Honored that this will be included in RESIST! being distributed at the @WomensMarch by @FrancoiseMouly ,@NadjaSpiegelman, & @desertislandbk. pic.twitter.com/0Cz4uVHpnl
— Scott Hassell (@scotthassell) January 12, 2017
.
What’s on the agenda as we buckle down for another day?
Trump has had more scandals in the last week than Obama had in 8 years https://t.co/81rkRpoEHV
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) February 15, 2017
So VP was in the dark, liar Flynn allowed in room for every NatSec decision, & only POTUS complaint is that his own staff leaked it? Yikes.
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) February 15, 2017
If only someone had warned us.
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) February 15, 2017
got my hands on the first page of tomorrow morning's presidential briefing pic.twitter.com/oKM5RvVxz9
— Bob Vulfov (@bobvulfov) February 15, 2017
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
raven
Kept in the Dark and Fed only Horseshit
amk
what scandals did Obama exactly have?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@raven: Is that a Girl Scout / Boy Scout patch? Uh, how do you earn it? (Long-time motto of mine from being a parent: don’t ask a question if you don’t want to hear the answer)
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
raven
@amk: FAST AND FURIOUS AND BENGHAZI!!!!!!!!
TS
Could someone explain to me why MorningHo & his girlfriend have gone 100% against Trump – after spending a year doing everything in their power to get him elected.
raven
@TS: They both hammered Trump repeatedly during the campaign.
Baud
@TS: Appearance of reasonableness and moderation.
TS
@raven: They praised him much more than they hammered him – which was why I stopped watching. Maybe they changed but I didn’t hear about it.
Mustang Bobby
If Mike Pence had any scruples, he’d tell Trump to get bent and then resign. Yeah, that’ll happen.
raven
@TS: They did both, let me see if that adds up to 100%.
TS
@Baud: They change with the wind and the weather – and then deny it.
rikyrah
@TS:
I hope that Kay comes in here and unloads on Murdering Joke
Baud
@Mustang Bobby: To Mike Pence, scruples is a game he played in the 80s.
And lost.
Quinerly
Good morning from Bernalillo, NM! We are settled into our rental and where we will be for week two of the 6 week great American road trip. Did a slight detour when leaving Abiquiu…the drive past Abiquiu Lake on Highway 96 through Coyote and Regina was beautiful. Great, cheap lunch in Cuba (El Bruno’s). Poco, the ex inner city street dog, snoozed most of the way. He did seemed a tad disappointed when we got here. No wide open spaces like his previous days in Tucumcari, Cerrillos, and Abiquiu, NM. He is adjusting to the courtyard with a coyote fence…back to city noises…we are within walking distance of The Range and the train station in the area known aa “Las Cocinitas”…on the main drag of Camino del Pueblo. His mom loves the location and the two story casita. Have a great day! Again, thanks for all the interest and kind words.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
“We tried RoboCop as well but it turns out he’s a character in a movie”
A truly decisive CEO president would pound the table and say, “I don’t want to hear excuses! Make it happen!”
it’s been my good fortune never to have a boss like that (who thought that yelling was the way to motivate employees to overcome the laws of physics) but I’ve heard stories. There was a legendary boss like that in my first workplace who retired just before I got there.
?BillinGlendaleCA
OT: Yikes! I just looked at the Weather Underground forecast and they’re predicting almost 4″ of rain for Friday.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Mustang Bobby: From what I’ve heard, it’s not even clear Pence has sentience, let alone higher order functions like scruples.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@amk: t3┘pЧ0ИЭ məTД ΔaTД
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@?BillinGlendaleCA: the weather underground is bad. someone should lok them up.
raven
@Quinerly: Sweet!
Mustang Bobby
@Quinerly: Enjoy the sunrise, and then tonight if the sunset is like it usually is, you’ll see why they named that mountain range east of Albuquerque the Sandias… the color will look just like watermelon.
OzarkHillbilly
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck….. Alex Reyes may need Tommy John surgery.
@Quinerly: You suck.
TS
@rikyrah: Kay’s posts on anything are worth waiting for. Her political understanding and comprehension are way ahead of anything I can do or say. She would make an amazing member of a dem administration.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Heh, that’s the problem, they usually underestimate the amount of rain.
Mai.naem.mobile
I don’t believe Pence was in the dark . That stretches incredulity for me.
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly:
Technically, I still suck.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Is our media learning (Rothkopf = editor and chief Foreign Policy magazine)
p.a.
What’s that plant that flowers once a year with a bloom that smells like shit? ‘We’ elected one that blooms daily!
Quinerly
@Mai.naem.mobile:
His colleagues in the House didn’t call him “Dense” for nothing.
Roger Moore
Trump had more scandals before being elected than Obama had in 8 years; the stuff now is just a continuation.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: My exes sister lived in a house just on the border of the National Park up there way back when.
Immanentize
@Quinerly: it sounds like this is going to be a great week for you and Poco. Pics? Please?
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: What drought?
Immanentize
@Quinerly: don’t you love the way Ozark flirts?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Here’s an interesting photo of Trump and Melania from the early 80s – they look so young (photo)
Immanentize
I just read a tweet:
“What if Putin has been picking all The Apprentice winners?”
The Thin Black Duke
@TS: I think it’s because they can smell the blood in the water.
bystander
@TS:
Because MSNBC had to prove both sides do it during the election. The fact that they routinely smeared Clinton with innuendo and lied about how trustworthy Trump is starting to damage the brand further. This may explain why Joe and Meeka may have delayed any wedding plans.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@p.a.: I’m not sure about once a year, but the Huntington has one that blooms every couple of years called the corpse flower or something like that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mai.naem.mobile: I believe he was in the dark. He can’t even find the light switch.
