AdamSmith

Don’t talk about underage boys. Otherwise this site is open to anything that comes into your head.
Or any other organ 

Staying out of that joint after being kicked out was possibly the best thing I ever did for my mental & emotional health, second only to 4 years of psychoanalysis 4 days/week on the couch in my mid-30s. 

Staying out of that joint after being kicked out was possibly the best thing I ever did for my mental & emotional health, second only to 4 years of psychoanalysis 4 days/week on the couch in my mid-30s. 

I believe the ONLY way to fight racism in this country is to let it fade away thru the generations.  It hasnt happened so far, but if THIS election is any indication, it's coming....
You cant pull that shit with today's youngins, even ones brought up in totally racist families.   Todays kids are WOKE and dont buy it.  Social media has made their generation the melting pot it should be, and furthers acceptance, diversity and inclusion....
All this talk about Trump or his spawn running again in 2024...  With what we know now, and the direction the country is headed, if Biden does it right,  the NEW generation wont let THAT happen again !   And as their forefathers become dust, the possibility for that is greater. 
But NOW is a time for celebration, and lets not allow anything to rain on our parade.  America got it RIGHT !  

The line that resonated most for me:  "Slavery is an abomination ........ but neither I or any man have any immediate solution to the problem."
How's that for understatement?  Different century, but we're dealing with much of the same shit today.
I suspect that clip was a highly white-washed portrayal of some of those men.  We know about Jefferson and owning slaves.  I don't feel he was a particularly good guy.  
I am now completely rabid about getting rid of the slavery electoral college.  There's lots of scholars, especially Black ones, that can make a great argument that the electoral college is all about the ownership and blood of slaves.  And there are plenty of "originalist" sources to go to to connect the dots and show the intent of "the Founding fathers"  was to build institutions, like the electoral college, that were designed to support slavery.
It is the last of our immediate problems, I know.  And I also know we don't have the power to do anything about it right now.  Talk about STILL not having an immediate solution to the problem.  
But it infuriates me that Biden will win this election by up to 5 million votes.  And yet we have to go through this process of discussing whether the election was stolen from President Toxic.  In no other country that even pretends to be a democracy would this be happening.
To the extent that we're going to have noise, I'd rather have noise about how the electoral college is an institution built to support the ownership of Blacks as property.  As opposed to how people feel about whether poll watchers should be six feet away from ballot counters in the middle of a deadly pandemic.  Again, in no other democracy where someone just won by 5 million votes could this be happening.  It makes me feel even worse about the kind of people who actually support this nonsense.
There was an interesting discussion on CNN this week between Rep. Clyburn and Don Lemon.  As always, Lemon was not exactly being a detached journalist.  In fact, he was in tears, talking about how hearing Biden tell Blacks "You had my back, so I will have yours" made him cry as he heard it.  He is not the only Black that said that on TV.  The emotion and redemption in some of these moments and symbols this week was very deep and powerful.  That was clear.
Lemon was basically bitching as a Black man about how slow and difficult progress is.  And how frustrating it is to even try to be objective interviewing people who are racists who unabashedly support Trump's racist nonsense.  Clyburn got into this riff about his relationship with John Lewis and Elijah Cummings.  How they became fast friends when they met and formed SNCC in the 60's.  How close his religious and geographic roots with Cummings were.  The love and dignity of these men, two of whom are now dead, was palpable as Clyburn went on in his riff with Lemon.  But his basic point was what we would all guess.  Be patient.  Stay focused.  Keep your eyes on the prize. 
Clyburn just gave an epic - one might say Biblical - example of how that works in real time with what he did with Biden in 2020.  It has changed America for the good.  I was in tears yesterday, too.  I didn't know much about Clyburn until 2020.  I am now in awe of the man.  I feel America, and especially Democrats, are gifted with his wise and moral leadership.
That's a way to rewrite the scene portrayed in what you posted, Adam.  We still don't have any immediate solutions.  I would argue we just escaped a brush with the degradation or even death of democracy.  That might be going too far, since having maybe up to 150 million people vote in what was essentially a free election isn't exactly a bad example of democracy.  But it was very messy, like that discussion about slavery  in the clip you posted.  
One thing I feel good about is the discussion we just had wasn't one limited to or led by solely White men who own property, which in some cases is Black men.  The key players in this debate on my side were people like Biden, Clyburn, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer.  That's progress.  The moral grounding of what just happened was in fact based on the words and ideals of men like Jim Clyburn, John Lewis, Elijah Cummings.  
So I'll take this as proof that MLK was right.  We just saw the arc of the moral universe bend.  2020 is messy and sad.  But if we listen to the words of men like Clyburn, Lewis, and Cummings, America will do well.  That is truly a gift from God.

Now the fun thing is going to be watching the state-level, and maybe even SDNY, legal prosecutions continue to play out.
I think the courts would kick this notion of ‘self-pardon’ straight into the toilet.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s5X0HqBPcCQ

Now the fun thing is going to be watching the state-level, and maybe even SDNY, legal prosecutions continue to play out.
I think the courts would kick this notion of ‘self-pardon’ straight into the toilet.

Countdown to Melania DIVORCE announcement !  

Well, Mr Trump, I guess BLM (Black Lives Really DO Matter) ?
THEY sure as hell sent your sorry, saggy Orange ass packin...   
Now maybe you'll learn to SAY it ?   Black Lives MATTER !   (you listenin Jared ?)

