Everyone once in awhile when the whole world is asking "what idiot thought this up?" the idiot is kind enough to stand up. https://t.co/ixVUGPViLH
— Geoff Bronner (@GeoffBronner) August 22, 2019
Cotton is a man who played many games of Risk in his younger days. If only he’d been able to find other people to play it with him, he might have more of a clue today…
(He remains a strong contender for ‘the Newt Gingrich of his generation’, however.)
Republicans are going to line up behind their newfound passion for purchasing Greenland, and it's going to own when they find out about the Mercator Projection.
— MCC Suicide Prevention Officer (ret.) (@agraybee) August 21, 2019
People keep saying Trump is engaging in his signature dealmaking here with Denmark. But what if Frederiksen is the one doing the art of the deal, saying "not for sale, not for sale" in an effort to bid Trump up to a really high price? https://t.co/vBI2DHkY5c
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) August 21, 2019
Traitors to … blondeness.
— Keep Wondering (@KEverWondering) August 21, 2019
Three years from now they will be wondering this. https://t.co/Xs5sZkYv6e
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 21, 2019
<— would like to fast-forward to the moment when I say, “Yes, Trump thought he could buy Greenland” to the documentary filmmakers.
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) August 21, 2019
mrmoshpotato
It’s been a long century. I just celebrated my 100th-fuckIcan’tremember birthday.
Are we fucking done yet?
trollhattan
“one of the first” what, there’s a frickin’ competition to be frist? “It was me!” “Liar, it was ME!!!”
Bright bunch, we’ve got here.
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato:
Not until the
fat ladyshaved cat sings.Immanentize
Does no one worry that Trump and Cotton are making invasion plans with whoever at DOD and Barr (for the legal check).
Immanentize
@mrmoshpotato:
I’m not done fucking if that was your question…
Yarrow
Tom Cotton has dead eyes. He’s scary.
Yarrow
Tomorrow could be fun!
Immanentize
@Yarrow:
Look at Steven Miller. These folks are not just low quality hires, they are pod people.
David Koch
Cotton = Randall Flagg
trollhattan
Out of I-can’t-evens, but Campos at LGM links to this beaut.
Had DOJ managed to become worse, post-Sessions?!?
Van Buren
I am wondering (and dreading )what he’s going to do to top this. Because he always ratchets worse.
Not the worst he’s done by a long shot, but perhaps the most inane.
Yarrow
@Immanentize: They are. The two of them have the same eyes. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has them too.
yellowdog
@Yarrow: Tom Cotton’s neck doesn’t fit.
Yarrow
@Van Buren: Buying Mars? Sending troops into Hong Kong? Nuking France?
Kay
Chetan Murthy
@Yarrow:
A serious comment. I’ve never been able to see this sort of thing in faces. I mean, there are faces I learn to dislike seeing (Shitlord, Yertle) but that’s b/c of the associations they dredge up. Stephen Miller’s face (spit) doesn’t make me think “dead eyes” or anything. When he starts talking, his affect really skeeves me out, but that’s all.
I wish I could see these things you all see. Sigh.
Immanentize
@Yarrow:
I think of Deliverance when I see Huck-Sanders. She doesn’t play banjo, does she? But she has a purty mouf.
Kay
@trollhattan:
Consider who hired them. The President who attacked a sitting judge over his ethnicity. Once they were on board with that it was all over. They know the deal they made.
Yarrow
Saw this a day ago and it was striking because it seemed so familiar.
Yarrow
Related to the post:
I think a lot of this is the real issue.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: Shave that cat and pull its tail!
(Fuck you, ‘it’s’ autocorrect!)
MattF
@Yarrow: Blockade Copenhagen– a little pressure might have an effect, you never know. Trump probably figured that the Danes weren’t really all that attached to Greenland, since the natives aren’t really white.
mrmoshpotato
@Immanentize: That’s not what I’m asking, and why are you monitoring comments during sex?
A Ghost To Most
@Chetan Murthy:
That was insultingly obvious with KG. Learn to spot the frauds.
mrmoshpotato
@Immanentize: How DARE you compare this criminal cabal of Kremlin ass-suckers to pod people! :)
Brachiator
So, do Republicans have regular meetings where they draw lots to decide who is going to take the fall for the Orange Nightmare?
Damn, these fools are like a cult.
Kay
More corruption from the Trump Administration:
They’re forced to attend meetings with Trump’s awful country club cronies and answer their “questions”.
Chetan Murthy
@A Ghost To Most:
Well, sure. But I spot frauds by what they -say-, not what their faces betray. But I know that many people are in fact capable of spotting lies by the facial tell. Ah, well.
sdhays
Denmark should have strung Dump along like Putin did with Trump Tower Moscow. But, of course, “purchasing” as sovereign country was too insulting to just accept. Just posing the idea as finding a way for Greenland to join the US would have been at least minimally respectful.
Kay
Let’s bet on whether the “VA nformation technology project” the three Trump cronies consulted on ended with a fat profit for one or all of them.
