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December 09, 2020 06:43 AM UTC

Wednesday Open Thread

  • 39 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.”

–Annie Besant

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39 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread”

  1. What do Ken Buck, Diana DeGette, Louie Gohmert, AOC, Matt Gaetz, Ilan Omar, Justin Amash and Steve Scalise have in common?

    all were “no” votes on bipartisan defense authorization bill.

    Go far enough to right and far enough to left and the NJs meet up.

     

    1. …and inertia dwells directly in the center. 

      Should there not BE a left and a right? I have never heard a kind word from you about any activist, have I? Your apparent loathing of adrenaline in politics is so short-sighted.

      Perhaps if you didn't seem so obsessed with putting down activists, it might be easier to understand your Mugwumpery.

      1. Things get accomplished in the center. But go ahead and align yourself with president who has threatened the bill. Perhaps your heroes will vote the sustain his veto.

        1. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. These days, it's all about power.

          Trump is certainly accomplishing things that are NOT of the Center.  Same thing with McConnell. Obamacare is broadly popular, yet the Republican Party is trying to get rid of the ACA.

          Trump ran on an extremist propaganda campaign and got 70 Million votes. So, you have some direct evidence that the center might not be where things get accomplished.

          Evidence against your thesis: Katie Porter a raging, roaring Democrat won a second time in fricken' Orange County. 

          Evidence for your thesis: Abigail Spangenberger barely won in VA-07 while running away from the Democratic Party.

          1. @PH: I think it was Stacey Abrams who said that a Dem candidate has to tailor their campaign to their district. 

            What works in far left districts like AOC’s won’t necessarily work in districts like those of Spangenberger, Slotkin (MI) or Lamb (PA). Those are three good moderate Democrats who almost lost hard fought campaigns due to getting bombed by the Rs trying to tie them with leftist slogans.

            I thought I read that Donna Shalala said she lost in her southern FL district because of Republicans hitting on slogans like Defund the Police, socialism, medicare for all. 

            I’ve seen Katie Porter interview on MSNBC. I like her straight forward, no bullshit, common sense. She’s not a typical leftie. And didn’t Rs regain a couple Orange County seats they lost in 2018?

            1. Not a single Democrat ran on "defund the police"; that didn't stop all Republicans from accusing them of it. Not to mention, the fact that they are all commie pedofiles who eat babies. 

              And, there isn't anything moderate about Katie Porter. She is outrageously courageous when it comes to pillorying Corporate CEOs and (lately) Mitch McConnell. 

              I keep asking, but I never get an answer on what "moderate" means. 

              I also don't really know what "conservative" means. As near as I know it means anti social security and pro child labor.

              1. “not a single Democrat ran on……” Correct. Unfortunately, some of the far left, anarchist, types made that a mantra during the George Floyd protests. Actions do have consequences.

                “I also don’t really know what “conservative” means……” I was a late arrival for my now deceased parents. They lived through the Great Depression and World War II. Mantras, from back then, that I was taught included “live frugally and within your means,” “pay as you go and avoid debt if possible,” “reuse, recycle, conserve” resources.

                One way that I “conserve” is this: I haven’t had credit card debt in many years. I pay them off every month; if I can’t afford it with available cash, I don’t buy it. I’ll be buying a new car in 3-4 years. By then, that will be the first time holding debt in a quarter century. FWIW, I’m not a “bloated plutocrat.” But I do know the value of a dollar.

                1. Your personal philosphy and your political philosophy are identical? Your philosophy about debt is the same as mine. Your political philosphy…not so much.

                  The term "conservative" is no more useful than the term "liberal". Both have been abused by fat guys with agendas for a very long time. They are now just trigger words for opening up a can of indictment on an adversary. 

                  We would get along better if we avoid using them.

                2. "Actions do have consequences"

                  Sure. Let Bannon back on twitter so that he can call for more beheadings.

                  Let the Oathkeepers terrorize with their threats of excecutions

                  and they can all get away with it because there is no federal domestic terrorism statute.

                  And that's who the conservative leaders are.

                  So instead of running against QBert in 2 years, let's run against Bannon or make believe that she's an OathKeeper  

              2. Orange County is not the same as it was fifty years ago, PH. Any more than Jefferson County (Colorado) was what it was 25 years ago.

                So Katie Porter wins in a district which has changed and after she runs as a wannabe member of the Squad. 

                If there were 218 districts that looked like Katie Porter’s or AOC’s, then you’d have an excellent chance doing all the screwball stuff people want to do.

                 But they don’t exist. And shit you people are peddling (Medicare-For-All, like it or not, socialism is good, defund the police, yadda, yadda, yadda) doesn’t sell in most districts, cost us seats held by some good people and will likely cost us the majority in 2022. 

