Just after President Trump’s defense lawyers ended arguments in their Senate trial Tuesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein suggested she could vote to acquit him, despite serious concerns about his character.
“Nine months left to go, the people should judge. We are a republic, we are based on the will of the people — the people should judge,” Feinstein said Tuesday, after the president’s team finished a three-day presentation in his defense. “That was my view and it still is my view.”
[…]After those remarks were published, Feinstein issued a statement saying she had been misunderstood.
“Before the trial I said I’d keep an open mind. Now that both sides made their cases, it’s clear the president’s actions were wrong. He withheld vital foreign assistance for personal political gain. That can’t be allowed to stand.”
Misunderstood! After the discipline of Schiff spending hours laying out his case in the most precise language, she makes a stupid off-the-cuff remark like that and has to walk it back. And it is so stupid, because the fundamental reason for impeaching Trump is that he’s meddling with the next election with the purpose of thwarting the will of the people.
Jesus, a child could understand that argument.
Just to be clear, I’m not just upset that she made a dumb comment that she had to walk back. What’s really scary is that that she might be reflecting what some other “institutionalist” Democrats in the Senate really think. Also, “Well if even San Francisco liberal DiFi has concerns about impeachment, how can I explain my vote to the voters of <purple or red state>”.
There isn’t enough alcohol in the world, there just isn’t…
Jacel
Dianne, I can think of one (among many) job that Adam Schiff would be a great fit for in the relatively near future.
Baud
Raven did the right thing.
Keith P.
She should really stop trying to impress the Chuck Todd and Gloria Bergers of the world.
Mike J
twitter.com/alaynatreene/status/1222285001653411841
Mary G
I have been extremely negative to her on Twitter and voicemail, and I am still pissed off by this:
She could have just said the trial is still going on and therefore she hasn’t made up her mind, but no. Hopefully she got enough of an earful from my fellow Californios, but jeez, that is bad no matter how she walks it back. And yes, I’m emotional, I’ve defended her here and other places and I feel betrayed. Don’t tell me to calm down, either, it’ll just piss me off more and I have a doctor’s appointment in 45 minutes and my blood pressure is going to be sky-high.
Mike J
Jesus Christ you idiots will bite at anything.
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@Mike J: Thanks.
But – the transcript posted has the “will of the people” remark which is a Republican talking point and stupid as fuck, to boot. She didn’t have to say that, no matter how it got cleaned up.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
I’m beginning to think so.
We’re going to miss no opportunity to dump on Democrats from here to November, aren’t we?
Wag
Reposted from below
Meanwhile, in other news, TPM has this headline:
talkingpointsmemo.com/news/falwell-rallies-rural-virginia-counties-to-secede-and-join-west-virginia
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Good chance that’ll be in the 2020 Democratic platform.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
very interesting about this new WSJ report– I can’t get twitter on my machine and WSJ has a paywalll, so no link, but Ari Melber is talking about a very aggressively sourced, “In the room”, report that McConnell doesn’t have the votes about witnesses. I’m curious about who won’t vote for what, wrt especially Hunter, of course.
Anyone in Iowa? I’m wondering how Joni Ernst Kinsleyan gaffe (admitting this is all about embarrassing Bideen is playing.
satby
@Baud: ???????
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah I saw that from other sources. I assume the play now will be a tit-for-tat Bolten for Biden type exchange to give cover to Senators afraid of the talking point that they voted against witnesses. “We did vote for witnesses, but nothing satisfies those Democrats.”
A Ghost To Most
Anyone who needs a spine stiffener, something of great need here, should give a listen to (and watch the video of) “Thoughts And Prayers”, on DBT’s new album, “The Unraveling”. Rolling Stone has it.
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: CNN has it as a blaring headline now.
NCSteve
Dude. Seriously. Chill pill.
The reporter who asked her the question she was answering came out quickly and said the LAT had construed her as saying the opposite of what she was saying. This is all on the Times, not on DiFi.
twitter.com/HoarseWisperer/status/1222288176854831112?s=20
PJ
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes: They don’t want to actually have either Biden testify, as that would put the lie to their conspiracy theory. They just want to say that Democrats are withholding the real truth. If they wanted the Bidens to testify, they have the votes to subpoena them.
chopper
@Mike J:
see, this is why it’s smart to wait a few minutes.
dr. bloor
Take a deep breath, pay her no mind. DiFi is at the point where she’s a higher-class equivalent of the drug-addled lunatic Cheri Oteri used to play on SNL. Her staff will point her in the right direction when it’s time to vote.
