Holy shit. This guy. https://t.co/VcnRS5xCUe pic.twitter.com/ujBGZRMUWd
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) July 19, 2017
The President today effectively asked Sessions for his resignation. Will he resign or insist on being fired? https://t.co/bShMQJtrBI
— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) July 20, 2017
This part of the NYTimes interview has been getting attention, for good reason. But now I’m curious about the Washington Post‘s report on an interview with the guy who’s taken over that part of Sessions’ job at Justice:
Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein said in an interview that aired Wednesday that neither the president nor the White House had asked him for an update on the investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election, and that he was “not doing any micromanagement” of that probe.
The comments came during a wide ranging conversation with Fox News’s Martha MacCallum about the Justice Department’s new asset forfeiture policy, his recommendation to fire FBI Director James B. Comey and his appointment of a special counsel to lead the Russia investigation.
Rosenstein sought to assure people that the special counsel, former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, was operating with some degree of independence from the Justice Department, though he also was getting the cooperation he needed.
But Rosenstein did not go to great pains to defend the special counsel team when pressed about whether he was bothered that several people on it had donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign…
Asked by The Washington Post at an unrelated briefing earlier Wednesday on how he could maintain his authority over Mueller when he might become a witness, Rosenstein declined to say.
“Going to have to move on to the next question. Not going to be talking about that,” Rosenstein said.In his interview with Fox, Rosenstein did offer sentiments that might please the president, suggesting, for example, he did not approve of Comey’s engineering a leak of information about a request from the president to shut down the bureau’s probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Rosenstein said in an interview with Fox News that those who work for the Justice Department have an obligation to keep documents about ongoing matters confidential, though he took pains to stress he was not commenting on any particular case…
Rosenstein declined to say to Fox News whose idea it was originally to fire Comey, saying he was “not going to be talking publicly about anything that may be within the scope of the ongoing investigation.” Rosenstein said he was concerned personally with Comey’s public statements on the Clinton email probe and stood by his own memo…
Maybe it’s just the Rosenstein photo WaPo chose to illustrate their report…
Speaking of that “new asset forfeiture policy”, looks like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is in very much of a hurry to steal as much money as he can from people who look like they might be criminals, or at least incapable of putting up a defense against robbery-by-law:
JUST IN: DOJ new asset forfeiture policy – police can seize property from people not charged w/crime even in states where it's been banned. pic.twitter.com/P8K0g80m4E
— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCBS) July 19, 2017
Jeff Sessions, civil forfeiture, what could go wrong? https://t.co/r4i4xpJHk1
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) July 18, 2017
Here's the story. Likely involves boosting adoptive seizures, which allow cops to sidestep stricter state laws https://t.co/DVp0ifspap
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) July 17, 2017
Nothing says "small government" quite like legalized theft of property from people convicted of nothing at all https://t.co/DVPnzWTXDm
— Mazel Tov Cocktail (@AdamSerwer) July 17, 2017
The move is particularly stunning because the 2016 GOP platform explicitly called for forfeiture reforms. https://t.co/Sej0CFkrKN pic.twitter.com/Mnotxkcjnm
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) July 17, 2017
Circling back to Trump’s grudge with Sessions, the uncrowned King of the GOP’s Out & Proud Racists caucus has already broken with his “president”:
@RealDonaldTrump No one in America can match the excellence of @JeffSessions as Attorney General. Trump agenda would be crippled w\o him.
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) July 20, 2017
One can only hope, she said piously.
rikyrah
A lesser known McCain fact: In 2005, Uzbekistan’s govt massacred over 700 of its own citizens at a protest. Few in US spoke out. McCain did.
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) July 20, 2017
It meant something to Uzbek refugees I knew at the time who saw broader apathy in the US. Some of McCain’s remarks: https://t.co/7fk1gcPZJh
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) July 20, 2017
rikyrah
Attorney General White Citizens Council
HAS.NO.SELF.RESPECT.
AND..he’s getting to live out his White Supremacist fantasies?
He’s not going anywhere.
Keith P.
Asset forfeiture is probably how Sessions plans on going after legal marijuana. He can’t get local law enforcement assistance in raids, but he can seize their assets. I don’t think he’ll get very far with it, though, considering how much public opinion has swayed on the matter.
Major Major Major Major
OT, cuz open thread: how do we feel about HBO doing an alternate-history show about an America where the south successfully seceded, from the showrunners of Game of Thrones?
kindness
One thing Trump has brought in that fits his agenda, he’s allowed his pigs to wallow in shit and he likes that. Why? I guess he likes the chaos. He probably likes it because it takes the spotlight off his whole family’s unimaginative grift. Sadly we have to live through this shit show.
@Major Major Major Major: You mean vs the current Trump Regime where the South won the whole country?
Alain the site fixer
@Keith P.: Yeah, I suspect he’ll try to seize property of growers and sellers in states, but when the state police apparatus declines to work with them, a whole new set of issues will appear. The Feds rely on local, regional, and state LE resources and without their cooperation, won’t make much headway. At least I hope that’s how it rolls. My readings of the police in Colorado show that many/most are happy to have more tax money, and to be greeted as heroes because they hand out Gatorade and munchies instead of getting stink-eye from many, many folks. I don’t think they will like their resources being used contrary to the state law or constitution!
Iowa Old Lady
Gibber gibber
Matt McIrvin
It’s interesting how we’re suddenly seeing all these garbled explanations of the concept of adverse selection from Republicans who are trying to justify letting people with preexisting conditions go hang. Gee, I wonder why Obamacare had that evil tyrannical mandate?
rikyrah
@Major Major Major Major:
HELL, MUTHAPHUCKIN’ NO.
I can’t get UNDERGROUND to be picked up by anyone, but, we’re going to have two WHITE people, do a show about the SOUTH WINNING THE CIVIL WAR?
Hell muthaphuckin’ no.
No. I’m not going to ‘give it a chance’.
These folks have done nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING to qualify them being given ‘ a doubt’.
And PHUCK HBO for Ok’ing this bullshyt.
rikyrah
Automatic voter registration expands to its ninth state
07/20/17 09:20 AM—UPDATED 07/20/17 09:34 AM
By Steve Benen
As recently as early 2015, a grant total of zero states had automatic voter registration. As of yesterday, however, AVR is now the law in nine states.
Illinois appears likely to become the 10th state to adopt the policy, with the legislature already having approved AVR and Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) is expected to sign it. What’s more, the issue will be on the statewide ballot in Nevada next year, and the consensus is it’s likely to pass.
Circling back to our previous coverage, this is a policy that’s tough to argue against. When it comes to registering to vote in the United States, the burden has traditionally been on the individual: if you’re eligible to vote, it’s up to you to take the proactive steps needed to register.
Automatic voter registration, which already exists in many of the world’s democracies, flips that model. The idea is exactly what it sounds like: states would automatically register eligible voters, shifting the burden away from the individual. Those who want to withdraw from the system can do so voluntarily without penalty, but otherwise, Americans would be added to the voters rolls automatically.
Alain the site fixer
@Major Major Major Major: Prepare for public acclaim tomorrow as the form launches and I thank you profusely for the hard work. Hope you have a great day/days at the conference!
Major Major Major Major
@Alain the site fixer: I’m actually preparing for three people to complain about mysterious SSL errors.
Laura
@Keith P.: Ding ding ding . . .
That’s been my take as well. Cash. Lots of cash just waiting for either a legal means of access to banking like all other business entities, or seizure by la enforcement.
AG Uncle Cracker has been open in his insistence that mj and the people that use mj are bad/criminal.
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: I’m reserving judgment until I know more. Counterfactual historic fiction can be interesting — I thought “Man in the High Castle” was fascinating at first, until it sort of went off into the weeds.
MattF
So, looks like those jack-booted government thugs will be making a comeback. Ya think Wayne Lapierre will notice? Ya think?
rikyrah
The Third American Civil War
Liberal Librarian
July 20, 2017
You may wonder why I’m writing about the “third” American Civil War. Wasn’t there only one?
The First Civil War was what is more commonly referred to as the Revolutionary War. About a third of the colonists sided with the British, and many fought in Loyalist contingents against the revolutionaries.
The Second Civil War is the one we all know about, when the southern slave holding states seceded to preserve their peculiar institution. That trended with the First Civil War, in that Loyalist sentiment was strongest in the South.
We are now in what many people are calling a Cold Civil War.
We see it all around us. A large portion of the country is at each others’ throats. There is no common ground. The part which supports Donald Trump—which seems to be shrinking—does so solely because it aggravates the other part. We have radical leftists who want to burn everything down which doesn’t meet their purity standards. Many liberals don’t care about why people voted for Trump, seeing them as lost causes.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: One of PKDs big problems was how to end a novel. He could never figure it out.
ETA: The other problems were mental illness and drug use. Not meant as a joke– it’s actually relevant to his writing.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: well that just makes it like the book :P
The difference there that I can see is that broad swaths of America don’t fly swastika flags and the attorney general isn’t named Adolph Rommel Sessions…
Alain the site fixer
@Major Major Major Major: Meant to ask you – what happens when the cert is renewed? The Lets Encrypt certs last 90 days at most, often less, so if you hard-coded something like the fingerprint, we may need to update it regularly….
Roger Moore
They also promised cheaper, better healthcare, and look at what they’re doing on that front. Anyone who trusts a promise from the Republican Party deserves what’s coming to them.
Major Major Major Major
@Alain the site fixer: it just points at the cert files, which is opened during the app boot. Assuming you keep the permissions the same on the file and directories then it will just need restarted from systemctl.
Walker
@Iowa Old Lady:
As has been pointed out, Trump thinks health insurance = whole life insurance. He doesn’t understand how health insurance works.
hueyplong
Unless this HBO series paints perpetually slave-owning America as hell on earth, populated by people who make Nazis look enlightened, Rikyrah’s post would be the more measured and conciliatory of any draft responses I’d write.
