Yep, those pardons are really gonna suck. I wonder how many will be announced and how many they’ll keep secret until Biden takes office.
I’ll bet against a blanket pardon of the insurrectionists and a self-pardon, but honestly it’s like predicting where a fly is going to land, so I don’t put much stock into my or anybody else’s predictions.
Open thread.
Ken
If Mike Pence is in the room, it might be easier to predict where the fly lands.
SiubhanDuinne
Do you think he’ll pardon Ghislaine Maxwell?
Leto
@SiubhanDuinne: “Ghislaine who? I don’t know her… I’ve heard she’s said good things about me, but don’t know her.”
This “pardon watch” is like a suicide watch.
Nicole
I am considering keeping the news off today and myself away from Twitter so I don’t find out who he pardons until after he’s out of office. I have productive things to do today that I don’t want sidetracked by my futile rage. We won; he’s gone tomorrow and while I haven’t seen a woman President yet, I get very (joyfully) weepy every time I say “Vice President Harris” to myself. That can be enough for today.
Edmund Dantes
More interesting is trying to guess what will be the most unexpected or horrible pardon.
In the surprise category for me, I am surprised he hasn’t pardoned Calley yet. Though Calley does have the commutation from Nixon.
Aleta
@SiubhanDuinne: Probably Prince Andrew, a boon to the Queen, he’s descended from kings you know.
satby
For those worried about him blanket pardoning insurrectionists, they still can be subject to state charges arising from their trip, and at least a few state’s attorneys have said that state charges would be filed.
NotMax
@Edmund Dantes
Odds on pardon of Obama for being born in Kenya running at 11:1.
//
Keith P.
So far, it doesn’t sound like a totally horrific list, in that DJT, the kids, and Giuliani aren’t on it AFAIK. Maybe Bannon gets a pass? Some more war criminals? I’m not going to lose sleep over L’il Wayne getting a pardon, since it didn’t really cost him much (a girlfriend maybe? But pretty much everyone knew he was just angling for a pardon)
Sloane Ranger
Off topic but if you have the chance watch The Rogues episode “Viva Diaz” starring David Niven as a con man who bets South American dictator Telly Savalas on which sugar cube a fly will land on. They play the game multiple times and Niven always wins because he has previously primed a cube with brandy and the extra sweetness always attracts the fly to his cube.
PPCLI
@SiubhanDuinne: I hope that Florida, New York, etc are ready with state charges if that happens. And she should be arrested the moment she leaves Federal custody, lest she flee to a Polanski-exile.
Alison Rose
Randy Rainbow offers us a nice send-off anthem. Wonder what he’ll do going forward–maybe make McConnell and Graham and the rest of them the new stars.
Leto
@satby: PA AG Josh Shapiro said he’s going hammer and tongs after people. Reminds me, need to drop him another email thanking him for that and reminding him of that.
Jeffro
Who cares? A week from now he’ll be under indictment in GA, NY, and DC…and those two dozen sexual harassment suits will be moving forward, too.
Fuck’em
Elizabelle
This time tomorrow, that fucker will be airborne on his way to Mar a Loco.
Leto
@NotMax: those investigators in Hawaii finally found the goods! What, 6-7 years later? Little did we know that Hawaii is the deep, deep, deep state.
dmsilev
25 hours, 27 minutes to go.
I doubt he’ll pardon the insurrectionists. After all, they failed him.
Dorothy A. Winsor
What’s the rationale for not pardoning his kids?
NotMax
The new mantra:
May you live in dull times.
;)
dmsilev
@Elizabelle: As I understand the (planned) schedule, he should be on the ground in Florida by this time tomorrow. Doesn’t want to risk being “in Joe Biden’s plane” or something like that most likely.
Mike in NC
Say, does the MyPillow scumbag CEO Lindell need a pardon too? Maybe just for being one of the biggest ever suckups to Fat Bastard? I just read that several stores have decided not to sell his garbage products. The free market has kicked him in the ass. I hope he goes bankrupt. That would be so on-brand for a grifting Trumpanzee.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
Cancels invocation of the Fifth Amendment.
Benw
@NotMax: if he pardons Joe, Kamala, and Nancy for “election thieving” their guilt is confirmed!
Betty Cracker
Good God, I’d already forgotten Trump pardoned those scumbag former House felons Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter. The firehose volume of malfeasance makes it impossible to internally catalog the abuse of power.
