Tuesday Evening Open Thread: THREE Turkeys at the White House
Trump looking at turkey: "Am I allowed to touch it?"
Turkey people: "Absolutely"
Trump: "I feel so good about myself" pic.twitter.com/S5kgqIqYzR— T.J. Ortenzi (@tjortenzi) November 21, 2017
Kudos to the reporter who yelled out “are you going to pardon any people” during that.
— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) November 21, 2017
Trump pardons Drumstick and Wishbone, but says he was unable to overturn Obama's 2016 pardons of Tater and Tot pic.twitter.com/XTBO0e7BcC
— Axios (@axios) November 21, 2017
In case of confusion, Trump’s head is the rumpled ovoid with the gaping cloaca at the right of your screen. Well, you wanted to eat light anyways, save more room for Thursday…
***********
Continuing the White Male Turkey theme:
Trump on Moore: "He is in total denial. I do have to say, 40 years is a long time. He has run eight races and this has never come up. The women are trump voters. Most of them are trump voters. All you can do is you have to do what you have to do. He totally denies it." pic.twitter.com/bVoVopcUWo
— Tasneem N (@TasneemN) November 21, 2017
We think of the AL Senate race as picking a senator.
Trump probably (& not wrongly) thinks of it as picking a juror.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 21, 2017
The GOP tax bill's bringing out my inner socialist. The sex scandals are bringing out my inner feminist. Donald Trump and Roy Moore are bringing out my inner liberal.
WHAT IS HAPPENING?— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) November 21, 2017
Sorry, Billy K., you’re still icky and not bright.
What a bizzarro world we live in now, where most of what people like Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin write makes perfect sense!
True on multiple levels.
He meant that, too. Christ, we have put into the presidency the most insane person to ever hold it. This fucking guy has some serious issues.
Ugh…this Cryptkeeper bish…FUQ U Kellyanne
@Nicole: Come on–that tweet was legitimately the funniest thing that guy will ever write.
None of these thoughts have any connection to the previous thought. Yeesh, what it must be like inside that head.
“The question is, was Moore famous enough, locally, that they let him do it? Because, when you’re famous, they let you do it. I don’t know. We’ll see.”
Congratulations, Bill! This is what you and your ilk have been working towards all of these years. You should be a proud papa.
Peter Bienart in the latest Atlantic issue says the conservatives are mean because liberals call them names.
Christ this asshole pisses me off. People have been telling him about the company he keeps and promotes for decades. He ignored it. Fuck if I’m gonna feel sorry for his dumb ass now. He caused this. If he’s got such a problem with it, let him fix it.
Don’t quote the Kristol tweet, you will get dumped into moderation land.
@schrodingers_cat: Poor Petey. I think he manages to drop himself on his own head every couple of years, just to make sure things stay loose and rattling up there. He’ll apologize for this in a couple of years, then… bang.
That Kristol tweet is hilarious. Also, fuck him.
Charlie Pierce made the point yesterday, when SkeletorAnn Conway first called Jones “weak on crime”, that he had put terrorists in jail after forty years. Of course, to Chuck Todd’s “Good Person” KAC and the Beast she serves, the Birmingham bombings weren’t terrorism, maybe not even a crime.
WORDS TO LIVE BY.@schrodingers_cat: @schrodingers_cat:
Totally agree – I look at the nation today and I think the reason we are in this state is because of aggressive and intemperate liberals.
Honestly, I imagine Peter is just recycling something he wrote back during the Bush presidency. It’s a holiday week and you need time to shop, etc.
Republicans are freaking out that Trump will actually pull out of NAFTA since he really is poor at negotiating deals.
Heh.
@hitless:
I’m sorry, guys.
@aimai: It is a hoot indeed, and the pinnacle of his writing (of any kind) career, in my view.
Also someone in that twitter thread said something to the effect of
which is an important point.
@hitless:
Well, c’mon, if we would just stop calling people racists, they would stop doing racist things, because they only act like racists to piss liberals off. Just ask Dylann Roof!
/Beinart
@SiubhanDuinne:
Now go do that voodoo that you do so well.
Jeez, Bill Kristol had better watch out. If those scales fall from his eyes, he might end up as a front pager on Balloon Juice.
Okay, now I have to go shower because the Bloody Bill tweet made me LOL.
Saw Neera on the CNN panel this afternoon and she was noticeably pissed at the two other “reporters/correspondents” who were making the “reasoned not partisan” argument or whatever bout why Trump said what he said…she outright said this is disgusting!
@Mnemosyne: You can has an email!
