So the gelatinous amber glob that’s currently defiling the Oval Office was on Twitter a while ago:
“National embarrassment” doesn’t begin to cover it. “Lying psychopath” is closer.
I’m on a road trip to visit relatives, including some who voted for Twitler. Hope no one brings up politics!
What are you up to today? Open thread!
schrodingers_cat
He is an embarrassment to the human race. How could people look at this and decide, wow let’s vote to make him President.
schrodingers_cat
I am snowed in. We had freezing rain all of yesterday evening. Snow at night, freezing rain in the morning and now its snowing again. Spring, what’s that?
Robin G.
@schrodingers_cat: Assumption that he’d be an asshole to everyone else (yay!) and leave them in peace.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
I hope to live long enough to see Trump cited history textbooks as the worst president ever.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodingers_cat:
He didn’t hide anything either. His white supremacist message was a siren song. White people have a huge white supremacy problem – they’re the only ones who overwhelmingly fell for his bullshit.
jeffreyw
I am hoping to sit out another day from my lawn mowing chore. Tomorrow promises to be warmer and it will be another day drier. I have reactivated my Twitter lurkers permit so as to keep better tabs on you damn kids. For your consideration, here are some puppies.
JGabriel
Politico does an analysis of Kushner’s privileged place in the White House, on April Fool’s Day:
Tension between a Jew and the Nazi? No one could have seen that coming.
WereBear
You made me LOL, thanks!
Not clicking around much today. Besides, I have some writing of my own to do.
zhena gogolia
He’s making sure his troops are ready to riot in the streets when he has to step down.
qwerty42
Lying psychopath
I’m good with that.
r€nato
today is the day we honor those who voted for Cheeto Benito.
r€nato
@schrodingers_cat: blind partisanship
MattF
So– bullying, bluster, and bullshit. And that’s all there is. Oh, well… and treason.
JPL
Trump always makes fun of someone else, without ever looking in the mirror. I’m not sure what’s wrong with Todd’s eyes.
LurkerNoLonger
I watched the video of this fucking idiot walking out of a signing ceremony without signing anything. I mean what the fuck? That’s all I have to say…what the fuck?
amk
@JGabriel: Look forward to the day bannonatzi is marched out of the WH by the security.
schrodingers_cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Not all of them, I have plenty of friends who went for the March in Washington, are a part of their Indivisible groups. All the BJers, special shout out to the one who sent me a pink hat. Many who were complacent have been spurred into action. For every T voting person there is decent, kind human being out there of every color. In fact we outnumber them, its time to make our presence politically felt. Resistance is not futile.
ETA: There are more than 10 Indivisible groups within a 10 mile radius.
PPCLI
@Robin G.: Yes. The paradigm being the woman who voted for him because he would deport the undocumented, not realizing that this included her beloved husband, who she knew to be undocumented.
mark
Every statement by Trump makes more sense if “April Fools” is added to the message. Every day!
schrodingers_cat
@PPCLI: Maybe not so beloved, actually. I judge people by their actions not their words.
JGabriel
Politico:
I can’t help it, I always find it hilarious when an over-privileged jackass who’s been given authority he doesn’t merit thinks everyone hates him because he’s moderate, instead of realizing that everyone hates him because he’s an oblivious asshole.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodingers_cat:
I was there marching in Boston – overwhelmingly white – but in Boston. Large swaths of whites – men and women – in the upper midwest, Ohio River Valley, Appalachia and PA voted up over 70% for *45. Over half of white women voted for the pussy grabber. That just can’t be dismissed. #notallwhites
Van Buren
@schrodingers_cat: I still can’t believe that anyone who watched more than 5 minutes of any debate could vote for him.
LAO
It’s Ms Maggie’s first birthday today. (Best guess and arbitrarily determined by her vet). After 2 hours in the dog park, she is blissfully snoring away on the couch.
schrodingers_cat
@Van Buren: R-voters are like a cult. They have been programmed since Nixon on as steady diet of hate. I have no idea how to deprogram them.
liberal
@schrodingers_cat: because fundies are a bunch of fucking perverts.
OzarkHillbilly
@amk: I look forward to the day he is perp walked in handcuffs.
NotMax
For noir fans: Sunday at 10 a.m. (Eastern) on TCM – The Blue Gardenia
Not exactly an A-list effort, with more holes in the plot than a wheel of Swiss cheese, but…
Frtiz Lang directed (and knocked it out in under three weeks); contains some scenes fairly dripping with atmosphere. Oh, and Nat King Cole sings.
Switching gears as it’s April 1st, the fractured* version of Paris in the Spring.
*Done that way on purpose by two otherwise accomplished performers.
schrodingers_cat
Why does prestige media not call T coterie by its name? Bigots, what is this populist BS? They are mostly hedgefunders and finance guys for crying out loud.
