Vladimir Putin gave a talk today. What I am picking up from Twitter is that it was mostly about improving social conditions in Russia, but Putin seems to have though he needed to get into the “My button is bigger than yours” discussion.
The nuclear trolling at the end of Putin’s address seems to be entirely aimed at gathering as many alarmist and jingoistic headlines and comments in the West as possible and then contrasting them on Kremlin TV against the overall progressive nature of the speech.
— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) March 1, 2018
He claims, as he had before, that Russia has a missile that can hop-skip-jump around any defenses the United States may offer. And he may have said that it’s nuclear-powered, which is possible but absurd. He also claims a doomsday weapon that will stealthily proceed underwater to the east coast of the United States, where it will explode in a radioactive tsunami. Until we see a bit more on these weapons (like US satellite photos of their tests), I remain agnostic as to whether they actually exist.
Here’s the trippy, animated video Putin showed (to great applause) of the new missile Russia has (allegedly) developed. https://t.co/E1wkchmXD5
— Mike Eckel (@Mike_Eckel) March 1, 2018
«Как вы понимаете, ничего подобного в мире ни к кого нет»: Вот так, покашливая, Путин отправил в корзину всю систему ПРО и не только ее pic.twitter.com/HB9mPLDnFh
— Дмитрий Смирнов (@dimsmirnov175) March 1, 2018
The missile over green hills looks photoshopped or animated to me, but I’ll wait until the experts on such things weigh in before that’s a firm conclusion.
My Twitter feed is having fun with this in predictable ways.
Putin has just announced a web contest to name Russia's new underwater nuclear drone weapon pic.twitter.com/8HqcaTVkTs
— Alec Luhn (@ASLuhn) March 1, 2018
I think this is the wisest advice on all this, which I doubt American media will follow.
Re Putin’s remarks: They’re clearly bad. But how bad? An accurate word-for-word translation is critical here. Don’t trust news reports to get the details correct. And the details matter.
— (((James Acton))) (@james_acton32) March 1, 2018
Aimai
I wonder how putin’s puppet will spin this?
Baud
He calls it “The Donald.”
Cheryl Rofer
@Aimai: Trump will probably ignore it. He’s likely to announce tariffs today on steel and aluminum to damage the economy.
Cckids
@Baud:
Perfect! I was going to suggest “Bomb-y McBombface”, but yours is much better.
Catherine D.
Will they name it Nukey Nukeevich McNukerson?
bystander
My entry in the contest is Droney McDroneface.
ETA: Slow to post is not proof of plagiarism.
opiejeanne
@Cheryl Rofer: Where was that last missile headed, the one that goes south around Tierra del Fuego before heading north along the west coast of South America? I didn’t see its final destination because my computer hated that video for some reason and just stopped it when the missile was alongside Peru. Or was that a ship carrying another fun missile?
opiejeanne
@Cheryl Rofer: Hawaii? It hit Hawaii? I played it again and it didn’t stop but Putin interrupted and it was difficult to tell where it went.
Cheryl Rofer
@opiejeanne: The video ends there too. Don’t forget that that is a line drawn by a computer program that has nothing to do with the missile. A quick translation that is now up from Tass makes it clear that the missile is in early stages of development, if we can believe what Putin says. Part of the official English translation is now up, and the rest should be there by tomorrow.
Jeffro
Radioactive tsunami?!?!? CLEARLY we must shut down the Russia investigation yesterday, lest we distract president* Trumpov from coming up with a “beautiful” plan to protect us all from that guy who he most definitely did not collaborate with.
Betty Cracker
@Cheryl Rofer: I suspect he’ll ignore it too, and that will be another tell. Putin is personally trolling the fool.
Spanky
Radioactive Tsunami will be my new band’s name.
Water is GREAT at absorbing radiation, also too.
Dave
That’s a great morning headline. Morning drinking bit is So given history of this skepticism of his super arsenal seems in order. And a bit of a so what as well. Don’t get me wrong I’d much prefer everyone moving to ditch nukes and tamp down the rhetoric but at end of the day if that balloon pops well everyone is still dying regardless of who’s aresenal is currently sexier.
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
Uh huh
Uh huh ??
marcopolo
For this thread, your obligatory Slim Pickens/Dr. Strangelove clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6WD7B_I_9c
Good morning everyone.
Scarshapedstar
The green hill animation looks like Pilotwings for the N64.
Aimai
@Betty Cracker: if its not on fox and friends how will he find out?
Lee Hartmann
There is no, nor has there ever been, any effective defense against ICBMs. The anti-ballistic missiles usually can’t hit the target even when they know what’s coming and when. I don’t know if MIRVs are still allowed but it hardly matters. A single warhead getting through is more than enough.
artem1s
@marcopolo:
also appropo:
Survival Kit scene
Patricia Kayden
@Aimai:
OzarkHillbilly
@Cheryl Rofer: He’s already done a bang up job in our timber feud w/ Canada. 6 months ago I could buy 7/16 OSB for $7.98 a sheet. $17.98 now. AFAIK he hasn’t actually done anything to cause the spike other than talk so it’s just speculation driving the price up.
Matt McIrvin
They have a shitload of ICBMs, so what does any of this matter? It’s already a thoroughly credible second-strike deterrent capability.
Cheryl Rofer
@Catherine D.:
@Betty Cracker:
I like your thinking, Tovarishi!
Matt McIrvin
They’ve revived the SLAM?
cosima
So, this was supposed to be the weekend where Mr C and I took our first romantic-anniversary-weekend-alone trip in our 18 years of marriage — it was only to Edinburgh (less than 3 hrs away), but still it was away & alone. The big motorcycle show was being held, and my plan was to avoid that and leave it to the mister, spending late afternoon/evenings with him, browsing bookshops & coffee shops etc during the day. Little C was to go on a 4-day ski trip with other S1/S2 (equiv of 7th & 8th grade) kids from her school. Anyway…….. we’ve had about 1 ft of snow (a lot for here), everything is shut down, cancelled, and called off. But Mr is still going in to work (nearly 1 hr drive on a good day). Thanks Obama (or May, whatever)!
Frankensteinbeck
What a ridiculous speech. My understanding of Putin’s record is that he is downright Republican in his determination to let everything go to shit for his people’s living conditions, and who gives a rat fart about whether he has scary bombs we don’t? We’re so far past MAD we can’t see it on the horizon. He could have a bomb that teleports into my living room. It won’t change anything in the arms balance or the politics involved.
I guess this is all posturing? He’s mocking America and lying to the Russian people about what he’ll do for them? You know, like Republicans do.
