Obama makes grand gesture to try and ERADICATE white history http://t.co/2QGxoRuY7z pic.twitter.com/Gr691QLIpX
— Allen West (@AllenWest) August 31, 2015
It's about the mountain. He's upset about the mountain's name. https://t.co/0MHagkptjX
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) August 31, 2015
#Obama, you are only the president. You have taken an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, not to shred it. Mt. McKinley.
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) August 31, 2015
“@crtconsu: @SteveKingIA pic.twitter.com/KnS4nrVWUU” // Perfect response!
— Jodi (@jodotcom) August 31, 2015
"Candidates, a show of hands. Please raise your hand if you are very mad about the mountain name thing."
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) August 31, 2015
The GOP opposition to renaming Denali seems to be largely based on the fact that the Athabaskan name sounds too 'foreign'.
— Apinak (@Apinak) August 31, 2015
Yeah! Why don't those damn Athabaskans go back to where they…wait.
https://t.co/CicBHtOXJz
— Billmon (@billmon1) August 31, 2015
Have we heard Sara Pailins Denali take yet. Feel like were missing out
— PFTCommenter (@PFTCommenter) August 31, 2015
hah, jokes, zing pic.twitter.com/gTnJuE85sL
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) August 31, 2015
Meteorological summer may be over, but it’s always Cucumber Time for the Wingnut Wurlitzer.
Serious question: Have the recent FYWP upgrades fixed the problem where, after 200 comments, a post would become unreadable on the mobile version of this site?
WereBear
Wish I could help you but I hate the mobile version with the heat of a thousand suns.
BGinCHI
If Obama had any real sack he would have named it Mount Obama.
You know that’s what Kanye is gonna do when he is Prez.
BGinCHI
@WereBear: I admire your hatezpah.
Zinsky
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican from Alaska, supported the name change. I heard a guy on NPR from the Park Service say that only the Congressional delegation from Ohio (I.e. The Orange Boner) opposed the change. Fuck ’em.
Ryan
Trollin trollin trollin….
Actually, I approve of the name change on the merits alone, but I’m glad it’s happening now, near the end of the second term.
WereBear
To be clearer: the mobile version does not support Reply or the useful ploy of clicking on the date stamp to keep one’s place in a comment thread.
So on mobile I can only go to the end of the thread and comment. See what happens next by refreshing and then scrolling to where I think my comment might be.
It’s like some parody of purgatory and it makes me feel like I’m sitting in the back of the school cafeteria with a stepped on hamburger.
EconWatcher
Apparently, Sarah Palin regularly refers to it as Denali. It’s some kind of Alaska thing, regardless of whether you’re Anglo or native Alaskan.
I could not care less, except that as someone who grew up in Michigan, I do enjoy watching Ohioans get all lathered up.
WereBear
@BGinCHI: I admire your word coinage!
See? Couldn’t do that on mobile.
BillinGlendaleCA
For those of you that remember TV in the 70’s and 80’s: The M*A*S*H location set in 1977.
I’m debating on continuing the Hollywood theme and hike up Mt. Lee and take a backwards(and very close) picture of the Hollywood sign or just hike in the Verdugo’s again.
BillinGlendaleCA
@EconWatcher: If I remember correctly, ‘the First Dude’ is part native.
WereBear
I shouldn’t be up at this hour but I have to take medication at six hour intervals or I’ll Hulk out. I moved it to make meals work better and now it is messing up my sleep.
Didn’t help that when my alarm went off to take the next dose the arm I reached up to shut the alarm was all numb from being slept on. I almost went Full Cole but fortunately no damage was done.
Betty Cracker
Allen West is one of the more despicable characters in public life. I remain grateful that his district kicked him to the curb.
Amir Khalid
As a person of colour, I support President Barack Hussein Obama’s sincere — if somewhat belated — effort to eradicate white history in America. There’s been far too much of it.
/kidding
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
I only wish I were all big and green and muscular.
