Goddess bless the Queen!
Longish read for a (hopefully) quiet weekend morning… Greg Sargent at the Washington Post:
If you care about whether the Democratic Party can rebuild itself anytime soon out of the smoking wreckage left behind by the disastrous 2016 elections, something very important is happening a lot sooner than you think.
There are more than three dozen gubernatorial races taking place in the next two years. And they could do a tremendous amount to set the party on the path out of the wilderness in the Age of Donald Trump — with potentially significant national ramifications that could stretch well into the next decade, for instance by having a substantial influence over the redistricting of House seats, which could help determine control of the Lower Chamber in the 2020s…
… The vast majority of these races take place in 2018 (only two, Virginia and New Jersey, take place next year), so we’re really talking about the 2018 map here. It has big transformative potential for Democrats, since many of the states in which Republicans are defending seats are ones Barack Obama (and to a lesser extent Hillary Clinton) won.
There are four reasons why these contests are so important to the long-term prospects of the Democratic Party:
1) They represent a major opportunity to reverse the tremendous state-level damage done to Democrats in 2010…
2) Winning back gubernatorial mansions could have real impact over the redistricting of the House in the next decade…
3) These races give Dems a chance to turn things around in swing states and “blue wall” states that Trump won…
4) Winning back states could have a big influence on policy…
Interactive map & full details at the link. Remember, those of you on (other) social media — Sharing Is Caring!
***********
Apart from preparing ourselves for the next battle(s), what’s on the agenda for the day?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Sorry, but that anthem performance was hideous. My rule at hockey games is that it needs to be done in under 70 seconds, or the home team starts with a delay of game penalty. I’d be willing to cut Aretha Franklin some slack, but not 4:35 of slack. It’s not a good song, and dragging it out like that takes it from bad to an abomination.
CarolDuhart2
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Since who is going to tell the Queen, and her fans, to cut back on a performance they want to hear?
Betty Cracker
With all due respect to Aretha Franklin, Lady Gaga’s version at last year’s Superb Owl was the best since Whitney Houston, IMO.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: Good to see you survived the thread stomp.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
I’m afraid my reaction to that performance was “That woman needs a Snickers.”
Betty Cracker
@BillinGlendaleCA: Doesn’t ruffle my feathers. I’ve never really understood the agita over so-called “big-footing.” It’s often impossible to tell in WP if anyone else is cooking up a post, and scroll wheels are a thing, so…
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Besides, everyone knows Anne has an automated morning thread coming. If it worried you, you would have waited to 5:05 to post it and bigfooted her.
rikyrah
Morning, Everyone???
rikyrah
Long live the Queen???
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: How are you feeling?
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Kinda shitty. (you had to know that was coming)
Baud
We also need new faces carrying the Democratic message forward.
Yoda Dog
Morning, comrades. (raises coffee mug towards screen)
JPL
Has Trump taken credit for Fidel’s death yet?
Betty Cracker
@JPL: Nothing on Twitter yet. It will be a dilemma for Trump, as he’ll have to balance the urge to pull off a massive con with the need to pander. My guess is the urge to con will prevail.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Like Baud!?
OzarkHillbilly
So tonight is the big Thanksgiving Right Wing Nut Job Wrestlemania and I rather suspect that for those looking for SUPER Villains it will be a disappointment of rather pleasant seeming everyday folks, a little religious, a little NRA-ey, mixed with far too much FOX news, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, etc and they will all be on their best behavior (leaving all things FOX at the door). Which makes the whole affair even less attractive to me. I hate holidays. In the road of life, they are the potholes.
However, I am rather fond of my stepdaughter who grew up without any kind of normalcy surrounding these family events so it is understandable that she enjoys putting on a really big show for her in-laws and us, comfortable in the knowledge that nobody is going to stand up in the middle of dinner and fling the turkey at her mother or the gravy boat at the ceiling while screaming about how horrible all the food is and storming out the door, and driving to the local tavern where he can drink his meal in the accustomed manner.
So with that in mind, I made 2 loaves of Mediterranean Country bread (just like my wife went to the bakery for as a little girl, and by the time she got home the loaf always had a whole in the middle of the bottom where she had been picking at it for nibbles) and 2 loaves of Apple Praline bread just because I could. I will put on my good jeans and a decent shirt (and bring an extra set of everything just in case my bowels explode in the middle of dinner) I will keep a civil tongue in my mouth, especially when my SD’s early stages of Alzheimers MIL talks about how the Crusaders were just defending their homes. If anyone else says anything…. Well, sarcasm. It beats killing people.
