Sen. Warren speaks to NYC. "We are here because of hard working women" @ewarren #WarrenNYC @WorkingFamilies pic.twitter.com/1Gfd7q20uA
— Nick Berghall (@nickberghall) September 16, 2019
Yes, this is self-indulgent. You would rather read another long tweet-collage on the latest Trump outrage?
.@ewarren is wrapping up her anti-corruption speech at the site of the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which was the result of a lack of government regulation. She connects it to today’s corruption- the corruption that led to Trump. It’s strong and powerful. #WarrenNYC
— Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) September 16, 2019
I have to say that it is enormously refreshing to hear a candidate talk about corruption in this plain of terms. An entire speech about corruption in our government?
My college thesis writing self (this was my topic… lol) couldn’t have imagined it.
— Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) September 16, 2019
Women workers sounded the alarm about working conditions for years before the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, but corruption stopped reforms. Look at any big problem we face today—climate change, gun safety, health care—and you can see the same system at work. #WarrenNYC pic.twitter.com/5QPje4KJRV
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) September 17, 2019
Over twenty thousand people packed Washington Square Park in New York City to hear Elizabeth Warren speak.
To date, this is the largest crowd to attend a speech of any candidate.#WarrenNYC #Warren2020
— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) September 17, 2019
But too sum it up: Warren’s big announcement was the anticorruption plan she released today. She talked about regulations preventing cabinet members from lobbying after, lobbyists from joining gov, fight Citizens United, etc.#WarrenNYC
— chuck (@Kluskee) September 17, 2019
Totally bummed.
Elizabeth Warren finished about 30 minutes ago. I've been standing on what was described as a "Selfie Line." There are HUNDREDS of people ahead of me.
B-Dad has to work in the morning, so no selfie for me.?
She STILL has my vote.#WarrenNYC pic.twitter.com/lochJSLXkD
— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) September 17, 2019
Elizabeth Warren is still taking selfies. For context, I have left the rally, taken a train to Brooklyn, ordered uber eats, watched an episode of the Sopranos, and played two FIFA matches
— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) September 17, 2019
And, as several of you have pointed out, the selfies with Warren reach more than just the person in them, because they are inevitably posted on social media and spread the word about her campaign. A superb viral political strategy. https://t.co/5D1ecL3nDd
— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) September 17, 2019
By extension, it suggests that each of us is worthy of her attention, that she has time for us. It’s a pretty strong counterpoint to trumps clear lack of interest in anyone but himself/someone transactionally useful
— Meredith McIver (@MeredithMcFake) September 17, 2019
Chyron HR
Uh sorry but Bernie has decreed that HIS crowds are the largest, case closed.
Betty Cracker
Warren knows what’s wrong with the country, and she knows what we need to do to fix it. Is America fixable? That’s the question we’re settling, IMO. I’m not particularly optimistic, but we’ll see.
Gelfling 545
@Chyron HR: Isn’t he starting to strike you as having some essentially Trumpian traits?
Aleta
@Betty Cracker: In a nutshell
geg6
OT, but Cokie Roberts is dead. In the interest of not saying anything bad about the dead, I’ll just leave it at that.
Nicole
It was a good rally- four speakers beforehand (2 State Assembly members spoke together), and all pretty brief- she was speaking by a little after 7, and the speech was done by a quarter to 8. I couldn’t see any of the speech itself, as I’m not tall and lots of people stood on benches in front of me, but the sound quality was great and her speech was really good. She’s very good at giving a speech without sounding like she’s giving a speech, which I chalk up to the teacher training. The line for the selfie was pretty disorganized for quite awhile- I ended up at the end of the line three different times- but they volunteers kept stressing EVERYONE would get their picture, and that did a lot to keep the thousands of people waiting chipper.
Before the selfie line started, they said that families with kids could jump to the front of the line and that people who had come requiring ADA accommodations didn’t need to get in line; Warren would come to them (they had a section set aside for them). I was impressed. Slightly annoyed with myself that I didn’t bring my son down (I figured it would be packed and didn’t want to ask him to stand in line with me for hours), but overall very impressed at the thoughtfulness for the families and folks who physically couldn’t stand in line.
I came away feeling really energized, which is a great space to be in after a political rally.
One really clever bit they did at the beginning- if a volunteer saw you heading in, they asked to check you in via your phone (to get your info, I’m sure, but as I’ve already given my info out to three different campaigns, that’s fine). To confirm they’d gotten your info, you were sent back a text- which was a photo of Warren’s Golden Retriever, Bailey. Now, I’m not saying I’m easily manipulated by cute animal photos but WHOSAGOODDOGGIE? WHO? WHO?
Chyron HR
@Gelfling 545:
Starting?
Major Major Major Major
But I heard that Warren can’t draw big crowds, only Bernie.
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: I don’t know either. Of course, if it’s not, then this politics bullshit is worse than useless, but I hold out hope that trying for at least one more election cycle is worth a shot.
That Trump managed to get enough prion-infected voters to get within striking distance, never mind win, I’ll be honest…that kicked the shit out of my psyche. Yes, I have always known that America was oversupplied with idiots. But I never dreamed the situation was as bad as it is.
Elizabelle
@geg6: I’m relieved Cokie is not around to throw shade at our Democratic candidates and nominee this next election.
And it’s sad that that how one sums up a woman who was, in some ways, a pioneer. Albeit, it was her birth into politics/DC establishment that allowed her to become a journalist. I liked her mom a lot more.
Tony Jay
Since I’m off and out of here in a few minutes I’ll just drop this here.
ps) Warren is pretty good at this politics thing, isn’t she?