They’re just plundering at this point. Grabbing what they can before the corruption free for all ends.
Yarrow
@A Ghost To Most: Who or what is KG?
@Chetan Murthy: “Dead eyes” isn’t about being a fraud. It’s looking at someone and seeing a lack of humanity in their eyes. Cold, dead eyes.
Kay
@sdhays:
It’s typical, though. Cotton crowing publicly about how he planned to plunder the place is typical. They don’t consider anyone but themselves human beings.
Yarrow
Talk about your low quality hires…
Sheesh.
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
Is that because there is nothing, zip, nada, zero behind them? Just a hole, no gray matter, filled to capacity with whatever it is, in his backed up bowel.
debbie
@Yarrow:
It’s like they are having a contest over who can be the stupidest.
debbie
@Kay:
I think Denmark should ask the U.N. to issue a proclamation confirming that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chetan Murthy:
It depends upon the person doing the lying. For instance, I can always tell when my ex is lying. Her mouth is moving.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Not like a cult.
Are a cult.
catclub
@Yarrow: Kevin Garnett is the only one that springs to mind for me
debbie
@Chetan Murthy:
Those are eyes that will never look happy to see anyone or anything. That’s how you tell.
mrmoshpotato
@Yarrow: @Chetan Murthy: Yes. Think ‘Jaws.’
Quint: Y’know the thing about a shark, he’s got… lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes.
Mandalay
@Kay:
I think it’s more a case of Cotton covering for the president to show his subservience and loyalty now that the Greenland project is facing worldwide ridicule: “That idiotic idea about buying Greenland was my idea – not President Trump’s – so make fun of me, not him!“.
Cotton is desperately hoping that Trump will remember that he took one for the team.
patrick II
We might like to “own” Iceland, but how much would Icelanders be owned? Iceland has universal healthcare, free public education — including college, a minimum wage of $14, nine months parental leave, they work only 1697 hours a year, and no shooting murders since 2007. Why would they even think of joining this redneck ruled social dystopia? O.K. it’s not perfect, it gets cold in winter, but that wouldn’t change.
patrick II
@patrick II:
that should be willing to be owned. I can’t seem to edit.
Raven
@patrick II: and the best goddamn soccer cheer evah!
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
They are not falling for the spin, the media are also players in the game. The Times of London, the Daily Mail and some other media are reliably Tory, no matter what.
I used to listen to the BREXIT podcast, put on by journalists from the BBC and other media. It was interesting to note how often they would giggle about all the behind the scenes stuff they knew and what UK ministers and EU officials really believed, but which would never be printed.
This seems to be a game to all these people. They believe that their own lives will go on much like before, no matter what happens. Only little people might get hurt.
US media is much the same.
tokyokie
@MattF:
White? Hell, der Trumpenführer probably assumes that they’re green.
laura
@Chetan Murthy: apologies in advance if I mangle this, because I think I understand what your asking -and my learning style is “by analogy”
When I see an “open face” when a person looks me in the eye, seems interested or engaged, I see a person that I don’t immediately fear (Jimmy Carter, Mr. Roger’s, Oprah for example). When I see a dead eye, my gut sends out a signal of anxiety, fear, fight or flight response, I trust that feeling ( Tom Cotton, Liz Cheney, Chris Christie, trump crime family). It’s an emotional quotient assessment. Tom Cotton is an educated dangerous fool with aspirations to power. I’d cross the street if I saw him coming unless staying on the same side meant I could spit on him.
chris
Charlie Pierce pointed out that Cotton is worse than Trump and more dangerous because he’s a lot smarter. Yikes.
trollhattan
@chris:
The same can and has been said about Ted Cruz. We can’t ever sleep on these people.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: Mette Frederiksen rocks.
More women PMs please.
Brachiator
@Kay:
This is especially galling. Trump loves to brag about how much he loves vets, and how he is doing more for them than any other president.
It stands to reason that this really means that he has especially targeted the VA to be plundered.
NotMax
@Yarrow
Cold, dead eyes.
Case in point, Mike Flynn.
cmorenc
@trollhattan:
It’s weird indeed that Jeff Sessions turned out to be a true man of integrity, relative to everyone else in Trump’s maladministration, OK, so judging Sessions by that standard is giving him the benefit of one Hell of a curve in the grading scale, but nonetheless it’s true that Sessions was light-years ahead of his successor Barr in the integrity Dept, as well as the interim hacks at that post.
bmoak
@David Koch:
More than any other contemporary political figure, Cotton reminds me of President Stillson from The Dead Zone.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
There’s no “like” about it. They’ve become a personality cult, just as they have been threatening to do since the days of Reagan.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Yarrow: Only The Best People.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: I look at Flynn and I see crazy eyes.
Mandalay
@Brachiator:
I’ve noticed that as well. I follow Ian Dunt, a journalist and Remainer who is way smarter than any British politician on either side of Brexit, and although he speaks eloquently about Brexit, he can’t resist constantly joking around, and portraying politicians as clueless buffoons at every opportunity. That may well be true, but as with Trump, the greater truth is that they are powerful and dangerous buffoons, and frauds to boot.
