I remember seeing an old Twilight Zone episode as a kid that’s stuck with me all these years. It’s the one where a woman who is considered attractive by American beauty standards in the second half of the 20th century is thought hideously deformed on Planet Pigface. The moral of the story is that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.
I thought of that story when I saw this Fox & Friends clip about a wingnut woman’s incognito safari to a rally hosted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Cori Bush, congressional candidate for the Missouri 1st district (who sounds like a great candidate, BTW).
Fox & Friends had Daily Caller editor @VAKruta on to discuss the fear she felt attending @Ocasio2018 rally.
"They talk about things everybody wants, especially if you're a parent. They talk about education for your kids, health care… it was really uncomfortable." #BeyondParody pic.twitter.com/BULE0KFuPJ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 24, 2018
The undercover operative for The Daily Caller, Virginia Kruta, says she’s not scared of rallies in general, having attended events for Trump and Ted Cruz. But she expresses alarm at the beguiling appeal of messages she heard at the Ocasio rally:
“They talk about things everybody wants, especially if you’re a parent, like education for your kids, healthcare for your kids, the things that you want, and, if you’re not really paying attention to how they’re going to pay for it, or, you know, the rest of that, it’s easy to fall into that trap and say ‘my kids deserve this.'”
The horror. But here’s the part that made me feel like I was listening to a clip from Planet Pigface:
“I was mostly uncomfortable because I was surrounded by a group of people who were talking about how they had gotten involved because they were tired of being angry all the time. It seems like so much effort to be angry about everything instead of to focus on what you can do to change it.”
Sounds like the crowd was at a political rally precisely because they chose to focus their anger on changing things. Only instead of being mad about ambitious women, justice-seeking black people, taco truck-driving Mexicans and what-not, they’re angry about lack of access to a decent education and healthcare for their kids.
But the cognitive dissonance generated by a Trump rally-goer decrying voter anger should be jarring enough to warp a person’s face. Ask not who wears the pig snout, dear. It oinks on thee.
Open thread.
Miss Bianca
I knew there was a reason I avoided “The Twilight Zone” when I was a kid.
AnonPhenom
Charlie Pierce knocks it outa the park (again)
trollhattan
It’s almost as though this fine “journalist” approached the assignment with one question “What do you want me to think?”
“Who are these pod people who want to eat, live in houses and send their kids to school? So very unexpected.”
feebog
Who are these monsters that want access to health care and enough to eat for their kids?
LAO
I’m totally gobsmacked by this.
Capri
To be fair, if you are immersed in the right wing bubble you’d probably expect everyone at the rally to be quoting Karl Marx and to generally be frothing at the mouth. That’s how liberals are portrayed in those circles. Which makes me think they won’t air anything like this again as the reporter humanizes the left in spite of herself.
Baud
@AnonPhenom: I kind of disagree. There are no “turns” in politics. You either win or you lose.
dmsilev
@trollhattan:
Seeing as the “reporter” is from Tucker Carlson’s House of White Privilege, I’m shocked.
Just One More Canuck
Was it Fox and Fiends or The Onion?
Baud
@LAO: I’m not sure why. These are people who thought Obama was the devil and Trump is a godly man.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Yup. That platform Pierce describes is a joke– corporate funded national pensions to supplement social security? Just strengthen social security, you dimwitted wankers. The promise of a secure and dignified retirement and not going broke if you get cancer were key to the wins of both the dread socialist from Brooklyn and that nice young man from western PA. And the disgusting Beast from Queens. Don’t focus on the wankers, don’t scream at them, don’t call for them to be exiled to Anthrax Island, just talk around them, and win
and ignore the Beltway. Pundits have willful blindness when it comes to the social safety net, all they hear is “entitlement reform”. To watch even MSNBC the night of Lamb victory was to think he ran on a campaign of hating Nancy Pelosi. Even EJ Dionne made a passing reference to Lamb’s reference to (IIRC) his grandfather and FDR. That wasn’t a footnote, that was the half the fucking story.
Mnemosyne
I wrote a term paper about that episode in college! It’s one of my all-time favorites, and shows that Donna Douglas (from “The Beverly Hillbillies”) could actually act when given a chance.
It is, of course, one of the classic “twist” episodes, because (spoiler alert!) the pig-people are the standard of beauty and Donna Douglas is considered to be hideously ugly and deformed by their whole society.
Ian
I am equally sure that this reporter would be shocked, shocked I tell you, that at the last Democratic caucus I went to the one thing in the room all 74 of us could agree on was “get money out of politics”.
SFAW
In a perfect world, all of America’s RWAs would go to their own (simultaneous) liberal-hating rallies, get-togethers, and events, and those events would have a common theme/title:
“To Serve Man”
ETA: Actually, since altruism is a null-set in RWAs, maybe it should be “To Serve Republicans”
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: We’re also getting played a bit by the media here. All the recent debate about “moderates” vs. the left (based on Michelle Goldberg’s otherwise good column today) stems from (1) a meeting of the piddling Third Way group which was attended by fairly minor players in the Democratic party, (2) Comey’s tweet, and (3) Joe Lieberman’s op/ed about Cortez. All these people are nothingburgers within the Democratic party, but it’s being played as if it’s the core of the Democratic “Establishment” leading the charge against lefty upstarts.
Mnemosyne
@feebog:
This is a theme that Fred Clark at Slacktivist goes back to again and again: evangelicals are told that evil people will speak of peace while secretly fomenting war so therefore ANYONE who actually talks about wanting peace (or health insurance, or public education, or enough food for everyone) is really working for the opposite. That means that the only trustworthy people are the ones who say up-front that they want to take away your health insurance and food stamps, because at least they’re telling the truth.
It’s a sad, sick, twisted way to think, but that’s what they think. They tell their followers that the people who say that they want to make their lives better are not to be trusted and the only people telling the truth are the ones who openly want to hurt them.
Leto
Funny enough, my wife talked about that this morning. The fact she thought we were living in a Twilight Zone episode. I pointed out most of those episodes were warnings, but Republicans thought they were instruction manuals.
Do you know what I’d do to have a good taco truck come to where I work? We have some good Mexican restaurants in the area, so if one of them decided to setup a mobile taco shop and park it in front of where I worked? Shoot… I would probably have to double my weekly run miles, but I’d be damned happy about it.
Paul W.
If the Democratic party is so full of Manchurian candidates… why do they keep waiting so long to switch from the “soft” liberal messages of healthcare and protecting kids instead of just going to the awesome juicy fascism and religious rule?
The projection and ignorant hypocrisy (speaking of a mindset is I don’t understand how to maintain) is so absurd it drives me beyond all desire to be “reasonable” if the Democrats ever do get back power.
tobie
@Baud: Along the same lines: it’s amazing to me how often people forget that Pelosi comes from the liberal wing of the party. Off to the library…if the path there is not flooded already.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Yeah, you endlessly hear on TV (MSNBC, cause I’m in a TV bubble) the more robotic daytime anchors “Do Democrats needs a message besides being anti-trump?” and some guest will point out, yet again, that on the trail Dems are talking about health care and economic inequality. So there is pushback, but that earnest, would-be contrarian, “even liberals have got to admit…” schtick is so deeply ingrained, it’s like the allergy to talking about the popularity of Social Security.
