How often do you get to watch a world record being set in the Victim Olympics? https://t.co/topQKJfr26
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) October 24, 2017
O'Reilly blames God for sexual harassment allegations: "Yeah, I'm mad at him" https://t.co/eJfEUQroYZ pic.twitter.com/UNJzfIwcKy
— The Hill (@thehill) October 24, 2017
It is hardly the Christian God’s fault that Bill O’Reilly can’t keep his hands or his fantasies to himself. (If the publicly-pious O’Reilly paid any attention during his long-ago parochial school days to the discussion of the near occasion of sin, he’d have known that already. Being “mad” at God was, IIRC, considered a second mark against your permanent record.)
I second Alexandra Petri, in the Washington Post:
Smoke is not weather. Let me tell you why I have said this. Weather is something you can do very little to prevent; you can only prepare for it and warn people about it and buy protective gear. Smoke happens when someone decides to light a fire.
I am sick of having to treat smoke as though it is weather.
I am sick of having to bear witness about sexual harassment.
I am sick of being warned, or not warned, about interacting with certain people, as casually (Molly Ringwald’s words, not mine) as talking about the weather.
“Bring an umbrella. There is a man spitting on you from a great height and it is easier to treat it as though it is raining.”…
You thought you were being nice, maybe. That any attention from you was flattering, maybe. That I would see it as a compliment, maybe. I have forgiven you, maybe. Or I am embarrassed for you, or I never knew what your name was. But make no mistake: Nothing about this was inevitable. This was not weather. You are not the weather, and your buddy is not the weather.
This has to stop. Instead of saying, “You cannot smoke in here,” we are telling every woman, “there is going to be smoke in the restaurant, so encase yourself entirely in protective sheeting.” Instead of saying, “Do not go around lighting people on fire,” we are telling women, “Don’t be flammable.” But you can’t be human and not be flammable. This is not like walking down a dark alley and getting mugged, because for that to be true you have to have the option of not walking down the dark alley…
I am sick of having to suffer so a man can grow. What is this, every Hollywood movie ever made? I am tired of having to confess to someone else’s crimes. I am tired of showing up at the banquet dripping blood like Banquo’s ghost. This should be your ghost, not mine. I am not the one who should be ashamed that you have done these things. I am not here to make you see the error of your ways. I am here to get through my life every day without inhaling thick lungfuls of smoke.
Because that’s what this is. This is like getting people who have gotten cancer from secondhand smoke to come testify together as a way of solving the problem. But you are the one who needs to stop.
So let’s try something new: You don’t stop smoking because it kills other people, until those people are your family. You stop smoking because it makes your breath foul and your hair brittle and it will kill you, eventually.
If you don’t know that this is killing you, I should not have to tell you. It is in your interest to be a good person, not because of some abstract conception of sin but because you are poisoning yourself. You like the smoke, but you are choking on it and you can’t even see. You are making us tell these stories instead of all the other, better ones we could tell…
Everything in our lives does not have to smell like smoke. We could get rid of it. But we have to want to. You have to want to…
JMG
Petri is the best writer on the Post by a mile, and it’s not a paper short of good writers.
lurker dean
waspuppet
Peggy Noonan and Maureen Dowd have Pulitzer Prizes and Alexandra Petri doesn’t. That’s enough to make me wanna throw a chair, but if either of them gets another and Petri doesn’t get one, I’m REALLY gonna throw a chair.
oatler.
IIRC rapists could get off the hook in Florida if the jury bought the defense that the victim was dressed “provocatively”. In the 1980s.
Chris
Well said.
No Drought No More
O’Reilly parlayed his ugliness into riches, and no doubt grew increasingly ugly in the process as he did. That’s invariably what happens to people who make deals with the devil. If the man truly believes it’s God he’s angry with (and I doubt it), that blasphemy too is also part of the deal. That’s the personal tragedy in all such cases where mammon has destroyed a person. He’s angry, all right, but at himself. He simply can no longer tell the difference, and no one else can tell him, either. Not anymore, not ever again.
Villago Delenda Est
Everyone in the universe BUT Billdo is responsible for Billdo’s behavior.
donnah
“Instead of saying, “Do not go around lighting people on fire,” we are telling women, “Don’t be flammable.” But you can’t be human and not be flammable.“
This is it. It’s the whole thing.
