According to news reports I’m seeing, half of the kids who were trapped in the cave in Thailand are out of the cave. No word on their condition. I’m not much of a believer in the power of sending thoughts, prayers, positive energy, etc., but it can’t hurt. Keeping my fingers crossed for the kids and rescuers.
In other news, shit like this should be illegal:
The white Maple Heights, Ohio, couple that called 911 on an adolescent black boy for mistakenly mowing part of their lawn 11 days ago called police on the same boy once again Wednesday, the Fourth of July.
Twelve-year-old Reggie Fields, CEO of Mr. Reggie’s Lawn Cutting Service, was among the kids invited to an Independence Day party and barbecue hosted by Lucille Holt-Colden, the black Maple Heights mother and grandmother who initially hired Fields to mow her lawn June 23…
“We have always been told by the police that if we feel threatened, ‘Don’t confront these people, just call us,’” Linda Krakora said during a recent phone interview. “We’re a slightly older couple. We have a white couple in their eighties next to us. If we feel it’s going to be more of an issue to go over trying to talk to somebody, for our safety, we just call the police.”
The “threat” this time? The kids were playing on a Slip-n-Slide and running into the shared fence between yards. So the Krakoras called the cops. Linda Krakora complained in the same interview about being accused of racism. It’s pretty simple, Linda — quit doing racist-ass things like calling the cops on black kids and caping for your “white couple” neighbors. Jesus.
Fellow white people, we need to talk to our friends and neighbors about this bullshit. The cops aren’t Task Rabbit. If the Krakoras were that worried about their goddamned fence, they should have sacked up and politely asked the neighbors to move the Slip-n-Slide. Or, you know, just shut the fuck up about it and find a hobby that doesn’t involve endangering children, abusing civic power and wasting taxpayer funds.
In other news, bookstore owner calls cops on Richmond area anti-litter activist:
A Richmond, Va., bookstore owner said he called the police on Saturday after former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon was confronted in his store.
Nick Cooke, owner of Black Swan Books, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that a woman called Bannon a “piece of trash.”
The woman then left the store after Cooke said he called 911.
Also, Mitch McConnell was hounded out of a restaurant by protesters:
A group of protesters confronted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Bardstown Road in Louisville Saturday, calling out “Abolish ICE,” before adding they know where he lives.
McConnell was out to lunch with Kentucky’s outgoing House Majority Floor Leader Jonathan Shell, who was upset in his May primary. Shell confirmed the two had lunch, calling the protesters “a small group of extremists.”
The interaction was captured on video and shared with Courier Journal.
In it, someone asks McConnell, “Where are the children? Where are the babies, Mitch?” — an apparent reference to the separation of children from families at the southern U.S. border.
“What are you doing to get the babies back?” someone asks in the clip.
It was a strategic miscue for a protester to say he knows where the senatortoise lives because now McConnell will go on Fox News and complain about feeling unsafe even in his own shell. But it gladdens my heart to see that these treasonous scumbags can’t go out in public without being subject to verbal abuse from disgusted fellow citizens. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.
germy
thread:
schrodingers_cat
What the Rs are perpetrating on us, We the People, is minority rule. It is our civic duty to object to this usurpation of power.
Baud
@germy: The NYT is garbage.
germy
schrodingers_cat
@germy: Three articles onAlan Dersh how many on on Treason 8 in Russia?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Toxic radioactive garbage with an extremely long half life.
rikyrah
The bookstore owner is a friend of Bannon, and stole from a church.
donnah
I heard the news early this morning about the rescue of the children in Thailand and was surprised to find myself tearing up. It’s been such a terrifying experience, and having raised three soccer-playing boys, my heart was nearly broken for them and their families. I’m hoping for a complete and safe rescue of all and a recovery from the trauma they’ve gone through.
rikyrah
Kids+summer+BBQ+slip ‘n slide =call the police???
JPL
Four of the boys are out, and they are increasing the oxygen level in the cave. They will start again in the morning.
germy
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think the NYT covered that visit. Or if they did, they mentioned it in passing.
I really don’t think there’s an innocent explanation for that. I’ve said here before they probably have some sketchy financial/real estate/foreign loans in their past. Either the owners personally, or on behalf of the paper.
rikyrah
Thread
@rafaelshimunov: The owner of Black Swan Books, (Nicholas Trout Cooke, III) who was very concerned about making Steve Bannon comfortable… https://twitter.com/rafaelshimunov/status/1015856119707832320?s=17
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat:
They know their audience.
chris
Mitch!
schrodingers_cat
@germy: A warning when you link to RWNJ websites and Twitter accounts would be nice. Thanks.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: Republican totebaggers?
germy
@donnah: Saw on TV a few days ago the letters the trapped kids were writing to their parents. “Don’t worry, we’re fine.”
Also saw an interview with a teen who was supposed to be with them, but cancelled at the last minute because his parents needed his motor scooter. He said he feels guilty, and wishes he’d stayed with his friends.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah:
Only when melanin levels reach a certain threshold. : (
Turner Hedenkoff
Nice to see the “No justice, no lunch” movement gaining ground. I look forward to reading the upcoming NYT stories about how McConnell having to slink back to his desk with a Big Mac is Just Like McCarthyism.
ruemara
Fuck Linda. Fuck the bookstore owner and Steve Bannon.
sdhays
It does not make you a bad person.
