Nancy

Documentation. Witnesses. Facts. Truth. That's what they're afraid of.

Saturday, July 23, 2016

Pantheon TV

I think that it's time that HBO buy Mr. Robot from USA and adds some tits. Really one of the best shows on TV so early in its run.

Friday, July 22, 2016

A Lesson from Last Night in Images

Things that pivot:

 
 
 
 


Things that don't:


 Media, I hope you can remember that.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Meredith McIver

Dammit, I can't believe I'm falling for Slate clickbait twice today, but...

What's that whole thing about having to prove a negative?

She started a Twitter feed just yesterday, and look at these pictures:


 
 
 

 
Source: Heavy.com
 
 
   
 
 
 
I smell the fucking of rats...

I'm Not Afraid...

I like Jamelle Bouie a lot, but I have to respectfully disagree with this:

The argument was clear: You are in danger, threatened by a brown invaders and black saboteurs. Donald Trump will keep you safe. It was a remarkable display of demagoguery, a clear sign that the Republican Party—whatever it was before Trump—is now a party of overt white nationalism. And it was just the beginning.

I feel like I'm "whitesplaining," but I think (I hope) I'm just "liberal who has followed the Republican Party for two decades and has read obsessively about American political history-splaining" (rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?).

The GOP has been headed this way for almost 60 years. Rick Perlstein has done a tremendous job chronicling this. It worked for a while, as those whites with memories of completely subjugating blacks under Jim Crow could be told by their economic betters, who don't give two shits about what they have to do to get their taxes cut, to blame their own declines on minorities. But each year, more of those die off, and every report on institutional racism or iPhone video of a policeman killing an African-American is another Emmett Till moment for those who haven't seen through this façade already, and another nail in the old guard's coffin (which they eagerly dug themselves). We're talking about a party that has won the popular vote once in the last six elections.

It felt like an ordinary event at an ordinary convention. That was the scariest part of all—the feeling that people here had already fit Donald Trump into the normal rhythms of American political life.

It's part of the normal rhythms of American life for the half-full arena of white octogenarians in a city where they're really not welcome:



There are fewer of them, and they know that. It's making them scream louder. But the volume of their insane bellowing does not increase the number of votes they have.

No matter what Michael Moore says, Donald Trump will not win in November.

This is not to say we should rest on our laurels; through a variety of ways of cheating or at least skirting around the spirit of the law, the Republicans have held a lot more power than should be reflected in the number of votes they have. So we need to change that. Aside from electing Hillary, we need 60 seats in the Senate, and a majority in the House. That's a really steep hill to climb. If we do pull it off, we restore voting rights, repeal Citizens United, and roll back this ridiculous gerrymandering of the last decade, and continue to repair the damage done by the other side's slash-and-burn tactics.

This country is not getting worse. It's getting better. Not as quickly as we'd like; the bad guys are not going down quietly. But they are going down.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

I Hate To Say It....

I wanted to live blog more, but I couldn't even bring myself to watch. I'm checking in every now and then to see if there might be anything interesting at all, but the convention seems to just continue to serve up maggoty shit on a shingle instead of red meat, which as least would be fun. Maybe tomorrow.

Serious Question...

In which cycle does the RNC feature a liberal chained to a wall being forced to call himself Reek? 2024? 2028? I swear, we're almost there.

Monday, July 18, 2016

RNC Liveblog Post #7

10:22 PM CST... Silhouette Trump got me to chug a whole beer. This got better quickly!

10:24 PM CST... I feel like she's about to get dragged off to Green Acres.

10:25 PM CST... Blinded by the wife... wrapped up with a douche...

10:28 PM CST... Bob Dole... forget drinking. Pop a Viagra!

10:33 PM CST... I got distracted. I just can't care anymore. I've got nothing to say. Some blogger I am.

RNC Liveblog Post #6... Rudy Edition

9:53 CST... Sorry, your son died for absolutely nothing. And you know why? Because of the people right in front of you, and the people who put you on stage. And there we go again, we can't name the enemy. IT'S YOU.

9:55 CST... Let's bring in the Confederates... Jefferson Beauregarde H. Doody.

9:57 CST... I don't remember who became President after 1999. Don't think I'll find out tonight.

9:59 CST... http://www.complex.com/life/2016/07/rnc-drinking-game . I need a better drinking game than that.

10:01 CST...

10:03 CST...  This is SO boring. Oh wait!!! RUUUUUUUDY!!!!

10:04 CST... We're doing it. 9/11 drinking. What's that claw???

10:06 CST... This man is afraid of everything.

10:09 CST.. Is he doing the Macarena?

10:11 CST... I think "Islamic Extremist Aneurysm" might be about to become a thing...

10:14 CST... I just screamed out "YES!" at the bar when he said September 11th, but then he said September 12th, 2012. Oh well, I think it counts. If I don't drink, what's the point? So I'm chugging now.

10:19 CST... OK, "Reagan" deserves a drink. I'm making this up as I go along.

Done, done, onto the next post.

RNC Liveblog Post #5

9:44 PM... Tom Cotton. SUPERSTAR!