Not only would I not watch it, but I’d stop watching their other stuff.
Alain the site fixer
@Major Major Major Major: It’s automated, so nothing should change. I’ll keep my eyes on it. Thanks for the answer, I’m outta here.
hueyplong
@Walker: Easier to list the things Trump does know:
1. Grifting
2. Painfully clumsy domination + humiliation where he has the power to do so.
That about exhausts the list. And a percentage of the country sufficient to ring the Electoral College bell thinks “only he” can run this world’s (current) superpower.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@rikyrah: I’m with you. HBO better not try it or they’ll lose a big chunk of their subscrbers.
MattF
@hueyplong: There’s evidence that he can identify family members.
TriassicSands
@Alain the site fixer:
Then again, police officers are individuals, some of whom may be opposed to legal marijuana. I’d expect the higher ups to be receptive to the tax revenue if it helps police departments.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
OT –
I think I got a contact high due to the fact that he was in the same building with me. My client (who was there on marijuana-related issues) was having his head in disbelief.
One wonders at the brilliance of showing up to court dressed thusly…
Marmot
@kindness:
It should be clear by now that this isn’t a North/South thing, like I’ve been saying for ever. It’s rural/urban among other things, and 2016 proves it’s a nation-wide schism.
SiubhanDuinne
Elf says:
JPL
@Iowa Old Lady: Maybe it’s just me, but I have no idea what he means.
Immanentize
@hueyplong: Instead, let’s see a show where Grant successfully kept the country on the path of reconstruction and Jim Crow and sharecropping and segregation never happened. How about that counterfactual history?
Why do we always have to imagine the world if the traitor racists won?
Immanentize
@JPL: I’m with you. I expect in the full transcript the next line is:
(Wipes drool.from mouth)
Jeffro
!!!
Bloomberg reporting that Mueller is indeed looking into Trumpov’s general (even non-Russian) business transactions. “Red line” has been crossed.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to try and get any work done…
Iowa Old Lady
@JPL: Neither does he.
Frankensteinbeck
@Marmot:
True, but the rural areas did take up the cause of the Confederate South, including flying its flag. And the cancer of hate remains thickest in the South.
TriassicSands
Sessions announces he won’t be resigning (not voluntarily anyway).
Roger Moore
@Marmot:
It’s largely a white bigots versus everyone else thing. The business about rural vs. urban is largely because white flight meant most of the white bigots moved from cities into suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas.
MattF
@SiubhanDuinne: Seems to me that the Elf is hedging his bets a bit.
JPL
@Iowa Old Lady: The Washington Post just put up an article about that section of the interview.. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/20/what-was-trump-talking-about-with-12-a-year-health-insurance/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.ad0c18c4a336
I think the last line is closer to the truth..
Amir Khalid
I’d expect Sessions’ new rule re
forfeiturewithout due process to face some sort of legal challenge. Is ACLU or some other such organisation putting up such a challenge?On another front, I have finally managed to put in the online purchase order for a Squier* Affinity Telecaster guitar, Fender Champion 20 amplifier, copy of Rock Guitar For Dummies, etc. Alas, the cool looking black Tele with white pickguard and maple neck went out of stock while I was faffing about trying to use my debit card. So I’m getting a guitar in butterscotch-blond and black pickguard (which is cheaper by RM170 anyway).
*by Fender
I had doctor’s appointments at U of Malaya Medical Centre today. Long queue at the heart clinic for my 11am appointment, so at 1pm I was still waiting for that as well as my 3pm appointment at the rheumatology clinic. I got that sorted out, fortrunately, but has anyone here found themselves in a similar spot?
Incidentally, the doctors I saw today were both very nice, very professional ladies. The one in Rheumatology agreed with me that I should be able to fret a high E string with my gouty pinky, and so I’d be okay to play right-handed.
Wapiti
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Any chance the young guy was just there for jury duty, dressing that way in hope of being declined by the prosecutor?
RSR
Ryan J Reilly pointed out on twitter that Trump disparaged Rosenstein for being from Baltimore
But he’s not – he’s from Philly, lives in Bethesda now, “still lived in Bethesda, even when he was U.S. Attorney for Maryland.”
https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/887826799954202627
https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/887828324227178496
JPL
I have an earbug, because after reading the interview, all I wanna hold your hand, keeps playing in my mind. .
For those who didn’t read the interview, Macron loves holding his hand. In fact Macron loves holding Trump’s hand so much, that he felt it necessary to mention it several times.
Karen
@Major Major Major Major: didn’t Harry Turtledove write a series about that?
randy khan
@hueyplong:
Honestly, I’m more interested in the portrayal of the North in that scenario.
boatboy_srq
@Major Major Major Major: Really? Wasn’t rolling back Reconstruction enough?
How about instead we have a series where Reconstruction works and the US becomes accustomed to equality for all before 1900?
MattF
@RSR: So, I guess, ‘from Baltimore’ means “lives in proximity to them.” Of course, ‘from Bethesda’ sorta means that too– but a different ‘them’.
JPL
This is us!
First Lady was a former nude model, and the President is nuts.
randy khan
@Immanentize:
From a dramatic perspective, the history in which Reconstruction gets done correctly isn’t that interesting. That’s why it never happens.
Amir Khalid
@Major Major Major Major:
Maybe Adolph Rommel Sessions is his secret name. I remember him arguing that it was an imposition on people to compel them to respect others’ civil rights. Me, I always thought that was the rule in any decent society.
Major Major Major Major
@Karen: Google makes it sound like the answer is yes! But I’m not aware of it.
@boatboy_srq: You mean Star Trek?
@Amir Khalid: Good to hear your hand is working out!
O. Felix Culpa
@Iowa Old Lady:
Would be funny if it didn’t have, you know, actual consequences. I’m still waiting for the GOP’s “the emperor has no brains” moment. I suspect I’ll be waiting a long time.
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
It was always a crazy red line in the first place. How is Mueller even supposed to know what is and isn’t related to Russia without at least some preliminary investigation of who the investors and customers are?
randy khan
@RSR:
Facts are stupid things.
chris
@Alain the site fixer: Dare I ask what happened to the old post/new post arrows?
Karen
I think that dolt45 believed he was elected to be the next “god-emperor;” and will one day be elected to “rule” the planet
RSR
@RSR: Reilly followed up on twitter with a few more jabs:
TriassicSands
@Amir Khalid:
So, you saw a rheumatologist to get the go ahead to fret a high E string with your gouty pinky. And you saw a cardiologist to see if your heart could take it? I wish I had your health problems. (Imagine a smiley face here — I don’t like them, but I want you to know I’m joking!)
Best of luck with the new equipment and that pinky.
danielx
Clearly Sessions is willing to swallow a lot of abuse to further his (Sessions’) personal policy goals. Nothing to do with Trump’s policy goals; he doesn’t have any.
boatboy_srq
@Major Major Major Major: I was thinking more of a reworked Untouchables or maybe Magnificent Seven, but if you insist on looking that far into the future for your goals, yes Star Trek works.
TriassicSands
@randy khan:
And completely unnecessary! Really they’re just annoying.
boatboy_srq
@danielx: Lord Dampnut’s one and only policy goal is to remain in office with a compliant Congress and an obsequious press.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Wapiti:
Not a chance – he was leaving; wrong building, wrong place, wrong time, wrong time in jury cycle and no jury badge.
Jeffro
@Roger Moore: Oh, I know and agree. Just try explaining that to Mr. Crazy-Ass NYT Interview, though…
Major Major Major Major
@boatboy_srq:
There are goals, and then there are goals–you can have both!
Alain the site fixer
@chris: they’re there in the desktop site, never been on the mobile site but will be sometime.
Amir Khalid
@TriassicSands:
It so happens that the Rheumatology doctor plays the guitar and …Yep, that’s it. I know that butterscotch blonde is a very traditional Telecaster colour, but by gum that black one I wanted looked bloody gorgeous.chris
@Alain the site fixer: This is a desktop, up-to-the-minute Linux Mint 17.3/Chrome. Sigh, will reboot.
Mike in NC
@Karen: Yes, Turtledove has written many alternate histories regarding the US Civil War, both World Wars, etc. The only one I liked enough to finish was “Guns of the South”, where time travelers from apartheid South Africa equip the Army of Northern Virginia with AK-47 assault rifles in an attempt to change the course of the war.
gene108
@Major Major Major Major:
Harry Turtledove wrote extensively on this topic.
Amazon Prime has a show “Man in the High Castle” about the Axis Powers winning WW2 and occupying the USA.
I think there’s a market for these sorts of alternative histories.
TriassicSands
@boatboy_srq:
I’m reading a history of the Republican Party right now and it’s depressing. Formed to represent equality of all Americans including slaves, by 1872 just seven years after the Civil War (Oh, my apologies to the US AG — War of Northern Aggression), the Republican Party had already renounced equality and adopted a platform denouncing lazy takers, among which were former slaves and manual workers, i.e., labor, and championing big business. The loss of Lincoln may have caused incalculable harm. The world might be a very different place if he’d lived. We didn’t just lose a great man, we may have lost the Republican Party as a force for good. Today’s Republicans would have hated the “Party of Lincoln,” but they would have felt at home with the GOP of 1872.
Major Major Major Major
@gene108: Some parts of the intertubes are very upset about it, I figured I’d see what folks here had to say :)
trollhattan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Were they maybe filming a reboot of Da Ali G Show?
Kristine
@Amir Khalid:
Cool. Best of luck learning to shred.
I have a few rock guitar lesson packs floating around the house. Two previous attempts to learn to play my Peavey Falcon (cherry red/white, a Stratocaster knock-off) fizzled. Now is the time, before the occasionally achy fingers get permanently achy.