I would like to see some of the MSNBC prime time crew (or anyone, but I can’t be bothered with CNN– is Wolf Blitzer still on?) take an occasional break from Russia to talk more about health care or our allegedly robust economy.
Major Major Major Major
I saw that on twitter. Amazeballs!
@Mnemosyne: these days when I think of a twilight zone twist episode I think of the parody from the last Darin Morgan x-files.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not sure can trust them to talk about those other things in a way that’s honest and fair to Dems.
Chyron HR
@AnonPhenom:
“Clintonism”? I thought the left “saved” us from “the Clintons” by burning the country to the ground in November 2016. That was the trade-off for the nazi prison camps, right?
Leto
@Mnemosyne: It’s everything to do with the end times, and how the anti-christ will come promising everything but deliver them to the pits of hell! If it’s not Revelations, then it’s the Old Testament. They skip everything in between. Asking them to work together, to help us all have a better life, is just a foreign concept. Either you get the mana from God, or you starve. It’s another part of the Prosperity Gospel, and it is indeed sick and twisted.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: A thousand times THIS. The ex-governor of Delaware no one in the other 49 states ever heard of? James Fucking Comey? Joe Fucking Lieberman? [insert rolling eyes emoji]
sherparick
Apparently Ms. Kruta missed hearing the “lock her up” chants from the crowd.
tobie
FWIW, I just checked MO-01 on Ballotpedia and the incumbent William Lacy Clay is a Democrat with a strong liberal voting record. Why is he being challenged?
Mnemosyne
@Leto:
Apparently Kruta (the Daily Caller “reporter”) is now claiming that we took her words out of context, but doesn’t seem to be able to explain what the context was.
I think you’re correct that it was an expression of her nutty End Times beliefs and she can’t explain those outside of her bubble because people not steeped in it just stare blankly at her.
lgerard
Virginia Kruta sounds like she wants to get off the train at Willoughby
Tim C.
Listening to it reminds me of something important. The right wing complex has created a very powerful, very false image of what it is liberals and Democrats stand for. Going to the rally made the Fox bot uncomfortable because it didn’t fit her own narrative of what we are and what liberalism and socialist is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sherparick: good lord, was that at a “high school leadership event”? some kind of thing aimed at the youngs?
Looks like “Turning Point USA”, somehow affiliated with the Tea Bagger groups, I believe. Non-partisan swing-voting hero Ken Bone brought his deep Concerns about civility there.
jc
I’m tired of hearing Tucker Carlson’s chronic lying, and I’m depressed to realize that there are people who actually take his crap seriously. When you put on the special glasses, Carlson’s pig face is revealed.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
Yep. I wanted to scream when I started reading an article about this stupid meeting. Big fucking deal, they got about 200 wealthy people in a room to decry creeping sokalism. But then I said fuck it, why am I reading this garbage and I stopped.
SFAW
@Major Major Major Major:
Are you talking about his recent one? Or his last one from the original X-files (with Charles Nelson Reilly)? I haven’t seen any of the rebooted series, but the Jose Chung episode was great.
Leto
@Mnemosyne: “It wasn’t the hysterical mob I was lead to believe, who would be shouting to abolish ICE, take away all the guns, establish a one world order, and force the entire nation to use the same doctor! They were talking about children’s healthcare and education, jobs, light rail infrastructure, and making sure people could buy a home! I FELT SO AFRAID!”
Yeah, it’s all “in-group” speak. If you don’t know the code words you’re essentially speaking a foreign language.
The Dangerman
@jc:
Carlson’s, Hannity’s, and Ingraham’s time is coming; when the indictments come, they can do their best Kevin Bacon of Animal House “all is well” all they want but good luck with that (actually, Hannity might get one of the indictments, but I digress)
SFAW
@Tim C.:
If you haven’t read it yet, you should read the sorely-missed Steve Gilliard’s comments on being a liberal.
A Ghost To Most
Womp womp
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Meanwhile, this thoughtful and serious conservative doubtlessly calls for The Wall, every aircraft carrier in the world and a tax cut all at the same time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Must be that anti-Pelosi platform
Yarrow
@tobie: I was wondering the same thing. Anyone from Missouri’s 1st district or nearby know what’s going on there?
Belafon
Parents actually think all the time about how they’re going to pay for school. Parents of not-wealthy income wonder why their kids should be disadvantaged because they’re not wealthy.
Doug R
@Chyron HR:
FIFY
Major Major Major Major
@SFAW: the recent one, with the “twilight zone” cold open.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: No idea. I looked the candidate up to check the spelling of her name and read her story and stance on the issues on her campaign site. That’s all I know about her. Maybe someone who lives near that district has insights.
cope
@lgerard: HEE HEE, good one.
Major Major Major Major
@SFAW: @Major Major Major Major: (no mobile edit button) also, the episode of The Scary Door in Futurama that has a bunch of famous twists piled onto each other. “Why should I believe you? You’re… *holds up mirror* Hitler!”
Cacti
@tobie:
Ocasio-Cortez is also heading to Delaware to campaign against Sen. Tom Carper.
Dems are still the real enemy of the Berniecrats.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
The context was speaking to people who agree with her. She never meant those words to get out where liberals could hear and mock them.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: I read that the incumbent, William Lacy Clay, has held his seat for 17 years and took it over from his father who held it from 1969-2001. Maybe Cori Bush feels he doesn’t represent the district all that well, plus dynasties aren’t good for democracy.
Cermet
@Mnemosyne: LOL; when you said:
That is all religions, which is why they are all evil. That is because religion is just human tribal group think and nothing more.
Brickley Paiste
Talking about things that everyone wants is a horrible strategy for Democrats.
We need to foreground transgender rights, reparations, m and open borders to focus on the issues that are important to our base.
Mike J
@Betty Cracker: There’s a candidate running against Adam Smith here in WA too. Her whole shtick is that she’s not a politician. You would think a doctor would understand the upside of experience and training.
tobie
@Cacti: Do you have a link for the Delaware visit? I live in Maryland, right next to Delaware, and would be curious. (I should add that although Chris Coons is the junior senator for DE, he’s far more visible than Carper, and, as far as I can tell, a better spokesman and defender of liberal values. I like Coons and wish Carper would move a bit more to the left.)
grandpa john
@Leto: And this goes back to the quotation from Pope’s Essay on Criticism
It seems as if many of them read only certain parts of the bible.
rikyrah
@tobie:
He’s also Black, and a former Chairman of the CBC. And, he’s a preacher.
Chyron HR
@tobie:
“We don’t want blue, we want that worships-Bernie-as-the-one-true-god blue! (foams at mouth)” – Nina Turner, mostly
Chyron HR
@Brickley Paiste:
Is “Shut Up Tranny Freaks” the official position of the Messiah Bernie and His Revolution, or are you winging it?
Jeffro
@Tim C.:
Exactamundo…”I know these people are evil, but they seem to be sticking to these ‘education’ and ‘health care’ talking points. Where’s the part about eating live Republican babies?”
zhena gogolia
@Miss Bianca:
My favorite, favorite episode of all time. I’m too lazy to read the thread, but I’m sure someone has identified the lovely woman as Donna Douglas, aka Elly May on The Beverly Hillbillies.
I was pleased and surprised one day to discover that my students knew all the old classic Twilight Zone episodes, and even corrected my synopsis of the Burgess Meredith library ep. I guess they’re out there streaming somewhere.