+++++++BREXIT NEWS+++++++++++BREXIT NEWS+++++++++++
“Like Dunkirk, but we’re playing the baddies too”
Another week dawns over Brexit Ready Britain and already those flocks of shifty migrant birds that have been exploiting our precious natural resources through the Spring and Summer months are fleeing for less nationalistic climes. Good riddance, you feathered freeloaders! Flap your way to Euroland and while you’re at it tell Brussels we don’t welcome your kind here. Pigeons, swans and bluebirds are all we require for our purposes, thank you very much, and should be need them we can easily arrange for imports of chickens from our friends in America, pre-washed and absolutely delicious, with a subtle chemical aftertaste. Up yours, Delors, or whichever unelected bureaucrat you’re handing your sovereignty over to these days!
I beg your pardon, that organic yoghurt has gone all Brexity in the sun.
Back here in the real world it’s going as badly as ever for the worst Government since the last one. The fusty old white folk who make up the UK’s Supreme Court have just finished their first day of submissions in the Case of the Unlawful Prorogation of Parliament by the Coward Alexander B de P Johnson, during which the Government’s advocate was awful and the barrister representing the claimants laid down the slap quite convincingly. It’ll be Thursday or Friday before they end their deliberations and give us the best excuse they could manufacture for turning a blind eye to the Prime Minister’s laughably false excuses for shutting down Parliament without making themselves look too subservient, which is harder than you might think given that 90% of them are probably wearing crotchless leather scratchpants under their robes and have multiple dominatrixes of all five genders on speed-dial.
Last week the Scottish Court of Appeal ruled that even a cursory glance through all of the evidence the Government had been forced (kicking and screaming all the way) to provide in the form of official documents and minutes of meetings showed, without a shadow of a scintilla of doubt, that the Government’s one and only reason for forcing Parliament out of session for 5 weeks was to stop MPs from exercising their constitutional right to hold overmighty and underhanded Governments to account, therefore rendering the current prorogation both unlawful and inherently wankerish. The English and Northern Irish Courts, OTOH, had ruled that none of the actual evidence mattered, however odd that may seem to a layman, because in their view the division of powers in our unwritten constitution means the Courts have no authority to question the political advice Governments give to the Queen, even when and if that advice is clearly dishonest.
How they’ll square that constitutional circle I have no idea, other than a suspicion that it’s very, very unlikely that the English judges on the Supreme Court are going to say, in effect, “We bin doon Konshtoochun rong frayjizz, sowee eveebodee” by supporting Scotland’s considerably less Executive-friendly interpretation of what is and is not covered under that ill-defined term ‘Political’. I’d like to be surprised but I don’t expect to be. It’s not like this is a Labour Government that needs to be reminded of how the system really works through the application of a timely judicial backhand across its insufficiently deferential face, is it? The Prime Minister went to Eton, for God’s sake, surely that’s enough legitimacy to weather any constitutional crisis.
While we’re waiting for that to be decided the slobby fuckwit masquerading as Our Leader has been out and about happily violating the little-people-only rules covering electioneering outside of clearly defined windows and the misuse of public funds for party political ends. That hasn’t gone all that well for him either. Last week his chief policy advisor, the epilepsy-inducing datastream of buzzwords and spite known as Dominic Cummings, synched back up with meatspace long enough to transmit a verbal opinion that journalists should get out of London and stop paying so much attention to ‘Rich Remainers’. This was obviously supposed to act as a pre-emptive frame through which The Media could view his client’s expedition Oop North to spend a couple of hours looking disconsolate under leaden grey skies and nodding half-heartedly while leather-skinned rejects from ‘Wuthering Heights 2 – Paki Go Home Now’ jabbered in their native dialects about darkies, gypsies and “Bloomin’ foreigners” taking all of the jobs in the local Pound Bakery, because if there’s one thing all of the London based ‘proper’ journalists know for sure, it’s that all Northerners are a bunch of cloth-cap wearing racist ex-Millworkers who sound like Sean Bean and are clamouring to reject Labour’s SJW poofery and deliver swathes of the country to whichever demagogue of the White Right best panders to their deluded resentments.
Maybe there are a lot of people like that, but Johnson had the great misfortune to bump into a couple of the other type of Northerner, the more genuine breed with no time for fancy-mouthed Southern toffs who think that everyone north of the M25 is too stupid to remember who imposed Austerity on them and too racist to recognise when they’re being lied to about the ‘benefits’ of Brexit. Confronted in a Rotherham market by a Yorkshire woman with her own factually based opinions on his bullshit Flobalob was reduced to blathering something nonsensical, backed up by a chorus of wide-eyed simpletons braying “Ahll be al’raaahhht” over and over again. Wankers. Pity the BBC didn’t think it was worthwhile leading its bulletins with coverage of this confrontation, though, preferring to show Johnson being indistinctly heckled by some beardy yob (probably a left-wing plant, naturally) at a speech in the same city. Odd choice of footage to go with. It might almost lead one to believe that the BBC’s political editors don’t want to give anyone the impression that the Clown Prince is less likely to hoover up disgruntled Labour votes in the North than he would like everyone to believe, and we can’t have that, can we?
Then we had yesterday, a day of infamy that will long tickle the funnybone of anyone who likes to see right-wing charlatans getting pantsed in real time. Pootering off to Luxembourg for a spot of lunch and a whirl around the local dogging scene while Parliament was being boarded-up for unconstitutional renovations, Flobalob found himself unaccountably surrounded by foreign press and harassed by an elderly bespectacled gentleman who appeared to want to know the dashing Englishman’s terms for removing his backstop and arranging a phased withdrawal that was satisfactory for all 28 participants. Ye Gads! As it turned out, once the confusion had been dispelled by some hastily summoned Gendarmes, Flobalob came to understand that the elderly man was not, as he’d assumed, his former French tutor Monsieur Peloteur come back from Tahitian exile looking for a bit of comment va votre père, but was in fact the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, there for a pre-arranged meeting to discuss the UK’s fresh ideas for alternative arrangements that would negate the need for a regulatory backstop covering the whole of post-Brexit Britain. Did he have any?
