"As far as I'm concerned, they're Iowans with better food." Mollie Tibbetts' father counters immigration outcry with praise for the kindness of Hispanics in Iowa during the hunt for his slain daughter. https://t.co/QU45B45smP
— AP Central U.S. (@APCentralRegion) August 27, 2018
From the original Des Moines Register article:
… Rob Tibbetts was among four people to deliver emotional eulogies Sunday afternoon to a crowd of more than 1,200 people inside the gymnasium at Brooklyn-Guernsey-Malcom High School. The school, in Brooklyn, a town of about 1,500, is just a short walk from where Mollie Tibbetts lived with her mother and two brothers.
“Today, we need to turn the page. We’re at the end of a long ordeal,” he said. “But we need to turn toward life — Mollie’s life — because Mollie’s nobody’s victim. Mollie’s my hero.”
Rob Tibbetts called upon the devastated community and family to come together in honoring his daughter.
“The person best equipped to help us through this is Mollie,” he said. “So let’s try to do what Mollie would do. Let’s say what Mollie would say.”…
Rob Tibbetts has not publicly commented on the issue. But in his eulogy, he highlighted how the local Hispanic community had embraced him as he searched for his daughter in recent weeks.
While in Iowa for nearly six weeks, Hotel Grinnell put him up for free. During that time, he said he ate at a number of Mexican restaurants, where employees were sensitive and kind. They knew when he needed space or when he needed to joke, he said…
rikyrah
Good Morning,Everyone ???
NotMax
Obviously an MS-13 sleeper agent, slyly appropriating the name of the pilot of the Enola Gay.
//
Aleta
@rikyrah: Good morning ? ?
Viva BrisVegas
Poor Mollie was murdered by a person, not an ethnicity.
Aleta
@NotMax: What’s happening there?
OzarkHillbilly
Rob Tibbets has more grace than I would have.
NotMax
@Aleta
Nothing much aside from the last gasps of Lane. Have to shuttle the landlady to a cataract operation scheduled for ragga-fragga 8 in the morning, so may just pull an all-nighter.
She tells me I also need to check in at the clinic along with her so they can ascertain I’m not some wild-eyed criminal. Or something.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: You are not alone. Unfortunately the asshole in power will not take Mollie’s fathers words to heart.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Baud
Tibbetts is good people.
NeenerNeener
Since the previous thread is dead, I just want to say how funny it is that there’s a bunch of Babylon 5 fans here. I just finished a rewatch of B5 last week, and the stuff with the Shadows installing Clarke after taking out Santiago, and the takeover of the news network to spew propaganda reminds me uncomfortably of what’s going on in America right now.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: I do not speak at the funerals of loved ones, much less speak with such eloquence.
raven
I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since this young lady was killed in Chapel Hill. She was from here and her folks are much the same as the Tibbetts’ family.
OzarkHillbilly
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@OzarkHillbilly:
Blaming the victim. Stay classy asshole.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s like Inhofe is partially to blame for when people will piss on his grave.
Chetan Murthy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Well, he’s doing that. But it’s actually worse. This is a sign of authoritarianism, right? He’s telling people “you diss the dictator, you’re gonna pay”. And he hasn’t gotten called-out for it now, has he? In a free society, this sort of threat (that is exactly what it is) should be swiftly smacked-down by all and sundry, including the press everywhere.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: I mean, if he’d said “well, McCain and Trump were at daggers drawn, so you can’t very well expect Trump to be gracious”, that’d be different (though still awful on Shitlord’s part). But he didn’t. He blamed McCain for Shitlord’s reaction. That’s what authoritarian enablers do.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: We’re gonna need to educate our descendants about the bus tour they need to organize (with copious drinks provided a suitable intervals before stops).
bystander
@Baud: I blame Inhofe and my small capacity, weak bladder.
Haven’t been on BJ for months because it was not readable on my iPad, so forgive me if I’m beating a long dead beast of burden but…
When did referring to “tribalism” become the new bothsidesdoit? Both tribes are exactly alike, except that one tribe believes in science, maintaining the health of the citizenry, not plundering our government to self enrich, treating people fairly and equally, and avoiding enlisting the help of foreign enemies in elections. But you know…tribes…
Jeffro
@Baud:
It’s going to be the penultimate stop for me in a few years, that’s for sure.
Jeffro
@bystander:
Probably right around the time that Republicans realized we were getting good at calling out “bothsides-er-ism” for what it was: cover for GOP malfeasance. Now it’s “tribalism”. Keep calling it out.
balconesfault
So I’m not so Alex Jonesian to suspect the murder of Tibbetts was staged … but the timing of the police releasing their conclusion (and the Russian troll factories being immediately ready to jump on it) the afternoon of the Manafort decision and Cohen settlement sure fits a pattern…
chris
Good morning all. The shitgibbon is feisty this morning, gonna take on Google. What could go wrong?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
OT, but I wonder what Putin would think of my labeling him an existential threat to humanity?
OzarkHillbilly
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: He’d agree.
Aleta
This ‘immigration outcry’ using her death seems close to totalitarian thought, normalization, this morning.
Skepticat
@NotMax: The insignificant other has to make an appearance when I check in for eye surgery to prove that I’m not going to leap into the car and mow down people when it’s over. The triple vision does make it unlikely, but judging by some people I see on the road …
Steeplejack (phone)
@rikyrah:
Good morning! ☕
JPL
@chris: lol I’m sure that only he can fix it!
