Nobody is thinking about Clinton vs. Sanders anymore.
It's good that you're not on Twitter.
Bernie would have written a book about his loss that would have won some award.
Hillary Clinton is one of those people that once I decide I feel one way about her, she does something that makes me feel the opposite. Like, when I decide I don't really like her, I'll read something about her that's really relatable and sympathetic, and then when I decide I like her, she'll go do something like this.
I get that losing to a pathologically lying orange clown probably does momentous things to one's sense of self, and I really do feel for her. But at the same time, someone needs to sit her down and tell her it's time to moveon.com
I wonder what percentage of the people arguing on twitter over Sanders! vs Clinton! 2016 are Russian bots?
The headlines I read say she mentions Bernie, but also blames Comey and herself (the last one probably because if she hadn't some roving gang of "moderate" pundits would have hunted her down.)
What was leaked was a couple of pages. They look pretty shitty, but I also bet that's the bulk of the Sanders material, and most of of the book is about something more important.
Clinton is publishing a book that primarily blames Sanders for her loss
I don't think that's right -- she puts some blame on Bernie, but also blames the sun the moon and the wind, before concluding, "but my heart blames it on me"
Nobody is thinking about Clinton vs. Sanders anymore.
Criminally Bulgur beat me to it in 1, but oh gawd is that not the case in many corners of the intertubes. I wish it were.
6/7
My guess is that's right, and whoever leaked chose the thing that would make for maximum outrage. But regardless, I don't think we need this book at all. Dukakis and Mondale and Dole and Gore didn't write books, and no one really wants to read this sort of thing. Maybe a postmortem for political strategists, but I feel like that might need some more distance.
Also, even if this is all there is, even a few pages on Sanders is politically stupid. The Democrats don't really need more infighting right now, and there's no reason to rip open an old and pointless scab when Democrats have a chance to unite around Trump. In primaries people say mean things about their opponents, then one person wins and says mean things about their opponent in the general election. The Sanders/Clinton primary didn't seem particularly dirty or underhanded as far as these things go. I thought it was relatively well established the worst "pro Sanders" stuff came from Russian trolls, and letting it divide the Democrats really does feel like letting the Russian trolls win.
and letting it divide the Democrats really does feel like letting the Russian trolls win
Yes! We win anyway of course, but could, at least, make it interesting.
1: Now I have another reason for having left it.
As my mother would say, don't let the Russian trolls get your goat.
I imagine in Russia that statement wouldn't be metaphorical.
I'm tempted to argue with some minor details about Clinton vs. Sanders in the OP, but I too want to move on, so I won't.
Or whatever politics you want to talk about. Like Trump besting Ryan and McConnell. What a weird fucking world.
I'm enjoying it. My first thought about the news was that Trump had fiiinally figured out what would get him good press, and did it just for the sake of that. My second thought was that that's too naive of me, since when does he care what responsible people who care about good governance think of him, either it's one minor fleeting victory for the good guys or he'll renege within the week. My third thought is, it really looks like good press is all there was to it.
But regardless, I don't think we need this book at all. Dukakis and Mondale and Dole and Gore didn't write books, and no one really wants to read this sort of thing.
I strongly suspect she is being paid to write the book. I think it's likely that was a primary motivation for writing it. (Probably not sole motivation.) I honestly don't mean that to be disparaging.
But regardless, I don't think we need this book at all. Dukakis and Mondale and Dole and Gore didn't write books, and no one really wants to read this sort of thing . . .
There have already been several books published as post-postmortems of the election. Clinton's book may or may not add anything, but I can certainly understand the impulse to want to tell her version of the story.
Also, even if this is all there is, even a few pages on Sanders is politically stupid.
I'd say exactly the opposite. The excerpts that I've seen suffer from feeling like they're written with too much of an eye on what is or isn't politically smart. I'd be much more interested in an account which was personal and gave some sense of her (very strange) experience. That story would have to include Bernie.
I strongly suspect she is being paid to write the book. I think it's likely that was a primary motivation for writing it. (Probably not sole motivation.)
Probably, and if so I suspect it won't be a very interesting book. But I could also imagine her wanting to say that she was correct all along.
In the last month or two I've read a couple of books about the 2016 election. It feels a bit like picking at a scab but, speaking only for myself, I feel like there is something to learn, and I don't know if I've figured out what it is yet.
Semi-related, have we all laughed at Verrit yet?
Also semi-related, can someone please, please assure me that Clinton isn't considering running in 2020?
15
That makes sense. I read that she's charge up to $3,000/head for a VIP meet-and-greet for a Toronto book signing, which, eh, she's not running for office so why not grift.
16.2
I super personal no-holds-barred memoir might be interesting and if it came off much more as her personally not liking or being frustrated with Sanders I think that would be counterintuitively less damaging, but I get the sense that's not who Clinton is and that she's incapable of writing a sloppy-drunk TMI style tell-all.
Further to 1, the Clinton vs. Bernie Twitter wars are over-determined on at least two fronts. There's a political personality and identity-based war that is annoying and mostly get-overable. When it come to things like the fight over representation in--and leadership of--the DNC, however, C v. S on Twitter is really a proxy fight between activists who want to own the party and make it more focused on transformational social policy, and the traditional donor base who wants the freedom to keep triangulating on social policy and grow the college-educated/white wing of the party.
"college-educated/white" meant to suggest that the growth among college-educated voters is mostly among whites.
I get the sense that's not who Clinton is and that she's incapable of writing a sloppy-drunk TMI style tell-all.
I agree. I'm just saying (a) that I'd read that book in a heartbeat if she did write it and (b) that is reason to think that she does have a story to tell that would be interesting to people. She may or may not actually tell that story, but it doesn't make any sense to say, "she can only try to tell that story as long as she doesn't say anything unkind or politically damaging." That just guarantees that it's going to be boring.
BTW, Criminally Bulgur, did you ever start on your response to the Nancy Fraser article? I was curious about it.
22
I would agree, but it would have to be a very different book, genre-wise. Like, I think a book where she frames it as her own experience and feelings would be fine ("Hill: Uncut"), but one where she says something like, "Bernie was, objectively, the worst and told his supporters to hate me and in part cost me the election" is just really unhelpful. It doesn't really help us learn more about Clinton (other than that she might be a bit petty), and it just needlessly annoys the young and progressive wing of the party.
Yes to all of the above, and particularly to Buttercup 9.2. The Democratic primary was all nicey-nicey on both sides, and whining by either side demonstrates a willingness to ignore what actually went on.
Plus, yeah, politically stupid.
Leaving the Twitwits aside, Bernie himself seems to have put it all in the right perspective.
My first thought about the news was that Trump had fiiinally figured out what would get him good press, and did it just for the sake of that. My second thought was that that's too naive of me, since when does he care what responsible people who care about good governance think of him, either it's one minor fleeting victory for the good guys or he'll renege within the week. My third thought is, it really looks like good press is all there was to it.
Yeah, I'm finding it weird because most of the coverage I've seen has emphasized how weird this is and how puzzled everyone is by it, while carefully noting the possibility that he soon changes his mind because that's what he always does. But apparently whatever coverage he's seeing is presenting it in a way that he interprets as very positive about him.
To 1, I've been dabbling a bit in reading Twitter lately (though not to the extent of actually signing up for it), and wow is it ever a different world than the internet I'm used to. Useful to check in on especially since journalists and politicians seem to spend so much time there, but not at all reflective of what's going on in the real world.
Yes to all of the above, and particularly to Buttercup 9.2.
[9.2] (emphasis mine): The Democrats don't really need more infighting right now, and there's no reason to rip open an old and pointless scab when Democrats have a chance to unite around Trump.
Let me try one more time to push back on this -- not out of any vehement disagreement but just because my intuitions/framing of the situation are different enough that I'm curious why we have such different reactions.
My first response to that is, "when would be a good time?" The Democrats (and Clinton specifically) just suffered a surprising and painful loss. The next election isn't for a while, this seems like the appropriate opportunity for a certain amount of soul-searching and recrimination. That doesn't mean that it's all going to be useful, a fair amount will be petty, but that's par for the course. When Shattered came out (to a lot of media attention) it sounded like it had a fair amount of score-settling from people critical of the Clinton campaign. I don't see any inherent reason why Clinton shouldn't tell her side of the story (which people can find convincing or not).
