The weekend flew so quickly I have to think what even happened. Oh, right — workout market Christmas tree lunch book Noel Night sleep breakfast cleaning schvitz decorating. I think that’s everything. The schvitz may be the most memorable, in that I stayed in for longer than usual, and when I came out, I felt a little weird and dizzy and heart-poundy. I guess some serious blood-flow shenanigans happen when you’re sitting in a million-degree room. It’s almost like another workout. No wonder the Russians swear by this stuff.
I was busy enough today that I only gave the Sunday papers a short skim, which seems to be better for my mental health, although I can’t afford to be one of those people who simply checks out. And I have Twitter, which means I am made aware every time this happens:
Just tried watching Saturday Night Live – unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can't get any worse. Sad
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016
And when this happens:
Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016
And suddenly, Sunday night seems a lot like Monday morning. Oh, well. Chili’s on and my basement is almost clean. Bloggage:
Comments are disabled for this video from Sandy Hook Promise, and of course we know why. Still, it’s a great one.
The fire in Oakland is absolutely horrible. I expect it’ll happen here one of these days — lots of after-hours spots with similarly casual attitudes about fire safety.
And that’s it for now. Happy Monday to all.
Deborah said on December 4, 2016 at 8:00 pm
Susan your link to how to manipulate Trump in the previous thread is chilling. He is surrounding himself with some despicable characters and this troubles me greatly. This guy will be our president in 7 weeks.
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Sherri said on December 4, 2016 at 8:21 pm
As James Fallows keeps pointing out, China isn’t devaluing their currency any more, they’re propping it up.
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brian stouder said on December 4, 2016 at 8:31 pm
The Sandy Hook Promise video is quite good. I totally missed everything ’til the recap.
Then there’s this video. I saw this story on NBC news this weekend, and went to Uncle Google and found this local version. It made my eyes wet, both times.
http://olympics.nbcsports.com/2016/11/30/cross-country-runner-helps-opponent-cross-finish-line-video/
The story is simple enough, but think of all the take-aways. Mom and the coaches and the officials – the adults – all followed “the rules” – and the results are unacceptably bad.
And another young lady breaks the rules, and makes things right – just like that.
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Ann said on December 4, 2016 at 10:48 pm
Copying and pasting from a friend’s fb post in response to the Sandy Hook Promise video. “Everyone – can you help us?
The target boy in this video (you have to watch through to the end) is exactly like my son. Many disabled kids fit this profile – the only difference my son exhibits is that we don’t allow him to post photos on social media, have guns in our home, or buy magazines about guns…but he has earned the right to play shooter games with good behavior, so he is focused on those.
My son has been sent to the ER twice this school year and to a PHP he wouldn’t have needed had the school followed through last year. All because he fits this profile and at the beginning of the year in an introductory exercise, without understanding this context, said his “dream” was to become an “international assassin.” During the assessment, he heard the Dean say to the social worker “this kid wants to be a lone shooter.” (I confronted the Dean, who admitted saying that where it could be heard, but that he was repeating someone else’s words for verification.)
My son is diagnosed with a deficit in social use of speech, and we wrote the school a letter before all this happened, stating that he sometimes uses violent language that should be redirected. We explained that unless the language is directed at someone specifically, it was not an indicator of potential violence. We asked to be notified immediately if the language was directed at anyone (this hasn’t happened, other than him directing language at himself.)
This video won’t stop school shooters, doesn’t offer any insight into how to help students who might become violent…but it DOES open the door to harassment of the thousands of students who are like my son. He is now being regularly bullied by anonymous phone calls telling him to “kill himself” because he is “violent”
Can you help my by speaking out against this video?
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Suzanne said on December 5, 2016 at 7:12 am
Just heard that Ben Carson has been appointed to head Housing & Urban Development. Whaaat? Didn’t he say he didn’t want to be head of a dept because he didn’t have experience? And his only experience is that he once was poor and lived in the inner city and had patients that were poor? OMG I try, try, and try some more to not get upset and then…
Also, Petraus is still in the running for SoS. Never mind that CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET stuff that he handed to his mistress.
Being hopeful is no longer an option.