I will do this because I love my wife who sacrificed much for her only child. It is a small thing, a very small thing to give one’s child a feeling of normalcy after so many years. Helping is the least I can do.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: We’ll see. I’m not a better person than Hillary is, and you see how they treated her.
Lurking Canadian
@JPL: Doesn’t Obama get to add Castro to his bag? Trump’s not actually the president yet.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Yes, but they had 40 years to do their work on her.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, but we had 40 years too.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Lurking Canadian: Who’s Obama?
/Republican
JPL
@Betty Cracker: If there is money to be made, Trump will ask Congress to life the embargo.
NBC said that Trump is on a working vacation. Why do republicans always take working vacations, and democrats just vacation?
Baud
@JPL: To exotic places like Hawaii.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Awesome! Tomorrow morning let us know, how it went. Just remember to keep repeating I will do this, all day.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: You are a good husband and a good stepfather. Kudos to you for having the fortitude to face wingnut relatives who will possibly gloat. I spent my TG avoiding mine. But their time will come, oh yes, it will. :)
BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: Democrats are lazy.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: You are also a better person then I am.
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: You are a good person for doing this. May your wife and stepdaughter be happier and let you know it.
OzarkHillbilly
Fuck all you fucking fucks. (I’ve got a reputation to uphold, you know)
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: You’re a loyal Democratic voter in Missouri. What could you possibly do that would make us think poorly of you?
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Back atcha.
Let us know how it goes.
Betty Cracker
@efgoldman: As you probably already know, Trump violated the US embargo to pay a consulting company to assess the opportunities there several years back, so yeah, most likely he and his flock of vultures will descend on Cuba. It’s clear they see the presidency as a self-enrichment tool. Maybe Trump will dispatch one of the two idiot grown sons to play Fredo in Havana.
Amir Khalid
@JPL:
What is Trump doing on vacation, “working” or otherwise? He’s supposed to be on the job 24/7 in DC. He has a presidency to take over in seven weeks.
Poopyman
@OzarkHillbilly: Makes me remember way back to this, thanks to Betty.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: I am amazed that you can go to wing nut dinner so soon after wing nut hunt camp. I am starting to think you really enjoy these things. Thereby securing your reputation as irracible nabob of negativity?
PS. I really laughed at the “shitty” remark.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: Help us all!
OzarkHillbilly
From the Business pages of the STL Post Disgrace: For the Sioux, pipeline represents yet another broken promise
An interesting read that helps to fill in the blanks.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I have yet to begin to defile myself!
satby
Hey everyone. I have to get ready for work in 6 minutes and I can barely stand to move. After trying to get another job so long it’s killing me to admit how much I hate this one. The doctor is great, and I can do the optical tech stuff happily all day long, but the back office dealing with insurance crap (which we never did 25 years ago) is horrible and the current office manager insists that everyone not only be cross trained but rotate doing it. Ugh. I come home drained every day I work.
@OzarkHillbilly: Good luck; you’re a mensch, you know, right?
satby
@satby: I should mention that the thing I hate most is that it’s an average 10-11 hour day, so the dogs are cooped up too long, which has led to the fights, which has cost me about half of the total I’ve made in vet bills. I’m a hamster on a wheel. ?
Yoda Dog
@OzarkHillbilly: As a fellow father and husband, I salute you. Hope everything goes well tonight.
Im reading Waiting for Godot.. I kinda skipped it in school and just learned to pick up the references over the years via osmosis. Its… precient to say the least. Reminds me and Borges and Kafka. Those guys knew the score here, obviously.
The best anthem I’ve heard in the last decade was 2015 NFL opening night. Arianna Grande. I dont have much nice to say about her personality, but boy, she killed it. That girl can sing.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’re a better man than I. I stayed home on Thursday despite the many texts from some of the family.
Hope your test went well.
Shalimar
@JPL: Wait until January 21st if you want a chutzpah con, when Trump takes credit for Bin Laden’s death. “Upon taking office, I discovered that Osama Bin Laden was alive and being held in Guantanamo. I immediately ordered him executed so he can no longer pose a threat to the United States.” Trump will be president, who will say that he is lying?