CZanne
@hueyplong: not so sure about that. Maybe a couple of his kids, but I’d lay a bet he doesn’t know or can’t recall his granddaughter’s name. He always uses a pet name with them or refers to them as a collective.
That’s a common covering strategy for memory loss/indexing failures.
I’m starting the day with an Advil-Tylenol cocktail. I made the mistake of reading the Napoleon paragraph. It’s so fractally wrong I don’t even know where to start.
Amir Khalid
There’s a Slate headline:
My American friends, I feel your pain.
rikyrah
@gene108:
There may be a market for them, but, it has everything to do with WHO is doing it.
If it were Ava DuVernay announcing this, I wouldn’t be upset.
If it were Spike Lee, I wouldn’t be upset.
If it were Kasi Lemmons, I wouldn’t be upset.
If it were the Production team from UNDERGROUND, I wouldn’t be upset.
There is NOTHING in the work product of these two that makes me, as a Black person, believe that they, IN ANY WAY, should be doing this show.
This will not end well.
And, No, I don’t have to ‘ give it a chance’.
chris
@chris: Nope, didn’t work. No side arrows.
ETA:No worries, just interesting.
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
Nice choice, countless guitar gods play/played a Telecaster so you have our permission to become BJ’s house guitar god. “Who’s ready to shred?”
Neldob
WGNs Underground sounds interesting. The lack of reasonable media in rural areas is contributing a lot to the current political divide. The Fairness Doctrine or something like it needs to be revived. My in-laws spent some time in the mid-west and said the only tv they could get was Fox deranged.
NorthLeft12
From Hullaballoo! one of the best opinion pieces I have read in awhile;
http://digbysblog.blogspot.ca/2017/07/without-rudder-or-keel-by-bloggersrus.html
Especially this line;
Mr. Tom Sullivan, I salute you.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
Butterscotch blond is classic. Have so much fun.
TriassicSands
@Amir Khalid:
Rock on, Amir. I’m sure the butterscotch will be sweet!
NotMax
Shorter Dolt 45: “If there is anyone I was positive would whitewash, it’s Jeff Sessions.”
@Amir Khalid
Wouldn’t an accordion, lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat be a better fit with the German studying?
;)
Amaranthine RBG
@rikyrah: wow, racist much?
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: That sounds like porn for all the confederate haters. Really bad idea. They already live in a fantasy world, this will just encourage them to hate even more.
Another Scott
@Jeffro: Of course Mueller is looking into that. It’s a web spun by Donnie and Vlad and all of Vlad’s hangers-on. Mueller followed one thread and it’s all connected.
As
Deep ThroatAdam says, “follow the money”. Vlad wants the sanctions lifted and free reign to break up NATO and the EU and weaken the USA. Donnie wants to keep and expand his “family business empire” that is in hock to Vlad and DB and other foreign entities as a result of them being the only ones who would lend him money (especially after the housing bubble burst).It’s always been about money and power – the election interference was always just a tactic.
Cheers,
Scott.
Karen
@Major Major Major Major: I read some of Harry’s alternate history books; I was bored and only thing new in library that hadn’t read that wasn’t on “christian fiction” shelf. I remember vaguely something about separate south and war.
rikyrah
Trump trips over his own ignorance on health care
07/20/17 10:01 AM—UPDATED 07/20/17 10:17 AM
By Steve Benen
A couple of months ago, Donald Trump sat down with Time magazine and boasted that once the debate over health care started in earnest, “In a short period of time, I understood everything there was to know about health care.”
He didn’t appear to be kidding. In fact, after meeting with Senate Republicans yesterday to urge them to pass some kind of health care bill, the president told the New York Times, “[T]hese guys couldn’t believe it, how much I know about it. I know a lot about health care.”
I wish that were true. It’s not.
During the public portion of yesterday’s White House meeting, Trump made a series of bizarre claims about his party’s proposal, making clear that he had absolutely no idea what he was talking point. He said the Republican proposal would offer “better coverage for low-income Americans” than the Affordable Care Act, which isn’t even close to being true. Trump added that the GOP plan is “more generous than Obamacare,” which is bonkers.
Towards the end of his public remarks, the president added, “Your premiums will be down 60 and 70 percent. People don’t know that. Nobody hears it. Nobody talks about it.” In reality, people don’t know that or talk about it because it’s spectacularly untrue.
At a meeting among federal policymakers on overhauling the nation’s health care system, the most ignorant person in the room was also the one leading the discussion – which generally isn’t a good sign.
Mike in DC
@rikyrah:
Can they do another alt history show based on “White Mans Burden”(the film, not the Kipling poem)?
NorthLeft12
I don’t mean to put your country down, but shit like this just confirms my decision to not set foot in your country.
Too bad, because I have relatives [not many] there and the US has many beautiful natural and cultural wonders that I would love to visit.
Oh, and a big FU to the first person who says “Just don’t break any of our laws.”
Karen
@Mike in NC: he is not one of my favorite authors, he has been more “nothing else is new in library” authors
gene108
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t see how a Southern victory in the Civil War will have a happy ending for anybody. The South fought the Civil War to expand slavery every where in the continental USA that was not yet officially a state.
If they won round one, I’m sure they’d have geared up to go for round two, three, four, etc., so what remains of the USA would’ve been engaged in several wars with their Southern neighbors to maintain what it had, in terms of then territories like CA, NM, AZ, OR, MT, CO, etc.
Second, a USA in chronic war may not be as appealing to European immigrants, so the immigration boom of the late 19th and early 20th century may not have happened.
Third, there’s no way the USA would become a global superpower, with a hostile neighbor on its new southern border. Too many resources would have to be dedicated to keeping the post-Civil War borders intact by military force. The Mississippi River would be contested, in terms of who could use it and who could get access to the ports at the southern end of the river, that it’d cripple development in the Midwest.
Fourth, I wouldn’t put it past an emboldened South to go to war with Mexico to pick up more territory to expand slavery.
So basically, North America goes from a peaceful continent, with no major wars to a militarized continent with Mexico, the USA and Confederacy all arming themselves to the teeth, in order to maintain territorial integrity, while whatever economic development happened in reality would not happen, because resources would be stripped to keep borders intact.
Edit: Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell were immigrants. Levi Strauss was an immigrant. There are plenty of people, “who made America Great”, way back when, who came from overseas. That’d be diminished, if the South had won.
Edit 2: I just doubt any show can show how truly awful a Southern victory would’ve been. 12 Years a Slave times infinity, in terms of pointless suffering, but I double even HBO can capture that and make a series out of it.
Major Major Major Major
@Karen: Sounds terrible. When I get that bored, I sit down and write the sort of story I might want to read!
A Ghost to Most
@Frankensteinbeck:
It has metastasized to every corner of the country.
I’ve been thinking of dropping HBO; if that show runs, I’m gone.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Karen: Harry Turtledove wrote a lengthy series based on the Confederacy winning the ACW and pissed off every proto-Puppy who had been salivating for the first book.
In it, Lincoln abandoned the Republican Party for the Socialists after the peace was negotiated.
Turtledove seemed amused/bemused by the white hot fury raining down upon him. He insisted that everything his fictional Lincoln said was from a speech or from Lincoln’s writings.
WaterGirl
@MattF: Are you referring to the “as long as it is appropriate” weasel words?
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: My first thought is that they will use this again people whose politics they don’t like – Black Lives Matter, anyone resisting Trump, anyone calling out this administration for what it is. That’s a terrifying thought.
LAO
@Amir Khalid:
Thankfully there are smarter lawyers here than I, but I think that the only people who would have standing to challenge the new asset forfeiture policy would be people who’s assets are seized. I’m not sure how one challenges the policy, which is based on existing statutes, absent an actual seizure. So, I’d expect that the ACLU could represent such an individual — but would be unable to bring a preemptive suit.
(I fully expect that I could be wrong, not really sure why I responded).
LAO
@WaterGirl: Was that not the strangest way of saying he wasn’t going to resign? Has me flummoxed. I’d hate to rely on Sessions understanding of “appropriate.”
MattF
@WaterGirl: Yes.
rikyrah
@Amaranthine RBG:
Nope.
NotMax
@gene108
CA and OR had already been admitted as states, pre-Civil War (1850 and 1859, respectively).
Karen
@Major Major Major Major: usually, books will pull me into their world; I have been using this escape when things get overwhelming. I read Harry while was in abusive marriage; if I was reading ex would leave me alone and watch tv
Major Major Major Major
@Amaranthine RBG: Go fuck yourself.
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
Told you..
1. He has no self-respect
2. Getting to act out his White Supremacist fantasies.
He.is.going.NOWHERE.
WaterGirl
@LAO: It is very odd. The only way I can make sense of it is to wonder if this was a dig at Trump, a way of saying that it’s not appropriate for Trump to let him go because he recused himself. And even that doesn’t make a whole of sense, but it’s the best I’ve got.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Lederhosen? In a tropical country?!?
varmintito
@Major Major Major Major: I would prefer alternative history in which the reanimated corpses of Toussaint L’Ouverture and Nat Turner were in charge of post-Civil War reconstruction. Kind of the Inglorious Basterds of the 1860s – 1870s.
gene108
@NotMax:
Well, strike the Pacific NW off my list of hostile take over targets by the Confederacy.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@trollhattan:
That would be awesome, but I’ve seen nearly three decades’ worth of poor court clothing choices. The winner is still my own client in 1989.
I was a public defender, he was a prostitute working the cross dressing trade. I was passing the case for another Pretrial conference date when I noticed the bailiff whispering at the judge and pointing down. My eyes followed his fingers and to my horror, I see he had adorned his jeans with a sharpie marker: “FUCK YA, SUCK YA, UP MY ASS” were multiply written all over them.
I argued that it was commercial speech and not addressed disrespectfully at the court – the judge gave him 10 days for contempt.