Or, putting Clinton aside for a moment. I mentioned that I've been reading and thinking about the election lately. I've started a couple of possible guest posts. One of them is in response to Mark Lilla, and why I think he's wrong. But I wouldn't say that he was stupid to publish a book, and that now is not the time for fighting about "identity politics." I'd say that now is the time, and that (based on interviews; I haven't read the book) I think that what he's saying is wrong and am interested in arguing with it.
The metaphor of picking at scabs implies that the wounds will heal on their own if we just leave them alone, and I don't think that's completely true -- I think there are strong differences of opinion and some of them need to be hashed out.
28: it seems like this would necessarily depend on who you follow?
Hillary Clinton is one of those people that once I decide I feel one way about her, she does something that makes me feel the opposite. Like, when I decide I don't really like her, I'll read something about her that's really relatable and sympathetic, and then when I decide I like her, she'll go do something like this.
Me too.
Speaking of twitter, today I learned (from an ad on the bus) that the hashtag for encouraging HIV testing is #doingit.
30: I'm sure it does, yeah. I'm talking specifically about political/journalistic circles on Twitter.
29- I agree with what you are saying here.
I feel somewhat discouraged, because it looks to me like the young Bernie supporters are losing most of these political fights to influence the party. I'm still hopeful that eventually they will start to gain that influence after they've been blooded in battle a few times.
29: I took Buttercup to be saying that this particular choice by Hillary amounted to useless infighting. I think we can all agree that disagreements within a party can be necessary and productive, but that stupid disagreements are (tautology alert!) stupid.
34: roger, I think it's time for you to acknowledge that you're going to feel that way regardless of the facts. Bernie's signature issue is single-payer healthcare, and that has become Democratic orthodoxy to the point where Max Fucking Baucus is supporting it.
I hate to break it to you, but I'm a lot more representative of Bernie supporters than you are. We Bernie supporters are quite pleased with the direction of the party.
On Lilla, and Frank (I heard him on NPR last week, that the wife had to keep asking me to stop yelling at the radio) , is there anything at all more to say than TNC's white president piece in the Atlantic?
Bernie's signature issue is single-payer healthcare
??? He's certainly been a vocal supporter of single-payer, but I would have thought anyone would have pinned Bernie's "signature issue" as something along the axis of reigning in Wall Street/inequality/money in politics.
Rehashing 2016 is worse than useless.* However, the insurgent v. establishment fight is perennial, and always worth trying to talk through. Right now, we have two guys vying for the Dem nomination to take on the Congressman-who-hit-the-Reporter in the general. Both called me on the phone today. They're approaching the thing very differently. The consumer rights lawyer from Billings wants to run as a full on populist, and hopes to substantially expand the electorate by registering people and increasing turnout. The environmental non-profit guy from Missoula thinks that only a more centrist candidate can win statewide here, and that being a guy who'll reach across the aisle to get shit done is the winning pitch.
* Unless one is getting paid to write a book, as noted above.
Max Baucus has come out for single payer.
I'm wondering if 'Chuck and Nancy' are looking for a way to tell the President that he can fix the ACA in a way that O couldn't -- making it so good that no one will call it Ocare any longer.
37-1 Why do you think that?
2- I'm curious about whether you have any basis for that claim. I know a lot of Bernie volunteers.
Trump passing single-payer would be the ultimate case of men not taking up a good idea until a white man brings it up.
Obviously PF can speak for himself. I was going to write that I think Bernie-policies are winning even if Bernie-personnel isn't. But that's not exactly right either.
I think events are fundamentally undermining the central tenet of Nader/Sanders political theory. The dispute has been about the explanation for Democratic centrism. Is it, on the one hand, because Democratic office holders accept donations, and hire staffers, from big corporations? Or, on the other hand, is the much more important factor that a Democratic office holder can only get so far to the left of the 51st percentile of her/his specific electorate? Bernie having shown a further left position for that 51st percentile voter, and Trump having pushed her leftward* we see Democrats (both office holders and establishment party folks) following the voters leftward. Rather than just the money.
* I'm think here of record approval for the ACA, which only really spiked after repeal became a serious possibility.
Nader was pure shit. I don't think you can count Sanders with him in any reasonable category narrower than "white male American."
His 2004 effort to get on the ballot in PA was nothing but a Republican-funded attempt at submitting fraudulent petitions.
Let me count the ways in which Nader was pure shit. Two. Literally and metaphorically.
IT'S A COOKBOOK!
But seriously, I don't know why anyone trusts any of these lying, sellout politicians as far as they can throw them. "Politician Writes Self-Aggrandizing Memoir" is hardly man-bites-dog. It seems like another example of something that's hella pearl-clutchy only because it pertains to HRC.
I was always flummoxed by Lilla's successful academic career -- I mean, Allan Bloom did something besides being Chair of Culture Wars. (I was also Lilla's student long ago; I was also also a true asshole back then, and he was amazingly intellectually generous to me under the circumstances.) I can't bring myself to read his new screed; I have this visceral inability to take him seriously without any evidence that he can still, say, write a long disinterested technical paper on Montesquieu or something.
But all I see is that he is "currently writing a book titled Ignorance and Bliss," suggesting a pathological attraction to trouble.
Or a morph of him with Lewis Black.
Nader/Sanders political theory
I disagree with you (and I suspect roger) here. Nader and Sanders were doing wildly different political things. The idea of a "Nader/Sanders" political theory is an oxymoron.
45- Worth thinking about.
Why did it take Bernie to show that everyone likes free stuff? I might want to impugn the courage of Democratic office holders, but when courage requires that you go against the interests of the people you spend most of your waking hours begging for money, another explanation suggests itself.
I'd like it if everyone were getting on board with the Sanders' medicare for all bill, but I'm thinking it isn't going to be that simple.
53- is just pure slander of me. I've never had anything good to say about Nader.
55: Sorry. Just voicing a suspicion, primarily based on the crazy stuff you link. But yeah, even the suspicion is a gross insult and I was out of line. I apologize.
Right, because, as somebody was saying, Nader is shit.
On Lilla, and Frank ... is there anything at all more to say than TNC's white president piece in the Atlantic?
Yes and no. On one hand, it was a good takedown, and I'm not going to be able to write anything better. On the other hand (a) I doubt the TNC piece is convincing to the sort of Democrat who agrees with Lilla and (b) part of Lilla's argument it, at base, "the Democratic brand should be selling much better than it is. That means that we are doing something wrong and should change the way that we're selling." I think that's a convincing argument to a lot of people, and the question of whether that's correct and, if so, what needs to change, is something that needs to be hashed out.
Bernie's signature issue is single-payer healthcare, and that has become Democratic orthodoxy to the point where Max Fucking Baucus is supporting it.
Why did it take Bernie to show that everyone likes free stuff?
I think that the combination of Trump and the ACA repeal fight changed the political landscape (in addition to whatever shifts happened in response to Bernie). Interestingly Ezra Klein may have called it.
History may record a certain irony if this is the argument McConnell uses to successfully destroy Obamacare. In recent conversations with Democrats and industry observers, I've become convinced that just the opposite is true: If Republicans unwind Obamacare and pass their bill, then Democrats are much likelier to establish a single-payer health care system -- or at least the beginnings of one -- when they regain power.
"I will tell you," says Len Nichols, director of the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics at George Mason University, "Democratic politicians I never thought would utter the words have mentioned single-payer to me in a non-joking way of late."
...
Obamacare's defenders argue that the law has worked well in most states and could be easily improved and fortified. They're right. The core flaw of Obamacare is the subsidies are too low and the individual mandate is too weak. More subsidies, and some tweaks to the insurance regulations, would do the system a lot of good.
If Hillary Clinton had won the election, that's likely what would have happened -- if Democrats even went that far. The party was exhausted by the Affordable Care Act fight, and wanted to move on to other issues like universal pre-k. But if Republicans leave Obamacare gutted and the political arguments that led to it in ruins, there's not going to be a constituency for rebuilding it when Democrats win back power.