Mustang Bobby
As Steve M noted on the Twitter machine, maybe GMC will rename the truck McKinley and sell a bunch to right-wing nut jobs.
Cermet
To me as a young kid when I heard the native name Denali it sounded very proper; so, about time it was made official.
WereBear
For those hip to the blue light interfering with sleep, I got a 99 cent app from the Apple Store which lets one browse at a lower brightness and has a red light option. Night Web Browser.
You won’t thank me later. You’ll be asleep.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Rachel had a poll that showed, among republicans more people thought Obama was born outside the US than thought Ted Cruz was born outside the US.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: There’s a downside, Amir.
There’s always a downside.
Kay
I don’t know anything about Alaska politics, but the national far Right grifters always have an angle and don’t they all hate Murkowski because she’s not far Right enough and she beat the Tea Party lawyer with a write-in campaign?
Maybe it’s about tying her to Obama.
Major Major Major Major
Had an amazingly nice date, but the hallucinations seem to be out in full force at the moment. Combined with the insomnia, that’s just lovely.
Somebody (Siubhan)? asked what was up… I have an arachnoid cyst, you can Google it, I’m in the process of getting it removed.
WereBear
Is restoring a mountain’s original human name the most stupid and trivial issue the Far Right has pitched a fit over? Or is it just one of a set?
Discuss.
raven
@WereBear: Flux too
WereBear
@Major Major Major Major: I will be virtually relieved when you get out of your surgery okay.
And what an opportunity to get an updated operating system for your brain.
WereBear
@raven: have it. Great for laptops. Currently in ridiculous love with my iPad.
Kay
@WereBear:
They’re probably thrilled to be asked about something other than how Donald Trump wants to raise taxes, has vowed to protect both Social Security and Medicare, yet is the far and away front runner in the GOP primary.
gene108
@Major Major Major Major:
Good luck with the surgery.
@WereBear:
One of an endless list that seems to have no beginning or end.
WereBear
@Kay: It only makes sense to Wingnuts?
Betty Cracker
@raven: Four more days!
Kay
Does anyone know why she still has this job?
BillinGlendaleCA
Morning Joe got the CLICK within a minute today, Hillary emails again.
Mustang Bobby
Four years from today, assuming all systems function within normal parameters, I will be starting my actual retirement from this job. Which means I had better start looking for something else to do. Playwriting is good for the soul but it doesn’t pay.
I have 1,044 working days left, but who’s counting.
Dolly Llama
Here’s a young tool in the making in the news here. I love how it’s buried down in the story that this young man hasn’t taken the course and hasn’t read a thing on the reading list, but it’s “one-sided” from his expert (freshman) viewpoint. And you know the guy would have to be a journalism major.
WereBear
@Kay: We have loathed her almost from the beginning and have told the DNC, many times, she is one of the reasons we don’t donate to them.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Pictures of the President with a goat, I got nothing. She’s been a miserable DNC chair.
ETA: I’ve always had a problem with having a congresscritter also being party chair. Both are full time jobs.
Schlemazel
@Major Major Major Major:
It was me. I guess arachnoid cyst does not sound as bad as some of your concerns & it is treatable so thats a plus. I guess the surgery part is scary but I have had so many surgeries I tend to think of them as routine. My guess is in a few weeks you will be up & running at full speed again wondering why you had stressed. Keep us posted.
gene108
I had a dream tonight, where I was going back to my (dream scape) college dorm late at night. The rooms were in a sort of suite set up. In the hallway was a large guy, presumably student, in a straight jacket asking to be let out.
My roommates and I discuss letting him out and decide against it.
Then John McCain walks down the hall and lets the crazy guy out of the straight jacket.
They proceed to fight/wrestle. I decide to try to break up the fight. I succeed and then end up at an airport, with my coworkers getting off a flight from a business trip.
I have had several dreams about college / high school over the years. A few about work.
This is the first one involving John McCain.
I do wonder what my subconscious is up to.