Percysowner
Interestingly, they don’t say if the nice white couple in their eighties wanted the police called. Certainly those senior citizens haven’t called the police twice. Linda K needs to stop doing racist things, if she doesn’t want to be called racist. She also needs to stop getting crazy about kids doing kid things. JEEZE!
Kay
Bravo, Betty. People call the police WAY too much for invented offenses.
OTOH, I would like to see a national program to report white collar crime. If you see something, say something :)
Pruitt’s crime spree was a bad precedent to set. We need deterrence measures. You have to get them before they speed off with the loot.
sdhays
@rikyrah: Trout Cooke, III? What’s his sister named, Sarah Toad Cooke?
debbie
Should I ever be in the area, I’ll go to every bookstore other than the Black Swan.
NotMax
@Turner Hedenkoff
There’s always (literally, always) the navy bean soup.
;)
Baud
@rikyrah: I’m just happy the police didn’t shoot the kids either time.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
In many more ways than you realize. I’m reading The List and am shocked how little I’d actually read about.
Kay
@germy:
They also campaigned against Al Gore. It’s funny liberals have forgotten that because it was such a big thing at the time and he was truly collateral damage in their insane obsession with the Clintons.
Their attacking the establishment Dem to promote a far Right candidate isn’t even new. They did the same thing with Bush.
What’s funny to me is it seems to be institutional- part of the organization- in that it’s handed down to new(er) hires. They could get rid of Maureen Dowd and the 1990’s crew and a whole new group would fill those shoes. It must run deep in the organization. It’s the management. It has to be.
Nicole
I saw a casting notice for the Roe v. Wade movie, back when the working title was 1973. The character breakdown gave absolutely no indication that it was going to be a right wing movie. I’m not surprised people quit when they found out what it was.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: A neighbor of my parents, a lifelong Republican, was named USA for the eastern district of MO by Nixon (Donald Stohr) He made white collar crime a priority for his office. It was definitely a different GOP than the one we have now.
zanamu
“We have always been told by the police that if we feel threatened, ‘Don’t confront these people, just call us,’”
“these people.” One of the few rental properties on my street is inhabited by a large family of Sudanese refugees. Last year, the police shut down a 10-block radius when one of my good neighbors called the cops on a couple of the kids for arguing while black: one kid ran off, thus the shutdown. Apparently the complainant characterized the conflict as a “gang” fight.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Well in the 1930s they were writing glowing testimonials about a strong German leader.
HeleninEire
@JPL: Sky News here is reporting 6. That would be half. Hope. Hope. Hope.
PaulWartenberg
I’ve heard from reports one of the rescuers – a Thai scuba diver – didn’t make it. :(
I’m seeing another report about that black kid who got cops called on him because he was mowing people’s lawns got called on again by the same couple from before. I seriously think that couple needs sensitivity training and maybe mow their neighbors’ lawns – for free – in that’s kid place.
The Ancient Randonneur
Multiple sources now confirm that four boys rescued from cave in Thailand. Previous report of six was in error. Rescue operation begins again at 2000 EDT.
Fingers crossed.
PaulWartenberg
@zanamu:
I wonder where the threshold limit is for the cops, when they will just get frustrated with crazy fearful white people constantly calling 911 and wasting everyone’s time with penny-ante shit.
JPL
@HeleninEire: Four, but still good news.
The Guardian has this statement about our president
HeleninEire
@The Ancient Randonneur: Shit.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: The Manafort case has been a crash-course in white collar crime for me. These well-connected crooks have been brazenly stealing tens of millions for decades right under the noses of the RNC politicians and party bigwigs — they are the party bigwigs! And no one calls the damned cops on them!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nicole: Is that the one that’s going to be the movie debut of Arby’s Cashier Tomi Lehren (h/t Tbogg) and Milo Yabbadabbadoofolis? I was chuckling looking over the list of has-beens and never-wades who have signed up for that nonsense, including Kelsey Grammer’s daughter and the guy from LA Law
germy
@Nicole: Collinsworth quit because when he finally saw the script he recognized a bunch of falsehoods. I think the last straw was when roger stone showed up for a cameo.
Kay
This part of the Jim Jordan scandal should not go unnoticed. Jordan has spent the last year accusing people of things- it’s his entire fucking role in the GOP.
This sleazy “implication” stuff is his whole career. No one should show him any mercy now that he’s been caught in a lie. Feel free to speculate away- he would do it in a minute.
germy
@Kay: Reminds me of trey gowdy yelling “c’mon, let’s wrap this thing up already” about the Mueller investigation. Suddenly, there’s a time limit on investigations….
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: The 2008 financial crisis wasn’t enough of a crash course? Almost no one went to jail for it and they’re back to doing the same things that got us there in the first place.
Kay is right. We need to crack down on out of control white collar crime.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
That’s part of what I’m hoping the Mueller investigation reveals- not just the actions of governments, state actors, “Putin”, but how this is actually a public-private partnership. That’s the part that isn’t discussed. It’s portrayed as “Russia”- a wholly state action- but the private players are huge. You can’t separate the two parts. They’ve merged.
We just saw this in action. The GOP Senators came back and said they want to lift sanctions, not for the people of Russia, but on behalf of business interests in Russia and the US. The private sector piece in Trump’s rise will be huge. They’re the single beneficiaries of it. The rest of us are just collateral damage.
