The Watering Hole, Saturday, February 27th, 2016: Antidote

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I’ve been up all night wallowing in the dregs of American “humanity”, IOW, reading headlines and comments on various internet sites. Right now I don’t even want to think about what a despicable, bigoted, uncaring, brutish devolution of a formerly (somewhat) civilized society we’ve become.

So, since I’ve blown right through sunrise here in the east, missing it completely, I’m putting up someone else’s glorious and unusually-tinted sunrise photo as an antidote to the darkness in my mind and soul. I hope it soothes your souls, too.
Golden Sunrise

This is our daily Open Thread – talk about whatever you want.

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36 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Saturday, February 27th, 2016: Antidote”

  1. I’m a Cynic, and I Voted for Bernie Sanders – Charles Pierce

    There is no question in my mind that, without Bernie Sanders and the forces behind him, Hillary Rodham Clinton is not talking like a Wall Street reformer, not bragging about how she’s going to go after the shadow banking community, and probably not being as vocal a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement as she has been. I don’t really care if it’s genuine or if it’s expedient; I’m fond of quoting Drew Pearson’s fictional President Ben Hannaford’s insight that, in a democracy, the right things always get done for the wrong reasons. The point is that she has to be kept to these positions even after she gets the nomination—and I think she is going to be the nominee—and the more states Sanders wins, and the more votes he piles up, and the more delegates come to Philadelphia pledged to support him, then the more tightly she can be fastened to the positions she adopted to beat him. So those are only a couple of reasons why I went to City Hall Friday morning and voted for Bernie Sanders. Your mileage may vary. And I do not intend to enter into the ongoing food fight between the supporters of the two Democratic candidates. Not with the incredible collection of dingbats laying wood to each other on the other side.

    ‘She has to be kept to these positions’ after she’s ELECTED. That’s the reason I’m voting for Bernie. I have no expectation she will do what we want done if she becomes President.

  2. Interesting Bernie endorsement in one of this morning’s emails:

    I am endorsing Bernie Sanders for President of the United States.

    He’s leading a movement to reclaim America for the many, not the few. And such a political mobilization – a “political revolution,” as he puts it — is the only means by which we can get the nation back from the moneyed interests that now control so much of our economy and democracy.

    This extraordinary concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the very top imperils all else — our economy, our democracy, the revival of the American middle class, the prospects for the poor and for people of color, the necessity of slowing and reversing climate change, and a sensible foreign policy not influenced by the “military-industrial complex,” as President Dwight Eisenhower once called it.

    It is the fundamental prerequisite: We have little hope of achieving positive change on any front unless the American people are once again in control.

    I have the deepest respect and admiration for Hillary Clinton, and if she wins the Democratic primary I’ll work my heart out to help her become president. But I believe Bernie Sanders is the agent of change this nation so desperately needs.

    Join me and my friends at Democracy for America. Please stand with Bernie Sanders by adding your name now.

    Thank you.

    Robert Reich
    Former Secretary of Labor

  3. Bill Maher rips into latest GOP debate: ‘It was a new low’ and the ‘clear loser was America’

    “I’ll fill you in if you missed the debate,” Maher stated. “It kind of looked like a really disgusting Cuban sandwich. There was Rubio on one side and Cruz on the other and a fat slab of cheesy ham in the middle.

    “I thought it was very fitting that it was in Texas,” he smirked.” Because it reminded me of the Alamo. The Mexicans were the enemy and the clear loser was America.”

  4. Jane, in reference to the tint of the sunrise. I recently saw a video about the Sahara where scientists used layers of dust blown from the sands into the Atlantic to determine the age of the desert. It is the dust from the Sahara Desert that causes the brilliant sunrises we see on the east coast.

    FYI they gave the age – the time when the area first desertified – as 3 million years ago. Since then, they determined the region has cycled between being desert and lush tropical paradise about every 100,000 years. They also theorized that the transformation only takes about 200 years and that a desertification event about 20,000 years ago is what led people to leave the area, spreading across Asia and Europe.