Betty Cracker
@Aimai: Good point.
Hey, have y’all seen the most arrogant Maggie Haberman tweet to date? Here she accuses Josh Marshall of distributing “fake news” for doubting her reportage on the timing of Hope Hicks’ exit from the White House:
Here’s the Marshall tweet to which Haberman was objecting, for those who are reluctant to click through to the devil’s platform:
To sum up, Haberman is suggesting that we must accept her interpretation of the statements she hears from anonymous sources who work in a White House filled from floor to ceiling with pathological liars. Haberman alone can divine whether the pathological liars are telling the truth, and to question her is to add to the “fake news” problem…that is the primary defense of her lying contacts. Jesus. So glad I shit-canned my NYT subscription before the election.
Cheryl Rofer
@Matt McIrvin: Possibly. Or the SNAP RTG thermoelectric reactors.
Matt McIrvin
@Cheryl Rofer: Either possibility seems pretty stupid. RTGs are good for space probes though.
mainmata
Oh, this is all so much Putin having fun with America. First of all, they’ve used a typical Tomahawk Cruise missile as the animation and has it going far, far past any possible fuel allotment for that sized missile. Quite aside from the fuel that would be consumed going around whatever those purple balloon defenses were supposed to be and then all the way round Tierra del Fuego and then what clearly was aimed at CA until Putin cut it off. Very silly, very, very silly. This is an impossible missile folks.
Cermet
Like the time the Soviets flew the same bombers over Moscow repeatedly and the us freaked; putin, being the pig faced liar any kgb ass wipe is, is just blowing more shit out of his ass/mouth. Anyone one can create a “radioactive tsunami” via a hydrogen bomb and it would be both a joke, and very low in radiation (i.e. water is an excellent absorber of radiation and most the radioactive debris will be washed away harmlessly.) Only an idiot would think such a weapon is other than near useless – yes, detonate a mega-ton hydrogen bomb underwater near New York, kill few people, do little radioactive fall out, and many orders of magnitude LESS damage to the city (no flash, or huge air shock wave) and get hit in return by a real, air blast hydrogen bomb. God, why didn’t Raygun think of this instead of the star wars bullshit.
As for a cruise missile (maybe even stealthy), they have always been hard to defeat – guess they are getting close to our 1980’s level cruise missile tech. What a fucking joke asswipe putin is.
That all said, when bush the socket puppet being controlled by bloody hands cheney got him to remove us from the ABM treaty, putin has realized how behind the russian missile forces and defense really are and that the have neither the money or technology to catch up; hence, his silly “We have bigger, badder nukes than you”. LOL.
Cheryl Rofer
@Matt McIrvin: Yep
Matt McIrvin
@mainmata: Something like a SLAM–a nuclear-ramjet cruise missile–could actually do that, while spewing deadly radiation along its entire track. But it’s a ridiculous idea if you already have a huge arsenal of ICBMs, unless you believe in Ronnie Reagan’s Star Wars defense, which I don’t believe Putin really does.
Cheryl Rofer
@mainmata: Thanks for the identification. I’m not much for missiles.
One of Putin’s talents is as a master troll. I thought I’d get this post up early because the media take the bait every time.
The Russians have been touting a maneuverable missile since at least the 1980s. Haven’t seen it yet.
Mike J
We’ve had terrain following cruise missiles for a while. Flying at treetop level takes a lot more fuel than flying at altitude and should limit range somewhat. Also much slower to fly in thicker air.
I think this type of delivery system is a nice option to have in one’s bag, but not a game changer.
David Evans
One advantage of the nuclear tsunami is that there is no missile that could be tracked to its source. The choice of whom to retaliate against might be problematic, especially in a future where North Korea might credibly have the same weapon.
Barbara
I wonder if Putin sends coded messages to Trump via speeches and radio broadcasts. Yes, I do in fact read a lot of spy novels.
Matt McIrvin
@Barbara: Yes but they’re all just about Ovaltine.
Frankensteinbeck
@David Evans:
We’ll certainly never suspect it was Russia, now!
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: Here’s what some New York City-based broadsheet said about Josh Marshall, whom Maggie called a non-journalist, some time back:
tobie
@Cheryl Rofer: @OzarkHillbilly:
Purity ponies on the left meet fascists on the right again! I was assured in 2016 that if we just slapped tariffs on everything American workers could compete in the global marketplace. Anyone who argued otherwise was a corporate whore, neoliberal shill and card-carrying member of the Establishment.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: Unless Hope Hicks personally told Maggie Haberman two weeks ago that she was considering leaving, Haberman’s version has no stamp of veracity. It’s all self-serving claptrap.
Elizabelle
@cosima: The Beast from the East strikes. My sympathies.
Cheryl Rofer
Betty Cracker
@Barbara: And even if she did have some vague plan to exit at some unspecified time in the future (which seems to be the case for everyone who works in that White House), the timing of yesterday’s announcement is still pretty interesting, no?
I understand that dealing with people like the Trumps and their hangers-on is unprecedented for Haberman and any other veteran DC access hack. But Christ, we’re 400+ days into this administration (not to mention the campaign coverage), and she’s still assuming what they say is true until presented with iron-clad evidence to the contrary.
It shouldn’t take this long to adjust. It’s really not so hard to flip the script. Assume they are lying — they almost always are!
Amir Khalid
@Barbara:
If Putin does that (and it doesn’t strike me as entirely implausible) there has to be someone on the White House staff in charge of receivng and decoding the secret message, because Trump doesn’t have the attention span to listen for them himself.
Spanky
@Cheryl Rofer: Sadly, my employer blocks twitter, so I cannot see the one picture. At least they let me translate!
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
Even on MSNBC, which my mother watches religiously, it took over an hour of discussing the meeting about gun control for someone to raise the possibility that Trump’s words might be meaningless. Only then did they play a clip of a Democratic lawmaker saying they’ll have to wait and see if Trump’s statements will be actual White House policy. Nobody pointed out that Republicans in congress are the ones who will actually need to be negotiated with and Trump is a figurehead here.
Spanky
@Amir Khalid: In days of Olde, I think the US and USSR had The Hotline. May still be around.
(ETA the rest of the comment) Therefore, no need for fancy-schmancy coded msgs, unless Vlad entertains Donnie’s obsession with his Crackerjack decoder ring.
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
I think there’s a code. The message is ‘Push for more nukes’, and the code is called ‘neener neener’ and is used on every elementary school playground.
Frankensteinbeck
@Spanky:
As I recall, Trump used it to get permission from Putin for his airfield bombing in Syria.
