I don’t post about football games here anymore because I got sick of all the whining and trolling. But here we have a college football story that intersects with politics and free speech on campus, so I’m making an exception.
As you may have heard, Trump, having been thunderously booed at the Nats game and then again at some sort of cage match combat thingie at Madison Square Garden, is flying around the country on the taxpayers’ dime in search of a sporting event he can crash without being publicly humiliated.
The Heart of Dixie would seem a good bet, no? So Trump is crashing a high-stakes SEC game this weekend: the University of Alabama Crimson Tide vs. the Louisiana State University Tigers. Should be a helluva game, football-wise.
But the University of Alabama Student Government Association must’ve seen a weekend forecast with a chance of boos because they sent this around:
I went to an SEC football school and have attended games in SEC stadiums virtually every year since college, and I have never seen non-disruptive behavior in the student section. Disruptive is normal, is what I’m saying. But apparently security will be deployed throughout the student section to ensure no one hurts Twitler’s extra-dainty feelings, on pain of losing their tickets for the season.
Surely the people who meep endlessly about PC thought police on campus will stand up for these students’ right to self expression, right? **crickets** **crickets** **crickets**
Anyhoo, I’m hoping Tigers and Tide alike can link arms in unity and boo the ever lovin’ fuck out of Trump before one team seizes control of the SEC West. The campus cops can’t kick them all out. To paraphrase some Twitter wag, let Trump seek a hero’s welcome at the Gutbucket, Arkansas Tractor Pull and Hawg Wallop.
Open thread!
justawriter
Over at LGM they note that Rothfarb is also the student recruiter for the UA chapter AIPAC.
dr. luba
What do you have against Gutbucket Alaska?
Roger Moore
It seems to me that even in the Deep South, college towns tend to be bastions of liberalism, so a college football game may not be such a good bet as Trump assumed.
The Moar You Know
Same way they stood up for Kaepernick’s, I’m guessing.
Should be a pretty safe trip for Trump’s Feelings.
Chief Oshkosh
Fucking asshole. Now I know why there are TFRs all over where I need to be this weekend. Well, here’s hoping it rains all over the southeast and that that soaks the freakish orange critter that lives on top of Hair Drumpf’s head.
Roger Moore
As someone has pointed out elsewhere, there’s only one other home game left on the schedule, and it’s against a nobody, so the threat of taking away tickets for the rest of the year is pretty hollow.
LesGS
I would imagine a thunderous *silence* when cheers are expected/desired could also be disconcerting.
Baud
It would be cool if they had to remove everybody and the game had to be played in an empty stadium.
The Moar You Know
The mind reels. Seriously. Both my mother and father went there. At the urging of their parents, 50 years ago, they changed the spelling of my brother’s middle name because it was, and I quote directly, “too Jewish”.
Guess the times have changed for the Jews in Alabama. Not so much for the black folks.
dr. bloor
Nick Saban will order campus security to buy and install state of the art facial recognition software so he can personally tear up the passes of malcontents who boo the president, or worse, don’t stay for the entire game.
John Revolta
When it becomes the New Fun Thing to boo Trumpski, these yahoos will be all over it like stink on roadkill.
Mobs are funny that way.
mrmoshpotato
@Chief Oshkosh:
Hey now, that freakish orange critter was living a peaceful, unmolested life until Dump decided to use him for a hair piece. Don’t hate the critter, hate the pile of shit it can’t escape from.
MJS
@Roger Moore: “Bastion of liberalism” isn’t what comes to mind when I think of Tuscaloosa, Gainesville, Baton Rouge, etc. And when I think of the actual campuses, I think of the segregation.
Dan B
IANAL but is there some clear first amendment issue here that could be addressed to embarrass the RW twits that are such offended snowflakes they don’t recognize the crassness of this “policing” of the right to express your opinion?
Wapiti
It might be better if he visits a private school. The University of Alabama probably shouldn’t be getting involved in free speech.
Baud
@MJS:
Yeah, most people there will probably cheer, and this notice is really directed at the minority (in both senses of the word).
mrmoshpotato
@LesGS:
And thousands of raised middle fingers.
Mary G
Jeffro
I’m picturing a stadium gone mostly quiet when trumpov is introduced. There are worse things than being booed, Donnie, you schmuck.
Isn’t he inserting himself into some veteran’s day parade in New York too? It’ll be great to watch/hear the footage of that one: cheercheercheerBOOOOOcheercheercheer
The Moar You Know
@Dan B: 1st Amendment really does not apply at either the workplace or schools.
