BREAKING: Trump admin. says it will place tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union, the latest action in a string of protectionist policies to crack down on alleged trade abuses – @CNBC
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 31, 2018
Apparently the brace of geniuses that are Commerce Secretary Ross and Director of the President’s Trade Council Peter Navarro have prevailed in their attempts to trounce the (((globalists))) in order to put America First and Make America Great Again. You’ll notice we’re punishing our oldest and strongest allies and partners here. Apparently they needed to do something to keep anyone from paying attention to the fact that the President’s promises regarding economic growth are DOA.
as a candidate, Trump promised his policies would generate sustained 4% annual economic growth
after Trump became president, his White House promised 3%
today, his administration reported 1st quarter 2018 growth of 2.2%
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) May 30, 2018
And that the Paul Ryan Tax Cut for the People Who Have Been Subsidizing His Entire Political Career and Lavish Lifestyle at the Expense of the Public Good Act of 2017 is, as anyone who could do even basic addition and subtraction without having to take off their shoes to get to 20 (cough – not Speaker Paul Ryan – cough) will tell you, a colossal failure at stimulating the economy. Though it is the massive handout to the people that needed more money the least!
Shockingly, companies don't seem to be spending their tax-cut windfalls on investments and new hiring. https://t.co/tiaOJlxWmr
— Sheelah Kolhatkar (@sheelahk) May 30, 2018
John Stephens, chief financial officer at AT&T, said 20% of the company's employees are call-center workers. He said he doesn't need that many. In addition, he added, "I don't need that many guys to install coaxial cables." https://t.co/V0BXg0CmEI
— Axios (@axios) May 28, 2018
Who ever could have predicted?
Also, noted felon, all around self righteous hypocritical scumbag and wife abuser Dinesh D’Souza is getting a full pardon. Because why not. Anyone want to wager that this didn’t go through the regular pardon process? Anyone, anyone?
Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D’Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2018
Treated so unfairly that he never actually had to serve any time in prison. And got to continue all of his normal scams money making activities while serving his sentence doing community service in a half way house. As opposed to Matthew Charles who, because of an error, is now being sent back to prison because the Department of Justice under Attorney General Sessions can’t abide an African American man being treated decently within the criminal justice system. It is important to note that Kim Kardashian has been advocating for Charles to receive a pardon or clemency as part of her prison reform advocacy that brought her to the White House yesterday. It didn’t actually make a difference because Matthew Charles doesn’t make factually inaccurate, ideologically slanted, and proto-fascistic documentaries about the President’s political opponents.
Open thread!
SFAW
Well, it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, but it’s still pretty damn accurate
Peale
Can you “unpardon” someone? asking for a friend.
SFAW
And fuck Dinesh D’Sleaze-a, that lying, evil motherfucker.
Adam L Silverman
@Peale: Unfortunately no. But he will have to sign paperwork fully admitting to his guilt to receive the pardon. Which won’t stop him claiming he was innocent and the victim of a political prosecution, but will allow the rest of us to bring it up every time he does.
LAO
Well, this is going to end well:
Jeffro
“Forget about broad-based pay hikes”, recent recipients of enormous tax cuts tell their workers.
Can. not. wait. for paybacks here. Class warfare, I iz down with it.
dmsilev
He really is an asshole in every dimension imaginable.
GregB
America 2018, where we treat the world’s dictators like kings and the world’s democracies like shit.
Dystopia, you’re soaking in it.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: I love the world the dystopian world we appear to be living in. IIRC, D’Souza pled guilty — admitting to the criminal conduct on the record. Not that, that matters. Because nothing seems to matter anymore.
SiubhanDuinne
Adam, would you be kind enough to provide a brief explanation of what the “regular pardon process” entails? Thx in advance!
Villago Delenda Est
D’dumbshit didn’t serve enough time in prison, and now Donald is pardoning him for a crime he pleaded guilty to.
MattF
I put pardoning D’Souza into the ‘piss off the liberals’ bucket and the ‘remind Manafort that he’s going to prison’ bucket. And the tariff threat in the ‘my pal Vlad’ bucket.
SFAW
@Peale:
Not a lawyer, but I think you can “unpardon” someone like D’Sleaze-a — in a manner of speaking. The unpardoning of which I am thinking generally involves two large gentlemen, sometimes referred to as “Vito and Guido” (back when the Mafia was a thing), who would visit the unpardoned-to-be, and apply some judicious behavior modification techniques to the subject’s legs, face, genitalia (if D’Sleaze-a has any), and so forth. Baseball bats are sometimes included in their B-mod toolkit.
Bruce K
@Peale: No, but the next crime he commits, I hope he gets every bit of punishment allowed by law.
Days like this, I wish that it were possible to round up every last Twitler appointee and hang them from lamp-posts up and down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jeffro: It’s tumbrel time.
LAO
@Villago Delenda Est: @MattF: I think Josh Marshall sums it up best:
Jeffro
You know, just sticking to trade issues here (our country pulling out of the TPP, the various tariffs and what not, threatening to ‘renegotiate’ NAFTA, all of it) – what a load of absolutely stupid self-inflicted economic pain. Where are all these great business leaders and CEOs – why aren’t they busy telling Team Trumpov to go fuck itself and quit screwing around with the world economy?
#TellHimToKnockItOff, could that be a thing, Fortune 500 execs? It just might be, if you don’t get your shit together and tell these knuckleheads to quit indulging Herr Twitler.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: Nope. It won’t.
M4
That Axios piece rather dovetails with a conference on technology-enabled disruption (bear with me) that the Dallas Fed had last week. Axios has some summaries if you scroll down, but you can do the math: automation + the end of raises == bad news for workers, and (depending on scale and speed) a pretty huge shift in labor’s relationship to capital that we’ll need government policy to address sooner rather than later.
Jeffro
@dmsilev:
I hope our next president doesn’t even live in the White House – how could you possibly disinfect it well enough? Turn it into a museum, a well-ventilated one.
LAO
@SiubhanDuinne: Here’s a link to the to the DOJ pardon/clemency instructions. I guarantee you D’Souza’s pardon didn’t go through the regular channels.
SFAW
@M4:
And, unfortunately, wooden shoes wouldn’t work that well any more, even if you can find them.
Elizabelle
@dmsilev: I think voters should remember this for the midterms.
Yes, he’s an asshole’s asshole. But he’s not above the law, and we need to vote in a Congress (and Senate) that will hold him accountable. Because Republicans clearly will not.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: He did. And has spent every waking minute since then claiming he’s innocent and was railroaded because of his political views and is therefore an unfairly prosecuted political dissident.
This is the same whacked thinking that is circulating on the right that LTG Flynn’s pleading guilty was a frame up and that it will all fall apart when the DOJ OIG report comes out and some FBI special agent no one has ever heard of testifies that Special Counsel Mueller’s office failed to provide exculpatory evidence to Flynn’s attorneys under discovery rules and therefore the court’s verdict is null and void. When anyone tries to explain to these folks, some of whom are actual attorneys, that there was no guilty verdict. This ignores the plea agreement paperwork filed by Mueller’s office with the court indicates Flynn accepted this deal to prevent prosecution for greater crimes in exchange for full cooperation and consideration in sentencing. And, most importantly, that Flynn had to state to the court that he was pleading guilty for lying to the FBI. But something, something McCabe…
Woodrowfan
@SFAW: I think some gardening stores carry them
SFAW
@LAO:
I think someone should tell Lying Littledick that Obama was planning to pardon D’Sleaza.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: And, Mexico joins the party:
gene108
I wonder, if the AT&T CEO realizes that if he lays off a huge chunk of his workforce, there will be fewer people with money to buy AT&T products?
