The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    I Know You Are but What Am I?

    The election of Trump has been touted as a challenge to "identity politics". What is identity politics?

    The Neoliberal Inside Me

    You may have heard this story. I hadn't. Or at least not beyond the punch line, the cruelty part.

    There was a man, a black man. He was angry a lot and one night when a friend couldn't afford $3 cover charge to get into a dance hall, he pulled out a gun and shot 3 people, I presume also black, but maybe not. One died. All over a $3 cover charge. He then drove away and stayed with different people for 3 days until his sister got him to agree to surrender to an old acquaintance, a cop. The cop was sitting in his mother's kitchen, said hi to him, and then turned back to speak to the mother, at which point the man fired 2 deadly shots into his neck and head.

    He then walked outside, and fired a shot into his own head, leaving him partially lobotomized.

    Abortion: Taming the Beast?

    "Safe, legal & frequent"? Hillary tried finding a way to calm the culture wars, to unite women and all people in a divisive climate around an issue that shouldn't be bipartisan - Republican women and girls go for abortions in nearly the same numbers as Democratic ones do.

    Ah, irony!

    that woman spending........years locking up the Establishment's support and it  turns out that the electorate doesn't   trust the establishment

     

     

    Don't know.The combination of  the Establishment and the electorate gave "that woman"  a  healthy popular vote margin of more than 2 million. (Or will do once the missing 20% of California finally appears.)

    Obama: Pardon Hillary-Stop a GOP Distraction Ploy

    Time to skip the happy talk about how things will be OK under our lying sex predator fraudulent ignoramus narcissist, and preemptively pardon Hillary to avoid another distracting partisan witch hunt, on the email server nonsense and Clinton Foundation 'favoritism'.

    Irony is dead. A short footnote to Alanis

    Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think, that a reality TV host got elected leader of the free world? That the corporate media mocked his rants about a rigged system and yet he won anyway? It’s like Zuckerberg making billions publishing fake right wing news but lowly media minnow Breitbart is the villain. It’s like a buffoonish misogynist defeating a highly qualified woman. It’s like that woman spending eight (twelve? thirty?) years locking up the Establishment’s support and then it turns out the electorate doesn’t trust the establishment. It’s a hundred crass celebrity ads when all you needed was a rust-belt listening tour. Isn’t it just so Ironic, don’t you think?

    Vagina Decalogues

    This year's election brought women's anatomy into play with some of the crudest language ever. We all remember that quote that kicked it all in:

    "I don't vote with my vagina"

    (or at least that's the one I remember).

    But worse, the cat was out of the bag (or Pandora's "Box", so to speak) - women's privies are fair game for contemptuous political comments. A woman, Susan Sarandon, told us so. And she's a liberal political activist, a feminist, so it must be okay.

    Just in case that wasn't clear enough, in endorsing Bernie she clarified "I don’t vote with my vagina…It’s so insulting to women to think that [we] would follow a candidate just because she’s a woman."

    The Wizard Behind the Curtain

    After a bit of thought & perusing through the archives, I'm pretty convinced Trump will give us the greatest chaos, most godawful scenarios, and we'll be tickled pink to give him what used to be an awful deal, but will now be thought of as a bad but acceptable alternative. [once upon a time Bill Clinton was a master of setting out an audaciously wide field too, to put the expectations on his side]. Trump knows how to play chicken and game it in so many ways, such as with the huge threats re: immigration, and if we don't up our game quick, we're in for a heap of trouble.

    Do It To Julia...

    I think I read somewhere or came to the expectation that values would converge - maybe because of the speed of communication, our increased mobility, our common tongue...

    I was wrong.

    Society doesn't move backwards or forwards - it moves sideways like a crab. Buckminster Fuller used to hope for that day we could move directly towards our needs, but a man embedded in tetrahedrons and spin should have realized we're always in orbit orthogonal to something we're zipping past.

    If We're Starting Over, Bernie Goes Too

    In the "lessons learned" department, we seem to be going through major soul-searching for how the party should reinvent itself, with some major finger pointing that the Clinton campaign didn't learn from its mistakes (or "doesn't think they made any"). Fair enough, maybe still clinging to a crushing near-win, maybe just unable to adapt to modern techniques of politicking. History will be the judge.

    Richard Day's picture

    THE CURSE OF CABLE NEWS

    The Curse of Oak Island.jpg

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Oak_Island


    There is a situation-comedy airing on the History Channel called:


    THE CURSE OF OAK ISLAND


    I think I wrote about it a couple of years ago.

    Say it ain't so, Joe

    As Democrats sadly and nostalgically wave goodbye to Obama and Biden, a small upsurge of the "why didn't we elect Uncle Joe" has popped up.

    Coincidentally, researching another topic, I was surprised to discover that Biden had been a Republican in 1968, making the irony complete - no "Goldwater Girl" (at 16) for Joe at 26. 

    jollyroger's picture

    The war of Giuliani's Grin

     

    Good news, bad news, good news:  Rudy Guiliani will NOT be Attorney General, Rudy Guiliani WILL be Secretary of State, we will no longer be in doubt as to "why they hate us..."

