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You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Friday Morning Open Thread: I’m TIRED of These Morons & Grifters

Friday Morning Open Thread: I’m TIRED of These Morons & Grifters

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Finally had a dry afternoon yesterday, so I could go out & start serious assessment of the various plants that did or did not survive the winter. It is going to take so much work to rip everything out and start over — I want to save as many of my favorite plants as I can, but I’ll have to dig them up one by one before carpet-bombing the myriad invansive weeds and vinca. And even though I’m not exactly looking forward to the task, at least it’s less discouraging than following the Oval Office Occupation and its various noxious pests…

From the Washington Post, “Stymied by aides, Trump sought out loyalist to curtail special counsel — and drew Mueller’s glare”:

President Trump was furious.

He had just learned that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation went beyond Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign and into the White House — and that Trump himself was now under scrutiny for his actions in office. The next day, he attempted to oust Mueller, only to be thwarted by his White House counsel, according to the special counsel’s report.

So Trump turned to the one person he could long count on to do his bidding: Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, described by senior White House advisers to investigators as a Trump “devotee.” In a private Oval Office meeting, the president dictated a message he wanted delivered to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions: that he needed to give a speech announcing he was limiting the scope of the investigation.

Trump’s efforts to enlist Lewandowski as a back channel to try to curtail the probe, detailed in 10 pages of Mueller’s 448-page report, provides a new window into how far the president went in trying to hold back the special counsel.

The episode, which discomfited even some of Trump’s most loyal advisers, was read by some legal observers as one of the clearest cases laid out in Mueller’s report of potential obstruction of justice by the president. In unequivocal terms, the report states that there was “substantial evidence” that Trump hoped his actions would derail Mueller’s investigation and prevent further scrutiny of his campaign and his own conduct…

Through a combination of missed opportunities and personal hesitation, Lewandowski never executed Trump’s demand. But the roughly month-long period in the summer of 2017 depicted in Mueller’s report details repeated and escalating efforts by the president to stymie the Russia probe — laying out evidence that former prosecutors said meets the elements required in an obstruction-of-justice charge.

“This is a very significant episode,” said Barbara McQuade, who served as a U.S. attorney in Michigan during the Obama administration. “The question is, are all of the elements of obstruction of justice met? Was there an act, was there a sufficient nexus and was there a corrupt intent? Here, the answer is yes, yes and yes.”…

Three days later, Trump called White House Counsel Donald McGahn and directed him to have Mueller removed, according to the special counsel’s report.

“Mueller has to go,” McGahn recalled the president telling him. The White House counsel contemplated resigning but ultimately was persuaded by other Trump aides to stay. He did not follow the president’s directive.

Trump denied the episode in a tweet Thursday, saying he never told McGahn to fire Mueller. “If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn’t need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself,” he wrote…

Trump wanted Sessions to deliver a speech declaring that the president was “being treated very unfairly” and that he should not be facing a special counsel investigation “because he hasn’t done anything wrong,” the report states.

Sessions should conclude the speech, Trump told Lewandowski, by announcing he planned to meet with Mueller in order to limit the investigation to future instances of meddling in U.S. elections…

Such a brave man, that Don McGahn — smart enough not to follow illegitimate instructions, but not brave enough to speak up about the blatant criminality. Of course, if any of these grifters and sycophants had the brains to pour water out of a boot, or the courage to stare down an aggravated starling, we’d be in an even worse situation than we already are.

Speaking of which, here’s another whinger looking for his tiny-violin orchestra:

Reader Interactions

209Comments

  3. 3.

    Elizabelle

    Friday is a good day for Poncho the dog. Satisfied looking pooch. Not hard to imagine Thurston in those very circumstances.

  4. 4.

    prob50

    @OzarkHillbilly: Aw, here I thought I might have the chance to make the 1st comment on a thread, but I couldn’t think of anything other than “Blech” and you beat me to it anyway.

    So…Double-Blech.

    There.

    Anyway I got blood works tests to be taken in a few hours so I really should be sleeping now, but..not tired and I’m not supposed to eat anything. Oh, well, guess I’ll hang around for a while…it beats lying there wide awake.

    Oh, yeah…Good Morning, Everyone.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    Speaking of which, here’s another whinger looking for his tiny-violin orchestra:

    Didn’t mention Hillary? He’s not going to go far in wing nut circles.

    ETA: ok, the story that the tweet is linked to doesn’t seem to support the tweet, as far as I can tell.

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @prob50: Sorry ’bout that. Hope your blood work comes back like my most recent: “Almost perfect.” The nurse said that and I couldn’t resist, “Just like me,”

  8. 8.

    prob50

    Baud: I’m sure one of their back-up nuts will be along soon to correct the oversight.

  9. 9.

    prob50

    @OzarkHillbilly: Well, at least they have some decent veins to drill into. Near the end of my hospital stay they were having trouble locating fresh places to poke me. I wouldn’t let them do the veins in the back of my hands because a previous attempt there screwed up a nerve or something. I’ve gotten most of the feeling back since, but I’ve decided those hand areas are off limits from now on.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    In rare sentencing, ex-Florida officer gets 25 years for killing musician

    A former Florida police officer has received a 25-year prison sentence for the fatal on-duty shooting of a black musician whose SUV had broken down after a late-night concert. The fired Palm Beach Gardens officer Nouman Raja was the first Florida law enforcement agent in nearly 30 years to be convicted and sentenced for an on-duty killing – and one of only a few officers nationwide.

    The 41-year-old defendant was sentenced on Thursday by the circuit judge Joseph Marx as family and friends of the 31-year-old victim, Corey Jones, looked on in a hushed courtroom jammed with supporters from both sides. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Raja.

    Jones’ family exited the courthouse singing the gospel song Victory is Mine. Jones came from a family of ministers and was to have performed at their church the morning he was killed in 2015. His father, Clinton Jones Sr, had told Marx earlier he hadn’t deleted his son’s number from his cellphone because that would be too hard emotionally. “We knew what the truth was and we stood by that,” Jones told reporters after the hearing. He said he never doubted Raja instigated the altercation. “Because of the son we had raised and the type of character he had, we knew … it wasn’t our Corey.”

    Raja’s wife, Karine, asked Marx to show leniency so her husband could be a father to their two young children. “Why I am so angry is that the wrong person was chosen to be a sacrificial lamb,” his wife said. “Raja is the man you wanted serving and protecting you.” His attorneys left court vowing to appeal.

  11. 11.

    prob50

    So Trump turned to the one person he could long count on to do his bidding: Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, described by senior White House advisers to investigators as a Trump “devotee.”

    See, there’s his mistake. Lewandowski’s type of devotion lends itself more to thuggery more than words.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @prob50: I used to have really good veins but in my old age they have begun to rebel. My last hospital stay ended on the high note of a collapsed vein in my hand that resulted in a saline solution filled volleyball at the end of my arm. Fun times.