Mike in NC
@gene108: Actually, there were Southern politicians who had designs on expanding into Mexico and Central America, including Cuba and basically the entire Caribbean region.
El Caganer
@rikyrah: In some ways the dishonesty bothers me even more than the stupidity and ignorance. He has no clue what he’s talking about, so he just makes up a bunch of shit that’s easily proved to be false….except a significant portion of the country believes him. Sad!
TriassicSands
How can anyone be that stupid and divorced from reality?
No intelligent person would ever make such an absurd statement. And he doesn’t realize what an idiot he sounds like.
Yeah, after a few minutes I understood everything there is to know about quantum mechanics, string theory, relativity, and how to make the world’s best borscht.
El Caganer
@gene108: Oregon had ferociously racist laws, both as a territory and a state, that were on the books up until the 1950’s.
Another Scott
@gene108: Er… Oregon was founded as a racist utopia (repost).
Racism can and does exist everywhere because people are everywhere. We have to fight it everywhere, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
LAO
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That’s amazing. Once I was doing a night arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court and the defendant was wearing a “Free John Gotti” T-shirt. The People agreed to ROR (which pissed off the Judge). I stepped outside the Courtroom to make a phone call when a court officer tapped my shoulder, and said “counselor, you best come in side, your client’s be remanded. The Judge was just looking for an excuse to set bail, I was so pissed!
chris
@NorthLeft12: If only! My aunt is almost 80 and I’m the only family left so I go two or three times a year but now I can’t be sure I’ll get in. Should have taken dual citizenship when I had a chance.
Anecdotal aside: She lives in a Maine beach town. They’re not, she says, seeing nearly as many Canadian license plates as usual.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
It makes me glad we don’t have HBO service available!,,
Origuy
I’ve an idea for an alternate history that I’ll never get around to writing. Suppose that the Norse settlers in Newfoundland had stayed there and established a colony, making peace with the people already there. If they maintained links with Greenland, Iceland, and mainland Europe, the devastating plagues brought by the Europeans might have still happened, but over a longer period of time. The cultures of the Americas (which wouldn’t be called that) would have survived. The Norse would have brought iron making and other technology. The Iroquois and the Aztec could be major powers in the modern world.
O. Felix Culpa
@LAO:
What’s ROR?
MomSense
Anyone else finding this fucking trump mess completely distracting and worrisome? I have never felt so restless and so full of I don’t even know what – dread/disgust/worry as I have the last six months. It’s like trump is a black hole of dysfunction and assholery and the whole world is getting sucked into it.
Amir Khalid
@O. Felix Culpa:
Ahem. Long-time watcher of American lawyer shows on TV speaking. I think it means “release on own recognisance” i.e. we’ll let you go if you promise to show up for the next hearing.
Kay
The hacks taking part in Trump’s voter suppression effort tried to appear credible yesterday:
Then the man they all work for showed up:
Nice work, panel! You sat there like potted plants and allowed Donald Trump to smear the voters you all supposedly work for. He’s accusing voters of committing a felony. Voters are paying for the room they’re all sitting in while he does it.
Why are they afraid of this moronic loudmouth? He doesn’t have any power over independently elected state election officials. There’s nothing stopping them from pushing back against him. Why so subservient to the blowhard? Do your jobs. Advocate for voters, not politicians.
chris
@MomSense: Yes, and I’m on the outside looking in. My heart goes out to all of you.
LAO
@O. Felix Culpa: no bail needed — released on (own) recognizance.
ETA: Beaten to the punch by Amir!
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: How about an alternate history where the person who was actually ELECTED president in 2016 actually IS our president?
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Opportunity to be a trendsetter. :)
Frankensteinbeck
@NorthLeft12:
Wow. Nailed it. Remember I keep calling Trump a chickenshit? He’s too scared to confront Sessions directly and is dropping hints. That is what an utter coward Trump is.
smintheus
Throwback Thursday, Trump Sept. 28 2014
O. Felix Culpa
@Amir Khalid: @LAO: Thank you both for the elucidation. Clearly I watch too little television. All on account of time wasted reading BJ.
catclub
NOT FIRED. As many noted in other threads, Trump is a coward and does not have the actual guts to fire him.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Keith P.: Yes, what consituancy is calling for this? Not to mention assest seizer abuse is to the Right is like Civil Rights abuse is to the left.
NotMax
@Kay
*cough* tax returns *cough*
It’s always projection. Always.
Kay
Oh, and keep in mind- while Trump was smearing US voters baselessly accusing them of election fraud and while the potted plants on the commission let him, Donald Trump had already given an interview threatening law enforcement that they better not look at his sleazy business records.
The Trump Family turn over nothing but they expect 350 million people to turn demographic information over to the Trump campaign. Mike Pence will be protecting it- Mike Pence who is a VP candidate already.
The Trump campaign is just getting a head start on the competition, I guess. Compiling a campaign list.
Didn’t there used to be a Federal Elections Commission? Are they on vacation?
MomSense
@chris:
Merci, Chris.
Kay
@NotMax:
HOW DARE law enforcement look at business records from the Trump Family! But 350 million people have to turn over information to Donald Trump or he’ll assume they’re guilty of felony voter fraud?
THAT’S privilege. That’s the definition. Information is power and the Trump Family think they’re entitled to yours but you’re not entitled to theirs.
GregB
I think it needs to be said openly and often that Trump could very well be an illigitimate president.
It is far more likely that 70,000 votes were stolen than were 3 million.
Immanentize
@Mike in NC: wasn’t that an on going skit on SNL? Something like 12 year old questions for experts and one was a question for a general and a historian? Which was something like:
What if Napolean had a fully nuclear capable B-52 bomber at Waterloo?
GxB
@Amir Khalid: Best of luck with the Squire. Their quality is greatly improved, and I understand the “Deluxe” and “Classic Vibe” series rival authentic Fender quality. I just got my callouses built back up as my shoulder and well, everything, goes to hell over the winter.
If I may offer, Justin Sandercoe – best teacher on the web IMO and all around decent bloke. Second, you may want to look into “Rocksmith” for PC (sorry no link, don’t want to end up on moderation hell). Its an edutainment-type game that has had some amazing results with some newbies. I wish it was around when I started, though I’m of two minds on it. It’s just a fancy way to get tablature thrown at you, no theory, no real guidance on technique, but feedback is immediate, and when combined with diligent practice and a good lessons, you may surprise yourself.
chris
@MomSense: De rien.
Kay
@NotMax:
Why is he hiding the loans? It’s just a loan. Papers should all be in order, I would think. If his loyal fans didn’t know by now that he’s up to his ass in debt and vulnerable to manipulation and capture based on owing everyone and their brother millions of dollars loan documents aren’t going to change their opinion.
Business records are dull-it’s just contracts.
Citizen Alan
@Mike in NC:
That was the only Turtledove book I ever read as well. Well it was a good read at the time, his need to paint Robert E Lee as a nearly Messianic figure who became committed to the abolition of slavery upon winning the war is a bit disturbing. His redemptive reading of Nathan Bedford Forrest is even more so.
kilo50
@Mike in NC: Filibusterers they called the Walker force in Nicaragua. Before the ACW. They should do one on SW Missouri. Deported ten counties of Border Ruffians who formalized their treason. No fiction involved. Should have placed every seceding state and all slavers under asset forfeiture.
Duncan Watson
I wanted to post this VOX link which I find quite annoying.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/7/20/16003304/full-frontal-samantha-bee-trump-impeachment-nope
Now this is just exploiting those less informed about the issues. Trump was impeachable on day 1 by violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. The interference of Russia into the election was known and there were well founded suspicions of collusion. This kind of crap is annoying. Here we have a supposed liberal source saying that the desire to impeach is solely emotional when it is based in facts as well as emotion. It is belittling and by directing such queries to the “man on the street” rather than the representatives of the viewpoint (The Resistance) defending their viewpoint , you have a debate between educated journalists with a particular point to demonstrate and uneducated random person on the street. It pisses me off.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I will ask again for you to take this up as a Frontpager, Kay.
Pretty please?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Citizen Alan: Turtledove’s primary source for Lee and Forrest was a True Son of the South.
(Both hung out in the same online community at the time. I saw some of the early discussion.)
It’s almost worth reading Guns of the South as a record of the Southern Myth.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
I hear you. I understand your dread.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@NorthLeft12: I cannot imagine anything in the personal history of Canadian author and scientist Dr. Peter Watts that would make his fellow Canadians nervous about visiting the US. /snark
And that was well before the current maladministration really got behind empowering ICE’s worst.
Kay
One of Trump’s unelected federal voting czars tweeted this:
They’re very serious and scholarly- yes, sir. Get the joke? It means Latinos are all unlawful electors.
Must be humiliating for the Democrats on that panel- they’re not in the photograph. That’s because they are seat-fillers to add a legit patina to this garbage panel.
They’re stoking the Trump base with accusations of voter fraud- directed solely at Democratic voters. And we’re paying for the whole thing. Ken Blackwell lost his last Ohio race by 30 points. Trump is the only person who WOULD hire him. For anything.
Jim Parene
@Amir Khalid: Amir, you will love the Tele. I purchased the Bullit Tele @ 1 month ago and I love it. It is a lot easier for me to fret Barre chords higher up the neck, therefore reducing the pain in my Arthritic fingers. As a result of this, I am now practicing at least 1 hour/day. My scales and leads are getting better and I seem to be learning a bit faster.
However, for shear joy of strumming, my Washburn acoustic is my go-to Guitar.
In general, my overall mood has been better as a result of my musical progress.
.
Keep playing and learning, my friend, Amir.
bemused
@Kay:
What was that word/phrase you said your teen and friends use…rat something?
Amir Khalid
@GxB:
Thanks. I’ve bookmarked Jeff Sandercoe’s website.