Nicole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: yep, that’s the one. The description really made it sound like they were going to try to do a piece telling, you know, the truth. And as we all know, the truth has a well-known liberal bias.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: I can’t remember who it was on MSNBC who called him out for his carefully mussed hair and loosened tie in that hearing, all carefully arranged like he’d been up all night workin’ on the case and sacrificin’ sleep in the quest for justice, just like the dogged underdog lawyers on your TeeVee,
Elizabelle
@Kay: It’s the publishers. It’s the fuck the fucking Sulzbergers. Who else has been constant throughout?
And when “Pinch” retired recently, the NY Times article fessed up to the Jayson Blair scandal happening under his watch. But nothing else. Jayson Blair did not get anyone killed.
germy
@Yarrow:
I was disappointed when Obama didn’t prosecute the white collar criminals responsible for the financial collapse. And then I saw an interview where he explained that the stuff they did was legal, and that his focus was on changing the laws that permitted their actions.
Of course, this new administration is reversing his reforms. I’m hoping those reversals are temporary. We need to vote these people out.
OzarkHillbilly
from the Guardian:
Probably brought out the strongest boys first so they could spot and then work out any unforeseen problem areas in the route with less pressure.
NotMax
Watched Turned Towards the Sun, a look at parts of the lifetime of poet, writer, WW2 British Commando and somewhat of a rascal Michael ‘Micky’ Burn, last night (Amazon Prime). Interesting is the best word. Enough fascinating moments and sequences to overcome the sluggish bits. May we all have it so together when well into our nineties.
Kay
Keep in mind that all Jordan had to do was say “I knew it, we all knew it, but we allowed it because that was the accepted practice at the university”
He would have been forgiven by the GOP base. That’s an absolute given, considering what they excuse in Trump. It would have been a blip in his rise to the top of the conservative “movement”.
But he couldn’t do that. Because he;s too fucking arrogant and egotistical. So he dug in and lied and in the process betrayed all those wrestlers who admired him and called him a friend. They just wanted him to validate it happened. That’s what they said in the first email. They needed back up from someone powerful. It wasn’t even ABOUT his role. He framed it as about his role, because that’s all he sees. Himself. His ambition. His goals.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
A prosecutor friend of mine confronted the old closetcase in a nice French restaurant here last year – he left, and she sent us the same hotels s to prove it. It was quiet and glorious.
On the rescue, I’m thrilled – the divers have come up with a great plan (every life saved is something of a miracle), and Thai civil authorities have been wise to defer to the Thai navy and the cave diving experts.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: All I see is his cowardice.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
I don’t really know anything about the NYTimes. I just know liberals have been lodging completely legitimate complaints about shitty coverage since Clinton, and it’s never addressed. They can have all new hires and it’s the same! That’s an institutional issue.
I was reading an interview with Amy Chozick because I’m interested in how their careers as authors influence their coverage. People blame Maggie Haberman for the crap coverage but Haberman covers TRUMP. The crap Clinton coverage came from the Clinton team. Chozick thinks Maureen Dowd is great. The reporter who was assigned to cover Hillary Clinton considers Maureen Dowd the gold standard. Good God.
It’s not fixable. You’d have to get a whole new management team. Systemic.
HeleninEire
@OzarkHillbilly: Was looking for you earlier cuz you know this stuff. I am so happy (despite I thought it was 6). This bodes well for the remaining boys and their coach.
Different scenario all together but I remember watching the Chilean Miners being saved. The rescuers rigged, effectively, an elevator to pull those men out. And they said they brought the healthiest man out first and I was like, what? get the ill men out first. Yeah they wanted the healthiest man in there first in case it failed.
Platonailedit
@Kay: He is more of a cowardly bully with phony arrogance.
HeleninEire
@HeleninEire: Also, too fun fact since the miners all got out. When the families gathered at the mine to await the rescue of their loved ones, one miner’s wife AND mistress showed up. WOOPS!
Uncle Ebeneezer
Our power went out yesterday from 1:30-4pm, while it was 104 degrees (it was 113 on Friday.) We packed up our dog and went up to a park and chilled in the shade. It was rather miserable. Today it’s supposed to be ONLY 99 degrees!!, so at least this heat is starting to subside…
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s a great help that the rescuees are slim and muscular Thai soccer/schoolboys, even in a debilitated state. Can you imagine if rescue involved the usual obese American tourist commandos? (Yeah, like they’d explore a cave that deeply in the first place.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve said before, it’s remarkable in the age of twitter that you never see MoDo quoted or her columns tweeted even by “radical centrist” types, but there’s still some kind of reflexive admiration for her, like people say this or that museum that they went to once is one of the reasons they love living in their city. Or Village. Same with Friedman, I can’t remember the last time I saw him being cited in any on line discussion, even by people I roll my eyes at. And fucking Kristof…. liberals should clap harder for trump’s efforts in NORK. I have to remind myself to look for Krugman and now Michelle Goldberg.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: The 2008 crash was a crash (heh) course in how much malfeasance is actually legal, as was the Bob McDonnell trial, which made it clear that outright bribery is legal. The Manafort case involved actual crimes that were done pretty damned openly, and yet no one dropped a dime on his ass.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Seven on the record.
Showers with kids
Smells like a pedophile to me ?
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t know why more people don’t run on it. It’s wildly popular. Bonus points if it’s white collar crime in the service of politicians or government contracts, which it almost always is.
debbie
@rikyrah:
One wrestler was on my local news last night supporting Jordan, saying he had never heard anything either. And so it goes.
