Hey, look — here’s a pair of gators sunning at Wekiva Springs, photo courtesy of faithful reader cope:
Before anyone freaks out about the kayakers in the background, these are just baby gators, the kind a Floridian would nudge aside with her foot if they were in her path on the way to the mailbox. (Not really — they could nip off a toe or two — but they’re not oh-sweet-jeebus-paddle-for-your-life-size gators. It’s the parents you have to look sharp for!)
Remember that wingnut ass in Michigan who proposed another Kent State-style attack on student protesters? Here, via the Detroit Free Press, is his non-apology:
“It was stupid, it was poorly done,” [county Republican leader Dan] Adamini said of his posts on Twitter and Facebook. “But my goal was to stop the violence by protesters, not commit violence against protesters.”
“The point I was trying to make, admittedly I did it very poorly … was that the violence is really getting out of hand, and much like in the 1960s, the violence created an atmosphere where something terrible and tragic like Kent State could happen.”
“I’d like to see the violence stop before we have a tragedy.”
Yeah, he’s a fucking liar. Here’s what he said in the tweet that prompted the backlash and non-apology:
Violent protesters who shut down free speech? Time for another Kent State perhaps. One bullet shuts down a lot of thuggery.
But part of the post-truth movement is the post-definitions phenomenon, which holds that words mean whatever the lying sack of shit who originally uttered them says they mean in retrospect.
Adamini isn’t the only wingnut spoiling for a round of extra-judicial killings and maimings. That nutcase Sheriff Clarke, who used to open Trump rallies (and pathetically appears to be still sucking up for a Trump regime job via social media), also frequently makes noises about cracking protesters’ heads during his many appearances on Fox News. I expect he, Adamini and the other bloodthirsty ghouls will get their wish eventually.
On that cheery note, open thread!
Roger Moore
Interesting, since he’s narrowed the job of his own department to running jails so he doesn’t have to confront any criminals who haven’t already been apprehended. Of course that hasn’t stopped his department from killing more than their share of people; his jails have a disturbingly high death rate.
Thoroughly Pizzled
It’s really disturbing to realize that, were I ever killed during a protest, they’d do everything possible to find something that would justify my death.
efgoldman
test
dedc79
Impossible to square this:
with this:
He also pretty clearly blames the Kent State protesters for the shooting:
Peale
@Thoroughly Pizzled: If it helps, I know someone who does silk screening and we’ll make up T-Shirts that say “Pizzled No More!” as kind of a rallying motto to wear at the march protesting your death.
Mnemosyne
So, just to be clear, out of the dozens of protests so far, there has been one (1) where some asshole Bay Area anarchists did what they always do and it’s all OMFG ALL PROTESTERS MUST BE KILLED IMMEDIATELY?
Buncha fucking whiny-ass cowards.
Barbara
I can’t get over this quote:
The protesters may be annoying but it’s the shooters who are thugs.
Capri
I’m fairly sure at least one of the people killed at Kent State was a student walking across campus who wasn’t even protesting.
Betty Cracker
Some of the local resistance groups I subscribe to get veiled and not-so-veiled threats of violence from rabid Trumpsters. It’s so common it hardly registers anymore. The cowardly pricks have yet to actually show up and confront anyone, but they talk big on social media.
sharl
Reminder, from LA Times reporter Matt Pearce:
I was able to make out the horrifying text in those scanned images, though others may have more difficulty with it.
ETA: Others have also noted that an anti-Trump/anti-Nazi protester got shot at one of the rallies put on by that creep Milo (Seattle I think), but we rarely hear about that, and police let the shooter go free.
Roger Moore
@Capri:
Omelettes, eggs.
jl
IIRC the Kent State shooting were in 1969 or 1970. What protest and controversy did they shut down? Protesters were all afraid and didn’t show up at the 1972 conventions, right? Things like that helped tear the country apart, but not as much as the horrible Vietnam War.
People who say stuff like that are ignorant fantasists.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Wow, Florida is a scary place, gun nuts, pythons, crocs, alligators and flying cockroaches. Stay safe, BC. I am crossing my paws for you.
Barbara
@jl: May 4, 1970, IIRC. A girl from a nearby school district was one of the victims.
liberal
@dedc79:
Exactly. …the violence created an atmosphere… is right. But it was the violence of sending a nation’s young half way across the world to kill millions of Others.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Peale: I would appreciate that. I shall live on in cheap shirts!
TenguPhule
True. Of course it can depend on which direction that bullet is aimed at.
liberal
@schrodingers_cat: Place is a fucking shithole. (Just got back from a visit there.)
The only thing nice about it is that there are lots of interesting nature things, but even that is horrible given that it’s all being developed or somehow otherwise treated like shit, like fucktards who illegally (IRRC) cut down mangroves to improve their ocean/gulf view.
PK
Donald Trump is going to speak at McDill air force base. I’m guessing it’s going to an airing of grievances. Every day is Festivus for this guy!
liberal
BTW lets not forget to honor the dead at Jackson State.
donnah
There was a Bloomberg article reprinted in our local newspaper today that said Republican representatives across the country are introducing bills to restrict protesters and penalize them for blocking traffic or businesses. The big numbers and the ongoing protests across the country have scared them.
So, instead of addressing the issues that people protest about, just take away their rights to protest. Make them angry rather than fix the problems. The Republicans are idiots.
Это курам на смех
I have a very good brain.
liberal
@sharl: Things were really different back then. I was at best a young child, but decades later I read some newsmagazines from the period on microfiche.
For example, after Suharto murdered about one million ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, in an effort to liquidate Indonesian Communists (which IIRC wasn’t an armed faction, not much anyway), Time or something had an article entitled, “A Gleam in the Light of Asia” or something.
For all we bitch about the media now, it was just horrible back then. That’s how the US could get involved in IndoChina in the early 1950s without it becoming a real issue until the mid-1960s, with mass opposition not really becoming viable until after the Tet Offensive in 1968.
liberal
@donnah: I would think that kind of thing ultimately must run afoul of the Bill of Rights, but IANAL.
piratedan
ya know…. I wonder if that asshat Adamini ever thought about the converse… geez, you shoot a protestor(s) to get the rest of them to fall into line… wonder if the same concept works in reverse, we start “shooting” a few of these asshat legislators, wonder if that will make the rest of them toe the line…
These guys are really not men of the people are they?
trollhattan
When you’re reduced to calling little old white ladies in pink knitted hats “thugs” you’re either wandered off the reservation or are revealing “secret plans, did we mention these are secret?!?”
Shoot a few to keep things safe for the rest of us, and one never knows what may happen next.
Felonius Monk
@piratedan:
Assuming facts not in existence that asshats like Adamini ever think.
Spanky
@donnah: Totally predictable. I won’t be surprised if by the Scientist’s March in April there will be a ban or extreme restriction on protests. I wouldn’t say I would ignore it and go anyway, but ….
Tokyokie
@liberal: Except that Jackson State is a traditionally black college, so the deaths there never got the publicity that the shootings at Kent State did.
trollhattan
@donnah:
One is safe assuming ALEC has dropped everything else to attend to the sudden need to shut the citizenry the hell up. I expect nearly identical bills to appear in a few dozen state houses post haste.
Betty Cracker
@liberal: Here’s hoping you are never compelled to return.
? Martin
BTW, that tweet by Trump about bad polls being fake, he really does believe that. Part of being a narcissist is that your inner true image (for him, being successful and popular) MUST be upheld. He will do that by lying about how successful and popular he is. He will do it by declaring any evidence that he is not successful or popular as being lies. It’s why he likes the rallies – he can with his own eyes how popular he is. That it’s a non-representative sample doesn’t even enter his head. He has adoring fans, therefore he is adored.
He doesn’t evaluate that information like a normal person does. A normal person would have at least a bit of curiosity that the information might be correct, even if that is overpowered by skepticism. But for Trump there is no curiosity. The information is wrong because it contradicts his inner true image. Period. End of story. And if he can’t discount it as a mistake (multiple polls, etc.) then he’ll assume malice – that it’s a conspiracy against him.
