Is Howard Dean, Tim Kaine, or DWS responsible for the poor leadership on what remains the real negative consequences of what should have been a better outcome for PBO’s 2008 election in the midst of an economic meltdown.
Does the DNC have a better plan to reverse the GOP’s RedMap Ratf*ck in 2020 starting with 2016.
Daley’s book reminds us how pluralist democracy is in the local details and how while PBO may have been responsible for the 2010 debacle, he was let down by a DNC apparatus in some ways no differently than the midterms that gave us the Contract On(sic) America.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who’s off this week. We are speaking with Salon’s editor-in-chief David Daley. His new book focuses on Republican efforts to win key state legislative races in the 2010 elections so they could control statehouses that would redraw congressional boundaries. The result, Daley argues, was gerrymandering, which kept Republicans in control of the House of Representatives.
Now, Democrats aren’t stupid, and they’ve been involved in redistricting for a long, long time. Where were the Democrats when all this was happening, when the Republicans were targeting these state legislative seats? Did they – were they just…
DALEY: They fell asleep at the wheel. This was a catastrophic strategic failure by the Democratic Party. Chris Jankowski tells me that throughout the fall of 2010, he’s out in the field and he can’t believe that the Democrats aren’t out there spending any money. The Democrats never saw this coming, and it’s political malpractice because the Republican Party announced their plans in big bright flashing neon lights.
In an op-ed piece in March 2010 in The Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove says we are going to use redistricting this year to take back the Congress. It was announced. It was not hidden. I don’t know if the Democratic leadership simply doesn’t read The Wall Street Journal, but it was right there.
STEVE ISRAEL, WHO LED THE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE AFTER THE DEBACLE OF 2010 FOR DEMOCRATIC PARTY, TELLS ME THAT THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE SIMPLY WHISTLED PAST THE GRAVEYARD.
No question, Donald Trump must not prevail in his bid for the presidency. In this article, Bill Moyers and Michael Winship trace a particular American virus “feed[ing] on fear, paranoia and bigotry” from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump. Is there a Joseph Welch among us?
–o-O-o–
Trump, His Virus and the Dark Age of Unreason
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship | Moyers & Company | June 16, 2016
“He’s the latest in a long line of American demagogues but has come closest to the White House. That makes him the most dangerous of them all.”
“There’s a virus infecting our politics and right now it’s flourishing with a scarlet heat. It feeds on fear, paranoia and bigotry. All that was required for it to spread was a timely opportunity — and an opportunist with no scruples.
There have been stretches of history when this virus lay dormant. Sometimes it would flare up here and there, then fade away after a brief but fierce burst of fever. At other moments, it has spread with the speed of a firestorm, a pandemic consuming everything in its path, sucking away the oxygen of democracy and freedom.
Today its carrier is Donald Trump, but others came before him: narcissistic demagogues who lie and distort in pursuit of power and self-promotion. Bullies all, swaggering across the landscape with fistfuls of false promises, smears, innuendo and hatred for others, spite and spittle for anyone of a different race, faith, gender or nationality. ” ~ Continue reading at Moyers and Company
Walking with Walt Whitman
A daily installment from Leaves of Grass
Inscriptions
“To a Certain Cantatrice”
Here, take this gift,
I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or general,
One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress and freedom of the race,
Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;
But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to any.
~ ❦ ~
Leaves of Grass – Wikisource
Image – Walt Whitman, age 35, from the frontispiece to Leaves of Grass, Fulton St., Brooklyn, N.Y., steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer from a lost daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison (my frame) ~ Wikipedia
Gun Control Measures to Get a Vote in the Senate; Dems Fight Over Corporate Transparency
Talking filibuster –> Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-style filibusters are rare these days, but Democrats, led by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, kicked one off yesterday and kept it going for 15 hours. Seung Min Kim and Burgess Everett at Politico report that after it ended, at a little after 2 am this morning, senators had yet to formally strike a deal, but “the Senate was likely to vote on two Democratic-backed gun measures: a proposal from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) meant to bar those on federal terror watch lists from obtaining firearms, and a plan from Murphy and Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) mandating background checks for sales at gun shows and over the Internet. Republicans are expected to put forward two of their own proposals for votes.”
“Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.” ~ Emily Dickinson
____________________________________
I know some lonely houses off the road
A robber ’d like the look of,—
Wooden barred,
And windows hanging low,
Inviting to
A portico,
Where two could creep:
One hand the tools,
The other peep
To make sure all ’s asleep.
Old-fashioned eyes,
Not easy to surprise!
How orderly the kitchen ’d look by night,
With just a clock,—
But they could gag the tick,
And mice won’t bark;
And so the walls don’t tell,
None will.
A pair of spectacles ajar just stir—
An almanac’s aware.
Was it the mat winked,
Or a nervous star?
The moon slides down the stair
To see who ’s there.
There ’s plunder,—where?
Tankard, or spoon,
Earring, or stone,
A watch, some ancient brooch
To match the grandmamma,
Staid sleeping there.
Day rattles, too,
Stealth ’s slow;
The sun has got as far
As the third sycamore.
Screams chanticleer,
“Who ’s there?”
And echoes, trains away,
Sneer—“Where?”
While the old couple, just astir,
Think that the sunrise left the door ajar!
