I have somehow managed to contract strep, so I am now on antibiotics and in the middle of a game of thrones marathon. Awesome.
Archives for February 2019
Ralph Northam Press Conference Live Feed
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is scheduled to give a press conference today at 2:30 PM. The live feed is at the bottom of the post.
As late yesterday afternoon turned to night and then morning, Governor Northam has apparently decided he won’t resign. From the reporting, Northam no longer believes, despite yesterday’s apology by video, that he is in the offensive picture. Specifically, he doesn’t remember the photo, nor does he believe that he is the man in blackface, nor the man in the Klan costume. And he has been contacting his former classmates to ask if they know who the two men are who are in the picture.*
.@BobbyScott, the dean of the Va delegation, tells me he wants to hear from the governor.
“The facts were fairly straightforward last night,” he said. “So let’s see if there are any new facts”
Scott has stopped just short of calling on Northam to quit last night
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) February 2, 2019
NEW: Northam told a senior Virginia Democrat this morning that he never selected the photos for the yearbook and, in conversations with med school classmates, he had been told some of the pictures were mixed up across the pages
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) February 2, 2019
All of this may be true: that it is not Northam in the picture and that the picture was put on the wrong page. It doesn’t matter. He’s had that yearbook for almost 34 years. So have others who were in medical school with him at the time. Had he come out, during his first run for office or even his run for governor when the Virginian Republican Party and his Republican opponent, Ed Gillispie who went all in on xenophobia, accused him of turning his back on his own family’s history with the Confederacy, disclosed the picture, explained that it was coming to an understanding that going to a costume party in blackface and/or in a Klan costume was both wrong and morally unacceptable, and that is why he’s denounced his forebears service to and support of the Confederacy, there would be a very different discussion about the photo, the yearbook, and whether Northam should remain in office. This is, however, not what happened.
It doesn’t matter whether he’s in the photo or not. It doesn’t matter if it was put on the right yearbook page or not. It doesn’t matter if this accurately represents who Northam is in 2019. Right now America, both state and society, are subjected to a non-stop barrage of bigotry, prejudice, and lying from the President of the United States. Every time he gives remarks, off the cuff or prepared, whether from the Oval Office, the Roosevelt Room, the Cabinet Room, the Rose Garden, the White House lawn, one of his rallies, or, as I fully expect to happen, from the dais of the House of Representatives next Tuesday, Americans are confronted with a President who lies about his own bigotry and prejudice, then makes more bigoted and prejudiced statements, and then delivers more lies on a wide variety of topics. Right now one political party, the Republican Party, goes out of its way to cozy up to, play footsie with, and tolerate bigots. It’s why Senator McConnell can condemn Congressman Steve King’s remarks, while never being held to account for his own longstanding relationship with neo-Confederate organizations. It’s why Congressman Scalise can do the same thing despite campaigning for Congress as “David Duke without the baggage”. And that’s before we get to the President’s political appointees, such as Stephen Miller and Kirstjen Nielsen, who are just as bad if not worse.
Right now there is a need in the US for both formal and informal leaders, and this includes Northam, to stand up, tell the truth, and do the right thing. American state and society are in desperate need for more of this, not less. And Northam can do America a great service today if he stands up at his press conference and provides one last act of formal leadership and resign. He needs to resign not because he or anyone else may be sure that he is actually either the man in black face or the man in the Klan costume or that the picture is on the right page, but because American needs to see examples of leaders who take responsibility, even if they’re not 100% sure that they are the responsible party, when something bad happens, and then take the hard and important first steps to fix the problem. Which, in this case, would be to resign. The real question about whether Northam is a real leader, and is even morally fit to be a leader, is less about the picture in his yearbook from 1985. It is really about whether he leads today by giving up power and seeing it peacefully and efficiently transferred to his lieutenant governor or whether he tries to petulantly cling to power in the hope that an explanation for the photo surfaces that exonerates him and allows him to brazen this out. You can’t teach character, despite what the knuckleheads at the Combined Arms Center think. You can identify it, you can nurture it. You can mentor it. You can reinforce it. But you either have it or you don’t. At 2:30 today we will learn if Governor Northam has character and is actually fit to lead, even as he gives up formal leadership, or if he doesn’t.
Update at 3:55 PM EDT
Governor Northam has announced that he won’t be resigning. Here’s the response from the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus:
The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus Addresses Northam's Refusal to Resign pic.twitter.com/z8pt15Uq3U
— VLBC (@VaBlackCaucus) February 2, 2019
Open thread.
* It is possible, though not probable, given what we know of them, that this is PJ and Squi in the picture after brewskis at Timmy’s with Brett, Judge, Tom, and Bernie because they were all black out drunks in high school at Georgetown Prep and this is the type of things they would do. But I think this is highly unlikely.
Ralph Northam Press Conference Live FeedPost + Comments (367)
GOP Venality Open Thread: Everybody Must Get Stone’d
Judge in Roger Stone case says she's considering gag order (from @AP) https://t.co/ms2MJzzxd3
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) February 1, 2019
… In a court filing Thursday, prosecutors said the FBI seized physical devices from his home, apartment and office. They said multiple hard drives containing several terabytes of information have been recovered, including bank and financial records and the contents of numerous phones and computers…
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Speaking of which…
As they sift through his terabytes, will we ever find out about all the dirty trick operations Roger Stone was behind that are incidental to the matter at hand? The mind boggles.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 1, 2019
There's really so many possibilities when you look back at his press hungry history. https://t.co/6FoLc5gErb
— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 1, 2019
The question is has Stephen Miller’s back gotten its Trump head tattoo yet?
— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 1, 2019
GOP Venality Open Thread: Everybody Must Get Stone’dPost + Comments (94)
My Tiers of the Candidates
Thought I would share my early thoughts on who I like to be President based on what I think they stand for- not all of these people have announced (denoted by an *):
Tier 1:
Sherrod Brown*
Stacy Abrams*
Andrew Gillum*
Amy Klobuchar*
Pete Buttigieg
Tier 2:
Castro
Harris
Gillibrand
Elizabeth Warren
Tier 3:
Sanders*
Beto*
Biden
Booker
Tier 4:
John Delaney
Tier Just Fuck Right Off:
Gabbard
Schultz
There is no real deep thought put into this, there is not much information on the candidate pages and it is way early. Just my general feelings. Tier 1 are obviously the people I would crawl over broken glass to vote for (Buttigieg is young and will probably go nowhere but I like the cut of his gib jib). Passion wanes the lower the tiers go. I really like Harris a lot, but I just don’t like the progressive prosecutor positioning you weren’t, really- just be who you are, which is pretty awesome! Warren is a touch old even though she looks 50, and I worry about Gillibrand being too moderate.
Beto, Sanders, and Biden are weird- obviously I would vote for them, but Beto just seems out there and I’m not sure what he is up to, Biden is too old and too compromised and too moderate, and Sanders is too damned old and I don’t want to live through 2016 and then the general campaign red-baiting and I don’t think the AA community has bought into him still, so what’s the point.
Again, these are just rough opinions based on not much but the gut, and as you all know, give me an hour and I’ll change them.
*** Update ***
I forgot Booker. I fear he may be too beholden to corporate interests.
The Not Racist Party
This is pretty typical of how a lot of conservatives on Twitter reacted to the Northam yearbook pictures yesterday. First, they assumed that Democrats would defend Northam, and when Democrats pretty much unanimously criticized Northam (and most called for his resignation), these thoughtful conservatives ended up defending Northam themselves. That’s because, in the Republican party, a picture of one of their elected officials in blackface and/or a Klan robe is more or less just another Friday. See, also, pussy grabbing.
And, yes, maybe a red cap doesn’t make you a racist, but there sure are a lot of racists in MAGA caps.
Saturday Morning Open Thread: Super Bowl Stories
Stacey Abrams will appear in a Super Bowl ad campaigning for the expansion of voting rights.
Running in Georgia markets, Abrams makes a call for updated voting machines and increased resources for local officials. https://t.co/3zjF5QIW3h pic.twitter.com/Ena44gh2HB
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 31, 2019
Figured I’d get this out of the way early, so that beloved curmudgeon Raven has the chance to ding me for hatin see it. Still don’t know from football, but I am — to quote the tag — riveted by the sociological significance of it all.
Will Leitch, in NYMag, “Was the NFL’s Success This Season Just a ‘Dead Cat Bounce’?”:
… After a few of the most tumultuous years the league has ever had, and the closest Goodell ever came to losing his job (which in retrospect probably wasn’t very close at all), 2018 was the calmest, happiest season the NFL has had in nearly a decade, at least. Television ratings, after a heavily debated downturn in 2017 that even led to Tom freaking Brady admitting he was paying less attention to the league than he used to, were back up this year. This has been the quietest CTE year since the league’s concussion crisis first broke through into the public consciousness, and, for the first time, the NFL’s sometimes laughably transparent defenses that the game is somehow “safer” now are being taken by many at face value…
Combine that with some truly compelling on-field product this year — thanks largely to innovations from the college game, offenses are running a more spread-out style, leading to higher scoring and more viscerally entertaining games — and it has been a dream season for the NFL… It’s even an ideal Super Bowl matchup, with the unquestionably fun Rams, led by an innovative head coach who’s eight years younger than Tom Brady, against those hated Patriots, a team we have such a national antipathy for that they might be the one thing everyone in this country can all agree on. Goodell, for the first time in years, can stroll up to that podium with a little swagger rather than the usual dodging of tomatoes. Fans angry at the refs? That’s the sort of “problem” Goodell will happily hold court on. It sure beats having Trump in his face all year, or facing existential threats to his game.
Saturday Morning Open Thread: Super Bowl StoriesPost + Comments (142)
Open Thread: Florida Man Senator
Rick Scott is just upset because he hasn't yet found a pet store in DC that will sell him a bag of baby mice as a snack. pic.twitter.com/dbQm3xkWij
— Kelsey D. Atherton (@AthertonKD) February 1, 2019
To save you the click: Scott insists, in the teeth of the evidence, that “we” can’t have a budget deal that embraces both Trump’s WAAAHLL and protection of DREAMers because of “irrational and clouded thinking motivated by hate from Democratic leaders in Washington”.
Were I a Floridian, I’d find the lack of baby-mice snack bags less embarrassing an excuse than this piffle!
Open Thread: Florida <del>Man</del> SenatorPost + Comments (85)