Adam L Silverman
@waspuppet: Perhaps she should consider becoming a lush with either a foot fetish or daddy issues. That seems to be what pushed Noonan and Dowd over the top for their Pulitzers.
guachi
It’s not a problem only for men. People just don’t really care that much about sexual harassment. 42% of women voted for Trump. Men may mostly be the perpetrators but both genders don’t care.
The gender gap isn’t much different than it was in 2000. There’s not much evidence it bothers women more than men – at least it doesn’t seem to change their votes to any greater degree.
SFAW
I think an interesting test case would be if, in a Stand Your Ground state, some predator ended up shot because he went after the wrong woman. I think it would be even more interesting were the predator de-nutted, but I think that’s probably a little more difficult to accomplish. [Especially in the case of Lying Littledick: “Donnie, honey, (gack!) can you wait a minute while I fetch my 15x magnifying glass?”]
I bet the NRA would be curiously silent, were that to happen.
SFAW
@guachi:
I seem to remember there was a bit of a disparity vis-a-vis the percentage of white women voting for him/it versus the percentage of black women who did.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: There was such a case in Florida. Marissa Alexander, an African American woman in Jacksonville, was confronted by her abusive ex. She retreated from the garage into her house, armed herself, and then came back to the garage. She repeatedly told her ex to leave. He advanced on her. She shot above him – a warning shot. She invoked self defense and stand your ground when charges were brought against her for aggravated assault. She was convicted. The appeals are ongoing.
The discussions in the comments on the gun sites was largely about not firing warning shots, but shooting center mass.
Redshift
@No Drought No More: I don’t think he had enough self-awareness to be angry at himself. He’s angry at the world because he’s goddamn Bill O’Reilly, and the world owes him all of this, and now it’s stopped delivering. I doubt even now he thinks he got away with doing bad stuff; it used to be okay, and the only thing that’s changed is that his enemies have succeeded in destroying him (because they’re his enemies, not because he did anything wrong.)
I used to wonder if O’Reilly might be one of the ones who would retire and about it was all an act (like G. Gordon Liddy’s show, according to one profile I read.) It’s obvious now it isn’t.
gene108
If Bill is angry with what God has given him in life, he could just give away all of it, such as however many millions of dollars he has, and start over.
germy
Yutsano
@SFAW:
Does Stand Your Ground cover anyone else other than a straight white male? Some AA woman in Miami tried it and got shot down.
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah that case.
Side note: just got my tax refund. Right before I go on vacation too!
gene108
@SFAW:
A black or Latino woman shooting a prominent conservative white man would bring a lot of derision down on the shooter.
A white woman shooting a black man would get a lot of approval.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: David French. Not the best advocate for women’s equality and equal treatment.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
I had forgotten about her, thanks (so to speak) for the reminder. Yeah, that was pretty fucked up.
Wayne LaPierre was on the TV news every night talking about the injustice, I’m sure.
As I and many others have said (or intimated): the quickest way to get gun control passed would be for the (New) Black Panthers to start displaying their weapons in Open Carry states, every damn day. Of course, given the current insanity in state and national government, they’d probably pass laws restricting the rights of blacks and other POC to own guns. [And Gorsuch would vote to uphold, because blacks are only 60 percent citizens, so they have no rights.]
germy
@Adam L Silverman: True. I just thought it was interesting how the deplorables are taking shots at each other now.
Jeffro
@germy:
It’s about to get pretty interesting on the SS GOP, methinks…
germy
Speaking of O’Really, I took a peek at his tweets. He had one photo of his dog, with a caption something like “My dog would never take a knee during the national anthem!” and a more recent one, another photo captioned “Don’t even think of dressing up as my dog for halloween; that’s cultural appropriation!”
He lacks the self awareness to realize this, but the way he uses his dog to parody the concerns of minority groups says a lot about the level of racism he carries in him.
If I’m not a wealthy white male of a certain generation and ethnicity, I’m an animal.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: Right now we take allies where we can find them even if they’re not going to be long term allies. I’m not trying to downplay why what he did here is important. But he is a very strange messenger for this message.
germy
@Jeffro: Enough holes to sink the ship, I hope.