Instead, they'll pass what many of them wanted to pass in the first place: a heavily subsidized buy-in program for Medicare or Medicaid, funded by a tax increase on the rich. A policy like that would fit smoothly through the 51-vote reconciliation process, and it will satisfy an angry party seeking the fastest, most defensible path to restoring the Affordable Care Act's coverage gains.
Repeal failed, but I still the description of the political dynamics seems accurate.
I probably should have also noticed that 45 is kind of a slander of Sanders. It is true that they both talk about big money corrupting the Democratic party, but so do a lot of other people. Putting them together that way seems like a way of trying to tar Sanders with Nader's "not a dime's worth of difference" disgrace.
I'm not expecting politicians to be as pure as the driven snow. I get that it is a dirty business and you have to cut deals with some unsavory characters. BUT (mindful that people think but makes the preceding mean nothing) I think it is worth applying all the pressure you can when corruption looks egregious to you. For example Obama's failure to prosecute control fraud at the big banks i.e. the reason we can't have nice things.
OT: Did they ever charge the dude who blew up his house and estranged wife in Lincoln?
Google says they didn't. Maybe because everybody is either dead or in a coma.
I didn't mean it as a slander of those two in particular, or of the folks that think 'follow the money' is the most useful heuristic for judging Democratic office holders. I think those folks are sincere, but oftentimes their analysis drives them to the wrong conclusion.
Was Max Baucus more interested in money from the insurance industry or in his re-election prospects for 2014? And would single payer have helped those prospects? I think absolutely not, unless he was able to develop a new electorate out of the same citizenry (if that's even possible -- as noted above, we may find out).
We have a small but vocal faction mad at Tester for voting against a proposal by Bernie regarding prescription drug prices. They think some relatively modest contributions explains his votes. I think they are simply wrong about that.
Go ahead and slander Nader all you want.
I couldn't think less of Nader but the real problem is that millions of people went for his simplistic pitch.
I could think less of him, I guess, because I think he's better than Trump.
I'm a little drunk so virtually slap me if you want to, since I just said I don't want to relitigate the primary and time to MOVEON.COM, but one thing that made me not so excited about Hillary's campaign was her insistence that Obamacare was great and that there wasn't the political capital to do much more than shore it up. She might have been right about the political landscape of right then right there, and who knows what her presidency would have looked like and where it would have ended up (rainbows and unicorns, probably). But I was like, "DUUUUDE, I have Obamacare. I love that it has saved me money and given me health insurance. I personally love Obama for fighting so hard for it. It also, kinda...isn't awesome in many many obvious ways that sort of matter, and insisting it's perfect as is when it's OBVIOUSLY a sort of shitty compromise healthcare plan doesn't seem like a great strategy." Also, that and you're supposed to campaign on butterflies and puppies and stuff, not "you're dreams are unrealistic because Republicans will block everything I do and probably impeach me halfway through my presidency for my pedophilia ring at a pizza parlor no reason." But anyways, I'm glad the climate has shifted so quickly. Between this and gay marriage I think it's becoming clearer that massive and influential 180s on public opinion are more like icebergs cleaving than we thought.
If we can get the Dream Act ensconced in law and get single payer healthcare and not actually start WW3 during Trump's one term, then he might be the equivalent of the black mold infestation that makes you realize your foundation has been eaten away by termites and needs to be rebuilt.
Let's reach the nadir of America!!
TRUMP/NADER 2020
At least I'm not as drunk as Buttercup. I have to get up at 6 tomorrow.
69
Why in god's name would you get up at 6 on a saturday?
I just flavored Costco whiskey with maraschino cherry juice. It's gonna be a great night.
I also added soda water and lemon juice, because just whiskey and maraschino cherry juice would be an abomination.
Thank goodness Max Baucus helped kill the public option. Can you imagine if the Republicans had been able to run against the ACA?
I had a sazerac at the local distillery last night. Surprisingly good.
[boring reiteration of my argument that the only way Democrats would have passed something better than ACA was if people who worried about reelection watered down the bill and lost had instead calculated that they'd lose on a weak bill anyway so they might as well lose on a strong one]
Or, on the other hand, is the much more important factor that a Democratic office holder can only get so far to the left of the 51st percentile of her/his specific electorate?
I think you're right that this sort of thinking explains a lot of the behavior of Democratic office holders over the last few decades. Why you and they still hold to this as an accurate model of politics is beyond me.
Perhaps they think that not getting elected means they can't do anything good -- even half or quarter measures -- and will allow the Republicans to be in office doing bad things.
I'm not sure why I'm being so rude. Sorry, Carp!
I still think triangulation is nuts though.
It's not triangulation for a representative to stick closer to where the constituents in the district are.
76: Why do they think suboptimal or destructive public policy will help them get elected?
79: Maybe more to CC's point, why do they think that more optimal/less destructive policy platforms won't help them get elected.
Maybe they know their voters better than you do.
The internet ate my comment.
The pitch for healthcare was that for most middle class people, there wouldn't be much change at all. The people covered by employers would still be covered, for the most part, and the small part of the market that's buying individual policies would be able to get better policies for less, from experienced companies, with the aggregation of the exchanges. The big deal was extending single payer to vast numbers of lower income people, funded by taxes on rich people.
The thinking was that this was a way easier sell than telling people who already had coverage that they were going to get wrapped into a new system. Everyone would suspect that the new system would be way less than optimal for the first few years as it shook out.
The fact that it was private companies, rather than government, was a huge selling point for a huge segment of the population. Including people who were already getting government funded single payer.
If our winning 2008 ticket had been Biden/Obama instead of Obama/Biden, a whole lot of things would have gone differently.
A Biden policy that significantly advantaged people of color would be received quite differently from the same Obama policy. We live in a suboptimal society.
To take a currently particularly radioactive example, I think there's some room to tighten up due process in university adjudication of certain student sexual assault. I don't trust Trump/DeVos/Sessions in even the slightest to manage this process. You can't divorce the question of what might be an optimal policy from who's implementing it, how, and why.
I just wrote and deleted an overly long and emotional comment. But I'm drunk, so why not comment anyway. The bottom line is this. Approximately 45% of the country or 140 million people now receive private insurance. Any quick move to "single payer" under any of the schemes currently on offer will force the majority (not all) of those people to pay more for care, or receive care that is meaningfully worse, or, in many cases, both. This is true without even accounting for their status-quo bias or (justified) suspicion of an untested government-run plan. To say that is tough politics and hard policy is an understatement. Of the remainder, about 53 million get Medicaid (usually supplemented with some kind of private insurance) and have little if any incentive to support a move to a new single payer plan. Plus most doctors and nurses and will resist -- and, before you ask, health care just costs way too much now in this country to "stuff their mouths with gold." Any health care policy that doesn't deal with these facts and status-quo bias will face a revolt and fail miserably, as the Republicans just found out.
More generally, there is one trope of the 2016 primary that pains me the most and I wish would vanish forever. It is the notion that the hard work of doing public policy in a democracy bound by law is itself a form of perfidious neoliberalism that should be rejected in favor of aggressive, simple and inspirational policy schema for the sake of the political benefit of having aggressive, simple and inspirational schema. That this is seen as a dividing line among politically -interested liberals pisses me off and saddens me to no end. Hopefully when both Bernie and Hillary get off the stage and 2016 is forgotten, which could not happen soon enough, we can put an end to that stupid dichotomy and find somebody who can satisfy both the felt urge for simple inspiration and the need for competent and realistic politics and policy-making. A drunk man can dream.
Weiredest movie type dream, on topic because it features Hillary.
Some mad scientist was trying to open a portal to another dimension, he had kidnapped HRC and was going to bring her there with himself and two assistants. I was a member of the resistance who had fought against this but was being made to help, even though they had tried it before and I had rebelled once before. The dimension portal thing was a weird contraption and HRC was bound to some Segway looking device while the mad scientist and the two assistants rode their own Segways on a ramp in front of the soon to be opened portal. I had the controller device which was to open the portal and kind of looked like a Panasonic Toot-a-Loop radio only chrome but it was taken from me by one of the mad scientist's armed guards (who were FBI I think) before I could make another attempt to stop them. While this was going on John C. Reilly was on the floor playing with a model of the Starship Enterprise and making space laser noises and paying no mind to what was going on with the mad scientist and HRC and the portal. I remember thinking I should record him doing that and post it to YouTube because it was great but I wasn't sure of what rights issues would be implicated.