Ken
@Amir Khalid: Yeah, I can’t see SNL updating the “President Reagan Mastermind” with Trump playing the bumbling fool for the public, and a scheming superspy in private.
Jinchi
@Gin & Tonic:
I think her definition of “journalist” is someone who writes for a “real” newspaper. And of course, you have to have the view from nowhere.
Jinchi
@Betty Cracker:
Even after Hicks told the world she often tells “white lies” in support of Trump.
germy
I hope that missile doesn’t fly too close to Brazil. Might frighten Greenwald.
Major Major Major Major
As we clearly cannot allow a doomsday gap, we must build one of these immediately, and bigger!
Gin & Tonic
@germy: He will just deny its existence. In 5,000 words.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: *50,000
Barbara
@Amir Khalid: Plus, Trump doesn’t speak Russian. His wife might actually know some Russian, because she was in school before the wall came down, but I doubt if she is a willing translator.
Leto
@mainmata: But how will the poor defense contractors be able to sell us on the “missile gap” theory, and promise to provide all the missiles we need to counter this threat? Won’t someone think of the poor defense contractors??? /s
Leto
@Amir Khalid: Plus he’s probably misplaced the decoder ring.
cosima
Russia has such a dramatic history, with so many extreme high & low points. It’s been the birthplace of important advances in the sciences, birthed amazing musicians and authors, so admirable in so many ways. I visited there in 1986, just after the Chernobyl disaster. It was beautiful in so many ways, and also so tragic, it was clear that there were many suffering under Communism, every moment of my time was scripted and conscripted, even being shown the ‘best’ of the USSR was oppressive for the most part. It was an amazing opportunity to be able to visit, particularly while it was still a communist country. However, I’ve never been tempted to go back — not even while we had close friends living there in the 2000s, never since then. The rotten stench since Putin rose to power has been overwhelming. I hope that I live long enough to see how history treats that evil horrible man.
Not long ago, I think it was a link I found in the comments here, there was a piece about a village in remote Russia where unemployment was above 40% and everyone lived in poverty, and yet one of the people interviewed said she’d vote for Putin again. Can’t remember the specifics, but it was something along the lines of her believing that he was the only one with the experience to fix what is broken. Never mind that he broke a lot of it and has now had about 20 years to fix it and hasn’t. It’s like 50% of the country has Stockholm Syndrome and he is their captor.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: You can’t awaken those who are just pretending to sleep. Our media is not learning because they don’t want to or are paid not to learn that Rs are full of shit.
japa21
@Jinchi: I know I saw her send out a tweet some weeks ago along the lines of “Nobody realized the degree to which the WH would lie to us”, us meaning her. Apparently someone got to her and she has pulled back from that.
schrodingers_cat
@cosima: I separate the people from the ruling class. The woman in your anecdote may be afraid to speak the truth because she lives in a quasi-totalitarian regime.
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: He barely has a grasp on English. The only language he is a natural in is in Moron Haterade.
NotMax
Hand in glove with N. Korea’s dastardly plan to deprive each generation of food until its people are small enough to fit inside the driver’s seat of Putin’s steerable missile.
“Mr. President, we are facing a midget gap!”
But her emails!!!
I’m not really impressed by the concept of an underwater nuclear drone. I know that it adds some frightening capabilities, but it sounds like they dropped a nuclear weapon in a mini-sub and wired it up to be remote and/or auto controlled.
Is the US response going to be throwing a suitcase nuke into the back of one of the Google self piloting vehicles and claiming they have a nuclear surface drone?
japa21
Concerning Haberman, I was looking at her Twitter profile and she describes herself in part as a “random woman”. WTF does that mean?
But her emails!!!
@Cheryl Rofer:
Mental note to self. Don’t let Russians paint my Death Star.
scav
Doesn’t matter what the answer Orange Magic Tweetball rolls out. Ignore it? Outrage on one side, cries of Russian stooge and ignoring threat! Auto-support on other, (strong silent HeMan!) with accusations of hypocrisy! leveled as the prototypical peace-loving hippy left. Manic rebuff with Call to Arm (Merchants)!? Holy Shit TerrorOutrage with Auto-support (Real Man with Strong Stick!) on the other with a little Job-Producing! Fairy Dust and PewPewPew allied redemption. Plus the scattering of “See! He’s Not a Putin-Poodle-Puff” chow for any faltering true believers.
And so on for all the possible faces. So long as the churn is maintained in the electorate, it’s all good. And easy to look smug and say one meant to provoke exactly that face of the orange dice.
catclub
@Matt McIrvin:
I would have said that submarine launch is the best second strike capability, and at least for a while, Russia had barely any of those out to sea.
Major Major Major Major
@japa21: probably quoting somebody insulting her.
GregB
is this what winning feels like?
cosima
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, it could be that. It could also be that a lot of the citizens are completely beaten down. It could be that they know/understand/feel that their elections are not legitimate, so what could possibly be the point of voting against him, whether you say it out loud or not?
When the orange fart cloud was elected I told Mr Cosima that one of the things that pissed me off about it was that I knew I’d be seeing a lot more of that shite-stain Putin in the headlines in the future, given his BFF thing with OFC. That has of course become true for much more dramatic reasons, and exponential, but glob I hate seeing his evil face-lifted face in the headlines, day in & day out, and never ever for any good reason.
rikyrah
ICYMI:
The KKKeebler Elf poked Dolt45 in the eye by having dinner with Rosenstein and the Solicitor General in public, so that he could be seen.
rikyrah
Loans to Kushner business followed meetings at White House: NYT
Jesse Drucker, business and taxes reporter for The New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about new reporting that companies loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kushner family business after meeting with Kushner at the White House.
Feb.28.2018
Spanky
Top CNN headline:
And that’s different from any other 48 hours how, exactly?
rikyrah
ICYMI:
The NEW YORK STATE EXAMINER is looking at Kushner’s Bank Records.
Key words being NEW YORK STATE
STATE LEVEL CRIMES CAN’T BE PARDONED, Boo.
Bobby Three Sticks says ‘ Checkmate’.
BWA HA HA HA HA H AHA
FlyingToaster
@Barbara: Because of the Tito-Stalin split, it’s unlikely she ever learned Russian. IIRC, Slovenian schools taught either Slovene, Hungarian or Italian (depending on municipality) as their first language, Slovene or Serbo-Croatian as their second language, and either German or English as their third. Nowadays the second language is English or German.
NotMax
Flash! Canada ‘bombs’ Florida.
rikyrah
Oh, and a big PHUCK YOU to Maggie Haberman for trying to carry Hope Hicks’ water.