Chris
@Redshift:
The conservative ethos in a nutshell.
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: Unfortunately, the SS GOP is currently the flagship of the American Navy, and we’re following where they lead.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Aye. Just as Mitt Romney was a truly bizarre messenger for the “you guys did you know Trump supports torture? Well, Trump supports torture! And that’s terrible!” message in 2016.
guachi
@SFAW:
Overall (and I didn’t see specifically by race and gender) Trump did 1% better among whites but 7% better among blacks and 8% better among hispanics than Romney did.
Yes, the gender gap increased in 2016 (24) versus 2012 (18) but it’s not any higher than it was in 2000 and it’s not like Bush was a serial sexual assaulter.
germy
While you’re all busy attacking this good man, important work is being done in washington:
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
One of the Florida papers (I think it was Palm Beach) was keeping a database of Florida shootings and the legal outcome. Basically, you can only claim immunity under Stand Your Ground if you kill the other person. If you only wound or scare them, it falls under a different part of the law, and that’s what she was convicted under.
So, yes, her legal mistake was in not killing him. If she had, she almost certainly could have claimed immunity from prosecution under SYG.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Totally OT, so please forgive the interruption, but for those interested in the creative process, John Scalzi’s blog (Whatever) has a very interesting post up by a guest artist/writer!
As for the topic of AL’s post, I do not understand such predatory male behavior. I grew up getting a lot if my social cues from a gentleman of a father, a strong mother, and old Hollywood leading men if a certain type: Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant… their on-screen personae were very admirable.
Mnemosyne
@guachi:
That would be misogyny in action right there. Men who were unwilling to have a woman president as their leader.
There were multiple factors at work in Trump’s Electoral College victory, and that’s the clearest example of misogyny.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
Wow, ’bout time!
Chris
@germy:
So they’re opening an investigation into the investigation?
MisterForkbeard
@germy: The dumb thing is that of all the “questions” in that investigations, almost all of them amount to “Why did the FBI treat Hillary much worse than it treated Trump?”. They’re just asking so things *seem* nefarious and evil. Look! Moar smoke!
The only ‘real’ and currently unanswered question is “Why Did Comey Write a Draft Letter Exonerating Clinton Months Before The Investigation Was Over”… and the answer to that is “It was pretty damned obvious nothing was going on and Hillary wasn’t going to be indicted, so he wrote an early draft of a sure-to-be-highly-examined letter.”
Mnemosyne
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
It’s not my favorite movie, but remember Jimmy Stewart’s line in The Philadelphia Story when Katharine Hepburn asks him why he didn’t sleep with her the night before?
LAO
Holy Cow:
I’m actually surprised by this.
MisterForkbeard
The blog ate TWO of my comments in a row. Now I’m worried.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Tampa Tribune/Tampa Bay Times. They’ve been doing long term, long form, deep investigative reporting on the stand your ground laws and their disparate effects.
germy
@LAO: Sen. Jeff Flake says he will not seek re-election in 2018, citing the nastiness of Trump-era GOP.
LAO
@germy: I guess we have the answer to whether the GOP congress will ever stand up against Trump.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: Just heard that: Boom! I wonder if it was fund-raising or those infamous “internal polls”.
And now that he has nothing to lose and a cable show and K Street career to gain, maybe he’ll start to speak up.
rikyrah
This response by BillO is rich. He spent how many years, lecturing ‘the others’ about how they need to have ‘ personal responsibility’, and to stop whining.
Irony has nothing on these cretins.
trollhattan
@LAO:
Holy crap, so that Tea Party garden gnome primarying him now gets a free path to the senate?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Mnemosyne:
DING DING DING!
Exactly the kind of thing I was referring to!
“Look, I’m no good at being noble, but if that plane takes off and you’re not on it, you’re going to regret it….”
Yutsano
@LAO: @germy: Kan I haz Senator Sinema naow?
@trollhattan: Nope. There’s actually a solid Dem running.
LAO
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If they would edit out that creepy speech by Tracy’s father….
MisterForkbeard
@germy: Of course, the dumb thing about this is that the ‘problematic behavior’ they’ve listed is all anti-Clinton, pro-Trump (with one exception). The GOP is just trying to further de-legitimize the whole thing by claiming there were problems with the investigation.