What that means is he’s starting to bunker down. The protests against him wound him. The pushback from the courts wound him. SNL wounds him. He’s going to turn against all of these institutions (because he has to in order to maintain that inner true self) and that’s going to either force a constitutional crisis or impeachment. The key is we have to keep pushing. Nobody should be comfortable pushing someone over a mental cliff, but the GOP and the voters haven’t give us any alternative.
lollipopguild
@schrodingers_cat: Not to mention their Gov. Scott.
trollhattan
Is our media leanin’? Perhaps.
CNN refudiated Spokescobra Conway’s assertion she wasn’t spurned by CNN and now Mika claims “we were first!”
I’m still laughing over “Spicy needs my bigboy nap.”
Woodrowfan
If I remember right things had calmed down at Kent State until the republican governor sent in the National Guard to “look tough.” That restarted the demonstrations. The students were throwing rocks at the Guards but were too far away to have any chance of hitting them. Two of the four students killed were not even at the demonstration but were waling to class. One was a member of ROTC.
Corner Stone
Who is this choad at MacDill introducing Trump?
Get some fucking kneepads buddy.
Brachiator
Famous last words…
“Hey, look at those baby gators! They’re so cute.”
“Yeah, I wonder where their parents are?”
Corner Stone
Everything he does is like he’s at a local Rotary Club crawfish boil and fundraiser.
? Martin
@liberal: There are always efforts to thread the needle. Yes, the first amendment guarantees the right to assemble, but there are laws that limit where you can assemble. Laws limiting the number of people assembling have been largely struck down as they were almost universally racially targeted.
The irony in all of this is that the right keeps paving legal ground which we will use. The court striking down ACA forcing states to accept Medicaid expansion is precedent to stop the WH from demanding that cities and state enforce immigration policy. The courts striking down limits against protests around abortion clinics that are on public sidewalks, etc. will be used by us to guarantee the right to protest Trump. Democrats should always be a little introspective about legal precedents that are convenient in the moment, because in the future we might find ourselves in a different situation.
Corner Stone
God, this fucking narcissist.
ETA, IOW, support me and be favored. Do not vocally support me and pay the price.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator:
.
.
“YEEEAAARRRGGGHHH!!!…blub blub blub”
Corner Stone
This is disgusting.
Brachiator
Some things never change. This sounds a lot like the British officials promising to put down “insurrections” in India in the 1830s, one of the places where the term “thug” was first used.
The references to Kent State and Jackson State reminds me of the songs of the era..
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Trump is coming. Be ready.
Doug R
@Corner Stone: “I wonder if there are any bears in this cave?”
AndoChronic
@Betty Cracker: At the St. Paul rally on 1/21 a tRump supporter was pepper spraying marchers as they passed. That was the only arrest that day. The other 100,000 people were peaceful.
? Martin
@Corner Stone: It’s only going to get worse. The more he’s forced to face his unpopularity, the more he’ll dig in. We have to push him over the edge.
Corner Stone
“And sometimes they don’t even report it. They have their reasons. And you know what they are.”
That’s Trump talking to MacDill personnell about terror attacks across Europe that the dishonest press refuse to report anymore.
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: Doesn’t your remote have a “power” button?
sukabi
@? Martin: think the senate repubs will move for impeachment before things get too far out of hand…read an article yesterday that scrotus was still pushing for voter fraud investigations, repubs said they wouldn’t fund any investigation in to that…(they really don’t want anyone looking under the hood)
Scrotus can’t let any perceived slight go so he’s going to make it impossible for house and senate r’s to ignore his mental incapacity for the job.
DocSardonic
@liberal: Thank you for visiting Florida and leaving some of your money….. Please feel free to “Don’t come back,ya’ll”
Quinerly
Does anyone know if he brought the cheering section to CENTCOM?
Corner Stone
@Doug R:
“Tell you what. I’ll just poke around a bit with this walking stick to make sure we’re good.”
oklahomo
@Roger Moore: That tree of liberty ain’t gonna water itself, bud.
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: Remote? I was commenting on how disappointed I was that my vibrator ran out of juice midway through.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
This may be a good thing.
Some of the first suffragettes did not exactly practice non-violence. And the authorities hated them for challenging the system, and treated them harshly.
I am not siting back in a cushy arm chair advocating revolution. But Trump clearly detests any kind of defiance, and he seems willing to go very far in enforcing his will. He is a coward and a bully who loves to demean and belittle those who disagree with him. I am hoping that more will find him detestable in response to his insults, and those of those who back him, and I am hoping that these people will push back hard, politically.
But I don’t know how far Trump may go to force obedience. I don’t think anyone does.
NR
Shorter Trump: “Everyone loves me! Except for all the people who don’t! Who I will complain about endlessly!”
waysel
Adaminis initial statement, and even more his ‘apology’ statement, are much about reinforcing the fiction that all anti-Trump marches are filled with lawlessness and violence. It’s like a TPM, Fox was all over the side street kerfuffle during the women’s march. Just spreading lies to the lo-info people , and demonizing us ‘liberal’ Americans. Makes us easier to shoot later.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Thug is a word found in Indian languages but it has a different connotation than it does in English. Thug is a not a violent hoodlum but a confidence man/woman who uses deceit and charm to rob/deceive you. Any group offering armed resistance to British imperialism and looting was labeled thugs. Victorian version of terrorist if you will.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
Is Trump speaking somewhere?
Keith G
@jl: No dude, protests weren’t shut down. Being old now…back then as a kid I was up watching the the GOP convention in Miami in 1972. The CBS reporters were having trouble talking because at one point, the tear gas was wafting into the Miami Beach Convention Center. That was well before protest zones, and then the action was right up against the buildings. Well, across the street on the other side of the line of security – cops and such.
Gary K
@Capri: Yeah, two of the four were walking between classes: William Schroeder & Sandra Scheuer.
Chip Daniels
If I were the uncivil type, I might respond, “Damn right, skippy.”
TenguPhule
@donnah: When its criminal to protest, all protesters will be criminals.
trollhattan
@Doug R:
Source of at least a hundred Far Side cartoons. Larson loved him some bears.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator: As Trump is already guilty of high treason, its not like we could hang him more then once. And we already know he has no sense of decency.
Presume the worst.
EBT
@Mnemosyne: And there is an excellent chance that Milo paid for that to happen anyway.
SFAW
@sukabi:
Oh, you are SUCH a kidder!
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
I think I speak for all in remembering with laser-sharp detail where I was when first learning of the Bowling Green, Belgium Massacre.
The playbook may be thinner than I first thought.
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: My favorite: “Just stay in the cab, Vern…”
TenguPhule
@trollhattan: We know, that’s the problem. Things get ugly.
Betty Cracker
Interesting op-ed in the Post by former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul: “We can’t let Trump go down Putin’s path.” I didn’t realize there were quite so many parallels between Putin and Trump. McFaul is the opposite of an alarmist, so if he’s a tad worried, there’s good reason for concern.
? Martin
@sukabi: No. I think it will get out of hand. The GOP hasn’t had power in a long time, and they’re going to take every minute of it that they can. They’re trapped, TBH. They don’t really know what to make of Trumps election. Trump strongly opposes things that the GOP normally support – and Republicans elected him. What do they do in that situation? So, I don’t think they feel they are on firm footing with the GOP electorate to impeach him, even though there seems to be wide agreement among GOP Senators that he’s unfit for office. They need to see Trumps approvals among conservatives drop below 50% before they can act – the point when they stop worrying about being primaried, and we’re nowhere near there yet. It’s really a race to see how much damage he can do before the public responds that way in polling.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Yep. Yep. I was hoping that you would help provide some of the historical context.
Thugs and hashish crazed assassins, seemingly immune to bullets, part of the lurid British fear.
Not strangely enough at all, beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, some white cops, especially in the American South, would claim that marijuana smoking made dangerous “Negro thugs” immune to bullets.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Interesting trivia I read once: any adult alligator within earshot will respond to a distress call from a juvenile, not just the parents.
? Martin
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I don’t think the Russians have anything on Trump. I think Trump admires Putin’s vindictiveness and willingness to kill his detractors. That’s very appealing to a narcissist. Putin is genuinely a role model for Trump.
EBT
@Mnemosyne: Alligators are cannibalistic.
Roger Moore
@oklahomo:
It will if we make it possible for crazy people to own as many guns as they want.
Mnemosyne
@EBT:
Meh. Black Bloc does their shit for the jollies. No need for payment.
