...her story is sexual Swiftboating.

The GOP and Putin both know that sexual abuse is a "trigger" for us Democrats, and that if they pull that trigger enough times we will kill our own, deservedly or not.

The Me Too movement was not intended to be the New Puritanism, nor was it intended to be the prelude to the New Salem Witch Craze, where an accusation, however ludicrous, could lead to the public hanging of innocent people.

When it comes to believing women -- sorry, but it is not unconditional in politics in this day and age. We were manipulated into dumping Al Franken without due process, and that manipulation proceeds apace. Consider the source, consider their associates. This isn't the old "What were you wearing, lady?" schtick. This is being intelligent enough to check what other motives the accuser might have before running with the story. If even Ronan Farrow declines to take it up, something is really wrong.

The attempted murder of Joe Biden's reputation is infuriating on so many levels. If his lifelong career in politics had not been clean, Obama would not have take Biden as VP. Then Obama's administration itself was clean and scandal free, and we are all aware that the GOP tried every day to pin something, anything, nasty on both Obama and Biden -- finally settling on lying about that old reliable, Hillary, because that always works.

In this campaign, Trump-GOP tried political malfeasance (Ukraine), and now they are trying sex. What will they try next? What bait will we take? What bait will we be dumb enough to take?

...if these oh-so-concerned "progressives" HELP with that going forward instead of taking every opportunity to blame Democratic candidates for not having passed Medicare for All in a hostile environment? That hostile environment being the entire GOP attempting to rip the ACA to shreds every single day from the moment it was signed into law.

So I understand progressives are concerned, so very very concerned -- but just for once can they keep their eyes on the goal here?

See ya around.

...by a lot of entities to keep a woman from in effect being his third term.

The "whitelash" is not the majority. We have to keep reminding ourselves of that. Otherwise we despair.

They are, however, an incredibly vocal and dangerous minority, and are backed by some incredibly rich, powerful, and dangerous white men: DeVosses, Mercers, Eric Prince, Mitch McConnell. Trump.

How did I get to be so old and not realize how much they (not just the stereotypical gunhumpers but their monied patrons) hate democracy? It's stunning to me: they hate democracy. How did I get to be so old and not know that for such as these the Civil War never ended? It's stunning to me: the Civil War never ended at all. They hate me, and people like me, because I'm not in the right tribe, even though I'm white.

It sounds unbearably naive, but I've been fortunate to never live in a majority conservative state or town. My whole life, only two states: Hawai'i and California, where things are not perfect -- but troubles seemed human scale. Slavery and the Civil War are not part of our history. Other misdeeds, yes, but the Lost Cause, the War of Northern Aggression, the sundering of the nation -- no.

Sorry, if I've wandered off-topic. I just need to periodically remind myself that by all measures the people in power now are in the minority. Minorities have ruled before, and they are hard as hell to get rid of. But if I start believing they are in the majority -- I will truly despair.

KnR, misanthrope. Stay safe.

They/we simply don't know how and don't have the muscles for it either. This is especially true of stoop labor, the backbreaking jobs of growing and harvesting our fruits and vegetables.

Sure, a lot of backbreaking manual labor went in to running an American family farm in Ye Old Days, and it was taken for granted. But why do you think people left those farms by the millions when they had other opportunities? That exodus started after WWI, just about a century ago.

Since then, farms have been increasingly consolidated by agribusiness, and when they hire people they have to look for those who come from rural areas themselves and have the knowhow. Those people have to be willing, and there are plenty of places south of the border where life is so hard that even American farm labor (or chicken-packing) looks better than what they have. Sorry, it was ever thus.

I don't think the American worker is "too lazy" to do farm work. I think our workers will work hard at what they know. I don't think they are much inclined to travel far away from what they are familiar with in cities, all for the privilege of doing backbreaking work 6 days a week, and sleeping in their cars or sheds or thoroughly substandard housing, and gettng a thoroughly substandard wage.