  13. 13.

    Elizabelle

    I am interested in this Anna Delvey case in NYC. Fake German heiress who traveled in the artsy and bright young things circles; it was all a facade. Anna’s real name is Anna Sorokin; Russian born; parents live in Germany not far from Cologne. Dad is a former truck driver, now a small businessman; upbringing was middle class, at best.

    Parlayed an internship in Paris at a fancy art magazine (Purple, which makes me laugh because my seventh-grade art teacher Petra Stathopolous always lectured that there is no color called purple; it’s “violet” and other shades) …anyway, reappeared in NYC and suddenly she’s an heiress with connections to the art world who is planning her own multi-million dollar art foundation and social club/art space. She was actually taking meetings with bankers, lawyers, architects and chefs. Always a problem with the bank wire just not arriving as planned. Kept moving upscale hotels when — surprise — there was not a working credit card on file. Billing expensive restaurant meals to the room.

    I am always amazed at people who act as though the law of gravity does not apply to them. Thinking of Stephen Glass too. Enough talent to succeed in the conventional sense, but got to go with the fabrication because of …. what? Are they more similar, or dissimilar?

    And how people don’t sometimes give people of assumed wealth (looking at you, Donald Trump and your whole grifting circle) the critical reception that the rest of us get. So many trust fund babies all over the place; emulate one and people did not seem to want to look much further.

    Anna bilked one friend, at the time a Vanity Fair photo editor, into covering a $62,000 vacation to Morocco (“problems with the credit card”). The friend pursued it in court, but the jury did not convict on those charges because VF friend came up with a $600K book and cable show deal and so kind of benefited from the fraud as well. (I would have still convicted … theft by fraud is still theft.)

    Links: NY Times: ‘Anna Delvey,’ Fake Heiress Who Swindled N.Y.’s Elite, Is Found Guilty
    A Manhattan jury convicted Anna Sorokin of bilking hotels, restaurants, a private jet operator and banks out of tens of thousands of dollars.

    Vanity Fair: “AS AN ADDED BONUS, SHE PAID FOR EVERYTHING”: MY BRIGHT-LIGHTS MISADVENTURE WITH A MAGICIAN OF MANHATTAN
    She walked into my life in Gucci sandals and Céline glasses, and showed me a glamorous, frictionless world of hotel living and Le Coucou dinners and infrared saunas and Moroccan vacations. And then she made my $62,000 disappear.

    Probably the best and earliest article: NY Mag’s The Cut from last May: Maybe She Had So Much Money She Just Lost Track of It Somebody had to foot the bill for Anna Delvey’s fabulous new life. The city was full of marks.

  15. 15.

    tybee

    no matter which democrat gets elected, i want them to appoint Hillary as secretary of state so she can spit in putin’s eye.

  16. 16.

    Kay

    Michigan:

    The “predominate purpose” of the redistricting plan approved by the GOP-led Legislature in 2011 “was to subordinate the interests of Democratic voters and entrench Republicans in power,” said the unanimous decision written by U.S. Circuit Court Judge Eric Clay, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton.
    “Therefore, the enacted plan constitutes a durable partisan gerrymander.”
    The Court concludes that the following Challenged Districts constitute unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders, in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, because they dilute the votes of Democratic voters: Congressional Districts 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12; Senate Districts 8, 11, 12, 14, 18, 27, and 36; and House Districts 24, 32, 51, 55, 60, 63, 75, 83, 91, 94, and 95.

    Takes effect immediately. They have to be redrawn.

  19. 19.

    prob50

    @tybee:

    no matter which democrat gets elected, i want them to appoint Hillary as secretary of state so she can spit in putin’s eye.

    I’m not sure she’d relish having to clean up the Trumplings dangerous & foolish catalog of lunacy. It looks like some kind of foreign policy janitorial service will need to come in before any decent SOS could get anything done.

  20. 20.

    satby

    @Baud:

    the story that the tweet is linked to doesn’t seem to support the tweet, as far as I can tell.

    Whoa, like Twitter might be misleading hot takes? Gettouttahere.

  21. 21.

    Immanentize

    Hello All. After one beautiful day, back to rainy and raw today. I need more sleep.

    Blech

  22. 22.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Kochd

    Biden’s announcement video was clever.

    So far candidates have been running on policy or temperament or generation or gender or personality. Biden comes along a takes the “Fuck Trump” lane which so far has been left open.

    The pundits are in different camps, some believe the nomination will be decided on who is most electable, others believe it will go to who has the best policy. It might well go to who’s best at firing up rank and file voters by sticking it to Dump.

  26. 26.

    Immanentize

    And regarding the unusual result of a police officer being convicted for shooting an unarmed black man; I’ll just note the said officer is himself not-white. Hmmm. And then this:

    The last Florida officer sentenced for an on-duty killing was Miami’s William Lozano in 1989. The Hispanic officer fatally shot a black motorcyclist who he said tried to hit him.

    I’m sure these are just odd coinkydoinks.

  29. 29.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: after our discussion on copal the other day I decided to get a charcoal resin burner myself. That started me on a clicky journey through all the options and ended up here. Got a charcoal burner and resin too because they’re both pretty cheap, but the bakhoor is so far beating the resin. Loving them both over incense sticks though.

  30. 30.

    Gin & Tonic

    The nuclear reactor accident at Chornobyl was 33 years ago today. Arguably the catalyst that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The federal government has six months to identify potentially thousands of children who were separated from their families at the US-Mexico border early in Donald Trump’s term, a judge said Thursday. Trump administration officials said they had a goal of six months but opposed any deadline, saying it could take as long as two years to reunite children with their parents if efforts to speed up the process fail.

    The US district judge Dana Sabraw said he would be willing to consider an extension past 25 October but that he wanted to establish a firm date. “I am going to issue an order to do this in six months, subject to good cause,” Sabraw said. “It is important for all government actors to have a timeframe, a deadline.”

    I know there are certain rules and norms judges follow, but given the number of employees ICE has I am having a hard time imagining what kind of ‘good cause’ they might show for being unable to complete this task w/in 6 months.

    “We did not properly document what we did or where we sent the children or where the parents went.” is NOT good cause, it is reason for prosecutions. IMHO

  36. 36.

    Sab

    @OzarkHillbilly: When they repeatedly misplace and separate 11 and 12 year old girls from their families I always suspect sex trafficking. It’s always projection with these guys, and sex trafficking has long been their obsession, when the more naive among us did not even realize it was an issue.

  40. 40.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: oh heck, for 13.99 just get what I got. You can burn charcoal on the dish for resin or a tea light candle for the bakhoor. Then if you come up with some time later you can make your own, but why deprive yourself when it’s so cheap?

  43. 43.

    satby

    Wish J R in WV was online, I wanted to tell him the ramps I transplanted last year came back! So excited, I’m leaving them alone to spread for a couple of years before I start harvesting any.

