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

    Joe's Plan was in the NYTimes for Easter Sunday

    By artappraiser on Mon, 04/13/2020 - 1:53am |

    Joe Biden: My Plan to Safely Reopen America

    An effective strategy to beat the virus is the ultimate answer to how we get our economy back on track

    The star of the NYTimes' op-ed section for April 12, it was accompanied by a large close-up portrait that I at first thought was a youngish Geo. Bush Sr.

    Comments


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/14/2020 - 3:27am

    OMG! CHOMSKY FOR BIDEN!!! will wonders never cease?!!! Bonus splainer: commies refusing to ally with the social dems means Nazis win. A pragmatist, who knew? Guess the more rabid Bernie bros gonna hafta smear him now:


    by artappraiser on Fri, 04/17/2020 - 8:17pm

    Chomsky always was the first person to ask if an "emergency" was a life threatening event or not. We have simply stumbled into his area of expertise.


    by moat on Fri, 04/17/2020 - 8:25pm

    Sample of three reactions to Chomsky news:


    by artappraiser on Fri, 04/17/2020 - 8:42pm

    Alternatively, it has nothing to do with any of those calculations.

    It is down to what is happening in our tiny minds.


    by moat on Fri, 04/17/2020 - 8:54pm

    My own mind might be encumbered by limits itself because I just can't rid of the thought that it is delusional to believe that one of many who ends up being the Dem candidate can make so much difference in "real life". The Congress is made up of 535 people, all of whom have their own particular ideologies, egos and ways of going about things. I don't know how many Federal judges, I know that there are lots and most pride themselves on idiosyncracy. The number of federal career civil servants in Executive is still huge. They all have an impact on what happens, how we are governed, how we respond to crises, it's not just one man or woman with a passionate ideology.

    Having a savior complex is just not useful in this country's system. It means disappointment no matter what kind of savior you'd like.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 04/17/2020 - 9:11pm

    Yes, the world will not be changed simply by changing who assigns people these jobs.

    On the other hand, these civil servants are the thin line that make it possible for you and I to eat or not.

    What i want to emphasize is that we owe our capacity to live our lives upon the fact that some people keep working now when others don't. The much maligned "government" is why we can still complain about it.


    by moat on Fri, 04/17/2020 - 9:29pm

    Of course all us left centrists would easily vote for Bernie, knowing he was unlikely to get a third as far as he claimed (which in many cases aligned with our actual wishes), but primarily concerned that he not get trounced by Trump it equivalent. These fever dreams on the left have gone on 4 years - Hillary gave Bernie 5 seats on the platform committee and they write whole swathes of their wishlist, which was like fine, we'll stick out tongue out at fracking and international trade nyah nyah, but then they still walked away and hung out by a North Dakota pipeline till their face turned blue while the actual party members tried to campaign for Hillary. In short, we don't suffer from Bernie hate the way they suffer from neolib-phobia.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 04/18/2020 - 1:49am


    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/18/2020 - 3:04pm

    just some interesting thoughts about the complexity of the actual electorate (as opposed to "supporters" types and Dem activist types) from Nate Cohn:


    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/18/2020 - 4:38pm


    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/18/2020 - 6:32pm


    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/18/2020 - 9:50pm

    Yup this tack by the Biden campaign about China has Trump campaign worried and split over which way to go:


    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/18/2020 - 10:02pm

    Running around like chicken with head cut off is the plan, maybe?


    by artappraiser on Sun, 04/19/2020 - 10:50pm

    Trump "plan" of supporting right wingnut protestors NOT working out very well at all, even only half of "Trump voters" support them (hey first time I've seen a poll separate Trump voters from Republicans as if they were two distinct units)

    Most Americans oppose protests against coronavirus restrictions, poll shows

    @ WashingtonPost.com Live Updates April 20, 2020 at 4:42 p.m. EDT

    Most Americans oppose the protesters who have called on governors to immediately end their shelter-in-place orders and reopen their states, according to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll published Monday. The poll shows that 60 percent of Americans oppose the protesters while 22 percent support them and 18 percent were unsure. A plurality of Republicans – 47 percent – oppose the protesters, while Trump voters are split. Independents oppose them by more than 2 to 1, and Democrats by an even wider margin.

    President Trump defended U.S. protesters, arguing that some governors “have gone too far” with their measures. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who leads the National Governors Association, criticized Trump for fanning protests that contradict the president’s own reopening guidelines.

    A trio of far-right, pro-gun provocateurs is using Facebook groups to push many of those anti-quarantine protests, The Washington Post reported. [.....]


    by artappraiser on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 5:19pm

    It is a replay of Charlottesville in some ways. Everyone was surprised that the MAGA messaging machine survived that incident.

    We are in Macbeth country now. The King won't change tactics until the Forest starts moving.


    by moat on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 5:57pm

    Oh, they prolly want to wake up White Knights vs Black Lives Matter. Whatcha wanna bet they succeed?


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 7:46pm

    BINGO! I'd venture that it's already happening as evidenced by the most recent entry on this site "In the News"

    Edit: that said, if Trump decided not to play this particular game, I bet the Russian trolls would fill in for him.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 8:03pm

    I was thinking the very same thing about Charlottesville now but was afraid to voice it. So thank you for putting it out there.

    The special thing about Charlottesville was that he got so much blowback from all varieties of identity groups and political ideologies. There is something about the Nazi symbols and imagery those guys were using that is particularly potent in that people that would not complain about most fringe right protest, with clear Nazi reference, many more are willing to draw the line.

    And the thing was: Trump couldn't see that! He can't see the line. Probably because he paid someone to do his high school history studies for him. Hasn't a clue about how offensiveness has to be finessed for"ratings". There's always a bridge too far.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 8:14pm

    I look at it more as a matter of what is permitted.

    Whatever is going on in Trump's mind is something nobody will ever really know. He is not a diarist. He has trouble completing sentences. We all die alone.

    But we can see what a person gets away with. In an alternate universe, talking that way would have led to the immediate end of his presidency. That it did not end that way is not a reflection upon him as much as it is a measure of our decline as a functioning society.


    by moat on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 8:42pm

    Retweeted by Rick Wilson:


    by artappraiser on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 11:25pm


    by artappraiser on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 1:40am


    by artappraiser on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 9:23am

    This from a media & communications expert:


    by artappraiser on Mon, 04/20/2020 - 10:46am

    We are about to see what big money can do about a nightmare candidate like Trump?


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/21/2020 - 12:05am

    At the same time I've recently read that democrats are way ahead in fund raising for house and senate races.


    by ocean-kat on Tue, 04/21/2020 - 1:39am

    thanks, that's positive news. As whatever they do would help counteract whatever message some evil genius might cook up for the flush Team Trump trying to raise up a falling down Trump. We do have many months tween now and then and lookit how the whole world been turned upside down in just a couple.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/21/2020 - 1:50am

    good question:


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/21/2020 - 1:03am

    Fox News poll: Biden tops Trump in Michigan, 9 pts:


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/23/2020 - 7:40am


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/23/2020 - 8:22am

    Why Trump is so unlikable


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 04/23/2020 - 9:55am

    pick and choose, direct attacks on the dumbest stuff?


    by artappraiser on Fri, 04/24/2020 - 2:45am


    by artappraiser on Fri, 04/24/2020 - 6:31pm


    by artappraiser on Fri, 04/24/2020 - 11:22pm