.
We should be angry over the inaction, empty words, and “condolences.” We should be angry over the moments of silence that should be screams for change. We should be angry over the politicians that came to SF to campaign and enforce outdated policies that make kids feel unsafe…
— Brittany (@britt_braun) May 21, 2018
And we should stay angry to advocate for change. Please register to vote. Below are a few pro gun control democratic candidates for positions that represent Santa Fe:
– Texas Governor @LupeValdez @randrewwhite
– Texas Senate @BetoORourke
– US Congress TX-14 @AdrBell— Brittany (@britt_braun) May 21, 2018
.
Ted Cruz has already used the term "sacrifice" related to the students. No, Ted. "Sacrifice" is where a person chooses to give up something for others or a cause. These children did not choose. But you chose to sacrifice them for NRA $$$ & votes.
— KarenP (@ktparrish48) May 22, 2018
.
Police responding to shots fired inside Santa Fe High School got locked into a 25-minute gun battle with the gunman, and some of the 10 people killed may have been caught in the crossfire, a Texas sheriff said. https://t.co/Tl1iwrQzta
— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 22, 2018
Trained officers spent 25 minutes in a gun battle with a kid who’s too young to buy cigarettes and the outcome was:
• one officer seriously wounded
• kids potentially killed in the crossfire
• the shooter emerged unscathedBut you want to arm the calculus teacher. Okay.???? https://t.co/soZ0q0j5Ij
— Scott Charles (@TheScottCharles) May 22, 2018
.
<cop shoots philando castile in cold blood in front of his girlfriend and little daughter>
“well, he had weed so, you know, had it coming”
<deranged loner goes on shooting rampage & kills 10>
“society has victimized these young men” https://t.co/lLjzJBTNuc
— Kilgore Trout (@KT_So_It_Goes) May 22, 2018
.
Mary G
The young people will win.
Mnemosyne
I didn’t think the professional misogynists could fall any further in my estimation, but the new Refusing to date a man means you’re bullying him! meme managed to do it.
Jager
When we first moved to California, my neighbor was a retired FBI Agent. He ran the FBI’s SoCal SWAT Team for a number of years. He told me a couple of things that resonate: 1. In an active shooter situation, ANYONE with a gun is a SWAT target. 2. He’d taken the US Military’s Tactical Shooting Course, he said the best guys hit less than 50% of the targets. He also said that the average gun owner who thinks he’s going to stop a crime with his gun is going to be dead or at best crippled for life.
Chet Murthy
@Mnemosyne: I wondered about that too. Was there any bullying other than “getting turned down by girls he “liked””? B/c if there was, it’s miiighty peculiar that he chose the most-recent girl to vent his ….. (ahem)….. ugh.
condorcet runner-up
@Mnemosyne: those commentators and enablers are straight up ghouls.
Villago Delenda Est
The NRA is a terrorist organization.
Deal with it, and its leaders, as Al Qaeda was dealt with.
Mary G
RIP Phillip Roth:
cain
@Mnemosyne:
Link?! This has to be mocked.
rikyrah
@Villago Delenda Est:
Can’t argue with you.
rikyrah
I hope one of the FrontPagers will be writing on the election results.
Elizabelle
@Mary G: He had a good long run.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mary G: I have a complaint. Not Portnoy’s complaint, but that we lost another talent while the monster that is Dick Cheney is still animated.
Rest in peace, man of letters.
Wag
@Mary G:
For all of our sakes, I hope that you are right.
Peale
@Chet Murthy: we don’t know and neither do the folks who are Assuming she was a bullying bitch. I’d discount what the father says. His son committed first degree murder which could carry the death penalty in Texas. He may think the bullying story helps, but it doesn’t.
Mnemosyne
@cain:
The Wall Street Journal did an interview with the murderer’s father, who claimed that his son was “bullied,” but the first person he killed was a girl who he had been harassing for several months. Sen. John Cornyn retweeted the WSJ story and got dragged for it, hard.
condorcet runner-up
link
Brachiator
@Mary G:
Yes. RIP. Loved much of his early work.