  45. 45.

    Sab

    @debbie: He is a member of the Federalist Society. That alone should disqualify him from any public respect or office. They are all vetted by one lone nut job, that Leo guy. That’s what blew up Comet. He was so obsessed with not offending the one lone nut job that he walked away from every standard or norm he had ever been exposed to.

  48. 48.

    NotMax

    FYI. For the If You Build It, They Will Click file:
    Facebook is banning personality quiz apps, which have for years been able to collect and store a great deal of information about their users. The ban comes a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where it came out that the data firm had acquired information on up to 87 million people through the quiz app “thisisyourdigitallife.”
    [snip]
    … Facebook doesn’t say the personality quiz ban is because of Cambridge Analytica, of course — instead, it’s about removing apps with “minimal utility” from the platform. Source

  49. 49.

    prob50

    @debbie: I remember that. He killed a couple out here in California and was eventually convicted of it. Per Wikipedia he’s still in prison. Whatta scumbag.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    Coding typo. Fix.

    FYI. For the If You Build It, They Will Click file:

    Facebook is banning personality quiz apps, which have for years been able to collect and store a great deal of information about their users. The ban comes a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where it came out that the data firm had acquired information on up to 87 million people through the quiz app “thisisyourdigitallife.”
    [snip]
    … Facebook doesn’t say the personality quiz ban is because of Cambridge Analytica, of course — instead, it’s about removing apps with “minimal utility” from the platform. Source

  52. 52.

    Sab

    @satby: My ramps also survived. My niece gave me some last year with roots, so I planted them. Family was slightly offended that I wasted them (did not eat them.) But next year there they are.

    Damon auto correct really makes a mess of things.

  53. 53.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A number of workplace safety advocates fear fatalities will soar as Trump cuts back on the federal work safety watchdog Occupation Safety and Health Administration (Osha).

    The latest Death on the Job report from union federation AFL-CIO, released to time with Workers’ Memorial Day, showed a slight dip in deaths from 2016, when 5,190 people died on the job. Some 5,147 people were killed on the job in 2017, Donald Trump’s first year in office. But the true toll of work-related injuries and illnesses may be closer to 7m to 10.5m each year, according to a report released on Thursday.

    Under the Trump administration, Osha has cut workplace safety inspectors to the lowest level in its 48-year history as an agency. The report also shows that Osha has cut by more than half the number of the highest level of legal action brought against employers for violations of workplace safety law. In 2016, 815 federal workplace inspectors were employed by Osha down from nearly 1,000 in 2010 after years of budget cutting by a GOP-controlled Congress. Now, through attrition and a federal hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration, only 752 inspectors are employed.
    ………………………..
    With a small budget of approximately $550m even during the height of Obama years, workplace safety advocates calculated that Osha only had the resources to inspect every workplace once every 129 years. Now with even less inspectors, Osha would need 165 years to visit every workplace in America.

    This is just a continuation of the long war on workers. The hollowing out of OSHA is a long term project of the Chamber of Commerce and other “business interests” groups. This all comes with a bonus tho:

    In addition to allowing the number of Osha inspectors to drop, the Trump administration has also cut ties and funding with immigrant and community groups that OSHA had successfully partnered with to help reduce workplace deaths in many areas.
    …………………..
    In 2017, the first year of the Trump administration for which full data is available, Latino workplace deaths increased from 879 deaths in 2016 to 927 deaths in 2017, with foreign-born immigrant Latino workers constituting 63% of those deaths. Workplace safety advocates say a crippling sense of fear has prevented many immigrants from speaking up.

    A pretty safe bet they’ll top 1,000 for 2018.

  54. 54.

    NotMax

    @Sab

    auto correct really makes a mess of things

    And just think, ‘self-driving’ cars auto-correct hundreds, if not thousands of time per second.

  59. 59.

    Baud

    What do you get when you cross Donald Trump with Hal 9000, the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey?

    “You’re fired, Dave.”

    Amazon’s warehouse-worker tracking system can automatically fire people without a human supervisor’s involvement

  61. 61.

    trnc

    On his way out the door, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein unloads on the Obama administration, pundits, the former FBI Director, and his perceived critics, while reverentially quoting Trey Gowdy and @realDonaldTrump.https://t.co/KYjLpfSLgp

    — Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) April 26, 2019

    Huh? I don’t see anything like what Josh alleges in the speech or in the cnn article about the speech. Maybe Rosenstein said something somewhere else?

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/deputy-attorney-general-rod-j-rosenstein-delivers-remarks-armenian-bar-association-s

  62. 62.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: I thought it was about time, not money ?. But I didn’t know you already had a burner. I’m just loving how much richer a scent they produce.

    @Sab: yay! I’m planting more from a batch I just bought, then using the rest cooking. Hope by next year I can harvest a few. Now if I could just grow my own morels!

  65. 65.

    Steve in the ATL

    Question for the arts aficionados on the blog: are there any serious challengers to “Solarbabies” as the worst movie of all time?

  66. 66.

    Elizabelle

    @debbie: Yes indeed.

    Ms. Sorokin fka Ms. Delrey told some newspaper that she had learned in jail how easily identity theft is accomplished. Oh joy. That seems to be something she never attempted in her first round of fraudulent high living.

  67. 67.

    prob50

    @Baud: As opposed to being let go by an impersonal corporate weasel.

    Back in ’03 the entire department I worked in was told “you guys just had your best season ever.” and in the next breath, “And for next season we’re moving Central Support to Wichita, KS.”

    About 5 years later that same large corp bought up the next company I worked for. I retired in 2011, but I just heard they are closing down that location and moving those responsibilities to Georgia at the end of May. For one of my former colleagues this will be the 3rd time said corporation has let him go in the same manner.

  68. 68.

    Leto

    @Baud: I’d ask if that was illegal, but I’m sure they’ll cite some box an employee checked saying their HAL 9000 is allowed to do anything it wants.

  70. 70.

    germy

    On his way out the door, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein unloads on the Obama administration, pundits, the former FBI Director, and his perceived critics, while reverentially quoting Trey Gowdy

    Here’s the disconnect I feel. We just turned on CBS this morning and the anchor did a brief roundup of the day’s news. They showed a photo of Rosenstein and said that he gave a speech defending the Russia probe. And that’s it.

  72. 72.

    prob50

    @Amir Khalid:

    How is it legal to give a machine authority to make firing decisions?

    Pretty likely the word came from somewhere up above in the corporate hierarchy. The machine is just the delivery messenger. Keeps the corporate hands from getting dirty (or given the times, being shot at).

  73. 73.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I’m going to chalk up an ‘I told you so’ here. My reaction to every ‘Now Trump will fire Mueller!’ incident was that Trump couldn’t want to fire Mueller any more than he did already, and something was holding him back. Turns out it was a combination of Trump’s extreme cowardice making him unable to fire people personally, and minions realizing that THEY lacked a president’s immunity from prosecution.

