Papers

by JanieM

From an article about the new head of the border patrol in Maine:

New border patrol chief explains why he uses #BuildTheWall and what his plans are for Maine

Jason Owens wants to increase transportation checks and the U.S. Border Patrol's visibility in Maine and takes over amid a national debate on immigration.

From the body of the article:

In Houlton, it’s not unusual for agents to know the names of the people they pass on their daily patrols or to stop and chat with residents or farmers.

“A good part of the population is law enforcement of the federal variety,” said Emily Harvey, whose husband works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at the Houlton station. She said she frequently travels across the border to go out to dinner, get a manicure or just go for a drive.

“Your typical everyday citizen, we really don’t see (changes to immigration policy),” Harvey said. “It really doesn’t affect us. As wives of some of these guys, we’re privy to some of the stories. But as everyday people we don’t see it.”

My bold. And her bullshit. The border patrol got on my bus to Boston in May: the first time I've had that experience, although it's been going on for a while. So let me just tell Emily Harvey: ordinary people *do* see it, and some of us don't like it, and we will do everything we can to scale it back to the invisibility in everyday life that it deserves in a free society.

From another angle, the notion that as long as "everyday people...don't see it," then everything is hunky dory, is vicious. As long as the abuse goes on out of sight of "everyday people," then everything is just dandy?

I didn't sign up to live in a police state. An increasingly more visible border patrol is not what I want or what I will ever vote for or support. I am reining in a rain of curse words even as I write.

Taking bets: how long before some R politician suggests that citizens should have to carry and show papers on demand? (I wonder how many links will come up in comments letting me know that this has already happened.)

*****

Miscellaneous articles and resources:

Increasing intrusion of the border patrol into ordinary daily travel.

The Constitution in the 100-Mile Border Zone.

Know Your Rights in the 100-mile zone.

Comments

[Girl from the North Country]

Hartmut for President.

You could do, in fact you have done, a great deal worse.

[cleek]

What conservative principle requires caging children and denying them basic hygene?

it's right there in the post-modern choose-your-own-adventure Bible, next to that part about worshipping liars and adulterers so long as they insult and demean enough of your neighbors.

[John D. Thullen]

Doesn't my wife, Kellyanne have enough on her well-used paper plate without showing up in this small corner of the blogging universe and nattering on about her lover's butt hurt:

Deep State crimes. OK, Joe.

You needn't go deep at all to see them, let alone find them.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/30/1882438/-Former-Justice-Department-official-We-have-a-Russian-asset-sitting-in-the-Oval-Office

[George Conway]

Sorry, that comment was from I, George Conway.

[bobbyp]

What conservative principle requires caging children and denying them basic hygiene?

It is the same principle that requires conservatives to excoriate libruls, accusing them of believing that the ends justify the means.

[George Conway]

Kellyanne: Could we have a moment, honey, to discuss this before you begin the hand-waving:

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/08/trump-and-lion-logo.html

Optics, dear. Optics

[Genghis Khan]

Optics, dear. Optics

Izz'at you, Thullen?

[JanieM]

russell: Want to talk about "differences of opinion", dump Trump and don't bring the Nazis and the guns. Keep Trump and/or bring the Nazis and the guns, and there will be no conversation.

wrs

cleek: your poisonous fantasies about what liberals are, do and want aren't legitimate differing opinions. they're delusions.

wcs

A similar formulation from a commenter with the handle Alex SL at Crooked Timber, in a thread called "Johnson's Putsch":

One of the problems – not just in Britain but everywhere – is that the ANY leader of the main centre-left party will face a constant, relentless, character-assassinating campaign against them convincing many people that they are Stalin’s next coming.

All those who say “if we just hadn’t got Hillary Clinton/Corbyn/Shorten/etc we could have won” will just find the next candidate to be in the exact same situation, unless they learn to deal with the media environment that exists and not let a bunch of ultra-conservative newspaper editors decide who should be the party leader of the opposition to the conservatives

(Earlier there was a comment that I marked as spam. It seems we have come up in the world since then.... May I welcome George and Genghis to the blog? ;-)

[George Conway]

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2019/08/30/the-presidents-operational-security-failure/

Genghis Khan would be comic relief at this point.

The deep state is the only thing standing between us and the savage end.

Kellyanne, where did you hide my Clinton dic pics, you little minx?

[wj]

I really wonder how much intelligence information, the stuff the normally would be routinely included in the President's daily information briefing, is getting held back in order to prevent disasterous damage to the nation's intelligence apparatus. The deep state preserving the nation.