Joking about them is counterproductive: many think the United Kingdom now has a lovable buffoon as Prime Minister, but he is far more a dangerous liar who will say and do anything that is in his own self-interest.
And British journalists just grin and shake their heads, and guffaw at the old rogue.
Baud
@Mandalay:
Everyone want to act like us internet denizens. No one has gravitas anymore.
BC in Illinois
It has been pointed out from time to time that some states in the US receive more in federal funds than they give in federal taxes. These dependent states [i’m looking at you Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina] are being subsidized by the other donor states — probably to a tune of more that $600 million. Do you think we can get a buyer?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I beg your pardon, I still have mine.
Mandalay
@Baud:
Except Baud/2020! More gravitas than a lead balloon.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Some want to insist that there is a continuity with all Republicans. I’m not sure I agree
But let me ask a question. I knew of Reagan as a governor and president. I never got the impression that he didn’t care for his country, even if I thought he was wrong about a lot of shit to the point of being evil.
I don’t think that Trump cares about anyone or anything besides himself, his reputation and Ivanka (as long as she continues to look youthful). He may well have sold out to the Russians.
I believe that many in the GOP would sell out the country to American plutocrats. But I believe that Trump would sell the country AND the GOP to Putin. And so, I think the GOP is fundamentally stupid if they think they can control Trump.
I had lunch with a friend the other day and mentioned the time I tried to persuade some friends and tax clients from getting involved in a dodgy investment scheme. They kinda knew it was a bad deal, but thought they could stay in until they made a nice profit. I tried to tell them that only two people knew when a con was going to end. The cops, if they were going to bust it, and the grifter, if he was going to run away.
Anyway, my question. My political history can always be improved. Do you know of past GOP administrations and governments that have been as staggeringly stupid and corrupt?
zhena gogolia
JaySinWA
@Kay: Did anyone say anything about buying the population? I expect they will get an eviction notice.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia:
The linked story is well worth reading.
Elizabelle
Whoa. James Fallows is shrill. And he is not wrong.
His blog at The Atlantic site: If Trump Were an Airline Pilot
But we are hostage to Mitch McConnell and those Fallows called “Vichy Republicans” earlier in his post.
Mike in NC
Trump probably has carried out three-way phone calls with his top foreign policy advisors: Tom Cotton and Sean Hannity. The word “cakewalk” might get thrown around a lot. Cotton seems to have a raging wingnut hard-on for tangling with Iran, and we’re bound to hear a lot more about that.
Cotton seems to be a ringleader among the GOP senators, most of whom couldn’t find Iran on a map. They’re happy with domestic policy and tax cuts. There is a very good chance Cotton will be the Republican presidential nominee in 5-10 years, which will be very bad news indeed.
JaySinWA
@Mandalay:
Interesting theory. I suspect that Trump will take it as Cotton trying to steal the credit.
HalfAssedHomesteader
I just want to go on record that the state of Georgia is also not for sale! Under no circumstances! Good day sir!
JPL
OMG He’s tweeting about Dancing with the stars. Whomever or Whoever had that on their bingo cards wins.
I have no idea what they win, but they win nonetheless.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
Point of order, the modern US armed forces would and have covered for the insanity of commanding officers that should have gotten them discharged without honor.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mike in NC:
No no, the American electorate will never elect that egotistic sack of hammers to the presidency..
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
..
.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…. 10,000 unemployed comedians and here I am giving it away for free.
Raven
@HalfAssedHomesteader: he can have Winder
Brachiator
@Chetan Murthy:
True story. I’ve always been a night person, or battled insomnia. When I was a teen, I would hang out at all night diners and other places open very late. Every now and then you would see lower level criminals taking a break. They would often have dead eyes. They would look at you and decide whether you were a competitor, a cop, a customer or nobody. Fortunately, I was a nobody.
Some years later I was visiting some store to buy gifts for friends. Hedi Fleiss was making an appearance, selling some clothing line. I remember that some print columnists and talk radio hosts had come to her defense, painting her as a victim and noting how her father was a respectable doctor. She came from a good family.
But I remembered that she was a madam, not an escort. She served up young women to her clients.
When she was not posing for the camera, I saw her up close. And you know what? Same cold, dead eyes as the low level criminals.
MomSense
@JPL:
You made me LOL thinking about all of us sitting at long tables playing the most bizarre bingo game ever.
I had to go check it out and now I’m hoping we will get to enjoy some new Melissa McCarthy skits.
TenguPhule
If they’re only nervous now, they’re stupid. At this stage of the meltdown its TOO LATE to start making contingency plans.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Coincidentally, Trump’s airline employer is German Wings.
TenguPhule
Yarrow
@JPL: No surprise. People are threatening to boycott DWTS because Sean Spicer is on it. Trump tweeted to “defend” him because Spicer worked for his administration. The whole thing is just dumb except for ABC normalizing Sean Spicer, which is terrible.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle:
Great piece. Depressing.