She is not stating the inner thoughts of the “institutionalist Dems” WTF that’s supposed to mean.
chopper
i see cole posted something above in response to all the questions as to azul getting banned, which still doesn’t answer the question as to why.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Martin: Wow. Looks like phone calls really do work.
Thank you Alex Bell.
rikyrah
Baud
@dr. bloor:
The Establishment.
Martin
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes: I don’t think so. The witness trade was shot down hard by Schumer.
As part of the process, they have a vote of whether to consider witness. That’s the vote in question here. Then there’s a process of submitting witness requests to leadership, I think it is, and they introduce individual motions for votes. They don’t need to introduce every rando request, but things they think are relevant. It could be none will pass. There will probably be some negotiating in how the motions are structured, whether individual witnesses, open or closed session, all that garbage.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dr. bloor:
Judge Judy? she’s all-in for Bloomberg. First I’ve heard that she was on drugs
More seriously, I was in full beam me up mode when I saw her making campaign appearances and ads, but… I guess she is one of the most popular TV acts out there. Kind of a Joe Rogan for old/er people.
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@Martin: This is a good point. Thanks
Juju
This was my reply to BettyCracker down below, Feinstein is old. She forgot details. If you watch her closely, you notice she depends on her staff to fill in a lot of details.
My mother is nine months older than Senator Feinstein. My guess is that some of this is age related cognitive decline. She’s forgotten some details and her staff will set her straight and she’ll come out and “clarify” what she said later on. Or I could be completely wrong. I think she should have retired rather than running for her current term. She will be 90 at the end of her term.
chopper
so difi says “before i felt it could just get decided in the election, but now that the trial is on i’ve come to the opinion that he totally broke the law” and the media goes OMG DIFI WANTS TO ACQUIT!
and people just fall for it and flip the fuck out because of course we believe the media framing when it comes to democrats, right?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
speaking of Cheri Oteri, Rudi Giuliani played her mother on SNL.
Martin
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes: I will add, the order of votes may be illustrative. If Bolton passes, who will the GOP want to *add* as witnesses to counter Bolton? I can see a scenario where Pompeo is attractive to the GOP because they think he’ll back up Trump, shit like that.
I expect this could get weird.
hitchhiker
Okay, so if Mitch doesn’t have the votes to block ALL witnesses, what will he do?
Does anyone know what the process is? Is there a process?
Juju
@chopper: I think it’s something like “because I said so.” , but that’s just a guess. I don’t know who Azul is and I’m not inclined to go back and figure it out. Given what John wrote, I think he must have gotten a lot of emails he didn’t much care for, as well.
namekarB
I have voted for Feinstein’s opponent in every primary and reluctantly voted for her in every general election.<sigh>
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@hitchhiker: pretty much whatever Mitch wants it to be, I think. I wonder how much of this is Tillis and McSally, maybe Ernst, scared so shitless of mean tweets (or is there time for a primary challenge) that they won’t vote for any witnesses. Maybe even Graham would be in that category. That’s four. Blackburn maybe the the trumpiest Senator, Five.
JPL
Bqhatevwr
Dan B
Feinstein’s words,”We are a Republic based on the will of the people.” Fails to include ‘We elected representatives are complelled to perform our duties to our constituents and uphold the Constitution.’ Her statement is eligible for a D in civics. If we had to wait for the next election why have Senators? There are polls. There are legal reasons for Feinstein to take a stand.
I had quite a few friends in San Francisco who hated her for consistently similar behavior. She was the liberal version of “good people on both sides.” It’s the opposite of MLK’s despair about neutrality and silence in the face of injustice.
It’s hard to imagine how she got to her second statement since the first was internally incoherent. Did Sekulow, Bondi, and Dershowitz’ logic-pretzels infiltrate her mind?
BGinCHI
We need to hit the pause button on old white politicians until we figure out just what the fuck is going on.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: @zhena gogolia: Gah!!!!!
Mnemosyne
@Mary G:
The actual reporter on the story was the first to defend DiFi and say that the quote as used was misleading, so it looks like the LAT fucked up.
Steeplejack (phone)
“The book is inadmissible” thing was Sekulow today, possibly ad-libbing and stepping on his dick in the process. Lawyers pounced on Twitter to note that if the document is inadmissible then the next best source is the author of the document. Uh-oh.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Can’t you just pass by what you don’t agree with?