Amir Khalid
I’m appalled by Vrginia Kruta’s belief that appealing to the normal desire for one’s life to be better is the “Democrat” party’s siren song rather than its rational proposition to the people. Truly, there are none so blind as those who will not see.
danielx
Education and health care for kids!
The horror…the horror….
I (un)eagerly await the next David Brooks column in full concern troll mode, gently tut-tutting these poor naive people actually attempting to make a difference.
ETA: @Baud:
Also too, fuck Joe Lieberman.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@feebog: Now, now. If she’s a mom she probably wants and expects it for her kids too. Just not yours or mine.
Major Major Major Major
@Chyron HR: if you don’t tell the tr*nny freaks to shut up, how are you supposed to get the votes from well-known democratic constituencies like Christian fascists and incel white supremacists?
zhena gogolia
@Mnemosyne:
lol, I knew it.
Just One More Canuck
@Yarrow: Is he doing a good job for his constituents? Is he a reliable vote for the Democrats?
ETA – Cori Bush is apparently a ‘Justice Democrat’ – Cenk Uygur’s group, before he resigned
patrick II
In Virginia you can audit college classes for free if you are over 65. So, last year I audited an Economics class. The rules of Economics are taught as if they are rules of nature, unbreakable and unchangeable. A rise in minimum wage will cause unemployment because of the law of supply and demand — despite that is not what has happened during American history. The rules are studied as if they exist apart from the context of laws and society — drawing one to the conclusion that a libertarian society is best. The teacher is a good person and gave to charity. She was also Puerto Rican yet did not get that the economic rules made by others will hurt her island.
Economics is being taught as natural science, not social science and the profits by large corporations are because of the laws of nature, the invisible hand of Smith often conflated with the invisible hand of god.
Government interference causes inefficiencies, is unnatural, and, kind of obliquely, against god’s will.
Yarrow
No surprise here.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Brickley Paiste:
Nyet, tovarich. There is time and energy to talk about all those things.
Citizen Alan
@Leto:
I have told Christianist Trump voters to their faces that voting for shitgibbon was the same as taking the mark of the beast and that God was going to send them to hell.
tobie
@Yarrow: This confirms my general impression that rural Americans like to pick themselves up with other people’s bootstraps. Freeloaders extraordinaire.
ETA: These are of course the same people who said regarding loans to Solyndra and the auto bailout that the government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers. So I emend my previous epithet for them: Freeloaders and hypocrites extraordinaire.
danielx
@Citizen Alan:
Got in-laws like that, but I have resisted the temptation.
So far.
Jeffro
Betty, I’ll see your “Eye of the Beholder” and raise you an “Eye of the Bubble-Dweller”. As in the Fox Bubble, on the viewer side. As in my RWNJ dad.
So I had to tweak him this morning with Michelle Goldberg’s column (the one I linked to in the previous thread), noting how odd it was that at a time when the GOP is running outright white supremacist/neo-Nazi candidates, we’re…talking about Democrats getting extreme.
Here’s his first response:
But wait, there’s more…(’cause clearly he knew if he left it there, at “Nazis vs people who want health care”, the latter will win)…so out of the blue and apropos of nothing he added…
I KNOW, RIGHT? Kuh-Ray-Zee!!
So in response, I chose to just focus on this “both sides” bullshit:
RWNJD’s response:
Say what now??? We’re back at Susan. Frickin’. Rice*??
*I think just as bringing up Nazis is “Godwinning”, a Republican falling back on attacking Susan Rice for her many, MANY imagined sins should be termed “Ricing”
Jeffro:
RWNJD:
Aaaaaaaand we’ll just stop there. (I guess in addition to “Ricing”, we will need “Jarretting” too – beyond illegal into pure evil? So Valerie Jarrett should go to jail for “anything in her past”(!) “just like Paul M(anafort)”(!!!)
Our candidates in 2018, 2020, and beyond are going to have to explicitly address this crazy, imagined “both sides” nonsense. Us voters and activists, too!
? Martin
@Citizen Alan: Years ago I was at Ace hardware when the customer in front of me chatting with the cashier made a reference about hoping the rapture would come soon. The cashier agreed and they both listed off their financial woes and bad personal decisions that they wanted to escape from. Think about the mindset of that person when they enter the voting booth.
They’re really, really banking on white Jesus to send them to the great aryan pool party in the sky, and voting accordingly.
Jeffro
@Yarrow: Trumpov to farmers: “Here, let’s bribe you so you don’t do something rash like protest my stupid, ill-conceived, temper-tantrum driven ‘policy’ or vote for politicians who point out how dumb I am and how hypocritical the GOP congress is”.
I’m sure this would be acceptable from a Democratic administration, absolutely.
Brickley Paiste
@Major Major Major Major: @Chyron HR:
Sanders focused his appeal to the economic concerns of the cisgendered white working class and that is why he lost.
There is a lesson there.
Citizen Alan
@Brickley Paiste:
Wanker.
Jeffro
@patrick II: I can guess which VA university you took the class at…
Yarrow
@Jeffro: Can you go to your dad’s house and enable the parental controls on his TV and put Fox News on the block list?
trollhattan
@patrick II:
I took econ during stagflation and my professor was very open and candid about how the then-current theory and models did not accommodate what we were experiencing. It has been noted that econ needs to be a humanities and not a business school department (I have no idea where yours may be housed). Lots of wingnut money is spent getting econ into bidnez school.
AnonPhenom
@tobie:
Let the BJ feeding frenzy begin…
trollhattan
@Jeffro:
Your dad is Roseanne Barr? You might could write a book!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
from Larry Sabato’s outfit
as of yesterday, Kasich was not endorsing the R candidate, I believe
Chyron HR
@Brickley Paiste:
@AnonPhenom:
You guys have to speak up, we can’t hear you when you’re wearing giant bird suits to celebrate the bird that descended from heaven and marked Bernie as the Chosen One.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@patrick II: That’s what you tend to get in an Economics survey class, when you get to Economics principles level courses and on to graduate level courses, you tend to see less handwaving and things tend to quite a bit less absolute. That’s why I always say that Libertarians took the survey course in Econ and did well and when the professor did the handwaving on externalalities and market failure they thought (s)he was saying hi to them.
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: I think we need more Futurama allusions here at Balloon Juice. The fact that the show’s been off the air for years is no excuse.
@Yarrow: Didn’t Mnuchin say earlier that this plan wasn’t legal? I could have sworn… On the other hand, what are the chances this makes other countries just ratchet up their tariffs again in response, since the Trump administration is just saying “Eh, we’ll try and cover it for you kinda.”
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“Brave Sir
RobinKasich.”Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jeffro: Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett sure do trigger a lot of rightwing paranoia. Why so ever might that be….
just saw on MSNBC that trump is now warning that Russians are seeking to swing the mid-terms to Democrats. Fasten your seatbelts, those of you who have rightwing relations and Facebook links
tobie
@AnonPhenom: Well, she’s certainly become a flashpoint in Democratic politics. At first her victory in the primary was celebrated across the board. Now she’s managed to alienate a number of Democratic constituencies. God knows how she thinks this is going to help in November.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: @patrick II: I’ve heard of Econ being taught both ways; I encountered the same thing taking archaeology classes in undergrad. Some profs parrot the establishment discipline party line, others offer a critical look at it while teaching same (since at the end of the day it’s the curriculum).