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alex said on December 5, 2016 at 7:34 am
Ann, it seems the schools are leaving nothing to chance anymore. The well-adjusted son of a good friend one day made a totally facetious and over-the-top threat to kill himself if he didn’t get ice cream and the school suspended him and wouldn’t allow him back until he’d undergone a psychiatric evaluation at his parents’ expense.
One of our local schools got egg on its face when it suspended a student just shy of graduation for bringing “weapons” onto campus. Said weapons were the butter knives in a set of utensils he was carrying in his vehicle, along with other personal effects of his grandmother who had recently died and whose home he was helping to clear out.
My friends in the teaching biz have always wondered why administrators get paid double what they do for having only half a brain.
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ROGirl said on December 5, 2016 at 7:52 am
The Chinese blamed Taiwan for taking advantage of Trump because of his lack of foreign policy experience. Hah! That’s showbiz, or something . Don’t the Chinese have a saying “may you live in interesting times?”
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Deborah said on December 5, 2016 at 8:28 am
This is exactly how I feel about Twimp and his minions http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/trumps-agents-of-idiocracy.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
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nancy said on December 5, 2016 at 8:40 am
It’s the pizzagate story that has me beside myself today. Someone is going to die behind this idiocy, and yet I’m still reading flattering stories about Ivanka and the boys, Bannon and all the rest of them.
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Suzanne said on December 5, 2016 at 9:27 am
I saw that pizza story, too. Another reason being hopeful has been taken off the table for me.
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Lou Gravity said on December 5, 2016 at 10:42 am
Re: What Russians swear by: Overall, a quarter of Russian men die before reaching 55, compared with 7% of men in the UK and about 10% in the United States. The life expectancy for men in Russia is 64 years, placing it among the lowest 50 countries in the world in that category.
Just saying.
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Deborah said on December 5, 2016 at 10:46 am
The vodka may have something to do with it too.
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Alan Stamm said on December 5, 2016 at 10:52 am
First saw that gut-punch vid from Sandy Hook Promise visa a Saturday morning tweet by Daily Kos contributing editor Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT), a physician in Newtown who posts:
It’s been 4 years (12-14-12) and I didn’t think this would hit me so hard. But it did.
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Jolene said on December 5, 2016 at 11:13 am
The pizzagate story is, indeed, awful, and one of the most awful things about it is that one of the propagators of the nonsense that prompted the shooter to show up is Michael Flynn, Jr., the son of our soon-to-be national security advisor and, apparently, one of his father’s closest aides.
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Jolene said on December 5, 2016 at 11:14 am
Meant to add: If you’re so inclined, you can check out Flynn the Younger’s Twitter account @mflynnJr.
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Bitter Scribe said on December 5, 2016 at 11:37 am
For me the cutest part of the cross-country story is that the girl who near-fainted gave the girl who helped her a gift card to Dairy Queen because they were both disqualified. (DQ, get it?)
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Sherri said on December 5, 2016 at 11:49 am
If only we’d stop trying to solve the impossible problem of guessing which broken person is going to pick up a gun and start killing people, and instead solve the much easier problem of guns being so available to broken people…
I mentioned that on our recent DC trip we splurged and flew first class. That meant we automatically got TSA PreCheck. After we strolled through the line without having to take our shoes off or our liquids out, my husband asked me what extra info I had to give the airline when I bought the ticket. None, just money.
We spend so much effort on things that don’t and can’t make us safer.
Another thing we can’t ignore about the election are the people who voted for Trump because Hillary was going to take away their guns. They are a minority who don’t seem to be persuadable but have disproportionate power. If we can’t persuade them, is there a way to cut into that disproportionate power? Maybe the next census will help.
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Julie Robinson said on December 5, 2016 at 12:10 pm
It’s never clear to me why I get PreCheck on some flights, or I’ll get it and hubster doesn’t. For the last three years the only flights we’ve made are back and forth to Orlando, on the same airline. (Stuck in a rut, I guess, but we miss those kids of ours.) Or how different TSA agents intrepret PreCheck differently, so last time I still had to get my liquids out. I’m not silly enough to fight with an agent over that one, but I did wonder.