MJS
@Baud: I will be satisfied if someone in one of the bands let’s out with a clear, resounding (literal) sad trombone sound or tuba-generated fart sound when his picture is displayed on the Jumbotron.
Baud
@Mary G:
The word “reeks” is accurate.
gratuitous
Please note that cheering is a throat thing. It’s usually higher-pitched and not sustained. Booing comes from the bottom of the diaphragm, and drowns out cheers. If the crowd is split, the boos will be far more noticeable.
MattF
‘Oh, no, officer, my FUCK TRUMP banner is totally non-disruptive.’ I mean, just totally.
lee
I see a flaw in their plan “…any organization…..”
So if it is just individual students protesting then it is allowed.
germy
@Jeffro:
He’ll turn that around and accuse liberals of booing our veterans.
hells littlest angel
Everyone knows that booing at a football game is disruptive behavior. I believe that the proper etiquette is to sit silently so as not to disturb the players’ concentration, with brief, quiet applause permitted after points are scored.
JPL
Well at least someone recognizes that president bone spurs is a snowflake.
rikyrah
If they had been protesting 44….they wouldn’t have said shyt.
Baud
I see a new reality show, in which Trump crashes events across America looking for people who will cheer him.
I call it The Biggest Loser
JPL
@germy: That’s the plan
MattF
@hells littlest angel: Golf claps.
MJS
@Jeffro: For the game, there will be sustained, loud applause. Given the location of the game, the audience is sure to be overwhelmingly Republican. Said applause will be meaningless, given that no one expects much of anything out of Alabama. I think Doug Jones was our high water mark, at least for a while.
ET
I went to the University of Alabama and graduated in 1991 and SGA is shit generally speaking. Usually led by a white frat boy (they had a token white girl once). It looks like he is ZBT which is a bit of a surprise since that is usually a Jewish fraternity and I wouldn’t have thought they would have allow someone from ZBT to be SGA president.
Personally I would think not showing up would hurt worse. Unfortunately enough people won’t show up for it to be noticeable.
germy
@hells littlest angel:
And listen quietly to the announcer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZGiyTdUOIE
moops
I think they are going to have one hell of a fight on their hands if they try to ban any students for booing the President. It is about as gentle and non-violent a form of protest we have on Earth. If there are fists thrown, it will be from MAGAts freaking out. If any of them get banned, you can bloody expect more wailing about campus PC out of control!!!
really, Trump’s public appearances are making me nervous. I am expecting a RWNJ to start shooting protestors or running them over with their car. Most football games have metal detectors, but parking lot vengeance can’t be that far away.
Mary G
@moops: I worried about idiots with guns that have chugged a keg of beer, but fortunately Alabama’s open carry law excepts schools.
Barbara
There are few things that grind my teeth more than the intersection of politics and sports. All I can say for sure is that I will not be watching.
Raven
My Dawg football blog tells me he’ll be welcomed and that’s from a “fan base” that got totally fucked when he attended the Bama-UGA championship game (that I was so sick I had to sell my tickets for $3k) .
Raven
@ET: For this game? No fucking way.
Mary G
Why, Uncle Joe, why?
PaulWartenberg
I’ve argued on Twitter earlier that the BEST thing is for the Bama and LSU fans to not even enter the stadium.
Do your tailgating in the parking lot, listen to the game on the radio, give trump the empty stadium he deserves.
Raven
@MJS: and then there is Athens. . . Still, Sanford Stadium is different.
PaulWartenberg
@hells littlest angel:
You went to UAB didn’t you.
Kent
We are talking white SEC students who attend football games. The majority of them are likely to be MAGAots.
My daughter attends a different SEC school. Yes, there are plenty of progressive students as well. But honestly they are not the ones who bother to got to football games.
moops
@PaulWartenberg:
what you ask is too much. They want to party and see the game. The season is short and after all they have paid for that stadium they should get their party. But they really should still have the courage to boo the Orange Tyrant.
Mandalay
@The Moar You Know:
But is it really that cut and dried?….
IANAL, but explicitly telling students in advance to STFU at a football game at a state university which receives federal funds sounds like a lawyer’s wet dream to me. And doubly so when the message is being delivered by the Student Government Association rather than by the university itself.
I think there’s a background story here for enterprising reporter; Jason Rothfarb didn’t dream this bullshit up on his own.
