Sydney Moore told WSMV-TV that when the tornado hit their home in Clarksville on Saturday, it ripped off the roof and lifted the bassinet with her son inside. Her boyfriend, the child’s father, tried to grab the bassinet but was spun up into the twister as well, Moore said.
…………………..
“I was pretty sure he was dead and we weren’t going to find him,” Moore said. “But he’s here, and that’s by the grace of God.”
“He was just holding on to the bassinet the whole time, and they went into circles, he said, and then they got thrown,” Moore said.
They all survived. I guess God wasn’t so favorably disposed to the 6 who didn’t.
My wife is an elementary school counselor and today is the last day until the students return after New Years. Her school is a Title 1, economically lower working class one, with many parents (and grandparents) struggling to make it, both economically and as families. There are two parent homes, grandparent homes, homes with one parent in prison or just missing, the whole range. Good parents and just awful parents.
I think the saddest part are the kids who don’t want to go home at the end of the day and just dread the holiday break.
I volunteer there because it is needed but there are days I resent the money that comes out of our pocket for school supplies, snacks, after school clubs. Then I slap myself because, quite frankly, my wife and I are fortunate, economically and socially.
No real reason to go on like this but just felt the need to share.
Man, the boyfriend/father must be so cocky now. I would be too.
“You were a gold medal Olympic athlete?? Yeah I rode a tornado on top of a baby’s crib. Baby did it too. No big deal. You got all A’s buddy? Rode. A. Tornado. Oh wow, just got married? You know what’s more exciting than your marriage night? (Tornado riding)”
A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. …
In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found.
Talking Points Memos adds:
The binder wasn’t found at Mar-a-Lago and doesn’t figure in the charges against Trump in the case.
The rational assumption is that Trump took it and gave it or sold it to the Russians. The pearl clutching about not stating this because we have no proof is ludicrous. Yes, as far as we know we don’t have evidence that would hold up in court. But Trump has made it abundantly clear that he would not hesitate to do such a thing if it advantaged him and he has absolutely demonstrated that he took highly classified documents and at least showed them about willy nilly. The starting assumption on this briefing book should be that Trump handed it over or showed it to the Russians, and/or the Saudis and/or others.
@Scott: A buddy of mine had a friend in grade school who’s father was a drunk. Beat the kid on a semi regular basis, but this was the ’60s and MYOB was the inner city currency of the day (still is). One Xmas the old man literally threw Xmas out the front door, the tree, the presents, the Xmas ham, everything.
@OzarkHillbilly: Today, there is a lot of mandatory reporting requirements. The school nurse and school counselors are more busy with kids with bruises in unlikely locations than with run of the mill illnesses. Child Protected Services is called several times a week.
@Scott: Yeah, I’ve got a friend who works at the MO DFS. They are way overloaded. Also, I got a couple house calls from a DFS social worker when I took custody of my sons. It was a dicey situation and she was very helpful.
@Jen: It’s just the typical projection – Trump is trying to get his Judge (well, one of his Judges) hurt or killed, as well as the court clerk – so they have to turn it around to pretend its going against him now.
Frankly it gets tiresome.
But it also highlights why Republicans are so very opposed to quality education.
Here’s a link to an opinion piece in The Atlantic from Ben Sasse regarding what he sees as the Liberal Puritanism (my phrase) of modern college campuses and the scourge of intersectionality (his term). Sasse is a longtime university administrator, but more famous for being a Republican Senator from Nebraska. Being a Republican he is of course very Conservative (captial C), but it is worth noting that he is one of six Republican Senators who voted to impeach Trump. I don’t agree with everything in this article and strongly resent his framing and tone, but I was very glad to read it and offer it here as an example of a well articulated and thoughtful piece by someone I disagree with. I am always looking for the best arguments from people on the opposite side of the an issue, or from someone who just holds a different perspective on an issue.
@CSK: Can this possibly be a prime example of the famous NY Times Lifestyle section article archetype: “The Monocle Returns As A Fashion Accessory”? This is also known as, “I’m a Reporter With Column Inches to Fill and No Ideas So I’ll Turn the One Instance of This Thing I Saw Into a Trend and Get Quotes From People Who Exist Only to be Quoted”
@MarkedMan: I read the CNN piece, and it sounded to me like Mark Meadows was the one who had the most ongoing access, and, notably, was the last one seen with the binder (according to Cassidy Hutchinson).
Donald Trump is “not a conservative”, the former Republican House speaker Paul Ryan said, but “a populist, authoritarian narcissist”.
The former vice-presidential pick, who led the House majority for two years when Trump was president, also praised the Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for opposing Trump to the cost of their congressional careers.
Given the common understanding of the purpose of government, the prosecutor and the judge are both acting bizarrely. But I often put forward the thesis that the Trump States practice Jim Crow Governance, and the prosecution of the kid makes perfect sense under such a regime. Jim Crow governance means that the structure and officers of government primarily exist for the protection of a small number of wealthy and powerful people, who give some authority, power, and benefits to a few higher officials in exchange for a tacit acknowledgement that a) they will use their power to the benefit of their patrons, and b) use racial and class resentments to stir up the masses and keep them from noticing they are getting reamed. So while these officials may consider arresting a poor little 10 year kid for peeing to be a bad look, once it has been done they must pursue the maximum sentence possible, lest the poors start looking to the justice system for, well, justice rather than the beat-down they exist for. The more attention it gets the more important to send the message that the poors can never, ever expect anything from the powerful.
Less than one month after Texas’ CROWN Act went into effect, the same school district that largely prompted the law’s creation is delivering its first major test.
Darryl George, a junior at Barbers Hill High School in Chambers County, has garnered national media attention after he served more than two weeks of in-school suspension for his dreadlocks, which school officials said violate the district’s dress code.