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
I think “getting 100 Facebook messages from two different accounts that are apparently the same person” is a pretty good reason, myself.
Cheryl Rofer
@hitchhiker: As I understand it, there will be a vote on whether to call witnesses. That is what Mitch says he doesn’t have enough votes to defeat. Then there will be a vote on procedures – how many witnesses, and so on.
Patricia Kayden
BGinCHI
@Steeplejack (phone): TPM reporting Turtle does not have enough votes to block witnesses.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Why should she? Should comments only reflect agreement?
debbie
@Steeplejack (phone):
Reading his bio in Wikipedia, he could do nothing else.
hilts
Chris Matthews poses the $64,000 question as only he can: “Can Mitch Bolton Down the Hatches?”
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
We had someone come to a meetup here in LA who worked on Judge Judy’s TV show. He said she was a good employer because she paid well and kept everyone on the payroll year-round so she could keep the production team intact. Film and TV production work is usually gig work where you work for 9 months and then scramble to fill the gaps. She didn’t want to have to constantly hire and train new production people, so she keeps them on salary instead.
opiejeanne
@Baud: What did Raven do?
I’ve missed everything today including whatever set Mr Cole off. What with doctor appointments, shoe shopping, grocery getting, lunch eating (mmm, hot dog with mustard) and pages of medical forms to fill out before I go again on Thursday. (No worries, I’m eating correctly, taking insulin, wearing one of those monitors on my arm, and my blood glucose is nearly normal).
In short, I’ve been busy for a change.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s channeling point 7 of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.”
Which, as I’m sure you know, Wittgenstein spent the remainder of his life disavowing.
Mnemosyne
@Dan B:
The story’s reporter says that the LA Times fucked up the quote and that wasn’t what Feinstein said. ?♀️
Baud
@opiejeanne:
Check out the morning thread today. Raven is leaving BJ.
opiejeanne
@chopper: Oh, again? I thought he banned him a couple of weeks ago.
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
I heard that Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel. ?
Gin & Tonic
@opiejeanne: I have to take the fall for this. In the morning thread I inquired as to raven’s whereabouts, and in that I mentioned that he seemed upset that ola azul was apparently banned a few weeks ago. Things kind of went downhill from there, although raven did make a brief appearance to post what seemed kind of like a GBCW.
In the meantime the thread kind of degenerated into discussions about the ban, which was not my intent. I was just curious about raven, since he’d usually appeared pretty regularly in the mornings and now hadn’t for a while.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Eh, he was a beery swine.
@Mnemosyne: Gah!!!!
Steeplejack (phone)
@opiejeanne:
Read the morning thread. Raven explained why he has been taking a break and may not come back.
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne: Surely you mean Hegel.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
If you start from the beginning, Baud thinks Raven did the right thing (ie, leaving). Zhena agrees and bemoans that there will be nothing other than Democrat dumping up until the election. I asked her why she doesn’t just skip reading what she knows will upset her.
Please explain how that is so horrible and how I am out of line.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, it’s obvious that there’s some joke here that has gone completely over my head.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Sure, once you answer my questions….
Steeplejack (phone)
@Gin & Tonic:
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
For the handful of us whose German is a bit rusty.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: This should help.
opiejeanne
@Baud: Over Ola Azul being banned? Ok, now I’m shocked.
chopper
@Gin & Tonic:
well david hume could out-consume wilhelm freidrich hegel, yes.
Mohagan
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sure, after you show me where I told her she could not comment.
opiejeanne
@Omnes Omnibus: That helped immensely. Teehee.
Jay
Dumph Pardon receiving Murdeous ex-Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher is now doxxing Active Duty Navy SEALs,…….
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you. Due to an apparently mis-spent youth, I am not up on all (or even most) Pythoniana.
For that, I am well up on my analytic philosophers.
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
The posts I agree with tend to be posted at 3:00 AM when I’m asleep. The afternoons are full of anti-Dem concern trolling.
satby
@debbie: Sweetie, Baud was joking.
BGinCHI
@chopper: Let’s talk about Kant and mustard.
Mohagan
@Juju: I thought she shouldn’t run again either. The only silver lining for her still being a senator is now Adam Schiff has gotten such wonderful exposure that he seems to be her obvious successor, IMHO.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: There are people reading this blog who are not thrilled with reflexive sniping at Democrats and they are entitled as anyone else to state their opinions. Suggestions that they just skip over things they don’t like as though it is just like a garden or gaming post sort of miss the point of the objection.