Then I woke up and saw that Halford was back (yay!) which makes this like one of those dreams when you dream you had a giant marshmallow but it got eated and you wake up and your pillow is under headboard.
I would watch John C. Reilly playing with a model Enterprise and making space laser noises.
It's supposed to be "but your pillow is missing and you've got feathers in your mouth."
I'm not sure what 89 is to. I haven't watched a Star Trek movie since the one with the whales.
90 But it hasn't. While the purpose of the ms as a women's health manual sounds plausible he didn't offer a single decoding of a single sentence in it.
89 is to 87.
BTW Barry, any thoughts on Aceh?
re: 93
I have no skin in the game. A friend sent it to me and I posted it on. I notice Wolfson on the other place linking to another recent publication (which has a totally different hypothesis, and a lot more direct evidence).*
* although skimming that one, the mapping of Voynich glyphs to the other set seems ... problematic.
94 Where was that thread again? I've a few beers in me so let's see.
It did occur to me at the time to mention that Islamic law distinguishes between individual and communal obligations. Examples of the former are the ritual prayer, the hajj, fasting, paying the alms tax, etc. whereas jihad was always seen as one of the latter. It's not incumbent upon any single individual to undertake jihad when its conditions apply, only that some members of the greater Muslim community (the ummah) do so I thought it interesting that the ulama made jihad an individual obligation.
Poking around a little I see the Dutch Orientalist Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje advised the Dutch to ruthlessly destroy these same ulama.
96.1: Here.
96.2: Alms-giving is actually a tax obligation? I didn't know that. Interesting wrt ummah-wide jihad obligations. Aceh sent embassies to the Ottomans seeking their aid against Westerners, a couple of times in the 16C, and again in the later 19C. First time round they were promised a fleet and army which never arrived, and some technical advisers which apparently did. Second time, no dice.
96.3 Hurgronje seemingly gets cited in every article ever written about Aceh.
97.2 It is effectively. All of of the five pillars are individual obligations.
8:
Dukakis and Mondale and Dole and Gore didn't write books
Actually all of them did write books after they lost, as did John Kerry (not McCain or Romney), although not precisely on campaign topics. Hilary's book, probably has only a few pages on the campaign). To varying degrees they all used book tours to talk about why they lost. Most or all of them also cooperated with aides writing books on their campaigns.
McCain, Mondale,and McGovern ran for office also after losing, so they had plenty of opportunities to gab about why they lost. Romney and Gore didn't quite run, but they made serious public efforts towards running for president again, and talked a good bit about why they lost.
Jimmy Carter is arguably in a different situation because he won before he lost in 1980, but he specifically blamed Teddy Kennedy for his loss, probably correctly. Gerald Ford blamed Reagan for his loss to Carter, also for good reasons. Gore of course sometimes blamed Bill Clinton, and Mondale sometimes blamed Jimmy Carter. The others who had serous primary rivals complained about it also. It's what you do.
Hillary is different from these guys in a few obvious ways, but not because she's pissed about losing.
Individual obligations enforced by the state I see the state logic, collect taxes for "alms" and if the money somehow ends up somewhere else ain't that a shame. But the theology?
I'm annoyed by Lilla because I think there's a hint of a valid point somewhere in what he's getting at, but he does such a piss poor job of making it. I haven't read his book, but in the interviews and magazine pieces he's vague and all over the place. It's usually unclear whether he's talking about elected officials or overzealous student activists, actual policy initiatives and legislation or more general culture wars stuff. And I would definitely vote in support of a law forbidding anyone from using the term identity politics without first defining exactly what they mean. Basically, I think someone more competent should be occupying the space he's taking up.
As for the hint of a point: I'm fine with efforts to make the upper executive levels of the local predatory forclosure mill more diverse, but would be nice to also see a little bit more effort devoted toward making it more difficult for predatory forclosure mills to operate in the first place. In my now officially former city of Cleveland, it was black neighborhoods that were decimated the worst by the sub-prime chicanery of the 00's.
the hard work of doing public policy in a democracy bound by law is itself a form of perfidious neoliberalism that should be rejected in favor of aggressive, simple and inspirational policy schema for the sake of the political benefit of having aggressive, simple and inspirational schema.
Well put.
I don't know if heebie is a burning firebrand or just careless with her pullquotes.
101.2 The argument that Democratic office holders, or candidates, have been solely interested in the former and not at all in the latter is the laziest of calumnies. Second laziest: after proclaiming President Obama uniquely divisive with respect to race relations in the US. Ok, that's true but only if you ignore every single thing the guy every said or did.
One party has run very hardcore on identity politics -- to the extent that they can't agree on hardly any policy at all when they get elected -- and it's not the party I belong to.
105: I wouldn't insist on "not at all" in the latter. I'd settle for "not nearly enough".
Anyway, "tighter restrictions on predatory lending" is at least something specific. That's what I found completely lacking in the Lilla pieces I've read. It's clear that he's against "identity politics", whatever he means by that, but it's very unclear what he's for. He mostly falls back on vague cranky references to how much better things were in the good old days.
The idea that we're going to ask minorities to give up what Lilla calls "identity politics" is absurd. If we want to do away with identity politics (again, as described by Lilla) then we need to do more to suppress minorities, as was done back in the good old days, or have a coalition that doesn't include so many minorities -- and doesn't include me, for that matter.
105
But! But! A student at Oberlin was obnoxious once!
It is the notion that the hard work of doing public policy in a democracy bound by law is itself a form of perfidious neoliberalism that should be rejected in favor of aggressive, simple and inspirational policy schema for the sake of the political benefit of having aggressive, simple and inspirational schema.
I agree with the general substance, but I disagree in terms of actual campaign strategy in the here and now. It would be lovely if most Americans paid close attention and voted on the details of policy implementation. They don't. Or at least not the particular people voting in the states where we need to win. You can't argue for pragmatism in terms of policy and governance and then run a campaign designed on pie-in-the-sky ideals on the rationality of the general electorate. Hillary ran marathons around Donald Trump in all things policy related. Donald Trump did little more than shout MAGA and promise the yuugest wall ever on the Mexican border. But running a national campaign is a different event than introducing legislation, or writing a white paper, and acknowledging that is being practical, not starry eyed.* Campaigning and governing are different, and you can't campaign like you'd govern or (as Trump is showing) govern like you'd campaign.
*I think a separate but related issue is that people do underestimate the ability for rapid change. Within 9 months, we've gone from an idea that most people want to repeal Obamacare to three different Democratic proposals for single payer, and a sense most Americans are open to it. Running on single payer being impossible might be absolutely true in the moment, but it might not be the case 12-24 months down the line. Millennials came of age watching gay marriage go from nothing to reality within a very short period of time. By contrast, gen Xers came of age during Reagan crushing nice liberal candidates, and they (as well as Hillary obvs) remember the healthcare fiasco of 1992-3, where pushing too hard probably ended up delaying healthcare reform for a generation. Where you do have a generational split, I think older people see younger people as being unreasonably demanding and foolhardy, and younger people see older people as being so cautious they're shooting themselves in the foot.
https://www.axios.com/why-trump-hopes-the-new-trump-sticks-2483311761.html
These stories aren't that useful in understanding/anticipating reality, but it's always interesting to see what someone wants the Village to believe.
And it probably is true that the guy likes spending money and being popular.
In finally got around to reading the Coates piece on the first white president. It is, among other things, a nice answer to the Lilla types (and, for that matter, some of the more foolish Bernie supporters):
Ostensibly assaulted by campus protests, battered by arguments about intersectionality, and oppressed by new bathroom rights, a blameless white working class did the only thing any reasonable polity might: elect an orcish reality-television star who insists on taking his intelligence briefings in picture-book form.
I didn't know who Lilla was until this thread and I was better off.
I still don't know who Lilla is, but if he's someone who says we lost because we're out of touch snowflakes, then I don't really want to know.