Citizen Alan
@WaterGirl:
I will go to my grave certain that if Al Gore had been elected in 2000, 911 would have been averted, but Gore would have got no credit for it because the Republicans in the media would have mocked the idea that terrorists could have flown planes into buildings. Then later, he’d have been impeached by Republicans before 2004 because of that one time he used the wrong phone to talk to a Chinese donor.
smintheus
Time for Tillerson to resign.
NeenerNeener
If only Sessions would seize all the assets of the criminal Trump family.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@O. Felix Culpa:
Release on Recognizance. Means nobody posts bond.
Marmot
@Frankensteinbeck: That’s all true. But it’s a different argument. Blaming everything on The South excuses homegrown bigotry, resentment, and stupidity. All of which will adopt whatever symbol is convenient. Say, a tri-corner hat.
JMG
The South could never have won the Civil War. Never ever ever. Shelby Foote, the Mississippi native historian who certainly admired the leaders of the Confederacy, has noted that the North fought the war with one hand tied behind its back, mobilizing only a portion of its manpower and industrial strength and still overwhelming the South. The only way the Confederacy could have survived is if the Union got tired of fighting it. The belligerency that is one of our most unlovely national characteristics would’ve prevented that. Counterfactual histories are all nonsense. Stuff happens for reasons. When I was a preteen this company called Avalon Hill made board games of famous battles. They were very realistic. So realistic that it was impossible for the “general” of the losing side to ever win if his opponent had played the game more than once. No matter what, Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top are easy to defend and hard to attack.
bookdragon
@randy khan: Yep. Dystopias are more interesting to write and watch because there’s more drama in scenarios where everything is going wrong.
GoT would not be half as interesting if Winter wasn’t coming and/or if the various kingdoms noticed Winter was coming, dropped their petty squabbles, and worked together to make sure they could all survive it.
Kay
@bemused:
They’re not my friends – they would probably object loudly to being portrayed as my friends, is why I tell you that :)
The phrase is “rat talk’in”. It means saying something untrue and malicious about someone, or something true that will get the person in trouble. I kept hearing it so I asked one- commented, really, I knew what it meant from context. He just stared at me- so no help there! They act tough and “silent” is part of that. I don’t get insulted when they only answer one of my 50,000 questions :)
I don’t know how they do it. It actually takes a lot of self control to shut up and they’re delinquents so self control isn’t their strongest area. Information is like the coin of the realm and my impulse would be to spend it.
El Caganer
@Citizen Alan: The only one of the leading Confederate generals I ever heard of who at least tried to redeem himself after the war was Longstreet. Lee’s reputation is fraudulent, and Forrest, well…..
chris
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): Heh, I watched the Watts affair in real time. (BTW his excellent books are free to download from his website.)
Can’t find the article now but last year they were asking people if they’d ever used marijuana. Of course they turned away those who said yes. This year, because I was crossing the border, I cut my hair and took the 40+ year old ring out of my ear. Never occurred to me before.
T S
@boatboy_srq: Because the gimmick in your rosier scenario doesnt introduce dramatic intrigue.
Amir Khalid
@JMG:
The Confederacy may not have won the American Civil War, but its ideology survives and has even conquered the Republican party.
Just One More Canuck
@Amaranthine RBG: Asshole, much?
Aleta
Telling about family guilt and opinion of T’s competence: the exact moment in the interview when Ivanka stops by to “just say hi” and sends her girl skittering across the room. She interrupts as T is staggering around in quicksand, and gives him a boost until he can reset the conversation. Suggests they had her listening from a closet or under a floorboard in the hall or the like.
Feathers
@JMG: This. Also the fact that slavery was also on the downswing in the rest of the world. I remember in world history that the charts of what a small percentage of the Atlantic slave trade the US was. How would the confederacy have played out as the sole slave state in the world? Would the rest of the world have put up with it?
I see things through a writer’s eye enough that I can see a really cool story with this premise. But I’m also enough in the world to realize that it is also playing into enough dangerous and stupid fantasies that it’s a story best left as a really cool pitch.
patrick II
@Major Major Major Major:
The only alternate-history of the civil war and confederacy I enjoyed was “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer” which showed southern slave owners in their true light.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major: Reposting from last night:
Knowing nothing else except the premise, I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with the idea itself, aside from being done to death already, only second to the “Nazis win WW2” concept.
The Confederacy was never going to “win” the civil war, only make the Union cry uncle and get an uneasy peace.
Though banning slavery was explicitly prohibited by the Confederate constitution, its highly unlikely that de jure slavery would still exist in a present day CSA. International pressure, cotton coming from other sources, and mechanization would have eventually made the CSA ditch slavery.
As for the White savior narrative, that’s unacceptable. The main character should have been a POC for sure.
bemused
@Kay:
That’s what I thought it was and I like it. Sure fits Disaster President.
gene108
@Duncan Watson:
I’ve seen full frontal mock The Resistance before. Basically, they drive at one point, if you really want to change shit, you are better off voting, organizing to get your candidates elected, etc. than marching in the street.
I think they could handle the need to vote better and make the point clearer. It’s not either vote and campaign or march in the street.
NorthLeft12
How can a reporter interview Deadbeat Donald without laughing out loud, rolling their eyes, spitting up their coffee, or asking “WTF are you talking about?”
Is it not possible for an interviewer, after the above statement by Trump not say, to him, exactly what I bolded? Really, is there anything wrong with saying that?
TenguPhule
@Keith P.:
And you’d be wrong.
Cops given free license to steal under color of law?
Everything that isn’t nailed down for people with large amounts of cash is about to become “criminal assets” and confiscated.
trollhattan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Dear lord….
Happen to know a few county PDs in our metroplex and love, love, love the stories. Most anyway. Occasionally one will pull a particularly newsworthy client and then get their faces plastered in the paper and on the local news.so now EVERYBODY knows they’re trying to keep Ghoul of the Week out of prison.
I admire their gumption.
germy
TenguPhule
@Alain the site fixer:
And you’d be very very wrong. There are no real disincentives for being a bad cop now. And the temptation of “free money” is going to be one that many police are going to find hard to resist.
TenguPhule
@TriassicSands:
Money insulates idiots from a lot of natural consequences that normally weed them out of the gene pool.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@JMG: The most plausible versions I’ve seen fork very early. Turtledove’s series forks at the finding of Special Order 191, leading to a Union loss at Antietam and a loss of appetite in the North for the war, an uneasy peace, and alliances that erupt into WW1 being fought on both sides of the Atlantic.
The story I keep thinking about involved the discovery of a reliable telepathy sometime in the 1960s. The telepaths are challenged to prove themselves by convincing a certain politician that the South was right all along. The aftermath, well, I keep feeling like we’re living in it.
SFAW
@Kay:
Thanks to Ken Blackwell’s voting machine/polling place shenanigans, W won re-election.
As efgoldman might say: Fuckem.
scav
@NorthLeft12: Do all the people suddenly without insurance (100% reduction in pemiums!) combined with the all the people paying more somehow reduce mathematically to 60% reductions? That might explain how more and more people will lose coverage as the Trumpcare plans improve and improve as they fail to reach his hungry signing pen.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: I’m with the people who think it sucks that “Underground” got axed but this piece of shit gets green-lighted.
ETA: Or what Rikyrah said.
Amir Khalid
@patrick II:
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I liked it too. When the book came out, there was a mini-trend of mash-ups of horror tropes with things like Jane Austen. A lot of reviewers thought the movie was just pure silliness but to my mind it’s the most exciting, action-packed POTUS biopic ever made. And it was quite right to liken slave owners to vampires.
JMG
The Times White House reporters, Haberman especially, seem to have adopted a therapist posture with Trump. The questions aren’t designed to deal with specifics, they’re just to get the client talking and feeling a bond with the therapist. It’s probably the only approach that’s feasible, which in itself is highly alarming.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Ignore this part. The edit didn’t go through. This kind of show can either be a great social commentary or a cringeworthy mess
bookdragon
@JMG: Yes. Even if, somehow, they had gotten foreign aid that would have helped them win, or pulled some other rabbit out of hat to get the Union to let them secede, the Confederacy would have fallen apart almost immediately afterward.
The US tried a Confederacy. It failed. With a weak central govt and no organizing principle beyond preserving slavery and white supremacy, it would only be a matter of time before Secessionist states would fall out with each and…secede.
Add to that the fact that the economy of the South was a shambles, a large portion of population dead or with disabling life long wounds, and their failure even with war build up to establish the sort of industrial strength that existed in the North. They would not have been a competing nation, and certainly not one capable of conquest to the West or toward Mexico. Especially since they would have to maintain as much force at home as possible out of fear of uprisings among their slaves, many of whom have seen free blacks in Union blue.
But even if it somehow held together for even a generation, I’d expect another war with the Union that would finally bring it to an end. A mirror image of the War of 1812: A black Union soldier taken by Southern slave finders slipping over the border (covertly since there would be no Fugitive Slave Act to allow it now) leads to the sort of crisis that arose from Brits impressing US seaman…
gene108
@JMG:
That was the whole Southern strategy. Fight hard enough, for a short period of time that the North would not want to fight anymore, and would rather seek peace than get more men killed.
There were plenty of people in the North, who would’ve gone for it.
And a few key battles could’ve changed the mood in the North towards the war or if Jackson had not been shot or killed by his own men or if Grant or Sherman had died, at Shiloh for example, a lot of the war would’ve changed.
I think another way to interpret the North fighting with one-hand tied behind its back, is the North really did not want to fight an all out war against their countrymen.
Could the North, if pissed off enough have eventually beaten the South? Yes.
But whether they’d have committed to it between 1861 to 1865 might not have come to pass.
Lincoln isn’t considered the greatest President ever because getting the North committed to fighting the South was easy and victory a foregone conclusion.
germy
Gracious, as always:
Miss Bianca
@Immanentize:
This, goddammit, this. Seems like white guys just loovve to re-write history this way.