I think his era has passed. I don’t think anyone is hailed anymore as having written the Great American Novel.
GregMulka
Gun ownership needs to become as repugnant as smoking in a nursery.
Villago Delenda Est
@Peale: She was a girl he had pursued for a long time, and she finally told him, unmistakably, NO. That his behavior was inappropriate and that if she had to go to the authorities to be rid of him, she would.
His reaction was to murder her and nine others.
Mary G
Yes, we can.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
For good reason, we have not heard anything from the murderer himself (not calling him the accused). I discount anything reported so far about motive.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.)
@Mary G:
Yes, I think maybe you’re right. I was hopeful after Newtown,. But when nothing happened, and then nothing happened after the next time, and then nothing happened after the next time after that, and then after the next time after that, and on and on, I kind of gave up any hope that it would ever be any other way. Since Florida though, I have the feeling at long last that the weather may be shifting. I wonder how many of these kids in Texas are going to take up the cause.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
Cohen never did say that Briody was his client
https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/999109630990143488?s=20
hervevillechaizelounge
@Mnemosyne:
Reminds me of my favorite Khaled Hosseini quote:
Why didn’t you have sex with that guy? You made him shoot up a school!
vs.
Why did you have sex with that guy? What are you, a slut?
Welcome to the patriarchy, motherfuckers;)
debbie
@Mary G:
One of my all-time favorite authors. No one could construct a sentence like he could.
rikyrah
Thread about Democrats and their lack of Russia/Dolt45 message
https://twitter.com/maxbergmann/status/999105397737877510?s=20
debbie
@Brachiator:
A number of current authors like to claim they have, but no, you’re right.
Gvg
@Peale: I heard the father a bit on TV. He sounded like a loyal parent with a refusal to give in and believe a child is terrible. I just discount it as not reliable. Same as many other parents of someone accused. Society actually trains us to expect parent loyalty and would punish someone who for instance said they disliked their son. Sometimes parents are actually in sightful, but mostly not. I have ignored parents before and will again.
tobie
@Mary G: Oh no. This makes me very sad. I met him years ago after he just published The Counterlife and I remember being excruciatingly tongue-tied and he somehow made it feel okay to ask for an autograph.
rikyrah
Complaint about California primary
https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/998955767997849601?s=20
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: Dems have been winning the vast majority of special elections. Maybe they know what they are doing.
Peale
@Villago Delenda Est: yes. He may have been bullied…there were nine other kids…since he targeted certain kids. Did he ask all of them out, too? Regardless, I don’t have any sympathy for him even if it turns out he was somewhere below the D- kids who smoke in the bathrooms in the social and hazing pecking order at school. Yeah, I guess it would be nice to know if he were a radicalized MRA wannabe or a MAGA youth gone amuck. But if that weren’t the case and life were more complI aged, it wouldn’t change the fact that someone gave the kid access to a gun that he shouldn’t have had.
rikyrah
Never before seen photos of Forever FLOTUS ? from her upcoming memoir
https://twitter.com/metaquest/status/998948877280559104?s=20
rikyrah
Forever FLOTUS ? in braids at Princeton
https://www.instagram.com/p/BjGCLtIgCuQ/?utm_source=ig_embed
Platonailedit
Cartoonists are the best teachers to the 3rd rate 4th estate corrupt hacks.
BruceFromOhio
@Villago Delenda Est: This. This. This. No compromise.
Peale
@rikyrah: arghhhh! Make up your minds, people. Two weeks ago it was “Dems need a positive message about what they stand for and not be Anti Trump” now it’s “they need to talk about Russia“ it’s a wonder…
BruceFromOhio
@Mary G:
I’m with her.
TeezySkeezy (formerly the T S you hate)
@Jager: What does a Deep State elitist Clintonite (aka, FBI agent) know about Real Americans (TM) and their gun skillz?