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
How long until Trump slams him in a tweet?
OzarkHillbilly
Amnesia is contagious.
A Ghost To Most
I see Shitler is off to a running start this morning.
Matt McIrvin
I can only imagine the number of death threads Tibbetts’ family must be getting right now.
debbie
@chris:
Oh, please. Google only recently updated the photo they use. Now, it’s only 10 years out of date, not 30.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: In 3… 2…. 1….
debbie
@Aleta:
This has happened for decades. What’s different now is that we have a president who supports and spreads the lie.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s amazing how nothing gets through to people. And those numbers suggest a lot of Dems buy into the lie.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@chris: It sounds crazy when Dale summarizes, but it sounds even crazier when you read what Trump says. He’s lost control of language and thought.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Why is he up and googling Trump news? Maybe he saw something on Fox news.
Steeplejack (phone)
@OzarkHillbilly:
Source?
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor: He should try Bing!
debbie
@Baud:
Is Dog Pile still around? That would be perfect for him. Fetch!
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Republicans have gotten higher opinion-poll marks on handling “the economy” for most of the time I’ve been alive, regardless of conditions. It seems to be a story that’s easy to sell: look at the way the US economy was successfully painted as in terrible condition until the day Trump took office, then a basically unchanged situation was suddenly wonderful. All it took was re-interpreting a bunch of supposedly fake news and cooked numbers as real now. For many it seems to go back to this mythologized version of Carter vs. Reagan 1980.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack (phone): Democrats Looking Good As Midterm Elections Get Closer
TS (the original)
@OzarkHillbilly: When dems are in power there is incessant reporting, talk, attacks about “the deficit”. When the GOP are in power and the deficit blows out of all proportion, there is no discussion by anyone. This is what people hear. This is why they think the republicans are better managers.
Not to mention that those socialists give all the money to those others.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
National security too. Both of these issues are important to the country and to voters. Is there any way to get people to view the Dems as better on both these issues?
Matt McIrvin
@TS (the original): And “the deficit”, the national debt, “the economy”, and your 401(k) are all the same thing.
rikyrah
This family is very courageous- pushing back against the racist forces that want to pimp their family member for racist gains. It’s wrong that they have to do this during such a painful time, but I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t necessary during this time in our country.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The numbers change for a year or two whenever there’s a catastrophe that puts Republicans in a bad light, then they revert to the norm after a while.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: It’s like trying to compete with one hand tied behind our backs.
Matt McIrvin
…basically, if the next crash happens while Trump is in office, the Republicans will get bad numbers on the economy, the Democrats will come in in a huge wave, and the Democrats will then immediately be blamed for the still-bad economy and for spending money to fix it.
But her emails!!!
@Baud:
I wish people would permanently buy a clue. There’s a whole set of issues where the default consensus is that Republicans are the better party. This despite the fact that Republicans fail egregiously on these same issues every time they have power.
The weird thing is I’m not sure the people polled even believe the nonsense about Republicans being better for the economy, because every time it tanks, they run to Democrats to fix it.
Patricia Kayden
@Viva BrisVegas: It’s disgusting that Republicans can’t state that simple fact.
OzarkHillbilly
It sounds hard to believe but as the anthropologist Gabriel Janer Manila said,
A long read but well worth the trip.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: To be fair, IIRC, Republicans are usually regarded as worse on “gives a shit about me” type questions.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: But that’s accurate. The better on the economy thing is not accurate.
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
This is why I think it’s wrong when we say Trump “doesn’t care” or “just wants to own the libs”. He cares a lot what people think. He desperately wants to be broadly popular and liked. He blatantly lies about polls all the time. At the rallies he first lies about polls and then says polls are wrong because polls undercount his supporters by 10.
I think we confuse “unable to achieve it” with “not wanting it”
Trump really believes this. He believes a majority of the country agrees with him and supports him. That he SHOULD be popular.
What’s more, a lot of rank and file conservatives believe this same thing- that’s why they dismiss objections as “political correctness”. The assumption behind that is objections are insincere- that no one really believes any of this is offensive.
I think it goes back to their seeing themselves as “the norm”- the real Americans- everyone else as outside the norm because they define the norm. Stephen Miller believed the baby snatching would be POPULAR. They were blindsided by the outcry because their assumption was no one would care about immigrant children, because they don’t care about them.
OzarkHillbilly
@TS (the original):
No, it is what they choose to hear. I can’t be the only person in the world who knew the deficits were exploding under W after having been brought under control under Clinton, that the economy was on the brink of a total meltdown in ’08. That under Obama, after the first year the deficit was in a steady decline. That the GOP has blown the deficit up again, that trump’s trade wars are not going to be “easy to win”, etc etc etc. This all out there, in the news, waiting to be read and absorbed by anyone with eyes and a brain.
Don’t blame the media for the willful stupidity of.43% of Americans. (OK, you can blame FOX and other RW news outlets, but FOX doesn’t force anyone to watch them)
Ken
@JPL:
To find out which of his many
close advisorsformer coffee guys were indicted or arrested yesterday?Baud
The Pennsylvania AG is good. He’s on Today and he’s a Dem!
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: And economists have carefully and quantitatively answered the “economy” question. Overall, and this is going back past Raygun, the economy does better under Dem presidents. It’s not even close.