It's funny.  I have less faith in Kamala than Joe, not more.  And that's coming from a California liberal who was very excited when she won her Senate race in 2016.
To clarify that, what is being talked about a lot on TV  right now, especially among Blacks and women, is how exciting and empowering it will be to see a Black woman speaking to America, tonight perhaps, as Vice President elect.  So I strongly agree with all that.  She does not look, think, or vote like Mike Pence.  This is a huge fucking deal, to quote Joe Biden.  Democrats should feel very excited about that.  I do.
We now know that even if Warnock and Ossoff win we can forget about a bold progressive agenda, Labor Secretary Sanders, or Treasury Secretary Warren.  We need them in the Senate.  And Warren or Sanders would never be confirmed by Rich Mitch.  This actually solves some internal political problems for Biden.  I'm both progressive and pragmatist, I think.  I get the fact that Democrats will now have to fight hard for relatively small victories, on things like jobs and the pandemic and voting rights and climate change.
There will be more young voters in 2024.  And they just crushed Trump.  There is no reason to think they will convert to Trumpism in 2024. 
So Democrats did not really settle this internal battle between progressives and moderates in 2020.  And we now have Kamala as a possible presumptive heir in 2024.  I have mixed feelings about that.  She kind of flopped in 2020.  She didn't have much time in the Senate.  But she isn't a Joe Biden, meaning someone who can clearly win elections outside California, or gets laws passed.  We just don't know.
Joe Scarborough said today that he is convinced now that Joe Biden is the only Democrat that could have won in 2020.  I think that is worth thinking about, both in terms of present and future.
I tend to disagree with Morning Joe and agree with Alan Lichtman.  This was a referendum on Trump and Trumpism.  Period.  Trump lost the referendum.  Period.  In January, Biden will be President.  Period.  Lichtman's basic argument is that who the Democrats nominate doesn't matter so much, or even at all, if the conditions are right to remove the party in power.
Here's how my bias plays out.  I think Sanders might have made a negative difference, certainly in very close states like Georgia and Arizona.  It's not logical to argue that making it easier to attach the label "socialist" to our candidate would have made it easier to win.  Especially given that we now know the "socialism" label had traction in Florida, and probably with some moderate suburban women as well.  
I will go to the grave thinking my preferred candidate, Elizabeth Warren, would have won.  You can argue she's too liberal, or even too female.  But she would have thrown this shit right back at Trump.  "I'm not a socialist.  I was a Republican capitalist who saw how corporate greed crushed people by taking their homes, or taking their jobs to China.  I'm the one who fought predatory Wall Street lenders, Donald.  You're just the predator."  I think you can make a good argument that Warren could have done a very good job inspiring the base without freaking out moderate women who grew up and look a lot like her.  She would have had a logical and powerful argument that she is fighting for these women, and guys like Donald Trump simply are not.
Regardless, none of that really matters now.  Warren and Sanders won't be in play for 2024.  And now Biden has the perfect reason to say we need their votes and their passion in the US Senate.  And I'm not against the idea of Kamala being heir in 2024 or 2028.  But I'm not convinced.  While I know Independents in Iowa who kind of do view her as "The Dark One" who may have questionable and excessively liberal views, I view her the way progressives do.  I'm not sure she's the one I'd want leading the ticket in 2024 or 2028.
Being a pragmatist, I'm getting used to what the voters just did.  It is clear now that there is zero mandate for moving directly from Trumpism to a full-on progressive agenda.  There are not votes for that.  Again, that's true even if Democrats have 50 Senators in January.  It may have been true even if we had 51 or 52.  Did we really think Joe Manchin was on board for the kind of Green New Deal AOC would support?
The main lesson I am taking out of this is that if we build power, we will win.  I sent a lot of money to people like Harrison and Warnock and Ossoff.  What just happened suggests Stacey Abrams can be and should be elected Governor of Georgia in 2022.  Some Latina Democrat should run in Arizona for Governor, because what happened suggests she could win.   
We again lost a chance to get ahead of the redistricting fight for an entire decade.  But we won big in 2018, anyway.  So if we figure out how to build a majority, Republicans simply can't stop us.  We just proved that.  Biden is winning over 50 % of the vote. They can not stop him from kicking Trump's sorry ass out of The White House.  That itself feels like a huge victory.
I think history just answered some questions.  This was not 2008, or 1992.  It was not a Democratic version of 1980.  It was not 1932.  Again, I think 1960 may be a pretty good year to think about.  Kennedy won, but barely.  It opened the door for things that had already been bubbling for years - like the civil rights movement - to gain a bully pulpit, legitimacy, and stature.  It means we need to feel like we won, to feel proud, and to keep donating and voting and organizing.
I'm not 100 % convinced Kamala is the right leader.  That said, we now get to give her a test ride.  And she will have a great chance to show America her leadership skills.  

BA-BYE !!!!!!!!!

