Comments

1

Two weeks ago today trump told Chris Wallace he would sign a complete healthcare plan within 2 weeks. Where the fuck is it? Would be nice if a journalist looked into it. If M4A is to librul for you call it Tricare for all, just make it happen.

2

trumpf LIED?
oh say it ain't So.

3

@1 wasn't long ago he said he'd soon have a big announcement about minimum wage and that hasn't happened either.

The mistake is making any attempt to evaluate Trump's emissions for informational value in the first place. You might as well be interpreting the flight of birds or the deposition of tea leaves.

4

I'll not be the least bit surprised to learn we do a better job of contact tracing hornets than we do humans.

5

two inches long
with a Stinger?
I'm gonna need
a bigger gun.

a net gun'd be cool

6

@1: Ingrid Bergman will probably star in another movie first.

8

@3
While i don't place an iota of trust in the farts that drop from HairFuror's cheeseburger-hole, scrying via bird migration actually has/had a basis in observable fact*: which direction they take is/was directly correlated with what the climate was going to do with regard to the upcoming growing season.

*At least in the corner of ancient Greece close to Eleusis where this practice evolved (iirc)

10

@8 If an owl is attacked by three crows on the eve of the election, I'll be as eager to hear from the auspex as anyone.

11

....something worth keeping an eye on...
Nancy Pelosi is one of my favorite politicians because she is very deliberate and precise in her language.
And she is furious right now with our Intelligence community, which is picking up clear signs that Russian and Ukrainian interests are once again going to attempt to influence our election.
The American public does have a right to be kept informed about threats to the integrity of our elections and any foreign agent's 'dirty tricks' efforts - no repeat of 2016.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/31/nancy-pelosi-william-evanina-russia-meddling-389847

15

'Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.'

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/01/politics/donald-trump-allies-election/index.html

Don't get soft in the middle now.

16

I'm hoping that our upcoming war against the Murder Hornets unites humanity and heals our divided nation.

17

A Twit and his bitcoins are soon parted.

18

Joe Biden picks his VP this week.

If I was a democrat I'd suggest Susan Rice. Qualified to take over as president, won't upstage the president, smart and predictable.

Kamela Harris is a fraud. Obviously her attack in the first debate over Biden's early congressional years working with racists was just a ploy, disingenuous and insincere. She now describes the incident as "just politics" as she is considered for VP. She also treats her staff like crap. I'd rather have Sarah Palin than her.

Elizabeth Warren is really the only other smart choice.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/joe-biden-vice-presidential-prospects-pros-cons.html

20

@19: You're right. Elizabeth Warren would definitely upstage him.

22

There don't seem to be any slam dunk VP candidates, but plenty of perfectly fine ones. Rice seems decent and someone on here recently made a solid case for Duckworth. Not big on Harris either, but she'd surely eviscerate Pence in a debate, which would be thoroughly enjoyable. Previously, I'd been advocating someone who might be counted on to deliver a swing state, though I'm increasingly thinking that doesn't really happen anymore.

23

Among Biden's veep picks, my two favorites, in no particular order, are Karen Bass and Tammy Duckworth. But really, just so he doesn't pick Kamala Harris--that's all I care about.

@18 Not surprised to hear that Harris is abusive towards her staff. Is it too late to get the meme going that Kamala Harris is the Ellen DeGeneres of politicians? Not that Joe Biden would pick up my meme anyway.

But really, I'm commenting here just to express my objection to the writer's language concerning the murder hornets: "They're hoping they can track a live one back to the colony: So that it can be eradicated before mid-September when the nest creates more queens and drones."

Jasmyne Keimig, it's the year 2020. Do we still need to be speaking the language of colonization and rigid gender and workplace hierarchies? Why don't you talk about your favorite Lady Antebellum and Dixie Chicks albums while you're at it?! (I am really getting into The Chicks' latest one, BTW. Full credit to the ubiquitous Jack Antonoff.)

24

@11 Nancy Pelosi is one of your favorite politicians? THE Nancy Pelosi? I think that puts you in a pretty tiny minority. Not sure how she managed to amass an $80 million fortune serving on a Congresswoman's salary for all these years.

Biden's VP pick will be a "centrist" who does not threaten the banking, insurance and finance industry. For the DNC Dems, their own progressives are worse enemies than Trump and the Republicans.