Baud
Now I’m depressed because we are talking about Joe again in the morning threads. It’s like Trump’s election changed nothing.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: And your little dog too.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
I guess this is what Watergate was like:
Breaking-in to steal opponents files in middle of campaign.
Media uninterested in crime.
Crime would have been buried but FBI leaked to papers after election.
Public/media initially in denial that scandal goes to top.
Crime eventually revealed by tape recordings and consumes principals.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yup, it’s the Corpse Flower.
p.a.
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes that’s it. Corpse flower; corpse democracy. Or at least corpse admin.
Roger Moore
@Mustang Bobby:
If Mike Pence had any scruples, Trump never would have offered him the VP slot.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Foreign Affairs magazine is pretty boring, but their centerfolds are pretty hawt (photo)
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning???
gene108
@Roger Moore:
If he had any scruples he would not have accepted the job.
Quinerly
@p.a.:
We have a Corpse Flower in St. Louis at our MO Botanical Garden. I went one year at night to be there when it opened. Think I read recently that they are now blooming more often than in the past. Unexplained. A sign?
satby
@Quinerly: I hope you send a couple of pictures to Anne Laurie so she can post them.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Rats fleeing sinking ship.
Video of Kellyanne Conway running away from reporters outside her apartment. (clip)
ThresherK
For those wondering, Nadja Spiegelman is Art (Maus) Spiegelman and Francois (RAW comic graphics mag) Mouly’s daughter.
I can see where she gets it.
NorthLeft12
Unfortunately for your country, you have a large segment of the voting public who really don’t care about this shite that is going on now. They don’t care about what the congressional Republicans do or don’t do. They just vote for Republicans because they are motivated by fear and hate for progressives/DFHs and people who do not look like them.
I am pretty sure their newsfeed does not include events that portray Rs in a bad light.
bemused
Reading Malcolm Nance tweets, I learned there is a BenedictDonald twitter feed. From now on, I will refer to the current White House mafia as Team Benedict Donald.
Charlie Sykes, disillusioned conservative former radio talk show host who regularly appears on msnbc dropped a clever line last evening re: WH staff communications with Russia, “We saw what you did last summer”.
SFAW
Is it me, or did Scott Hassell kind of miss the point with his “Trump Town” graffiti on the wall behind the Ruby Bridges stand-in? I mean, it’s better than that stupid-and-assholish, Cleek’s Law-ish Betsy DeVos abomination, but it ain’t quite there.
Kay
I know that it should be some patriot in the US government who blows the whistle on the Trumpsters, but I sort of love the idea of Russia getting pissed at them and releasing something to punish them. It has the necessary “no honor among thieves” aspect of a good crime story – makes it so they’re even incompetent criminals and criminals are often incompetent.
In my experience people don’t cheat or do underhanded things because they’re super-duper smart. They cheat and do underhanded things because they know they need a competitive edge they don’t have on the merits. A lot of criminals are dumb, which is why they’re criminals. It’s the only way they succeed.
bystander
It looks as if the saving grace of the Trumputin Presidency is fancy First Lady Melania. Her #powerofthefirstlady program is just as successful as you might expect.
Quinerly
@satby:
I feel like I have been hijacking these morning threads enough but it is kinda nice to check in with all of you first thing.❤ Maybe some Poco pics from Winslow, AZ (there’s a corner there, I hear) or the Grand Canyon…we are car camping on and off through Utah in March. I’m calling it a “two bedroom (Ford) Escape with Poco.”
Baud
@NorthLeft12: Those people are lost. The fight is for the hearts and minds of moderate white people who vacillate between protecting their privilege and their sense of responsibility as Americans for the nation’s well-being.
Hal
Susan Sarandon is going to be on Chris Hayes tonight to talk about Trump’s first weeks as president and I won’t be surprised if she doesn’t see any difference between Trump and Clinton.
Baud
@Quinerly:
You do this right now!
SFAW
@satby:
Like one of the prickly pear cheesecake, for starters.
No, I ain’t gonna let it pass. (Jes’ tryin’ to look out for ya, Ozark.)
Baud
@Hal: Unless he’s going to burn her at the stake, fuck Hayes for inviting her on, especially at this time. She’s no one. Not worth the air time. It’s the equivalent of click bait for the TV.
Amir Khalid
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
That’s some moves. They should cast her in the next Catwoman movie.
Quinerly
@SFAW:
Actually, I did take a picture of it in it’s native habitat…smothered in that exotic coulis.
Immanentize
@Kay: This. This is so true — I tell my students that the prisons are not filled with clever people.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Kay
Kellyanne Conway has also been discriminated against for being a wealthy white Republican:
I love how she or her husband don’t contact these schools themselves- they send an advance team. Just like ordinary Americans.
Stop barring the pricey private school door, Leftists.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Hal: Ah, another reason that I’m happy I don’t get MSNBC anymore.
Baud
@Amir Khalid: Hey, Amir. How are you doing? Hope things are less interesting in Malaysia, although I guess you have to deal with poison dart throwing women assassins.
GregB
Sen. Angus King just said his work on this Russia-gate matter is probably the most important thing he’ll ever do in his life.
Tony J
‘Administration sources’ are circling the wagons around President-Elect Pence so frantically you’d almost think they’re worried about something. Anyway, did you know Pence knew nothing about Flynn other than what Flynn told him? Nothing at all. No other sources of information were available to the Vice-President of the United States. Apparently he doesn’t read newspapers, hasn’t got a Staff and has never received an Intelligence Briefing. Presidential material right there or what, eh? I know this because the BBC told me, and they got it from the rolling news tape their DC Correspondent could see over the shoulder of some guy in a Sports Bar this morning while he was waiting for his order of Buffalo Wings and Fries to arrive. So it must be true.