WereBear
@Mustang Bobby: Write a book?
raven
@Betty Cracker: Two. There are good games Thursday night. My Illini, who fired their coach last Friday, start this Friday and the NDSU-Montana game last Saturday was a barn burned. Meanwhile I have finalized plans for the dreaded LA wedding trip that will cause me to miss the fucking game of the century here in Athens.
Kay
@WereBear:
They usually have a reason. I think they have a small donor, online base who respond to things like this and Obama as dictator combined with “eliminating white history” must just be catnip.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: You need to rig you up a short timer calendar!
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: LA, as in Los Angeles?
Mustang Bobby
@raven: Got an Excel spreadsheet on the desktop that updates every day, but I love the graphic you have there. I have colleagues who are on the same track as me; there’s an app for those with smarty-phones.
@WereBear: On top of the two that I’m already working on?
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yes, my niece is getting married down near Laguna. My only revenge will be if the Dodgers get in the series and all those dorks MISS their game too!
raven
@Mustang Bobby: Most of them were pinups but I thought the Snoopy one was cool. I had the Bob Dylan psychedelic poster myself!
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: If you have a free evening, you could also meet some of the fine, upstanding Balloon Juice commenters during your stay in the Southland.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Well, you know, there was no history before white history.
Kay
@WereBear:
I thought she had potential when I first started hearing her because she’s such an aggressive speaker- she does that filibuster thing that I associate with GOP operatives where she just railroads media- but they really are measured on whether they win elections and she lost ground. This has to have some connection to merit. She just has nothing to justify keeping the job.
Betty Cracker
@raven: I’ll probably watch the ‘Cocks vs the Heels on Thursday, but Saturday is the true opener of The Most Wonderful Time of the Year for me.
Which game do you have to miss for the wedding? Auburn?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: She’s been mostly invisible as far as I’ve seen. See plenty of RNCBS.
Major Major Major Major
@Schlemazel: Thanks. I appreciate that.
It’s gotten so much worse lately. So lonely and frightened. But it will be over soon, I guess.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Personally, I would have sent her a card and gone to the game. As for the Dodgers making the series…. Fat chance. They’re having a hard time winning their division.
Kay
Snicker, snicker :)
Another Holocene Human
Funny, he doesn’t mention just how many American soldiers DIED in those stupid tropical adventures. The Base doesn’t like that kind of thing. Never have. A good portion of the Base are openly isolationist.
Neocons trying to whip up hysteria on behalf of their hero is precious, though.
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear: Reply works for me on mobile but apparently my phone has been blocked as a spammer. Bad carrier, I guess.
Phylllis
@Mustang Bobby: 530 for me. I can see June 2018 from Ms. Palin’s porch.
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear:
Man, that sucks. Fucking medication.
They make us take pills because “easier” but they fuck with our stomachs and everything else.
But I can see why they like pills. Right now I am in therapy and taking pills. The pills are dirt fucking cheap. The therapy–expensivo. The therapy has some chance of permanent change (I’ve made a lot of measurable progress already–no more panic attacks), the pills? Well, after a while they can cause awful side effects.
Yay.
Another Holocene Human
@BillinGlendaleCA:
IOKIYAR.
Another Holocene Human
@Major Major Major Major: There’s a silver lining–one day you’ll be able to write about this stuff very vividly and you won’t have needed a traumatic brain injury to get to that point.
Oh, who am I kidding. :( *hugs*
WereBear
@Mustang Bobby: Yeah. Writers gotta write.
And I can’t recommend cat blogging. I’m coming up on my eight year anniversary and just now I’m within sight of the black ink. With donations. And we’re just talking meeting operating expenses. No profit yet at all :)
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear:
No.
Legislatures actually set aside part of their time every year to designate official whatsits and name things. Throwing a name tantrum is par for the course.
The GOP got mad at Obama over:
His official birth certificate didn’t look like a birth certificate from a REAL state like Connecticut or Alabama.
He put his feet on his desk.
He met with them.
He didn’t meet with them.
He signed legislation passed by Congress.
He made recess appointments.
Every executive order (despite the stack behind him with Republicans’ names on them).