At some point hoarding all the wealth and running things so bare bones people struggle to survive is self defeating, b ecause you take all the demand out of the economy.
Emma
My aunt, an accountant, life-long practicing Catholic and anti-communist conservatve, is visiting with us. She has been watching the political and economic debates very carefully. Last night we were discussing some of what she had seen, she looked at me and said, very seriously, “when this crazyness is over you will have to restructure your whole economy. The rich will have to be reined in.” I now understand the expression “gobsmacked” personally.
Jeffro
@M4:
Yes indeed. As in address it yesterday. Dems should run on, “If your job is automated away, your company will have to pay you for a year (or two, what the heck) while you take part in the retraining or higher ed of your choice”. And then remind them that quite a few white-collar jobs are being automated as well. They can tinker with it however they want but that has to be the message, not just ‘universal basic income’ or whatever.
Make companies do THAT calculation before they replace 99% of their workers with robots. No more pushing the costs off onto society while reaping the ever-upward-distribution of the gains.
SFAW
@Woodrowfan:
Probably. I wonder it they’re still used in steel mills as well.
SiubhanDuinne
@LAO:
Canada is also likely to retaliate, hard. ?? is the single biggest source of foreign steel, around 17% of total steel imports.
Shalimar
If AT&T’s customer service gets worse after they reduce their staff, will anyone notice?
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman:
…Strozk, Steele, Jarrett, Rice, Mueller, Rosenstein, Soros, Holder, ad infinitum
LAO
And this piece of shit chimes in:
I FEEL DONE!!!!!
(sorry for yelling)
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: There is an office at DOJ that takes the requests for pardons, clemency, and/or commutations that come in. They then do a full scrub and review on each case/request. What were the charges/crimes? What was the sentence? Has the sentence been served? Or how much? Has the potential recipient, if actually legitimately guilty, expressed contrition? How did they behave as prisoners? How have they behaved after their sentence was served? Things like that. Then they take all that information, package it in a report with a recommendation to pardon or grant clemency or commute or to take no action at all. The process is intended to insulate whoever is president from accusations of using the pardon power for political purposes by routinzing it within the bureaucracy. Those charges are still made even when the process is followed.
We know, based on reporting, that this process was not followed for Arpaio or Libby. I don’t know if they were followed for Johnson.
SFAW
@Jeffro:
Interesting idea, but until there’s a DoJ more interested in prosecuting stuff like that, instead of pot and PoCs, the corporate poobahs will flip the workers the bird.
trollhattan
@SFAW:
I shall have a 3D printer fashion mine from sawdust. I’m sure the code is out there.
David Rickard
500 quatloos the pardon gets reversed when Twitler learns D’Souza is a brown-skinned immigrant.
SFAW
@LAO:
Fuck you, Rafa, you scumbag. I hope Beto beats your ass by 10 points, you anti-American motherfucker.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Two for one pitchforks and torches from 11 – 1, 4-7, and 11 to close!
SiubhanDuinne
@LAO:
Thanks. I don’t think he went through proper procedures for Joe Arpaio, either.
trollhattan
I hope Wilbur Ross toddles down to the 7-11 to buy a Chevy Silverado to wave at the camera and mock silly Americans who complain about having to pay an extra two cents for it. Also, too, pose in front of a skyscraper project and especially a bridge project, since it’s Infrastructure Week.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: Ross is basically a money launderer who found a way to do it while looking legit. As much as I wouldn’t have liked the domestic agenda of a Kasich or Christie or Jeb! Bush administration, Ross wouldn’t have even been able to buy an ambassadorship via donation from those guys. Ross is a long time Trump acquaintance/friend. They’ve done business together before.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
Even if the code is there, will sawdust work? I know various polymers and metals will, but I have no idea re: wood/cellulose. And yes, I AM too lazy to research it.
NotMax
Dolt 45 must believe that Smoot-Hawley was some kind of high priced touring car.
Adam L Silverman
@M4: Yep, I’ve been stating that here for a while in a number of comments.
Jeffro
@SFAW: I think the idea of such a law being passed, much less enforced, presumes that it’s able to make it through both houses and signed by a (real) president, so we’re looking at 2021 at the earliest. Still a good idea and a good point to run on – corporations can’t keep automating away workers’ jobs and letting the 1% pocket the gains. Put it on them to pay folks while they retrain for something different.
Shalimar
Is it even fair to call Canada and the EU “allies” anymore? Trump doesn’t have allies, just various shades of suckers he tries to screw over in deals. Whoever is president after the Chief Asshole can try to resurrect some semblance of order in our foreign policy.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: I like full figured steel myself. But I’m funny that way…//
SFAW
@trollhattan:
Did you recycle this comment from last week? Or from the week before? Or from the week before THAT? Or from ….
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
When Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, the first thing Arpaio did afterwards was petition the court to void his conviction. Because in Trump’s mind and his, he had done nothing wrong. I’m pretty sure D’Souza feels that way too, even if, to get his pardon, he must sign his name to a letter admitting his guilt.
Just One More Canuck
@SFAW: or repeated defenestration until the desired effect is acheived
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: And those Canadian steel imports are actually covered under US Federal law as American made products for national security reasons. So those tariffs are technically DOA and I expect the Canadians will file suit in Federal court to block them.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Thank you for this. That’s very clear.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
Until this point, I had never appreciated how truly weird you are. Landsmann!
Peale
Yay! Not only “no raises” but any raise you do get will immediately be deducted from your paycheck to pay for increases in health insurance! So much winning.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: @SFAW: Only in America could a Canadian Hispanic rebrand himself as a Texan white supremacist.
randy khan
To build on the question about whether the D’Souza pardon went through the process, I don’t think Trump has followed the process for any of the people he’s pardoned.
Trump will have pardoned 5 people once he gets around to issuing the pardon to D’Souza. The others are Joe Arpaio, Scooter Libby, Jack Johnson, and a guy named Kristian Saucier. D’Souza, Arpaio, and Libby are obvious political pardons (and, it should be added, that gives Trump more political pardons than anybody since GHWB (and maybe further back)). Johnson actually should have been pardoned, but it only happened because Stallone lobbied for it.
Which leaves Saucier, who happens to have been convicted of crimes related to classified information in 2016. And, you guessed it, he was held up as an example of why Clinton should have been prosecuted by the right. So his pardon turns out to be political, too. Go figure.
SFAW
@Just One More Canuck:
“Hey, Dinesh, I hear the view from the top of Burj Khalifa is a-may-zing! C’mon, let’s go take a look!”
chopper
@trollhattan:
it’s always infrastructure week.
randy khan
@Amir Khalid:
D’Souza, of course, pled guilty (because he was guilty), but that won’t stop him from continuing to claim he was railroaded. (And, as I recall, his crime was a stupid and obvious violation of campaign finance law.)
trollhattan
@SFAW:
I don’t know either, just assume it’s possible. Once I read there are now 3D “printed” metal bike frames I figure sky’s the limit.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: The only real solution is going to be a universal guaranteed income combined with some form of universal healthcare. Either a properly done Swiss system (the ACA was a rough attempt to adapt that to the US without making the private portions – the insurance companies – not for profits and regulating them VERY heavily), single payer, or single provider.
I’d also like a pony!
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: I actually laughed out loud. well played.
Preet chimes in:
mad citizen
It’s weird to me that these people are reversing free trade, an issue that was argued and solved in the 1800s and I guess into the 1900s for a while.
I think the R’s should pass a law legalizing slavery, but only if a state also passes a law to make it legal in their state. Why not? It’s turn back the clock government!
I’m very much down with some major class warfare.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Yep. I really miss working for the Canadian Government these days. We did a lot of very intense advocacy on any number of high-priority issues, and things could get crazy busy, but never the kind of bilateral/multilateral whiplash that’s been going on for the last year and a half.
chris
This might affect a few jobs.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Aren’t these tariffs a violation of NAFTA?