And yet, with all this rudeness being thrown his way by the Fake News Posse, not a lot is coming out of Tangerine Tweetstorm’s bunker. Could it be that someone with a clue wormed their way through the air-vents of the Oval Office to drop a note on Feathery Bin-Lid’s desk with “STOP TWEETING AND HIDE!!” scrawled in Ivanka’s favourite shade of lip-stick?
And it’s only Wednesday.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I guess she’s just going to have to send them to public school. ETA: Though maybe she shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry. There’s no telling if she’s going to have a job by the time she can find her kids a place in a DC school.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Hal: the silicon implants and foie gras have rotted out her brains.
if she had any self awareness and decency, she’d apologize, then get in a convertible and drive off a cliff.
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
And if Mike Pence had scruples….yada, yada, yada.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Kay
@Immanentize:
I’m not making fun of them but this a regular conversation I have “you called the police?”
I’m really reluctant to call the police even if I need one and I’m not doing anything illegal. They call the police all the time.
amk
@Hal: hyper boy and wilmer girl. what could go wrong?
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Heh.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Those of us who are not members of North Korea’s royal family are perfectly safe, I am assured.
TS
@bystander:
Your comment reminds me that Trump threatened to tell all about their relationship which was when they started to support the shitgibbon.
And that reminds me yet again – How can a world leader speak to his country – and the world – via twitter. This is more insane than everything else he does.
p.a.
What did the MSM know and when did they know it?
Baud
@Amir Khalid: Glad to hear it!
Baud
@p.a.: Relevant.
Scroll to bottom.
TS
@Baud: Sorry – as long as you promise to include Kay in your administration I’ll not mention them again.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
It’s more whiny bullshit from perpetually victimized white conservatives. How many Republicans are there in DC after any given cycle? They’re barred from private schools? It’s a dumb premise. The people moving there and enrolling their kids in private schools are by definition not ordinary Democratic DC voters- not permanent residents.
You know what Trump said about DeVos yesterday? That she was treated “unfairly”. Whine, whine, whine. She sucked at that job interview. She would not be hired by any reputable school district in the country based on her performance at that interview. It’s not surprising! This is her first job outside the family lobbying business.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TS: Has he been anywhere outside of DC excepting his place in Floriduh? I know he was planning a couple of trips, but both were canceled.
Baud
@TS: That’s a given. I need at least one person who knows what they are doing.
raven
@Amir Khalid: Where ya bean frijole?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
debbie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Yeah, pretty much.
Just listened to an NPR interview with a Rep. Goodman (R-LA) who hopes the issue of leaking doesn’t get lost in all the investigations, especially the fact that the name of the American involved in questionable foreign phone calls is supposed to be kept secret.
In his mind, the worst thing is that Flynn’s name came out at all.
Iowa Old Lady
Morning tweets. The man is a fool.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I see some familiar names in those nested comments.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Kay
Every single problem Trump is dealing with was caused by either Donald Trump or someone Donald Trump hired.
Wait until they have a real problem. They will make it worse.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@debbie: I’m sure he was really upset when the FBI leaked info that led to nowhere against Clinton
Baud
@debbie: Ain’t no one left with any credibility to complain about what the IC community is leaking.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Iowa Old Lady:
Neither should the FSB.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady: He’s president because FBI interfered in our politics. Live with it.
randy khan
@Iowa Old Lady:
That third one reminds me of some comments by Bernie or Busters in the last week or so. Maybe he’s reading BJ. (Okay, maybe someone’s reading it to him.)
Thoroughly Pizzled
They sold our country. They should all be shunned for eternity. I want the Trump name extinguished.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Bob Corker’s upper lip is sweating.
On a cool morning, before 8 am.
Lurking Canadian
@Hal: Actually, continuing to claim not-a-dimes-worth would, though mad, at least show an admirable intellectual consistency.
She’s more likely to talk about how awful Trump is, without confronting her own part in bringing the Trump era about, which I find worse.
Kay
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I don’t even think he played a masterful CEO and manager on the game show. If you have to fire people that means you’re bad at hiring people and it’s better not to hire bad people in the first place.
A good manager wouldn’t have hired all these low quality people. I mean, listen to them. They’re a bunch of misfits and weirdo cranks. Normal organizations have one or two misfits, cranks and people walking around with a chip on their shoulder. He managed to assemble an entire team of them.
Bupalos
Why isn’t peeotus giving endorsements and commercials for fox news the same kind of ethics violation Conway is getting slapped for?
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
I wish someone would point Trump to Nixon, who did what Trump’s doing now (deflecting, distracting, denying, d’etc.), and ask him if he really thinks this is a winning strategy.
bemused
I’m somewhat curious how Faux news is covering or not covering the Russian scandal. As I was scrolling channels last night, I stopped there a couple of times for a moment but nada.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
If only someone who worked with him could have warned the media.
debbie
@Kay:
Shorter version: Omarosa.
amk
@Iowa Old Lady: Do the rethugs like mcturtle and the granny starver read these clear nutjob’s tweets? Whatever little reputation of us of a has around the world is being shredded every fucking day by this thug.
Lurking Canadian
@Kay: The Apprentice is actually a good predictor of how the Trump administration is going to run. I actually watched (most of) one season. In each episode, before the “You’re fired” scene, there was a “board meeting” in which “teammates” did their best to throw their “co-workers” under a bus to save their own worthless skins. To me, it was a textbook example of dysfunctional management style, but what do I know? I’m not the President of the USA. SAD!
Waldo
On the SS Trumptanic, Joe and Mika have scuttled back and forth between state room and lifeboat several times. Yesterday they got a look at the gaping hole in the hull.