Miss Bianca
@Mary G: You know, I seriously wonder whether stuff like this will start to erode his support among African-American voters. *They* know the score about Republicanism, even if Joe doesn’t.
Gravenstone
@Mary G: The one who desperately needs an epiphany appears to be Biden. Seriously man, did you not see the shit they put your former office mate through? And you expect them to change after the coarsening that the Trump years have brought upon them?
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
“Jews in Alabama” would be a great band name.
Are they actually protecting their investment in Nick Saban? What is wrong with these people?
moops
@Kent: the national average of college students has 76% in favor of impeachment. Alabama skews more GOP, but I think college young Republicans are in that small set of the R camp that are in favor of impeachment.
Raven
It will be more interesting to see how CBS handles it. Nessler and Danielson aren’t total dorks like Nance but I suspect, given orders, they’ll do a stupid in game interview. I think they did for Army-Navy.
jl
@hells littlest angel: ” Everyone knows that booing at a football game is disruptive behavior. I believe that the proper etiquette is to sit silently so as not to disturb the players’ concentration, with brief, quiet applause permitted after points are scored. ”
Unless the football players don’t snow up in their proper, dainty tennis whites. If not, then they should get loud boos.
raven
@Kent: Hell I may be the only lefty among 85,000 here at UGA! Most of my peeps are like the people on this blog. . . ewwww football.
Mousebumples
They walked it back… I mean, um, they were “misunderstood.”
The details are in an image in the tweet but I’ll try to transcribe it shortly (on my phone tho)…
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@The Moar You Know:
Thanks to the right-wing Supreme Court it doesn’t. Read an article I’ll have to find that in the late 60s and early 70s, right-wing conservative types looked at the liberal successes of the 1960s and saw an existential crisis for their ideology; an attack on the “American Free Enterprise System” as Lewis Powell, the future Supreme Court Justice, called it. The article characterized the SCOTUS and the last 4 decades of its decisions as increasingly fascist-lite. A lot of it’s the result of Powell’s and others widespread efforts to stem the tide of mass participatory democracy and greater economic/civil rights for all.
The SCOTUS in the past has killed the possibility of greater workplace democracy by allowing employers to search employees personal belongings at work
Barbara
@Mary G: Was Joe Biden awake and paying attention when Obama was president? Or Clinton?
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
I’ve been pondering the Alaska “bong hits for Jesus” kid comparison with those little Catholic fucks in D.C. confronting the American Indian in their MAGA hats. Which one(s) had their 1A rights defended and which had them taken away?
mrmoshpotato
@MattF: “My ‘Trump is Putin’s Bitch’ shirt is totally non-disruptive too.”
moops
The first student to suffer a consequence for booing Trump will have a meal ticket on most of the late night talk shows. Streisand Effect.
I’m expecting an organized MAGA contingent to try and attend the game. I don’t think it will work that well. Trump will have to learn that even Football doesn’t want his shenanigans. Shit Midas will make Alabama regret their invitation.
artem1s
My alma mater, Ohio University in Athens, OH was famous for it’s annual drunken orgy, rowdy, street closing, Halloween party. Various mayors of Athens have taken different approaches to the plethora of public drunkenness and open container violations. Most had the local cops ignore the non-violent offenders and had them focus on making sure no one ended up dead. Shortly after I graduated, a newly elected mayor decided ‘not in MY town’. He/she thought up the brilliant plan of taking out ads in every paper in every college town in Ohio announcing that “THERE WILL BE NO HALLOWEEN PARTY THIS YEAR…DO NOT COME TO ATHENS, OR ELSE” Needless to say every student body within driving distance took that as a challenge. Result – total chaos and one term mayor.
this edict may not turn out the way they expect it too.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mary G:
WTF? Does he seriously believe this? This is absolutely delusional
mrmoshpotato
@hells littlest angel: Yes, and Michigan Stadium doesn’t yell back “Who cares?!” during the opponent’s starting lineup.
Jamie
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I can’t imagine he actually believes this so much as he’s employing a pleasant fiction in order to angle for centrist/swing voters.
Whether that’s a good strategy or not is beyond my capability to assess.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@trollhattan:
Well, obviously the nice young smirking MAGA chud //
Good god, that poor Native American guy got destroyed and torn apart by the media
Barbara
@Mandalay: I think the decisions you are referring to were not colleges or universities but high schools. However, it is the case that even a public space can impose time, place, or manner restrictions on protests. Remember when Berkeley wouldn’t let Milos Yannapoulos give a speech at Berkeley at the time and place of his choosing? A university could probably decline to permit a large protest to take place in or around its football stadium at the same time a game is going on. Spontaneous expressions of derision that are not “organized protests” per se should be permitted to the same degree that spontaneous expressions of adulation would be. Which is to say, if they tolerate whooping and cheering and stomping of feet in support of Trump, they can’t punish catcalls, whistling and similar displays mocking Trump. I am pretty sure that is a reasonably up to date explanation of First Amendment law.