Presidential travel.
The GOP has expressed outrage every time Obama has tried to do his job. By comparison, this stupid name flap is light comedy.
The joke is on Ohio, because Alaskans call it Denali anyway.
WereBear
I liked that too, but when I found out she was PRO-privatized prisons I dropped her like a hot rock.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Holocene Human: I can barely see.. it makes me angrier and angrier (again I’m getting treatment) but I’m a pretty big dude who knows how to ….damage people. I don’t want to obviously but it’s just so frustrating.
Sherparick
Senator Murkowski might as well become a Democrat. Except for about 95% of the other issues, she is a complete RHINO in the eyes of those who count: Limbaugh, Levine, Fox, and Trump.
Another Holocene Human
@Dolly Llama: “In conclusion, the instructor has a foreign-y name. INPEEECH!”
Matt McIrvin
The reason it hasn’t been changed before now is an amazing Congressional dick move: a Representative from Ohio entered legislation every two years to keep the McKinley name, just so that the Bureau of Geographic Names would be blocked by its policy of avoiding doing anything if legislation was “pending”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denali%E2%80%93Mount_McKinley_naming_dispute#Alaska_Board_of_Geographic_Names_attempts_to_change_name
This went on for 34 years!
Another Holocene Human
@Major Major Major Major: Oh. That’s heart-rending. Dealing with a disability, even temporary, is no picnic. I heard your surgery is today and I hope all goes well.
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear: Her record (vis a vis other Democrats) in Florida should have disqualified her from a Dem leadership position.
I guess they were looking for “killer instinct” and forgot “character.” (Or loyalty.)
Schlemazel
@Major Major Major Major:
I completely understand. Worry is the killer, a completely understandable but irrational fear. I don’t think it is just me but I know it is not everyone but these sorts of things always include bleak predictions (made up inside my own head) just often enough to be upsetting.
WereBear
That’s some world-class dickmoving.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
Keep us posted. Best of luck.
Kay
@WereBear:
Agreed. That’s just gross. There’s no excuse for it. That Esquire piece says Jennifer Granholm is “waiting in the wings” so maybe she’s next. I thought Howard Dean was over-rated. He’s become almost a proxy for everything liberals hate about Democrats. They just say “HowardDean50statestrategy” and that encompasses a whole view. We were a target of the now near-mythical 50 state strategy and it came off here as an incredibly long list of directives, so much so that there was open derision at a meeting I was at- they were laughing at the organizer- but DWS is objectively terrible on every measure so…50 state strategy, whatever.
Raven
Wtf
NorthLeft12
@Zinsky: Who knew that ex-Prez McKinley had such a devoted base?
Little known fact; McKinley was the first president of the so-called Progressive Era.
Progressives in 1901; start a frivolous war with Spain, annex the independent state of Hawaii, raise tariffs to protect US industry, ignore AA concerns to placate southern whites, and serve as the puppet of a mega-rich businessman. Yeah, I guess I understand why the Republicans think so highly of him.
Kay
@Sherparick:
She seems to have found a route to winning in that state though, so maybe she’s sticking with it. They micro-target so much now and there aren’t a lot of people there. Maybe she’s identified some patchwork of voters where she can eke out a win over the latest wingnut celebrity.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: It was an attempt at party-building. WTF has DWS done? Besides shiv other Democrats?
I would be excited about Jennifer Granholm. Not gonna lie. Plus, that region is really in trouble with Dems and they need to staunch the bleed.
The thing that’s deceptive about a South Florida pol is that you’re thinking Florida is a battleground state, we really need to make progress there, yadda yadda, but actually South Florida is its own world, its pols are in a bubble, and the biggest fights happen during districting time, not election season, because there are GOP pockets of rich assholes. Enclaves? Anyway, it tells you nothing about their ability to win in adverse conditions.
Wait, it tells you everything: the South Florida Dem apparatus CANNOT CANNOT CANNOT win a statewide election even with headwinds behind them.