LAO
@randy khan: Confirmation. (As if it weren’t obvious)
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: You have contracted DOJ/FBI tourettes! Please consult your physician immediately!//
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
“What a country.” //
HAL
D’Souza and company accuse President Obama of being a thin skinned narcissist that can’t take criticism while propping up Trump as a bold, brave, iron willed warrior with nerves of steel. The cognitive dissonance is enough to tear through reality itself.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Wasn’t it Michele Bachmann (“the girl with the faraway eyes”) who always used to call it “Hoot-Smalley”?
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW:
https://theragingfanboy.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/doompatrol01-tofuturkey001.jpg
https://theragingfanboy.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/doompatrol01-bedroomsurprise001.jpg
Peale
If I’m Mexico, I’m off to China to ask for a loan to develop my oil infrastructure such that I’m no longer sending my oil to the US for processing at US refineries. And I’m actually going to spend the money doing that – which means I’m not actually Mexico at all.
M4
@Adam L Silverman:
Many of us have! But I thought the Dallas Fed conference had a good collection of presentations on the matter, and that the ones from industry leaders especially were worth looking up. So I thought I’d share.
CliosFanBoy (formerly Woodrowfan)
@mad citizen: well, the republicans were the protected trade party for many, many years. (The Democrats were the free trade, or at least lower tariffs) party.
CliosFanBoy (formerly Woodrowfan)
@HAL: and make a hole in the universe the size of…. Belgium
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman:
…paid for by highly progressive income/interest/dividend taxes.
Hey while you’re there, grab me a pony too, wouldja?
Fleeting Expletive
Whoopee, y’all!! I just pardoned what’s-his-name Dnoosh! Suck that, libs!
Guys, my friends, I know that makes you so, so happy! MAGA, believe me!
Jeez, this is all so incredibly stupid, I’m getting a headache already. Our current timeline has to be some cosmic joke, right? I had hopes for Kim Kardashian, though.
Are we not entertained? It’s like he’s prancing around saying “Watch me dance”. I think he’s scared shitless.
p.s. –I want to change my nym here, as I think it maybe sounds…not good. It’s a legal term that I always thought was one of the funnier ones, and reminds me of Cher when she said something like “Fuckin’-A!” at an awards show, which of course led to clutched pearls and FCC scrutiny, IIRC.
Does anyone have a suggestion, or nah?
CliosFanBoy
@Adam L Silverman: what are those from?????
Jeffro
@LAO: You know, when the inevitable shit-ton of indictments drops and Trumpov goes into a frenzy of pardoning-by-tweet…I do wonder how that will go. Who has standing to take #FakePardons to a court (and which court) to claim that Orange Crash is pardoning with corrupt intent, and therefore the pardons are not valid?
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@SiubhanDuinne: That woman got the wrong name in my head and now I have to stop and think very carefully before I say Smoot-Halley.
Adam L Silverman
@randy khan: And he was undercharged. He stole his wife’s identity as part of the illegal campaign contribution schemes. She testified against him that he used her name to make one of the illegal donations. He should have been prosecuted for that as well.
Jeffro
@Fleeting Expletive:
Yes. SATSQ
Did those hopes involve her having secretly training as a ninja for the past few years, and bringing a garrote in her BVLGARI clutch last night? Mine did.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jeffro:
Deadspin says today that billionaire NFL team owners knuckles under to White House pressure
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: Preet is correct. Preet is also a far better attorney than Cruz.
Aleta
Adam, It’s also important to mention that Kardashian, and the lawyer she brought to the meeting, were advocating for Alice Marie Johnson, 21 years into a life sentence (first time offender) for attempted possession of cocaine. (She was also charged with attempted conspiracy to possess and money laundering.)
Kardashian became aware of Alice Johnson through the CAN-DO org, which “has advocated for Alice Johnson since 2014 when she became #1 on the CAN-DO Top 25 women deserving of clemency soon after Clemency Project 2014 was launched by the Obama administration. Only four women on the CAN-DO original Top 25 are still in prison.”
Jeffro
Back to the tariffs: I see several smart Dems smartly tweeting that Trumpov’s tariffs against our allies are a huge win for Putin. Smart! Keep it up, Dems, and always remember to ask: “If he were a Russian asset…what exactly would Trumpov be doing any differently?”
(crickets)
chris
Huh. Cruz and D’Shitstain have history.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That too!
Fleeting Expletive
@Jeffro: No. Actually, I did have a fleeting (Ha!) thought that the PR genius would grab onto the possibilities here to be a “reformer, compassionate conservative, save money, etc.” and really pardon her. Take yuuge credit, give ol’ Jeffy the blues, win bigly ratings.
But then I remembered, she’s black, so fuck that.
But then, maybe Kim has wiles and persuasive talents, who knows?
rikyrah
Trump admin facing tough questions on child separation policy
Rep. Ted Lieu talks with Rachel Maddow about trying to hold the Trump administration accountable for their new policy of taking babies and children from immigrant parents and forcing a change to the policy.
May.30.2018
Aleta
Since Sessions has come up:
NYT
Adam L Silverman
@M4: Thank you.
rikyrah
Outrage over Trump child separation policy saps his zeal to troll
Rachel Maddow points out that while Donald Trump usually delights in doubling down on racially inflammatory trolling of Americans on immigration issues, he hasn’t handled his new policy of taking kids away from parents with quite the same zeal.
Peale
@Jeffro: I was told throughout the Obama administration that these CEOs were a cautious bunch who hated “uncertainty”. Where are all those “uncertainty” expressions now I wonder.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Peale: I suspect D’Souza will be back in front of a judge for another crime before long.
burnspbesq
I hope I’m ultimately wrong about this, but in terms of the trade war, today’s actions feel like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
This pretty much guarantees that the EU will challenge several parts of last year’s misbegotten tax law as illegal export summaries under WTO rules. They’ll win. And if Trump is still in office when that becomes final, I predict he will veto any attempt by Congress to fix it, and use it as a pretext to pull the United States out of the WTO.
Somewhere in Hell, Smoot and Hawley are having a big ol’ laugh.
Brachiator
Trump knows how to play to his audience. His core supporters don’t care about economic growth. They just want to see Trump deliver some smack down. Meanwhile, pundits, policy wonks and spin doctors will debate growth forecasts, and Fox News will lie about the results.
Where the fuck did that come from?
And of course, D’Souza was not quite a birther, but definitely an Obama hater.
rikyrah
Mueller attention intensifying on Trump frame of mind on Comey
Michael Schmidt, reporter for The New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about new reporting on Donald Trump’s reaction to the recusal of Jeff Sessions from matters related to the Russia investigation, and a newly revealed memo by Andrew McCabe on the letter Donald Trump asked Rod Rosenstein to write about James Comey.
Jeffro
@Peale: Is “uncertainty” a form of “anxiety”, as in “economic anxiety”? I believe it might well be.
These cowards are hoping they can ride out the Storm of Insanity and emerge with their bank accounts fatter than ever. They can’t begin to imagine what they’re risking by enabling this gang of damaged souls.
Jeffro
@Brachiator:
I think you may well have answered your own question there.
NotMax
@Jeffro
No one, and there is not a court in the land which would come within a mile of accepting any such action. The only remedy, such as it is, for such a situation would be to delineate and include misfeasance* of office in articles of impeachment. Even so, that would not invalidate nor otherwise affect those pardoned.
*Misfeasance addresses intent, as opposed to malfeasance.