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
CA-49 is Mary G’s district, where Issa is retiring. I’d be curious to see what she has to say about it. I know that Applegate and Levin have been bashing each other for months trying to get the Dem nomination.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Peale: with the midterms only a week away, clearly the thing to do is panic. NOW!
BruceFromOhio
@Peale: Consider the source of those two messages.
Dems will win by sticking to the issues, and representing the electorate.
ruemara
@Peale: he. was. He was a Nazi loving, bullying, shit. His dad is an enabler who’s going to Greek tv for sympathy.
Sab
@rikyrah: Malia looks just like she did.
ETA Stupid me. Wrong kid. I meant Sasha.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Frankly, the only people who ever got hailed as having written the Great American Novel were white men (for these purposes, Jewish men like Roth were counted as white). No one ever claims that The Age of Innocence ranks as the Great American Novel of its time.
So I’m not sorry to see that meme fade away. Especially since the only true Great American Novel is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
rikyrah
Article on the Democratic nominee for Governor in Georgia
https://twitter.com/JamilSmith/status/999100109563486208?s=20
Peale
@Mnemosyne: given where we are today, the great American Novel was probably Spider-Man #145 and the critics haven’t caught up yet.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mary G: I liked his book, The Plot Against America, but it was too rushed at the end; the US stays out of WW2 for two years that it should have been in and history turns out exactly the same as our timeline? Yeah right, pull the other one.
Peale
@BruceFromOhio I’m going to be nervous until November and there’s not much to talk me out of it. I’d rather they ran in lowering the retirement age to 55 with a one time 37% COLA for existing retirees to be on the safe side. But I don’t get to choose the platform.
TeezySkeezy (formerly the T S you hate)
@Peale: I think the issue is, the Dems seem to be losing a little ground in the political fight against Trump and a bit of a freakout is starting. Some erratic vacillation is to be expected. I say this based on Trumps slowly rising approval rating, polls on the Russian probe (no one is paying attention), and the fact that Ds like Chuck Schumer sound like preschool teachers calmly lecturing 4 year olds as they talk about Trump’s banana republic politics when there should be a hell of a lot more piss and vinegar in response to the level of lawless corruption Trump has wrought.
I’m still hopeful that the new voter registrations among Democrats are going to surprise people and we at least going to take the House. And I hope we have a non-sleazy AG in NY state to take down as much of the Trump empire as possible with pardon-proof convictions. However, not holding my breath for Mueller to ride into town riding a shark surfing the crest of a might blue wave to wash the Trump stain away. Not happening.
Vote, vote vote, as they say.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
In my English and Comp. Lit. days, the GAN contenders included Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Little Women, The Bell Jar, To Kill A Mockingbird, Native Son, Invisible Man, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and The Age of Innocence.
But my larger point is that the serious novel, and poetry, don’t really count any more as great literature. In America, the only culture that matters is popular culture. So-called high culture is mummified in academia.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah: I’ve never liked the ‘jungle primary’ here in California and this is one of the reasons why.
Peale
@TeezySkeezy (formerly the T S you hate): yep. I know. I’m more skittish than I should be. But I worry that 2010 and 2014 represent the actual mid term voting pool for the Dems and we need to find five million voters in 30 states that aren’t California. I want to be proven wrong.
Duane
@ruemara: I’m having a hard time working up sympathy for the shooter’s father, since it was his damn guns used in the murders. He should face charges but Texas.
Brachiator
@BruceFromOhio:
Woo hoo! This is great to hear.
Hungry Joe
When Roth is in a groove — which happens a lot — you can blow through 40, 50 pages, look up, and wonder, “How’d he do that?” (I’m thinking, in particular, of a long stretch in “Zuckerman Unbound.”) In “American Pastoral” he devotes three or four pages to describing how gloves are stitched. The passage could have been cut and you’d never miss it — it added nothing to the plot — but he was Philip Roth, they left it in, and damn, it was great.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: As in the current President is pulling out of the Idlib area, which will allow both the al Nusra Front (AQ in Syria) and ISIS to regroup and restrengthen because he’s decided that spending any money on helping the locals consolidate the gains post military intervention to secure the peace is a waste of time and money?
guachi
For the first time this cycle, dating back over a year, Cook Political Report has actually moved a number of races back to the Republican side. Two Likely D to Toss Up, one Toss Up to Lean R, and one Likely R to Solid R. Given past performance, that’s a loss of about 1.25 seats. Combined with gerrymandering and a tightening of generic polling and the steam has (temporarily?) come out of the D’s sails.