Oh. Yes. That. Well, the thing is….. flibbleflabblewifflewaffle. Fart.
Flobalob hadn’t done a stitch of the work he’d promised, because it was too hard, really, really boring and frankly he didn’t want to. In place of any of the new ideas he’d promised he announced that, contrary to the recently passed Act of Parliament ordering him to do so, he wouldn’t be asking for a further Brexit extension and wouldn’t accept one if the EU offered it, so there. Juncker did what EU representatives have got used to doing when British Prime Ministers make mouth movements for the entertainment of their domestic supporters and simply walked away, shaking his head at the absurdity of it. They’d be increasing the frequency and intensity of talks between the EU and the UK, yes, but would that achieve anything? Who knows, shrugged Juncker, it depends on if the British keep on turning up half an hour late and insisting that everyone else just wait a bloody minute while they finish composing a snappy tweet telling everyone back home how they are totes owning the Eurogimps.
That over with Flobalob had a word with the pimply shadow-chaser responsible for his diary and was horrified to discover he was expected to stop for a chat with the Prime Minister of Luxembourg. Really? Bloody hell, how was he supposed to fit in a visit to Madame Mineure’s stable of fine fillies with all this on his plate? They were just lucky his self-identification with the Incredible Hulk was purely theoretical, and wrong, and embarrassingly wide of the mark when it came to understanding the point of the Hulk as a character and as a meditation on the truism that fear strips even the cleverest men of their higher reasoning faculties, with unfortunately destructive results. Bah! What did that Ruffalo fella know anyway? Stupid bolshy actor taking things so seriously, didn’t he know it was all a lark?
The meeting with Prime Minister Bettel got off to a bad start, went downhill, and ended up in a crumpled heap of shame and embarrassment that could only have been improved if a slobbering bulldog in a Union Jack dog coat had trotted in front of the cameras, taken a huge, steaming dump on the marble flagstones and rolled around in it for five minutes while journalists from the Sun, the Times , the Express and the Telegraph all applauded its can-do spirit.
The worst bit, of course, was the end. Flobalob had been booed by protesters while leaving his lunch meeting with Juncker, but by the time he got to the meeting with Bettel they’d really found their voice and were regaling their target with chants of “Bollocks to Brexit”, “Stop the Coup” and “Bog off, Boris”. Showing his typical verve and love of unscripted back-and-forth exchanges of opinion Flobalob ended the meeting with PM Bettel and went outside to congratulate the protesters on their fiercely held opinions and hold a quick question and answer session in front of the cameras where he eruditely and politely laid to rest their concerns about the direction and legality of his Government’s Brexit policy.
Ha! No. Can you imagine? This is the Baron of Browntrouser we’re talking about here. He begged the Luxembourger to cancel their planned press conference, or at least bring it inside to where no dissenting voices could reach. To his credit Bettel said no, this is democracy, we’re having a press conference outside, shit or get off the pot. Flobalob did both, filling his pants and scrambling out of a back door while frantically phoning ahead to his PR people demanding they spin this dross of a performance into Brextremist-tickling gold. Meanwhile Bettel, leader of the second smallest EU member state and new gay icon, braved the chanting crowd to deliver what can best be described as a sustained and merciless verbal beatdown to Flobalob’s character, intentions, ideas, policies, seriousness, dress sense, general fitness and suitability for the role 90,000 bitterly Conservative arseholes with the average age of ghost (hat-tip Mash Report writer’s room) had elevated him to. You don’t see that a lot, if ever. As a statement on how few fucks anyone in Europe has left to give about the fee-fees of Conservative Prime Ministers it came across loud and clear. We can only hope that a change of Government will be greeted with a sigh of relief and allow us to start putting this national disaster behind us… but that’s only partly up to us. Six miles of pointed stakes running from Westminster to The Mall might be a good start, especially if each were mounted by a prominent Brextremist enjoying in stark, physical terms the same sensation of helplessness and anal intrusion their policies have inflicted upon the most vulnerable sections of British society.
One can but hope. Election first, mass executions later.
Meanwhile, back in Blighty….
In advance of their Party Conference down in Bournemouth (where the old go to die and the dead will not rest), Liberal-Democrat leader Jo Swinson, (un)fondly remembered by everyone outside the ‘Left Wing Media’ as a loyal and obedient cheerleader for Austerity in David ‘Porksword’ Cameron’s Coalition Cabinet, announced out of the blue that, were her Party to win a majority in Parliament (not going to happen in this reality) they would forego the complicated matter of a 2nd Referendum on Brexit in favour of straight-out revoking the Article 50 process under which Britain is leaving the EU. Now, I’m sure she expected this to be a festival of honeydew and handjobs for her Base in the Press (I’m looking at you, Guardian politics desk) but it turns out to have been politically as dunderheaded as her follow-up announcements that, a) she’d never countenance any kind of post-Election Parliamentary deal with either Johnson’s Tories or Corbyn’s Labour (so much for grown-up politics) and further that, b) she’s 100% opposed to any kind of tactical voting arrangement with Labour (but not with the Tories).
Wow. Just wow.
When the Guardian Editorial page and even its most pro Lib-Dem columnist Polly ‘Je suis la social-démocratie’ Toynbee come out swinging against a Lib-Dem leader, you know they’ve fucked up on a galactic scale. She then made it even worse by telling the public she’d never forgive David Cameron for calling the 2016 Referendum, even though one was in the 2010 Lib-Dem manifesto and she herself made at least one speech in Parliament saying how much she wanted one. Politically inept and unashamedly dishonest? As far as shitting-the-bed in public goes no-one’s seen a grand ouverture of this quality since Spud from Trainspotting woke up in his girlfriend’s bed and wondered what that fruity smell was.