Pangloss
@JPL: That was my very first thought upon hearing the news. Seriously.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Shalimar: That would be believable if Trump ran a tight ship, so far the Trump transition team has been more like a leaky dingy.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker:
You know…that’s not a bad way for OH to deal with the wingnut relatives, actually: get them to agree on a “checkup” date, to see just how Der Trumpenfuhrer is doing on all those campaign promises. See if they’ll agree to run down a list of 5-10 things like building the wall, deporting millions, implementing that better-than-the-generals plan for combatting ISIS, etc, and pick a date. Nickel bet says they back off it, or qualify it pretty severely (“This list is subject to Dimmycrats and Paul Ryan not sabotaging Trump’s beautiful plans”, etc etc)
(Which is also kind of funny if they try to qualify or hedge: I thought Trump said “[he] alone” could save us on all these fronts.)
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie:
Well, it helps being the right gender. ;-)
Heh. It didn’t, as in, it didn’t go. This is what happens when small town healthcare meets insurance company regulations over a holiday wkend. I’m scheduled for Weds, the soonest they could get me in. As I told the gal who was making my appointment, “This is not going to work out well.”
Not sure what I’m supposed to do about my blood thinners. I’m thinking I’ll just wing it and start taking them every other day starting either tonight or tomorrow night. I can’t get a hold of the Doc until Tuesday and waiting that long could be pushing my luck, which if it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.
Baud
@Jeffro: Trump voters care about privilege, not promises.
germy
retweeted by Gabriel Sherman
Baud
@germy: Sounds fishy.
germy
@Baud: Everything’s fishy nowadays.
Gabriel Sherman is someone I trust, however.
raven
Coach O gets the job at LSU, sometimes they get it right!
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
You could increase your intake of dark green vegetables, which is what I do when I notice I’m bruising. Can you take half-pills every day instead of skipping alternate days?
Stupid doctors.
Baud
@germy: The tweet is from someone else.
debbie
@Baud:
I find it hard to believe Obama would even do that, but I guess he always has to be blamed by someone somewhere about something.
germy
@Baud: retweeted by Gabriel Sherman
OzarkHillbilly
@Jeffro: They are actually way to nice for that sort of thing. Every time they have slipped up and uttered some “FOX fact” I have been all too eager to filet them with actual real honest to dawg facts that in their simplicity are impossible to refute without resorting to blatant conspiracy theories that even they can’t believe.
It’s like telling a child there is no Santa Claus: I am met with stunned silence.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: J. Allen wrote a big, non-authorized but non-crazy bio of HRC, I assume he’s pretty well sourced in Clinton world
Baud
@debbie: Right. Doesn’t seem like him.
@germy: I don’t know what retweeting is supposed to signify.
germy
@Baud: I just googled “Obama Urged Clinton” and the story appears in a million RWNJ news outlets, nowhere else.
Retweeting is like when someone’s aunt forwards “check out this cute cat video!” to everyone in her mailbox.
Baud
@germy: Judging by the last election, about 10% of our voters will fall for it.
tobie
@germy: The Hill posted this article about Obama’s call to Clinton on election night. It’s consistent with Jonathan Allen’s tweet.
And above and beyond that it’s consistent with Obama’s general reluctance to fight. Putin knows this, which is why he risked getting involved in the US election in the first place (hack or no hack of voting machines). The sovereign citizen’s movement knows this after seeing the government do nothing to enforce its fines on the Bundy Sr. for not paying grazing fees to the Bureau of Land Management–a failure that led directly to the taking of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. The Republicans know this which is why they took the unprecedented step of not even bothering to interview a Supreme Court nominee. And finally the press knows it… You can’t take a knife to a gun fight. When they go low, you sometimes have to go low too. Obama never learned this.
germy
@Baud: 27%?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@tobie: Good point, if Clinton had waited a few hours to concede, the vote totals in WI, MI, PA and FL might’ve changed drastically.
rikyrah
What about the black working class?
excerpt:
“In general there is a tendency to not talk about blacks as workers. This hurts the whole dialogue,” said William Spriggs, chief economist for the AFL-CIO and an economics professor at Howard University. Instead, black and brown workers are considered “underclass” as opposed to working class and “lazy” instead of hardworking, said Spriggs. And yet, they too have worn overalls and lost factory jobs.
“The notion of the white working class implicitly embodies a view of white privilege,” said Spriggs, “It implies that things are supposed to be different for them, that they aren’t the same, that they aren’t going to face the same pressures.”
Baud
@rikyrah:
That’s the whole point.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Thank you. Agreed re the poor, suffering white working class.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: They are really teeny tiny pills and odd shaped. I don’t think it would work well in the pill splitter. As to the dark green vegetables, I’ve been eating them all along, not about to stop just because I’m supposed to.
germy
@tobie: So far I’ve only seen the story reported on RW media, the Hill included.