____________________________________
Emily is said to have carried a pencil and scraps of paper in her pocket in order to always be prepared when a poem came her way.
The Coffee Shop is an open thread-style discussion forum for human interest news of the day.
From Great Big Story:
When Mosha, an elephant, was two years old, she lost her leg in a landmine injury along the Thai-Burmese border. Luckily, an orthopedic surgeon was able to fit her with the first prosthetic leg ever designed for an elephant. As she’s grown, she’s needed to be fitted for new ones. But she’s never forgotten the doctor who changed her life.
This is an open thread. There are several hosts, each host being responsible for picking a “theme of the day” and starting the discussion. However, there is no hard and fast rule about staying on topic, especially if you have a personal story burning a hole in your pocket trying to escape.
Pictures and videos are welcome in the comments. If photos are used, please be sure you own the copyright. We would rather see your personal photos anyway, rather than random stuff copied from the internet. Our only request is that if you use pictures or videos, take pity on those who don’t have broadband, and don’t post more than two or three in a single comment.
This is an Open Thread. Grab your cup, pull up a chair, sit a spell and share what’s on your mind today.
There’s some strange behavior in the Amazon jungle that has Lepidopterists scratching their heads. Bamboo shoots, one of the most coveted sources of nectar for the local ant population, are being blatantly pilfered by the cherry-spot metalmark butterflies (Adelotypa annulifera), and the ants are not retaliating. In fact, they don’t even appear to notice that the butterflies are stealing the nectar from right under their antennae.
Biologists already knew that metalmark larvae produce a nutritious goo and feed it to ants in exchange for their protection from predators, but after the larvae made the transition to adults, they had to immediately fly away or the formerly protective ants would attack and try to eat the adults. What the adult butterflies did afterward — how they mated, what they ate — remained largely a mystery.
“Ants normally treat this bamboo like their castle, aggressively fighting off intruders,” says Aaron Pomerantz, an entomology Ph.D. student at University of California, Berkeley, and National Geographic explorer. Pomerantz is the co-author with Phil Torres, who first observed this behavior, of a new study published in the Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society.
How the butterflies are getting away with it remains unknown. Some theories are being investigated. The butterflies could use chemical signals to conceal themselves from the ants, or the ants may get some as yet unknown benefit from the butterflies in their midst.
Most of us think of butterflies as peaceful and beautiful, gently flitting from flower to flower. But when it’s a jungle out there, even butterflies do whatever it takes to survive.
The clincher for John Schindler’s article about the risks associated with Hillary Clinton’s using a private server comes at the end. Schindler is a former National Security Agency analyst, Navy officer, and War College professor. Click here to read the entire article at the Observer.
The Observer’s publisher, Jared Kushner, is Donald Trump’s son-in-law. As with any news or opinion source, decide for yourself whether the information is accurately presented.
–o–O–o–
Opinion – The Coming Constitutional Crisis Over Hillary Clinton’s EmailGate
John R. Schindler | Observer | June 15, 2016
(the last three paragraphs)
“Make no mistake, there are more than a few senior intelligence officials in Washington, DC, who are livid about Hillary Clinton’s willful disregard of clearly defined laws on the handling of classified information. Her misconduct endangered sensitive intelligence programs—and lives. Even if Comey is a sacrificial lamb here, there are high-ranking spies who are perfectly willing to leak the sordid details of EmailGate to the media if the president pulls a Dick Nixon and tries to subvert our Constitution to protect himself and his designated successor.
And in the unlikely event that nobody in our nation’s capital is willing to go public with exactly what Hillary Clinton did, it now seems the Russians may do so. It’s highly plausible that Russian intelligence services, among others, have many of Clinton’s emails, perhaps all of them, given how slipshod her security arrangements were.
Therefore the recent statement by Julian Assange, head of Wikileaks, that his organization plans to release more of Clinton’s emails should not be dismissed out of hand. Although Assange is prone to flights of fancy, Wikileaks has long served as a front for Russian intelligence, as Western security services are well aware, so it may not be fantasy that he could get his hands on more of Hillary’s emails. It would be supremely ironic if the Kremlin demolishes Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations thanks to her own neglect of basic communications security when she was secretary of state.”
It seems humans have always found ways to terrorize their enemies in addition to killing. Eighteen hundred years ago, one of these was was “whistling” bullets flung with slings.
–o-O-o–
Whistling Sling Bullets Were Roman Troops’ Secret ‘Terror Weapon’
Tom Metcalfe | Live Science Contributor | June 13, 2016
“Some 1,800 years ago, Roman troops used “whistling” sling bullets as a “terror weapon” against their barbarian foes, according to archaeologists who found the cast lead bullets at a site in Scotland.
Weighing about 1 ounce (30 grams), each of the bullets had been drilled with a 0.2-inch (5 millimeters) hole that the researchers think was designed to give the soaring bullets a sharp buzzing or whistling noise in flight…
These holes converted the bullets into a “terror weapon,” said archaeologist John Reid of the Trimontium Trust, a Scottish historical society directing the first major archaeological investigation in 50 years of the Burnswark Hill site.
“You don’t just have these silent but deadly bullets flying over; you’ve got a sound effect coming off them that would keep the defenders’ heads down,” Reid told Live Science. “Every army likes an edge over its opponents, so this was an ingenious edge on the permutation of sling bullets.” ~ Continue reading
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