Mousebumples
@Mousebumples: the “clarification”
mrmoshpotato
@Mary G: I want to laugh, but it’s just so sad. How’d he miss 8 years of Obama being told to pound sand?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jamie:
I hope for his and our sake that’s all it is. I really don’t think Biden is what the country needs now, especially after his indecisiveness about only serving one term
Barbara
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Magical thinking. Totally agree.
Patricia Kayden
@LesGS: Nah. Boo the hell out of him. Sue the school for violating free speech rights. There’s nothing in the constitution that forbids protests of politicians.
germy
Off-topic, but here is the description of an upcoming NOVA episode, from my local PBS TV station:
Did they mean forgeries? People who write for a living should know what words are.
Miss Bianca
@Mousebumples: apropos of nothing in particular, I love your nym.
Patricia Kayden
@Mary G: And this is why I’m voting for Warren in the primaries. Biden is out of touch with reality. He saw how Republicans treated President Obama for eight years but still naively believes that Republicans can be worked with.
moops
@Jamie: Eventually, you are what you pretend to be. Biden has been at this stupid Reasonable Republican Racket so long now that he has almost certainly drunk his own kool aid. Perhaps it started as cynical tactics, but you can’t earnestly say this over and over without it having this effect. He is telling us, again and again, what he believes. His supporters are idiots if they don’t believe him on this one.
Frankensteinbeck
This is the best bet Trump can get, but I can think of no widely open event where Trump is actually safe. At least a third of the country does not just dislike or disapprove of him, they viscerally hate him and become angry hearing his name. They hate him enough to spontaneously boo. If even 10% of the crowd is like that, he’s going to be humiliated.
Outside of evangelical and other carefully audience-screened events, Trump faces a risk of booing everywhere. Will it happen? I can’t be sure. But he’s not safe.
Mary G
@Patricia Kayden: I’ve been trying to find a journalist that’s asked him WTF (in nicer terms), but they are all being stenographers, I guess.
Jamie
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I think the country needs “Not Trump.” Biden worries me in a lot of ways, but if I thought the difference between him and any other Democrat winning the nomination was the difference between an 80% chance of winning the presidency and a 75% chance, I’d pull the lever for Biden all day long and twice on Sundays.
This isn’t a policy election–it’s an all-hands-on-deck, save-the-freaking-republic election.
That being said, I have no confidence in my ability to assess electability.
sdhays
@Mandalay: Not to mention, a football stadium is hardly “the schoolhouse door”, even if it’s technically part of the school. There should be greater deference to the First Amendment there than in a more structured educational setting where unreasonable disruption can prevent learning for everyone.
moops
@Patricia Kayden: There is also nothing in the school constitution or the student code of ethics that is violated by protesting a politician. If you tried it there would be one hell of a lawsuit.
Mousebumples
@Miss Bianca: haha, thanks! I came up with it in high school (over a decade ago) and it’s rarely taken on online fora so it works good as an online nym. XD
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Frankensteinbeck: I am sorry to say that I was at dinner last night with a guy talking about “Shifty Schiff.” My friend challenged him and said she like Schiff. We left soon after that.
Kent
@moops:
Have you ever been to an SEC football game? I’ve attended them with my daughter. The students who go to football games and sit in the the student section are generally not the campus lefty types. It’s the exact opposite. My daughter and her lefty friends think sitting in the student section with a bunch of drunken frat boys is about the worst way they can think of to spend a Saturday. She only goes when I visit to humor me and only if I get regular good tickets on StubHub
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@moops:
I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried that at both the Nationals game and the MMA fight and both time got drowned out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mary G: @Patricia Kayden: I think there are a substantial number of Dem voters who want to hear that rhetoric. The trouble is, I think Biden believes it. For all I believe he’s sincere is his effusive praise for Obama, I think Biden thinks he would’ve been a more successful president. (In fairness, every other candidate in the race, every Dem in the Senate, every Dem governor, half the Dem caucus in the House, and more than a few commenters here, probably think the same thing.)