As I’ve already said, any further venues for Milo or other conservatives would be well-advised to insist that any speeches take place at lunchtime and end well before dark. The Black Bloc only comes out from under their rocks at night.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
I thought our word thug came originally from thuggee. They were indeed con men of a sort, in that they’d try to ingratiate themselves with their victims, but they’d then proceed to murder them.
JMG
No veteran secret policeman like Putin would ever just rely on the admiration of a volatile person he wished to convert to an asset. He’d want some more tangible hold as well.
Corner Stone
@? Martin:
Oh, c’mon. Trump does not admire anyone he does not see in the mirror. His ego will not allow him to. It is clear Trump owes hundreds of millions or maybe more to Russia and Russian oligarchs.
No Drought No More
“The policeman is not there to create disorder, the policeman is there to enforce disorder”.
Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, during the 1968 democratic convention.
oklahomo
@Roger Moore: Coupled with the states that want to make concealed carry at schools and campuses mandatory (Arkansas is trying to ram this crazy shit down everyone’s throat, even colleges that don’t want it), I can see the gun-deaths spiking.
EBT
@Mnemosyne: Sunlight is a disinfectant to both groups. That Theil needs darkness to hide from justice.
JordanRules
LMAO Pete Souza is on Twitter letting the new Admin know where the lights are so they don’t have to keep meeting in the dark per that NYT piece.
grandpa john
@liberal: Or the fore runner of both, the orangeburg Massacre From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Orangeburg massacre
Weapons Revolvers, shotguns, police batons, thrown objects
Deaths 3
Non-fatal injuries
27
Perpetrators 9 patrolmen
The Orangeburg massacre refers to the shooting of protesters by South Carolina Highway Patrol officers in Orangeburg, South Carolina, on the South Carolina State University campus on the evening of February 8, 1968.[1] The approximately 200 protesters had previously demonstrated against racial segregation at a local bowling alley. Three of the protestors, African American males, were killed and twenty-seven other protesters were injured.[2]
The event pre-dated the 1970 Kent State shootings and Jackson State killings, in which the National Guard at Kent State, and police and state highway patrol at Jackson State, killed student protesters demonstrating against the United States invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
Mnemosyne
@EBT:
So are chimpanzees, cats, elephants, bears, dogs, pigs, and lions. Alligators are more complicated in their actions than people give them credit for.
(But they still scare the ever-loving shit out of me.)
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Now, that’s a scary thought. And I didn’t realize that juvenile alligators could vocalize.
See ya later, alligator…
zhena gogolia
@donnah:
Putin playbook.
JordanRules
@Corner Stone: Yup! His NPD will not allow it. He kicked his mentor and only “friend”, Roy Cohn, to the curb when he was just a dead man walking and no longer useful.
? Martin
@oklahomo: The state battles are going to be interesting.
We’re only out of control because we run a budget surplus thanks to higher taxes, while providing benefits to undocumented, while having the toughest gun laws, and the strongest environmental protections – all of which the public support – all of which have been supported by ballot initiative. We’re out of control because we routinely prove Republican orthodoxy to be false, and that is why CA voted so strongly against him.
The Moar You Know
The little bastards are FAST if it’s warm out. The big ones can kill with a swing of the tail but they’re usually very, very slow. Although you don’t get near them because sometimes they can do that “burst of speed” thing and then you’re missing some legs.
grandpa john
@Tokyokie: Same is true of “The Orangeburg Massacre” at SC State in Orangeburg
The Moar You Know
@? Martin: We give them a buck, they give us 62 cents back.
I’d take that deal in a heartbeat. They cut us off, we keep our share. They need that money. I’d rather spend it here, on the people who made it in the first place.
hovercraft
@? Martin:
Stop it, stop it, stop lying about him, people are starting to believe the lies!!!
Trump Accuses NYT Of ‘Making Up Stories & Sources’ In Latest Attack
President Donald Trump on Monday accused the New York Times of making up “stories & sources” in articles about him, the latest in a long line of attacks against the paper from the President and his administration.
Trump was likely reacting to a front-page story about his administration’s stumbles over the first two weeks of his presidency, published in the paper on Monday. Trump left no ambiguity about his opinion on his Twitter account:
And Trump himself has repeatedly gone after the paper with threats:
However, when Trump sat down with editors and writers for the Times after his electoral win in November, the exchange was largely cordial. He called the paper a “great, great American jewel. A world jewel,” and closed the meeting by saying “I hope we can all get along well.”
If only everyone would stop recording and writing down what he says, then everything would be hunky dory.
Steve in the ATL
@Roger Moore:
Stop trying to appropriate her culture!
That said, I thought the same thing you did.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne: Alternatively, rig the site to blow and kill two evils with one explosion.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
@Steve in the ATL:
SC knows a lot more about it than I do, but IIRC the thuggees reputation was greatly exaggerated and the name was applied to bandits who weren’t part of the movement at all.
? Martin
@Corner Stone: Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they are able to influence him much over that. I think part of wanting to be president is that he can tell his creditors and accusers to fuck off – he’s got the biscuit in his pocket now. I think he’s more interested in mimicking Putin who has personally enriched himself by taking advantage of his position and using the state to kill off his detractors. Trump has publicly stated both of those things as being appealing to him.
Who gives a shit if you’re in debt by hundreds of millions to the Russians if you have the US military and the ability to skim billions from the US taxpayers? You’ve just negated whatever leverage the Russians may have had. That may be part of the reason why he wants to keep his family so close to the WH.
LAO
HOLY CRAP — I’ve been so wrapped up in nonstop Trump related disgust that I missed that jury selection began today in the Bundy Nevada trial? Which hopefully will be better presented than the Oregon trial.
ETA: Apparently there are going to be 3 separate trials — the first does not include Cliven and his boys.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: I see you have swallowed the British propaganda about so called thugee or are using Indiana Jones movies as historical fact.
ETA: Thug/Thuk is a word used for con men in many Indian languages. Usually not violent but kinda smarmy.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Dude, stop trying to make “fetch” happen.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@? Martin:
I believe I read it here:
“Narcissists don’t have friends, they have appliances made of human tissue.”
Just like people have noted that Twitler’s never had a dog, note how you never see references to any friends, just the family and bidness/political associates.
schrodingers_cat
@Steve in the ATL: Cult of Kali, monkey brains? I think you are confusing history with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
For some reason, the topic of “Temple of Doom” came up yesterday and G said he’d read an essay that said it was probably not a coincidence that Spielberg and Lucas were both getting divorced when they made a movie that features people getting their still-beating hearts ripped out of their chests. ?
lol chikinburd
fuck, missed
EBT
@Mnemosyne: Humans are nothing if not masters of projection.
CaseyL
Open thread, so… It’s snowing in Seattle, pretty hard right now. UW campus is closed, so I have an unexpected day off (though I’ll have to give up some leave time if I want to be paid for it).
So I’m sitting here, watching the snow fall, TV off. Cleaning house in fits and starts. Listening to the hardly-any traffic going by.
Snow is beautiful, and it does beautiful things to light. Everything has a subtle glow, and a sense of tranquility.
Feels like a day out of time, and I’m liking it.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Mnemosyne:
That’s assuming that the College Reptilians…er..Republicans want their events to be violence-free.
I personally think that they invite speakers who’ll incite violence on purpose because it:
a) gives them (spkr & org) widespread free publicity
and
b) makes the opposition look violent & deranged.
Just One More Canuck
@Corner Stone: “He looks like he’s sleeping. I’m going to get a selfie with him. Hold my beer.”
TenguPhule
@? Martin: Unless Putin’s video has Trump committing murder on a Thai ladyboy who was smuggled in with the other hookers once he found out that the ‘girl’ he was buggering had a dick.
Even his followers would lynch him for that if it got out.
schrodingers_cat
In case people are interested, a scholarly work about thuggee, The Scarf and the Sword, by Gordon Stewart.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne: I apologize. It was in poor taste.
But I still intend to laugh should either of them come to grief.
efgoldman
test
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Also, apparently a trilogy set in India written by one of my favorite romance authors (Mary Jo Putney) is super cheap on Amazon Kindle right now. I’m wondering how well it holds up since it was written 20 years ago.
(And IIRC all of the leads are British, though she’s pretty sympathetic to the locals.)
trollhattan
@LAO: Picking a non-Bundyphilic jury from southern Nevada is going to be a real hurdle, recalling the moron Oregon jury. I presume papa Bundy has a vast collection of live-free-or-die lawyers at his disposal.