NotMax
@Uncle Ebeneezer
Cue Noel Coward.
:)
rikyrah
@Kay:
All they wanted was someone in power to acknowledge their pain. And, yes, he is too much of a sociopath to even do that. I want him DESTROYED ??
lgerard
@rikyrah:
I think trump’s sister was the judge who presided over this case
Ruviana
@HeleninEire: Put on your oxygen mask first and then help others. Same idea. I thought of the miners too. I was watching that while frantically packing to move into a new house the next day!
rikyrah
@debbie:
You think that they did it to every kid? Of course, not. Folks pick and choose their victims.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: The EPA whistleblower who went on the Hayes show to complain about Pruitt against a backdrop of trump campaign signs said that “drain the swamp” was reason he was with trump in the first place. Not to play psychiatrist on the internet, but the guy came across as more than a little odd, and in at least one subsequent story he was named as one of the people bullying a staffer about doctoring Pruitt’s schedule, so we may see him testifying next January.
ETA: which I bring up in response to your point that white collar crime and crony corruption is a good issue. Maybe some Dem could make it an issue, tied to campaign finance, in the upcoming SC hearings, but I think that’s a hard case to make in such a dry and (to too many voters) tangential forum.
(NPR’s top of the hour news just promised me an update on “fired up” trump voters. If they were trying for self-parody I don’t know how they could do better)
Platonailedit
Hold these the thug enabling mofos to account.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“Obambi” is the gold standard of political commentary. So clever!
I personally feel like a bit of a fool. I thought that since Trump’s locus of operations was NYC there would be some actual substantive coverage of his “business career” at least AFTER he was elected. Nope! He operated in their backyard for 50 years and the Washington Post has much better coverage of his corrupt business practices. How does that happen?
germy
@Kay:
Because the owner of the paper of record was involved in the same sketchy financial bullshit?
gbbalto
Heavy rain at the cave. Keeping the remaining boys, the coach, and the rescuers in my thoughts…
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I just heard that. My wife has the little radio on in the kitchen. The woman who reported the story sounded so cheerful when she mentioned the confederate flag she saw as she walked up the driveway.
Also, she mentioned one voter who “regretted” voting for drumpf, but this person was mentioned in passing and was not heard in the segment.
NotMax
@Kay
NYC luxury building concerns don’t buy advertising space in the Washington Post.
Kay
@Platonailedit:
I hate to say it but I think he did a bad job. They’ll dismiss it because his argument was so weak. There are better critiques in the comments section on this blog, critiques that involve actual examples.
The best criticism of the email coverage I saw came from Nate Silver. They couldn’t refute it, he counted coverage- put a number to it- so they huffed and puffed for a while, but they can’t substantively defend the TIME and RESOURCES they devoted to that story particularly now that we know Trump was under investigation too.
The excessive email coverage took a starring role in a debate. Bernie Sanders raised it. THAT’S how big it was.
At this point they may be the only people who don’t see it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as Charlie Pierce always said, her efforts to ‘pink-wash’ Obama were embarrassing. That’s when I gave up reading her regularly, but glancing at the dead trees edition over the years, she was big on “Barry’s playing golf again!” during his presidency. And don’t forget the other half of her ’08 primary schtick: “Obambi and the Dominatrix”. Nerdy, wonky Methodist HRC was a “dominatrix”. I remember in ’08 when Clinton teared up in a campaign appearance and Dowd wrote something like ‘a female colleague watching on TV in our office asked, how is she going to take on bin Laden if she cries!’ I’d bet the farm that Dowd was citing herself as an anonymous source.
Kay
@Platonailedit:
I cannot get around one thing I think I know to be true- this would have been a different election if the FACT that Donald Trump was under investigation had been revealed.
They can’t defend the disparate coverage. We had 2 candidates who were under investigation. They covered only one.
That’s a completely different story, and it’s perfect for them! It’s both sides! The stories write themselves. We didn’t even get that. Instead we got blanket coverage of the Clinton investigation and silence on the Trump investigation. That changed the election.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: BS bros at the Jacobin have a both-sides-do-it take on immigration. Did you know that Obama was as bad as T on immigration.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
Yes, it is the Sulzberger’s. Having that name was an entree to every party/event/happening of every kind in NYC and summer locales. When I started saying on this blog in the summer of 2016 that I wondered what kind of dirt the Russians found on their servers, I was completely serious. I do not find it plausible that the Russians hacked the DNC, Clinton campaign, DOD, State Dept., White House, RNC, etc and not media outlets.
The other issue which everyone should keep in mind is that laundering money through real estate is yuuge business in New York City. Before the Times, which has been heavily in debt and cash poor forever, moved to their Times Square location they owned real estate there that increased tremendously in value thanks to Rudy Giuliani. If you remember Times Square before Giuliano was mayor and “cleaned up the city” you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Those rumors about what happened to homeless people, have never been confirmed but people who were there one day were gone the next and that has never been explained. Anyway, Giuliani was very very good to the property values in Times Square.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ugh. “Take on” Bin Laden. Let’s not even mention how they flogged 9/11 for a hundred years. “America’s Mayor”- that sleazy old lobbyist and right wing profiteer is not my mayor.