 

I'm posting a few very long, data-filled, and thoughtful articles recently written by two of my favorite political pundits:  Ron Brownstein and Stan Greenberg. 
The themes of the two are similar.  Mostly, it's very good news for Democrats.  I'm not very worried about the Democrats losing, like I was in 2012 and 2016.  This is going to be more like 2008, I think. 
That said, I feel none of the joy that I did in 2008.  Maybe COVID-19 and a recession and death has something to do with it.  But this does not feel like it is going to be a fresh beginning.  It feels more like survival.  Like we escaped a close brush with death.  If anything, what I'm worried about now is what happens if Biden wins.  Which is essentially the topic of both of these excellent articles.
This first one is by Ron Brownstein:
Why the 2020s Could Be as Dangerous as the 1850s
As my thread title says, I think a Biden victory will quickly enough serve as a reminder that Trump was more the symptom than the disease. 
I agree with The Economist Biden endorsement @AdamSmithposted.  We'll be living with "Trumpism" for years to come.  That said, we were living with "Trumpism" before anyone imagined Trump would run for President - let alone win!  Hindsight being 20/20, it is clear that all those "moderate" Republicans that really didn't like Obama and by 2014 were calling him and Obamacare "evil" - or worse - just needed some dark-souled asshole scammer like President Toxic to come along and make all their worst fears, hatreds, and paranoia seem not only legitimate, but noble and patriotic.
The likely scenario tomorrow is that just like in 2017 and 2018 and 2019 the part of the Republican Party, and the Independents, that can't stand any more of this hate and horror will vote for Biden and Democrats.  That said, that just makes Trump go away.  Not the disease itself.
Brownstein is more generous with his language than me.  As much as anyone, he's had his finger on the pulse for a long time.  He calls Trumpism "the coalition of restoration".  As opposed to the ascendant "coalition of transformation" that is likely to win tomorrow.   If Biden does actually win North Carolina or Georgia or both, it will be a signal that the old politics of The South really has changed.  Both states could be part of a Democratic majority for a generation.  If Trump wins Iowa, which used to be a solid blue state in Presidential elections, it's more proof that places with few big cities and loads of Whites are shifting into the "coalition of restoration".  But as Brownstein says, the losers will be indignant and angry.  Even more than they are today.  2020, meet 1850.
In this article published Nov. 2, 2016 Brownstein came closer than anyone I read in 2016 in describing how Clinton could lose - and, in fact, did lose.  She was focused on the Democratic Party of the future (Georgia, Arizona, Orange County) enough that she overlooked the Democratic Party of the past.  Brownstein named "Colorado, Wisconsin, and Michigan" as the states she needed that Hillary could lose in 2016.  So had he written "Pennsylvania" instead of "Colorado" he would have nailed it perfectly. 
2020 will revisit this battle between past and future.  But after four years of President Toxic, it now seems like the future is ready to win.  Just don't tell that to the past.  Because they don't believe it.  And it is really going to piss them off.
After Trump, the Republican Party May Become More Extreme
If Biden wins, Democrats will face a harsh political landscape.
That article by Stan Greenberg hits many of the same positives and negatives.  If Brownstein and Greenberg are essentially saying the same things, I think there's a good chance they are right.  Add lots of other smart voices to that mix - like Axelrod, Carville, the Morning Joe crowd.  The good news for Democrats is the Democrats are going to win.  The bad news for Democrats is the Democrats are going to win.  It will make the obstructionism and resistance that greeted Obama in 2008 look like child's play.
It was amusing and sad that while I was typing this I got a call from an escort buddy, a strong Biden supporter, telling me about the vitriolic texts going back and forth today between his family members - some of whom support Biden, and some of whom support Trump.  Is anyone surprised?  Like me, he doesn't believe for a minute this will end after Election Day.  
I'm going to throw yet a third article into this mix.  Because I think it touches on another important aspect of the problem of victory going forward for Democrats.  This article, unlike the first two, is not particularly thoughtful in my mind.  But I think it is important because it accurately reflects how a lot of Independents will feel if Biden wins.
Post-Election Choice for Dems: Retaliation or Reconciliation
 
There's a few things about this article I genuinely like.  I agree with the implicit standard that reconciliation is better than retaliation.  I agree the idea of governing should be you at least try to bring everyone along.  And you reach out to the other side.  And reaching out to the losers of course involves compromise.
In the run up to 2016, and for decades prior, polls consistently showed that a majority of Democrats favored compromise.  Meanwhile,  a majority of Republicans favored sticking to their principles rather than compromising.  Now, after four years of Trumpism, a majority of both parties see compromise as a bad word.  So it's a good thing if there are people willing to speak up for compromise.
That said, some of what is being proposed here is wrong, and just plain dumb.
Silly me.  I apparently had the very misinformed idea that my favorite 2020 candidate, Elizabeth Warren, would make a great Treasury Secretary under Biden.  Not because she'll usher in socialism.  But because had she been Treasury Secretary in 2005 or 2006 she would have done everything in her power to crush the balls of the rich white male predatory lenders.  We wouldn't want that kind of radicalism, would we? 
In fact, what real American would even seriously consider "confiscating" the hard earned wealth of the "job producers" through higher taxes on the very rich, like Biden himself proposes?  If that's not socialism, then what is?
Needless to say, if I'm wrong and Trump wins it is of course  certain that within 24 hours Ricj Mitch will resign as Senate Majority Leader and ask Joe Manchin or Mark Kelly to take his place.  Not that Mitch isn't the greatest guy in the world.  But somehow Democrats have this silly idea that he is a roadblock to compromise.
It's just ridiculous to suggest that the standard for a Democratic win should be hiring Romney and McSally, and firing Pelosi and Schumer.  Just like when we won wars before, we made sure generals like General Grant and General Eisenhower got nowhere near power, right?  It's important to make the winners suffer, right?
The reason this article still rings very true to me is that I was hired by people like this for years.  At least the ones I know are smart, powerful, and driven.  There is absolutely no way in hell they would take their own political advice when it came to doing things like running their own businesses.  They don't view competitors as people you make Chair of the Board.  They view them as people you grind into dust, and annihilate if possible. 
Maybe that's why they have such an unrealistic view of how politics really works.  What they suggest is good for Washington DC has little to do with how they actually operate in the real worlds they live in - at least in my experience.
That said, I posted the article because it rings true.  Biden and Democrats will be greeted with total obstruction and resistance by the losers.  And many of the people in the middle, like this author,  will have standards like the ones he describes.  Meaning standards Biden can't possibly meet.  My read  of it is that they are already predisposed to be disappointed.  And vote against Biden in 2022, just like they voted against Obama in 2010. 
And Rich Mitch will play to them.  His argument will be that he wakes up every morning with only one goal:  to seek compromise with Democrats.  At least the very few Democrats who don't wake up every morning with horrific new plans to turn America into a socialist hell.
Had I gotten my wish, and we were about to elect President Warren, I think she would have won.  I think Allan Lichtman will prove to be right again.  This election is a referendum on President Toxic.  Which he will lose .  Period.  Almost any Democrat, including Warren, could have won, I believe.
Had she won, what I would worry about is how Warren (or Sanders) could get 50 votes, even with a Democratic Senate, for anything she really viewed as good policy.  So that may be the saving grace of Joe Biden, which I understand and appreciate.  He won't be overly concerned with good policy.  I think he will be smart enough to be overly concerned with getting shit done.  And getting the 50 votes to get it done.
Biden will at least try to create the impression that he genuinely wants to bring everyone along.  And reach out to the other side.   I think that may be one of the best explanations for why Biden flopped in his past races for President, and hit it right in 2020.  You can't bullshit a sincere and lifelong interest in compromise and civility.  With Biden it appears to be the way he has lived, and legislated.
That may be one of the best things going for Democrats as we face the obstruction and resistance and rage that is going to greet us in victory.
 