  74. 74.

    Soprano2

    I’m listening to Rachel Martin interview Noah Rothman about what Democratic voters want, and it makes me want to stab them. NPR, why are you asking a Republican what Democratic voters want? They’re talking about the “white whale” of white working class voters, that group that hasn’t voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since Carter. When I Googled to find that, I got a bunch of stuff about Joe Biden and whether Democrats can “win back” white working class voters, although some of the articles appear to believe the working class is all white people. I swear, it’s a huge sign of prejudice that so many people seem to believe that in order for a political party to be “legit” white people have to vote for its candidates. Also, it continues the myth that it was mostly poor blue collar people who voted for Trump. Evidently, the press has learned NOTHING from their 2016 fuck-ups.

  75. 75.

    prob50

    @Soprano2:

    Evidently, the press has learned NOTHING from their 2016 fuck-ups.

    The cynic in me thinks that may be more of a “feature” than a “bug”.

  76. 76.

    Ken

    @NotMax:

    personality quiz apps

    “Oh, cool, what Game of Thrones character am I most like! Question one, are you a ‘cat person’ or a ‘dog person’… question two, what was the name of your first pet… question three, what is your mother’s maiden name… “

  79. 79.

    Leto

    @Baud:

    “Dave… you’ve been in the bathroom for two minutes, Dave… what’s the problem, Dave…”

    “Dave… that’s your second donut, Dave… be a considerate employee, Dave…”

    “Dave… we we know it was you who microwaved the fish sandwich in the employee lounge microwave, Dave… that was the last straw, Dave… you’re fired, Dave…”

  80. 80.

    Immanentize

    @prob50:
    No different than the old style factory pink slip. Everyone likes firing to be anonymous as to them. Ask the President.

  81. 81.

    MomSense

    @Soprano2:

    You may want to join our burgeoning yell at the NPR radio club. You should be aware that if you yell at NPR in your car, people can see you doing this.

  82. 82.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud: C’mon. We all know that robot would ask another robot to do the firing, because it’s a chickenshit coward.

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    although some of the articles appear to believe the working class is all white people.

    Democrats themselves are guilty of this, though. They could insist that the discussion not be limited to white working class. In many ways I think we bought the framing. I think the way to get there is to talk about the jobs people do. So rather than say “there IS a black and Latino working class, dumbass” point to the jobs. Every once in a while a Democrat will do it- Obama did it with home health aides- 80% women and majority minority- but it’s rare. It does 2 things, IMO. It values the work people do and it stops this insane equating of white people with working, because think about the impression that gives- it assumes that white people are the only people who work. Why would we go along with that? It’s not true and it ignores whole huge sections and sectors of work.

    Embrace working class, but not the pickup truck commercial version. To be “working” one doesn’t have to be throwing a bale of hay into a truck bed. Embrace the real version- one that includes women and minorities and the jobs that are ignored. Instead of a focus on 25,000 coal miners talk about 2 million home health aides. Go the Bureau of Labor statistics and start making lists.

  87. 87.

    prob50

    @Immanentize: Yup. Having been a retail store manager for a while in the 80’s I had to let someone go once. He was as productive as anyone, if not more so, but corporate was on a cost-cutting kick. Orders from a manager higher up the food chain. It sucked because the guy was better than some of the remaining folks on my shift. The only upside was that he took it very graciously and thanked me for giving him the opportunity in the first place. I felt like sh*t.

  88. 88.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Sadly, your Senator, who I generally like, is guilty of this.

    Part of the problem is that a large portion of the white working class doesn’t want to be lumped in with those people, meaning any Democrat that does so is in for controversy.

  89. 89.

    Immanentize

    @Kay:
    Good points all. Also, it has been almost 19 years since the Democratic Party — and the nation as a whole — preferred by votes a white male to be President. So maybe not the winning hand it is presented as?

  90. 90.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The Rosenstein quote:

    “The previous administration chose not to publicize the full story about Russian computer hackers and social media trolls, and how they relate to a broader strategy to undermine America,” he said, per Politico. “The FBI disclosed classified evidence about the investigation to ranking legislators and their staffers. Someone selectively leaked details to the news media. The FBI director announced at a congressional hearing that there was a counterintelligence investigation that might result in criminal charges. Then the former FBI director alleged that the President pressured him to close the investigation, and the President denied that the conversation occurred. So that happened.”

    Much ado about nothing by people who want to get their blood pressure up over more SSDD.

  96. 96.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: @Immanentize: Admittedly, I would have preferred Rosenstein mentioned the roles McConnell and Ryan played in Obama’s decision not to say anything more during the election, but he’s a Republican. What did people expect?

  97. 97.

    JGabriel

    @tybee:

    no matter which democrat gets elected, i want them to appoint Hillary as secretary of state so she can spit in putin’s eye.

    Better yet, make her secretary of defense so she can put a bullet through it.

  98. 98.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Elizabelle:

    Ms. Sorokin fka Ms. Delrey told some newspaper that she had learned in jail how easily identity theft is accomplished.

    I remember learning in law school that prisons were crime schools, which is a good reason not to incarcerate so many people.

    ETA: OzarkHillbilly beat me to the punch—blech!

  99. 99.

    Leto

    Senator Warren introduces military housing bill to boost inspections, transparency

    Senator Elizabeth Warren will introduce a bill Friday that offers new protections for U.S. military families facing unsafe housing, following a series of Reuters reports revealing squalid conditions in privately managed base homes.

    The Reuters reports and later Congressional hearings detailed widespread hazards including lead paint exposure, vermin infestations, collapsing ceilings, mold and maintenance lapses in privatized base housing communities that serve some 700,000 U.S. military family members.

    The Massachusetts Democrat’s bill would mandate both regular and unannounced spot inspections of base homes by certified, independent inspectors, holding landlords accountable for quickly fixing hazards. The military’s privatization program for years allowed real estate firms to operate base housing with scant oversight, Reuters found, leaving some tenants in unsafe homes with little recourse against landlords.

    The bill would also require the Department of Defense and its private housing operators to publish reports annually detailing housing conditions, tenant complaints, maintenance response times and the financial incentives companies receive at each base. The provisions aim to enhance transparency of housing deals whose finances and operations the military had allowed to remain largely confidential under a privatization program since the late 1990s.

    I know everyone has their issues, but she’s doing her best to secure my vote. This has been an ongoing problem for years. I continue to be deeply invested in the health and welfare of my Airmen, even though they’re no longer my Airmen. While I “get it” that the DoD no longer wanted to be in the housing game, to allow their people to be stuck in this type of shit has been, and will always be, wholly unacceptable. This is what makes people not want to re-enlist. This is the type of shit that makes people not want to enlist in the first place. Thank you, Dr Sen Warren.

