Oh, you guys. My lovely, lovely readers. Where would this stupid blog be without you? Monday night was a late night for me, if “late” means “feeling sweaty and unwilling to sit in front of a screen for another 45 minutes to an hour.” I’d tell you I watched the convention, but I didn’t watch much of it. Sue me. I edited a cover letter for a friend and read a little in “In the Darkroom,” Susan Faludi’s great memoir about investigating her estranged father, who had gender-reassignment surgery late in life.
(Alex, this is going to you when I’m done. Not because you have a particular interest in trans issues, but because her dad is Hungarian, and much of the narrative takes place in Budapest.)
So I missed the FLOTUS speech, but after reading the raves today, I looked it up and watched it over my lunch hour today. Outstanding. Talk about someone who slays all day. Beyonce has nothing on FLOTUS (and I suspect she knows this; I suspect, if FLOTUS decided to try a little career in pop music next year, Bey would retire or maybe take a job as one of her backup dancers).
I promise I’ll watch more tonight, but I’m attending a sushi pop-up Tuesday night and may not be into it tonight, either. Truth be told, I generally find following it on Twitter more entertaining and time-efficient. And of course, you guys are invaluable.
So I’m going to post this on Tuesday afternoon, and I’ll see you again in 36 hours or so. With a sushi review! Maybe.
I discovered the “Keepin’ it 1600” podcast over the weekend, and that may be my second-favorite way to enjoy the conventions. This is produced by Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer, former Obama aides who now do their own thing and enjoy the freedom of doing a podcast full of laughter and casual profanity. Like lots of podcasts, it’s way too long — lookin’ at you, Marc Maron — even while you enjoy every minute of it. But I have been chuckling over one passage all day, which I’ll try to paraphrase: “I voted for the first time in the election of 1994, and if you’d told me then that I would still be having to see Newt Gingrich speaking at conventions 22 years later, I’d never have believed you.”
Any other podcast recommends? They make me feel guilty, because I’ve found they generally require a more focused attention than regular old music-on-the-radio, but I can rarely devote an hour or more to them. And I’m out of the radio habit. But I want to be open-minded. So throw ’em out there.
Quick bloggage before I book out of here:
Does anyone care about Milo Yiannopoulos? I don’t, but I guess he’s someone who begs for attention, so here ya go.
Speaking of profanity, but the funny stuff, the case for Hillary, by “Hillary.”
I know you’ll keep me posted on what I need to watch tomorrow. For now, post away here.
Scout said on July 26, 2016 at 4:03 pm
As usual, Uncle Charlie catches all right drifts.
“In Philadelphia, the loud and tasteless politics came from a bunch of people locked away from the venue on Broad Street and from some obstreperous yahoos sitting in the cheap seats in the hall. In Cleveland, the loud and tasteless politics came from the damn podium–including from the nominee himself. That seems to me to be a rather compelling difference.”
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a47059/media-reporting-dnc/
Michelle O’s speech was a thing of beauty. I keep watching it and I keep tearing up. That has NEVER happened to me in all the many years I’ve been paying attention to politics.
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brian stouder said on July 26, 2016 at 4:59 pm
Y’know, I’ve not yet watched the marathon Trump speech*, although I think I recorded it.
Maybe with a little help from my friendly “ff” button, I’ll watch the small-handed f’er, just to appreciate how much better his opposition actually is
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brian stouder said on July 26, 2016 at 5:00 pm
*I understand the thing runs 80+ minutes? Maybe we should call him infidel Trump
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alex said on July 26, 2016 at 5:26 pm
From the reviews I’ve read of Faludi’s memoir, I expect it to be a delightful book. Looking forward to it!
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Julie Robinson said on July 26, 2016 at 5:46 pm
Someone recommended A Way With Words to me a few days ago and I’ve listened to exactly one episode, but I enjoyed it. It’s etymology and the like.
And I just stopped in at the library, where I saw “In the Darkroom” waiting on the shelf, so I snagged it!
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Deborah said on July 26, 2016 at 6:17 pm
This is a treat, I wasn’t expecting a new post today, was just checking to see new comments. As far as podcasts go I just listen to the oldie but goodie “This American Life” and it’s offshoot “Serial” on any regular basis, mainly when I’m out on a long walk. I often listen to the ones people link to here and I mean to make many of them regulars but then I forget. I think one of them is called “On Being”, that’s always been interesting when someone links to it, but then I find that I don’t seek it out on my own for some reason.
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Deborah said on July 26, 2016 at 7:12 pm
So I guess it’s official. I wasn’t watching, did Bernie make the announcement that Hillary was nominated?
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 7:32 pm
Vermont passed, so as to go last in the roll call. After they cast their votes, after all the votes were cast, the Vermont chair handed the mic over to Bernie who made a motion to suspend the rules and nominate Hillary by acclamation. Evidently there had been some talks earlier today to get him to do it when she went over the top, but he wanted all the votes to be announced. (Or he wanted the guarantee of the committee chairmanship he wants, Health Education Labor & Pensions, but he’s not in position to get that, unless Patty Murray gives it up, which she doesn’t seem inclined to do.)
Bernie has also announced that he will be returning to the Senate as an Independent. Hey Bernie, if you want to change the Democratic Party, you should consider joining it rather than using it.
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 7:55 pm
A hundred or so dead-enders walked out on Hillary’s nomination and went to the media tent to protest. I didn’t see the leave on TV, and the state delegations didn’t let them get near a microphone. You’ll probably see them interviewed though.
I recommend watching the convention on C-Span. No talking heads, no interviews.
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Lois Marquart said on July 26, 2016 at 8:18 pm
I just finished In the Darkroom; great book.
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 8:23 pm
Julian Assange (and Wikileaks) makes it clear he prefers a Trump presidency: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/assange-timed-wikileaks-release-of-democratic-emails-to-harm-hillary-clinton.html
Assange, in case you forgot, has been living at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, avoiding extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations, and concern that he would then be extradited the US for the Chelsea Manning leaks.