New Deal democrat
An argument can and ought to be made that the exception to the pardon power “in case of impeachments” [note: the framers did *not* say “impeachment and conviction”] extends to the crimes of others which gave rise to the impeachment.
In other words, prosecutors should press the argument, and since the cases would be sui generis, a majority of a Supreme Court shocked and p****d off by January 6 might go along with it.
dmsilev
“He watches every show.”
germy
@Mike in NC:
Dominion threatens MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell with lawsuit over ‘false and conspiratorial’ claims
Delk
Not going to get worked up about this. MAGA world is going to be more upset about who didn’t get a pardon.
Almost Retired
It’s hard to predict who he’ll pardon, but given his increasing detachment from reality, I can envision him pardoning fictional murderers. This is good news for Raskolnikov and the Talented Mr. Ripley.
geg6
@Nicole:
I’ve got HGTV on. Rehab Addict and Bargain Mansion marathons today. Much more edifying than worrying about what fresh hell these pardons and that asshole will unleash.
artem1s
yes, impossible to predict. But I can absolutely guarantee you that there will be no end to the butt-hurt complaining about how *Jimmy (the worst president ever) Carter gave blanket pardons to draft dodging, treasonous hippies, so why can’t His Excellency (the Greatest President Ever) give pardons to the MAGATs who are real Patriots.
*there is a lot of speculation about why Jimmy lost his second term. Iran hostages and the economy comes up a lot. But really, a lot of the deplorables we saw in DC of a certain age last week , wanted him out because of the Vietnam pardons. Not to mention they believe we lost that war because of integration and those elite college kids protesting and spitting on soldiers. Ironically, they had no problem voting for W and Cheney who took deferments to stay out of the war, but Clinton protested that one time in London, so he’s a traitor too. As we saw with Ford, pardons can be a double edged sword for the party of the president signing them. So I expect McConnell and maybe Barr has left some time bombs around to prevent some mass pardons – if only to keep the FBI’s eyes on the small fry and off the bigger fish who had a hand in making it happen. Trumps never going to extend a blanket pardon to Lindsey, Cruz or Moscow Mitch. I think if the turn out at his 8 AM going away party tomorrow isn’t pleasing to him, he may decide to underbus them all for their disloyalty.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Since Trump has already gone after all the Culture War Martyrs I suspect it be a pack of rich people we never heard of who rendered on to Trump bigly in the Campaign donations.
That and Trump will designate a day of the year for the Bowling Green Massacre remembrance.
dmsilev
@Almost Retired: No pardon for the Hamburgler though. Some crime sprees are just unforgivable.
Leto
@dmsilev: the bar for exceptionally terrible White men is set so subterranean that even mole people have no problem clearing it.
The Thin Black Duke
I’m actually feeling pretty good this a.m. Donald Trump anymore, a friend who was struggling with Covid is feeling better, more of those assholes who stormed the Capitol are getting arrested, and I finally got through a nasty writer’s block. So far, Life Is Good.
satby
@Alison Rose: Damn, dude can hit the high notes.
Leto
@geg6: Love It or List It starting at 3pm. I know Suzanne doesn’t care for these shows, but Hillary Farr’s kitchens are always amazing. 99% of the time I’m in the Love It category just on her kitchen design alone. Plus out of most of these rehab shows, her work doesn’t require outside contractors to come back in and bring everything back up to code.
PaulB
@New Deal democrat:
James Madison (18 June 1788):
NotMax
As it’s Open Thread –
In a word: Assholes.
germy
Elizabelle
@The Thin Black Duke: You’re a good writer. Bonus points for the clever DAW quote.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@The Thin Black Duke: Hey, thanks for the shout out!
Immanentize
@PaulB: That suspension language is so interesting, but never it seems made it into the Constitution?
Carlo
Rioters pardon 3:1 odds against. They’re not celebrities, they can’t afford to pay the going rate, and Trump felt that they looked “low-class”.
I actually hope that he does one or two pardons in exchange for cash (NYT reported an active market in such pardon trafficking). That’s exactly the sort of thing that got Rod “It’s a Fucking Thing of Value!” Blagojevic hurled into a Federal pen by a Special Prosecutor. It would be a beautiful own-goal.
NotMax
@germy
Hope Biden, Pelosi and Schumer are all wearing thick rubber soles. Lightning strikes are a bitch.