Thousands, and I mean thousands, tens of thousands of Republicans voted against Rick Scott in the last election and the Dems still failed to turn out and they STILL LOST.
Where was S Florida? Throwing a pity party because one of their own wasn’t the nominee. There was a primary, y’all. Your precious pony lost. You gotta win across all the counties. Fuckin’ ridic. (The rival was living in and had major backing from CENTRAL FLORIDA. Upstarts.)
RSA
@Major Major Major Major: Good luck with your surgery! Hope you like jello. :-)
Woodrowfan
@NorthLeft12: um, McKinley was not a Progressive. He was from the conservative part of the republican party.
Kay
@Another Holocene Human:
I wondered what happened with the governor’s race. I have to admit, though, I love how bizarre and quirky state-level politics is. There’s an amateur hour part if it that I find really appealing compared to the slickness of the national stuff. It seems more accessible and real to me. I went to a Marcy Kaptur “rebuild the Democrats” event and it’s freaking amazing how thin people slice this: “you will not win in X county without the retired-construction- trade gun lovers vote- can’t do it”. That’s my favorite thing- local experts just opining away :)
WereBear
@RSA: Which reminds me. Major to the Fourth, if at all possible, recruit friends to bring food.
I’ll never forget the oatmeal I got one morning. It was bizarrely inedible just from the smell. Couldn’t even taste it, it frightened me so.
Baud
@Kay:
It’s like blogs in real life.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Woodrowfan: About the only thing that McKinley did that was progressive was select TR as his running mate in 1900.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Wait, blogs aren’t real life?
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: I wish the Florida Dems had a Marcy Kaptur. Last one they had was (apparently) Walkin’ Lawton, who was before my time. The Dems here haven’t won the state since then. Can’t seem to find their ass with both hands, actually.
(Obama won Florida, but he created an infrastructure to get out the fucking vote. That meant calling some people like 15 times. We do that for local elections too. Come to their house at 5pm on Election Day. Didja vote? Need a ride?) But state elections? Hahahaha. Dems seem to leave it to labor. They’re strong in some areas, weak in others. It’s a low labor participation state. You need more people involved. They sure love our money, though.
Steeplejack (phone)
@WereBear:
What you said. Plus comment numbers, which the mobile version doesn’t have.
I use the desktop version on my tablet and even on my Moto X cell phone. It’s quite readable.
ETA: I thought the mobile version does support Reply, but I haven’t checked in a while. And I think there are some problems with it. All the other navigation stuff I agree with.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
God I hope not.
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: Hang in there. My medical consultant (widipedia) says the surgery should take care of this, but fear of having someone cut into your head is pretty hard-wired, I think.
Baud
@Steeplejack (phone):
I use the mobile version all the time, and reply works.
Matt McIrvin
The Republican candidates are now all rushing to promise to reverse this. Somebody should ask them just why they’re lining up to coddle the sensibilities of a state that voted for Obama twice over a good deep-red state with Sarah Palin in it.
Iowa Old Lady
Re Denali, whenever I hear a freakout over something like this, I hear my rather unsympathetic mother’s voice saying, “That should be the worst thing that ever happens to you.”
@Mustang Bobby: I can’t recommend writing fiction as a way to make money either.
PaulW
@Another Holocene Human:
There were also problems with voting machines in S Florida “not working” and other delays which cut back on overall turnout results, which is a sh-tty thing for the state to do (guess who benefited from that).
Turnout for midterms is a disaster for Democrats – not just in Florida – for several reasons. One of them is that the party at the state and national level IS NOT RECRUITING WELL for candidates in ALL districts. For God’s sake, they tried lining up some centrist ex-Marine guy for the congressional district in Pinellas County only to find out the guy couldn’t qualify because he wasn’t a party member long enough! meanwhile, they HAD two perfectly good local residents who were long-time Democrats that polled well and had good chances to run, and they were snubbed.
The other problems are systemic: our electoral process is a complete mess… and BOTH parties profit from that mess in their own way, meaning they never get fixed.