I just saw that some Rs are talking about subpoenaing the Bidens in an eventual Senate trial. I could see Biden getting out a “have you left no sense of decency?” at Lindsey Graham if he got his dudgeon up
Mary G
Rudy’s exact text to Volker:
Pompeo will probably try to use this to show he wasn’t in on the extortion, but Rudy think’s he’s a minion.
moops
@Jamie: Electing Biden is winning the battle and losing the war. Trump is the symptom, not the illness. Biden will usher in an era of Looking Forward, Not Backward, and we will be in even deeper fascist danger in just a few years. The Bush Jr appointees and “experts” should have been purged from DC and crimes prosecuted, but Obama and Biden gave it all a pass. Including Russian ratfucking. No, Biden will just let the infection linger and the next round of white-hot-hate will go even more berserk.
Mousebumples
@Jamie: my dad (lifelong republican but a never trumper who voted third party in 16) has said he likes Biden and could see himself voting for him. I haven’t picked my favorite yet and I’m not leaning Biden… But I agree with you that having Not Trump win is priority #1. #TeamBrokenGlass
Baud
@Mary G:
Biden’s epiphany talk is awful and especially if he believes it but this is also wrong.
That also mitigates what the GOP has become.
Mandalay
@Barbara: On reading the article more closely, I think you are correct; it was referring to high schools rather than colleges. That said, an NCAC article on harrassment and bullying said this:
Given that the SGA was attempting to enforce a “speech code” at a football game, and only this specific football game, it seems to me that they were on very thin ice. Still, based on post #55 from Mousebumples, it looks like they have backed off anyway.
Mary G
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think there are an equally substantial group of Democratic voters who think he’s senile for saying this. Time will tell. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear him blurt out that he was the one who really ran the Obama administration behind the scenes.
jonas
Can you imagine how much shit the Fox News and AM radio brigades would have lost had Obama demanded that crowds at a public event he was attending all clap in unison for Dear Leader under threat of losing access privileges to future events? They would have called it the founding of the Fourth Reich.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mousebumples: If I thought Biden were our strongest candidate, I’d swallow all my irritation and support him. I’d even do that with Bernie (though, replace “irritation” with “white hot hatred blazing like a thousand suns”). And I think Biden would be a perfectly fine president, especially if he had coattails, I just wonder if he could get through a GE campaign.
chris
OT but this looks like fun. Thread
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
did she say that? Good lord.
@Mary G:
Wouldn’t surprise me either, my word as a Biden.
matt
I kind of admire people who lick spittle so avidly. Definitely a predilection I lack that could have profited me.
hueyplong
An LSU-Alabama game is the third safest thing for Trump:
1. KKK rally
2. NASCAR event
3. LSU at Alabama
They couldn’t risk Alabama at LSU because there might be no controlling drunk LSU fans if they were to find themselves behind at the halftime of a night game.
Mousebumples
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: agreed on pretty much all of that. One personal anecdote isn’t sufficient to rely on to flip wisconsin back but I was surprised at my dad’s comment and wonder how many others are off a similar mindset.
Mary G
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Agree to both. I think I’d have to ask for a Xanax prescription, because I’d be terrified of a Biden gaffe 24/7.
kindness
What kind of wankers are in that Student Government down in Alabama?
Damn! I’d be embarrassed if I was a student there and if I was a student there a certain person from the Student Government would find their car TP’d repeatedly. Or maybe I’d glue a Russian flag (the old Soviet one) to the car’s paint job. My bad, sorry.
Betty Cracker
@Mary G: Just saw that on Twitter a little while ago, and my forehead is still smarting from slamming into my desk several times. Dog help us.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I looked it up because I had copied from the second hand account in the tweet.
MJS
@Baud: Seems gratuitous. I really like her, but I hope she knows what she’s doing. “Joe and I agree on a lot, but on this I couldn’t disagree with him more” seems a lot better.
Cacti
@Baud:
If you disagree with the blessed mother of born again progressive wokeness,, you must be a Republican.
Just ask her and her cult faithful.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MJS:
Me, too. I worry she’s bit off more than the party can chew.
Mary G
In response to Biden:
debbie
I just heard that Trump’s conscience rule has been tossed, where even billing staff can refuse to assist a patient on grounds of religious freedom. What is it that the billing staff could even do, refuse to bill someone? Sign me up!
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: @MJS: Biden might not be the flavor of the hour, but he has been a good Dem for a long time. This isn’t the way to take a shot at him.
