Sliding out of this shithole week and into the weekend like… pic.twitter.com/dEqNKhaVAX
— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) January 13, 2018
.
Speaking of walking shitholes / mudslides, via journalist Yashar Ali’s twitter feed, from CNN:
Donald Trump in 2013 asked James O’Keefe, the controversial conservative filmmaker, if he could “get inside” Columbia University and obtain President Obama’s sealed college records, according to a passage in O’Keefe’s forthcoming book, a copy of which was reviewed by CNN…
According to O’Keefe, Trump “suspected Obama had presented himself as a foreign student on application materials to ease his way into New York’s Columbia University, maybe even Harvard too, and perhaps picked up a few scholarships along the way.”…
O’Keefe said he explained to Trump that the request did not fall into his “line of work,” and that he considered himself and his colleagues to be journalists, not “private eyes.”
But that didn’t seem to deter Trump. At the end of the meeting, O’Keefe wrote, “Trump shook my hand, encouraged me to keep up the good work, and half-whispered, ‘Do Columbia.'”
Trump’s desire for these records would likely have had its roots in his obsession with Obama’s birth certificate, and the false conspiracy theory that Obama was born outside the U.S. Several of the many varying and often contradictory threads of the conspiracy theory centered on Obama’s records from Columbia, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in 1983. Some of the conspiracy theorists believed, without evidence, that there would have been something suspicious in his records from that period…
A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to a request for comment from CNN. O’Keefe declined to address the substance of this story, only telling CNN through a spokesperson that he would “be more than happy to go live on the air to answer questions regarding the book.” CNN received a review copy of the book from its publisher…
Publisher seems to be “All Points Books”, nepotism beneficiary Adam Bellow’s attempt to escape the stench of having published “some of the most controversial and notorious right-wing books of our era, including “The Bell Curve” by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein, Dinesh D’Souza’s “Illiberal Education” and David Brock’s “The Real Anita Hill.”
Gonna be interesting to see how Trump (or his twitter handlers) decide to address this little D-list wingnut-welfare parasite trying to steal some reflected “glory” from His Gilded Majesty. Especially since soliciting the commission of a crime is the sort of behavior that just might interest New York City prosecutors… *if* this story were being told by someone with any credibility.
Yarrow
Speaking of prosecutors, I missed this earlier today.
Looks like summer’s gonna be lit! Tick tock, motherfuckers!
Sebastian
Speaking of assholes:
Chris Matthews “joking” about date raping Hillary Clinton, on video
https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/chris-matthews-bill-cosby-pill-hillary-clinton-interview.html
tybee
there’s a woman’s march in savannah on the 20th.
i’m in need of two pus>sy hats, in bright pink with ears before that date.
any knitters able to supply such?
Sab
Is that elephant doing that slide on purpose? Seems to be.
Rommie
The Tyson Zone will have to be renamed the Trump Zone because there’s scant few stories you wouldn’t believe if told Trump was involved. I mean, even if someone said he secretly binge drinks, would you discount it?
tybee
damn. comment in moderation.
there’s a woman’s march in savannah on the 20th.
i’m in need of two pus=sy hats, in bright pink with ears before that date.
any knitters able to supply such?
dmsilev
@Sebastian: Matthews is another entry on the long long ‘good riddance’ list.
jl
Is the takeaway that Trump is dumber and sleazier than O’Keefe? If so, good to keep in mind.
eclare
OT, just watched David Letterman’s new show on Netflix, My Guest Needs No Introduction. His first guest? Obama! Of course I miss his humanity, intelligence, wit, everything, but this killed me. At the end, Obama asked Dave, don’t you feel as if you were lucky? And Obama went on to say, he was surprised to see people in business or entertainment or politics who are convinced they are successful because they are so smart. Obama said there are a lot of hard working talented people out there, there was always chance. Obama said he didn’t want to be too self-important. David Letterman’s response will surprise you.
SFAW
Maybe I’m just experiencing Shitgibbon fatigue/overload, but I just don’t give a rat’s ass about this story. A pampered, congenital liar telling stories about an older, fatter, more demented version of himself? Whatever.