PST
@SiubhanDuinne:
I cannot imagine a pardon that would do more harm to his reputation, and that’s saying something. I know most of Trump’s supporters will accept anything, but that would have the greatest chance of peeling off some. They will accept the pardoning of all kinds of political cronies as the natural thing to do to protect them from the witch hunt sure to ensue with the dirty dems in power. But pardoning Maxwell would be seen as a confession of a whole different kind of crime. Of course, that doesn’t mean he won’t do it. The own goal is a Trump specialty.
germy
PaulB
@Immanentize: Considering that Madison talked about the suspension of [pardon] powers a year after the signing of the Constitution, he may have thought that “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of impeachment” was a broad exception against pardoning during an impeachment and not a narrow ban on pardoning people who have been impeached.
Anonymous At Work
@artem1s: Carter’s “blanket pardon” wasn’t an actual pardon but an announcement of prosecutorial discretion to NOT PROSECUTE draft dodging, letting the Statute of Limitations run out. Reagan’s WH in 1981 discussed reversing course but decided to let sleeping dogs lie.
So, Trump issuing a “blanket pardon” would amount to tell prosecutors to exercise discretion ON TRUMP’S LAST DAY. Census Bureau civil servants have already openly-defied Trump’s orders on the Census in his waning days, I wager career DOJ prosecutors will too.
lee
“how many they’ll keep secret until Biden takes office.”
All of them.
I would not be surprised if he’s signing the paperwork on the worst of them until 11:59am tomorrow.
Anonymous At Work
@PST: Not to mention that she would accept it, admitting guilt, and would lose Fifth Amendment rights and immunities. If Trump has anything to fear from her, he’ll want to maintain her Fifth Amendment rights.
Amir Khalid
I know this is a bit far-fetched; but I wonder if, for at least some of those to be pardoned, things have come to where taking that vague, catch-all pardon from this badly tainted POTUS is more shameful than being found guilty of the crime.
Nicole
@geg6: When I was doing six weeks of radiation early this year, HGTV was the channel that was always on in the waiting room. Yeah, it’s an excellent choice for keeping the atmosphere soothing. Good call for the Tangerine’s final day.
JoyceH
Seems to me that the TV pundits are really scaremongering on the subject of pardons. One of the claims they make is that the president can issue secret pardons. They say that the pardon can be signed and just put away until and unless it’s needed. So my question is – with a secret pardon, how do you prove the pardon was actually issued and signed during the president’s term of office and not afterwards?
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
Her father’s check has cleared.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Nicole: It’s what I watched when I was in the hospital after my heart attack
VOR
@dmsilev: I’ve long suspected Trump counts watching TV and tweeting as “work”. Once he is out of office I expect we will get confirmation those “long hours” of working actually consisted of Fox News on Tivo and rage tweeting, followed by calls to a roster of suck-ups.
Omnes Omnibus
@JoyceH: Why should TV pundits be any different than Balloon Juice commenters?
Quiltingfool
Last night I was talking to a cousin who works at the county courthouse. She knows all the county players, been there for almost 30 years, so she is a good source. Anyway, I guess there was a big brouhaha between 3 county commissioners; two guys who have been commissioners forever and a new guy. Long story short, old guys convinced a group of maintenance guys to scream at the new guy, surround him, and keep him from leaving the office building. Not sure why, think it had to do with the new guy exposing some cronyism done by the old guys.
So, courthouse cousin was appalled by the bad behavior, never seen anything like that, blah, blah, blah…but I knew why, but didn’t say it. Trump. They were mimicking Trump’s behavior.
This incident got me to thinking about something I “knew,” but never really internalized; Presidential words and behaviors do have a profound effect on the people. I suppose I never thought about it because past Presidents’ public words and behaviors usually didn’t mirror the awful things they did. Past Presidents normally didn’t air private “fights” with officials in public. Trump does so, and quite gleefully. He revels in being rude, disrespectful and dishonest. He gave people who covered their bad behaviors with a thin veneer of respectability permission to rip off the facade and show us their true colors.
I think Biden’s character and good nature may slowly turn some of this around, in time.
raven
I just refi’d our rental in an hour !!!!
Baud
@JoyceH:
IIRC, a pardon has to be “delivered” and “accepted” to be final. Not sure what acts are needed to meet those requirements.
Leto
@PST: “He’s pardoning her so she can help him bring down the pedo child trafficking pizza ring.” There. That’s literally it. They’d accept that hook, line, and sinker. Yes, they are that dumb. Does it piss off the libs and Never Trumpers? Good enough.
cope
@geg6: Agreed except for having to put up with the seemingly endless promos for that damn Discovery Plus app. Like the world needs more Chip and Joanna Gaines although who knows, maybe for once they will finally do a house for a same sex couple.