                1. Nor does your set of shitty wares:

                  Medicare for none, just get sick and die quickly

                  Militarize the police and assign them to dump

                  Facism is the best

                  To whom does that sell? You’ve bought in already, you say?

                  1. You're missing his point. Which I interpret that if Dems lose another dozen seats in 2022 like they did last month, get ready for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

                    1. McCarthy can’t even tell a good lie or keep up a good ruse. He’s as dumb as they come.

                      If he is what you want just keep up the lies about Ds and run against the boogey/strawmen you conjure from your worst nightmares.

                      Nobody expects anything resembling honesty from the Rs anymore.

                      But you’d better be ready for the fertilizer to hit the ventilator too.

                      It doesn’t matter if you like him or not.

                      McCarthy can’t even tell a good lie or keep up a good ruse. He’s as dumb as they come.

                      If he is what you want just keep up the lies about Ds and run against the boogey/strawmen you conjure from your worst nightmares.

                      Nobody expects anything resembling honesty from the Rs anymore.

                    2. @kick: didn’t say I like McCarthy. Just saying what might happen.

                      “dumb as they come…..” Don’t think McCarthy is as dumb as Devin Nunes, while we’re talking about Republican electeds in CA.

                  2. Nor does your set of shitty wares:

                    Medicare for none, just get sick and die quickly

                    I'm a big fan of Medicare for the elderly and the disabled.  I also think we need to figure out how to pay for it. 

                    I also think there should be a public option to buy in to a government-run plan for those who do not want private insurance.

            2. What works in far left districts like AOC’s won’t necessarily work in districts like that of Mike Conaway’s; towns like Granbury, TX where Hood County’s constable, Bob Shirley, logged on to his Facebook account and called for the execution of a mayor nearly 2,000 miles away.

              “Ted Wheeler needs to be tried, convicted and executed posthaste,” John D. Shirley wrote on Aug. 31. “He has blood on his hands, and it’s time for justice.”

              Shirley is a sworn member of Oath Keepers, which in recent months has been warning of a civil war.

              I am happy that AOC and the Squad are not calling for the execution of elected officials 2000 miles away or eagerly prepping for civil war.

              AOC wouldn’t win in Conaway’s district. Conaway wouldn’t win in AOC’s district. I doubt that there are any Oathkeeper’s in AOC’s district but it’s pretty much the price of entry to Hood County.

              https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/09/oath-keepers-far-right-group-infiltrate-local-government-texas-443773

              2. This is the problem with these frigging gerrymandered districts. 

                If you could take half of CO CD 1 and splice it onto half of CO CD 5, we would be rid of both DeGette and Lamborn. Both parties would need to run something that would attract non-ideologues.

                Ditto, doing the same with CO CD 2 and CO CD 4. Yes, we would need to give up Neguse but we would lose Ken Buck. We'd probably get something like Betsy Markey or Hank Brown.

        2. Social Security – liberal socialists.

          Medicare – radical socialist liberals.

          Civil rights – godless commies.

          WWII – interventionists.

          Hell- the Revolution itself was a violent act of radicals who would have been executed as traitors if we lost.

           

    2. I've yet to see something directly from DeGette, but I expect her statement will be she voted against the NDAA after the conference committee stripped out the Wilderness provisions. 

      “It’s shameful that Senate Republicans refused to include any of our public land bills in the final version of this year’s NDAA,” DeGette, who was appointed by House leadership to the conference committee, said in a statement. “We are already working to continue building upon the momentum we have garnered behind these important pieces of legislation — and we will continue searching for any opportunity to get them passed and signed into law, whether it be this year or next.”

      The NDAA conference process was widely viewed as the best chance for the CORE Act — which received its first hearing in the Senate last month but has stalled amid a lack of support from departing GOP Sen. Cory Gardner — to pass in the lame-duck session of Congress.

      1. Yep, “two faced” Cory claimed to be an environmentalist. But in reality, he never left the hip pocket of the oil & gas industry. Sad….he could have been a contender.

        1. Yeah…if he were someone besides who he really is. Cory was a phony from the start. As soon as the O&G lawyers in Armani suits started shoving checks at him, he was lost. There is no amount of statesman in Cory. 

           

  2. WOTD from DailyKos: "Joe Trippi on Georgia runoffs and the future of Democratic campaigns"

    This is very interesting, even if you aren't a fan of Markos. Rather long. The podcast reviews electioneering strategies with Trippi, a veteran Democratic Party organizer who worked the Alabama campaign this year.

    Stacey Abrams and others in Georgia get attention for their 10 year effort to build turnout. Trippi says the same strategy can work in other Southern states such as NC, SC and TX, but that they are 10 years behind.