@ruemara: I fail to see the point of scorning people (Kristol, Rubin, Will, et al) who seem to be in the process of changing their minds and switching sides. Same thing with The Orange Better One’s deplorables who express buyer’s remorse: I don’t expect them to march under a rainbow banner, chanting, “Black lives matter,” I just want them to consider voting for their own economic self-interest.
WHAT IS HAPPENING? Maybe the world as we know it is ending? And maybe that’s not a bad thing?
@Mike in NC:
Don’t worry. If Trump is replaced by a more subdued Republican, they’ll go back to being their regular dense selves.
@Bex: I feel fine.
Shit. Animation legend John Lasseter of Pixar and Disney steps down amid claims of sexual harassment and misconduct.
This is the second big name in animation to be outed as a creep in this (Chris Savino, creator of Nick’s The Loud House was the first), and I’m expecting many more, because people suck.
Just goes to show it is possible to arrange things so domestic turkeys are NOT the stupidest creatures in the room.
@hellslittlestangel: Uh, yeah. Look, that man denies his own culpability. Until he does, yeah, he’s saying some good things, but I don’t pretend a worthless sack of genetic material is anything less than that, even if he’s helping me fight a serial killer. Failing to own up to being wrong is exactly why the Republican party is now the party of pedophilia, treason, genocide (wave to PR & the USVI), white supremacy and economic destruction.
@bmoak: The Loud House guy?! That is news, but I haven’t checked into industry news in a while. Heard the Lassiter thing, which is disappointing but not surprising.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Conservatives may actually hold the fact that Doug Jones got convictions for the racists who killed those four girls in Birmingham against him. Remember that Trump called White Supremacists “good people” when they killed a young woman in Charlottesville.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: As another commenter pointed out earlier today, when people say “soft on crime”, they really mean “soft on blacks”.
@bmoak:
If it makes you feel better, I’m still awesome.
@Patricia Kayden: Yeah, this. Remember, Donald Trump had to be dragged kicking and screaming into disavowing David Duke’s endorsement of him.
Hmm, open thread? Some observations from M4-land.
— I’m letting my novel lay fallow for a bit until I pick it up for the next draft, and it’s driving me crazy not working on it. Christmas will be just about six weeks, which seems like the right amount of time, so my present to myself will be a printout of it to maul during my Europe trip.
— Relatedly, I’ve started using my writing-tools website to work on my webcomic. Gosh! It’s exactly what I always wanted from writing software! It’s almost like I wrote the spec.
— Work has picked up to about 2-3 hours per day, which is still not a full day, so I’m learning Smalltalk, which seems neat.
All in all, just feeling some weird combination of pleased, restless, and nervous. End me update.
Annie Proulx received the National Book Award the other day. She gave a short and very dark speech then read a lovely poem at the end.
@bmoak:
Since people know where I work, I need to say that I do not know anything more that what’s being published. We are all very shocked and surprised, because there haven’t even been rumors of that happening at our location.
@Baud:
Where the fuck have they been all year???
@Major Major Major Major: Sounds like things are coming up roses.
Earlier saw a clip of the turkey-pardoning thing and my takeaway was how desperately sorry I feel for Barron (who stands there with fists clenched and leg kind of rocking/twitching, never looking at his father, clearly wishing he were anywhere else on the planet) and how preëmptively terrifying I find him, in a “Bad Seed” kind of way.
I apologise. It’s wrong to go after the President’s* minor children, and I shouldn’t have done it.
Oops. Too late.
@debbie: Busy trying to steal things from you.
@SiubhanDuinne: No worries. Thanksgiving is a time for forgiveness.
@SiubhanDuinne: I retain hope that once out from under his influence, Barron could be a decent human being.
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
“I just grab ’em by the turkey. They let you do that if you’re a star.”
@NotMax:
We proved that back in 2009. Remember, in what was a more innocent age, that interview Sarah Palin gave while a bunch of turkeys were being slaughtered in the background?
NPR’s On Point discussed sexual abuse generally and Bill Clinton explicitly. That Caitlin chick you all have been bitching about was on for the full hour. I’d never heard her or read much of her stuff at Atlantic. What a horrible, self-righteous bitch she is! Lucien Goldberg couldn’t have wished for a better successor.
@bmoak: Ouch. That one hurts.
@bmoak: John Lasseter Takes Leave of Absence From Disney/Pixar, Apologizes for Unwanted Hugs
This has officially gotten out of hand. Unwanted hugs?
@SiubhanDuinne: I can guarantee you that Trump’s parenting is spectacularly shitty.
I would also bet my considerable pension that Trump raped his daughter Ivanka on a regular basis when she was a minor.