Which, if true, suggests that, even if this was nominally Top Secret Compartmented Information, it was perhaps not actually cutting edge.

Even so, if I was in US intelligence, there might be something to be said with only providing Trump with unclassified info. Plaster it with Top Secret labels, of course, to stoke his ego. But don't let him near anything that's actually sensitive.

[Hartmut]

There would even be precedent for that. Iirc the WH was temporarily struck from the list of recipients of broken Japanese code messages before Pearl Harbour after intelligence learned of sloppy security there.

The Great Khan was a childhood hero of mine due to some novelizations of his youth (aimed at kids). I still hold to the belief that Mongol rule (as opposed to the conquest) was something not to be scorned at the time. Religiously and culturally tolerant and comparatively meritocratic. Imo a clear improvement over the standards at the time.

[russell]

Khan!!.

Apologies, I guess. But someone had to do it.

:)

[wj]

I heard rather similar accounts of the Mongol Empire. Not only a better than average place to live (once the conquest was past), but unusually well run.

[Girl from the North Country]

You freedom-hating pinko bastards! A perfect example of how you hate and demonise the Christian West, and praise the yellow peril!

[wj]

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/bolton-sidelined-from-afghanistan-policy-as-his-standing-with-trump-falters/2019/08/30/79651256-8888-483b-9fd1-c47a2cfadab7_story.html

Now if we can just get him sidelined from Iran policy....

I'd say booted out altogether. Except for Trump's record of finding ever worse appointees, even when I would have thought that impossible -- but I've learned better. Heaven know what he would come up with next.

[CharlesWT]

The neocons seem to think the US isn't properly engaging with the rest of the world if it isn't bombing brown people somewhere.

[Nigel]

All those who say “if we just hadn’t got Hillary Clinton/Corbyn/Shorten/etc we could have won” will just find the next candidate to be in the exact same situation,..

I think Corbyn is perhaps the exception that proves the rule. Under one of the worst Prime Ministers ever, his leadership rating stayed in third place behind Theresa May and Don’t Know (with Don’t Know regularly in the lead).
Now that the Lib Dem’s have started to be included in such polling, he is behind the barely known Swinson.

He remains popular with somewhere around a quarter of the electorate and electoral poison to the rest.

[wj]

The UK does seem to be ahead of us in that respect. We only have Trump. They have two Trump-level politicians heading major parties. (And that doesn't include whichever piece of work is heading the Brexit party.)

[Little Known Facts]

Kellyanne's great uncle in-law, Genghis Conway, was hanged for leaking classified intel about his wife's employer.

[cleek]

Heaven know what he would come up with next.

Gorka, obvs.

[Little Known Fake News]

Kellyanne's many great aunts-in-law were relieved to finally be free to consort among themselves.

[Tony P.]

Calling all pro-lifers:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/08/29/deportation-from-united-states-with-this-type-medical-condition-death-sentence-representative-ayanna-pressley-said/I2Fm6F5b85EKKdLMaLMi3M/story.html?p1=Article_Recirc_InThisSection

I know you'd rather have your tax cuts, but if you can't renounce your allegiance to the Republicon party over this, you can kiss my ass.

--TP

[wj]

Gorka, obvs.

Definitely a possibility. But would you put money on him failing to find someone even worse? (Who was that Russian woman who was working with the NRA...?)

[Girl from the North Country]

We only have Trump. They have two Trump-level politicians heading major parties.

I bow to no-one in my contempt for Boris, and, assuming wj is referring to Corbyn as the second, I despair that he is leading the Labour party, particularly at a time like this, but neither of these is Trump-level. They are not crooks, grifters and ignoramuses. Boris is a habitual liar with an unprincipled lust for power, but a clever man, and Corbyn is an anachronistic, dogged, not very bright relic of a failed ideology with (at the very least) a tolerance for anti-semites and other appalling types who he perceives to be otherwise sympathetic to his base ideology. Farage is the most Trump-like, but not quite as bad and not (yet) the leader of a major party. However, having said all this, none of them are anything to boast about, and if Trump were not POTUS any of them would certainly be in with a fighting chance for the title of "worst leader".

[wj]

Calling all pro-lifers:

First, most "pro-lifers" seem not to care much about life after birth. Certainly not enough to spend a nickle of their own precious funds on supporting it.

Second, if these people were from a northern European country, they could get treated at home. And if they aren't, why would this administration give their deaths a second thought? Nothing else in their behavior suggests they would care.