TenguPhule
@Immanentize:
Because peace and progress are boring to read about.
Conflict is interesting.
SgrAstar
@NorthLeft12: Dear NorthLeft, please come visit despite your concerns. The embattled majority need your help, and we would appreciate getting tha chance to show off Yosemite, Yellowstone, San Francisco…the gorgeous terrain, the fascinating cities, the genuine people, the great food …it’s all still here. Come help us shore it up.
trollhattan
@gene108:
Ironic that it’s the same rationale used for strategic bombing campaigns: “They’ll get tired of being bombed and will come to the bargaining table.” That’s worked soooo well the last hundred years.
Duncan Watson
@gene108: I understand. It just annoys me when they make their point with shallow inaccurate garbage that gets reused by genuine opponents.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Miss Bianca:
Dystopias are interesting because they are often horrifying to us and an exaggerated version of our own world. Because I’m a white guy who happens to enjoy them, does that make me a racist?
@TenguPhule:
Pretty much this. Though Underground certainly would have had plenty of interesting conflict
Peale
@TenguPhule: And because both the slave holders and the Nazis lost. Its tough to have an alternative history that doesn’t change those outcomes.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
And the Republicans still insisting on throwing those firebombs to heat it up.
Miss Bianca
@Amaranthine RBG: Don’t even go there.
gene108
@germy:
We are not in a reality, where Confederates won anything. I’m sorry. I keep people saying this, but fuck no. Confederates lost. They lost big.
They wanted perpetual slavery for African-Americans.
As bad as Jim Crow was, it was not as bad as slavery.
Half the blacks in the South got the hell out because the South sucked, during the Jim Crow era.
That wouldn’t have happened if the Confederacy had won.
Nikki Haley and Tim Scott would not have won elected office in South Carolina, if the South won.
Yeah, all the progress of forever seems to be under assault right now, but we live in a world where a black, arch conservative Supreme Court justice is married to a white woman, in Virginia, and not living in fear for his life.
So in short, progress has been made. Progress has been sustained. More progress will happen, but it’ll be harder than we had hoped.
bemused
@Miss Bianca:
And we’re living it for real right now, oh Lordie.
TenguPhule
@Peale:
I’d be in favor of an alternate history where the Native Americans banded together, attacked the Confederacy, then incorporated the freed slaves as citizens of their alliance to retake their old lands from the slavers and settlers.
TenguPhule
@gene108:
Honorary Whites in service to the Confederacy are not new.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Settlers meaning the Union? I’d read that
gene108
@trollhattan:
Western Europe, when Hitler invaded, did not have the appetite for all out war because of the damage they had sustained during WW1.
Some places to sue for peace rather than fight to the death.
SFBayAreaGal
I read this book in my early teens in the 70s, “If the South Had Won the Civil War” This book was written long before Turtledove alternate history
Per Wikipedia:
It is a 1961 alternate history book by MacKinlay Kantor, a writer who also wrote several novels about the American Civil War as it actually happened. It was originally published in the November 22, 1960, issue of Look magazine. It generated such a response that it was published in 1961 as a book.
TenguPhule
@Amir Khalid:
Unfortunately its not new. Its a reversion to the bad old status quo.
The shit dates back to the 1930s for Prohibition. Got a big boost in the 1980s under Reagan.
Massively unpopular with the public, but beloved by law enforcement because most of the time they get to KEEP their loot for their own use.
And fighting it is a bastard because the rule is “property accused of a crime is presumed guilty unless proven innocent”. And no, I’m not joking, that’s how the fucking legal scam works.
gene108
@TenguPhule:
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Immanentize:
I can only think of one CSA alt-history that proposes a positive future, and it’s the one where dedicated apartheidists discover time travel and equip the CSA with AK-47s . Unfortunately for them, one of their books from their original timeline ends up in Lee’s hands.
Dystopias are a way to comment on current events and modern society. CSA alt-histories go in popularity cycles. They were on the rise along with Reaganism, displacing the “nuclear war survivors” subgenre I grew up with. I suspect they’re coming back right now because of what’s going on around us.
germy
rikyrah
Ignoring threats, special counsel examines Trump’s finances
07/20/17 11:32 AM
By Steve Benen
In his interview with the New York Times yesterday, Donald Trump lashed out at an alarmingly wide number of officials in the Justice Department and the FBI, most notably former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who’s overseeing the investigation into the Trump-Russia scandal.
Among other things, the president accused Mueller of overseeing an investigatory team rife with conflicts of interest and, as the Times’ report noted, warned that Mueller and his team shouldn’t examine Trump’s finances. The president didn’t specify what would prompt him to fire the special counsel, but when asked about an examination of his finances, Trump said, “I think that’s a violation.”
Comments like those make it all the more significant to see reports like this one from Bloomberg Politics, which said the special counsel’s investigation is, in fact, examining “a broad range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses as well as those of his associates.”
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Why would the freed slaves fight against the Union, though?
Miss Bianca
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Dystopias that excuse or fantasize about the continued oppression, suppression, or outright erasure of POC are racist. Are you asserting that you enjoy those types of stories?
TenguPhule
@gene108:
Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good of white power.
Plenty of time to cleanse the mudbloods when their usefulness has ended.
/A Republican mind is a terrible thing to experience
Major Major Major Major
@germy:
…this would be the mayor of the city that’s giving out that contract, yes? Somebody who has power over the situation, perhaps?
@Miss Bianca: Who’s saying this HBO series is that kind of story? So far all I’ve seen is HBO saying they wouldn’t comment on the direction the story would take. All we know about it is who’s running it.
rikyrah
What Robert Mueller Learned From Enron
By JESSE EISINGER
JULY 13, 2017
It seems safe to assume that nobody read Donald Trump Jr.’s damning emails with a Kremlin-connected lawyer more closely than Robert Mueller.
Mr. Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, will surely be looking into the now infamous meeting, including the president’s son; the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and his campaign chairman at the time, Paul Manafort.
As he does, will Mr. Mueller be able to build a case that goes all the way to the top?
That could depend on what lessons he learned from overseeing the task force that investigated one of the biggest fraud cases in American history: the collapse of the energy giant Enron.
In December 2001, Enron filed what was then the largest corporate bankruptcy in American history. Just weeks later, Mr. Mueller, then the F.B.I. director; Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson; and the assistant attorney general for the criminal division, Michael Chertoff, formed the Enron Task Force, an elite team of F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors assigned to investigate and prosecute crimes related to the Houston-based energy trader. Andrew Weissmann, who recently joined Mr. Mueller’s Russia team, later led the task force.
The Enron team was patient and learned from its investigative and trial mistakes. After its yearslong run, it set a high-water mark for complex, high-profile financial inquiries, successfully indicting and imprisoning almost all of the company’s top executives.
………………………………
But the Enron Task Force may have given Mr. Mueller a hide thick enough to protect him from those attacks. More than that, Enron honed skills he’ll need now in the Russia investigation, which may well touch on money laundering, secrecy havens, complex accounting maneuvers, campaign finance violations — and multiple lies.
As I talked with Mr. Mueller’s former Enron Task Force colleagues in recent weeks, it became clear to me that he believes the Enron team was successful — and understands why. That means his special counsel team will probably move more slowly than people anticipate. But it might also shock people with its aggressive investigative and prosecutorial tactics. If Mr. Trump and his advisers committed crimes, Mr. Mueller will find them.
Miss Bianca
@TenguPhule:
OK, now that one I’d read!
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
If the Native Americans freed them first & treated them as equals, why not?
TenguPhule
@Miss Bianca:
i may be on to something here.
Maybe Baen will be interested in my draft.
TenguPhule
@Miss Bianca:
Point of order, most of those stories involve just how horrible such places are to live in and almost always involve protagonists either going against the system or experiencing how bad it is first hand.
The rest are bad fanfiction.
bookdragon
@TenguPhule: I’d read that!
In fact I could see a plot where someone in DC decides to solve 2 problems at once by giving a particular stretch of land in the West to freed slaves as reparation, expecting them to then take on the most troublesome native tribes in order to claim and hold it. From the pov of the douchy white DC pol, it’s a win-win. However, the freed slaves turn the tables by making common cause with the natives in order to fight the white settlers encroaching on the land as if neither of them had prior claim…
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule:
I was under the impression that the Native Americans would be fighting the CSA on a second front, allied with the Union.
Origuy
@TenguPhule: The Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast (the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole) owned African slaves. Over 4,000 black slaves went with them to Indian Territory during the Trail of Tears. Had the Trail of Tears never happened, many Native Americans might have fought on the side of the Confederacy.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Miss Bianca:
Not excuse or make it seem like a good thing. To show history as it might have been in all its horror.
Major Major Major Major
@Origuy: That too. We romanticize “the Native Americans” quite a bit.
NorthLeft12
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): Thanks for the link. I live just outside Sarnia, Ontario which is home to that same Bluewater Bridge. I have never heard of this incident before, which I don’t find surprising as the local media have no interest in criticizing or publicizing the faults of either the US or Canadian border service.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Miss Bianca:
I like Star Wars just fine, thanks.
Most of the time, the oppressors/suppressors/erasers are the villains. Are you suggesting that it’s a bad thing to use a truly evil society as antagonist?
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Not with white settlers breaking the treaties in their search for gold and land.
Jeffro
Has anyone yet pointed out that Trumpov nominated a talk radio show host (a man with no scientific background whatsoever, natch) to be the Ag Dept’s top scientist? A pure Bannon play there.
MCA1
@Immanentize: That would likely be pretty boring, wouldn’t it?