Honestly, while I think leaking and whistleblowing are important functions in society, Wikileaks has spiraled into nihilism. They have made themselves useful idiots for the likes of Putin and other authortarians.
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 8:32 pm
Sandra Bland’s mother and the Mothers of the Movement: Amen, sister.
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Andrea said on July 26, 2016 at 8:44 pm
I live for podcasts on my daily commute when the news gets too depressing to listen to. In no particular order: The Gist, FiveThirtyEight, Getting In (I have high school students), The Moth, Wait Wait, RadioLab, This American Life, and Hidden Brain. I also drive around Illinois a lot for work and the radio in some parts of the state doesn’t work for me. I do a lot of audio books too.
As a side note, several of these podcasts work for my family of 5 with kids aged 17,15, and 11. It keeps us from fighting over music on long car rides.
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 8:58 pm
Podcasts: You Must Remember This, Invisibilia, Slate’s Amicus (Dahlia Lithwick), Dear Sugar.
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 9:11 pm
I feel sorry for the BernieBusters who walked out because they missed the Mothers of the Movement.
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Little Bird said on July 26, 2016 at 9:24 pm
Sadly, the Bernie-Busters couldn’t care less about the Mothers of the Movement.
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Deborah said on July 26, 2016 at 9:45 pm
Watching the convention now, saw the mothers, very moving.
During a commercial break wanted to let you know we had the corn/mint salad for dinner and it was delicious, just right for a summer evening.
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Suzanne said on July 26, 2016 at 9:52 pm
I listen to the On Being podcasts fairly frequently. Usually enlightening & thought provoking. I also like Radio Lab and Freakenomics.
I did watch part of Michelle O’s speech. Impressive. I still don’t get why some people don’t like her. She’s all the things I wish my daughter to be. The convention bits I saw last night were so different from the GOP, spreading hope not fear.
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 10:04 pm
The DNC has a steady stream of ordinary people who have interacted with Hillary and are proud to tell their experience. The RNC had nobody who had dealt with Trump personally and wanted to talk about it other than his family. Over and over again you hear the story from people who’ve met her that Hillary listens, yet the narrative for years has been of a cold, calculating bitch who will step on anybody to achieve riches and power. As a woman, it’s really hard not to feel misogyny in the disconnect.
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 10:18 pm
Pro-tip: never compare your protest to the March on Washington.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/spokesperson-for-pro-sanders-walkout-compares-protest-to-mar?utm_term=.yv80RR9ew#.ngMR66EbO
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 10:55 pm
Bill can never do anything succinctly, but that was good. He’s a good storyteller, and he told a lot of stories about Hillary, and managed to keep the focus on her, not him.
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Jolene said on July 26, 2016 at 10:59 pm
Haven’t listened myself, but a podcast that I frequently see mentioned favorably on Twitter is The Axe Files, a set of interviews hosted by David Axelrod. Axelrod, as most of you likely know, was Obama’s chief political strategist in the 2008 and 2012 and a White House advisor in the intervening years. The podcasts are interviews with all sorts of people associated with politics: current officials, past candidates, political journalists, and political comics (at least one, Jon Stewart).
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 26, 2016 at 11:33 pm
Say whatever you like about Bill Clinton — in a room, a hall, or a convention center, he can grab an audience and weave his storytelling into their thinking until they’re almost telling the story along with him . . . then stop, for just the right amount of time, reach out to grab their attention in a new way, and turn the narrative from the bridle path to the rock and roll highway, punch the accelerator, and carry everyone right down whatever road he wants to take.
That whole closing riff? If you were watching on FB Gawker’s live feed of the ‘prompter? It stopped rolling, and Bill just reeled himself in, rolled out a new stretch of speech, wrapped it up and put a bow on it and handed the package over to us for delivery. A master at work.
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Deborah said on July 26, 2016 at 11:33 pm
I watched Bill’s speech and thought it did just what it needed to do, I was hanging onto every word. I was watching MSNBC and Rachel came on after the speech with a surprising take on it. I agreed more with O’Donnel’s analysis, personally. But my favorite part of the night was the mothers of the movement. It was Michelle last night, another mother.
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 11:52 pm
I read that Maddow thought the speech was anti-feminist, but that’s not what I thought, that’s not the way it was playing on my Twitter feed, and I don’t think that’s the way it played in the room. The Mothers of the Movement won the night, though.
PBO and Biden tomorrow night. Man, what a difference from last week.
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brian stouder said on July 26, 2016 at 11:53 pm
Deborah – I agree with you, but indeed, the other woman also agreed with Rachel, and on reflection, I did wince a little at WJC’s recollection of first seeing Ms Rodham, and going into pursuit-mode
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Sherri said on July 26, 2016 at 11:54 pm
Yglesias’ take on the speech: http://www.vox.com/2016/7/26/12287860/bill-clinton-speech-humanize
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susan said on July 27, 2016 at 12:05 am
I don’t have a tee vee or Netflix, and I’ve always been a radio nerd since a wee nerd, so podcasts are a perfect fit. Podcasts I listen to on a regular basis: The Gist, The Professional Left (Blue Gal and Driftglass, who are wonderfully optimistic, verbal, and very funny), Slate’s Trumpcast, 99% Invisible (hard to describe, but extremely interesting and not usually more than 20 minutes or so), PRI’s The World, The New Yorker Radio Hour, On the Media (I love this one), Stuff You Missed in History Class (as advertised and also extremely interesting), Tech Nation Radio Podcast, Stuff You Should Know; and various BBC podcasts such as Outlook, Witness, The Truth About …, The Why Factor, Newshour Extra. And other casts people already mentioned. Oh, and if you download the BBC Radio app, you get about 70 radio stations. On Channel 4, on Sundays at around 6ish AM Pacific Time, you can listen to “Gardeners Question Time.” This one is a hoot and so British. It’s been on BBC radio since 1947, and is still wildly popular. You can go to their website and listen to archived programs.