My biggest pet peeve is that we've let the party of racist oligarchs write the narrative that we're out of touch with working class people (by which they mean white men in a few select states). I was thinking about it and it reminds me of an abusive relationship. No person is perfect, so abusers pick up on real shortcomings that they use to make their partner second guess their behavior or judgment. Because when decent people are told they're too elitist/argumentative/judgmental/leave the dishes lying around too much, the first instinct is to take seriously the criticism and do some soul searching. This allows the abuser to deflect and go on the offense. Eventually the abused party has to realize the abuser is never offering these criticisms in good faith, but doing it to keep the abusive relationship going. I think we is learning, but Democrats need to learn that "you're elitist" is actually an abuse tactic, not an actual criticism.
A lot of the issues that get defined as "identity politics" don't really speak to areas that affect me personally, and don't address what I'm looking for from the Democratic Party - which would be more of a leftish policy wonk Berniecrat focus in addition to a more serious approach to sustainability and environmental themes. But, identity politics are an effective organizational mechanism - as the other side well knows - and I respect that various identify-related issues are important to those groups in the coalition that have experienced marginalization.
115.1: Three words: committee + social + thought. (At least during the first Bush/Cheney term.)
I think this idea that the Democratic Party needs to gaze into its fucking navel for four years to summon the insight necessary to run a successful presidential campaign is pernicious because it's just... so... close to seeing the actual problem with "coastal elites" and "flyover country:" namely, that the Democrats don't win enough Congressional and state-level offices. The failure to focus on this problem, in favor of an apparently endless obsession with the presidency and what it signifies, is a sign of some distortion in perspective. If instead of blithering about identity politics, we say: how can you win this particular local race in Tennessee, or this House race in Idaho, then you don't need to rely on straw-working-man demographics. The population you need to persuade is specific, and limited, and it is whatever it is. I don't see how the martyrdom of Bernie and Hillary gets us any further.
Charley (and others), I'm sure you're tired of my ignorant ranting on this subject and I'd welcome pushback; I'm not sure how best to express whatever germ of insight I have, because it's a matter of working against my own errors of thought, so it's hard to get traction.
I still don't know who Lilla is
He was at the Committee on Social Thought for a while. I interviewed with him when I wanted to go there (I was totally unprepared and we both knew it, but he was gracious), and sat in on a seminar he ran, which was very good. But he seems to want to be the liberal-scolding public intellectual and his more academic stuff I haven't found very rigorous. Josh Marshall's dig was tough but fair: "opportunistic and ahistorical preening wrapped up in a fancy package."
And yet, despite my shit-talking in 50, 119 makes me depressed and bitter. (It's also too harsh, strictly speaking: Bauerlein openly supported Trump.) ogged, what was the seminar?
That's why he's the new. Bauerlein was the reasonable conservative critic of higher ed about 10-15 years ago.
I'm just saying a vacuum opened up when people like Bauerlein went for Trump and couldn't plausibly be seen as doing insider higher ed critique anymore.
But I guess Lilla wouldn't describe himself as conservative.
117 & 118
Thanks. I steer clear of the committee on social thought.
I'm trying to think of what the Democratic equivalent of nominating Trump would be, and if I would support the party no matter what. Lyndon Larouche? I really don't think I would vote for him, even if the alternative was Ted Cruz.
We've probably discussed this before, but why are Conservatives so obsessed with higher ed, especially elite higher ed? It's a world that really only affects a tiny % of Americans. What happens at Princeton stays at Princeton doesn't really impact "salt of the earth" Real Americans in rural Kentucky or Idaho.
My thoughts are
1. It's an institution they will have to interact with via their children that they don't entirely dominate (although admin holds most of the real power, and they're often Wall Street types). Relatedly, they're petrified their kids will come home at Thanksgiving and call them heartless assholes for funding their tax cuts on the backs of poor people's healthcare.
2. It's the only place outside of tumblr or maybe a local Green Party meeting where you can find examples of ridiculous liberals living up to the stereotype,* and they don't want to admit they read the tumblrs of teenage girls.
3. It's entirely bad faith.
*Mainly because 18-22 year olds are in general sort of ridiculous.
Is there a Hurricane Irma thread around here? Could there be? Some of us have relations down there.
(Sorry, I kind of forgot how that pause/play thing went, hope I got it right.)
Shit, obviously didn't get the pause/play thing right. Duh.
Lyndon Larouche?
Hot diggity!
I'm sure you're tired
Not in the least.
I find handwringing about how Dems only care about winning presidential races somewhat similar to the handwringing about how Dems only care about transgender rights. It would be really useful if people would name some names with that kind of thing. I mean, sure, if by Dems one means journalists who appear on national cable TV, we're talking about people who only care about state and local races rarely. But surely every pundit spouting this line understands that state/local office holders, candidates, and party functionaries, are actually engaged at every level.
Engagement with the world via cable TV makes everyone stupid, even if not stupid enough to buy Trumpism.
124- Conservatives want to run everything and take it as a personal offense that they don't. The only other institution of any power they don't completely control is the media, and they're rage at it burns even hotter.
128- Maybe some of it is guilty conscience. I do some local volunteering but not as much as I do when the presidency is at stake. It just doesn't seem as interesting.
108: Indeed, given that Republicans (specifically Republicans; not e.g. "white people") stop supporting the social safety net when they see a photo of a black man, I think we can all agree that the real problem is Black Lives Matter and annoying college students, and surely if they go away we'll return to the wonderfully color-blind and progressive world of 1958.
I don't get how Mark Lilla--who studied under Harvey Mansfield, edited The Public Interest, and was married to Irving Kristol's kid--is supposed to be speaking for the mainstream liberals who reject Tumblr and all its works. Even before you get to the staggering series of self-owns and drooling historical ignorance (or simple disingenuousness) in this interview, that's not the resume of someone even like Jonathan Chait who can claim to represent a strain of contemporary thinking in the Democratic Party. That's (at best) the resume of someone with a big poster of Scoop Jackson and another one of Daniel Patrick Moynihan over his bed.
It's very much of a piece with one of Moynihan's political mentors, Stanley Elkin, who argued that one of the failures of abolitionists in America was their unwillingness to compromise with slave power.
132: Also posters of Michel Houellebecq and Daniel Bell. But I can't believe I'm engaging with a mind that can start a paragraph with Harvey Mansfield and end it in a bedroom, you sick fuck.
128: similar to the handwringing about how Dems only care about transgender rights -- well, that stuff is immensely irritating, so I'm grateful for what must be considerable patience. I wouldn't presume to criticize the Democratic Party itself, just its interested spectators and the public debates about its focus and its future (i.e. bullshitters bullshitting). A second- or third-order phenomenon. And I wouldn't even say that people are too concerned about Democrats winning presidential elections, but that they're (if anything) too concerned about them losing presidential elections, as opposed to losing other elections. That has probably changed at the Congressional level, I'd say; I am not sure about state and further down the chain.
134.a: No kinkshaming! We're not ashamed of Manliness here, iykwimaityd.
OT: I'm surrounded by white people, even by Nebraska standards.
Guy at the next table just got engaged (I'm guessing) to a woman with spectacular cleavage. On topic because I'm a feminist.
I may suck at understanding feminism, but not as badly as Kristol.
117
the actual problem with "coastal elites" and "flyover country:" namely, that the Democrats don't win enough Congressional and state-level offices. The failure to focus on this problem, in favor of an apparently endless obsession with the presidency and what it signifies, is a sign of some distortion in perspective. If instead of blithering about identity politics, we say: how can you win this particular local race in Tennessee, or this House race in Idaho, then you don't need to rely on straw-working-man demographics.
See 131. Democrats can't win most rural heavily-white areas and also be the coalition full of people of color because rural heavily-white areas are full of racist assholes who don't have the slightest idea of how government actually works.
Speaking as someone who has only lived in urban areas and the one rural heavily-white state in the entire country that Democrats carry up and down the ticket except when the Democrat loses to someone further left. Sorry to Charlie and others who live in rural heavily-white areas and haven't completely given up hope. In fairness I know Montana has had a successful Democratic governor in recent years, and Alaska Republicans are slightly saner than usual. Maybe my despondency is only logical in the South and Midwest? Btocked and also tired, FWIW, but I felt the connection had to be mentioned. Yes, I agree that the real problem is that Democrats aren't winning down-ticket, and there's one big reason for that.
|| just because this is the active thread I thought I would update you on the magic of my pharmacological disaster/mental breakdown: things got really bad in the past few days and I was embarrassed to tell y'all about it, like cutting myself with a putty knife bad, like bashing my arms against the concrete wall corners till I am covered with bruises, and hitting myself in the actual fucking face bad, and deep scratches, and I generally look like I lost a fight with a panther wielding a broom handle.