[wj]

but neither of these is Trump-level. They are not crooks, grifters and ignoramuses.

Fair enough. But that mostly means, I think, that they will be more effective in the damage they will (or would) do. The biggest constrain on Trump is his, and his circle's, utter incompetence at their misdeeds. Neither of them would be so limited.

[cleek]

But would you put money on him failing to find someone even worse?

hell no. the world is full of cretins, and Trump attracts them.

but he likes a TV celebrity, too. so that narrows things a bit.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

When it comes to the worst of the worst of the GOP, it's not only worse than you think, it's worse than you can think.

[russell]

Donald Trump, friend of the working man.

Because if you let the wealthiest among us get even wealthier, the benefits will surely trickle down to you, the average American.

I'm not sure how this even ever happens, because I'm not sure the executive gets to make tax law. Maybe tweets have pride of place nowadays.

Very wealthy people are not satisfied with their extraordinary wealth. They want more. They want every dime they can possibly get their hands on.

They will exploit the institutions of government to make that happen, to the degree that they are able to do so. The degree to which they are able to do so is very large.

This is not about hating on the rich. I don't give a crap if people are rich. This is about preserving the institution of a self-governing polity of free people in the republican form. Note the small 'r'.

If you've got a billion, or even a mere hundred million, dollars, go enjoy your life. Buy a couple of houses, fly first class or even better buy or lease a private jet, eat wonderful food prepared by your personal chef. Wear bespoke suits and have your shoes made by Florentine artisanal cobblers. Hang out in the Hamptons with your peers and compare art collections.

Go have fun. Leave the rest of us the fuck alone.

[wj]

When it comes to the worst of the worst of the GOP, it's not only worse than you think, it's worse than you can think.

No question that we all suffer from failure of imagination. Which, in this case, is probably a good thing. After all, how many horror movies can the market absorb?

[John D. Thullen]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/31/odessa-midland-texas-shooting-home-depot-cinergy/2183128001/

Skip the victims' names this time, OK.

No one gives a fuck.

Instead, name your chosen prominent republican conservative subhuman vermin who should have been murdered/wounded in place of each of the innocent victims.

Grover Norquist is mine.

He's on record numerous instances over the past 30 years urging gun violence against humans who work for the government.

[Hartmut]

To lighten the mood a bit, here's a paper* on pooing penguins:
www.meyer-rochow.com%2Fpenguin.pdf
Remember: it hasn't to be bullsh|t all the time

*wasn't this post about asking for papers?

[Nigel]

What do our resident lawyers make of the claim that the Federalist Society is an apolitical, non partisan organisation ?
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/31/federalist-society-advocacy-group-227991

[Girl from the North Country]

IANAL, but on balance I think the penguin shit article wins over that claim (although you can draw parallels with the pressure needed to expel the shit from the generating orifice).

[russell]

but he likes a TV celebrity, too. so that narrows things a bit.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jeanine Pirro, Associate Justice of the SCOTUS.

[Tony P.]

The penguin paper informed me that penguins squirt radially outward from their nests, using fairly significant intestinal pressure to do so.

The Politico article informed me that the Federalist Society is a political advocacy organization, aligned with the GOP.

Only one of these was "news" to me.

--TP

[russell]

He's on record numerous instances over the past 30 years urging gun violence against humans who work for the government.

Who remembers G Gordon Liddy, recommending head shots against federal officers, because they wear body armor?

Good times.

[John D. Thullen]

The Politico article informed me that the Federalist Society is a political advocacy organization, aligned with the GOP, and uses fairly significant intestinal pressure to do so.

[russell]

And in addition to Odessa, Mobile AL.

We have a very strange understanding of what it means to be free.

[cleek]

we are free from worrying that we won't get shot.

and that's the greatest freedom of all.

[John D. Thullen]

A well worried Militia, being worrisome to the worrywarts of a worried State, the right of the people to keep worrying and bear Arms, shall not be assuaged.

The only way to stop a good guy from worrying, is for a bad guy to shoot him with a gun, but for maximum freedom to worry, an unworried good guy could accidentally shoot a worried good child, which will further maximize the profits and assuage the worry of the shareholders of the bullet-proof child backpack industry.

Worriers target worry-free zones.

Guns don't kill people, but at least the people they kill can relax and stop worrying.

Guns are tools that can kill, just like hypertension and anxiety among the worried, and we’re not banning hypertension and anxiety, are we?

And why not, because CHRONIC hypertension and anxiety keep the pharmaceutical profits rolling in perpetuity.