Jay
@opiejeanne:
it’s not specifically about Azul being banned, it’s the news, a bunch of the comments, a bunch of the infighting and that there are “sides” forming around candidates that are engaged in bitter fighting.
it might be permanent, it might be temporary, it’s Ravens choice to take a break.
satby
@opiejeanne: yeah, his GBCW was over that guy, along with dark muttering about how John doesn’t run his own blog.
so Dad pulled the car over in the next thread, and thank FSM there’s no comments. Because though he explained pretty well, people seem to need moar detail, which John doesn’t owe anybody. Plus, I bet that the “sweaty emails” are actually “sweary emails”, and if someone was berating me in emails they’d be banned, blocked, and forever sent to spam. John is much better than I am.
Baud
@Jay: Where are you getting that from?
Betty
@Juju: I would like to see all the 80+ Senators retire and make room for some younger folks. I say this as an older person.
Jay
satby
@Jay: well, we also don’t do football threads anymore.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Cole should put up a “It’s My Fucking Blog” tag, for his use only.
Another Scott
@debbie: If only we had threaded replies, we wouldn’t have these problems…
Cheers,
Scott.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Wag: As a now-Virginian, I wouldn’t miss those snowflakes. They can’t accept that democracy means you don’t always get your way, they should leave.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: I’m going to send Cole an e-mail…
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott: Well, you could get rid of a bunch of people that way if that is your goal.
chopper
@satby:
well, if we’re losing raven over this, it’d be real nice to actually know why.
Jay
@Baud,
Raven’s post in the morning thread,
coupled with a bunch of his recent posts, “jumping in” to try to quiet some of the infighting.
chopper
@Jay:
see, you pardon a war criminal and this is the sort of shit that happens.
Baud
@Jay:
Don’t see anything about politics in there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Gin & Tonic: If you read between the lines, I think he prefers to get Facebook messages
Jay
@satby:
there’s usually more than a couple of football comments every single day, they just arn’t about “American football”.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: rofl.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: as I recalll, the problem was Ola Azul was the only person he had to talk fishing with
debbie
@Another Scott:
Why, I…
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s really weird but I missed all of that when it was happening.
Jay
@Baud,
Baud
@Jay:
You didn’t post those so I can’t assess. What I’ve seen is what Raven explained this morning.
J R in WV
@Baud:y
I’m not sure that’s what I heard. I think he’ll be back after a while. Hope so anyway, he is one of my favorite Jackals.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
I’m out here in the Midwest. I’m used to not agreeing with the people around me, which is why it bothers me less than it does you. Sorry.
Dan B
@Mnemosyne: The specific sentences about the US is a Republic and 9 months to go appear in the reporter’s transcription of the tape of Feinstein’s interview. They seem to fit with patterns of her career as a centrist / moderate. My observations are speculative but we’ve got to decide if we still believe we can work with the GOP or if they at war with us and will mor be satisfied until we surrender. Are we going to Weimar / Chamberlain (He had excellent reasons to delay.) or Churchill? Neither approach is ideal but we should try to thread the needle for now. Feinstein seems to want to stall on deciding but saying “the will of the people” in 9 months seems like: I don’t want to do my job. Her second statement was much better.
HinTN
She’s fucking senile. I’m sure someone else had already said this truth. But it’s truth. She’s fucking senile.
Heywood J.
I’ve lived in Cali my entire life (52 years), and have never voted for DiFi. Not once. And even though she took pains to walk back and clarify, this is exactly why. She’s 125 years old and just got-re-elected in 2018. She’s in the bluest of states. She could be out front in declaiming and knocking town this human centipede of an administration, and calling them out for the dung beetles they are. But no, we mustn’t perturb our well-intentioned colleagues, who always go above and beyond to be civil and cordial and play by the rules as well as the spirit.
These fucking people, all of them. The more one looks at the current composition of the Yew Ass Senate, the more one can see the positives in term limits and maximum retirement ages. If we basically agree that this country and the world face some serious challenges in the decades to come, then maybe the best people to address the situation aren’t doddering centrists who can’t even muster ten seconds of full-throated declamation to the worst set of traitors this country has seen in 150 years, instead of explaining themselves to them.
satby
@chopper: seriously this
isn’t clear enough? And raven, for whatever reason, decided on his own that this was a decision he didn’t like and so took a hike. John gets to decide on the participants here at the shebeen and raven is as entitled as anyone else to take a break, or even decide it doesn’t suit him any longer. He’s a big boy too.