SFAW
@Adam L Silverman:
Metal Men? JHC.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Fleeting Expletive: Kim thought about running for mayor of my fair city(we have a large Armenian population) until she found out that we don’t actually elect a mayor(it’s a title that rotates between city council members).
rikyrah
FBI assembling contents of Michael Cohen’s shredder machine
Rachel Maddow reports on the legal wrangling over evidence in Michael Cohen’s court case, including the revelation that among the material yet to be vetted is the contents of Cohen’s shredder, which the FBI is reassembling.
Adam L Silverman
@CliosFanBoy: One of the Doom Patrol or Metal Men comics. The character is Platinum, the female Metal Man (Metal Woman). In every incarnation, in what has become a running joke, her personality quirk (each Metal Man has one), ranges from being hopelessly in love with her creator Dr. Will Magnus to being a flirt with any male DC hero to being a complete nymphomaniac. Those set of pages are from the cringe worthy range of the character. It is important to remember that the character was originally created in the late 50s, so the hopelessly in love robot woman who only wants to marry her creator and be a good housewife kind of fits the social context of that time period for sexual relations.
The best versions of her use this as a foil as sort of an unrequited love type of story or star crossed lovers types of stories. The worst ones are cringe worthy. This was played for effect in the alternate (elseworlds) style DC Animated movie Justice League: Gods and Monsters. Where Magnus turned out to be a psychopath who killed his real wife named Tina (often Platinum’s nickname in the comics) and replaced her with Platinum.
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Platinum_(Gods_and_Monsters)
Peale
@Jeffro: @Brachiator: OH, I think he’s a Hannity special case as well. Proof that there’s two sets of laws in this country – one for Conservative Truth Tellers and normal people who are always persecuted and convicted – and another for the Clintons who get away with everything.
Jeffro
Ben Sasse: “[These tariffs] are dumb…Make America Great Again shouldn’t mean Make America 1929 Again”
Shit just writes itself, doesn’t it? Go Dems, GO! Run with this!
burnspbesq
@Jeffro:
Nobody. If you can prove the corrupt intent, you might have a prima face case for obstruction.
But those pardons would be counter-productive, because the people pardoned can no longer claim a privilege against self-incrimination and refuse to testify before a grand jury..
Which isn’t to suggest that Trump won’t do it. For him, the need to say “fuck you, I do what I want” seems to always crowd out any rational analysis of what’s really in his best interest.
Brachiator
@Peale:
They have the certainty of a juicy tax cut to keep them warm.
@LAO:
Does Trump even know that an Office of Pardon exists? In any event, he prefers direct action, and gets off on knowing that he has the power to pardon.
Adam L Silverman
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Discovery in Kaepernick’s grievance suit is the gift that keeps on giving. The President, according to what was turned over to Kaepernick’s attorneys, called Jerry Jones and threatened him and the league over this and told Jones to share this with the other owners. Once Jones did, there was no resistance to the rules change. The NFLPA is going to eat them alive at the upcoming CBA negotiations
A Ghost To Most
@burnspbesq
Hoot (Boehner) and Smalley (Franken) as well.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@M4:
Yes, I am sure some robot will come to people’s homes and and synegize big data to string string cable. ATT is the company Dilbert parodies.
West of the Rockies
A bit OT, but do those rogue Twitter accounts by government employees still exist? I haven’t heard anything since about o.o days into the administration. I think some folks at the State Department were notably energetic at first.
HAL
My general disregard for conspiracy theories is really being challenged in the Trump era.
https://abovethelaw.com/2018/05/pardon-me-the-dinesh-dsouza-story/
rikyrah
Manafort gets contender for world’s sketchiest legal defense fund
Rachel Maddow looks at a the very peculiar web site of a new legal defense fund set up for former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
The Ancient Randonneur
D’Souza is filthy racist scum. No wonder the Treason Tribble wants to pardon him.
Adam L Silverman
@Aleta: Yep. I’m not knocking Kardashian here. Using her celebrity to advocate for something like this is a good thing, all things being equal. But it wasn’t going to make a difference for Johnson. No one in the White House or the political appointees at the DOJ care about anyone like Johnson.
Jeffro
@NotMax: Thanks.
Via Vox:
I know it would be uncharted waters, but if a pardon is issued with corrupt intent, and such pardons were part of a charge of misfeasance, and the president* is impeached, convicted, and removed…it’s hard to believe that the pardons would then still stand.
But I’m not even qualified to be an armchair lawyer, much less a real one, so I’ll defer to folks who know better.
Adam L Silverman
@chris: D’Souza’s attorney is also Ben Brafman, who is Weinstein’s attorney.
Fair Economist
Just to remind people – Trump is imposing steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and Europe because *China* has been dumping steel. Trump logic at work.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Adam L Silverman:
Trump’s NLRB will simply break up the union and order wages lowered, saying “it’s grown men playing a game”.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jeffro:
The power is a ridiculously broad one, and hails back to that applied to those who do great service to the crown.
NotMax
@Jeffro
There is no mechanism for undoing the pardon. And creating one would open a gigantic can of worms about undoing anything else a President had put his signature to. In short, not gonna happen. Pretty much the only outcome based on what you suggest (IMHO) is that said pardons would stand but be tainted.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
D’Souza had a wife named Dixie.
Somehow, that just seems wrong.
Or soooo Republican.
El Caganer
So has EU told Iran that it’s all in with U.S. sanctions, and Iran’s gotta knuckle under? Or perhaps this latest development might delay that?
Humdog
@gene108: It is a perfect example of a collective action problem. Each employer has an interest in reducing their own labor costs and their biz depends on others not reducing theirs. Perfect opportunity for government to step in, but it won’t as currently constituted.
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro:
While I may *technically* be part of management and may, on occasion, represent management in negotiations with workers, I am a yellow dog Democrat and regular B-J poster. Therefore, I humbly request clemency in the form of a high tumbrel number.
Thanks in advance!
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: The original Engineer, from The Authority…way hotter, vastly cooler powers, vastly brainer too (not that ‘brainer’ is a high standard when compared to Tina!)
Humdog
@Fleeting Expletive: I think the nym “I had hopes for Kim Kardashian, though” would make me release a fleeting expletive, so it may be perfect for you.
Miss Bianca
@Jeffro: What the hell did Ben Sasse *think* that MAGA meant, anyway? Jesus Chicken-Fried Christ, taking us back to 1929 socially, economically, and politically was what MAGA was all about!
ETA: With predictably disastrous results for the country, of course…now, if I could be as sure that it would be as predictably disastrous for the Republicans, I’d be all, “please proceed, GOP…”
Jeffro
@Steve in the ATL: You may proceed to the back of the line, sir.
LAO
offered w/o commentary because, I can’t even (as the kids used to say):
JPL
Jeremy Diamond on twitter
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
In the upcoming civil war, who wields the baseball bats and who carves the “T” into the foreheads of prominent Trump supporters?
JPL
@LAO: Beat me to it… They are white after all.
El Caganer
@Fair Economist: Hey, how many trademarks have they approved for Ivanka lately?
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: If only Senator Sasse belonged to some organization that had the power to do something about the imposition of tariffs?
NotMax
@LAO
It’s
infrastructurepardon week!“Can I pardon that dude holed up in the embassy over in London?”
LAO
@JPL: And, waiting for it — both were convicted of lying to the FBI (18 USC 1001). Hmmm, I’m sensing a trend. And a bullhorn.
ETA:
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: Yep. I’m exceedingly wide read.
Kay
I don’t follow the Right wing grifter sector, so I did not know that D’Souza tweets exactly the same things as Roseanne.
It is just so funny that when she did it she got fired and D’Souza gets rewarded. He’s worse than her! She’s the saner version.
