Simone Biles now holds the record for most world medals by a gymnast. Here she wins her 25th world medal.pic.twitter.com/HDaPotLVkv
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) October 13, 2019
When @Simone_Biles won her first World’s AA title, my co-coach was worried that she had peaked too early for Rio. My response was “maybe she will become the greatest of all time”. So proud of you today (and all days) Simone! pic.twitter.com/ZWKci2VzSV
— Aimee B (@Salto_Coach) October 13, 2019
The best quote I’ve seen was in USAToday — “Simone Biles sets the standard in gymnastics and maybe any sport you can name”:
… “She’s incredible,” [Coach] Landi said. “You don’t want to look at (the medals), just. We were here to do the job. The goal is to hit four out of four, every day, day after day… “
Heck, most days I’m satisfied if I can hit three out of four. Some days, I settle for two — okay, one — plus some earnest efforts…
***********
Mandatory political content, for the hard to please:
Ahead of this week's subpoenas and depositions, new documents obtained by Axios show how Democrats are taking the impeachment inquiry in two tightly focused directions: Ukraine and obstruction of justice. https://t.co/gFN14JUrF2
— Axios (@axios) October 13, 2019
Kay
I don’t know how much lower it will go- it’s bottomless as far as I can tell- but why did they promote him so much? They gave him thousands of hours of free tv time to promote this hatred beginning in 2012. They didn’t know where this was headed when he launched his campaign based on birtherism?
It’s gotten worse every single month since the launch.
Just as a side note- we’re scolded constantly about not criticizing or upsetting “people of faith” and yet Republicans can use a video of the President assassinating people in a church? On the scale of possible or real offensiveness to “people of faith” where does this land?
JPL
@Kay: I just wish I knew how the story ended. I just saw the video and it is horrifying.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ? ??
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I’m pretty sure Evangelicals are A-OK with a video of heretics and apostates being slaughtered. The chapter on Sodom and Gomorrah is one of their favorite parts of the bible after all.
PS: Blech.
Kay
@JPL:
I DO think individual members of the media need protection from the cult leader and his followers, but this is the same person who regularly gins up violence against black and brown House members. They thought they were immune?
His re-election campaign hasn’t even started in earnest and he hasn’t been impeached yet, and he is going to be impeached. They think it will 1. get worse or 2. get better as the stress on the cult increases? We all know it’s going to get worse.
OzarkHillbilly
From the “You can’t make this shit up file”:
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
That whole non-acceptance of and being inhospitable toward strangers thing as the transgression kind of escapes them, doesn’t it.
Aleta
It’s hideous. Is it legal for the FBI to investigate the people who made and posted that vid to youtube (in Dec 2018) for (something like) advocating murder of a public official? Would this be considered a threat if it showed attempted murder of a sitting president? A former president?
Anne Laurie
@Kay: Got a warning post about that video scheduled for later this morning — didn’t want to spoil peoples’ appetite this early. (I’m not embedding the video, and I really wish others wouldn’t either.)
Anne Laurie
@Aleta: It’s being circulated outside of right-wing media now because it was shown at a MAGAt fan-con over the weekend. And since the hardcore grifters who put on that hatefest have hastily disavowed the video, I don’t think they intended it to be circulated to those not ‘of the (Trumplodyte) body’. I *do* hope its surfacing discourages some of the more avid Media Village Idiots from treating His Lardship like a harmless, ‘fun’ infotainment figure — but who knows?
Chyron HR
TRUMP: Some people–a lot of people are saying I SHOULD have the Fake News Media killed. [smirks] But we don’t want that, DO WE?
(CROWD shouts “Kill Them!”, tears the reporters covering the rally from their protective cage and begins beating them to death. TRUMP makes a face like a constipated bullfrog to indicate his pleasure. Cut to CHUCK TODD watching the scene on a monitor.)
TODD: New clouds of allegations darkened Hunter Biden’s father’s presidential campaign today…
Raven
The video piss you off, scare you and make you upset? Mission accomplished.
WereBear
@Anne Laurie: It sounds like their Id is out rampaging the countryside. As usual, it’s their monster, and we have to hunt it down in a windmill.