As for national security …. sadly the definition of “national security” is “kickin’ ass and takin’ names” without regard for national strategic goals and how to achieve them. So with that definition, well, the GrOPers are better, eh? I mean, who cares of we end up in quagmires, creating new generations of enemies, amirite?
chris
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Well yeah. Dale has a couple of follow-up tweets, the 96% number comes from the invaluable PJMedia.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t need convincing. I want to know what we can do to convince others.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Breakfast: strawberry yogurt, granola, and a bunch of pills. Nom nom.
Kay
I can’t prove this but I interview a lot of low income teenagers and my belief is a lot of the anti-abortion rhetoric has boomeranged in this insane way where low income white rural teenagers and young adults have somehow come to believe that using birth control is anti-baby. It’s really alarming listening to them. They have put “babies” into some magical section where they’re completely fucking irrational and insane about the practical realities of having children. You can’t talk them out of it. The language is anti-abortion language- babies are “blessings” and having children is just the natural and inevitable outcome of having sex. It’s bizarre and weirdly archaic.
Someone needs to do a study. Teen and young adult birth rates are dropping but is that skewed by urban center numbers?
randy khan
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’m trying to imagine how Google could tweak the algorithm to push Alex Jones and QAnon to the top.
Baud
@Kay: Babies are the new opiod.
But her emails!!!
@Baud:
Convince Warren Buffett and Soros to buy up all US media and ISPs and eliminate all right wing propaganda.
rikyrah
Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) Tweeted:
“A lot of prominent African Americans in the party clearly felt sidelined and insulted.” Good piece on how the latest DNC moved backed by Sanders upset alot of prominent Black Democrats. These Dems will have ALOT of influence on the Southern states in 2020 https://t.co/thXvqXsov2 https://twitter.com/marcushjohnson/status/1034290974116270080?s=17
Kay
@Baud:
One child when you’re young and poor is actually manageable. Not ideal (and this has nothing to do with the child) because babies cost in all kinds of ways and they cost young poor people more because they miss opportunities- they miss essential windows of time and you just can’t be 20 again – but doable. 20 isn’t the same as 40 and the difference isn’t just 20 years- it’s that you need to do some thing by 20 in order to get ahead. Have to be done in that period or you’re starting out catching up to the other 20 year olds.
But that isn’t part of this. There’s no counting at all going on. It’s as if it’s completely out of their hands. Could be one, or two, or four. Just…whatever. It’s a blessing and God’s will. They don’t use “God’s will” but I don’t have the language to describe this attitude.
Elizabelle
I think the Republicans get credit for being good at things they actually suck at is because of the framing provided by the Republican-owned major media. The FTF NY Times, NBC, all the legacy media — they are handed the Republican framing and run with it.
Would be much different if our press took the same tack as comedians, who are apparently the only ones allowed to report accurately on what is obviously going on.
The MSM always couches everything in respectful language about Republican gravitas, and it’s not surprising viewers may pick up on that more than the actual story.
That and Democrats being virtually absent from a lot of coverage. The egregious Sunday news shows.
Maybe the public relies on Democrats to get them out of messes (thanks Mom), but doesn’t really respect or appreciate them? Because Democrats don’t do the legacy-burnishing that Republicans do, constantly. (Saint Reagan.) Look at it: Bill Clinton is trashed as a rapist and terrible, unpopular, nothing but triangulating president — he was not that; Jimmy Carter, LBJ (I appreciate him tremendously for civil rights and attempting a War on Poverty), Woodrow Wilson is being attacked as a white supremacist while Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge are kind of ignored.
It’s interesting to me that the Republicans can’t really use Teddy Roosevelt very much, because he pretty much would deplore everything they stand for today. The danger of monopolies and trusts; establishing the national parks … They also don’t attack FDR that much in general, because he’s remembered for getting us through the Depression and WW2, even though the New Deal is anathema to Republican funders.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Back in the 1980s my mom worked as a school psychologist in Prince William County, VA, and that kind of attitude was all over the place. Sometimes it was just for emotional support–a baby was someone who had to love you, no matter what.
This CDC page has numbers on teen births by state for 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2005. If you compare with 2005 you can see that the numbers have been dropping even for poor rural states, so I don’t think there’s a contrary trend in rural areas.
But, just eyeballing the charts, it does seem to me that the drop has been stronger (albeit from higher up to begin with) in places where the poor population is heavily minority, like SC and NM, than in rural white states like WV and AK. That might be the effect of conservative rhetoric.
Baud
@Kay: Sounds like anti-vaxxers to me.
@Elizabelle:
I agree so much.
Matt McIrvin
…I meant AR, not AK. Apparently you can’t edit comments right now.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chetan Murthy:
This is all connected, and entwined with most Republican thought. It’s the logic of an abuser, ‘you made me hit you.’ Abusers are authoritarians. If they’re stronger, they must be right and how dare you question them. (Interestingly, if they’re weaker, the other person is cheating somehow.) It’s the same logic as ‘I’m hurting you for your own good.’ You’ll notice that almost all Republican policy revolves around that logic, and TV pundits almost all take it as an assumption of how the world works. It ties into racism and other bigotries too, because it provides a moral high ground for oppression.
@bystander:
When Obama was elected and Republicans went utterly batshit insane. Racism absolutely could not be called out as the cause. You can’t accuse a white person of being racist! ‘Tribalism’ sounds nicely like it’s not really about race, people are just defending their own side. You can tisk-tisk about it without facing the truth of what the Republican Party is.
Elizabelle
@Kay: That’s horrifying. In terms of the opportunities those young people will have to forgo, with very little support in rural red state USA.