OzarkHillbilly
@schrodingers_cat: FEMA camps.
Turgidson
@JPL:
There are far more urgent things than looks to ridicule about Chucklehead Todd. Namely how he’s a pathetic disgrace to his profession who thinks lying is “messaging successfully” when Republicans do it.
danielx
@debbie:
I have no doubt you will be able to see and hear that well before then.
Culture of Truth
@JGabriel: Did nazi that coming!
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Just to avoid confusion, I’m not one of them.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: As long as you are not a T voting moron, all your other faults are excused.
danielx
@Baud:
Me either.
Vindictive, spiteful, prone to ridiculing T voters whatever their reasons? Without any sympathy towards their plight, whatever it may be?
Oh, yes.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Neither am I. I don’t know who she’s talking about.
WereBear
@PPCLI: It’s always “mayhem for them, never mayhem for me!”
Ken
@NotMax: TCM also has The Manchurian Candidate Sunday at 6PM Eastern.
NotMax
@schordingers_cat
Had I the needle skill, would make that up into a sampler and sell ’em online.
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh, come ON! You know the answer(s): “but her e-mails” and Benzghaziiiii!!!!!! and Goldman Sachs usw.
But other than that, a combination of racism/bigotry, misogyny, anti-government hatred (“he’ll shake things up!”), the ridiculous idea that he’s a successful businessman, and, of course, stupidity.
SFAW
@PPCLI:
I think SHE should have been deported (either instead of, or in addition to, her husband) for being a fucking moron.
WereBear
@LAO: Congrats! Remember, they stay babies until at least three years old.
When is my kitten grown up?
J R in WV
We went out to dinner last night, at a new place in town we had not been to before.
Red Fire Asian BBQ is the name, with two large inflated golden dragons you walk between to the front door. Hibachi tables where you watch the “cook” do his thing, big sushi bar, regular dining tables, lots of seating. But poor language skills no the part of many of the young Asian girls waiting tables.
And the soup and salad I got came moments before the entree (fatty crispy duck) and the appetizer came last, oysters in individual cups in a long plate. I ordered a bourbon neat, which was 2/3 of a tumbler full, so the best drink deal I’ve had in a long time. The food was tasty, but Mrs J noticed some strange dishes on the maki sushi roll pages.
There was a MacArthur Roll, between the Hiroshima Roll and the Nagasaki Roll. M got the Las Vegas roll, which had little slices of jalapeno pepper on top of a fairly normal fancy roll. She also had chicken satay, which was very good.
But a MacArthur roll? Hiroshima and Nagasaki rolls? Strange in a japanese joint by any standard. If it had been more of a Korean place maybe?
NOT April fools, either!
schrodingers_cat
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I am not dismissing it but we also need to keep reminding ourselves of the positive. My town is more 95% white but voted for HRC by an overwhelming margin, He barely crossed 25% of the vote here. This town is a mix of both University folk and a farming community. We need to see what works here and if it can be transplanted to other places.
JoJo
@schrodingers_cat: Are you in one? If so, how have you been approaching it when politicians etc. claim that we are an astroturf group?
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: You could have just started with stupidity and left it at that.
schrodingers_cat
@OzarkHillbilly: I agree. The stupid in leftier-than-thou contingent is pretty strong too. I mostly encounter them IRL than the T voting crackpots. I immediately tune out when anyone starts babbling about Monsanto and how we are worse than Russia.
Debbie1
@NotMax: When a film has Raymond Burr and Anne Baxter in it, AND is directed by Fritz Lang, you watch what you say, Bubb. I think Richard Conte was in it as well.
schrodingers_cat
@JoJo: Not yet. I am going to my first in-person meeting two weeks from now. We should not worry so much about what other people are saying about us. The prestige media is not our friend but even they cannot ignore something the scale of the Women’s March. We should be known by our deeds rather than words. That’s what President O did and he was successful.
Lahke
Thanks, Boston folks for a most pleasant evening. Great to meet you, John.
Am now trying to pay my first of the month bills with one cat sitting on the checkbook and the other using the pen in my hand as a head scratcher. And it’s snowing again. This may not be my most productive morning.
OzarkHillbilly
@schrodingers_cat: I have a tendency to despise purists of all stripes.
schrodingers_cat
@OzarkHillbilly: Same here and religious fundies. Any person who wears their religion on their sleeve is an asshole.
I haven’t yet found an exception if indeed they do exist.
ETA: Fundie evangelical politicians blab about Jeebus more than the Jesuit nuns who taught me ever did.
germy
@Debbie1: Raymond Burr plays a henchman in “Love Happy” from 1949. He puts Harpo Marx into a washing machine.
