— Herodotus
By Blue Bronc, a Trail Mix Contributor
Having just scanned the various websites I look at each day a common theme is evident. Many sites have individual pages for opinions. Others are total opinion sites. What I saw in common in the opinion pieces was each demanding that their issues should outrage Americans and make that their top issue.
Two years ago it would have been possible to prioritize outrageous issues. There was not an outrageous act every twenty minutes from a senile, old man with serious DSM 5 matching symptoms. Even if he was saying things, it was with minimal impact as he was not in power. Now, we are having a serious issue trying to keep track of and stay outraged at everything.
Today the horrible person causes direct and indirect results when he says or uses social media to express his hate of one thing or another. He has no education in anything that makes humans human, so his proclamations are almost always incorrect or inane.
What we Dems have at the moment are so many horrendous issues from the guy that we cannot unite around only one.
Do we go after the outrage de jour? Or, put together a top ten list? Or, focus on one issue that is a top polling issue and forget the misogynist, racist old fool?
His action, or act, is to throw dirty diapers at the wall. Nothing more. Come January 3, 2019 I hope at least one chamber of the Congress will bring some level of control on the executive branch. I think the Dems can do it if they spend the last two weeks focused on one issue such as health care finance and the opponent in the race.
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“…nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob”
bbronc, “useless” is the key word. all that sound and fury signifying nothing (to steal a phrase) if they don’t get out and vote.
renee, for you. Let’s go Red Sox, let’s go!!!
couldn’t find them singing for last night’s win so this one from game 2 will have to do
BB – I don’t know if Chris Christie is trying to give Trump cover, but he says Dumb Donny has always been like this.
Having a sociopath for a president is just as bad as having someone with dementia in charge.
Based on what I’ve seen and heard from Trump, I think you are correct.
What meds can they give someone with dementia to help them function and what are the side effects?
My great-grandmother said that if there ever was a Santa Claus, it was FDR because he really helped when people were hurting. This is what my grandmother told me her mother said…and then Grandma always voted Republican, right up until W, when she was in a nursing home. Go figure.
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thou shalt not steal…. elections by suppressing votes
Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, has made efforts to hold up 53,000 voter registrations, 70% of which belong to black voters, all while maintaining his job as Georgia Secretary of State, a role in which he oversees the very election he’s running in. This is some Africa-level s**t.
and scotus put its thumb on the scale for voter suppression in north dakota two weeks ago according to mother jones:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a lower-court order requiring voters in North Dakota to present certain forms of identification and proof of their residential address in order to cast a ballot in next month’s elections. A case challenging this requirement on behalf of the state’s sizable Native American populations alleged that the requirement would disenfranchise tribal residents, many of whom lack the proper identification and do not have residential addresses on their identification cards.
The Supreme Court’s order will likely make it harder for Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, considered the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate, to retain her seat in November. Heitkamp won her seat by less than 3,000 votes in 2012 with strong backing from Native Americans, and she is the only statewide elected Democrat. North Dakota Republicans began changing voting rules to make it harder to cast a ballot months after Heitkamp’s victory six years ago. Republicans have claimed the changes to voter ID requirements are intended to stop voter fraud, even though in-person fraud is exceedingly rare.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was sworn in on Monday, did not partake in the decision, and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissented.
North Dakota’s 2017 voter law ID was challenged by Native residents who alleged that the law disproportionately blocked Native Americans from voting. In April, a federal district court judge blocked large portions of the law as discriminatory against Native voters. “The State has acknowledged that Native American communities often lack residential street addresses,” Judge Daniel Hovland wrote. “Nevertheless, under current State law an individual who does not have a ‘current residential street address’ will never be qualified to vote.” According to the website of the Native American Rights Fund, which represents the plaintiffs, many native residents lack residential street addresses because “the U.S. postal service does not provide residential delivery in these rural Indian communities.”As a result, tribal IDs use P.O. boxes, which are not sufficient under North Dakota’s new law—a specification that seems designed to disenfranchise native voters. Hovland’s ruling was in place during the primaries this spring.
But in September, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the law to go into effect. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling Tuesday. In her dissent, Ginsburg argued that the Supreme Court’s order was at odds with one of the top court’s most frequently invoked doctrines on election law: not to change the rules right before an election. By allowing a different set of ID rules in the general election from in the primary, Ginsburg warned, the court was risking widespread confusion and disenfranchisement.
“The risk of voter confusion appears severe here because the injunction against requiring residential-address identification was in force during the primary election and because the Secretary of State’s website announced for months the ID requirements as they existed under that injunction,” Ginsburg wrote. “Reasonable voters may well assume that the IDs allowing them to vote in the primary election would remain valid in the general election. If the Eighth Circuit’s stay is not vacated, the risk of disfranchisement is large.”