Guns won’t solve the issue of mentally ill people going on rampages. However guns will stop people who worry about gun rampages from taking our guns.

[John D. Thullen]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/01/us/texas-new-gun-laws-trnd/index.html

When we shoot all right-wingers with guns who loosen gun-control regulations, we will be free to worry about other things.

[cleek]

it takes a worried man, to shoot a worried child.

[wj]

it takes a worried man, to shoot a worried child.

It takes a man we should be worried about.

In addition to being worried about him having the means to shoot anyone. Because I notice a distinct lack -- in places where attacks take place with, for example, knives -- of children being attacked. Even by nut cases who attack strangers.

[CharlesWT]

Depends on the country. There's been a number of knife attacks against children in China.

[John D. Thullen]

The way for China to stop, or curtail knife attacks on children is to legalize gun ownership across the board and thus provide everyone with free choice among weaponry.

A guy in Shanghai stabbed another guy in the eye with a chopstick a couple of years back and then forcibly washed the latter's hair in a wok full of sizzling sesame oil.

He wasn't free to shoot him, so can you blame him?

[JanieM]

China:

Gun violence is rare in China, where ownership of firearms is strictly regulated. But Wednesday’s violence was the latest in a string of knife attacks on Chinese schools in recent years, adding to persistent concerns among parents about school safety.

In the last year, knife attacks have occurred at schools in Shaanxi Province, in Shanghai and in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing. In January, a man attacked and injured 20 children with a hammer at an elementary school in Beijing.

This week, the police in Henan Province said they had detained a kindergarten teacher on suspicion of poisoning 23 children.

The frequency of school attacks has shown few signs of abating despite the fact that perpetrators of such crimes in China are often dealt severe punishment, including the death penalty.

Experts have said the spate of school attacks can be attributed in part to a lack of high-quality mental health care in China and growing frustrations about social inequality and injustice. Some have pointed to a series of deadly stabbings of children in 2010 as the inspiration for later copycat attacks.

[John D. Thullen]

Beyond Meat, which unveiled pea protein and other vegetable matter prepared to look and taste like a bucket of KFC, (they are working on forming beef, pork, and chicken flesh into faux broccoli and cauliflower florets to satisfy vegetarians at vegetarian restaurants who would like to have something that looks like vegetables to those they have bragged to about their strict vege habits, but would really like the choice to cheat a bit with the real thing without their friends knowing) is starting up a division that will manufacture guns out of vegetable matter and other comestibles to fool the mentally ill and possible suicides into enhancing their diet while retaining the pleasurable aspects of gun ownership and concealed carry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjuvr5uGA4s

Whole Foods meat counter is now given over completely to organic beyond-meat vegetable protein in the form of whole chickens, steaks and chops, while the fresh produce section is now wholly stocked with animal protein made to look and taste like radishes, blackberries, and parsley.

Everything tastes like chicken.

You've heard of killing two birds with one stone, right? Well, now we say killing two beyond meat birds with one vegetarian stone.

[John D. Thullen]

Republicans finally looking askance at President p are telling Democrats to nominate someone .... anyone in the Democratic primary that looks and tastes like tax cuts and shutting down immigration, otherwise they'll stick with the USDA Grade A offal they voted for last time.

[Tony P.]

Tax cuts and shutting down immigration will never be enough for this guy. He's too obsessed with guns and god.

God-bothering gun fetishists are not like you and me. They read the 1st and 2nd Amendments in their own way. They're -- how to say it politely? -- special.

--TP

[wj]

Experts have said the spate of school attacks can be attributed in part to a lack of high-quality mental health care in China and growing frustrations about social inequality and injustice.

Definitely sounds familiar. I can remember (about the time the tax cut fanatics were getting started; coincidence, no doubt) when folks on the left pushed thru shutting down our (California's) mental hospitals, in favor of "community-based treatment". The hospitals got closed, and their residents turned out. But nothing resembling community treatments got created. However we did generate a big jump in the homless population.

[Nous]

I don't spend a lot of time at The Intercept, but my own time monitoring a lot of sketchy Threeper-ajacent forums confirms this, and I found it via a friend (and grad school compadre) who was a Bosnian refugee.:

https://theintercept.com/2019/09/01/bosnian-genocide-mass-shootings/

I've been seeing signs of this fo a while and really began to worry about such things after spending some time teaching Chris Hedges' War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning back in 2007. Hedges, like Greenwald, seems to have gone a bit around the bend in the intervening decade, but I have am still chilled every time I read his chapter "The Plague of Nationalism" and see the same exact death spiral being pushed by the RW punditry and major Evangelical figures in the US since at least the Iraq War, with no signs of turning back.