Kay
@debbie:
Right but it’s not just her. Bannon standing around glowering, absolute unhinged weirdo Stephen Miller who behaves as if he’s some kind of revolutionary in the movie playing in his head – these people are odd and not good “odd” – not at all appealing or reassuring or appearing competent and in control.
JMG
If Mike Pence was about 1000 times smarter than he is, he’d be out leaking like the Andrea Doria right now. Trump can’t fire him, and obviously Pence has the most to gain from Trump’s sudden removal from the scene.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Kay: He’s a complete disaster. He’s filed for bankruptcy SIX times. He ran THREE càsinos into the ground. He killed an entire American football league. He blew his inheritance. Trump steaks. Trump Shuttle. Trump vitamins. Trump University. The ultimate confidence-man, he lives off other
people’ssaps’ money.Thoroughly Pizzled
@Lurking Canadian:
“I wouldn’t be a millionaire if I fired a fifteenth of my workforce every week.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ss-59fi4nM
Kay
@Lurking Canadian:
Americans say they like calm competent people but what they really promote is this idea that everything is easy if only we had asshole “leaders” who hired bad people and then fired them- a lot of useless and counterproductive “action!”.
Trump’s whole campaign was “these people are stupid and this is easy”. It’s not easy. He, for example, is bad at this job. It’s childish to believe this. Almost nothing is easy. If it were easy it would have been fixed.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie: Nixon is their playbook, the only mistake Nixon made in their view is he quit.
Another Scott
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Hey, she’s in pretty good shape for someone who looks like she gets 20 minutes of sleep a night (if that)!!1
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
El Caganer
@JMG: As Dirty Harry observed, “A man’s just got to know his limitations.” Pence is dumb as a rock (shoot, his colleagues thought he was dumber than Louie Gohmert), but he might have sufficient self-awareness to know that actually being POTUS is way, way out of his league.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie:
You know Omarosa worked in the White House before, in the East Wing for FLOTUS Hillary Clinton.
El Caganer
@Kay: He’s hiring people using the same management theory as that bozo who runs Sears Roebuck. And we know how well that turned out.
debbie
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I did not. I’d check her phone records if I had any say.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bupalos: When the President does it, it’s not against the law.
Kay
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I watched him reading off a piece of paper yesterday when he met with “parents and teachers” to promote DeVos and it hit me what a bore he is. He’s the person at the table who talks about themselves constantly but in the most boring and unimaginative way possible. His sole contribution was to ask “what’s up with autism?” He can’t even phrase a question in an interesting and informed way. It’s like banal country club table boasting – the kind of “conversation” one can check in and out of because no one is saying anything you haven’t heard from them before.
Elizabelle
Good morning all.
I feel safer this morning. Flynn’s gone, and there’s blood in the water with an actual scandal.
is unfair. To dogs. (Congratulations Rumor, the German Shepherd. Named after an Adele song.)
Shalimar
@SFAW: Hassell’s cartoon was done after the election and he obviously wanted to make it clear that the protection the little girl required was in response to Trump’s rhetoric against Muslims. You’re right that it isn’t a direct echo of the graffiti on the wall in the original Rockwell painting.
Another Scott
@SFAW: The “Trump Town” tag works the same way as it does in the original, for me anyway. It’s meant to intimidate the little girl (“This is our place, not yours…”), and to horrify the audience (“How can America be like that?”), and show the importance of good people standing up together (via their government) to do what’s right.
It works for me.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
I’ve been binge watching Game of Thrones (just finished Season 5), and it has become very tame in comparison to actual events.
Eric S.
@OzarkHillbilly: re Alex Reyes, what you said!
Baud
@El Caganer:
Jeez, that’s the gold standard.
gene108
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Bush, Jr used Nixon as a model. He filled his Administration with ex-Nixonites, like Cheney and Rumsfeld.
The mistake Nixon made was he left a “paper trail” that clearly lead back to him.
Note that Bush 43 never recorded anything, never used email, and what emails they did use were on a private server they controlled and were permanently deleted.
Trump’s crew are something utterly different. They lack the basic skills needed to abuse power the way Nixonites envisioned it should be abused by the President.
No disciple of Nixon would have made calls on an unsecured line, which could be recorded by anybody.
Bruce K
My feeling is: the sooner Pence is sworn in, the sooner he goes into the fishbowl and under the microscope, the sooner the general public will learn who and what he truly is.
Yeah, I get people wanting to see the cheeto last a little longer so that when he goes under for the final time, he takes Ryan, McConnell, and the rest of the bastards down with him in the upcoming elections, but right now I’m kind of worried about the collateral damage. I don’t want the cheeto to bring down the whole country with him when he falls.
Baud
@gene108: Agree. Sooner or later, they’ll trust the wrong courier.
liberal
Re that tweet from yesterday…did Spicer really say that Obama’s DOJ should have looked more closely into Flynn?
liberal
@gene108:
Big problem is that Democrats didn’t subpoena his ass off after Iraq.
Baud
@Bruce K: Pence is more likely to reflect badly on the Republican brand than Trump will. If things go south with Trump, the GOP will claim he was never one of them and the media and half this country will accept it and move on.
liberal
@Elizabelle:
I feel better now that Flynn’s gone, too. Though some commenter at Larison’s blog over at The American Conservative said, amusingly, Better the crackpot you know than the crackpot you don’t know.
Gindy51
@TS: The checks bounced?
liberal
@Kay: Agreed, but a big part of the problem is this idiotic shit that business leaders are, by default, competent.
father pussbucket
@amk:
Presidenting while Black?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@gene108:
Zero core competence – it reflects directly on everything that Trump is. The IC knew it before the election, which is why so many military and national security professionals – Republicans as well as Democrats – stepped up before the election to warn about him.