Ginsburg noted that according to the factual record of the case, about 20 percent of voters likely to try to cast a ballot in the midterms will lack the required identification. Another “approximately18,000 North Dakota residents also lack supplemental documentation sufficient to permit them to vote without a qualifying ID,” she noted.
BB
There you go again, talking sense. I hope someone, actually a lot of someones, will listen. I would also pose as an issue to choose from – McConnell’s pledge to pay for the tax cut for the richest Americans by cutting Medicare, Medicaid and social Security. And I do not mean to add that issue, but to choose based on the district.
Well written and important Bronc. I got into a major fight yesterday with one of my few remaining right wing friends because he started spouting the “it’s been said” Khashoggi was associated terrorists crap. How does anyone fall for the political created rumor as fact?
On the mob front, I made a lot of people angry following 9/11 by pointing out where an aroused mob was taking us. Kept posting the “flags were waving” part of Twain’s “War Prayer”. Look where that mob has taken us almost two decades later.
Trevor Noah urges American Blacks to register as Republicans. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/arts/television/trevor-noah-voter-suppression-georgia.html
do wish the media (this case lately was mika, but she’s just repeating the mantra chanted daily) would stop with the dems need “a unified message” and “a national leader” garbage for the midterm elections to be successful. gene robinson is the only one that seems to be sensibly acknowledging that it’s more important that dems campaigns should be determined individually and according to where they are and what’s needed to be said/done there. IOW location location location
Yes, BB, we’re in an outrageous rut. Nothing more dangerous than normalizing Trump’s behavior. Up to the voters now.
the hill:
107,000 purged from Georgia voter rolls for not voting in past elections: report
Georgia officials removed an estimated 107,000 people from voter rolls because they decided not to vote in prior elections, according to a new report.
An APM Reports analysis found the voters were removed under the state’s “use it or lose it” law, which starts a process for removing people from voter rolls if they fail to vote, respond to a notice or make contact with election officials over a three-year period.
After that three-year span, those who don’t vote or make contact with authorities in two elections can be purged from the voter rolls under the Georgia law.
[….continues…]
I can’t take anymore outrage…
I just want the election to happen NOW!
Mika and Joe are actually Republican Concern Trolls
She’s an idiot and he is a complete asshole I have no idea who would watch them and think they were worth it
Renee, I agree. Go Braves!
If Democrats lose it will because the Republicans blocked people from voting —
i would have to root for the redsox
arghhhhh I was responding to Jaime — why is the response above the comment
Dodgers Redsox series please!!!!
Why aren’t Mika-ugh and Joe-barf outraged at the attempts and success of people being blocked from voting
because they are stupid and shallow and repeating gooper talking points
patd… your 8:21 cartoon…. I said to Rick yesterday afternoon that it was too bad that the press wasn’t as outraged over the fact that 15 of the 19 highjackers on 9/11 were Saudis as they are over the killing of one of their brethren. Or over anything else related to trumpty dumpty. For heavens sakes media…. wake the fuck up!
Jamie… I guarantee you that major league baseball is praying for a Dodgers vs Redsox outcome. That will get the biggest ratings. An Astros vs Brewers outcome would have made most of the country shrug it’s collective shoulders with a “who cares”.
sam recaps the many ways gopers suppressing vote
As midterms approach, the parties are starting to roll out their platforms. Democrats are looking towards Medicare for All and Republicans are looking towards Voting for None.
Really — Trump lies about Republican job creation and according to Stephanie Rule Democrats have a branding problem
How about this — you have a reporting problem moron.
And how about that Nikki Haley – she called out the president in a speech — saying political opposition is not the enemy
The biggest liar on the planet is the president of the United States and the lame journalists of today cannot get 30-40% of the population to understand why this is a problem
wapo:
Justice Dept. charges Russian woman with interference in midterm elections
The Justice Department on Friday charged a Russian woman for her role in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election, marking the first criminal case prosecutors have brought against a foreign national for interfering in the upcoming Midterms.
Elena Khusyaynova, 44, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Prosecutors said she managed the finances of “Project Lakhta,” a foreign influence operation they said was designed “to sow discord in the U.S. political system” by pushing arguments and misinformation online about a whole host of divisive political issues, including immigration, the Confederate flag, gun control, and the NFL national anthem protests.
The charges against Khusyaynova came just as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that it was concerned about “ongoing campaigns” by Russia, China and Iran to interfere with the upcoming Midterm elections and even the 2020 race — an ominous warning that comes just weeks before voters head to the polls.