SO my doctor decided to put me on lithium which I was scared about since it seems kind of old-school and weird, I mean, so old-school that I think it's the third element on the periodic table. looking at its chemical structure versus brexpiprazole which I am also taking it's just like "hi! I am a goddamn salt! watch out for dem kidneys hahaha and don't get any pure amounts of me because I oxidize so for real that I will explode when exposed to air lol." BUT THEN lithium turned out to work like a fucking charm and I haven even bitten my hands once since about an hour after I took it. I have a headache and am nauseous and kind of giddy and want to sing the 80s song "nobody's gonna break my stride/nobody's gonna hold me down...etc." but I don't have to ask anyone to hide my laguiole carving set. nor do I feel like a loathsome demon hand is squeezing my heart with terrifying pressure, or a terrible fear I will hurt myself truly badly. and why was I moving house at this exact moment?
so despite all those songs written about it and the eventual reputed flattening of affect in some nurse ratched way when taken at the full therapeutic dose, it turns out that microdosing lithium is the best thing ever for mania and I have maybe never felt so relieved in my entire life, since prior to this I have maybe never felt so bad in my entire life. withdrawing from drugs and alcohol was but a bagatelle by comparison. so, lithium, hooray! also, moby, titties, hooray! >
140: Glad it's going well. That is, going better.
You make lithium sound fantastic, al, and I know it often is for those who need it. Not unlike breasts in that respect, maybe. Maybe.
who hasn't needed breasts, when you get right down to it? well, I guess there's formula, which is ok too.
Glad you're out of that dark place, Al.
Glad to hear that al, take care of yourself.
Jesus, alameida, Jesus Jesus. I am so sorry. I am so glad you found some relief; I hope it lasts. What a year you've had. I hope the wounds heal okay, too. My mom is of the tribe that swears by arnica for bruises.
sure heebs, I was thinking of you but meant I thought you needed them as a very young person. unless your mom went for formula all the way.
thanks for the good wishes e'eryone! this has been the absolute worst. the terrifying part was that I would usually do something with no planning or forethought, just an impulsive self-injury. part of the reason my doc put me on lithium is that it does reduce your suicide risk which is genuinely if slightly increased under these circumstances. I have been afraid to go near the windows. luckily (?) I bruise really easily and have apparently been able with some careful hiding to convince my kids I have just gotten hurt moving boxes/picking up our recalcitrant kitty etc. I don't know though and I worry I've really scared them. and thanks on the arnica lurid keyaki; I think I have some, actually.
we can now return to complaining about how bernie is way too old to seek the nomination and should just throw his weight behind some other candidate rather than recreate the divisiveness that plagued the previous primary.
|| The wind's been blowing for 4 hours now and it's glorious! |>
http://svc.mt.gov/deq/todaysair/AirDataDisplay.aspx?siteAcronym=MS&targetDate=9/9/2017
What fraction of Republicans are actually obsessed about higher ed? I'd guess it's comparable to the fraction of Democrats really obsessed about transgender bathrooms; but those people make more noise on the internet, so we hear them more. OTOH AIUI American evangelism was literally founded on the rejection of modern Biblical studies carried out in higher ed, so.
Yay lithium! Jesus, that self harm stuff is scary.
Meh. Putty knives are blunt.
So (if used for stabbing rather than cutting) they make really ragged, nasty puncture wounds.
new putty knives can be sharpish and if you swing them sideways in an arc into your palm with enough force they make long nasty ragged cuts :( I just happened to be using one. however I happily never graduated to the appealing box cutter because I made someone take it away.
I never understood the deal with cutting before but I could see it genuinely relieves stress and anxiety by narrowing down the world to a singular point of pain and interest that occupies all your mental attention and offers you the possibility of symmetry and a kind of self-challenge plus beads of welling blood are interesting. this may violate the analogy ban when considered with relation to the modern democratic party. we should give the DNC old timey 7-Up:
As with cocaine in Coca-Cola, lithium was widely marketed as one of a number of patent medicine products popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, and was the medicinal ingredient of a refreshment beverage. Charles Leiper Grigg, who launched his St. Louis-based company The Howdy Corporation, invented a formula for a lemon-lime soft drink in 1920. The product, originally named "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda", was launched two weeks before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. [--timely! ed.] It contained the mood stabilizer lithium citrate.... Its name was soon changed to 7 Up. All American beverage makers were forced to remove lithium in 1948 [--! ed]. Despite the 1948 ban, in 1950 the Painesville Telegraph still carried an advertisement for a lithiated lemon beverage.
one wonders what the effect of drinking the two beverages in alternation would be.
I was being sarcastic about the timeliness; obviously the years leading up to the crash would better have been served by lithiated lemon-lime beverages.
No, you had it right the first time. Cokey Coca-Cola for the Roaring Twenties, Lithiated Lemon-Lime for the Depressed (pun!) Twenties.
And ok sure, putty-knife-to-palm makes sense. I always did upper arms, for concealment purposes. Professionalism is very important to me that way.
Depressed Thirties! Woe is me!
It sucked so hard! Especially because I was so proud of the rest of the comment. Stupid typos. I blame spellcheckers, for making me dependent on their little red lines.
And you, Barry. How are things looking?
165: umm, I meant...nemmine. you got that.
167 Things are looking okay for now. So glad to have had a much needed vacation.
167 Things are looking okay for now. So glad to have had a much needed vacation.
But maybe not so okay so as to warrant a double post.
so, like, single-post ok. still good!
I may have spoken a little soon but things have still improved amazingly. shouldn't have let husband x leave me alone. I'm ok though.
If you need to chat to keep occupied, al, I'm sure I'm not the only one around. And I am at least around.
I'm about to drive into a cell phone towerless zone. It's a fetish.
Passing on Thomas Jefferson's bath ring and heading home.
Amazingly, still clear this morning. It won't last, says the county health department: Do you enjoy crushing hopes and dreams? You too could be an air quality specialist!
If Al is back long term we can have a proper Eastern Hemisphere shift.
I'm old enough to remember stage 3 smog alerts and warnings to stay indoors if possible in Los Angeles.
I recall at least once when, after a particularly bad stretch of days, it actually hurt to inhale too deeply when you were outside. I was about 7 or 8 then, so I'm not sure if I can trust that recollection. Doe bad air quality actually do that?
I've never inhaled a doe but yes, it sounds painful.
Stinging eyes, sore throat, yes.
Wood smoke is chemically different from industrial smog, so I don't know how that plays out. Out of state smoke smells a lot less strong than our local stuff; a lot of the stuff has dropped out en route from Oregon or Washington.
Most of us are heeding the warnings, so the symptoms are more psychological. A friend who runs 3 mornings a week hasn't run in four or five weeks. We haven't ridden our bikes much at all for the last month. Etc.
Lithium is due for rebranding as the artisanal elemental hipster psych med, your just a trendsetter al!
Apparently, lack of cell phone service leads people to paint quilts on their barns.
A whole quilt or just a block? I think my youngest daughter's art teacher might be working on making some. I've considered doing one but I'm not sure where I'd hang it. And I'm even worse at painting than at piecing quilts.
Are we talking here a painted representation of a quilt, or an actual fabric quilt attached to a barn? Some fiber-glass type product?
Just a block. Painted on the wood.
Are you sure it isn't preppers with dazzle paint?
They were usually on the prosperous looking farms.
Naturally, you dazzle-paint the most valuable barns first.
I'm so glad to hear you are getting some relief, alameida. I hope things continue on a good trajectory.
Healthy thoughts to everyone (and safe thoughts to those of you in the path of hurricanes/smoke/fires/tornadoes/whathaveyou).
|| The wind's been blowing for 4 hours now and it's glorious! |>
Good to hear. I got back yesterday from a three day trip up to Yellowstone and that was far and away the smokiest version of the Tetons I've ever seen.