OzarkHillbilly
Yes, because everyone knows a black person with a gun is the most dangerous thing in the world.
Yeah, the implied victim blaming of including that gratuitous still is disgusting, but the fact remains that in a society that encourages it’s citizens to arm themselves, and carry guns everywhere they go so that they can “defend” themselves, cops should not be shooting armed people just because *they have a gun*, at the very least not until they point said weapon at them, (and even that is problematic) because shit is confusing and who knows what a person hears or doesn’t hear at such moments.
Not to mention that if I had 2 unknown guys sneaking around my house at night shining flashlights in my windows, your Dawg Damned right I’m grabbing my .357, AND calling 911 for whatever good that might do me.
**otherwise known as “exercising their 2nd Amendment rights”
different-church-lady
…get out of bed for coffee.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: A whole lot of shit escapes them. It’s like none of them ever read the Book of Matthew.
Raven
@different-church-lady: I’m letting the boss lady sleep in since she’s exhausted from the dog parade. Here’s some photo’s and, no Max, I didn’t call the fucking paper to tell them the have a typo. The rain held off and the parade was great!
ThresherK
I understand that gymnastics and figure skating take incredible tolls on the body, and some of that is because the participants are still growing. Biles will retire young; I hope when she hangs up her chalk (?) she’ll be in good health structure-wise and be able to enjoy the incredible accomplishments.
Of course, a lot of my musings are brought on by watching that dismount from the top bar and thinking “Could the young me even land on a pad from that height without breaking every bone below my navel?”
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: The Bohdi-satva!
JPL
@Raven: Great pictures.
Anne Laurie
@ThresherK:
I’m hoping she does work with professional ballet (or other) dancers, because she’s not just an amazing athlete, she’s also putting on a hell of a performance.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: A shot of the crew! https://flic.kr/p/2huBgXe
satby
@Anne Laurie: is that the same video discussed in the thread below as being tracked back to a Russian troll site? Not giving any of that any clicks.
eclare
@Raven: Thanks for the pics! Hope a good amount of money was raised, looks like a big crowd.
eclare
@satby: I saw that comment too, but haven’t seen anything official. The PAC has just said it was from a third party. Lying? Who knows at this point.
eclare
@Anne Laurie: Amazingly she did not do very well on Dancing with the Stars a few years back. And this was after Laurie Hernandez won the whole thing.
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: Exactly. Whatever Dear Leader does is okay with White Evangelicals and Deplorables. There’s no bottom.
And then you have idiots like Joe Scarborough arguing that Senators Warren and Sanders are not moderate enough to get his vote and that VP Biden is too weak. Arghhhh.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: Nice! Where did you find that old homeless guy pushing the cart?
Patricia Kayden
@ThresherK: I remember trying to walk on a balancing beam and falling off almost immediately. I’m amazed by how agile and flexible gymnasts are. Very proud of Ms. Biles’ accomplishments. Perhaps she’ll coach after she stops competing.
Kay
Great job, Team Biden. Jesus. I know they’re bad at this but do they have to take the rest of the candidates down with them?
John S.
Remember when Kathy Griffin posted a photo of a decapitated Trump, and Republicans lost their minds over how inappropriate and disgusting it was?
I’d be willing to bet the most vocal critics then just don’t have much to say now about Trump being depicted as violently killing his political enemies.
There are no depths to IOKIYAR.
Kay
You know, I’ve been listening to Biden and IMO the reason he’s a weak candidate is he makes no connection between his (apparent) wish to restore normalcy and regular voters. It’s all a defense of institutions for the sake of the institution- it’s not an argument. He has to make an argument- why are these institutions essential to people? Why should they defend them? It’s a kind of entitlement.
Patricia Kayden
The majority of Americans polled support the impeachment inquiry.
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1183638333676761088
Suck it, Deplorables.
RAVEN
@OzarkHillbilly: At a spelling bee. . .
satby
@Kay: the air date of the interview probably wasn’t up to the Bidens. It’s the media outlet using it to generate eyeballs and clicks for the horse race. Craven profiteering.
I would like to have the news media’s collective back, but they keep stabbing us in ours.