Heywood J.
@Dan B: ….we’ve got to decide if we still believe we can work with the GOP or if they [are] at war with us and will [not] be satisfied until we surrender.
The best way I can put this is that I deeply resent that one of the senators representing my state seems not to have made that decision yet. And I don’t know if a word in the English language even exists to describe how baffling and inexplicable I find such a stance.
We could have set her out on an ice floe with a crate of Matlock DVDs and been done with her a couple years ago, and gotten someone born after Lawrence Welk. This nation has a bizarre fixation on never retiring their politicians, even when they aren’t very good.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Perfect day for it!
WaterGirl
@Baud: It’s like you won the lottery, and you didn’t even buy a ticket.
Dan B
@Heywood J.: I mostly agree with your view of Feinstein. My friends in SF thought she was stuck in one gear : be polite. There are plenty of times when that is crucial. And there are times when the principles that undergird democracy must be supported with strength and clarity. It’s going to be years threading the needle between respectful disagreement and full throated resistance. Schiff seems to understand, Feinstein not so much.
And my favorite former candidate does as well.
WaterGirl
@satby: Even though you are probably right, I kind of thought sweaty emails was a great description.
opiejeanne
@Baud: I was wondering the same. I went back and read that thread from a couple of weeks ago, and was surprised at what I’d missed after I left the thread to do other stuff, but I didn’t see what Jay’s describing.
Dan B
@Heywood J.: I have no appetite for Feinstein snuff fantasies. She’d be fine as an elder spokeswoman reassuring the elders and “centrists” that Dems, even the assertive ones that give her pause, are best.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: Yeah, maybe not.
chopper
@satby:
so is john saying this
is referring to azul? cause it aint clear. which one was he, the sweaty emails or the FB shit?
sorry but if one of our oldest most beloved commenters is walking away it’d be nice to know it wasn’t over some bullshit. i guess not everyone feels that way.
terry chay
She is my senator and I hate her. I hate how she built her career and I hate that we have her instead of a Senator we deserve.
But you morons are truly moronic if you think she said that she isn’t voting to convict. Whatever she said was taken out of context. She was probably answering a different question entirely.
Your bile should be reserved for whoever wrote this piece. Those are the people with an agenda. Feinstein, as milqtoast as she is, is still a patriot who cares about her country and the duties of her office, unlike the entire Republican Party.
danielx
@Dan B:
Fixed. And yes, there are any number of people out there who would like to see anyone to the left of Genghis Khan sucking on grass from the root end.
danielx
@Heywood J.:
Also too, it would help if the Senate as a body wasn’t pretty much a wholly owned subsidiary of the banking, fossil fuels and evangelical industries…
Hey, I can dream.
@Heywood J.:
Heywood J.
@Dan B: Politically speaking on the ice floe, of course. The point being that 86 is far past the age where one should be doing this sort of work.
I have no use for her as an “elder stateswoman” or whatever. She’s been in office for decades, and I’ll be damned if I can recall her doing or saying anything particularly noteworthy. Maybe somewhat ahead of the curve on gay rights, but nothing this century.
I think our other senator has done a fine job in striking that balance you describe. I am tired of waiting for old dogs to learn new tricks, while Moscow Mitch drinks their milkshakes. Politeness and comity do not work in Calvinball.
Heywood J.
@danielx: Right? I think we all have the same dream.
Jay
Heywood J.
@Jay: Naw, just headaches. Coupla Tylenol and they’ll be fine. Didn’t you get the memo from Dear Leader?
zhena gogolia
@terry chay:
Good comment.
MaryLou
@Heywood J.: DiFi lived through the Moscone/Milk assassinations by a fellow SF supervisor (that’s how she became mayor of SF) and the Jonestown episode, also locally sourced. Her ‘moderate’ politics are well-earned, since she’s seen the real death and carnage that result from political extremism. In other words, she’s got her reasons to try to tamp down political animus since in her experience, some of us don’t handle it well.
Sab
@Keith P.: If she hadn’t started out in SF she would probably have been a very moderate Republican, like they used to have in the Midwest and New England.
Jay
Jay
@Heywood J.:
0, 11, 34, now 50, ( so far).
I am old enough to remember when the US Infinity Wars merited more discussion.
Heywood J.
@MaryLou: I’m aware of that, I’ve lived in CA all my life and recall those events well. It’s not 1978 anymore. Her colleagues have been openly colluding with the defendant to throw a sham trial. Maybe she could spare a few words about that, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just not all that important to her, I mean, as long as everyone’s civil and all. Jackie Speier was shot five times at Jonestown. She never seems to have any trouble speaking her mind with directness and conviction.