I am SO glad that Wolff came out with his book and just stomped all over hers.
schrodingers_cat
@cosima:Those poor Russian people, their misery just seems to have no end in sight.
NotMax
Fancy Bear goes to Germany.
rikyrah
Exxon is abandoning Russian projects brokered by Rex Tillerson, ending hopes of drilling in Moscow’s Arctic ocean oil fields https://t.co/QuYInpLhi3
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 1, 2018
germy
rikyrah
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Marine Le Pen: French judge opens probe into IS images https://t.co/hXgmmjPYJR
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 1, 2018
Mnemosyne
@Cermet:
I am a total layperson here, but I’m pretty sure that a tsunami hitting the East Coast would cause a huge amount of damage — some areas are still recovering from the hurricane.
The real threat is massive damage from the tsunami, not the radioactivity.
rikyrah
Now, this is something I can believe in.
Today’s a big day for @TheDemocrats, because we’re launching #IWillVote to talk to 50 million Americans about going to the polls this November. I committed to vote this morning — will you join me? https://t.co/zatV0zAKzA pic.twitter.com/BDiylrx7gP
— Tom Perez (@TomPerez) February 28, 2018
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah:Is she angling for Hicks’ job?
rikyrah
LOL
The only possible name for Trump’s next reality series is “The Shit Show”.
It’s about a bunch of clowns who move into the White House and ruin America. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and a lot of you will wish YOU’D VOTED pic.twitter.com/0cAH2aINQb
— Ken Olin (@kenolin1) March 1, 2018
rikyrah
It’s call the Negro Wake Up Call.
The White House is furious at the embarrassing stories about the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Secretary Ben Carson https://t.co/H1LDdOjBsI pic.twitter.com/Fvosx8DOg2
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 1, 2018
germy
Cokie and Jill Stein. Together on stage. Should be a great discussion.
rikyrah
Janus v. AFSCME: Rauner, Lisa Madigan and the Illinois case at the Supreme Court
GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic Attorney General Lisa Madigan were both inside the Supreme Court on Monday for Janus v AFSCME Council 31 oral arguments — a big Illinois case and a high point of the Rauner crusade to eradicate public sector unions.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/janus-v-afscme-rauner-lisa-madigan-and-the-illinois-case-at-the-supreme-court/
Leto
Since this is an open thread, Ta-Nehisi Coates is writing a new Captain America series due out this July: (The Atlantic) Why I’m Writing Captain America And why it scares the hell out of me
rikyrah
‘Javanka’ faction falling apart as Hope Hicks, others quit W.H.
Rachel Maddow reports on the resignation of White House communications director Hope Hicks, her legal context in the Trump Russia scandal, her political context as an ally of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the White House, and her personal context for Donald Trump.
rikyrah
Mueller queries getting at heart of Russia collusion question
Carol Lee, national political reporter for NBC News, talks with Rachel Maddow about new reporting that special counsel Robert Mueller is asking interviewees whether Donald Trump knew about hacked DNC e-mails before they were released.
Francis
Query for the horde: in the event of actual nuclear war, how many of the damned things are expected to actually go off? Most? Half?
On one level it’s kind of a dumb question, because even one is one too many. But let’s say that I don’t have a great deal of trust in our military-industrial complex.
sheila in nc
@Matt McIrvin:
WIN! One of my favorite movies ever.
“A crummy commercial?“
rikyrah
New questions surround the ‘Patriot Legal Expense Fund’
03/01/18 10:08 AM
By Steve Benen
…………………………
At first blush, the creation of the fund may not seem especially noteworthy. The Russia scandal has cast quite a net over much of Trump World, and I’m sure many of the president’s aides could use some financial assistance paying defense attorneys’ bills.
But given this gang’s lax approach to ethics and legal proprieties, it’d be helpful to know who’s contributing to the fund, how it will distribute money, who might be deemed ineligible for assistance, and what the fund will do to ensure compliance with conflict-of-interest rules.
At least for now, those are the questions no one is answering – and it’s part of a larger pattern.
Just this week, for example, the Trump Organization said it would “donate” its foreign profits to avoid legal trouble for the president. The Washington Post reported, however, that the Trump Organization hasn’t said how much money it donated. Or how it arrived at the figure. Or which foreign governments originally paid the president’s businesses. Or which parts of the president’s private-sector enterprise were included.
Meanwhile, Trump still won’t release his tax returns. Trump’s White House won’t release its visitor logs. Trump’s Florida resort has gone to court to keep its customer list secret. Trump’s White House even tries to obscure his golfing habits.
rikyrah
THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O’DONNELL 2/28/18
Lawrence: Hope Hicks made Sean Spicer look competent
The W.H. Communications Director says she will resign one day after revealing to the House Intel Cmte. she tells “white lies” for Trump. Lawrence O’Donnell examines Hicks’ record of bad decision-making in a job that requires her to make the White House look good.
schrodingers_cat
OT: Carrot Halwa update.
I made it in the slow cooker with ricotta cheese, it turned out awesome! Yay me.
Nicole
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, the thing that jumped out at me about the “no perfect time” excuse is that while there probably is no perfect time, some times are still better than other times and it seems to me that the day after you admit you lie to the press for your boss might not be one of the “better” times.
I think Mueller should maybe take a look at where Haberman’s money comes from recently, as I swear, I would not be surprised to see some conversions to dollars from rubles in her transaction histories.
Also was that Rubin who did a fawning piece on Hicks in today’s WaPo? I knew it couldn’t last with her.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
wouldn’t surprise me
GregB
@schrodingers_cat:
Posting the recipe?
NotMax
A droplet of unbad news, animal style.
aimai
@schrodingers_cat: Oh, great idea for a slow cooker! I adore carrot halvah!
rikyrah
THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O’DONNELL 2/28/18
Student protests have Democrats pushing Trump to act on guns
In tonight’s Rewrite, Lawrence O’Donnell explains how Democrats are using the political momentum from the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where 17 people were killed on Valentine’s Day to convince the president to support their gun legislation
Spanky
@Mnemosyne: A tsunami requires a real whole lotta bunch of energy, and I don’t think a nuke is big enough to cause more than localized flooding. And I’m not sure how far inland a nukified wave would travel.
germy
@NotMax: 272 years. What a lifespan. I wonder how they perceive time.
Amazing to think something living today was swimming around almost 300 years ago. I remember reading about a whale they found with part of a 19th century harpoon still in her. A wonderful survival story.
germy
@Spanky: So monstrous, these audience members applauding the idea of a tsunami. I know they’re Putin fans, but still…
Spanky
@Nicole:
Only one that might fit that description is by Alexandra Petri. I just skimmed it, and it doesn’t look that fawning to me.