While I get the emotional “hell no” response some are having to the broader concept, I think it could be an interesting exercise. It all depends on what the chosen counterhistory over the intervening 150 years is. I’d think it unlikely that stasis would be chosen. It wouldn’t be a cohesive South where slavery still exists. It was an unsustainable system in 1860 already; something will have happened in the alternate history to end it one way or another. Maybe we’d find that by 2017 the South worked out its own issues; maybe there were mass uprisings around 1930; maybe WWII had the Confederate States in the Axis and it gets wiped out. More likely it would have fallen apart within 20 years because of the lack of federalism. Maybe the North, lacking the cohesive tissue of having put down the rebellion, would lag even further behind in cleaning up its own racial issues than we are now in the real world. Maybe without a unified U.S., WWII dragged on another 5 years before the Russians eventually wore down the Nazis, and both separate countries are still economic laggards the way they were before the war gave them the kickstart to world domination. All kinds of interesting things could have happened. Couldn’t such an exploration of an alternate history teach us some lessons about how not done with the process of karmic retribution for our actual history we are?
Again, I understand the reaction to the concept – we’re allowing ourselves to imagine a world in which the horror of slavery continued, so the idea of the show is predicated on swallowing that massive human suffering. But, it’s imaginary.
TenguPhule
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Lol!
I won’t say the thread was won just yet, but we have a contender!
bookdragon
@Miss Bianca: Stories that excuse or glorify it, yes, are racist. However ones that show the sort of horrors that could have been and how people nevertheless fight on can be good stories.
My family is half Jewish, but I found Man in the High Castle to be a compelling story. I’m a woman and a feminist, but consider A Handmaid’s Tale a great book and am now absorbed watching the tv series. I don’t think either of those things make me self-hating.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: so “the native Americans” (some of whom as has been noted practiced slavery) would be fighting against the confederates and the union?
Aleta
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
First the Confederates, then later against the Union once the treaties are violated and the Union forces refuse to do anything about the white settlers and gold prospectors. Not at the same time. I’d like both the Confederates and Union to lose, after all.
scav
Why assume “Native Americans” would be consistently fighting for one side or the other as a cohesive bloc or with any consistency over time?
(ETA: quotes merely about assuming they’re a homogenous group under a single umbrella. First Nations nomenclature at least recognizes the diversity of groups with agency and agendas.)
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: And why have all of the many Native American nations banded together to fight the Confederacy, again?
Miss Bianca
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
You tell me. Am I? Are you actually looking at what I said and getting *that* out of it?
jeffreyw
@Miss Bianca: The Indians Won
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: Kind of, yeah. You’ve taken an idea (Confederates ‘won’ the civil war and have their own country now) and assumed that it will be told in a way where they are not the antagonists and their actions are excused. ETA: At least, that’s how I read what you’ve written.
Uncle Cosmo
@Karen: Turtledove’s “Southern Victory” alternative history series – which encompasses no less than eleven full-length novels & runs from 1862 to 1945 – is a monumental extrapolation of the imagination. But its fatal flaw is that the author is unspeakably terrible at literature. It reminds me of Harlan Ellison’s swipe (in the intro to his anthology Dangerous Visions anthology) at John W. Campbell, Jr.,
Turtledove assembles (I cannot in good conscience type “writes”) schematic drawings of alternate history. He is (barely) competent at moving characters into & out of scenes; he is utterly unable to give readers a reason to care (love, hate, anything in between) about any of them. I happen to be a yoooge fan of alternative history, & I cannot stomach Turtledove’s wretched prose – I plowed into this series but frequently found myself flipping pages irritably thinking Fuck this crap, just tell me what happens next.
That’s not to say that the schematics aren’t occasionally interesting. For example (IIRC) he conjectures that within a few decades of independence the CSA’s patron states (specifically Great Britain) would have forced it to abolish slavery – but that the Confederacy would have simply reclassed blacks as “serfs” with no real change in the culture. (Jim Crow on steroids) That seems plausble to me.
In fact the most plausible reading of the “Southron* Victory” [* – yeah, I went there] series is not as an epic story but as a repeated thumb in the eye to people who think “American exceptionalism” spared us most of the horrors of the last 150 years. Analogies – plausible analogies – abound, from the obscenity of trench warfare to its breaking by mobile armor to a defeated South rising under a Fascist demagogue to plot revenge to Pittsburgh-as-Stalingrad to extermination camps for a despised minority to atom bombing. Through all 11 books Turtledove is really saying, It was mostly dumb luck: Watch how a seemingly minuscule change in history [Lee’s Special Order #191 not falling into Union hands] could have brought all those vultures home to roost right here. It’s just a damn shame he wasn’t writer enough to put viable flesh on those diagrams & bring them to some sort of life.
Miss Bianca
@MCA1: @Major Major Major Major: You know why I think an alt-history that posits the Confederacy winning the Civil War is redundant at best, insulting at worst? Because in a very real way, the South *did* win the goddamned Civil War.
At least, they won Reconstruction. A white son of the South assassinated the one man who would have had the balls, the heart, and the head to make sure that Reconstruction actually reconstructed. The South got its way, and reinstituted slavery in all but name for another hundred years, and 50 years after the Civil Rights Act passed, we are STILL fighting for full equality for POC in this country.
That’s what I find infuriating. That’s what I find grotesque about positing “oh, gee, what would have happened if the Confederacy had won.” Because it ignores and elides the fact that even if it didn’t, it might as well have.
El Caganer
The only alternate-history Civil War story I’ve ever truly enjoyed was Thurber’s “If Grant Had Been Drinking At Appomattox.”
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: I have to agree. I am so fucking tired of these SF dystopias, filled with lazy writing and bad science. Give me the hopeful vision of Star Trek anyday. I am living in a dystopia right now, where everything has to be fucking entertaining, news, politics, science everything, that’s how T got elected, to satisfy our endless need for amusement.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Taking advantage of a split in the white forces encroaching on their lands to seize resources and acquire the manpower needed to have a chance of standing against the weakened winner of the conflict.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: *Applause*
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: You’re again imputing a lot of agreement to a large number of peoples that didn’t come together to defend all of each other against genocide in the first place, and assuming they could all agree on offensive action.
ETA: And then assuming that the freed slaves would ally themselves with this Native American army, a large proportion of which would be from societies that had African slaves.
@Miss Bianca: Right, but this is about them winning in a different and realer way. It’s speculative fiction. About which we know literally nothing other than who’s running it.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@schrodingers_cat:
Dystopias often contain elements of real world problems taken to eleven to show us the horrors of what could be. I like hopeful Star Trek stuff too, but I still think dystopian fiction has value as social commentaries
TenguPhule
U.S. says ExxonMobil violated Russia sanctions while Tillerson was CEO
Thursday is the new Friday.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: Well yes, hence alternative history fiction.
Uncle Cosmo
And just FTR I think this “Confederacy” idea for a TV series is, in this day & circumstance, beyond obscene – it would arguably promote a second Civil War for the sake of a few ratings points. Boycotting HBO is probably the least that should be done. Although I think the most effective boycott would be by the people who make the content they live on. Let the vast mass of producers, directors, actors, etc. refuse to work for them any more & we’ll see how long this imbecile notion survives.
TenguPhule
Nearly half of liberals can’t even stand to be around Trump supporters
Next, we discover that air is needed for us to breathe.
MisterForkbeard
@Uncle Cosmo: This entire description of Turtledove reminds me of a quote from a friend in college, describing an incomprehensible textbook written by one of our professors:
“Words on paper do not constitute a book.”
TenguPhule
FYWP.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Miss Bianca:
Dystopian alt-history is supposed to be grotesque; that’s the point. Not in a gleeful way like a white supremacist’s fantasy, but in a sorrowful way that shows the effects of the POD (point of divergence) on those oppressed by the system and them fighting back
TenguPhule
Nearly half of liberals can’t even stand to be around Trump supporters
File under, No Shit Sherlock.
El Caganer
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: That’s what the whole Black Mirror series is about.
HeleninEire
Hey they are showing OJ’s parole hearing live in this here pub. I had no idea he was even up for parole. Did y’all? Too much other stuff going on in the US.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Miss Bianca: Yeah, actually, in context with the statement you replied to, you sounded a lot like you think any use of an oppressive society requires excusing the oppression and by definition is racist. As is anyone who likes stories that involve such societies.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: “Winning in a different and realer way” than the way they *actually* won, which involved getting away with apartheid and race-based murder? Forget it. I’m with Rikyrah on this one.
frosty
@Jim Parene: And if the fingers get too gouty or arthritic, pick up a slide and start playing bottleneck or lap-style dobro!
Miss Bianca
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: that happens not to be the case. but read into my statement whatever your heart desires. I’m done with this.
Benjamin Mays
Eric Flint has written two books in his “Rivers of War” series postulating an expanded Arkansas Territory following War of 1812 period. Sam Houston, Cherokee, Creek, black soldier/sailors from War of 1812, slaves, freemen and Irish building a new nation/state.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Uncle Cosmo:
I started reading his WorldWar series about aliens invading Earth during WW2, which sounds really cool. I read half way though the first book several years ago and couldn’t finish it. This isn’t to say I thought writing was bad; it was passable. What really gets me about writers is when characters use the same words over and over in dialogue; vary it up for god’s sake! Use a thesaurus!
Turgidson
@Marmot:
Rural vs. urban is definitely a big schism, but Democrats have still generally been competitive with white voters outside the Deep South. Obama won Iowa twice and swept the Midwest other than Indiana, which is basically a southern state that wandered off from the group and got lost. That support eroded in a significant way in 2016, obviously, but we’re a long ways off from Iowa’s white voters voting the way Alabama’s or Mississippi’s do (~90% GOP).
VeniceRiley
@Major Major Major Major:
Hit the nail on the head here. That Man In The High Castle is fine, while this alternate universe of present day confederacy is considered “too soon” like a bad joke, is attributable entirely to what you posted above. SAD!
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
AND?
SO?