Baud
@PaulW:
Um…are we sure Bernie has done his homework on his eligibility in all 50 states?
raven
Apparently one can post on the iPhone, it says it was posted complete with a green checkmark and then NOTHING!
raven
We’re going to LA for my nieces wedding and missing the 4th Georgia-Bama game in the 31 years I’ve lived here. Our schedule will be nuts for the couple of days we are there so, as much as I’d like to metope, this will be wall-to-wall family. As far as not going, even I realize there are more important things than football. I have a 2 out of 3 chance that I’ll be able to see the game since the wedding is at 5pm LA time.
beltane
DWS is from a safe, heavily Democrtic district. She sucks because she sucks. Sometimes she even goes out of her way to suck, as when she expressed her personal opposition to a proposed state medical marijuana law, putting her on the side of the Florida GOP. On foreign policy she might as well be Louie Gohmert. They say she is a good fundraiser, but if the funds raised don’t translate into election victories, they may as well not be raised in the first place.
The best thing I can say about DWS is that she makes Terry McAuliffe’s tenure at the DNC look stellar by comparison.
satby
@Major Major Major Major: Good luck! When will you have the surgery? Keep us posted. {{Major Major Major Major}}
Kay
@Baud:
I was sitting next to a real political professional from Sherrod Brown’s campaign and I was telling her “you just lost the retired county clerks association with that last comment, Harvard. Hope you’re happy”. I’m incapable of behaving in “share ideas” forums. I can’t do it.
raven
@Baud: Not for me.
Baud
@Kay:
You don’t want to mess with Big County Clerks.
Baud
@raven:
Maybe it’s an iPhone thing.
debbie
Rob Portman was on the local news, stating half-heartedly that he’d find something else in the park to name after McKinley. Don’t know if there are public conveniences in the park, but that’d get my vote.
Meanwhile, John Kasich seems to have stolen Lindsay Graham’s fainting couch.
Betty Cracker
@Another Holocene Human: I agree that the Democratic Party here is appallingly dysfunctional, but attributing the reelection of Scott to Central FL vs South FL Dem infighting misses a huge part of the story and the true reason that ambulatory dildo won. The Democrats ran a re-tread who had changed parties three times in just a few years. The loss begins and ends with that fact, IMO. Voter turnout was down in Orange and Osceola too. Democrats just weren’t all that excited about voting for Crist.
Betty Cracker
Testing…
ETA: Was able to post this via my iPhone.
WereBear
Maybe that’s the “thing.”
To get Democrats to vote you have to get excited. To get wingnuts to vote, you just get them outraged.
And that’s so freakin’ easy.
Betty Cracker
@WereBear: Yes, and it makes me want to slap the shit out of Democrats who won’t get off their asses to vote in every goddamn election. But what can you do? They’ve seen the appalling assholes who get elected when they don’t vote, and I guess they just don’t give a shit.
Baud
Good post at LGM about reviving Lochner.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Witch.
satby
@Betty Cracker: That and the fact that Republican voters adamantly do NOT believe that anything on a Republican platform policy-wise actually will apply to them. So it’s safe for all those seniors to vote for the guys who want to gut SS and Medicare, because they won’t be affected. Secretly, they don’t think their own children will be either, just those wrong kinds of people. It’s industrial strength denial.
Kay
@debbie:
That phrase can follow everything he says. He’s low energy, like Jeb.
Baud
@satby:
The Republicans sell privilege, and everyone wants to believe they are among the privileged set.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The Facebook comments and such I’ve seen on this strongly suggest that the grassroots outrage is just raw racism against Native Americans. Nothing more complicated than that. “Who shall we bow to next?” (“We”?)
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
It is terribly frustrating, but when the Democrats are looking for a new Outreach Coordinator in your locality, please do not apply!
(On second thought, maybe you should!)
Cervantes
@Kay:
But Murkowski is not alone among Alaska Republicans in having worked to restore the Athabaskan name.
FlipYrWhig
@satby:
And you can’t have “Denali” without “denial.”