And surely my 84 year old mother isn’t going to take down a plane. She barely has the energy to make it to the gate. Yet she still has to get patted down or take off her shoes depending on the whim of the agent at the time. How is this a worthwhile use of our taxes?
The cross country runner was wonderful, and so was Brian’s description. I had to blink back a few tears too.
The gray skies are getting to me already. My happy light isn’t doing it for me anymore.
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Deborah said on December 5, 2016 at 12:25 pm
Julie, have you seen the trailer for the movie coming out soon, La La Land. It’s a musical, I thought of you immediately when I saw it. Sorry I didn’t copy a link for it, but you can Google it.
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Dorothy said on December 5, 2016 at 12:28 pm
The girl who collapsed in the cross country video had undiagnosed mono, poor kid. That made me cry too, Brian, and my husband as well!
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Julie Robinson said on December 5, 2016 at 12:52 pm
Yep, I’ve seen it and have high hopes. Of course the theatre snob in me thinks it should have been done with Broadway folks instead of movie stars. Of course then it would have never been made, but I’ll keep tilting at that windmill.
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alex said on December 5, 2016 at 1:47 pm
Big news from Coozledad country:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-kkk-parade-north-carolina_us_5844eb97e4b017f37fe5591c
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nancy said on December 5, 2016 at 1:52 pm
That’s actually in his county. Let’s keep an eye on this one.
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nancy said on December 5, 2016 at 1:54 pm
And yes, he’s aware.
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Sherri said on December 5, 2016 at 2:20 pm
What to really pay attention to in North Carolina is the special session of the legislature Pat McCrory has called. McCrory has finally conceded defeat in his re-election bid, but has called a special session of the lame-duck legislature ostensibly to deal with Hurricane Matthew relief. However, given the behavior of McCrory and the NC GOP, it’s not unreasonable to be concerned that they might be up to more. In particular, the GOP lost control of the state Supreme Court in the election, and the worry is that this legislature might vote to add a couple of seats to the Supreme Court and appoint a couple of Republicans to make up for that. That may sound crazy, but in a state which systematically put in voting restrictions to make sure that black people couldn’t vote, and so gerrymandered the state legislature districts that a court has thrown them out and is forcing another election next year, anything is possible.
The rot in the GOP is deep and wide.
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Deborah said on December 5, 2016 at 2:31 pm
This is only the beginning. Unfortunately. Rotten.
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Sherri said on December 5, 2016 at 3:44 pm
I suspect that Evan McMullin and I disagree on a whole host of things, but we are on the same side when it comes to the Orange Bully: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/trumps-threat-to-the-constitution.html
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 5, 2016 at 4:37 pm
An interesting look at how the Obamas shaped, and may continue to shape the culture of Washington:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/12/04/how-the-obamas-changed-washington-dc/
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Deborah said on December 5, 2016 at 4:58 pm
If somebody already linked to this, sorry I missed it. We have a long history of this https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/second-klan/509468/
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Charlotte said on December 5, 2016 at 5:31 pm
Hey — how about a moment of celebration for the good folks of Standing Rock? While the war is certainly far from over, especially as ETP is claiming they’re just going to drill the pipe under the Missouri anyway, it was a pretty big concession. Now it remains to be seen how hard a finance stoppage their Jan 1 2017 completion deadline actually represents. Jezebel had a good piece here: https://jezebel.com/we-don-t-go-until-they-do-cautious-celebration-and-sk-1789676946 Huffpo has a good photo essay here (and be sure to scroll down for Chief Arvol Looking Horse’s photo, he’s magnificent): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/standing-rock-photos_us_5844c3b2e4b0c68e0481849f There’s also a good piece on the Veterans for Standing Rock movement here, with a couple of good videos: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/12/04/thousands-veterans-descend-standing-rock-protect-and-serve-166660
I haven’t been out there, but a lot of folks from here have been making supply runs, and say it’s an astonishing movement — so for today at any rate, I’m going to be glad for a small and stubborn (and media savvy) group of Indians who are trying to save us all from destroying ourselves.