Although: are they not delaying childbearing because they don’t see a bright future or opportunities? That is entirely possible.
Matt McIrvin
Here are teen birthrate trends broken down by race/Hispanic origin. It’s consistent with what I said about the maps: rates are dropping for all groups, but proportionately more for minorities, who started up higher. The black and Hispanic teen-mother birthrates today are lower than the white rate in the 1990s.
Frankensteinbeck
Addendum: The use of ‘tribalism’ is directly connected to the use of the phrase ‘white nationalism.’ White nationalists are white supremacists, but somehow changing that word lets white people pretend it’s not about racism.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: C’est la vie.
ET
I put this trippy Donny Osmond/Lil’Yachty team-up for Chef Boyardee jingle and accompanying video because, well just because.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
That is an incredibly vague article on who is upset. It sounds like a standard ‘Democrats In Disarray’ article, where they find someone who has a complaint and pretend that’s a whole movement about to rip the party apart. God, I hope that’s true, because while removing superdelegates is a harmless – maybe even slightly productive – sop to the whiners, any African-American who is offended by giving anything to those bigoted Sanders shitheads is well within their rights.
Haroldo
@Elizabelle: Howevah, Wilson was a white supremacist (or, at least, as racist as they come). Invoking ‘whaddabout …..’ does us no good in this instance.
Frankensteinbeck
Addendum (I hate losing the edit button): I see removing the superdelegates as part of a package of simultaneously sticking it to the Sandersites while convincing those idiots they’re getting what they want. Despite those buffoons’ conspiracy theories, a lack of superdelegates in 2016 would have reduced the amount of damage Sanders could do, not in any way increase his odds of winning. It goes nicely with switching caucuses to primaries, again because the Sanders assholes are deranged enough to think they’re what the overall party wants and fair voting would have gotten them the victory. They can’t see the evidence in front of their faces.
Soprano2
@NeenerNeener: The re-watch of B5 is pretty incredible – you pick up on a lot of stuff that you missed the first time, because you had no template for it. If that show had been on a major network it would have won some awards. For one thing, Walter Koenig playing Bester showed what a great actor he is. You should watch the eps from S1 and S3 that are the same incident told from different viewpoints back-to-back – that’s an interesting experience! I’m waiting for the formation of a Nightwatch-like group by the Trump administration – that would certainly fit their MO.
Elizabelle
WaPost has a story of Zafar, the lonely French dolphin. All by himself off the coast of northwest France; he has been isolated from other dolphins for some reason, has become habituated to humans, and is now a bit of a pest to swimmers because he wants a mate. A lonely dolphin’s ‘sexual behaviors’ toward humans cause a French town to ban swimming
The mayor has banned swimming near him, in an effort to protect him and swimmers. I hope this story will have a happy ending. Can they introduce more dolphins? Should Zafar be placed in a marine aquarium for a while, so he can be around other dolphins, and then released into the sea again?
WaPost reader commenters are joking about a dolphin incel, and are surprised that the French find any kind of sexual behavior outrageous. I just wish Zafar could find dolphin company. They are social animals. Viva Zafar.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: TR was pretty racist (his racism didn’t quite fit into modern categories–he was certainly more pro-black-people than the Democrats–but he bought into the paternalistic and eugenic ideas of the time) and an aggressive military interventionist. I get the impression that a lot of world leaders saw him as sort of a Trumpish figure, this irrational man-child.
FlipYrWhig
IMHO “Democrats are worse for the economy” means “they’re gonna raise mah taxes!” Everything that people who don’t like Democrats don’t like ABOUT Democrats boils down to the belief that Democrats raise hardworking people’s taxes and use the money to buy the support of shiftless dark-skinned people. That’s what all Republicans believe, all the time, and it’s never going to change. So, you know, fuck them, and point and laugh until they’re really mad, then raise their taxes anyway.
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
I know the hardcore white supremacist neo-Confederates (and some actual Confederates still alive at the time) thought Wilson was totally their man and was helping save the white race.
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: Agreed.
rikyrah
Manafort looked to cut a deal with Mueller in second trial: WSJ
Rachel Maddow relays breaking news from the Wall Street Journal that Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort sought a deal with Robert Mueller’s prosecutors on charges in his second federal trial.
Elizabelle
@Haroldo: Yes, he was. As were most white Americans of the time, right? The vast majority, I would think. History is history. It’s probably more honest to judge historical figures against the culture of their times, and be amazed at the folks who were years ahead of their time. It’s how we get progress.
Was Wilson particularly objectionable? Was he proposing things that were egregious by the standards of his day? If so, why did we never hear about that until the last decade or so? I ask because I really don’t know; haven’t looked into it, and there’s enough to focus on today without going back and slamming someone who did have some high ideals (the League of Nations, etc.)
There is plenty in Teddy Roosevelt’s writings to complain about too. That does not take away from his greatness and impact.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I haven’t watched Babylon 5 in a long time–I’m sort of afraid to, to see how well it holds up or doesn’t. I was a big fan back when it first aired. I remember the production values being unavoidably cheap and the acting uneven (with the best actors mostly playing the nonhumans). But Straczynski’s serialized arc was incredibly ambitious and unheard of for a syndicated science-fiction show of the time–it’s the sort of thing you’d see today in a show made for streaming. And it was fundamentally a political show.