When he exits, we very well may need a “national unity” government to undo the damage.
liberal
@bemused: Just stepped over a copy of The Boston Herald entering my workplace. Headline wasn’t friendly to Trump, despite it being a right-wing rag.
bemused
Heard reporter say on a morning news show short time ago re: Trumpgate, “EVEN some Republicans are worried”. That’s where we are now. Expectations of GOP having standards are that low.
liberal
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
That presumes a Republican Party that isn’t a “revolutionary power,” as Krugman put it.
There could be mushroom clouds all over major American cities, and those fucks would still be pushing to eliminate the capital gains tax.
gene108
@liberal:
They tried. Bush & Co were not at all cooperative. I believe Rove was in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify, at some point. They tried getting emails, but they were deleted.
Bush & Co really mastered not leaving a “paper trail” behind. There was nothing there to incriminate anybody. The only person, who got in trouble was Scooter Libby for lying to the Feds.
They really thought through how to not leave finger prints behind, and have plausible deniability in all circumstances.
liberal
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Did he come out and endorse Clinton? He’s a libertarian, after all.
TS
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Might have spent a night in New York? He can go nowhere without being met by protests. Doubt he’ll become a world traveller. Mightn’t last long enough to get to the UK – QEII has her fingers crossed.
Shalimar
@Kay: I suspect the kind of people who run the most prestigious private schools in the country don’t react well to having the help call up and enquire about a place for junior. Even if Kellyanne Conway wasn’t nouveau riche in her own right, that would be a big initial strike against her.
Another Scott
@Tony J: Pence didn’t know much about Flynn, Jr., either. CNN from December:
I mean, of course Trump needs people with security clearances “helping out” to spread nonsense about Pizzagate from the White House. The Teabaggers aren’t going to stay riled up on their own, you know.
:-/
Pence is lying, of course. Flynn, Jr. wasn’t just some qualified “administrative assistant” or other just keeping track of his father’s calendar.
Lots of Trump’s people didn’t have their security background checks done before their confirmation hearings were scheduled. I don’t think the National Security Adviser requires Senate confirmation, so Gen. Flynn’s checks were likely even more cursory. But this shows what happens when process is thrown out the window.
Not that Donnie cares – he obviously hires the “best people” and lets them do what they want. Trump doesn’t care about policy – he cares about having yes-men around him and controlling (or trying to) the media. Pence only cares about his Teabagger policies – he’ll hand-wave away anything Trump and his minions do as long as he can stay in power and destroy our civil institutions and the federal government in service of his dangerous brain-dead goals…
(sigh)
Let’s remember that Pence isn’t somehow the “victim” in this Flynn mess. He knew (or should have know) that Flynn was a kook that was too dangerous to have as NSA and nothing he (or his son) said (of any consequence) could be trusted. America was (and is) the victim in this Flynn mess…
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m happy for you too. I bet your teeth are even whiter.
OzarkHillbilly
@liberal: A fair number of the emails they deleted were under subpoena.
@gene108:
It’s worse than that. Flynn called the Russian Ambassador on a line that he as a former long term member of the IC, knew, knew was tapped. (the NSA listens to all conversations on official diplomatic lines, especially the Russians) And he did it anyway. So either he didn’t care, or … he didn’t care.
liberal
@?BillinGlendaleCA: IMHO the FBI stuff was way more damaging than the Russian stuff. Though of course Trump colluding with Russia is ridiculous.
My only fear is that the other rats (congressional Republicans) will flee the ship before it sinks.
As I said before: any Democrat in 2018 running for Congress who doesn’t “nationalize” his/her election is dumber than a brick.
liberal
@OzarkHillbilly: No, I’m referring to the entire conduct of the war, and the decision to go to war, not just what was on the private email server. The Dems didn’t do shit.
Oldgold
David Corn @DavidCornDC 9h9 hours ago
I think we need to temporarily suspend all White House action until we can figure out what the hell is going on.
SFAW
@Shalimar: @Another Scott:
Well, except that the graffiti in the Rockwell version/prototype specifically used a term (“nigger”) directed at the Ruby Bridges character. Had it been something like “white power,” then the “Trump Town” would have been a good use of “parallel structure” (so to speak). Even the DeVos abomination gets that right, with “conservatives” scrawled on the wall, aimed at that poor little Betsy.
Look, I know that Hassell’s heart is in the right place, I just would have preferred him to get it all-the-way right.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108: No, Nixon is their playbook; they’re just 4th string talent.
liberal
@gene108: No they didn’t. I remember at the time thinking how much of a complete pussy Rockerfeller (e.g.) was.
There’s a lot more than emails, and live testimony is mostly a dog-and-pony show. AFAICT the real work is obtaining actual documents and working from there. I don’t see any evidence the Democrats did that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Yup, they’ll say: “He used to be a Democrat, ya know”.
Peale
@Bruce K: I think that he’s got to take the country down with him somewhat, or voters will just elect another one. Better our country than someone else’s. I mean, do we want it to be like 43, with 500,000 shock and awe deaths in another country? That doesn’t seem fair. Our system produced this hairball. We should chocke on it awhile.