Aleta
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Without unions, companies can require forced arbitration. Although, the following is about managers not hourly wage workers.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: He likes them pale and/or blonde!
Adam L Silverman
@El Caganer: The EU is working the internal process to activate legislation based regulations protecting European companies from US sanctions should they continue to do business with Iran.
JPL
@LAO: The pardons are f.u. to Comey also. This is not going to end well.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: Stewart I have no issue with. Blagojevich should not be pardoned. All of this, though, is messaging to Cohen, Manafort, Flynn, etc.
chris
PM Justin Trudeau news conference at 1:30. Should be interesting.
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
Bank of Cyprus, Dear.
Ksmiami
@Bruce K: be a little patient… that’s how the story will end
JPL
@chris: Is that Eastern time?
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: I’m aware. Which just so happens to be one of the banks that Manafort was laundering his money through.
J R in WV
@M4:
I wonder which one of these mental midgets will be the first to realize that the workers whom they despise are the source of every penny of their income in a fundamental way. Because if no one can buy a car/suv/truck but fabulously rich people, Ford will have to charge $20,000,000 for the entry-level vehicle to maintain their cash flow level.
If no one can buy anything, who will b e buying those TV ads?
This isn’t just a problem for working people, those few of us who are equity-wealthy investors will see share prices drop like a rock when sales for all these companies vanish like a drop of water in a blast furnace. Then there will be no dividends to spend in St Moritz!
Marx wasn’t nearly the economic genius some people think he was, but on one thing he was correct: Labor is the source of all wealth! Without labor we would still be hunter-gatherers ranging through the woods finding berries and rabbits to eat. Management here seems more shortsighted than Trump does, actually.
Ford was the first corporate manufacturer to realize that if he paid a real living wage, then his workers could afford his autos. He soon became one of the wealthiest men in America, to the hatred of the other Plutocrats, who despised him for paying his workers so much.
It meant they had to raise their wage offered, which cost them money, they thought. But in reality the more money in circulation, the more money there is to be made by everyone.
Brachiator
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Mild Alexandre Dumas literature plot SPOILER.
This always makes me think of The Three Musketeers, and d’Artagnan using a letter of pardon written by Cardinal Richelieu.
rikyrah
@Aleta:
Am I reading things wrong?
Was she convicted in STATE – TN court
or FEDERAL Court?
Just trying to be sure.
SiubhanDuinne
Holy fucking shit, you guys!
I can’t even just. At all.
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
WRITE.THE.CHECK.TO.KAEP.
Yellowdog
@gene108: I hope you realize that this is the fundamental basis of Marxist economics. In order to extract profits, capitalists must drive their workers into lower and lower wages.
Lapassionara
@LAO: OMG! He is just a complete joke. I can kinda sorta get the Martha Stewart one, but Blagojevich!?!?
Elizabelle
WaPost: MSNBC host Joy Reid faces new questions about her old blog. Paul Farhi, media columnist, picked up a Buzzfeed post. Joy Reid is possibly in trouble again. Buzzfeed story: her defunct blog posts allegedly included some post 9/11 conspiracy mongering.
The posts from WaPo link:
FWIW, a quick scroll through Buzzfeed a few moments ago did not find the story prominently displayed. However, the WaPost has given it a major headline on the website.
rikyrah
@JPL:
SO TRUE.
Aleta
@LAO: You can’t say they had no reason to pardon D’Souza. It was Preet Bharara who announced his sentence; this contributed heavily to the minuscule deliberations.
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
Maddow informed me of this over a year ago….
Kay
@rikyrah:
Oh, I hope so. It would be pure joy to embarrass these people, after what they did to him. They all have such big mouths and they’re all so grossly entitled they probably blabbed their heads off. Fingers crossed! :)
Elizabelle
What’s going on behind the scenes that Trump is rolling out this Pardonpalooza today?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The owners will not win this fight.
Elizabelle
@Lapassionara: What is he distracting reporters from?
Further, Blago was dirty as can be. Maybe this will just remind voters to vote against Trump and his party to combat corruption.
Kay
@Aleta:
Well, thank god he’s free of the taint of his criminal deeds. What we need in this country are more Right wing deadbeats tweeting for a living. Productivity! The bullshit sector was hungry for more talent.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: You know, Stewart is not a Trump fan and being a convicted felon has not hurt her at all, I think she’ll say no to a pardon. Would be interesting to see what happens, if he does offer her a pardon.
LAO
@Elizabelle: Well said. I’m going to use “pardonpalozza,” if you don’t mind.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
I don’t know for sure, but I think it rhymes with “flick-flock, brothersuckers.”
raven
Catfish Catfish Catfish Catfish Catfish Catfish Catfish POMANO!!!!!
Peale
@SiubhanDuinne: So now its basically going to be anyone who was ever convicted of a securities violation, campaign finance violations, civil rights violations, or bribery. Basically anyone convicted of any crimes he is guilty of himself.
eclare
@LAO: I wondered about that too….
J R in WV
@Jeffro:
You don’t understand – the number of jobs available will plummet like beach-front real estate values after the flood arrives.
There won’t be “something different” at all, anywhere.
Retraining made sense when old jobs going away were roughly equal to new jobs being created. That balance is OVER now, the jobs just evaporate. And when no one is working, there’s no income tax, no Social Security investments being made, nothing being spent on anything.
Elizabelle
@LAO: Please do!
Kay
Martha Stewart remembers Trump as “extremely unkind”. Perfect.
I like her because she was so tough about going to prison. Say what you will but she didn’t feel entitled to special treatment. The Trumpsters look like whiny babies compared to her.
HAL
Comey prosecuted Stewart, Patrick Fitzgerald prosecuted Blagojevich and Scooter Libby, and Preet Bhara prosecuted D’Souza. So basically, if you’re prosecuted by someone Trump hates, you’re good to go.
NotMax
@raven
Latest law firm to sign on with Dolt 45?
:)
JPL
Trump is testing the waters to see just how much the repubs will put up with.
AlienRadio
@Jeffro: That’s not the original engineer, The ORIGINAL engineer died in Stormwatch#50, She was the Engineer’s successor.
SiubhanDuinne
@LAO:
I was thinking exactly the same thing. She’s pretty well known to be a Democrat, and she long ago moved past her conviction and imprisonment. I think she’d turn down a pardon if Trump were to offer it.
But it’s all just so painfully blatant, isn’t it?
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
LOL!!
LAO
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, yes it is. And shame on anyone in the media who doesn’t make that connection.
MisterForkbeard
@chris: Is it just me, or does most of that seem targeted towards Trump states/voters?
scuffletuffle
@Fleeting Expletive: love your nym, as is
Elizabelle
@Kay: Yeah. Weirdly, going to prison, not whining, and staying in touch with her fellow prisoners, and genuinely caring about them — that experience worked out well for Martha Stewart, actually. It humanized her.
And now: Snoop! I like the post-conviction Martha a lot more. I think she throws that pardon back in his face.
chris
@JPL: Yes, 1:30 EDT. Should be somewhere on cbc.ca
GregB
I predict Trump will not pardon Blagojevich, for a few reasons. Hair envy foremost. Second, he will use it as an opportunity to attack Democrats, Chicago and Obama as inherently corrupt.
LAO
@GregB:
SiubhanDuinne
@Peale:
Yes, pretty much. Not forgetting obstruction, conspiracy, and lying to the Feds.
AlienRadio
@J R in WV:
This is the thing, Automation is in the Exponential phase. previously new technology would modify industries relatively slowly, new industries would crop up in a timescale that made it possible for humans to retrain within a few years, even if they were probably never going to reach the total earning power in their old career. In the world that’s coming with massive AI automation of white collar work, By the time a new industry comes into existance AI’s will already be developing new industries that make them obselete, Humans just aren’t going to reskill quick enough to be useful in most of these situations, the number of employable people will trend toward 0. THAT is the world we are about to enter.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
She interests me because she’s not “warm”- she is openly demanding and sort of stern. I feel like women aren’t allowed to be like that on tv, especially in the “domestic” area or whatever they call what she does. She’s not at all ingratiating. It’s all very businesslike.