And the one question they have that hasn’t already been answered is also pretty dumb: “Why did Comey write a draft exonerating Clinton before the investigation was complete?” Well…. because it was obvious Clinton wasn’t guilty? It’s not like it wasn’t obvious from the beginning that barring something really crazy turning up in the emails that Clinton was basically only guilty of bad IT practices and some decisions that would only look bad if SHE made them.
trollhattan
@Yutsano:
In a just world we could see Senator Gabby Giffords on the horizon but this is not a just world, especially since gawd hates Bill O so very much.
SFAW
@germy:
Where’s that feckin’ meteor(ite)? We need a highly-targeted one, stat.
Maybe Rep. Elijah Cummings can open call for an investigation into potential treasonous activities of various members of the GOP, starting with Rohrabacher, but also checking Issa, Gowdy, Ryan, and McConnell.
MisterForkbeard
@Yutsano: Here’s hoping the Dem has an opening.
The Moar You Know
@LAO: It’s Trump’s party now. Might as well call ’em Trumpistas. Party of Trump. Flake would have gotten his clock cleaned by the howling bigot brigade and knows it. Just like McCain would have, but there will be no more election cycles for Senator McCain.
There are still plenty of folks under the impression there’s a “decent” GOP somewhere out there, in the mists, perhaps. There is not. This is Trump’s party and you can get with the program or get the fuck out. Now, normally, the smart thing would be for the party on the outs to pick off these voters. But I’m not sure that can be done, they’ve been propagandized so heavily that I think the effort for return would not be worth the hassle. You literally would have to run them through cult deprogramming, and that’s time and labor intensive. Best case scenario, they just stop voting.
Likely scenario, they keep voting GOP because they don’t know what else to do.
As usual, I have no good suggestions. The magnitude of the Trump voter problem is staggering and it’s going to take decades to fix.
StringOnAStick
My RW jerk parents love, love, love Billdo and are sure that if the saintly Roger Ailes was still alive then Billdo would still have his show and all would be right with the world.
Example of my dad’s mindset being just like Billdo’s: my younger sister drove a thousand miles to visit them, a difficult undertaking for her given her back and hip problems. Dad gunned it and backed right into the side of her easily visible car, then blamed her for parking it there even though that was where he had told her to park it. Obviously, the damage to her car was all her fault.
Billdo is mad at those women for his getting caught and it costing him his bloviation platform. he in no way thinks he did anything wrong, those beyotches were lucky to get his attention.
Brachiator
@No Drought No More:
Wealth and power do not destroy people. It can reveal who they truly are at their worst.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: This is Nunes on the House Intel Committee. Its going to fall apart just as quickly as his unmasking BS.
LAO
ETA: Which he’s going to accomplish by quitting his job rather than fight against it from a position of power. What a load of crap.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
It IS my favorite movie…sigh….
” My, she was yar…..”
rikyrah
@germy:
I’ll repeat it…
Nunes is knee deep in business partnerships with ties to…
Guess who….
PUTIN.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Dinah Lord singing “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” never fails to boggle. One of my favorite film moments.
LAO
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: Let’s see him put pocket holds on the upcoming judicial and other nominees and start voting against the agenda. That would take courage.
bystander
Flake is reminding me of those self-immolating monks during the war in Vietnam.
Aleta
Small Montana firm lands Puerto Rico’s biggest contract to get the power back on
“The company, Whitefish Energy
(a two-year-old company from Montana that had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall)
said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the island’s electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.
…
The power authority, also known as PREPA, opted to hire Whitefish rather than activate the “mutual aid” arrangements it has with other utilities. For many years, such agreements have helped U.S. utilities — including those in Florida and Texas recently — to recover quickly after natural disasters.
“The fact that there are so many utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other out, it is at least odd why [the utility] would go to Whitefish,” said Susan F. Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department and state regulatory agencies. “I’m scratching my head wondering how it all adds up.
…
Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Mont., the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Its chief executive, Andy Techmanski, and Zinke acknowledge knowing one another — but only, Zinke’s office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where “everybody knows everybody.” One of Zinke’s sons “joined a friend who worked a summer job” at one of Techmanski’s construction sites, the email said. Whitefish said he worked as a “flagger.”
(Whitefish did not bid; contract was based on “a discussion.”)
