Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale explains what it's like providing refuge for #Harvey evacuees in his furniture store https://t.co/rafaA26t7g
— CNN (@CNN) August 30, 2017
I say we take away Joel Osteen's tax-exemption and we give it to Mattress Mack.
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) August 29, 2017
More context, via Esquire:
Anyone who’s glanced at the electric Twitter machine since the sky began to fall on southeastern Texas has become familiar with Jim McIngvale who, under the name of Mattress Mack, owns the Gallery Furniture chain of stores in Houston. Mattress Mack has opened a couple of his stores for people displaced from the storm to come and rest and sleep on his inventory…
Mattress Mack apparently is one of those local businessmen known for his eccentric promotional sense… Now, though, he’s betting long on his fellow citizens, which is pretty much the living definition of citizenship…
Also of Christianity, if what the nuns told me forty-plus years ago still has any currency. Not that Pastor Osteen would take advice from a bunch of women, but I don’t think even the Prosperity Gospel has been able to wholly eliminate Matthew 25:40.
***********
Apart from looking for the helpers (as Mr. Rogers always told us to do), what’s on the agenda for the day?
If there's one message I hope @realDonaldTrump heard today in Texas, it's this. pic.twitter.com/naPwtQB0Ff
— Mark Elliott (@markmobility) August 30, 2017
Cermet
Rebuild? No; rather move people (mostly the poor and middle class) to high ground out of those flood plains. The message should be “Remove, and allow to return to forest/plains and relocate to higher ground. Doesn’t exactly fit on a poster
bystander
After Katrina there was much discussion of the need to re-engineer all the levies and dams in the Delta. Dutch engineers offered their expertise. Did anything actually happen on a large scale to prevent similar flooding? I imagine the farsighted repubs will see to it that rich people aren’t burdened with Houston’s woes either.
opiejeanne
@Cermet: I don’t think there’s much higher ground anywhere near Houston. I thought I read that the highest point is about 45 feet above sea level.
OzarkHillbilly
@bystander:
From Houston, take heed from us Katrina survivors. This is what lies ahead of you
-Jed Horne
kdaug
That’s Julie and Ryan holding the sign – good friends of mine.
Baud
Actually, Trump is the least of all of us, and I plan to continue to treat him in a most un-Jesuslike manner.
OzarkHillbilly
Will nobody think of the poor fire ants?
Great pics, Video too! at the link. ;=)
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Baud
@kdaug: Cool. Tell them BJ says ???
danielx
@OzarkHillbilly:
Rather not, if it’s all the same to you.
skyweaver
Mackingvale is a Houston legend, he’s always been very generous in times of need. We used to make fun of his quirky commercials in the 80s, then the city fell in love with him because he kept showing up in times of need, just like he’s doing now. The Osteen family seems to just me another Texas evangelical megastar family. Every photo I see has that whiff of teeth-whitened desperation in their smiles.
kilo50
Here is what Real Christians are working on. Don’t have time for “the least of these” thing. Too busy writing manifestos:
A coalition of evangelical leaders released a “Christian manifesto” Tuesday asserting their belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and condemning the acceptance of “homosexual immorality or transgenderism.”
The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood outlined the views in what it called “The Nashville Statement,” and offered it as guidance to churches on how to address issues of sexuality. A group of evangelical leaders, scholars and pastors endorsed the statement on Friday at a conference in Nashville. It was initially endorsed by more than 150 people.
The “manifesto,” which is composed of 14 beliefs, rejects the idea that “otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree” on gay, lesbian and transgender issues. The leaders refer to this mentality as “moral indifference.”
Sorry From WaPo
bystander
Moanin’ Joe just broke the news that Trump is apparently a racist. I wish somebody would rerun the video of Joe’s reaction when Rob Reiner said the Trump campaign was rife with racism.
ThresherK
Good for him.
I’m thinking he really isn’t named Mattress Mack.
To be fair, would you shop at a store called Unpainted Huffheinz?
bystander
Here is a link to Rob Reiner shocking Joe.
The article also refers to Trump as a “poop corndog”. So, quality journalism.
OzarkHillbilly
@danielx: You’re just prejudiced.
debbie
I thought I read that Osteen had decided to open his church as a shelter. Is that not true?
