Here’s a video of Nancy Pelosi talking impeachment with Jane Mayer earlier this month at the New Yorker Festival (sorry about the pre-roll commercial; I couldn’t find an ad-free version).
[ETA: Replaced embedded video with THIS LINK to video since the original was autoplaying on some platforms. Attention, New Yorker: AUTOPLAY SUCKS!]I’d missed this somehow, but it’s a wonderful account of the impeachment decision, and it contains details I hadn’t heard before about Pelosi’s phone call with Trump on the day she announced the decision to formally open an impeachment inquiry several weeks ago.
Trump was definitely trying to wheedle his way out of trouble over the whistleblower complaint when he called Pelosi. She says he called her ostensibly to discuss gun control legislation, then turned the conversation to his “perfect” call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. Pelosi understood immediately what Trump was trying to do, then told him “what we’re kind of observing here,” i.e., that Trump had violated his oath of office, undermined national security and jeopardized the integrity of U.S. elections. At that point, Trump complained that Pelosi was laying all of that on him right before he had to go do a speech at the U.N. General Assembly. So on brand!
Anyhoo, I thought it was a fascinating insight into the origins of the impeachment drama. Pelosi is under no illusions about what the Senate will do, but she says her job, should impeachment move forward, is to make an “iron clad” case so that the public can see the courage of the House in upholding its oath to protect and defend the Constitution and the cowardice of the Senate, which will almost certainly choose to prop up Trump instead.
As I mentioned in a comment to one of our weekend threads, I think Pelosi’s description of what she was saying to Trump when asked about the now-iconic photo of her confrontation with him at the White House — “all roads lead to Putin” — is significant. Notice that when House leaders commented on Trump’s cutting them out of advance notice of the al Baghdadi raid, they noted that Trump informed Russia before informing Congressional leaders.
Smart lady, our Madam Speaker. Open thread!
sdhays
Ads are fine, but auto-play sucks.
sukabi
Walter Shaub on booing drumpf
5 tweet thread…
RedDirtGirl
I’m not seeing any video on the mobile site…
japa21
Waiting for the usual suspects to stop by and decry our worship of Pelosi who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the impeachment route.
Betty Cracker
Just updated the post to replace the video with a link to the New Yorker page that has the video. Didn’t realize it was set up to auto-play. Sorry about that!
Elizabelle
Kay Hagan, former US senator from NC, dead.
Robert Evans. The kid is out of the picture. Dead at 89.
Greg Walden, GOP Congressman, retiring. Who else might retire after that calvacade of boos?
sdhays
Thanks for updating to remove the auto-play, Betty. I don’t understand why websites which aren’t video sites like YouTube do it. I find it enraging.
RedDirtGirl
@RedDirtGirl: there it is. Thanks.
bluehill
For repubs “courage” is apparently not running for office again.
Betty Cracker
@sdhays: I despise it too, and I appreciate the heads up. I’d forgotten I have an app that kills autoplay on my laptop, so I didn’t notice it in preview mode. I would never knowingly inflict autoplay on y’all — it is of the Satan!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Damn shame, I think she got sucked under by all the hysteria over ebola and ISIS beheading porn. I’ve been wondering if she would run again
Mandalay
@sukabi:
Heh. Here’s MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts on the “Lock him up” chant directed at Trump at the baseball game last night:
Mika Brzezinski:
Joe Scarborough:
These vile pigfuckers did all they could to get Trump elected, and then flip-flopped, and get paid millions to spend hours every day vilifying Trump.
But baseball fans need to “tone it down”?…
Dorothy A. Winsor
@japa21: I love Pelosi. I want to be like her when I grow up.
I put up a blog post for Halloween/Day of the Dead. It’s a short story, “Ghost Cakes,” about a kid coming to terms with his grief over the death of his father. I’m traveling so much over the next 6 weeks that I’m not planning on blogging again until January.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good on Weigel
Miss Bianca
I’ve been working on summoning up the sufficient fire in the belly necessary for me to write to Cory Gardner and tell him what a cowardly POS I think he is for signing on to that bullshit Senate GOP letter. A dose of Nancy is helping.
Steve in the ATL
Thanks morning people for the cat advice. One element I didn’t mention: cat was eating the green peppers out of a mix of peppers, onions, and mushrooms that had been sautéed in butter.
Now a question for the paranoid crew (may need to repost late at night):
What can I put my Amazon Firestick remote controls in when I’m not using them so that the voice function won’t work?
Jay C
@Mandalay:
I’ve seen online today that Joe and Mika are receiving a great deal of very-well-earned grief over their vaporings about Trump’s World Series reception: one thing that these suddenly decorum-obsessed pundits (ANY of them) seem not to recall is the provenance of the “Lock Him Up!” chant that seems to have triggered them so badly.
I wonder where the Washington stadium crowd might have gotten the idea for that particular phraseology??
[//sarc]
MattF
@sukabi: Slate has a mildly amusing take on the huffing pundits.
Also, irksome Hugh Hewitt makes his recommendations for Trump’s defense in the Senate. Basically, maxed-out whataboutism, with a big dose of Hillary cray-cray. He apparently noted that Pelosi is going for ‘simple and provable’, so he goes for the opposite extreme. I rather doubt that’s going to be okey-dokey with either Roberts or McConnell, but we shall see. No link.
piratedan
in the Schaub tweet thread someone related my feelings for the situation… these politicians and pundits want us to respect the office and as such, don’t feel as though 45 should have been booed whereas many us feel that we’ll respect the office as soon as the current officeholder does, and with a multitude of examples of obstruction, admitted lawbreaking, conspiracy, emoluments violation and a debacle in foreign policy and no interest in preventing foreign interference in our elections, they are lucky that the protesters didn’t rush the motherfucker and throw his ass off the roof.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Many of the troops told him that ABB said that no one had ever hunted him down so strongly as trump. He said, with tears in his eyes, “Sir, please tell his excellency Donald J Trump that I died whimpering and crying like a dog”
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Okay, now that’s perfect – needs to be sent to the entire staff at the NYT.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this made me chuckle
glory b
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Has there been anything about Conyers’ death?