TenguPhule
Not the Onion.
zhena gogolia
@Yarrow:
They’ve been playing that game with DWTS for a long time. Tom DeLay, Bristol Palin — it’s one of the many reasons I stopped watching it. Hell, even Tom Bergeron complained publicly about this one.
Dan B
@Chetan Murthy: These folks smile and their mouths are frequently distorted. The same thing happens with their eyelids. The upper eyelids in a normal person lift up very slightly when they are happy. The edges of the eyelids curl up slightly as well. In addition their eyes tend to fix in an unwavering stare. It’s called a blank stare. They often look slightly down – their head is tilted diwn but the eyes look straight ahead so the top of iris is often under the upper eyelid. The intent, conscious or not, is to project menace. Mr. Burns on the Simpsons is drawn this way. It’s a tell that they are afraid if they don’t project power they will be attacked or at least put down. Their game is dominance and everyone else must submit. They’re the ones who want to know who is the wife and who is the husband in gay relations because they can’t conceive of coequal relationships.
TenguPhule
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
OzarkHillbilly
Absolutely Spectacular Time-Lapse Stormchaser Video: “From Darkness to Light”
4 minutes you won’t get back, but it’s still phenomenal videography.
Kathleen
@Yarrow: When I see these soulless ghouls I halfway expect to see slimy tentacles burst through their suit jackets and alien buggy eyes pop out of foreheads a la alien creatures from Men In Black.
Yarrow
@Elizabelle: I understand what Fallows is saying but I disagree with it to a certain extent. People in power are allowed to get away with a lot of stuff before they are finally removed. It seems awfully aspirational that people at the top will be removed for their concerning behavior. My experience is that everything possible is done by underlings to cover for them.
chris
I missed this yesterday. Threatening Europe should go well and where are all these ISIS prisoners? And, and… (Caution, video attached.)
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: WOW Reminds me of the time that we lived in ILL.
Kathleen
@Ruckus: “Backed up bowel” is a perfect description of the Rethuglican Bully Daddies and the media minions who love and enable them.
JaySinWA
@Yarrow: The examples in the excerpt are off as well. There are plenty of examples in the military and CEO land where people refused to believe their own lying eyes.
Even the Caine Mutiny example has the presumption that there was nothing wrong with the captain by the chain of command. The mutineers go on trial. And in the end the defense attorney for the acquitted mutineers attacks them for their lack of support for the mad captain
Yarrow
@JaySinWA: Yep. And I can speak from experience in the medical profession. Like I said, nice thought but aspirational.
Elizabelle
@Yarrow: We saw the Overstock.com glibertarian have to relinquish his CEO/seat on the board. Today. Because he was romantically and philosophically involved with Russian spy Maria Butina. And turned out the be a complete nutcase, which sent his company’s stock tumbling 36% since those revelations.
Trump, and all of his bottom of the barrel hires, are something we really haven’t seen before. To this extent. People complained about the U.S. Grant administration, but in retrospect, he seems like a very decent guy. I don’t know anything about his presidency. Need to learn up there.
Kay spotlighted a FTF NYTimes story on the new press secretary, and what an appalling record she’s got. She would not be hireable in a lot of companies. But they’re there, pulling down healthy salaries for destroying our country from within.
About Stephanie Grisham (and could you name her?): Kay pulled out this text:
I think this is unprecedented. I also feel like it’s coming to a head. The ground seems to be shifting. People have had enough. It’s the gun massacres. It’s the having a president who’s a laughingstock.
It’s being terrified what is going to happen to your investments, to your home values. To your job.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Living in the flatlands can be exciting. We get some good storms here in the Ozarks (saw a thundercloud that towered over 30,000 feet yesterday) (I swear!) but the plains? For viewing? For ferocity? Nothing quite like it.
japa21
@OzarkHillbilly: Absolutely riveting. I may need to go back and throw away another 4 minutes of my life, never to be seen again, just to watch it again later.
Thanks.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: Don’t forget D-in-Meats Perry.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: Good way to spend 4 minutes of 4 years we won’t get back.
Kathleen
@Elizabelle:
.
I have to disagree. Many of us foresaw this type of behavior.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
Wonderful!
Duane
@Elizabelle: Fallows is right. Trumpov rambles on like a nut. I’ve heard him this week talking to reporters and how they keep from asking if he’s lost his mind is beyond me. In a normal workplace he’d be gone.
Yarrow
@Elizabelle: I think we’re heading in the direction of Trump no longer being in office. How that happens I’m not sure.
The point I and JaySinWA were making is that there are a lot of examples of objectively crazy people in positions of power who are being propped up and kept in place for some reason. Even in large organizations and publicly traded companies. How long had Mr. Overstock been a nutcase before he got found out? I’d expect plenty of his cronies knew about him but kept him there for whatever reasons.
I get what James Fallows is saying but the excerpt you posted makes it sound like “if it were any other field Trump would be gone” and I categorically disagree with that assessment.