OTOH, here’s one for the books:
No linky for you! But it’s a WaPo Opinion Page piece, in the event you’re a real masochist.
trollhattan
@Jinchi:
So when she says “He’s so dreeeeamy.”…
Reminiscent of Condi and Dubya. Speaking of, she’s poking her head up lately and I wonder if it’s testing the presidential waters. To which I say hell to the no!
Roger Moore
@Francis:
It depends a lot on the scenario. One scenario that’s discussed a lot is a decapitation strike, in which a surprise attack with few nukes successfully takes out the other side’s leadership and command and control capability. In that case, the war is expected to end with that successful strike. Another possibility that’s been discussed is a limited strike following a conventional war, in which the side that’s losing attacks a single enemy city in the hopes of forcing peace negotiations that aren’t too unfavorable. Either of those scenarios could result in only a few nukes being used, or they could easily spiral out of control and result in most of them being launched. So nobody really knows how things would play out in reality.
trollhattan
@germy:
Jesus. How does Stein keep getting camera time? Yeccch.
Spanky
And speaking of high-energy events …
germy
@trollhattan:
The Villagers will always find time for anyone willing to talk shit about Democrats. (see Sanders, Bernie)
If she ever called for unity, they’d drop her in a minute.
schrodingers_cat
@GregB: I will try. I didn’t use any particular recipe.
germy
Mnemosyne
@Spanky:
I honestly have no clue how well a nuke would be able to mimic an undersea earthquake. I flunked physics, bigly.
Roger Moore
@Spanky:
That depends a lot on the nuke. The largest nuke ever designed was roughly equivalent to a magnitude 8.5 earthquake, which would be enough to kick up a substantial tsunami if it were delivered in the right place. Since that’s the general size of nuke the Russians are talking about putting on their doomsday sub, it would be a real worry- again, if they can figure out how to get the explosion to produce a strong tsunami.
germy
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
By providing a different line of attack on the Democrats. It lets the media claim they’re giving time to a diverse set of views while still ignoring any elected official with a (D) after their name.
trollhattan
@germy:
I should think the mass AR15 marriage ceremony is a more reliable marker of end times, but maybe that’s just me.
efgoldman
@catclub:
They used to have the Red October, but Sean Connery gave it to us.
Ken
@Mnemosyne: One way would be to use the nuke to trigger a massive landslide, either underwater or from land at the water’s edge. Cumbre Vieja is a candidate, possibly Storegga.
germy
lollipopguild
@trollhattan: The End Times as a Monty Python sketch.
Ken
@lollipopguild: Already done. The TV series even had John Cleese.
NotMax
@efgoldman
The K-19 coming within a hairsbreadth of experiencing a nuclear core meltdown was a wake-up call. After it had been towed back into port and decontaminated, its missiles were test fired to see what result exposure to massive amounts of hard radiation had on them. Answer: none, they performed as designed.
Barbara
@Spanky: Rick Wilson goes back and forth trying to decide whether he hates Trump or Democrats more and decides that he can’t lose by claiming that Trump actually IS a Democrat. Wilson is funny but still firmly in the other camp as far as I am concerned.
Amir Khalid
@germy:
Wikipedia describes the oldest Greenland shark known to man as having lived an estimated 392 +/- 120 years, so the low end of that estimate was 270 years and the high end a mind-boggling 510 years.
danielx
I seem to recall reading about some Russian guy saying that if they wanted to cause maximum havoc in the US, all they’d have to use would be two nuclear weapons – one targeted on the San Andreas fault and one on the New Madrid fault. Makes sense to me.
danielx
@germy:
John Bolton as National Security Adviser? We would be in a major war within thirty days.
Jeffro
@Barbara: it’s funny I was just coming here to complain about Rick Wilson showing his true dickhead colors and I see several others of already beat me to the punch . He’s funny when he slams trump but if he thinks calling him a “closet Democrat” is going to win his pathetic party back to him he’s got another thing coming
Spanky
@danielx: I’d say mission accomplished already, without those pesky nukes.
Amir Khalid
@Spanky:
Trump is neither a real Democrat nor a real Republican. If he’s a real anything, he’s a real apolitical grifter.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
It is stupefying that Haberman would waste time trying to defend her inadequate reporting. And it is ridiculous that the NYT editors would keep her (and her equally worthless colleague, whats-his-name) in the position as White House reporter.
I give her a -5 for logic and truthiness, but 10 style points for presumption and arrogance.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
I disagree. He’s proven he’s a real Republican, or at least that a large fraction of the Republican base are Trumpists rather than traditional Republicans. He has shown that the biggest motivation of the Republican party is bigotry, pure and simple.
Amir Khalid
@danielx:
That sounds very similar to Lex Luthor’s evil scheme in the first Chris Reeve Superman movie.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore:Word!
Fair Economist
@Jeffro: I’m happy for the #NeverTrumpers like Rick Wilson to call Trump a “closet Democrat”. They’ve lost the Republican party to the white supremacists and kooky evangelicals – that’s over and done. If they join the Democrats they might pull the Democratic party to the right some but as long as they attack both major parties they’ll be irrelevant politically except as a mild drag on the Republicans – and that’s just fine with me.
Brachiator
@Ken:
This sounds like an interesting movie, but poor military strategy. And I suppose that somewhere someone has worked out an intricate analysis on how much damage a “massive landslide” might cause, but it seems to me that a nuke dropped on NYC or Washington DC would wreak a massive amount of destruction.
The Moar You Know
@danielx: Absolute crap for the consumption of rubes. A nuke on a fault is equivalent to the impact of a flea jumping on your bed – unnoticeable. Your typical 6.0 earthquake on the San Andreas generates 6 kilotons, and hydrogen bombs generate thousands of times that – but only locally. Even if you dropped one nuke per mile, that still won’t do it as the fault slips that cause earthquakes don’t happen on the surface, but miles underground.
If you want to cause earthquakes, the best and only known way to do that consistently is fracking. Shoot billions of tons of water down to where the fault actually slips. That’s been working pretty well.
Jeffro
@Roger Moore: agreed… everything he has done has been in the service of the 1% and the most far right, racist elements of the Republican Party i.e. the majority. #NeverTrumpers and “principled” (LOL) conservatives have had their chance to stand up for their values and rebuke Trumpism (including joining the center – center party). Few have done so, so if they’re going to try and gaslight America about Trumpov being a “closet Democrat “, we need to get in their face about it
It’s okay – we don’t need them at this point. We are the majority. A blue wave is coming
Cheryl Rofer
@Francis: Good question. We don’t really know. I would say most.
