.
“I wouldn’t say anything inappropriate when people are listening” said the guy who asked Russia to hack an American’s emails in a public speech.
— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) September 19, 2019
The tell is Trump’s denial clearly came late enough in the morning that there was surely DOJ consultations before he made it.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 19, 2019
The only way it could get more lit is if Bolton is the whistleblower
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) September 20, 2019
Trump: PLEASE IMPEACH ME, IM TIRED AND I WANT TO GO HOME! LOOK, IM EXTORTING A FOREIGN LEADER FOR PERSONAL GAIN!
Pelosi: No Donald, I’ll never impeach you. I’m going to make you suffer.— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) September 20, 2019
Trump is going to get indicted and make a run for the Mexican border and you’re not gonna believe what he finds when he gets there.
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) September 20, 2019
I think I’ve already suggested the other one, in which Trump tries to get away by boat and the USS McCain pulls up behind him.
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) September 20, 2019
"The has-been hero, the disgraced hacker, the addled ringleader… Together they must find a Moscow bodega that will make change for a large bill." <Cue Mission Impossible music>
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) September 20, 2019
B/c when you're defending the President of the United States, of course you want to allude to a book in which a former star of the NFL explains how he killed his wife. pic.twitter.com/Z8YsredXgZ
— Ira Goldman ?????? (@KDbyProxy) September 20, 2019
This is a much, much more legitimate concern than thinking he'll declare himself dictator forever. https://t.co/LCIVDVZYE8
— Je Suis Corn Pop (@agraybee) September 20, 2019
rikyrah
Good Morning,Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
When he’s a private citizen he can be arrested and imprisoned for this shit.
satby
@rikyrah: @Baud: Good morning ?
@Baud: and I am so looking forward to that day.
satby
It’s global climate strike day!
seaninclt
Wouldn’t that be some shit? NancySmash’s plan all along was to avoid impeachment to let Orange Julius fully destroy the Republican party within one term… I know, I know, fanciful eleventy degree chess, but a boy can dream.
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
Baud
@satby:
I’m not using any climate today.
Baud
@seaninclt:
I don’t think that was her plan, but I do think if they had started a full impeachment hearing, a lot of new news would have gotten burried. Biggest problem is that it’s hard to figure out which crimes to impeach over because they’re so many.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: …for a long, long time.
seaninclt
@Baud: I don’t really believe that has been her plan all along either and I’m one of the people that rage-tweets at her about not doing something about Trump. However, I also realize that a) she’s waaaay smarter than I am and b) like it or not, she is one of the most gifted politicians of the last 50 years. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of person that would just frazzle under pressure and not have a plan for this dickhead.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
You know he’s going to be surveilled 24/7.
NotMax
Frivol fizzle.
Wag
how do we keep him from blabbering all our secrets or exchanging secrets for his own good?
Um, lock him up for life immediately?
NotMax
Harbinger?
Gvg
@Baud: yes but we are still going to have to do a lot of preventive damage control, change things, move people etc. And that will cause harm to our intelligence capabilities. It’s unavoidable now.
If I were briefing this President, I would really avoid telling him much. In fact I wonder if they are actually lying to him or avoiding briefings. He is lazy, but I think he wanted to know secrets to brag to his friends. The minute he can’t issue pardons, some of his friends are possibly going to get arrested.
Kay
Who else in and around the Trump Administration knew about this? One person reported it. How many knew about it and didn’t report it? They don’t need to ask the whistleblower – ask the people who would have known but didn’t report it, because they’re culpable too.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: By who is the question.
ETA: by everyone is the answer.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Yeah, they do that at Florence.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
And new ones, each and every day.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Yeah, but the administration folk won’t show up and even if they do they’ll claim privilege(though they just make new forms of privilege all the time).
Kay
This is the 2nd time in just the modern era where Republican Presidents went completely insane with executive power. Nixon inspired a whole body of law re: checks on power and new regulations regarding transparency. It’ll have to happen again after Trump.
You have to police them constantly or they race right to the bottom. They can be permitted no leash, no wriggle room. Unless they’re tightly rule-bound they launch crime sprees. No one on the face of the planet needs to be regulated more than these people. Their personal behavior is the best argument for the regulatory schemes they oppose.