Archaeology as a discipline was still undergoing a revolution in thinking that started in the 1970’s at that point (~2003). Academia moves slowly, and that’s without billions of dollars at stake trying to keep the discipline stagnant.
There’s lots of worthwhile stuff in establishment Econ and behavioral Econ, just as there’s worthwhile stuff in processural archaeology (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processual_archaeology). The trick is finding the right teacher who can show it to you while also offering other modes of thinking in the discipline.
Yarrow
Do your fucking jobs.
Brachiator
@Capri:
The contemporary right wing only knows parody communism. They wouldn’t know Karl Marx from Groucho Marx.
Starfish
A Ghost To Most
Dispatches from Earth2
Jim, Foolish Literalist
just gonna leave this here for the moment
Major Major Major Major
@MisterForkbeard: we need more Futurama allusions everywhere.
Are you excited for Disenchantment?
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: Does… does your RWNJ dad think Valerie Jarrett was Vice President? And he thinks that Nunes was actually proved correct? Wow.
I’m having a conversation with an old high school friend now on facebook about media capture, and this is exactly the kind of thing we’re discussing. Yeouch.
Humdog
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I did not understand Gen. Hayden’s tweet. What does it mean?
Yarrow
patrick II
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
It was a survey course. And I think for most who aren’t going into business or econ, that fills a requirement and that is all they are going to take. So they get this very pseudo-mathematical false precision introduction partly because its easier to teach than a course with ambiguity. And that ends up being their total view of econ. And like the lady reporter, like many of them, listen “education for children, feed the hungry”, and they can’t square it with the way they were taught the math works.
Education is really letting us down here.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: At UCLA the Econ department is a social science along with Political Science and Sociology.
Baud
@Cacti:
@tobie:
I don’t know anything about Carper, but campaigning against a sitting Dem Senator is on a different level from supporting a Dem primary candidate in a race to unseat a GOP incumbent. This will not end well.
Also too, I’m not sure how “safe” a seat Delaware is. Didn’t Coons win only because the GOP there nominated that witch person?
Jeffro
@A Ghost To Most: That makes a lot of sense there, Donnie…Putin was standing right next to you when he said he favored you in 2016; now, he wants to saddle you with a Democratic congress?? Um, sure…
Betty Cracker
@Jeffro: I feel your pain. I am dreading my late grandma’s upcoming memorial because I’ll have to listen to brainless wingnut bullshit like that. Fortunately, the liberal wing of the family (we’re about 50/50 if you extend it out to all living generations) will be there too, so we can back each other up.
Baud
@Jeffro: I know it’s your dad, but you are much too nice.
eric
@A Ghost To Most: Then how about some bipartisan legislation to address securing the registration rolls and voting rolls?
Jeffro
@tobie:
I used to live in DE up until about 5 years ago…you are correct on all count except Carper needs to move a LOT more to the left. ;)
Coons is awesome.
@Baud: Coons won because Mike Castle lost the GOP nomination to Christine “I’m Not A Witch, and I Also Owe a Shitload of Back Taxes” O’Donnell. DE is a solidly blue state but Castle did have a ton of crossover appeal. OH WELL DE GOP!!
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: I’d missed that your grandma had passed. So sorry to hear that. Condolences on your loss.
MisterForkbeard
@AnonPhenom: AOC can and should feel free to ‘help’ primary people if she’s got a good reason for it. Where I draw the line is she Bernie’s the thing up and tars people as corrupt that will go on to run in the general and who… aren’t corrupt.
She can @Major Major Major Major: I IS excited for Disenchantment. The new trailer was pretty great, though it already reminds me of the first season of Futurama where they were still finding their footing. My wife laughed out loud at the pet shop joke and that’s a great sign.
Frankly, I’m such a Futurama fan that every time I hear someone talk about Al Gore I want to quote his joke in Futurama: “As I wrote in my book ‘Earth in the Balance’ and the far more popular ‘Harry Potter and the Balance of Earth’, global warming is…” Whoever hired Kristin Gore to write on that show was a goddamn genius.
Booger
@patrick II: LOL Did you go to Koch U, I mean George Mason? A grad-level econ class was teaching classic supply/demand, dissing Keynesian stimulus…as Greece was falling. Don’t ever let facts or contrary EVIDENCE get in the way of good dogma.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@patrick II: Yeah, the survey course is just there to teach the basics and in a “perfect world”. Going into more would require several years of coursework.
(Full disclosure: I did graduate work in Economics.)
Gin & Tonic
@AnonPhenom: I think rikyrah above pointed out what Rep. Clay’s major drawback is, to the Bernistas.
MisterForkbeard
@A Ghost To Most: I guess it’s time for another fervent wish for the media to point out that Russia is actively supporting Trump right now and we have demonstrable proof of this.
Maybe in a world when the media did their jobs. You’d really think “President elected by and conspiring with foreign power” would be a news story that gets a lot of clicks, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
tobie
@Baud: Coons did win against the “I Am Not A Witch” person, who was cruising at the time because the Tea Party was united against Dems. However, I don’t think Coons would have any trouble getting reelected and the same is true for Sen Carper. What pisses me off is that people’s resources are finite and we’re now wasting them on primary fights–see, too, MO-1, where the incumbent is a liberal Dem–when we need to be conserving whatever dollars we have for the general election in November.
zhena gogolia
@Humdog:
I didn’t understand it either and don’t have time to read some 6-vol. history of the Civil War.
Major Major Major Major
@MisterForkbeard: I always think “I HAVE RIDDEN THE MIGHTY MOON WORM!”
I’m curious to see what Groening et al do with a more serial-oriented story. I also liked when the guy got impaled on the stupid throne made of swords.
cmorenc
@Baud:
It’s more like they think Trump is Gods’ unlikely instrument, the analogy often used is Matthew (hard-nosed tax collector) and Paul (former zealous persecutor of Christians) who ended up serving God as Jesus’ apostles – i.e. God sometimes puts ungodly men on the path to end up serving God’s purposes. Of course, the analogy fails badly in that in their chosen examples are of amoral or immoral people who come to see the light and become devoutly moral men willingly, deliberately serving God and their newfound morality – whereas there is absolutely no sign of any present or forthcoming moral conversion by Trump or intent to serve God rather than mammon and ego – instead all signs are that he is dealing with Evangelicals in a coldly transactional way, and would immediately fuck the Evangelicals over if he could make another more favorable deal with another political interest group. Their hatred of brown immigrants blinds them to the cruelty of Trump’s nature toward people.
A Ghost To Most
@Jeffro: I commend your effort, but you can’t teach sheep to dance. They don’t learn the steps; they just faa-llow.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: Poor you. My 94-y.o. MIL (the only person I have left at that generational level) comes up with some really creative insults when she happens to see Il Donaldo on the teevee box.
Jeffro
@Baud:
Yeah, probably, but really letting him have it doesn’t do anything either (except causing both of us to quit talking for weeks). He knows he’s wrong, he just can’t get ‘there’ to admit it. The all-day, every-day Fox-Fest doesn’t help either obviously.