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David C. said on December 5, 2016 at 6:54 pm
Kevin Drum thinks the Rs won’t be able to repeal Obamacare. He seems pretty wise about this sort of thing. I hope he’s right.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/obamacare-repeal-doomed-pre-existing-conditions
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Sherri said on December 5, 2016 at 7:29 pm
Yay, Standing Rock!
And at least there will be a retrial of the LEO who shot Walter Scott in the back, then planted a weapon on him, all captured on video.
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Suzanne said on December 5, 2016 at 7:34 pm
David C, I would agree except that I can no longer underestimate the stupidity of people.
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Dexter said on December 5, 2016 at 7:41 pm
Every time I see an athlete helping a fallen competitor help across the finishing line, around second, third, and on to home plate, or a football team let a disabled kid score a touchdown or go in for an uncontested lay-up, I ask myself if this is another re-play or another new one. There are so many of these clips , from so many years, I can’t keep them straight. The only one that got me was this one, copied from Wikipedia: “Lauren Hill (basketball) Lauren Hill (October 1, 1995 – April 10, 2015) was an American freshman basketball player at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, who was suffering from terminal brain cancer. She was runner up for 2014 Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year, coming second in voting to Mo’ne Davis.”
She passed away at age 19 but got into one final game in her last year of life and scored a couple baskets. That got to me.
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Dexter said on December 5, 2016 at 7:46 pm
11 said murder, one said justified shooting of Walter Scott. If video ever convicted a shooter, this one did. Did you see the killer cop say he felt his life was “in danger”? One juror said s/he agreed. Some days….two more chances for the lawyers to pick some fair jurors.
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Sherri said on December 5, 2016 at 7:53 pm
Worst public editor ever: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-public-editor-reporters-trump-tweets-2016-12
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Sherri said on December 5, 2016 at 7:59 pm
I doubt the Dems have the spine to do this, but I’m calling my Senators tomorrow.
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/12/senate-democrats-have-one-shot-saving
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Deggjr said on December 5, 2016 at 8:22 pm
Dexter, I understand the comment on sameness. I think people are so desperate for good news, even before the election, that those stories are popular.
One personal favorite, the Downs Syndrome child fist-bumping at the Boston Bruins pregame (good on the Bruins!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVzu_qUwoZQ
Second favorite: autistic team manager raining threes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV1akgvFknk
For your consideration.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 5, 2016 at 9:53 pm
And in the midst of our national flirtation with racial discrimination and economic authoritarianism, I get contacted today at the church by someone who caught wind of my researches in various county archives about the 1910 – 1925 period here, particularly the incredible comprehensive “memory hole” treatment given to late 1923 through the start of 1926. No joke at all, there are no copies to be had anywhere in central Ohio for any of our local newspapers for an entire two-and-a-half year stretch, and almost all city and county records are fragmentary at best — yes, there was a courthouse fire . . . in 1878. But I can find more civic info for 1876 than I can for 1924.
Of course, the reason is pretty apparent. During that time, the Ku Klux Klan ran Newark, Ohio and most of the county. When I say “ran” I don’t mean “they had a great deal of cultural influence and some holders of high office.” I mean they ran the city. They ran as a party, and took the mayor’s office, most of council, with little if any opposition (as far as I can tell), placing their stooges in the police department, fire department, and service department, along with the city treasurer. The Klan position on county offices is harder to discern simply because the relevant records are missing.
I’m dragging our congregation through some of this history, and it’s not comfortable, and I’m having to be more discreet than I wish, given that the Klan kept their secrecy awfully well, and our church did, in fact, burn to the ground in 1946 thoroughly enough to ensure that we have barely a singed folder of pre-1946 history to consult. But indirectly, I can infer with confidence much, and it’s not pretty. Hat tip to James Loewen for the help he’s given, before and after he made a visit to Denison University a couple of years ago at my encouragement (“Lies Across America” and “Sundown Towns” are two books I can strongly commend by him).
Anyhow, the contact was from an elderly woman, who had heard from a mutual acquaintance that I had asked about some items she had placed with our county historical society. Yes, robes, and a bit more. With hoods. I saw the message, and had a moment of high hopes that she had some other archival and informational material she was willing to share.