Raven
London (CNN Business)A trio of economists were awarded the Nobel Prize on Monday for their work to alleviate global poverty.
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer pioneered an approach to poverty reduction that was based on carefully designed experiments that sought answers to specific policy questions, according to the prize committee.
Duflo, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the youngest person and second woman to be awarded the prize. Banerjee, her husband, is also a professor at MIT.
Kremer, a professor at Harvard, used field work to test how school results could be improved in western Kenya during the mid-1990s.
Spanky
@OzarkHillbilly: Wait, you mean there’s something more after Psalms?
Princess
@satby: The Bidens could demand whatever conditions they want to let Hunter do the interview in the first place. If it is even a good idea. Hunter is not the real issue here — people want to know about Biden. This seems like an own goal even from Joe’s perspective.
Anne Laurie
@satby:
Me neither — I scheduled the post because I’d like to *discourage* further clicks, because I know people are curious, but UGGGH.
As for its source… certainly could be hostile foreign interference! On the other hand, from what I know from working on / attending fan-festivals (which is what AMPFest is), they don’t always make much of an effort to discourage the hardcore stans (selling bootleg merchandise at a Star Wars con, or promoting explicit slash fic fanzines at a Harry Potter convention). So it’s *also* possible, IMO, that the organizers either didn’t realize quite how much pushback this particular crappy violence-pr0n video would get from the media… or even, as they’re now claiming, that they didn’t proof the ‘amateur’ exhibit as thoroughly as they should have.
It’s Trumpworld. They don’t hire quality workers, and they don’t get quality workmanship. Even their puppetmasters can’t be arsed to do a professional job on their trollbait, because the MAGats wouldn’t trust anything that’s too ‘slick’ or polished.
Anne Laurie
@eclare:
Don’t watch the show, but I get the impression that professionalism is *not* what its voters are searching for.
OzarkHillbilly
@Patricia Kayden: The great athletes rarely make good coaches. “Why can’t s/he do this? It’s sooooo easy!” Even if they don’t say it, the frustration comes thru.
FlipYrWhig
Just posted this downstairs before realizing there was another more recent thread…
Re: the revenge splatter video, I’m not the only one who remembers the media firestorm over a MoveOn video contest that included a submission likening George W. Bush to Hitler, am I? Or over “General Betray-us”? What does it take to get the media interested in shaming the makers and the side they affiliate with when it’s *that* side?
Kay
@satby:
Joe Biden has been running for something for 50 years. He, and no one else on his huge team, considered that the Hunter Biden interview might dominate the news?
It screws the other Democrats. The last thing they want to talk about is Joe Biden’s son. Is this what the interview will be like?
I, me, my. When do they get to voters? What are we even defending here? What relationship does any of this have to normal people?
Betty Cracker
@satby: High-interest subjects who make themselves available to a network have leverage over a lot of things, including the timing of release. They must think this helps them. I don’t know, maybe it will help the Biden campaign — maybe Hunter Biden will call out Trump’s hypocrisy, etc., which they should be doing, IMO, but I don’t know that having this topic dominate the debate is helpful for Democrats in general. We’ll see, I guess.
@Anne Laurie: The owner of the site that hosts the video was invited to the White House a while back, says the person who made it will remain a site contributor and that he will protect that person’s identity.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Here’s a revealing article about Rudy Giuliani from the Philadelphia Inquirer: How Rudy Giuliani’s epic slide, from crime buster to conspirator, reveals America’s broken windows | Will Bunch
satby
@Kay: I just don’t see it as interesting to anyone but the hardcore haters on the right anyway. They’re not going to vote for Democrats. And anything that highlights the offspring of politicians getting plum jobs spills over onto the Trump spawn.
I just can’t work up any angst over it because I think it won’t matter.
delk
@John S.: She’s depicted in the video being shot.
ETA: typo
Kay
@satby:
So that’s the standard for him? At best he stays even? He retains the gains he inherited from Obama? Why is that good enough? If he can just hold on until the general we’ll all give him an A+?
Maybe the other candidates were hoping they could add some supporters at this debate.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Good article, thanks.
bemused
@OzarkHillbilly:
The people at conference who watched this video probably cheered and clapped loudly with big smiles.
