. Trump lost in 2020 and never lost his stranglehold on the Republicans. His biggest challenger was Desantis?
Omnes Omnibus
@trollhattan: Trump is sui generis in many ways. By all conventional and rational analysis, he never should have had a chance. We need to avoid drawing too many lessons from him.
Geminid
@CaseyL: A couple counter-examples consistent with your thesis: what if Tammy Baldwin and Jackie Rozen had lost last year? They could have, and if they had the political vultures would be feasting on their political carcasses.
But Senators Baldwin and Rozen won, and no one talks about what they brought to the table that made them winning candidates.
frosty
@Baud: Technically I owe the banks the payments on my credit card purchases … or do I, really?
H.E.Wolf
Always interesting when unfamiliar ‘nyms pop in to denigrate an intelligent, accomplished Black woman.
CaseyL
@Geminid: Very much that.
The obverse is the candidate everyone writes off, who then wins, and who is lauded as being a genius, and their campaign is held up as a model that other candidates (or their consultants and advisors) copy. Same instinctive reflex.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
No, but it’s quite definitely purple, rather than blue. A GOP wave and a less-than-optimal candidate could have easily added up to a loss.
RevRick
@Cordonazo: Implicit in your critique is the belief that it’s a sin for Democrats to make money.
But where do we draw that line? We’ve made money on investments from our inheritance.
I get that you don’t like the appearance, and to you it feels dirty.
Eyeroller
@Fair Economist: The problem may be partially that we don’t really have a word for “member of the genus Homo that is not H. sapiens” other than the word “human.” The word “Sapiens” isn’t widely used.
Neanderthals and Denisovans are considered separate species in the Homo genus. As you note, it’s not uncommon for closely related species to be able to produce fertile offspring. I’ve seen some articles indicating that Neanderthan-Sapiens crosses were only fertile with a Neanderthal father and a Sapiens mother, and not every pair was necessarily fertile. (So little is known about Denisovans I’ve haven’t seen anything comparable, so I don’t know about those mixes.) So it’s perfectly reasonable to consider us three separte species. But Neanderthals and presumably Denisovans also had “human” behaviors.
lowtechcyclist
@HinTN:
😁
CaseyL
@H.E.Wolf: In my comment at #161, I almost said the phenomenon is most acute when the unsuccessful candidate is neither white nor male… but then I remembered how savagely people turned on Biden after that debate. It was horrow-show impressive, like that old nature film of piranhas eating a capybara.
Another Scott
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: +1
Oz is doing plenty of damage, though, as head of CMS.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Fair Economist: +1
Also too, fish apparently feel pleasure.
It makes no sense that every creature that is not-us is somehow categorically different (can’t think, can’t plan, can’t pass on knowledge, can’t feel pleasure and pain, can’t get depressed, etc., etc.) when we are all related.
Really old books written by people who didn’t understand too much about the world, and passed on in too many cases by power-hungry monsters, have done a number on us, and it’s taking a very long time to get into the light.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: But was Fetterman the optimal candidate? I thought Lamb would have been stronger. He had proven he could flip a red Congressional seat. Lamb was young, articulate and a Marine Corps veteran. Plus, he’d never pulled a shotgun on a Black jogger.
Fetterman was lucky he was never charged over that incident. Pennsylvania has a law against driving with a loaded shotgun in the vehicle, and with good reason.
The Audacity of Krope
Facts. Also, threatening others with a weapon also seems like it can’t be legal. Also, I think lucky had very little to do with his not being charged.
Eyeroller
@moonbat: This isn’t really accurate. Species is a population definition and does not apply to individuals. There are a number of examples (like Fair Economist, I know mostly about birds) of two species that are capable of producing fertile hybrids, but are still kept separate. There are also “superspecies” of two particularly closely related species (an example is the Ruby-Throat and Black-Chinned hummingbirds) but they are not necessarily interfertile.
Taxonomists are well aware that “species” and even “genus” are fairly fluid categorizations. But broadly speaking, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Sapiens engaged in sufficiently limited interbreeding — Sapiens’ genome has only a small contribution from either– that categorizing them as separate species wouldn’t be controversial.
Captain C
@piratedan: It could have gone either way.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: They also cater to young people because they know those are their future customers, and young people are much more racially diverse than the rest of the population. Whenever anyone complains to me that “there are too many black people in commercials” I say “Companies spend millions of dollars trying to figure out the best way to advertise their products, they know that the younger generation is more diverse and that’s what they’re doing. They don’t spend money because they’re ‘woke’.”
lowtechcyclist
@trollhattan:
I remember when we used to ridicule all those banana-republic ‘strongmen,’ and now we’ve got one.
tam1MI
Yup.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Geminid: That’s because what saved them were the coattails from Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s very active campaign. (In contrast to the awkward and anemic Biden campaign, which by the early summer threatened a massive down-ticket drubbing, in addition to an electoral college wipeout.)
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
Well, as a pretty knowledgeable commenter was just saying:
Apparently he seemed to be that to enough PA Dems.
French Onion Soup
@The Audacity of Krope:
This doesn’t pass the smell test. Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry were gone. The only recent general election loss that remained involved in politics post loss is HRC.
Captain C
@Eyeroller:
Hominin? I’ve heard that word used in that context.
JML
@CaseyL: the instinct to turn on a candidate who lost is mostly found within Democratic circles; the GOP has won more than a few seats over the years by running the same candidate multiple times, giving them time to grow as a candidate, make fewer rookie mistakes, build up their fundraising network, etc. Hells bell one of the reasons right-wing think tanks exist is to have a place to park candidates they like until the next cycle, giving them a fat salary to live on and a no-show job while they spend their time & title getting media opportunities and gearing up for another run.