Villago Delenda Est
@Peale: WE MUST HAVE A HORSE RACE!
The greatest horse race I’ve ever seen was Secretariat totally smoking the field at the Belmont Stakes.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: Bergmann’s argument is factually wrong.
Hungry Joe
@Mnemosyne: “Huckleberry Finn” gets my vote as The Great American Novel, but if either “Moby Dick” or “The Great Gatsby” gets called off the bench to come in and take the spot I wouldn’t complain too much.
Omnes Omnibus
@guachi: Panic away. Do go ahead and ignore all the special elections that have happened.
Jacel
@Brachiator: Roth wrote “The Great American Novel”, the title of his wonderful novel about baseball that has led me to helpless laughter more than about anything else in my life of seeking out great humor. Really, what else could a Great American Novel be about than baseball.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@guachi:
But what about the historical trends? Midterms have always gone badly for the president’s party in Congress.
Suzanne
@Mary G:
You think so? I hope so.
Hoping is tiring.
Hungry Joe
@Brachiator: I loved Flannery O’Connor’s comment on “To Kill a Mockingbird.” She said, “It’s a CHILDREN’S book!” And she was right. But then, so what?
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t think it’s him. He’s totally out of his depth. But asshats like Bolton think they know something. They don’t, but they’re pulling Donald’s strings. Along, of course, with Vlad.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: I doubt that giving up is inspiring.
TeezySkeezy (formerly the T S you hate)
@Adam L Silverman: I saw someone say Bergmann’s argument is a bit ‘overstated,’ but you seem to think it’s factually wrong? In what way? I think it would be wrong to overstate the importance of the probe to winning elections (I haven’t read his thread carefully not sure if he even does that or not). People are voting on issues, and SURPRISINGLY the Ds are actually running on issues. However, isn’t it true that voters aren’t THAT interested in the Russian probe?
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne:
I took a class in college about “masterpieces of American literature” and we spent a long time on Beloved. I definitely remember the prof talking about it that way. He was persuasive!
guachi
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Yeah, midterms are bad for the incumbent party. And, like most predictions, Cook is probably going to be a bit conservative if there’s a tailwind behind one party or another heading into the election. We see that conservatism play out as Cook slowly was moving seats towards the Democrats.
The movement Cook did on the 22nd is quite large as the real seats in play are in the lean/tossup/lean category so moving from one to the other has a much larger effect on the outcome. Candidates in the “Likely” category just don’t lose. It’s more of an indication of a race that might be in play. So it has meaning in May but no meaning in November. A “Lean” candidate wins 90% of the time and a toss up is, by definition, 50%.
As I said, there are tailwinds that are likely to be underestimated. The side with the tailwind wins 60% of tossups, 98% of “Lean” for their party, and 15% of “Lean” for the other party. It’s hard to say who will have a late tailwind at this point (though it’s probably D).
It’s not a good sign. You’d hope races would be moved towards D after primaries not towards R.
Major Major Major Major
@guachi: I anticipate that the election’s outcome will be modest but adequate. Assuming nothing completely insane happens before now and then.
guachi
@Omnes Omnibus: Do go ahead and ignore why Cook changed their ratings. Do go ahead and ignore that it was based on actual candidates that are on the ballot (in the case of Nebraska and South Carolina).
Ignore that the SC Dem candidate assaulted his ex-wife in the ’70s so what was a longshot race is now a no chance race.
Ignore that Nebraska nominated the more liberal (and probably harder to elect candidate) instead of the moderate.
Ignore that two CA races have the potential of, in both cases, not even having a D on the ballot.