    • Nah, couldn’t happen. Not possible since the “desertification event about 20,000 years ago is what led people to leave the area” hasn’t happened. Yet. Man wasn’t even created until 9:00 AM on Friday, Oct 23, 4004 BC; Bertrand Russell explains:

      “The date of the creation of the world (according to the orthodox view) can be inferred from the genealogies in Genesis, which tell how old each patriarch was when his oldest son was born. Some margin of controversy was permissible, owing to certain ambiguities and to differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew text; but in the end Protestant Christendom generally accepted the date 4004 B.C., fixed by Archbishop Usher. Dr. Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, who accepted this date for the Creation, thought that a careful study of Genesis made even greater precision possible; the creation of man, according to him, took place at 9.00 A.M. on October 23rd. This, however, has never been an article of faith; you might believe, without risk of heresy, that Adam and Eve came into existence on October 16th or October 30th, provided your reasons were derived from Genesis. The day of the week was, of course, known to have been Friday, since God rested on the Saturday.” (R.S.p51/2) ~Bertrand Russell

    • I don’t understand a fucking thing you wrote ❓

      However, it is only fair to inform you that my perception is somewhat impaired 🙄

      • On the Twitter, we like to play what are called hashtag games. You come up with a short phrase to describe a category of something or a situation, put a pound sign in front of it (the kids today have co-opted our pound sign and call it a hashtag now), and give examples of things meeting that category. This one was #DrugAMovie, which is interpreted to mean take a film title and turn it into a drug reference that is hopefully amusing when applied to that film. My entry was to take “The Sound Of Music” and make a drug reference out of it. So I added “Pink Floyd” in front of the word Music. “The Sound Of Pink Floyd Music.” If that isn’t a drug reference, what is?

        People on Twitter can currently respond by “Liking” a tweet (with the Heart) or Re-tweeting it to others. It’s a way of letting the author of the tweet know you liked it. David Gilmour, one of the co-founders of Pink Floyd, was one of the four people who liked my tweet.

        Now that you understand it, I think you can see why I’m excited. 🙂

  10. Al Sharpton just signed off saying ‘I’ll see you next Sunday’. He’s a real optimist.

  12. After all the pointing out to Trump that he keeps retweeting white supremacists and neo-nazis, you’d think someone on his staff would have explained who these people are. Apparently not.

    • “Ignorance of the KKK” is extremely doubtful, given that his father was a dedicated white supremacist. Trump came by all those endorsements honestly, I’m sure.

      • Another reason Trump isn’t believable is the simple assumption, though reasonably reliable,that if you ever heard of David Duke, it’s because of his being a former KKK Grand Wizard. And if he wasn’t a former Klansman, there’s no reason why we ever would have heard of him.

    • Donald Trump: ‘It would be very unfair’ to disavow KKK and David Duke until I ‘do research on them’

      On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Trump if he was willing to say that he did not want Duke’s vote “or that of other white supremacists.”

      “I don’t know anything about David Duke,” Trump insisted. “I don’t know anything about what you are even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don’t know. I mean, did he endorse me or what’s going on?”

      “Because I know nothing about David Duke, I know nothing about white supremacists,” he added. “And so, you are asking me a question that I’m supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.”

      Tapper pressed: “Would you just say, unequivocally, you condemn them and you don’t want their support?”

      “Well, I have to look at the group,” Trump replied. “I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about. You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I’d have to look. If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them, and certainly I would disavow if I thought that there was something wrong.”

      Yeah, right. OK. Sure. I get it. Uh huh. Say no more.

  13. Look for the video of Ed Schultz squaring off with Hillary supporter David Brock on Reliable Sources. Ed puts Brock so much on the defensive, all Brock could do was try to keep talking over him, just like a Republican, which he used to be.

    • Trump thinks he should be able to sue the media if he doesn’t like their crowd estimates. He’s apparently never heard of the first amendment principle of prior restraint.

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