Quite how this was supposed to work out to the Lib-Dems’ advantage I don’t know, but Swinson seems habitually determined to push the indulgence of the centrist Press as far as it will go and then some. Revoking Article 50 without a 2nd Referendum really is as extreme as demanding a No Deal Brexit based on the result of the 2016 Referendum, and what it shows is that putting distance between her ‘Remain Party’ brand and Labour’s more realistic policy is much more important to Swinson right now than wooing the disgruntled anti-No Deal/anti Hard-Brexit Tory voters her candidates need to boost the Lib-Dem vote share in southern marginal constituencies. Any Tory campaign specialist who can’t repackage this policy as an undemocratic act of hubris and proof positive that, bluster aside, Remainers are afraid they’d actually lose another public vote on Brexit needs to resign right now and go get a job digging mass-graves for all the people who will lose access to vital medicines under a No Deal Brexit.
I’ve heard apologists argue that this just gives the Lib-Dems a ‘firm’ Brexit policy to differentiate them from Labour’s ‘fuzzy’ one, and that the abovementioned attacks on Johnson and Corbyn as ‘unfit for Government’ leave open the possibility of co-operation with their parties after they’ve gone, but even that nonsense aside it’s still politically stupid. The point-blank refusal to trade Lib-Dem votes in northern and Midland constituencies for Labour votes in the South and South-West (the fabled tactical voting that blew the Tories away in the late 90s and early 2000s) marks Swinson as implacably hostile to the kind of co-operation with Labour that will be vital to ensuring that the Remain vote doesn’t split in the coming Election, and that “You got nowhere else to go” tone is likely to be deeply unattractive to Labour voters in marginal seats across the Lib-Dem heartlands who would otherwise be happy to trade Party purity for the guarantee of Tory losses. I’d be so bold as to suggest that her ultimate plan is to rely on the Media placing the all blame for ‘allowing’ a Tory/Brexit Election victory to happen on Corbyn’s Labour (why couldn’t they have just dumped him and freed all the unicorns like we asked?) while she positions the Lib-Dems as the safe-space ‘moderate’ Labour MPs can flee to in the brutal Labour civil-war that would inevitably follow Electoral defeat.
That’s shockingly high risk, but maybe she thinks it’s her best bet for growing the Party without having to expand its electoral appeal outside of the areas that gave it, at its peak, 60+ seats in the 600+ seat Parliament. OTOH, how comfortable can the existing Lib-Dem MPs (all 14 of them) be at the prospect of seeing themselves swamped by an influx of first Tory and then Labour refugees? How many is too many? And at what point does the Party lose its soul? They’ve already had to swallow Swinson appointing ex-Labour, ex-Independent, ex-Change UK (but always fully on board with himself and his own innate wonderfulness) Chuka ‘The Fucker’ Umunna to a senior Lib-Dem spokesperson role based on nothing more than the theory that’s it’s worth promoting the kind of solipsistic wanker who would edit his own Wikipedia entry to suggest that ‘other people’ were calling him “the British Barack Obama” as long as it pisses off Jeremy Corbyn. And it’s noticeable that Swinson has chosen now to bring the presumably less egotistical but equally dishonest Luciana Berger (also ex-Labour, ex-Independent, ex-Change UK) into the Lib-Dem fold, which I can only assume means Swinson intends Berger to be the face of the Lib-Dem effort to smear Corbyn as the ‘Bearded Hitler who Hates Teh Jooz’ come Election time. Neither of these brave champions of fairness and inclusivity felt the need to allow the thousands of Labour voters who put them into Parliament a chance to opine on their continued right to represent them (claiming that the voters elected them because of who they were, not because of the Party they stood for) after they ran away from the threat of democratic deselection, and now that they’re Lib-Dems they’ve wasted no time in scuttling off to stand in more winnable constituencies, which again in an insult to potential candidates who have been Lib-Dems a lot longer than those two. Personally, they can both go and fuck themselves vigorously far from my sight, but I know they’re going to be all over the TV and radio in the coming months spewing their bullshit and receiving tongue-baths from our own over-promoted Villagers who’ll hang on every word they say as long as it’s virulently anti-Labour.
Anyway, fuck those people. Swinson is playing a similar same role in British politics as Tulsi Gabbard is in yours. Won’t come anywhere close to winning, but damn, she’s going to play the hell out of that Purity Pipe and do as much damage as she can in the process.
So, uh, that’s where we are. You can follow the Guardian’s Live-Stream in the Supreme Court case if you like, but the verdict isn’t expected until Thursday, by which time I’m sure Ar-Flobazon the Golden will have done something else brazenly stupid and undemocratic to heighten the contradictions. Fare thee well, and don’t forget, tarantulas are for burning en masse with huge flamethrowers, not for Christmas.
piratedan
@Betty Cracker: to be fair, it sounds like she’s willing to try, and in doing so with the American Ideals that I was brought up with, focusing specifically on opportunity and tolerance. Less a focus on “winning” and more sop on achieving. Very team oriented in the approach to the issues and the resolutions.
Pretty damn refreshing, I have no problem with Warren being our political tour guide and if a few politicos wander too far off the path and fall into the Canyon, well, that’s on them.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know: I hear you; 2016 kicked the shit out of my psyche too, and seeing that leering, corrupt, incompetent buffoon defile our country every single day in a thousand ways keeps that wound from healing. I haven’t seen Warren’s speech yet, but from excerpts, I gather her theme is that we’ve faced down corrupt, cruel, seemingly all-powerful scoundrels before and fundamentally changed things, and if we summon the will, we can do it again. I do believe that. I just don’t know if we have the will, as splintered as we are.
trollhattan
@Chyron HR:
Are they “yuge!”?
hells littlest angel
ElizabethWarren.com has some really nice merch for sale.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Here’s a live blog of the UK Supreme Court hearing on prorogation, if anyone’s interested.