She doesn’t “try too hard” or at all, really :)
chris
@MisterForkbeard: Ayuh, see China and soybeans.
Jeffro
@AlienRadio: I remember now…all-green guy, wasn’t he? Something like that? That was a great story arc (despite having slipped my aging memory)
chopper
@LAO:
trying to sell a senate seat is what politicians everywhere do all the time? the fuck?
rikyrah
In new reversal, Trump says he didn’t fire Comey over Russia
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says he didn’t fire FBI Director James Comey over the Russia investigation, despite previously citing that as the reason.
Trump tweeted Thursday: “Not that it matters but I never fired James Comey because of Russia! The Corrupt Mainstream Media loves to keep pushing that narrative, but they know it is not true!”
Trump fired Comey in May 2017. A few days later, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he fired Comey. The New York Times reported Trump told Russian diplomats in the Oval Office that month Comey’s dismissal had “taken off” pressure he faced “because of Russia.”
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, told Fox News Trump fired Comey because Comey wouldn’t state “that he wasn’t a target” of the Russia probe.
Jeffro
@J R in WV: @AlienRadio: Good points – noted.
Alexa, I’d like my lifetime of Universal Basic Income in one big sum, right now, please.
Elizabelle
@AlienRadio: I think we are going to see social unrest of the type we have not seen in 50, and more likely 90-100 years. You can’t have millions and millions of people made redundant.
I think we should have a discussion on putting the brakes on some of these tech developments. Who do they benefit? If your answer is, the developers of the tech advances, you have it.
Mnemosyne
@West of the Rockies:
Alt Parks Service (National Parks) is still going strong on Facebook.
D58826
@J R in WV:
shorter version – local stable owner converted to a car dealer or local blacksmith opened a gas station.
schrodingers_cat
@West of the Rockies: alt_uscis account still exists and is a good source for info about the latest in immigration shenanigans.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Her pairing with Snoop…shouldn’t work, but it does…I dunno…
schrodingers_cat
I want to know who are all these women that find DS an attractive prospect to wed and bed.
rikyrah
Can’t wait for all those MAGA workers in those foreign plants down in red states get those notices that they can take their azzes on home….
JPL
@rikyrah: I didn’t link to the article so I’m not sure if it was mentioned, but he also Russian top diplomats the day after he fired Comey.
El Caganer
@SiubhanDuinne: He might limit it to people convicted while Obama was President.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Neither was Julia Child all warm and fuzzy.
ETA: As for Martha, she is a bit OCD for me. I do love her magazine though. She has a great eye.
Jeffro
@chopper: Trumpov’s telegraphing his defense, right there.
Doesn’t every politician take money and assistance from anyone & anywhere, to win? Don’t they say a lot of things they don’t mean, like, “if it’s what you say it is, I love it! Especially later this summer.” Or, “…in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won’.”
You know, all politicians do stuff like that.
Aleta
@LAO: @Peale:
Yeah, in the Don’s world Blagojevich is a lost lamb. He merely solicited bribes for political appointments and a Senate seat. Could even return the favor someday.
Blagojevich: Then I said to my wife, “For justice, we must go to Don Trumleone.”
Stewart he might be hoping to humiliate as he did Romney.
“But let’s be frank here. You never wanted my friendship. And you were afraid to be in my debt.”
rikyrah
Native Americans Boldly Announce They Are ‘Untamed and Unapologetic’
by Nancy LeTourneau
May 31, 2018
During his commencement address at the Naval Academy, Trump gave nod to white supremacy when he said that “our ancestors tamed a continent,” adding that “we are not going to apologize for America.”
Sarah Sunshine Manning, a citizen of the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in Idaho and Nevada, wrote an indigenous response.
It was from Manning that I learned about #UntamedandUnapologetic on Twitter. I encourage you to go take a look and be inspired.
Elizabelle
@Kay: I honestly don’t watch much cable, but Joy looks like a solid interviewer when I see her.
That said, and this will make me unpopular here: I think Al Sharpton is problematic, no matter how good his stance on Trayvon Martin. He is a tax dodger, and, to my knowledge, hasn’t renounced his participation in the Tawana Brawley scam enough for me to have heard about it. (ETA: He did not start it, but he publicized the hoax.)
WRT Joy Reid: maybe she truly thinks her blog was hacked, and maybe it was. That said, it would seem to have been a moment to say “yes, but I have grown and no longer believe that or live that, and I am ashamed of those posts.” It might have innoculated her against what’s getting dredged up at this point.
People can make mistakes, and grow and change. But honesty is important. (And I realize that Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell and the others are problematic in their own way …)
Anyway, MSNBC is not the be all and end all.
catclub
WaPo had a funny phrasing:
LAO
>sigh<
Kay
@rikyrah:
Hah! I don’t know anything about that, but now I’m intrigued. She had a decent cotton sheet at Kmart for a good price, is all I know, and that was genius. Trump Sheets (and I’m sure they exist) would be crap.
rikyrah
@JPL:
I knew that.
CliosFanBoy
underage boy or underage girl??
TenguPhule
The Pendant is weak in you, Adam.
SFAW
@Jeffro:
“Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1929!”
Party over, oops! Out of time, motherfuckers.
I hope.
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
That’s been the thing for awhile..
OF COURSE, we took meetings with the Russians…EVERY campaign, if offered, would take meetings with the Russians..
Even though, campaign after campaign heads, from both side of the political aisle, said, ‘ Nope, we’d call the FBI’.
TenguPhule
Rank and File workers suggest that the days of CEOs living to see retirement may soon be over and that their ranks may be unexpectedly thinned as life expectancy surprisingly drops.
CliosFanBoy
@Elizabelle: I agree with you on Sharpton. I remember his targeting Asian-owned businesses in New York in a race-bating campaign… As well as the Tawana Brawley scam ….
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
No, she wasn’t. I read a book about her. It seemed to me she fought really hard to have a different, less conventional life than what was expected of her. They sort of made her less threatening though, by spoofing her.
SFAW
@CliosFanBoy:
Boy, girl, dog, doll — D’Sleaza is an equal-opportunity scumbag.
LAO
I think I have to sign off twitter for my sanity:
TenguPhule
@CliosFanBoy:
Por que no los dos?
CliosFanBoy
@Adam L Silverman: thanks. I never read DC and haven’t read Marvel in ages, so a LOT of stuff is new to me.
(that’s not a “I never read comics, sniff” brag, I have been going back and picking up a few bound volumes of classic stories, including Batman. Loved “Long Halloween”)
Mary G
@Elizabelle: Martha and Snoop should do a remake of the Odd Couple. They’re charming.
SFAW
@LAO:
Is there ANY RW “pundit/”intellectual” who is NOT a fucking asshole? Of course, not all of them enjoy it as much as D’Sleaza, but still …
Just One More Canuck
@Steve in the [INSERT CURRENT LOCATION HERE]: they’ll never be able to find you
Kay
Kim Kardashian went to Trump to talk about prison reform and he interpreted that as “pardon all the celebrities”
CliosFanBoy
@TenguPhule: true, he is greedy….
JustRuss
@J R in WV:
So tired of that old trope. It’s just not true, Ford was pretty much a bastard, and not a particularly enlightened one. There’s a good debunking of the myth here.