I walked into the break room to fill my water cup and saw Donald Trump on the television blathering about his support for theocratic pedophile Roy Moore. I filled my cup, walked back to my desk, and donated to Moore’s opponent Doug Jones. You can too.
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bjalsen?refcode=thermometer
@Baud:
I’m needlepointing that phrase on a pillow cover.
@Baud: I guess. Still anxious for no reason.
I resent the current Republican Party for making me like Bill Kristol, even a tiny bit.
Chris Cillizza STILL an idiot!
@Major Major Major Major: I know that feeling!
@lamh36: Chinchilla’s lack of silence is pretty damning if you ask me.
@Patricia Kayden:
That seems extremely unlikely to happen any time soon.
A little something to get you ready for Thanksgiving, the latest episode of the Make Me Smart podcast (you can listen online with a browser).
@Baud:
P.S. Thanks for the Cole Porter ear worm, which I did not need.
@SiubhanDuinne:
“I yam what I yam.”
@ruemara: IIRC Barry Goldwater’s granddaughter made him see the error of some of his ways. Not that I’m looking for the Beast to change, even if Ivanka granted him his fondest wish, but sometimes apples roll far far away from the tree. Goldwater’s Veep was Stephanie MIller’s father. And Ronald Reagan’s son is an activist for secularism, among other things.
@ruemara:
That pretty much says it all.
@LurkerNoLonger: Yes. Hugs. Your body is sacrosanct. It’s not up to someone else to hug you without asking. And considering some of his hugs went kinda long, they’re not just brief. If you don’t want to be touched, it’s your right to say I’m not a hugger and have that respected.
I think Bill Kristol may have just woke up and found his head of his ass all these years.
@Baud:
I remembered that you were asking about Swing Left. This is a link in an email I received from them yesterday that explains what they plan to do.
https://swingleft.org/p/how-we-win
@SiubhanDuinne: To be honest, the only Trump kid I feel bad for is Barron…saw a clip of him at the Turkey pardoning felt bad for him. I mean the Obama girls, so didn’t want to be doing the Turkey pardon, but they were so obviously uncomfortable.
SMH…Melanie should have put her foot down and said no to Barron doing that. NOTHING says a President HAS to parade out their kids at photo ops…heck, the Obamas carefully crafted and planned EXACTLY when Malia & Sasha was involved in photo ops. And from what I recall, they didn’t make the girls do any photo op they didn’t want to do
@Major Major Major Major: I love reading your comments. They are a breath of fresh air.
@debbie: I’m going with their heads have either been up their (respective) assess or buried in the sand. You choose.
@lamh36: I’m not clicking on that, but what does he think Franken should be doing that he hasn’t already done? He apologized. Is he supposed to call a press conference and start cutting himself in front of the cameras?
@Josie: Thanks.
@lamh36: I hate the fucking turkey pardon. Not even Obama could pull it off. I can accept “god bless blah blah blah”, the photo ops with sportsballers irritate me, but sweet jeebus I hate the fucking turkey thing. Don’t know why, but I hate it
@WaterGirl: Aw, shucks.
@LurkerNoLonger:
Woody apologized to Buzz Lightyear for the same thing.
@WaterGirl:
I don’t know that you need “respective” there. There’s no telling with these folks.
@debbie: Caitlin Flaganan was a main reason for my not renewing an Atlantic subscription years ago.
@hitless:
Yes, much like the only reason the US came into being was because of radical and violent anti-imperialist and slavery was ended by aggressively militant abolitionists.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Anti-turkite?
Ewwwwwww:
(TPM)
@lamh36: One of the Obama girls wasn’t there for Barack’s final speech, if I recall correctly.
@LurkerNoLonger:
“Unwanted hugs” is Lasseter’s formulation in his non-apology apology:
@Baud: you know, I did pause for a second as I was typing that!
Curiously, so did Charles Manson.
@WaterGirl: Sasha had finals the next day, IIRC
@Steeplejack:
Hmmm.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ah, I did not know that. Thanks.
@steenfox
You know what didn’t age well?
Pepe le Pew cartoons.
So true…I was NEVER a fan of Pepe Le Pew
So bad, that apparently a couple of years ago streaming sights began adding a disclaimer about them being “…products of their times”
@Mike in NC:
I think I remember reading her a time or two long ago and never agreeing with her, but I’d never heard her voice until today. Pompous, entitled, bitch princess. Just a horrible human being.
@ruemara: I’m think if we start conflating unwanted hugging with what Moore, Trump and Weinstein have done we’re going to get into a real bad place.