I hope Tony Jay will weigh in with his inimitable analysis, but here is my understanding of where we are: the three-judge Scottish court that ruled unanimously that Boris Johnson closed Parliament illegally did so on three different grounds, all of which BoJo needs to refute. The UK court which is hearing testimony now is the final word, their Supreme Court. If they also rule BoJo didn’t have the right to close the Parliament, then they’re back in session.
This is pieced together from what more knowledgeable people have said over the last couple weeks.
Edit to add: I see that while I was typing my 200 words, Tony Jay dropped 50,000 up above. So I’ll go check that out.
SiubhanDuinne
@geg6:
(Reposted from tail end of early morning thread):
In Cokie’s early days with NPR, back in the ‘70s, I admired her very much and, in fact, viewed her (along with Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, Jackie Judd, Nina Totenberg and the rest of NPR’s “founding mothers”) as role model.
But I really started to sour on her once she became a TV personality, especially as a Sunday morning pundit. By the Obama years, I couldn’t bear to listen to her. Not sure whether she changed, or I did, or both. Probably both.
Nevertheless, I wish her a peaceful rest, and condolences to her family and friends.
hells littlest angel
I wish we were back in the world where that was hyperbole.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Several platoons of McConnells are ready to fight her/whomever wins each step of the way. They honed their act the last six years of Obama’s presidency and will be even more entrenched.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
If she thinks it’s anything other than exiling all Rethug officeholders and their idiot/racist/fascist supporters, then, no, she doesn’t know what’s wrong, and, no, she doesn’t know what we need to do to fix it.
Now, I realize any useful solution would likely not be politically viable, but that qualifier was not included above.
[I must be mellowing in my dotage; a few weeks ago, I woulda said “filling the Marianas Trench with,” rather than “exiling.” ]
SiubhanDuinne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Oh, I expect Tony Jay will :-)
rikyrah
chris evans (@notcapnamerica) Tweeted:
A dudebro in the Fallon audience tried it with Kamala on guns and she left him hyperventilating and picking up the tattered pieces of his greasy wig off the floor. https://t.co/zqspPnzYOL https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1173983155897978880?s=17
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Same here. I wish Cokie could have stayed the more honest NPR Cokie.
Television news seems unusually corrupting. It’s where accuracy goes to die, pretty much. Cokie was horrible, although it took a while to realize that. She was a complete enabler for Republicans and other DC establishment gatekeepers.
All of the Sunday morning network political (“public affairs”) shows are hopelessly biased, as currently constituted, and Cokie did her part there.
Have to say, when I saw that her new dog ran away a few years ago (posters up in her neighborhood), I laughed. Which is mean, but I was thinking “go dog go.” That story did not have a happy ending.
rikyrah
@Tony Jay:
Thanks for the update. I hope that this is FrontPaged
Ladyraxterinok
@Elizabelle: Wasn’t it Cokie who complained Obama vacationed outside the US in the primary or election campaign because he’d gone to Hawaii?!?
Jeffro
We are so going to fucking crush them next November. Blue Wave II: coming soon to a precinct near you!
Love the theme of tying everything the trumpublicans do to corruption, Corruption, CORRUPTION. The rot is undeniable with this gang and it stinks.
japa21
@trollhattan: You know what takes care of that, don’t you?
MattF
Somewhat OT. Jen Rubin makes some sensible remarks about the Kavanaugh mess— that the relevant House committee should investigate how it happened that the FBI didn’t do its job. Mildly surprised that she Went There…
Nicole
@rikyrah: That was a great clip. She answered beautifully and thoughtfully, and while I am appreciating the beauty and thought in her response, I am also very much appreciating the sourpuss look on the face of that dudebro as he sulked in his seat after.
Betty Cracker
@SFAW: By that standard, all is lost, and we might as well fold up our tents and go home. We won’t exile — to the Trench or anywhere else — “all Rethug officeholders and their idiot/racist/fascist supporters.” But we can beat them at the ballot box by at least one point, thus marginalizing them, then drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century — if we have the political will. Like I said, I’m not optimistic but it’s worth a shot.
Elizabelle
@Ladyraxterinok: Yup. The very one. And Obama was raised in Hawaii, which was, believe it or not, a U.S. state by the time of his birth, and is not some foreign destination. Although it’s way out there from the continental U.S.
I wonder if Cokie got a lot of maps and ribbing from her friends over that remark. It was egregious. And memorable, and kind of sums her up, sadly.
zhena gogolia
Have to put these great Kamala tweets in here.
https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1173983572132278284
Kay
This really got to me yesterday:
It’s probably the right decision and it isn’t the judge’s fault, but the girls were just so shabbily treated the whole way. No one worked for them. A decision was made to protect the rich guy and throw them in the trash and everyone involved got away with it.
The girls weren’t important enough – not of the right class- to merit anyone taking up for them. Just brutal. They lost and lost and lost.
They had him and they let him go. No one is ever going to get prosecuted in this case. Just add it to the huge, ever-growing pile of shitty, sleazy corruption.
The Moar You Know
@SiubhanDuinne: She was one of those folks who fundamentally lost their shit after 9/11. It was traumatic, but some people let it ruin their lives and I think she was one of them. And Obama’s election just seemed to make it worse. For some reason.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah:
Haha, I am out of it this morning. I saw your post, went to the tweet, forgot I saw it on here, and came back and posted it again.
oh well, doesn’t hurt!
lamh36
check out the clip of Kamala Harris on Fallon answering a question from some white dudebro in gun control.
Kamala shut his dudebro azz down so hard that and he couldn’t even fake a clap???
