43 years ago today. Concise and to the point.
You could even fit it in a tweet, @realDonaldTrump. pic.twitter.com/1rtKdCUwM4
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) August 9, 2017
.
Apart from nostalgia, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
This post is in: Enhanced Protest Techniques, Open Threads, Republican Venality, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
43 years ago today. Concise and to the point.
You could even fit it in a tweet, @realDonaldTrump. pic.twitter.com/1rtKdCUwM4
— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) August 9, 2017
.
Apart from nostalgia, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Comments are closed.
rikyrah
Looking for a new cellphone. …sigh…hadn’t planned on buying a new one, but , life happens :(
burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
iOS or Android? Is it your primary tool for listening to music?
jeffreyw
@rikyrah: You may find a deal here on a used one. Get one with the same size sim and just pop it into another phone and you don’t even have to deal with the phone co.
zhena gogolia
I am so deeply depressed. They have taken over the government by illegitimate means. They didn’t win the popular vote, and the Russians and Comey helped them win the electoral college. They are breaking every law and norm they can get their hands on. Even if Trump were to resign today (yes, I’d be happy!), all his appointees are there infecting our government and our society. I still cannot believe we’ve fallen so far, so fast.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
I was helping my dad at his night job (custodian at an office building). We watched the speech in one of the offices during a break. I was 16 (gah) and already a political junkie; my mom and I had followed the hearings obsessively. I remember feeling relieved.
Tonight–nothing so sublime. Grocery shopping and maybe an episode of Sherlock (I am slowly catching up. Yay for Netflix.)
TenguPhule
In the old days honor meant a glass of whiskey and a loaded revolver in the library.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I suspect that Mattis is backing up Twitler rhetorically because he has to.
JPL
Is this normal?
Maybe his front door is also his bedroom door.. (kidding)
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
hammanahammanadooloolooloolooloourszuladudziak
No surprise that he has fairly warm words for the Bannonite faction.
TenguPhule
@zhena gogolia:
And are nowhere near rock bottom yet either.
Remember, its not the fall that’s fatal, its the sudden stop at the end.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Y’know, I forgot that he handed the resignation to Kissinger. I suppose he was just guessing on the protocol – I’d think he’d hand it to Ford.
khead
Bit of a side note….
The Venn diagram of “folks who are upset over the Google Tech Bro firing” and “people who are ok with Colin Kaepernick flipping burgers” is pretty much a single circle.
A Ghost to Most
Reposting from below:
JPL
@zhena gogolia: I streamed Ozark and watched the ten episodes over a few nights. I slept like a baby both nights. At times I’ll watch violent shows, but not alone, since I’m prone to nightmares. The series was compelling enough though, that it took my mind off things I can’t control. The administration has changed my sleep habits.
SiubhanDuinne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
No, SoS, and here’s the reason why. At least, it’s plausible to me, but one of our Constitutional scholars can weigh in with additional insight.
Yarrow
I cannot wait to see those words again with Trump’s signature under them. Or tweeted by him if that’s his choice. Sooner is better.
Eljai
I have some fond memories of watching Watergate hearings with my dad when I was on summer vacation from school. I think I was a little disappointed when Nixon resigned. I wanted to see him get impeached.
Lapassionara
@rikyrah: Me too. Yuch. I hate spending money on phones.
A Ghost to Most
@Eljai:
Me too. It was a letdown, turned to anger when Ford pardoned the rat bastard
rikyrah
Dingell’s twitter game is absolutely on point:)
tobie
Ever since Trump’s conversation with Pena Nieto was released, I’ve been expecting a new youtube from Vicente Fox but thus far none has come to light. What a pity. I could really use some comic relief!
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Funny, he never mentioned it in the morning thread ?
rikyrah
@burnspbesq:
Android.
No..I don’t listen to music on it..hardly ever.
Mnemosyne
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
You can’t fool me twice. The last time I got out of the boat, I was forced to see GG’s idiotic ravings.
rikyrah
@jeffreyw:
thanks for the link
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@A Ghost to Most: If the graveyard maintenance staff is lucky, the family will take Hunter S. Thompson’s advice as to Donald’s burial preparations.
mai naem mobile
I would be shocked if Dolt45 left in that fashion. He’s going to go tied up like a goose with lots of restraints to tie him down from doing something any more stupid stuff.
dexwood
@Eljai:
I watched the Watergate hearings on a small black and white TV with four others over five days in a lounge at St. Elizabeth’s hospital in Washington D.C. We drove down to the hospital everyday from Baltimore in one car to take part in a marijuana study. We were paid 50 bucks a day to smoke dope grown at the University of Mississippi that came in plain white packs and looked like unfiltered cigarettes. We were given tests involving memory, cognition, perception, and pain tolerance. Between the marijuana and the hearings, our breaks were a giggle-fest. We joked constantly about enjoying Tricky Dick’s stash.
encephalopath
What’s with the cutesy Kissinger initials on the resignation like he’s a middle school child?