NotMax
FYI, a cubic zirconia in the diadem of shock schlock on TCM at 2:15 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, Eating Raoul.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
They should set up a web cam in his cell so people can be inspired by the justice.
NotMax
@NotMax
Bad linky. Fix.
FYI, a cubic zirconia in the diadem of shock schlock on TCM at 2:15 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, Eating Raoul.
Kay
Just on a side note- when the NYTimes covered this “Trump Administration uses US foreign policy to target political rival” story months ago they covered it from the angle of Joe Biden’s corruption.
They would have continued covering it like that and all the other media outlets would have followed them, but for the fact that there’s a whistleblower.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Hence their opposition. FREEDUMB!
Baud
@Kay:
We can thrown in a new rule about private email servers for the sake of bipartisanship.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
An embarrassment of crimes?
Baud
@Kay:
You’re assuming they won’t go back to that.
Kay
@Baud:
Right. Those are bad. I want a nepotism rule immediately. I think the nepotism is bad for the country on the grounds that it’s anti-competitive. We’re not getting the best people because we’re getting these low quality otherwise-unemployable relatives.
This is WHY we supposedly have a professional civil service. We already had this problem once and solved it. We just have to close the loopholes. We left a tiny little bit of wiggle room and, you know, you can’t do that with conservatives! They apparently have no internal governor so it must all be codified.
NotMax
@Kay
48 years (1920 – 1968) from Harding to Nixon. 48 years (1968 – 2016) from Nixon to Dolt 45.
Hmmm.
;)
Kay
@Baud:
I think it’s hysterical that the NYTimes looked at some of the same information the whistleblower looked at and concluded “this is a Joe Biden corruption story!”
Fucking hopeless. Shut it down and start over. It’s systemic. They completely swallowed Guiliani’s spin, probably because he gave it to them.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Oh yeah. ‘Cause I’m gonna want his fat, orange fascist face still broadcast around the world after the Soviet shitpile is out of the people’s house.
Sarcasm – it’s what’s for breakfast.
Sarcasm Industry Council and Sarcasm Board
Baud
@Kay:
We just have to learn not to trust them when they report on Democrats. Stop using their reporting against Democrats we don’t like. Lessen the same for propaganda.
Immanentize
@Baud:
I intend to make climate today
Kay
@Baud:
What’s amusing to me too is how parochial they are. They take Rudy Giuliani as credible because he’s a local and they know him. There are 9,000 people in the city where I live. This same thing happens in our local newspaper, which probably has a countywide circulation of 20,000.
This isn’t big and sophisticated. It’s small and insular. Giuliani just happens to come from a media center instead of Anytown, Illinois. Trump just happened to be a NYC real estate developer, instead a car wash chain developer in New Mexico.
Location, location, location :)
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Cancelling 2064 to avoid any potential PITA.
mrmoshpotato
@satby: No hitting. Use your words.
Baud
@Baud:
Same = demand
Kay
@Baud:
Giuliani is a complete scumbag. Has been for 20 years. Yet. Because THEY lauded him back in the day and elected him he somehow maintains his unearned reputation as some kind of law enforcement figure. It isn’t about his credibility. It’s about protecting THEIR credibility. Because they admired a really bad person we all must pretend he has some authority or ethical standards. He doesn’t.
MJS
@NotMax: Ignoring Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2 in that Nixon to Trump timespan is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: There’s a new Mexico?
Anne Laurie
@Wag:
Hand to goddess, I am 100% sure that Ivanka & Jared (with or without the assistance of Don Jr & Eric) plan to have the old man warehoused ‘for his own good’ if he escapes being jailed before his term expires. And I think part of why Lord Smallgloves is fighting to stay in a job he so obviously hates is that he suspects the same — because it’s what *he* would do, under the same circumstances.
Of course, if it looks like he’s about to go to jail, Donny Dollhands will no doubt pull a Vincent Gigante and (try to) have his associates claim the old man is too senile to go to jail. But since Trump can’t actually have people killed, I suspect he won’t inspire the same kind of ‘loyalty’ Gigante managed; the second he shows ‘weakness’, however feigned, his nearest & quasi-dearest will tear him into chum…
Baud
@Kay:
That’s America’s Mayor, Kay.
Kay
It’s weird how none of the “guard rail” Trumpsters who were supposedly reluctantly taking these high level positions out of Duty and Honor in the Trump Administration never did any whistleblowing.