As others clapped around him…look at his face ???
that “I’m done” from Kamala at the end was it!!
Major Major Major Major
@zhena gogolia: I’ve done that! Lol
ETA and you are not alone on this one either!
Aleta
@Gelfling 545:
Kept quiet about the Russian hacking and Putin’s effort to influence voters against Clinton … so yes.
He had the great privilege of receiving that security information, and he shirked responsibility to inform the public.
So yes.
He didn’t say a word to back Clinton up when she called out Putin working for Trump-Pence. He could have badgered the media to give that more than the day’s debate coverage. It appears like even then he saw only personal advantage, assumed HRC would win, decided maintaining bridges to T and T supporters was in his best interest. Who knows, maybe T’s camp made overtures and fake promises. Or in his narcissism or megalomania he agreed with the messaging he knew was from Russian trolls, and chose opportunism over honesty.
So yes.
MisterForkbeard
@rikyrah: Kamala does really well with this type of question. She does well in MOST appearances, actually.
Just needs to get more visibility.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Does Warren get a bathroom break? I know Trump thinks that’s “disgusting,” but seriously. I’m about Warren’s age and I’d need two or three during that.
Kattails
Great clip, thanks. Indulge away. Her description of the fire was direct and chilling. I liked the bit where she talked about Americans differing on many things, but we agree on not wanting our neighbors house burning down, their kids shot in school etc. It would be a good way to tackle, for example, 2nd amendment absolutists–“So instead of getting rid of the worst guns and putting reasonable national gun regulations in place, as per the first part of the amendment, you would be fine with your neighbor’s kids getting their limbs torn off and livers shredded by high-caliber bullets while they’re in math class? You think we can arm every school to the teeth and prevent this, but you’re already bitching about your taxes?”
@Nicole: This is super. What impresses me is that she seems to be drawing on years of skills from teaching–organization, clarity, approachability, interaction. It may be why she seems to have such energy; she’s not having to expend extra just to learn those hugely helpful things. They’re an embedded part of her makeup at this point. She can focus outward on the issues, and of course she wants the whole class to do well. I really like that.
kindness
Cokie represented the worst of Sally Quinn’s Washington. Cokie really played the matriarchal role of who was and who wasn’t serious or important in DC. Which would have been fine if they stopped doing it in the 70’s. By the 80’s Cokie was Republican Pravda. Ronnie Reagan was a god and GH Bush was old line American Dream. The Clintons were lowlife userpers who didn’t belong in Washington at all. Cokie was everything that went wrong with NPR as a viable outlet for valid news.
By the end, I loathed Cokie. She actively hurt our nation.
Sanders Sista
p.a.
Did EW mention the corruption that will make her election (or any Democrats’) twice as difficult as it should be?
Gelfling 545
@Elizabelle: I never paid her a lot of mind but I did hear her broadcasting President Obama’s first inauguration on radio. She was really reaching to find things to criticize. Completely stupid stuff, so I noted her down in my little list of crypto-racists to be avoided.
lamh36
ICYMI, just a short clip: Kamala Harris Slow Jams the news.
https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1173959048393371648?s=21
japa21
@lamh36: Weird. For some reason I have been blocked from seeing his tweets. I never even responded to any of them.
ETA: Unless he hates the Brewers which is what about 90% of my tweets have been about lately.
Aleta
@rikyrah: he felt compelled to put as sa-lt w pons in quotes like that’s just an unfair or ridiculous label
geg6
@kindness:
Yes. All of it.
H.E.Wolf
@Betty Cracker:
I understand the worry (due to family background, and being a history major).
In case it helps at all, here’s a short list, off the top of my history-major head:
The Civil Rights movement. The Labor movement. The get-us-out-of-Vietnam effort. The 2018 elections.
Each one of these examples was during a time of major splintered-ness and vehement, powerful, entrenched, well-monied opposition.
Our nation is almost always splintered… and yet, when enough people do the work (and then do the work some more), for however long it takes, positive change occurs.
This week’s book recommendation is “See Jane Win” by Caitlin Moscatello, published this year. Moscatello followed the campaigns of 4 women who won elections in November 2018. Three of them are young women of color who won seats in state legislatures. It was a great recharge of my batteries.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
Betty, I loves ya, but please don’t start on me with that “you’re saying ‘give up’ ” crap — IF that’s what you’re in fact saying. I’m hoping I’m just mis-reading it because I’m a cranky-pants.
Yes, I know exiling them is not a practical solution, and that kicking Rethugs to the curb, electorally speaking, is the best/only way. And “folding our tent” is probably the worst course of action. It’ll take a multi-pronged approach, of course, including the DNC (et al.) spending a TON of money on getting voters registered, and fighting every voter-suppression tactic as if it were life-or-death — which it is, for far too many people.
As Shakespeare or someone else said: “I’ve found that evil usually triumphs unless good is very, very careful.” In 2019 and 2020 America, the functional equivalent of “very, very careful” is “make sure every Dem is registered, and that they know how to respond when the inevitable bullshit challenge (to their registration) occurs.”
Kay
@Kattails:
I love when she takes their question and rephrases it and makes it a better question. All Democrats need to do this, immediately. You don’t have to accept the question! That’s not a rule :)
They have a definition of “cost”, for example, that is very narrow and, well, not REAL, but there’s a broader definition that is just as valid. She’s allowed to use cost= what people pay. Hers is BETTER.
Major Major Major Major
@japa21: A lot of bigtime tweeters use shared block lists which are compiled collaboratively. So sometimes you find yourself on one of them, and people unrelated to the original blocker end up blocking you too. (You can see the tweet by using an incognito window or logging out, in case you didn’t know.)
Mike in Pasadena
Anne Laurie: in what way is your post self indulgent?