25

@24 She did it the old-fashioned way - she married a rich guy.

26

Voted a few weeks ago, only 43rd and 36th State Rep Position 2 were ones I had to think about.

Straight Democratic ticket. Biden 2020, Warren/Harris 2024!

I'll be glad when Jenny Durkan is a confirmed appointee and not our Mayor.

29

I too am a huge fan of Pelosi's eloquent communication skills! It's similar to also being starstruck whenever I am in a bar at closing time!

Why can't they use Tik Tok reviews by Chinese people in China to justify keeping it from being banned in the US? Seems like they'd be the experts!

30

"Strangellingly" just instantly became my most favoritest adjective in the entire English language. I love it so freaking much.

32

Stop the madness. Sign the petition.

https://stopdefunding.com

33

Thanks for reminding me. I convinced a lot more people to support even higher levels of defunding the police in a bunch of cities with that extra little push from you, raindrop. We're aiming for 60 % with an automatic escalation of 5 % each time someone tries to lower it.

Much appreciated!

35

The City Council is a bunch of virtue signaling lunatics that are too ideologically driven to govern. The tea party left is a cancerous rot on the city and progressive movement. Fuck these idiots for turning Seattle into a shithole.

36

@33: So how does government by arbitrary and impulsive actions serve the public interest?

If there was concrete proposal to establish specially trained teams that would service domestic abuse, homeless, drug induced, and mental illness calls that would offload them from traditional police handling that is something far more people could relate to. The repurposing of funds would be decided by actual numbers, not by some arbitrary percentage dreamed up by a brain dead city council curing favor with an angry mob who don't care about the actual details. Details like 50% reduction in SPD equates to 800 fewer cops.

It's childishly foolish and a rather Trumpian approach to governance. It's as pathetic as Joan Crawford chopping up her rose bushes.

38

@36 If I call your objections "arbitrary and impulsive", where does that leave us?

If one is operating from the assumption that the structure and constitution of the Police Department is a problem that needs fixing, the kind of claims you are making here won't be persuasive at all. The natural response to "that's 800 less officers!" (a figure concocted by SPOG for p.r. purposes and not a "real number") won't be apprehension, it will be "at least its a start".

Of course SPOG is going to lobby in every way they can to thwart reform - they've been doing it for years. But the essence of this issue is the manner in which SPOG, rather than the electorally accountable city government, determines how law enforcement is accomplished in this city. That is an intolerable condition.

39

@38: "fewer officers", not "less officers"

City services typicallly release information through their public relations departments. The estimate is as "real" as 50% slashing from the Seattle City Council "PR" - if you think "PR" is such a dirty acronym.

41

@38: SPOG isn't the PR department of SPD. Nevertheless, they are providing data every bit as real as the Seattle City Council's arbitrary percentages.

43

@professor -- there's Women here?
Who Knew?!

44

https://youtu.be/rwaklEmDn_0

Lincoln Project Republicans side with the protesters and call the feds Trump's "violent, abusive, lawless forces"

46

Biden has pledged to make a woman, and she will most likely be a woman belonging to a traditionally underserved minority group, because identity politics is all that the Democrats really have left.

47

Pick. Argh. You understand what I was saying.

49

Literally anyone will be better than the current imbeciles. I've never seen this country sink so low.

Go Joe!

50

re: "strangellingly" (i.e. @27),

Am I the only one who loves this post so much?

First and importantly...

Yes, it was an obvious typo and the troll was obviously aiming for "stranglingly," which itself would have been a less than ideal choice of words, given how awkwardly it rolls off the tongue, with all the jumbled together G's and L's and such. He really should've gone with suffocatingly, which would have conveyed the same general meaning without any of the grammatical inaccuracy and awkwardness, but whatever. We all post typos, and I'm a firm advocate of overlooking such transgressions when they don't distract or conflate the overall meaning of the post or comment.

But this typo rules! Go ahead and google "strangellingly" and you get ONE hit, occurring within this very thread! Test it out, for real! Meaning this specific typographical error does not exist within the entire and seemingly vast and limitless landscape of the entire freaking Internet except for where it does right here! Is that not kind of awesome? Like, I feel like even random keyboard mashes probably would produce evidence of a similar mash at some point in time, probably on reddit or 4chan or whatever. But not strangellingly!

