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

    I'm thankful for

    Adam Schiff

    Trump supports choice of sexual identity

    while the military goes behind his back and insists on roles reinforced by gonads:

    Friday's Hearing

    We won.

    What ever might have been the outcome otherwise Trump's intervention meant the Republicans played catch up all day and never did.

    I'll check the feeling of the 538 group and add them subsequently.

    Subsequently

    WHY ? (As if you cared. Nor should you.)

    538's  day job: accumulating predictions and experiencing the actual  outcomes  trains them to automatically reject trivial data (plus their own romanticism)

    The hearing today :Comments?

    Unless anyone has a better vehicle - anyone who wants to comment is  invited to use this blog.

     

    Flavius

    Bloomberg

    The best chance of  preserving the planet is for him to run. The reason is so

    neobvious it would  be  insulting to repeat them . But  come down to there is nobody else more likely to be elected with the skills to  save us.

    Warren Already Losing Swing States to Trump

    Nate Cohen, expert on polling and demographics:

    The results suggest that Ms. Warren, who has emerged as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination, might face a number of obstacles in her pursuit of the presidency. The poll supports concerns among some Democrats that her ideology and gender — including the fraught question of “likability” — could hobble her candidacy among a crucial sliver of the electorate. And not only does she underperform her rivals, but the poll also suggests that the race could be close enough for the difference to be decisive. link

    Warren will drop significantly more if nominated, from GOP attacks as a "tax raising big government elite east coast professor from Harvard", a "socialist", a "Maduro clone", "will turn America into Venezuela" etc. She has given the Republicans plenty of material to use against her in her 54 plans.  (yes, there are 54 of them) Even some of her single plans, like her 15,000+ word Medicare for All healthcare/tax plan make FDR's New Deal look like a business as usual continuing resolution. The Warren plan would kick 140 million or so off their current health care plans. Although some might not mind, millions who like their plans will mind. Many on Medicare may be concerned the system will go broke faster, leaving them at the end of the line.  Warren has no provision in the plan for anyone in the United States to pay anything per visit, which is an invitation to broken appointments and increased use of emergency rooms. There is no guarantee that doctors will not just opt out of the system and go full fee for service, causing further congestion at doctors still taking Medicare for All. It will overturn 18% of our economy and is sure to be a ripe target for all kinds of attacks from the Republicans and their PAC's.

    "Ok Boomer"

    Gen Z thinks Boomers don't get it. By 1976, here's what Boomers "get". One of my favorite movie scenes of all time, from Network:

     

    Trump Shoots Federal Judge on Pearl Avenue NYC

    As court sessions at the Southern District of New York City concluded today, President Trump was seen driving from Trump Tower with a fleet of Secret Service personnel to a street outside the courthouse where he jumped out of his limousine and shot a judge. He was said to be accompanied by Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Police have not identified the wounded judge, who is expected to survive, but they said the judge was not involved in any cases involving the President.

    Adventures in Cultural Appropriation, Part II

    (Part 1 is here.)

    Made in America: How four iconic dishes with roots in other lands tell a story of immigration and transformation

    by Tim Carmen & Shelly Tan @ WashingtonPost.com, Oct. 11

    Spaghetti and meatballs, chile con queso, gumbo and the California roll have become American icons. Their journey to that point is one of immigration and transformation.

    Big picture perspective

    jollyroger's picture

    Hunter Biden: "Now, as to schtuping my dead brother's widow..."

     

    This is a pretty hip room, politically, so everyone remembers ( all the way back to 2016)  how the visible anguish over "should I run or  should I not" exhibited by Joe Biden included a large, if vague, "evaluating it's impact on my family yadaya."

     

    Today, we may translate at least a part of those concerns as touching upon the obvious  corrupt cloud enveloping Hunter's Board of Directors seat with Burisma.