  100. 100.

    mad citizen

    Good morning juicers! Haven’t seen any coverage of the exciting NRA Annual Convention in Indianapolis here, so am sharing. It’s next door to my workplace. Fortunately this is my every other Friday off so I didn’t have to engage the traffic mess this today; though I have 4+ hours of conference calls today to cover.

    Our leaders are coming today to speak and close streets, etc. You’d think the team would come on one plane, but no, doesn’t sound like it. Trump leaving early afternoon and Pence around 6:30:
    “Vice President Mike Pence is expected to land at the Indianapolis International Airport around 10:05 a.m.
    President Donald Trump is expected to land sometime around 10:50 a.m.”

    Here is a live blog from one of our tv stations: https://www.theindychannel.com/news/politics/live-blog-president-trump-vp-pence-speaking-at-nra-convention-in-indy. One thing is not adding up. We were told the convention brings 60K, 80K, 75K people. You’d think the stadium would be packed for the speeches. Yet, the blog says tickets are still available, even to the public, at $10, for the Orange One.

    15 acres of Guns & Gear!

  101. 101.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @germy: i believe Jefferson stated that a ‘well-informed citizenry’ is the foundation of democracy!!

    Anyone think today’s M$M provides a ‘well-informed citizery’??

  102. 102.

    Rommie

    @Kay: Until Judge Beer gives the 5th Thumbs-Up in a few weeks to it being A-OK. I can *hope* that the Chief sees this as one of those legacy-defining moments if he on-board with partisan map-drawing, but no one should ever bet on Roberts leaning Blue at any time.

    If Gerrymandering proves to be hunky-dory, at least it’s more ammo to pack the Court.

  103. 103.

    Betty Cracker

    @mad citizen: Don’t know if you’re a TPM reader, but they’ve got an article up on the NRA’s scandalous present and past. I’m pleased to hear the death merchants are still hawking tickets.

  104. 104.

    karen marie

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Kochd: It won’t be Biden. All his “fuck Trump” is mere posturing, providing cover for his Republican “friends” to avoid responsibility. Trump is a symptom, not the cause of Republican degeneracy. Biden has already evaporated any positive feeling from me toward him with that rank bullshit.

  107. 107.

    Leto

    @Leto: From the end of the article:

    Congress has been quick to take its own measures. Earlier legislation proposed by senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California, along with Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, would compel base commanders to withhold rent payments and incentive fees from the private ventures if they allow home hazards to persist.

    This is why I vote Democrat. Because we recognize the problems and want to actually fix them. It’s also why I get so f’ing mad when the Talibangicals wrap themselves in the flag and proclaim they’re the true patriots of the republic. Fuck’em.

  108. 108.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Rommie:

    no one should ever bet on Roberts leaning Blue at any time.

    Roberts has a well established history of forbidding gerrymandering. The problem is that he also has a well established history of allowing gerrymandering. He appears to be legalistic rather than partisan about this issue, and shockingly is quite firm against racial gerrymandering. The problem is, the law is weird, so ‘legalistic’ is hard to predict for us regular people.

  109. 109.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Leto:

    Because we recognize the problems and want to actually fix them.

    And Evangelicals vote Republican because they realize that DEM fixes are the real problem getting in the way of the corporate bottom line.

  110. 110.

    Cacti

    I see that Cenk Uygur’s “Justice Democrats” are opposing Joe Biden.

    I’d call that another point in Uncle Joe’s favor.

  111. 111.

    mad citizen

    @mrmoshpotato: “ammosexuals” is one of my favorite terms that I have learned here. And Betty, ironically “Because of the President and Vice President’s attendance, firearms, firearm accessories, knives or any weapons of any kind are prohibited in the Forum.”

    The live blog also says only a few tickets are available for purchase (you can also join the NRA at the door for $30). We’ll have to see some pictures of the event–it’s in the Colts NFL Stadium, not sure how much of it they are using. Hoping Daniel Dale is coming to blog it.

  112. 112.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    getting in the way of the corporate bottom line.

    Evangelicals realize that Democrats and liberals are in the way of their beating to death or driving minorities to suicide. Everything we stand for must be fought against tooth and nail for that reason.

  113. 113.

    Betty Cracker

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Kochd: Despite Bernie Sanders’ claim that “It’s not enough to say, ‘I’m a woman, vote for me,'” there are no actual women running on “gender” among our primary candidates. In fact, two of the women in the current field who are not running on gender have called for Trump’s impeachment, so perhaps the “fuck Trump” lane isn’t as open as you think.

  114. 114.

    James E Powell

    @Soprano2:

    Evidently, the press has learned NOTHING from their 2016 fuck-ups.

    Not a knock on you, but we all need to stop saying this. The press/media learned everything they needed to know in 2016. They learned that putting Trump in the White House was the best thing for them since 9/11. They learned that abandoning every standard of what was once known as journalism made them richer and no one but a few old cranks seems to mind.

    The press/media do not want to be any different – or what you and I might call better – than they are right now. They want everything to be just like it is, only more so.

  115. 115.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Betty Cracker:

    there are, in fact, no actual women running on “gender” among our primary candidates

    I’ve noticed a lot of men think ‘addressing issues specific to women’ is ‘running on gender.’ If it’s not a white man’s problem, it must be identity politics.

  116. 116.

    mad citizen

    @Betty Cracker: Thanks for the link to the TPM article on the NRA’s self-dealing, etc. In downtown Indy there are giant pictures up of Oliver North and Wayne LaPierre. I normally walk through our convention center to my workplace, but it was closed to conventioners starting Wed. Yesterday I walked a different street so as to not see the visages of those ammosexuals. I think it’s ironic they developed the guy with the French name into the NRA leader. You would have thought the leader’s name would be John Rambo or Vin Diesel or something like that.

  117. 117.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Yesterday:

    U.S. Military Academy @ WestPoint_USMA
    Today the U.S. Military Academy unveiled a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States, #USMA Class of 1843, during a ceremony on The Plain, in celebration of the sesquicentennial of his inauguration and the beginning of Inspiration Week at West Point.

    today:

    Kaitlan Collins @ kaitlancollins
    Trump on his “both sides” remark regarding Charlottesville: “I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee….People there were protesting the taking down of the monument to Robert E. Lee. Everybody knows that.”

    Josh Rogin @ joshrogin
    Trump on Robert E. Lee: “Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals.” Then claims active duty generals told him Lee was their “favorite general.”

    the appeals to vague, anonymous authority are one of my favorite (“favorite”) trump tics

  118. 118.

    Cacti

    @Rommie:

    If Gerrymandering proves to be hunky-dory, at least it’s more ammo to pack the Court.

    At this point, amending the Judiciary Act should be a basic policy position of any serious Dem candidate, after the Merrick Garland travesty and Justice Boof Kavanaugh.

  120. 120.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Rommie: Clarence Thomas is on record saying that partisan gerrymandering fine. Gerrymandering is only improper to him if it’s race-based. As if there’s a difference.

  121. 121.