JR
He’s like a stupid Vizzini
mrmoshpotato
@Kathleen: Agreed. “This racist, fascist, pussy-grabbing asshole is fucking crazy!” doesn’t have limits on behavior.
A lot of us aren’t surprised at all this. Repulsed, of course. But we saw this coming from the “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”, I-want-to-ban-all-Muslims Soviet shitpile.
Elizabelle
@Kathleen:
In Fallows’ defense, he brought up the pu$$ygrabbing and racial slurs earlier. Also referred to the Vichy Republicans who went right along with it.
But I think this past week has rattled him a bit.
Elizabelle
@Yarrow: Very good point about those within the company knowing the Overstock CEO was a nut job. No doubt.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: From IL we moved to Dallas, TX, but because of the city lights the stars at night
were not big and bright.
JaySinWA
@Yarrow: Hear, hear. It takes something pretty spectacular to kick out the props. In the case of Overstock a loss of over a third of market value after the CEO publicly showed his ass probably precipitated his downfall.
Would a stock market crash of 8000 points do in Trump? Perhaps, but I am not rooting for that. Pretty much any major crisis will hurt a lot of people before it takes out Trump.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL:
Tell me about it.
mart
@debbie:
GOP is selling USA Greenland T shirts to raise money. What won’t the rubes buy?
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
Agreed. But some people whose votes we need need to convince themselves that this was unpredictable.
WhatsMyNym
Did anybody comment on John Hickenlooper switching to run against incumbent Sen. Cory Gardner?
Two dropping out of the race for Pres. in one day (Inslee being the other).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
when he wasn’t “experimenting” on squirrels and rabbits he trapped in the backyard, and decapitating the barbie dolls he stole from girls in the neighborhood.
That boy maybe be the that-boy-ain’t-righest boy on the right. He makes Rick Santorum look reassuringly normal.
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle:
Something just passed through my head.
If Republicans are “Vichy Republicans”, who’re the Nazis? It’s all the same party. Dump didn’t invade the Republican party. They’ve wanted this for decades.
From Grover Norquist wanting someone stupid and/or fascist enough to sign whatever batshit crazy bills are put on his desk to Newt Gringrich making fun of Chelsea Clinton back in 1993, Dump’s election was at least 25 years in the making, though the Republican party has been a POS for 40+ years.
This wasn’t an invasion that some wanted to collaborate with. It was welcomed with open arms and tears of joy.
“Hooray! We had to endure 8 years of an elitest Negro who liked spicy mustard!”
Steve in the ATL
I’m in downtown Kent, Ohio. What are the chances that I’m going to get shot by a national guardsman?
Villago Delenda Est
I still would like to know how Cotton avoided being Douglas Niedermeyer in Iraq.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
There is no place to hide on the plains.
germy
Comment over at LGM:
Villago Delenda Est
@Steve in the ATL: Need to be on the campus of Kent State for that. Preferably enrolled in ROTC and just walking by the quad.
Elizabelle
@mrmoshpotato: You are not wrong.
Mainmata
@Yarrow: Yes, absolutely. The Tories and their media allies have minimized the danger of Britain becoming “Little England”. Certainly, Scotland will leave; they have the resources and N. Ireland will work with Eire to keep a trade relationship.
debbie
@mart:
What crappy designs!
TenguPhule
@Villago Delenda Est:
I assume any unit he served in wasn’t issued firearms.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
You’ll be fine as long as you put flowers in their rifle barrels. That always works.
TenguPhule
@Steve in the ATL:
If you loudly declare you’re a lawyer? I’d say 1:1.
Villago Delenda Est
@JR: Inconceivable!
germy
@TenguPhule: Maybe someone threw a stapler at him.
TenguPhule
@germy: Somehow its Saturday already.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
I think it’s easier to overwhelm the purity crowd. It’s damn hard to tell yourself, even alone at night, that you fucked over democracy because 4-8 years of Hillary was a fucking bridge too far.
raven
@Steve in the ATL: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – The Cost of Freedom
schrodingers_cat
I think Cotton is falling on the sword to curry favor with the Orange and inherit his base. Will be useful when he runs for President in 2024.
germy
@raven: Larry Taylor (Canned Heat) has died at 77.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: if Cotton becomes (not going to say “is elected”) president, we will pine for the halcyon days of Orange Julius
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: “never bring a knife to a gunfight—bring flowers instead!”
Chyron HR
@mrmoshpotato:
The hostile country that took over the US and installed a puppet government in 2016?
raven
@germy: CANNED HEAT – MY CRIME
germy
@Steve in the ATL: I get an Anthony Perkins vibe from Cotton (his role in PSYCHO)
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: I agree. He’s scary. Those dead eyes. He’s worse than Trump because he’s not incompetent.
Cacti
@Mainmata:
I heard that Boris offered Ireland the chance to ditch the EU and join in a new partnership with perfidious Albion.