Gravenstone
@dmsilev: The only nugget of truth in the whole statement.
germy
Who cares?
Is the NYT going to keep this up through the entire Biden admin.?
Baud
@germy:
Probably.
rikyrah
@Leto:
I hate Rehab Addict. can’t stand that woman.
I really like Love it or List it. I’m usually on David’s side, because the houses he finds really are ready for the families to take it to the next level.
MisterForkbeard
@dmsilev: Jebus.
Staying up late watching TV is not “work”. He takes more vacations and golfs more than any other president.
His schedule is full of “executive time” where he watches TV and tweets at people, calls Hannity, etc. Laziest and worst president ever.
geg6
@Leto:
I love HGTV shows. I watch a lot of them and find them soothing, especially in these fraught times. It’s fun stuff and I really do get ideas for things to have my John get done around the house. When I began working from home and turned our bonus room into my office, he built me an 18 foot long, four shelf built-in bookcase there to keep the clutter down and provide a nicer Zoom room background for me. He got the idea a few years ago from an HGTV show. At that time, he built a 6 foot long five shelf built-in in our sunroom to hold books, photos, tchochkes and the TV there. They are both just beautiful. Plus, House Hunters is just pure, yell-at-the-TV fun. During the lockdown, they ran a show called “House Hunters: Comedians on Couches.” It was freaking hilarious. Basically, just a regular House Hunters episodes with commentary by comedians all connected via Zoom. JB Smooth was particularly hilarious.
Baud
DC circuit throws out Trump EPA power plant deregulation rule.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Anonymous At Work: I suspect pardoning the people who tried to lynch the Senate just as the Senate starts the impeachment hearings wouldn’t go well.
MisterForkbeard
I don’t know who is getting pardons, but I can say that QAnon is going to think they’re a brilliant part of the plan. Really though, I have no idea what they’re doing, but after joining a couple of communities on Reddit that track this stuff it’s really mind-boggling – I have no idea how people can believe any of it.
Miss Bianca
@germy: Yeah, well…I hope Biden doesn’t actually think this is going to accomplish anything. Unless McConnell and McCarthy actually burst into flames crossing the threshold of the church. I might actually start going back to church myself if that happened.
NotMax
@MisterForkbeard
Incoming White House staff will discover all the TVs tuned to Fox and all the remotes missing.
//
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: I suspect TV pundits have better hair and teeth.
Cheryl Rofer
I’m wondering if he will release the pardon list at 5:30 to step on Biden and Harris’s observance of the covid-19 deaths.
geg6
@Cheryl Rofer:
That would be so totally on brand for him.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: Nobody; yes.
Kent
It is more in his character to toss them under the bus. They failed him after all.
MisterForkbeard
@germy: As always, Democrats are the only ones with agency and Republicans are the only ones who matter.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: There are roadside dinners full of middle aged guys Cletus who aren’t going to interview themselves. How can the nation heal until we’ve heard the opinion of every last retired trucker?
Patricia Kayden
Gin & Tonic
@geg6: When I was out of work a long time ago, my wife urged me to build a bookcase in one of the front rooms. Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, oak plywood, oiled finish, really nice. I thought I’d be able to put some of my books on it. I was wrong. 100% hers.
Yes, we both have a book “problem.”
MisterForkbeard
@NotMax: What, not OAN? The White House staff betrayed Trump
@Gin & Tonic: We had the exact same issue. We bought two new floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that are now in my home office. About 80% of it is filled with my wife’s books. I started putting my own stuff in front of the books, but mostly I solved this by buying everything digitally on my kindle and only buying hardback signed copies of books I adore (slowly getting subterranean press versions Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos is a bitch and a half, but they’re so lovely).
Raven
@rikyrah: Home Town is fun!
Low Key Swagger
I’ve got a love/hate thing with HGTV. Mostly hate. I’ve enjoyed watching several renovations, and I used to enjoy that couple from Waco until they got greedy. But, these “flip-it” type of shows (and there are many) rarely add much value to the home and just artificially raise prices for working families.
Jeffro
@MisterForkbeard:
Simple. It’s easier than admitting they were complete suckers for an obvious con man. It’s easier than admitting Democrats really aren’t such bad people after all.