Baud
@germy: It’s a universal law.
Baud
@germy: I don’t read this Hill often, but they seem like a “both sides” publication.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: They seem to have drifted steadily fox-ward in the last few years. One of their reporters, I wanna say Molly Hooper, has become a regular on MSNBC and her talking points are often indistinguishable from the “Republican consultants”.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good to know.
tobie
@germy: I don’t know enough about The Hill to judge its political slant. I didn’t like the breathless reporting, gossip-column tone in the article. That said, The Hill isn’t a fake news site. Is it as far gone as the Washington Times? Possibly. Maybe others here have more insight into the publication.
Barbara
@rikyrah: Amen. And it is doubly infuriating to me when this view is implicitly echoed by people like Bernie Sanders when he dismisses those who “only” stand for diversity. As in, the latent assumption that when you go out of your way to include people of color you are supporting “diversity” at the expensr of supporting the working class. Just pisses me off.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: Clinton went after Trump with both barrels, and some folks are saying that was the problem, that she neglected to campaign on a positive message. Is it possible we’re overthinking this? Maybe swing voters by their very nature are an ill-informed, panicky herd that zig-zags between the two parties for no rational reason.
That said, I do think Obama overestimated this country’s virtue. Lots of us did. But I’m not sure what more you think he could have done.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Whatever was wrong with my toe and knee seems to have completely disappeared with the pred I took. Maybe it would have anyway. I’m going to go to the stadium and hustle up a ticket in a bit.
mai naem mobile
Hang Trump around every single GOPrs neck like the Mafia does with block of concrete when they’re trying to dtown somebody. Make thme defend the $6 million dollars Trumpy charged the SS for protecting his orange ass during the campaign. Defend his disgusting cabinet members. They need to have eau de Trump all over them.
Baud
I’m having a hard time accepting the faith people continue to have in journalism. I get that not everything they report is a lie, but enough of it is that people should be skeptical. I was that way before this election, and everything I’ve seen this year has only hardened my position.
mai naem mobile
@Betty Cracker: I think quite a few people thought Hilz had it in the bag because Trumpy is so obviously unqualified and they thought they could waste a vote on 3rd party or didnt show up.
Glidwrith
@rikyrah: Yes, the whole pity party for the WWC. I look at the disparities in pay and all the crap minorities have to put up with and somehow think the WWC has it worse?
What the shitgibbons want actually is a horrible form of socialism: a guaranteed job and good pay without having to compete with anyone else, regardless of their qualifications.
Baud
@mai naem mobile: Polls didn’t help with that.
I’d be more sympathetic to those people if the 2000 election were not in our living memory.
Botsplainer
I’m thinking it might be fun for individual Americans to support Chechen separatists with our dollars…
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: @Baud: @Elizabelle: That’s why we have to have a white working class.
Baud
@Glidwrith: Socialism without the egalitarianism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Including Trump and his campaign staff, up until the late returns in PA and FL. And even then, Dave Weigel was tweeting about the results of I forget which FL county as the lid being nailed shut on Donald Trump’s brief and noisy political career.
Humdog
@satby: this sounds terrible! How can they make you work so many hours? Poor critters and poor you!
Glidwrith
@Baud: Yep, hence the “regardless of their qualifications”.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Good luck, hope you can find a deal.
Baud
@Glidwrith: @Baud:
Actually, more sinisterly, a lot of them probably believe that an oppressed underclass is needed for them to have such nice things. It’s like the labor equivalent to the worst aspects of capitalism.
Belafon
@rikyrah: This is the letter a mailed (snail mail) around the issue of identity politics that ties into this:
I don’t expect a response, and I can only hope for him to read it. But the idea of dividing people the way they are still being divided with these words is only making affected groups weaker.
Botsplainer
@rikyrah:
I’m still struck that after the Dems took all that heat for bailing out the car industry, there was zero reward from the Rust Belt WWC in 2010, 2012, 2014, with the big kahuna of 2016 being the final hammer blow. Dozens of major bills designed to help the working class get ahead got zero momentum among GOP voters because the WWC blew no wind into the sails, they then rewarded the people who held it all back. VW wanted a union at the plant in Tennessee and Tennessee Wingnut pols threatened VW and screamed about unions – rank and file workers there went with the wingnuts.
Fuck the WWC – no more cars from US makers for me, and if Carrier fails to bolt while knuckling under, I treat them as I would Bayer or IG Farben in the 30s and 40s.
Glidwrith
@Baud: That is so contrary to my world view that I am having trouble comprehending that statement.