Baud
@debbie:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/29/us/joel-osteen-houston-megachurch-criticism/index.html
Kay
debbie
@Baud:
Thanks. I wonder if they’re screening for whiteness or for evangelicality.
kilo50
@Baud: Lakewood Church probably will serve nourishing evacuee food when all the McDonalds and other eaterys run out of food as well.
danielx
@OzarkHillbilly:
Guilty.
Baud
@debbie: It’s what Jesus would do.
kilo50
@debbie: All evacuees must say shibboleth correctly, be wearing a MAGA chapeau or be able to speak in tongues on demand,
OzarkHillbilly
Oklahoma isn’t working. Can anyone fix this failing American state?
….
….
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah. Elect Democrats.
Lapassionara
@kilo50: I am fervently hoping that this ship has already sailed, and that the efforts of evangelicals to turn back progress for LGTB folks are doomed to failure. Please, FSM, make it so.
Good morning, everyone.
Iowa Old Lady
We all should pay more attention to Mr. Rogers.
kilo50
@OzarkHillbilly: Oilfield Prayer Day. You gotta love the rank derp that the policy is honestly thought to be a solution. I have no sympathy for a state that would cut its own throat and apologize to the Koch brothers for the inconvenience.
Baud
We need a BJ prayer day.
kilo50
@Lapassionara: Radical Reactionaries gotta react. SBC is very powerful and many of it’s member church now openly espoused preferred candidates from the pulpit. They have no limits to their inndecency now. They long passed the espousing policies during services bit. They are fired up to roll back the last 25 years so I would not be hoping. Keep fighting.
Edited for no coffee yet spelling
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
That first quote could also be said for Ohio. The Brownback Effect is destroying our country.
Baud
Osteen on Today! Lead story.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
I saw the picture of them on Twitter and it scared me to death. I get shivers just remembering the picture.???
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I was thinking “Move.”
gene108
@Baud:
I think it is more tax cuts, because Oklahoma still has a tax rate that is too high and thus scaring job creators from flocking to the state. It is the only logical conclusion as to why any economy fails.
kilo50
@Baud: Would you pray for specific things or the sites health in general.
Iowa Old Lady
@Lapassionara: I’m reading Geoffrey Stone’s SEX AND THE CONSTITUTION, which is about the history of culture wars in the US. The Founders were much more interested in keeping government out of issues having to do with sex. The religiously driven fixation on other people’s sex lives rose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It’s interesting stuff.
I thought the ship on LGTB rights had indeed sailed, which was why the trans ban in the military was so discouraging. And of course, I thought the abortion rights ship had sailed too.
rikyrah
@bystander:
Rob Reiner is just being honest.
debbie
@Baud:
Hope Matt hits him with every marshmallow in his arsenal.
Gin & Tonic
Today’s agenda? Off to see the wizard, hoping that he really is a wizard and not just some old guy behind a curtain.
rikyrah
@debbie:
I will believe it when I see it. And, even if he.does…he.did so because of Twitter.
Baud
@kilo50: Given the problems I’m having with he mobile site, the latter.
Kay
We had the event for Connie Pillich last night. There were quite a few Republicans there- maybe more because one of their fellow Republicans invited them than they are supporting a Democrat in the governor’s race, but still.
Pillich was very centrist. No comment at all on Trump other than a eye-roll at the “chaos” in DC. I don’t know if she’s more liberal in liberal areas but someone could easily get to the Left of her in a primary.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
Gasoline and fire. I’d be tempted to be the only boat going about with spare gas and a lighter to torch fire ant colonies…
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
I read stories like this and shake my head. Never been to Oklahoma. Don’t ever intend on going there.
bystander
@rikyrah: The Morning Joe crowd doesn’t deal well with honesty.
Chris Christie is on now lacerating Ted Cruz as a liar and a weasel. (No offense to weasels.) Fun when they turn on each other publicly.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Good luck today at hand expert extraordinaire!
Baud
@Kay: You suggesting Nina Turner should run?
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: And Misery.
Immanentize
@Kay: maybe she was just reading her audience? Or do you think she really is a third way candidate? And is that the way to win in Ohio? I’m curious because I would rather a win than a purity pissing match.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Someone like Cordray?
She’s a Democrat, and if she’s willing to go get the votes where Democratic votes are, good luck to her.
Did you get to discuss voting rights and Husted’s voter suppression tactics?
Baud
@bystander: I hope Cruz responds.
danielx
Because thread needs morning kittehs…
From July….
They grow so fast!