Hell muthaphuckin’ YEAH, it SHOULD be hard to be around those people.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@NorthLeft12: An interviewer who is interested in giving him enough rope to hang himself without being kicked out of the room for contradicting the greatest and most beloved POTUS ever would just sit back and let him go, while giving him occasional sympathetic nudges intended to encourage the Orange One to dig himself in deeper.
There is absolutely nothing to be gained from direct confrontation, for an interviewer. Especially if that interviewer is interested in seeing to it that the Orange
CreamFearsicle exposes himself to such an extent that even asTrump-enablingkindly an editor an Dean Baquet can’t find a way to fix the thing.Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Uncle Cosmo: Yep, yep, and yep.
I gave up on it early because I couldn’t stomach the writing any longer. (Though I was vastly amused at the reactions to Lincoln-as-Socialist.) My husband stuck with it a little longer but eventually got tired of the “lift this historical event and move it over here, file off the names, and call it good” method of plotting.
But it was clear from the beginning that it would be a bite of the thumb at the American Exceptionalists.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: I know I can’t.
ETA: You could have warned me that the linked article is horrible!
bookdragon
@Miss Bianca: This is a good point, but also one that shows a potentially interesting avenue for developing an alternative history.
What if as a result of the CSA coming to be the myth of the ‘Lost Cause’ and all the romanticizing of Johnny Reb never came to be? What if instead all the incompetence and elitism of the Confederate states proved the disaster it would have been and collapsed? What would come from those ruins? With such a large population of black slaves, maybe something like South Africa after the collapse of apartheid? Or maybe a socialistic workers party, that might come to include those slaves, see them freed and made more equal than they were in our timeline?
(Note: It is not what expect anyone at HBO to do, but I think it would be a very interesting twist to the usual ‘South won the war’ idea).
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Benjamin Mays:
I tried reading 1632, but the dude cannot write romance very well
Ella in New Mexico
@LAO:
He’s saying that he’s gonna seize whatever, regardless of whether a state has laws against it, correct?
Well, I’d think that the states that have put a lid on asset forfeiture would have standing to sue preemptively, like some states did in regards to the Muslim Ban in January.
These fucking Confederates all all about states rights until it doesn’t suit their personal agenda…
Major Major Major Major
@Ella in New Mexico: Well, as Atwater was so kind as to tell us on tape, “states’ rights” is just code for n****r n****r n****r.
schrodingers_cat
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I don’t disagree with your general point, I am in no mood for them, right now. I also think that they have been done to death.
Yarrow
Well, OJ was granted parole.
scav
Wonder if they’ve thought through the implications of all this new asset forfeiture in light of the new landscape of opiod addiction (oh! the anxiety that must now be understood!)
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s fine. They’re not for everybody. And yeah, darker and grittier fare has been the norm for entertainment, especially post-9/11. Did you hear about the new star trek series they’re doing?
Karen
Since Ryan took the war powers amendment from bill; dolt45 still has power to start a war if things get too far out of hand and it looks like he might be charged with something.
schrodingers_cat
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: In passing. Has it started?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Karen:
Why the fuck would he do that? Has he no sense of self-preservation?
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Sometimes you have to share the pain to make it bearable.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Cleek’s Law.
As certain as gravity,
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Now there is a franchise gone far from its roots.
Each new iteration of Star Trek has been more violent and less noble then the last.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@schrodingers_cat: Not until September 24th. The 2 parter premier will be on CBS, but the rest will be on CBS All Access, because CBS will be showing more reruns of NCIS
Immanentize
@Ella in New Mexico: This is actually an interesting question that I have not considered before — it is one thing, perhaps, for the feds to seize $$, but can the federal government seize land that is actually “state’ land, in that it is regulated, taxed, etc. by a state? I am sure someone has written extensively on this because it is a cool question — if I have time, I will check.
TenguPhule
@Ella in New Mexico:
They won’t. The work around simply gives the police a fig leaf of federal involvement which preempts the state restrictions. The SC will not override it.
Karen
Did anyone else see this? Deutsche Bank agreeing to hand over records?
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/07/deutsche-bank-agrees-to-hand-over-trump-records-to-investigators-and-they-may-contain-russia-probe-info/
Immanentize
@scav: The War on Drugs has always been a war on marijuana. Over 85% (I believe that is the number) of federal convictions for drug crimes are marijuana related. There is a scholar, Eric Blumenson, who has done a ton of work on this issue.
Jim Parene
@frosty: Thanks for the suggestion! Slide is definetly on my radar. I’m thinking of purchasing a “Cigar Box” Guitar kit. I might be able to get finger picking down if I only had to worry about 3 strings!
TenguPhule
@Immanentize:
Yes they can. They already have. It’s not a new thing. This shit dates back to the 1930s.
All Sessions is doing is reverting it back to Pre-Obama rules which override State restrictions.
O. Felix Culpa
@jeffreyw:
Actually, they did win in 1680, when the Pueblo Indians banded together to expel the Spanish from New Mexico. Unfortunately for the Indians, the Spanish returned twelve years later in 1692…and remained. This book is flawed (too much insertion of the author’s self, to my mind), but a good read for learning more about what happened: https://www.amazon.com/Pueblo-Revolt-Rebellion-Spaniards-Southwest/dp/0743255178/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500577600&sr=8-1&keywords=the+pueblo+revolt
Immanentize
@TenguPhule: I know the history of forfeiture quite well, but the seizure of real property is not something I perhaps sufficiently argued against. I guess the theory is like dual sovereignty — that each sovereign is offended and has a right to protect its interests… LAO?
ETA Just because something has happened before, doesn’t mean that in the future it won’t be against the law to do so.
TenguPhule
@Immanentize:
Unfortunately it will take an act of Congress to make it illegal.
And given the Congress we’re stuck with…..
scav
@Immanentize: They’ll certainly enjoy that aspect of the outcome (those uppity states thinking states rights apply to anything other than human bondage!) but free money is a hella addiction for all those blue lives agencies that want and need new expensive toys.
Immanentize
@TenguPhule: Congress is just one way to make that happen.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108: California was never a territory and we were admitted to the union as a state in 1850.
Betty Cracker
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Bingo. Handmaid’s Tale, anyone?
Felonius Monk
@Amir Khalid:
Glad to hear it. Keep on rockin’, dude.
bemused
@TenguPhule:
I had to read “Dems tend to be more insulated from dissenting political voices” a few times because that didn’t sound quite right to me. I’ve always lived in small town/rural America and very familiar with the teaparty type Republicans but was still totally shocked at people who I thought had more sense and morals than to support Trump. Heartbroken in some cases. I’ve always felt that people who were Fox, Limbaugh fans deliberately isolated themselves from real news, have no idea what’s really going on in the world and who liberals really are other than the garbage they soaked up for years. oth, most political junky liberals I know keep up with what right and left wing media are talking about.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I don’t need Hand Maid’s Tale to demonstrate what I have seen IRL.
WaterGirl
@Citizen Alan: I’m with you on the first sentence, the last one is too depressing to contemplate.
Gravenstone
@Amaranthine RBG: Wow, asshole much? No need to answer, we know you by your work all too well…
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Well, fine; no one is requiring you to read it / watch the HULU series. But some folks in this thread seem to be saying a dystopian story touching on persistent injustice shouldn’t even be made. That strikes me as wrongheaded. I thought Goku’s comment illustrated the potential value of such a depiction well. YMMV.
TenguPhule
@Immanentize:
The courts aren’t going to help us on this one. Fucking precedents are not working for us and the Supreme Court is compromised.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Lois Bujold, after several attempts to do romance in her science fiction, decided that what people are actually looking for in their SF is political agency.
1632 is a set-up novel. It was intended as a standalone, but then fanfic started happening, and it kind of exploded. Most of the books in the series Flint with a cowriter. If you like the underlying conceit, keep trying other authors in the shared world. I’m fond of the ones set in Rome and in Russia. And Carrico’s music stories.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I am just not in a mood for fictional dystopia when RL is so fucking gone off the rails. I was not arguing about the literary and societal merits or the lack there of.
gvg
@schrodingers_cat: A question at a meeting at work reminded me of something I want to pass on to you. You just became a citizen recently. Have you gone down to the Social Security Administration to notify them? As a college financial aid counselor, i found out years ago that when people become citizens, there is no automatic process for the INS to tell the SSA, here is a new citizen. Its an old process and I think the laws are pre computer. At any rate we found that you will drop off the INS information and they will no longer confirm you are a permanent resident (because you aren’t). However the SSA doesn’t get told unless YOU show them, so they don’t confirm you are a citizen when we query that (as we do for everyone that says they are). It used to come up a lot until we figured this out and it’s really simple to solve. Just go down to ANY SSA office with your docs and they will update. We make a habit of telling the students to tell their siblings and family to each do it also. I sort of worry about when the new citizens retire and go to collect SS benefits…..Also as things get more and more computer connected and given we are going through another period of anti immigrants, I bet there will be some more data matching becoming common. Before we figured this out, our students were having the same problem each new year and its a silly hassle. Also tell anyone else you know in this position.
raven
@Frankensteinbeck: How do you know that?
schrodingers_cat
@gvg: Thanks for the reminder, its one of the things on my to do list.
Ella in New Mexico
@TenguPhule:
I’m curious, since you sound like you might know–has the overall Constitutionality of asset forfeiture been challenged, not necessarily in an narrow case. It’s a flagrant violation of the due process clause, but there have to be other constitutional objections in cases where the original intent-to stop drug and organized crime-is not the case.
This used to be a big issue with Libertarians. So where the fuck is shit for brains Rand Paul on this? Spending all his time trying to take healthcare away from the poors, apparently.
Tehanu
@Immanentize:
Yes it was. My two favorites were, What if Kal-El’s rocket had crashed in Germany in the 1920’s instead of America? and, What if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?