The dress code sets guidelines for how long male students’ hair can be, while the CROWN Act outlaws discrimination of hair texture or styles commonly associated with race. George’s suspension has sparked questions about the legality of punishing students for the length of their hair and the extent of the CROWN Act’s protections.
Texas’ CROWN Act — an acronym for “Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair” — outlaws discrimination on the basis of “hair texture or protective hairstyles associated with race.” Texas was the 22nd state to implement a version of the law, which went into effect Sept. 1.
he law states that “protective hairstyle” includes braids, locks and twists. It does not, however, mention anything about hair length.
The district’s policy states male students’ hair cannot, at any time, extend below the eyebrows, earlobes, or the top of a T-shirt collar. Male students’ hair also may not “be gathered or worn in a style” that would allow hair to fall to these lengths “when let down.”
Darryl wears his dreadlocks in a twisted style at the top of his head. District officials said they cannot provide information about discipline issued to a student, including whether school leaders disciplined Darryl because his hair fell past his T-shirt, eyes or earlobes when let down.
It’s like @JKB is bi-polar. He’ll have a period of time when he tries to hold it together and pretend to be sane, but he can’t sustain it, and the MAGA just comes spewing out, stinking of bile.
@CSK: I’m reminded of going into a McDonalds outside Memphis and ordering milk with my meal. “I’m sorry, sir, what?” “Milk.” Puzzled look. “A carton of white milk.” “Oh, my-ulk!”
@gVOR10: I remember an early family trip to the South where I learned at the hotel pool that “flip” was a two-syllable word: “Mommy! Mommy! Watch me do a fleeee-up!”
@Michael Reynolds: Based on a few of his comments here back when I used to read them, as well as some comments from others who seem to know him from other sites, I suspect that his primary motivation for loving Trump and MAGA is racism. Trump is a racist and that’s what he likes about him, full stop. But he knows that doesn’t fly here, so whenever he comes across something on some MAGA site that uses the same words as he has seen here in other discussions, he cuts and pastes them. He doesn’t care about them or even make an attempt to understand them, he just posts them. He certainly doesn’t respond to a challenge. Why would he? In his mind he is posting them for our benefit, not his.
The Ben Sasse piece was awfully full of GOP talking points.
Ben Sasse is, like so many alleged-to-be-reasonable-and-centrist Republicans, a fake centrist.
He just appears to moderate when placed in a police line-up with Tommy Tuberville, Roger Marshall, Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn, Cindy Hyde-Smith and Cynthia Loomis. When it mattered Ben, like just about every thought-to-be-moderate Republican, always defaulted to the Trump position.
Sure, let’s talk about violent threats and incitement.
First, though, I don’t recall any direct incitements or threats of violence against Trump here, but there might be some, perhaps of the form “I hope X happens to him in prison”. There have many hopes that his advancing age and apparent lack of concern for taking care of himself, he might succumb to some disorder or disease, such as coronary artery disease. There’s been lots of hopes that he will be imprisoned for the rest of his life.
So, any difference between that and Trump is not binary. The main difference comes from the fact that blog commenters are generally not political figures with millions of people taking in their words. I’m pretty sure it would be hard to find someone with as many Twitter(that’s what it was called then) followers as Trump had on 1/6/2021 tweet out something as incendiary as Trump did and say things as incendiary as Trump said.
Even so, Trump retained ambiguity. That’s the first rule of threats of violence. They are always ambiguous.
Something I’ve learned is that the US contains subcultures in which threats of violence are pretty much normalized, and other subcultures where they are not acceptable. ‘ I was raised in the latter.
I need to clarify, in my subculture, idle threats of violence were never made. My father and his brothers never made them, but I recall at least once when Dad stepped out onto the porch with his shotgun because a car was coming up the (very long) driveway late at night.
This was not an idle threat of violence. He meant it. This is a very different thing. It’s more honest, for one thing. (As best I can tell Trump things honesty is for chumps, by the way).
I have dealt with this in the dojo, too. We do not condone idle threats of violence, we consider thought to be the mother of action.
So, you have a person who orchestrated and incited a mob, and refused to tell that mob to stand down, all with the avowed purpose of overturning a legally conducted election. That makes that person, in my book, an enemy of the United States of America – the country in which I was born, I love, and I will die in if it is in my power to do so. If he had succeeded, that country would have ended.
I am mostly non-violent. There are very, very few things I will hurt other people for. But this is on the list. Should this happen again, I will be available – if not particularly effective due to my age. I consider Trump an enemy of the US. I am patient, I will let the courts and investigative processes go forward. But he betrayed his own oath (apparently integrity is for chumps, too), and betrayed the founding principles of the country on 1/6/2021, and very likely in several other ways as well.
Someone who wants to make the comments on a blog of people who are frustrated with the fact that at least 45% of the country wants to see that person as President again equivalent with what he did on 1/6/2021 is trafficking in ridiculousness. I’m not sure, though, whether the person they are trying to distract the most is us, or themselves. For they are endorsing the worst kind of political behavior becuase … reasons.
You got your Dobbs Now would be a good time to walk away from Trump. He will ruin you.
@MarkedMan: I may have more to say when I manage to plow through Sasse’s somewhat turgid writing. But as propinquity would have it, Kevin Drum has a good example of “intersectionality” posted today. Under the U. S. tax code, married couples, if both work, may pay a higher federal income tax rate than they would as singles. “The marriage penalty”. This has a racial impact, as it’s more common for black families to have two earners. Low income couples more often need two incomes to make ends meet. It’s an example of race, economics, and tax law “intersecting” to create a disparate impact to the detriment of Blacks. No one intended it so when the legislation passed fifty year ago, it’s not large, and no one’s screaming about it. But it exists. And it’s far from alone.
Also, intersectionality (there’s a WIKI page) is a concept under CRT. Sasse realizes CRT has faded as a bogeyman, so he’s substituting intersectionality. As the new prez of UF Sasse is a DeUseless minion.