…but still do everything together.
danielx
@Gin & Tonic:
Got a new hand wizard?
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: Fingers crossed.
Kay
@Baud:
I suggest nothing :)
Pillich is appealing. It’s a “good government” sort of argument. Sadly that was basically Clinton’s argument and didn’t get us far but that sort of “roll up your sleeves and WORK” thing almost makes me feel better – my husband was alarmed at how vehement she was about locking up drug dealers. I thought she needs to read up on Lake Erie environmental issues- I knew she’d get a question, she did, and she wasn’t prepared.
Jeffro
Fuck the fire ants and fuck Joel Osteen.
The best tweet I have seen so far this morning is ” praying for Houston but all cities matter … see how stupid that sounds ? LOL”
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That was my initial thought but the article states that detergent is better. Who’da thunk it?
Immanentize
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: @OzarkHillbilly:
I hate fire ants. Impossible to get rid of and their bite hurts like hell. One time, just after we were married, we were visiting my in laws who are rather said Lutherans (Missouri Synod) and I was walking in their back yard with sandals and stepped on a fire ant mound. The little suckers raced up my leg and started biting with their acid bonus. I was hoping up and down on one foot, trying to swipe the devil’s off me while yelling “Jesus Fucking Christ!”. I thought I was alone out there but as I took a revolution of pain-hopping, there were my new in laws standing looking like American Gothic.
This is the type of praying I suspect a BJ prayer day would inspire.
Baud
@Kay: I wish you would run.
Kay
@rikyrah:
No. No voting rights. She wants a state public option which I thought was kind of interesting so I asked her about that. She thinks Obamacare really set the stage for expansion/improvement in Ohio with even Kasich climbing on board. I agree. It’s a good issue for her. So funny how that changes, huh? Now Obamacare is a plus for them.
Kay
@Baud:
Ugh. I asked her how her day went and she listed counties. 6. She hit 6 of these things. No thanks.
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: It’s drive thru country.
Baud
@Kay: You could do it by Twitter. It worked for Trump.
#MakeOhioKayAgain
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Some may say that this isn’t the time, but based on the images I’m viewing, might part of the problem involve building 6000 sq ft McMansions for silly assed white people to horde vast amounts of useless shit that they neither need nor really use for actual enjoyment under two story interior porticos and 8 foot ceilings across a plain made of filled in swampland and grassy flatlands?
My assistant actually got pissy with me yesterday. She told me that her parents found a way out of their neighborhood and finally got out after abandoning the notion of saving “stuff” in the first floor. When I said “be thankful that they got out and will be safe”, she actually got angry with me for not focusing on the tragedy of the waterlogged or potentially stolen stuff (she had previously agonized over thieves in boats).
Too many Texans with money are fucking weird – their priorities are way, way askew. As I always say, Texas got all the worst money scrounging supremacist assholes from Tennessee in the beginning, and the culture metastized into the leadership.
low-tech cyclist
I don’t have a link handy, but earlier this year, the abysmal Erick Erickson was claiming on Twitter that this only applied to ‘the least of these’ among our fellow Christians. And he was really patting himself on the back about how he was right about this and his critics were wrong.
Why are there so many people out there being assholes in the name of Christ?
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: That wouldn’t bother me near as much as the constant fund raising.
Kay
@Baud:
I know one of the Republicans there quite well and he said “tell me about Pillich”. I said “you’ll like her, she’s very approachable and normal” and he laughed- “normal would be good. Let’s have normal again”
They’re ashamed of Trump. I knew they would be. For the wrong reasons, in my view, they don’t like the excess and the “tone” but I knew the moderates wouldn’t be proud of him.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I don’t understand the connection between McMansions and flooding.
Baud
@low-tech cyclist: Because they aren’t accountable. Good Christians are either too week or too uninterested in reclaiming their religion from them.
rikyrah
@danielx:
Awe???
Baud
@Kay: We’ll see how the 2018 midterms turn out. What they say they believe is utterly worthless to me.
OzarkHillbilly
@low-tech cyclist: Did anybody tell erik son of erik that when Jesus said that there were no Christians?
rikyrah
@Baud:
Housing sprawl with no environmental plans?
Maybe it’s that.
Maddow had on last night that Houston and its surrounding suburbs was the land mass size of Connecticut.
MJS
@Baud: Because that’s what Jesus preached, “Love one another as I have loved you, but only if local facilities are at capacity.”