LAO
I’m going for an early evening at the dog park since Maggie has finally been liberated from the cone of shame. Also planning to leave cellphone home as the real world is kicking my ass.
LAO
@mai naem mobile: he will not go quietly. Pence will probably have to club him into unconsciousness.
Nicole
@dexwood: That’s a most excellent story. As coincidence would have it, I was part of a study today, but nothing as good as that.
My husband remembers his mom watched the hearings nonstop and he thought it was really boring. Then again, he was seven.
rikyrah
@zhena gogolia:
I understand.
dexwood
@Nicole:
Thank you. I hope you were well compensated. I was 21 and we were all students at the University of Maryland’s Baltimore County campus who answered a notice on a bulletin board. We were escorted to lunch everyday sharply at noon to the McDonald’s across the street. They treated us.
HeleninEire
“Those were the days, my friends, we thought they’d never end. We’d sing and dance forever and a day. We’d live the life we choose, we’d fight and never lose. For we were young and sure to have our way.
Thanks Anne Laurie for bringing me back to my childhood.
One of the best songs ever.
AliceBlue
If anyone’s in need of a laugh (and most people are these days), check out Randy Rainbow’s song parody videos. They’re wickedly to the point and funny as hell. My favorites are “The Room Where It Happened” and “Putin and the Ritz.”
A Ghost to Most
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): You may find this hard to believe, but my father’s remains were shot out of a cannon. Unlike me, he was no Hunter S. fan.
Too good for Rump. How about a vat of lye?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
The mention of TPM in a thread below (in admittedly not-glowing tones) made me decide to go take a look over there, as I haven’t read it in a while.
Found this interesting take on why the financial investigation might be about more than the money. Apparently it’s a prosecutorial tactic for getting charges in espionage cases when the actual espionage evidence raises classification issues.
Betty Cracker
Wow, 43 years! I was too young to really understand what was happening, but I’ll never forget my mother’s utter joy at the news. She hated that sumbitch Nixon!
SiubhanDuinne
@HeleninEire:
I agree. I love it.
That said, I thought Anne Laurie was quoting the All in the Family theme song:
(“Boy, the way Glenn Miller played
Songs that made the Hit Parade.
Guys like us, we had it made —
Those were the days.”)
mai naem mobile
@LAO: they’ll have to give him something in his two scoops of ice cream to sedate him and then cart him out in a delivery vehicle through the back door. What an ignominious end.
efgoldman
@zhena gogolia:
The greatest majority of “appointees” are in fact, empty desks, chairs and offices. His immediate advisors can bloviate all they want, but without staff, assistants, and thousands of ordinary civil servants, there’s no-one to follow thru and implement things.
The bark is fucking terrifying, but the bite isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
SiubhanDuinne
@encephalopath:
Kissinger’s official acknowledgement of personal receipt of the letter. I don’t know whether it’s legally required, but it’s certainly customary.
A Ghost to Most
@Betty Cracker: Good for her. He was a rat bastard, but many people pretended and deflected then as well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
From a Buzzfeed article about how Europeans view trump. There’s a very good chance that those people mocking trump’s English learned English as a foreign language, and the last part
* many people would be very surprised to learn [thing an embarrassed foreigner or frightened aide had to tell trump earlier that day]
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@A Ghost to Most: Too dignified. Maybe creation in a port-a-potty.
@Mnemosyne: Well the second link approvingly cites Greenwald and seems to have identical conclusions. With an author that evidence suggests is noticeably dumber than Greenwald.
catclub
@Eljai:
Many people smarter than me assign Ford’s pardon blame for a lot of further lawlessness by Republicans.
No accountability. hoocoodanode.
burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
Most of these are priced close to the iPhone 7, which is nutzo. But the Pixel amd the S8 are cooler than shit (S8 is the first Android phone that ever tempted me to switch).
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/best-android-phone-which-should-you-buy-1135314
scav
@Nicole: Also remember my mom having the hearings on, especially remember her ironing to it. Presumably we had very tidy clothes for a while as she was very into it — there was also a big countdown to the end of his presidency calendar on the panty door carefully marked off every day and gleefully removed early.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: it’s an ironic look at Republicans in the thirties, or later, isn’t it?
“Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again…
Didn’t need no welfare state
Everybody pulled his weight
Gee our old LaSalle ran great…”
randy khan
August 9 was my mother’s birthday. She said it was the best birthday present she ever got.
On the letter:
As I remember, the protocol was to give the letter to Kissinger because the Secretary of State is the highest-ranking member of the cabinet (based on when the office was created, of all things). He initialed it to show that it had been received – the bare letter without acknowledgment might not have been effective because you wouldn’t know that Nixon had transmitted it to the recipient.
Amaranthine RBG
@randy khan:
Yeah, kind of significant that Nixon didn’t include a time for his resignation, so HK had to write it in.
Thor Heyerdahl
@scav:
A room just for lingerie?
zhena gogolia
@HeleninEire:
It’s a Russian song! Dorogoi dlinnoiu — much better in the original Russian.
bystander
I was a newbie at a regional investment bank when Nixon resigned. I put a damper on my glee for the sake of the job. Can’t say I regret it, either.
@zhena gogolia: If you need a laugh, check out the State Dept. spokesmodel. Betty Cracker and ruemara both told me she is in fact a former fauxbot. It is so weird seeing a State Dept. spokesperson who looks like a bandeau-dressed weathercaster, sneering at the journalists. They could cut from her to the audience-reaction shots in The Producers.
zhena gogolia
@efgoldman:
I hope you’re right. I shouldn’t read the NYT front page.
A Ghost to Most
@burnspbesq:
My Pixel phone has terrible battery life, but it charges real quick.
zhena gogolia
@bystander:
See, this is just the kind of thing that would depress me more. Unless I get it filtered through Colbert or something.
HeleninEire
@SiubhanDuinne: LOL my bad.
efgoldman
@Betty Cracker:
I had a stereo/radio in my office, which was on gavel to gavel. After supper, at home, I’d watch the video from PBS.
Yes, I was and am a political junkie.
germy
@bystander: Some hilarious responses to the foxbot:
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/twenty-years-at-faux-news-must-suck-out-truth-internet-cant-deal-with-condescending-state-dept-speaker/
“State Dept. hired Samantha Jones.”
germy
@efgoldman: I remember Sam Ervin’s eyebrows seemed to be telegraphing some drama. I was hooked on watching the proceedings. Little did I know many of Nixon’s key men would re-take power in the ’80s, ’90s and beyond.
Mary G
I was in the parking lot of a great diner in Redlands, CA with my mom when we heard the news that Nixon had resigned. She was still a Republican and yelled at me for cheering.
Major Major Major Major
@Amaranthine RBG:
I see the filter gods have selected an appropriate one for you today.
frosty fred
@SiubhanDuinne: I take “cutesy” to refer to the style of the initials, with the two letters run together. Someone who does a lot of initialing, though, might well develop a shortcut (I have, anyway; possibly I’m a middle schooler).
HeleninEire
@zhena gogolia: @SiubhanDuinne:
OK, Jeebus. Anne Laurie, what song were you referencing?
zhena gogolia
@HeleninEire:
Looks to me as if it could be either one.
gene108
The one common thread from Reagan to Bush, Jr. is their Administrations were basically staffed with the Nixonites, who managed to not get indicted or convicted.
And they learned how to cover their tracks, from Nixon’s failure to cover his.
The Bush, Jr. Administration really made this into an art form, wherein everything they said and did had some element of plausible deniability to it and nothing, absolutely nothing, was written down or recorded about what was said in private discussions.
germy
What’s with the giant chicken on the White House lawn?
What is the nature of her protest?
EDIT: Ah, I see this:
scav
@Thor Heyerdahl: Apparently so, What was my mother doing with all that laundry and ironing?! (The things I missed out on as a kid . . . . I would have gotten so much more amusement and mileage out of that typo then.)
bystander
Andy Borowitz:
Philbert
The day Nixon quit, my boss came into swing-shift lunch (9pm) at the machine shop where I was working, took us out to a bar, and said ‘the shift is paid, and you are all on days now’. Pretty good for a small shop owner.
efgoldman
@gene108:
Which proves that political prognostication wasn’t worth the meltable type at the printing plants. The consensus was that Trocksi Dicksie and his merry band had ruined the Republiklown brand for the foreseeable future.