It could happen here.

Since all this was on my mind, I decided to rent Scream for Me Sarajevo, the documentary about how Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden traveled to Sarajevo in the middle of the siege to play a gig there. Outstanding, moving, heartbreaking, uplifting documentary. I plan on buying a copy on DVD and teaching it for one of my courses.

[russell]

The hospitals got closed, and their residents turned out. But nothing resembling community treatments got created. However we did generate a big jump in the homless population.

I recall the same phenomenon when I moved back to Philly around '81. Except it was a Reagan administration initiative.

[John D. Thullen]

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/09/your-fellow-americans-are-cray-cray.html

"A little taste of Genghis Khan butchering and slaughtering the lot of these millions of filth would be therapeutic to the upholding of common decency."

John Adams, 1796.

It was a gaffe.

[John D. Thullen]

Same with free trade. Outsource, kill the unions, send jobs abroad, cut overhead, cut benefits, slash wages, all measures touted by the very Kudlow slime now become p whisperers ... and then slash funding at the federal and state levels across the board for jobs programs and retooling.

The savage killing of the subhuman conservative movement will be as salutary and patriotic as throwing tea into Boston Harbor.

[John D. Thullen]

Every time a Category 5 Hurricane hits the homeland, it's groundhog day to me unless the know-it-alls in the deep state bother me with their expertise:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/09/and-the-hurricane-came-up-to-me-and-started-crying-and-said-sir-please-dont-nuke-me

Eat me, conservatives.

[Nigel]

A great slogan:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/01/mikie-sherrill-new-jersey-pressure-227995
“I would go for her rather than any Republican I can conceive of,” he said. “Abraham Lincoln is dead.”

[cleek]

i really believe Q must be a running gag, at the top. it just feels like someone is trying to be ridiculous.

that people believe it is tragic.

[cleek]

nobody could have predicted that legalizing discrimination so long as you say "it's my religion!" would lead to people discriminating for things that have nothing to do with religion!

“First of all, we don’t do gay weddings or mixed race, because of our Christian race—I mean, our Christian belief,” the woman tells Welch in the video.

“Okay, we’re Christians as well,” Welch replies.

“Yes ma’am,” the woman says.

“So, what in the Bible tells you that—?,” Welch beings to ask, before getting cut off by the apparent Boone’s camp employee.

“Well, I don’t want to argue my faith,” the woman says.

so unpredictable.

[wj]

For some people, their religion leads to their beliefs on a variety of topics. But for others, their beliefs come first, and their religion is twisted to justify them.

[Tony P.]

The notion that "religion is twisted to justify" various vicious propositions is questionable. Who gets to decide what an UNtwisted Christianity prescribes? Certainly not an atheist like me. So, who? Episcopalians, maybe?

--TP

[wj]

Who gets to decide what an UNtwisted Christianity prescribes?

A better question might be, who can say what untwisted Christianity doesn't prescribe? The answer being: Anybody who troubles to read the New Testament.

All you have to do is look thru the Bible and notice that it says nothing about interracial marriage. That's enough to say that someone claiming the Christianity forbids it is twisting his proclaimed religion. Even an atheist can make that valid point.

Similarly, anyone can read Jesus's statements on worldly things and note that they are directly contrary to the "prosperity gospel". (Numerous Christian theologians have made the same point.) So that's twisted, too.

Just by the way, the same exercise can be done with various non-Christian religions. If your holy book says one thing, or is totally silent about it, claiming a religious basis for something else is a twist to justify a belief which isn't actually religious. For example, good luck finding any words from Mohammad mandating the Saudi cultural insistance that women be totally covered in public. For all that the Wahabists claim a religious basis for it.

[cleek]

i'm willing to make a deal: i won't tell you what your religion is and isn't, and you won't pass laws that effectively coerce me into following whatever you claim your religion is.

[wj]

...and you won't pass laws that effectively coerce me into following whatever you claim your religion is.

Does this qualify as a "stretch goal"? ;-)

[cleek]

a guy can dream...

[wj]

"If you don't have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXgmQDFhPjo

[sapient]

Somewhat opposed to having clicked on nous's link to the Intercept, and I won't be reading the Intercept without a mediator, but since the mediator was nous, I did it.

It was a very good, but depressing, read. I have some friends who are now US citizens, who were refugees from Bosnia. This article was incredibly important to me, as I have ancestors from the area that was the former Yugoslavia.