Baud
@rikyrah: There’s definitely sprawl. I just didn’t realize that the mansions were a major contributer to that sprawl.
Immanentize
@Baud: I can give you an example of the connection. There were these great neighborhoods in Houston proper that were built between the ’20s and the late 40’s with bungalow style houses, usually two bedroom single story on God’s little 1/3 acre. yards, trees, little gardens — you get the picture These were great places for young families, etc. But then a combination of no zoning in Houston and gentrification meant that people with cash came into these neighborhoods, ripped down the small houses and built mcmansions that filled nearly every square inch of the property (no set backs required). What wasn’t covered was mostly paved.
When you do that too large areas mile by mile over time, the ability to absorb any water is quickly diminished. Houston would have flooded anyway, but the speed of the flooding and the cost of the damage is greatly increased by such building practices.
Baud
@MJS: Look, Jesus said “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” That means someone has to play the role of the Omega. Osteen is just doing his Christian duty.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
The current cable imagery isn’t “little pink houses for you and me” that are flooded, and for which our vast soulsucking maw of middle America white Christians can’t seem to care about.
These homes are larger – 4000 footers at least.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Filling up wetlands and putting up impermeable surfaces (roofs, driveways, basketball/tennis courts, etc) Practically the entire Houston Metro area was a wetland at one point in time. The sprawl is an unforced sin.
Baud
@Immanentize: Thanks.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Definitely better TV.
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t dispute the sprawl. I was just wondering my much of that was attributed to large homes.
Mai.naem.mobile
@OzarkHillbilly: NPR had a story on a very recent Oklahoma teacher of the year who quit and moved to Texas. I think his pay went up a third or so. He and his wife,also a teacher,had their first child and he said they just could not make it on the pay. Meanwhile his replacement a long time Oklahoma teacher said you just have to make do and basically insinuated that the guy who left was being selfish.
Kay
@Baud:
I think Democrats will be all over the map because they’re unsure of what the situation is- it’s not a bad thing, it’s just uncertainty about what approach to take. Pillich hasn’t yet encountered divisions in the base so we’ll see if she goes more toward the base as this goes on. “Centrist” isn’t a BAD bet in Ohio- it’s a 50/50 state.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ll add that Houston only exists because
1) Galveston kept getting destroyed by hurricanes (we used to call it the City that Almost Was) and 2) they built the ship channel in toward Houston to protect commerce when Galveston would get destroyed again by Hurricanes.
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Most of the McMansions I have worked on are 6,000+ footers. I built one right at 6,000′ that was a single bedroom home.
danielx
Remember driving through neighborhoods in Houston with an old friend who had relocated there (years ago it was) and being taken aback by the lack of zoning. We’re driving through a residential neighborhood – nice homes, decent sized yards, all that and all of a sudden there’s a thirty story high rise in the middle of the neighborhood. I’m all ‘WTF’ and my friend says “yup, no zoning…gotta be care and make sure there’s no open land anywhere close to where you want to live”.
Strange place.
Kay
Good piece on Detroit mayor:
Ugh, this:
Baud
@Kay:
That’s heresy, Kay. It’s only 50/50 because Dems haven’t put up a true progressive.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
6000 square feet and ONE bedroom?
Da phuq?
Baud
@Kay: I think voter suppression probably played a larger role.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Over the years, more than once I’ve prayed for a BJ.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It’s how I learned there is no God.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Yeah, I was born in Texas City, another city that almost was.
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: No shit. 10′ ceilings too.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@rikyrah:
A ridiculous temple to self. I tend to find that those purchases tend to be driven by the wives (or ex-wives) of courageous, heroic paper processing insurance brokerage owners, purveyors of gimmicky mortgages and lavishly state educated engineering company executives who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps in the 60s and early 70s when education was state sanctioned and they could make scads of money on government contracts.
Another Scott
We had a good day in Fairfax County, VA yesterday. Special election for an at-large school board seat. The Teabagger that held the seat resigned 10 days before the deadline that would have put the election to replace her on the November ballot. So the county had to spend about $250,000 for a special election.
It was rainy most of the day. Turnout is usually only ~ 4-6% for elections like these…
But the Democrat won going away. 2:1. Turnout was up (~ 10-11%). She won every district but one, and only lost that one by less than 10 votes.
Very good news, and it points in a good direction for the state elections in November.