They should cover Trump like they cover DeBlasio, who seems to be in the Clinton category for coverage. Try that. Cover him like they cover a mayor they don’t like. That’s a workable template.
MomSense
@MomSense:
Also I suggest people look into the renters of the Times Tower and the loans to keep the company afloat.
brendancalling
I don’t feel badly, at all, about the protestor saying he/she knows where Mitch lives.
Fuck him. Fuck him and however scared the old man is. he brought that shot on himself
Peale
@Kay: yep. And it has nothing to do with latent leftism at the times that couldn’t stand “triangulation” or “neoliberalism” in Clintonism. They promote those things all the time. It’s just weird.
Kelly
Pro gun rallies drew dozens of protesters Saturday. Organizers disappointed by turnout.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/small-student-led-rallies-show-support-for-gun-rights/2018/07/07/1969fb5e-8211-11e8-b9a5-7e1c013f8c33_story.html?utm_term=.1dec599385c5
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s a graphic of what it takes to get out of the cave. Worse than I thought. Three hours of underwater swimming.
rikyrah
Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) Tweeted:
Here’s a story about the Trump administration threatening the rest of the world in order to protect pharmaceutical companies from a resolution that would encourage universal breast-feeding, which would prevent 800,000 child deaths a year.
https://t.co/6Uc08Cct8v https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1015970893862846465?s=17
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I knew they were going to lose those kids. The federal government isn’t set up to be custodians of kids.
This was a fucking CRAZY idea. Even when we kidnapped native American children we didn’t have the FEDERAL government do it. It was accomplished thru state law.
Just the cavalier way they did it! They grabbed 2500 kids and they had no way to care for them or keep track of them because the federal government is not in the child custody business! The judges who are complaining that there’s no process? That’s true. NO process. There isn’t one and they didn’t put one in. They just winged it.
If you’re in or around a child welfare agency at the state level your reaction is “what do you mean you don’t know who they are or where they are?” That’s what “custodian” means. It means stepping in the shoes of their parents. The MOMENT they grabbed those kids the Trump Administration became their parents. They’re terrible parents! They don’t even know where their kids are.
Felony Govt
I escaped the heat to an air conditioned mall yesterday and was truly disgusted to see that Bloomingdales is selling Ivanka Trump shoes. I fired off an angry message to them, and told as many friends as I could think of.
Peale
@MomSense: yep. The Sulbergers have actually been reducing their ownership of the media business for years to diversify. The real estate holdings are probably where some of that money ended up. It’s got to go somewhere. My guess is that it’s tied up with some unsavory types who lurk around investment these days
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: And his dreamy blue eyes.
MomSense
@Kay:
They didn’t lose those kids. They never intended to keep track of them or reunite them with their families. They didn’t even give them the same numbers as their parents. They didn’t keep them in the same cities as their parents.
If you wanted to set up a trafficking operation, you would do it this way.
different-church-lady
@Platonailedit: The veil on his disgust is thin to the point of non-existence.
opiejeanne
@PaulWartenberg:
In the 70s we had a neighbor who called the cops for all sorts of stupid reasons, so calls from our little street were sometimes treated as crackpot calls. The cops did a drive-by when called for an active break-in next door to us. I mean, the thieves were in the house when the cops just rolled on past.
It’s the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Here’s a small piece of the Ohio state code on state custody of children:
It goes on for 40 pages. There’s a whole section of the juvenile court system devoted to it. A state agency and then a division in EVERY county. When you take children from their parents this is the responsibility you take on. HUGE.
This is true in all 50 states. Sessions, Miller and Kelly just grabbed those kids with no process in place to care for them or return them. It’s insane. They’re crazy people. Also- REALLY bad parents.
Kathleen
@debbie: I haven’t seen any coverage on my local news (WLWT Channel 5 in Cincnnati), which is strange because Channel 5 is NBC affiliate.
gene108
Wishing ill upon evil can never make you a bad person.
hitchhiker
@Kay:
Trump ran on it.
Drain the swamp! I know what crooks these politicians are because I’m the guy they used to come to for campaign donations! And then they’d do me favors, huge favors! It’s all rigged and I’m going to stuff it down their throats!
He’s got to be so pleased with himself for that con.
gene108
@germy:
I for the life of me, even back then, cannot figure out why Whitewater required two Congressional special counsels and two years of headline news coverage.
And the media has never bothered two subject our “CEO Presidents” (Bush, Jr and Trump) to the same level of scrutiny on all their failed past business dealings, which they got bailed out of in less than transparent ways.
West of the Rockies
Meanwhile, NPR has a story up about Republican voter enthusiasm. Why, they’re more engaged than in 2014 when they won back Congress!
No Democratic voter mentioned. Just Repub after Repub. Fuck you NPR.
Haroldo
@Kathleen: Coverage on the whole Jordan scandal, or just this one wrestler’s statement? If the former, I’m not surprised – it seems a lid has been thrown on this. Perhaps (and I hope) a few more days of percolation will blow the lid off.
Elizabelle
@West of the Rockies: It’s like we don’t exist. I see that a lot in newspapers too. Fuck NPR indeed.
They all sound so excited to be discussing the Supreme Court, when I hear the hourly recaps. Like it’s not going to be a total disaster, and eventually their own funding cut.
Fuck NPR.
NotMax
@West of the Rockies
Empty barrels make the most noise.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Drum
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Our self appointed progressive betters say that Obama made them do it.