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susan said on July 27, 2016 at 12:10 am
Oh, and a new one for me: Politically Re-Active with W. Kamau Bell & Hari Kondabolu
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St Bitch said on July 27, 2016 at 12:16 am
I thought Bill Clinton picked it up and laid it down…smooth and smart
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jcburns said on July 27, 2016 at 12:46 am
Axelrod has to sit back and stop interrupting the guest some, but when he does, it’s engaging radio–er–podcastio. And I agree. Bill Clinton picked it up and laid it down. Masterful. And educational!
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 1:12 am
Charlie Pierce on the Mothers: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a47077/gun-violence-mothers-dnc-speech/
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Dexter said on July 27, 2016 at 2:25 am
My Wife Hates Me. I love this couple, quick, funny, witty.
It’s a podcast. Rich Vos & Bonnie McFarlane.
http://www.riotcast.com/mywifehatesme
I was such a big Clinton supporter years ago, through the good and the bad (as Bill faintly alluded to last night). He had me 100% until he stabbed American workers in the back when he and Al Gore pushed NAFTA through. This issue was bigger than most remember or ever knew. Clinton , who had the UAW lock, stock and barrel for years, instantly became our enemy, and damn, a guy just can’t forget that…at least I can’t, because I had to sit through hand-wringing meetings as union officers tried to plot some action to counteract NAFTA. It was brutal, and caused a lot of unnecessary hatred.
So when Hillary has ads with UAW workers under a banner , proclaiming the love-of-American Labor-workers, I realize younger folks do not study history, even very recent history. So it was good to see Bill reminiscing about his courtin’ days with Rodham, and his praise of his good wife, well hell, I can’t get excited about Bill Clinton anymore.
Monday I watched it all but for Cory Booker , and I watched that one online Tuesday. Now that guy is special, and like most, I believe it to be just a matter of short years before he is cast atop the heap and into the fray. Godspeed, Cory Booker. I can’t wait.
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 2:41 am
Dahlia understood Bill’s speech: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/bill_clinton_s_long_beautiful_speech_at_the_dnc.html
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Jolene said on July 27, 2016 at 3:20 am
For sheer stagecraft, it’d be hard to beat the “breaking the glass ceiling” effect as Hillary appeared on screen.
In this interview on Face the Nation last Sunday, President Obama talked about what it takes to be president. First on his list was “a good team.” The planning and presentation of this convention make it pretty clear that Hillary has a very good team.
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David C. said on July 27, 2016 at 5:36 am
I like Slate Money for Cathy O’Neil, Felex Salmon meh. I’ve recently been listening to The Beef and Dairy Network, by Welsh comedian Benjamin Partridge. It sounds like a feature from BBC World Service only funny. The Professional Left, The Bob and Chez Show, Hopping Mad, and The Majority Report are the political podcasts I listen to.
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Nancy P said on July 27, 2016 at 6:10 am
“Mystery Show” (https://gimletmedia.com/show/mystery-show/episodes/) is my favorite podcast, but they made only six episodes, and we’ve been waiting on Season 2 for over a year. “Reply All” is also high on my list.
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alex said on July 27, 2016 at 6:40 am
I’ve watched two full nights and sacrificed about two hours of sleep for each, but they were worth it.
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Suzanne said on July 27, 2016 at 7:22 am
I watched B Clinton until about 10:45 and went to bed. I thought, “He is just getting warmed up!” so I bailed. Great orator as was Booker the other night.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 27, 2016 at 7:46 am
Dexter, I’d like to hear from your point of view: what was the alternative to NAFTA? This is a big underlying issue in this election, and certainly in my patch of Ohio. Lots of anger, much of it (but not all) out of union members, especially retirees who may be retired but often sooner than they wanted, now-unemployed union members, and all of their families, about how NAFTA did them wrong. And I’m not closed to the possibility that it was a sell-out of sorts . . . but I’m not clear what Bill (& perhaps Hillary even then) could have done differently.
Global markets are at work, both on this continent and overseas, consumers are still easily led to cheap Chinese (or Bangladeshi, or Thai) products over costlier even when better quality American goods. I thought growing up in NW Indiana that it only made sense to advocate strongly for buying American even when you could do otherwise, and I’ve never yet bought a Japanese or South Korean car in large part because of that early conditioning. Keying Hondas always seemed like a bridge too far, but I understood the hostility by steelworking families to Toyotas and Kawasakis.
But the battle on that front, trying to educate and motivate buyers, seemed to die early on, and even still-working union members around me drive Subarus and purchase tons of cheap stuff (and buy it again when it breaks that year) at Wallyworld. Buy American is as quaint a principle as using turn signals, or so it seems to me. Meanwhile, I hear lots of anger over having made a deal to, as I saw it, get the best set of parameters we could to make sure that the US is holding some control and ability to manage trade as it passes over our borders. The alternative appears — to me, and I could be missing much, I’m a pastor, not an economist or machinist — to have been trying to put up protectionist regimes economically that could have left us out of overseas markets, and trading ever costlier products back and forth internally, with even raw materials shooting up let alone manufactured goods to the point where everything gets so expensive the average voter would have thrown out either side.
I’m looking for what the alternative would have been, or even if there could have been one. Today, we have plants in east-central Ohio near me that make assembly lines for Brazil and boxes for Peru and our ballistic helmets and razor wire go around the world (granted, thanks to American military intervention, another ripe ground for counterfactuals). My impression is that, without NAFTA, we’d not have most of that . . . and I guess my question is whether we’d really still have Meritor making transmission parts or Holophane making glass diffusers and more guys out at Kaiser pouring aluminum if NAFTA had been strangled in its crib. I’d love to hear a case made for a non-NAFTA world, but I can’t find one. Which keeps me wondering how to argue with the biggest pro-Trump stance I hear in my part of the world.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 27, 2016 at 7:48 am
FWIW, this is the most neutral general analysis I can find on my own:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/u-s-economy-since-nafta-18-charts/
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Kerry said on July 27, 2016 at 8:27 am
Best podcasts around are on Goat Rodeo http://www.goatrodeodc.com
OK, confession time: My niece is the co-founder. Her own pieces, “Revivalism,” take you on a busker’s road trip through America. The New Orleans episode is excellent.