Why were they there, again? Looks like the guard rails failed! Crashed right thru and none of them said a word.
Bring them back from their private sector positions as celebrity authors and board members of child prison companies and ask them- did they know what the whistleblower knew? Did they have the same law to protect them? Why didn’t they use it?
Ken
@mrmoshpotato:
History provides us with one possible solution for that.
Kay
@Baud:
Gross. He’s been sleazy forever, too. Immediately following 9/11 he launched his “sleazy operative and security contractor” career. These interviews where they’re like “you’re a liar!” – no shit. Twenty years into it their hero comes crashing to earth. They have to examine why they admire such bad people! What are their values? Do these people embody them?
mrmoshpotato
@Ken: Stop making me sound like I said that seriously.
OzarkHillbilly
My father had a lifelong ticket to fly anywhere. Then they took it away
My dad was one of the only people with a good-for-life, go-anywhere American Airlines pass. This is the true story of having – and losing – a superpower
ETA: It’s a long read, but definitely worth the trip.
Immanentize
@Kay:
You are skipping the part where Giuliani tried to stay in office in NYC after 9/11 but the good people of the City said, “Hells to the No!”
People were certainly on to him. Just not his social club.
TS (the original)
@NotMax From your link
The General needs to check out trump rather than UFO hunters.
Ken
@mrmoshpotato: Sorry, bad edit of your comment, and I’m one of the people with no edit or delete button except on alternate Tuesdays of months ending in “y”.
If it’s any comfort my carelessness also spoiled my small attempt at a joke. Yeah, that’s right, just joking…
debbie
@Kay:
The first to be asked should be Barr.
Have you heard that they’ve found significant errors in the voter purges in Cuyahoga and Franklin Counties? I’m SHOCKED this happened in the bluest counties in the state!
mrmoshpotato
I think a plane flying overhead just set off a car alarm.
Honk honk honk… Not even a fun alarm.
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t know. It’s so strange.
debbie
@Kay:
Don’t forget he and Kerik had that chick pad right beside the smouldering ruins.
mrmoshpotato
@Ken: I’m not interested in your one possible solution. Do you have one weird trick? :)
Immanentize
@mrmoshpotato:
Thems the new effects of chemtrails. Don your breathing apparatus.
SFAW
@MJS:
“Who? Those names are not familiar to me”
— every elected Rethug in the USofA (plus the FTFTFNYT)
mrmoshpotato
@Immanentize: Not chemical warfare, but auditory warfare.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Yep ?
TS (the original)
First time in months I turn on MJ & he’s calling out democrats for asking for Kavanaugh to be impeached without the correct level of proof.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Immanentize
@mrmoshpotato:
They have to mix up the types of attacks, donchaknow. Put in your militia-distributed camo earplugs….
rikyrah
@Kay:
Surrounded by sychophants ??
mrmoshpotato
@SFAW: “What’s this giant hole full of memories?”
“Oh that old thing? It’s my memory hole. Every Republican’s got one.”
rikyrah
@Kay:
Speaking of regulatory schemes…
Folks do understand that our pork will be killing us soon…..with his new self-regulation of the pork industry ???
Immanentize
@Baud: @rikyrah:
Some say the hard crash Brexit is being pushed by very rich people who do not want to comply with upcoming EU banking rules that take effect in January. Look at the history of many African democratic leaders turned dictators. Trump is like them — he cannot withstand scrutiny.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Kitten update.
Maysie escaped their room yesterday and headed directly down the stairs to the kitchen, where she joined the Vorwiggles twins in begging for scraps from a rotisserie chicken. The twins were not amused.
Brief introductions have been going well. Still too soon to let them wander unsupervised.
They’re not sure what to make of the turtle tank in the sewing room.
They really like the ball track. Two new videos up, one 15-min and one 30-min version of them playing with the ball track for the first time. All I had to do was demonstrate that the ball rolled in the track. They’ve been adjusting the camera angles for me. (Everyone’s a critic.)
They’re not really staying still long enough to get photos right now.
mrmoshpotato
@TS (the original): Funny. I thought Joey JoeJoe Scarborough was an independent now. Interesting to still be spouting Rethuglican BS.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I wish I believed this scandal would end differently than the 50 before it. He and his thugs will scream “privilege!” and the country will stagger on.