“John Conyers was elected to Congress in 1964, co-sponsored the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and introduced the first bill to create a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. He also sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment.”
Just Chuck
Hey Mika, Joe, all you other snowflakes who can’t handle criticism of Dear Leader? FUCK YOUR FEELINGS AND FUCK YOUR DECORUM..
glory b
And Conyers supported universal health care/ Medicare For All well before some others we could mention.
James E Powell
@MattF:
As God is my witness, I had no idea Slate was still a going concern.
Ruckus
@James E Powell:
Think they will get it?
oatler.
Andrew Lack, fire those motherfuckers and re-hire Phil Donahue.
Just Chuck
This Chrome Extension is very handy in stopping autoplay. Be sure to disable it on conferencing apps like Google Hangouts though.
Betty Cracker
Has anyone heard an update on how the injured Delta Force dog is doing? Trump is a fucking sociopath who doesn’t know that dogs are brave and loyal since those are qualities he utterly lacks. But he could have had a PR coup out of this military action if he’d 1) given all the credit to the service members who carried out the raid and not made it about himself, and 2) have the injured dog rushed to the White House, have it treated by top vets at his own expense, and live stream video of himself feeding it bits of rare filet mignon from the White House kitchen.
Mandalay
@Jay C: And here’s a Democratic Senator who is troubled by the “Lock Him Up!” chant by the baseball crowd:
But I’ve searched in vain for any condemnation from Coons of Trump constantly calling for Clinton to be locked up. With friends like Coons we don’t need enemies.
Senator Coons: Go fuck yourself, asshole.
MattF
@James E Powell: As long as they keep publishing Dahlia Lithwick, I’ll keep reading it.
waspuppet
“All roads lead to Putin” is driving Trump crazy. She out-catchphrased him.
Just Chuck
“All Roads Lead to Putin” would make a great rotating tagline.
Dave
@piratedan: Your point exactly, amplified by Mr. Pierce…
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29610218/trump-heckled-world-series-respect-office-presidency/
catclub
J. Rubin at the WAPO.
Does anyone under 75 watch 60 minutes? alternatively “who this ‘we’ kemo sabe?”
Immanentize
@Steve in the ATL:
The toilet
trollhattan
@Steve in the ATL:
1. The cat–just disguise them as peppers.
2. Oven mitt? Mitt Romney?
trollhattan
@waspuppet:
Makes a nice fellow traveler with “Moscow Mitch.”
cain
Good news y’all. Greg Walden is retiring and won’t be running in 2020. Greg Walden, the architect of the shitty tax bill that Trump signed. We here in Oregon have been trying to get rid of him for years. He must have read the tea leaves. The last race I think he saw his lead tightening with democratic challengers. But we should all be happy. Walden isn’t a fuckking loon, so I would say he’s fairly right of center and a complete trump fuck up, but I’m sure he’s feeling the heat to go more and more cray cray for his base.
catclub
@Betty Cracker:
well-done flank steak, with ketchup!
Josie
@Mandalay:
Let us not forget that Senator Coons is the one who gave his good friend Jeff Flake cover during the Kavanaugh kerfluffle. I can live without such bipartisanship.
MattF
@Steve in the ATL: An axe.
Yutsano
@catclub: Selectively edited with a decent make-up job? I don’t know how to interpret what she’s saying any other way.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MattF: That’s a good sarcastic piece in Slate.
catclub
@Steve in the ATL:
molten lava
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Some poor schlub who was part of the raid will be instructed to have “heard” said whimpering and crying.
cain
@catclub:
I haven’t watched 60 minutes in over a decade. I’ve basically stopped watching anything show that is political. I’m so allergic to commercials that I just stick to netflix now.
sdhays
@Mandalay: “We” stopped being “America” when the Republican Party nominated an absurdly unqualified fascist bigot rapist for President and allied with foreign adversaries to put that man the Oval Office. And we definitely stopped being “America” when the 70% of people not in his base didn’t come together to defeat him.
catclub
@catclub:
And I make no claims of google-fu
Avalune
Onions are bad bad for dogs – not sure about cats? Glad the kitty sidestepped those if it’s the same.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: The dog was fine and I think back on duty. To hear trump tell thought the dog called him sir.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@glory b: Conyers was my congressman when I lived in Detroit. I never had to worry about him coming down on the wrong side of some issue. Rest in peace, Mr. Conyers.
Betty Cracker
Okay, I Googled the injured Delta Force dog, and he or she is okay! [Politico]
Good to know.
Ruckus
@Mandalay:
I’ll give him a chance at redemption. One. Slim.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll agree with you. BTW I don’t think it will.
It’s the office that we respect, not necessarily the person holding that office. That person is in our employment. We pay them for their time and effort and we have a right to demand that they actually earn the pay and the credit, not just brag about bullshit.
sdhays
@Mandalay: It’s totally ok when the chant is started from the podium at a rally.
I think what disgusts me most about the criticism is that the blame is put on
Democrats“libs” rather than the MAGAT leader who popularized the chant himself.Amir Khalid
@Avalune:
You’d have to confirm this with Her Who Knows Everything About Cats, i.e. Werebear, but from my own observation onion tends to upset the feline tummy.
MagdaInBlack
@Steve in the ATL:
I will share that we had a cat who LOVED marinara.
I know (now) that some ingredients in that are bad for cats, but he lived to the ripe old age of 18.
Your cat enjoys italian flavors ?