Said future was four years until Sanctus Ronaldus, and twenty until Newtnik became speaker.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m feeling a bit tapped out on donations lately, but this might be one go fund me I would have to kick in to
zhena gogolia
@HeleninEire:
Here’s a pretty good version by a young guy. If you want real style, check out Vertinsky’s 1920s version.
bystander
@germy: Thank you. That was hilarious. Heather Nauert is too obscure but she would make a great SNL character.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Reminds me of the notBorowitz story that Sarah Palin didn’t know there were two Koreas.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@germy:
Mike in Pasadena
@Eljai: On August 10, 1974, I remember I was standing in the terminal at Ramstein, the US Air Force’s giant base in Frankfurt, Germany, when the Air Force Times was delivered. Front page, above the fold, four inch high letters: NIXON RESIGNS! I failed to save a copy. One of the people I was travelling with was in the habit of imitating Nixon. He put his arms up in the Nixon victory salute, hunched up his shoulders around his neck, and in Nixon’s deep growl said, “Make no mistake about it, I am NOT the president.” Good times. It was news to us because there was no Internet and we had been unable to watch television or listen to radio for several days.
r€nato
@khead: likewise “people who scream ‘NUNH UNH, RACISM IS NOT WHY KAP CAN’T MAKE A ROSTER'” and “people who lose their fucking minds when a team considers Kap for their roster”.
bystander
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Borowitz has another one about how Trump is sending Betsy DeVos to North Korea to stop their progress in math and science.
prostratedragon
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: In re, data scientist David Robinson, who last year uncovered the iPhone/Android divide in tweets from Trump’s account, has updated his analysis with lots of new material (from the comprehensive Trump Twitter Archive). Among other things, Robinson traces the evolution of Trump’s tweets about Pres. Obama. No one could ever guess when they started to trend …
“Trump’s Android and iPhone tweets, one year later” featuring R/tidytext goodness.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Since Huffington Post printed the story, wouldn’t they fund the defense.
schrodingers_cat
OT software question is upgrading to Office 16 for my personal laptop worth it? Currently I have Office 10. Any reviews from people that have used it?
Thanks.
JerryRich
@rikyrah: I was resisting the idea of spending a couple of hundred bucks for a new phone, so I invested $15.00 in a new battery. Much better performance, a new phone can be delayed for a while.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I’m annoyed with polls. Quinnipiac had Lump at 33% a few days ago (all time low!).
A couple days later another poll had him at an “all time low” of 38%.
Today Politico announces his all time low of 40%.
Different polls that apparently are each at all time low, but the number is going up, dammit! 40% of what group of idiots can actually approve of Trump?!?
hellslittlestangel
I love John Dingell.
Mnemosyne
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
I’m guessing that it means Trump is polling at an all-time low for each of those polls. They all had him start at a different number, so they all have a different low point.
The fact that he’s measurably sinking in multiple polls is a good sign, even though the low is different for each poll.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: You are better at math than you think you are. If you took Algebra now, I am sure you would do well.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@encephalopath: Show Kissinger got and read the memo. Kissinger even put the time down.
ruckus
@rikyrah:
Have Motorola pure edition, works great, on the site that jefferyw gave you $170.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Awww, thanks, but I have way too much math anxiety to take an actual class. I can figure things out on my own without any pressure, but the prospect of quizzes and homework and tests makes me break out in a cold sweat. ?
odinhans
One of the best days ever! My ex and I were enjoying a rare steak and a beer when the sad faced Pres came on the TV and said he was not guilty but was resigning. God, it was absolutely terrific.
zhena gogolia
@odinhans:
You just gave me a heart attack. I thought you were talking about today!!!!!!! I was filled with unutterable joy!
encephalopath
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Of course he initialed it to show that he got it. That’s not the point.
Why is HK’s initials some twee version of H and K? That what I’m asking. If there were and “I” in there he would have put a heart on it.
Henry effing Kissinger signed the President’s resignation letter like it was a yearbook.
SiubhanDuinne
@encephalopath:
Signing it this way, he used four strokes of the pen. If he had done it non-tweely (writing the H and K separately), he would have used six strokes. Most people who sign or initial a great many documents develop time-and-effort-saving ways of doing so.
There is a great deal for which one can, and must, criticise Henry Kissinger, but unless you can cite a reliable graphologist proving that his idiosyncratic “HK” is the sign of an ignorant, demented monster with dangerously twee tendencies, I’m going to conclude that you’re wildly overthinking a fucking two-letter monogram.
encephalopath
@SiubhanDuinne:
Really? You need an appeal to authority to suggest there’s not something weird about that?
Kissinger is a monster. Also a really strange dude. It’s two letters. Write the two letters. But no… he needs some special way to make his two letters.
Still look odd to me.
scott alloway
Happy anniversary! I remember the night well. Was a social worker with my parents up from Connecticut and friends over the place. Most of us – but not my dad – were quite happy. I am so hopeful for a reprise by the Orange Menace to bookend my working life.
