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The Confluence
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- Avedon’s Sideshow
- Someone waits for me
- Just see what you've done
- Arise, ye prisoners of want!
- Surely, you know it surely won't stand the light of day
- Not trying to pretend
- People tell me I'm lucky
- You're trying hard not to show it
- It's not like me to pretend
- There is no freedom in a land where fear and hate prevail
- And folks dressed up like Eskimos
The Confluence 
OMG, listen to this. My experience in a ‘third world country’ was so much more humane and refined with excellent doctor, family/husband support. This first world richest country does not support women’s right and welfare in the 21st century! This is pure politics — an issue has been weaponized by white male politicians of one party and one party alone, that is the Republican party. It is pure weaponization of an healthcare issue to control and inhibit growth of half the population by white males and their docile, submissive, and dumb females of one political party. Come on, trump women, tell us about your forced abortions by this squatter in the WH. I bet there are many. VOTE THEM OUT!
I am seeing an organized propaganda about this from the ‘pro-life’ Republican quarters already, flooding the twitter with right wing talking points in their replies.
This mfer is already off to a good start with the squatter … not with the country. Liar and a sycophant.
He has two daughters. Maybe he will send them to finishing schools.
wow, this is instructive.
Obama was a f*cking disaster for this country. It wasn’t just his lack of experience, it was his lack of a pulse.
2000 and 2008, elections have consequences.
Another grifter who got into politics out of necessity (and lack of accomplishments despite a world class education) and selected president by the media. He needed to keep his gravy train going for the rest of his life.
Apparently he believed that he was so rhetorically gifted that he could transcend politics, and bring everyone together under his banner of Hope and Change. And when he found that it was not going to happen, he still kept acting as if it were, as if he could bury all the turmoil under another soaring speech full of words which had no real-world effect. And when it was all finished, we had lost 89 House seats, 10 Senate Seats, 15 or so Governors, and most of the state legislatures. We had an immeasurably critical Supreme Court seat stolen. And major Russian interference in the 2016 election was not conveyed to the American people until it was too late. But Obama did manage to keep his reputation unsullied, which apparently was his major goal. A decent man, who was temperamentally unsuited to fight the evil with which he was confronted.
Truly I think he was incapable of recognizing evil.
Neville Chamberlain Obama.
Then the 2016 election is as if Oswald Mosley replaced Chamberlain instead of Churchill. 😡
Good point. England could have gone in that direction as well.
This remains the best short summary I’ve seen of Obama’s defects:
From a comment by Brendon Moody to this December, 2016 post by Falstaff:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2364980587788164382&postID=4133510129334828254&bpli=1
Well, he has no legacy as the few things he did do have been destroyed. It all went up in a puff of smoke. That’s what happens when you rely on personality politics.
Exactly. Too many Democrats, and of course the media, which wants Democrats to lose, or else to be non-partisan (Broder and other pundits were always imploring Democrats to have many Republicans in their Cabinet), thought it would be some kind of transcendent moment to rise above politics; but we cannot, not when the other side plays gutter politics with everything. When running against Hillary in ’08, Obama said, “We do not want to revisit the battles of the ’90’s.” Well, he ended up being revisited by the same ones, now emboldened by the fact that no one on our side was engaging in them.
But one could write a book on how this is all part of a whole; Democrats are much more caring and fair-minded than Republicans, but too many of them think that fighting the other side is unseemly, “so let’s all come together.” And the media always demands that Democrats do not fight. Eight years of a president who did not fight, essentially led to the Republicans trampling on every single political and legal institution. Hillary a long time ago said that there was a vast right-wing conspiracy. The media never forgave her for it; Democrats are supposed to get punched in the stomach and smile,ruefully. And of course the right-wing conspiracy did everything they could for 25 years to destroy the reputation and political fortunes of the woman who dared to call them what they were. Oh, and of course, it is so declasse to use the word “deplorables.” Obama would have never done that!
Finally, Republicans are still playing the victims; they are now complaining that “Democrats always fight against our judicial nominees.” Of course, Republicans simply do not hold hearings on ours; and they were all prepared to never hold hearings on any of Hillary’s. But watch the media do everything they can to make Kavanaugh a sympathetic figure; we already have been told that he is “a great carpool dad.” What a wonderful story to hang on to for 40 years of having our rights taken away.
Pure speculation on my part but why was Kennedy so invested in who sits on the SCOTUS in his place? Is it because there is a chance his son or sons will get caught in Mueller probe?
https://twitter.com/GeoffRBennett/status/1016642192616706050
I don’t know. On the one hand, I’ve heard he was ready to retire. On the other, I have read that he’d already picked his clerks for the fall and was pressured to leave.
I never trusted Kennedy. He let his swing status go to his head. The books I’ve read about the court indicated that he was a pompous egotistical judge. The only reason why Kennedy didn’t gut abortion in the Casey case is because O’Connor lectured him about it until he finally gave in. He was a conservative. More of a libertarian conservative. But definitely a big C conservative. Think Rand Paul on the Supreme Court except prone to flattery.
Something is fishy!