@Joe: A brother in law worked for a few years in a NASCAR engine shop. He got a laugh out of them putting an engine in a car. The guy guiding the engine gesturing downward to the guy on the hoist, saying, “Raise her on down. Raise her on down.”
@gVOR10: Just a small pushback. I heard of “intersectionality” long before I ever heard of CRT, and it doesn’t seem to apply here.
The main idea behind “intersectionality” – to my knowledge – is that some individuals have it worse because they have more than one identity that is deprecated by social norms. You know, like black women. I am happy to be instructed, though.
I think Drum’s post is a good example of structural racism. It’s probably the case that the policy was developed with no particular ill intent for black couples, but with complete ignorance of how the policy might affect them. I think nobody ever looked at the numbers to see how they might fall on black couples. Until now.
It still has the same impact though.
And yeah, I’d like to do better. There’s no such thing as America without black Americans. It has never existed. So I’d like to give them as fair a shake as we can manage.
@MarkedMan:
Oh, he’s absolutely a racist. He’s gotten slightly more clever – it used to be he’d only comment on threads where race was the topic which is what poker players would call, a ‘tell.’
In a second Trump administration @JKB could well end up on the Supreme Court.
@Mister Bluster: No pay toilets in Monteagle, TN. They even charge you for using the one in your cell. Even if you don’t use it because you already took care of business elsewhere.
I think that the last time I saw a pay toilet was in the Illinois Central Electric Randolph Street Station in Chicago circa 1966. I believe I had the correct change.
(not the best picture but it was all I could find. sign reads “To Illinois Central Electric Trains” at the entrance to a very long stairway down to the platforms.)
As far as I’m concerned all white people in the US are racists in some degree. Especially, but not exclusively (glares at the young’ns), us older people. Considering what things were like when we grew up, how could we not pick up a few attitudes and resentments?
The first step toward changing it is owning it. Some of us are working on it. I’m not a crazy bigot, I feel confident in that, but there’s so many assumptions and attitudes that some of them show up from time to time.
Anyway, I think that those of us (white people, I don’t tell POC what to do about racism) who would like things to be better would be better served if we stopped being so binary about “X is a racist”. “What you said is a problem” is completely fair, of course. I think it’s a better approach.
@CSK: It’s a long story and I don’t have time to tell it properly today, but as I was removing the bootlaces from my boots (so I couldn’t hang myself with them), my partners in crime were pleading with the local constabulary to let me go as long as I promised to never visit their fair shining city on a hill again while I tried vainly to keep a straight face and stifle my guffaws while Barney Fife and the other fine law enforcement professionals helpfully repeated (loudly) their advice that an, “ATM! ATM JUST DOWN THE STREET! ATM!” from which my fellow travelers could easily raise the necessary funds to secure my release from their… very clean and comfortable facility.
Seriously, the cleanest jail I have ever almost been held in.
@Mister Bluster: The Chicago Greyhound station had pay toilets in the mid ’70s. I seem to recall some other shady and disreputable establishments whose hospitality I may have abused on occasion.
So, I’m sure most people her know my feelings about The Atlantic (it’s dog shit). Despite that I clicked on that article (I’m a masochist). The second I saw who it was by I laughed and said “fuck no” out loud. I agree with you that there is value in looking at opposing views, but that’s not unlimited Especially when it comes from bad faith actors who have a financial interest in their own nonsense.
For what it’s worth, I discounted intersectionality. Then I transitioned. The first real estate closing I did after my social transition, the other attorney walked in and said “oh, I thought you were the assistant.” I have men constantly talking over me or disregarding what I said. I’ve had younger male attorneys who have less experience than me tell me I’m wrong. It is eye opening to go down a social peg. I also get away with some things because I’m a white woman.
Wow, I recognize a few of you sometimes from comments on Ordinary Times. Andrew Donaldson writes about some two-bit grifter striking down a statue to SATAN!!!
Wow is this music to my ears:
I will declare my own bias here. I come from the land of small churches, bivocational pastors — if they were paid at all — and hills and hollars where being faithful didn’t have much money in it. Just folks who claimed to be people of faith taking care of each other as best they could. Nationalized politics has started to change that all over, and technology means no community or place of worship is untouched. The accusation of sheltered is harsh, but has validity. Very few folks had such a privileged base to grow from. Still, I’m thankful to have experienced it, and having that filter of a servant-based faith that the Cassidys of the world can’t pass through, or won’t pass through since there isn’t fame and fortune in it.
Experience such as this allows the noise of the outlets, social media accounts, and websites trying to dictate what is and isn’t of God to fade into the distance. “Be still, and know I am God”3 while the next two lines are about God being exalted among the nations and the earth — while little old you, me, us, is still — would work just fine if folks would try it. It just doesn’t trend well, that whole “being still” thing. Hard to get engagement and fundraising like that. Easy to get online criticisms from the buzzword crowd that want lots and lots of works exactly how they want such works to prove out someone else’s salvation.
Andrew beats me handily in the “who came from a smaller town” contest. Still, I get it. Media and money have polluted just about everything including faith.
After the good news on Thursday re. Hungary being finagled into not blocking the Ukraine (& Moldova) EU accession process, Orban demonstrates his dog is still firmly lodged in the manger by blocking EU funding for Ukraine.
However, some commentary is overstating this. What has been blocked appears to be new money, not disbursement of current funds. And as the EU has. essentially. no funds of its own in this matter, it should be easy enough for the states simply to transfer it on their own account.
Orban’s move on this seems to be putting his price for aid to Ukraine to being the unblocking of “discretionary” funds for Hungary (if I have it right, largely relating to COVID recession assistance, as opposed to normal transfer payments re. agriculture etc).