In a statement, the Director of National Intelligence said officials “do not have any evidence of a compromise or disruption of infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt our ability to tally votes in the midterm elections.” But the statement noted, “We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies. These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections.”
The announcement, which was joined by the Justice Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security, comes on the eve of a trip National Security Advisor John Bolton is making to Moscow, where he is expected to raise the issue with his counterparts.
Court papers said Khusyaynova’s operation was funded by Russian oligarch Yeveniy Prigozhin and two companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering. A criminal complaint filed against the woman charges that she managed the finances of Project Lakhta, including detailed expenses for activities in the U.S. such as paying for activists, advertisements on social media, registering domain names, the purchase of proxy servers, and promoting news postings on social media.
Between 2016 and 2018, Project Lakhta’s proposed operating budget exceeded $35 million, although only a portion of that money targeted the U.S., prosecutors said.
[…continues…]
Jennifer Rubin op ed in wapo:
One can hardly fathom the twisted psyche of a president who, after acknowledging that Jamal Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for The Post’s Global Opinions, had likely been murdered, would go before a cheering mob to lavish praise on a U.S. congressman who physically attacked a journalist. “Any guy who can do a body-slam, he’s my kind of — he’s my guy,” Trump said in a Montana campaign appearance on Thursday, referring to Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) who pleaded guilty to assaulting the Guardian’s reporter Ben Jacobs, who had the temerity to ask Gianforte a health-care question. “I had heard that he body-slammed a reporter. And he was way up. … I said ‘Oh this is terrible, he’s gonna lose the election,’ ” Trump continued. “Then I said, ‘Well, wait a minute, I know Montana pretty well, I think it might help him.’ And it did.” And his ghoulish fans ate that up.
The Guardian’s U.S. editor responded with a statement: “To celebrate an attack on a journalist who was simply doing his job is an attack on the First Amendment by someone who has taken an oath to defend it,” said John Mulholland. “In the aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it runs the risk of inviting other assaults on journalists both here and across the world where they often face far greater threats. We hope decent people will denounce these comments and that the president will see fit to apologize for them.”
Trump won’t apologize, of course, nor will his devoted base hold his remarks against him. To the contrary, this is what they love about him — the contempt for a free press, the celebration of male thuggishness, the mindless emotional outbursts. Somehow it empowers them, to side with brutes and bullies, to revel in the silencing of a free press.
And in case you thought such moral depravity was limited to a few thousand fans, a concerted smear campaign against Khashoggi is underway.
[….writes here about smearing khashoggi….]
Whatever the impetus, the lack of decency on display — the willingness to defame a reportedly tortured, murdered and dismembered journalist to deflect blame from a brutal regime that snookered both the U.S. and Israeli governments into adopting it as the key bulwark against Iran — should disgust people of good will, whatever their political or foreign policy views. Proximity to and reverential treatment of an amoral, congenital liar in the White House have disabled the intellectual and moral reasoning powers of many previously respectable Republicans.
Whatever the cause, if you are falsely smearing a missing man, trying to diminish the horror of a thuggish regime’s alleged gruesome murder or yukking it up with a president celebrating violence against a reporter, it’s time to rethink your politics.
Attribution:
Saudi arms deal by John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune, PA
Something I was reminded of while watching a BBC history program is that when people die, what they experienced is no longer a memory, it is then a history. Although the majority of the WWII vets are gone, the few who remain should be asked to tell their stories, combat or home bound. The same with Korean War vets. And, sadly the same for Vietnam era vets. The Library of Congress is recording these stories.
the guardian:
GOP candidate improperly purged 340,000 from Georgia voter rolls, investigation claims
Georgia secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp improperly purged more than 340,000 voters from the state’s registration rolls, an investigation charges.
Greg Palast, a journalist and the director of the Palast Investigative Fund, said an analysis he commissioned found 340,134 voters were removed from the rolls on the grounds that they had moved – but they actually still live at the address where they are registered.
“Their registration is cancelled. Not pending, not inactive – cancelled. If they show up to vote on 6 November, they will not be allowed to vote. That’s wrong,” Palast told reporters on a call on Friday. “We can prove they’re still there. They should be allowed to vote.”
[…]
Lawsuits have also charged that Kemp blocked the registrations of 50,000 would-be voters, 80% of them black, Latino or Asian, because of minor discrepancies in the spelling or spacing of their name. Another suit targeted the state’s most diverse county after it rejected an unusually large number of absentee ballots.