 
 
9:49 PM CST... I'll call the enemy by its name. Donald Trump. Can you do that, Senator Cotton?
 
 
9:50 CST... When did Tom Cotton turn into John Kerry circa 2004? Where's the help coming from, motherfucker?
 
 
9:51 PM... Christmas Baby? Relevant because...

RNC Liveblog Post #4

9:44 PM... Tom Cotton. SUPERSTAR!

RNC Live Post #3

9:37 PM... Thank you, Chez Pazienza

9:41 PM... I don't know how to properly post a Tweet in Blogger. Man, it's been a long time since I've blogged.

9:43 PM CST... This is not a candidate who is going to win. Sorry, dude.

RNC Live Post #2

9:31 PM... Black privilege. That's the first bit of red meat. These guys love this stuff.

9:32 PM... Anyone surprised about references to reality TV? And holy crap, is the audience old. My friend just say "Yeah, grey hair?" No, white hair!

9:35 PM... These are buzzwords that are so worn. They're not red meat. They're maggoty meat.

9:36 PM... Trump is clearly their leader. One sentence does not lead logically to the next. He's bred a whole family of nonsequiturs.

Oooh... RNC Liveblogging... Don't Mind if I Do!

9:23 CST... I've only been watching for 20 minutes, but I'm shocked at the lack of red meat. This is not your older brother's RNC.

9:24 CST... OK, there's the Fox Sheriff guy. There is nothing to say. Not in the "there are no words" sense. There is just nothing happening.

9:28 CST... Yup. MLK. That's a must. Because, well, I don't know. I'm just lost. But I see C-SPAN trying to catch all five black people on camera right now.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

I… Just Can’t. (Or how I survived Netroots Nation 2016)


I attended the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh in 2009, and had a tremendous time. I’ve personally never spent much time in a formal role as a political activist, but I felt very welcome at the conference, because there were many others just like me, who didn’t work for any particular organization or vendor. It felt like a very important moment, with Bill Clinton speaking, among many others, and the place was littered with celebrity bloggers as well as recognizable members of the mainstream press. Markos Moulitsas has to be commended for what he started, waaaay back in 2002. But he’s no longer part of this. This conference is very much absent from Daily Kos this year.
Flash forward to today in St. Louis. I’m one of the only people here without an organizational affiliation. This is now a conference for professionals, organized by pseudo-professionals. Daily Kos is long gone as a presence, and I don’t even know how it can keep the moniker “Netroots.” There are very few named bloggers, no journalists to speak of, and is of no consequence to anyone outside of the St. Louis Convention Center.

I’m currently watching the one moment of energy I’ve seen at this whole conference… protesters shut downI-64 in downtown St. Louis. But to whom does that send a message? It’s not Ferguson. You’re just inconveniencing people who already agree with you, and reaching, at best, the local press. Black Lives Matter, you're doing the best you can, but we need to find you some resources and some strategy. The Tea Party didn't start in 2009, and it wasn't a grassroots movement. It came out of the box ready to go.

One of the places where I’m for consolidation is the bringing together of talented liberal voices. I don't mean just knowledgeable people. We need people that are good on TV and radio. The best of the writers, the best of the bloggers, the best of the talking heads. Netroots Nation continue to be a failure until it gets some sort of formal backing. It’s the same issue as I had with the Occupy movement. No structure, no leadership. It wasn't their fault. We don't have the money or coherence of message.

Will someone adopt Netroots Nation? Do we have another Kos? Who’s going to step up? Who are our Koch Brothers, making sure that we have cushy jobs for those who commit their lives to our cause? We need the equivalent of wingnut welfare. We don't need, as I saw at NN, a group to combat ALEC. We need our own ALEC! (And no, SIX doesn't count. At least I haven't heard anything about it in two years).

All this is to say that I’ve needed substances to get through this conference, because it just is spending three days of my life watching a few hundred people tread wated. I’m blogging anonymously, but I’m the one who’s been sitting through the whole conference with a large open container of some adult beverage or another.
Folks, we can do better. I'll write more about this, well, if I write more...

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Trump Can't Win

I'm a little late to the party on this, but I'm just getting totally tired of all of my liberal friends and colleagues crapping their pants about the possibility of Donald Trump winning the general election in November. I've been saying for years that the presidential candidate who wins is the one that runs the objectively better campaign. So for anyone who thinks Trump has ANY shot at all, I give you this:
It's the same thing with the blowup over the Star of David bit last week -- the issue is not that Trump is or is not an anti-Semite, it's that his campaign, knowing that he has such a huge white supremacist following, isn't just a wee bit careful about the sources of the things they post.

How can a campaign that's such a clusterfuck even clear 40%? NAH GUH HAPPEN. This campaign is about 25% as good as the worst of the losing campaigns I've ever seen (McCain, Mondale, Dukakis...).

With that, I'd like to invite my lefty compatriots to wipe their asses, go find a change of undies, thong, banana hammocks, whatever, and go worry about getting Democrats elected to Congress. I'm with Hillary, and she's got this.