Rephrased: it is a zero sum game to them. Correct? That I can understand.
Baud
@Belafon: Nice letter.
Baud
@Glidwrith:
Not so much zero sum, I think. More the notion that their gains will be greater if there is a group that is beneath them socioeconomically.
Glidwrith
@Belafon: Thank you. I will add this to my repertoire if someone screeches identity politics at me.
Scout211
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes.
Hooper was a congressional page for a Republican (Pombo, IIRC) and started her career as a production assistant for Fox News.
Her beat at The Hill has typically been the Republican Congressional Caucus. That is likely why MSNBC hired her.
Glidwrith
@Baud: Gods, that is sick.
tobie
@Betty Cracker: I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. My only point is that this was HRC’s call, not Obama’s about when to concede. John Kerry did it the day after the election in 2004 and scarcely anyone remembers it, so the 5 or 6 hour delay is not a big deal…and it may actually have helped cement the narrative that the popular vote and electoral college vote were out of whack. That discrepancy has been brushed under the rug.
I do think that years from now people will look at something that ran under the radar in Obama’s second term–the protest against the Bureau of Labor Management (BLM) ad emergence of Black Lives Matter (BLM) turned rural America into a rabid, self-entitled, fascist haven.
Kay
@Baud:
Trump isn’t objecting to tough “journalism”. Trump is objecting to opinion pieces that slam him. He doesn’t know the difference and either, apparently, do “journalists”.
Compare the NYTimes news coverage of Donald Trump with the editorials. The news coverage isn’t at all “tough”. The opinion is tough. By conflating these two things journalists and Donald Trump are getting away with pretending there is some kind of “oversight” but it’s bullshit.
It’s the difference between a restaurant review and a report of a health department investigation. Trump is objecting to the review of his restaurant He’s thrilled there’s no coverage of the health department investigation. It’s like the restaurant review replacing the report from the health department. Everyone goes home happy- Trump attacked them for “tough” coverage which raises their credibility and Trump would much rather have a poor review from a restaurant critic with an opinion than a shut-down notice from the health department.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, two hours before kick and the tickets were still in my truck. I would have gone a bought a ticket but it seems dumb not to call my buddy and ask him if he was going. I did and he wasn’t!!!! Off I go, GO DAWGS!!!
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker:
Obama did everything he could. I think we’ve been over the factors why Clinton lost about eight ways to Sunday at this point. I think in light of Russia’s obvious hacking of the election, Trump’s actions since election day, and Trump’s continued conflicts of interest, we need to think about ways to push on the Electors to put their country ahead of their party (and Putin). It’s worth a shot and who knows, we might just avoid 4 years of complete chaos (to say nothing of wholesale privatization of what little safety net there is in this country).
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Somebody else’s gains comes at their expense. They feel it down in their bones and now they intend to get some of theirs back. Literally.
Shalimar
@BillinGlendaleCA: The Trump team is leaking on purpose, for the attention. Trump gets new stories every time they leak some possible candidate for this or that position, and he is one of those people who believes that all publicity is good publicity. He wants every news cycle to be all about him.
On the real issues, all of the business negotiations with partners in foreign countries, there have been no leaks at all from the Trump side. We only know about them because the partner talks about it to the press of the other country and someone who speaks that language translates the stories a week or more later.
In other words, I’m not saying they will be competent at government, but I do think their media strategy is much more coherent and coordinated than we see from the outside.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Also, they don’t just swing between D and R. I gather that it was R leaners who stayed home in 2012– Sean Trende’s much-mocked “missing white voter” theory– that swung FL and WI to Trump. Not by themselves, they were part of HRC’s death of a thousand cuts, like Comey, Putin, a lack of charisma and a lot of others.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Heh. Silly fuck. Enjoy.
OldDave
On Anthem Singing – David Roth’s recount.
D58826
@OzarkHillbilly: My Mom would send me to the local German bakery for a dozen dinner rolls. Only 11 would make it to the dinner table:-)
Jeffro
The focus of my letters to the editor/op-eds and calls to Senators/Rep this week:
Protests probably feel good to those who take part, but don’t seem to change much. Noting that Clinton got 2M more votes is important – Trump is certainly a minority-winning president with no mandate – but ultimately our system as it currently stands depends upon the Electoral College vote. My suggestion to all progressives is, push on the media and your representatives (at all levels) to make the Electors do their duty: they should honor both the majority and repay Putin’s hacking of our elections by NOT installing Putin’s puppet. We are not a client state of Russia…yet…and there is still time to influence the Electors. If enough of them are going to stick with Russia over their own country, to say nothing of essentially voting to let Trump & Co loot the country, then make them own it.