Cervantes
@Baud:
Privilege, yes, but also self-pity, among other things.
Matt McIrvin
The whole business had me looking up the local indigenous names of other mountains. Mt. Washington in New Hampshire has a great one: Agiocochook. Thoreau seems to have favored it.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven:
KILL THE HERETIC! KILL THE HERETIC!!!
beltane
Someone needs to tell the Republicans that many Mexicans and Central Americans are of predominantly Native American ancestry. Maybe Donald Trump will propose doing an ISIS by attempting to blow up Denali.
raven
@Baud: yea
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: The key, in both cases, is emotional involvement.
Some people care more about Cake Boss. Well, they can talk about that with their best friend and their Aunt Ida and everyone else getting their haircut in the salon that day; the one in the back of someone’s house. The one they can afford.
They can talk about it sitting in the cruddy breakroom of their minimum wage job, or waiting in line at WalMart. They can be an expert at it… because they are.
People have a resistance to talking about how crummy they have it because no one wants to think about that.
Bring it up and you better have solutions. That will get people worked up. Not talking about the Iran deal. They don’t know what it is and they don’t want to betray their ignorance by talking about it.
Which never stopped a wingnut. That’s the difference.
SuperHrefna
@Major Major Major Major: @Major Major Major Major: I’m so sorry, good luck with your treatment!
satby
@FlipYrWhig: FTW!
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: Bingo. I think self-pity is vastly underrated as an animating force behind conservatism. I see critiques attributing it 100% to racism, and I don’t recognize the conservatives I know in those descriptions. But self-pity? Yep.
satby
@Baud: Read that and then the piece that inspired it. I can reply on my Kindle here, but I can’t copy and paste on FB from it, so that’s my first task when the laptop boots.
It’s so frustrating to hear younger people announce they’re libertarian without actually understanding what that means and how it would affect their quality of life.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
satby
@Baud: @Cervantes: I think both in that lots of R voters are convinced that they will one day be rich and need to protect their money; and self pity that it’s taking so long for them to get rich and it must be someone else’s fault that they aren’t there yet.
Gimlet
I see a lot of the anger and self pity coming from subsistence conservatives that can’t get the items or help they need. They think it’s potentially available but being given to “cheating” group of unworthy persons.
gene108
@satby:
I went through a libertarian curious phase in my late teens and early 20’s. This was in the early to mid-1990’s.
There’s something appealing about an alternative that emphasizes self reliance, when you grow up seeing social safety nets gutted and the promise of Social Security as not being there for you when you retire.
And yes, 20+ years ago predictions of Social Security’s demise was a thing.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Yes and not just over here. Husband kitteh’s uncle in India, is big supporter of BJP. Even though he is a Brahmin male he feels put upon and slighted (Perhaps because lower caste people and women don’t bow and scrape before him, which he seems to think is his due?) He has a persecution complex the size of Jupiter. According to family lore he had Communist sympathies in his youth. I think some people are just attracted to authoritarian ideologies.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
In India is there reliable information on how demographic change might affect numbers in the caste system?
Chris
@gene108:
I always thought it was mainly that there’s something appealing about an ideology whose basic tenets are “you’re not the boss of me!” and “I’d be just fine if everybody would just get off my back!” when you’re a teenager. It’s the age when you’re learning to spread your wings, become your own person, and get out from under your parents’ shadow – and yet (for those of us lucky enough to have been raised comfortably middle class or higher, that is) your parents are still there for you so that things like paying the bills and putting food on the table (the whole scary side of being on your own) don’t really register yet.
There’s probably some kind of Churchill paraphrase to be made. If you’re not a libertarian by the time you’re fifteen… but if you’re still a libertarian by the time you’re twenty-five… etc.
So, Social Security has always been just about to go bankrupt and die, just like Iran has been two years away from a nuclear weapon for the last twenty five years? Sounds about right.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: The Brahmins are the 1% of the caste system, they form a tiny sliver of the population. They are not the richest caste either, what they had a stranglehold on was knowledge and learning.