The laughter in Dublin must have been a seismic event.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti: “He’s been in the cooking sherry again.”
germy
JanieM
@Steve in the ATL: Unsnarkily, go to the university and find this:
It is extremely moving, or at least it was to me. I grew up an hour or so away from there and had high school friends who were students at KSU in 1970.
raven
@Yarrow: I’m seeing G Gordon Liddy.
Ksmiami
@Mike in NC: which is why we need to lay waste to the entire party and it’s media apparatus
Mart
@debbie: I thought the T shirt with the red, white, and blue maps of the USA with the map of Greenland shown just above Maine was pretty sweet; except they forgot to keep the meridium projection showing Greenland to be the size of half of the US. Still thinking of buying and framing the shirt like a sports jersey. I would put it next to my Mad Magazine cover with Trump’s head being a Jack-In-The-Box, and smiling Alfred E. Newman springing out of it. As good a predictor of the Trump Presidency as any.
Amir Khalid
@JPL:
You’ve got an absolutely beautiful lyric there, now you need to go write the rest of the song.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Steve in the ATL: Too soon.
I dated a guy from Kent when I was in college. He was a townie, but I knew people who were there that day. Not close enough to be in danger, it turned out, but it changed their lives, and not in a good way. Only one of them knew a victim.
mrmoshpotato
@Chyron HR: Reasonable assessment. Though personally I don’t draw divisions between Nazis and their collaborators.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
WHY DON’T THEY MAKE A PUBLIC STATEMENT TO THIS EFFECT?
Yarrow
@Cacti:
It really is comical. Or, it would be if it weren’t so serious.
Raven
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: It changed my life and I was in Urbana.
Raven
Mandalay
Nobody Could Have Predicted… Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Join Fox News as a Contributor
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: Because they’re cowards, more concerned with their careers than the welfare of the country they claim to love.
chris
B-J on Linux/Chrome takes 3 minutes to load and a comment takes 5 minutes. Hi, stackpathcdn!
Firefox loos like a rescue page and won’t scroll. So that’s out.
Works on Android. Weird. New website, anyone?
Steve in the ATL
Brexit was all over Bloomberg this morning, and not one iota of the coverage was sanguine about Britain’s prospects.
Meanwhile, in between dodging the pipes and wrenches being swung at me by ornery Teamsters, I have been working with an increasing depressed lawyer in London about moving our European works council rep to Ireland. On a related note, real estate prices in Dublin are totes OOC as companies move work there as the English-speaking option in the E.U. The Brits are so fucked in so many ways.
Kathleen
@mrmoshpotato: I’m a bit surprised because I think Fallows is one of the better reporters and I thought he would have had more insight early on. But he was not alone in that.
Steve in the ATL
@Raven: among all the other stupid things in this letter, it inaccurately assumes that these migrants are all staying in Texas. You’re just the gateway, you paranoid egomaniacs.
Yarrow
@Steve in the ATL: They’ll always have that sweet Russian money. Also, they can look forward to becoming a colony of America.
Kathleen
@Elizabelle: Thank you for adding that context. I do consider Fallows to be much better than many of his peers. Sadly, I am neither surprised nor freaked out about these latest developments. I must be a terrible cynic because I believe he is capable of anything and nothing he does will shock me. That applies to many of his fellow Rethuglicans as well.
smintheus
I think Cotton is just trying to provide some cover for Trump on this. His claim that the US fears China will get permission to build naval bases on Greenland and that’s the reason for trying to buy it … is particularly ridiculous.
Mandalay
@Mainmata:
Hardly. More like they have the debt:
The SNP wants to be like Argentina, and wipe their slate clean because…..honoring your obligations is so icky. Good luck with that approach, you fucking con artists.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T. A friend of mine in a political chat room just said that Scaramucci is on CNN and is “ripping into Trump so hard, he makes Cohen look like Trump’s mentor.” LOL!
Anybody watching this? I don’t own a TV but will likely be able to see it online before long.
Steve in the ATL
@Yarrow:
That’s the whole point of Brexit, n’est-ce pas, to get rid of the E.U. rules so that London real estate can remain a money laundering/money stashing spot for Russian oligarchs?
London:Russian oligarchs::Miami:Latin American oligarchs
mrmoshpotato
@Steve in the ATL:
The Germans mocked the crap out of Brexit last October. (They were even nice enough to add English subtitles.)
This is what Brexit REALLY means
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne: I think Scaramucci is a con. Don’t trust a word he says.
@Steve in the ATL: Pretty much. Also, there’s tons of Russian money in south Florida.
smintheus
@Elizabelle: I think Fallows is too sanguine about the Navy’s supposed scrupulous dedication to honesty, competence and reasonableness. Naval officers cover up for themselves, their friends and shipmates more or less routinely…or at best, keep mum. This also isn’t true:
I taught at a college where for 10 years the president daily insulted and abused anybody he wished, with zero action by the board. I had only been teaching there about one month when he began to single me out with sneering and thinly veiled threats (because I wouldn’t suck up to him, I suppose). Almost nobody else at the college stood by anybody he abused because academics are cowardly on the whole.