But no. She was calling to ask me to come by her home . . . so she could ask me to stop my digging into material “that can only bring pain to many good, decent people.” She’s 90ish, and she’s worried about what I’m going to say in public about her father — my inference, not her clear statement, but it’s obvious what’s on the table. Her attitude, though, tells me as I suspected that it probably wasn’t the Klan, after leaving power, somehow “disappearing” the record of their collapse and failure after a brief, hapless ascendancy, but that it was almost certainly “good, decent people” who tried to make the evidence of their crimes against decency, if not against persons and property, go away forever.
I tried to explain to her that it was because I’ve spent almost 30 years stumbling across the unburied bones of that era that I wanted to bring about an open, public conversation about what we did to Catholics, immigrants in general, and African Americans in particular, for Newark and Licking County, so we might in some form of truth and reconciliation, bury properly those remains and lay to rest a still bleeding injustice — and might as well have been talking to that hood and robes in a box down at the museum. She was utterly certain that if we simply do not speak of it, we can “move forward.” We parted awkwardly, and she resignedly . . . I think she felt she owed her father this, and is almost curious to see what I write.
I am too.
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Sherri said on December 5, 2016 at 10:14 pm
I am frustrated with the current church’s desire for peace rather than justice: https://sherrivotes.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/whither-the-church/
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Sue said on December 5, 2016 at 10:45 pm
Not sure if anyone’s posted this yet:
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/activist-danielle-muscatos-anti-donald-trump-rant-goes-viral-w453721
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alex said on December 6, 2016 at 6:13 am
Jeff, that’s an amazing story. And one that needs to be told.
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alex said on December 6, 2016 at 6:55 am
For some scary reading from the Roaring ’20s, I recommend the Fiery Cross, a short-lived newspaper archived at IU:
https://libraries.indiana.edu/collection-digital-archive-fiery-cross
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 6, 2016 at 8:08 am
That, Alex, and the Muncie Post-Democrat, are my primary primary sources. But thanks for posting the link — it’s bracing reading for anyone who doesn’t know about this period. We missed out on having our own version of Hitler or Mussolini by a hair, mostly because the man at the top was so totally out of control (D.C. Stephenson) that he brought most of the structure down at the end of 1925 himself . . . also, the Klan did not have the same support of a cadre of industrialists and businessmen at the top that the National Socialists had in Germany or the Fascist Party had in Italy. Which in turn seems to be because the Communists were not threatening enough to cause them to take that risk in funding and propping up a rightist movement to counterbalance them. Which is a strange story in itself, but one that almost has to be told alongside to explain the difference that could have been too easily otherwise: the CPUSA was instructed, for reasons I’ve never seen well explained, not to make common cause with the major trade union movements, the AFL & CIO in that day (let alone the UMW or UAW etc.). So the Communists were largely a marginalized coastal entity with some relationships in the needle trades, but hardly at all in the unions that would have mattered.
The other blessedly missing gear in that evil wheel was that in Germany the Freikorps, their version of a veteran’s group after World War One, was co-opted into the Nazi movement as their paramilitary, and for an assortment of reasons, the American Legion and other veterans groups refused to be collaborators with the Klan: my educated guess is that their focus on anti-Catholicism cut across too much of their existing base, closing off that possibility. Hitler hated the power of the Catholic church while he admired their authority structure, and was careful not to challenge Rome or his local bishops too closely, especially early on. The Klan (this “Second Klan” in the 1920’s) was relentlessly anti-Catholic, more than anti-immigrant in their rhetoric (though the intention seemed to be the other way around), and it meant that in the Midwest, they always had trouble with the police and fire departments . . . since they were heavily Irish or German Catholic in makeup. Take away the cops and the vets, and the Klan just couldn’t survive the venality of its leadership.
But to see how quickly they took over most of the Midwest, and no small number of offices around the US from California to the Carolinas, is a bracing historical lesson.
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Julie Robinson said on December 6, 2016 at 9:38 am
Sherri, I tried to leave you a comment, but it kept telling me I wasn’t logged in to gmail, though I was, and that I had the wrong password, which I didn’t. If you don’t get any other comments there may be a glitch.