MJS
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She made an issue out of something that didn’t need to be made an issue of, i.e., health care. Democrats own that issue. There was no way Trump and the Republicans were going to miraculously come up with a plan that anyone likes. Simply keeping to “ACA was a giant step forward, now it’s time to see where we can make improvements and get everyone covered,” and ridiculing 10 years of Republican non-plans would have been all that it takes. I know she has a primary to win, but there’s no “shifting back to the middle” from MC4A, at least in my opinion.
Sister Golden Bear
@mrmoshpotato: A friend of mine does a burlesque act about the poor creature that’s forced to live on Trump’s head. As you might expect, her costume is pretty awesome.
gvg
I have never been to an SEC game without a bunch of booing. I can’t imagine any SEC administration thinking they could stop booing and cheering. Now thinking they HAD to stop drunken fights and riots in the stands…yes, and I agree with that. Haven’t been to anywhere other than Gainesville for year so I can’t predict Alabama/LSU. Gainesville votes liberal and the actual people are a mix of the whole state, the liberal and the conservative because it’s the flagship state school and it’s supposed to reflect our whole state. I really don’t know how it works out at the other schools in more conservative parts of the southeast. I will say Florida isn’t as conservative as you think. We are mixed urban and rural and we are gerrymandered to favor conservatives but cities trend liberal.
UF is going to start having beer served in the stadium, I think this weekend. That’s going to go well (not).
Raven
Here’s a clarification from https://mobile.twitter.com/carterwilliam_/status/1192176606841901056/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1192176606841901056&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fblutarsky.wordpress.com%2F
Cacti
@MJS:
She’s painted herself and the party into a corner if she wins the nomination.
Mary G
NotMax
@Mary G
“Read my lips” two point oh.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mousebumples:
I wonder if this Rothfarb hammer head gets that most readers will be seeing red after that first passive aggressive statement.
Betty Cracker
@MJS: I don’t think Warren will “shift back to the middle” (nor should she, IMO), but she’s said she’ll put out a transition proposal outlining how we might move toward a single payer system. I also hope she’ll repeat points she’s made before, e.g., that it’s a blueprint that will require reconfiguring Congress to achieve.
I know everyone outside the Warren and Sanders camps is convinced that Democrats should just point out that Republicans have only harmed the shitty, expensive coverage we have and that Democrats will incrementally improve what we’ve got. Several candidates are saying that, so vote for them! The primary is about hashing out ideas.
PPCLI
More on Judd Legum’s discovery that the Trump campaign has been advertising “donate now and get entered in a contest to win dinner with Donald Trump!” on several occasions. Legum has counted 15 of them. And there appear not to have been any winners. After the story was published, the Trump campaign essentially conceded Legum was right, by a) telling him that really, truly, there had been winners but not providing any. b) pointing in the direction of two people, one of whom won a dinner that Trump wasn’t at, and another that won a contest to meet Trump backstage, not during the timeframe Legum was talking about.
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1192187447637159937
Amazing. There is no grift too petty or obvious for that grifting family.
Zinsky
LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!
As loud as you can, Betty!!
Barbara
@debbie: The opinion is 147 pages long. It is almost impossible to summarize succinctly because the regulation purported to arise out of so many disparate statutes that gave HHS various responsibilities. The most interesting aspect of it, which I had not looked at before, is that it basically created a conscience exemption to EMTALA:
They denied that is what they did. They also argued that health care providers could double staff to avoid any conflict. That did not go over well with the court.
debbie
@Mary G:
That second tweet is just stupid. Has he already forgot the 100% obstruction of his good friend, Barak?
Mnemosyne
@Raven:
Wondering if one of the school’s lawyers called him after they saw the letter and said, “Dude, you can’t do that!”
MattF
OT
Alexandra Petri on how totally fortunate we all are that Trump so nearly almost just about saved the day
MJS
@Betty Cracker: I generally agree that the purpose of a primary is to hash out ideas, but the cynic in me thinks that the more radical ideas (and in comparison to what we have now, MC4A is radical, regardless of how much sense it makes) are best left to the also-rans (think Beto’s insistence that yes, he would be confiscating guns), which gives the front runners the opportunity to agree with some of the “better” aspects of the ideas (i.e., what polls well), but distance themselves from the more problematic aspects.
Again, very cynical, I know.