Apparently Justice Kennedy negotiated the terms of his retirement with Trump’s people, only agreeing to retire when he was assured that his former clerk Kavanaugh would be the replacement. This is a sourced story; there is no definitive proof, of course, but would anyone doubt it? It is beyond disgraceful, but so is everything else going on.
Somewhere back there, at a fork in the road, the two parties diverged into one which basically supports Constitutional norms and political precedent; and one which breaks and tramples anything in a monomaniacal drive to win, to have their agenda crush everyone else’s. And over time, they have gotten even more emboldened. The first party doesn’t have the corrupt intent or iron will to fight them; and the “third rail,” the media, is either impotent or complicit. Never in 150 years did one party refuse to even hold a hearing on a Supreme Court nominee of a President from another party. And what was the cost of that unbelievable attack on our democratic system? None. Virtually no one even mentions it now. If the Democrats had ever done that (they would never have), we would have had a literal civil war; the Democrats would be down to about 50 House and 10 Senate seats. Republicans did it, and it is simply accepted. Now we see that Republicans bribed Kennedy to retire by guaranteeing who would replace him. Outrage? No; it is accepted as simply “smart Republican tactics.” The first time the Democrats ever do something slightly outside the little box to which the media assigns them, there will be massive media outrage. In fact, I already see the shaking of heads and pursed lips; the narrative that Democrats must accept this shredding of all norms of governance like good little boys and girls bowing to their political betters.
Kavanaugh hounded President Clinton for five years as part of the Starr investigation. Yet his absolutely hypocritical opinion ten years later that no President should be investigated while in office, is shrugged off. Kavanaugh is being put on the court to cement Right-Wing Oligarchical Control of the country into perpetuity. And the New York Times, the Marshal Petain of the modern day, is paving the way for them. We’ve got one vote left, this November, to try to stop this.
This is crazy. So trump is helping these criminals by separating the children from their parents and making it easy for them. Is that it? How stupid do these people are or that they think we are.
https://twitter.com/elisefoley/status/1016780031182458881
I saw this mfer senator from WI saying this. But feeling very bleak about what is going on. trump has powerful international allies and they are not looking for US interests and trump is looking out for himself — he is a traitor. trump is their vehicle to weaken America and run it into the ground.
Putin’s gremlins hacked the RNC as well as the DNC; I reckon they gained all sorts of useful kompromat. If we liberals knew what the Russkies know about the Rethugs, we could bring them all down.
Even if pootie has no kompromat, he could simply say he does and these mfers will cave. Gym Jordan’s thing is out but like a nasty cockroach he sticks around and we can’t kill his career and send him back to the hell hole he came out of. Hope people come out of the hiding and expose these mfers for the sake of the country.
Hopefully Jim Jordan will get voted out. It sure does not look like he’s going to quit no matter how many wrestlers come out and say he knew about the abuse. There have been 7 so far but apparently 100 have been interviewed.
And of course Al Franken, who was non-credibly accused of putting his arm around some women, and trying to kiss one, was summarily drummed out of the Senate, by Democratic purists. Republicans just deny, get supported by their people, and wait until it goes away. It does not take a genius to figure out that by this metric, there will end up being very few Democrats left in power, while all the Republicans stay. It infuriates me to recall how quick Gillibrand was to call for Franken to resign. He was perhaps our best Senator, and now there is no assurance that we will even keep that Minnesota seat. And so it goes.
A friend who attended Ohio State at the time recalls the wrestlers referring to Dr. Strauss as Dr. Perv. And I’m still steamed about Al Franken’s all-too-fast ouster.
Turn the channel when I see Ruth Marcus, Katy Tur, Andrea Mitchell, that godawful Jeremy Peters or Schmidt, boring Peter Baker (his wife Susan Glasser is lovely though), any of the other NYT motherfuckers esp. MAGA Maggie but she does not appear on MSNBC and I don’t watch CNN.
trump going after NATO… going after Merkel. Who is coaching him with these lines? Bottom line, what is in US interests — leading the pack with NATO and all other allies or being subservient to Russia (and China)? trump is making the latter happen, pootie’s dream!
As usual, he LIES by omission…(60% of less than 20% and not 60% of all energy). His dumb base will just lap it up.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/419defbc-6d37-38ac-a6f8-d8a010975fc6/ss_white-house-does-not-dispute.html
I was thinking about this. The crooked mfers want to show their power play in the open for both their detractors and supporters alike. There is an organized force behind what is going on I think.
From The New York Crank:
The Republican right wing is beginning to discover that it just shot itself in the … no, not in the foot. It’s another part of the anatomy. 😈
http://thenewyorkcrank.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-republican-right-wing-is-beginning.html
Thank you, IBW. From the title, I assumed it was about banning Viagra.
Are you still commenting on Wonkette? Those people make me laugh out loud every single damn day.
Yes; I’m “Cletus Safari” there, with good old George Takei as my avatar (Trekkaz4Life!)
Off topic: I just discovered this on Wonkette. 😛
In my dreams, this is Johnny Cash and June Carter’s biggest hit.
The follow up to “We Got Married In A Fever.” Thanks for the belly laugh, IBW.