I can promise you that however all this shakes out, whether there is violence or (hopefully) not, whether Dear Leader gets evicted and actually vacates the house, nobody is ever going to say, “Hey, remember when all this criminality was going on right in front of us, and the administration was rubbing everyone’s noses in it on a daily basis, and the Republicans all abdicated their sworn oaths, and Senator X was just really polite about it and never really raised a fuss? Good times.”
Heywood J.
@Jay: Fair enough. I agree, it is very peculiar how the number keeps increasing.
I hope the good folks serving in our military forces take a good look at their CinC, and really consider whether he gives so much as a wet Big Mac fart about any of them, and vote accordingly.
James E Powell
@debbie:
That goes against everything Al Gore had in mind when he invented the internet.
James E Powell
@Baud:
Me too. I do not recall anyone name Ola Azul. I recall some trolls, but I can’t recall their names. There was a Bob something, I think.
satby
@WaterGirl: sweaty is the autocorrect when I typed sweary. But I’m pretty sure he meant sweary because how can emails sweat???
chopper
@James E Powell:
he wasn’t a troll, he was a fisherman. plenty liberal but he had an annoying patois like he was pretending to be an old prospector or something.
given how many honest-to-god trolls this site has tolerated over the years it seems a pretty minor thing.
Jay
@Heywood J.:
it’s not “weird” that it keeps increasing. Putting a bunch of peoples heads through the Paint Shaker at the Big Box Store, tends to have an impact for some people that will be “immediate”, others, weeks to months before their symptoms are bad enough that they report it.
There is still a huge stigma about brain injuries, not just in the Military.
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
It’s hard to tell. They slur the lyrics quite a bit.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Patricia Kayden:This, is Josh at TMP said this is a battle of attrition. It’s been pretty clear the Right has convinced themselves that useless idiot Trump is the second coming of Jesus, Washington and Lincoln at the same time so they are only going to let it go by inches.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@chopper: I ignored him but a couple of people have said he got really nasty sometimes, and apparently crossed a line at least once
Heywood J.
@Jay:
Sorry, I should have been clearer that I was being sarcastic. It won’t be in the least bit surprising if it turns out that the casualty count is even higher and worse, and that Trump and SecDef Raytheon have been deliberately feeding low figures to whichever credulous media dupe bothers to transcribe it without checking the facts and figures. And it’s certainly possible that there are and will be more delayed trauma victims to come forward.
Totally agree that there is still an unreasonable stigma regarding brain trauma in general, but it seems even worse in the military and pro sports.
The main thing that annoys me about this story is how fast and loose Trump plays with soldiers’ lives, and then when he gets them needlessly injured, he shrugs it off, calls them pussies and says it’s no big deal. It’s absolutely a big deal. Brain trauma gets terribly underplayed, because you can’t see it and most people don’t know much about it.
satby
@chopper: it wasn’t about his fake writing style. Which he claimed was the way “his people” spoke and snotty elitists (like me and Amir, G&T, etc) could stuff their grammar and spelling. There’s scads of you tube videos of Sitka fishermen, so feel free to go look at how none of them speak any broken English. I just ignored him after a while. Oddly, a lot of the people grizzling about him being bounced also mentioned they didn’t bother reading his comments much.
I think where the line was crossed was alluded to in John’s post about sweary emails, not as much as anything written in the blog. And possibly the complete contempt demonstrated by some now absent for Cheryl and the implication that she manipulated John into banning ola might have factored in too. A lotta misogyny on display, and since I defended Cheryl I caught some of it. And I am now not going to deal any more with this, it’s John’s house and he doesn’t need my help.
chopper
@satby:
i never said his writing style was authentic. i know plenty of fishermen, it was clearly a patois.
john said some people send these sweary emails. that doesn’t mean that was the case here with this guy, just that some people have done that. i’m just wondering what specific rule was broken given that we lost a beloved member of the community over this guy getting shitcanned.
i’m not crazy, am i? i just want to know raven didn’t take off over some dumb-ass bullshit some other guy didn’t actually do.
chopper
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
yeah, his fake-ass patois would instantly set some people off and he’d fight back.
of course if “things got nasty” is the line in the sand then all manner of commenters wouldn’t have lasted a month here before getting the banhammer. stuck and CS woulda been shitcanned straightaway.