Jeffro
@Fair Economist: I hear you but I’m not OK with it – Trump is a nightmare because he is a nightmare not because he is a closet Democrat . He is a nightmare that a vast majority of Rick Wilson‘s party embraced.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
Abe and TR wouldn’t have seen anything recognisably Republican about Trump. I’m not sure Ike, the last good Republican POTUS, would have either. I do agree that Trump has managed to hijack the party by appealing to the worst instincts of its base.
Spanky
Meanwhile, the msm ratchets up the hysterical headlines.
WaPo:
“Arsenal”?
germy
Fair Economist
@Jeffro: No, don’t get in their face about the silly claim that Trump is a “closet Democrat”. Let it ride. Nobody will fall for it on our side. That will just further fracture the Republican party by giving “traditional Republicans” who don’t like Trump more reason to stay home in elections.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Remember The Dot and the Line? Dolt 45 is the squiggle, “nothing more than anarchy and sloth.”
p.a.
Who put the snakes on the mother fucking skipping missle?
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Was it very sweet?
Spanky
Ooooh! Sick burn from CNN!
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
This kind of thing seems fundamentally insane. How much damage and civilian death would a “few nukes” cause if they were dropped just on DC and New York? And of course you might not take out the political leadership, which would be hunkered down in bunkers, but you would bring much of the economic life of the country to a halt, and cause a huge number of deaths.
What would be the point of following this up with conventional war? There would still be enough of the military and command structure to fight back elsewhere in the country. And I am having a hard time imagining enemy troops being able to operate successfully over the part of the country that had been laid waste by nuclear destruction.
Any attack would also have to cripple any ability by the US to launch retaliatory strikes. This might require the use of more than a few nukes. And in all the chaos, who would have authority to continue or to surrender?
But I don’t know. Maybe the generals who game this shit out have considered all the possibilities. Still seems insane to me.
rp
Clearly we live in the dumbest of all possible timelines.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/969229970483671040
“This thread is a perfect example of how partisan loyalists will attack & malign journalists if what the journalists report undermines, rather than promotes, the interests of their party. Just read what Haberman & Ryan Grim are saying here about what they know to see how it works:”
Ken
@Spanky: Well, they have a nuclear arsenal. And since they’ve noticed that nukes can be delivered by small vehicles, not just missiles, they can definitely avoid missile defenses.
(They’re a little late to the party on the small vehicle systems – I recall people discussing that in the Usenet days. The main theme then was deniability – if a nuke on a cargo ship goes off in NY harbor, would we even be able to tell which ship had it, much less how it go on board?)
Hoodie
@Roger Moore: there was an op ed in the local paper this morning by a former gop state Supreme Court justice bemoaning how the NRA had taken over “my” party. Hate to break it to him, but it’s not his party anymore or, more likely, he’s more like the gun nuts than he imagines. There seems to be this zombie belief among older Republicans that somehow their party will return to some golden age when they were all kindly church going fiscal conservatives. The mask was ripped off that fantasy when Reagan was president, 30 fucking years ago.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore:
Exactly. There was never any such thing as a “traditional republican”—the party has always been a small number of rapacious looters being given cover by pandering to racist, sexist, homophobic, and millenarian nutjobs.
@Hoodie:
40, more nearly.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Major Major Major Major: Right. Republicans are as Republicans do. There is no Platonic Republican party somewhere. There’s what people make on a day to day basis.
Cheryl Rofer
@Spanky: That is why I thought I’d get a post up early before the panic began.
rikyrah
I’m shocked that we even have an Ambassador to Mexico.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico to Quit Amid Tense Relations Under Trump https://t.co/sELTppvFBb
— Mark S. Getzfred (@marknyt) March 1, 2018
Miss Bianca
@germy: oh, ffs. Jill Stein at a “Women and Power” symposium? Only power that bee-yotch has is to fuck shit up. FAIL.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: No. Its not too sweet. It may actually be slightly short on sugar. I halved the amount of sugar as that of a traditional recipe.
ETA: I will post a recipe for the lazy version of carrot halwa on my blog.
Matt McIrvin
I keep thinking, “What missile defenses?”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and mainline protestant churches, where one didn’t make a fuss over any of it and carry on during the week. Not this snake-handling stuff. That weird, sentimental belief in Eisenhower Republicanism is what keeps them viable, in no small part because it gives people who find trump, and Gingrich, and Palin, and cetera embarrassing an excuse to keep voting for tax-cuts and telling themselves it’s more complicated than that.
rikyrah
YES YES YES
Voting rights milestone: today, California expanded its automatic voter registration law to automatic voter *pre*-registration!
16- and 17-year olds who get their license/ID will now be automatically preregistered and ready to vote when they turn 18. https://t.co/pgnMcaXWDV pic.twitter.com/9Y8OGOiTZ0
— Taniel (@Taniel) March 1, 2018
Matt McIrvin
…It’s like they actually still don’t know, after all these years, even approximately what a nuclear war would be like.
Cheryl Rofer
@Brachiator: “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed.”
[Thanks for making me look that up. It’s a really good image of some of the folks who wrote the Nuclear Posture Review.]
rikyrah
The plot thickens:
Lawmakers: Hope Hicks testified that Mike Flynn asked her to lie during the transition https://t.co/g7iOp8pYL9
— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 1, 2018
The Moar You Know
@Hoodie: My father is one of these. Hates Trump HATES him. But not because he disagrees with him on any sort of policy, I think 90% of the problem is simply Trump makes Republicans look bad. And I’ve told him, this has been festering in your party since Reagan was elected back when I was a child. The logical end result of the last 40 years has been this orange clown. He can’t put those pieces together. He’s not a stupid guy. But he’s having a problem with completely re-evaluating the last 40 years of his life. I get that. I would too.
Matt McIrvin
@The Moar You Know: I remember some idiot saying on Usenet years ago that they could bring the US to mass famine and total societal collapse by nuking the Alaska oil pipeline.
There are all kinds of these ideas that make no sense unless you don’t think them through very well. The EMP bomb that instantly destroys modern civilization is another one.
The Moar You Know
@Matt McIrvin: As do I. The fucking thing has never worked in anything remotely like real world conditions.
rikyrah
Malia Obama got one piece of advice from her mom before heading to college — and she didn’t follow it
Abby Jackson
Before former first daughter Malia Obama headed off to Harvard in the fall, she received a sage piece of advice from her mother and former first lady Michelle Obama.