Short version: Ford paid a decent wage because employee turnover was hurting his business. And half of the vaunted $5/day was a “bonus” dependent on employees complying with Ford’s rules governing their private lives, and included submitting to home visits by Ford’s Socialization Organization.
If your business model depends on selling products to your employees, you’re a pyramid scheme (Hi Amway!)
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
Ha!
Peale
@SFAW: Yep. I’m sure Preet went after you because of your race. Because if there’s one thing the contemporary Democratic party is about is making sure white liberals are comfortable that minorities won’t go all tribal on us and making them prove it by attacking their own group.
El Caganer
@Elizabelle: If Joy Reid questioned the 9/11 narrative in 2006, I don’t have a problem with that at all. By that point we knew we had been lied into the Iraq War; if Bush & Co. made up bullshit to get us into a war, what else might they have made up bullshit about? I don’t think being cynical/suspicious then was too paranoid.
trnc
One reason he doesn’t need as many workers is because most people have not gotten a boost from the economy and are paying more in local and state taxes to make up for the dip in federal subsidies, so they aren’t expanding their cable services. Apply this to customers of multiple industries.
Might be time to start a pool on which month will be the first since the beginning of Obama’s first term with negative job growth.
The Moar You Know
@J R in WV: Precisely. And this is why the rich have finally cast off their masks of trying to be members of the society we all share – they’re going to lock in their gains because when it’s all over what’s inside the mansion walls is all they are going to have. Which will be more than what the rest of us have: for the middle class, a cardboard box to squat on underneath the overpass, for all, tire rims, anthrax, and sparrows being cooked on shower rods.
Investment opportunities for the near future: ammunition, plastic tarps, hard alcohol, cigarettes.
rikyrah
@El Caganer:
We had been lied into two wars (for those who chose to believe Shrub and the Evil One).
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
What a …..
I can’t even think of a term to express my revulsion at D’Generate D’Plorable for this tweet
TenguPhule
Bueller? Bueller?
MisterForkbeard
@LAO: This gives up the game, right? Trump says he’ll pardon anyone who’s caught selling out their position for money. Bribes are *totally okay*.
The fact that Blagojevich is/was a Dem is icing on the cake to him – he’ll say that Democrats can’t complain about it and that this PROVES he’s not doing it for partisan reasons. The fact that it was Obama’s DOJ that got him helps, too. I suppose the difference is that Dems don’t want their rightfully convicted politicians to get off. If Trump meant anything he said, he’d pardon Siegelman – someone who was plainly railroaded by Bush’s DOJ.
The Moar You Know
@Elizabelle: My dad flew him and his crew many times when he was still working. Said he was awful to the entire crew, every time.
I have zero respect for anyone who treats the help like shit.
JPL
Twitter is guessing who is next.. maybe Conrad Black.
trnc
@gene108:
Golden parachutes still open for many of the CEOs who trash their company’s earnings, so I doubt he cares.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trnc: Wait until they automate the CFO position…
Citizen Alan
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Me too. Drives me crazy.
TenguPhule
@SFAW:
No. SATSQ.
TenguPhule
@LAO:
if D’souza gets run over on the street, its not a felony as long as you remember to stop and call to render aid.
Barbara
@SFAW: Preet Bharara wasn’t “fired’ for anything other than what nearly every other US Attorney are let go for, and that is, they were appointed by the new president’s predecessor. Most US Attorneys anticipate such a career move, although it doesn’t always happen, especially in relatively low volume jurisdictions. I never understood why Trump said Bharara would stay.
TenguPhule
@M4:
President Obama would have offered federal aid.
Trump is gonna deploy fucking Imperial stormtroopers.
TenguPhule
Now more then ever, this B5 quote is so appropriate to the situation.
Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trnc: Depends on what the parachute is made of, if it’s stock options…may not be so golden.
Citizen Alan
@Adam L Silverman:
Before this is all over, we will end up having to change the national anthem to a new song in order to erase the stain that Shitgibbon and his lackeys have left all over the Star Spangled Banner.
Chief Oshkosh
@LAO: As others have noted, Trump is pardoning people who were convicted of/pleaded to crimes that his minions are probably going to be indicted for or have already been indicted for. It’s his way of telling them that they should not testify against him, that they should take the fall, and that he will pardon them later.
It seems to me, though, that all the investigators or prosecutors (depending on where we are in the process) would have to do to sweat the implicated or the indicted is to walk them through likely scenarios, such as, the process being “allowed” to drag out to 2020 and the chances of a re-election being, let us say, not 100%.
TenguPhule
@gene108:
The CEO will tell you of course that the solution to this problem is another round of tax cuts.
D58826
@SFAW:
dead or alive, what the diff!!
Jeffro
FYI all, per today’s pardon discussions, Martha Stewart, and her paramour Snoop, Twitter Dick Nixon is reflecting (via Mr. Ziegler) upon how he “has long worked with Mr. Broadus on youth sports and education initiatives” and “identifies strongly with the themes of “Paid Tha Cost to Be Tha Boss”
I’m dyin’ here…
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Ah, but that’s dependent on four factors; 1) political affiliation (GOP), 2) race (white), 3) religion (evangelical Christian), and wealth (must make at least $100,000 to $200,000 a year at the least) of the accused.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Ah, but that’s dependent on four factors; 1) political affiliation (GOP), 2) race (white), 3) religion (evangelical Christian), and wealth (must make at least $100,000 to $200,000 a year at the least)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@The Moar You Know:
Burning piles of cash, bonds, stock certificates, antiques and paintings can only hear the walled manse for so long. Eventually, they have to emerge to join the huddled survivors scavenging for the scraps of the civilization they could have saved, had they not been so wedded to a “grow it all the time” formula.
My prediction is a Soylent Green future – overheated climate, starving masses, Charlton Heston, Edward G Robinson, all followed by a war and pandemic fueled die-off of 70% of humanity sometime in the 2080s.
I figure that by 2250, there will be some livable economic and ecological equilibrium, along with mandatory population control.
By that time, the language of commerce and currency and travel is going to be Chinese.
germy
J R in WV
@AlienRadio:
Yes, my point exactly. I don’t think you need to wedge AI into this mix at all, plain old robotic automation is sufficient to take care of most of the well paid jobs.
Real AI is still just as close as cold fusion power plants. Or even hot fusion power plants. As in not close at all. Unless someone at CERN invents something not even imagined today…
TenguPhule
@mad citizen:
Slavery is technically legal and can be imposed by the federal government if you’re convicted of a crime.
Because we have 5 sc justices who will decide this is true.
TenguPhule
@chris:
They know who to hurt the most: Redstate and California Republicans
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Question is, will it work?
MisterForkbeard
@LAO: To be fair, Dinesh is saying that Preet should put racial/tribal loyalty above the law and thinks that actually doing your job and prosecuting lawbreakers is wrong if it might damage your own kind.
Which is Republican “Law and Order” in a nutshell, and this kind of thing should be broadcast far and wide. Fuck any Republican who says they’re voting for “Law and Order” or “Rule of Law”. They’re voting for their own preferential treatment.
TenguPhule
@Fair Economist:
He imposed $25 billion in tariffs on China yesterday.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Woodrowfan:
Oh, wooden shoes. I was hoping tumbrels.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@TenguPhule:
I heard that pissing on an open head wound after popping it 4 or 5 times with a baseball bat is helpful. Don’t remember where I saw it – it was someplace on the internet….
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
I’m not sure what on that list is from California. Florida produces way more orange juice than we do.
Mary G
scav
@MisterForkbeard: I did rather notice that strident assertion of Identity Justice. Or is it more properly Identity Jurisprudence?
Steeplejack
@LAO:
But, Ted, didn’t Dinesh go to a lesser Ivy?! Sad.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
Didn’t that bank suffer a cyber attack at the end of 2016? I think I read somewhere that there were some big accounts that were emptied out. I wondered at the time if that was one of the retaliatory actions we took after the election.