Indycat32
@Steve in the ATL: he probably likes the butter. Onions are toxic to cats.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ruckus: and Coons is, I believe, the more progressive of Delware’s Senators
catclub
@Jay C:
I was wondering where all the Morning Joe shows where Mika and Moanin Joe are criticizing the Lock Her Up chant, got lost.
Ruckus
@cain:
Don’t even have access to commercial TV.
There are too many alternatives that don’t have commercials and you can’t even get commercial TV without – commercials. And paying on top of that. Just. Not. Worth. It.
Sab
@Avalune: Onions are toxic to both cats and dogs. On the mild end is gastointestinal upset. On the more serious end is hemolytic anemia (killing off their own red blood cells.)
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s not saying a whole lot…..
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the chin-stroking and finger-wagging are absurd, but I do agree with this
ETA: I would love it if “shame” echoed around every trump appearance, like his buffoonery in Chicago today
Kent
@cain:
I’d be shocked as hell if the seat doesn’t stay GOP. The eastern 2/3 of Oregon is as bright red as West Texas outside of a few enclaves like Bend. The district also includes Medford but that has never really been a blue area. Eastern Oregon is cowboy country and they hate Western Oregon with the passion of a thousands suns. It more resembles Wyoming than anything west of the Cascades. Only question will be whether they get some establishment GOP type or a crazy. I’m guessing the money will quickly flow to whichever rich GOP cosplay rancher type is next in line.
sdhays
@catclub: Indeed. No Democrat popularized that. That was all Dump himself. Why isn’t the criticism directed at the actual source?
Avalune
@Ruckus: You know, we’ve been back stateside, what, three years now and I still can’t get over how many of the commercials are for prescription medications. It drives me bananas.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Dump is the one who made “Lock X up” the go-to phrase. It’s pretty ridiculous to expect thousands of Nationals fans to focus-group their 5 second chant ahead of the game.
Jeffro
@Mandalay: seriously
Just because trumpov has no bottom, doesn’t mean no one calls him on his behavior/lawbreaking; just because we Democrats have standards, doesn’t mean that well-deserved protests and responses or somehow beyond the pale
Avalune
@Sab: Good thing cats are smarter than dogs when it comes to eating. Our current dog would PROBABLY stick her nose up at buttered onions but if it was cooked with a roast or something she’d probably gobble it up like a dummy. She’s always hoovering up what I term “street food,” when we are outside.
Ksmiami
A push off the balcony would have been quiet and civil… just saying
trollhattan
It’s all a big misunderstanding: they weren’t shouting “Boooo!” they were shouting “Boobs!”
Killjoys.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Okay.
I don’t think I, or Corn, suggested that.
ETA: listening to MSNBC, at the 45 minute mark they’re getting to the CA wildfires. I’ll say this for them, I didn’t have to listen to Katie Our coo and gush about the Nats before getting to it like Chuck Todd almost certainly will.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Twitter said it was her vote in support of the ACA. Hagan was 66 and died of complications due to a tick related virus. That is so sad and the NC folk need to think of her when they renew their health ins. .
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: that is correct, but only by a little. Neither is exactly a left-wing firebrand
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@catclub: I watched last night. Don’t watch regularly, but I catch part of an episode every now and then and I’m only 50. Was not all that impressed with Joe’s performance last night so I can’t explain Rubin’s opinion on it.
piratedan
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: its possible she was using Trump or any of the current GOP as a baseline threshold, Joe probably came off like a Rhodes Scholar
Kelly
@Kent:
I concur. I’m in rural Marion county, Schrader’s district. Rural Oregon is bright red and Trump is still a hero. My Legislative district voted 70% Trump and there are already Trump 2020 flags and signs. The only way that seat goes blue is if we gerrymander the Congressional district boundaries so they all intersect in Portland.
Chyron HR
@glory b:
Bernie is currently searching for a minimally offensive way to say “F**k that ni**er, I created Medicare-For-All!”
O. Felix Culpa
WaPo: Republicans feel anxious and adrift defending Trump
So sad. Or, to quote GOP’s finest, “F*ck your feelings.” Maybe these poor anxious Senators should consider weighing the evidence and doing their constitutional duty. Hah! I crack myself up.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Avalune: The prescription ads seem to pop up more when the audience is likely to be older. What makes me cringe is the string of potential side effects they rattle off so casually. “…including death.”
Sab
@Avalune: I had a pair of dogs in my mid-twenties, many years ago, that I fed leftover stir fry almost every night. One of them did fine with it. The other had severe hemolytic anemia off and on for her whole life. She would get so anemic that her gums turned white and she would faint.
No one ever told me to avoid the onions. They took her spleen out. They had her on prednisone for years. It was awful. Yet her bigger half-sister was fine. She died at eleven. Sister died at sixteen.
My cats are really picky about what they eat, except I have a tuxedo who is determined to drink cold tea.
Gin & Tonic
@JPL:
That’s scary. I’m about her age and have been bitten by ticks quite a few times, including getting really, *really* sick one time. A month on three different antibiotics and I can never donate blood again.
tarragon
@MagdaInBlack:
I had a cat that would growl and swipe if you tried to take away a raw mushroom that he got a hold of.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sorry, I wasn’t trying to suggest you were. I just find it irritating that even sympathetic media figures are critiquing the spontaneous outburst of thousands of people in a non-partisan event. The story is that people hate Trump, and the coarsening that he and the Republican Party have embraced isn’t contained to his MAGAt rallies or his supporters.
Chris T.
Onions and garlic are both bad for cats. They can lead to anemia, as several people said. Anything in that family (including chives, leeks, and shallots) are suspect here…
Yutsano
@Dorothy A. Winsor: See? American exceptionalism!
Except New Zealand allows them too. But that’s a medium city sized media market compared to the US!
Amir Khalid
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
If memory serves, the only two countries where prescription meds can be advertised to the public — which, I agree, is senseless — are the USA and New Zealand.