We need to pay attention to the fascism (and, yes, Nazis) in our own countries. This is an international movement, but every place has its own history of racism, and ethnic hatreds. I grew up knowing something about what happened in my own country, but have learned so much more.

My father fought the Nazis. He was a yellow dog democrat, and I'm sure he would be with me. He had a lot to overcome, though, as a white boy growing up in the midwest, born in 1921. WWII opened his eyes to some degree of diversity. He took it seriously and tried to move forward.

I always took it for granted that we were evolutionarily going forward to eradicate hate and racism. I was wrong. We're here, and I am trying to figure out a way to forestall our own version of the Yugoslav wars.

[sapient]

We're here, and I am trying to figure out a way to forestall our own version of the Yugoslav wars.

Just to follow up on this, I've had some bitter exchanges with some very good people on this site (GftNC particularly). I have felt that their insistence on avoiding the word "Nazi" or "fascist" has gotten in the way of making clear what is happening: an international effort to bring us into this era of hateful, sadistic policies against people who are vulnerable in various ways.

If we can't agree on Nazi or fascist (which I think are accurate terms - the people who describe themselves as that support the people we're all talking about), then we need to come up with a term that we can gather round and fight.

There are people in Hong Kong, and people in Russia, and people now in the UK (maybe you are one of them, GftNC) - these folks are standing up. There's a demonstration in DC on September 21. I plan to go. I would prefer that everyone showing up here go to a detention center, and demand that the people there be liberated, and when they are, take a body home.

But I'll start with this. We need to act. Make it a schedule. Make it a commitment. Somehow, we need not to be Nazis.

[sapient]

One more thing, because, why not - the blog is quiet.

This Naziesque movement is international. We know that Putin is a stronghold. We have to recognize its operatives infiltrating our ranks. My guess is that nombrilisme vide was one of them. We need to ask questions, and reject them.

[John D. Thullen]

Here's yer shallow state. You'll wanna click on that first video, featuring the scientist:

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2019/09/02/monday-evening-open-thread-floriduh-man-dorian-edition/

Sure, get c'her navy out there, and sail them fleets in the opposite direction of the way the storm is spinning and reverse its motion and whut you got is the defunding of FEMA and what you might wanna do is drop a thermonuclear device right in its eye and, just saying, we'll see what happens.

Stupid catches up with malignity and is just as efficient as the great Khan.

"This is an international movement ...

And it will be a savage international civil war, waged on five continents.

[russell]

I always took it for granted that we were evolutionarily going forward to eradicate hate and racism. I was wrong. We're here

I don't really disagree, with any of this. Slavery is no longer legal, we're no long under de jure Jim Crow, many forms of discrimination are no longer sanctioned by law, but that is many miles from eradicating hate and racism.

What I will say is that at least some of the groups that have born the brunt of the fncking insane human tendency to think your own tribe is better than every other tribe are unlikely to put up with it again. Not as long as the stories are this close to living memory.

So, there is that.

I'm a Unitarian jihadi, our chief tactic is boring you into submission via well-meaning committee meeting. Not everyone has made the same self-obligation to be nice.

Also: can we please just lock these mf'ers up?

[russell]

So, this is somewhat unfair, but I'm just putting it out there anyway.

I go to the grocery store to get a sweet potato and some black bean soup. At the end of the parking lot is a Jeep Commanche, parked directly over the line between two spots. That is, it's straddling two spots. And I mean, it is centered over the line with almost surgical precision, so this was not an error in judgement, i was some dude deliberately taking two spots.

There are lots of spots, so no real harm done. But, why be a dick?

I walk over to the Jeep, and there it is: Trump campaign bullshit on the dashboard.

Everyone is entitled to their point of view, but it strikes me over and over and over again that support for Trump is just another form of people flipping the damned bird to everybody else in the world.

It's a freaking disease.

And no, I don't hate Trump supporters, I just wish they would grow the fuck up.

[John D. Thullen]

Dust to dust, but they quibble over primordial slime, while treating human beings like dirt:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fox-news-guest-evolution-mass-shooting

Slime = Water added to dust.

It made the world, including shitheads.

[sapient]

I go to the grocery store to get a sweet potato and some black bean soup.

Excellent choice!

And no, I don't hate Trump supporters, I just wish they would grow the fuck up.

I actually do hate them, except the ones I have been assigned to love.