On Thursday, Techmanski told CNN simply: “We called each other.”
The scale of the disaster in Puerto Rico is far larger than anything Whitefish has handled. The company has won two contracts from the Energy Department, including $172,000 to replace a metal pole structure and splice in three miles of new conductor and overhead ground wire in Arizona.
Shortly before Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, Whitefish landed its largest federal contract, a $1.3 million deal to replace and upgrade parts of a 4.8-mile transmission line in Arizona. The company — which was listed in procurement documents as having annual revenue of $1 million — was given 11 months to complete the work, records show.” –Wapo
Adam L Silverman
@LAO:
Yutsano
@trollhattan: Sinema is more centrist than Giffords is true. But Gabby has found a second life where she’s actually able to do more than she was as a congressman. Also: Senator Mark Kelly has a nice ring to it since she didn’t lose any cognitive abilities. Just her speech ones.
chopper
@germy:
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Bill was sending gay porn to people, now angry at God. I think Bill has something to tell us.
(Considering the way the conservatives project, it makes one wonder about “Hillary, the lesbian lover and murder of Vince Foster” myth they love so much
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: quitting is pretty cowardly, so not expecting much of a senator who voted with Trump 92% of the time.
StringOnAStick
I guess Flake took a look at his personal books, realized he was more than set for life and said “screw it, who needs this crap”. Flake’s from the ” worthy opponent ” era and having drawn a chemtrail crazy as an opponent must feel insulting, base, déclassé, take this job and shove it, oh shit Mueller’s getting too close – time to slide out of town.
ruemara
@guachi: Your statistics obfuscate the numbers. Trump won due to a majority of votes by white folks and the suppression of minority and youth votes in key states. He won because it is just as easy to manipulate far left & far right folks, because admitting you were wrong and manipulated is the worse crime of ruining your self esteem.
Bill O is just the same as any other man, albeit with more wealth, power and normally unassailable privilege. The privilege is in access to women’s bodies. All of them in general and the best of the best based on his tastes. I see it in male friends I like when they talk about their woes in dating, usually the attempt to gain women 10 or more years their junior who should be size 2, rate 8-10, have no baggage and deeply respect them because and like what they like. There’s something about women as being living breathing people who ARE NOT PRIZES FOR YOUR DICK that even guys who call themselves feminist have a problem with. Bill, Roger, Harvey et al, just have more power to act out the desire to have what they want, when they want and punish women for not being all of that. I don’t know what will fix it beyond training boys in enthusiastic consent and redefining what it means to be manly.
Waynski
Is anyone else watching Jeff effing Flake on the floor of the Senate? WOW. Just WOW. He fired both barrels.This will leave a mark (I hope). Wow.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
Yep. I avoided most of the media discussion about Chief of Staff Kelly and his defense of Trump with respect to the soldier’s widow. But I caught a bit of “Meet the Press” and one female guest seemed to be saying that Trump was elected president and the rest of us just have to adjust to him. I switched the channel at this point.
But in catching up on some of the reaction to the widow’s story, I was dismayed to hear some local conservative talk radio people, who previously leaned toward the “decent” GOP side now rabidly defending Kelly and mocking and disparaging Congresswoman Kelly. It is sad to see how easily and quickly some people have shed the last bits of their sense of decency.
schrodingers_cat
@Waynski: What did he say, can you give us a gist?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes, a terrible speech, but a sign of the times back then.
trollhattan
@StringOnAStick:
Can he maybe handcuff Inhofe to him as he heads out the door?
Suzanne
Jeff Flake says PEACE OUT.
I think he is more popular than his poll numbers suggest. Now we get crazy Kelli Ward. FSM help us all.
Immanentize
Just a quick thought:. John Kelly and Bill O’Reilly have pretty much the same cultural perspective and viewpoints. Kelly just was constrained in acting his out while in the military. Billo acted them out because he had wealth, power and backup.
LAO
@Waynski:
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: No argument. My guess is he decides by Thanksgiving that he’s not coming back from the Christmas recess. That allows his wingnut governor to appoint Ward as his replacement. And then she’ll run as the incumbent next year. And given I’m not sure that Senator McCain is going to make it much longer, this would give the Arizona governor the chance to appoint two senators in short order.