 
 
 

The Guardian view on the 2020 US electionsIt’s time to dump Trump. America’s only hope is Joe Biden
Four years of deranged and unpredictable behaviour is proof that the current US president is uniquely unsuited to the job
Tue 27 Oct 2020 14.30 EDTLast modified on Tue 27 Oct 2020 20.57 EDT
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797   Donald Trump’s presidency has been a horror show that is ending with a pandemic that is out of control, an economic recessionand deepening political polarisation. Mr Trump is the author of this disastrous denouement. He is also the political leader least equipped to deal with it. Democracy in the United States has been damaged by Mr Trump’s first term. It may not survive four more years.
If the Guardian had a vote, it would be cast to elect Joe Biden as president next Tuesday. Mr Biden has what it takes to lead the United States. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden cares about his nation’s history, its people, its constitutional principles and its place in the world. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden wants to unite a divided country. Mr Trump stokes an anger that is wearing it down.
The Republican presidential nominee is not, and has never been, a fit and proper person for the presidency. He has been accused of rape. He displays a brazen disregard for legal norms. In office, he has propagated lies and ignorance. It is astonishing that his financial interestsappear to sway his outlook on the national interest. His government is cruel and mean. It effectively sanctioned the kidnapping and orphaning of migrant children by detaining them and deporting their parents. He has vilified whistleblowers and venerated war criminals.
Mr Trump trades in racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. Telling the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, to “stand back and stand by” was, in the words of Mr Biden, “a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn”. From the Muslim ban to building a wall on the Mexican border, the president is grounding his base in white supremacy. With an agenda of corporate deregulation and tax giveaways for the rich, Mr Trump is filling the swamp, not draining it.
A narcissist, Mr Trump seems incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Coronavirus has exposed a devastating lack of presidential empathy for those who have died and the families they left behind. Every day reveals the growing gap between the level of competence required to be president and Mr Trump’s ability. He is protected from the truth by cronies whose mob-like fealty to their boss has seen six former aides sentenced to prison. A post-shame politician, Mr Trump outrageously commuted the sentence of one of his favoured lackeys this summer. The idea that there is one rule for wealthy elites and another for the ordinary voter damages trust in the American system. Mr Trump couldn’t care less.
The people’s enemy
Like other aspiring autocrats, Mr Trump seeks to delegitimise his opposition as “enemies of the people” to mobilise his base. In 2016, the institutions that should have acted as a check on Mr Trump’s rise to power failed to stop him. This time there has been some pushback over a Trump disinformation campaign about Mr Biden’s son. It is an indictment of the Trump age that social media companies acted before politicians in the face of a clear and present danger to democracy.
Mr Biden has his flaws, but he understands what they are and how to temper them. Seen as too centrist in the Democratic primaries, his election platform has borrowed ideas from the progressive wing of his party and incorporated a “green new deal” and free college for the middle class. Mr Biden should not retreat into his comfort zone. The failures of capitalism have been thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic. If elected, he will raise taxes on richer Americans and spend more on public services. This is the right and fair thing to do when a thin sliver of America has almost half the country’s wealth.
It’s not just Americans for whom Mr Biden is a better bet. The world could breathe easier with Mr Trump gone. The threat from Pyongyang and Tehran has grown thanks to President Trump. A new face in the White House would restore America’s historic alliances and present a tougher test to the authoritarians in Moscow and Beijing than the fawning Mr Trump. On climate change, Mr Biden would return the United States to the Paris agreement and give the world a fighting chance to keep global temperatures in check. With a President Biden there would be a glimmer of hope that the US would return as a guarantor of a rules-based international order.
Perhaps no country has so much to lose from Mr Biden’s victory as Britain. It has the misfortune of being led by Boris Johnson, whom Democrats bracket with Mr Trump as another rule-breaking populist. Mr Biden, a Catholic proud of his Irish roots, has already warned the Johnson government that it must not jeopardise the Good Friday agreement in its Brexit negotiations. Having left the EU, the UK can no longer be America’s bridge across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, Britain has a prime minister who led the country out of Europe just when an incoming President Biden would be looking to partner with it.
Faustian pact
Whether Mr Trump is defeated or not next week, Americans will have to learn to live with Trumpism for years to come. The first impeached president to run for re-election, Mr Trump avoided being the first to be removed from office because the Republican party has lost its moral compass. The party of Abraham Lincoln has become subsumed by the politics of grievance and entitlement. The GOP turns a blind eye to Mr Trump’s transgressions in return for preserving the privileged status of white Christian America.
The most obvious sign of this Faustian pact is the Senate’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court — Mr Trump’s third justice. Conservatives now have a 6-3 advantage in the highest court in the land. Compliant judges are key to retaining the status quo when Republicans face a shrinking electoral base. The Republican strategy is twofold: first is voter suppression; if that fails, Mr Trump appears ready to reject the result. He has spent years conditioning his supporters, especially those armed to the hilt, to mistrust elections and to see fraud where it doesn’t exist.
We have been here before. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million ballots. The election turned on a handful of votes needed to capture the electoral vote in Florida. But the votes that counted were not found in the Sunshine State. They were cast by the five supreme court justices named by Republican presidents who gave the election to George W Bush.
In the 2018 midterms, a coalition of millions marched into polling booths to disavow the president. It is heartening that more than 60 million people have cast their ballot in early voting at a time when the president is doing much to call US democracy into question amid baseless claims of a “rigged election”. Americans are busily embracing their democratic right, and a record turnout in this election may show that voters, worried about whether democracy would endure, strove to save it. Anything other than a vote for Mr Biden is a vote to unleash a supercharged Trumpism. All pretence of civility would be dropped. The divides of race, class and sex would become even wider. Mr Trump is a symptom of America’s decline. Finding a solution to this problem begins with a vote for Mr Biden.
Tue 27 Oct 2020 14.30 EDT