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ROGirl said on July 27, 2016 at 8:36 am
A more direct factor in the loss of automotive jobs was the recession. Demand went down everywhere, jobs too. The Chinese came into North America at that time and started opening factories that had been idled and hiring laid off workers. Cars assembled here contain parts made in China because they are much cheaper to make there. It goes beyond nafta, but nafta is tied to the Clintons, so it is an easy target for trump.
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Deborah said on July 27, 2016 at 9:04 am
Jeff tmmo (when I first typed tmmo, auto-correct changed it to “T-Mobil” of all things), Good questions about NAFTA and great link. Interesting.
I’m blown away by the brilliance of the mother=leader theme of this convention. In my mind it’s a paradigm shift in thinking about everything. For instance at first I was confused why Amy Klobacher was talking about sex trafficking and then she seamlessly wove in ISIS as rapers of children and young women. What an amazing way to paint that, not as Islamic extremist but as horrific, despicable creatures who are proliferating the unthinkable. The mothers of the slain black young people imploring us for a solution to the problem of systematic racism, was beyond brilliant. Protecting the young, as a way to talk about security instead of maiming and killing our enemies was astute. Michelle Obama started it, or at least it seemed that way to me, I haven’t listened to Cory Booker’s speech yet or really any of the other ones on Monday night, so I don’t know how they contributed to the theme of mother/protector or mother/carer or mother/whatever. I don’t think it’s ant-feminist, I disagree with Rachel about how she saw the start of Bill Clinton’s speech. It’s a new way to think about leadership, or at least a new way to talk about leadership, I haven’t heard it before. I wish I was more eloquent, it’s hard for me to express what I see happening here, and to me, it’s profound.
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Deborah said on July 27, 2016 at 9:06 am
That should be “anti-feminist” not “ant-feminist”
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 27, 2016 at 9:10 am
That would be Paul Rudd.
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Randy said on July 27, 2016 at 9:22 am
I can recommend two podcasts that come from our mother ship, aka the Canadian Broadcasting Corp:
*Under The Influence, a brilliant examination of advertising and how we respond it,
*Someone Knows Something, a Serial-esque podcast that is focused on one missing-person investigation from 40+ years ago, and the more they investigate, the more troubling it gets.
Props to Bill Clinton, but wow he seems to be a little bit worn out? I know he’s older, but his voice was a bit thready, and his eyes were a little less sparkly.
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Suzanne said on July 27, 2016 at 9:27 am
Jeff (tmmo)I think you are correct that a globalized economy can’t be put back in the bottle but it seems that over the years, little thought has been put into how to manage the changes it has brought. Those pushing for it years ago failed to take into consideration(or didn’t care) about those left behind but now, there are simply too many to ignore. The economy after all is an ecosystem; a change here has an effect on something there.
I know a very staunch free market (the freer the better!) advocate who is a financial planner. He only seems to notice the big picture in looking at the market. I have tried, rather unsuccessfully, to get him to grasp that those that have been put out of work as the world economy shifts around and are now too poor to have anything in the market don’t care if it rises or falls. (Let me digress here and note that he is not a financial planner I would hire because of his view of things).
Globalization may have been good for many countries’ economies, but not always for the people in those economies. He does not get it (those out of work should just get new job skills! Move to where there are jobs! It’s that simple!)I think this is the mistake so many of the economic powers that be have made. They see only what is in their coffers and the overall economic prospects, not the effect it all has at the local level. Until there is a solution for those left in the dust, there will continue to be instability and anger.
Just my two cents which may or may not be worth a penny.
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alex said on July 27, 2016 at 10:19 am
I have a rather low opinion of financial planners and I’m never surprised when they turn out to be laissez-faire right-wingers. They balk at the idea that the law should impose fiduciary responsibility on them. (Most people are surprised when they learn that the law doesn’t.) Ripping off elderly widows and easy marks is what their business is all about.
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Deborah said on July 27, 2016 at 10:29 am
Bill Clinton brought up people in small towns who have been left behind, which is something that needs to be addressed in this country. He’s talking about poor whites who have become Trump supporters. This showed up on my Facebook feed from one of my FB friends who is quite liberal http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-politics-poor-whites/. Yes, consider where the link comes from, but it is an interesting perspective that seems accurate. It explains a lot. If someone here linked to this previously, forgive me, I missed it.
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Dorothy said on July 27, 2016 at 10:43 am
I watched only Bill Clinton’s speech last night, and the follow up panel discussion on MSNBC. I was surprised by Maddow’s reaction, too. All I could think was, he was telling it in the context of the times. It was 1971. That’s the way people talked/acted then. He said “I met a girl…” Okay so he didn’t say “I met a woman.” Yes that is the more PC way to say it these days. But he was relating something that HE experienced – I don’t believe people should change their narrative just satisfy their audience. I also thought he said plenty about Hillary’s accomplishments. Rachel Maddow said she kept waiting for it ‘not to be all about him.’ Were we listening to the same speech? I thought she was unnecessarily harsh.
Bill’s fingers shook on more than one occasion. It made him look more frail than we’re accustomed to seeing him. I still thought he did a wonderful job. I’m avidly looking forward to hearing Kaine, Biden, Chelsea Clinton and of course Mrs. Clinton’s speeches, too.
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Little Bird said on July 27, 2016 at 11:07 am
New Rule:
If you’re voting for Trump (or a third party candidate to “punish” the DNC) you have to meet with your Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Black, Muslim and Hispanic friends and explain why your need for spite is more important than their right to live free and happy lives.
You have to look them in the eyes and tell them why your anger at a 238 year old system, that didn’t dramatically change in a few months, is worth more than their safety or security.
You need to meet with every Mother, Father, Sister, Brother and Parent who has lost a loved one to gun violence and tell them why a lack of Bernie supporters at the polls is enough reason to support the RNC’s love affair with guns and their hatred of common sense gun reform.
You have to tell your female friends that you’re furious about Benghazi and other vague incidents that are somehow Hillary’s fault and that the de-funding of Planned Parenthood is worth enduring as long as she isn’t in the White House.