Now, if this story resulted in Shitgibbon (or one of his minions) putting out a hit on O’Queefe, THEN I would be interested.
SFAW
@jl:
If so, it’s only because he’s had 40 or 50 more years to practice.
khead
Reposting this from Cole’s test thread below:
Just when we thought we were out, they pull us back in! Adding another kitteh to the family tomorrow. Looks like it might be a Turkish Angora dump. Anyone have experience with these kittehs?
satby
@Sebastian: yep. Another male who helped undermine Clinton shown to be a raging asshole misogynist.
Not that any women are surprised.
Beezus Q
@tybee: Go to ETSY, I got some great hats there. I also bought about 3 dozen pussy ear headbands at Oriental Trading Co and passed out to everyone! East to wear, kids and men like them, super inexpensive, etc.
Mnemosyne
@tybee:
Insider tip: the “ears” on the traditional pink p-hat are formed because the hat is “bound off” (finished) straight across instead of with a round top. The hat is square when you get it, but when you put it on your (presumably) round head, the corners poke up and look like ears.
Kayla Rudbek
@tybee: how big do they need to be? I have one spare one in wool.
Jay S
@satby: There was plenty of evidence of the misogyny and the Hillary hatred. Now it is visual.
Mnemosyne
This was the kind of week where I got called into jury duty on a Thursday, so I really feel that elephant right now.
eclare
@Sebastian: Wow…gee, wonder why the media coverage was so bad? Jokes about date rape drugs? Always funny!
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Take all the magic out of it.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
All geometry is sorcery. ?
eclare
@khead: That is one cute kitty! And yes, when the universe gives you signs, you listen.
Peale
@Jay S: thank god, if he’s gone. I can’t stand his voice. I can’t stand the shouting rants and unprepared interviews. He was put there by Jack Welsh to hound the Clintons. He’s another one of those 1980s and 1990s pundits who I worried I would have to live with until the afterlife since they won’t go away.
satby
@Jay S: I continually argued with my locally famous journalist friend, who didn’t grasp the misogyny at all, even when multiple women pointed it out. The Clinton rules are so baked into how news media relates to the world they don’t see it at all.
Of course he was a BS supporter too, though I know he voted for Clinton.
mapaghimagsik
@Mnemosyne: SOH! CAH! TOA!
Okay, Trig, not geometry, but still, for some it carries the weight of “”Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”
satby
@Peale: was he fired? Happy dance, I hated that fucker and his bullshit “workingman’s friend” schtick.
Mike in NC
Yesterday I walked into a Barnes & Noble for the first time in years and found nothing of interest. In the Remaindered section for $4.95 was a D’Souza book that claimed to prove that the modern American left evolved from actual Nazis. How original.
Amir Khalid
It’s charming to see an elephant kid playing just like a human kid.
Siraj is a familiar name to me: it’s the name of my maternal grandfather from Jogjakarta, who’d be 115 if he were still alive.
SFAW
@Sebastian:
Christ, what an asshole.
cain
Anybody clicked on “Liberty News” banner that was showing on top of the blog? Cripes. It is a total right wing publication. I find it funny it barely had anything to say about anything Trump has done. I knew some shit wasn’t right when it started talking about Christians being killed everywhere or something like that. While true, the fact that there is some conspiracy not to report it is well hard to swallow.
ETA – that and talking about Clinton Foundation and thinking it is shenanigans.
Another Scott
@Mnemosyne: [Lisa talking to Maggie] Dodecahedron! Dodecahedron!
[/Lisa]
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
TS
Listening to President Obama on Netflix (didn’t even think it would be available in my world, so surprised to find it) – what a wonderful intelligent knowledgeable man – unbelievable that some would prefer a dumb racist moron – who wouldn’t be able to have such a conversation for more than 10 seconds.
Amir Khalid
@mapaghimagsik:
I still remember what SOH, CAH, and TOA stand for, even though none of my maths teachers ever used that mnemonic.
James E. Powell
@Sebastian:
I’ve always considered Matthews to be an asshole, but this is just. too. much.