I’m leaving town later this morning for a long weekend with a friend in MN. It will be good to be away from the news.
Kay
@debbie:
I disagree. We need a new approach. The committed, currently employed Dear Leader lackeys have the government tools and resources to obstruct. Bring in the former employees. The people who were supposedly there as “guardrails”. And DON’T start at the bottom. I know everyone loves the story about the Mafia prosecutions how the little fish flip on the big fish, whatever, but forget the little fish. Bring in the bosses who left The Family. It’s not, actually, the Mafia. It’s a bunch of fancy self-interested independent contractors who have a lot to lose and who are now pursuing their post-Trump careers.
They’re not career criminals. It isn’t a cartel. It’s public sector white collar crime and now they’re in the private sector.
Leto
@Kay:
Even when they are tightly rule bound, they still commit crimes. They understand our slow walking legal system so they know that by the time it might get to a ruling, the crime and it’s results will be long done. Think of the Chairman of the House Ways and Means asking for Trumpov’s tax returns. Or this article here: Betsy DeVos’s DOE Violated Court Order Prohibiting Collection of Loan Payments from Scammed Students
They don’t care.
Baud
@Immanentize:
If we win next year, expect the NYT and others to treat us as worse than Trump because Trump didn’t indict Hillary.
Karen S.
@Kay: This exactly, although I don’t think the average New Yorker has any time for Ghouliani and hasn’t for at least a decade, but I’m in Illinois so I’m just speculating. It’s the media glitterati who still puff him up.
TS (the original)
@mrmoshpotato: He’ll vote GOP at the next election – guaranteed. He may leave out the President line if trump is the nominee.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: @Kay:
I don’t think they will stop. The problems with the Times go beyond a lack of understanding.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah:
My first thought too when I read that.
debbie
@Kay:
The problem with that is that they’ll just be labeled as “disgruntled” and dismissed.
mrmoshpotato
@TS (the original): Yup.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
I still can’t post links, so I’ll try to get some photos to send TaMara, and she can link the channel again.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
My physical therapist has promised that I will finally be rid of my aircast boot today!!!
To recap:
Saturday, June 1 – Hearing the happy scrabbling and chirps of an extended raccoon family in the wall, I located their entry point in the soffit. Being a cheap fuck (I paid nearly $1200 over removing 5 squirrels a few years ago), I got the ladder, climbed up and jerry-rigged a springy closure so they would leave but be disinclined to go back in.
Sunday morning, June 2 – The Contessa heard the babies in the wall. She worried about 1) them starving to death, which made her feel bad and 2) them dying in the wall, which would make us feel really unhappy when the stink started. I got the ladder to go up and undo my fine work, heedless of the fact that there had been a pop up shower overnight. As I’m fiddling with my trapdoor, one side of the ladder started sinking into the uneven, wet ground. I tried shifting my body, but was unsuccessful, and then fairly ran down the ladder, 2 rungs a clip. At the point where it looked like I was going to fall into the ladder, I leaped into the last 4 feet of clear air. Wound up on the ground, left ankle on fire. Thought it was really badly sprained, but didn’t have the sharp pain I associate with breaks. Decline spousal demands for hospital trip, because I hate doctors.
Sunday, June 9 – After a week of hobbling, ace bandage and half ass braces, am lured to the car on the pretext of going to the grocery. Am instead diverted to the hospital for an ER visit and X-ray. As predicted, no break in evidence.
Wednesday, June 14 – To continuing legal education in Las Vegas alone. Airports a pain in the ass to walk through, Las Vegas a pain in the ass to walk through. I manage through a combo of weed gummies, whiskey and ibuprofen.
Wednesday, June 21 – As we’re leaving for Greece on June 23, the Contessa has expressed concern about the continued swelling, redness and heat on the ankle. She worries about blood clots and long flights, and has sent me to primary care. I get ultrasound. As predicted by me, no clots, but doc provides blood thinners for the flights as a precaution.
Friday, June 23 – We go to Greece. I hobble around. The Contessa is now irritated with it as I am “shuffling like an old man”.
Saturday, July 7 – Freshly home from Greece, we go to the wedding of someone I now hate. While there, a courthouse acquaintance suggests that I get an MRI, as she’d had a similar injury.