Peale
So who is paying Eli Lake to be Neocon shill for Trump on every single foreign policy issue? He could vomit on the shoes of the pope and it Lake would be there praising the brilliance of the strategy and new direction in relations with the Vatican.
SiubhanDuinne
@encephalopath:
Nope. On my very own authority I will not only suggest, I will state flat-out, there’s nothing in the least weird about that.
No argument there.
When I woke up this morning, I had no idea that before the sun went down I would in any way be defending Henry Fucking Kissinger. But people do all kinds of individual, unique things with their handwriting, especially signatures and initials. I had an uncle named Frank Thorolfsen. His signature was a huge “F” followed by a short squiggle, and a huge “T” followed by a long squiggle.
Whenever I write a word at the beginning of a sentence (or otherwise needs to be capitalised) that starts with “Th,” I invariably join the cross-stroke of the “T” to the downstroke of the “h.” It’s quick and easy, and in my opinion looks pretty. But according to you, it is “twee” and a “special way” of making the two letters. I guess I should be glad you haven’t yet sent the FBI to do a pre-dawn raid on me. Who knows what such a monster might be capable of?
Bless your heart.
encephalopath
Argument from Authority is one thing, but to claim that some unnamed invisible authority in the form of “reliable graphologist” is required to sign on to my argument in for it to be admitted into discussion is some bizarre rhetorical bullshit.
You’re the one who suggest the need for a “reliable graphologist” to verify the strangeness of his initials. Now you’re going to backpedal and claim you didn’t really mean that.
Maybe you didn’t mean it that way, but shutting me down because some unnamed expert didn’t say so doesn’t seem at all fair.
Also… why is this so important to you you that you feel the need to bless my heart?
J R in WV
@encephalopath:
Henry the K’s initials and date/time stamp were what made the resignation official. The Secretary has to receive the resignation for it to be effective, right? Or someone, whoever it’s addressed to. This was the first, so they set the standard, so to speak.
encephalopath
@J R in WV:
Ok… that’s a thing that makes sense. He made his middle school HK at some point as part of his official duties so he has to keep doing it that way.
SiubhanDuinne
@encephalopath:
So far, you are the only one who is referring to “the strangeness of his initials.” What I am suggesting is that because you think his HK is strange and I think his HK is not strange, it
might make sense to enlist the views of an actual expert in the field of handwriting analysis to provide a professional analysis. If said graphologist looks at Kissinger’s HK and concludes that it is weird, twee, or strange, I will gladly acknowledge and accept the correction.
It seems to be far more important to you, but in any case, I am a kind lady who has lived in the South long enough to know when “bless your heart” is the only appropriate comment.
SiubhanDuinne
@encephalopath:
Did you even read my #43?
encephalopath
@SiubhanDuinne:
Bring me the head of a “reliable graphologist” and I will accept your blessing.
For tonight we will agree that HK is a weird dude.
J R in WV
@A Ghost to Most:
“You may find this hard to believe, but my father’s remains were shot out of a cannon. Unlike me, he was no Hunter S. fan.”
A friend of mine, of my whole family, was a theatrical director, and worked for an arts group that my parents and other family members were involved with, management level, really. He was a great, fun guy, big guy with a VanDyke beard, big laugh, great producer and director.
The shows he directed were period historical dramas, outdoor amphitheater productions at a park, with muzzle loading firearms being shot into the air all evening. After he died, still in theater, still directing and producing, just elsewhere, he asked to be cremated and sprinkled here and there. Which was done.
But there was lots left, all of which was shot from those guns during performances in the glooming darkness of the outdoor theater where he had directed so many shows, for years. It was wonderful to learn about.
Bang, another ounce of ashes shot into the woods!! He would have loved it, and would have asked for it if he had been sure it would have flown. I never knew if “management” was aware of it, who cared!
SiubhanDuinne
@encephalopath:
Cool.
encephalopath
@SiubhanDuinne:
The initials comment was a throw away line that people didn’t get, then took too seriously (no… wait, that was me).
I still think it’s strange that an adult in the highest levels of government signed off on an official document that way.
But it’s not a thing that actually matters.
Have a good night, SD.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
The name I use has 7 letters. My signature is 2 squiggles.
I’m with you, if you have to sign your name to a lot of stuff you learn shorthand. And squiggles. Nothing more to it.
HK was and still is a major fucking asshole. He’s also older than fossilized mastodon shit.
SiubhanDuinne
@encephalopath:
You too, ecphlpth ❤️