Raven
@Low Key Swagger: Home Town seems to be the opposite. If Laurel, MS is really that diverse!
lee
@germy: Yes
In my next segment of ‘Obvious answers to simple questions’…. :-)
Gin & Tonic
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Kent
Funny thing about that. My wife and I knew at least 6 of the families who had houses done on that Fixer Upper show from our time in Waco. the Gaines were members of a cultish evangelical church there called Antioch Church and a whole bunch of clients on the show were co-workers of ours who either worked at my wife’s clinic network or for the school system where I worked. Very strange seeing people you know on reality TV.
Honestly, the Gaines were the best thing that ever happened to Waco. They got tired of their show because their fame got to be so much that people who’s houses they had done were turning them into AirB&B to cash in on the fixer-upper name rather than living in them. Why go through the whole thing when people weren’t even going to live in the houses that you were designing for them and just use them to cash in on YOUR name? They had a creepy religion but it was time to move on and do something different.
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: Yeah, he wanted to fly out on Air Force One while it was still his Air Force One, instead of having to receive the traditional favor of a flight home. Petty to the end, but we’ll all be happier without him there.
Dahlia
@rikyrah: That would be impressive considering he was lost at sea years ago, wasn’t he?
Raven
“Presenting honest stories of working people as told by rich Hollywood stars”
Baud
@Raven:
Source?
Downpuppy
Who will be writing the pardons? With all the competent lawyers gone, he could really screw up, pardoning the wrong crimes, being too specific or non-specific, and having some of them end up worse than useless.
geg6
@Raven:
I have read that the husband, Ben, on Home Town is a bit of a liberal. He ran for city council or something in Laurel and lost. Just goes to show that MAGAts aren’t attracted to just any celebrity.
citizen dave
“Ainsley Earhardt: “They’ll criticize President Trump but no one can argue, he is a worker. ”
Oh My God! I remember in some lame attempt to make conversation with the Laura Ingraham book reading individual/superior I was working with at the time (Nov 2016), saying “I was reading in the ny times how he likes to create chaos to keep everyone on their toes, etc. And he never takes vacations”.
The facts say yes, he did create loads of chaos. But he played golf 25% of the time. And is one of the laziest persons anyone has ever seen. Along with a lot of his staff, whose crap contained factual errors and misspellings, etc. As often noted here, it was the gross incompetence that saved so many worse things from happening.
God, he’ll probably watch Fox & Friends tomorrow morning before flying out. What a maroon. Hope NY state police serve him when he steps off the plane in Florida.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: That’s Firesign Theater.
Raven
@Baud: Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers.
Raven
@geg6: They do houses for gay folks, mixed race couples and lot’s of “non traditional” peeps. In Laurel! There was also a BLM dust up this spring.
RandomMonster
@Downpuppy: There’s still a WH lawyer, isn’t there?
rikyrah
@Raven:
I LOVE Hometown.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
From what I’ve seen and the people I’ve talked to, these are some really, really stupid people.
Subsole
@Quiltingfool: Yep.
The people we elect are the people we give ourselves permission to be.
gvg
@JoyceH: People have to accept the pardon for it to be finished and legal. A prior President revoked a late pardon by the prior President and that held up so I think we are safe from late ones including late secret ones. Not sure I buy the secret stuff but apparently a lot of things have not been done and most of what has been done, hasn’t been challenged in court, so we aren’t actually sure many details are really legal.
rikyrah
@Dahlia:
Isn’t her father the rich Maxwell? That’s the only reason I thought she was being kept alive and didn’t find herself at the end of a ‘ suicide’ like Epstein.
geg6
@Raven:
Yes, they do. I was initially resistant to their show because I really couldn’t stomach the Gaineses, even before I learned about their nutcase religious beliefs. After I learned that, I actively despised them. I thought these people from Mississippi would be the same garbage. But my sister talked me into watching Home Town and I really like them a lot.
geg6
@rikyrah:
That’s her dad and he’s dead.
Barbara
@JoyceH: Yes, I had the same question. There has to be notice that the pardon is valid. I think that the pardon process issues a formal document, I just don’t know whether that process requires it to be published or publicly released. I am tuning out these and other issues until such time as they might actually be real live questions.
Low Key Swagger
@Raven: Yes, from my limited viewing, it seems like they honestly try to do a good job on a budget. Inclusive as well.
Subsole
@MisterForkbeard: Cowardice, mostly.
Cannot bear to admit people they see as lesser (us) had everything pegged from the jump.