MomSense
@Peale:
They announced construction of the tower in December of 2001. Remember what the economy was like then? They finished construction in 2007 and were terribly in debt. They are still in debt.
IMHO, following the money would be revelatory.
Haroldo
@West of the Rockies: NPR will go the way I fear the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is going. The ABC was gutted bit by bit as it feared its funding would dry up. The reporting got more and more ‘mainstream’ (a/k/a conciliatory to right wing talking points). And now a former Murdoch employee is head of the ABC, and the funding very well might be removed by the current right wing (and growing more reactionary by the day) gov’t.
In spite of this attack, the ABC still isn’t as grovelling as NPR (and its better journos are not disappearing easily).
Fuck you, NPR, indeed.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jul/08/abc-supporters-including-kerry-obrien-and-magda-szubanski-rally-to-save-broadcaster
debbie
@Kay:
I’ve read that one child has been adopted out and won’t/can’t be returned.
boatboy_srq
Wow. Those Other People™ buying houses next door and everything. Soon they’ll be [gasp] talking to us like regular neighbors or something (and obviously not the
livestockstaff they’re supposed to be – although wouldn’t staff be responsible for mowing the lawn in the first place?)And of course one of the LEOs responding had to write up that the kids bumped a board loose in the White People’s White Fence and all. Because BSDI and the kids obviously couldn’t be completely not at fault.
debbie
@Kathleen:
You’re likely joking about Hitler, but that was exactly how people described Charles Lindbergh, the front man for the American Nazi sympathizers.
rikyrah
@Kay:
This is what isn’t being reported.
They had NO INTENTIONS OF RETURNING THE KIDS.???
People who intended to return the kids would have a tracking system for the kids. THEY DON’T.
there is no other conclusion.
debbie
@opiejeanne:
Here, they’ve started charging for false alarms (for EMS and the Fire Department). I think they should do the same for 911 calls that turn out to be nothing.
J R in WV
I just heard on ABC that they brought out the 4 weakest boys first, and they all made it to safety, which is amazing to me. I’ve caved and I’ve dived but cave diving never made it onto my bucket list at all.
Not even in a crystal clear spring, much less a twisty passage with squeezes and zero visibility! I don’t much like squeezes in a plain old WV cave! When you have to exhale to get past a tight spot and you feel the limestone on your back and your breastbone, that’s tight!
My respect for the Thai Navy divers is complete!! This shit is hard. And the volunteer cave divers from around the world!
Kathleen
@Haroldo: The whole Jordan scandal. I was watching it this morning for an hour and not a peep. I don’t recall any stories earlier this week either. Since his district was gerrymandered from local boy John Boehner’s older district I would think they could find “local story” angle based on that.
patrick II
America against Mother’s milk. In what should be a new low, except for the whole government child abduction policy, the United States has come out against a UN bill supporting the use of mother’s milk to feed their children because it will cut into the profits of the baby formula cartel. Countries were threatened to not sponsor the bill until Russia came to the rescue. Of course.
Kathleen
@debbie: I could have sworn one of the NYT articles at least mentioned his blue eyes. I’m on my way out the door right now but I’ll google it when I get home. Caveat: I could be wrong about specific ref but the fawning tone of the Hitler article was redolent of “Tiger Beat On The Rhine” (to steal and paraphrase a Pierce meme).
lgerard
I expect trump to announce the formation of the new Cave Force sometime next week
Mr Stagger Lee
Justice for this White A-hole who called the cops on a Black woman and her child for using the pool in North Carolina.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: We are under a minority rule where diplomacy and governance has been replaced by mob tactics like blackmail and extortion.
Teddys Person
Yesterday, an embarrassment to all middle-age white women showed her racist ass on public transportation. Here’s Orangetown Town Commissioner Chris Day’s statement on Facebook:
More public officials like Chris please.
Mr Stagger Lee
@patrick II: Just like in the 1980’s when the Reagan Admin joined Iran of all people in opposing a UN measure encouraging the use of contraceptives.
Robert Sneddon
@Cheryl Rofer: No-one does anything in cave diving in a hurry. Slow and steady and, if everyone on the team has done all the preparation, logistics and planning correctly everyone comes out alive. Three hours total swimming effort might only cover a few hundred metres of actual distance travelled while submerged.
From various reports they’re extracting a single evacuee at a time through a series of submerged sumps and pot-holes using two divers as escorts. The problem is that those divers need to be replaced every trip, probably every segment because it’s exhausting for them so fresh divers need to go in to the starting point and intermediate staging points and they also need to be supplied with food, water, extra air bottles, lamps etc. as well as the equipment needed to get the evacuee out. I think I saw mention of ninety divers involved in this operation and that probably doesn’t include dive masters and technical diver support personnel, dive medics etc.
Kudos to the people involved, this is a monster technical feat and it looks like they’re succeeding. It’s a real pisser that they’ve lost one diver already though. Don’t be surprised if it happens again or of they have to medevac a diver or two if things do go wrong.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
I just finished reading this story. The cowardice and cruelty of the Trump administration is, by now, standard operating procedure.
But what is strange is Russia riding to the rescue.
Also, strange is how the US backed down once Russia stepped up. Almost as though the two countries were playing a game to let Russia upgrade its status as a benevolent super power.
Also Interesting that China, the true super power, doesn’t give a shit about helping on globsl health and social issues.