ETA: So I don’t understand your question about demographic change. The upper castes (especially Brahmins) are already a demographic minority and because of that they can’t dominate the discourse as much as they could during the British era, for example.
tamiasmin
Denali — not a river in Egpyt.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
No problem.
If the Brahmins are literally at 1%, is that effectively by definition? That’s probably not what you meant, right?
I don’t know much about how these things work in India in 2015, but I wondered if the Brahmin segment is either not growing or shrinking. Any reliable data?
Also, I was wondering not only about the Brahmin segment.
Do not feel obliged to respond. I can find out for myself if I really want to; it would just take time I don’t really have!
PurpleGirl
@gene108:
And yes, 20+ years ago predictions of Social Security’s demise was a thing.
The demise of Social Security is still a thing among conservatives and Republicans. We have to cut it NOW to save it, dontchaknow. Of course, conservatives and Republicans have been against Social Security since it was enacted.
ETA: And we have to privatize it… we have to give that money to Wall Street. Now, yesterday, whatever.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: I have no idea. Census data for 2011 is available on line.
Brahmins are probably not literally at 1% but my guess would be between 5 to 10% of the Hindu population which is about 80% of the total population. So between 4% to 8% of the overall population.
Another Holocene Human
@PaulW:
Sounds like the Florida Democratic Party at work.
Another Holocene Human
@Betty Cracker: He. Won. The. Primary.
Another Holocene Human
@Matt McIrvin: I like that name. Mt Washington way oversells it.
They can tell tourists that Agiocochook is Algonquin for “Better bring layers.”
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Just now realized you are getting into surgery today. Best of luck with it! Sounds like they have this down cold, so not that much point to worrying.
While Mrs J was in the hospital for 59 days, we noticed that their food was really pretty good. Even after she was off the vent and recovered from the induced coma she didn’t get tired of the food. The food service folks would bring her things she asked for, like cut fresh fruit for breakfast, etc.
Everyone but one (female out of all the other male ICU nurses) nurse was over and above on every issue, and that’s probably a large part of how she lived through an illness that has a 70% fail to recover rate. Septic shock from severe pneumonia was her illness, along with collapsed lung that went bad.
Anyway, I just wanted to wish you the best, tell you I expect to hear from you asap on how things went.
Glad you had a good date, even if he looked like a 14 foot high fluorescent walrus from the hallucinations. Kidding, of course, he probably looked like a Greek god if the hallucinations were really working!
Take care, and eat everything they bring you. I ate jello and liked it after my surgery. There’s the best joke of the year, I’m a picky eater and I ate everything. I was halfway through some baked chicken before I realized it wasn’t fish… and didn’t care what it was.
sigaba
@EconWatcher:
At the risk of contributing to a dead thread, Sister Sarah’s Secret Service codename was “Denali.”
lurker dean
bob casey comes out for the iran deal. looks like chris coons will be a yes also. almost there.
chromeagnomen
@Matt McIrvin: surprisingly enough, this guy was a complete RINO. he pushed for increased Pell grants for poorer students, increased funding for research into cancer and heart disease, and supported stem cell research. he was also a leader in alternative energy sources and fuel cell technology. supported clean coal, and was an early mover for Landsat.
a dickhead in the denali thing, but for a winger, he sure could have been a lot worse. replaced by a dem when he retired.
JimGod
@Baud: Again, you can only register as a Democrat in the state you live in. If that state has partisan registration. Any state that requires a Presidential candidate to be registered in the party he seeks the nomination of is stupid. It is an unenforceable law. New Hampshire’s law is unenforceable. Unless one becomes a resident of NH, the idiot SoS there cannot decline a ballot line to a candidate for not being a registered Democrat. Obama was not a registered Democrat, still is not. Neither am I. Illinois does not use partisan registration nor does Vermont. Jim Webb is not a registered Democrat as Virginia does not use it either. Any official who tries this line of bullshit on any candidate who is not a citizen of said state is playing games.