     

    It is hard to conjure up a more toxic collection of misfiring neural networks than Giuliani.  He combines sumg incompetence (he ignored years of urgent suggestions too move his NYC security hub out of the World Trade Center) a megalomaniacal zeal for power, a vindictive pettiness that is legendary, and an almost autistic inability to imagine how he is seen by others.

     

    tmccarthy0's picture

    My Election Diary: Week 1

    The next two to four weeks will be busy! Scratch that, the next two years are going to be busy. I am lucky enough to be advised by a former HRC Staff member in Georgia. I think I can make social media work to my advantage. And there is a dagger or two with special skills who have also offered to advise me.

    I haven't run for any office since Student Council, and that was a really long time ago. And I am out of practice. I've been raising children and going to work, and doing all the mundane things families do. I have no more excuses; our youngest is almost 26, and my oldest is almost 31.  So I do hate that Trump won.  I only know one way to deal with my disappointment, which means I have to do something, and I can't just sit around and bitch and moan about what went wrong.  So much has gone wrong and to assess all that went wrong in the last election and recover from it is going to take some planning and openness.

    Baby Baby Baby You're Out of Time

    Reality check on that "next woman candidate" thing. Women tend to rise to positions of power 10 or more years later than their male counterparts - if they're not being pulled up by some family connection slightly earlier.

    Let me straighten you out about a coupla things.

    Unemployment

    Nov 1 2016        4.9             Jan 1   2007     4.6

    Jan 1 2016         4.9                         2006     4.7 

     Jan 1 2015         5.7                         2005      5.3

    Jan 1 2014         6.6                         2004      5.7

    Jan 1 2013         8.0                         2003      5.8 

    Jan 1 2012         8.3                         2002       5.7 

    Jan 1 2011         9.1                         2001       4.2   

    Jan 1 2010        9.8                          2000        4.0

    See below

    US unemployment rate

    Sept  2016

    Jan 2016

    Jan 2015

    Jan 214

    Ignore

    printed by error

    jollyroger's picture

    The President Trump silver lining!! I've found it!

     

    OK, this silver lining is really of importance only to those who fear that they might outlive the ability of their brain vesicles to sweep out beta amyloid protein when they sleep.

     

    The children's crusade. Again

    We did nothing wrong. Except  failing to persuade 600 Floridians that it was  not a great  idea to

    vote Nader in 2000. ( When will we ever learn? ). But because of that we got:

    -W

    -A continuation of Alan Greenspan's loopy version of Ayn Rand economics

    -The completely avoidable sub prime bubble

    -Followed by the then unavoidable 2008

    -Followed by Paulson kneeling before Nancy Polosi pleading for her to do the right

        thing, and save the country from disaster about to be created by his own party.

    Blaming the Victim

    Something's happened to America and the underdog, the underclass, the victim.

    My father who died this year grew up in the Great Depression, so passed on the stories of his youth - Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories, people who survived by their wits and hard work. This included his father who lost more than one fortune but when times were tough could always return to farming, the land.

    CVille Dem's picture

    Can Americans Sue Comey?

    My sister just texted me that she thinks Hillary should sue Comey.  I responded that Hillary should just enjoy her life doing whatever will make her happy, and not get into the dirt of any lawsuit.   

    Then I began thinking about who was really damaged by his actions, and half of the country was.  I haven't been able to find anything on the possibility of having a Class Action lawsuit against him for the aggrieved parties.  I realize that it would be impossible if he had followed protocols, but he didn't, and even went against his boss's verbal instructions not to do what he did.

    Trumps Real Reality Show Begins

    Trump has blocked traditional press access normal for a President-elect.

    Trump has not responded to congratulations from foreign leaders, often cautious in nature, like Angela Merkels:

    “Germany and America are connected by values of democracy, freedom and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views,” she said in a statement, adding: “I offer the next President of the United States close cooperation on the basis of these values.”

    Trumps problem is a very serious one.

    tmccarthy0's picture

    I AM DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THIS ELECTION SO SHOULD YOU!

    Hi Daggers? Or Dagsters? Or umm, okay whatever you want to be called. 

    First, I love you all, we've all fought tooth and nails over the years, and it's been fun sometimes and other times horrible, maybe because I mostly like you all. So right now I am not going to give into fear, I'm not going to relive this election either. What happened has happened. It sucks so much. But we need to move forward and quickly.

    Natasha Gural's picture

    Remembering An Unlikely Soldier

    My father, Michael William “Brother Mike” Gural, was a pacifist humanist. But being born into abject poverty to factory worker immigrant parents in Newark, NJ., in 1926, he enlisted as a Medical Administrative Corps (MAC) Officer with Army Serial #12102416 at Ft.

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