We all know which side the president is on.
Corner Stone
@JMG: Flatter them, open them up, find out what they want/need and give it to them. Then squeeze their nuts for the rest of their life.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: I mostly don’t remember it, except for the scenery chewing by Amrish Puri.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
S/he has a lot of violence fantasies.
Timurid
@Mnemosyne:
The ‘Thugs’ were the public face of a massive crime wave in early 19th century India caused by the collapse of the traditional economy and mass unemployment after the Industrial Revolution. The British tabloid media of the day focused on the Thugs because they were so strange and disturbing (thus marketable). There were greatly exaggerated stories of their numbers and reach, describing them as some kind of India-wide Mafia with thousands of members. There were probably never more than a few hundred Thugs. For every Thug there were dozens of more mundane criminals, many of whom were driven to crime by lack of other choices, and hundreds or thousands of people participating in a larger shadow economy.
By focusing on the savagery of Thuggee (they really were a murderous, Manson-style cult) and associating it with the wider crime problem they focused attention and blame on retail criminal violence and absolved the wholesale policy decisions that were the underlying cause. See also; pretty much every piece of hysterical blood and guts crime reporting ever, especially when brown people are involved.
LAO
@trollhattan: I’ll admit, I find it less “fun” (for a lack of a better word) to follow the trials and tribulations of the Bundy family since the inmates have taken over the asylum.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
As I’ve said before, my preferred protest against Milo would be to have a minimum of 1,000 middle-aged women in pink hats gather to point and laugh. Preferably led by women of color.
Spontaneous combustion would probably follow since Milo loves to be hated, but can’t stand being mocked by a woman, which is why his campaign against Leslie Jones got so fucking creepy.
EBT
@Mnemosyne: I am convinced Milo isn’t really gay so much as an angry nominally straight bisexual who went all MGTOW.
Corner Stone
@? Martin: I just disagree. There’s something there that scares the insides of Trump green. Something that he knows will bust him down below the 27% margin of buffer safety. Something he can not stand to have see the light of day. Maybe his tiny pen!s. Maybe underage Russian hookers laughing at him not being able to get it up. Maybe him choking one to death because of it. And then fucking their dead corpse in a coke fueled rage.
Just sayin’
Betty Cracker
@lol chikinburd: Someone on Twitter posted a story about a meteor near-miss with the comment, “Wait! Come back!” :)
@CaseyL: That sounds lovely.
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
To be fair (ahem), the British weren’t much more tolerant of their actual citizens inside Great Britain. It was the days of the Bloody Code, when you could be executed for stealing a loaf of bread. I just started reading a book called Regency Spies about domestic spying in that period, and pretty much any call for peaceful Parliamentary reform could lead to transportation or execution.
That may be one of the reasons they were so desperate to project “savagery” onto the places they colonized.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Wait. What? You mean Indiana Jones ain’t real history?
NorthLeft12
My wife and I were watching the new series about Queen Victoria, and my wife was horrified by the shooting of the protestors in Wales [Chartists] at Newport. She did not believe that people protesting for rights would be shot outright. My sense of history was that back then [1830’s] that protestors were taking their lives in their hands by going public in any country, and that they were usually branded as traitors, with punishment as severe as if they were traitors.
I guess my point is that throughout history, the people in power have despised and used every means possible to harm those that are trying to change the status quo through protest. And strangely enough, the powerful have been supported in that hate by a fair number of the poor and powerless.
Some things never change.
Steve in the ATL
@LAO:
I concur, and it makes me sad
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s not a very good movie — even Spielberg admits that now.
Elizabelle
@CaseyL: I love snow days. Enjoy yours.
schrodingers_cat
@Timurid: Your version is remarkably similar to 19th century Victorian historians, white man’s burden BS used to justify the racist colonial enterprise. Why should I take this self serving version of history at face value. When there is recent scholarship throwing a great deal of doubt on your premise of so called wide spread collapse of law and order.
schrodingers_cat
@NorthLeft12: Tell her to google Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. Oh and fuck that fatty Victoria.
hovercraft
@? Martin:
Nah, it’s because he has no friends.
Posted by Steve M. at 2:24 PM
Monday, February 06, 2017
DON’T YOU DARE TRY TO MAKE ME FEEL SORRY FOR DONALD TRUMP
Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post goes to that New York Times story about Trump administration dysfunction and applies laser focus to the least important revelation:
There’s a remarkably telling paragraph in Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush’s tour de force in the New York Times documenting President Trump’s first two weeks in office. Here it is:
Usually around 6:30 p.m., Mr. Trump retires upstairs to the residence to recharge, vent and intermittently use Twitter. With his wife, Melania, and young son, Barron, staying in New York, he is almost always by himself, sometimes in the protective presence of his imposing longtime aide and former security chief, Keith Schiller. When Mr. Trump is not watching television in his bathrobe or on his phone reaching out to old campaign hands and advisers, he will sometimes set off to explore the unfamiliar surroundings of his new home.
Cillizza turns this into a sob story:
He is … remarkably transactional when it comes to acquaintances — what can he/she do for me today? — which tends not to lead to lots of close friendships. And he is a celebrity, someone with lots of “friends” but no actual, close friends. (Quick, named people Donald Trump is friends with: Don King? Kanye West? Right.)
… The simple fact is that Trump has never had real friends in the sense you or I think of the term. The relationship world of Trump has long been split into two groups: 1) His family and 2) people who work for him. And people who work for you are rarely your actual friends.
… Trump is, in an odd sort of way, a reclusive family man. He is someone who likes routine and likes to be around his family. Hell, he built a hotel that he both works and lives in! Even during the campaign, Trump flew on his own plane surrounded by his kids — a protective, comfortable bubble amid the back and forth of the race.
… Without the comfort of Trump Tower and robbed of the proximity of his family, Trump is a man apart. He has cable TV, his phone and Twitter. But he lacks a group of friends or confidantes — again, outside of his immediate family — with whom he can have dinner or just chat. He is isolated — and in the most high-powered and high stress job in the world. That’s a very tough place to be.
Cillizza isn’t the only one who’s trying to make us feel sorry for Donald Trump. Here are two of Haberman and Thrush’s Times colleagues:
Stop. Just stop.
We’ve had other presidents who were reputed to have few close friends — Richard Nixon, famously, but also Barack Obama*. This didn’t inspire them to sign documents without reading them. It didn’t make them incapable of processing basic information about the functioning of government. Maybe Nixon padded aimlessly around the White House in the desperation of his final days, but he didn’t spend his first month in the White House bored. Trump may be lonely, but — as the Haberman and Thrush story makes clear — presidential loneliness is not the biggest problem here.
Trump doesn’t need a hug. He needs to learn his damn job. Failing that, he needs to resign and hand the White House over to someone minimally qualified (at this point, even Mike Pence would be a slight improvement). Hey, he could say he’s doing it to spend more time with his family.
*I say bullshit on even Steve M throwing Obama in there at the end. Obama had friends, he did not necessarily have or want any DC friends. The beltway people were denied the cache of being invited into his inner circle, so they called him friendless, but he isn’t.
trollhattan
@LAO:
Yep, their horrid armed “protest” and extensive vandalism and theft are celebrated while constitutionally lawful protest is under legal assault.
I blame Reagan, who reached out to the Sagebrush Rebellion during his campaign and after which, they were encouraged and abetted by James Watt and our SCOTUS nominee’s mamma. Just great.
Mnemosyne
@NorthLeft12:
Yep. The British government was terrified that they would go the way of the French Republic, complete with a Reign of Terror, so they cracked down early and hard on any dissent. There’s a reason the US Constitution is so explicit about there being a right to dissent.
TenguPhule
@hovercraft: Is it sad that the first thing that came to mind is to wonder how much Trump promised to pay them for this?
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
Everything that story says is absolutely characteristic of a toxic narcissist, who can’t get people to stay unless they’re related to him or work for him.
Nothing more.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
This is just pathetic. It’s like this fool doesn’t realize that he is president. He is incapable of rising above trivial slights.
I guess we should be thankful for small favors. Trump talks about “his lawyers.” At least he is not promising to put the Justice Department onto the Times. Not yet.
ETA: Imagine an alternate universe in which Richard Nixon had access to Twitter. No there is some scary shit.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne: And what would stop him from attacking the women while he was masked? Common human decency?