James E Powell
To me Cokie Roberts was the most Village of the Villagers. I’ve despised her for so long that I can’t think of a single positive thing about her. I will avoid all news & “news” outlets so that I don’t have to read or hear people talking about how great she was. The only sad thing is that her death will do nothing to improve the situation; those who have come after her are worse.
Major Major Major Major
@Kattails: The question was hilarious. “How do you square wanting to ban some guns with my second amendment right [to own whatever the fuck kind of gun I want regardless of what it’s for, where’s my Howitzer?]”
zhena gogolia
@lamh36:
Hilarious!
SiubhanDuinne
@Nicole:
The first time watching the clip, I somehow missed the last few seconds, so — thanks to your comment — I went back and watched the whole thing again. Love the dude’s not-at-all-subtle body language — slouched down in seat, arms crossed over chest. Love the pout. What a pwecious widdle snowfwake.
JCJ
@japa21:
How could anyone hate the Brew Crew? (Still heartbroken over Yelich’s injury)
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Nicely done. Will have to steal that. [“Pwecious” and “widdle” were already in my vocabulary.]
SFAW
@JCJ:
As is this Mets fan. I hope he recovers completely, it would royally suck if his career ended because of it, or if he turned into a mid-grade player because of it.
tokyokie
I, too, initially liked Cokie Roberts, but one day, probably 25 years ago, I read one of the crappy op-ed columns that she co-authored with her husband, and it was a rah-rah piece about junior colleges. The column itself wasn’t offensive, although it was boring. But a few weeks later, I saw something about her having come under fire for accepting an overly generous fee to speak before the junior colleges’ trade group. Nobody seemed to make the connection between the column and the six-figure speaking fee, but I did, and I concluded she was in the bag for whomever would pay her, and she lost all credibility with me.
ThresherK
@geg6: Hard same.
I’ll be testing the waters for when “too soon” is over for Cokie.
Isn’t she the inventor of “it’s out ther”?
Kent
Gotta say, Warren has really been growing on me in the past month or so. Some candidates you don’t really know if they have “it” until you see them in the meatgrinder that is national political campaigning. Bill Clinton had it in spades. So did Obama. They both seemed to gain oxygen from the process. Trump does too, to some extent which is why he keeps trying to recapture his time on the campaign with the endless MAGA rallies.
I think of all our current crop of candidates, Warren is closest to this mode. She seems to gain energy from campaigning rather than be drained by it as Biden seems to be. I don’t think it is something you can fake and I think it is what people for lack of a better word call “authenticity”
I still like Harris and she was my early first choice. But if she doesn’t catch fire soon, the Warren train is going to leave the station without her. And no amount of “southern backstops” or whatever is going to make a difference.
tokyokie
@JCJ: People who hate what the Used Car Salesman did to baseball during his malign term as commissioner still have a strong dislike for the Brewers. Or at least do the odd seasons in which they’re competitive (which seem to be more frequent now that Seligs are not part of the ownership). And as a side note, George W. Bush has said he wouldn’t have run for governor of Texas had he been selected baseball commissioner after Fay Vincent was defenestrated, but the Used Car Salesman cockblocked him, and we wound up with the asshole as president instead. So in a round-about way, the Brewers are responsible for the Iraq folly. So yeah, I don’t much like them.
But I’d still root for them against the Yankees.
Kent
Cokie Roberts was a paid mouthpiece for the unelected Washington elite and Davos crowd. And her “both-sides-ism” was instrumental in bringing us both Bush and Trump.
Elizabelle
@tokyokie: Yup. Cokie was a buckraker.
jl
Go Warren! Glad the event was a success. I liked the bit of the speech I heard in the clip.
@Tony Jay: Thanks for the update I only have two quibbles:
” And at what point does the Party lose its soul? ”
Hasn’t that been answered already. The Lib-Dems don’t even need a point to sell their soul. They’ve already done so pointlessly when the were a feckless and useless coalition ‘partner’ (actually mostly lapdog) to the Conservatives.
And, only purity I see in the Tulsi Gabbard movement is pure loyalty to Gabbard.
Elizabelle
@ThresherK: Yup. A recent WashPost reader comment, on a thread that is becoming a hagiography of the sainted Cokie:
rikyrah
I disagree. If you can’t see the racism of placing children that look like you in cages. And, that they mean harm to people who look like you… nothing to say.
There is a reason why normally less than 10% of US vote Republican. Sadly, we have always had these Stevens from Django amongst us.
There isn’t a policy position in the world, or series of them that can overcome those who believe that they are ‘special’ and ‘not like THOSE’ who the GOP is talking about…..
Cause the positions on the important topics, the Democrats win hands down.
___________________________
Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) Tweeted:
Currently 66% of Hispanics vote for Democrats. If Hispanics voted more like African-Americans, Republicans couldn’t win statewide nearly anywhere.
To get there, Democrats are going to have to offer a vision of the future that is more than “we’re not as racist as the other guys.” https://twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1173957948244221952?s=17
jl
@rikyrah: To get there, Democrats are going to have to offer a vision of the future that is more than “we’re not as racist as the other guys.”
What prominent Democrat, or segment of the Democratic Party is saying or doing that? Honest question. I don’t know who or what he is talking about.
Gelfling 545
@Tony Jay: You know, when I read your posts I sometimes feel grateful that we hav a 2 (more or less) functioning party system instead of Gawdknowshowmany . Fewer loonies to keep track of.
Ladyraxterinok
@SiubhanDuinne: IIRC she claimed Obama–during either the 08 primary or the election–took a ‘vacation outside the country’ because he went to Hawaii!?!
Betty Cracker
@SFAW: Voter registration and anti-suppression efforts are absolutely critical for sure. I’m doing my part on that as a volunteer. I absolutely despise doing blog fundraisers, but maybe I’ll put one together for Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight 2020 organization at some point soon.