D’s won special elections with good candidates. Cook moved the races because of poor (or potentially poor or potentially no) candidates.
Jacel
@guachi: I wonder how much that fallback towards the Republicans is because we are reaching the point in the calendar where Cook has paid more attention in the past, and are baking in past results and assumptions that have favored Republicans into the models they are using now to interpret polling results. Keep fighting, Democrats everywhere!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Suzanne:
Sure as hell beats the alternative.
Sab
@Major Major Major Major: I am not much into audiobooks, but I have heard that “Beloved” is amazing. Read by Toni Morrison.
Adam L Silverman
@TeezySkeezy (formerly the T S you hate): At the national level a lot of Democratic officials who are in safe seats are all over the news media, except, perhaps, Fox and talk radio, covering the Russian active measures and the corruption and the attempted subversion of institutions. These include senators like Blumenthal and Warner and Hirono and representatives like Schiff and Swallwell and Liu and Waters. You see Harris and Booker and Gillibrand and Schatz and Klobuchar less often, but they’re out there. And now that she’s got Junior Senator First Class, Duckworth doesn’t seem to be doing much media for obvious reasons. Schumer and Pelosi do their media hits, but they tend to do them as official statements, which is the right move. They have their much younger members of their caucuses who are on the appropriate committees doing the shows, so to speak.
As for the campaigns, my understanding from the reporting is that the candidates themselves are determining how much to nationalize their campaigns by referring to all of this and how much to actually focus on the issues that matter to the district or state if they’re running for state wide office and issues that tie into the actual Better Deal platform that’s been put together which is pretty solid even if I have some quibbles. This isn’t being reported as much nationally – as in on CNN or MSNBC or the broadcast networks and the big national papers like the NY Times and WaPo – but it is covered more in local reporting. And the reason for this is because the major news media, which means the national news media, always follows a scandal. And right now we have either multiple scandals or one big scandal with multiple facets and offshoots.
Some voters are very interested in these various scandals, the Russian probe, and related issues. Others just want to know what may or may not be done to make their lives better. Some are focused on only certain national issues, such as Harley Davidson closing its KS plant and shipping the jobs overseas despite getting the tax cut that was supposed to ensure it wouldn’t do so. Saw one of those workers on with Hayes tonight and he was pissed.
And then you’ve got sort of niche candidates like Randy Bryce who was geared up to run against Paul Ryan, so he was running a home and away campaign where he was focusing on issues that matter in the district while contrasting his focus on Ryan’s being away all the time and not actually carrying about anyone or anything in the district. Or Richard Painter in Minnesota who is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore in his attempt to win Franken’s former Senate seat as a newly converted Democrat. And he’s fused the anti-corruption, anti-Russian interference, anti-GOP has become extremists and authoritarians national stuff to a good government/governance, no big money donors, singly payer healthcare, pro-environmental protection/conservation platform.
From what I’ve seen all the angles are being covered by a variety of elected officials, as well as candidates and surrogates, at all levels.
Mnemosyne
@guachi:
Given that we will find out that result two weeks from now, I will wait to panic until it actually happens. Two weeks can be a long time in politics.
eemom
1. You have to be out of your fucking mind to care what bullshit polls are saying more than 5 months out from the election.
2. You also have to be out of your fucking mind to debate what is the “great American novel.”
3. RIP Philip Roth. Will never forget giggling my ass off at Portnoy’s Complaint.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve been wondering how trump’s Carrier stunt is looking in Indiana. I would think Donnelly could get some mileage out of that
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m mostly trying to get the conversation kicked off, as demonstrated by the fact that I named my own GAN candidate.
But if we’re talking about The Canon, I think that Edith Wharton was the only woman whose work we read in American Literature, and it was only Ethan Frome. Alcott’s Little Women was a children’s book, not worthy of consideration. And I’m old enough that I don’t think Beloved had been published yet.