One of the 2 or 3 genuine genuises I have ever known.
 
Reynolds Price Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back   In his third volume of memoir, Reynolds Price explores six crucial years of his life -- his departure from home in 1955 to spend three years as a student at Oxford University; then his return to North Carolina to begin his long career as a university teacher. 

He gives often moving, and frequently comic, portraits of his great teachers in England -- such men as Lord David Cecil, Nevill Coghill, and W. H. Auden, who was the most distinguished English-language poet of those years. In London the poet and editor Stephen Spender becomes his first publisher and a generous friend who introduces him to rewarding figures like the essayist Cyril Connolly and George Orwell's encouraging widow, Sonia. He spends rich months traveling in Britain and on the Continent; and above all he undergoes the first loves of his life -- one with an Oxford colleague whom he describes as a "romantic friend" and another with an older man. 

Back in the States, in his first class at Duke he meets a startlingly gifted student in the sixteen-year-old Anne Tyler; and he soon combines the difficult pleasures of teaching English composition and literature with his own hard delight in learning to write a first novel. At the end of three lonely years, he completes the novel -- A Long and Happy Life -- and returns to England for a fourth year before his novel appears in Britain and America and meets with a success that sets the pace for an ongoing life of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations (Ardent Spirits is his thirty-eighth volume). 

The droll memories recorded here amount to the unsurpassed -- and, again, often comical -- story of a writer's beginnings; and the young man who emerges has proven his right to stand by his fellows of whatever sex and goal. Ardent Spirits is a book that penetrates deeply into the life of a writer, a teacher, and a steadfast lover. About the Author
Reynolds Price (1933-2011) was born in Macon, North Carolina. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University, he taught at Duke beginning in 1958 and was the James B. Duke Professor of English at the time of his death. His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.
Review
“His beautiful books, his tremendous productivity, his spirituality and cheerfulness, his abiding friendships—all these generous traits and dynamic accomplishments have characterized Reynolds Price…. Ardent Spirits is … effervescent.”--Edmund White, The New York Review of Books

“Ardent Spirits is Mr. Price’s third memoir [and] it is the best of this winning lot… Price’s warmth, vigor and good humor consistently shine through.”--Dwight Garner, New York Times