Jay
Not the Onion, points to the Onion.
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Both the Brit MSM and the North American MSM covers Brexit as if the EU doesn’t exist and has no agency.
Funny that.
Patricia Kayden
I wonder if Trump finding out that most Greenlanders are Inuit would dampen his zeal for buying Greenland from Denmark. He probably thinks they’re all Scandinavian blondes. ?
Jay
@smintheus:
Yup. Academic horror stories, the local Recruiter for the Atheletic Program died in a Victoria hotel room of a fentanyl od, with a 17 year old female “recruit”. Everybody knew he was a coke head who preyed on young girls, even his Wife and children, but they kept their mouths shut, buried the reporting for 20 years from lower level staff, because he brought in the sweet sweet money from donors, the DOE, and talent from the A Leagues.
JR
@Brachiator: The fact that there is not even a single Marat — nevermind a thousand of them — out there filling the void is truly remarkable.
Dan B
@Steve in the ATL: What are the chances you’ll find food with flavor and texture….. errr Cow products…. but vegetables that have any hint of texture and/or life?
Maybe things have changed in metro-Akron in the last few decades.
And let me tell you about the time a friend and I were in Akron to visit family at Christmas and tried to find a gay bar or a drty bookstore that might know about a gay bar and then asked cabbies. We finally high taiked it out of there ahead of a blizzard but not after spending a number of minutes in fluorescent lit bars with small clusters of nearly lifeless men.
chopper
as i said in another thread some place, trump probably thinks the Mercator Projection is a ludlum novel.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
British TV/Movie writer
RAVEN
Barbara
@Patricia Kayden: Doubt it. Knowing they aren’t European will make it easier to justify stealing their resources and polluting their air and water.
Gin & Tonic
@chris:
Soon come, mon.
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Scary. We are in deep trouble.
Keith P.
Anyone else watching Chris Cuomo interview the former Overstock CEO? Bonkers interview…all over the map, with about 10 different “OK this is the main event”s and a conspiracy where James Comey and Peter Strzock have this guy sleep with Maria Butina and knowingly get in with Hillary, Trump, Rubio, and Cruz so the FBI could blackmail everyone.
Bill Arnold
@Chetan Murthy:
TBH I usually need video to see the tells, which are small facial movements.
Cotton is intelligent and does not appear to be neurotypical, which can make reading him difficult. It’s the arrogance and nastyness that most get to me:
Chair of the imbecile caucus: Sen. Tom Cotton proudly stands at the vanguard of shameless Republican obstructionism – Cotton’s spiteful blockade of recently deceased Obama nominee Cassandra Butts sums up what’s wrong with the GOP (Gary Legum, June 8, 2016)
The arrogance, to be clear, is not justified, IMO. (Also it’s bad form and leads to mistakes.)
chris
@Gin & Tonic: God’s, I hope so! Works on Android but eats battery life.
Brachiator
@chopper:
I don’t think that Trump has ever read a novel in his entire life.
And If you Google “Trump favorite author” stories and an interview clip from 1987 come up, with Trump struggling to talk about his supposed favorite writers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Boy wait till the Libertarians hear about this
Ascension Parish, LA
Elizabelle
@mrmoshpotato: That’s excellent.
Der Englische Patient, with Boris Johnson in a straightjacket. The picture frame: you are either in or out. Brilliant.
Steve in the ATL
@Dan B:
I drove right past Bob Evans! Kent has a decent little downtown. Lots of bar food and such, but a few places that had some farm to table food. My meal was good, and probably fucking awesome by local standards!
There is at least something of a gay scene there now, as I saw two men wearing pink shirts.
Villago Delenda Est
@zhena gogolia: They fear the wrath of Don.
Jay
Jay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Could have been worse. ICE deported over 2400 Americans in 2018, some after 3 years in detention. About 1100 have managed to make it home.
Gin & Tonic
@Keith P.: Strzok.
Jay
chopper
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
lol you funny.
chopper
@Brachiator:
i didn’t say he read it.
Sab
@Dan B: Have you been to Highland Square lately? It’s pretty much a gay neighborhood now.
Captain C
@patrick II: It might if they had to adopt the ideal Republican environmental platform.
Jay
Monkees with smaller testicles scream louder,
https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/animals-ecology/monkey-small-testicle-03082016/
Miss Bianca
@WhatsMyNym: Did he really? Oh, *my*, yes! : )
Ken
@Yarrow:
Or their lives, if some of Trump’s more deranged supporters decide they’re betraying Dear Leader. Assuming Dear Leader doesn’t tweet it first.
So, would you call that irony, or karma? I can’t decide.
Jay
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/08/elections-have-consequences-oakland-county-edition
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jay: Mickey Dolenz unavailable for comment
Jay
@Ken:
One of the nice things about Nazi America, is there are more splitters there than Judea, and they hate eachother almost as much.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4
Jay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Different Monkee,…..