Monday, July 9 – Get MRI
Tuesday, July 10 – Doc calls, says I have an Achilles rupture and wants to consult Wednesday and operate Friday.
Wednesday, July 11 – Doc tells me that he’s going to snag some tendons mid calf and strap them to my big toe. I’d be off work and in bed with open wounds with pins and a halo, eating lortab like candy for two weeks. After that, I’d have a thigh high hard cast for six weeks, and then a shorter cast with scooter for another month, followed by a boot and some really intense PT for months. One year to full recovery, which should be “pretty good”. The alternative was to let it heal and form scar tissue, then to do strengthening PT. I respectfully chose the second.
All I know is that I am really eager to dump this goddamned boot. I’d have been triply miserable with that procedure.
Kay
@rikyrah:
They’re turning it into a shithole country. Lowering quality, really across the board. Did you see there’s now a whole industry springing up where they sell fake health insurance? It’s just a straight fraud. They sell them a card for 400 dollars a month. They’ve sold almost a million of them. People pay and carry the card around. When they go to redeem it for health card they’re told there’s virtually no insurance behind it. Just in the last two years. The Trump Administration and the GOP Congress created a new fraud industry that didn’t exist 3 years ago.
Gin & Tonic
@mrmoshpotato: Well, I watched the open and part of the first half-hour, and he was all over this Trump-whistleblower-Ukraine thing, along with all of his sycophants/panelists. “Unambiguously impeachable.”
Don’t normally watch, but I woke up early and I was curious to see how they’d come at it.
Frankly this presents an interesting time for my son to move to Kyiv (he’s busy selling off his stuff, deciding what goes in storage, etc.)
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Sounds like an uneventful summer.
OzarkHillbilly
Got a toothache? Go easy on the benzocaine:
Feeling blue: US woman treated by doctors after blood turned navy
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
There was a lot of me laying about and wallowing in Netflix and her complaining about it.
Baud
Di Blasio dropping out.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I had an absolutely crippling disc injury in my upper spine and I chose PT and I am a believer. You have to do what they say but it works. I ended up liking the sessions. They have this… neck stretching machine that is the best. It basically slowly pulls your head away from your spine- in my case relieving the pressure on my neck. I once fell asleep in there. She had to wake me up and make me leave.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Glad you’re healing, but tell me: Have you spent more than you would have to remove the raccoons?
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly:
I realize it’s The Guardian and written for a foreign audience, but still, from an editing point of view, what does that detail add to the story?
debbie
@Baud:
Finally! He never broke that zero percent ceiling, did he?
Baud
@Kay:
I wonder if PT traces its origins to medieval torture practices.
“Igor, he likes it. I have an idea.”
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: Poor guy has to go back to NYC, which he apparently hates (and the feeling is mutual.)
Baud
@debbie:
I think he actually invented the previously thought impossible idea of negative percentages.
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Healing thoughts coming your way.
Kay
@Baud:
Good. I still think Harris can compete in the Biden lane. I hope she does. IMO she’s stronger than him and the center needs a choice. I wish she had staked that out and left Bernie and Warren to battle it out in the left lane. Harris v Warren would be a really good race for our base, IMO. I think they would love that and be engaged.
gene108
@rikyrah:
There’s a reason people have their meat cooked well done. Helps minimize risk of disease from food.
Spanky
@Baud: Oh noes! Who could I possibly vote for now?
Baud
@Kay:
I hope so. She needs to figure out what she wants to be and then figure out a way to get oxygen, because no one is paying attention to her.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Finally! But he must be at least a little miffed that small-town mayor Pete Buttigieg is still running.
Spanky
@Kay: Same here. I was just released from PT on my lumbar spine. They quickly zeroed in on my hips, which were way too tight. Some therapy and at-home stretches, and I’m good!
Kay
@Baud:
I believe the people who say it’s painful- it’s all different kinds of injuries- but for me a good part of it was only painful in the sense of when you’re using weak muscles, which I didn’t and don’t mind. My husband is not shy about getting medical care and he has been screwing around with doctors on tennis injuries for 20 years. He got a PT, religiously followed directions, and is back playing pain-free. It took a long time, though. I think he went for a year. He’s like an evangelist. He could be employed by the PT trade group :)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
That stuff is generally worthless, unless it’s 11:30 at night and you know you can make it to a dentist the next morning.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@debbie:
No, but my insurer, in the other hand…
Baud
@Kay:
I hate getting medical care. Probably have lived with more than I should have as a result.
burnspbesq
@Kay:
When the Times looks at Giuliani, it still sees the kick-ass U.S. Attorney from 1987.