Honus
@danielx: hard to believe it only took the Rs eight years to outstrip W.
Aleta
I don’t see Ivanka as the right choice for Favorite Unqualified Advisor, seeing as Pence can’t talk to her privately. Seriously, they say in Congress he refused to work with female staff after hours, even though a lot of votes happen then.
germy
I’m trying to imagine a reality where President Obama calls Todd “Sleepy-Eyed Todd” and says his reporting is a fake scam.
Impossible.
Gravenstone
@JGabriel: Sad as it may be, I have to root for Kushner in that instance. Although debilitating injuries to all parties involved are always welcome.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: #notallwhitepeople
schrodingers_cat
@Aleta: He just wants to exclude women, the religious BS is just a cover.
Baud
@Aleta: I wonder what the reaction would be if a woman officeholder said she couldn’t be alone with a man.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: What about them?
germy
@Aleta: Dunce must be just bursting with Maleness. The wimmenfolk can sense his power. That’s why Mother keeps him on a short leash. I mean, who can resist those beady, close-set eyes?
MattF
@WereBear: Speaking of kittens.
germy
@Baud: Or if Sec. of State Clinton insisted on “no eye contact” from staff.
Fox and Friends would have been a steaming puddle of liquid rage.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Some of them didn’t vote for Trump.
germy
@schrodingers_cat:
I think it’s a cover for a personality disorder.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: What’s the deal with no eye contact. What’s the stated reason?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Good for them and may their tribe grow.
germy
@schrodingers_cat: I honestly haven’t the slightest idea.
If you look into the eyes of a career diplomat, maybe you fall in love instantly? And Tillerson doesn’t want that.
laura
I’ve got a date with the spouse to go see T2 Trainspotting this afternoon. Looking forward to Giants baseball season and attempting to organize a siblings and nephews getaway to Asilomar before the roadie brothers hit the road again and the nephews age out of interest in hanging out with their parents, aunts and uncles.
Honus
@NotMax: plot holes are a staple of noir. In The Big Sleep Hawks famously forgot to account for what happened to the chauffeur that was found in the submerged car.
LAO
@Baud: I’m sure that was Bachmann’s policy.
Baud
@LAO: I didn’t know that. Interesting.
OzarkHillbilly
@schrodingers_cat: I have Matthew 6: 5-6 on the back of my truck for the fundies. My down to earth translation of those verses:
“Jesus is not impressed with your public displays of piety.” Goes without saying that neither am I.
gene108
@Turgidson:
The MSM shares the right-wing/Republican ethos of win at all costs. Therefore the MSM is very understanding of lying to get ahead.
I think the office politics in newsrooms must be something fierce. And does not always lead to the best and brightest rising to the top, but rather the better political infighters.
Gin & Tonic
@Honus: As I recall, The Big Sleep was more hole than plot.
germy
@Honus: I suppose because the scripts were being constantly rewritten during filming. Multiple screenwriters (some credited, some not) being called in for additional dialogue, etc.
Jim Parene
Regarding pence and his “no one on one” meetings with women. I’ll bet you that he was the perpetrator of several aggressive, inappropriate, unwanted incidents against women. To me, his actions speak of a superstitious person who is scared shitless of his god’s wrath .
Since he had no control around women, he assumes that all men have no control when interacting with women.
I have no proof of this but it would foolish not to speculate.
Honus
@J R in WV: reminiscent of the late much lamented Hibachi on the West Side down the hill from Stonewall Jackson?
Honus
@Gin & Tonic: my point. TBS is the quintessential noir film.
gene108
@germy:
If Obama said that about a media person every news outlet would have hammered him for being a terrible human being.
With Trump it is all fun and games.
JMG
@germy: The legend, which is too good to care whether it’s true or not, is that on the Big Sleep one of the screenwriters was William Faulkner. He couldn’t figure out what had happened to the chauffeur, was he murdered or was it suicide? So he went to Raymond Chandler and asked him. “Beats me,” Chandler responded.
germy
@gene108: It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt. And people are getting hurt.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@schrodingers_cat: In a word: racism
germy
@JMG: I’ve read some of the accounts of authors who traveled west for Hollywood money. All of them, whether it was Faulkner or Dorothy Parker or Scott Fitzgerald, agree it was a clusterfuck. The studios didn’t know what they wanted, but they wanted it now.
It was a factory system, but I still love the films. Especially on the big screen.
germy
@Jim Parene: A commenter over at LGM went to college with Dense. He provided some interesting observations.
WereBear
@MattF: Thank you, I love that!
Uncle Ebeneezer
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Yup. As Rod from TheBlackGuyWhoTips puts it “this is y’all’s man.”
gene108
@schrodingers_cat:
The current theories are he is (a) a vampire, (b) a basilisk or (c) a medusa.