“Don’t wind up on Page Six,” Michelle said, according to Page Six itself. “I don’t know if she managed that.”
The New York Post’s iconic gossip column has featured many a celebrity in its pages, Malia being one of them.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore:
Drop a Tsar Bomba on that one island in the Azores (the one with the cleaving fault line under the mountain), and see what happens.
No Drought No More
Does anyone know if Putin banged a table with his shoe when he made this announcement?
Remember Major Strasser? The guy Bogie advised there were some areas of NYC the German Army would be wise to avoid? Sure, Putin gets his kicks playing the tape at Kremlin parties of Trump frolicking with peeing hookers. But is he fool enough to confuse Trump with the United States? At the moment, I guess he is. And he’s a great fool for it, too.
rikyrah
Really?
Seriously?
Uh huh
Uh huh
Meghan Markle: UK Royal reporters shocked by racist abuse levelled at Prince Harry’s bride-to-be
By Europe correspondent Lisa Millar
Senior Royal reporters have lifted the lid on the extent of the abuse levelled at bride-to-be Meghan Markle over her mixed race background.
And they have told the ABC that one of their own colleagues was threatened with having acid thrown in her face over her reports.
The revelations came as Ms Markle joined her fiance Prince Harry, along with his brother Prince William and his wife Catherine, on stage officially for the first time.
The young Royals have been dubbed the Fab Four and are intent on using their appeal to further their charity work.
Ms Markle said she would continue to agitate for gender equality once she became a working Royal in eleven weeks.
But her mixed heritage — her mother is African-American — has sparked online abuse and threats unlike anything Royal observers have seen before.
Brachiator
Turns out an old mall near where I work was a designated nuclear war safe zone:
Ah, the good old days when we were all so innocent.
Mary G
rikyrah
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry join Prince William and Kate in first royal engagement
By Morgan M. Evans
Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, Prince William and Princess Kate have attended their first royal event together.
On Wednesday, the royals appeared on the panel for the premiere Royal Foundation Forum in London, England, marking their first royal event together since Christmas, when the family joined the Queen in Sandringham, England, for her annual holiday celebration.
The inaugural event, which boasted the theme “Making a Difference Together,” presented programs and initiatives organized by the Royal Foundation that help to unite people and “tackle society’s biggest challenges, including mental health, the armed forces and wildlife,” according to Kensington Palace.
“We feel a tremendous responsibility to play our part in affecting societal change for the better,” Harry said in his speech at the foundation event.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@Frankensteinbeck:
Putin and Republicans are cut from the same cloth.
The Moar You Know
@Matt McIrvin: That one in particular pisses me off. Part of my work deals with hardening gear, mostly against ESD. The “nuke 500 miles above Colorado” won’t do much to anything. It’ll torch a bunch of cheap consumer electronics right underneath it. Not much else. I don’t see that as a downside.
Corner Stone
@Mary G:
We live in the stupidest possible timeline.
Miss Bianca
@Leto: Wow, cool article. Thanks for sharing!
clay
@rikyrah: Bum bum BUUUUUUUMMMMMMMM!!!
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Damn. Sounds like this woman had excellent credentials.
Oh, Obama appointed her and the bonehead Republicans fought her appointment.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Weren’t BS bros and sisters all for this, tariffs, being anti-TPP and anti-NAFTA.
Will WTO fine us?
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: “We are shocked, SHOCKED to find racism going on in this establishment!”
efgoldman
@germy: That old crook and philanderer is still alive?
Mike in NC
@rikyrah: If the Ambassador to Mexico quits, that’ll be 42 countries lacking an American Ambassador. Jared can’t cover all those positions.
Cheryl Rofer
El Caganer
@Hoodie: I think today’s Republicans are the same type of people who called Ike a Communist back in the 50’s. Yeah, the Republican Party changed a long time ago.
eric
@Cheryl Rofer: The “Trump” a bomb that destroys the country from within with limited damage to infrastructure.
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat: I’m not sure but seeing as how it’s an absolutely stupid, misguided, dumb and self-damaging move then I am going to guess the answer is Yes.
I’m not sure what rumblings the WTO will start with, but President/Leader for Life Xi will certainly not take this direct assault lying down.
Aleta

Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Trump is always furious over something. Hell, I’m furious that Trump is president, but you don’t see me getting on Twitter every 5 seconds about it.
tobie
@schrodingers_cat: Not just BS bros. Elizabeth Warren, too. This is from her own website:
I assume “strengthen[ing] trade laws” and “meaningful enforcement” mechanisms and “playing on a level playing field” are code for tariffs.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Did you forget how globalization is the ebil and Obama and Bill Clinton sold us out refrain by our lefty betters?
T and company want to bring back the roaring twenties
Smoot Hawley 2.0 with these stupid tariffs
Johnson Reed 2.0 for immigration
And the huge taxcut.
Miss Bianca
@El Caganer: It’s funny, I was just thinking this morning about my father, who died almost twenty years ago, and how much he, a classic country-club Republican, would have been horrified by Trump. He went to college with George HW Bush, and I am sure he would have been a Jeb! supporter. But would he have voted for HRC? I am sure we would have had some lively…ah…airing of views on the subject. But the truth of the matter is that all the rot in the modern GOP has indeed, been there for 40 + years. It was exposed to varying degrees by Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Iraq War(s), etc…and covered to a certain degree by Reagan’s “folksy charm” (which always sickened me, but I can see how people would have fallen for it), HW’s New England-y blandness, W’s “man of the people” pose. Now scandals and political ignorance and folly of a truly unprecedented scale, coupled with the short-fingered vulgarian’s truly epic grossness, are appalling, almost unthinkable, to a certain country-club Republican. Will it appall them to the point of voting Democratic, or even declaring themselves Democrats? Time will tell.
MomSense
@GregB:
He did say we would get tired of winning.
schrodingers_cat
@tobie:Our MA Lady of hectoring is the beloved of the leftier-than-thou crowd after the saint of Vt.
Balloon Juice thread on the TPP hasn’t worn well either.
https://balloon-juice.com/2015/05/11/fast-tracking-tpp-punching-hippies-punching-down/
Mike in NC
But Sleepy Ben is part of the kakistocracy. Who is surprised he blew $31K of taxpayer money on a table? Does Carson even show up to work every day? He could spend hours sitting on a park bench feeding pigeons and nobody would notice he’s absent.
boatboy_srq
@mainmata: The Impossimissile? Unpossible.
frosty fred
@Miss Bianca: I have caused jaws to drop, describing the totally segregated society where I grew up. But I can’t remember ever hearing the kinds of overtly racist comments there, that I routinely have from middle-class Brits.