Things did fall apart a bit in Season 5 because they’d wrapped up the main story arc in S4 under cancellation threat, then found they had another season after all. The best S5 episodes are the ones about the fate of the Centauri empire, probably because that was stuff intended for the original arc that had been held back.
clay
@Kay: Yup. Of a similar vein: “You should fire James Comey, Daddy. Everyone will love you for it!”
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: The GOP base is unreachable, but there’s no reason we shouldnt be doing better with others.
Elizabelle
@FlipYrWhig: I think Democrats should not run away from raising taxes. Talk about how the European democracies do it, and how much more service the European citizen gets for taxes paid. Healthcare, college education, way better infrastructure in many countries.
Taxes are what we pay to have an advanced society, and we are not better off having gazillionaires who then buy the political system and self-deal. We would be safer as a democracy if we taxed the extremely wealthy way more heavily. If they want to move to New Zealand or some tax haven: bye bye, fuckers.
It’s time to fucking grow up and force that conversation. The conservatives and their donors have it ass-backwards, and time to take them on. They are liars on this, as with most of their schtick. And just because people don’t like to pay taxes doesn’t mean they don’t have to be adults.
We are a nation of adolescents. Stop coddling. Grow up.
Baud
@Elizabelle: i believe Wilson was a bit worse on race than his GOP contemporaries at the time. Better in other areas, but not race.
Baud
@Elizabelle: It’ll continue to be hard until we start winning some elections with that message.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Good point and maybe- maybe they don’t see opportunity. I DO feel like there’s some magical woo-woo going on here, though. A lot of them, most of them maybe, have some exposure to evangelical fundamentalism because it’s evangelical – those churches reach out a lot. But the only part of it that seems to stick is the part about magical babies.
They are maxing out on child support. The state can’t take past a certain percentage of wages and they are reaching that at 20 or 21. So, basically, no one can live on that. Not the parents and not the children. It’s simply not enough. I try to raise these things and I get back this ” I can’t HEAR you! BLESSING!”
Remember when Obama said something (practical and true) about young, poor parents in the ’08 campaign and Palin and the Right freaked out and shrieked for a week? It’s like that. You can’t even go there.
Elizabelle
@Baud: OK. We do have to remember that the Republicans and Democrats were kind of switched out, back then, on issues of race. I guess it flipped around the time of [post-] WWII? Truman desegregated the US Army …
LOL. Found this letter to the editor of the Los Angeles time from May 2018. If Teddy Roosevelt can win a Nobel Prize, why not Donald Trump?
I think time has told. In like, 3 months.
papadum
@Kay: That’s a bit of a shift from where it was 20 years ago when I was a rural teenager. Then it was less about the babies and more that having sex to someone you weren’t married to was a sin, and if you used birth control it meant that you planned to sin in advance which made it extra sinful. But even back then things were starting to shift among adult Protestants from “Abortion is a sin, but condoms and the pill is what separates us from the animals and Papists” to “Birth control works by killing tiny babies and is abortion you can buy at the drug store.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Soprano2: I loved the way that show was written with a 5 year arc, so you could only understand some events fully in retrospect.
rikyrah
Judges demand NC rectify gerrymandering as election draws near
Rachel Maddow reports on a ruling by a three-judge panel that North Carolina’s gerrymandering is unconstitutional and must be corrected before the 2018 midterm election.
Aug.27.2018
sherparick
@OzarkHillbilly: I hope Trump and all the Trumpkins like Imhofe who are in the hole with him just keep digging. One thing drives Republican support for Trump: the Murdoch media empire and Right Wing Infotainment network, and that enterprise, along with direct donations to the Republicans, is driven by the money coming from 158 families who love their tax cuts and that the Government under Trump, Pence, and Mulvaney is giving them the right to pollute and rip off people without limit. “Half of all contributions to the first phase of the 2016 election came from just 158 families, along with the companies they own or control.”https://www.newsweek.com/robert-reich-trump-tax-plan-payback-billionaire-donors-751032
rikyrah
Trump White House fails at simple decency in McCain response
Rachel Maddow excoriates the Donald Trump administration for its utter failure to summon the common decency required to not screw up its response to the death of Senator John McCain.
rikyrah
My Man, Chuck. He’s my favorite of the MSNBC legal analysts :)
Low chance of deal for Manafort without cooperation, information
Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about a Wall Street Journal report that Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort sought a plea deal with Robert Mueller’s prosecutors on charges in his second trial and what the terms of such a deal would look like.
rikyrah
Jailed Russian hacking suspect seen as potential source of info
Rachel Maddow shares a Bloomberg report that a Russian hacker, Yevgeniy Nikulin, being held in a San Francisco jail for breaking into LinkedIn and other sites is seen as potentially having information for investigators on 2016 election hacking as well.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Woodrow Wilson completely wiped out the Black federal work force during his Presidency. He was a stone cold racist in word AND DEED. LITERALLY wiped them out, and they wouldn’t get back those jobs until another 15 years. So, all those lives ruined – professionally – because of Wilson’s racism.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay:
They are off in crazy land with an alternative reality created by wingnut media. Last night I was reading a thread were all the conservatives were insisting that Sweden was a failed state occupied by Isis and not the socialist paradise everyone in the reality community views it as. Every demand the conservatives cite sources and they would just babble around it.
So doubtless the chuckleheads of the right are convinced that Trump is saving them from an invasion from Muslim controlled Mexico or something equally the same stupid level. Calling them things like racists really doesn’t work because they live in the world were whites are the persecuted minority and the Civil Rights Movement set them free.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: I honestly did not know that, about black civil servants. And that is deplorable. Will learn up. Thank you.