WereBear
@Jim Parene: It totally makes sense. The rabid fundamentalist Christians teach exactly that!
Keith P.
Anyone else catch that Politico used a somewhat sleepy Trump photo in their article on these tweets? They do it a lot…they always use the worst photos of him they can find. Cracks me up, and it drives him nuts.
Mnemosyne
@JMG:
The story I’ve heard is that Hawks realized there was a plot hole with the death of the chauffeur, so he went to Raymond Chandler, who’d written the original book. Chandler said, “Yeah, I wondered that myself.”
chris
@germy:
Religion, the most common mental illness
Iowa Old Lady
@WereBear: Whether Pence has been sexually aggressive or not, his refusal to work with women in some situations is a terrible career disadvantage for them. He shouldn’t be able to do that.
Olivia
@Jim Parene: You could be right but I just always thought he was way down deep in the closet with absolutely zero interest in women except for “Mother” because she feeds him and changes his shitty pants.
Mnemosyne
@Jim Parene:
I was thinking along those lines myself — it’s the kind of rule a wife sets up after she discovers her husband has a wandering dick.
Gelfling 545
I believe it is wrong to apply the term April Fool to Trump. He is pretty much a fool for all seasons.
opiejeanne
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I saw a revised estimate a couple of days ago that said 41% of white women voted for him, not a majority.
Baud
@opiejeanne: Not possible. Hillary would have won otherwise.
Raoul
So i’m seeing a theme being shopped around (not the first time, but with more effort now) that Trump’s bumbling incompetence is “starting to remind people of the Carter administration.” (that’s a quote from former Politico dick cheese Mike Allen’s latest Axios column. No link for him, google if you have to, I feel sort of soiled for bothering to read it).
No. No no no.
Carter made mistakes as President. I will not dispute that. But he was a decent, honorable man who’s analysis of power, and efforts to work the global system, did not match the times or in some cases the needs of the situation.
Trump is a gasping, desperate fool.
Carter was a farmer, a scientist, and a former Naval officer at the time of his election. Trump is of course a grifter and serially bankrupt brand manager.
I just can’t with the Carter comparisons.
David Spikes
@LurkerNoLonger: The sulky, petulant look on his face as he walked out was priceless. And Pence herding him like a mom with her spoiled 3 year old.
Major gardening today, working the compost heat. The magnolias are in bloom-well, just starting. Sadly, our long hot spell last summer killed the big magnolia stellatas so must decide on some sort of ornamental tree replacements..
Nectarines, cherries, plums and pears are coming into bloom-ummmm,fresh fruit.
Aleta
Kushner is “bringing to government a disruptive Silicon Valley mindset that helped him succeed in the technology and real estate industries” a writer at po lit I co says.
Except his success stories in those fields don’t seem to exist. Just a false picture painted of a guy who inherited the wealth to buy some things that fed his ego. Didn’t understand tech or the business part, managed things poorly, took on heavy debt, but thinks he’s extremely competent at everything.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/30/i-worked-with-jared-kushner-hes-the-wrong-businessman-to-reinvent-government/?utm_term=.8b91280257ac
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
Unfortunately I think you have to let them die and hope they didn’t infect too many before then.
Daoud bin Daoud
It continually amazes me how the Republicans consistently elect The Worst President Ever generation after generation. (I guess they’re really serious about proving evolution wrong.)
David Spikes
@Honus: Nah-Sleep is great, but Out of the Past is definitive.
Ken
@David Spikes: My browser size hid the paragraph break, so I read:
which totally made sense as a metaphor for this White House, until the part about the magnolias.
Aleta
@LAO: Congrats. Nothing like the happiness of seeing one’s rescued dog reach a pinnacle of evolutionary success, the nap on the couch.
David Spikes
@Honus: No one could figure it out-Faulkner asked Chandler and Chandler hadn’t done it in the book. But had to get rid of him so that’s what they did.
Ruckus
@Raoul:
ALL presidents make mistakes. It is a very, very tough job. Most of the time there is no one great answer. There may not even be one good or decent answer. There are shades of both reality and desirability. It’s the level, the number, the goals and the information that formed the decision that makes the mistakes acceptable.
Raoul
Oh, and in new news, white house’s Dan Scavino has now announced that the (ahem) Trump Train is gonna go after MI’s Justin Amash. I abhor the whole Freedom Caucus view of the world, but to this I say, bring on the popcorn, internecine fights are a gas!
Westyny
@mark: #19, Or “between the sheets.”
hovercraft
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I wish people would stop saying people voted for him in spite of his racism! They voted for him BECAUSE of his racism, the bullshit was just a cover.