And what makes it even cooler is that it would have had only a brief and ephemeral existential life had I not made a big fuss about it as I now have. Seafas the commenter is surely soon to be banned, as are all of his RWNJ racist commenting profiles, and such bans have the consequence of seeing all of his goofy ruminations relegated to ethereal oblivion. But strangellingly shall live on, owing to my efforts and obsession with it, which will return hits to this very thread upon it's googling.

The troll should name his next soon-to-be-banned commenting profile as an homage to it's legacy. Long live strangellingly!

52

Neither were very convincing, frankly, but I am going to have to give the edge to herbal medicine spammer @51 over @48.

53

That "lad" is probably a "lass," since worker hornets are female!

54

@34 Guesty and all the other people debating about qualifications- The president will be either Biden or Trump. Let's stop this pretense that the "best person suited" for a position is the one who gets it. It's a childish belief at this point, or else a mental delusion.

55

I mean, the best person suited for the job as POTUS or VP might be a woman or might not. The only guarantee is that this qualified person absolutely will never come anywhere close to either of those positions.

Biden's going for optics that might increase his voters and malleability to serve the interests of the people who will put him in power. On the first measure, Elizabeth Warren as a selection will bring him nothing- her support is just loud in media and academics/nonprofits, even though her supporters will not belief this despite her coming in third and fourth place in every primary contest. Most people do not like her, and among those who do like her, the overwhelming majority of them are going to vote for Biden no matter what. Kamala Harris would likewise be a bad choice for the same reason- also she's from a solidly blue state. Though the Democrats are stupid so who knows.

I agree that it seems likely he'll go with Susan Rice- a woman of color who is as much of a DC insider (born and bred) and has all the academic/corporate bona fides- she's quite conservative and talks in that nonprofit sort of way that allows liberals to go along with hawkish foreign policy without feeling guilty about it. It will not bring much to Biden in voter turnout except the identity politics talking point, but she is the sort of person that both the Democrats and the neocon Republicans (who are now all Democrats) would find appetizing as a figure head for our empire given that Biden is elderly and in decline and no one thinks he'll stay in power for eight years anyway. You could say most the same about Duckworth though I think she's an easier target for the Republican suburban voters that the Democrats now wish to make their base. Duckworth has more traditionally "liberal" stances on some issues, while Susan Rice has talking points that fit the foreign policy narratives that a lot of right wingers like (and which most liberals totally misunderstand or ignore)- in short, I believe that Rice could bring over a few of the sorts of people who liked Tulsi or Rand Paul. Though I don't want to overstate this since I think VP picks aren't that relevant in the first place.

Or he could go totally outlier and select some lesser known woman of color from the south or from swing states.

Personally I don't give a shit who he selects though it's a fun distraction to talk about the horse race. I'm probably not going to vote for POTUS at all for the first time in my life. His embrace of groups like the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump, their PAC money, his foreign policy and state dept advisors currently, plus the Dems current response to everything happened has made me decide against voting for him this year. If I were pressed to it, I think the long term greater evil is putting into power eight years of this alliance between Bush era neocons, corporate interests and Obama era state/defense dept members. But I'm absolutely not going to vote for a Republican either so I'm sitting it out altogether. We're fucked either way, and I vote for destroying the current system, and I know most people will disagree adamantly, just as I disagree with people who told me this in 2016.

56

No EmmaLiz, the only way we're fucked is if pouty people like you sit on your ass and not vote for Biden. Period.

58

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”.

--Issac Asimov

60

Raindrop, luckily for us, there's worlds of options between not voting for the POTUS and sitting on one's ass.