Citizen_X
@Matt McIrvin:
The human subplot (one of many!) had alien saboteurs, with their own agenda, allying with a broad array of human xenophobes and authoritarians to bring about a fascist takeover of democratic government.
If B5 were done after the Trump years, it would be criticized for being too on the nose.
CliosFanboy
my elderly terrier, Rocco, is not doing well. At vet now getting tested. this might be it for my big guy. It’s hard to teach when all I want to do is cry. (he’s on the Pets of BJ calendar too.)
raven
@CliosFanboy: Aw I’m so sorry.
Kay
@papadum:
Yeah, it’s odd. It’s like they’re putting birth control in the abortion category. As if they’ve taken this concept and expanded it, so any intervention is somehow stopping a baby. Which it is! That’s the point of birth control! :)
I can often talk to them because I’m familiar with these things they learn or hear, but on this we’re just missing.
The thing is there will always be people who can and do overcome great obstacles. But the reason those people are celebrated is because there are so few of them. MOST people can’t overcome. MOST people will find it too difficult. And it is difficult! It can be near impossible.
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle:
Mondale faced this head-on and was wiped out in a 49-state blowout. George H. W. Bush reluctantly faced it and lost reelection after having been remarkably popular for most of his term.
I don’t know if those dynamics still apply, but you can see why Democrats can still be wary of talking about it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Citizen_X: From a writer’s POV, the Trump years are too on the nose. An editor would say they were too broadly drawn and obvious.
Yarrow
@chris: @Dorothy A. Winsor: Daniel Dale is missing the larger picture. The far right has been complaining for awhile that they’re being silenced on Twitter (shadowbanned) and that Google is biased against them and won’t show their sites in searches. They’ve been whining about this issue for several weeks now and the story has followed the usual track of starting on 8chan and reddit, moving up to fringe sites, then fringe sites but with larger followings like InfoWars, and then to Fox News where it looks like Trump finally saw it.
This story like so many others is planned and coordinated disinformation that is aided and abetted by Russian bots and trolls and sometimes started by them. The path for these types of stories is well worn and easy to see once you know it’s there. We need to be focusing on this coordinated effort to discredit and destroy organizations, institutions, and our society in general and not the one instance of crazy when Trump finally tweets about it.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I agree, JMS was way ahead of his time with the idea of a 5-year story arc. Today that show would be on Netflix or Amazon streaming. I think the plot and story arc would hold up pretty well, especially in light of the events of the past couple of years. A “foreign” power assassinating someone to place their hand-picked candidate in the presidency doesn’t sound that far-fetched, does it? If anyone did a remake people would believe it was written in light of the Trump presidency. I loved Mira Furlan as Delenn – she was the series’ center, and it’s moral compass. I also thought the evolution of the G’Kar/Molari relationship was an amazing story in itself. Those actors did a fantastic job of making those characters come to life behind masks and crazy wigs.
And we shall not speak of the horror that was most of Season 5………..I know the story about what happened. All of the episodes in Season 4 felt like they were almost slamming into you as you watched them, since they packed so much stuff into all the episodes because, to his credit, JMS was trying to give the fans a satisfactory ending to the series. Now, all I want is a movie about the Telepath Wars!!! Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhh………..
Kay
I have my second meeting as an official County Democratic Party …officer tonight. I don’t know what we’re called. I think we’re officers. I have some vague memory of that word when I impulsively jumped into this because I got caught up in deflecting a coup and we had to win. At the time. It was vital at the time. I think.
It’s not going that well. They’re getting on my nerves. I’m gonna try to go in clean tonight and not think about how well I know these people and that they’ll continue to be annoying and fractious :)
hedgehog mobile
@CliosFanboy: Huge hugs. I am so sorry.
Haroldo
@Kay: You’ve my admiration and good wishes.
Tenar Arha
@rikyrah: Nodding vigorously.
@Elizabelle: Wilson was a seriously flawed President. As President, Wilson destroyed the last remnant of Reconstruction remaining within the Federal Government. He segregated the Civil Service. He basically let Jim Crow reign nationwide. In addition, partly simply because he loooved Birth of a Nation the movie as “history” & called it so, he also presided over the rebirth of the Klan & did nothing to stop it. Wilson was the first southern President in decades, & it showed in his every domestic program & policy.
As for the League of Nations & his international diplomacy, lots of historians have torn that apart, but briefly he gave great expectations for self-determination that he couldn’t back up in any way, & also couldn’t convince Congress to ratify. Then there’s the First Red Scare (which hurt unions & left organizations for decades) & sending troops to support the Whites battling the Red Army, even inside the borders of the Soviet Union, which practically guaranteed that WWII would end up followed by the Cold War.
Wilson is even one of the major reasons we have the 25th Amendment even if we never use it. Because he got very sick, & rather than letting the VP replace him, his wife & aides ran the government, for months.
Looking at Wilson, with his high ideals & terrible policies, which helped set the stage for another ~50 years of Jim Crow & the next World War, it’s very hard for me not to poke holes in the hagiography I learnt as a kid.
schrodingers_cat
@papadum: What’s the story behind your nym?