Also, they’ve tied their entire identity up in being what conservaganda programmed them to be. If you question one point of doctrine, why not another? And where does that end? If the dam ever cracks it will be an annihilatory experience for some of these folks.
catclub
@NotMax:
Wouldn’t that be 44:1 against?
Gin & Tonic
@geg6: Hey, if JFK Jr is alive, why can’t Maxwell be? They never recovered a body, did they? Huh?
SiubhanDuinne
ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED FORTY MINUTES !!
citizen dave
@Baud: This is good news from a political/regulatory front, but the economics/markets are rapidly driving the coal units to retirement (solar/wind/storage). Some may be around into the 2030s, but most are retiring in this decade. Most are reaching normal retirement age anyway. It’s the transportation sector that will need the most work, and might be interesting if the Biden EPA will try to make some nexus from electricity to transportation.
The Obama rule (Clean Power Plan) was the first to go outside the power plant’s fence, essentially. The court is saying that’s OK for EPA to do.
cope
@Raven: You are correct, sir. I just don’t want to see the Napiers go down the same track as the Gaines couple did
Subsole
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Except a lot of these guys and gals aren’t even Cleti. They’re Republican organizers and local operatives who pass as Cleti.
Benw
@SiubhanDuinne: now < 1 day
tick tock
JoyceH
I watched a lot of HGTV but that was years ago. I miss the shows where they’d just come in and, you know, redecorate a room. Now it’s like unless you’re knocking down walls, why even show up?
citizen dave
TWENTY TWENTY TWENTY FOUR HOURS TO GO!
Low Key Swagger
@Kent: That’s interesting. Doesn’t surprise me at all about their church. All. Over. Texas.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Why doesn’t BJ have a countdown clock???
geg6
@Gin & Tonic:
Nah, they found Maxwell’s. Floating in the Atlantic. He was scum.
Anonymous At Work
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Well, there’s a separate question that if Trump is impeached for inciting an insurrection, he cannot pardon those involved in the insurrection, as part of the Constitution’s limits on pardons under Article II, Section 2. “[The President] … shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”
However, no one wants to test this before Supreme Court. Especially the Supreme Court.
Leto
@geg6: just got in from dog walkies, but YES! House Hunters is the gift that keeps on giving. The House Hunters Comedian shows were so funny; they’re getting their own series on the Discovery App thing. I’d like to watch it but not enough to mess with that. Avalune and I enjoy watching the HH: International for all the Americans heading to Europe, and the resulting hilarity between wishes and reality.
@rikyrah: gotta say, David and his team do a really good job on finding homes that can take families to the next level. I have a little laugh each time he wins because it’s so infrequent that each one is a major victory.
danielx
@SiubhanDuinne:
I just spent two hours screwing around with Excel date functions and I could have just asked you!
Bruuuuce
Under twenty-four hours to go.
I’m gonna be elated!
trollhattan
@Baud:
So much for “beautiful clean coal.”
SFBayAreaGal
I like some of the shows on HGTV. I also notice how white HGTV is. They really need to find more people of color to host the shows.
jonas
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Well, they’d have to agree to “accept” said pardons and why would anyone who hasn’t committed any crimes (*eye-roll*) want to accept a pardon for them? You can see the bind he’s in, including with himself. I understand that, legally, accepting a pardon isn’t tantamount to a guilty plea in court, but it is an admission that you did something that either has, or someday might, put you in legal jeopardy.
ETA: also, if he pardons them, but not himself, they could be forced to testify against him to stuff like obstruction of justice, corruption, foreign influence, etc.
SFBayAreaGal
@Leto: I love HH International for the same reason.
leeleeFL
@geg6: moi aussi!
JanieM
@The Thin Black Duke: Good essay. I admire the way you succeeded in condensing so much insanity into a relatively short, tightly-reasoned piece. My thoughts are so all over the place on this topic, I wouldn’t know where to start.
MisterForkbeard
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It’s fun to say that, but I think it’s more that it’s a religion. When we say it’s a cult that’s literally what it is.
If you read /r/QAnonCasualties you see a lot of this. There was one a few days ago where the poster talked about how her mom had just gotten super racist over the past four months. The poster had married a half-black man a decade before, and her mother just loved him. Had a close relationship and everything.
But a few days ago her mom came over and started talking about how black people were the root of all our problems, had incited violence and BLM was just the worst, and how they were bringing down the whole country, etc. And when asked “How can you believe that when my Husband and your grandkids are black” she shot back “No they aren’t. They’re not black.”