Jeffro
WOW…beginning of the end, GOP! Time to pick a side after all.
Immanentize
@Suzanne: Ward can be beat. And now with Corker and Flake off the train, and wazisname from Mississippi on death’s door (plus McCain) tax package chances of passing just took a big dive.
ETA in March I said the tell would be the number of retirements — but I meant the House side and expected none on the Senate side
catclub
@SFAW:
This is a serious “but who will bell the cat?” problem. Would you open carry if you were a young black man and valued your own future?
schrodingers_cat
@Immanentize: That’s the spirit!
Immanentize
@catclub:
The Black Panthers did that – in numbers – because the young black men were getting killed by the police
ruemara
@catclub: People have to stop asking black folks to put their bodies on the line again. We’ve had this tested in real time. The least these men get is arrested. They did shoot a man in walmart with a bb gun he was planning to buy.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: @catclub: What will eventually happen, as I’ve been saying for months, is that one of these MAGAnuts is going to hassle an affluent, professional American of color who conceal carries in a stand your ground state like Florida. And when it escalates that American of color is going to stand his or her ground. At that point a whole lot of white folks, especially the self proclaimed People of the Gun, are going to learn that the old saw “G-d made man, Samuel Colt made all men equal” doesn’t just apply to white folks.
Waynski
@schrodingers_cat: The big gist without using Trump’s name is “I cannot be a part of this.”
Immanentize
@schrodingers_cat:
Arizona went for Trump only by about 2.5 points. It is a purple state getting bluer
ETA. Romney beat Obama in 2012 by almost 10 points.
dmsilev
@Adam L Silverman: What would be the incentive to quit early? I can’t imagine he’s much of a fan of the hyper-wingnut who has basically muscled him out, so why do her any favors?
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: Why sit in the Senate, be subjected to constant harassment by the President and his supporters, and have to be reminded by everyone that he’s supporting the legislation and nominations he’s just decried. Today wasn’t an example of courage, it was an example of cowardice. The path of least resistance for him is to go home for the Thanksgiving recess and not come back. Will he do that? I don’t know. But I think it is likely.
Suzanne
@Immanentize: However, the Dem who is running for Flake’s seat who is the most likely to win is my congresscritter, Kyrsten Sinema……and she is terrible.
Barbara
@Mnemosyne:
You and I keep bringing this up! Like sexual harassment, misogyny just seems like the weather.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: But is she better than the R who will against her?
Suzanne
@Immanentize: Romney is Mormon and lots of AZ is Mormon. Flake is also Mormon. Do not underestimate the importance of that here.
Hell, some Romney relatives were at my wedding.
Immanentize
@Suzanne: If Flake is not running, more Dems may run, no?
Yutsano
@ruemara: They shot a 12 year old boy with a toy gun. AND THEY’RE GETTING AWAY WITH IT. Policing in this country needs to be reformed badly.
Immanentize
@Suzanne:
What’s Morman for “MAZELTOV!”?
Suzanne
@schrodingers_cat: Yes. She is better than Ward. (Hell, chlamydia is better than Ward.)
But Sinema sucks bad and she will piss us all off for years if she wins.
Barbara
@StringOnAStick:
I would definitely bet money that this is exactly the case, however, I do find it interesting to contemplate what two senators could do with the power that comes with having NFLTG over the next 15 months. Three if you count McCain. No high expectations, and my guess is that they are waiting for others to show bravery that heretofore they have not quite commanded themselves. Flake is better than Corker in that Flake has never supported Trump.
p.a.
Let us all sing the praises of great men. To Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, for bringing Dixie Cups of water to a five alarm fire.
Immanentize
@Adam L Silverman: I have to disagree — no one really ever does that. The life of a Senator is pretty good and he can probably still get some goodies for Arizona. Plus, why quit when you can just stay home and not show up? That is more likely, I think.
Barbara
@Immanentize: The Mormon for “mazel tov” is have a nice day.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: There are two potential GOP frontrunners. One is currently serving Representative Martha McSally. Sort of closer to Flake in tone and temperament. The other is Dr. Kelly Ward, the chemtrail enthusiast who challenged McCain last time. Guess who is going to get that nomination?
Immanentize
@p.a.: Still better than brining gasoline.