Love is sometimes about actual delight! Most of my family, and some other people, delight me, and it's not just about me - it's about what we mean to each other, and watching them interact with the world! But there are pauses, when it's not just about me and my deep appreciation for my loved ones, but for realizing that I need to cut them some slack. I cut slack for only one relative who is a Trump person, and that is hard for me to do. But the relative is worth it, and I am family.

So, yeah. What to do about people who, for whatever reason, are on the wrong side.

[Donald]

Do people read the comments? I hope not.

“This Naziesque movement is international. We know that Putin is a stronghold. We have to recognize its operatives infiltrating our ranks. My guess is that nombrilisme vide was one of them. We need to ask questions, and reject them”

NV was a lawyer in the military iirc and a left winger and sapient had clashes with NV. From this it clearly follows that NV was a Hitler lover and an agent of the international Nazi movement.

[Pro Bono]

For decades the dominant Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa supported apartheid, and held that opposition to it was a heresy. "It is quite clear that no one can ever be a proponent of integration on the basis of the scriptures. It would be in a direct contradiction of the revealed will of God to plead for a commonality between whites, coloured, and Blacks."

The Southern Baptist Convention in the USA was formed explicitly in support of slavery, which it held to be endorsed by scripture.

I'm not interested in arguing hermeneutics with these people. They can worship their god as they please, up to the point where it interferes with anyone else's freedoms. And no further.

[sapient]

NV was a lawyer in the military iirc

You don't recall correctly. You're misguided on many things. And it's weird that you popped up for this.

[sapient]

The Southern Baptist Convention in the USA was formed explicitly in support of slavery, which it held to be endorsed by scripture.

Reverend Barber is so good on this. I have read a lot about this, and slavery religion is so much with us. Thank you, Pro Bono.

[Tony P.]

As religious convictions go, not hating Trump supporters may be as Christian as it gets. Turn the other cheek, and all that. It's a noble sentiment which I cannot claim to live up to, myself. But then, I am not a Christian.

Meanwhile, wj: Anybody who troubles to read the New Testament.

Betcha a (very small?) minority of self-styled Christians have ever read even a translation of "The New Testament". But that's beside the point.

My main point is that Reverend Pat Robertson and Reverend William Barber both revere the same "holy" texts. They have to decide between themselves what their Savior meant to say about this, that, or the other thing. Neither of them, I suspect, cares to hear an atheist explain it to them.

And of course an atheist has this additional problem: how does he exhort the faithful to hew to ancient texts that the atheist considers in no way "holy"?

--TP

[Donald]

I lurk here sapient. Putin’s orders. And what is your recollection of NV’s past?

But anyway, your paranoid McCarthyite speculations ( in the name of anti fascism) about a former poster are gross. If that sort of thing is acceptable around here now I will stop lurking. Probably should anyway, simply to save time, but that kind of comment provides an extra incentive.

It is possible to oppose fascist and murderous and sometimes even genocidal American policies without indulging in fantasies about the connections of people you don’t like. It’s a big complicated political world out there and people have all sorts of views without being agents of a foreign power.

[sapient]

Donald, you asshole, I actually had a conversation with nv (when I was open-minded about the bot) where s/he was planning to go to law school. S/he didn't, so that would mean s/he's not a lawyer. So, yes, go away.

Or, instead, a lot of people here think you're a saint, so don't leave them - just block me, and leave me alone.

[sapient]

So maybe I've chased Donald off.

If so, sorry, bobbyp! I was lurking when you pledged your allegiance to Donald for pissing me off. (That was a few days ago, and maybe not on this thread.)

Just want y'all to remember that nombrilisme vide hated cleek.

Okay, so, I agree with cleek on most things, but cleek would probably not want me as his family member.

But really, picking a fight with cleek? Gotta wonder. I'm thinking that nombrilisme vide vs. cleek? I'm picking cleek.

[sapient]

What's funny is that Donald is going to go sulk somewhere, and certain of our regular commenters (won't name names, but I'll laugh out loud) will show up for "OMG, Donald, your voice is appreciated and loved".

Jesus, y'all, I know we are small in number here anymore, but ...

Yeah. Donald is not our friend.

[JanieM]

Yeah. Donald is not our friend

Who is this "our" of whom you write?

Get a grip.

If that sort of thing is acceptable around here now I will stop lurking.

Do I have to repeat myself?

[liberal japonicus]

What Janie said. I've not been writing, Korean is taking up all of my time, but I do read, and I'm more than willing to put folks on cooling off, so I have more time to think about Korean verb tenses. Don't need any apologies, just knock it off. Last warning.