Adam L Silverman
@guachi: Cook is himself politically conservative. So I’m not sure he’s completely able to overcome his own biases. I’m also not sure that a great deal of what is building is being under counted and under reported because it is so far outside of anything we’ve seen. For instance, the huge surge and increase of the number of women and women of color and people of color running up and down ballots. The models that exist aren’t designed to capture that. Similarly, and recognizing they have historically not turned out to vote, especially in mid terms, first time registrations of people who will be eligible to vote the first time this November is way, way, way up. By solid double digits. Here too we don’t have models that are designed to capture this. In Florida you also have almost 200,000 Puerto Ricans who have relocated because of the hurricane, ARE PISSED THE FUCK OFF AT REPUBLICANS, and provided they channel that anger into votes have the ability to remake Florida politics come November. Here too the models aren’t designed to capture this. And we’re still 6 months out from the election. Does anyone actually think six months of bad news isn’t going to have an effect? We’re looking at a mess with the DPRK summit. They’ve stepped all over their cranks today in golf shoes on the Iran stuff. They’re facing trade wars with everyone. Gas is creeping up and will go higher. This means food prices will go up. The two will wipe out whatever limited benefit the vast majority of Americans got from the tax cut. And the new insurance rates will come out a month before the election. And the sticker shock there is all on the President and the GOP.
I’m not saying anything is a lock or a cake walk or that things will be easy, but there is a long time to go and a lot of bad news on the way with a lot of indicators that election and campaign specialists aren’t used to focusing on showing something major is building.
Adam L Silverman
@eemom:
Yep. There is only one. And this is it.
https://www.amazon.com/Legion-Super-Heroes-Great-Darkness-Saga/dp/1401244165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527052957&sr=8-1&keywords=the+great+darkness+saga
Adam L Silverman
And with that I’m going to bed. Catch everyone on the flip.
Mandalay
@Duane:
Right. The phrase often used when declining to prosecute is that the parents have “suffered enough already”. It has wide applicability: after leaving the pitbull to protect the baby, after leaving a loaded gun on the sofa, after reversing over something strange in the driveway, after checking the oven when the kid is in the pool, etc.
It could have happened to anyone…
Villago Delenda Est
I live in one of the bluer states around, part of the Left Coast wall. So my local reality is not the same as the reality just a few hundred miles east, and beyond.
I would hope that the 77,000 odd votes that put Donald in the WH may have changed. Radically. But the polls are, as eemom wisely points out, not connected to the reality that will unfold in November, and attempts to ignore the wave by reactionary dickheads are all whistling past the graveyard.
Yarrow
@Suzanne:
Agree. Hope is exhausting. Gave up on it in 2016. I now look at what is or is not happening. I no longer spend time hoping things will change. Too tiring.
Peale
@Adam L Silverman: I need to take the edge off of the Puerto Rican’s will flip Florida idea. A lot of those people will be children who are sent to live with relatives. And a lot will not be registering to vote until they decide they aren’t going to go home. I do hope that the larger PR community in Florida does come out, tho7hh. That will help. But the refugees will have a very small effect statewide. What I would hope is that the awful response to PR and the very slow response to Houston will be a wake up call to lots of voters in that state that Trump and the GOP Congress will not respond to hurricanes Relief calls like they have in the past.
Mandalay
@Adam L Silverman:
From your list I think the price of gas is by far the most important with respect to elections. Unless we actually went to war, nobody is going to change how they vote in November over North Korea. But $4 gas will get the job done very nicely.
The DNC should cut the crap and just pay Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz. Apparently shit like that is completely legal now.
Sab
@Mandalay: We had such locally yesterday. Parents left 14 year old watching a 9 year old and an 8 year old cousin. 9 year old went to kitchen cupboard for snacks and found ( of course) two handguns on the shelf, so of course he took one and shot it, and accidentally shot his 8 year old visiting cousin.
This is in slap your head territory. Yes your neighborhood is dangerous, but young kids with guns is more dangerous than anything outside. I do feel for the family, but guns with kids are not safe, ever!
Why is this so hard to grasp?