I take solace in the fact that my eventual inheritance from him is going straight into things he’d never approve of – scholarships for poor and minority students, GOTV organizations, PP. And to pay for a road trip to Orangmandias’ grave (plus a case of Bud Light ;)
smintheus
We can’t have affordable government-subsidized health care, but can give billions of dollars to farmers when their crop prices don’t meet expectations? We can sabotage the health care market for those fancy-pants Democrats and walk away from the chaos smirking, but when we sabotage the export market for good Republican voters we need to give them a hand out.
Socialism is bad because it’s political bribery except when it’s good political bribery.
Booger
@?BillinGlendaleCA: See my comment to Patrick II…in certain prostituted economics departments, this swill still flies at the graduate level.
A Ghost To Most
@zhena gogolia:
Second day, Battle of Little Young Top. Rebels tried to turn Union left flank. Chamberlain and Co. Said Ed the Union position.
A Ghost To Most
@A Ghost To Most: Little Round Top.
F A-C.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Booger: Classic supply/demand would be taught in a graduate level principle course, but since you have a year to cover it you’d also learn about market failure and externalities.
Major Major Major Major
So where’s the money and executive authority to give farmers billions of dollars come from anyway?
Ohio Mom
@patrick II: Funny, I took that same Economics intro class at the University of Cincinnati in the early 1990’s, with one exception. The TA who taught it thought the deduction for mortgage interest was evil incarnate, and somehow managed to work that into many lectures.
All you have to have is enough self-awareness to know you make hardly any personal decisions rationally and the entire edifice of the intro version of Economics falls apart. Real economists know better.
Is there any other field that is as misrepresented in the standard intro course as Economics is?
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: What part? That he’s black or that he’s a pastor? Or the former chairman of the CBC? Cori Bush is also black and also a pastor. She’s a nurse and a woman, so those are some differences. She couldn’t chair the CBC, never having been in Congress.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/07/it-is-time-to-help-farmers-hurt-by-the-tariffs-we-imposed-on-them/
CliosFanboy
@Citizen Alan: I love you!!!
tobie
@Jeffro: I remember you said you were from Delaware when there was a special election for a state senate seat inJan 2017. (The Dems hold on the State Senate at that time hung in the balance.) Coons, by the way, came for the victory party for that one seat and Joe Biden called in. Carper wasn’t around.
Gin & Tonic
@Yarrow: Looks like I went off half-cocked.
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: “I must go now, to help collect cans on Jupiter. PEACE OUT, Y’ALL!” Ideally, this will be something I can yell when I quit my job.
Disenchanted looks like a dark, fantasy (not to be confused with ‘dark fantasy’) version of Futurama. I’ll take it, even if that means I won’t get more jokes about Schrodinger’s Cat or The Vice Presidential Action Rangers.
@Major Major Major Major: Congress would approve this in a heartbeat. Dems would be wishy-washy on it but vote for it, as they don’t want to be “punishing farmers”. Republicans will hail this as visionary leadership to help farmers through a hard time, even if they think Donald should be approaching the trade war differently.
Booger
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Koch U don’t believe in ‘externalities.’ They’re for hippies.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: ah, one of the zombie New Deal programs.
Starfish
@A Ghost To Most: You and I were referencing the same tweet at the same time. Trump’s reality distortion field is not having the same effects on Wall Street as it once did because they are not driving the market down on all the tariff threats. This is bizarre because they were all too happy to drive companies that Trump hated down, but he wants to tank the whole economy? Meh.
germy
JustRuss
@patrick II: When I took Econ many many years ago, the text was pretty clear that “the free market” didn’t actually exist, the closest example in reality being farmers who all produce essentially the same product (if you ignore gov’t subsidies of course), and that the supply vs demand equations were just models that were subject to distortion in the real world. They don’t teach that anymore?
Baud
@JustRuss: I think the market has learned that Trump is full of shit.
zhena gogolia
@A Ghost To Most:
Okay, I understand that even less.
CliosFanboy
@?BillinGlendaleCA: econ majors should be required to take 2-3 history courses for every econ course they take so they can learn what happens in real life when their theories get put to the test…
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker: Great post and spot on analogy! This really made my morning. Thank you.
ETA: This is also a favorite Zone episode. If I recall correctly, the discovery scene is highlighted by intercut shots of the society’s Dear Leader appearing on a TV monitor, exhorting the populace toward greater conformity.
Major Major Major Major
@MisterForkbeard: if it’s as good as Bender’s Game I will be 110% happy.
Humdog
@zhena gogolia: Glad to see the explanation missed you, too!
opiejeanne
@Mike J: We’ve got a candidate running against democrat Manka Dhingra, who won the special election last year to replace our state senator who died right after his election. Andy Hill, R. That was the only R representing us, and her election flipped the senate in Olympia. She’s being challenged by Dale Fonk who says: we gave her a chance and she’s turned out to be… A DEMOCRAT. AIIIEEEEE! She hasn’t been in office for a whole year yet.
Also, he refers to her as voting like a downtown Seattle Sawant Socialist Democrat. Last Sunday we went to a brunch to support her reelection and I asked one of her friends what that business about Sawant meant, not knowing who Sawant was. He’s being more than a little racist with that claim, because they’re both from India.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: Thank you. We’re having her memorial on what would have been her 100th birthday, so she had a good run!
Chip Daniels
@Brachiator:
Right Wing: We don’t want sockulism!
Also Right Wing: We demand crop subsidies to offset our losses from tariffs!
A Ghost To Most
@zhena gogolia: Battle of Gettysburg, 2nd day.
Rebels attacked the left end of the Union line at Little Round Top. Had they succeeded, the Union army might have been destroyed.
Chamberlain and his troops saved the Union army. It was a big deal. The war changed the next day.
Aimai
@Mnemosyne: yes! I’ve been thinking about this ever since the wapo article about the christianists reading the bible through a white natiinalist lens. One of the things that became obvious is that people become anxious and ashamed by their selfish and cruel political impulses and need to be comforted by Rush or their religious leaders in order to avoid the human temptation to be humane.
MisterForkbeard
@germy: Thereby demonstrating a real lack of leadership at a leadership summit for high-schoolers. Way to go.
I want to stress how screwed up that is: Our Attorney General is chanting “Lock her up!” about the political opponent of his boss, despite the fact that she hasn’t been found guilty of any wrongdoing by Session’s own department and that Session’s boss has openly called for her to be jailed (and sometimes, he even condescended to new investigations before jailing!).
Once again, Republicans are betraying everything their office is supposed to stand for.
patrick II
@JustRuss:
Not in the class I took. The models were taught as if they had scientific precision, and doing things contrary to them would be the equivalent of ignoring gravity and stepping off of a cliff.
While I was taking the course, I was wondering how many thousands of students were being taught the same way throughout the country and the political price we pay for that.
FlipYrWhig
@smintheus:
Their theory boils down to that socialism (a/k/a welfare a/k/a government) is bad because it gives things to Those People, who are lazy and want a handout, but if there was a way to give aid to Us People it would be great because unlike Those People, We worked hard and deserve it. This is what every Republican believes.
Jeffro
@tobie: “from” DE = lived there almost 2 decades. But I’m truly “from” the Republic of Northern Virginia, both originally and now. =)
Anyway, yes, Coons and Biden are true Dems – as good on economic issues as they are on social ones. Carper is a pretty corporate-aligned pol, with a veneer of progressiveness on social issues. He’s getting pretty far up in years at this point…will be interesting to see if he’s determined to stay in office until the end, or bow out gracefully sometime soon (and let Markell or Carney have a shot).