Consider that he’s been one of the principal authors and promoters of the Hillary Clinton narrative over the last 20 years. And he’s supposedly the liberal. For most people, everything they know or think they know & feel about Hillary Clinton is based on information that they received from people like Matthews.
He really needs to be fired.
eclare
OT, just watched David Letterman’s new show on Netflix, My Guest Needs No Introduction. His first guest? Obama! Of course I miss his humanity, intelligence, wit, everything, but this killed me. At the end, Obama asked Dave, don’t you feel as if you were lucky? And Obama went on to say, he was surprised to see people in business or entertainment or politics who are convinced they are successful because they are so smart. Obama said there are a lot of hard working talented people out there, there was always chance. Obama said he didn’t want to be too self-important. David responded by saying he never thought he would be so lucky, and that his success was all due to luck.
no comment
@tybee:
I could mail 2 hats to you, if a front-pager would help us exchange contact info.
Adam L Silverman
This is interesting:
Apparently her tenure at HHS got a late term abortion.
Mnemosyne
@mapaghimagsik:
I flunked out of trig my junior year of high school and never went back. I can figure out the math I need, but I have very high math anxiety thanks to some bad teaching methods. Kid with ADHD + instruction based on memorization = recipe for math anxiety.
danielx
Make…it…stop…
Mnemosyne
I gave the bartender at the hotel a $15 tip on a $30 check because she very wisely fawned over the middle-aged woman traveling on business (me) and I wanted to encourage that behavior for the future.
mapaghimagsik
@Mnemosyne:
. Its frustrating to think how many people have been turned away because of poor, unencouraging math teachers.
frosty
@eclare: I’ve been reluctant to watch it because of a) missing Obama and b) Letterman’s beard. Really Dave???
MomSense
@tybee:
What sizes do you need? I think Inhave enough yarn to make one for an adult. If we don’t get an ice storm tomorrow I can get some more yarn.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@khead: Yes, I have. Jeez. Takes me back. My little darling Piglet. They are smarter than you will believe possible, complete mischief makers, kind of hyper as youngsters but very sweet and some of them share a trait with their very close relatives, Turkish Vans; they love water. As in wading/playing/swimming. My little girl used to jump into the bath with me and just sit on my chest, up to her neck in the water, purring. You won’t have to force the issue if you’ve got one of those, mine insisted.
Jamey
Adam Bellow was editor of Jonah’s opus, Liberal Fascism. And author of the foundational work on why nepotism is awesome. Christ, what an asshole…
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Or was it just bad math?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
One never knows, does one? ?
divF
@Amir Khalid: I get them confused with spa fon.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I once tipped 50% at a birthday dinner for my then-wife. The staff had been wonderful, but we’d all had a bunch of drinks. I insisted that it wasn’t a mistake.
eclare
@frosty: I think you’d like it, I did. Although yeah, you will miss Obama, but that is a given. But there are also a lot of interviews with John Lewis, which are very informative.
zhena gogolia
@eclare:
What bugs me even more is when he refers to “the queen’s water.” I assume that means Hillary. Like she’s such a prima donna.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: nothing to do with your link. Was reading your last thread. I don’t need or want to know about your break with Lang, but as a long time reader of his site I had to get off the bus when the Trayvon Martin murder was committed. He just completely lost his shit at that point and never came back. Really, really sad. He was a really good guy and even when I disagreed with him, was not willing to discount him, because he was still working with reality. Then…things changed. He changed. That still really bothers me, and I never met or knew the guy. Scared me, to be honest. He was smarter than I’ll ever dream of being and he just made what looked to be a conscious decision to go over the falls, as it were. Hope I never go there, but if it’s possible with him I guess it’s possible with anyone. Just wanted to say my piece, and express my sympathies.
eclare
@mapaghimagsik: I turned away from pre med after everyone in my freshman chemistry class was so much better than I was. My teacher in a I’ll maybe medium sized high school let us play with mercury. And we always heard she had a bag of hair, we didn’t know why, but we found it. A brown grocery bag full of different tufts of hair. ,We put it back. I had great teachers in other subjects and did fine in college, but science, I could never catch up.