Mary G
@O. Felix Culpa: Paging Ben Shapiro!! The facts don’t care about your feelings.
geg6
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Well, he wasn’t drooling on himself or sounding like an early stage Altzheimer’s patient. Which makes him several hundred steps ahead of the Guy Who Gets Booed at sportsball events.
Mary G
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s really creepy when they advertise a drug without saying what disease it’s for so they can leave the side effects off.
hueyplong
Absent perfection of some kind of intellectual property rights to the phrase, it’s breathtakingly cheeky for any GOPer to whine about the chant last night
For a Dem like Coons to do so reeks of sweating cowardice and a weasely
threat to vote not to convict.
Kent
@Kelly:
Yes, I grew up in Oregon and my family goes back about 5 generations. I currently live across the river in Camas. But WA is not that different from OR in politics.
What easterners don’t understand about Oregon is that it is basically Portland, Salem, Bend, and a couple of college towns surrounded by a sea of rural red that has more in common with Arkansas (in the west) and Wyoming (in the east) than anything easterners think is Oregon. This NYT map gives a more accurate picture: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-2016-voting-precinct-maps.html#9.00/45.357/-122.607/80406
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
Darn you! Just beat me to it.
geg6
@Steve in the ATL:
I can’t help with your firestick situation or the cat/peppers situation, but my Lovey absolutely goes bananas over asparagus. I’ve never met a dog that loves asparagus.
Quicksand
@Avalune:
I have one cat that goes crazy for silicone (no, get your mind out of the gutter – household items!) and another that loves to steal and chew apart neoprene, and who at one point needed abdominal surgery after swallowing an entire foam nerf dart. I’m not sure “smarter” is a word I would use, personally.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Undiagnosed Lyme disease becomes incurable (merely treatable) and is a cousin to tertiary syphilis. Scary shit. I know somebody who moved out west from Connecticut and she has it. Affects many aspects of her life.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Apparently part of the problem was that the crowd at the Nats’ stadium was twice the size of his Inauguration crowd, so he got a little overwhelmed.
trollhattan
@Quicksand:
See also: cats and xmas tree tinsel.
trollhattan
@SFAW:
Hey-oo! [rimshot]
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Do you mean the SHAME! chant from Cersei’s walk on Game of Thrones?
Or are we singing Jimmy Reed’s Shame, Shame, Shame?
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: And I’m barely paying attention right now!
At a pre-op. Further details incoming.
Quicksand
@trollhattan:
Right! But my silicone-favoring one goes right for the artificial tree branches, never mind the tinsel or anything like that.
They are sweet and adorable companions, but my goodness are they dumb.
Redshift
@SFAW:
Perfect.
Mary G
The House Oversight Committee is having Jerry Brown over to testify about the administration’s environmental policies, and I cannot wait to see the Republican members get shredded. Governor Moonbeam has no use for fools.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
I wish I had thought of it mineself. Sadly — or maybe happily — I saw it (i.e., the “twice the size” part) as a reply to a tweet. [Fortunately, someone on the tweet thread (or whatever they’re called) had already pointed out the stadium capacity is 41,000.] But I think it’s hilarious.
tarragon
@Quicksand:
Made me check to ensure that is in fact balloon-juice.
Mary G
Twitter sez impeachment vote on Thursday!
Cheryl Rofer
TomatoQueen
@trollhattan: I’ve seen that, and broken glass ornaments, all in the same Siamese cat. Little Miss Yodelpants converted us to cloth ornaments on the cat level of the tree ever afterward, and NO TINSEL.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Cheryl Rofer: Ooh. I wonder if she waited until the court found her in the right, so it didn’t look like she was letting the Rs dictate to her.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Avalune: Our beagle likes to chew on dead snakes and rodents when he finds them. Those are the identifiable “street foods”, but he so far hasn’t actually eaten any of those. That I know of. Much more often, the sequence is: (1) stick nose deep into grass and sniff, (2) suddenly start chewing something, (3) swallow it before I can get my fingers into his mouth to try to figure out what he got.
Then there’s the rolling thing, which I know lots of dogs do. Most often it appears to be a dead bug that has excited him, but I can’t always tell. So far at least, he hasn’t managed to roll in anything really stinky but I probably ought to take him to the dog bath place on general principles.
SFAW
@Cheryl Rofer:
She used a LOWER CASE “b” in “best regards!” Therefore, the whole (non-due) process is illegal! Lock her up!!!!!!!!
The above “argument” is about as sound/substantial as anything that will come out of the mouths of any Rethugs regarding this.
Leto
@Betty Cracker:
If it’s a boy, “GOOD BOY!”; if it’s a girl, “GOOD GIRL!” That’s their name! It’s not hard! The PR campaign writes itself! C’mon people!
oatler.
@Kent: Yes, I lived in OR for fifteen years in Josephine County and got heartily sick of the Art Robinson and “US Out of UN” signs. I’m pretty sure the landowners weren’t gainfully employed unless they worked in meth labs,
Gravenstone
@piratedan: Why should I respect “the office” when it’s clear the current squatter therein doesn’t respect it in any meaningful form? Aside from a platform for enriching himself and his sprogs, he views it as nothing more than a useful cudgel and has in the pat viewed it with outright disdain when filled by certain predecessors.
Leto
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Our dingbat has walked over two snakes, never saw them. Me? I about jumped out of my skin, which is when dingbat looked back at me like, “What’s up?” At which point I ask her did she not see the snake? You’re on point! That’s your whole job! Yes, she still gets a treat when we get in. Dingbat.
trollhattan
@oatler.:
Dollars to donuts before that it was “Impeach Earl Warren.”
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: Trump hates dogs and has said so multiple times publicly.
The dog is OK.
Leto
@Gravenstone: If he doesn’t leave a greasy McDonald’s stool sample on top of the Resolute as the official presidential note/letter to his successor, I will be very surprised.
trollhattan
@Leto:
To be fair, a snake looks nothing at all like a squirrel.