TS
@Iowa Old Lady:
He really doesn’t think ahead – or read what he wrote 30 seconds ago
Tweet 1. The information is fake
Tweet 2. I won, Hillary lost
Tweet 3. Information is being illegally given to the media {mmm sounds like it wasn’t fake}
Tweet 4. The NSA & FBI should not interfere in our politics {didn’t notice him saying that to Comey a few months ago}
?BillinGlendaleCA
@liberal: It would incentivise the rebuilding process.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud:
Do remember John Cole was one of the lost. Something like Benedict Trump is the kind of thing that gets these people thinking, but it doesn’t happen over night. Speaking as one of the Lost myself that’s why I say attack the ideas and arguments, not the people; That’s why all Right Wing media is filled with nothing but trolls now, to keep it nothing but personal attacks and avoid any serious discussions.
sherparick
@OzarkHillbilly: Even as a Cubs fan, I think this sucks. I just keep wondering though how these things happen at the beginning of Spring training. What have Reyes and the Cardinals been doing the last 4 months in the way of communication? Mutual denial that the elbow pain would go away?
Kay
@liberal:
Oh, I agree. The elevation of CEO’s to near-mythical figures has a lot to do with it. Just stop. Stop kissing their asses.
Stop behaving like children. They’re not all that and they’re not the father figure you’re looking for.
Trump actually said it at his banal and really dull “conversation” about education. He said the point of his education “plan” (such as it is, which is non-existent) is so people can make more money. That’s his single measure of worth.
Have you ever been to business training? Like 90% of it is slogans. It’s just not “brilliance”. It’s fine for what it is but it isn’t more than that. It basically takes two forms- “disruption” and then it cycles back to “tried and true”. Repeat every decade. You could skip like a hundred years of it and miss nothing.
hovercraft
@amk:
He had the fast and the furious, gun walking scandal,
Bailout gate, Wall Street and Detroit,
About a hundred “Obama’s Katrina’s”,
Arugula gate,
Mustard gate,
Obamacare gate, forcing people to stand before death panels,
BP Gulf spill gate, where he failed to fix their fuckup fast enough,
Tan suit gate,
and of course the mother of all scandals, Benghazi, where he and Hillary held the ambassador down while the terrorists killed four of our citizens.
There are many more, but those are the biggest ones the right talks about.
SFAW
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Well, that’s before the name change from “Earl” to “Omarosa” (among other changes).
[Sorry, a little NYC sort-of-humor there. May he RIP]
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I’m not saying people can’t change. People go in the other direction too, unfortunately. But almost know one changes because of a fact based argument. They have to undergo their own religious experience, and if and when that happens is anyone’s guess.
gene108
@liberal:
My point is there were no fucking documents to get. Bush & Co were very careful not to leave any documents behind that could be used against them. Every document that did exist was structured to give maximum plausible deniability to any accusation of wrong doing.
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
And it continues:
“Scattershot” has become an inadequate descriptor.
Another Scott
@gene108: The (20M?) deleted e-mails were eventually found. They’re at the Archives and will be released in 20 years or so (the usual waiting period).
Cheers,
Scott.
OzarkHillbilly
@liberal: OK. I have to say that they did do something, tho wholly inadequate. I understand why Obama wanted to let it go, but it has long been obvious that that was a mistake.
Jeffro
@Kay:
That’s essentially what my former-cop dad told me when I was younger: “Fortunately for us [cops], criminals are SO DUMB and don’t think anything through.” There’s something to be said for executive functioning and building up that skill in kids as early as possible! =)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@hovercraft: You left out Gatesgate.
Jeffro
@Hal:
I’m sure she’ll try to finesse it: “Well, back during the campaign I said there was no real difference…but who knew Trump was going to be this bad??”
(65 million voters raise their hands: “WE DID! WE DID, YOU GOOF!!”)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Iowa Old Lady:
Except the information is from your own staff Donny ROFL
Jeffro
@Kay:
Maybe Kellyanne could wave a voucher in their faces? I hear those solve everything that’s wrong with schools.
debbie
I have a Twitter question. There are always 20-some thousand likes on each of Trump’s Tweets. Is there an app where you can automatically like the Tweets of someone you’re following or are that many people actually reading all of this garbage as it is posted?
SFAW
@Quinerly:
Did you post it here and I missed it? If not, then what are you waiting for?
Jeffro
@Tony J: They’re trying to keep Pence viable for when Trump is taken out (impeached or 25th amendment). What we ought to be pushing is that if (since) Russia helped Trump’s campaign win, that is an act of war that denied 65 million Americans of their right to equal protection. It should go to SCOTUS and they should rule for either a new election or having HRC sworn in as the rightful 45th president.
(Has the side benefit of taking Trump out of the hall of presidents, portraits, he doesn’t even get a number…just a footnote in history as a pawn of Vladimir Putin)
OzarkHillbilly
@liberal:
I take it you haven’t heard about the “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program” then? Intel committee staffers went so far as to sneak out damning documents from the secure room so they could not be destroyed.
Jeffro
@Iowa Old Lady: Wait…I thought he LOVED the intelligence community? Didn’t they give him like a 3-hour standing ovation in front of the CIA wall?
Jeffro
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
Help push for this to be taken to SCOTUS – a hostile foreign power deprived 65 million Americans of their vote. New election or HRC is 45th president. No number for Trumpov!
Jeffro
@El Caganer:
That’s a bit harsh even for Pence.
TS
@Jeffro: New Elections – not only did they steal the Presidency, the fallout gave the senate to the GOP. If Hillary had won the election, the dems would have won the senate.
Jeffro
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Ah, so at least one person has been reading my newsletter…;)
We will need that, and a 2-part “truth & reconciliation” commission as well. One to look into and fully air the extent of Russian hacking and interference (including who has been blackmailed into looking the other way during all of this…you hear me, Mitch and Paul?). And another to look into the full extent of voter suppression tactics in recent years, to include recommendations for concrete steps to take and ensure everyone has the right to vote in the future.
And while I’m wishing, how about if both major parties come to terms on what they both will insist from their national candidates (MoCs and president) in the future, with 10 years’ worth of tax returns being an obvious starting point.
amk
@debbie: from 2016, it’s all bots and bots .