D58826
@Jeffro: I’m not sure if the country would be better off with 4 years of Trump or the explosion of anger/violence from the right if EC flips and votes for Hillary. Despite having lost the EC but having a 2.5 million pop vote advantage I don’t see the D’s and the left talking about 2nd amendment solutions. The right on the other hand, continues to spout hate and threats of violence. A EC victory for Hillary would prompt these nuts to fulfill their 2nd amendment dreams.
Davis X. Machina
@Belafon:
This is how I was raised — and that’s before the Jesuits stuck a copy of Michael Harrington’s The Other America into my hands and the hands of every other ninth-grader on opening day and said “Start reading.”.
“Whatsoever you do to the leas of my brothers, that you do unto Me”.
Davis X. Machina
@Botsplainer: Let’s not over-think this.
“They hate the same people I hate. Hand me the goddam ballot” is enough.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
You would need the public and private cooperation of the GOP for any change of the EC vote to happen. And the Republicans are very happy with the election results.
Also, if you win, however you win, you have a mandate. Dubya didn’t care about how he got into office once the Supreme Court certified his election.
But you can certainly try to get the electors to do the right thing.
Iowa Old Lady
On our visit to our son and DIL, my first-grade teacher DIL told me she cried on the morning after the election. She’s dreading what Trump will do to public education.
Davis X. Machina
@Iowa Old Lady:
So making $11.40 an hour — no benefits — and walking up and down with a clipboard between rows of children hunched over proprietary ‘teaching’ software isn’t enough to be grateful for.
Shalimar
@D58826: Even if Trump loses/had lost, the Republican party still hasn’t totally lost credibility to the point where they will be reduced to the rump party they are in California. That is what their horribly unpopular policies deserve. I think we will be in a huge Depression by 2020, but maybe that has to happen for Republican govern-only-for-the-rich ideas to be discredited for a generation. Trump is going to be a disaster for all of us, including 99% of the people who voted for him. Maybe they will snap back and finally accept some reality again.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Belafon:
Who did you send that to?
Elizabelle
@D58826: All the more reason to have it out now, while we still have norms and rules in place.
Capitulating is not going to help in any way.
Don’t be afraid of the lunatics and their second amendment bullying. They can’t take us all out.
Belafon
@Steeplejack (tablet): Bernie. I thought I’d implied that, but reading back through it, I didn’t.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Renee Flemming is the answer to all “who delivered best anthem?” questions. Agree that Gaga was excellent, nevertheless.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@tobie:
I see The Hill as similar to Politico: allegedly “fair to both sides” but in reality consistently right-leaning.
BBA
I always thought the Star-Spangled Banner was too arcane, too war-mongering, and too hard to sing. Give me America the Beautiful any day. Or if you must have a war song, the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack (tablet): Sadly, true.
But thus undistinguishable to the Village. Who are also right-leaning, those special meritocratic snowflakes, they.
debbie
@Kay:
And print bad pictures of him. Because he is not petty and vindictive.
debbie
@BBA:
My Country Tis of Thee is my pick — no religious references at all. Which probably dooms it.
Hellbastard
I’m not worried about the 2nd Amendment remedy crowd. They’ve been barking that bark for eight years now… it’s nothing more than internet tough talk to impress their fellow rubes.
That said, I do like the idea of pushing the electors to fall in line with the popular vote. After all, there is no Constitutional requirement that they vote for the popular vote winner of their state. I have it on good authority that without an explicit directive in the Constitution they are free to do anything they want. Seeing as how Hamilton himself is on the record stating that the EC is designed (among other reasons) to prevent candidates lacking “requisite qualifications” it would be a case of the Constitution working exactly as intended.
J R in WV
@germy:
Re: Retweeting:
when grandma retweets a cute kitty cartoon to all her contacts… added: often with malware inside!
For amusement’s sake.
Kropadope
@Baud:
We need a party that isn’t trying so hard to lose elections.
Suzanne
@rikyrah: YES! That’s why I’ve been saying “white working class” with scare quotes around it, because it’s just the name we appear to have settled on, but it isn’t accurate. This tension isn’t about financial position. It’s about social position.
Rp
What’s more likely: that Obama pressured Clinton to concede and Clinton agreed to give up her life long dream on his recommendation, or that Clinton and her team were tired and overwhelmed and made a bad decision and someone on the team is now trying to pass the buck?