SFAW
@Kay:
The driver for the NYT’s destruction WAS Pinch, and as of January 1st, it IS Pinche Sulzberger. As far as I can tell — based on how he used his newspaper — Pinch hated the Clintons with a passion. I had hoped his son, Pinche would rebel against the old man (the way Pinch was somewhat different from his father, “Punch”), but he appears to be a (cow)chip off the old block(head).
I wish Bezos had purchased them instead of the WaPo. On the other hand por que no los dos?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@patrick II: God – at least it sounds like Trump’s attempts to block the resolution were ultimately unsuccessful – I guess Putin and his oligarchs don’t have big $ invested in baby formula.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@SFAW: Bezos with two national newspapers? Watch what you wish for…
A Ghost To Most
@debbie:
I’m sure no money changed hands. /disgust
cope
Since this is an open thread, I would like to take a different tack and ask if anybody else is an F1 fan? Today’s British GP was an outstanding race and I marvel that the sport I started following in the late 60s is now so TV accessible.
Back then, I would have to wait for days to read results of a race, only got to see the occasional race on TV (usually the Monaco race on Wide World of Sports). Now, we can watch every practice round, qualifying and the race live including POV cameras on the cars. Very cool and a pleasant distraction from the shit show in which we find ourselves living.
Bex
Thanks to whoever restored my name and got rid of the out of place click to edit and request deletion commands. Still can’t view the site without error messages popping up unless I pause the Billboard and whatever is under it auto play ads.
MagdaInBlack
@Kay:
We have a better system for checking /tracking coats in a night club, for god sake. Quite frankly, I think one “plan” was to turn these children over to various Xtianist adoption organizations* for indoctrination and adoption out to fine white families. So, not unlike our treatment of Native American kidnapped children.
* ( aren’t Ms Devoss and her brother involved with one such site in Michigan?)
A Ghost To Most
@SFAW: I don’t. WaPo still matters, and is doing comparable work to Watergate.
FTFNYT.
debbie
@Kathleen:
Here in the shadow of OSU, the NBC affiliate makes mention of Jordan every broadcast I’ve seen, but nothing in depth or even remotely critical.
opiejeanne
@MagdaInBlack: Yes, the DeVos family is tied to one such charity. I saw a report on it that it only has about 30 beds and sounded like one of the better ones; I’m not sure how they’re making money from it.
SiubhanDuinne
@patrick II:
One of the commenters on the Twitter thread about this story came up with the single best comment I have seen on the internets in many a day:
I would love to have come up with that.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
RE: BS bros at the Jacobin have a both-sides-do-it take on immigration. Did you know that Obama was as bad as T on immigration.
I despise these people as much as I despise the Trump administration. But I am not surprised at their reaction. They are like religious zealots. The real world doesn’t exist to them. Nor can they ever see themselves working with people who are less pure than they are.
They only see the vision of paradise that they want to bring about.
ETA. Shorter, what I hate the most about these people is that they don’t care about the families and children. They only care about gloating about their own ideological purity.
A Ghost To Most
@SiubhanDuinne:
So much whinging.
Platonailedit
@Brachiator:
WTF? The traitorous thug’s admin actively tried to sabotage that UN bill and you are blaming chinese ? Your trump will do what trump does normalization shtick is getting annoying.
Platonailedit
@cope:
Pity Hamilton, who ran a great race to come back from last to second, could not make it due to Ferrari’s suspect tactics.
J R in WV
@debbie:
You are incorrect. The NY Times wrote and published numerous complementary pieces on “Mr. Hitler” over the years starting in 1922.
I couldn’t get this link to the archive to come up for me, maybe others will have better luck:
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1922/11/21/98786796.html?pageNumber=18
They also covered the American-German Bund meetings at MAeison Square Garden quite a bit, which were as much like Mr Hitler’s meetings as they could be, except for no Hitler present. Also a lot like Trump’s “rallies” to no one’s surprise!
The Times has been broken for many years, nearly a century now.
JPL
@Brachiator: It appears that the US didn’t try to bully Russia. hmmm I wonder why!
Kelly
@debbie:
I’m nervous about how racist cops could use that as another way of failing to protect and serve minorities.
cope
@Platonailedit: Yes, Hamilton drove an outstanding race. As I recall, at the end, he was on the medium tires while the Ferraris were on softs. That may have come in to play as well but you can’t discount Hamilton coming from dead last to finish second. Simply an amazing performance and how cool to see those over-takings from the driver’s point of view.
sukabi
@Kay: There will be photos that show up at some point that put Jordan in a headlock…he’s not going to come out of this intact. He may even get to spend time in Hastert’s cell.
MobileForkbeard
@patrick II: To be fair, telling mothers to go milk-only is a terrible idea. Theres a movement in the US for this. and hospitals even get certified this way… but it’s responsible for a lot of damage to young babies when mothers are discouraged from supplementing with formula.
That said, somehow I doubt that’s what was happening with the Trunp admin.
low-tech cyclist
Maybe. OTOH, if he or others complain about this, it would give an opening for Dems to point out that wingnuts do this to people on the left all the damn time, frequently to people you’ve never heard of, who get this treatment for no better reason than the drooling hordes didn’t like something they said. Mitch can probably get a security detail if he needs one; these folks can’t.
Sloane Ranger
@MomSense: The whiter looking ones can be adopted by good Christian parents and brought up to be right-thinking Americans. As for the darker ones, good for home helps/basic chores before being kicked back to some shithole South American country at age 18./snark.