Steve in the ATL
@Miss Bianca: btw, look at fraudulent conveyances. You can’t divest your assets when you’re about to get a judgment against you. Every state has that kind of law; don’t know the details, but it seems like a good avenue to explore for the Epstein victims.
Miss Bianca
@Steve in the ATL: Pink shirts on men = gay? : /
Steve in the ATL
I was being facetious, but I heard these guys talking and they were in fact gay
Jay
Jay
@Miss Bianca:
Pink or coral?
Gay or woke?
Jay
@Steve in the ATL:
Salmon?
Gin & Tonic
@Steve in the ATL: You could tell by the sound of their voices?
Jay
Steve in the ATL
@Gin & Tonic: the actual conversation
@Jay: no, salmon is masculine
Brachiator
@Jay:
Don’t know about the Monkees, but the Rolling Stones concert at the Rose Bowl is about to kick off.
Jay
Those Amazon fires that have hit the news, arn’t wildfires, they are land clearing operations for cattle, soybeans and mines.
Within 5 years the cleared land will be too sterile ( nutrient poor) for soybeans or grasses.
Jay
@Brachiator:
I was thinking more about Deplorables than say, Freddy Mercury or Nazareth.
NotMax
@WhatsMyNym
Not the same day. Hickenlooper’s drop out announcement was last Friday, Inslee’s yesterday.
Jay
@Steve in the ATL:
Wouldn’t know. I wear black, white, grey, denim and Carhart, for the ease of laundry.
Jay
Miss Bianca
@Steve in the ATL:
Ah, I figured there had to be a legal concept at play here! Thanks.
Sooo…h’m. With regard to Epstein: He’s in jail, he’s been charged, but hasn’t gone to trial, so no judgement yet…
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
Say what now?
Jay
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@Brachiator:
Warren G. Harding’s. Which also included the plunder of the VA, as well as land grabs and petroscandals.
Jay
J R in WV
@chris:
I’m running a laptop with Ubuntu 18.04.3 and Firefox 68.0.2, because I have pretty tight security, at the moment twits don’t show in the B-J front page until I open them in their own tab. Otherwise everything seems quite normal.
I also have an Android tablet which I browse B-J with, but rarely comment because the touch-pad typewriter is such a pain to me.
Maybe there’s something else off about your setup?
ETA: Just reloaded B-J front page took under 10 seconds.
For a little more detail on our setup, we have a Viasat sat link which is up on the ridge at the next door neighbor’s house, connected with a local ethernet to the wireless modeM at our house.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: True. All the while, the EU goes about its business while the UK keeps bashing itself in the face.
Jay
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
Yeah, 999,999,999 words on “Britian”,
0 words on the EU.
Fuck Britain, they are so done.
Jay
Sally
@Raven: And truly epic Eurovision entries
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
There are billions being wasted on vets – the bullshit according to trump. Or any other republican. Every thing that the government does other than pay for trumps golf outings is waste. Parks, FEMA, infrastructure, VA, Medicare, SS, etc, that’s all money that could be given to rich assholes, like he thinks he is. The republican concept of government is Loot, Pillage, Plunder, Lie and Steal. Everything.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
Got to agree with TP here. The US military has a lot of members with extremely oversized views of them selves. The ones that can do much about it are officers. I had a ships captain once that the Pentagon wanted gone but they wouldn’t fire him, what they did and I imagine still do is give them a shitty, nothing command hoping they resign. But what the shitheads normally do is take it out on the powerless, the crew. Which is what this shithead did. I can not imagine that the other services have the same issue. Had an executive officer who would follow behind the captain and rescind the captain’s orders if he didn’t agree with the captain’s decision. Within hearing of the captain. Even the lifers were pissed. BTW the commanding officer for those officers I served under on a destroyer was the same officer who became the captain of the last ship I served on and told about above.
There are a lot of shitty people in this world, who think that the only way to get ahead is to step on everyone who they have a chance to. No matter what, the world revolves around the stick up their ass. And yes it’s that big of stick for that big of ass.
patrick II
@Chetan Murthy:
Perhaps you can think of a woman you find attractive because when you look into her eyes they are so full of life? There is an alertness, intelligence, they see you exist as a person, perhaps a joy in seeing you? It’s like that, but the opposite.
Uncle Cosmo
Sen. Tom “Snake Eyes” Cottonmouth (R-Deliverance), the Arkanaconda.
We’ll need a tumbrel with solid sides & a tight narrow-screen top so he doesn’t slither out. Start the design process now.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: I see these things to some extent but I always wonder how much of it is suggestion based on whether I like these people or not. There has been a lot of psychological research showing that perception of facial expression is highly suggestible. If I were a Republican would I be perceiving Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren as having cold, dead eyes? Especially if I mostly saw pictures cherry-picked by right-wing media? (They loved shots of Obama in which he had a haughty, glaring-down-from-above expression. Liberal publications do the same kind of thing with pictures of Republicans.)
chris
@J R in WV: Thanks. It’s working now but I have no idea why. Yay?
ETA: It’s directly related to stackpathcdn. If that shows up in the bottom left corner something is wrong.