SFAW
@TomatoQueen:
Early in our marriage, Mrs. SFAW and I made the mistake of not tying the top of the Christmas tree to any type of ceiling attachment point. One late night (or early morning), we were awakened by the sound of a Waterford (I think?) ceramic bell ornament crash/smash on the floor — along with the rest of the Christmas tree.
I always anchor the tree. Now.
NotMax
@Leto
Will it turn out to be a Russian terrier? (ref.)
//
HumboldtBlue
Fucking PG&E, They shut off power and I miss an epic comeback by Liverpoolo and the image of Trump’s nasty-ass getting booed. That’s enough for a beating right there!
36 hours without power with another shutoff scheduled for early Tuesday a.m.
So many people in very difficult situations. I just whine, but tens of thousands have serious issues that are being directly impacted by these shutoffs.
PG&E lists 850,000 customers, we’ll that adds up to about 3.5 million people in all. What’s so fucked up is Humboldt County has three power generating stations, a microgrid with HSU and Blue Lake Casino. a biomass grid with HSU and a decommissioned Nuke plant. But due to a lack of safety shutoffs on lines to the north, east and south, we get region-wide shutdowns instead of localized.
jl
@Cheryl Rofer: Holding a formal vote on a resolution to do an impeachment investigation is one way to go. Or, they could just forego it on the grounds that even such a symbolic concession infringes on the constitutional authority of a co-equal branch of government. Then, just add Trump’s unconstitutional obstruction to the bill of impeachment. I’d be inclined to go the second route,
But that is secondary. Whatever Pelosi’s plans were before the revelation of the Ukraine extortion attempt, after that, really no choice but go full steam ahead with impeachment asap. I heard a news report that Pelosi wants to wrap this up by January 2020. Why? I also read that was in order to not box in GOP after primaries. Is that true, or just pundit and political hack gossip passed off as news? Impeachment proceedings should pay exactly zero regard to GOP nomination timeline. That is their problem, not Pelosi’s, or the Democrats’ or the Constitution’s, or the nation’s.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
To be fair, if you have the proper “pharmaceutical enhancers” in your system, it does.
Leto
@trollhattan: Hey, if you’re going to insist on being the alpha, always being out front, never letting one of us lead, your main job is to make sure you notify me of snakes before I step on them. I’ve seen more snakes than squirrels (2 v 0) on our path, so she needs to keep her eyes and nose open!
Avalune
@Quicksand: Lol! Ok. I’ll admit, while I’ve owned cats, I have much more experience with dogs, so my catspertise is lacking. I’ll submit that cats are not as discerning as I suggested.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I haven’t really noticed a distinct difference but maybe I’m just watching all the elderly favorites? I mean the only other thing they sell seems to be beer, cars and artery blocking foods. It’s just still very jarring how omnipresent it really is. As someone else said sometimes you don’t even know what it is they are trying to sell you. You need this! But why? What the hell does it do?
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: My terrier is very slick with hers. She doesn’t really sniff first because she risks that I might be on to her. She just goes for it and keeps moving like some kind of dog slight of hand. I gave up even attempting to get anything out of her face. I just tell her I hope that doesn’t kill you while she very pointedly declines to make eye contact.
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
“See also: cats and xmas tree tinsel.”
Quoted for truth. We don’t do trees anymore, no kids, just gave it up. But back when we did do trees, I had to slowly pull yards of silver tinsel out of various cat’s read ends. They didn’t like it much, but then they didn’t like dragging around the tinsel, either. I didn’t like to do it either, but we do many things we don’t care for to care for the kitties.
Kent
@oatler.: I grew up in Eugene but would go down to places like Roseburg and Coos Bay for football games and track meets. Some of those parts of rural Oregon are pretty indistinguishable from the Ozarks or rural West Virginia. Broken down mill towns full of racists and hateful old people that are left after all the young and ambitious have long since left for opportunities elsewhere.
The logging mill towns of western Oregon are pretty indistinguishable from the coal mining towns of West Virginia. In terms of appearance, ethnicity, and politics.
Leto
@NotMax: Haha, thankfully no! Our military utilizes the same few breeds. I had a chance to go to a few of their demo days (the security forces members who are part of the military working dog section) and it was really cool. If people get the chance to see it, def recommend it.
Ruckus
@Avalune:
And just as we pay for all the commercials, we pay for the people to make and play them on TV. It makes our medical bills soar, because that’s how the companies make their money. Healthcare in the US costs about twice as much as other civilized countries. And it comes from what we allow out healthcare industries do in the name of profit. Not everything should be about fucking profit. I’ve owned two businesses. I understand about profit. You don’t got, you go out of business. Because you can’t improve or repair the things that need it. We should refine it to excess profits and profit at the detriment of everything else. The ACA recognizes that profit is not bad, even if the limit may be too high in the original concept.
And that brings us to the concept of a not for profit business. A not for profit company can earn more than expenses – they can have an excess over net. But they are taxed differently and have limits as to what they can do with that excess. And yes I have worked for a subsidiary of a non profit, which was a for profit company, headquartered in the same building. We had different rules/laws we could work under. Some in the non profit didn’t get that. At all. But that was the reason it was formed by the board in the first place.
But with the assumption that profit is everything and more is always better, the healthcare industry, especially the pharmaceutical side, has hurt their core business. And their customers.
Avalune
@Ruckus: But the free market will regulate itself! Etc and some other oft repeated nonsense.I’d like to go back overseas for numerous reasons but to not see another ad for psoriasis etc would be a definite plus.
Amir Khalid
@Gravenstone:
If you disrespect the presidency because Trump does, what makes you better than him? You know that Trump is defiling it even as he harms the nation. And you should maintain respect for the presidency so that you will work to put a fit and proper person in the job.
jl
As for cowardice of the Senate, that will never change. If there is any chance the Senate will convict Trump, it will only be because enough GOP Senators are scared to death they will lose their seats in the 2020 general, and for exactly no other reason at all whatever.