Fellas and gals, that was a long-ass time ago.
Kay
@Baud:
They’d watch a Warren v Harris debate. Substantive, but crackling with energy! And we like both of them. Biden is occupying the center lane. Someone needs to shove him over. There are a lot of centrist Democrats. I think they’re the majority, which I’m fine with – accept- and should be accomodated in the sense of giving them a real race.
JPL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You did manage to take some beautiful pictures while in Greece, so that was good.
Kay
@Baud:
I hate it too. Hate. I waited too long on one thing- I scratched my cornea with a tree branch whipping into my eye and I thought it was a piece of bark in my eye so rinsed it over and over with river water and it got infected. Incredibly painful and your whole face swells up. Anyway, when I finally got to “my” doctor who knows I avoid him – he said an interesting thing- he said “what you’re doing is the flip side of hypochondria- it’s as extreme. Find a middle ground, because you could have lost your eye”. That’s true. I’ve been better since then.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@JPL:
I did have a lot of fun – just was a LOT slower in the having of it. I also got to see everything I wanted to see – sometimes, you just have grit your teeth a bit and plow forward.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Good god, that’s a long time dealing with it. No wonder you want the cast gone.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: A recent novel, The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek, has a blue character in it.
Baud
@Kay:
It depends where you draw the line. I don’t care. The battle with centrists is a losing battle for us.
Chris Johnson
…are you fucking kidding me.
He’s a fucking foreign agent. (just, far from a good or trustworthy one)
There is nothing he could possibly tell that he has not already directly told to Vladimir Putin in attempts to curry favor. Putin’s problem is not in getting him to do this. Putin’s problem is to keep him from blabbing THAT he’s doing it, in tweets or to the press, thus screwing up what Putin deems a very good arrangement.
jonas
Says the guy who revealed a code word-level intelligence operation against ISIS to the Russian ambassador in the Oval Office and who meets with Putin and Kim one-on-one without a note-taker, or confiscates any notes that were taken.
Immanentize
@Baud:
I am fully expecting the argument that all criminal prosecutions of Trump peeps are just political. And a third of the country will believe it. But most of the rest wont
Montanareddog
@Gin & Tonic: I agree you could argue it is a redundancy. But it does not grate with me in the the same way those establishing shots in US Movies and TV shows set in foreign lands with captions like: London, England; Paris, France; Berlin, Germany; Bangkok, Thailand, etc. I mean if the shot shows the Eiffel Tower, I think I know already that it is in Paris. And I sure as hell know Paris is in France.
Another Scott
@Baud: ‘morning everyone.
FIFY.
:-/
I personally suspect that some “medical” issue will suddenly arise if Donnie faces legal jeopardy. That’s what seems to be the common future of dictators and wannabe dictators these days.
I’ll bet Kuwait and Bahrain have excellent medical and recuperation facilities…
Grr…!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
@Kay:
Straight to the point as always, Kay. These people are why we have laws and courts in the first place.
Spanky
@Immanentize: I think it’s almost time to go there.
Yes, it is political! Because one of the political parties in this country is either actively or passively supporting foreign agents in the White House. We can prove it! We have the receipts! Let’s adjudicate it, either at the ballot box or in a court room. Or both.
Leto
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’m glad you’re on the mend and ready to be done with the boot. Scar tissue management is the key here to getting back to full mobility. It’s going to hurt, but ya gotta do it.
I’m fairly certain that if I had that management plan right after my accident, I’d be back to professional soccer playing levels by now ?
OzarkHillbilly
@Montanareddog:
It is? Huh, the shit I learn here.
Leto
@OzarkHillbilly: Paris, TX receives no love here… *insert Rodney, “No respect, no respect!*
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: Wasn’t there a movie called Paris, Texas?
/checks IMDB.
Yes, there was.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud: I could see Trump running to Russia the day after he is out of office.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Isn’t the Eiffel Tower in Nevada?