But the rest of the EU may have little problem with funds flowing to Hungarian voting blocs via programs (no one in the EU is naive about politics of this sort; every country does it).
What they DO baulk at, is the money being pocketed by the Fidesz political oligarchy in person.
I suspect Orban may be miscalculating here. Even other European right wingers are not happy with subsidising Fideaszists blatant greed.
And when push comes to shove, the EU states can set-up “ad-hoc” co-operation, “co-ordinated” by the Commission, to dodge formal blocks on action.
This is exactly how the the EU responded to the UK when Cameron tried to extort concessions on financial regulations affecting the City of London financial sector during the Eurozone/Greek debt crisis.
They simply side-stepped the block by an “informal” Eurozone group.
Much to Cameron’s baffled rage.
One reason (along with the bracing of the recalcitrant Greeks) for the proverbial truth of EU politics: “Troika always wins.”
Not a pay toilet, but a paid public restroom, I think it was around 2008-9, at the bus station in either Queretaro or Morelia. There was a gate with a turnstile in the entrance, and a mechanical device collecting five peso coins (at the time, about US $0.50).
Inside it was clean and well supplied. You can’t ask more than that of a restroom.
@gVOR10: Next step–Giuliani goes banko and continues to live in the style to which he has become accustomed while telling the plaintiffs and their counsel to go pound sand, ala Alex Jones.
ETA: Or is the pyrrhic victory the only important element on the left?
Monteagle is a small community near the University of the South, on the mountain between Nashville and Chattanooga. As you get off the exit on I 24 there is restaurant and at one time a tire and service store. Around 25 years ago there was an old west style shooting there. My client claimed to have been cheated in a business deal by the man owing the store and he went there with his .357 magnum to set things right. This being Tennessee the store owner was similarly armed, and a shoot out ensued. The glass was shot out of the tire store and the restaurant had bullet holes near the door. My client wasn’t hit but the store owner was seriously wounded.
My client was charged. with assault with intent to commit first degree murder and the trial was set in Jasper Tennesse, the county seat. When I walked into the courthouse the first things that I saw were two portraits of Medal of Honor recipients from the county. As I went into the clerk’s office, I saw an NRA poster. I said to myself this is where I want to try a gun case. My stated defense was self-defense which was pretty thin since my client went to the victim’s place of business heavily armed. My actual defense was the man deserved to be shot. We tried it for two days and the jury came back with a not guilty on the Assault with Intent. but found him guilty of carrying a weapon, a misdemeanor. The judge sentenced him to 11 months and 20 days which he served in six months at two for one. The sheriff let him out during the day to go to work and so he only spent the night in jail. “It’s OK” he told me ” The foods not bad and I don’t have to listen to my wife bitch when I get home at night.
The first step toward changing it is owning it. Some of us are working on it. I’m not a crazy bigot, I feel confident in that, but there’s so many assumptions and attitudes that some of them show up from time to time.
Well said. That’s where I am, as well. I catch myself having knee-jerk conditioned reactions, and have to consciously bring System 2 into play to get past them. Despite having grown up in the least racist house on the block, everywhere we lived…
@Kathy: Who promised the equivalent of a death penalty? Certainly not the bankruptcy laws.
Mind you, I’m okay with an equivalent of a death penalty–or an actual one as far as that goes*–but I don’t see anyone other than Trump who’s promised one. (And he’s certainly not going to support impoverishment of one of his own.)
*Item #743 in the list of reasons not to elect crackers to positions of power.
@a country lawyer:
Weell..the jury system can be replaced.
OTOH: be careful what you ask for, because you might just get it.
It all depends, I suppose, on what juries might or might not consider acceptable,
But higher court review of jury trials might be problematic.
IIRC UK higher courts could review both verdicts and sentences of magistrates courts (ie non-jury criminal courts) but could not over-ride a not-guilty verdict of a jury.
There are provisions to request a re-trial in cases of “evident” miscarriage, but they’re as rare as hen’s teeth,
@a country lawyer: The Western movies and TV shows that I’ve watched over the years claim that stealing a man’s horse was the equivalent of murder when it deprived him of his ability to work or stranded him in the wilderness. Always made a sort of cracker-ish sense to me.
And it worked, too. People don’t generally cough while they’re in deep enough sleep
One more thing I miss about the 20th century – codeine cough syrup that would knock you out when you had a bad cough. Can’t get it from Kaiser anymore.
I had a doctor tell me with a straight face that the reason they did not prescribe it anymore was because kids in Houston were mixing it with vodka. What that had to do with me as an aging baby boomer in California I never did figure out.
@anjin-san: “One more thing I miss about the 20th century – codeine cough syrup that would knock you out when you had a bad cough.”
Only got that once, when I was hit by the worst strep throat of my life. It was quite a lovely experience — the codeine, not the strep. I’d take a little spoonful and then I’d just float happily on a twilight ocean for hours.
I made sure to get rid of what was left once the antibiotics did their job and the strep was gone. It was just too good not to keep using, and that was a road I really didn’t want to start down.
They all survived. I guess God wasn’t so favorably disposed to the 6 who didn’t.
Judge sentences Black child, 10, to three months of probation for peeing in public
In Monteagle TN they just say, “ATM! ATM raht down the street! ATM!”
My wife is an elementary school counselor and today is the last day until the students return after New Years. Her school is a Title 1, economically lower working class one, with many parents (and grandparents) struggling to make it, both economically and as families. There are two parent homes, grandparent homes, homes with one parent in prison or just missing, the whole range. Good parents and just awful parents.
I think the saddest part are the kids who don’t want to go home at the end of the day and just dread the holiday break.
I volunteer there because it is needed but there are days I resent the money that comes out of our pocket for school supplies, snacks, after school clubs. Then I slap myself because, quite frankly, my wife and I are fortunate, economically and socially.