Senators may have reason to fear. States cannot be gerrymandered, and voter suppression has to very effective on a statewide basis, effective enough to stop a possible repeat of 2018 wave election.
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue:
Well that sucks.
Yolo County residents are kicking themselves blue for not passing a vote to leave PG&E last decade–a threat PG&E took so seriously they spent 10x the amount the pro-annexation side had. We’ll see a lot of those the next couple years and the utility won’t be able to counter them so much.
Not looking forward to tomorrow’s windstorm.
trollhattan
@Kent:
And yet they’re all “het” to create State of Jefferson so they can flip off the citified gay minority college elites and form their own instant welfare state. It’ll be GREAT.
Avalune
@HumboldtBlue: It is mind boggling that this is their answer to a problem with their equipment. Let’s put people at health risk, discomfort, ruination of food possibly, (no hot water?), etc. because we don’t want to risk out butts/profitmargin. It’s just…insane that this is being allowed to carry on.
ixnay
Grapes and raisins, also onions, are poisonous for dogs and cats. Many houseplants are poisonous for cats. Tbe classic holiday emergency for cats is called a ‘linear foreign object’ – usually tinsel, ribbon, or string used to truss up meat.
On another topic touched on in this thread: it seems possible that we will all die of tick-borne diseases. I say that as a veterinarian who goes to every lecture I can afford about such things. Kay Hagan died of Powassan virus. No treatment for almost all viruses. I can only hope she had good pain meds; encephalitis is no fun.
O. Felix Culpa
@Mary G: No, not an impeachment vote. A vote on impeachment procedures to “ensure transparency,” per WaPo. Here.
ETA: Or see Cheryl Rofer’s post at #110. Refresh function on BJ is weirdly delayed sometimes, you might be surprised to hear.
Doug R
@sdhays: 2,800,000 MORE people voted AGAINST him.
germy
Then there’s Johnson.
feebog
@Cheryl Rofer:
Pelosi is moving this impeachment thing right along. I predicted there would not be an actual impeachment vote until January/February, but she is on track for a mid-December vote. Which means a trial in the Senate concurrent with the beginning of the primaries.
Ruckus
@Quicksand:
Not so sure.
What school did they go to? Did they take chemistry and other sciences? I know people who did go to school and even have college degrees and the width and breadth of what they don’t know is staggering. Let alone their ability to actually learn new things. And it gets worse as they age and think they know everyfuckingthing. One of the candidates for president comes to mind.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know:
I’m sure he does hate dogs — his bizarre use of dogs in pejorative similes (“fired like a dog,” “choked like a dog,” etc.) makes that assumption logical. But I don’t believe he has said he hates dogs multiple times publicly. This country is so fucking weird that, had Trump come out publicly and unambiguously as a dog hater, THAT might have been a death knell for his political career in a way that caging children, ginning up hate against immigrants and minorities, abusing women, lying constantly, etc., have not.
jl
@Avalune: There will be a huge battle coming over the next year as PG&E asks to hike rates to make up the revenue losses from the power shutoffs.
Due to climate change, some power shutoffs are necessary. Other utilities are forced to use them. But with PG&E the question is why do they have to be so huge, why do so many customers have to put up with them because of the PG&E power grid, not because they are in a high risk area. Lack of up-to-date equipment, decades of lack of proper maintenance, decades of peculation through violation of safety regulations are big reasons.
Edit: forgot that there is also a question of why PG&E has done such a half-assed job of administering them, keeping the public and local governments informed, getting them correct information, and generally using the power shutoffs as another platform to demonstrate their managerial incompetence.
There have been many attempts to take parts of Peculation, Greed & Explosion’s service areas public in the past The corrupt and crooked utility has been able to beat them back to dumping money into scare campaigns that say anything the government does will be worse. And that argument has won, even thought there are examples of excellent publicly run utilities in every part of California. I hope that changes over next few years.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
This concept has been going around on the internet all morning.
Yes we have to respect the office and the institution, after all they are ours. What we don’t have to do is respect the people in the jobs that we hired them for, when they aren’t doing their jobs. trump isn’t doing his job. Not in any sense of the word. We shouldn’t have to and don’t respect him for that.
Kent
@feebog:
As long as the GOP signals that they are going to deep-six this thing in the Senate I see no reason for the House to hurry things along. Much better to meticulously pull every thread and document every atrocity before closing the book. Because the book really will be closed once this is passed on to the Senate. They aren’t going to get a second bite at the apple. The more they investigate the more they find and the more the bleed Trump drip by drip. Let the fucker twist in the wind as long as it takes and they more the White House delays and obstructs will just lengthen things out. I’d be fine if they were doing impeachment during the GOP convention in August.
Kent
@Ruckus:
I’ll respect the office when Trump and the GOP start respecting the office.
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
All I’ve ever heard from her is that she wants to be methodical and make absolutely sure the mushy middle agrees Trump deserves impeachment. I’ve heard one Hell of a lot of people extrapolating what they think she means. If anyone has a report of her actually saying a time she wants this done by, I’d be interested in reading it.
waspuppet
@Betty Cracker: The things Trump could do to get the Chuck Todds of the world to literally carry him on their shoulders until Election Day is so long, and full of such simple things. They’re dying to do it. But he won’t do any of them.
sukabi
@Steve in the ATL: remove the batteries if it has them…or stick it in the freezer if it doesn’t.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: The ex-diplomat in question, Telizhenko, is widely viewed in the Ukrainian press as a corrupt gun-for-hire. Obviously he’d gravitate to Giuliani.
clay
@Betty Cracker: At one of his rallies he belched forth something like, “They want me to get a dog… Can you imagine, me with a dog?”