Mnemosyne
@Peale:
There are groups that are organizing specifically to get Puerto Ricans registered to vote and to the polls in FL.
I do think that the MSM has consistently underestimated the amount of Democratic organizing that has been going on under their radar. Everyone in the MSM was astounded when Doug Jones won in AL because no one was paying attention to the grassroots organizing that the DNC was funding.
I think we’ll have a clearer idea of what’s going on when the various state primaries are done in the next couple of weeks. CA’s is on 6/5.
West of the Rockies
This is OT, and maybe already been brought up somewhere upthread, but anyone see that Tomi Lehren got doused with a drink at a restaurant?
I know that could be called assault and battery… But if she and her cohorts in bigotry are being called out and shamed for their words and behavior… Well, there are other things more worthy of our concern.
Mandalay
@Peale:
Well one Republican candidate is shitting his pants over it, and says point blank “I don’t think they should be allowed to register to vote”. See this video about 15 seconds in. He also says “I don’t NECESSARILY have a problem” with Puerto Ricans “coming to the mainland”! That’s mighty white of him.
WTF????!!!!!!
Chet Murthy
@West of the Rockies: Less there than I hoped, but hey, it’s all good.
sigyn
@TeezySkeezy (formerly the T S you hate): “…Mueller (riding) into town riding a shark surfing the crest of a might blue wave to wash the Trump stain away”
I need this image on my desktop, right now, please!
Jacel
@Adam L Silverman: It’s hard to argue against the primacy of The Great Darkness Saga as The Great American Novel. Especially when it already has “Great” and “The” in its title.
frosty
@Mnemosyne:
That’s got my vote too. It dealt with slavery and race like no other. It ended with lighting out for the territory, and if that isn’t the essence of America, I don’t know what is.
frosty
@Peale:
Yeah, I can see that one as a possibility too.
Mary G
@rikyrah: @Mnemosyne: It has been wild and wooly here in CA49. Just today I answered polling calls from PPP and the DCC; last week I did three and bailed out of two more that were Republican push polls.
There is a huge amount of money being spent and the number of signs up is ridiculous. The reasons that the Obama boys and the punditry are all riled up is the jungle primary and the fact that they think for some reason that six Democrats and three Republicans are running.
Two of the Dems have no chance. The Republicans have been issuing all kinds of bullshit polls showing two Republicans getting in, but I highly doubt that happens.
This Survey USA poll has the numbers. Note that eight Republicans are running, to five Democrats, a Green, a Libertarian, and two others. The two Republicans that I think have a chance are Rocky Chavez and Nancy Harkey. Because Rocky seems to be leading, everyone else is flinging mud and running negative ads nonstop.
The Democrat side is more even, because two of the candidates are millionaires who have put a ton of money into their campaigns. Maybe too much, because they remind me of Meg Whitman. I haven’t heard a lot of great feedback about either of them, though. Mike Levin is the party’s choice, but he’s really popular with very liberal people, and Doug Applegate, who ran in 2016 and came within 1671 votes of Issa, has by far the least amount of money, but is in second place because he has done so much face to face campaigning. I have decided to stick with him.
We’ll see what happens! I am pretty certain that the Democrats will get one person in, because Indivisible49, and several city Indivisible groups have a strong GOTV going. I’ve already gotten calls about not having sent my ballot in.
Mnemosyne
@Mary G:
I have been basing some of my primary vote decisions on “Which candidate is not actively shitting on his/her fellow Democrats?” I’m going with Chiang for governor because Newsom’s attack ads are pissing me off and, ironically, I may end up voting for Feinstein because De Leon is being such a fucking asshole to her.