Keep fighting, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott: That’s so excellent, Scott. Good work.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: Texas City… Aka Toxic City. I have a good friend who grew up there on his family’s chicken ranch. He hated chickens so much When I went to lunch with him, he would always order a chicken dish. I asked him one day, what gives? You hate chickens so much yet every meal it’s chicken. He told me that to him every meal meant one more dead chicken.
Betty Cracker
Article in The Hill:
She knows this how? Ditching the data collection requirement is supposed to somehow improve the gender wage gap? What a steaming load of horse shit.
Cermet
@opiejeanne: My point stands; one does not relocate a city based on 500 or 1000 year events (now rather common it appears …) but does not allow people to live in zones that will be lost every few years no matter the fact that AGW makes every few years 500/yr events – so, even if the 500 year event do occur every ten/twenty years now. If that means most all the city residents are in zones that will be lost every five years, that is a very different issue and must be addressed. If not, then how, pray tell, can anyone, least of all the tax payer’s afford rebuilding houses in those zones that often? Or do we only allow the rich to survive safely and cast off the poor and say, too bad, you lived there and suffer the consequences? No. AGW is reality and it is starting to bite – the issue is to tax the wealthy to pay for its harm and use that to move people to safer ground and replace their losses when even that ground finally is underwater for a while. Then, maybe, the 0.001% will take AGW seriously.
Baud
@Immanentize: I hope no one ever told him about the laws of supply and demand.
@Betty Cracker: It’ll improve the gap because Trump will lie about their being a gap and there won’t be any data to contradict him.
Ohio Mom
@Kay: When Pillich ran for State Rep, Ohio Dad was a regular campaign contributor even as he sometimes complained that she was too conservative for his taste.
Still, it was a thrill to finally be represented in Columbus by a Democrat. The fellow who took her place is pure slime.
MomSense
@Iowa Old Lady:
Mr. Rogers is someone who has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.
Immanentize
@Baud:
Oh, we did. But David would just smile — his cousins still owned the family business.
Another Scott
@Baud: McMansions around here are infamous for covering every allowable square foot of the (often) < 1/8 acre plot, either by the home itself or hardscape (driveways, etc.). It increases run-off during rains and certainly would make flooding events worse.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ohio Mom
@Kay: You have Pillich nailed. What she knows about, she knows about but she isn’t always broadly informed enough.
That was another Ohio Dad observation, who has followed her career much more closely than I have (every couple needs to divvy up what needs doing).
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Ignorance is bliss.
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
She talked about that. She’s really proud of flipping a GOP seat. I agree with her there- it’s difficult to do.
I think the healthcare debate in the governor’s race will be interesting now that Medicaid expansion is such a big success in Ohio. Democrats can run on it, particularly because Republicans have to run AGAINST it in their primary. They all have to run hard Right to retain the Trumpsters.
It feels to me like it’s changed- like “keep Obamacare” is now the centrist, “bipartisan” position so even middle of the road Democrats can run on strengthening. It’s funny how things play out :)
rikyrah
Georgia State Rep. Jason Spencer warns black attorney she ‘may go missing’ if she tries to remove Confederate monument
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
It was kind of nice to have Republicans there. One I know is a an insurance agent so everyone turned to him and laughed when Pillich said “public option” but he admitted there are real issues with health insurance.
Obviously this group is self-selecting for “reasonable”- they attended a Democratic event- but the whole thing had a good feel to it.
Another Scott
@rikyrah: This reminds me of an article I came across yesterday – WHEREIN I DISCUSS FREE SPEECH AND UNIFY THE NATION BY MAKING EVERYONE DISAGREE WITH ME. It’s long, but excellent.
tl;dr – a free-speech absolutist thinks about it more deeply given recent events.
My take is: there’s a difference between “speech” and intimidation and incitement and we have to be willing to recognize it.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Just as Republicans feared.
Schlemazel
@OzarkHillbilly:
I discovered while living in Florida that I am allergic to fire ant venom. They are very nasty little bastards. THere should be a flotilla outfitted with flame throwers out their torching those rafts
Ohio Mom
@Kay: She must have had a good number of Republicans voting for her for State Rep here in the northeastern suburbs of Cincinnati because there sure aren’t enough Democrats to put her over the top.
She flipped that seat by knocking on door after door, making sure every contributor got thanked with a hand-signed card, and so on..she did everything you are supposed to, all the way. As you have observed, she is a very hard worker with a lot of stamina.