Jay
Cohen: 3 yrs in prison Manafort: 4 yrs in prison
Stone: on trial
Flynn: awaiting sentencing
Rudy’s partners: arrested
Rudy: stark barking bonkers
Individual-1: facing impeachment
Hillary: enjoying a nice walk in the woods, probably
me: laughing at all you “lock her up” morons – Jeff Tiedrich
japa21
I happen to like Biden just fine. He is not my number one or two choice, but comes in number 3. Warren used to be number 1 but she has dropped precipitously in my estimation and is getting close to reaching the level that a Senator from Vermont holds in my book of disdain.
I used to think the only Dems guaranteed of losing an election against Trump were Gabbard, Williamson, Yang and Sanders. I, regretfully, have to add Warren to that list. And M4A is the main reason. She does not offer it as one of many possible options available, but rather as the ONLY reasonable option.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
I beg to differ. Biden has been a good politician pretending to be a Democrat for a long time. He’s way more in favor of Giant Evil Corp and their profits than he is in favor of the Great Middle Class that needs protection from Giant Evil Corp and assistance from the Federal government. Bankruptcy bill, Clarence Thomas and his job application hearings, Iraq weapons of mass destruction, etc, etc.
Biden is a Democrat because he is smart enough to know he can’t get elected anywhere he wants to live as an out and proud Republican. End of story. I’ll vote for him if he wins the nomination and Trump is the Elephant party candidate, but it won’t be with any great joy.
Jay
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/469259-judge-strikes-down-trump-rule-on-health-care-conscience-rights
jl
@MJS: I’m supporting Warren, at least in terms of contributing most to her, but I am a little worried that she did something she didn’t need to with her detailed M4A plan.
As for M4A itself, there is plenty of wriggle room. The only place I don’t see wriggle room is among the M4A fanatics in the Democratic left who have very rigid view that all private insurance must be dead dead DEAD! for any M4A plan to work. But international experience shows that is not true. Harris approach is fine for me, M4A with allowance for private insurance if they provide equivalent plans and submit to stringent regulations to make sure that they are not cheating. I don’t know why Harris had to flip flop around before getting there.
Warren has signaled to unions that she is willing to be flexible. So, most of the problem is how she handles BS corporate media narrative shaping, and the ideologues on the Democratic left whenever she makes any concessions at all in order for realistic chance of getting something passed.
I think polling shows public is very mixed on M4A proposals. They like the concept by a large margin, but then those who have good private plans get nervous when it comes to how it may affect their own insurance. No matter what position a candidate takes, they’ll have to do some substantial education, explaining and selling in order to get a large majority of the public on board with whatever approach they take.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MJS: also gives Rose twitter and excuse to bitch and kvetch if someone with a more appealing plan does catch on. “Even capitalist millionaire Elizabeth Warren agrees anything less than BernieCare is a sell-out!”
What could go wrong.
MattF
@MattF: Oh, and btw, I’m pretty sure her line about how Trump ‘interposed his electoral body’ is a sly allusion to Lytton Strachey’s response to the question of what he would do if a Hun was raping his sister. You can look it up.
Dan B
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’m surprised that no one I know of has hollered about the anti-semitic “Shifty Schiff” ( shifty jew) smear.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dan B: a lot of people on twitter have pointed it out, but most of the energy on that front lies with people who think trump is a friend of the Jews and Bernie Sanders is an anti-Semite
SiubhanDuinne
Hey! You take that back, BC! Raven is not either a whining troll!
Jay
@japa21:
Don’t worry, like The Green New Deal, M4A is simply aspirational with some vague policy proposals on how your could get there, and pay for it.
It’s a hope, a prayer, an incitement.
It’s never going to be policy. The US will always have the most expensive health “care” system in the world, with the crapiest outcomes, the least number of people covered, the highest rates of preventable deaths and bankruptcies, record infant and female mortality, and absolute Global Record Corporate Profitability.
scav
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Or envisioning the new Alabama school chant of Roll Doormats!
And seriously, however much they may hope to control the stadium (and theoretically the dainty bubble of personal in his orange face visibility), there’s a hell of a lot of outside the the game as well, crawlling with cameras ready to throw fodder to any media channels smelling blood. How fast can a fat baby baloon be fedexed in?
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: I disagree. So do most organizations that rate politicians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Joe_Biden
Aleta
All he really wants is TV footage of a stadium cheering for his profile on a jumbotron screen with an approximate imitation of a military band. Your standard authoritarian photo shoot.
It’s sociopathic to mess with people who’re going to a game to escape and have a good time. Who already bought tickets. Now it’s two games.