Blip, perhaps. I can't remember how old you are. I started voting in the 90s- it's possible I would think differently about it if I ever had to choose between Dems and Reps of the 60s or 70s. But at least since Clinton, there's been a pretty clear difference between their foreign policy- more than a sliver though I agree they've served the same interests and had roughly the same goals. The difference was the willingness (or even eagerness) of the Republicans to go it alone and actually overtly invade countries and overthrow their governments, starting wars. Whereas the Dems, while working towards the same long term goals, have tended towards working within the international community or else working tactically / covertly rather than a full military action. This makes a pretty big difference in the lives of the people in those regions, even though lesser evil is still evil. It was my main reason for trying to convince people to vote Clinton last time around. Trump was an unknown then. Now, we can see what he is and is not willing to do, and the architects of the Iraq war, the very people who made up the Project for the New American Century, etc are now supporting Biden- literally the most evil people in the politics IMO. And I can't think of much more terrifying than them uniting themselves with the work ethic and worldview of Obama/Clinton style bureaucrats in the state and defense departments.

I was all set to vote for Biden as a lesser evil several months back if he won- I've said all along it would be between him and Bernie. But it turns out, I'm less cynical and more naive than I realized because I honestly did not expect Biden to openly taut his Republican support and backers nor for the Democrats to become just so ruthless in their refusal to adopt even modest approval towards liberal domestic policies. In retrospect, you might be right and its always been this way, but I did genuinely believe that the Dems were lesser evil not just different evil. Honestly I don't see how we get out of the situation we are in- whether or not Biden wins- but if there's any hope it's going to come from the streets.

The other difference perhaps between myself and other lesser-evil Biden voters is, having lived in India, I see where the current trajectory leads without falling into hyperbole about 30s-era military dictatorships. There's no reason for that style of authoritarianism anymore, and Trump himself doesn't have the savvy to achieve it even if there were. Which is not to say that I think they won't consolidate power and corrupt elections- they will and do. But rather that you can do so well within existing systems which you then break down and corrupt so that the entire government just serves certain interests while everyone else is left outside of it. If you can claw your way into the private sector and live in a gated community or some other nice wealthy area with privatized services, your life will be fine. If not, then you'll be one of the majority of people living beneath this system as under employed or disposable labor forming your own alliances. And I think it's possible we've been moving this way in the US longer than I realized- after all half the country does not vote at all and even among those that do, a sizable percentage of them do not vote for one of the two main contestants for president, so a majority of eligible voters came to this conclusion before me it seems.

61

tout, their, and all the other typos, excuse me etc

62

"I realized because I honestly did not expect Biden to openly taut his Republican support ..."

If you know presidential history, just about every candidate seeks the support of their political adversaries for the general election. There's no reason to be troubled by this, as it the essence of democracy.

As the saying goes, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

63

I mean, theres nothing good here which perfect can make an enemy of. That bullshit doesn't apply. My compromise, not letting perfect be the enemy of good, was the Bernie wing of the party. My lesser evil practical vote (simple harm reduction) was voting for a Biden administration that looked something like the Obama/Clinton/corporate Dem wing of the party. There is nothing lesser evil about Bush era neocons- they are just pure evil.

It could be that I've not noticed, but I can think of no example of Republicans who were a part of former administration literally forming super pacs to fund the opposition party's candidate against their own party's candidate and also no examples of a Democratic candidate accepting the money of opposition party members and touting their support, even at the funerals of their own party members, even at their own convention. Now there are perhaps historical precedents that I'm not aware of, and it would be interesting to learn about it. But in this case, it's not the existence of Republican party support more generally that turns me off Biden but rather the specific neocons involved in those PACs who are, in my opinion, the most evil political figures in this country and among the most evil people in the world, far more destructive than Trump has yet been.

Unless you just mean that they seek the VOTERS from other parties, which sure, who cares.

64

Democrats moving right to occupy the political space of fanatical bloodthirsty Republicans who created the current situation that we find ourselves in leaving us without an actual opposition party IS in fact something to be troubled by. The only question is if it has just happened now or if it in fact happened long ago and I held out some hope that it could change long past the point that it was impossible. People told me as such in 2016 but it still seemed important to prevent what has since happened, but the cats out of the bag now.

65

@64: George F. Will, who is probably more of a suitable pundit on the fate of the Republican party than we are, has no worries that the Republican party will arise from the 2020 ashes in some flavor or another.

I wouldn't worry about lack of an opposition party. How Tumpish it will be is the question.

67

Will is an antichoice libertarian who supported the Iraq war and doesn't believe climate change is as severe a threat as scientists present, why should I give a fuck what he thinks- just because he writes opinion pieces to work up elderly people in the last pages of Newsweek?


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