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Two weeks ago I went to a meet-the-candidate thingie at my neighbor’s. Ds have great baked goods! There was delicious cake of at least 3 kinds and some cookies too! All homemade.
schrodingers_cat
@Tenar Arha: Did you watch PBS’ American Experience on WWI? What did you think?
catclub
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Actually the victim in the case of whether or not a flag is lowered is not McCain. More like the US and its image are the damaged parties.
schrodingers_cat
@catclub: True. At best it looks like amateur hour and at worst like the United States is petty and feckless. For better or for worse he is our representative in the international arena.
Tenar Arha
@schrodingers_cat: I missed that. Meant to watch it at the time. Was it good, or really sappy?
schrodingers_cat
@Tenar Arha: It was good but too soft on Wilson.
NeenerNeener
@Soprano2: I wish JMS was up for doing a reboot, but he said after the first two actors from the series died that he didn’t want to do anymore stories that couldn’t have the original cast and 5 or 6 more of the original actors have died since then. But that comment was 15 or so years ago, so maybe he’s changed his mind since then. It would need to be on some network that would do it right and commit to the whole 5 years, though, which means NOT the SyFy channel or any of the other small cable channels where it ran last time. Imagine how good the CGI would be now, and the alien costumes.
Elizabelle
@CliosFanboy: All the best to you and Rocco.
@Tenar Arha: Thank you for the information on Wilson. We need to get past the American South unduly influencing our policy and marking our parameters. We can be better.
I’m pretty sure I have Scott Berg’s bio on Woodrow Wilson, but have never read it yet (obviously) and would have to go look for it. Lots of books in my storage space.
Manyakitty
@NeenerNeener: Not sure if you’re on twitter or not, but JMS maintains an active and accessible presence there.
James E Powell
@FlipYrWhig:
Even people who sometimes vote for Democrats will state this as if it were undisputed truth.
NeenerNeener
@Manyakitty: I am, maybe it’s time to go tweet at him, or see if anyone else has suggested a reboot.
Elizabelle
@James E Powell: Well then maybe we should talk about that stereotype. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Ask the voter: what do they suggest to help make people more employable (and therefore less shiftless and more deserving)? That might shut them up, because a lot of the causes are not quick fixes. What’s more, you could end up with a thoughtful discussion — a lot of people have good ideas out there.
We should not traffic in helplessness here. Be brave.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Thank you for saying this. We know what the opposition is capable of and what they want. We can accept that as fait accompli or fight it from becoming a reality. While its natural to be dejected at the continuous onslaught, that’s exactly what Rs want us to do, to feel dejected and give up. I don’t want to give them that satisfaction. So I know what option I am choosing.
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
How the black middle class was attacked by Woodrow Wilson’s administration
February 8, 2016 4.51am EST Updated February 18, 2018 3.39pm EST
When Woodrow Wilson arrived in the nation’s capital in March 1913, he brought with him an administration loaded with white supremacists. Wilson’s lieutenants segregated offices, harassed black workers and removed black politicians from political appointments held by black men for more than a generation.
Racism had always been a part of life in Washington and its government buildings, but the U.S. civil service had never been formally segregated prior to Wilson’s inauguration.
……………………………………………
Wilson’s policies halted growth of black middle class in DC
Black men and women who worked in Washington, DC, at the turn of the 20th century were functional members of the national government doing the nation’s business. Their numbers grew steadily well into the new century, as I have detailed in my book, Racism in the Nation’s Service. In 1912, every dollar printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing bore the signature of James C. Napier, a black man who served as Register of the Treasury.
Black men also served as auditor of the Navy Department, U.S. Consul in Cognac, France, and Collector of the Port of New York. More than 400 African Americans, mostly men, worked as white-collar clerks in Washington, some in supervisory positions over white workers. The politically savvy, educated, and reasonably well-off black population in the capital represented the highest ideal of progress for African Americans.
The decent salaries of government clerks supported a full and dynamic life in a capital city with comparatively little racial discrimination. Washington was an island of possibility for ambitious black men and women at a time when racism cordoned them off from most of the economy and set ceilings on the jobs they could get.
Never free of racism or hardship, DC and its federal offices offered nonetheless a promising future for African Americans in a nation in which disfranchisement, peonage, violence, and terror were becoming the hallmarks of black life.
………………………
Reclaiming’ the capital for white supremacists
Yet, when the 1912 elections handed Democrats executive and legislative control over Washington, many administrators and congressmen arrived with a more specific goal of redeeming the capital for white supremacy.
“Long ago we determined that the Negro never should be our master,” explained one of Wilson’s administrators, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury John Skelton Williams. Williams vowed “stern, final, definite prohibition” of any “social or political equality.”
Wilson appointed white men to important executive positions usually held by leading black politicians, and racist bureaucrats went out of their way to humiliate, demote, and dismiss ordinary black clerks. (I describe the case of one such clerk here.)
It was the end of Washington’s heyday as the center of elite black America; the nation’s capital now stood for a nationwide ethic of white supremacy.
The changes that occurred under the Wilson Administration drew not just from a belief in black inferiority but also the presumption that “racial mixing” caused corruption in American institutions. African Americans needed to be kept down because they were troublesome to the proper functioning of American society.
Equality and efficiency for white Americans was predicated upon racial segregation.
rikyrah
@CliosFanboy:
Sending prayers …..hoping for the best…
rikyrah
@Kay:
Good luck, Kay
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: ?
@rikyrah: Thank you! Will read this this week. Got to head out for an hour or two now. A day that feels like 100 degrees today ….
back to the AC asap.
L85NJGT
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Sweden – there’s some stuff you’d like and some stuff you wouldn’t. Same goes for the inhabitants.