:)
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: I thought it was in Bangladesh.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t look at it as a “battle” and I don’t think we should.
There is a group of people who make up the D Party. It’s diverse. They can compete without us all killing one other. If there’s two that could pull that off it would be Warren and Harris. Obama and Clinton pulled it off, eventually. These two could too. The individuals matter. It’s not always Bernie v Clinton. In our recent history that isn’t even true.
IMO, the centrists (rank and file) have a weak candidate partly because they didn’t have a choice.
Kay
@Baud:
I wonder if part of the reason Obama and Clinton were able to pull off a hotly contested primary without one destroying the other and the coalition is because they were both “nontraditional” candidates- two firsts- AA and female- and they perhaps had a better understanding of the need for cooperation and solidarity than a Bernie or a Biden.
The “battle” frame isn’t the only frame one can use.
Leto
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I’m not sure Marine Tangerine can fly that far, but if Russia is willing to supply the pilots and refueling capability (straight flight, no landings) then I’ll happily say proshchay!!!
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Good lord, what an ordeal! Hope you heal up soon! Now tell us what happened to the baby raccoons! :)
Aleta
“Occupations for 800, Alex.”
You and the crew may crash the street to carry on with a crime spree in open daylight but police are not permitted to show up for at least four years.
“What is white presidency?”
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: This is heartbreaking and infuriating. Ever since the 90s, we have been *this close* to eradicating polio forever – it’s been a big campaign of Rotary International for years – and always, always, it comes down to some authoritarian asshats fucking things up and scare-mongering about vaccination that prevents it.
rikyrah
@Kay:
they were all garbage, Kay. ALL of them.
Just One More Canuck
@Gin & Tonic: @Leto: and don’t forget about Paris, Ontario
rikyrah
@Immanentize:
When I saw that in a tweet, a whole lotta things became crystal clear, and I am with those who say follow the money.
rikyrah
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Awe :)
rikyrah
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I am sad to read all of that. Sending positive healing thoughts :)
germy
These photos are gorgeous:
rikyrah
@Kay:
I did Kay. One of the cases brought up by the Bloomberg article was a woman who had problems with childbirth, and was denied her claim because HER MENSTRUAL CYCLE WAS A PRE-EXISTING CONDITION.
Whereas regular insurance has to spend 80-85% of the policy ON CARE..
These junk policies are about 10%
NOTHING BUT A SCAM.
rikyrah
@Kay:
LOL
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I like Amy Klobuchar, but besides being a less-than-exciting candidate, I think she was hurt by her first major forum after was a CNN town hall where the most attention-getting questions and answers were “Do you support M4A (Bernie’s version?” “No”; “Do you support free college (again, B’sV)?” “No”. Hard to build excitement with the base at this moment by being the candidate of “No”, even if (IMHO) she was staking herself in a good place for the GE.
I think it’s hard for Harris to move back to the center lane and bump Biden out because her most definitive policy statement to date has been her pledge to support SP, and expressing support for that less-than-popular position by emphasizing its least popular aspect: I will get rid of private insurance. And then being kind of all over the map on the issue ever since.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: It sure would be refreshing to have two candidates competing for votes by presenting their ideas and advocating for their approaches with mutual respect. Maybe two women could pull that off, though it would probably require telling the network moderators and their sound bite agenda to take a hike and getting the League of Women Voters to do the debates instead.
joel hanes
@Kay:
This is the 2nd time in just the modern era where Republican Presidents went completely insane with executive power. Nixon
Forgotten W/Cheney already? The purge of the US Attorneys? The reification of torture? A gratuitous war on Iraq? “We make our own reality?”
joel hanes
@mrmoshpotato:
set off a car alarm
Worst invention of my lifetime. Perfect example of externalized costs.
All car alarms make the same noise: “Issa! Issa! Issa!”
Captain C
@Kay:
100% on brand for the 2019 FTFNYT.
joel hanes
@Baud:
I hate getting medical care
Up until I was eleven, my family had no medical insurance, and not much money.
We mostly went to the doctor only when we _had_ to.
I internalized that, and have never really gotten over it.
joel hanes
@Betty Cracker:
telling the network moderators and their sound bite agenda to take a hike and getting the League of Women Voters to do the debates instead.
I am fascinated by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Yes. (Looks out of window…and Glendale).
debbie
.