JAFD
Spent a few minutes talking with Philip Roth once, asked him what was probably the most inane interview question in the history of American lit (no, ain’t gonna repeat it)
A great writer and a nice person. Sic transit gloria mundi, RIP
Mary G
@Mnemosyne: I was impressed with Chiang calm and sensible manner. Newsom is OK, but I agree he has done himself no favors by being such a drama queen. I ended up going with DiFi too. It’s kind of annoying that people rag on her age when she shows no sign of slowing down – look at RBG go! She released a couple of reports and testimony from Glenn Simpson and Fusion that debunked one of the crazy conspiracy theories early on and I believe she’s one of the reasons the Senate Republicans haven’t gone the Nunes route. She will do it again if she has to and they know it. I hate to lose that experience and knowledge of where the bodies are buried in this precarious time. She has been smart enough to move left and get loud in Twitter about all the right things like Twitler and Pruitt’s corruption, the horrible policy on immigrant children, CHIP, and the assault on women’s rights on abortion/contraception.
? Martin
In case you were wondering if we’ve grown too accustomed to these shootings, and the context against which the founders were writing laws – fewer members of the colonial army were killed/injured at Lexington and Concord than concert-goers in the Las Vegas shooting. It takes about 5 years to kill as many American kids as total colonial lives were lost to combat during the 8 year long Revolutionary War.
Fair Economist
@guachi: The SC race is a loss, but I think the downgrade in NE is 90’s thinking. It’s a swing district with a mild Republican lean; Cook may think Eastman is “too liberal” but she’s a pretty ordinary Democrat on issues which means she’s about in the middle of what the typical American thinks. Like the Villagers, Cook is still stuck in the 20th century where there were a lot of conservative Democratic voters for the Blue Dog types to pick up but the reality is they are basically gone and relevant only in hard-right areas, which NE-2 isn’t.
Fair Economist
@Mary G: 85 is too old to commit to a 6-year job. In any case, Democrats should vote for De Leon just for the chance at a Dem-vs-Dem general.
? Martin
@Mary G: My objection to DiFi isn’t that she’s necessarily too old, it’s that we can easily put a Dem in that seat this year, but when that seat comes up again in 2024, is she going to still be running at what, 91? Or are we going to be trying to elect someone new in a presidential year, with who knows what national politics.
Look at how the GOP is packing the courts with young lawyers that will sit on the bench for 40 years. We should be putting someone in that seat that will be running as an incumbent in 2024 and hold that seat for as long as DiFi did.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
These arguments aren’t meant to be factually or logically correct. They are bullshit, in the formal sense of that term: the people making them don’t care about truth or logic, they care only about spreading the idea that Democrats are always wrong.
B_Rogers
@Adam L Silverman: I didn’t know how much I loved you until I read this comment!
Long Live the Legion!
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’d call it more like a drug cartel. Its shtick is profit, based on selling a product that’s illegal or at least tightly regulated in the civilized world overall. But because of the idiosyncracies of local laws and courts, the extreme weakness/corruptibility of the local authorities, and their success in presenting themselves as folk heroes to part of the population, said product is legal or at least tolerated in its home country. And yes, the fact that we relate to them the same way the authorities in weak or failed states relate to local warlords and trafficking organizations – by partnering with or turning a blind eye to what they do no matter what it costs the citizens – is a disgusting illustration what kind of country the GOP wants to turn us into.
Jack the Second
Has there been a bullied school shooter? I know I’ve heard it claimed several times for several different shootings, but usually it is never supported if not discredited.
Apocalipstick
@Villago Delenda Est: Be careful with this. Has it been confirmed? I remember everything we “knew” about Columbine that turned out to be false.
J R in WV
@Villago Delenda Est:
Secretariat’s win that day was the best horse race anyone anywhere has ever seen – the best horse running the best race ever run.
Last night after I saw Amy McGrath beat the DCCC candidate in a primary in the congressional district around Lexington KY, by taking the rural Dem voters, I looked her bio up. Naval Academy, Marine Officer Candidate School, Navy Pilot School, graduate school, combat pilot of F-18 in Iraq and Afganistan, retired from the marine corp as a Lt Colonel, married to a Lt Commander with 3 kids. So brave, smart, accomplished, born and raised in KY, left to join the military for 20 years, they tried to call her a carpetbagger for moving home to run for office. Fools.
\
Sent her money for the run to the general election! Will send more.