Democrats are the ones who immediately toss a candidate aside once they lose.
The Audacity of Krope
Dukakis, yes. Gore spent years campaigning for climate change legislation, not office but still politics. Kerry was reelected to the Senate before becoming, I believe, Obama’s second secretary of state. Neither was urged to disappear from public life.
Paul in KY
@Baud: The ability to create more mucus may have been a strategy (the body’s) to lessen the chance of getting Tetanus.
Interesting article.
Professor Bigfoot
White people, man.
They just cannot help themselves. ;^)
Obligatory #NotAllWhitePeople
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: He was/is better than Oz. Very disappointed in him, but we had a binary choice and he was better (IMO).
Paul in KY
@mappy!: They are. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is the long version of their ethnic grouping.
Homo sapiens denisova for the other ones.
French Onion Soup
@The Audacity of Krope:
And yet they are all completely gone now!
Omnes Omnibus
@The Audacity of Krope: Kerry was also Biden’s Climate Change guy.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: I know they hate hate hate all the commercials with white husband/black mom or black husband/white mom.
I love em! Whenever I see one I know they are gnashing their teeth and rending their garments!
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: Marketing works, sadly.
The Audacity of Krope
@French Onion Soup: Object permanence exists for politicians, too. None of them have died. And they certainly didn’t disappear from the political spotlight immediately. Sure, if they retired 10, 15 years later, that makes more sense. And no widespread demands for them to go away.
Point is, there’s a double standard being applied.
Omnes Omnibus
@French Onion Soup: We do allow people to retire if they choose to do so. Dukakis is 91. The other two are pushing 80. Harris is still 60 for a couple of months.
suzanne
@Paul in KY:
They hate all kinds of stuff. Greeting cards for gay weddings. Fertility treatments for single women. Multicultural food at Costco.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: Oz was a really bad candidate. Not Alan Keyes bad, but just not ready for primetime (politicswise).
Paul in KY
@suzanne: They stew in their hatred. What a shitty way to live…
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Yeah, Pennsylvania Democrats chose Fetterman by a wide margin and I had no problem with. My attitude was, “their state, their choice.” I even cited the strength of Fetterman’s primary win in my first comment on him this thread.
So I don’t know you getting at here. Maybe it’s nothing in particular. But if there is something, just come put and say it.
Fair Economist
@CaseyL: You mean that’s something Democrats do. Republicans rally around losing candidate, and that helps them win. See Trump.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Soprano2: It’s the Progressive™ way, apparently.
And people wonder why I’m increasingly wary and distrusting of that label nowadays.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fair Economist: They didn’t rally around McCain or Romney.
The Audacity of Krope
@Omnes Omnibus: McCain wasn’t evil enough for MAGA. Romney probably was, but he didn’t present that way.
TEL
@moonbat: As a biologist myself, a biologist is the last person who would consider modern humans to be the same as ancient hominid species. The very simplified definition you gave doesn’t even touch on the scientific definition of species, which is all about genetic sequence similarities and differences, especially among what I call “housekeeping” genes. I won’t put everyone else to sleep and go into more detail, but Fair Economist is correct.
Citizen Alan
@Cordonazo: She doesn’t hold an office. What specifically do you think she should be doing?
Citizen Alan
@Deputinize America: Some odd examples. I don’t think any government could “manage” any of those three well enough for the nation to survive largely unscathed even if the last decade hadn’t happened. I mean, a Yellowstone eruption could potentially be an extinction event.
SteverinoCT
I see a barrel, on its side.
Citizen Alan
@Cordonazo: I can think of one very good reason. People who lose presidential elections tend to vanish from public consciousness unless they take aggressive steps to prevent it. Admittedly, a failed coup attempt is pretty damned aggressive, so I admire Harris’s restraint in merely publishing a book to explain her political views and energize her supporters.
Citizen Alan
@stinger: Honestly, I’m surprised the CB logo lasted as long as it has. It can’t be good for business that the company logo basically says “we only serve old white guys.” Bad enough that, by design, the interior of every Cracker Barrel looks like Mayberry if it were made of plastic.
Citizen Alan
@CaseyL: I didn’t turn on him, but I was devastated and fairly certain Shitgibbon was going to win after that. I don’t blame him for anything that happened, but he had the absolute worst moment to take a little too much cold medicine before a debate, at a time when the entire US media apparatus was already setting the narrative of him suffering from dementia.
Citizen Alan
@suzanne: I once attended a town hall for that POS Alan Nunnelee (R-Bumfuck, Mississippi) in which some asshole old enough to look like a rise mummy was spitting mad because he had to “Press 1 for English.”
Citizen Alan
@Omnes Omnibus: Neither of them openly embraced racism. The most depressing thing about the ten years is the realization that Obama would have lost in 2008 if, instead of telling that racist bitch at one of his campaign stops that “Obama is a fine family man who I just disagree with about politics,” he’d said “I too have grave concerns that he’s secretly a Muslim terrorist sent by Osama Bin Laden to kill us all.”
Citizen Alan
@The Audacity of Krope: And I think now that Romney would probably have beaten Obama in 2012 if he’d been Southern Baptist. I was genuinely shocked at the number of evangelicals who voted for a Mormon elder despite their personal beliefs that Mormonism was a literal Satanic cult.
chemiclord
@Citizen Alan: A lot of elements on the religious right have accepted that they need to be in alliance, at least for now, in order to defeat the goddess liberals.
The left has yet to learn that lesson, and would much rather eat their own than fight fascists.