At this point, his brain reminded him that most people love dogs, so then he quickly spewed, “I’d be great with a dog, of course, but I just don’t have time for one!”
Which is, of course, a lie, since he has more free time than any President in history. ( <– the one hyperbolic claim he could make that would actually be true!)
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: I hope the reports i’ve heard that the Pelosi is telling the House to wrap this up by a certain date are wrong. I’ve heard that in a national radio news analyses, or maybe it was a youtube clip of national TV news talky, where the ratio of BS to actual news is high..
jl
@clay: Dog or a cat or an ant farm, or even worm box would take too much attention away from Trump. Melania and Barron with cute doggy pix would be adorable, and the nation would like them. They would be proof of some humanity in the WH. And Trump would smolder about it.
Patricia Kayden
@Cheryl Rofer:
clay
@jl: There was a report that McConnell told his caucus that he expected Pelosi to have an impeachment vote by Thanksgiving, so he would hold the trial between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But I don’t remember hearing anything about it from Pelosi or any House leadership, and I don’t know that McConnell has any special insight into her thinking.
I will note that if the Republicans want a quicker resolution on impeachment, then they could ask their House members to stop disrupting proceedings with stupid stunts. And they could ask the White House to stop stonewalling on documents and witnesses.
JPL
@ixnay: She contacted it in 2016 according to the Washington Post. Without her we would not have the votes necessary for the ACA or Dodd/Frank. She served only one term but what a term it was.
sukabi
@MattF: mildly amusing, sure. Sadly infuriating most of all. Everything that’s wrong, broken and deceitful about the beltway pundits and national media is spelled out explicitly in that piece, and not a one of them will change their behavior inspite of being called out on what is plain to see constant bullshit on their parts.
jl
@clay: Thanks for info. Sounds like McConnell is BSing. And makes sense that if a big shot GOPer said it, that is enough for the big network and cable news flunkies to take it at face value and report it as if it were The Truth, and with admiration and wonder, hence the news report. I hope Pelosi takes as much time as needed to do it right.
HumboldtBlue
@Cheryl Rofer:
Can a decommissioned power plant still produce power and dsitribute it locally?
MattF
@jl: I think Pelosi wants
— a clear, simple charge, backed by strong evidence
— to give Trump ample opportunity to self-impeach
— to torture Republicans.
And, fwiw, so far, so good.
Dorothy A. Winsor
This made me laugh
randy khan
@jl:
I assume that the idea is *to* box in the Republicans before their primaries – if they don’t vote until after the nomination, they don’t have to worry as much about far-right challengers. Pelosi actually wants them to vote no because she thinks it will hurt them in the general.
I feel like she accomplishes much the same thing by having a vote to authorize the inquiry in the next few weeks. Then you can hold off on the actual impeachment vote for a while, and use the intervening time to build the case in public.
Of course, the other message here is that she has the moderates on board for this phase of the process. You can be sure she’s keeping in close touch with them all the way through.
jl
@randy khan: ” the other message here is that she has the moderates on board for this phase of the process. ”
A unanimous vote would be nice. Though I wouldn’t put it past Gabbard to mislead the whip and vote no, just for the shot at more free media.
O. Felix Culpa
@jl: You are correct that Nancy has not set a deadline to wrap up the impeachment process. McConnell was blowing smoke. I recall (but cannot presently find) a direct quote from Nancy where she said she’s more interested in the “truth line” of the impeachment investigation than a timeline.
Martin
@jl:
I don’t see this as a concession. I see it as rule-making. They’re voting on the process going forward, how public hearings will be held, who gets to talk, maybe changes to the recess calendar.
Mary G
@O. Felix Culpa: That’s what I meant, but I was not clear. Nancy SMASH is just turning the screw a bit tighter.
Fair Economist
@jl:
That is awesome, and *so* accurate.
The choice of shut-off vs. fires is a horrible one; but fundamentally it’s only happening because PG&E’s short-sighted focus on profits has resulted in a profoundly under-maintained and under-updated electric grid.
Martin
@HumboldtBlue: None of this has anything to do with safety. PG&E is trying to emerge from bankruptcy and will be facing liability for the Kincade fire just as they do so. Odds are they lose their financial backers here, with no bailout route. The blackouts are simply trying to protect them from further liability in the hopes that someone will come to their rescue.
I have to imagine there will be a metric fuckton of lawsuits regarding lost productivity and personal damages due to the blackouts. To show just how fucked up PG&E is, they started the blackouts after they started the Kincade fire. The damage was already done and they didn’t even realize it. It’s just gross incompetence.
Sab
@clay: That’s about they only thing in his favor that I have ever heard, that he wouldn’t subject a dog to trying to live it’s life failing to please him.
Fair Economist
@Frankensteinbeck: Even if Pelosi *said* she wanted to wrap up the impeachment process by a certain date, the House has, constitutionally, complete authority over impeachment, so it’s her choice, as the leader of the House, when it actually *does* get finished. Pretty obviously the extreme interference and delaying tactic of the Trumpsters will delay the process.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Mayhew shoulda won.
Fair Economist
@Kent:
Actually, the House can send over articles of Impeachment as often as they want. Trump has done enough horrific stuff they won’t have much trouble finding new, different things to impeach him on.
bemused
@Avalune:
I would think everyone must hate those ads but there must be enough people who see them and ask their docs for those prescriptions if the drug companies spend humongous amounts of money on the ads.
HumboldtBlue
@Martin:
That’s pretty much been the feeling of a few million people in Northern California.
Miss Bianca
@bemused: @Avalune: I think it’s long past time for those ads to be outlawed. Just like cigarette and liquor commercials. I wonder if any of the Democratic candidates plan on tackling that elephant in the room when they talk about prescription drug costs?