Jeffro
@liberal:
I think it’s probably because so many Dems went along with it (the decision to go to war). They put their trust in the president and got burned.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@debbie:
Crimea was taken under Peter the Great by the Russians. Was King William of Orange to soft on Russia?
Jeffro
@hovercraft: I think you forgot the “beer summit”, the scandal that revealed post-racial Obama to be the true champion of all that is non-white/put the white man at the bottom of the totem pole, right? At least to hear the RWNJs tell it…
jonas
@amk: A lot of made up ones in the fever swamps of talk radio and places like Infowars. Very, very few actual ones in the world where objective reality still counts for something.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Hal: Nice he’s brining some balance to his regular roster of Mike Coffman, Mo Brooks and Eli Lake.
debbie
@amk:
Thanks. It also seems that most of the people who do follow him do so just to abuse whatever he says. Which makes his claims — that he’s so good at Twitter and that Twitter is the future — so ridiculous.
jonas
@bemused: Their news desk actually reports on it to a certain extent, but then that’s interspersed with one of their hack hosts complaining that this is all just a big liberal media pile-on and they’re being so unfair to Trump and what’s wrong with Vladimir Putin anyway and Obama made phone calls and no one suggested impeaching him for those and why don’t they just shut up?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
only halfway through my first cup of coffee, I thought Weigel was actually reporting from Ironsburg and this second one seemed completely believable
hedgehog mobile
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Da fuq…
debbie
It will do no good, but this ending exchange between Miller and Stephanopoulos on his Sunday show is refreshing:
Like that woman on the game show: Guhbye.
O. Felix Culpa
@Quinerly: It was great to meet you at San Marcos! Enjoy the rest of your trip. And scritches to Poco.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The heart wants what it wants.
Bruce K
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: How’s about this for a national unity government: Congress agrees to confirm Pence’s nominee for Vice President, on the condition that the nominee is Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Obviously this won’t work until the 116th Congress convenes in January 2019.)
Then if Pence is caught in the Trump-Kremlin imbroglio, justice for 2016 is done.
And while I’m at it, I’d like a pony.
Tony J
@Another Scott:
I’d forgotten all about Flynn Jr and his flair for the fantastic. In my defence the one quality of Trump’s ongoing campaign that reaches outstanding levels is its ability to shoot out jaw-dropping scandals faster than Shakira can shake her booty. It’s mesmerising and very hard to keep up.
And yeah, Pence is obviously lying. I don’t care how dense he is. At some point over the last year – someone – will have had ‘a conversation’ with him about how Trump’s close relationship with Putin’s regime is going to leave a President-shaped hole in DC that he can fill with his love of Jeebus and all things Evangelical. Whether that someone was on his staff, a representative of the IC, or of the GOP leadership in Congress is irrelevant, the conversation will have been had.
As far as the quality of Trump’s hire go, I think people here were right when they said before the Election that he had no intention or expectation of winning. He had no lists of candidates because he never thought he’d need them, and when he did squeak in thanks to the Alliance of Acronyms (FSB/FBI/MSM) everything was done on the fly. Professed loyalty and membership of the right reddit community/country club/high-class escort agency were all it took to get the Low-Class Lindbergh’s nod, background checks be damned.
Immanentize
@liberal:
Rockefeller wasn’t one. He was just always looking for some. Distracted.
Elizabelle
@Bruce K: In all honesty, I think it’s cruel to ask Hillary to serve under Mike Pence.
Tony J
@Jeffro:
Pleasing as that prospect is to all right-minded people I can’t see the Supreme Court making that ruling. They’d either throw it back to Congress as rightly their affair or go 8-0 that the Election stands. Yes, Russia interfered and threw out illegally obtained information to favour one candidate over another, and the FBI Director broke with tradition and decency to put his finger on the scales, but that wouldn’t have had the effect it did if the US MSM hadn’t puke funnelled it into the ears of – just – enough American voters to make the difference on Election Night.
The only chance you have of getting a Democrat in the White House lies in winning the House before an impeachment of – both – Trump and Pence (unlikely) or by winning big in 2020, which is a loooooooonnnng way off.
tldr – Nope. That’s not a fight you’re going to win.
Timurid
So how are the Bridge and Tunnel Borgias going to get out of this one?
Ksmiami
@Mustang Bobby: he’s the back up. The GOP can impeach trump leaving pence to satisfy their main base.
Ruckus
@Mustang Bobby:
You made a funny.
And that’s not the worst of his problems.
Also, he doesn’t seem to be smart enough to have found any. Ever.
Peale
@Bruce K: nah. Putting in Clinton would just demoralize the Bernie Crew. We would need to have a VP primary. It would last months.
amk
@Tony J:
Alliance of Acronyms
Good one.
Ohio Mom
@Kay: I just watched Trump’s presentation at that parents-teachers conversation (inspired to do so because you mentioned it yesterday) and heard that bit about how his goal is to have every child grow up to have a well-paying job, or better yet, start their own business.
Putting aside the real purpose for public education — to develop an informed citizenry — what he says doesn’t make mathematical sense. Everyone can’t be a business owner, everyone can’t have a well-paying job (unless you want to raise the minimum wage a lot and I don’t think that is a goal of his).
But most of all, as an autism mom, I continue to be fascinated by his obsession with autism. It is the biggest reason why I am convinced that Barron is somewhere on the spectrum.
In my experience, people without a direct connection to the world of autism just don’t spend that time on it. Frankly, I don’t spend a lot of time on other disabilities, and I’ve developed a broader, deeper knowledge of the range of disability than most people-on-the-street. Just human nature, I suppose.
And FWIW, I wish he’d leave “my” disability alone. No good can come of his (admittedly,scattered) attention.