“The most compelling book he’s published since Kate Vaiden in 1986. Price has always been one of our finest storytellers, but in Ardent Spirits he rises to new heights, delivering a compelling account of a profoundly exciting period in a young man’s life.”--Charlotte Observer
From Publishers Weekly
In this new memoir, award-winning novelist Price (Kate Vaiden) takes up where his 1989 Clear Pictures left off—with a young Price heading for England on a Rhodes scholarship, a young man lighting into new and unfamiliar territories and the lessons he learns about literature, life and love. Covering the years 1955 to 1961, Price chronicles the challenges of living in a strange place, his emotional insecurities and his anxieties about his ability to complete the thesis on Milton, his adventures in Europe with a close friend and his eventual return to his alma mater, Duke University, to teach writing and literature. Along the way, Price recalls his friendships with Stephen Spender, Cyril Connolly, W.H. Auden and his brief encounters with Jean-Paul Sartre and J.R.R. Tolkien. Price's memoir also displays the tenacious desire with which, after warm encouragement from Eudora Welty and William Styron, he embarks on a round of writing that produces his first novel, A Long and Happy Life, published to acclaim in 1962. Although the detail can be tiresomely meticulous, Price, as usual, powerfully articulates the strength of memory in shaping our lives and gracefully draws us into a literary life lived fully. Photos. (May) 
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
In his third memoir (after A Whole New Life), award-winning author Price details his life from 1955 to 1961—his studies at Oxford, where he befriended W.H. Auden and met such writers as Robert Frost and Eudora Welty; his European travels; and the beginning of his Duke teaching career. The detailed stories he includes come from copies of letters he wrote to his mother and brother. Two underlying streams in this memoir are Price's homosexuality and the beginning of his first novel, A Long and Happy Life, which he refers to as his "pregnant-girl story." Price's true friendship with an Oxford classmate, Michael Jordan, and his intimate relationship with Matyas, a British academic, reveal Price's personal growth during his studies. He outlines the universal writer's dilemma of working the "necessary job" to pay the bills while struggling to begin a writing career. Readers will identify with his journey and eventual satisfaction. Recommended for all academic collections.—Joyce Sparrow, JWB Children's Svcs. Council, Clearwater, FL 
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Michael Dirda After graduating from Duke University, Reynolds Price sailed off to Oxford in 1955, where he spent three years as a Rhodes scholar. During this time he published his first short story and produced a B. Litt. thesis on John Milton's dramatic poem "Samson Agonistes." He then returned to Duke for a short-term appointment as a teacher of creative writing and literature. Fifty years later, Price is still there in Durham, but now as the very distinguished James B. Duke Professor of English and one of America's most revered men of letters. This engaging memoir, however, covers just six years in a young man's life, albeit a life that was unusually rich in friendships and youthful accomplishment. At Oxford, Price's teachers included such eminent scholars as the aristocratic David Cecil, who used to grow so excited in lectures that he would spray spittle on students in the front row; the formidable Helen Gardner, an authority on John Donne with a disturbingly flirtatious way of twiddling with the pendants she always wore; and Nevill Coghill, who had once been the teacher of W.H. Auden. During his holidays, Price also managed to meet some truly famous people: He recognized and spoke with the very young Brigitte Bardot, glimpsed philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre on the street and was given a curt bow, and actually exchanged grins with fat Nikita Khrushchev. Following a performance of "Titus Andronicus," Price was introduced to Vivien Leigh and a nearly naked Laurence Olivier in their dressing room. He attended a to-die-for performance of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" conducted by Karl Böhm and sung by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Irmgard Seefried, Christa Ludwig and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. He even dined at the home of the great actor John Gielgud. Like so many provincial Americans before him, Price eagerly, relentlessly sucked up as much English and European culture as he could. Of course, he also fell in love. Twice. Much of this memoir recounts Price's intense friendship with a fellow undergraduate named Michael Jordan, a relationship that taught him "an enormous amount about affection, love, steadfastness, wit, and patience." That friendship continues to this day, though it has never had any physical component. On the other hand, late in his Oxford sojourn Price virtually seduced a somewhat reluctant older East European scholar he calls Matyas. Yet like many of the people Price cared about, Matyas was essentially bisexual and ultimately settled down with a wife and family. In general, Price is very low-key about what he prefers to call his "queerness." (He notes that a "queer" friend once said: "Please don't call me gay. If you need an adjective, call me morose.") While clearly dazzlingly handsome (as the cover photograph of "Ardent Spirits" shows), Price claims never to have been a "draw" for men or women. He's never felt comfortable in gay bars. In his fiction he nearly always writes about heterosexual love and family life, insisting that he just doesn't know enough about homosexual couples. Fundamentally, Price presents himself as a generous mentor to the young, a deeply loyal friend and a born teacher. Back at Duke, though, he discovers that he has absolutely nothing to teach one member of his very first writing class, a 16-year-old girl named Anne Tyler. His other early students include the now well-known poet and fiction writer Fred Chappell and the journalist and environmentalist Wallace Kaufman. Courteously, Price only hints at the jealousies and rivalries of