Aleta
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
There have been mixed race people, particularly people of African heritage in Britain since at least Roman times. And often the British people have been more accepting. But a few intense crazies are obviously a real problem.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Get the fuck out of here, the peeps who are acting “surprised”. The glorious reign (eulogized on PBS right now) of Queen Victoria was built on the bedrock of racism.
QEII’s crown diamond, was the stolen from India, the Kohinoor.
Unlike the criminal enterprise that ruled the British islands, Nazis had to return their loot.
Loot btw is a word found in many Indian languages including Hindi.
tobie
@schrodingers_cat: I really do get the impulse to say, “It’s not fair, I can’t compete with workers in Country X who earn a quarter of what workers earn here.” The problem is that restricting trade won’t (a) land your company contracts or (b) raise the wages of workers in Country X. The additional issue of whether an advanced economy should be competing for jobs that can just as well be done in an under-developed economy is not something as a country we’ve been willing to address.
ETA: HRC talked quite a bit about the role of govt in helping train people for the jobs of the future but was either ignored or lambasted for the position.
El Caganer
@Miss Bianca: I don’t know whether to be fascinated or appalled or both when I read Eisenhower’s statements on the MIC or about how schools and hospitals don’t get built when we spend the money for weapons. Ike was no saint and got us involved in some rather dubious adventures, but….Jeez, you read those things today and he sounds like Eugene Debs. There were a few others back then that I had real respect for, such as Mitt’s daddy George. But still – a long, long time ago.
Leto
@Miss Bianca: The Black Panther secret thread was a really great read and made me bookmark more stuff to look up/read. I’m definitely interested in reading the TNC BP stories, and I’ll try to check out this upcoming work too. I honestly haven’t read comics in a few decades, but I’m always a sucker for good art/stories. Plus it’ll be interesting to compare it to cinematic Marvel universe.
@Corner Stone: We should petition to get that as one of the permanent rotating tag lines.
@Mike in NC: I think you’re missing an important question/observation here: But what if he could?
Aleta
@rikyrah: She’s a target for horrendous racist attacks, and what does she do? Sitting with the other royals, asserts that #metoo and #timesup are serious priorities. Strong woman.
gvg
@tobie: No, not tarrifs.
There are actually trade laws which aren’t being enforced, often because republicans have an aversion to anything like inspectors of business and have sabotaged them by underfunding agencies. if a government or country is doing something against the treaty/law and we don’t enforce it that is a problem. there are too many ways it can be a problem to state it generally, it has to be each specific case. Its almost always hurting the law abiding companies though, so generally hurts American business and sometimes even hurts foreign competitors of the cheaters.
Brachiator
Here is one of the saddest aspects of this story. The Times article details the ambassador’s deep experience, but then goes on to note the following.
This is an administration of dopes and thieves.
schrodingers_cat
@tobie: The main problem with globalization is that the biggest profits went to investors and not consumers or people who work for their living. Without strong unions that’s going to keep happening even if we put tariffs on all imports and get rid of of all non-citizens in the labor force. All this will do is contract the overall economy.
tobie
@gvg: She’s talking about much more than just enforcing existing laws in the passage I quoted. True, she sticks to broad recommendations and doesn’t say tariffs explicitly but in the manufacturing community “level playing field” means that the same labor laws and environmental laws that apply here should also apply elsewhere. It’s a nice idea in theory, I get it, but it doesn’t work out in practice. Warren’s metier is banking law. She’s sharp as a tack when it comes to understanding the laws governing financial institutions and transactions. Her approach to trade is far less sophisticated.
Miss Bianca
@El Caganer: What I’m pondering right now is how we got a from GOP that could nominate, and vote for, an Eisenhower to a GOP that could nominate, and vote for, a Nixon. I know we had the 60s – and Barry Goldwater, whose extremism by 60s GOP standards looks almost quaint today – intervening, but what else was going on? Why the GOP cultural freak-out that prompted Goldwater?
Civil Rights movement, is my best guess.
tobie
@schrodingers_cat: Agree.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: The Rs were pretty horrible about immigration in the 1920s too. The Italians played the role that Mexicans do today.
Leto
@gvg: This is in a similar vein to how Republicans have underfunded most of the safety inspection agencies, which has resulted in having like 1 safety official having to inspect 3-400 sites. Which in turn helps lead to disasters like the West Fertilizer Company explosion in West, Texas back in 2013.
Edit: some background info on the West TX accident:
West Fertilizer Company explosion
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
And I’m sure that Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson would see nothing recognizably Democratic about Barack Obama. Neither would Woodrow Wilson. That doesn’t mean he isn’t a Democrat from the top of his head to the tip of his toes; it just means the party has changed over time. Trump may not fit with the party of Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, or Dwight Eisenhower, but the only way he doesn’t perfectly with the party of George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Warren Harding is that he’s so blatant about everything he’s doing. The Republicans have been the party of the corrupt elite since Grant, and they’ve been the party of bigotry since Nixon. Trump fits perfectly with both those essential traits of modern Republicanism. Hell, the Republicans have even been the party of traitorous deals with foreign dictators to win elections since Nixon, so the only way Trump hooking up with Putin is novel is that he’s stuck with it after the election.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The price increases on finished goods containing metal will be seen as “inflationary”, and those assholes at the Fed will fuck us on interest.
Welcome stagflation leading to the Trump Conservative Depression of 2019.
El Caganer
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yes, but it will be the best depression, very yooge and bigly.
Corner Stone
@El Caganer: We’re going to be doing something strong about this Depression, very, very strong. Believe me.
Gex
@Hoodie: Who do these people think allowed them to take over? The “good” or “moderate” or “sane” Republicans gladly used culture wars to get the margins they needed to win. Over and over and over again for decades. What did they think would become of the party if they recruited this way for so long?
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Brits like to think they’re less racist than Americans.
Key word being “think.”
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
The side of the Republican party that put Eisenhower in charge was never the whole party, and often wasn’t the strongest wing of the party. They only convinced Eisenhower to run in 1952 because they were afraid of Robert Taft winning the nomination, and Eisenhower’s victory was a close one. Throw in the Civil Rights movement, and it’s easy to see how a Goldwater or Nixon could wind up leading the party.
SgrAstar
@Jinchi: Josh Marshall has a fricking PhD in US History, and he’s won a Polk Prize. He totally eclipses Maggie Haberman. She’s outed herself as an access-grovelling sycophant. UGH.