Platonailedit
@cope: Some of the racing camera angles are amazing. Instant replays for instant gratification helps too.
Mnemosyne
@West of the Rockies:
I just saw a chart on Facebook showing that Republican turnout is up between 25 and 50 percent,
Democratic turnout is up between 75 and 150 percent in those same districts.
And yet it’s the smaller turnout that is deemed the bigger story, ?
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
Quite a number of newspapers wrote positive stories up to the 1930s.
And editors were hamstrung by their desire to be “fair” and “objective,” despite what was happening right in front of them.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/early-warnings-how-american-journalists-reported-the-rise-of-hitler/254146/
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Only R voters matter to our media. I have known many male white working class D voters IRL. They are never ever profiled by the goddamned media.
Brachiator
@Platonailedit:
You need to work on your reading skills.
swbarnes2
@Brachiator:
Let’s just remember what ‘breastfeeding support’ really looks like in the 21st century
http://www.trusselltrustforum.org/uploads/136/UNICEF_UK_Baby_Friendly_Initiative_Statement_Food_Banks_April_2014.pdf
Between breastfeeding and making formula with unclean water, breastfeeding is far far safer. But if you have clean water, breastfeeding shows almost no benefits over formula in well-controlled experiments. The PROBIT studies in Belarus showed no long term health benefits. An Irish study of behavior and cognition found no benefits. The NSLY study of thousands of sibling sets found no long term benefits.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2017/03/23/peds.2016-1848
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4077166/
If women want a little help to get breastfeeding rolling, that’s fine, but breastfeeding support is not going to make magical health benefits in Western populations. Breastfeeding has tripled since the 70’s in the US population wide…can you think of any child health measurement that has substantially improved in that period due to breastfeeding?
And the way breastfeeding support is actually happening in the US, it’s more about shaming mothers, and risking the lives of newborns in the name of conflating a woman’s biological functions with her moral worth.
MagdaInBlack
@Sloane Ranger:
Not snark. Exactly correct.
Brachiator
@swbarnes2:
What the fuck does this have to do with the Trump administration trying to intimidate other countries in order to prop up the profits of certain corporations.
Trump doesn’t care about the facts. He consistently applies a brute force method that favors narrow business Interest over everything else.
And it is also pretty clear that Trump doesn’t care about mothers or babies. He doesn’t care about the nuance of policy that you note here.
Ruckus
I’m dog sitting for my friend in nocal and watching the Ken Burns Vietnam special.
I highly recommend it to everyone to watch. The lessons we didn’t learn then, that the South Vietnam didn’t learn, are instructive to us now. Or at least they would be if the maladministration was capable of learning anything. But in any case it’s a valuable view of history.
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
And because it can’t be said enough,
Fuck LBJ.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Ruckus: Just completed it. I think Ken Burns outdid himself on this one. The last episode itself ought to be watched by the politcians. And Fuck McNamara and Richard Nixon
Chris Johnson
@Brachiator:
You think?
Strange times we live in, but it’s not like it doesn’t make sense.
So does this: the idea of the Trump administration being ‘bad parents’ with immigrant children separated from their parents is kind of understating the case. It’s always projection with these evil people, and what’s going on is child sex trafficking on US soil. Imagine the sort of quid pro quo involved with getting massive campaign contributions from the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, and then combine that with the fact that these Trump-circle people are completely amoral and also full of themselves and miserable at being conspiratorial. They are bad at being criminals because they’re used to wielding so much power and money that they don’t have to be sneaky or good.
So now, the system and the other evil Republican people in Washington are choking on the overreach that’s been done over and over by the Trumpsters and their people.
No, you can’t seize immigrant children and sex-traffic them. Not even if you’re the government.
Now everybody’s scrambling not to be implicated. And Putin’s people have had a lot of access… and they ARE good at being bad. There’s going to be a lot of kompromat, in a lot of different ways, and that’s why this all is so messy. We have a lot of naive true believer rightwingers who only wanted to persecute and torture wrong-thinkers… and ended up ensnared in shit that they know is horrific, and they’re trying to get away with it on the grounds of ‘but we didn’t intend THAT’.
We’re definitely the next Nazi Germany. Everybody try to minimize the damage and save who you can while this all works out. It’s way WAY too evil to last.
Mnemosyne
@Chris Johnson:
It’s not just sex trafficking. Certain groups of fundamentalist Christians are already notorious for “adopting” kids from developing countries and then essentially enslaving them for use as domestic servants. They often don’t bother to complete all of the adoption paperwork, so the kids reach 18 and discover that their adoptive “parents” never filed the paperwork for them to become citizens, so now they’re stuck serving those “parents” forever under threat of deportation. They’re usually also homeschooled, so they have limited contact with anyone outside the family and/or church who could potentially help them.
And, of course, they’re expected to be grateful for all of this and cheerfully work to pay back the parents who “helped” them. ?
swbarnes2
@Brachiator: Obviously strong arming other countries is terrible, and useless in light of Russia’s eventual sponsorship of the motion.
But this is not an example of the US trying to tank a supremely wonderful public health policy which saved millions of lives. Formula made with clean water saves lives when breastfeeding won’t work, as sometimes happens.
Ruckus
@Mr Stagger Lee:
On this blog that goes without saying.
Of course it’s never in bad taste, it’s just obvious.