Duke's English department, though he speaks frankly of mentor William Blackburn's eventual paranoia, and repeatedly makes clear his own current disdain for today's cult of theory and cultural studies. Surprisingly, he also questions the value of his own specialty, creative writing: "I never urge advanced writing-study on talented students. I'm more than convinced that the best writing of fiction, poetry, and drama is the result of intense independent work by a naturally gifted man or woman who finds the time . . . to deepen those skills in the act of probing further down into what will prove to be his or her best subject matter, matter to which only he or she has guided him or herself, not a teacher nor a group of workshop colleagues." Certainly, this was Price's own method. "Ardent Spirits" traces his own literary self-formation: a first story and essays published in Encounter (he reviewed Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch with "deplorable condescension"); encouragement from people like William Styron, Stephen Spender and the agent Diarmuid Russell (whose clients included Eudora Welty); and the gradual realization that what he thought was just another story was in fact his first novel, "A Long and Happy Life" (which won the William Faulkner Award in 1962). While much of "Ardent Spirits" feels agreeably conversational and digressive, Price's individual sentences and similes can be striking: "Their mutual devotion was clear as clean water"; a landlady's black tea was "strong enough to ream a radiator"; Bill Blackburn "could scarcely write a postcard." Still, some of these pages do seem to lack punch, mainly because Price scrupulously sticks to just what he can remember. One wishes that he'd kept a diary and recorded the exact words and witticisms of his brilliant teachers and friends. David Cecil, he does tell us, once warned him that the famously ugly and notoriously sharp-witted Cyril Connolly was "not as nice as he looks." Fortunately, Price does offer some typically winning vignettes of W.H. Auden, who was in residence at Oxford as professor of poetry: "I mentioned my love of Emily Dickinson; he nodded with no enthusiasm -- 'Very little-bitty at times, don't you feel?' . . . He asked for my favorite opera composer. I said Wagner; he grinned, shut his eyes in bliss, tilted his head back: . . . 'I long to direct a production of Tristan und Isolde with two large lesbians -- no man and woman could ever carry on so fervently about one another.' " When Auden finally left Oxford, the neat and tidy Price was given a glimpse of the poet's living quarters: "I looked round at two rooms in a state of disarray that I'd never before seen generated by any human being. And Wystan had only been in residence for two months. The desk, the floors, the tables, and every other surface were inches -- if not feet -- deep in abandoned books, magazines, clothing, galley proofs, dirty dishes, whatever. My face may have betrayed my literal shock; but Auden only gave a brisk wave above the chaos and said 'If you'd like to come back later and see if there's anything you want, by all means do.' " Does the fastidious Reynolds Price come back to rummage through the great poet's trash? You'll have to read the very enjoyable "Ardent Spirits" to find out. 
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* The distinguished American novelist, author of, among many celebrated works, the National Book Critics Circle Award–winning Kate Vaiden (1986), remembers being a Rhodes Scholar at England’s Oxford University in the mid-to-late-1950s, when he was in his twenties. Price examines both the three years he spent at Oxford and the following three years, when he began teaching at Duke University in his native North Carolina and completed his first novel, A Long and Happy Life. Many readers will identify with his recollection that “since early adolescence, I’d all but tasted the strong desire to visit Europe.” But few will have had the range of experiences Price enjoyed in England: not only studying the poetry of John Milton at Oxford but also making friends with such literary luminaries as W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender and working to become a fiction writer. Scholarship and fiction writing initially seemed at cross purposes to the young Price, but eventually he came to reconcile both impulses. Fans of his fiction are the natural audience for this account, but it will also appeal to anyone interested in literary memoirs. --Brad Hooper
Product Details
Publication date: April 24, 2009 File size: 4016 KB Word Wise: Enabled Print length: 418 pages Publisher: Scribner; Reprint edition (April 24, 2009) ASIN: B0027G6X6K Screen Reader: Supported Language:: English X-Ray: Not Enabled Text-to-Speech: Enabled Enhanced typesetting: Enabled Lending: Not Enabled About the author
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Lately I've also been thinking about some additional disengagement.  Although I got my first computer forty years ago and went on-line a few years after that, I've never wanted to become so immersed that I couldn't survive without connectivity.  Even so, the pull to be ever-connected is stronger than I'd like.
I live in an area with regular power outages and spotty cell phone coverage, so I do go cold-turkey from time to time, including three days last week.  Thirty years ago, that meant walking to a friend's house, taking some long hikes, and pulling out a handful of votive candles to read after dark.  The world always returned a few days later and I hadn't missed all that much.
Last week though, I was getting anxious enough by the end of the first day that I wandered around till I got a cell signal and checked for the latest power outage update.  Pre-Covid, I'd have gone to the local library and used their WiFi connection.
I found I really don't enjoy being off the grid as much as I used to, and that's a concern.  Having avoided Facebook and Twitter and all the social apps, I'm not hooked in as much as most of my friends are, but I'm still too tethered for comfort.  I'm wondering what gradual steps I might take to further cut the ties.
Thanks RockHard and AdamSmith for voicing some of the same concerns.  I wonder if a small support group might be in order.  
         