Suzanne
@Botsplainer:
Maybe you could point this out to commenters like NR and Bailey, who still think that voters elect politicians who provide “good policy that makes their lives better”. No amount of evidence that they vote for douchebags who promote bad policy that makes their lives worse (as long as they get to shit on black and brown people) has been persuasive.
BBA
@debbie: Eh. Sharing a tune with God Save The Queen doesn’t work for me.
dance around in your bones
Terrible song; sort of adequate attempt to sing the un-singable.
I kept getting distracted by that little bug or person scuttling in front of/across the Yuuuuuuge flag.
Crowd cheering drove me loca. Annoying!
Kropadope
@Hellbastard:
The 2nd amendment remedy is only to be used against Democrats. Could you imagine what would’ve happened if Hillary Clinton so much as gently suggested that Trump should have been shot?
@Steeplejack (tablet):
Well, this depends on your interpretation of fairness. Are we looking for equality in the level of scrutiny given or equality of outcomes. Most in the media seem to lean toward equality of outcomes, which is why they put a
thumbfoot on the scale for the Republicans. Reality has a clear liberal bias.Lizzy L
Favorite songs: “America the Beautiful” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” I am also very fond of “This is My Country.”
Have a good day!
J R in WV
“This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land
This Land was Made for You and Me.”
Woody Guthrie
Learned it in grade school in the 1950s. Even little kids can sing it and do OK.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
And the dignified tweet:
Classy! It’s so embarrassing, in addition to terrifying, that this idiot is going to be inaugurated.
amk
@tobie:rrriight. being ignorant & clueless is how he won the presidency twice in a basically racist country. idiot.
sukabi
@Betty Cracker: He’s working the details of the new Havana Trump Tower…it’s such a yuuuuge beautiful deal that Fidel died of excitement….
Or at least that’s how it plays in my head…
sukabi
@BillinGlendaleCA: he will be the BEST last thing, once the full drumpf kicks in.
Kropadope
@sukabi: We’re going to undo Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba, which was an absolute disaster, with A Trump branded thawing of relations, which will be huge and classy. Believe me.
Elie
I don’t agree with Tobie across the board, but I am worried about Obama’s “normalizing” Trump and this whole catastrophe. We might eventually have to fight tooth and nail to keep things that HE once thought were key goals and values for our country. How do you prepare for that by putting the blush of reason on the orks coming in? I guess it depends on the reality you think you are in. I think we will have to fight for the soul of this country and to keep ourselves and what we value safe. You don’t do that by being nice. We are not going to win back state legislatures by passively supporting this regime — the differentiation is gonna have to be sharp and targeted to gut level arguments that don’t mince words, in my opinion. I definitely think Hillary should have waited to concede on election night. Where was the sense of fighting for something very very important?
Suzanne
@J R in WV: YES! “This Land is Your Land” is easily the best choice. Truly anthemic, easy to sing for young and old, not jingoistic, and written by an American in an American song tradition.
tobie
@amk: Whoa…I didn’t say he was ignorant or clueless. I said that he didn’t appreciate the “fierce urgency of now,” even though he coined this beautiful phrase. Yes, he faced unprecedented obstruction, venal attacks and routine bad faith on the part of the media and the GOP. But sometimes he was so keen on learning from mistakes in the past that he didn’t go with his gut when it would have been appropriate. We let the tea party take over town halls in 2009 when the ACA was being debated; we let Max Baucus take his time on the ACA, when we didn’t have time to waste; we should have and could have gone really big with high speed rail between DC and Philadelphia or New York and Boston to shame Chris Christie for saying no thanks to the money. These are just some examples of ways we should have pushed and pushed. And we should have had the big automakers and the UAW publicly thanking us for saving the auto industry with commercials on all the major networks. Look at the friggin’ mileage Trump is getting out of supposedly saving a Ford and now a Carrier plant. We could have done the same but we were too damn honorable and now we’re paying an awful price, and I don’t mean this as a price for the party but people who will lose their jobs, their healthcare, their retirement savings, quality schools, and equal treatment before the law.
Major Major Major Major
Correct me if I’m wrong, but a vote recount wouldn’t actually show any signs of hacking or tampering or anything else unless it was on the vote-counting machines, right? I feel like people are missing this?
Elie
@Elie:
I feel that after months of putting the strongest terms around what a Trump presidency would mean, she and we end up in effect saying, “oh well, nevermind — we weren’t fighting for something that important after all — nothing worth pushing back a bit instead of capitulating to our new masters”. NO WAY! Why were there smiles? And Bill and Chelsea behind her smiling? Our country just selected fascist leadership — shouldn’t we be just a little serious.?