IIRC, she was all ready to run for the State Senate but our district was redrawn to exclude her home. What a funny coincidence!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@rikyrah:
“While I am shouting about my desire to subjugate you/disenfranchise you/expropriate your business and property/drive you out of the country(all while whiny about your current ability to peacefully participate in civic, social and economic life), I am not currently doing it, nor am I breaking windows or committing acts of violence while rallying others to my cause of eventually destroying you financially, socially and physically. Therefore, my speech is peaceful and you must tolerate me, respect me and be deferential because my race.”
rikyrah
Republicans Will Let America Burn While Holding Out for Tax Cuts
The core principle of the GOP is to make the rich richer, and that’s more important to its congressional leaders than any U.S. institution
Their priority will not change no matter what Trump does and no matter how many vastly more pressing problems confront the nation. The core principle of the GOP is to make the rich richer, and that is more important to people like Ryan than any of our institutions. As reality dawns on the naively hopeful GOP members who believed they could “manage” Trump, their willingness to keep the nuclear codes in the hands of a giant toddler says a lot about their values.
rikyrah
Trump Likes to Dig Deep Holes for Himself
There is no doubt some ideological component that helps explain why the Trump administration has made so few appointments and seen so few confirmations of people to fill out their government. But the fuller story is one of lack of preparedness, a refusal by Trump to consider nominees who have been critical of him, a lack of desire by an increasing number of people to seek employment in his administration, and a lack of qualifications or actual disqualifications among those why were vocal supporters of Trump’s candidacy. The Democrats have engaged in some slow-walking, too, mainly in a reciprocal denial of unanimous consent in the Senate that would speed along the nominees who have been named. On the whole, though, Democratic obstruction explains almost none of the phenomenon.
Dupe70
Mattress Mack is plain awesome. I lived in Houston for 10+ years and always enjoyed his crazy ads and promotions.
Immanentize
@Another Scott:
I agree but where is that line? I think the ACLU is right to represent Nazis who want to March but not represent those same people if they do so armed.
How do we get police to protect us from intimidation?
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/29/17
Houston hazards multiply as flooding worsens
Stephanie Gosk, NBC News correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about the emergency response to the crisis in Houston as flood waters push dams and levees to their limits and a chemical plant is being watched for potential explosion as safety systems lose power.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/29/17
As Houston levees overflow, so do flood evacuation shelters
Maya Rodriguez, NBC News correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about the plight of flood evacuees in the Houston area and the effort to find enough shelter space to accommodate everyone in need.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/30/17
How natural disasters became a presidential test
Michael Beschloss, NBC News presidential historian, talks with Rachel Maddow about the secondary story that accompanies any natural disaster in the United States: whether the president has responded and behaved appropriately.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Immanentize:
Tanks and flamethowers.
rikyrah
No one asked Cajun Navy, Houston mosques and @MattressMack to help. But pastor with 16,800-seat church had to be? https://t.co/RPIjpWHrPQ
— Mark Elliott (@markmobility) August 30, 2017
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Dupe70:
It was a good thing to do AND brilliant marketing. He’ll make out for 10 years of goodwill on this gesture alone.
It was cheaper than ads. Besides, the floor models are usually sold at about 40% of new, and still exceed the wholesale cost. This was super cheap as a really nice gesture.
rikyrah
8 Top Trump cyber-sec advisers resign: ‘Your actions have threatened the security of the homeland.” https://t.co/oO7HTbmjWT via @Change
— bardgal (@bardgal) August 30, 2017
Immanentize
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That seems to be the Trump and Session plan, but I don’t think they are handing them out to oppose the white supremacists.
VOR
@Schlemazel: Soap. Per this article in Wired, hit the floating fire ant raft with soapy water to break up their ability to cling together, then they will drown. https://www.wired.com/story/why-those-floating-fire-ant-colonies-in-texas-are-such-bad-news/
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Immanentize: I know, I was being just a tad snarky.