And the bag of hair was not even the most shocking thing.
burnspbesq
@Yarrow:
That would be one of the nicer birthday gifts I have received in recent years.
Mary G
@Amir Khalid: I read the op-ed about your government in the FTFNYT yesterday and some of it seemed very familiar. Apparently shenanigans in gerrymandering aren’t just a U.S. phenomenon.
Sab
@Mnemosyne: Yeah.I do math with my lizard brain, and lizards apparently aren’t very good at math. It nakes them nervous.
In my day job I am an accountant, so that’s not so bad. Most of us only do arithmatic. We rarely do math ( i.e. equations and harder stuff) and, contrary to popular opinion, we are simply incapable of understanding economics. So if an accountant expresses an economics opinion, ask your pet frog for a second opinion. It probably knows more.
scott alloway
@frosty: Dave’s beard is great. I have one like that. 36 years of tending the face garden.
Omnes Omnibus
@mapaghimagsik: I had a fantastic math teacher in high school – I can do math, but I am a History/English/PoliSci guy at heart. OTOH, my one 7 (the max) on my IB exams was in Math. Thanks, Patti. (RIP)
Omnes Omnibus
@scott alloway: No offense, but I don’t really like it. I am sure Dave couldn’t care less about either of our opinions.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Ya know, it’s really not a great mystery how Obama got into Columbia; he was admitted as a freshman to Occidental College here in CA, they have a program with Columbia where you do your first two years at Occidental and the last two years at Columbia and receive your degree from Columbia. This really isn’t difficult, except for Trump.
burnspbesq
@Sab:
Don’t sweat it. The one branch of tax where economists are deployed, transfer pricing, goes against everything anyone ever learned in intermediate micro about vertical integration.
eclare
@Sab: Accountant here, tax, I was taught you never add anything, not even 2+2, without a ten key. And by ten key, you know how old I am.
burnspbesq
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Oxy’s previous gift to the world of politics was Jack Kemp.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Trump is obsessed with it because he knows that he barely got into college at all despite his father’s millions, and he needs to prove that everyone else is exactly like him and cheated their way into college.
Sab
@Mnemosyne: Yeah.I do math with my lizard brain, and lizards apparently aren’t very good at math. It nakes them nervous.
In my day job I am an accountant, so that’s not so bad. Most of us only do arithmatic. We rarely do math ( i.e. equations and harder stuff) and, contrary to popular opinion, we are simply incapable of understanding economics. So if an accountant expresses an economics opinion, ask your pet frog for a second opinion. It probably knows more.@Omnes OmnibusIB. Aren”t you the show off? Thank god that wasnt available when I was in high school. My neice did that. Lots of work. I wouldn’t have had time for the real extracurricular stuff (politics).
Omnes Omnibus
@Sab: Who can afford to keep tame French people around?
eclare
@zhena gogolia: And he laughs and grins like look at my great joke…
chris
65F here right now.
(Testing a link.)
ETA It works! Good night all.
Sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Your comment when completely over my tiny head. There’s a joke there but I missed it entirely. Sorry.
Sab
Tame french peopke??
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
In one of the other threads, I compared it to that moment in Scientology where a person has put many years and thousands of dollars into this religion, only to hear the Xenu story. That is a huge crisis moment, because they have to decide if it’s so ridiculous that they’re going to quit (which some of them do) or if they’re going to double down, close their eyes, and continue following the cult’s path.
The murder of Trayvon Martin was one of those moments for people who were racist but had never really examined that. They could do some soul-searching of themselves, come to terms with the fact that they were racists, and try to do better, or they could double down and believe even harder than they did before.
Lang chose the second path. At this point, only a cult deprogrammer might be able to help.
Sab
Slow on the uptake here. My pet frogs are amphibians, not French.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
“Crow, what is it with you and the French?”
Omnes Omnibus
@Sab: It wasn’t that much work and, as my parents said as we tried to bully me into the fledgling program at my high school, “He’ll only do the work if it is interesting. ” It was. I had great teachers. The kind that liberals yammer on about. Give schools money.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sab: Pet frog.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Unfair. I am a Francophile. Crow has issues.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@burnspbesq: Yup, star quarterback there.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Apparently, Trump never went to class or did the required reading. I guess Penn gave away degrees like candy in those days.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Only if your millionaire dad made a few multi-million dollar donations.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Trying to cook rice in the Instant Pot, I’m sure I’ll fuck it up.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sorry, can’t resist:
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Dear god.