You’ll need to take time away from Pokemon Go and Netflix to talk with the youngest generation of Americans who will live with the legacy of non existent environmental protection that your vote promised them.
You’ll be expected to go door to door and apologize to all the people who will lose their health insurance when President Trump dismantles Obamacare. Access to medical services may be important, but they’ll need to understand you were expecting free college.
You’ll be requested at several LGBTQ events, where we’ll patiently listen to your reasons why you voted for a President whose party just stated they’d work to reverse marriage equality. I would do this one quickly however, before we get too comfortable being treated as human beings, worthy of equality.
Of course, you’ll also need to offer your time checking genitals at bathrooms around the country, as your vote ensures the Right has the political power to continue punishing and demonizing transgender people who simply want to pee.
Your African American friends will most likely expect a solid reason as to why you supported a party that sees no problem with police brutality or the militarization of their local law enforcement. Black Lives Matter, but not nearly as much as your inflexibility.
I’d also prepare a few remarks for the police officers who are currently being targeted, because of a racially divided country fueled by hatred and fear mongering, all originating from the party your vote placed into power.
You’ll also want to start growing your own food, because once President Trump sends his goons to deport “All dem illegals”, you’ll find a remarkably non existent workforce of Americans willing to pick the nation’s food for pennies a day.
This would also be the best time to pick up a few stuffed animals or toys. It’s the least you can give to the immigrant children whose families you’ve ripped apart out of political spite.
I imagine a few mosques would love to sit down with you and hear you pontificate on the ills of “Crooked Hillary” and all the crimes she’s mysteriously never been convicted of and how those transparent crimes are worth chasing down, even it it means the Muslim community continues to get targeted and blamed for the actions of 0.0001% of their religion. (You won’t need to do this for the white mass shooters, as it’s clear they’re acting alone and simply just “sad and depressed.”)
Skype will be a great tool when you need to video chat with the Syrian refuges who have seen their homes and entire lives destroyed by both American and Russian carpet bombing. Language barriers aside, I imagine they’ll understand that your frustration is a fair trade for their entire lives and continued homelessness.
In the end, you won’t have enough time to meet with all these people and it’s probably for the best. Once you start humanizing the people who will be damned by your tantrum, you risk seeing the bigger picture, which only assures your eventual return to reality. Once that starts to happen you’ll be forced to accept that Bernie Sanders was ONLY able to get the DNC to adopt several of his political ideals, because of the tireless efforts of his supporters. Supporters like myself. Supporters like you. You’ll soon realize that few people love Hillary, but they understand their support of her is necessary to ensure the country survives long enough to give Bernie’s policies time to settle in and take off. Suddenly you’ll be forced to admit that political revolutions don’t happen in a year and that dramatic changes are going to take time, time that can’t be allocated to a country torn apart by an egotistical madman with a penchant for spite and revenge. By the time this all happens, you’ll find yourself looking around at this beautiful country, your friends, families and loved ones and you’ll wonder why you ever even considered risking all of this, just because your hatred of a woman was more powerful than your love of country, freedom, humanity and decency. You’ll question your friends who are cursing the man they just recently considered their savior and you’ll have to look at yourself from the outside in. Then it hits you.
Perspective.
This is bigger than you, or me or Bernie Sanders. This isn’t your typical Left vs. Right political nonsense. This is real, this is happening and you can join your fellow men and women in opposition or you can damn the country to trillions in debt, broken NATO agreements, racial hatred, homophobia, war, isolationism and proud ignorance.
What world will you leave for the next generation? What amount of anger is worth destroying everything and empowering the proud intolerance of the know nothing base?
We all get to choose how to shape the future and your choice will forever define the person you are, in the eyes of those around you.
Don’t burn down the farm, because the crop wasn’t what you had hoped. Enrich the land, ensuring an even better crop next season.
This was posted on FB by Justice Blaine Wainwright
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Julie Robinson said on July 27, 2016 at 11:20 am
It was a bravura performance from a figure out of our past. Wait, that wasn’t Bill Clinton, that was James Taylor, and we got home after 11 so tumbled directly into bed.
As I watched the glass shattering video this morning, I thought its power was undone by Hillary’s facial expressions. Every time they cut back to her, she looked like a dictator out of the Hunger Games. Can’t Bill teach her bite her lip?
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 11:43 am
NAFTA gets used to blame a lot of trends that would have happened anyway, and in fact, had already happened. Globalization was already well underway before NAFTA. NAFTA wasn’t the cause of the loss of the steel industry to Japan or the influx of Japanese cars or Chinese goods; it’s the North American Free Trade Agreement after all. Industries have moved in the direction of cheaper labor or increased innovation for centuries. What NAFTA did was let US companies move to areas of cheaper labor more easily, i.e. Mexico. That’s not the only thing it did, of course, but that’s the main thing it did that hurt workers, while hoping that the companies would stay competitive enough to still keep jobs in the US. Eventually, even without NAFTA, it would have happened, because the tariffs would not have been high enough to make up for the difference, or competitors from overseas would have overtaken them, even with their tariffs.
The Clinton answer to that was job training. It’s unclear how effective that would have been, but a Bush administration that immediately cuts taxes and fights an expensive war and is never going to be committed to workers is going to make that a priority. By the time the Obama administration comes, we’re deep in the worst financial downturn since the Great Depression, and job training for what becomes a legitimate question.
Globalization won’t be put back in the bottle by the defeat of the TPP. Almost nobody arguing against the TPP can tell you anything about it, which is part of the problem; too much of it has been negotiated in secret. What I know about it has more to do with intellectual property than jobs, and I don’t like it, but I don’t know what the impact on jobs will be.
I grew up in an area where everybody’s grandfathers were farmers. A fraction of the fathers were farmers. Almost none of my generation became farmers. In my generation, the ones of us who went to college did well. The ones who didn’t, it was more a mixed bag. The question is, what is there for the people who just aren’t college types? How do you pull a middle class job out of the economy without a college education? Perhaps more important than free college tuition for everyone is free job training for everyone – you want to retrain for a new job, training is free. Because the days of working one job for life are over.