Raoul
@Ruckus: Of course. And I think Carter gets a bum wrap given the context of the American economy and post-Watergate disarray when he took office.
But I think it can be valuable to understand what mistakes he made (as well as understanding the mistakes Ronnie, Bill, Dubya etc made). Carter was probably overly cautious on some matters, and may have given too much credit to the American people to understand things like his ‘malaise’ speech in nuanced and measured ways.
Anyway, I hope my larger point stands: Trump is no Carter. Carter was a fine man and an OK president. Trump is a flaming dumpster fire inside a melting down nuclear reactor, on a planet with an asteroid on an imminent collision course. There is no comparison.
David Spikes
Trump and diplomacy. Fuck with the Chinese a week before the state visit and then tweet about how difficult it’s going to be.
Would be delicious if the Chinese canceled.
germy
Thru the Looking Glass...
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Srsly… not all of us fell for this shite…
Some? Yes… All? No fuckin’ way…
Don’t categorically lump me in that bunch of idjits…
Iowa Old Lady
@Raoul: You can tell he’s never had to build cooperation to get what he wants. He’s used to running a private business. His ineptitude is just stunning.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@David Spikes:
Directed by the truly great Jacques Tourneur…
rikyrah
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Yep. This is on you, Mayo Nation.
patrick II
If there was an attempt to subvert the American elections — and by public circumstantial evidence there was — then I would hope to God that the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. would be competent enough to have potential suspects under surveillance. That is not saying investigating a political party and it’s chief candidate isn’t a dangerous thing for a democracy (see any authoritarian country that uses the law against it’s political enemies), but that’s when the institutional gravitas caused by the long history of a neutral court system, justice department, and legislative body allows a justifiable investigation to move forward.
Sadly though, no group had done more to destroy the integrity of the institutions now investigating Russian influence than the Republican party and its current leaders. Republicans don’t believe in democratic institutions as a matter of ideology — when there is a clash between government law and economic “law”, i.e. profit, the government loses, so they have been hammering at the underpinnings of democratic institutions for awhile now. Mr. Trump and his profit-is-all ideological counterparts, have come along with a sledge hammer. It is not just we democrats who are under dangerous assault with the man who now holds the most power of anyone in the country, but our basic democratic institutions that are becoming deemed corrupt by our many of our fellow citizens. Sadly,with some justification. So, trust but verify, as that old asshole Reagan said. We have to trust and support the F.B.I., and other investigatory institutions, but pay attention to the manner and results of their investigations.
Frankensteinbeck
@Daoud bin Daoud:
Generation after generation, white people are less in control. We hardly notice it, but to them this is a visceral, constant element of their reality. They see more and more black people on the streets, and every time they do they feel just a tiny bit afraid in case that’s a criminal. Mixed race couples are everywhere in media, treated as normal. Saying Jesus told you to do something gets you funny looks instead of applause. Obama’s election was a signal to them that things were much worse than they thought and the apocalypse had arrived, but make no mistake, they feel whites losing our grip on being normal and it has grown, with the anger and irrationality that accompany fear, over at least the last two decades. Many don’t even know what they’re afraid of, just a sense that crime is getting worse (they see so many criminals around!) and the country has lost its way.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Mayo is too dark, how about Bleached Flour Nation?
Aleta
@J R in WV: Large inflated golden dragons — sounds like Chinese investors’ chain restaurant biz ?
(Hard to figure those sushi roll names! Somebody’s strange concept of familiar words to Americans, but those are like what would be taken out of an old post-war language lesson book, which seems unlikely given the internet. If they meant to be passive aggressive, they sure pulled it off!)
germy
@Frankensteinbeck: And it’s a pretty fucked-up life raft they chose to grab at.
Frankensteinbeck
@Thru the Looking Glass…:
As a white heterosexual cismale, from the South even, I fully accept that my demographic group have lost our fucking minds, even though I personally am not part of the freakout. I can understand not wanting to be tarred with that, but it conflicts with the need to acknowledge that more than half of whites are so racist they froth at the mouth if you tell them black lives matter.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: I think looking at places with majority white voters that went for Clinton overwhelmingly is a worthwhile exercise to figure how and why they resisted or were immune to the racist bile,
trollhattan
@gene108:
Nigel Tufnel syndrome.
“Don’t touch it! ”
“Can I point?”
“No, no pointing.”
“If I can’t point can I at least look?”
“No, no, that’s it. You’re seen enough.”
The studies about the prevalence of sociopaths in the executive suite seem spot on.