No real reason to go on like this but just felt the need to share.
The story behind the gag order on Trump and the nasty little man running the digital campaign behind it. Check out that mugshot. Maggot, indeed.
https://themessenger.com/politics/the-story-behind-trumps-gag-order-involves-a-man-under-criminal-investigation-for-stalking
@OzarkHillbilly:
Man, the boyfriend/father must be so cocky now. I would be too.
“You were a gold medal Olympic athlete?? Yeah I rode a tornado on top of a baby’s crib. Baby did it too. No big deal. You got all A’s buddy? Rode. A. Tornado. Oh wow, just got married? You know what’s more exciting than your marriage night? (Tornado riding)”
From CNN:
Talking Points Memos adds:
The rational assumption is that Trump took it and gave it or sold it to the Russians. The pearl clutching about not stating this because we have no proof is ludicrous. Yes, as far as we know we don’t have evidence that would hold up in court. But Trump has made it abundantly clear that he would not hesitate to do such a thing if it advantaged him and he has absolutely demonstrated that he took highly classified documents and at least showed them about willy nilly. The starting assumption on this briefing book should be that Trump handed it over or showed it to the Russians, and/or the Saudis and/or others.
@Scott: A buddy of mine had a friend in grade school who’s father was a drunk. Beat the kid on a semi regular basis, but this was the ’60s and MYOB was the inner city currency of the day (still is). One Xmas the old man literally threw Xmas out the front door, the tree, the presents, the Xmas ham, everything.
@Neil Hudelson: HA!
This is your brain on the Democrat party aligned Vertically Integrated Media Apparatus. They are trying to get someone to try to kill Donald Trump as they’ve no confidence in Old Joe.
I love the presumption that the career government employees will all go Associate Bob once Trump wins.
@OzarkHillbilly: Today, there is a lot of mandatory reporting requirements. The school nurse and school counselors are more busy with kids with bruises in unlikely locations than with run of the mill illnesses. Child Protected Services is called several times a week.
There’s an article, which I haven’t yet read, in today’s NYT, entitled “Why More People Are Shaving Their Eyebrows.”
All the way off? Why?
@JKB:
This is insane. Go take a nap, JKB.
@Jen:
Not to mention those who mistake a public good with private gain.
@Scott: Yeah, I’ve got a friend who works at the MO DFS. They are way overloaded. Also, I got a couple house calls from a DFS social worker when I took custody of my sons. It was a dicey situation and she was very helpful.
@CSK: I have to trim mine when they get too old man bushy. As to shaving them off, why indeed?
@OzarkHillbilly: Regarding the ten year old kid hauled into court for public urination: whatever happened to de minimus non curat lex?
@Jen: It’s just the typical projection – Trump is trying to get his Judge (well, one of his Judges) hurt or killed, as well as the court clerk – so they have to turn it around to pretend its going against him now.
Frankly it gets tiresome.
But it also highlights why Republicans are so very opposed to quality education.
@JKB: wow….almost sound like the inverse of Fox news, oann, hannity, et al every election year. Cry more about it.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I gather it’s a fine old tradition in some cultures.
http://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/t-magazine/how-to-shave-your-eyebrows.html
Here’s a link to an opinion piece in The Atlantic from Ben Sasse regarding what he sees as the Liberal Puritanism (my phrase) of modern college campuses and the scourge of intersectionality (his term). Sasse is a longtime university administrator, but more famous for being a Republican Senator from Nebraska. Being a Republican he is of course very Conservative (captial C), but it is worth noting that he is one of six Republican Senators who voted to impeach Trump. I don’t agree with everything in this article and strongly resent his framing and tone, but I was very glad to read it and offer it here as an example of a well articulated and thoughtful piece by someone I disagree with. I am always looking for the best arguments from people on the opposite side of the an issue, or from someone who just holds a different perspective on an issue.
@CSK: Can this possibly be a prime example of the famous NY Times Lifestyle section article archetype: “The Monocle Returns As A Fashion Accessory”? This is also known as, “I’m a Reporter With Column Inches to Fill and No Ideas So I’ll Turn the One Instance of This Thing I Saw Into a Trend and Get Quotes From People Who Exist Only to be Quoted”
@MarkedMan: I read the CNN piece, and it sounded to me like Mark Meadows was the one who had the most ongoing access, and, notably, was the last one seen with the binder (according to Cassidy Hutchinson).
@JKB: Here, you can add Paul Ryan to your list of traitorous assassins:
Trump is a ‘populist, authoritarian narcissist’, says ex-speaker Paul Ryan
The Ben Sasse piece was awfully full of GOP talking points.
Steve
@Slugger:
Given the common understanding of the purpose of government, the prosecutor and the judge are both acting bizarrely. But I often put forward the thesis that the Trump States practice Jim Crow Governance, and the prosecution of the kid makes perfect sense under such a regime. Jim Crow governance means that the structure and officers of government primarily exist for the protection of a small number of wealthy and powerful people, who give some authority, power, and benefits to a few higher officials in exchange for a tacit acknowledgement that a) they will use their power to the benefit of their patrons, and b) use racial and class resentments to stir up the masses and keep them from noticing they are getting reamed. So while these officials may consider arresting a poor little 10 year kid for peeing to be a bad look, once it has been done they must pursue the maximum sentence possible, lest the poors start looking to the justice system for, well, justice rather than the beat-down they exist for. The more attention it gets the more important to send the message that the poors can never, ever expect anything from the powerful.
@MarkedMan: Sounds adjacent to this case:
Texas made it illegal to punish students for dreadlocks. A school is testing the limits of the law.
It’s like @JKB is bi-polar. He’ll have a period of time when he tries to hold it together and pretend to be sane, but he can’t sustain it, and the MAGA just comes spewing out, stinking of bile.