I was just slapping myself in the face last night and made husband x come sit with me after but I will be happy to take people up on late night talking me off the ledge generally. I'm titrating up to double the dose of sexy artisanally naturally-occurring Li in three days so hopefully that will lead to even greater improvements. I feel slightly downcast like now the spell broke so I might do something dumb again, but hopefully last night was an aberration. I mean, obviously it was aberrant, but additionally so.
Alameida, I'm not around much to chat, but I've been reading your updates and wishing you the best. I hope the end of the move was easy and that you get the best drug cocktail (artisanally crafted, small batch meds from local sources?) (that sounds like homebrew meth from a dealer, doesn't it?) possible and feel better soon.
al- They're probably giving you about 300mg. 900 mg would be normal therapeutic. Maybe they go as low as 10=50mg.
Micro-dosing would be pretty cool. There are lower suicide rates in places with naturally higher levels of lithium in the water - way below therapeutic, even anti-depressant adjunct therapeutic doses. They are doing micro doses to see if it prevents dementia.
Take care. Please feel free to e-mail.
Hey y'all. I'm even drunker than I was last night. Sorry to hear about the breakdown Al, but I'm glad you're seeing some progress. I hope lithium works. One thing I've failed at is I have a friend in Narnia who's the wife of an academic who I should connect with you, but haven't yet.
I went off antidepressants awhile ago for reasons, and now that those reasons no longer apply I should go back on, except I haven't, so I'm basically a nonfunctional ball of anxiety whose crazily stress procrastinating on life. Drinking helps with the anxiety, but not the productivity.
199.2 didn't work out so well for me, even without the drunkenness. The stupid pills really are magically formulated to help you cope with the bullshit life you are irrevocably stuck living. If you get back on them now, you might be cheerful and functional by interview season? I am a broken record on this subject too, but srsly, wellbutrin + prozac + sobriety [because alcohol interacted so unpredictably with the first two that it stopped being worth the cost] + a decent talk therapist seems to have eliminated depression from my life, in the most uncanny way. I suspect the good times won't last, but I am frantically trying to make up for lost years while they do. Even two more solidly good years would be life-changing.
sorry buttercup; that's shitty. I'm really sad because I just hurt myself the worst so far by banging my arm on the edge of the bathroom stall at my aa meeting place. I thought it would be good to go to a meeting and it kind of was but god damn I fucked up my forearm and now my hand doesn't want to bend one direction. my doctor said it would take like five days to work so this is normal but it seemed so awesome for two days. i am really tempted to divide my dose again and take half now and half at bedtime. the other option is to take a fuck ton of clonazepam now and for various reasons this isn't good for me. please tell me this is going to be OK you guys.
Can you call your doctor now? Is an inpatient stay an option at all for you? Three more days of this sounds like literal torture.
It will be okay, it will be okay, you can survive this. I worry about your arms, though.
It's going to be okay Al. Please stop hitting things, you'll break bones and that'll be even more annoying for you.
Also if you break something badly they may not be able to give you the good painkillers, because interactions.
thanks guys I divided the Li dose and husband x is reading me a fairy tale now. I am tempted by the magic of the psych ward but we are trying to literally guard me every second at home I don't know if it's even possible though.
It will be ok al. Forgive my presumption but you know you've been through worse and come out the other side able to grab some of the good and joyful in your life. You will again.
east of the sun and west of the moon with the neilsen illustrations. and then "the blue belt" which was deeply weird. thank you barry but this is so strange and scary I've never just had random impulses to injure myself before. I mean, long-term, being addicted to drugs or whatever was worse but this is almost unbearably bad. this has to stop soon I can't do it. I do know it'll be over and be ok it's just very hard right now. husband x has fallen asleep which is dumb.
I'm so very sorry you're going through this alameida.
Wake him up. Or go to hospital.
Is that the beautiful blue-bound book with the gold-embossed line drawing?
YES! I woke him up. by banging my other arm on the door, admittedly. not hard though, I'm fine. it's the other one that's fucked. now that the Li has kicked in I feel quite a bit better actually. I want to take all my nighttime meds and just sleep but there are chocolate chip cookies so that's good.
Yes, that's the book? Is there like a sun or moon with lines radiating from it? And people flying?
What story does the cover represent?
east of the sun and west of the moon.
How does it go? I don't think I remember it.
OT, though I suppose it is a book recommendation: I am really enjoying "The Dictator's Handbook" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, one of the best and best-written books on politics I have ever read.
Years and years ago, I read his "The War Trap" and wasn't impressed. Of course, I was in graduate school so my job was to read things and not be impressed.
Thomas Frank makes some good points about the original topic of this thread: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19944:Clinton-Attacks-Sanders-in-New-Book----RAI-With-Thomas-Frank-%2826%29
Clinton just said she's not running for anything again. I'm not going to worry about this anymore. Does the article at the link lend itself to bad puns?
Doesn't everything in your expert hands?
222: This really gives you a feel for how the media treats Hillary:
PAUL JAY: [W]hy on earth does she make this critique of Sanders at this time? How does she ... benefit from this?
The actual reason she makes this argument at this time is that she believes it is true and important. I think her point of view is flawed, but it's not ridiculous. The media really did abuse her in the way she described, and Bernie wasn't making proposals that had a shot at being enacted in any near-term timescale.
The idea that she was subject to some kind of out-of-line nastiness from Sanders is pretty ridiculous, but Sanders has said the same sort of thing about Hillary with similarly thin justification. It's just human nature to be pissed off at an election opponent.
Halford in 85 makes Hillary's argument eloquently. Perhaps Paul Jay would like to ask of Halford, "How does he ... benefit from this?"
Also: I think the famous Be||e Waring ought to be proud, or at least amused, that her classic discussion of ponies has sunk this deeply into the American consciousness:
"Someone sent me a Facebook post," writes Hillary Clinton, "That summed up the dynamic in which we were caught," meaning her relationship with Sanders, "Bernie: I think America should get a pony. Hillary: How will you pay for the pony? Where will the pony come from? How will you get Congress to agree to the pony? Bernie: Hillary thinks America doesn't deserve a pony. Bernie supporters: Hillary hates ponies. Hillary: Actually, I love ponies. Bernie supporters: She changed her positions on ponies," and then there's a hashtag, #WhichHillary, #WitchHillary, meaning ... on ponies, "Headline: Hillary Refuses To Give Every American A Pony. Debate Moderator: Hillary, how do you feel when people say you lie about ponies?"
I hope Waring has copyrighted that concept and gets a nickel every time it's invoked.
I agree with Bernie more than Hillary about how a politician should have been discussing healthcare in that moment, but Hillary provides an entirely reasonable description of the dynamic at work.
220: I think canonically first you get the sugar.
225- "Bernie wasn't making proposals that had a shot at being enacted in any near-term timescale."
That always seems like a weird forced objection to Bernie. None of Hillary's proposals had any chance of being enacted soon either! In order to make any substantial policy proposal happen the Democrats would need some kind of sea change in the people in congress. A political revolution if you will. There was a candidate without a realistic plan to make that happen, but that candidate wasn't Bernie.
Where's al???? Who can contact her or the husband?
I assume she's asleep. It's almost midnight in Narnia.
It's 22:46 in Narnia and I don't feel like assuming.
Yikes, alameida, that sounds scary and awful. I hope you're okay and I'm sending all of the positive vibes that I can that you get through the next couple of days with fewer scares.
I'm ok! I was indeed asleep from like 8 pm on, have woken up at 3 for no reason, and will hopefully be headed back to sleep soon. thanks for all the love and concern.
Glad to hear it! Hope you aren't reading this!
If you really want somebody to not read something, you need to put it in a link.
232. Good. Sleep well and take care.
so I'm icing down my arm again, feel pretty ok, and am going to ikea with my helper later which might sound nightmarish but it's so crowded that I feel safe and I can even have her come into the bathroom with me if it's empty, plus we need a bunch of stuff, plus I sort of perversely like ikea. it offers a fantasy of home organization that I need right now. husband x is still leaving me along to do work emails; I can't decide if he should believe me when I say it's ok but probably not? I feel guilty destroying his work time. but hopefully it's just a few more days? one thing is that in a money-saving endeavor we are letting out helper go and she's supposed to leave the 27th I feel like I have to change this but there's no room for her here so the girls are sleeping together with girl x on a mattress on the floor; people have been through worse, right? the rate of sucessful suicide for people with mania that's self-harm is 6% over 20 years holy fucking shit. I'm right not to go to the old place where I feel nervous about impulsively going out the 24th floor window. and I'm scared about being alone in the house all day so soon.