Anyway, I was trying to say that it’s the same attitude my daughter is fighting with her congregation. They just want to move forward and forget the past. But in my reading of history, and in my own family, I’ve learned that sweeping problems under the rug never works. You have to bring problems into the light before there can be reconciliation, and then, peace.
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Deborah said on December 6, 2016 at 9:44 am
Here’s a funny solution to the hideous Trump signage on his building in Chicago https://archpaper.com/2016/12/trump-chicago-gold-pigs/
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Deborah said on December 6, 2016 at 10:00 am
http://billmoyers.com/story/farewell-america/#.WETYY5VmZ5k.facebook Farewell, America
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brian stouder said on December 6, 2016 at 10:32 am
Deborah-46 – superb!
Deborah-47 – I disagree.
Much as Cooz made me mad, with his somewhat unhinged assault on everyone – including people who are in agreement with his social/political points of view – that piece was simply too defeatist.
I think, when we get to look back on these days, it will be darkly humorous, since what will probably unfold is the political equivalent of the dog catching the car.
For example – repeal ‘Obama-care’? And then OWN every single terrible story across the nation?
The only thing those Republican sons of bitches (in keeping with the dog-catches-car metaphor, eh?) in Congress like less than President Obama, is the responsibilities (and the BLAME!) that comes with their job.
I think their hostility to Rep Pelosi stems from the fact that she has more intelligence, and more courage – then the lot of them, and she positively got something DONE, when she had a congressional majority!
Now – the bright lights are upon the GOP peanut gallery, and there’s no place to hide.
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Jason T. said on December 6, 2016 at 10:58 am
Jeff (tmmo):
They were a factor here in western Pennsylvania, too:
http://www.tubecityonline.com/almanac/entry_1106.php
With all of the Italians, Hungarians and Slovaks pouring into the Pittsburgh area in the 1910s and 1920s, the Scots-Irish settlers went into a full-blown panic, which opened the door for the Klan.
I don’t think they ever got anything like a majority of local office-holders, but they were definitely welcomed by the local power structure (at least for a few years) and a lot of this stuff has been memory-holed in the Pittsburgh area, too.
BTW: When that article started to circulate on Facebook, a local conservative talk-show host attacked me for being a “typical liberal” playing “the race card.” That it was well-documented mattered not at all; we’ve been in a post-truth era for a long time.
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Connie said on December 6, 2016 at 11:00 am
I lived in Seymour Indiana for 14 years. People can show you the house on Lee Blvd that DC Stephenson used to live in. I studied the KKK in Indiana in an MSU class called American Radical Thought.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 6, 2016 at 11:43 am
Jason, thanks; yep, Indiana had the governor in the Klan’s pocket. He didn’t run as a Klan candidate (as they did, and won, in many places) but it was well known in the campaign that he was “their” candidate and won because of it, not in spite of it — Ed Jackson. Was Secretary of State before his successful run for gov, and granted the Klan a state charter, over the objections of the sitting governor who was also Republican, but had taken clear stands against the Klan (hence his loss in the primary as well as Jackson’s reason for winning). Can’t recall the previous gov, but he was married to George Ade’s sister, from whom half of Purdue’s Ross-Ade Stadium is named.
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Michael Einheuser said on December 6, 2016 at 12:11 pm
Apropos the Oakland fire, I was at a very crowded holiday party up stairs in a carriage house in Indian Village. An architect friend leaned over to me and said I’m not sure this structure can hold all of this weight. That was my cue to say my good byes.
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brian stouder said on December 6, 2016 at 12:23 pm
That terrible Oakland fire captures much, coming as it does, just as President-elect Trump names Ben Carson to head up Housing and Urban Development.
The Oakland catastrophe touches (heavily) several urban housing issues, chiefly – affordable, suitably safe arrangements.
And as the fire inspectors move forward, beyond this calamity, many (many) more people will find themselves (literally) out on the curb (unless some solutions are crafted)
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Deborah said on December 6, 2016 at 1:37 pm
Spencer, the white supremacist guy is speaking at Texas A&M in College Station this evening. It’s not sponsored by the school or the students but an alum planned it and is paying for the rental of the hall on campus. There are protests planned too. http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/06/politics/richard-spencer-texas-am/
And people think this has nothing to do with Trump.