    Leto

    @OzarkHillbilly: @Frankensteinbeck: Corporate profits, driving POC/LGBTQ members to poverty/suicide/horrible outcomes… here’s a perfect example of talking to working class voters. The enlisted force is that working class voter base.

    The rain has really started and F1 FP2 is on. Time to decompress for a bit.

  122. 122.

    Cacti

    Speaking of Biden, his announcement speech has already baited the Dotard into doubling down on Charlottesville:

    Manu Raju
    ✔
    @mkraju
    Trump, at the White House, defends his “very fine people on both sides” comments on Charlottesville, says people were protesting the removal of Robert E Lee statue, calling the Confederate leader “one of the great generals.”

    Well played.

  123. 123.

    Betty Cracker

    Oh Christ, the press caught up with Trump on the way to the NRA convention, and he went full Norma Desmond:

    “I think that I just feel like a young man, I am so young, I can’t believe it. I’m the youngest person,” he said when asked “how old is too old” to run for President. “I am a young, vibrant man. I look at Joe, I don’t know about him. I don’t know.”

    He added that all the Democrats running for President are “making me look young, both in terms of age and energy.”

    Good God.

  126. 126.

    piratedan

    @mrmoshpotato:

    there was this thing called Mystery Science Theatre 3000…. but then again, everyone probably knew that, just sayin, plus their offshoots in Rifftrax and CinematicTitanic.

    All helping to make the unpalatable…. palatable.

  129. 129.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Sadly, your Senator, who I generally like, is guilty of this.

    Completely disagree. I think Democrats repeating over and over that “working class” doesn’t apply outside white people is insane. On this we’re part of the problem. We accepted a shitty frame that excludes our voters, is downright insulting to our voters, and maybe more importantly is not true.

    Every single time Trump says “coal miners” our response should be “home health aides”. Allowing them to claim the mantle of “people who work”? That’s just dumb. Stick up for your workers! The first way to do that would be to insist they exist.

    This is one of those areas where I just want to tear my hair out with Democrats. You’re overthinking this. Talk about our voters. They work.

  130. 130.

    The Moar You Know

    He added that all the Democrats running for President are “making me look young, both in terms of age and energy.”

    @Betty Cracker: I have a dream. It’s pretty simple.

    “He then fell down in full cardiac arrest and shit himself for twenty minutes straight while everyone laughed as he died.”

  131. 131.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Because you see what media and the GOP are saying? They’re saying “workers are WHITE” – over and over and over- why in the hell would we ever accept that premise? It’s so damaging to our voters! If Sherrod Brown says “I value work and the people who do the work” and we, Democrats, hear that as “oh, that’s about white people” what does that say about us?

    To me it says we bought their entire ridiculous argument that coal miners are somehow more valuable than nail salon techs. They’re not. It’s ALL work.

  132. 132.

    Chyron HR

    @Cacti:

    I see that Cenk Uygur’s “Justice Democrats” are opposing Joe Biden.

    Works for me. The only downside is that the little idiots are going to keep trying to taunt Democrats with, “Oooh look shitlibs, we’re going to take down your beloved Joe Biden who we assume you must love! U mad?”

  133. 133.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Maybe Joe Biden will get better at this- you know my feelings so I doubt it, but miracles occur!

    Just ONCE I would like to see a Democrat NOT limit worker events to Teamsters and construction trades. I mean, Jesus. Go to a fucking nursing home! There’s workers there! They look a hell of a lot more like our voters, too.

    We, Democrats, are BAD at this. The response to Republicans and media elevating male white workers in traditional blue jobs with the implication being that our voters are all either college professors or, I don’t know, unemployed, shouldn’t be “we must not talk about work”. We have AN ARMY of our workers. No one ever talks about them.

  134. 134.

    Captain C

    @Steve in the ATL: Manos: The Hands of Fate. This may be the one which was so bad that when the gang was forced to watch it on MST3K, the Mad Scientists actually apologized after (though that may have been The Pod People as well, another candidate for Worst Movie Ever).

  135. 135.

    tobie

    @Cacti: In hindsight you might be right that Biden’s announcement video was meant to bait Trump and given how stupid and impetuous he is, he fell for it. That the video did this while also tapping into the public’s desire to believe in something (the ‘soul of the nation’) was very clever.

  136. 136.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Amen to that. Trump is always crowing about phantom steel mills, etc., but meanwhile, the retail sector — largely staffed by women — has been decimated.

  137. 137.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    We do the same thing with colleges. SKIP one campaign visit to the University of Michigan and go to a community college. We have voters there. Unlike the University of Michigan the majority of students are black and brown. Are we ashamed of them? I want to brag about our “hard working” people like Republicans brag about their “small business owners”.

  138. 138.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: That is, once again, why I love this AFSCME knock off video.

    It’s about ALL the working people and the message doesn’t have to be Union based (although today it would probably look more like SEIU). Health care, service, hospitality, construction, education…. Those people work hard and vote Dem.

  141. 141.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Mind if I snag some of your comments above and front-page it if I have time later? It’s such an important point. We need to talk about our workers! I blame Tweety and people of his era (including the old-school pols he loves) in part for the love affair with lunch buckets. They never got over the “Reagan Democrats” thing and view everything from that lens.

  143. 143.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I would do an ad. “Our hardworking retail workers are all getting laid off”. I want to see a middle aged black lady in the genre of “hardworking” political ad. Just fucking ONCE. Instead I get “well, ‘working’ actually means white, Kay”. Really? Since when? Why would I accept that? “College” means 17 selective colleges and “working” means coal miner. Okey doke. That’s horrible for our voters but okay, if you say so.

  147. 147.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    You see Brown more than I do, but I feel like he’s fallen into that trap on more than one occasion.

    I agree with the rest of what you say.

  149. 149.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Not at all. I got upset with Biden yesterday because he’s the absolute worst. We had historic teachers strikes this year. Millions of workers, majority female and in a lot of places very diverse. So Biden goes to construction trades for the 500th rally.

    Is this what we believe? That white men do the only work that is worthy of mention? We must! We’re going along with it.

    Go to a hospital, Joe. Look around. Who works there?

  156. 156.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Are we ashamed of them?

    FWIW, like I said above, I think it’s because there’s a feeling that appearing with non WWC workers will cause resentment among WWC workers, and people are still choosing to chase WWC workers.

  160. 160.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    The messaging to the people who are called hard working families and other phrases that are generally accepted to refer white people who did not go to college but own their homes. Not exclusively and in every context, but that is what nearly everyone means. A bit part of the problem with the rhetoric and imagery used to communicate with this demographic is that it is drenched in what Garcia Marquez called the perverse lucidity of nostalgia. Ever since Reagan candidate of both parties are almost always talking about getting back to something. Trump’s whole campaign as based on a backwards view toward a world that never existed.