Be well al. I'm off to work soon and will check in to the blog regularly if you need to vent.
I hope Ikea goes well. It's never been my favorite because I get lost and because I'm afraid of minimalist furniture.
That's rough, al, I will be thinking good thoughts for you.
My psychiatrist wants me to consider adding an atypical antipsychotic, Rexulti. I am very leery of this, but really don't know what else to do at this point.
239: I take rexulti and it's great; I really recommend it very highly, but titre up slowly because it can push you into a mildly manic state at a dose that happens to be too high for you. IME we backed down fast and it was fine. I also take lamotrigine as a mood stabilizer. but don't also take cymbalta at the same time, because the rexulti inhibits the metabolization of the cymbalta and you may additionally be a bad metabolizer and then you may be taking an effective dose of the latter of up to 5x the nominal dose, especially if you push the rexulti up again to fight depression, which will fuck you up bad ask me how I know! that's how I ended up like this.
I realize I'm not selling the rexulti but until this recent blip disaster which involved changing a bunch of other things at once I was doing amazingly well, mentally sharper than I've been in ages and just on an even keel.
but what I can't believe is that wrong medication dosage could pitch me into this weird para-manic self-harming state and then I would just stay there. although we haven't been able to get off all the offending drugs at once obviously because I am bad at withdrawing from things lol, nor can you just slam people in the face with a full dose of lithium. but what the fuck it's so scary and weird and it's just never happened before. it's like tourette's syndrome of self harm, where I just do it all of a sudden without forethought. fuck all this. but do they even watch you in the psych ward that well? I've had bad treatment from narnian doctors before, and it's not like they take your arms or doorframes or fingernails away, and we would lose control of our tapers possibly. do I literally want to be put in a padded room? I don't even know. better to just be watched carefully at home, right? but what if this lasts eight more days? thanks for listening, you guys are soothing you know.
Wear gloves and a coat? I found the Neilsen Sun/Moon book online and I'm not sure we ever had it when I was a kid. The vague image in my head was something else, and I don't recognize the plot summary at all. The Neilsen looks amazingly beautiful though.
Maybe you make a bear-fighting suit of armor to wear like that Project Grizzly guy.
In Narnia armored bears fight you.
my b-I-l suggested gloves and then bubble wrap on my forearms. I cut my nails as short as possible but it hasn't totally don't the trick.
Do you like popping bubble wrap? Once I literally asked for a roll of it for my birthday. Best present ever.
Taking little squares of fabric apart strand by strand was my silent bubble wrap, especially effective if they'd been dyed to a pattern after having been woven.
Taking little squares of fabric apart strand by strand was my silent bubble wrap
And so "picking oakum" moves closer to the end of its two-century journey from "punishment for 18th-century convicts" to "modern lifestyle trend endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow".
I would like to think my life on the whole has much more overlap with the former than the latter, ajay, and I'll be terribly hurt if you disagree!
I'm still waiting for Goop's Guide to Situational Cannibalism.
While momentarily distracted the other day, I taught a class the definition of cannibals, then tricked the inattentive ones into proclaiming themselves members of that set.
I think the mainland phrase is "long pig".
No, that's an islander phrase. Which I taught them also.
Possibly relatedly, I think a student tried to ask me if I was high today.
Shit. I thought I was safe because the restaurant was run by people from the ROC.
You're probably fine. The Pacific islanders come from the island, but not from the Roc. If you see what I mean.
Also, who gives a shit. With your political system, kuru would be an improvement.
I assume Trump has already eaten human brains at least once.
I'm just thinking you personally could maybe use more laughter in your life.
Maybe just lunch. I'm thinking Greek food because there's no way falafel can be people.
So, have any of you taken anti-psychotics and not gained weight? Because I know it's a relatively trivial thing to worry about, but I am in a pretty grim place with my body now, and gaining more weight would not help that.
As for the OP, charming story about Chelsea's birth.
264: I think of it as being basically unavoidable on risperdal but not such a big deal with Zyprexa. Those are the only ones I was on long enough to have an opinion. To avoid atypicals and weight side effects, have your doctors considered guanfacine? I don't know if it's useful for adults but I think it's a great place to start for kids.
I don't recall discussing it--will bring it up next week. He had also mentioned MAOIs as a possiblity, but they also sound scary.
MAO the first killed tens of millions.
I mean, I'm looking for a revolutionary option, but...
no weight gain on the rexulti at all but when I took seroquel, for sure. it's not so trivial; I'm worried about it on the Li although a month or two of vomiting/withdrawal from the wretched amitriptyline, followed by full-bore crisis have caused me to lose 12 lbs, about which I am irrationally pleased even as I am clearly both undernourished and crazy. just one more pound to my pre-pregnancy weight! I blame the patriarchy. and mania. fucking mania. I'm not even productive right now at least you normally get to be but no one will let me clean anything anymore after accidents! maybe today I'll alphabetize our LPs.
I'm sorry you're feeling so shitty, J, Robot.
Technically, I'm at my pre-pregnancy weight.
If any other wretched people here need some lulz, know that there is a product named "LENIS PACK."
Would it be helpful to suggest distractions? If so ... Filing system for lps! Make it complicated enough and you can sort your guests between those to whom it doesn't occur to crack the code (vast majority) those who try to figure it out and fail (majority of the remainder), and the super sleuths aka complete loons, who solve it (3 in the last 19 years). Go!
I already have a system but the children want labels for some weird reason: soundtracks, alphabetized; compilation albums, this is tricky but alphabetized; big band compliations and herb alpert because something; then normal albums alphabetized by name of band not including "the," or by last name of artist. I use ikea kallax shelves which have squares perfect for holding records.
My wife put on weight on antipsychotics (Abilify, then Rexulti, as adjuncts to SSRIs and SNRIs for depression). Having seen the before-and-after mental state, though, they have totally been worthwhile drugs.
glad to hear martha is doing better! I too found the difference amazing. I hope this is over soon and I return to the state I was in in, say, may and june before I started a billion near-simultaneous cross-tapers. I doubled the Li today and feel a bit better; I guess slow and steady wins the race, and my psychiatrist says the cavalry is coming, but jeezuz I want this over yesterday. if people are awake please entertain me with dumb stuff. tell me about what you had for dinner. where is gswift? I want the gswift and al show. we would have the best podcast ever.
I had a box of dumplings for dinner. They came with little sachets of soy sauce and chili. The latter of these refused to be poured or even squeezed over the dumplings, on account of the density of what turned out eventually to be phenomenally powerful chili seeds.
Oh, al go to the other thread and tell us about education and barbers in Narnia. If you want.
278: maybe a win in the end?
279: ooh, OK. I'm not allowed to listen to emo music, so.
Fig & prosciutto sandwich, & rocket salad.
County health department air quality update:
But I'm going to be honest with you - looking at the forecast and what's coming, it's hard to focus that much on what may be our last day of significant smoke impacts. You guys. This is an actual quote from the National Weather Service: If fire season isn`t finished by the time this week is over, it will end next week.
The models are coming into glorious agreement that the weather is going to get cold and rainy and snowy on the mountains. Precisely who gets what precipitation of course remains to be seen, but this is just terribly exciting.
Edmonds is a trustee of the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), an organisation which is strongly opposed to wind farms. He was said to have joined "because of the threat near his home in Devon". He has been quoted as saying that, "Politicians are promoting the wind industry as a green icon, but they are misleading the public into believing the propaganda of the wind industry. The reality is that wind power is too costly and can never meet our energy needs; but it will destroy the countryside". His view is that those who are promoting wind farms are energy companies with a vested financial interest and that wind turbines are not reliable enough as a source of sustainable energy.
Edmonds also opposes immigration and the BBC's Welsh Language Service.
What does he have against the Welsh?!
Oops! Wrong thread. I guess I should go to sleep.
What thread was that supposed to go in?
Haircut. Reading Group - After the Family Wage.
I gained a lot of weight on Zyprexa, I've lost some of it since I went on Invega. I also have more energy. I'd do ads for Invega if I could.
Invega is just risperidine extended release.