ETA: Guess I should have added, “What could possibly go wrong”.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/29/17
In odd move, Mueller subpoenas former Manafort lawyer
Rachel Maddow reports on the atypical treatment former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is receiving from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, including subpoenaing his former lawyer to give grand jury testimony.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/29/17
Trump attorney testimony unlikely in light of Moscow deal story
Rachel Maddow reports on the development of the Trump Tower Moscow story and how Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen’s role in it raises new questions about whether Cohen will testify to congressional investigating committees.
rikyrah
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES 8/29/17
Chris Christie: Ted Cruz is lying
The New Jersey governor says his Republican colleague isn’t telling the truth about why he voted against Hurricane Sandy relief – but now wants money for Texas after Harvey.
rikyrah
@VOR:
ok..that story just freaked me out..the images…
I’m back to shivering again…..
creepy…something out of a horror movie..
Schlemazel
@VOR:
But that does not give the same visceral thrill as a flaming ant raft!!
rikyrah
Trump steered clear of storm victims during Texas visit
08/30/17 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
The fact that Donald Trump went to Texas in the wake of Hurricane Harvey is not surprising. It’s been common for many years to see presidents travel to areas hard hit by disasters, meeting with officials on the ground, and offering support to victims.
But reading Politico’s report, it’s clear Donald Trump can’t stop being Donald Trump.
Perhaps the most memorable moment of the day came when Trump marveled at the size of his audience, saying in Corpus Christi, “What a crowd, what a turnout.” Apparently, in the president’s mind, what mattered during his brief visit to Texas was the number of locals who wanted to see him.
Mike in DC
@Cermet:
Since 6 million plus people live in the Houston metro area, can we agree to stipulate that relocating an entire metropolis is an undertaking of decades, not years?
frosty
@Another Scott: That’s because the Virginia stormwater regulations don’t require stormwater management for single lot residential development/redevelopment, just subdivisions.
Schlemazel
Found this on the FB, thought you all might get a stomach turn out of it:
The Gettysburg Address, delivered by the 45th President:
“Four weeks or even seven days ago no one had heard of Gettysburg. I had, but the rest of the country hadn’t. This is a really special place and a special state. What a crowd, what a turnout!
So here we are, in the middle of this war, okay? The sad thing is that this is long-term. Nobody’s ever seen anything this long. Nobody’s seen this kind of war. Probably, there’s never been something so expensive in our country’s history. But we’re here to take care and it’s going well, we’re going to get this country back and operating immediately. And your governor, Dan Hastings here, I just want to say him and his team are doing a fantastic job. So, Governor, we won’t say ‘congratulations’, we don’t want to do that. We will congratulate each other when it’s all finished. But you have done terrific, and you’ve been my friend too, for a long time. You’ve become famous in the papers these last few days. You have, it’s okay, you have.
So our soldiers are doing a fantastic job, and when we put this country back together, we want to do it better than ever before. We want to be looked at five years, ten years from now, as this is the way to do it. I will tell you, this is historic, epic what happened here in Gettysburg. But you know what? It happened in Pennsylvania! And Pennsylvania can handle anything!
I love you guys, what a crowd! What a great turnout!”
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: That doesn’t sound like a veiled threat to me. Is it against the law to threaten someone with bodily harm?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Mike in DC:
Shit, in Kentucky, we can’t even suggest “leave that shitty, jobless, run down hamlet in an Appalachian hollow so Louisville doesn’t have to keep pumping money into maintaining infrastructure, medicaid and county salaries” without hearing howls of outrage. After a century of those fuckers gerrymandering this city while burrowing through our pockets, they’re sensing backlash coming from ordinarily cooperate legislators. I’m seeing some pieces printed in the hinterlands, talking about how we’re really some kind of team and all the benefit we got from the extraction communities in the past, and how we have to respect their cultural differences and heritage when they change state law to disallow our elitist local fairness stuff, mandates for prevailing wages, expenditures for diversity, blah blah blah.
WaterGirl
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Driving around in their truck -sometimes AT NIGHT, at risk to their own safety – rescuing 200 people and bringing them back to the store – that wasn’t some cheap publicity stunt.
Maybe try being a little less cynical?
The Moar You Know
I heard this guy on BBC World Service a couple of days ago. He’s doing the right thing and I don’t give two shits about his underlying motivations or lack thereof. He’s doing the right thing and that is to be celebrated.
He’s no Joel Olsteen, that’s for sure. Few higher compliments can I give a person.
Davebo
Mattress Mack (Jim McIngvale) is a legend in Houston. Came to town with almost nothing, setup furniture store inside a couple of model homes from a bankrupt builder on the side of the freeway. He’s a good guy.
Davebo
Mac also built the West Side Tennis Center that hosts the US Tennis Association.