Marcopolo
Good news folks. The NC State Supreme Court just ruled the state’s current mapping of US congressional districts is an illegal gerrymander and must be redrawn for the 2020 election.
There is no higher review for this decision.
Cheryl Rofer
@HumboldtBlue: “Decommissioned” means shut down and taken apart. Perhaps you mean decertified, or something like that? Not allowed to produce power for the grid?
I’m not an expert in such things, but if a power plant can’t operate safely, it should be shut down. If there’s some issue that it’s out of date and incompatible with the grid, then perhaps could produce for the local market. The grid is a very complex subject, though, and I don’t know its ins and outs, just some generalities.
cain
@Kent:
I talked to my activist friend, and yes it will likely stay red, although I think most people voted for Walden because of name recognition. But these voters were literally voting for bills he voted for or sponsored/written that made their lives worse. You can’t even say it’s because of ‘the other’ since there isn’t a lot of ‘others’ there.
Also found out that a friend of mine is running against Peter DeFazio’s seat as a Republican and he asked me to help him and I said I wouldn’t join his campaign but would help him for anything personal. He knows I’m a dirty liberal. :) I don’t think they has very good instincts. He is Nelson Ijih. You probably can google search him. But we did our master’s in computer science together. Great guy, not super dependable but otherwise fine. His positions are typical Republican except for the antivaxxer thing.
Sab
@Quicksand: We have five cats. Two of them ate our amazing seven foot fiberoptic tree two years ago. Now we have a shorter (cheaper) fiber optic tree with fake snow which has a horrible noxious chemical smell. Looks pretty, and cats hate it. Can’t stand to be in the same room with it, which means they aren’t peeing on the unfamiliar packages under it.
What idiot said cats are lower maintenance than dogs? Gotta walk dogs, but when they get home they settle in. Cats are continually at war with anything that changes in their environment. (Moved that bag. I am on it (pss).)
cain
@oatler.:
He is also running for Peter DeFazio’s seat. He usually gets Mercer money to run I think. My friend is supposedly running in the Republican primary but I don’t know how well he knows Art and whether he can defeat Art. I would rather have Art win since I don’t know what Nelson will do.
Aleta
Are dogs that detect explosives also trained to stay a certain distance away from them once detected? Can military handlers who’ve ordered dogs to pursue someone who might be wearing explosives also order the dogs not to get too close?
Rommie
I wonder if the GOP will disrupt the public hearings. You can’t question a witness in the middle of a “riot” *taps head*
trollhattan
@Cheryl Rofer:
Humboldt went into “inactive status” in 1988, so long, long defunct. Amusingly, PG&E has never found three missing fuel rods.
IIUC it was built and commissioned based on incomplete seismic knowledge of the area and the utility didn’t want to make the needed upgrades so retired the thing after thirteen years’ operation.
Elizabelle
New thread up.
HumboldtBlue
@Cheryl Rofer:
Thanks, I am now uncertain of its status although I see Troll has handled it.
J R in WV
@Sab:
We have two cats, and three dogs (two of these dogs are new puppies, and hence chew stuff, like shoes, a glasses case, magazines, books, they love to shred newspapers!) and the two cats are way lower maintenance than the 3 dogs.
We don’t have to walk the dogs, we live in the woods,and they are free to wander in those woods at will. Sometimes this is annoying, as they do sometimes bark incessantly late at night. I worry that they’re keeping neighbors who have to get up and go to work tomorrow awake, instead of just their old retired grownup adopters who can sleep in until they’re awake.
The cats have so far in the last 10 years ruined one pair of nice loafers by copiously urinating on them. I’m not sure which one of them did that. I would squirt gun them mercilessly if I knew for sure who to squirt.
Sally
@Aleta: When an EOD dog detects explosives she is trained to lie down wherever she is. This is to spread the weight so as not to trigger an explosion, to indicate where the explosive device is, and to not move until a handler can determine a safe extraction (for the dog). The dogs are very smart, highly trained and have fabulous personalities.
JustRuss
@oatler.: In case you’re wondering, now every Oregon farm sports a billboard warning that Salem is going to take away their guns. Shocking, I know.
Ruckus
@Kent:
That is exactly the point. It isn’t the office that is a lying sack of shit. There is nothing wrong with the office. It’s the person in the office. In this case a lying, cheating, moronic, asshole, sack of shit. It’s his misuse of the office that is wrong. Not the concept of president.
Also though the congress over the years has abdicated some of it’s duties to the presidency because they then don’t have to take responsibility. Which means that the presidency has taken on even more importance than it used to have, and it had plenty.
The government we have, the structure may not be perfect, it isn’t, but it is pretty good. It requires that the people elected to run it be rather qualified. We failed to protect that such that we can/only elect reasonably qualified people to run it. And the person/people in charge of the executive branch at totally unqualified. They have to go. The office doesn’t.
So. Don’t be like trump and disrespect the office, the office isn’t the problem. Disrespect trump, he’s the major problem, him and moscow mitch.
Central Planning
@J R in WV: This year our christmas tree is going to be a (new) cat tree. We’ll put the tree skirt around the bottom and stack the gifts around it. There are some interesting and inexpensive ones on Amazon. If only they made green ones…
Steeplejack
@Steve in the ATL:
Can’t believe you didn’t get at least one serious answer.
Amazon Fire Stick: You can turn off voice control by pressing the Menu and Back buttons at the same time for two seconds. Then you can leave the remote wherever you want.
Same procedure to turn it back on.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
And I was indeed making that very distinction.
catclub
@Steeplejack: comment #50
Steeplejack
@catclub:
Didn’t see that because you replied to yourself. I did a search on Steve’s nym.
cain
@Martin:
Yet somehow their execs believed they were owed a shit ton of money. These execs should be PERSONALLY sued as well. I’m sick of these assholes not getting their due. If you fail, you should get fired. No golden parachute, just a golden shower.