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodingers_cat:
An interesting point, but having grown up in the South, I suspect the answer will be tradition and culture. Those same areas that are so deeply racist are also steeped in spite and cruelty, and it’s part of the culture itself, baked into its norms. So you’ll have the areas where those values and social customs took hold, and the areas where they never did.
trollhattan
@Aleta:
Japanese restaurants run by non-Japanese are common and those roll names sound like a bit of stick-poking. Could well be Korean or Chinese (dragons implying the latter) since there’s still a lot of post-WWII animosity in some circles.
WereBear
@chris: Link no work, it leads to a jpg.
WereBear
@Iowa Old Lady: Of course not. He is a hideous creature who doesn’t think women are human. Somebody call a vet! Because this is one sick puppy.
WereBear
@Olivia: But such a guy wouldn’t worry about being consumed by lust around women, would he?
No, Pence is one of those holier than thou assholes who loves parading their dubious morality while in the meantime starving children and allowing their parents to go without medical care. Morals, my shapely behind!
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: You may have something there. This area of MA was a hot bed of abolitionist activity, and was also very welcoming to Jewish immigrants during the 30s and the 40s. That’s not to say everything is perfect, its not but at least the heart is in the right place.
amk
amk
Aleta
@trollhattan: My guess is Chinese, and a best guess is that the names are someone’s idea of words that represent “success” to Americans. Or “congratulations” or “strength. ” The way that the names of some dishes use characters that are related to “good fortune” or “happiness.”
Like you say, still huge animosity. But for Chinese business, it might be considered inauspicious to a restaurant’s success to have a dish signifying anger. A name would be directed toward the customer they hope will order it, and the name or certain ingredients are intended to have positive associations or powerful effects on health and strength. Just a guess; it’s interesting. Like you say, surely not a Japanese owned place. And, somebody’s concept is pretty outdated …
aimai
@amk: You know, I can imagine it. In the real world information comes at you that is so complex and so unromanticized that you can’t even tell who are the heroes and villains! And often you don’t know what to do with it. Fox’s world contains none of that scary possibility. Information is doled out to you in a bite size, pre-digested, pieces.
All joking aside I imagine that the presidential briefings were the first time in Trump’s life when information that was scary or unpalatable to him, or which confused him, was presented to him on a regular basis.
Lurking Canadian
@WereBear: Yeah, weird as it is, I have no problem believing Pence’s “no women” thing is exactly what he says it is, not a reaction to past cheating or closeted gayness or any of the other theories. It’s exactly the kind of ostentatiously pious bullshit you get from fundies.
I once knew a couple who maintained a policy of never being alone with each other because they weren’t married yet and couldn’t be sure they could resist temptation.
I grew up in a pretty religious crowd. I’ve been at several weddings where it was at least plausible that the happy couple had never had sex, with each other or anybody else. But theirs is the only wedding I’ve ever been at where all the speeches: his, his Dad’s, her Dad’s, family friends, every blasted one, talked about it. You have not felt ick, until you feel the ick of a proud father saying how glad he was that his son found a “pure” woman. Weirdest, freakiest Freudian horror of my life, that reception.
Olivia
@WereBear: He doesn’t strike me as a person who is consumed with lust for women but it is in his best interest to appear so. You are certainly right on with the immoral asshole part.
rikyrah
* The folks at NBC’s First Read summed things up this way:
rikyrah
Dan Rather has observed other failed presidencies. Here’s what he sees now:
Lurking Canadian
@rikyrah: Tired of winning!
rikyrah
This Presidency Is Failing — and Stunningly
By Michael Gerson
March 31, 2017
Heading into the 2016 election, Republicans knew that this problem — the tea party predicament, the Freedom Caucus conundrum, the Boehner bog — had to be dealt with. The GOP needed a large and capable leader who could either unite the whole party (at least temporarily) with a bold, unifying conservative vision, or peel off some centrist Democratic support with innovative policy. They needed an above-average president.
What they got is unimaginably distant from any of these goals. They got a leader who is empty — devoid of even moderately detailed preferences and incapable of using policy details in the course of political persuasion.
Republicans got a leader who is impatient and easily distracted…
Republicans got an administration that is incompetent…
Republicans got an administration that is morally small…
It is now dawning on Republicans what they have done to themselves. They thought they could somehow get away with Trump. That he could be contained. That the adults could provide guidance. That the economy might come to the rescue. That the damage could be limited.
Instead, they are seeing a downward spiral of incompetence and public contempt — a collapse that is yet to reach a floor. A presidency is failing. A party unable to govern is becoming unfit to govern.
Steve in the ATL
@Lurking Canadian:
I went to a wedding like that, in St. Joseph, MI. The bride’s father and brothers all talked about her virginity. I was creepy AF. Needless to say, the marriage didn’t last. In part, at least, because the groom was deep in the closet.
We still see the ex-wife from time to time and she is a much better person now that she is a thousand miles away from her fundie family and has learned that things like sex can be enjoyable.