@MarkedMan:
Apparently eyebrow elimination began as a Goth trend, and eventually spread to the more outre rock singers and models.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Why would the sight of a 10-year-old child urinating in a parking lot induce Tennesseans to start yelling about ATMs being raht down the street?
@CSK: I’m reminded of going into a McDonalds outside Memphis and ordering milk with my meal. “I’m sorry, sir, what?” “Milk.” Puzzled look. “A carton of white milk.” “Oh, my-ulk!”
@CSK:..ATM…
I did not get that either. I can’t wait to find out.
@gVOR10: I remember an early family trip to the South where I learned at the hotel pool that “flip” was a two-syllable word: “Mommy! Mommy! Watch me do a fleeee-up!”
@Michael Reynolds: Based on a few of his comments here back when I used to read them, as well as some comments from others who seem to know him from other sites, I suspect that his primary motivation for loving Trump and MAGA is racism. Trump is a racist and that’s what he likes about him, full stop. But he knows that doesn’t fly here, so whenever he comes across something on some MAGA site that uses the same words as he has seen here in other discussions, he cuts and pastes them. He doesn’t care about them or even make an attempt to understand them, he just posts them. He certainly doesn’t respond to a challenge. Why would he? In his mind he is posting them for our benefit, not his.
@Scott: Yep, exactly. Makes perfect sense under the Jim Crow Governance scenario.
@Mister Bluster:
Try as I might, I can’t figure out what the connection between ATM’s and urine is.
@steve:
Ben Sasse is, like so many alleged-to-be-reasonable-and-centrist Republicans, a fake centrist.
He just appears to moderate when placed in a police line-up with Tommy Tuberville, Roger Marshall, Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn, Cindy Hyde-Smith and Cynthia Loomis. When it mattered Ben, like just about every thought-to-be-moderate Republican, always defaulted to the Trump position.
Sure, let’s talk about violent threats and incitement.
First, though, I don’t recall any direct incitements or threats of violence against Trump here, but there might be some, perhaps of the form “I hope X happens to him in prison”. There have many hopes that his advancing age and apparent lack of concern for taking care of himself, he might succumb to some disorder or disease, such as coronary artery disease. There’s been lots of hopes that he will be imprisoned for the rest of his life.
So, any difference between that and Trump is not binary. The main difference comes from the fact that blog commenters are generally not political figures with millions of people taking in their words. I’m pretty sure it would be hard to find someone with as many Twitter(that’s what it was called then) followers as Trump had on 1/6/2021 tweet out something as incendiary as Trump did and say things as incendiary as Trump said.
Even so, Trump retained ambiguity. That’s the first rule of threats of violence. They are always ambiguous.
Something I’ve learned is that the US contains subcultures in which threats of violence are pretty much normalized, and other subcultures where they are not acceptable. ‘ I was raised in the latter.
I need to clarify, in my subculture, idle threats of violence were never made. My father and his brothers never made them, but I recall at least once when Dad stepped out onto the porch with his shotgun because a car was coming up the (very long) driveway late at night.
This was not an idle threat of violence. He meant it. This is a very different thing. It’s more honest, for one thing. (As best I can tell Trump things honesty is for chumps, by the way).
I have dealt with this in the dojo, too. We do not condone idle threats of violence, we consider thought to be the mother of action.
So, you have a person who orchestrated and incited a mob, and refused to tell that mob to stand down, all with the avowed purpose of overturning a legally conducted election. That makes that person, in my book, an enemy of the United States of America – the country in which I was born, I love, and I will die in if it is in my power to do so. If he had succeeded, that country would have ended.
I am mostly non-violent. There are very, very few things I will hurt other people for. But this is on the list. Should this happen again, I will be available – if not particularly effective due to my age. I consider Trump an enemy of the US. I am patient, I will let the courts and investigative processes go forward. But he betrayed his own oath (apparently integrity is for chumps, too), and betrayed the founding principles of the country on 1/6/2021, and very likely in several other ways as well.
Someone who wants to make the comments on a blog of people who are frustrated with the fact that at least 45% of the country wants to see that person as President again equivalent with what he did on 1/6/2021 is trafficking in ridiculousness. I’m not sure, though, whether the person they are trying to distract the most is us, or themselves. For they are endorsing the worst kind of political behavior becuase … reasons.
You got your Dobbs Now would be a good time to walk away from Trump. He will ruin you.
@al Ameda:
And yet despite always defaulting to Trump, Sasse is deeply, profoundly hated by the MAGAs.
@MarkedMan: I may have more to say when I manage to plow through Sasse’s somewhat turgid writing. But as propinquity would have it, Kevin Drum has a good example of “intersectionality” posted today. Under the U. S. tax code, married couples, if both work, may pay a higher federal income tax rate than they would as singles. “The marriage penalty”. This has a racial impact, as it’s more common for black families to have two earners. Low income couples more often need two incomes to make ends meet. It’s an example of race, economics, and tax law “intersecting” to create a disparate impact to the detriment of Blacks. No one intended it so when the legislation passed fifty year ago, it’s not large, and no one’s screaming about it. But it exists. And it’s far from alone.
Also, intersectionality (there’s a WIKI page) is a concept under CRT. Sasse realizes CRT has faded as a bogeyman, so he’s substituting intersectionality. As the new prez of UF Sasse is a DeUseless minion.
@CSK: I speak of Monteagle, TN from personal experience.
@Joe: A brother in law worked for a few years in a NASCAR engine shop. He got a laugh out of them putting an engine in a car. The guy guiding the engine gesturing downward to the guy on the hoist, saying, “Raise her on down. Raise her on down.”
@gVOR10: Just a small pushback. I heard of “intersectionality” long before I ever heard of CRT, and it doesn’t seem to apply here.
The main idea behind “intersectionality” – to my knowledge – is that some individuals have it worse because they have more than one identity that is deprecated by social norms. You know, like black women. I am happy to be instructed, though.