Chyron HR
@Kay:
Gonna be honest, this definitely pushes me back towards the Biden camp.
satby
@Kay: as the increasingly acrimonious discussions on this blog demonstrate, I don’t think it will matter to most Democratic voters because they aren’t looking to the news media to make their decisions as much, and many of the most engaged have already picked their favorite candidates.
There’s a lot of fear driving this acrimony, and that demonstrably doesn’t attract voters. I’m betting the field will look very different after the first primaries and this shit won’t even be a blip on the radar. I hope.
Zzyzx
At some point, Biden has to be allowed to defend himself. Yes there is a debate, but it’s one in a series and by this point, the only people tuning in are political junkies, those who are rooting for a candidate and watching it like a football game, and Republicans hoping that a Democrat says something they can spin.
It’s a minor spectacle that will be forgotten in a week. I’m not going to worry about something else overshadowing it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@satby: Good point. We’re all on edge right now because, as Kay says, every day it gets worse. Be brave, people. We can do this.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I followed that with this 2nd piece from Will Bunch: Unbelievable: Failed smears only make Elizabeth Warren stronger as new Dem front-runner
This cracked me up:
Betty Cracker
Pete Buttigieg pushed back hard on the narrative Trump is trying to build on the Bidens’ buck-raking. It was on Jake Tapper’s show. Tapper asked if Hunter Biden stepping down from the board of the Chinese company wasn’t at least a “tacit admission” of an “appearance of impropriety,” and Buttigieg said the double standard was ridiculous and mentioned Ivanka’s Chinese patents, the Trump-spawns’ global business ventures, Kushner’s relationship with the Saudis and said we had no idea what role Trump’s business interests played in his decision to green-light Turkey’s war against the Kurds.
Maybe that’s the Biden campaign’s strategy: don’t have the candidate confront Trump’s hypocrisy directly and let the other candidates do it instead because they’ll sort of have to, won’t they, if this story is the theme of the upcoming debate. I have no idea how that sort of thing plays with neutral voters.
debbie
@Kay:
I’m over on FB, arguing whether this is a war crime and should be prosecuted.
satby
@Dorothy A. Winsor: my previous corp job was for a big outsourcer, so I’ve lived this tense, everyone lashing out environment IRL. One company, that shall remain nameless, outsourced to mine and laid off about 30k workers in waves over a few months as the publicly traded shared dropped from a high of $80/ to a low of $8/. If course their pensions were heavily invested in those shares, as were a number of Canadian governmental pensions.
My main memory from those miserable months was that it felt like those folks were ready to eat their own young to survive. And it’s starting to feel like that here. We are all (mostly) allies. We can’t forget that.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh that’s good.
debbie
@JPL:
I’m going to hate myself for asking, but where is this video?
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: That would be a good strategy at any point in this campaign. Attack whatever trump or his minions say about DEMs with a single voice. They can fight over the differences in their policy choices without giving the Repubs any fuel for the fire.
A Ghost To Most
@satby:
Some of us are not scared, but pissed and prepared. We also know who amongst will stand, and who will run. Sadly, there appears to be far more of the latter than the former around here.
No gods
No fascism
No communism
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: The Guardian has it. Haven’t seen it nor read the article.
SiubhanDuinne
@Raven:
If you’re referring to the caption about the dog wearing “a small hat and a lay,” I don’t call that a typo. I call it ignorance.
debbie
@Anne Laurie:
I feel like I need to know what I’m mad at.
satby
@Betty Cracker: Mayor Pete pretty much says what he thinks and has a gift for answers that get to the point but lose the right-wing framing along the way.
And as a vet, he’s incandescently angry about the abandonment of the Kurds.
debbie
@Kay:
I slept like crap last night, Trump being only one of the reasons. At some point, I turned on the radio for something to listen to. There was a piece about the freshmen Dems from swing districts who were taking all kinds of heat over impeachment. At one town hall, a woman shrieked that political leaders do this stuff (extortion) all the time. I think someone needs to post a video explaining just what a president is and is not allowed to do.
satby
@A Ghost To Most: never said anyone in particular was scared. I’m not, I’m enraged. But I’m not going to burn out on every little thing when we have to get all the way to an election more than a year away, and oppose the traitors every day IRL.
chopper
@Kay:
biden’s deer-in-the-headlights reaction to all this not only implies to people that he’s not at all ready for this, it also makes it look like his kid actually has some sketchy stuff going on that they’re trying to figure out a way to deal with. this is why you address this stuff quick. doesn’t biden have fucking advisors?