Brachiator
It’s April Fool’s Day and I can’t tell fake news headlines from real ones. Did Trump really tell NBC to cover Obama and lay off Russia?
Anyway, good luck to Tom Brady and his new job as quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, according to a yahoo story.
Ruckus
@Raoul:
Oh your point stands! And I think Carter was much better than OK. But he was, as you suggested between a very large rock and a very large hammer. Very, very few of the 44 actual presidents that we have had/endured could have walked through that valley unscathed. And several of them would have done far, far worse. Yes, like every other president he scored some own goals. So did President Obama, and I think he’s in the running for one of top 3 or 4 slots, depending on how you add things up. I was just trying to expand on your post, and point out that no matter what bad choices are going to be made, but the better people doing the job make the fewest bad and mostly good choices rather than like our current office holder, who is all bad choices and nothing remotely good.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Carter could say with a good deal of detail what would happen to Trump inside that melting down reactor.
Can you imagine having Trump in your physics class?
Elie
I think it is still amazing just HOW incompetent this administration is. What seems apparent is that they can’t even identify competence enough to target it… they are completely clueless and bad steps are almost always followed by more bad steps, making bad situations worse. I am alarmed — terrified at times, thinking how they would handle true emergencies or crises… Not one seems of even average intelligence and capability to just practically problem solve. If out of three choices, two are bad, they can be counted on to make bad choices time after time and then show absolutely no learning from the experience! They don’t seem to have the intelligence of rats who can be taught to ring a bell to get a goodie or avoid an electric shock. And the GOP is not too far behind in incompetence and inability to problem solve. They remind me of dumb bulls… they can charge a red flag or cape when provoked but when you look in their face you just see a blank stare and an animal chewing its cud… nothing is going on upstairs besides the hard wiring to charge the red flag.
JMG
@Ruckus: Carter knowingly doomed his own Presidency. Paul Volcker, head of the Fed, came to him and said, we can end inflation, but only raising interest rates until there’s a recession which will cost you your job. Carter said go ahead. That’s pretty impressive to me.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
I thought you were going to remind me that I left out “economic anxiety of the WWC.”
Elie
From the tweet that is at the beginning of this post, do you think that to Trump, since he won this unexpected victory doing whatever, that whatever is all he has to do to continue to succeed? Again, not just him, but his whole entourage seem to be on a planet with different rules of physics…
Iowa Old Lady
Jacobson was a WH lawyer under Obama. The problem is we are so buried under broken laws that we can’t keep up. Is anyone ever going to at least slap Dan Scavino’s wrist? (Scavino, a current WH staffer, had tweeted that Justin Amash was a “big liability” for Trump)
Elie
@JMG:
What Carter did — that seemed so principled from one point of view, was to ignore the impact on the country should the Republicans win… he forgot that it wasn’t just about HIM being a good guy, but that what was at stake and who he was supposed to protect ultimately from Reagan was critical… All for fixing the rate of inflation?
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
I live in CA, which pretty much went for Clinton full bore. And yet I know dumpfmeisters. They of course are all white. Pure of color, infested with stupidity or hate or both. But I know a lot more white people democrats. I even met one republican who not only voted Clinton but worked for her because he knew that drumpf was and would be the worst choice ever.
Like any racial group we may be something but completely uniform one way or another we are not. I just don’t like to see democrats fall into the same traps that republicans have, that everything is, to use the old phrase, black and white. We are supposed to be better than that. And yes I’m guilty as well, grouping all republicans in with the dumpfmisters. As I said I even know one who isn’t.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Gerson makes a rather stupid and stunning point here. A party that is unable to govern, is by that very nature, unfit to govern. They can’t become unfit to govern, they have already achieved that.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I can’t imagine having drumpf as president. And you want me to imagine that I have to be in the same room with him? Two or three times a week, for a year? Remind me never to get on your bad side.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
I’m still slightly astonished that my white, straight, former cop, and lifelong Republican older cousin was not only able to recognize Trump for what he was, he was urging everyone he knew to vote for Hillary. That was not at all what I expected, and I was pleased.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think it was all that difficult to see what drumpf is. The difficult part for his supporters was either understanding what having a completely incompetent fucking asshole as president was going to be the shit sandwich of all shit sandwiches or that wanting the shit sandwich of all shit sandwiches was the dumbest idea of their shitty little fucking lives.
I don’t sound at all pissed off do I?
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Heh, I’ll go the next step. The dorms were packed when my boomer ass was in college so all rooms were doubled up. Trump is that guy with a single room.
The Lodger
@aimai: Predigested. Well, that’s one way to describe the information coming out of Fox.
No One You Know
@JPL: I now have a Stevie Nicks/Don Henley earworm. And some wicked lyrical options.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
LOL.