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brian stouder said on July 27, 2016 at 11:43 am
Little Bird – thanks very much for sharing that.
Last night our fine young Bernie-voter and I tumbled into a bit of a conversation, and he’s now thinking he’ll vote third-party.
The only point I emphasized was – our next president will be Trump or Clinton, period. Therefore, to me it makes sense to select whichever one of those two once can most tolerate, and move forward from there.
…and so it goes
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Judybusy said on July 27, 2016 at 12:43 pm
Little Bird, that was wonderful; thanks for sharing.
I subscribe to the magazine Foreign Affairs. A recent issue had an analysis of trade and argued in favor of trade agreements. The author stated that automation has caused far more job loss than jobs moving to other countries. Another article described what other countries do to try to mitigate these vast system changes, and during recessions. They have their online content locked up pretty tight, so I can’t link to the articles. I highly recommend this magazine for in-depth reporting on the world.
As for podcasts,I like We the People which is produced by the American Constitution Center, so lots of discussion about those issues. I heard about it when Dahlia had one of the hosts on her show. And Wait, Wait Don’t Tell me makes me look like a fool at the gym because I’m just laughing so much. Makes the weightlifting go by, though.
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beb said on July 27, 2016 at 12:46 pm
Erik Loomis is one of the bloggers at Lawyers, Guns and Money. He talks about labor relations at lot and has written a book “Out of Sight” discussion the impact of globalization on third world countries. He argues that manufacturers have moved out of the US to escape health and safety laws, child labor laws, building codes and unions. One of his suggestions is that corporations like The Gap, should be able to be sued by the Bangladeshi workers who have suffered from inhuman working conditions. Because companies like The Gap have it within their power to require that their clothing be made in safe, healthy environments, just like The Gab cam require that clothes not be made from flammable fabrics, endangered animal hides, etc.
It’s hard to say to what extent being able to sue US companies for not requiring US health and safety rules would bring jobs back to the US but it would certainly advance the cause of lifting up third world countries. (One argument for out-sourcing is that it improves the lives of third world citizens. If that were the case then insisting on first world safety standards would help third worlders even more.
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Scout said on July 27, 2016 at 1:18 pm
Little Bird: That was righteous.
I missed most of the convention last night because we went to a drum circle, a much needed and very healing thing to do in these ‘interesting’ times. I caught the end of Bill’s speech on NPR on my way home, and today I will watch the whole thing on line. My impression of what I did hear is that it was Bill at his oratorical finest.
Here are a couple links the group might enjoy:
I got almost as emotional reading this as I did watching Michelle on Monday night. The long range impact of this election is really hitting me in the feels.
http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2016/07/michelle-obama-dnc-white-house-slaves.html
This is kind of interesting from the aspect of divine order. Some woo-woo stuff makes me roll my eyes, but this was pretty cracking, imho. I believe her prediction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ppS0UlYY0&sns=fb
Brian Stouder – there is still time for the remainder of the Bernie die-hards to come around, maybe they all need to read the piece that Little Bird posted and others along the same vein. The freakout over the DNC emails is over the top based on what was actually in them. While I think there are some actual progressives who are taking this way too personally, I wonder how many who are keeping the protests going were never progressives to begin with. Bottom line, it’s not typical political hyperbole and business as usual. Trump is really that dangerous and anyone who proclaims their refusal to vote the lesser of two evils will be voting for the greater evil, even with a third party protest vote, and when they realize just how much evil that is it will be too late to take it back.
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Jolene said on July 27, 2016 at 1:32 pm
Trump just held a press conference in Florida in which he challenged Russia or any other country to find and release the 33,000 emails that Hillary deleted on grounds that they were personal.
Pence tried to clean that up, but Trump followed up with a tweet repeating the challenge. Needless to say, the idea of inviting a foreign power to hack an opponent’s email is rather outside the bounds of normal politics.
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Jakash said on July 27, 2016 at 1:59 pm
Yeah, Little Bird, that was excellent. It’s hard to imagine swinging the struggling, blue-collar, angry-white-guy voter to an understanding of what a charlatan and governmentally-clueless narcissist Rumpelthinskin is, nor how he has no real plans to do anything for them, regardless.
But I still believe the vast majority of Bernie folks can be brought around, starting with Brian’s son! : ) Intelligent appeals to “conscience voters” like the one LB posted and frequent references to Ralph Nader supporters in 2000 essentially providing for the election of G.W.B, who then essentially paved the way for the creation of ISIS by invading Iraq under false pretenses will have an effect, one hopes. And every time Rump mentions that he was against going into Iraq, he needs to be called on that and his actual early support for that war made clear.
What scares me now is that it seems like lots of “elite”, for lack of a better word, Republicans realize that Rump must be defeated and are willing to go so far as to endorse Hillary — and that’s good, of course. But evidently, the disgruntled, non-college-educated white guy support for him is even higher than it was for Romney or McCain. That’s really disturbing, but I just don’t know if anything can be done about it, other than for the Dems and rational independents to get fired up and, rather than holding our noses, let Hillary remind us fuckers who she is and has always been, in the provocative words of Nancy’s funny link…
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Scout said on July 27, 2016 at 2:27 pm
I’ll see your 33,000 emails and raise you the last 10 years of your tax returns, you mangled apricot treasonous hellbeast.http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-i-hope-russia-has-hillary-clinton-emails
And speaking of Hillary’s emails: http://www.bluenationreview.com/i-was-a-hillary-hater-until-i-read-her-emails/
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 2:38 pm
Rebecca Traister on Bill’s speech: http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/07/clinton-is-first-man-to-give-first-lady-speech.html
Maybe Maddow was just shocked because she’s never heard a man give a first lady speech, but that’s exactly what it was, and that’s the purpose of the spouse of the candidate speech at the convention: here’s why I love my spouse, and why you should love her too.