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: yep. A good strategy for all of us, honestly.
debbie
@Raven:
Love the costumes (esp. the poop factory) and glad the weather held out!
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
I took a quick look at the article. Seems like a logical sequel to that video where “Trump” wrestles “CNN” into submission. //
I don’t feel the need to see it now. I was thinking it was about Trump and the Kurds. Now that, I’m furious about.
A Ghost To Most
@satby:
There are a lot of folks on our side just pissing their pants.
U.S. Grant said something to the effect of “Bobby Lee! Bobby Lee! People should stop worrying about what Bobby Lee is gonna do, and start working on what we’re gonna do to Bobby Lee”.
How can we expect to rally folks who are too scared to come out from behind their fucking pie filters?
OzarkHillbilly
Another for the “Headlines I Never Thought I’d See” file.Andy Serkis plays talking anus in fatberg prevention campaign
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Why am I not hearing any pushback especially about the Trump family business practices? No one’s been more crooked than them.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: I am trying really hard to not get into stupid arguments over stupid stuff with people I agree with 90% of the time. Not sure how successful I am.
@debbie: As with all things trump, I never saw “that video where “Trump” wrestles “CNN” into submission.”. It’s better for my blood pressure.
eta fixt
rikyrah
@Kay:
They are not people of faith. They are fake azz frauds ???
hueyplong
I don’t do pro-trump vids. I’d find them offensive in general even if the substantive content were not brutally offensive as a stand-alone thing.
Haven’t heard his actual voice in some time because I’m much quicker now with a remote.
You take your positives where you find them.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
It is 2am and you hear something outside.
HE? DID ? NOT ?ANNOUNCE? THAT ?HE?POLICE?
rikyrah
@Raven:
That was so cute ?
PPCLI
@debbie: Yes. The Democrats should have a short list of things that need to be repeated over and over. Ivanka and Trump Tower Baku enriching the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Eric and diverting money from a cancer charity into Trump Organization coffers when donors were told this wouldn’t happen. Don Jr. … well there is so much there, just pick the worst one that can be easily summed up in a sentence or slogan.
But most of all, repeat over and over again: HOW MUCH MONEY DOES DONALD TRUMP MAKE FROM TURKEY? WE NEED TO KNOW.
The Republicans all had the same talking points about Hunter Biden, repeated them endlessly, and look where we are. Democrats need to start hammering on this.
rikyrah
@Raven:
Husband and wife team????
Betty Cracker
@debbie: Maybe the Biden camp thinks attacking Trump and the klepto Ivana-spawn elevates the evidence-free allegations Trump made against the Bidens to create a both-sides fog? I don’t know. That’s certainly what Trump’s team is banking on — their strategy has always been to dirty up the opposition enough to give their crook a shot.
Raven
@rikyrah: A Nobel Prize romance? It turns out that economics laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee are a married couple.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where both have worked closely together for years, confirms they wed.
The couple won on Monday along with Michael Kremer of Harvard University for pioneering new ways to alleviate global poverty.
MIT spokeswoman Kimberley Allen is cautioning reporters not to refer to the pair as “Abhijit Banerjee and his wife.” She suggests “Esther Duflo and her husband.”
Subscribe to With Interest
Catch up and prep for the week
rikyrah
@debbie:
See, I would throw it back in the voter’s face…
Who did Obama shake down?
Bush 43?
Clinton?
Bush 41?
Reagan?
Carter?
You say President’s do it all the time…YOU TELL ME ABOUT OTHER PRESIDENTS DOING IT.
see…this is why I can’t be a politician
rikyrah
@PPCLI:
Now that we know it includes China too..