As we all know, Abrams ought to be governor of Georgia right now, but was cheated out of what she worked so hard to win. Similarly, Warren never wanted to be a politician, but she was cheated out of running the organization she built, so she ran for office instead. It would be poetic justice if the crooked jackasses who swindled these women ended up regretting it in a special way.
rikyrah
Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) Tweeted:
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties has posted a hearing for September 23 called “Presidential Corruption: Emoluments and Profiting Off the Presidency.” https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1174000310181871616?s=17
Elizabelle
No surprise. The Obamas released a very gracious statement in response to Cokie’s passing.
Just listened to the NPR recap. It was — quite accurate. Had George Will speaking of Roberts as a member of “permanent Washington.” Yes indeed.
jl
@Kent: I agree. I think because so far Warren is able to do things she loves to do as she runs for president, and deeply believes in what she says, the importance of saying it, and has a realistic vision for getting it done.
I think Biden looks drained from his act because it is a BS PR act. I had hopes Biden would play a positive role in his presidential campaign, and thought I could possibly enthusiastically support him if Warren and Harris didn’t make it. Biden brought some very good progressive economists to the early Obama administration, for example. But looks like I’ll just have to support him if he gets the nomination in the cause of defeating Trump. I watched his early speeches before he announced and they seems overly consulted overly baroque variations on his Obama era Uncle Joe persona, and the speeches were almost impossible to follow (pix of the audience indicated that they had the same problem). Now he is running a belligerently and unapologetic retrograde and out of date campaign. Because, on his own, he also has the bad side of the crazy old uncle: an unapologetic out of it doofus (which is consistent with his career before Obama. He is what he is.
Biden’s campaign has been a big disappointment to me so far. Maybe he is running it that way out of trying to make a virtue out necessity. Or, maybe his is doing it as an excuse out of convenience, and convincing himself it is a virtue out of necessity.
“both seemed to gain oxygen from the process. Trump does too, to some extent which is why he keeps trying to recapture his time on the campaign with the endless MAGA rallies. ”
Trump is a debauched Pheonix out of nightmare. He repeatedly destroys himself in fires that he lights himself. Then is reborn ever more damaged and corrupt, not to the wonder and admiration of everyone, but to most people’s disgust. But to ever more admiration of his debauched and degraded fan base.
rikyrah
Kirsten Allen (@knicole_a) Tweeted:
“Harris threw herself into a world of Black abundance, into a place where there was a constant drumbeat of exceptionalism. Alumni boast about a Howard swagger. They see it in Harris now…”
Read @RobinGivhan’s deep dive on @KamalaHarris’ time at @HowardU.
https://t.co/aAZJw4O1yC https://twitter.com/knicole_a/status/1173599832499507200?s=17
Ladyraxterinok
@tokyokie: As I recall, she and her husband wrote a column about how could the Democrats ever convince people they were religious since the GOP had proved God was on their side. Or at least that’s what they meant even if Cokie and husband weren’t that blunt.
Her husband sat in for Diane Rehm on NPR several times. That irritated me.
Tony Jay
@jl:
Quibble 1) Well, I was trying to be nice. I’m not good at it but I thought I’d give it a go.
Quibble 2) Yup. With that assessment I would not disagree. That’s why she reminds me of ‘Spud’ Swinson.
Ladyraxterinok
@Ladyraxterinok: Had left for a while and thought I had posted this in a previous post. So this is 2nd time I wrote this in this thread. Sorry.
tokyokie
@Ladyraxterinok: As bad as Cokie Roberts was, her husband is much, much worse, inasmuch as he’s never made much of an effort to conceal that he’s talentless and owes his prominence entirely to his wife.
rikyrah
Awe??
Just a little animal love ??
https://twitter.com/dodo/status/1173657803950608385
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
How are you going to drag them into the 21st century? We have to get them out of the 17th first.
Elizabelle
From Cole’s twitter.
I’d take Jane Mayer. Will have to think of some other amazing women journalists who have stayed true to accuracy, not the dreaded “objectivity” that dumbs down reporting and brought us Trump.
Betty Cracker
@Ruckus: They can mentally inhabit whatever century they choose; the point is to move forward despite them.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
I’m getting tired of the pundits informing Dems that they need to have something other than “WE are not the ones who are going to try to destroy the country nor the middle class — but the Rethugs are.” It’s the functional equivalent of “Well, sure, Trump is a liar, a probable criminal, a probable traitor, a racist and fascist — but that Hillary, well, I JUST DON’T KNOW.”
veniceriley
@Tony Jay: I have a new girlfriend in the UK. I feel like I never know what’s really going on there after listening to her, our media, and your media. Until one post from you. So cogent and incisive – with insults aplenty as the sugar to help the information go down. I may end up moving there.
KSinMA
@rikyrah: Harris just gets more and more and more impressive.
Tony Jay
@veniceriley:
Hey, if you’re up for chaos come on over and spice up our genepool.
And you’re very welcome.
Searcher
@Chyron HR: Did you see all the big empty spaces in the crowd, even right near the arch?
Mary Ellen Sandahl
@Kattails: As the daughter of a classroom teacher, I’m sure you’re right. OTOH, SPW is a very energetic human. I read her Wikipedia bio and felt like I had to go lie down and recover!
hilts
With all due respect to the great Chris Hayes, I’m All In for Elizabeth Warren! Yes, I’ll vote for any Democratic nominee to remove Donald Trump’s fat totalitarian ass from the White House but it would be a soul crushing travesty to see an intelligent, inspiring, and eloquent candidate like Elizabeth Warren lose to a stumbling, bumbling, incoherent mess like Joe Biden.
Anne Laurie
@Searcher: It’s a reflecting pool, moron. Unlike your crew, Democratic voters are smart enough not to stand calf-deep in a fountain just to gawk.