Some of the Busters are older lefties who have never been Democrats. They were Naderites in 2000, and they are still unapologetic about it. They are never going to vote for Hillary, no matter who the opponent is. Some of the Busters are young people who are simply uninformed about how the system works, who have been played as useful idiots by those lefties. These are the people who believe that the DNC rigged the system, because they don’t understand that the DNC doesn’t run primaries, the states do, and in fact, the DNC has very little involvement in state caucuses. The DNC doesn’t set rules regarding voter registration and open vs. closed primaries and how many voting locations there are and how provisional ballots are handled and all those things the Busters complain about to claim that Bernie really won. I don’t know how many of these can be converted for this election; once someone believes a conspiracy theory, it’s hard to dislodge it. Once they believe that it’s important that they vote their “conscience”, trying to convince them that doing so will actively harm other people probably won’t work, because that’s such a cognitive dissonance that most of them will retreat into their Hillary hate caricature.
I honestly think the best thing to do is stop paying attention to them. The lefties will go do their thing; they just want attention anyway. The young people vote at a low rate, and if we don’t push them, some of them will come around in time, and others will eventually figure it out as they gain life experience. Don’t push them out of their bubble. Let them come out of their bubble on their own.
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 2:44 pm
Speaking of lefties who aren’t part of the Democratic Party, a Seattle City Council member has been in Philly this week urging Bernie delegates to leave the party and support Jill Stein. Kshama Sawant campaigned for Bernie in the primaries, but now endorses Stein. Sawant isn’t a delegate, though, because she’s not a Democrat. She’s a Socialist Alternative.
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 3:09 pm
Also, at this point, arguing facts with Bernie deadenders is like arguing facts with anti-vaxxers. They believe so many things that aren’t true but they aren’t going to budge. They believe that Clinton doesn’t really oppose Citizens United, because she’s benefited from Super PACS and their hero hasn’t. They don’t understand that their hero has, in fact, used Super PAC money, both in this election and in the past. The campaign and the organization (National Nurses United) don’t want to call it a Super PAC, but that’s what it is. Yes, there’s a difference in scale, but Hillary was always planning for a general election campaign against a Republican with a deep chest.
And even many reasonable Bernie supporters I’ve talked to seem unaware of the history of Citizen United. They don’t know that the case was about a hit piece on Hillary.
The Bernie deadenders bought into the cartoon Hillary just as much as the rightwingers. They haven’t bothered to do their homework, and nobody likes to be reminded of that, so they’ll insist that they did so and their cartoon is real.
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Dorothy said on July 27, 2016 at 3:47 pm
Thanks for that link, Sherri, from Rebecca Traister. See – she said what I thought – he barely spoke about himself! That’s why I thought what Rachel Maddow said was so strange. It was like she had that sentence in her head an hour or two before Bill even spoke and she wanted to make sure she said it out loud. That’s not like Rachel – I wonder what that was about?
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Deborah said on July 27, 2016 at 3:56 pm
I agree, it’s not worth arguing with Bernie Busters because it gives them the attention they crave. Little Bird has a “friend” who posts Bernie Buster crap on Facebook all the time, especially now, but we know she has horrible judgement because she recently married an incredible creep.
We just got back from Whole Foods and saw the actor Paul Bettany, I didn’t even know who he was until I Googled him, but LB knew all about him. We told a woman who works at Whole Foods that we’ve gotten to know, that we saw him and she told us that another woman who works there had Kiersten Dunst go through her line a couple of days ago. A lot of movies are being filmed around here right now, we’re trying to figure out which ones.
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brian stouder said on July 27, 2016 at 3:58 pm
Dorothy, in all honesty, I was – at first – a little surprised with Ms Maddow’s immediate reaction to WJC’s speech.
Then, Nicolle Wallace immediately agreed with her, and that swayed me….but on reflection, Ms Wallace is inclined to “think-the-worst” about all things Clinton, so this was probably an error on my part.
The two women didn’t like the speech, and this swayed me; but I respect the women who comment here every bit as much (or more) than the TV women, so count me as convinced-by-y’all!
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 4:30 pm
If the Busters actually cared about policy details, they wouldn’t be talking up Jill Stein: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/07/27/jill_stein_is_not_the_savior_the_left_is_looking_for.html
They care more about demonstrating how outraged they are that people aren’t perfect. They’re happy to vote their conscience for someone who knows nothing about much of anything.
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Dexter said on July 27, 2016 at 4:40 pm
JeffMMO: I first heard of NAFTA in US newspapers like the Detroit Free Press. It was painted as a great thing, an economy kicker, great for everyone, and I sort of agreed, but I never studied it. Soon after I was called into a series of meetings we, as local UAW officers, had with International reps from Detroit and Indianapolis. We were told to expect changes, as some processes we used in Indiana would surely be performed in Mexico and shipped back for assembly in our plant. Now, it’s a 2 for 1 trade off…twice as much work is done in Mexico(that used to be USA work) as is the work created by Mexico-made parts shipped back to the USA to create USA based work. Union or not type work. That is the legacy of NAFTA.
Play around with theory and economics all you want, but NAFTA contributed greatly to the fate of towns like Ypsilanti and Anderson, Indiana, and Cincinnati, too.
I am linking the following al-Jazeera article because my former cohort, the progressive union leader Dave Cole, contributes with a quote.
Anyway, it’s complicated. In 1980 during a UAW class I attended in Bloomington, Indiana, a UAW International instructor told us to “run any foreign car you see into the ditch!”
Shee-itt…he seemed serious. This is how the hatred ran amok, the passion was fierce.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/29/20-years-later-naftastillstingsinypsilantimich.html
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Jolene said on July 27, 2016 at 4:44 pm
Trump is now speaking in Scranton. He is saying that the RNC convention is superior to the DNC because there were more flags on the stage. He also said that he’d spoken to unemployed coal miners in WVA and asked them whether they’d be willing to move somewhere else and do some other kind of work. They reportedly said, “No, Mr. Trump. We love coal mining. Our fathers and grandfathers were coal miners. We want to stay here and mine coal. I said, ‘OK, then. We’ll start ‘er up again.” So reassuring.