Talk about all of Ivanka’s patents in China.
debbie
@rikyrah:
Right??? My head would explode after about a minute or two!
satby
@A Ghost To Most: oh, I think you’ve misinterpreted some comments. The ones I’ve seen have been saying they were pieing repetively negative commentary from people repeating Twitter rumors. Especially after those rumors are debunked. I think that’s reasonable since debunked crap endlessly repeated adds nothing to the discussion, and often derails the discussion entirely. That’s not out of fear, that’s frustration.
I think fear is motivating some of the rumor-mongering.
Betty Cracker
PSA: This morning, Team Biden added a page to their campaign site: THE BIDEN PLAN TO GUARANTEE GOVERNMENT WORKS FOR THE PEOPLE. The opening paragraph slams Trump’s unprecedented corruption, as it should:
From a quick read-through, it looks pretty sound and includes a lot of provisions similar to the legislation Warren proposed in Congress more than a year ago.
rp
@rikyrah: Not an expert on Texas law, but I’m guessing that she would have been within her rights to open fire on him. After all, he was skulking around on her property in the middle of the night. Did he knock on the door first? If not, what the hell was he doing?
The cops are idiots, particularly if they don’t throw the book at this guy, because eventually people are going to start taking justice into their own hands.
Robert Sneddon
@Raven: Time for my standard canned rant…
The Economics Prize is not a Nobel Prize, it is not issued or funded by the Nobel Foundation. It was created and paid for by a major Swedish bank, Sveriges Riksbank starting back in the 1960s. Members of the Nobel family have repeatedly decried its association with the “real” Nobel Prizes. The Nobel Foundation administers the bank’s Prize, selects the winners and the award is made “in memory of Alfred Nobel” at the same ceremony the regular Nobel Awards are made.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Actually Kay,
The candidates should take whatever question given to them, and turn it into an impeachment rant.
What about the calls on the Secret server?
Did we betray the Kurds because of Dolt45’s holdings in Turkey?
Are 3,000 American soldiers on their way to Saudi Arabia because of a business deal between Dolt45 and the murdering Prince?
Where are the actual transcripts, not the outlines?
What financial stakes did they get from China?
I wouldn’t answer whatever lame azz question is asked. I would pushback.
They all should.
PS-the Biden campaign should have done it Post-debate.Period.
Marcopolo
@Raven: Good morning folks.
Thanks for the link to the doggie photos. I see a lot of handsome dogs patiently putting up with the strange whims of their hoomans :). Also looks like everyone had a lovely time.
Hope everyone has & takes the time to join in a local community activity celebrating the season.
Miss Bianca
@Raven: is that Bodhi and Lil Bit in the second photo?
Kathleen
Deleted
Soprano2
@debbie: I heard that; it’s what I came here to post about. I was struck by how they didn’t include the rep’s answer to that screaming and shrieking. That’s one of a whole series they’ve done the past two weeks about Dems in swing districts and how they’re handling the impeachment inquiry. They don’t seem to include too much about how the reps are actually handling it, though, but instead mostly seem to include quotes from what I can only assume are outraged Trump voters who probably didn’t vote for the rep anyway. Funny how they haven’t covered how any endangered Republicans are handling the impeachment inquiry.
Fair Economist
@Betty Cracker: Great for Buttigieg, who is taking the right approach. Seriously, what exactly is Hunter Biden being accused of? Taking a job with a company in a country that might have an interaction with his father sometime in the future – which is to say taking *any* job *anywhere* in the world!
Kinda sad that Biden’s best defender is a rival for the nomination, though.
Robert Sneddon
@Fair Economist: Being catapulted into a highly-paid no-work-required boardroom-level job with zero track record in the industry involved means that you’re there BECAUSE your father is Vice-President of the United States. Hunter Biden knew the deal, so did the company that “hired” him.
Plenty of jobs around, driving a truck or working in an office somewhere but cashing in on nepotism is an American institution — the sheer number of elected officials who happen to be the sons and daughters and close family members of other well-established political figures never ceases to astound me.
Ruckus
@ThresherK:
Really talented professional athletes understand the risks of what they do, but they do it anyway. Some for the glory but mostly for the thrill of success. It is a very natural thing for some to go the extra million miles past what normal humans can do.