Immanentize
@Barbara: nice and so polite.
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: Kray Kray Kelly.
Is Ward a medical doctor of a PhD? Rs seem to have a lot of cray cray MDs
Gravenstone
@germy: That sounds … meta. Now they’re going to investigate the probe, into the investigation that they themselves carried out, multiple times?
Suzanne
@Immanentize: Deedra Abboud is a progressive Dem and she is running. I have met her and I think she’s great. She doesn’t have a chance in hell…..an outspoken Muslim woman in hijab who has never held elected office and is a civil rights lawyer. NOT the person who will come from the state that elected Jeff Flake.
I predict that the Dems will throw their weight behind Sinema—hard. She’s been elected three times, in a central Phoenix district. That’s an accomplishment. Of course, she did that by being terrible. I would imagine that the party will try to dissuade anyone else from running.
Suzanne
@Barbara: The Mormon for “mazel tov” is “have you heard about the NEW gospel of Jesus Christ?”.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yep. Her mom has a point when she says that her parents’ marriage is none of Tracy’s business, but her dad’s whole speech about how Tracy forced him to cheat on her mother is full of squick.
Ruckus
@No Drought No More:
Maybe when O’REILLY looks in a mirror he sees the devil and thinks it’s him. In a way it is.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
True.
Hillary earned 94% of the Black female vote.
Black male vote?
88%
Lips pursed.
Corner Stone
What is with that raccoon eye makeup. She’s really selling me the enthusiasm.
schrodingers_cat
Google says Ward is an osteopathic physician. What the hell is that?
Immanentize
@Suzanne: That sounds like a match perfectly suited for a horrible person — most politicians would pay real money to have a
1) civil rights attorney
2) woman
3) Muslim
4) in a hijab
Run against them…. Hell, they faked it with Obama because it is so powerful. I feel bad for Abboud and I’m going to send her campaign some scratch.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Who?
The Moar You Know
@Suzanne: These days I’ll take whatever I can get. Her name isn’t Trump and she’s at least willing to call herself a Dem. In Arizona. So. Not that terrible.
ruemara
@Suzanne: I’ll take being pissed off over being piss scared.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
We grit our teeth and deal with Manchin. We’ll deal with her too.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
No, but let’s do discuss it over Irish coffees, your treat!
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
This. It’s not 1967 anymore.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Exactly ramen noodles in a pack is better than tire rims and anthrax.
Immanentize
@schrodingers_cat:
This is that guys favorite trick. He writes incomprehensible stuff regarding someone he is watching on his electric TV machine so that someone has to engage him by asking what he is talking about. It’s a version of negging I think.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
I always thought it was about a man’s ‘mid-life crisis’, and the anchor that ‘some men’ can hold onto is the love and devotion of a daughter – which Tracy wasn’t giving. Yeah, it’s ridiculous.
Suzanne
@schrodingers_cat: Many doctors are D.O.s rather than M.D.s. That doesn’t make her crazy. Being crazy makes her crazy.
@The Moar You Know: @ruemara: This is probably the calculus I will make, as well. But do not be fooled—she is terrible. Like, voted-against-helping-refugees terrible.
Tazj
@p.a.: Yes, I’m glad but not impressed. Stating something that was readily apparent to any sane person before the election is courageous for Republicans.
Like others have already said they’ve gotten a lot of what they already wanted like Gorsuch and other judges. They’re destroying the ACA and the EPA and everything else they can get their hands on, but speaking out against Trump is better late than never I guess.
Immanentize
@rikyrah:
But Tracy’s younger sister and the librarian and Liz are some of the best girl/women characters out there. Especially Liz.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Overall, it was a tiny percentage and in a normal year it would have been nothing more than a blip on the radar.
But it wasn’t a normal year, and the balance was tipped by something like 70,000 total votes across 4 states. It really was a year where every vote mattered even at those tiny percentages.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I think the reasoning is in SYG that if he is dead then he must have been a direct threat, why would you have killed him otherwise? If you had time to fire a warning shot, you were not in immediate danger. It doesn’t make sense, but then what part of SYG does?