    When candidates talk about the future and where we ought to go, they are derided like Al Gore or they are attacked like Hillary Clinton. Talking about the future as anything other than a restoration of the past hasn’t been successful.

  165. 165.

    ThresherK

    @JR: HDTGM is an uproarious podcast which manages to convey movies without using footage or pictures.

    It is how I learned about The Apple, a movie which can barely be believed after it is seen.

  168. 168.

    JPL

    @rikyrah: I’m watching the view and I just found out that another person decided not to testify. I always thought he just cut the hearing short even though I watched the entire hearing.

  169. 169.

    J R in WV

    @satby:

    Wish J R in WV was online, I wanted to tell him the ramps I transplanted last year came back! So excited, I’m leaving them alone to spread for a couple of years before I start harvesting any.

    And here I am, to tell you how glad I am. They’re really hardy plants, if not harvested into oblivion. I’ve been planting 1/2 or a third of all the ramps I buy, and now we have a bunch of big patches on the hillside right out the front door.

    So good with crispy fried potatoes!! Or in a wilted lettuce salad. Anything you would use garlic or green onions in. I slice the bulb ends really thin, and loosely slice up the greens, cook the bulb parts a little more and the greens very briefly, like 90 seconds.

    Congrats on the success, let us know how things taste.

    Cool and rainy here, rained all night off an on, good for the ferns, which are doing pretty well.

  173. 173.

    JPL

    @rikyrah: It doesn’t matter the color of their skin to me. I have distanced myself from trump voters and supporters. When I saw the children in cages it destroyed part of my heart and it’s not healthy to be around those who still support trump.

  174. 174.

    Miss Bianca

    @James E Powell:

    Talking about the future as anything other than a restoration of the past hasn’t been successful.

    Well…on the one hand, kudos for a depressingly pithy quote/insight. On the other, I am not sure that Obama won elections with appeals to restore the past. Indeed, how could he have?

  175. 175.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Frankensteinbeck: It all makes perfect sense now! Thank you for enlightening us Frankensteinbeck!

    Ok, back to reality. What fresh delusions are Bernie Bros suffering from?

  176. 176.

    J R in WV

    @prob50:

    I had to let someone go once. He was as productive as anyone, if not more so, but corporate was on a cost-cutting kick.

    The one time I had to actually fire someone, I was in software development project management. We phone interviewed a potential contract developer in India, he gave a good interview, had a quirk in his speech where every phrase or sentence ended with an uplift, like it was a question?

    Offered him a contract shortly after the phone interview — but when the actual person showed up a couple of weeks later, no speech quirk at all. My buddy managing the project with me said “You know that’s not the guy we interviewed, right!?!?”

    We decided maybe he was phone shy and could do the job, gave him a fairly trivial task he could not do. After 6 or 8 days I had to fire him, drive him back to his apartment he shared with several other contractors. Worst 30 minutes of my working career. At least it was because he couldn’t do the work, not because of some off-site manager decided he was nothing but a net cost.

  178. 178.

    Brachiator

    @James E Powell:

    When candidates talk about the future and where we ought to go, they are derided like Al Gore or they are attacked like Hillary Clinton. Talking about the future as anything other than a restoration of the past hasn’t been successful.

    How soon we forget. JFK, FDR, Eisenhower and Truman all talked about the future. Abraham Lincoln looked forward to a restoration of America.

    Fuck, a great deal of the mythology of the United States was based on the idea of an almost limitless land, new frontiers and the possibility of renewal. Horace Greely’s “Go West, young man,” or even admiration of a sickly Teddy Roosevelt reinventing himself as a cowboy.

    The fearful nostalgia that Trump (and Reagan) offered has also existed, but often in a minor key, and often represented a failure of imagination.

  179. 179.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    in re “Justice Democrats”, I posted this last night, mostly for the replies, which range from “How dare you!” to “Nuh-uh!”

    Nate Silver @ NateSilver538
    It’s probably worth noting that while this group, Justice Democrats, calls Biden “out-of-touch” with the “center of energy” in the Democratic Party, only 26 of the 79 candidates it endorsed last year won their primaries, and only 7 of those went on to win the general election.

    Dave Weigel followed up with some more data

    Dave Weigel @ daveweigel
    At the same time, Justice Dems/Bernie didn’t put up any wins in swing states/districts, They built a beachhead in Congress but didn’t prove the “move left and you build a winning coalition of workers” theory.

    but they’re convinced that they’re “the base” and the only thing standing between us and SINGLE PAYER is Nancy “Big Pharma” Pelosi, who took that roadblock role from Barack Obama

  180. 180.

    mad citizen

    @J R in WV: If that’s the worst thing, you had it pretty good (and I commiserate as I understood from a post recently you were a state worker (?)–me too). I suppose nowadays you’d call an Uber for the guy. Not sure if it was my worst day, but once many years ago my group was all going to a conference in St Louis by ground, and we were waiting in our parking garage for a young Indian guy who hadn’t been working for us very long. He had a heart condition/defect (which we didn’t know beforehand), and he had the traumatic incident and died in our parking garage elevator. We didn’t go on the trip.

  182. 182.

    Harbison

    @Sab:

    We had a huge garden growing up but we never tried to plant ramps – we always foraged for them.

    How hard are they to grow?

  183. 183.

    mad citizen

    From Daniel Dale’s live tweets at the NRA convention, plastic straws now on par with guns. Can we get a friggin’ amendment protecting our rights to straws? (https://twitter.com/ddale8?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)

    Daniel Dale: NRA executive Chris Cox speaking before Trump: “They hate us. They hate our trucks, they hate our plastic straws, and yes, they hate our guns. But what they fail to understand is we don’t give a damn what they think.”

  184. 184.

    karen marie

    @NotMax: In my opinion, that applies to 99.9% of apps – you’re giving tracking/collection permission in exchange for a stupid game, twitter, a calendar or anything else. It’s how they make their money – selling your information. I have a no-apps policy, especially for sites like FB and Twitter and all but a couple app games that I downloaded knowing full well that they are not “free.”

  185. 185.

    Kay

    @James E Powell:

    The messaging to the people who are called hard working families and other phrases that are generally accepted to refer white people who did not go to college but own their homes. Not exclusively and in every context, but that is what nearly everyone means.

    I don’t understand the passivity of that. We’ve already analyzed it. I get it – “that is what everyone means”. True.

    Now say something different. Mean something else. Speak to to the other workers. Limiting it to “people who own their own homes” is a CHOICE. “Oh, well, Republicans have limited “working” to mean “white people” so I must go along with that”, is nuts. If Democrats represent urban, diverse working and lower middle class people then let’s make some commercials extolling their work ethic instead of leaving the whole thing to Republicans.

  189. 189.

    Kay

    @James E Powell:

    I live in a rural area but my son lives in Chicago and he uses public transpo so I sometimes ride with him. Here’s what I see on public transpo. A whole lot of black and brown people going to work. We could point that out. They’ll have the fake rancher with the pick up truck and we’ll have the people on the train. As it is now they have the fake rancher and we’re like “oh, we can’t talk about work. That’s for white people!” :)

    Jesus. How did this happen? It’s very wrong.