And not a single friend.
His roomate for a day, because all rooms had one, went to the dorm super and made a comment something like, if you don’t find me another room I’m coming over to your house and living there.
Tokyokie
@Honus: The folkloric story has it that William Faulkner, who was adapting Raymond Chandler’s novel for the movie, gave him a call and asked, and Chandler didn’t know either.
Olivia
I just saw a Facebook post by an idiot trump supporting relative who is outraged that people are complaining about Trump’s security costs. She is insisting that the Obamas spent way more time and money on travel and then said that Trump has his own security so who cares anyway. She had been uncharacteristically quiet about the results of the election till now and I am wondering if her outburst is because she is starting to see the cloud of doom ahead.
Ruckus
@Olivia:
Of course I don’t know the relative but is it possible that she thinks that the white businessman would never waste as much money as was given to the black community organizer.
WaterGirl
@MattF: I think I’ve watched that at least 5 times! Love when the black & white’s eyes get big when realizes “every time I do this i am going to get a treat- every time!”
WaterGirl
@germy: Dense hasn’t really announced that stuff, has he? I thought we were surmising the rules because of the odd behavior.
Oh my.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ruckus:
One of the major traits of racism is believing that once the Other is put down, everything will magically be great for the chosen people. This came up a lot when people talked about repealing Obamacare. Sure, they were on it, but if it was repealed they wouldn’t need it. With the moochers draining the economy out of the way, they would get a great job and be able to afford insurance.
hovercraft
@Mnemosyne:
Your cousin is part of the miniscule part of the republican party that still lives in the real world. There was no excuse for not seeing Twitler for exactly what he is. The people who allowed 25 years of bullshit investigations, that found absolutely nothing, and the fact that they would rather have a beer with him to decide their vote are self deluding morons. I’m including those on our side who something, something, I just don’t trust her, in that. Angela Merkel does not strike me as the warm and fuzzy type, but German voters have kept her there for years because they value competence over personality. Perhaps it’s that their media hasn’t been Murdoched, but it seems to me everywhere he’s gotten a toe hold in he’s succeeded in making the media and by extension the populace much dumber. Gordon Brown was labelled as dour and boring, Cameron and Clegg were the good looking charismatic youngsters whose austerity cut so deep that people needed a scapegoat and caused the Brexit results. The rise of Twitler and his disaterous reign will I hope stop rightwing electoral successes across Europe.
@Ruckus: you don’t sound overly pissed off, given that these are the people the “DO NOT EAT” labeling is needed for those silicone packets in your new shoe box.
hovercraft
@Olivia:
Do you think she’s amenable to facts at this point? Or is reality biased towards liberals? Twitler is now the head of the government, the expenses everyone’s bitching about are based on numbers from SS and the GOA, or will those numbers simply be the product of the “deep state” that Obama left behind?
Incidentally the “deep state” is now a thing on the right, I was watching AM Joy this morning and there was a commercial for David Horowitz new book, you need to get it so that you can learn about al the things Twitler has already accomplished, but also to learn about how Obama’s “deep state” is trying to destroy Twitler!
Ruckus
@hovercraft:
You think that things might get better if we took off the labels? Or is it that they have been eating the little packets because of the labels? That’s the “I’ll show them!” level of thinking a good number of humans seem to do. It comes right after “Hold my beer and watch this!” on a list of things that one hears/sees all to often from a rather large segment of humans.
father pussbucket
@hovercraft:
Wouldn’t it have been easier for him to use his evil Deep State magic to just win the fucking election?
Ruckus
@father pussbucket:
There you go, using logic again.
MaryLou
@schrodingers_cat: The nuns must have been something other than Jesuits. Only priests and brothers in that group…
Olivia
@Ruckus: But, but she has a black friend on Facebook so she is colorblind. It’s probably more that one of them is a Kenyan mooslim…or she is toothless, stupid and seldom leaves the rural county she lives in, much like the rest of her stupid toothless family.
Olivia
@hovercraft: She isn’t informed enough to even have heard the words “deep state”. She is the typical scared to death, white rural insulated voter who insists she voted Democrat up till the last election. I don’t think she has ever voted much, actually. She is the perfect target for disinformation campaigns, easily swayed and no skills or desire for sorting out reality from the ridiculous.
Ksmiami
@schrodingers_cat: crush them first than force a closure of fox entities as similar to denazification
Tehanu
@Raoul:
Thank you! I’m a great admirer of President Carter and I’ve always thought it was the shame of the century that he was defeated by a senile shill for the rich. And whether one thinks his Presidency was a success or not, his post-presidency is probably the greatest ever. May he live long enough to see the country repudiate Dolt 45 and all his works.