 
This has indeed strained the credulity of even your most ardent admirers.  
 

Likewise. I can’t believe the number of young guys I know who sit around bitching about the futility of grindr, but then express incredulity at my suggestion they just go out to a bar/club and pick up somebody in person.

I miss Keith Olberman. For a straight guy, he sure knows how to deliver some serious SHADE.
Keith Olberman is one of the few talents who can do a take-down video presentation like this one with terrific aplomb. It is amazing to me that he got through all 50 Trump villains. The video is not easy to sit through, but my god, Olberman is right on the money, revealing anecdotes that I had not heard before.
 

Figured I'd start a new thread along those lines and try to keep explicit politics in the other threads this time.  
 

 
 

 
 

 
 
 

I think The Guardian, notwithstanding their origins, tends to hold with Gladstone:
The AmericanConstitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a giventime by the brain and purpose of man.
https://www.quotes.net/quote/3589

The Guardian view on the 2020 US electionsIt’s time to dump Trump. America’s only hope is Joe Biden
Four years of deranged and unpredictable behaviour is proof that the current US president is uniquely unsuited to the job
Tue 27 Oct 2020 14.30 EDTLast modified on Tue 27 Oct 2020 20.57 EDT
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797   Donald Trump’s presidency has been a horror show that is ending with a pandemic that is out of control, an economic recessionand deepening political polarisation. Mr Trump is the author of this disastrous denouement. He is also the political leader least equipped to deal with it. Democracy in the United States has been damaged by Mr Trump’s first term. It may not survive four more years.
If the Guardian had a vote, it would be cast to elect Joe Biden as president next Tuesday. Mr Biden has what it takes to lead the United States. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden cares about his nation’s history, its people, its constitutional principles and its place in the world. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden wants to unite a divided country. Mr Trump stokes an anger that is wearing it down.
The Republican presidential nominee is not, and has never been, a fit and proper person for the presidency. He has been accused of rape. He displays a brazen disregard for legal norms. In office, he has propagated lies and ignorance. It is astonishing that his financial interestsappear to sway his outlook on the national interest. His government is cruel and mean. It effectively sanctioned the kidnapping and orphaning of migrant children by detaining them and deporting their parents. He has vilified whistleblowers and venerated war criminals.
Mr Trump trades in racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. Telling the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, to “stand back and stand by” was, in the words of Mr Biden, “a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn”. From the Muslim ban to building a wall on the Mexican border, the president is grounding his base in white supremacy. With an agenda of corporate deregulation and tax giveaways for the rich, Mr Trump is filling the swamp, not draining it.
A narcissist, Mr Trump seems incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Coronavirus has exposed a devastating lack of presidential empathy for those who have died and the families they left behind. Every day reveals the growing gap between the level of competence required to be president and Mr Trump’s ability. He is protected from the truth by cronies whose mob-like fealty to their boss has seen six former aides sentenced to prison. A post-shame politician, Mr Trump outrageously commuted the sentence of one of his favoured lackeys this summer. The idea that there is one rule for wealthy elites and another for the ordinary voter damages trust in the American system. Mr Trump couldn’t care less.
The people’s enemy
Like other aspiring autocrats, Mr Trump seeks to delegitimise his opposition as “enemies of the people” to mobilise his base. In 2016, the institutions that should have acted as a check on Mr Trump’s rise to power failed to stop him. This time there has been some pushback over a Trump disinformation campaign about Mr Biden’s son. It is an indictment of the Trump age that social media companies acted before politicians in the face of a clear and present danger to democracy.
Mr Biden has his flaws, but he understands what they are and how to temper them. Seen as too centrist in the Democratic primaries, his election platform has borrowed ideas from the progressive wing of his party and incorporated a “green new deal” and free college for the middle class. Mr Biden should not retreat into his comfort zone. The failures of capitalism have been thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic. If elected, he will raise taxes on richer Americans and spend more on public services. This is the right and fair thing to do when a thin sliver of America has almost half the country’s wealth.
It’s not just Americans for whom Mr Biden is a better bet. The world could breathe easier with Mr Trump gone. The threat from Pyongyang and Tehran has grown thanks to President Trump. A new face in the White House would restore America’s historic alliances and present a tougher test to the authoritarians in Moscow and Beijing than the fawning Mr Trump. On climate change, Mr Biden would return the United States to the Paris agreement and give the world a fighting chance to keep global temperatures in check. With a President Biden there would be a glimmer of hope that the US would return as a guarantor of a rules-based international order.
Perhaps no country has so much to lose from Mr Biden’s victory as Britain. It has the misfortune of being led by Boris Johnson, whom Democrats bracket with Mr Trump as another rule-breaking populist. Mr Biden, a Catholic proud of his Irish roots, has already warned the Johnson government that it must not jeopardise the Good Friday agreement in its Brexit negotiations. Having left the EU, the UK can no longer be America’s bridge across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, Britain has a prime minister who led the country out of Europe just when an incoming President Biden would be looking to partner with it.
Faustian pact
Whether Mr Trump is defeated or not next week, Americans will have to learn to live with Trumpism for years to come. The first impeached president to run for re-election, Mr Trump avoided being the first to be removed from office because the Republican party has lost its moral compass. The party of Abraham Lincoln has become subsumed by the politics of grievance and entitlement. The GOP turns a blind eye to Mr Trump’s transgressions in return for preserving the privileged status of white Christian America.
The most obvious sign of this Faustian pact is the Senate’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court — Mr Trump’s third justice. Conservatives now have a 6-3 advantage in the highest court in the land. Compliant judges are key to retaining the status quo when Republicans face a shrinking electoral base. The Republican strategy is twofold: first is voter suppression; if that fails, Mr Trump appears ready to reject the result. He has spent years conditioning his supporters, especially those armed to the hilt, to mistrust elections and to see fraud where it doesn’t exist.
We have been here before. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million ballots. The election turned on a handful of votes needed to capture the electoral vote in Florida. But the votes that counted were not found in the Sunshine State. They were cast by the five supreme court justices named by Republican presidents who gave the election to George W Bush.
In the 2018 midterms, a coalition of millions marched into polling booths to disavow the president. It is heartening that more than 60 million people have cast their ballot in early voting at a time when the president is doing much to call US democracy into question amid baseless claims of a “rigged election”. Americans are busily embracing their democratic right, and a record turnout in this election may show that voters, worried about whether democracy would endure, strove to save it. Anything other than a vote for Mr Biden is a vote to unleash a supercharged Trumpism. All pretence of civility would be dropped. The divides of race, class and sex would become even wider. Mr Trump is a symptom of America’s decline. Finding a solution to this problem begins with a vote for Mr Biden.
Tue 27 Oct 2020 14.30 EDT

He has no choice. What a sad development. To have Barrett replace Ginsburg! As Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall.

Guess I'm one of those who finds this more humorous than horrendous.  Are there other western countries where a paucity of prudence and a dollop of diddling would crater a career?
What I can't figure out is what kind of camera setup he has.  I've  been on a few Zoom meetings recently with my laptop in my - er - lap and the camera pointing up at my face.  Had I done a 180 and turned it down toward my pudenda, I couldn't have seen the other folks.  
Not only do I hope that he returns with his luster intact, I also hope that the suspenders at the New Yorker will adjust themselves and not go all hypocritical about a little erection tampering.  
 

In thinking about the debate, and Trumps performance some more, I came to realize that he had a plan and strategy which was quite ingenius.... He actted crazy, made some fictional claims and said some outrageous, shocking shit.   Some are calling him unhinged....  I say, for Trump, he was Smart....  NOONE is talking about his tax fraud today  (which is a major, ongoing issue for him) or his Supreme Court robbery.  Instead of focusing on what a crook and scumbag he is, they are simply talking about how Crazy he is.... A masterfull Pivot !