I don’t want to spend time on what is done, but I remain completely mystified by my party and its current leaders…
Ella in New Mexico
@tobie:
This, as much as I love my President, has been his most frustrating trait.
@D58826:I
Think about what you just wrote there. IF the EC flipped, it would be a vindication to it’s very existence, and would be the best thing for the future of this country, hands down.
Think about that and then realize that the thought occurred to you that you might be willing to hand the country over to a corrupt and incompetent cabal who will reverse every single advancement and civil right that we’ve acquired after 240 years just because you’re afraid some assholes with guns will threaten to commit violent crimes for which they will in all likelihood quickly caught and justly imprisoned.
No wonder Democrats can’t hold on to a fucking majority in this country. We’re helpless victims of our own fantasies, clubbing ourselves in the knees before we even get out of the damn stall.
Elie
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah, I remember you told me that a recount would be a waste of time because the machines are unhackable. They might or might not be but my understanding is that software for interpreting the machine output might be the issue. I think its important to look like we care. Can you imagine the noise they would be making if this was the reverse situation? Why must we just accept accept accept what we know is going to result in great harm to us? Why fight so hard during the campaign and then just give up with smiles all around after. We might not get another chance to question another result once these orks are in place. They won’t be just sitting around thinking of being fair and just. I know we want to have a peaceful nation to “come together” — but what are we going to come together to be? I would rather us stay divided until we resolve what that means…
Major Major Major Major
@Elie: I certainly don’t mind fighting to win. I can see (but disagree with) the notion that people want to say “OK, we lost, now we must work together to address the issues that blah blah”.
I think that people are conflating the issue of hacking a machine and what a recount does. Individual machines are easy to hack but you basically have to do it in person and each individual polling place has multiple machines, so doing it in a way that adds up to anything significant is nigh impossible. Nobody’s talking about hacking vote tabulation machines, and I don’t know much about that TBH, but I imagine it’s a similar issue, but even more so, since a hack would be much easier to detect. And hacking of voting machines wouldn’t actually even come up during a recount, since any tampering would be at the stage where it’s before the records you’re recounting have been created. You’d need a forensic audit for that–which are good ideas, we should have those anyway!–but that’s not what we’re going to be doing, even with the recount, since they’re different things.
Elie
@Major Major Major Major:
I think people have to see that indeed there is a effing opposition. Again, this is a pretty important fight and we use whatever we can get to push back, to challenge and let people know that an opposition fucking exists! It may not win every contested issue, but we have to show that there is some sort of core opposition for people to look around for at some point. Otherwise, what did we just do for more than a year?
No — we fight. Who cares if once in a while we look lame or stupid or nothing turns up. We say to our people, “we are gonna fight this best we can using every thing we can — we are not going down the just get along route”. Nope not this time… hopefully not ever again. Fight for every fucking vote, I say.
artem1s
States are where future federal level candidates come from too (outside of the Reality Show Party, that is). State level politics are also good training for those of who care about the actual running of government. It’s extremely hard for a Senator to win the WH. I’m pretty sure no SOS has done it. If Dems can use this odious administration to get people activated at the state and local level, it will be an indicator that they are playing a long game for the betterment of all of us, not just running national level grifting campaigns to appease the media with ad buys.
debbie
@BBA:
When Brexit tanks their economy, we’ll just buy it off them.
SWMBO
The all electronic machines with no paper trail aren’t that difficult to get around. My cousin said that she saw one instance of someone voting and not pushing the “VOTE” button and walking away. In checking and clearing up the polling station, the worker changed the vote and then pushed “VOTE” button. It was done casually and not anything appearing wrong. Just happened once that she saw. But how many of those can occur? And a recount won’t change the outcome of this. Vote tampering can be before the votes are counted the first time.
Also, if the EC flips and elects Clinton, after Trump suggesting Second Amendment solutions, how long do you think she will last if there are that many nutters out there willing to “do what it takes to save our country”? The Secret Service may not be able to stop them all.
Elie
@SWMBO:
Why is it that only the nutters want to save their country that bad?
Elie
If it comes to overt resistance how do we fight/resist without worrying about how violent or vocal they will be? The will be violent and vocal at the slightest provocation. We should not not do things because of that IMHO
SWMBO
@Elie: Partly because they have nothing left to lose. Partly because in their fever dreams, it makes them the hero of their own lives.