H.E.Wolf
Re: Pres. Wilson:
Barbara Tuchman’s short non-fiction book, The Zimmerman Telegram, is about the entry of the USA into WWI.
There’s a German spy who was a Mariia Butina type. Scandalous photographs of him and various American women in Bathing Costumes!!1!!
Tuchman’s opinion of Wilson is… not high. Her authorial voice is a delight, and her narrative skills are magnificent.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: JMS was probably thinking about Cold War proxy conflicts. I remember Mira Furlan saying her friends thought it was all a metaphor for the 1990s conflicts in what used to be Yugoslavia, but JMS was just trying to hit perennial themes.
NeenerNeener
@Matt McIrvin: I guess everything old is new again.
Luthe
@NeenerNeener: Yeah, there was some kind of B5 curse where a lot of the original actors died before their time. It’s sad, really.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@L85NJGT: Sure, but as standards of living go it’s ranked in the top 10 for nations, but that is a subjective point. The thing is according to the Right Sweden is Somalia, Scandinavian edition and that’s purely to counter the point that Sweden’s a successful socialist country and that’s unpossible in Conservatard circles because of Hitler. (basically their shit is so weak and they know it, so they claim everyone else fails too)
trollhattan
@Kay: @Matt McIrvin:
Helloooo, Catholic Church anybody? I presume Southern Baptists, Mormons and suburban megachurches are similarly predisposed to find contraception icky WRT encouraging sexytime and getting in the way of making Jesus’ precious babies.
trollhattan
@H.E.Wolf:
Not Bathing Costumes, scandalous! I assume they were the usual suits and dresses but having doffed socks and hats.
Aleta
‘ ‘ Jerry Falwell Jr., said Monday he urged President Donald Trump to fire Jeff Sessions over his handling of investigations into Russian election meddling, saying the attorney general has lost evangelicals’ support.
“He really is not on the president’s team, never was,” Falwell said of Sessions. “He’s wanted to be attorney general for many, many years. I have a feeling he took a gamble and supported the president because he knew he would reward loyalty.”
In forsaking Sessions, faith leaders are turning on one of their own, a man who for decades fought in the political trenches for conservative Christian causes. …
As a community, evangelicals have been willing to overlook what they see as the president’s personal shortcomings … in return for his attention. Vice President Mike Pence has hosted a series of dinners at his home for faith leaders. On Monday afternoon, faith leaders met with White House officials in a series of meetings on immigration, prison reform and abortion. Later, Falwell and dozens of other faith leaders were to attend a formal White House dinner celebrating the evangelical community.
Falwell said Sessions lost the group’s loyalty “a long time ago” and has not stopped the Justice Department from going after Trump’s allies. … “A lot of Republicans pretend to be friends to conservatives and the faith community for decades when they really were not,” Falwell said. “I don’t know if he’s in that category. If he was really a fair person, he’d be going after both sides.” ‘ ‘
Politico
Uncle Cosmo
@NeenerNeener: Your post prompted this B5 fan to click over to a page with the death roll from the production –
&, down at the bottom, discovered Harlan Ellison as the most recent member (last June). Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I was a few days in Sherman Oaks for the first time last August, couldn’t have been more than a few blocks from “Ellison Wonderland” – had I known I’d have walked over just to look. I guess I could still look next time there (presuming I can google the address), but it woudn’t be the same without the guy who as a young SF fan told Ike Asimov he was a “nothing.”
TenguPhule
@randy khan:
The same way China does it. Censor out the rest.
J R in WV
@Aleta:
So Falwell (Jr.) DOES believe that everyone is committing felonies, just like his Theocrats and Republicans, and thinks the DoJ should be “going after both sides” even though Democrats typically do not commit crimes at the same rate Republicans do.
Such a surprise. They have trumped up false charges against Democratic office holders during G W “Shrub” Bush’s term, to mess with our democracy, and we will see that again, soon, to distract people from the treason of Trump and his team of treasonous bastards.
And @Elizabelle: , when you say “Ask the voter: what do they suggest to help make people more employable (and therefore less shiftless and more deserving)? That might shut them up, because a lot of the causes are not quick fixes. ” your heart is in the right place, but your brain is not perceiving the real issue.
Those of darker complexion will never NOT BE SHIFTLESS, even when they have graduate degrees and successful careers in their profession. It isn’t about reality, it’s about racism, which appears to be in many cases based upon inheritable brain damage or propaganda from birth. That’s the biggest part of the battle, to make them realize they need to shut up about it in society because society rejects their prejudice.
Elizabelle
@H.E.Wolf: Thank you! I love Barbara Tuchman; don’t have a copy of The Zimmerman Telegram, so will scout it out at used bookstores and library sales. The hunt is the fun.
Ms. Tuchman was Robert M. Morgenthau’s cousin. Just knew that because RM”s older brother Henry (another really fascinating guy) just died recently, at an advanced age — 101. Barbara Tuchman died of a stroke at 77. Way too young. I would bet she and William Manchester still had plenty of writing in their heads, and ahead of them. (Manchester had to retire for health reasons.)
satby
@CliosFanboy: keeping you and Rocco in my thoughts.
Soprano2
@NeenerNeener: Oh, a reboot would need to have a whole new cast, for sure. The actors who are left are way too old to play themselves, plus too many of them have passed. If it were done, and they knew they definitely had “x” number of episodes to tell the story, JMS could rewrite and trim and fix some stuff. I would love to see the B5 universe with updated special effects.