I think Drum’s post is a good example of structural racism. It’s probably the case that the policy was developed with no particular ill intent for black couples, but with complete ignorance of how the policy might affect them. I think nobody ever looked at the numbers to see how they might fall on black couples. Until now.
It still has the same impact though.
And yeah, I’d like to do better. There’s no such thing as America without black Americans. It has never existed. So I’d like to give them as fair a shake as we can manage.
@MarkedMan:
Oh, he’s absolutely a racist. He’s gotten slightly more clever – it used to be he’d only comment on threads where race was the topic which is what poker players would call, a ‘tell.’
In a second Trump administration @JKB could well end up on the Supreme Court.
It’s almost enough to bring tears to my eyes.
@CSK:..connection…
@OzarkHillbilly:…
Urine trouble if you need to use a pay toilet and can’t find an ATM…in Monteagle TN ?
Oh! The humanity! His poor tortured soul is poured all over the page!
@Mister Bluster: No pay toilets in Monteagle, TN. They even charge you for using the one in your cell. Even if you don’t use it because you already took care of business elsewhere.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m still not getting the connection between ATMs and urination.
@CSK: “And yet despite always defaulting to Trump, Sasse is deeply, profoundly hated by the MAGAs.”
It’s good to know that despite all our differences there are still things we can agree with Trumpies on.
@wr:
The MAGAs seem to hate everyone but Trump. And I think their reasons for despising Sasse are different from yours.
@OzarkHillbilly:..pay toilets…
I think that the last time I saw a pay toilet was in the Illinois Central Electric Randolph Street Station in Chicago circa 1966. I believe I had the correct change.
(not the best picture but it was all I could find. sign reads “To Illinois Central Electric Trains” at the entrance to a very long stairway down to the platforms.)
As far as I’m concerned all white people in the US are racists in some degree. Especially, but not exclusively (glares at the young’ns), us older people. Considering what things were like when we grew up, how could we not pick up a few attitudes and resentments?
The first step toward changing it is owning it. Some of us are working on it. I’m not a crazy bigot, I feel confident in that, but there’s so many assumptions and attitudes that some of them show up from time to time.
Anyway, I think that those of us (white people, I don’t tell POC what to do about racism) who would like things to be better would be better served if we stopped being so binary about “X is a racist”. “What you said is a problem” is completely fair, of course. I think it’s a better approach.
@CSK: It’s a long story and I don’t have time to tell it properly today, but as I was removing the bootlaces from my boots (so I couldn’t hang myself with them), my partners in crime were pleading with the local constabulary to let me go as long as I promised to never visit their fair shining city on a hill again while I tried vainly to keep a straight face and stifle my guffaws while Barney Fife and the other fine law enforcement professionals helpfully repeated (loudly) their advice that an, “ATM! ATM JUST DOWN THE STREET! ATM!” from which my fellow travelers could easily raise the necessary funds to secure my release from their… very clean and comfortable facility.
Seriously, the cleanest jail I have ever almost been held in.
@Mister Bluster:
Do ten-year-olds ordinarily have ATM cards?
@Mister Bluster: The Chicago Greyhound station had pay toilets in the mid ’70s. I seem to recall some other shady and disreputable establishments whose hospitality I may have abused on occasion.
@MarkedMan:
So, I’m sure most people her know my feelings about The Atlantic (it’s dog shit). Despite that I clicked on that article (I’m a masochist). The second I saw who it was by I laughed and said “fuck no” out loud. I agree with you that there is value in looking at opposing views, but that’s not unlimited Especially when it comes from bad faith actors who have a financial interest in their own nonsense.
For what it’s worth, I discounted intersectionality. Then I transitioned. The first real estate closing I did after my social transition, the other attorney walked in and said “oh, I thought you were the assistant.” I have men constantly talking over me or disregarding what I said. I’ve had younger male attorneys who have less experience than me tell me I’m wrong. It is eye opening to go down a social peg. I also get away with some things because I’m a white woman.
Wow, I recognize a few of you sometimes from comments on Ordinary Times. Andrew Donaldson writes about some two-bit grifter striking down a statue to SATAN!!!
Wow is this music to my ears:
Andrew beats me handily in the “who came from a smaller town” contest. Still, I get it. Media and money have polluted just about everything including faith.
After the good news on Thursday re. Hungary being finagled into not blocking the Ukraine (& Moldova) EU accession process, Orban demonstrates his dog is still firmly lodged in the manger by blocking EU funding for Ukraine.
However, some commentary is overstating this. What has been blocked appears to be new money, not disbursement of current funds. And as the EU has. essentially. no funds of its own in this matter, it should be easy enough for the states simply to transfer it on their own account.
Orban’s move on this seems to be putting his price for aid to Ukraine to being the unblocking of “discretionary” funds for Hungary (if I have it right, largely relating to COVID recession assistance, as opposed to normal transfer payments re. agriculture etc).
But the rest of the EU may have little problem with funds flowing to Hungarian voting blocs via programs (no one in the EU is naive about politics of this sort; every country does it).
What they DO baulk at, is the money being pocketed by the Fidesz political oligarchy in person.
I suspect Orban may be miscalculating here. Even other European right wingers are not happy with subsidising Fideaszists blatant greed.
And when push comes to shove, the EU states can set-up “ad-hoc” co-operation, “co-ordinated” by the Commission, to dodge formal blocks on action.
This is exactly how the the EU responded to the UK when Cameron tried to extort concessions on financial regulations affecting the City of London financial sector during the Eurozone/Greek debt crisis.
They simply side-stepped the block by an “informal” Eurozone group.
Much to Cameron’s baffled rage.
One reason (along with the bracing of the recalcitrant Greeks) for the proverbial truth of EU politics: “Troika always wins.”