@lamh36:
ExActly. The Obama girls rolled their eyes right out of their sockets at the terrible dad jokes, but I never once got a vibe that they were in pain. I know 100% that if either of them had said definitively “Nope, don’t wanna do this,” Michelle and Barack would have been fine with that choice. Poor Barron seems like he’s being crucified whenever he is forced to make a public appearance next to his dad. He seems beyond uncomfortable; he seems literally pained.
@LurkerNoLonger: Yup. A few more weeks and it will be, “Then [famous person] killed a baby, then he drank the baby’s blood, then he put the dead baby’s hand on my breast and said, ‘Hail Satan.'”
@Patricia Kayden:
I am predicting right now that an Alex Jones clone is the Republican Presidental canidate who is coming after Trump
@debbie: In other words, typical Hillary hater.
@LurkerNoLonger:
The key word is “unwanted.” There are different degrees of harassment, but they’re all wrong. Excuses shouldn’t be made for any of them.
“He is in total denial”….
“Wait, I said that all wrong.”
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It is a stupid tradition. Do you remember the West Wing episode where Josh or Toby or someone left the turkeys overnight in C.J.’s office and they created all kinds of mayhem?
Good times.
@Baud:
And using this as an excuse to bring it all up again. Not once did she mention a GOP transgressor. A couple people phoned in to say that, but it did no good.
@LurkerNoLonger: Dude or Ma’am. It’s not the same, but it is harassment. Consent isn’t hard. You don’t get to hug, fondle or cuddle your employees. No one has said it’s sexual assault, but it does make the workplace uncomfortable at best.
I assume Adam S will have a post up about the latest news about the Niger raid?
@ruemara:
You are stepping into touchy territory here, especially with the holidays coming up.
One interesting thing that my single mother did with me is that she allowed it to be OK for me to reject the request of a hug or kiss from visiting family members I did not know or who I had just met. But having grown up in the South, I know lots of people who expect kids to “respect” elders, and to give them a hug and a kiss on demand.
ET: grown up, I did not demand that my little niece or nephew give me a hug and a kiss when my sister brought them over for a visit. But we developed a bond and they volunteered hugs and kisses. All good.
@debbie: The media will eat it up. They love it.
@dmsilev: You just have to know that a pastor named “Flip” is siphoning off quite a bit of the congregation’s Sunday offerings for his personal use.
@Brachiator: Yes. And that’s why I say folks don’t understand consent. No one cares if you want to hug or kiss someone else – except that other person. You don’t know how they feel about unwanted touching and you need to ask before you do.
@The Dangerman: This morning the local newspaper had an obituary entitled, “Hippie Cult Leader Charles Manson Dies At 83”. Because being a hippie is so much worse than being a fucking mass murderer, right?
@LurkerNoLonger:
I repeat from above: “unwanted hugs” is Lasseter’s formulation.
From a story in The Hollywood Reporter:
@dmsilev:
I don’t understand. Did these women all up and volunteer to go to ‘Nam? Did they flee to Canada with draft dodger hippie boyfriends? Did they all get married? Alien abduction?
We need an investigation. What happened to the (presumably) white women of Alabama that should have been available for Roy Moore?
It says something sad about Alabama that as Moore’s explanations get more and more ridiculous and sleazy, the more his supporters hang on tight.
@debbie: Yeah that makes sense.
@ruemara: I’m a dude.
@Steeplejack: That sounds a lot worse than just hugging. I didn’t see that article.
I wish those turkeys would turn on him like they did on Les Nessman at the Pinedale Shopping Center. Here’s the link to the classic WKRP Thanksgiving Day episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR6yA59LcRQ
@Mike in NC:
No. I don’t have a big problem with this. Manson wasn’t a real hippie. And he ordered the murders, he did not do the job himself.
“Hippie Cult Leader” hits the spot.
@Steeplejack:
Wow, just appalling.
@Mike in NC:
Can I change realities please.
@Major Major Major Major: Are you heading to Maui during christmas? or was that just a typo?
We’re the turkeys circling tRump like this?
@debbie: Jeez the Clintons will never be free. Every time there’s a new groping scandal we have to reconsider whether we flogged the Clenis hard enough back in the day.
@Montysano: I caught that, too!
@Hkedi: mauL, the verb. I’m going to Portugal.
@Mike in NC: Why do so many vile white Irish American Catholics inflict themselves on the the public via the media? MoDo, Hannity, O’Reilly, this wench, and too many others I’ve mercifully forgotten. So ashamed to share the same tribe.
@dmsilev: @Brachiator: Maybe that was a polite way of saying that Moore developed a taste for young girls while he was in Vietnam. I would love for some reporters to contact other people he served with there.
@NotMax:
And domestic turkeys have been known to drown during rainstorms by looking up for too long.