No need to worry about the depletion of the WVA coal deposits, the lower cost of mining in Wyoming, or competition from lower cost natural gas. Once the evil regulators are thrown out of office, all those problems will magically evaporate.
What an asshole, but the audience is roaring their approval.
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beb said on July 27, 2016 at 4:55 pm
Dorothy said: It was like she had that sentence in her head an hour or two before Bill even spoke and she wanted to make sure she said it out loud. That’s not like Rachel – I wonder what that was about?
I think Maddow already had a narrative in mind for Bill’s speak just like the New York Times has a narrative that Hillary is untrustworthy, or the NBC/MSNBC line that the Bernie deadenders are an important sign of Democratic disunity. The media too often seems like they wrote their responses to various speeches and appearance before they actually happened. And usually because their preplanned narrative is more interesting that reality. Give them real news, like the possibility that Trump is a puppet of the KGB, and because it doesn’t fit their narrative as a loose-lipped game-changer, the media is not interested. It’s enough to drive one mad–mad, I say!
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alex said on July 27, 2016 at 4:56 pm
With all due respect to Rachel Maddow, she has become the left’s answer to Sean Hannity, which is why I don’t bother with her much anymore. I don’t need her to flatter me in my politics if she’s going to insult my intelligence.
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brian stouder said on July 27, 2016 at 5:07 pm
Alex – I’m not there yet; I still really like her…but your shit-for-brains-Sean comparison has me reeling.
I’ll have to think about that one, some more.
I gave Oxy-Rush 5 minutes at lunchtime (it’s an effective appetite-suppressant!), and today’s meme is the “no United States flags” thing – which is such a pile-of-shit argument that you know some large number of angry white guys will repeat it from now on, forever.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/27/donald-trump/dnc-flag-missing-controversy/
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brian stouder said on July 27, 2016 at 5:10 pm
Politifact was half way there; Snopes clobbers it
http://www.snopes.com/flags-banned-at-dnc/
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 5:32 pm
Trump held a press conference today. He said that Tim Kaine did a terrible job in New Jersey. He told a female reporter to be quiet. But the kicker is that he called on Russia to hack Hillary’s email and release them to the press.
He doesn’t even want to keep hacker jobs in the US!
(Oh, and he called for a foreign power to launch a cyberattack on the US and interfere in our election.)
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alex said on July 27, 2016 at 5:59 pm
The sad thing about Trump’s latest salvo is that the press will quickly inure people to its outrageousness and normalize it, along with the next thing that flies out of his ass. I wonder how Hillary is going to manage herself in debates where he’s likely to be interrupting her and taunting her and then making her out to be “weak” because she won’t stoop to his level.
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 6:26 pm
Seen on Twitter: “Mr. Putin, Tear down that firewall!”
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 6:45 pm
Trump said that he will not release his tax returns. Two points:
-the man who relentlessly called for our President to release his birth certificate wot release his tax returns.
-neither of Clinton’s opponents this election were willing to release their tax returns.
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David C. said on July 27, 2016 at 6:59 pm
The year 2000 must seem like ancient history for the young Sandersnistas, but they’re using the same arguments to vote for Jill Stein that the Naderites used against Gore. We all remember them. That even if Gore lost, Bush would be such a disaster that it would bring on the glorious progressive revolution. Well, Bush was a disaster, but I’m still waiting for the glorious revolution. I heard someone say today that if you vote for Hillary, you have a chance to vote for someone you like better in four years. If you vote for Stein and throw the election to Trump you may never get a chance to vote again. I’d like to say, “No, I don’t believe that”, but seeing his behavior and listening to what he says it’s hard not to believe.
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Deborah said on July 27, 2016 at 7:24 pm
The more outrageous things Trump says the more the press will give him publicity. This day and age there’s no such thing as bad publicity. He’s got a personality cult rooting for him, his every utterance is gospel to them, no matter how stupid.
My rightwing sister finally responded to my email asking her if she’s changed her mind and voting for Trump now. She says, nope, that she still has no desire to vote for him or Hillary.
We went out to do some errands and found that a tree limb had fallen in the wind causing a downed line of some kind in our parking lot. I didn’t know if it was a live electric line or what. I tried calling the local power company to report what might have been an emergency but kept getting ridiculous recordings. I know I overreacted but I finally called 911. I sat out waiting for someone to come and check it out, when they came I got up quickly to talk to them, then tripped royally on a small step down onto the gravel and splatted on the ground. The policemen came rushing over to help, it was super embarrassing. Then I started laughing uncontrollably, they probably thought I was drunk. Whew, glad that’s over.
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Deborah said on July 27, 2016 at 7:27 pm
Oh, I should say it turned out to be a cable line but we still have cable so somebody’s going to be upset when they find out.
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 8:12 pm
If the Bernie supporters really want the movement to continue, they need to fix this shit. Black people are watching, and they aren’t going to join your revolution if you dis Michelle. Merely not booing isn’t enough.
Black women are the most important part of the Dem coalition. They turn out and vote at the highest percentage. Don’t piss them off.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexNBCNews/status/757761569501638661
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Sherri said on July 27, 2016 at 9:17 pm
Busters interrupt Admiral Huston’s speech because one of their own was late to the party and was having trouble getting past the Secret Service lockdown. They interrupt Leon Panetta multiple times because SecDef, must be bad, amirite? But if we say, hey Trump is a monster, time to grow up and get on board, it’s “stop insulting us!”
I’m going to miss Kaine and Obama live tonight, and if Joe takes too long, I’ll have to leave before he’s done. Planning Commission beckons.
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Suzanne said on July 27, 2016 at 9:59 pm
My daughter is now loving Joe Biden. Love or don’t love Michael Bloomberg, he gave one heck of a speech!
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St Bitch said on July 28, 2016 at 12:53 am
Oh oh oh Obama…signed, sealed, delivered!
Trump, our ‘homegrown’ political terrorist, was only successful in hijacking part of today’s news cycle…until it became mere grist for the powerful ***we, the people, are too strong and savvy to fall for that*** mill.
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