CliosFanboy
@A Ghost To Most: here’s a good version from “Gettysburg”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL-5uyp44WA
Gin & Tonic
@MisterForkbeard: The High School Leadership Summit Dinner is tonight at the Trump Hotel in DC, with speakers Donald Trump Jr., Rand Paul, Jeanine Pirro and Kimberly Guilfoyle (aka Don Jr’s mistress.) So that’s the kind of “Leadership” you’ll get.
Sounds like a blast.
Kathleen
@AnonPhenom: I think he is offering nothing more than warmed over anti Democratic tropes. “Democrats are the problem.” Right Charlie. Let’s complain because no free college and old Dems are meanies. He is totally clueless.
And my intent is not to flame you or any of his other fans here.
Hobbes83
@Gin & Tonic: Something is really starting to bother me about her. I think it first started after she blasted Gillibrand for supporting Crowley during the primary. She had already won the damn thing, and decided to go after her for no real reason after she had already won the fucking thing.
A Ghost To Most
@CliosFanboy: I grew up deeply immersed in the Civil War (crazy ass racist ammosexual cosplayers). Do not miss.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@CliosFanboy: No, any Econ program with it’s weight will provide that in it’s program. The problem is that it isn’t presented generally in the survey course, nor should it. It’s just to teach the basics, which confuses most students anyway(there’s math involved). That said, I’m all for breadth requirements in college to produce well rounded graduates.
Chyron HR
@Hobbes83:
Like Chelsea Manning and (probably) Bernie 2016, the OC campaign was intended to lose and gin up resentment against the “establishment”. Actually winning was not part of the game plan, and as it turns out she didn’t have a plan B if she got the nomination.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: Aww…that’s nice. Hopefully your family can focus on celebrating her and not all the other crap. That is a really good run.
Baud
@Hobbes83:
Probably.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
@zhena gogolia:
Yep. Great episode. And very well crafted. The beautiful Donna Douglas essentially has to convey all the emotions of the visual “discovery scenes” with her face and body. But she has only a single line of dialog in the episode.
In the first part of the episode, actress Maxine Stuart provides the anguished voice of the woman talking to the medical staff, who hopes that her disfigurement has been “cured.”
Elizabelle
Watched your clip with Virginia Kruta. I think it’s possible that woman is within a year of getting woke, or at least a start on “woke”. She likes her pay for The Daily Caller, and her conservative community where they do nothing but disdain, and her creds, but she is going to start asking herself those questions. Maybe she’ll stay dishonest, but …
Busy today, but might hunt down the clip in full.
I originally wondered if the comments were some kind of code to others who are waking up, but did not seem to be, at this time.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: No big deal. I was wondering what I’d missed.
Frank McCormick
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This is one of Atrios’ pet peeves — why come up with some complicated scheme just because it’s “new and bold’ when you can just fix the existing program. (His typical example: miles driven tax versus just upping the existing gas tax!)
BruceFromOhio
And I hope it keeps you awake every single night for the rest of your life, along with that gnawing feeling that you are missing something that is really, really important, but you just can’t determine what.
Like a soul, maybe.
CliosFanboy
@?BillinGlendaleCA: OK, maybe just the ones at George Mason…
Rand Careaga
@Jeffro: How old is the RWNJ pater? My own would be, let’s see, ninety-seven in a couple of months—he pegged out three years ago—and would certainly be a full-on Trumpazoid today. Alas, though, I have some relatives near my own age (sixty-six next week) who sound like your old man.
Gin & Tonic
@Frank McCormick: The gas tax doesn’t account for electric cars.
tobie
@Yarrow:
I think politics may be the only business where we hold people’s experience against them. Granted incumbency can be corrupting but governing’s tough and requires expertise. I’m glad we have Schiff with 17 years in the House on the Intelligence Committee, and Nadler with 26 years on the Judiciary Committee, and Cummings with 22 years on the Oversight Committee, and Waters with 27 years on Financial Services. Has Clay been ineffective? Do his politics oppose the politics of the Democratic Platform crafted in 2016? If not, I see no compelling reason to oppose him.
stan
I suspect (not a mind reader here but a history nut) the point of the Hayden tweet about Gettysburg is: when our republic was in real danger, a couple hundred ordinary guys, led by an exceptional amateur, pulled off an incredible feat simply by having the guts and presence of mind to do it. So to can we, in this moment of real danger.
The 20th Maine was led by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a former college professor from Bowdoin who went on to become a general in the army and governor of Maine. This unit was on the extreme left at Gettysburg, i.e., they were quite literally the last soldiers on that end of the line, and they prevented a union loss in the battle that day.
If you never learn anything else about the civil war or any American military history, you can look to this story as a truly inspirational, absolutely authentic episode of courage and dedication. It’s one of the greatest small-unit feats in US Army history; they should not have succeeded in what they were trying to do; but they bloody well did and saved the union army that day.
germy
@MisterForkbeard: The weird thing is, I saw a flyer for the event, and they said it would include a cocktail party. ??
Gex
@A Ghost To Most: I think I love this part the most:
He doesn’t HAVE to pick chihuahua. He could just say dog. Or lapdog. But he specifically picks the most racist example he can find while bemoaning the nativism that is hurting the party.
They just can’t help themselves.
stan
I’m thinking porn is another business like that.
odd that they have that in common. ;)
hueyplong
@Gex: It’s their nature. They can pick out some aspect of what they say and tone it down, but the’re oblivious to the fact that it’s baked into their every utterance, every thought. They always give themselves away and it rarely takes long.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gin & Tonic: True; but if you’re taxing to repair roads, heavier vehicles do more damage to roads and also consume more gas.
Geeno
@A Ghost To Most: Also – the Second Maine was so low on ammunition, Chamberlain had to mount a bayonet charge to secure the win.
Joshua L. Chamberlain was a Rhetoric professor at Bowdoin College in Maine.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@stan:
Porn would be age and looks, not experience.
zhena gogolia
@A Ghost To Most:
But what is the whole left left left thing about? He’s not referencing Bernie, is he?
Ohio Mom
@Elizabelle: Out of morbid curiosity, I followed the links all the way to Kruta’s Twitter page and read it for a while. She has an occasional witty retort, she isn’t inherently stupid, just very, very brainwashed. For one example, to her, it’s simply self-evident that universal health coverage is impossible, there’s no need for laying out an argument.
Lots of our folks answered her on Twitter and rebutted her, mostly without snark, and usually with clearly stated facts.
Is she capable of weighing those answers fairly, could she admit for example, that as a veteran she has had all her needs taken care of by the government, that Trump rallies with their cries of “Lock her up!” and the nazis with their tiki torches, are undeniably violent (unlike the rally she went to), and so forth?
That would’ve take huge personal integrity, it would be a huge risk. I wouldn’t bet on it.
zhena gogolia
@CliosFanboy:
Okay, thanks, a picture is worth a thousand words.
zhena gogolia
@stan:
Thank you!
Spanky
@Humdog:
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
There needs to be some kind of “economics for dummies” that tries to explain economic principles and the real world, with a dash of common sense. I’ve never seen much point in focusing on a “perfect world” since nobody lives there.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Steve knew what he was talking about.