TenguPhule
@Steve in the ATL:
You will be spared.
TenguPhule
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Random lottery?
The Moar You Know
@Fair Economist: China and India. So yes, the logical people to go after in that case are Europe.
Dow will lose quite a bit by the start of next week unless he takes that card off the table today. He won’t, of course. He’ll blame Obama for the crash. 40% of America will believe that without even asking a single question.
Our society is in deep trouble. No society could survive 20+ years of Fox and GOP-owned media attacks on good governance, and ours didn’t.
(It wasn’t THAT well-governed, a truly well-governed society would have taken one look at what Fox was doing and pulled their licenses back in the late 1990s)
Mary G
The NK summit is off again.
CindyH
@TenguPhule: QFT
TenguPhule
@Aleta:
There’s something almost poetically ironic about a kickdown of hourly wage employees being turned around and used on the salary management.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
In terms of changing their votes? No.
In terms of making them eat shit, financially? Yes.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (phone): Just Some Fuckhead was looking for you last night.
TenguPhule
@Mary G:
You do the Hokee Pokee and you turn yourself around.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Rice and blue jeans.
JPL
@Mary G: What? I was only outside a few minutes.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Rice.
ETA: Bill beats me to it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: He’s got 2 weeks to turn it back on, loads of time.
TenguPhule
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
No. you disinfect a head wound that way.
You’re thinking about rubbing road salt into the wounds.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mary G:
But, but, just this morning,Trump tweeted:
What went sour in the last few hours?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule: Mnomosyne needs to go out the Central Valley where the real folk live*. They grow all sorts of stuff there: cotton, rice, almonds…
*At least that’s what silly jl tells me.
The Moar You Know
@Mary G: They’re just going to keep stringing Preznit Urinehead (his new hair dye is not doing him any favors) along, aren’t they? Grudging admiration for the North Koreans, who have his number and are going to jerk him around like a hooked fish until even he realizes that he’s been had.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: Maybe they called Dense an idiot again.
LAO
@Mary G: It was back on?
TenguPhule
@J R in WV:
None of em, Katie!
Elizabelle
@The Moar You Know:
I agree. Fox News and the whole of rightwing media (Rush, Sinclair) makes a functioning democracy way too hard. It needs to go. Don’t let lies and propaganda hide behind the First Amendment, or that it’s on cable.
We need to solve that problem.
SiubhanDuinne
@TenguPhule:
Another musical choice.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV:
Feudal Society, serf labor, Lords of the World! //
SiubhanDuinne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That would definitely have the advantage of accuracy.
trnc
@TenguPhule:
If you mean calling a fellow juicer to come finish the job, I’m on board.
TenguPhule
@JPL:
FTFY.
Trump is going to keep testing boundaries until he’s at Fifth Avenue with a gun.
J R in WV
@JustRuss:
Pretty sure I didn’t call Ford a nice guy, he was a Nazi and a bigot, which is why my Dad’s Jewish friend drove Cadillacs instead of Lincolns. My dad was shocked to learn that old Henry Ford was a real Nazi, and that that’s why Horty didn’t drive one. But Ford did raise the take home pay, in spite of his strange “rules” for living in his company town.
That’s my point.
I didn’t call it a pyramid marketing scheme, because it wasn’t one. No one was required to buy a Ford who didn’t want one, but many of the workers could afford to buy one if they wanted. I suspect that is undeniable, though I will confess I’m totally not interested enough to research it any further.
Further, my real point here was that if no one has the money to buy the products of American companies, those companies will go broke very quickly, which is what happened in 1930. And those companies seem to be strategically completely unaware that their staff cutting and wage cutting is a death wound to their core businesses.
But you didn’t discuss my actual point. Yes, Ford was a real SOB, and a fascist. He’s also long dead.
Kay
Christina Wilkie
Rule a law, baby! God, but conservatives have traded everything for Donald Trump. Everything. They’re a joke.
The pettiness knows no bounds. They’re punishing the federal prosecutors by pardoning celebrity criminals.
Kay
Remember- these are the same people who deliver stern lectures on how felons should never be allowed to vote.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
We grow rice? Jesus, no wonder we don’t have any water left.
I thought all of our blue jeans were made in China now anyway. ?
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Why wouldn’t it change at least some votes?
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
Wait. What?
catclub
@Brachiator: I would say that Pompeo has NOT announced that the summit is on again, after the first meeting with KJU’s representative.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne:
As are the fruity phones, still an American symbol.
And, yes, we grow rice in the Sacramento Valley. CalRose rice, it’s the best.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
That only applies to felons who don’t have rich and powerful friends willing to buy a pardon for them. Duh!
catclub
Kevin Drum on auto-trade wars (kind of)
so he mentions that US made SUV’s have tariffs applied. I guess this includes BMW and MB SUV’s made in Alabama and SC.
Anybody know if those are Kampfhundblick? sellers in Germany?
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
That’s the almond’s fault, actually. Rice fields help retain your water.
Barbara
@TenguPhule: That’s what it’s all about! Literally, that’s what it’s all about, turning around in endless circles without every accomplishing anything real.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
I pointed this out last year. They’ve gone all in and doubled down this time.
The GOP has decided this is literally win or die time.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Republicans. Common clay.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes it is. And we in Hawaii very much appreciate it.
Brachiator
@JustRuss:
The more accurate story still largely works.
Ford was able to raise wages, hire and retain workers, and reduce the price of automobiles, making them more affordable.
Steeplejack
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Well, that was cryptic. (Him, not you.) Thanks for the tip.
TenguPhule
And Trump of course used the security clause to invoke the tariffs.
Fucked, our Republic is.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
They will ultimately die. Nothing lasts forever. I can’t see them surviving as a coherent entity 20 years from now. The energy against the GOP I’m seeing now I hope lasts.
Yutsano
@TenguPhule: Mmm rice…good thing I’m having some at lunch today.
Calouste
@catclub: I don’t know why people think “Kampf” means “Struggle”. Do they think that the Nazis called their tanks Armored Struggle Wagons (Panzerkampfwagen)?
TenguPhule
Mexico’s statement is shrill.
schrodingers_cat
@Calouste: You are right, that makes no sense. So, what does kampf mean?
TenguPhule
Canada has a list and they’re not afraid to use it to hit back.
MisterForkbeard
@Mary G: What, seriously?
@Mnemosyne: Makeup, maybe? We do some pretty crazy artisinal things here. :)
@TenguPhule: Those are more broadly-based, too. Not targeted at Trump states, but at essentially everyone.
ealbert
@Calouste:
Per Wikipedia, kampf started as meaning field and then transitioned to meaning fight (as where the battle was fought) and then I guess to struggle. A somewhat similar path is the word deadline. It started as literally the line at which you were able to kill someone approaching you. This later shifted to the line beyond which you couldn’t print (we now call the area you CAN print in the live area). The final change was to the latest time that something could be included in the printing. Isn’t word derivation fun?
burnspbesq
I can’t wait to see Trump pardon his “great friend,” Michael Corleone.
J R in WV
@burnspbesq:
LOL Funny, Burnsy!!!
Oh, man, that would be so good, if someone passed a pardon for Don Corleone across his Pardon Signing Desk while he was pardoning all the Big R Traitors. And it would be valid, even though Don Corleone isn’t real!
No way to undo a Presidential Pardon!!!!! Way to go, Repugnants!!
I have to admit, Dinesh D’Souza pisses me off more than Sheruf Joe and Scooter Libby. What a complete dork, no morals, no ethics, no respect for law, none of that good citizen stuff, none!