@Baud:
But you’re also a sea monster.
@debbie: Egypt, in de Nile.
@debbie: Yep. Unwanted hugs is
not a good description ofa ridiculous description for what was described there.@ruemara:
I’d still sentence him to lifetime as a monk with a vow of chastity just to be safe.
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Phrasing.
@dmsilev: For their purity. Yeah, we get that. He’s scum, just scum.
@LurkerNoLonger:
You mean we’re not already there?
@Major Major Major Major: ah! Have fun in Portugal.
@Major Major Major Major: I thought you were going to London.
@Hkedi: Thanks, that’s the plan. I hear from many people that it’s got the best cooked fish in the world!
Little Billy Kristal has no inner liberal, he has no inner socialist and he has no inner feminist. If he had two brain cells to rub together he might have an actual functioning mind. But alas he doesn’t.
Now if he renounces every word he’s written over the last 64 yrs, apologizes to all the normal humans that he has shit upon for all of those 64 yrs, and performs harakiri in front of the weekly standard, I might consider that it’s possible I’m wrong in my first paragraph.
@Ruckus:
Well crap, I’m in moderation.
You know how Republicans worship troops and police and first-responders and such? Wonder what they’ll say about this one?
@trollhattan: Easy, women officers are only 3/5ths as trustworthy as a white Republican.
How does he not know the difference between “he is in total denial” and “he denies it totally”? How stupid is this man?
Billy Kristol
The Girondins were radicals too. Look what it got them
Taking a cue from their boss, three military service members in the communications division could not keep it in their pants during Trump’s blunder in Asia.
Possibly compromising themselves.
/Sigh
White House military personnel removed amid investigation into contacts with foreign women during Trump’s Asia trip
@eclare: London, then Portugal. I was trying to make it sound sexier.
@ruemara:
This is the kind of thing that tends to blow up even if it’s done “innocently” if HR isn’t willing to tell the big boss that people are complaining and he needs to keep his hands to himself.
It’s not the unwanted hug per se — it’s that no one is willing to tell him that it’s a problem. And so it just gets worse and worse, again even if there’s not a conscious intent to harass anyone. That’s where you start getting a hostile workplace.
@WaterGirl:
More likely, he believed that he could more freely indulge himself outside the US.
@Major Major Major Major: Friend of mine went to Portugal a couple of years ago, now wants to retire there. Enjoy!
@Brachiator:
I’d bet money that you are correct.
@ruemara: I agree 100%. AND: what does it say that the unwanted contact for which arguably redeemable individuals are apologizing is hugs and groping and the stuff for which the perpetrators are doubling down is fucking pedophilia and rape?
I want this all out in the open and I thoroughly condemn all of this conduct. But somehow mysteriously the repercussions for some assaults or harassment have been drastic whereas those for others much worse have been deflected, minimized, ignored, or bothsided in light of the former.
This is shaping up to be two things at the same time: 1) a vital and necessary project to hold people (er, men really) accountable for what men do to women in the workplace and numerous other public spaces; and 2) a ratfucking operation by the Republicans to bothsides statutory rape, sexual assault, and abuse of power committed under clearly aspirational cover with the end goal of allowing the worst actors both personally and politically to be the ones left standing.
I fucking hate this world.
Haven’t read the thread. I cannot believe I would ever be against a turkey pardon, but after Trump got through with it I would bite that turkeys throat the with my own bare teeth. Trump’s presidency is like my last divorce. I didn’t know the depths of my own personality was capable in disliking this guy.
Trump said today he would announce next week if he will campaign for Moore.
Oh, pleasepleaseplease pleasePLEASE let this happen. Few things could be better than these two perverts tied together for all time.
@The Moar You Know: I just went over to Twitter to see Bill Kristol’s tweet on his timeline. I noticed he has 5.7K replies to it. I added one saying roughly “Welcome to the reality-based world”
@SiubhanDuinne: Every time I see him he seems just very…. remote. I don’t know what that might indicate, but it seems odd.
@Shana:
There is a longstanding rumor that he’s on the autism spectrum, but no one in the Trump family has ever confirmed that. Given his father’s age, it seems fairly likely — paternal age is one of the biggest risk factors for an autism diagnosis.
They fall in line.
The rancid pied piper has started playing his tune.
70% for Moore.
@TenguPhule: The turkey in chief looks straight into an eclipse without glasses.
@JR: a nice monument in Bordeaux?
They were just fine with the Republican agenda until it included normalizing Nazis(both are Jewish). Leopards, faces, and all that. They didn’t care how bad the Republicans were until they realized there was a chance they’d be on the receiving end.