JAFD
@patrick II: John Quiggin, who blogs at CrookedTimber.org, has put up there the prepub draft of his new book, _Economics in Two Lessons_. What I’ve read thereof seems both smart and wise.
In less than six volumes, Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine regiment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Chamberlain
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/joshua-lawrence-chamberlain
Hope. everyone’s having a good day today !
zhena gogolia
@CliosFanboy:
I thought that was Jeff Daniels, but wasn’t sure I recognized him behind all the foliage.
Jeffro
@Rand Careaga: He’s 72 – very early Baby Boomer.
Although to be fair, my high-school age daughter had a kid in her class last year who is even more vocal in his defenses of Trumpo & Co and even more dense in his attacks on Democrats.
Citizen Alan
@Chip Daniels:
As I have said repeatedly since the election (which really crystallized things for me on this point), WWC Republicans would be perfectly fine with hard-core Scandinavian Socialism if only POC weren’t allowed to benefit from it. They want a world where they can sit on their asses and do nothing and still live the good life while POC slave and toil to support them. IOW, they want the Confederacy.
Elizabelle
@Ohio Mom: Wait. She’s a veteran? That’s an interesting wrinkle. Because the military is about the closest we come to a socialist-funded and distribution structure in this country.
Good for checking. Let’s watch this one.
Marcopolo
Just dropping in to say hi & comment on the MO-1 House race. I live in the district. I will be voting for Cori Bush. I did not support Bernie in the primaries and worked my ass off to get Hillary into the White House. In terms of politics, I probably agree with Lacey Clay on just about every issue. I have voted for him in the past. But here’s the thing, he has had a safe seat his entire tenure in Congress (first elected in 2001 iir). He occupies that seat, he votes the way I’d like him to vote, but that is the extent of it. He doesn’t lead. He is my fricken Congressman and he could do so much more. As an example, he doesn’t actively go out and encourage minority and economically challenged folks living in his district to register to vote and participate in the political process and elect people who will make their lives better. His voice was pretty much not heard during the entire Ferguson/Michael Brown police shooting situation. Perhaps that is because he spends/has spent more time in Washington DC over the past two decades than here in St. Louis. Anyway, we can do better than that with this safe D seat. St Louis City (and the County to a lesser extent) tends to be segregated along a north/south axis. South St Louis is predominately white, North St Louis predominately black and the central corridor is mixed. St Louis has elected one mayor from the northside over the past 50 years. As the most prominent AA politician in the St Louis region Clay should, over the past several decades, have done a lot more work to help his constituents empower themselves. The final kicker for me is that Clay is currently grooming his son to take his seat. I don’t need three generations of the same family representing me in Congress and taking this congressional seat for granted as some kind of inheritance.
The chance of Cori Bush winning this primary is pretty low (unlike Crowley who no longer looked or sounded like the folks who now live in his Brooklyn/Queens district, Clay fits right it–he still has lots of family living here). Yes, we will lose 20 years of seniority if she wins. Yes it is possible that if she wins she will be an awful Congresswoman. But hey, if that is the case, there is another election in two years.
Finally, let me contrast that position with how I feel about Claire McCaskill who has to run statewide here in MO. McCaskill is nowhere near as liberal/progressive/insert-your-favorite-adjective-here as I am. But I am busting my butt knocking on doors for her because she is as moderate a Dem as can be elected in the state of Missouri at this time. If I lived in MA or CA I’m pretty sure I’d be voting for someone much farther to the left of her.
So sure Cori Bush’s largest support bloc are former Bernie supporters & she is getting some buzz & AOC came and campaigned with her (notice Bernie did not–I suspect he is friends with Clay from their time together in the House). A lot of what that means is there were a lot of folks who were politically activated by Sanders campaign and they have stayed energized and involved since then–to the point that they can run a credible candidate for St Louis mayor (Tishaura Jones only lost by about 500 votes in 2017) & a credible campaign against Clay. I welcome that energy. They, along with a lot of angry women activated by the Women’s March & Hillary’s loss, have really revitalized the D party in MO.
If you haven’t seen this piece on Warren by Rebecca Traister, read it. Warren is right–we need to lean in with the energy, anger, and hope that is happening right now in Dem politics, not mock it.
Well this was overly long and the thread might be dead but that’s my 2 cents.
Yarrow
@tobie: I don’t either, but maybe people in his district have more insight.
Citizen Alan
@Gin & Tonic:
So it’s a Hitler Youth rally?
SFAW
@Spanky:
Re: Chamberlain: I was at the sendoff (in Portland) when the Maine National Guard was being sent to Afghanistan (I think), early in this decade. One of the speakers — might have been Angus King, can’t really recall — made the point that Joshua Chamberlain was/is the reason we’re not all speaking German now. The reasoning: if Little Round Top fell, Gettysburg was lost. If Gettysburg was lost, the Union would not have defeated the Treason States. Had America not defeated the Treason States, there would not be the strong US Armed Forces which helped the rest of Europe defeat Germany, and so Germany would have eventually landed here, etc.
Probably a little hyperbolic, but not completely nuts. [And, of course, there are those who claim that Culp’s Hill was more important to the eventual Union victory]
So: Thanks, Joshua!
J R in WV
@zhena gogolia:
They were all the way left, as far left on the defensive line of the Union Army as it was possible to get. That’s the point of the left, left, left left, thing.
In many battles they would never have seen any combat at all, unless the opponent attempted to flank the whole Union army, that is, circle around the defensive line and enter the Union army’s back, able to attack without dealing with defensive positions at all. To stab the Union army in the back indeed, and perhaps winning the war in that one movement.
Marcopolo
@Marcopolo: I forgot to note that Clay’s father, also Bill Clay, was a ground-breaking leader in the civil rights movement in St. Louis and was the first AA elected to Congress from MO in 1968. He held the seat until he retired and his son won the election to replace him in 2001. Also, I could have added that Clay enabled (possibly abetted) Republican gerrymandering in 2010 that saw the competitive MO-2 house district carved up with much of the more D leaning areas added to MO-1 which made it an even safer seat at the expense of changing MO-2 from a tossup district to one that now leans +7 R.
Tarragon
@Baud:
Buddy of mine had to unfriend his Dad on FB. It’s so crazy how unreachable these people are even through family bonds.
Betty Cracker
@Marcopolo: I was hoping someone who knew the district would chime in — thank you!
Betty Cracker
@Tarragon: I had to unfriend Facebook. Don’t miss it a bit, but then again, I rarely used it anyway. I can see where shutting down a page would be a big deal to some folks.
rikyrah
@Hobbes83:
Uh huh
Uh huh
rikyrah
@Marcopolo:
Thanks for your on the ground view.
tobie
@Marcopolo: Thanks for the insights about the local scene. This is stuff you cannot know from afar.
Brachiator
@zhena gogolia:
A short animated reconstruction of the Battle of Little Round Top
.
Humdog
@Marcopolo: I really appreciate your input, gives us a much better understanding of the dynamic in your district.
opiejeanne
@Citizen Alan: I yelled that at a JW on my doorstep years ago. I was in a mood and their nonsense was not to be borne that day.
opiejeanne
@Jeffro: I’m so sorry this is your dad believing this BS. And in what universe was Valerie Jarrett Vice President?