Patricia Kayden
@Hal: Sarandon said that Clinton would be more dangerous than Trump so there’s that. She may actually praise Trump for being more restrained vis-a-vis hawkishness than Clinton. She was a diehard Bernie Bro and many of them are still bitter.
P.S. So glad I gave up MSNBC. My health thanks me.
Aleta
The Sen. vote to abolish the Obama admin. regulation of methane release should be coming up this week. It will be close. It passed the House around Feb 3rd. H. J. Res. 36.
The pollution and the lost royalties seriously affect a lot of tribal land. In research, methane is thought to be one of the largest contributors to co2 production and climate change. It’s said to dissipate after 10-15 years.
Patricia Kayden
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: In 1987? So Obama was President in 1987 in Rightwingistan? Bizarre. At the very least, if he’s looking to blame Democrats, he could actually point to President Jimmy Carter. But no, somehow President Obama has to be blamed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: other than pointing and laughing and the rich crazy lady whose chauffeur is helping her up on the custom made mahogany soap box she brought to Speaker’s Corner to yell about Dear President Sanders and the United Nations of Aquarius he would have made, what possible point is there of giving an otherwise gifted actress a platform for a role and a script she, unfortunately, wrote herself.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: Weigel was making a joke about all the “but what do Trump’s most loyal voters think?” pieces that are published every three hours
Aleta
@Aleta: correction: In research, methane is thought to be one of the largest contributors to climate change. (not to co2 production)
Kay
@Jeffro:
The voucher bit to choose “any” school is an obvious lie. You can’t choose Kellyanne’s school with a voucher. It costs too much.
Ruckus
@Kay:
He’s so good he wants life to be a mirror. So he hires people just like him. But without the charm. That’s why everyone is as bad or worse than him. Fun house mirrors. What he sees is nothing like what a normal human sees and it’s reflected in every thing he says and does.
ETA Also I was taught to hire people better than me. That doing so would insure that the work got done better, that relations would be better. To be able to do this one has to know their own limitations, what they have to work on, that they can be better if they try. He is, in his tiny mind already perfect so none of that is possible.
Elizabelle
@Ruckus: That could be a short story. Of the horror genre.
I hope that Trump’s term will be short, too. We deserve better.
Elizabelle
@Patricia Kayden: Yes re giving up Msnbc. Blessed relief.
It’s another purposely distorted mirror. Better to be free of it.
I find it easier to take in news on current US politics in a quick written scan. Not broadcast. Too slow and tailored.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: In undeserved fairness to Preznit Carrotface, this is how at least 95% of the parents I know feel about education and especially college. My wife (HS teacher) and brother (tenured professor, U of I) give even higher numbers. If you took moneymaking out of the equation, you’d close most of the colleges in this nation.
Larkspur
@debbie: Jeez. I suddenly had a mental image of Nixon with Twitter capabilities.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Larkspur: Twitter Nixon.
People who knew/study Nixon, like John Dean and Elizabeth Drew, say this guy nails Nixon’s voice.
EBT
@bystander: Mika probably just doesn’t want to end up dead in Joe’s office.
Ohio Mom
@The Moar You Know: Yes, because that’s the era we live in. It is in good part the knowledge that it is harder than ever to pass down middle-class privilege — many parents are always in a slow panic about that, even if they can’t even articulate it.
I live in a suburb where I am surrounded by moms who take all those standardized tests as seriously as you would cancer biopsy results. They have no critique of the system at all. Makes me lonely.
But teachers should always remember that their true calling is furthering democracy through the development of the citizenry.
Can you tell I’ve read way too much Dewey?
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Or would that be, “the lead standard”?
leeleeFL
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Is this the Onion? C’mon, it’s gotta be the Onion.
chopper
@Kay:
he didn’t even play a decent CEO and manager on the show. he kept picking the idiots and the producers had to keep recutting the episodes to make it look like he was making smart choices.
J R in WV
@Quinerly:
I’m glad you still suck, milkshakes are great when you’re on the road!
Bernalillo, NM looks like a great base between the big city and Santa Fe. Albuquerque is OK for a night on the road, and we’ve visited Old Town, which is nice but expensive. We spent a week in Santa Fe one spring, it was the weekend of the big Native Art show on Museum Hill, which was why we were there.
That was the trip we visited Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelle, Toadlina Trading post, Monument Valley, stopped in Gallup on the way back to ABQ to fly home from. Keep us filled in on Bernalillo.
J R in WV
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Where the hell did you find that? And so timely!!
liberal
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s just a minor detail (yes, minor, against the overall crime of the invasion itself) regarding the war’s conduct. It doesn’t deal with the actual decision to go to war and the brazen bullshitting done to sell it to the public.
liberal
@Jeffro: Yeah, could be.
J R in WV
@hovercraft:
You left out one of the first scandals – when famed Professor Henry Louis Gates
was arrested for unlocking his own front door, in his own home, and President Obama said That was just stupid, and wouldn’t have happened to a white man! and then, THEN, had to gall to drink imported beer with Uncle Joe Biden, Henry Louis and the Sargent arresting officer at the White House.
Plus, tall Black guy with bootylicious wife living in the White House !!!!!! So wrong!
Words fail me.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@leeleeFL: actually, I wrote it. it’s pretty good, only I screwed the spelling. anyways, it’s based on something you may have seen as a kid: this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Smart#KAOS
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@J R in WV: There is a documentary on the making of Dr. Strangelove. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfJTld0baG4
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@liberal: nah, he voted for johnson. the polls actually hurt clinton. a number of people would have reluctantly voted for her to stop trump, but with pollsters like Sam Wang saying her victory was 99-100 percent certain, enough people they could cast a protest vote in comfort.