PS: In case it's not clear, I believe immigrant farm workers are badly treated and deserve better. But refusing them entry is not the answer.

Trump never had a political grand plan, because he's not a politician. He is what he always has been: a rich kid who used Daddy's money to get his start, a failed businessman (bankrupt over and over), a huckster, a con man. He has not got a clue about how government works and why we have government. He thinks everything is a crooked business deal -- hence Ukraine.

Many powerful Republicans saw him for what he was, but thought they could control the monster and get more of what they wanted: power and money. Mitch McConnell is one.

Putin, otoh, plans to break apart Western democratic alliances. Think about that. NATO, Paris Climate Accord, European Union -- everything that statesmen sweated to achieve: stability and peace from 1946 onward, everything we hoped & prayed for when we thought our world might be blown to atoms in WW III. Every POTUS from FDR and Truman to Barack Obama.

To Trump, they are obstacles to "deals" where he can play one against the other for personal monetary gain -- he even thought NATO was a trade alliance. He is a very stupid and ignorant man. Putin is neither stupid nor ignorant.

To Putin, all those Western democratic states and their alliances are reminders that the glory days of the USSR as a feared and powerful empire are over, and he wants the power and the glory back. As long as the US and the European Union remain united, he can't get what he wants. If he can find the right cracks and drive wedges in, it all falls apart into separate squabbling nations without the power they/we have now.

Putin had a hand in Brexit. He has had a hand in agitation to break apart the EU. We know he had a hand in making sure Hillary Clinton did not become president and that Donald Trump did.

Breaking apart the US isn't Trump's fantasy -- he hasn't got the imagination. Becoming an actual dictator -- all Trump wants is the big parade and constant adulation, and whoever can give him that, well...

But every time someone here at DU fantasizes about breaking America apart into several nations, or breaking California apart into several states, or feverishly claims they's just doing a thought-experiment about a military coup to get rid of Trump (I remember similar about Dubya), I really wonder if they have thought this through.

And if they have not thought it through, Putin definitely has. It would be the end of us as a republic, the end of us as an international power.

Some of you have been around awhile, and some are new (or "new" ) .

I'm one of those who keep saying hell no.

But this is your opportunity to fully express yourselves. I would love to hear it explained in full: how the US military, which is designed to be non-political, would up and do what you want. How the US, which is designed to be a republic, would remain a republic after a military overthrow. How the inevitable armed insurrection by the heavily armed knuckle-draggers would be put down. How any of this is supposed to work to our benefit.

I really want to know. Thank you.

Every so often someone posts the names of those jerks (so I know you can find it if you look) and you will be aghast at who they grew up to be. I think one of them was a young man named Brett Kavanaugh.

So far, the people participating in the current actions look like typical Trump cultists: downscale and none-too-bright. Someone is pulling their strings from behind the scenes, and the only "glory" they can expect is from the Rapture.

...and metastasizes.

Remember when it happened to Senator John Kerry? He was a genuine war hero, wounded in action, who commanded a "Swiftboat" in the Vietnam War. By the time the GOP was done with him, they had managed to search under every rock until they found a couple of disgruntled vets who were willing to lie about his record, and they painted Senator Kerry as a coward who lied about his service and lied about his documented wounds.

That is the meaning of "Swiftboating." Take something good and honorable about a person -- in the present case VP Biden's unblemished reputation as a devoted family man -- and find some lowlife willing to lie and smear until he's destroyed.

That's what's going on here. As far as I am concerned Ms Ocasio-Cortez can go to hell. I am done with her.

Apr. 11, 2020

How a stockpile of 39 million masks was exposed as fake

A powerful California union that thought it had made a deal to purchase 39 million masks for healthcare workers fighting the coronavirus was duped in an elaborate scam that originated overseas, federal prosecutors say.

Authorities who stumbled onto the scheme while looking to seize the masks for the Federal Emergency Management Agency found there were in fact no masks.

This showed up from the LA Times in my email today. Just read and re-read this snippet from a Kafkaesque world.