It’s not stupidity. It’s the need to believe something to back yourself up and an unwillingness to acknowledge you’ve fucked up. Fundamentally, getting into QAnon isn’t an intellectual failing so much as a moral one, where you’re just too weak to face your convictions and instead have to… “pretend”.
dmsilev
@SiubhanDuinne:
Obligatory: Tick tock, motherfucker.
leeleeFL
@Kent: I am glad you think they did some good. I kind of like them, and they don’t get preachy on the show.
HGTV gives me great ideas and I like that si many women are the Main Stars!
SiubhanDuinne
Thank goddess for the properly-placed apostrophe. Otherwise I would have been worried about Peter Gelb.
Michael Cain
@Baud:
It will still get to the Supremes. Even if Biden’s EPA declines to appeal the ruling, the power plant owners will be granted standing to carry on in their stead. This is the case where we see if Gorsuch does what he was appointed to do, roll back agency regulatory powers everywhere. At some point, Schumer will need to get Manchin on board with limiting the filibuster sufficiently to allow amending the Clean Air Act.
(Historical note, in Massachusetts v. EPA, the case where the Supremes allowed regulation of greenhouse gases under the existing CAA, the five votes in favor were Kennedy and the then-four liberals. Roberts opposed it. This is his chance to reverse it.)
Al Z.
20, 20, 20, 4, hours to go
I wanna be sedated
Nothing to do, nowhere to go, oh
I wanna be sedated
Just, get him to the airport, put him on a plane
Hurry, hurry, hurry, before we go insane
Kent
If you are curious, you can read all the dirty details about their church and Waco here:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/waco-texas-magnolia-fixer-upper-antioch-chip-joanna-gaines
So glad to be gone from Texas. We had lots of friends there and there are plenty of good people. But you get weary at constantly being at odds with the crazy fundamentalist bullshit and the crazy evil GOP politics.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I gather this is happening on the Senate floor?
McConnell would just love to throw trump under a train, if he can figure out a way to do it that improves his odds of taking back the Senate in 2022
mvr
@JoyceH: Yeah, I asked that question on a Twitter thread where Phil Donahue or some other celeb I can’t distinguish from him alleged there could be secret pardons. And I asked for a reference to some authority for the claim. No response yet.
So I googled it and got a politico page by two non-lawyers – the argument was that the constitution doesn’t explicitly rule out secret pardons. But that isn’t really a good argument. It also doesn’t explicitly rule out self-pardons and yet they are likely as not invalid.
yellowdog
@rikyrah: When he tells them the price of the new house he never includes closing costs and moving costs. That dramatically changes the affordability equation.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s looking an awful lot like moving in favor of impeachment.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m pretty sure McConnell wants revenge for Trump sending thugs to kill him. McConnell may not have been high up on the target list, but the mob considers him one of the traitors who could have saved the election and chose not to.
Subsole
@Bruuuuce: Gabba gabba we accept you!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JoyceH: @mvr:
I can’t remember which MSNBC content I had going in my ears yesterday when this came up: trump could pardon himself and his spawn and just not tell anybody till they need it. So he would mail it to himself certified and keep the unopened envelope in a safe at Mar-A-Loco? “Look at the postmark, Mr Chief Justice!” Have it witnessed, signed and dated by the Kushner in-laws and notarized by Sean Spicer?
More credibly, people were saying he’d been scared out of a self-pardon by talking to him about forfeiting his fifth amendment rights. That was the most persuasive case I’ve heard against the self-pardon, but I’d still bet a mortgage payment he won’t be able to resist the narcissistic and transgressive thrill of a self-pardon
mvr
One reason I can’t ever retire is the seven 7 foot tall 3 foot wide bookcases full of books in my office. We also have ten or so floor to ceiling bookcases scattered throughout the house and half a dozen more stacking barrister-style bookcases. All full. And a sun room and part of the attic filled with books in boxes.
I’m not a hoarder, just an accumulator.
Jinchi
Trump famously told the crowds at his rallies that he’d never visit again if he lost their state.
The insurrectionists failed Trump. I doubt he’s going to pardon their failure.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MisterForkbeard: I think he’d do it in a heartbeat if he thought it was a win, or even a wash, in the 2022 Senate races.
zhena gogolia
@mvr:
Tell me about it.
The Thin Black Duke
@Elizabelle: Thanks!
Kent
Is it wrong to be gleeful?