Roger Moore
@EBT:
Also, too, he’ll turn to dust the moment he’s hit by sunlight. I saw it on Buffy, so it must be true.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
One guy — or even a dozen guys — in broad daylight against a thousand or more women?
I know that dudes tend to overestimate their capabilities, but if you think those guys wouldn’t be tackled and beaten, you’re a fool.
rikyrah
@? Martin:
Tweet to him about President BANNON.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
It turns out that when you try and conquer someone’s country, those people get mad and fight back. Who knew?
/British Victorians (and Georgians)
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft: Word. My sympathies are with the immigrants who step into the unknown without knowing a single soul in the new country.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Really? I know a lot of genre fans who love it. And some kids like to watch it on a dare, especially the gorier scenes.
On first viewing the film, I remember thinking, “Who is Kate Capshaw, and why is she in this movie?”
Later learned that she was Spielberg’s new main squeeze.
Still later, I appreciated that Spielberg appeared to have settled up the divorce with a minimum of fuss, and made her a generous settlement.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Why won’t those ungrateful heathens welcome them as liberators with flowers and candy?
Gin & Tonic
@Brachiator: Imagine an alternate universe in which Richard Nixon had access to Twitter.
hovercraft
@TenguPhule:
Actually if he offered payment, he won’t be paying up, he is unhappy about the stories portrayal of his first few weeks as a chaotic disaster with them all stumbling around in the dark.
Gravenstone
@EBT: So you’re suggesting the response is “Lunch!”?
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
Don’t talk bad about Nixon, who had spent many years in Government by the time he became President. He knew the inner workings of the Government. (damn you for making me write something positive about Richard Nixon)
Barack and Michelle Obama famously said ‘ no new friends’. Then again, Barack Obama was actually interested in DOING THE JOB of being President.
I said it before…I’ve come around to the belief that Dolt45 is a functioning illiterate.
Gin & Tonic
Blockquote fail.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I know how you feel, the other day I found myself defending Modi.
EBT
@Gravenstone: something like 7% of young alligators are cannibalized each year, so I could see an adult alligator willing to capitalize on whatever is making that noise.
Elizabelle
@Brachiator: That tweet is from September 2016.
Back when we had a sane president. And Trump as POTUS was unthinkable.
randy khan
@Spanky:
The good news is that the D.C. government controls the streets in D.C., and it’s completely run by Democrats.
I suppose that Congress could try to pass a bill restricting protests in D.C., but I think that would be a bridge too far.
Gravenstone
@JordanRules: What’s truly stupid about that whole “no lights” thing is that the Trump folks were clearly so contemptuous of any Obama staffers that they obviously refused any advice. Even common sense shit like, “the light switches are over here and are a little quirky. this is how they work”.
EBT
@randy khan: But Home Rule lets congress overrule basically anything DC does.
ThresherK
@Brachiator: Leading to the moral calculus of those who enjoy nature with our shorter, slower loved ones:
I dont need to paddle faster than the alligator swims, or (in my county) outrun the bear. I only need to be faster than my wife–the one who’s just had a knee replaced. Can I stand to do this, especially right in front of her?
Betty Cracker
@NorthLeft12: Does the series ever pick up? Seemed to start off kinda draggy, IMO. I watched the pilot episode, but the timing was bad because I’d just finished binge-watching “The Crown,” which I thought was particularly well done. Trying to decide if it’s worth giving “Victoria” another shot.
Elizabelle
Does the “no lights” story hit you at all like “outgoing Clinton staffers took all the Ws off the typewriters?” Didn’t that story go viral for a while?
What really hit me was the loneliness of Trump.
? Martin
@rikyrah: One of the curses of being born rich is that conditions that would force normal people to face up to can go untreated because they can simply hire around their disabilities.
? Martin
@Elizabelle: Yeah, a bit. I’m sure there was a day when they couldn’t figure out the lights – that’s normal. To characterize that 2 weeks in they still can’t isn’t likely true. But what matters is that there are lots of knives out inside the WH. Nothing good about that.
ruckus
@NorthLeft12:
A large number of the poor and powerless think/know that the powerful will often reward protests with over whelming force. Because the powerful don’t give a fuck about those “below” them. To many, being a poor slave is better than being dead. My mileage, and yours may vary.
bemused
@hovercraft:
Was the intent to make it a sob story? I didn’t get that impression and certainly didn’t feel a bit sorry for the pathetic putz. The piece was just more horrifying confirmation that we have a 70 year old whining toddler behind the wheel. Only rabid trumpsters could feel sorry for him and I doubt even they are capable of feeling for anyone but themselves.
JordanRules
@Gravenstone: It is all so ridiculous. Pete even told them which guy they could ask and then figured they probably fired him. We are getting some fun Biden sabotage speculation though.
Doug R
@trollhattan: It is from one of my favorite Far Sides. I am partial to “Beware of Doug” as well.
Timurid
@schrodingers_cat:
This was the ‘white man’s burden’ insofar as it was the British who were the root cause of the problems. Before the 19th century, India (along with China) was one of the world’s centers of manufacturing. The British East India Company was mostly importing manufactured goods like textiles, not raw materials. The need to compete with Asian industry (and third party re-sellers like the E.I.C.) was one of the motivating factors for the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. After mismanagement and corruption led to the near-collapse of the E.I.C. in the 1770’s, it was nationalized by the British government. Now that it was a ward of the state, there was no chance that the E.I.C. would be allowed to compete with rising British industry. Thus no factories were built in India, and the focus of the Company business shifted to extraction of raw materials. India was afflicted by the same basic problems as Britain and the rest of Europe. Advanced industry displaced traditional craftspeople. Enclosure and an emphasis on factory farming of cash crops wiped out many family farms. But the outlets that absorbed all this now surplus labor in the West… growing cities and factories… did not exist. That, along with the British annexation of Indian states and the demobilization of thousands of soldiers and civilian functionaries, led to massive unemployment. Some of the unemployed inevitably turned to crime.
The British were completely clueless about how to fix this. There were a series of reform-minded governments in the early 19th century led by pipe-hitting idealists and outright hacks (imagine what would happen if you gave the Village its own country to run, and you wouldn’t be far off). They attempted the same solutions developed in Britain to respond to the Industrial Revolution. Education, law and order, workhouses and orphanages, preaching both religious and secular morality, disparaging the lazy and primitive habits of the ‘rustics,’ sharing superior upper class/British values and education. They said education twice? They like education… Basically they wanted to create a modern industrial political economy in India… without any industry. It went about as well as you would expect. And the more they failed, the more they scolded, finger wagged and blamed the Indians for everything.
No, there wasn’t initially a ‘wide spread collapse of law and order,’ unless you consider events like the crime during Prohibition or the 1980’s ‘crack epidemic’ to be that. The real collapse comes in 1857 when Indians have finally had enough of this bullshit. And, yes it was the British to blame. At this point I can’t even read about the run-up to 1857 without getting triggered, because it reminds me in some ways of the underlying problems of early 21st century America and the solutions proposed by our enlightened betters…
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
I don’t know about that. Bunkerville is in Clark County, which also includes Las Vegas. That’s a lot of non-ranchers to choose from.
Gravenstone
@Betty Cracker: As I said this morning, after learning about the near miss (several folks around here heard the sonic boom), Sweet Meteor of Death is teasing us.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Yeah, I never heard that the Obamas had NO friends, just that they were keeping new people at arm’s length once he became the nominee.
Half the beef with Valerie Jarrett was that she was an old friend of both of the Obamas in addition to being a colleague, and some Villagers were pissed that she was (rightly!) controlling access.
ETA: Also, they would go to Hawaii for vacations so he could see his old friends from high school.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
I noted during both the primaries and general campaign that one of many things Trump was unique for is the complete lack of humanizing personal anecdotes. Hell, I can’t even recall a former classmate coming forward with, “Yeah, he was a real slob and douchenozzle in prep school/college.”
His ghost writer does have a few things to say, however.
Now we’re down to Howard Stern anecdotes to try and prise out any scraps of humanity from the humanoid lump that is the president. He’s not fully formed and what’s left is innately unbalanced. Lucky us.