     

    1. @PH: I'm not a liberal. But I do admire Stacey Abrams' tenacity and commitment to getting out the vote. All citizens have the right to vote. 

      1. I suspect there are a substantial number of conservatives who do not agree with your last sentence, and will use anything they can (voter suppression, tests to be able to vote, difficult-to-obtain IDs to be able to vote, etc, etc) to be sure that the only people who can vote are those who look like them, have bank accounts like them, and think like they do.

  4. Amazon’s Echo, Google’s Nest, Apple’s HomePod and the like — But the people receiving (or giving) these digital personal assistants may not realize all the potential privacy pitfalls that come with them — or know what they can do to protect themselves from always-on listening and data collection devices.

     

    One possible example of this is Amazon’s Sidewalk, a somewhat mysterious free feature coming to Echos, Rings, and any other device under its Sidewalk Bridge umbrella. Sidewalk uses Bluetooth and radio frequencies to connect all of your devices to each other and to any other Sidewalk Bridge devices in the vicinity — your neighbor’s Echo, for instance — turning your smart home into a smart neighborhood.

     

    Prepare to be assimilated!!! 

    Resistance is futile.

    1. What if one doesn't have Echo, Nest, HomePod, Siri, Sidewalk, and the like? I already have smart stuff in the house. As an example, my "smart thermostat" consists of my finger moving it down at night and up in the morning.

      Early in the new year, I'll finally be upgrading my 8+ year old iPhone 3. The new phone should have a capability to link to my desktop iMac. That's about all I need.

      1. If you don't have the latest gee whiz tech-of-the-day then you've probably not only saved that $$$ but you may have also preserved some sliver of your personal privacy and maybe that of your neighbors.

        But, as you know, there are plenty of others ways to give that up.

  5. No, Mitt, It's Not 'Appropriate' for the President to File Frivolous Lawsuits for a Month After the Election

    But let's backtrack a moment. How is it in any way "appropriate" for the president and his shitbrained allies to pursue "every legal avenue" when the election was not close, the result is not in doubt, and this extended—and expensive—legalistic scam has only served to undermine American citizens' faith in democracy and to render Joe Biden an illegitimate president—to Birtherize him—in the minds of the president's most ardent supporters? (Oh, and it's also been a pretense for Trump to grift his supporters one last time, money that will surely go towards legitimate ends.) It is not "appropriate" to file frivolous lawsuits for a month or more after an election in which you lost the popular vote by seven million, the Electoral College by the same margin you won it four years previous, and the individual swing states by larger margins than you won them in the last cycle. This is not, as Democratic lawyer Daniel Goldman pointed out, "part of the democratic process."

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/no-mitt-its-not-appropriate-for-the-president-to-file-frivolous-lawsuits-for-a-month-after-the-election/ar-BB1bMy85

    Fuck Ttump

    Fuck Mitt

    and, fuck every other gaslighting apologist for these two fucks, and all their enabling-ilk fucks.

     

     

      1. “With friends like those, . . . ?”

        And, Dale Carnegie never met a 21st Century Republican . . .

        (. . . and also like some, he never made it out of the 1950s either.)

    2. But there is money, power and fame to be had!

      Greg Sargent makes an important point. It doesn’t really matter what Republican voters say they believe, he writes.

       What matters is that many of them are entirely willing to support specific concrete actions to steal the election on Trump’s behalf.

      What Republican voters think, or say they think, about who really won matters less than the fact that, as a consequence, they actively want their elected representatives to subvert our democracy and keep Trump in power illegitimately.

      This all has consequences, because it keeps false hope alive. It’s likely that charlatans like Ted Cruz understand that this is hopeless, but there are points to be scored, cash to be raised, and clicks to be had.

      Unfortunately there are millions of folks in TrumpWorld who don’t know they are being conned. They still actually believe that Trump will win this thing. And, that’s dangerous, because many of them will be shocked when reality hits.

      1. @harry: there is method to Trump's "madness" in raising a ton of money; over $200 million since the election. In reading the fine print, almost all the money accrues directly to Trump's pocket. He may be liable for some income taxes, but can probably "avoid" most of those.

        Here's my take, FWIW. COVID has caused drastic revenue and profit cuts in Trump's various resort properties. He supposedly has several hundred million dollars in loans from Chinese banks coming due in the next 3-4 years, some of which he personally guaranteed. What better way to pay off his debts than to fleece the gullible marks who have supported him?

         

         

         

    3. Mr Homes does not understand the grift and the necessity for a cover story. The more dramatic and threatening the cover story the more willing the griftees are to keep the money flowing to the grifter.

      the only part that Holmes is getting correct is his contribution to the outrage.

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