Mary G
And cue Sully (no link, I don’t plan to read it) “Time to Resist the Excesses of #MeToo.” Hoocoodanode? What a sad little man he’s turned into. As usual, I was wrong and all you haters were right. He had a temporary splat of sanity over Obama and went right back into crazyland.
Sab
@Mnemosyne: Lang seemed to be a normal person until Patraeus manipulated Obama into backing a surge in Afghanistan. That somehow became solely Obama’s fault, and not the fault of Petraeus and the whole military system backing more war. I understand him being upset about a surge, but I don’t agree with him blaming Obama alone.
I am going to let my cynical flag fly, and say he went against all his racist instincts to trust the bright young black president, and when said president failed him he went full racist. What else explains his Confederate hagiography novels afterwards?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: Turned into?
James E. Powell
@Mnemosyne:
My recall is that Trayvon Martin’s killing felt like a moment of decision. The reaction was delayed and a bit unsure at first. After all, Zimmerman was not a police officer and he was not white, so should the racists really care? 12-36 hours later. Hell yes! There was no way they would condemn the killing of a young black male under circumstances that were blatantly racist.
Once they made that decision, they were all in. There was no more hesitation when news of the death of another black male broke. Michael Brown. Totally justified. Tamir Rice. Totally justified. Back when I was still speaking with him, I asked my RW nut job brother, why the hell do you RWers feel the need to defend every one of these a-holes? Why do you defend an obvious whack like Zimmerman, a trigger happy cop who couldn’t handle anyone defying his authority, and cop that one department rejected for fear of him doing something exactly like he did when he killed a twelve-year old boy? He responded that they weren’t a-holes, that the liberal media was making them look that way, and that he was defending something more important that had nothing to do with these individual cases. It was white supremacy and white right to kill people of color whenever they make whites nervous. He refused to accept that description, but he didn’t have a better explanation.
Also too, Scientology. For years, I heard the name and that it was either a religion or something like a religion, but I never bothered to learn a thing about it until I saw the South Park episode. I can’t believe people get all the way to Xenu without having a moment of clarity.
Yarrow
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I have a story about how a rich person I was only vaguely acquainted with tried to recruit me to take her graduate classes for her to get her PhD. I could hardly process what I was being asked to do but once I did understand I refused. I later saw photos of her with the head of her program at a fancy gala. The writing under the photo talked about her donation to the university. She somehow got her degree. Wonder how that happened.
Sab
@Omnes Omnibus: “It wasn”t all that much work.” I just remember IB guys stumbling into things they weren’t much invested in, disrupting things and then moving on. Volunteering for Habitat for Humanity when they couldn’t pound nails, distrupting things for a weekend, and then moving on when the rest of us were there for the duration (by choice.) They came to the Council on World Affsirs once for a lecture, and left early before the questions, because it was a school night, which was rude to the speaker, and useless for them because the questionst are when the interesting stuff happens. Disruptive to the rest of us and no use to them. I always assumed their in school academic stuff was worth the rest.
Mnemosyne
@James E. Powell:
That’s exactly what the “principle” was, and exactly why they couldn’t articulate it. I think it was Frankensteinbeck who was saying earlier that they actually believe all of this bullshit, and they can’t believe the rest of us don’t feel the same. They’re annoyed that they would even have to explain why they should be allowed to kill any person of color they found to be threatening. That’s just reality! Why can’t stupid libs accept reality!
James E. Powell
@Mnemosyne:
That’s exactly the kind of responses I have been getting from my RW family members since the Reagan days.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: It’s fear.
Mary G
@Omnes Omnibus: No, always was and will be.