     

    Suburban/Rural Swing Women

    Here they are (from this Oct. 11 NYTimes article: As Impeachment Divide Persists, More Voters Embrace an Inquiry):

    Denise Reynolds, left, and Sonya Pancione feel differently about the impeachment inquiry.CreditJason Andrew for The New York Times

    They live in Culpeper, a town that is older than America itself and sits roughly halfway between Washington, D.C. and Charlottesville, Va. where Representative Abigail Spanberger, a freshman Democrat, flipped a seat long held by Republicans

    They are together at the Rusty Willow Boutique, an upscale women’s clothing shop that was preparing for its grand opening where just the mention of Mr. Trump prompted a squabble between Sonya Pancione, 57, the shop’s owner, and Denise Reynolds, 50, one of her best friends from church. Ms. Pancione is dead-set against impeachment.

    “Respect the office. It’s a democracy. People voted for him,” she said.

    Ms. Reynolds loathes Mr. Trump and blames him for inciting racial hatred. She was once excited about his candidacy — “I thought we needed somebody who understood business in that seat,” she said — but says now that if he were impeached and removed from office, “it would not upset me in the least.”

    More on their House Representative:

    California PG&E's 100 Year Old Transmission Grid

    A million or more Californians have their electricity cut due to wind and the chance a transmission tower, line or cable might fail and start a fire.  A large part of the reason is the advanced age of the high voltage electrical grid that carries power long distances from hydroelectric and other sources in the state to cities where it is used.

    Looks like the NBA is more totalitarian about protest than the NFL?

    In the NFL, it's the players that got the "censored" treatment. But at NBA games, fans gotta toe the line, too?

    The results of a two-state "solution" summarized in two tweets

    India is reacting to 70 years of Jihad from without and appeasement within.

    If Jinnah was wrong, Pakistan should not exist.

    If he was right, then it's Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, and we can stop pretending otherwise.

    Pakistan can exist or India can be secular. Either, or. https://t.co/92Xvz0e5bn

    tmccarthy0's picture

    What to Wear to the Civil War; Impeachment Style

    It’s a real question people, style is essential! What will we wear to our upcoming Civil War?

    Ah blessed be new coalitions between "People of the Book"!

    Just In time for Rosh Hashanah no less. Such a strong reminder that the book of the famous phrase is known in the west as the: The Old Testament!

    MBS “is leading Saudi Arabia through the most dramatic, positive and exciting social and economic reforms in the history of the Kingdom” — US evangelical activist Joel Rosenberg https://t.co/jcrYYzEqzt

    What Republicans Would Have Us Believe

    This will be a short blog, really just a question. I'm not going to try to analyze every fact or theory of the many conspiracy theories out there. The thing is what it all amounts to is that the right wing would have us believe that the democrats with very little power, with Trump and the republicans controlling the presidency and both houses of congress were able to start a fraudulent investigation that resulted in several of Trump's associates being falsely charged with crimes they didn't commit and were able to get convictions that sent them to jail.

    "May you live in interesting times"

    Any other boomers having the realization: we did and we do? This tweet hit me hard like that:

    Is "cancel culture" as bad or worse than the right-wing Christian movement?

    Modern social justice and cancel culture are secular reboots of the evangelical Christian crusading of decades past, with one big difference: Christianity is replete with forgiveness and redemption narratives, while the secular version has none. https://t.co/HU07xln9el

    — Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm) September 25, 2019

    Dairy, it's baaaaack!

    I cannot believe what I am now seeing in nutritional science news. It's yet another ultimate flip flop. My whole life I've watched people take their doctor's advice, and within a decade, that was flipped. Conclusion: this "science", just like many others related to the practice of medicine, is still in its infancy and humans are the guinea pigs, "they" basically understand zilch about what food does to people. The ironic thing: in this case, the results do not synch with the environmental proposals that we need to cut way down on animal husbandry. Nor do they support the idea of plant- based substitutes for animal milk.

    Two examples, one recent and one from a year ago:

    You would like to have a beer with her and would also let her babysit your kids!

    Liz Warren gets the hang of doing exactly the kind of campaigning that people like Peracles hate, while Bernie drones crabby-old-man socialist agitprop in the background:

    Richard Day's picture

    QUADRUPLE

    ABC Debate Ad Links Cambodian Genocide w Democrats

    Slate:

    On the debate stage in Houston, Bernie Sanders frustratedly batted away any comparisons between his brand of “democratic socialism” and that of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But that was mild stuff compared with the red-baiting going on during the commercial breaks, when viewers were treated to a commercial in which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face goes up in flames, replaced by images of skulls from the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia.

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