Gex
@Frank McCormick: I imagine that the people who propose brand new solutions out of whole cloth like them because you can sneak massive cuts or expansions (depending on who receives the money) without ever having debated cutting or expanding something. Just sneak it into the design. Then let the reluctance to modify programs that you’ve already nurtured prevent fixing the problem you introduced.
Mnemosyne
@Cermet:
Yeah, that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — what a bunch of assholes, amirite?
And that Gandhi idiot. He totally could have gotten the British to leave sooner if he’d stuck to a strict atheist platform.
Mnemosyne
@zhena gogolia:
I totally would have been one of your well, actually … students. ?
opiejeanne
@? Martin: I talked to one who was the home helper when my mom was in need of one and Dad just couldn’t cope. She was grossly overweight, had very bad teeth, lived in a trailer park with an unemployed asshole who controlled what they watched on tv even though she paid all of the bills, and who told her how to vote. She was also very naive for a woman in her 40s. Brought a printout of the “blush spider under the toilet seat” hoax so my dad and sister could see it and be warned.
She was just finishing up her nursing degree at the local jC and was looking forward to a better paying job. My sister was waxing rhapsodic about it and I asked her who she thought was going to employ this person as a nurse. I felt bad for her because she was very good with my mom, but I knew she was trapped until she found some way to get her teeth fixed at the very least. I hope she went to that free dental event in LA that they held not too long after this.
Anyway, she looked at me one day when I was there and said she couldn’t wait for the rapture, she wanted everything to just end. I was stunned. I asked her if she didn’t think there was anything in this world that was enjoyable and she couldn’t think of a thing. That was depressing.
Yarrow
@Marcopolo: Thank you for your comments and knowledge of the district. It’s hard to see that sort of thing from the outside. The dynasty “took over the seat from his father” thing caught my eye and not in a good way. If he’s grooming his son for the seat, that’s also not so good. I can see why people might want a fresh face.
James E Powell
@Baud:
This has been one of the press/media’s favorite story since 1972.
Citizen Alan
@opiejeanne:
Putting it like that, I begin to see parallels between rapture mania and suicidal tendencies, with the former being a way to cope with the latter.
Kathleen
@Cacti: But thete’s no rodent procreating of Dems from Bernie and OC. Nah.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: I think you answered Tobie’s question. The “black” part temaind problematic for our progressive rat effers. I hate those effing people.
AnonPhenom
@Marcopolo:
Thanks for the report.
Well said.
zhena gogolia
Thanks to all the awesome BJ historians!
Kathleen
@tobie: She doesn’t want it to help in November. Agenda is to destroy.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
Yep, pretty much. When they get huffy about “their” tax dollars going to the wrong people, it’s because they want to get them instead and everyone else can go fuck themselves.
opiejeanne
@zhena gogolia: Civil War. The battle of Little Round Top was at Gettysburg and the outcome of that shifted the dynamic towards the Union winning the war. The rhetoric teacher, General Chamberlain executed a textbook maneuver that out-flanked the attempted flanking movement of the Confederates.
After that deadly day General Robert E. Lee wrote a letter of apology to Jefferson Davis, saying everything was his fault, all of the deaths, all of the failure belonged to him, and offering to resign.
I just watched this episode of the Ken Burns Civil War documentary two nights ago.
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
I’ve talked before about Frances Trollope’s travel book, Domestic Manners of the Americans, and she describes exactly this scene — a white dirt farmer sitting on the one chair in his log cabin while his several slaves scurry around doing all of the actual work for him.
She wrote that in 1835.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
At my romance writers’ convention, that was something that several of the workshop teachers talked about — romance is a genre of hope, and if written well, it can teach people that they deserve better than what they’re getting out of their relationships and their lives. It was very inspiring.
Dan B
@Mike J: I vaguely recall that she criticized Adam Smith for voting for military contracts, or something non-liberal and corrupt, probably for Boeing. Boeing is a big employer (union) for Smith’s district so: represent contituents / compromise…
There’s a group bringing in people from out if state to organize for her. I’d like to know where their funding is from. Sorta smells Russian but could be Steyer.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: For my initial BA in English I was required to take Econ I and II. Two quarters. That was in 1968/69. When I went back for my music degree, having not finished the English BA, my requirement would have been only one quarter, but still I had a teacher who taught those quarters in a way that didn’t treat the material as Natural Law. He had some interesting ideas I’d never heard before, like negative income tax, and he backed up his arguments in convincing ways. I think that was the beginning of the end of my Republican upbringing, but it really ended when Reagan ran for president, having witnessed him as governor and how he did a 180 on certain issues he’d supported before. I’d been annoyed with some of the Republicans outside my district but I thought mine were fairly sane, moderates. After Reagan I saw that the party in California really hated the moderates, and there were no more liberal Republicans like Kuchel (sp) left in office.
opiejeanne
@Chyron HR: You’re as cynical as I am. I don’t feel so all alone now.
opiejeanne
@zhena gogolia: No, not a reference to Bernie. They were on the leftmost flank, and they swung out farther to the left for the action.
JAFD
@JAFD: Hello again !
http://crookedtimber.org/2018/06/30/economics-in-two-lessons-3/#comments
has the full list of the draft chapters.
Or wait till Priceton U Press produces dead tree edition next year.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: It sounds like you had a great time and it was a useful exchange of ideas
. Not my genre but when you’re finished with your book I’d love to read it.
The Lodger
@JAFD: Priceton U
Typo or comment on tuition?
different-church-lady
OK, they’re just screwing with us now.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
now?
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
If you can call your book “historical women’s fiction” (ie the protagonist(s) are mostly women or girls), you can join your local chapter of RWA. I highly recommend it — they’re extremely supportive and are a great resource for writing workshops, critique partners, etc.
I just changed the opening of my novel AGAIN, but I’m hoping that this is the right one. It feels right.
Also, I’ll recommend the same writing book for you that I was telling M^4 about yesterday — “Verbalize!” by Damon Suede. He really breaks down the craft in a way I haven’t seen before but that makes perfect sense to me.
opiejeanne
The protagonists are mostly women or girls, and the main character is Susannah who is 9 years old at the start of the book in 1859, is 15 or 16 at the end, depending on how/when I end the book. But there’s no hint of romance in the book as I’ve written it.
Right now I’ve written to where she’s in St Louis with her step-mother in Feb 1863, to visit her wounded father in Camp Grover Regimental Hospital (about which I can find not a single thing. I need to go to Jefferson Barracks outs St Louis and buttonhole a historian. Nothing online that I can see under that name, but I have an electronic copy of the Union Army’s record of Levi’s time there). I have plans for what happens next, but I can see that there are two distinct possibilities for the outcome of this trip (one I planned), maybe more.
Thanks for both of the suggestions. I will look into both.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I visited a meeting of the RWA in LA county about 30 years ago and it was very interesting, and the other would-be writers were very supportive when they talked to me even though I thought at the time that I would be writing something mainstream. A HS friend’s wife was a pretty successful romance writer and she had urged me to come to a meeting. This woman:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Diamond_Hyman
I got the impression that she was the only one in the room who had been published. I bought one of her books and it was head and shoulders above what I’d seen in the past.
I”m disappointed that she and her husband won’t be at our 50th HS reunion this September.
ETA: The chapter meeting I attended was probably in Orange County.