The Des Moines Register has a great article about a Chuck Grassley town hall that went badly for him because Trump is concerning. Good to see
Amir Khalid
@Mary G:
Gerrymandering to dilute the non-Malay vote is an old story in Malaysian poitics, going back towhen we were still only Malaya. The Alliance and its expanded version Barisan Nasional has always been in power, and is not all that discreet about putting its thumb on the scales in order to stay in power.
patrick II
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
It just struck me what Trump’s problem with Obama going to Columbia and then Harvard is: even with his dad’s money he could not have gotten in to either of those schools . He says “I’m so smart , I went to a great college” but what he wants to say is he went to Harvard. He couldn’t, Obama could and it kills him.
Mary G
@Amir Khalid: That one-party rule is the Republican’s dream.
Amir Khalid
@James E. Powell:
Zimmermann has a white dad. Even with a Peruvian mother and a black maternal ancestor he’s still a lot whiter than Trayvon Martin. That’s how the white supremacists chose sides in that case.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Wait… Instant pot? Sign me up!
(Kidding, actually.)
Amir Khalid
@Mary G:
That it is, but let the Republicans take heed: power is impermanent. The Barisan coalition has been steadily growing weaker and less popular in recent years. Other Malaysians can also run a functioning government, and perhaps do it without the cronyism and corruption that has become especially blatant in Najib’s time as PM.
Sebastian
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Low pressure, rice:water 1:1
Gretchen Diefenderfer
@tybee: You can get pink pussy hats on Etsy. I’m in the throes of knitting 2 before the 20th, so can’t help. I wear mine all the time.
Fair Economist
@James E. Powell:
The tenets of Scientology are so absurd it seems like a sociology experiment gone amuck. It’s like they were trying to test how absurd you can get with doctrine before believers finally give up and say it’s ridiculous; but they got all the way to 11 and still have tens of thousands of believers.
Sab
@Omnes Omnibus: “It wasn”t all that much work.” I just remember IB guys stumbling into things they weren’t much invested in, disrupting things and then moving on. Volunteering for Habitat for Humanity when they couldn’t pound nails, distrupting things for a weekend, and then moving on when the rest of us were there for the duration (by choice.) They came to the Council on World Affsirs once for a lecture, and left early before the questions, because it was a school night, which was rude to the speaker, and useless for them because the questionst are when the interesting stuff happens. Disruptive to the rest of us and no use to them. I always assumed their in school academic stuff was worth the rest.@Mnemosyne:
Unrelated to nothing, but I grew up in the Jim Crow South in Northern Florida. I think my memory is pretty much universal for much of the South. People of color were only African Americans.
American Indians, East and South Asian Indians weren’t people of color in the Jim Crow south. My elementary school in Florida was named for Osceola, a revered Seminole chief that Andrew Jackson imprisonedfor life in the fort at St. Augustine in Florida.
General Sherman’s middle name was Tecumseh, the Shawnee war chief clobbered, but respected, for his role in the war of 1812.
Ved Mehta, an amazing writer for the New Yorker, who was born and bred in India until his parents sent him to a segregated blind school in Arkansas. He worked for the New Yorker until the toxic Tina Brown era when they hired a Brit who didn’t understand our culture and whose publishers didn’t care that she didn’t.
Ditto Nikki Haley. I personally think that by southern standards she is white. Thus proving my other point: just because you are white by the standards of the Jim Crow south, doesnt mean you are OK by any other standard of civilized people.
Bobby Jindal is an asshole, but white Louisianans respected him as one of their own, as did South Carolinians with Ms. Haley.
Chet Murthy
@Sab: I grew up in TX ’75-onwards, and (as a south asian doctor’s son) I ran with the white kids, ate dinner at their houses, etc, I sure wasn’t treated as white. Many of those same friends would call me wetback, camel-jockey, and sand-ni-CLANG. And other things. All in good fun, you understand (not). It seemed pretty clear that I could be taken for “white” as long as I was the right sort of “little Indian boy”.
Took a lotta years to exorcise the demons that sank deep, deep roots in my soul in those years. A lotta years.
Maybe Jindal, Haley, & others had a different experience b/c they’re young than me. Idunno. But it sure seemed (compared to the Northeast) like a deeply racist place, even for a bookish doctor’s son.