  191. 191.

    mad citizen

    @Kay: We talk a lot about 65 vs 62 million votes or whatever it was, but I’m sure I read here, the non-voters are over 100 million, right? I know it’s hard, but the Dems should be doing MASSIVE get out the vote campaigns–it’s one of our only hopes. All workers need to vote. Hell, I think at this point I’d consider taking the vote away from retired people, as I head there in a few years.

  192. 192.

    Steeplejack

    I had an accidental day away from cable news and the ranty parts of the Internet yesterday. Very nice! I just checked in with Andrea Mitchell to get my blood pressure spiking again, and Joe Biden was topic #1.

    Bad: Mitchell—and this is in line with a surprising number of other pundits I have seen—makes the mistake of equating all “hugging” with bad hugging. Apparently Biden was on The View this morning and was mewling about how he wasn’t sure how to greet the women, woe is me, etc. That’s bullshit. These handsy guys know the difference between a casual hug and “I’m leaning in a little too close, holding it a second too long and getting a good hair sniff while I’m at it.” It’s not a black-or-white thing. Although I would be perfectly satisfied if Biden drops back to a hearty handshake for one and all. (Which is basically what I do unless the other party initiates the hug.)

    Good: Mitchell put the wood to Biden about the Anita Hill hearings. She covered them in person and wasn’t having any of his “I’m sorry she feels like she was treated badly” bullshit. She said that Biden has reached out to Hill through intermediaries and is willing to sit down with Hill in a joint interview to hash things out. That would be a disaster for Biden, because he will not let go of his “Mistakes were made, but not by me” attitude and because it will resurrect yet another “Democrats in disarray” issue.

    Okay, my blood pressure is sufficiently amped up. Gotta go out to drive a friend to P.T., so it’s probably for the best. Just need to finalize my “Whatever you do don’t go to Target” strategy.

  196. 196.

    J R in WV

    @mad citizen:

    I did some contracting in private industry, but mostly in state government. Never had a co-worker die on the job, had one pass over the weekend at his home. Had a senior management user commit suicide during the night in the parking lot, that was pretty traumatic for his boss who found him at 7 am! I got to work and people were hugging outside the office, pretty spring morning.

    We also had an outside network engineer in house to upgrade networking systems, about which I know little or nothing. He and our networking guys came out of the network center to go to lunch and he keeled over in the hallway. But there was an auto-defibrillator and many trained in CPR, plus we were only 4 minutes from the firehouse, so the paramedics got him to the nearby hospital, and he made it ok.

    Did have a contractor have an attack of kidney stones one morning, called 911 for that!

    Worked in Environmental Protection until retirement, was highly technical data to be handled, so challenging fun work with engineers, biologists, lawyers. Moved from COBOL and IMS DB/DC to Oracle DB, windows, web tools, in 20 years. Learning a lot all the time.

  197. 197.

    J R in WV

    @Harbison:

    …we never tried to plant ramps – we always foraged for them.

    How hard are they to grow?

    Really easy, will come back thicker every spring, we plant about half that we buy from foragers on the roadside, now we have great patches of thriving ramps. You can even shallow plant the root end you trim off and many will come up from those roots.

  198. 198.

    Raoul

    @OzarkHillbilly: Proof that the meritocracy is a myth grift.

    Also designed to block rising POC, since they seem to magically never quite have the right merits. Obama’s election and subsequent total RW derangement has more clearly illustrated that than anything else, to me. He *should* have been the model black person (yeah, I know, but for this argument, I mean that with all the BS attached), but they hated his guts all the more for showing how closed the club of acceptability is to Harvard educated, ‘bootstrapped’ black men who did everything as the conservatives claimed black men needed to.

  200. 200.

    Soprano2

    @James E Powell: I do understand that they seem to want Trump to be re-elected; the way they talk and act tells me that. It just pisses me off so much. I was trying to remember whether or not they consistently asked Democrats about the Republican candidates in 2016, and as far as I can remember they didn’t. They act like the Republicans are the “adults” who set the parameters of which candidates are acceptable and which aren’t, and it drives me crazy that even NPR does it!

  203. 203.

    MomSense

    @Soprano2:

    Haha! Yup. My neighbor came over and asked me if I was ok because someone spotted me ranting at my radio in my car. Right now It’s you, me and Debbie but I suspect that as this election nears we will go viral.

  204. 204.

    debbie

    @MomSense:

    I’m sure you’re long gone, but I am laughing very hard right now. I was yelling on the drive to work this morning (at Trump’s “young and vibrant” crap), heard a laugh, turned, and realized my window was open!

  205. 205.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:

    The fearful nostalgia that Trump (and Reagan) offered has also existed, but often in a minor key, and often represented a failure of imagination.

    They are conservatives, in that they want to conserve what came before. The future they look to looks exactly like the one they came from because that is exactly what they want. They don’t want anything new, possibly that cuts or restricts what it is that they are trying to do.
    What they want is in the title of their movement.

  206. 206.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:
    I ride the Metro here in LA a lot. It works and it goes where I need to most of the time. When I ride it home at the end of the work day I’m often the only white face in the car. I’ve ridden the commuter train in Chicago at the end of the work day and it was much more diverse, although this was almost 30 yrs ago so I have no idea about now.

  207. 207.

    abbyab

    @OzarkHillbilly: Six months. That’s a tacit acknowledgement that the ICE documented few if any of these separations.

    I would have said “On my desk in 30 days”. ICE has computers. Why can’t they do this a month? They should be able to do it in 6 days. 6 hours! How long does it take to query the ICE child custody database? Six months if you don’t have one.

    I don’t think they even bothered. They weren’t planning on returning the kids to their parents. Orphaning them is a part of the intended punishment for coming here. It was accidentally on purpose they have no idea whose kid is whose.

    @Sab #36
    I think they don’t even know how many kids they have taken. Is it just criminally bad record keeping? Or has it enabled and obscured actual criminality? Bad records are a feature not a bug for certain people.

  208. 208.

    moops

    @James E Powell:

    The Media ignores the rise of fascism to their own peril. They carelessly report and repeat Trump’s attacks on all of them. It catches ears and eyeballs now, and stenography is easy.

    There will be a lot more bombs showing up in newsrooms across the country. The idiots are bringing this on themselves. I fully expect reporters to be assaulted, injured, and killed while reporting on Trump events and rallies. They had better figure out how to responsibly report on this trend, or they are going to be one of it’s early victims.

  209. 209.

    moops

    @abbyab:

    They didn’t enter any of these kidnappings in a proper database. Losing the children and destroying the families was a feature.

    The judge needs to step up and impose consequences, other than yet another ignored ruling. Someone should be held in contempt at this point.

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