That’s what working in professional sports showed me. I participated in the amateur side of the sport I worked in, and I was, well, average at it. I didn’t have that push to go past the limit of danger, to take the extra risk. I’d take a lot of risk and have, but I wouldn’t push the boundaries past my comfort zone. Top athletes have a much higher comfort zone. They are aware of the boundaries of physical space, but they prefer to push them rather than be controlled by them. It is awe inspiring to watch up close, a person do something you know how to do, but do it dramatically better than you are even willing to try.
Ruckus
@satby:
Yes it is. A lot of people never understand fear. It is a normal emotion, it can be very protective in our lives. But that doesn’t mean we scream and wave our arms about wildly to scare away the fear. We have to understand the fear and the underlying cause and what can mitigate the fear. Right now the fear is that some magamoron is going to believe the bullshit and do the stupid. Or lots of magamorons are going to do the stupid because the head moron keeps egging them on. It’s not quite the perfect storm but it is close.
Answering that fear is helping to defeat it. Our current actually viable candidates, EW, KH, Mayor Pete, Beto are doing this. The last two have no real chance to win now and they are therefore much freer to saying everything necessary out loud. Mayor Pete and Beto are really doing this, being team players. EW and KH are being very professional, each in their own ways, which is part of the reason they are where they are. JB is just wishing he can win, based on his 50 yrs in politics.
evodevo
@rikyrah: Yes. This. If you have been doing politics for awhile, this should be second nature…instant comeback. I don’t know why the Dems are so reticent…it looks weak, AND doesn’t push back on the lies…
A Ghost To Most
@satby: I disagree. There is an entire category, growing quickly, of comments of the form “I don’t like what you said, I’m pieing you”.
If BJ is going to sanction censorship, it should at least identify the censors.
This place has become your average high school, full of cliques and in-groups, and purity ponies.
General Stuck would read you all the riot act.
satby
@A Ghost To Most: well, I don’t have anyone pied, I’m perfectly capable of ignoring stuff unless it screams for a response. But if someone finds a pie filter allows them to enjoy the blog better, who am I to judge? We’re living in a country awash with psychotic hostility to a number of different groups of people. People are on edge and if that’s what it takes for them to enjoy the community here, ok. Because in the end, we jackals do try to be there for and help each other.
A Ghost To Most
@satby:
Censorship is a form of judgement. An anonymous pie filter is censorship for chickenshits.
At least I have the comfort of knowing that if everything goes to hell, I won’t have to share a foxhole with these wusses. They will have all died from dehydration from pissing their pants over ideas that conflict with their carefully curated worldviews.
This place has become a fucking cliqued-up social club. No wonder the old timers are falling away.
WaterGirl
@A Ghost To Most: Balloon Juice ebbs and flows. Just when I think it has gone off course and we have collectively lost our way or lost the magic, it comes back.
Living under Trump has made the last 3 years extremely stressful, and I think it shows in our interactions with one another here. I believe we will come out on the other side, but in the meantime, perhaps we all need an extra shot of grace so that we don’t allow ourselves to turn on our friends in a pique of frustration.
Trump turns everything to shit, but we can collectively make sure that we don’t allow him to do that to BJ.
My two cents.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@A Ghost To Most: I don’t have anyone pied, but I do scroll past some folks pretty quickly. Maybe that’s cowardly. I don’t know. But I plan to leave them in peace so I can keep my own equanimity.
I think some people thrive on argument and conflict. It energizes them. And more power to them. We need them. I know myself well enough to know I don’t thrive that way.
Elizabelle
@A Ghost To Most:
No. Think of it more as a remote. I have a few people pied not because of their views but because they are fucking insufferable. It is very possible to peek under the piecrust with the >> feature, and jackals can move commenters into and out of the pie filter.
Ghost, we all make judgements and censor, every single day. By choosing not to watch Fox News, or mainline Breitbart or spend the day in the company of people we cannot stand, for longstanding and good reasons.
Grow up.
A Ghost To Most
@Elizabelle:
You can have poltroon-juice.
Social cliques raise my hackles, and this place is ridden with them. Let loose the purity ponies!
The big tent shrinks everyday.