Sab
@Chet Murthy: Thank you. That is an important alternative view to the world that I saw. We only see what is visible to us,and often that’s not much of what is out there.
hat is
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Those people who stay in the cult have ingested every morsel of the stupidity without question and so don’t question that step they’ve been unreasonably prepared for. Which is why someone has to spend a long time and lots of money to get there, they have to invest the effort and it has to feel worth it. It’s like Mr. Creosote having that one thin mint. It should make them question everything but how could one more step hurt.
ETA I said the other day that L Ron couldn’t write SF worth a shit but he could figure out how to get people to accept total bullshit and pay a not inconsiderable sum doing it.
Sab
@Sab: Where do you live now? I am remembering (or misremembering) the SF Bay area. Is it more welcoming now? I know Ohio is unwelcoming for any one whose folks weren’t pioneers.
Chet Murthy
@Sab: I live in SF. And it’s …. well, it’s paradise. Specifically, b/c of all the brown and black and Asian and pink and every-other-type of person. I’ve lived here for ten years, and in the last few, I’ve actually become comfortable in my own skin. Which is something that I wasn’t for the first … 40-something years of my life.
I don’t kid myself that it’s perfect here. After all, Oskar Grant. And there have been a few other shootings. My sister reminds me that if a few young black males were to walk up the main drag in Noe Valley, the cops would be on them in an instant. Which I’m sure is true.
But it’s still a world apart from how I grew up.
I read an article about a South Asian doctor in a rural town where he was heavily recruited, and his dismay on finding (after he’d been there a couple of years) that the town and the county had voted heavily for Trump. I wrote to him, asking him to move to someplace with a more diverse population, so that his children would grow up around many people who looked different, dressed different, and in short, so that his kids wouldn’t be the “different ones”.
Sorry, logorrhea. The Aimerica I see being created here in California is going to be an amazing place. If I’d been fortunate enough to be raised out here in recent years, I’m sure I’d be a much happier person.
Funny story: A few years back, I had to go to Orlando, FL for work. And I was really antsy driving around, and in restaurants, etc, b/c it was the South, and that gives me the heebie-jeebies. But at the conference hotel, I was back in the multicultural environment of work (IBM), and that was a relief. Then, on the drive back to the airport, I’m anxious again. Until I get past checkin/security, and I’m waking towards the gate, and I see …. a guy with a mohawk and massive tattoos, and a lesbian couple, and an Asian family, and an interracial couple, and a guy with *gynormous* earrings. And *at that moment* I relax, b/c I know I’m back home again!
ETA: the city is changing — more entitled tech bros, more rich folks. I can see a day when I’ll move someplace else in California. But CA as a whole? The most vibrant, diverse place I’ve ever lived.
Cain
@Chet Murthy: I am sorry you were treated that way. I grew up in Indiana and I never really had racial problems. Thank God for that, it was a tumultuous childhood already. Add racism would have been worse.
Timurid
@Chet Murthy:
I grew up in New Orleans in the 70’s. The understanding of race was binary, black or white. Whites generally accepted Latinos, Asians and minority groups that were not African-American. That was, at least in part, because there were so few of them. Those attitudes were one of the reasons my Mexican-American dad settled there. It was a welcome change from Texas where he grew up (and went to segregated schools). On my birth certificate it says “Race of child: White, Race: of father: White. As a small child I thought I was white. Half “Spanish,” but white. I lived around and went to school with white people. Then as a teenager I had to move to Texas. That was… educational. As Chet can testify, white Texans from the start have had a separate and inferior category for brown people. It could have been much worse, Being light skinned helped… most of the time, if not all of the time. But it was now clear that I was different in some way.
Eventually, as the state grew more diverse and Latino and Asian populations grew, people in Louisiana started thinking more like Texans. The first wave was the negative reaction to the large number of Vietnamese immigrants after 1975… In recent years, of course, white attitudes on race have become more uncompromising everywhere. “White adjacent” is not white. Half white is not white. Light skinned is not white if you have the wrong ancestors… as our Jewish friends are now being reminded…
Chet Murthy
@Cain: I feel like I should note that there was never any violence. What there was, was the unstated threat of violence. Like some big guy trapping your arm in the crook of his (in gym class), and squeezing the life out of it, while calling you “wetback”. To be clear, in a friendly manner — he was a “friend”. I’m sure (the few) black and Hispanic students in my town had it much worse. And lordy, a guy a grade younger than me, turned out to be gay, and now lives in SF. I cannot imagine the terror he lived every day of his life until he was able to get out. I cannot imagine it.