Guess the guy digs tennis.
Schlemazel
@WaterGirl:
Given the world as it is being less cynical just seems to be a recipe for constant disappointment. As a professional cynic I enjoy the rare surprise when cynicism is undeserved.
@The Moar You Know:
I think you have that backwards. Not being Joel Osteen is such a low bar that whale shit could clear it.
different-church-lady
@Another Scott:
Bingo.
Patricia Kayden
@debbie: Yes he has. Belatedly and after much criticism.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: And Republicans do absolutely nothing to him. No censure. No sanction. No rebuke.
different-church-lady
From the essay @Another Scott linked to:
Bingo
zhena gogolia
@bystander:
Sickening at the time, even more sickening in retrospect.
sukabi
@low-tech cyclist: Why are there so many people out there being assholes in the name of Christ?
Pretty sure they are first and foremost assholes, they just use Christ as a shield.
germy
different-church-lady
@germy: I don’t know if we should “let them go”, but I do know we should not pander to them.
There is a difference, and our progressive betters right here at this website have been seen advocating for the latter. And the really weird thing is that pandering to them won’t work anyway. They want hatred, and if you don’t give them hatred they won’t vote Democratic.
The key would be figuring out how to defuse the hatred. That’s a task that’s above my pay grade.
Mnemosyne
@Another Scott:
Thanks for linking to that. He really articulated a lot of what’s been bothering me about “free speech” arguments lately.
john (not mccain)
Has Trump complained yet that this really epic storm, unprecedented in the history of America, wasn’t named after him?
Schlemazel
@sukabi:
As a teen I was an amature magician – and a bad one at that. I was also raised in a religious household & sent to weekly bible class as well as Sunday School. One time some friends from bible class told me about a faith healer & insisted we go see him. I was impressed at what I saw right up until I watched him perform a trick I knew by heart (“your legs are different length but if we pray God will lengthen the short one and you can see it happen!”). Then he pulled a second lame trick that I knew. I pointed this out to my friends and they were pretty upset – WITH ME!
Had I been a bit less sincere I could have done his act (pretty sure I could have figured out his other tricks) because apparently some Christians want to be taken advantage of. Conmen are everywhere but none get treated as well or given so much leeway as those who profess they were sent by God
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
I pretty much guarantee you that McIngvale self-identifies as a Christian (I haven’t read the full stories about him). This is one of those situations where it’s very, very easy to point and say, “This guy is a Christian, Osteen is not.”
The Moar You Know
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You should meet the ones without money.
MomSense
@Another Scott:
Thank you for that article.
Frankensteinbeck
@Immanentize:
I think one important line is whether the group is engaged in intimidation. Forget the Tiki Parades, the alt-right are waging a massive war of sadistic, organized online harassment including threats of rape and death, grotesque racist insults, and actual doxxing. They will only stop if they are afraid, so they must be made afraid. I wish the authorities would do that, but they refuse.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
It was established by the Supreme Court that death threats are A-OK and protected free speech when they decided that the vile anti-abortion Nuremberg Files website had a free speech right to publish the home addresses of abortion doctors and mark out the names of the ones who had been murdered, like Bernard Slepian.
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly: Wonder if it’s possible to scoop up these rafts somehow and dispose of them…the last thing we need is more fire ants surviving the flood!
ETA: @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Well, there’s always your solution, too…
Captain C
@OzarkHillbilly: We need the flamethrower guy from Charlottesville to help with the fire ants.
Miss Bianca
@Schlemazel: Aaggh….
Captain C
@gene108: Companies love moving to places with crappy infrastructure and a poor educational system to provide them with future employees. That’s why places like New York and California have no corporate presence whatsoever.
tybee
@Baud: i pray for one every day. sometimes twice a day.
J R in WV
kiklo50@comment 13 or so.
First, your link is hosed and the reply link branches to the WaPo story about the “Real Christians” and their pathetic and un-Christian diatribe.
And your first sentence is inaccurate too, I FIFY:
These monsters masquerading as compassionate ministers preach hate and revenge rather than love and compassion. Every command from Jesus in the New Testament has been broken by these miserable hucksters, grifters , and conmen.
They are despicable, greedy and power mad, with no good side to be found anywhere.
The Lodger
@Schlemazel: Conmen are everywhere but none get treated as well or given so much leeway as those who profess they were sent by God
That should be a rotating quote.