March 14 Open Thread: Blame the Pornstache
Republicans have figured out why they lost that special election last night: Rick Saccone’s pornstache. No, I’m not making that up; one GOP operative actually blamed the mustache, as if the rest of Rick Saccone was a fine candidate. Remember, three Republicans ran for this nomination. Their party’s loyalists specifically chose him. Live with it, Republicans — your base has the intelligence of a cinder block.
Exit polling by PPP found health care policy was a big factor in Lamb’s victory. District voters favor Obamacare 53-39.
British PM Theresa May, unlike Trump, is taking seriously the Russian attempt to assassinate a spy last week, expelling a score of Russian “diplomats”, with more steps to come. It’s unknown whether Trump has been told he can’t fire her.
Scientific American magazine delved into the research about gun ownership to compile a profile of the American gun nut, the kind of guy who belongs to the 3% of the public that owns 50% of the guns. Does it surprise you to learn he’s anxious about his ability to protect their families, insecure about his place in the job market and beset by racial fears? Of course not. But now it’s confirmed by science.
Of course, it’s a bad day for science, as time ran out on the guy who wrote the history of time, Stephen Hawking. Fortunately, there are many alternate universes in which he is still alive.
Speaking of scientists, one Russian who helped develop the nerve agent used in the assassination attempt says it was developed as a battlefield weapon. For some reason that does not make me feel safer.
Hillary Clinton’s approval rating is as low as Donald Trump’s, and she keeps giving people reasons to disapprove. She told an audience in Mumbai that she won the parts of the country responsible for 2/3rds of America’s GDP: “I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward, and his whole campaign, Make America Great Again, was looking backwards.”
This has proved enraging to the mouth-breathers who live in the rest of the country — go figure — but it also demonstrates the white-collar left’s failure to understand the economic inequality that has produced all that diversity.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/clinton/555563/
If she can’t go away, maybe Clinton can really sharpen her trolling skilz and provide an actual service to the Democratic Party?
She should switch to Republican and primary Trump. I might actually donate to/ volunteer for that campaign.
Hilary is intelligent, there can be no doubt, but she learned nothing from Bill and has a knack for saying the wrong thing at the right time, coupled with zero charisma it does not work well. But hey! How about them dead Russians and the Brits reaction? If it happened here Trump would pardon the perpetrators and grant them dual citizenship.
Alby embraces the multi-verse theory! So did Hawking. (But I’m pretty sure Alby was being ironic.)
now we know why mike protractor can never get elected
“Northland College sociologist Angela Stroud from the SA article. Lol, I did part of my undergrad at Northland. The men’s dorm had a large walk in gun locker and a game cleaning station in the basement next to the laundry room. How times have changed.
I can see why you did only part of your undergrad there. Too many distractions.
10 points Alby for the win.
I hope the Clintons retire and say nothing more. They had their ride. Hilary should never have been the candidate, her rallies couldn’t get 15,000 people which is why she went to “smaller venue. Only Bernie had thousands everywhere he went. Right before the primary Bernie’s polling showed he would win against Trump by 12 points, but Debbie Wasserman Shultz and the center right running their party did everything possible to undermine him. Millions still support Bernie and Warren a winning ticket against Trump or any GOP puke.
Bernie Bot Alert!
Conor Lamb campaigned:
1. For universal health care
2. Against Trump’s tax cut
3. For expanded background checks
4. For stronger unions
5. Against cuts to Social Security
6. For a woman’s right to choose
7. For medical marijuana
“Conservative Democrat.” Ok. Cool.
6:50 AM – 14 Mar 2018 another bloggers take.
Actually, that’s from Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau.
Jon Favs? Another blogger… C’mon, bud.
As far as Lamb, yeah, his politics aren’t great. But a regular Democrat, or liberal or whatever you want, is going to be shitty for now. Especially in the Pittsburgh suburbs. (He seems better than Doug Jones.)
I’ll say this though. I prefer a pro-union, social security, medicare for all, person who equivocates on cultural/social issues. For too long we were sold that the Third Way, Delaware Way centrist was the only way. Hedge Fund managers who went to same-sex weddings and ski. Frankly I’ll take that trade. (The ex-Federal Prosecutor bit is very tough to swallow admittedly. Still choking it down.)
We do not stop fighting for social issues. That never ever stops. But politically, in the fight for power, I prefer Lamb to like an Ossoff type. Ossoff got the full party freak show and lost.
We need to stay sharp, folks. Make smart decisions and consider context. I see a lot of time wasting. Too much middle management, policy wonk, status quo nightmare shit. Lack of imagination, really.
In other news, great play by all the students today, don’t you think? We’ll be out again in two Saturdays time in our nation’s capital.
I saw a story not too long ago, (two weeks, perhaps) that was publication of another study that concluded that growing up in poverty does about the same damage to the brain as those collisions in football and hockey are reputed to impart. I’m deeply saddened by the suffering we are permitting by not attending properly to what is going on. Here we are as a society that tacitly approves of the 1% and their tactics, and while that is going on, a larger and larger slice of our country actually is being physically damaged by not having enough. JUST by not having enough. While this is happening, the media are churning out propaganda that these people deserve our intolerance because it is their moral failings that cause them to behave in a subhuman way. But the study suggests we are responsible when we agree to extremely unequal wealth. We make these choices, albeit subconsciously for the most part, and the idea of confronting it makes us each uncomfortable. If we but permit ourselves a bit of productive self-criticism, we could do better. The poor need healing. The privileged also need healing, of a different sort. The kind of healing that comes from waking up, and being a responsible member of a country.
n bad news for Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) who have made gutting the safety net their central ambition for 2018, a poll (pdf) published on Friday found that Americans are overwhelmingly more likely to vote for a candidate who proposes expanding—not slashing—Social Security and Medicare and taking federal action to lower prescription drug prices.
According to the survey, conducted by Public Policy Polling:
84 percent of voters are more likely to support a candidate calling for federal action to take on soaring drug prices while just 11 percent are less likely;
66 percent of voters are more likely to support a candidate who wants to expand Social Security, while just 18 percent are less likely; and
64 percent of voters are more likely to support a candidate who proposes expanding Medicare, while 22 percent are less likely.
Highlighting the polling data in a statement on Friday, Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, said the decisive results demonstrate that Americans are deeply opposed to the austerity regime Republicans and President Donald Trump are looking to impose following passage of their massive corporate tax cuts.