SenyorDave
@hovercraft: Trump is, in an odd sort of way, a reclusive family man. He is someone who likes routine and likes to be around his family. Hell, he built a hotel that he both works and lives in! Even during the campaign, Trump flew on his own plane surrounded by his kids — a protective, comfortable bubble amid the back and forth of the race.
Sure he’s quite the family man. Every family man brags about grabbing pussy while he’s away from his pregnant wife. I see Chris Cillizza is doing his usual bang-up job churning out drivel for the WaPo. We’re supposed to feel for Trump, the lonely family man? Maybe we’ll get lucky and in a fit of anger, he’ll try to use his little hands to turn on one of the WH lights and jam his finger in the socket because he didn’t listen when President Bannon was explaining how to use the lights.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: These people paid the price to keep rosy cheeked young Victoria in jewels and furs. Spare them a thought when you see the Masterpiece fluff.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Lifted my note from a legal analyst who observed fed court throws a wide net for jury summonses and this one will include all of rural southern Nevada. Whether Las Vegas urbanites can reverse the influence remains to be seen but after Portland–Portland!–I’m doubting it.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
We are through the looking glass people, being forced to defend people who we used to think of as terrible people, Bush, Nixon.
They want to normalize this asshole, so they throw Nixon and Obama in to make him not seem like such an anomaly, but we all know he’s an narcissist and an idiot. Obama and Nixon were very intelligent men, Nixon was insecure and paranoid, but he knew what he was doing, Dolt 45 not so much, and he’s doing a terrible job of hiding it.
Gravenstone
@Brachiator: Well, since the threat of legal action against the NYT in that tweet was pre-election, he might just decide to revisit it now that he does have the DoJ under his thumb.
artem1s
@? Martin:
If he was mentally stable it wouldn’t be possible to push him over that cliff. As you pointed out, he would look at the evidence around him and adjust his behavior. So not feeling sorry here.
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
Well, you have to admit that those solutions worked like a charm in Britain.
Oh, wait … ?
TenguPhule
@hovercraft: No, we still think of Bush and Nixon as terrible people. Its just that back then, Evil had Standards.
Brachiator
@ThresherK:
I’m sure that you would be chivalrous and do the right thing.
Bear (swallowing a particularlly self-sacrificing human): That guy tasted really good!
Brought to you by “Bad puns done cheap.”
Timurid
@Mnemosyne:
They worked even less well in India.
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
I’m just teasing you a little — I think we’re in agreement, and I think SC probably agrees as well.
It’s kind of fascinating how different history looks once you stop and think about how the locals probably felt when the British showed up with guns and started ordering them around.
hovercraft
@schrodingers_cat:
The sad thing is that while there are many autocratic leaders around the world, most of them are are savvy politicians who toiled for years learning the system and manipulating the rules to get where they are, this moron is a con artist who simply bamboozled a large portion of the country into voting for him. Now that he’s got the brass ring he has no idea what to do with it, and given that this is the one ring to rule all others, he could destroy the world.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne: Numbers don’t matter if you’re not organized and they are and armed to boot. Worse still if they brought vehicles for use. Once a crowd becomes a frightened mob, it breaks. History is very very clear about that.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Well many of the local princes behaved like the Congressional Republicans, so there is that. The ones that didn’t were either beheaded, hung or exiled.
Doug R
@Mnemosyne: Spielberg says The Temple of Doom story was Lucas’ idea. They put in a couple of elements that they cut from Raiders like the scimitar fight and the mine car chase. The heart ripping scene is supposed to be slight of hand, but it’s not very clear. They shot it in Sri Lanka because the Indian government wouldn’t let them shoot in India once they saw the script.
Brachiator
Since this is an open thread, I am really happy about the discovery and restoration of some lost Bob Marley tapes:
I hope that whatever needs to be done gets done so that this material can be released to the public. Along with new music from Prince’s vaults.
rikyrah
The White House and Fox join forces to undermine anti-Trump protests as violent and fake
By Philip Bump February 6 at 10:55 AM
Fox News’s “Fox and Friends” has quickly emerged as a stalwart advocate for the presidency of Donald Trump. This may be due in part to the fact that Trump watches the show with regularity — so much so that a visual gag from the show about Trump flickering the lights of the White House at the hosts’ request went viral last week simply out of believability.
Part of that defense of the beleaguered president has been to dismiss the protests against him as harmful, violent and artificial. Consider this remarkable snippet from Monday morning’s show.
“Violent protests like this,” the host says over footage from last week’s violence in Berkeley, Calif., “not only disgusting but also dangerous. Now rioters protesting the president’s immigration order are accused of blocking an ambulance carrying a critically ill patient in Connecticut.”
It is true that a protest in Connecticut blocked a highway, delaying that ambulance. The patient lived, happily. But a local NBC affiliate showed what that protest looked like:
Blocking a highway is illegal, and the leader of the protest was arrested. But this is much more “civil disobedience” than “rioting.”
The day after that protest in Berkeley, we saw “Fox and Friends” hauling the same load. Alongside footage of crowds mingling next to a bonfire in California, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway lumped the violent protesters together with protesters at airports, suggesting that they all shared a collective misunderstanding of the president.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer appeared on the show on Monday to undercut the protests in a different way.
“Do you sense,” host Brian Kilmeade asks, “instead of being an organic disruption, do you sense that there is an organized pushback and people are being paid to protest?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Spicer replied. “I mean, protesting has become a profession now. They have every right to do that, don’t get me wrong. But I think we need to call it what it is. It’s not these organic uprisings that we have seen over the last several decades. The tea party was a very organic movement. This has become a very paid, Astroturf-type movement.”
First of all, it is true that there are organizations that are helping to organize protests against Trump. The millions of people who turned out nationally on Jan. 21 were participating in something that began with an idea from a woman in Hawaii. But progressive groups certainly helped encourage attendance and awareness of what was happening.
schrodingers_cat
@Doug R: It was banned in India IIRC.
ETA: It made Amrish Puri’s career in Hindi movies as a scenery chewing villain, though.
TenguPhule
@hovercraft: And yet, even after getting a Reputation for welching on payments, people STILL keep doing stuff for him and expecting to be paid on time.
Its like Trump generates his own Idiot-ball Klein Field that infects whoever gets within hearing distance.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
You really should read up on the Black Bloc. They’re not nearly as organized as you seem to think. They’re vandals who show up under cover of darkness to break stuff.
And you actually think Milo would put himself at personal risk? Yeah, right. If he doesn’t have armed security, he’s afraid to leave the house.
You are inventing scenarios in your head. Please seek help.
rikyrah
Gorsuch’s Praise of David Sentelle Should Concern You
by Martin Longman
February 6, 2017 3:31 PM
President Trump has selected federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill a Supreme Court seat that ought to have gone to Merrick Garland. Now, some people, including Neal Katyal, who served under President Barack Obama as acting Solicitor General, have said glowing things about Mr. Gorsuch. But I have some concerns.
As a young lawyer, Gorsuch held three prestigious clerkships. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy. He also clerked for David Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. When Gorsuch spoke during the announcement of his nomination, he went out of his way to praise these three mentors, and he praised Sentelle in particular who was present for the ceremony.
Sentelle, if you recall, had his confirmation to the DC Circuit held up for months over his refusal to disassociate himself from “from private clubs that did not admit blacks or women.” Maybe you remember how he used his position to overturn the convictions of Oliver North and John Poindexter at the tail end of the Iran-Contra Affair. You could even remember how he upheld (and was subsequently overruled by the Supreme Court) President George W. Bush’s suspension of habeas corpus in the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Or, perhaps, like me, his name is etched in your memory because of the conspiracy he engaged in with Sens. Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina to fire Whitewater investigator Robert B. Fiske Jr. and replace him with Kenneth Starr.
I’ll go over that conspiracy in a moment, but I want to dwell on Sentelle’s connections to Jesse Helms for a moment. Hopefully, you don’t need to remember Helms’s notoriously racist White Hands 1990 political advertisement to know that he was a reactionary and bigoted hold out against the desegregation of the South. He was bad enough that David Broder (usually the paragon of civility) took the opportunity of his death to excoriate him for “his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans.”