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Sherri said on December 6, 2016 at 1:42 pm
Julie, I’m not sure what the problem was. I don’t have any settings turned on that require you to be logged in, just the setting that requires you type in a name and an email address. I loosened the spam restrictions; maybe that will help.
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Sherri said on December 6, 2016 at 1:53 pm
This seems like a pretty good economic analysis of what might happen under Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/29/donald-trump-is-an-economic-nationalist-whats-an-economic-nationalist/
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LAMary said on December 6, 2016 at 2:32 pm
My ex’s grandfather in Rhode Island was in the KKK.I recall a cross being burned on the front lawn of a black doctor’s house in NJ in the sixties as well. It was about twenty miles from NYC.
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Sherri said on December 6, 2016 at 2:54 pm
Pretending that racism wasn’t a significant part of Trump’s appeal has implications: https://medium.com/amor-mundi/the-significance-of-overt-racism-2ad366c33d97#.mcgkq4azk
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Sherri said on December 6, 2016 at 3:24 pm
This is a very good piece on who Trump is and how to cover him: http://www.cjr.org/special_report/literary_journalism_trump_president.php
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brian stouder said on December 6, 2016 at 3:31 pm
Pam sent me this link – which is sort of a cake-taker:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2016/11/30/food-fight-breitbart-news-asks-readers-to-boycott-kelloggs-products/#4edee27939f4
Short version: the alt-right is GRRRRRRRReatly flakey!
or –
forget crackling and popping – they’ve snapped!
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Dexter said on December 6, 2016 at 4:18 pm
Deggjr: The team manager , the autistic superp-shooter, that was a good one. Another recurring one is every time Teddy Kremer, who was honorary bat boy for the Cincinnati Reds, gets to see former Reds player Todd Frazier. Frazier and Teddy have a special bond. Frazier was dealt to Chicago Sox and may be headed to LA Dodgers now…at least Teddy can reunite with Todd when LA visits the Reds.
Teddy is an ebullient Downs kid.
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Sherri said on December 6, 2016 at 4:25 pm
I suppose one good thing will come out of the Trump disaster, should civilization survive: Rick Perlstein’s book about this time is going to be incredible.
https://washingtonspectator.org/press-trump-perlstein/
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Judybusy said on December 6, 2016 at 5:01 pm
Good god, Sherri, that last piece just brought together a scary picture. How are we supposed to keep informed? You have to dig deep.
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Sherri said on December 6, 2016 at 5:14 pm
Originally from Cincinnati, Falk was in town visiting; he now lives in New York and sells biometric-fingerprint technology, but he still saw himself as a citizen of the heartland. “Why is it that lesbians and gays and blacks and transgenders can vote for their interests, but when working-class people do that, they’re demonized?” Falk said. “Who’s speaking for us? There’s more of us. We’re America.”
“Working class” salesman thinks no one speaks for the endangered white male, who is the real America.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/the-power-of-president-trump/509684/
Also, note that as I’ve said, if Trump doesn’t do what he’s promised, his supporters are ready to blame someone else.
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Deborah said on December 6, 2016 at 7:05 pm
Sherri, your link at #58 was excellent, I sent it to my husband who is back in Chicago. This was his response, he said it a lot better than I could:
Common Sense suggests to me that it is a much more natural human state to be Racist than not to be Racist. It is the most direct and deep-seated embodiment of the Other than can be imagined. Not to recognize that Racism makes Common Sense is to massively underestimate the power of Racism.
To overcome the natural state of racism in a person takes enormous efforts of learning and understanding of Lakoff’s systemic cause principle. It is an un-natural act. Racism is not an affront to Common Sense, it is Common Sense, Common Sense of the worst kind – the point Arendt was making about Eichmann. Racism is bad because it prevents certain people from being free and it is in making as many people as possible to be free that provides the most benefit to Humankind, the release of phenomenal Human capacity.
That is what is awful about Trump & Co., the restriction of Human Capacity.
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