[….continues…]
FU Mika and Stephanie Rule RCT Republican Concern Trolls
Democrats do stand for something and have a consistent position over the years – just because you are too stupid or lazy to get that is not the problem of the Democrats. I like the following from a friend of a friend
A friend asked if I am a single issue voter on climate change as he “recalled” I was a big Al Gore fan, though I never bothered to see An Inconvenient Truth. I was talking to a climate scientist once, though, and was poking him about so-called Climategate where some idiots published purloined emails. He responded, it’s a scientific fact that carbon absorbs heat. More carbon means more heat trapped. He went on, you can argue about the effects, but you can’t argue it isn’t happening.
Since climate change will be horrible and it’s a difficult international problem, it is top of my list. I believe we should try to hand the earth off to the next generation in as good as condition as we found it. Since that is now impossible, we should nevertheless do what we can.
After climate, comes water. We act like water resources are infinite, so we don’t seem to care we are polluting our fresh water sources. Follow Erin Brockovich on this service and be afraid. Those are the big existential two.
Next is preservation of Democracy. That means expanding the franchise and not throwing people off the rolls in order to preserve a minority party’s power. This is all tied up in the James Buchanan/Koch Brothers attempt to destroy the power of the Federal Government to tax and regulate for anything the Kochs don’t approve of. This is a long time radical libertarian goal, documented in Nancy McLean’s book, Democracy in Chains. It includes voter suppression, ideologically aligned judges, and dismantling so called entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA). It also includes dismantling public education, which is a travesty and must stop. It includes selling off public resources, like land. All of the above are denounced as socialism, but since that sort of “socialism” gave me my high school education and the roads I drive on, I am good with that. We are in a late stage of this attack on the state, you can see it in the tax cuts and the Kavanaugh appointment, the failure to staff many government departments, the willy nilly overturning of regulation, Betsy DeVos, and Rick Perry, who wanted to get rid of the Department of Energy because he thought its job was to advocate for oil and gas interests, and now he is its head.
Last on my list is the coming cultural changes driven by automation/robots and AI. Lots is about to change and we are driving into it blind without leadership. Historically Democrats have been better on all of these issues. That’s why I vote for them.
KGC… I raise a glass of pinot noir to you!
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/what-happens-when-multiple-women-run-for-president-democrats-are-starting-to-find-out/
Not sure I totally agree with everything written here, but it does make for very interesting speculation. At this point I could get far more excited about potential female candidates than any of the men that have been mentioned.
One thing is certain and that is sucess in 2020 will be much easier to achieve if we have some success in two weeks. All the more reason for getting out and voting.
And I return the gesture..is it because of the Sox over the Dodgers?
Kudos to the Sox, Renee. That calls for a beer and a brat.
KC, while RR may be raising her glass of PN to you and your Dodgers, I’m guessing she’s congratulating you on your excellent 3:32 comment.
Beat LA
patd, I hope some legal group has gotten 2 of Palast’s folks who were wrongfully purged to serve as class representative sand sued the bastard Kemp in federal court. Effing Supreme Court rolling back the VRA protections should be ashamed of themselves. We’re, well, Georgia, is back to the Lester Maddox days. I wonder who Kemp has launder his hood? Son-of-a-bitch wouldn’t know a conflict of interest if it crawled out of his ass and bit him.
Pogo… KCG is a Giants fan… she hates the Dodgers.
And yes… it is because of her 3:32 comment… but then… I’ll raise you a second glass,KGC… because you’re for the Red Sox. And I raise one to Flatus too… just because.
Red Sox and Dodgers would make for a nice series. At least some of the games would be played in decent weather.
Back at you, Renee. I confused the Red Sox and the Braves earlier. It was because of the 1948 Series between the Indians and the Boston Braves. I’m in your corner this year–really
crackers- It’s not that Dems have no message, it’s that they can’t communicate it effectively.
It is not the job of journalists to help anyone with PR, so if the message is weak, muddled and/or apologetic (which I find it to be much of the time), that is on Dems.
There are a few who do it well (Elizabeth Warren) and some who do it poorly (Nancy Pelosi).
Journalists should do their jobs and not follow every dropping Trumpco poops out along the way, but Dems could benefit by sticking with fewer words, repeated ad nauseum, which is what works with voters.
The message is one point : health care. It should have been a 3 point menu : healthcare, equality under the law, and repub corruption. Oh, well.
Congratulations to the Red Sox and their fans. A Red Sox/Dodgers series is the perfect conclusion to this season.
Go, Vikings !
The world according to the lying, corrupt, adulterous, sexual predator and traitorous russophile : Everyone is innocent until proven to be Hillary Clinton.
Great line x-r
BID
You have stated as facts things that are not in evidence
It is not the job of the media to judge people, their job is to report the facts not find soundbites
If they reported accurately what is going on – no problem.
And you are wrong about the Democratic message