@Mister Bluster:
Not a pay toilet, but a paid public restroom, I think it was around 2008-9, at the bus station in either Queretaro or Morelia. There was a gate with a turnstile in the entrance, and a mechanical device collecting five peso coins (at the time, about US $0.50).
Inside it was clean and well supplied. You can’t ask more than that of a restroom.
@Jay L Gischer: While I’m still here, how about a Satan Club at Chimney Rock Elementary School?
ETA: And for the record, I, too, find some solidarity with Andrew Donaldson.
The Giuliani jury is back. $148 million. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving person.
@gVOR10: Next step–Giuliani goes banko and continues to live in the style to which he has become accustomed while telling the plaintiffs and their counsel to go pound sand, ala Alex Jones.
ETA: Or is the pyrrhic victory the only important element on the left?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
We were promised the equivalent of a death penalty, and we should demand to get it.
Monteagle is a small community near the University of the South, on the mountain between Nashville and Chattanooga. As you get off the exit on I 24 there is restaurant and at one time a tire and service store. Around 25 years ago there was an old west style shooting there. My client claimed to have been cheated in a business deal by the man owing the store and he went there with his .357 magnum to set things right. This being Tennessee the store owner was similarly armed, and a shoot out ensued. The glass was shot out of the tire store and the restaurant had bullet holes near the door. My client wasn’t hit but the store owner was seriously wounded.
My client was charged. with assault with intent to commit first degree murder and the trial was set in Jasper Tennesse, the county seat. When I walked into the courthouse the first things that I saw were two portraits of Medal of Honor recipients from the county. As I went into the clerk’s office, I saw an NRA poster. I said to myself this is where I want to try a gun case. My stated defense was self-defense which was pretty thin since my client went to the victim’s place of business heavily armed. My actual defense was the man deserved to be shot. We tried it for two days and the jury came back with a not guilty on the Assault with Intent. but found him guilty of carrying a weapon, a misdemeanor. The judge sentenced him to 11 months and 20 days which he served in six months at two for one. The sheriff let him out during the day to go to work and so he only spent the night in jail. “It’s OK” he told me ” The foods not bad and I don’t have to listen to my wife bitch when I get home at night.
@Jay L Gischer:
Well said. That’s where I am, as well. I catch myself having knee-jerk conditioned reactions, and have to consciously bring System 2 into play to get past them. Despite having grown up in the least racist house on the block, everywhere we lived…
@a country lawyer:
My Brit jaw drops.
But: did the store-owner actually deserve to get shot?
@JohnSF: Who am I to question the wisdom of the jury, the crown jewel of the American justice system?
@Kathy: Who promised the equivalent of a death penalty? Certainly not the bankruptcy laws.
Mind you, I’m okay with an equivalent of a death penalty–or an actual one as far as that goes*–but I don’t see anyone other than Trump who’s promised one. (And he’s certainly not going to support impoverishment of one of his own.)
*Item #743 in the list of reasons not to elect crackers to positions of power.
@a country lawyer:
Weell..the jury system can be replaced.
OTOH: be careful what you ask for, because you might just get it.
It all depends, I suppose, on what juries might or might not consider acceptable,
But higher court review of jury trials might be problematic.
IIRC UK higher courts could review both verdicts and sentences of magistrates courts (ie non-jury criminal courts) but could not over-ride a not-guilty verdict of a jury.
There are provisions to request a re-trial in cases of “evident” miscarriage, but they’re as rare as hen’s teeth,
@JohnSF</ Supposedly when someone, in the old west asked, why was horse stealing a hanging offense when, of all the degrees of homicide, only first degree murder was? The answer given was, there never was a horse that deserved to be stolen.
@a country lawyer:
This is why I love being a lawyer.
This is why I hate being a lawyer:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CwFvrXLLLer/
@a country lawyer: The Western movies and TV shows that I’ve watched over the years claim that stealing a man’s horse was the equivalent of murder when it deprived him of his ability to work or stranded him in the wilderness. Always made a sort of cracker-ish sense to me.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
One of Rudy’s lawyers argued, in court, that awarding the $40 odd millions the plaintiffs wanted, would be like like the death penalty for his client.
So, we were promised the equivalent of a death penalty, and we shall have it.
ON related news, removal to Federal court isn’t looking good for Meadows.
IMO, he really, really, really wants to squeal, but the Georgia prosecutors don’t want to hear it.
And in other news, as the House adjourned for the year, Kevin is out of Congress for good (or at least until 2026 at the earliest.
So, if anyone wants to kick him around, they’ll have to go to California.
According to a book I’m reading, morphine was seen as a treatment for opium addiction. It created morphine addiction.
Later heroin was seen as a treatment for morphine addiction. I’ll give you three guesses.
Neither was used only to treat addiction. There were other uses. There still are.
This, though, is really bizarre. Branded Bayer Heroin advertised as a sedative for coughs.
@Kathy: And it worked, too. People don’t generally cough while they’re in deep enough sleep.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
One more thing I miss about the 20th century – codeine cough syrup that would knock you out when you had a bad cough. Can’t get it from Kaiser anymore.
I had a doctor tell me with a straight face that the reason they did not prescribe it anymore was because kids in Houston were mixing it with vodka. What that had to do with me as an aging baby boomer in California I never did figure out.
@anjin-san: “One more thing I miss about the 20th century – codeine cough syrup that would knock you out when you had a bad cough.”
Only got that once, when I was hit by the worst strep throat of my life. It was quite a lovely experience — the codeine, not the strep. I’d take a little spoonful and then I’d just float happily on a twilight ocean for hours.
I made sure to get rid of what was left once the antibiotics did their job and the strep was gone. It was just too good not to keep using, and that was a road I really didn’t want to start down.
@a country lawyer:
But did the horse get to testify?