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: Shitgibbon is in my general area today visiting CENTCOMM, and from the accounts I’ve read in the local news, he opened his talk by bragging about the fucking election again and talking about how much the troops love him according to the polls. It’s all about him, all the time. There just is no other topic worth commenting about, I guess.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
I have a really fun Kindle book called K Blows Top! that’s about Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the US in the late 1950s. The really interesting thing is how much of a traditional politician he was — when they did the whistle-stop tour of the West Coast, he got off the train in Santa Barbara and kissed babies like he was running for Senate.
Trump is basically trying to run the presidency as a reality show, but it ain’t gonna work.
Mnemosyne
@Doug R:
Lucas was also getting divorced from his first wife at the time, so that’s no surprise.
D58826
@Betty Cracker: He also spent some time talking about all other terror attacks that the ‘dishonest media in Europe’ isn’t reporting on. (sigh)
Yarrow
@rikyrah: I heard someone who listens to Fox repeat the “paid protesters” thing today. All the protesters are paid, apparently. They travel from place to place and do nothing but protest. If you interview them they don’t know what they’re protesting about.
Also, “the protests aren’t going to do anything. There’s no point to them.”
Gravenstone
@rikyrah:
It’s always fucking projection with these choades. He’s talking about known Republican behavior vis a vis the “Tea Party” bullshit and how they disrupted Congressional meetings in individual districts. But ascribing it to current non-violent street protests.
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: wow. just…wow. that is some cool news.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I guess my check for showing up at LAX is in the mail … ?
More seriously, though, it’s always projection. The “Tea Party” groups were paid for and organized by conservative groups pretending to be “grass roots.” Now they can’t imagine that millions of people would voluntarily show up to protest their asshole — they must be paid, too!
JordanRules
@Brachiator: Wow, good stuff!! Hope to listen and satisfy my soul a bit.
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft: Modi was duly elected, his party won an outright majority in 2014. He does have autocratic tendencies but has many prominent critics in his own party and his party has not done as well in some of the assembly elections (like state level elections here) held afterwards. So by no means an all powerful dictator.
ETA: On the national stage he has been W level bad. Nothing approaching the storming of the Golden Temple by Mrs. Gandhi, yet.
ruckus
@TenguPhule:
Bush and Nixon were bad. Drumpf, the Republican president, is a horrible fucking bigot with mental issues who has no idea how government works, and has no desire nor idea how to learn how, let alone any capability.
efgoldman
@Roger Moore:
Federal court, right? Is their potential jury pool limited by municipal/county or even state boundaries?
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
[Shakes head] I just don’t know how long he can keep this up. Reagan kept his dewy-eyed shoe-lickers (literal, in Noonan’s case) in tow by understanding how to capitalize on his folksy-yet- sophisticated public persona. This guy is playing Reagan’s game with virtually no charm and no understanding of why he needs any. Other than the anger-driven gun-humpers I don’t foresee it lasting.
Timurid
@schrodingers_cat:
I imagine Puri’s rationale for taking part in that abomination was like Michael Caine’s for abasing himself in Jaws: The Revenge… “I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”
Doom is easily the worst film of Spielberg’s career (and I say that after having seen Jurassic Park 2) and one of the worst mass market/big budget movies ever made.
jl
@Mnemosyne: I haven’t read that particular book, but read an article about the visit. Interesting insights into the Khrushchev and Eisenhower. I read that Eisenhower was obsessed with getting Khrushchev to visit a family farm where he did chores as a kid. Eisenhower wanted to prove to Khrushchev that he wasn’t some effete decadent rich-man’s-son late capitalist weenie.
Not sure how that relates to Trump… oh… um.. wait…
Edit: I think Eisenhower did get Khrushchev out to the farm in Kansas, but not sure IIRC.
Mnemosyne
Also, special snowflake Sean Spicer needs a safe space, because SNL is just too mean, you guys!
efgoldman
@Gravenstone:
The NYT can afford as many lawyers as Amber Asswipe can, plus any court in the country would throw it out in about three seconds. His attorneys would figure out a way not to file.
jl
@Mnemosyne: Melissa McCarthy was totally awesome.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne: Hyenas may prefer carrion, but they won’t say no to living victims unfortunate enough to come within reach.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker: If this was proposed as a movie it would be rejected for being too unrealistic.
SenyorDave
@Timurid: The Revenge… “I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”
One of my favorite quotes of all time from one of my favorite actors.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
As others have mentioned, you’re spinning off into paranoid fantasies that have no relation to reality. Please ask your primary care doctor for a referral to a therapist.
jl
@hovercraft:
” a con artist who simply bamboozled a large portion of the country into voting for him. ”
He is president because of a crucial 80,000 or so deluded voters in 3 rust belt states put him over the top in the electoral college. If Trump was not so infantile, he would consider that and calibrate. But he can’t. One of the reasons Arnold would fire his ass on the new Apprentice. I should put up a petition at the WH site, if it is still up, that Trump should go on the show so he can get his ass fired.
schrodingers_cat
@Timurid: Have you seen Tamas (Darkness), a miniseries on the Partition of India, based on Bhisham Sahni’s book by the same name?
ETA: It has Amrish Puri as a leader of a gurudwara.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
I don’t remember that being in the book. However, it is true that Khrushchev really, really wanted to go to Disneyland, and Walt Disney was eager to host him there, but the LAPD didn’t want to have to deal with the potential crowd control problems.
Это курам на смех
@trollhattan: The Bundy jury in Portland was drawn from all over Oregon, and if you take Portland and Eugene out of Oregon, what you have left is Idaho without Boise.
randy khan
It turns out that Kellyanne Conway used the “Bowling Green Massacre” bit not just once, but three times in the last week. I guess she’s a fan of The Hunting of the Snark.
Tell me three times, it’s true.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: We told the truth about the origins of the Tea Party for eight years. Nobody cared or paid attention. Classic Big Lie here. Worst part is of course it will work.
p.a.
Everyone see the article(s) on the Cambridge UK group that tRump campaign used to focus ‘granular’ election messaging on individuals using Big Data from fbook etc? Well that also means each of those voters* will take failure to back the promises personally. And since it was mostly bs messaging except to the actual fascists the result is building: twitteregret is a display of it. And it won’t get any better for him; tRump must be hung around the Rethugs’ necks like a noose, or burning tire.
*the regret being expressed on twitter is from those with a partially functioning brain. Admittedly there are many beneath this level of function. 27% anyone?
Mike in NC
@Mnemosyne: We watched that skit today and my wife thought Melissa McCarthy ought to get some sort of award for it. It was brilliant.
Svensker
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, but that one, and the people throwing water on the attenders at the Trump Inaug party were the only things shown on FAUX. The other millions of peaceful demos have not been televised. So they think it’s pretty much 100% violence at the Dem/paid protestor marches.
schrodingers_cat
@Svensker: @The Moar You Know: We are not going to convince those who are core Republican supporters, we need stop this constant wringing of our hands about them.
jl
@Mnemosyne: LAPD always ruined the fun and messed things up, didn’t they.
As for farm, I just remember reading Eisenhower was obsessed with showing Khrushchev his small town ordinary working person roots. Not sure if Ike got Nikita out to the farm and challenged him to see how could slop the pigs better.
Brachiator
@Timurid:
Oh, hell, no. “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is much, much worse.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
I’m making a point of saying on Facebook that I didn’t get paid a dime. I doubt it will wake up my Trumpster relative, but a girl can hope.
trollhattan
@Это курам на смех:
Yup, and I figure that goes moreso for Nevada.
efgoldman
@schrodingers_cat:
Shorter:
Fuckem
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Yes. They didn’t extend their circle of friends with any Villagers. The friends they had before they got to Washington were the friends they had when they left. I believe the exceptions were the Bidens and the Holders. Outside of them….no NEW friends.
jl
@Svensker: If the GOP Congress pushes really and truly unpopular stuff, won’t make much difference.
The carpet bagger McClintock is trying to accuse paid outside agitator protesters for messing up the beautiful BS fest he had planned for his local townhall near Sacramento. He claims there was an ‘anarchist element’. Locals are not taking to it kindly.
GOP Reps Skip Out On Town Halls As O’Care, Travel Ban Concerns Flare Up
TPM blog
“I’m a constituent of McClintock and a registered Republican in a very Republican district—though I don’t really align very well these days with the Republican Party,” Mattoch said in a Monday phone call. “So I wanted to go to the town hall because I legitimately had questions for the congressman.”