Cain
@Chet Murthy:
Ugh.. I never had any of that. I got along with everyone and could drift from one clique to another. I was never felt to be different other than being short and even then nobody called me on it.
Aleta
@khead: Like someone said above, looks like he could be an Angora or a Van. I’ve had several Vans. Two were rescues, and some were born here to one rescue and stayed on. The ones I had were more territorial than other cats I’ve had. As though they had a sense of how many cats should live within one acre, and tried to enforce that. Two spent their time trying to drive the other cats away. (Later I learned that it was why one had ended up rejected from his home.) It took a while to figure out how to handle it. The other cats suffered, but trying to subdue the Vans made them more anxious/aggressive. Energy and personality-wise they were over the top, funny and interesting. I loved them. Off and on I even look across the internet to find another. Your beautiful fellow looks like he’ll be a lot of fun. Wonderful for him to find a good home with good people.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: He’s obsessed with calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” too, and remember, the right thinks that story is somehow about college admissions.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
I do that too, on.behalf of elderly fat bald retired software geeks. And their wives. Especially if there’s any chance, even a .0001 chance, I will ever be there again.
Last Tuesday we went to the best joint in town in Tee shirts and jeans and got a good table, a great dinner, and all the attention we needed. Worth every penny of all those tips. If we are dressed, we are seated, how doesn’t matter. First day in town in 8 days, did a bunch of errands, got hungry, drove there on auto-pilot.
J R in WV
@Fair Economist:
Scientology is a religion invented by L Ron Hubbard, who was a pulp science fiction writer, not an especially good one, on a bet during a poker game with drinking involved, at a Sci Fi Con. He bet he could make up a religion about space aliens with the other goofy shit also required by the bet – and get people to pay to believe it.
So he was a far better con artist than he was a Sci Fi writer. Scientology still puts out an annual Best Sci Fi of the year, many people actually get a start in writing sci fi on account of that book. I always buy them used for $0.75 so as not to support Scientology.
The current believers may or may not care about or know about that – perhaps it is the central secret of the church owners. And they may have beaten it into the other card players who lost the bet with L. Ron that they had better not talk about it any more at some point, because that story is seldom told today, but was pretty common back in the day.
Hope they can’t find me!
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
When people you know and respect suddenly change like that, something has happened in their brain, which causes their mind to be different when they get out of bed. They may not even have a headache from it. But when an event happens in your head in the right spot, you can’t help it, there is no way to fix it, you are a different person, still smart, still educated, but your perspective has changed forever and if you are a public person, people will notice. If the change is big enough and obvious enough, which it sounds like Mr. Langs was, well, they are not the people you knew anymore.
I’m sorry for your loss, Adam, and yours too Moar.
tybee
@no comment: sounds like a plan. :)
i assume i just need to email a front-pager…
tybee
@tybee: and done. hope betty is around today. :)
Emily68
I worked in the Graduate Admissions office of a large public university for many years and if Trump thinks being an international student will ease your way into a college, he’s mistaken. They have way more hoops to jump through than citizens or green-card holders and there are way fewer sources of financial aid they are eligible for.
Also, if Columbia followed the same records retention schedule that my school did, they don’t have anything in Obama’s “file” except a transcript of the work he did there–no application, no recommendations. But it is too bad that O’keefe didn’t try to sneak in and access these records. He’d surely get caught and blabbing about a college student’s record is a federal crime. And while I’m not a lawyer, I bet Trump would be on the hook, too.
fuckwit
@Mnemosyne: He did his first 2 years at Fordham in the Bronx, close to home, then transferred in to Penn. Same trick Obama did with going to Occidental in LA for 2 years then transferring to Columbia.