I have no idea how many times I‘ve come to TPM for political insights and found myself expanding my vocabulary. Cordwainer. A new one for me.
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“I appreciate Speaker McCarthy’s willingness to address legitimate concerns and add due process language to our resolution. Deliberation and debate are vital for our institution, not top-down approaches,” Spartz said in a Tuesday statement.
“…which is why I’m caving in to pressure from the Speaker.”
Too bad votes can’t be cobbled together to oust Kev and various others out of the House altogether.
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I only became familiar with the word a few years ago when, doing genealogical research, l learned that several generations of my early MA and then (after their world in Charlestown has burned down in the Revolution) RI ancestors were cordwainers and tanners. (The mariner remained in their “genes” – my direct ancestor and the extended family fought in various land battles in the Revolution: they were also privateers out of Salem.) Back to the point: my direct ancestor left behind his “Moroccan factory” in Providence after the Panic of 1837 for WI, where he farmed (after selling the RI)-made stock of shoes and boots in Milwaukee, which then had about 400 residents), and then moved to MN in 1859, where they farmed until my great grandfather gave up farming and became a house painter in a college town (so his children could go to college) – though my grandfather continued to work every summer on his uncles’ farms in Mower County. So, my father’s great grandfather was the last of the line in cordwainers and tanners, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the cordwainer/tanner mentality was passed on. My father (who knew almost nothing of this family history, certainly nothing about tanners and cordwainers), even though we could not afford it, always insisted that we children wear quality leather shoes, and he always gave me something leather for a special present – say, to mark a graduation. Henry Louis Gates needs to interview me.
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Doesn’t Senator Ron Johnson get to vote on Rep Omar.
After all, he was running campaign commercials last summer that said if one voted for Mandela Barnes, he would be joining the “Squad”.
Who they are and proud of it.
Uh, I doubt Santos will step back into his committee positions without anyone noticing. The news media (including TPM) are obsessed with him. And now, the FBI has gotten into NY’s act and the FEC’s, of investigating him on campaign finance violations and on fraud (the vet’s dog). Today Santos looked so miserable as the press chased him that I almost felt sorry for him – almost. He know’s he’s in deep shit.
The son with a mother and sister (half or full?). His father exists only as an implication of the surname Santos. Grifter children, and possibly even the mother. (Home healthcare aid. Did her son steal the checks from her pocketbook, or did she steal them from the man she was “caring for” and give them to her son? I’ve begun to wonder.)
Somehow, this is an “only in New York City” story. Or maybe more specifically, “only in Queens” story. Recall where Trump grew up (of a rich father and grandfather, both grifters). Queens is a big county, so I don’t mean to impugn everyone there. But. (The low-level grift can move east only so far. After Long Island’s Nassau County, with its North Shore and Hamptons, there are the islands belonging to Massachusetts and then: the Atlantic Ocean.)
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Senators do not vote for Representatives as committee members in the House.
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Omar is.
- an Immigrant
- a Muslim
- Black
- a woman
- smart
(And a magnetic smile)
Everything Republicans hate and fear.
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Couldn’t resist.
Looking at jacket-free Gym wearing the same dingy greyish shirt for two years is not something I look forward to.
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Very much a crossword puzzle clue.
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Rep. Omar got in hot water a while back when she said “it’s all about the Benjamins, baby” taken to mean our support for Israel by throwing a lot of money at that country. Haters are still clinging to that even though apologized.
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The thing about this kind of petty retribution is it says nothing about Omar and everything about McCarthy. Everyone knows she’s just the chosen victim because she’s the easiest one to rally Republicans around (because racism, sexism, etc). As far as the committee goes, I assume she’ll be replaced by another, equally good Democrat, and McCarthy isn’t going to be able to get his caucus to agree to boot that one, too. I mean he could just barely pull it off with Omar, and Republicans despise her. (IIRC the only reason the Rs didn’t get to replace the MTG seat is they were stupid enough to say “MTG or nobody!” so Nancy said “Sounds good to me, dumbasses.” 
)
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I’m a little Mixed up. Is she the Rep that warned us about Jewish Space Lasers?
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‘cordwain’ was the leather that is now known as ‘cordovan,’ originally made in the Moorish city of Córdoba from horsehide, pigskin, or goatskin
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I’m waiting for the ‘all is forgiven’ signal that allows Santos back on his committee assignments now. His banishment has served its purpose, however temporary.
That would be Marjorie Taylor Greene whose mouth and brain were disconnected a long time ago. A mind is a terrible thing to lose.
From New York Magazine, January 2021.
Greene suggested in a Facebook post that wildfires in California were not natural. Forests don’t just catch fire, you know. Rather, the blazes had been started by PG&E, in conjunction with the Rothschilds, using a space laser, in order to clear room for a high-speed rail project.
In the same article:
.Muslims don’t belong in government.
• 9/11 was an inside job.
• Shootings at Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Las Vegas were staged.
• “Zionist supremacists” are secretly masterminding Muslim immigration to Europe in a scheme to outbreed white people.
• Leading Democratic officials should be executed.
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Right there is a ton of material for a crossword puzzle, cordwain, cordovan, the Moors, how nice it would be.
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Yes, I learned about that, too, when I studied up on cordwainers.
A great great grandfather (another line, my mother’s, my much more colorful side) was murdered in NYC in 1884 by three young “ruffians” (code then for Irish) whom he’d taken out for drinks at 10 in the morning when he should have been at work on Maiden Lane, where he was an accountant at a gravestone firm. He died from apoplexy as they were robbing him in a hallway – quite a story (one I learned from detailed newspaper stories, not my family). One of his murderers confessed when my g g gr’s son identified a “red Moroccan notebook,” which was in one ruffian’s possession, as his father’s. I’d already researched my father’s Charlestown-Providence-WI-MN line so I understood this was a notebook bound in high-quality leather.
Interesting that the 13-year-old ruffian was sent off to a reform school, while the two older ones – 18 and 22 or so, as I recall – got something like 5 years in prison. Doing her genealogy for my hairdresser (descended from one of Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain boys, as it happens), I learned that her father had shady cousins who spent time in a reformatory and, while about 18 or 19, in running away from police across three states (they were about to be arrested for robbing houses when they fled), even after having shot at a VT state trooper (!), got prison sentences of only a few years. They eventually “settled down,” more or less. This was in the 1950’s. Since then, we as a country have gone mad with long prison sentences. (Though, I admit, I was a bit shocked that those two ruffians got only 5 years for killing (legally, murdering, or at least committing manslaughter) a man while robbing him of his coat, shoes, watch, and that red Moroccan notebook. Even my criminal defense appeals attorney daughter found that sentence a bit light. I guess the coroner’s report of his bad lungs and heart played a role, but I look at it from the point of view of his Union volunteer service during the CW, which seems to have sent him askew. (He’d once been much more than an accountant.)
Btw, check out this statue in the City of London:
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