Mattoch said the protesters waiting outside had a wide range of “legitimate concerns.” She personally hoped to ask her representative about how the GOP was progressing on repealing and replacing the ACA and why House Republicans last week voted to kill a ruling aimed at preventing coal mining debris from ending up in waterways.
…
“If you look at the videos from the event, you can’t get any notion that it was aggressive,” [another constituent] said. “There was an older woman with a poodle that ran after him and it’s like, okay, the older lady with the poodle is not going to threaten you. I understand that he might want to give that impression, but it was very pleasant.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/constituents-push-back-lawmakers-cancel-town-halls
efgoldman
@Brachiator:
Both are right up there, but 1941 is no prize, either.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
And that’s the difference with Trump: he has NO friends. He only has family and the people he pays to be around him. Even Howard Stern is only his “friend” because he puts Trump on his radio show.
randy khan
@EBT:
Congress can, but interfering in permitting for use of the streets would be pretty blatant (and stupid – even Samuel Alito probably would figure out the First Amendment issues there).
Also, frankly, you can’t arrest 100,000 people. You can’t really arrest 5,000 people.
Svensker
@schrodingers_cat:
Who’s wringing hands? Just pointing out that the RW is being fed this stuff and they totally believe. What I don’t get is that all the RWers on my FB page totally believe it — and yet, all their relatives and friends are posting pics of themselves at the protests. So I guess they believe that their cousins are being paid to protest? I just really don’t understand them anymore.
Svensker
@Brachiator:
Did Spielberg ever make a good movie? I can’t think of one. Except maybe the first Indiana Jones, which he did not do on his own.
FlyingToaster
@Mnemosyne:
Not entirely true. There was one Black Bloc idiot I had to march beside for half a block on Jan 21. I suspect the Boston cops kept eyes on him.
They only come out en masse when the crowd is huge enough for them to hide in it or it’s after dark. I’d have more respect for them if they’d just wear V masks.
Mnemosyne
@randy khan:
They estimated that LA had 750,000 protesters at the Women’s March. There is no way you could arrest them all.
Mnemosyne
@Svensker:
Go watch Catch Me If You Can or Amistad and let me know. ?
Brachiator
@TenguPhule: What’s the hyena’s preferred type of luggage?”
Carrion
Mnemosyne
@FlyingToaster:
There seemed to be one or two at the LAX protest I went to, but they got flooded by the crowd of normals and were kept to well-lit areas, so they were stymied.
NeenerNeener
@Svensker: I still think Poltergeist is pretty damned good..
randy khan
@efgoldman:
Federal juries come out of the district where the court is located, and the districts never cross state lines. Nevada is one district, but the court sits in two places – Las Vegas and Reno. I would expect that each location draws from the parts of the state closest to it, and that you won’t get someone from Reno on a Las Vegas jury or vice versa.
randy khan
@Svensker:
Jaws
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Schindler’s List
Personally, I liked Raiders a lot, and ET is good if that’s your kind of thing, but YMMV.
Brachiator
@Svensker:
Interesting contrarian opinion.
Brachiator
@NeenerNeener:
Wasn;t that Joe Dante?
Mnemosyne
@randy khan:
Munich pissed off a lot of the right people, because it comes to the conclusion that revenge is always futile and self-defeating.
Shana
@hovercraft: I seem to recall an article from early in the Obama years where either he or Michelle said something to the effect of “our friends are now locked in. We can’t know what the motives are of any new friends we make from this point on.” The Bidens seem to be among the very few they made during the Administration.
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator:
Tobe Hooper.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Tobe Hooper. Dante did Gremlins, the other film that helped create the PG-13 rating.
rikyrah
@jl:
See, this is the thing that the protesters are playing fabulously. While that ‘ oh, they are paid protesters’ will work on Fox…
on the LOCAL media..doesn’t work at all. It’s quite easy to get the local media to show up at these events, and either the report is
“Congressman takes questions from challenging audience’..
or
” Congressman hides from constituents”, and they show the Congressman not showing up to a crowded Townhall, or leaving by outside entrance, like the creep in Colorado did.
When all the local media outlets are reporting the truth….having Fox try and shill it differently, doesn’t really work.
Brachiator
@zhena gogolia:
You’re right. Damn. I’m getting old.
And I was questioned by some LA Times reporter about the movie while standing in line to see it. I think part of my quote ended up in the paper.
NeenerNeener
@Brachiator: Spielberg wrote the script.
I don’t think he wrote any of the sequels, though. Those were godawful.
Kathleen
@Tokyokie: Yup. Just like the anthrax scare after 9-11. The press obsessed over the fact that Tom Brokaw and 30 Rock got envelopes with anthrax. On 9-11 memorial pieces they never, ever talk about the African American postal workers who actually died from anthrax. Pisses me off to no end. Thanks, @liberal, for bringing up Jackson State. I get pissed about that, too.
jl
@rikyrah: I don’t know about other areas of the county, but in Northern California and around Reno, local stations are really selling their role as watchdogs for the little person up against ‘the system’ (government, bureaucrats, businesses that are shafting people). Every one of them features their local viewer assistance numbers and runs stories on what comes in every day. Every local radio and TV station with any news bureau will show up at a legislator throwing a local thowhall, local, state or federal. And footage of a bigshot trying to sneak out of a townhall gone bad is just golden stuff for the nightly news. Multiple interviews with locals griping about what a miserable worm the bigshot was.
schrodingers_cat
@Svensker: There is nothing to understand, they are in denial. You cannot wake up someone just pretending to be asleep.
cosima
Didn’t want to drop this into a nice happy thread about lovely horses, so will do it here…
A while back Adam S. & I had a slight difference of opinion as to how the UK (in particular, given that I live here) and the EU need to treat the SCROTUS administration. I said they’ll have to band together and freeze him out as long as he’s aligning himself with Putin. Anyway, interesting piece at Der Spiegel along those same lines: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-1133177-amp.html
TenguPhule
@Brachiator: Ow. owowowowow. Stand still, I have some tomatoes to pelt you with.
randy khan
@Mnemosyne:
I never saw it, so I didn’t want to mention it, but Munich did seem like a good film.
Timurid
@schrodingers_cat: @schrodingers_cat:
A long time ago. Scary stuff.
EBT
@Timurid: The thing with video game movies is that producers and directors are dumb fucking shits who think they know what the audience they never sold to wants. We want to see mario dressed in red stomping on turtles, we want to see Thomas and G shooting Dr Curian in the face repeatedly, we want to see Commander Keen’s grandson SILENTLY (did you know canonically the Doom marine is Commander Keen’s grandson?) shooting Barons of Hell and Cacodaemons with rocket launchers and chainsaws.
Not whatever stupid fucking bullshit Hollywood dreams up after snorting coke off an old instal disk.
Shana
@efgoldman: The only thing I remember from 1941 is the sun rising over the ocean in California at the end of the movie.
I also hate The Color Purple. The movie not the book. The scene with the close up of the mail box where the sign falls off to indicate OMG Guys – decay! A first year film student would be embarrassed to include that in a class project.
jl
@EBT: I thought they snorted coke off the current rent-person’s buttocks. They need to learn how to live it up, like the titanic trillionaire rich health insurance oligarchs do, like our Mayhew.
Roger Moore
@Timurid:
You must have protective amnesia from Crystal Skull.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
IMDB ranks 1941 as the worst of any of Spielberg’s feature-length films. That includes Firelight, a movie Spielberg made when he was 18 years old and later remade into Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
JustRuss
@Brachiator:
It’s sad because it’s true.
Roger Moore
@Svensker:
Schindler’s List? Saving Private Ryan? The Color Purple? Lincoln?
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t give a rat’s ass about the British monarchy, except to wish them a quick drop and a painless snap at the end of a rope. They are cruel, exploitative, greedy powerful monsters, along with all the Dukes, Earls, Barons and Knights.
No offense, BettyC, just don’t understand the fascination with brutal rulers willing to commit any cruelty to maintain their rule and ownership of literally miles of British countryside, multiple palaces, businesses, etc. Millions of people died for their wealth and power. Not to mention the Belgian King in the Congo, etc.
J R in WV
@randy khan:
Actually, you can. They used a football stadium to hold “detainees” – thousands of them, and one was a friend of mine. It was a protest against the Viet Nam war while Nixon was in charge. Years later Mike got a check for damages, after the class action suits were settled. It went towards his med school tuition!