It also gives me a chill. If you tell people they will never be heard unless they pay, that their reps have zero influence, that protest may not be safe, and you keep on doing terrible things, booing is a pretty mild option. But you can’t even handle that. So now you’re taking over a setting as your own stage and forcing people to submit even though they didn’t agree?
And controlling their behavior with extra security to pass through, and cameras on them, and an expectation of what you want them to do?
It’s disturbing to say the least.
topclimber
@Cacti: You talk as if the Democratic Party has no agency. I would bet a few of my scarce dollars that the Democratic Party platform will NOT call for an end to private and/or of employer-sponsored insurance. At which point Warren will get out of any corner she doesn’t wish to occupy by endorsing the plan “we” have vs. the one “I” have.
Remember how Obama was against an individual mandate during the election, then agreed to it because ACA didn’t work otherwise? Good leaders adapt to reality. Doesn’t mean you have to start by conceding aspirational goals like M4A aka universal health care. Talk the idea up in the primary as part of the multi year campaign that eventually gets us there.
chris
@Dan B: Have you seen the latest on Schiff? The man is amazing! Marsha Blackburn is… something. Thread
J R in WV
Trump is a friend of Israeli fascists, not of Jews in general, like Democratic jews… And Trump is only a friend of Israeli fascists as long as he need them and they support him.
debbie
@Aleta:
If they can’t boo, they can turn their backs to him.
topclimber
@Jay: Have a nice day!
debbie
@J R in WV:
Umm, there are plenty of the non-fascist variety who chose tax cuts over everything else. I can think of more than a handful of them I haven’t spoken to since the election.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@chris: are we sure Blackburn isn’t Michelle Bachmann in a blond wig faking a Southern accent?
Dan B
@Sister Golden Bear: Pictures or it didn’t happen!
I’m imagining that the creature from tang lagoon makes some interesting noises – alien animal?
Heywood J.
Hair Twitler will spend the rest of the week getting reminded how he literally said that an electoral rejection of Matt Bevin would also be a rejection of him. By Saturday, he’ll chicken out of showing at the game, preferring instead to take his faithful poodle Lindsey golfing.
Geaux Tigers!
Dan B
@Dan B: Question for SGB: Have you watched House of Flowers / Casa de los Flores? The LGBT characters seem to be the main feature at times. Sorta high end Telenovela but everybody seems to know when it’s tongue in cheek and when it’s not.
Aleta
@SiubhanDuinne: Hey, how’s your wrist?
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
We disagree pretty often. Watch Biden manage the committee hearing where Clarence Thomas got approved for a lifetime Supreme Court appointment. He did not vote for Thomas, but he also didn’t call any of the other witnesses against him. So now we have a fascist goon perv on the Court until he retires or dies.
I honestly can’t think of a time when Biden and I agreed on a substantive issue, really — that may be my memory, but it might be his viewpoint and my viewpoint….
Dan B
@Mary G: It’s not just intensity against Trump for anyone payng a wee bit of attention. The entire cabinet and the judicial appointments are outrages in corporal form.
Dan B
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not looking at the right Twitter feeds if I missed the condemnation of Shifty Schiff, King Trump – King of the Jews, and Bernie of the PLO / Hezbollah.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
I will try harder. /s
Dan B
@chris: “Superhero Schiff” according to Ms. Blackburn. One single human entity on multiple continents and operating in a realm where time is not limited but infinitely expanding!
I hope she finds a safe place to shelter from this muti-dimensional Schiffness.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: Of course Obama chose a DINO to be his vice-president. That makes sense.
chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Maybe it’s Louie Gohmert in a blond wig? Or just his long lost sister? I think Bachman would have added some stuff about Satan and the homosexual agenda.
debbie
Interesting to come across this tweet after the debate here last night:
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Why is she suddenly Canadian?
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
To escape Trump Hell?
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fall colour emogee’s, not Canadian Flags.
Last week it was ghosts and pumpkins.
Ben Cisco
I was on the road when this thread went up, and it’s probably mostly dead, but anyhoo…
I’m disgusted that Ol’ Gelatinous Bastard is coming to my town. Disgusted that his never-ending quest for undeserved cheers has led him here. Disgusted (but not surprised) that a half-wit SGA rep tried his hand at pre-emptive fascism. But if last night taught me anything, it taught me to, as Baud said, still have hope.
I’m here fighting the good fight. And I’m not alone. Let him get what applause he can. Clock’s ticking.
Quaker in a Basement
@LesGS: Or laughter.