[Donald]

Yes, it’s true that NV wasn’t a lawyer yet. I remembered that afterwards— I think he or she was talking about law school. NV was in the military and seemed to be associated with military law in some fashion, but I wasn’t clear on the details.

On me being a saint— um, no. In fact that’s why I “sulk”. It’s better just shutting up than losing it. I’ve made a fool of myself on occasion when I didn’t shut up. Some people are pretty good at arguing even when angry, but I am not one of them.

“If that sort of thing is acceptable around here now I will stop lurking.

Do I have to repeat myself?”

Sorry. That was an example of me making a fool of myself.

[Girl from the North Country]

What Janie said. Plus, NV was a brilliant presence, with whom I often disagreed, but whose contributions I still miss, despite her fights with cleek. Nazis are Nazis, fascists are fascists, unprincipled right-wing grifters are unprincipled right-wing grifters, fools are fools.

[Girl from the North Country]

In all fairness, NV was a pretty spiky character, who could turn nasty (which she was aware of, and took the trouble to explain) but her cleverness and clearly highly principled stands compensated, at least for me.

[cleek]

And of course an atheist has this additional problem: how does he exhort the faithful to hew to ancient texts that the atheist considers in no way "holy"?

if they're good enough for you to force me to obey, they're good enough for you to obey, all of them, first.

[cleek]

i don't think nv was a nazi. i'm not sure i knew nv was even a she.

i know nv was smart.

i just always thought beating Trump was more important than whatever "the left" had been assigned for it daily freakout. i still think that. nv disagreed.

[Girl from the North Country]

I can't remember why I thought NV was a she, but I think she was, and if not I am prepared to assume it in order to redress generations of patriarchal assumptions! (not entirely a joke)

i just always thought beating Trump was more important than whatever "the left" had been assigned for it daily freakout. i still think that.

As a matter of fact, I agree. But in my opinion hearing a very clever person dispute one's opinion is valuable, assuming it is a person of principle and integrity, and so she seemed to me.

[russell]

What Janie and LJ said. There are real Nazis running around, no need to invent imaginary ones.

Pretty much everyone here gets on somebody else's last nerve at some point. I get on my own pretty often. It's not an indication of bad faith or fascism, some folks just don't get along.

If poking at the sore spot just makes it hurt more, quit poking at it.

[bobbyp]

If so, sorry, bobbyp!

The Society for the Advancement of Pure Unadulterated Communism has taken your request under advisement.

Thank you.

PS: As I recall NV was on the suicide 3rd party train...other than that, a wordy, but worthy, contributor. He/she is missed.

[hairshirthedonist]

I was curious to see what new line of discussion was happening, given the number of new comments since I last checked in.

Napoleon Dynamite: “What the heck are you even talking about?”

[John D. Thullen]

Talons

[sapient]

As I recall NV was on the suicide 3rd party train...other than that, a wordy ... contributor.

I'll agree with that much, and also that NV was smart. NV comments often read like a badly translated Russian novel. Obviously, I can't prove that s/he was inauthentic.

I'll take a break so that people can recover. Sorry for my slip into incivility.

[John D. Thullen]

The science of it:

https://juanitajean.com/heres-a-handy-guide-for-determining-hurricane-categories/

[McKinneyTexas]

NV was a useful contributor. I had him down as male, but wouldn't bet the ranch on it. I'm pretty sure he was a paralegal within the Judge Advocate General Corp (Army). Not sure why he didn't go to law school. IIRC, he had concerns about matching his intensity level (very high) with the the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (McKinney is not happy with the Texas Supreme Court at the moment) and having a burn out issue.

I'm not down with doing anything radical with Sapient. I've said before, she's an apparatchik. That won't change. She's highly intelligent and insightful when not obsessing over things no one can prove--which makes her different from the rest of us in what way? I concur that she is more confrontational, at times, than circumstances merit. In some respects, she's jumped the shark and she can over-personalize things (probably her greatest failing). I'm in the confrontation business, so it doesn't get to me much. Name calling is pretty ineffective in the long run and almost never persuasive to those who aren't already in cocoon.

No one--Donald in particular--should let her get under their skin. And, she should be allowed to hurl her darts. No one has to respond, or if they do, just address the merits.

[bobbyp]

or if they do, just address the merits.

Hey, now. Just a danged minute. This is the internet you know.

[wj]

if they're good enough for you to force me to obey, they're good enough for you to obey, all of them, first.

Amen.

You don't have to share someone's (proclaimed) beliefs to observe that they aren't conforming to them. IMHO, of course.