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: The protest that the Dallas police-killer used as cover had black demonstrators peacefully open-carrying (a small fraction of the crowd). It was one of the things that made it harder to find the shooter, and also contributed mightily to people blowing smoke about Black Lives Matter being a terrorist organization (though I don’t think it was technically a BLM rally; it was the Next Generation Action Network). Did nothing for gun control, but got people exercised against black activists.
dogwood
@ruemara:
Amen! If so-called progressives decide that Arizona in an off-year election is the hill to die on with the leftiest candidate they can find, then we deserve what we get. And I’m sure the Russians will be all over that primary if it looks like they can piss off a good share of democratic voters who won’t vote for the “establishment” candidate.
germy
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
The slogan you need is something like the one they used against David Duke in Louisiana: Vote for the Crook: It’s Important!
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
IIRC, the killer in Dallas despised BLM and was deliberately trying to hurt the movement. And he succeeded.
Shana
@Adam L Silverman: Well, she is a P.G. Wodehouse fan and gave those of us at the Wodehouse Society convention last weekend in DC a small taste of the musical she’s working on based on A Damsel in Distress. I look forward to it being produced somewhere.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: I’m not surprised to hear that at all.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Totally OT, but did you see that Shondaland did an interview with Beverly Jenkins a couple of weeks ago?
Boatboy_srq
@oatler.: But should the rapist get off NOW just becsuse the victim dressed provocatively in the ’80s? Because that sometimes seems like the argument MRAs use.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: I think she’s a physician.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: Osteopaths were the major competition, in terms of licensed physicians, to medical doctors through, about the 1920s. That’s when the AMA made a huge effort to run them out of practice over technical abilities, specifically the ability to perform abortions. This is where abortions first become a political issue in the US. Osteopaths spent decades in the professional wilderness until starting to make a comeback in the 90s. I’ve had a couple of primary care physicians who were osteopaths who were excellent physicians.
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks, I guess I know too many MDs who look at osteopaths with barely disguised antipathy.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: They do.
germy
Bill O’Reilly Has Reportedly Been Dropped by His Talent Agency
Adam L Silverman
@germy:
Fixed it for you.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
@schrodingers_cat:
And then there’s the mention in Double Indemnity. ?
David Evans
Petri is excellent as always, but I wish she hadn’t written “This world does not have an independent existence of the people who live in it.” That’s uncomfortably like the Bush aide who said “we create our own reality”. Too many people think science is only opinion. Better if she had written “This social world…”
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
Long ago Osteopathic medicine was based upon aligning bones somewhat like Chiropractic was. Then things like germ theory was discovered and Osteopathic medicine advanced just as regular Allopathic medicine did. WV has two mainstream Allopathic medical schools and one Osteopathic medical school, and all three teach the same stuff. Graduates of all three schools work in hospitals and medical practices all over the place.
The different beliefs about medicine, before science was applied to illness and healing, were distinguished by having different names, like Chiropractic, Osteopathic, Homeopathic and Allopathic.
Science has proven that Homeopathic medicine is not a valid way of treating most illnesses, but Osteopathic and Allopathic medicine are both about the same in the US today. There may be a little more room for RWNJs in DO, but then Sen Paul is an MD so ???
NorthLeft12
I could never in a million years like this statement as much as it deserves. I have always struggled to deal with assholes, because I cannot empathize with them. I don’t understand why they act the way they do, because being good, nice, etc. takes very little effort in my opinion, and does not really cost you anything.
One employee who reported to me, was constantly in conflict with virtually everyone at our workplace. No one was too big or too small to be objects of his scorn and abuse. Including me. After one particular incident, I finally convinced the plant manager to suspend him for a week after he had been written up a few times before this. At the disciplinary meeting [the Union rep and the HR rep were present too] I asked him why he wanted to continue to work here, and to use the week off [paid of course] to think about that. I told him I thought the stress of being constantly angry was bad for him in the long run and that he could not enjoy working here.
I never knew what eventually happened to Jack, as I left this job for another about two weeks after he returned. Jack was an asshole and I suspect he did not change much.
Mnemosyne
@David Evans:
Congratulations. You win the award for the nit-pickiest comment ever on Balloon-Juice and, believe me, there is a LOT of competition for that title around here.
Matt
Surely BillO should’ve availed himself of the Matthew 5:29-31 remedy that Gawd already suggested. #neuterhim
KS in MA
@ruemara: THIS.