The Thin Black Duke
@Dorothy A. Winsor: You’re welcome. It’s a great line.
Bruuuuce
@Subsole: Hey, ho! Let’s go, clock! Faster, Faster!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: doesn’t Cracker Barrel have gift shops? I believe there’s lots of empty retail space at the trump hotels in Chicago and LA?
Kent
One of my future projects is to rebuild the bookshelves in our living room (which are just tall Ikea ones now) into a serious built-in library with one of those antique library ladders on wheels that slides side to side so you can reach the tall books. We have the ceiling height to do it. I just have kids in college so other priorities.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I agree. Pardoning the seditionists will make a few rethug senators made at the wrong time for himself.
mvr
And (if it turns out secret pardons are legal – I’m a skeptic) a secret self-pardon or crony-pardon can be asked about in any future legal proceeding in which he or one of the pardonees has to testify. There will be many such occasions.
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Too little, too late, Mitch. Hope the MAGAts haunt your ass like that last pork chop.
The Thin Black Duke
@JanieM: Thanks. I appreciate it.
Matt McIrvin
@mvr: When we moved to our current house, I couldn’t bear to throw away the hoard of books I’d accumulated since grad school or so, but there was no sensible place to put the shelves so they mostly went into boxes in the basement. But most of them just stayed there, and in some cases got peed on by a troublesome cat (now long gone).
Last summer, we finally got rid of most of them, though it often pained me to do it. And I’ve taken the plunge lately to mostly reading electronic books–I tell myself that if I miss any of those books I’m more likely to enjoy them in an e-book edition anyway, and the vast majority of the ones that are worth reading are available that way.
But it was really hard to go through those boxes.
Brachiator
No matter what he does, Trump is almost out the door, and we will no longer have to endure the displeasure of his company. Absolutely nothing he can do about it. I’m not even going to let his shitty little pardons bother me. To paraphrase the Eagles song.
‘Cause he’s already gone
And I’m feelin’ strong
I will sing this vict’ry song
Woo hoo hoo, my my, woo hoo hoo
The pardons that you’ve written made me stop and wonder why
But I guess you felt like you still are riding high
Just remember this, Orange Fool, when you look up in the sky
You can see the stars and still not see the light (that’s right)
And you’re already gone
And I’m feelin’ strong
I will sing this vict’ry song
Woo hoo hoo, my my, woo hoo hoo
mvr
I just used one of those ladder hardware kits to custom fit a rolling retainer rail for the ladder up to my tiny mountain cabin loft. FWIW, you can find the hardware cheap on Etsy right now, compared to the usual prices at some of the woodworking and renovation retailers.
Miss Bianca
@The Thin Black Duke: Hey, nice essay!
mvr
Yeah, it would be. Many many of my books are on arcane technologies which would be hard to buy electronically – vacuum tube amplifiers, hand woodoworking techniques from the 1800s, homebuilding from the same era, fly rod building, finishing technology from the 1920s. I imagine some of that stuff has been digitized but when I accumulated these some of it was close to lost knowledge.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Leto:
“I handknit pants for hamsters for my Etsy store. My husband breeds stinkbugs for sale on Amazon. Our purchase budget is $875,000 with a renovation budget of $230,000.”
artem1s
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
and what are the chances that he tells Jared or some other fool he has a secret pardon waiting for him if he ever needs it, but never goes thru the process because he has crappy lawyers and advisors? I say 100% he will never file the paperwork if it costs him a dime to do so.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: or the international version: “I lived in Paris for three months in college, and I really feel like I became French. I feel much more at home in the Marais than on Long Island… Why is the kitchen so small? The toilet is in a separate little room? I’ve never seen that before!”
Subsole
@Kent: Heh. I went to that church in high school.
It is absolutely hilarious to see the silos of all places get turned into a tourist attraction…
Also really hilarious how Magnoliaville seems to end before you cross the Brazos…
Subsole
@Kent: If it is I don’t wanna be right.
There go two miscreants
Some of you people are undermining my current project of thinning out my bookshelves!
hueyplong
All this reminds me of how liberating it will be not to give a crap what Trump is thinking, ever again
Practicing now.
kindness
I kind of expect that the US will find out what the actual legal limits to Presidential Pardons are. I believe the president does not have carte blanche to pardon anyone and everyone. Especially if it is a crime the president is part of. I hope Uncle Joe goes to court to wipe some of those pardons off the records, especially if it means Roger Stone and Mike Flynn get to spend some time in government run crossbar hotels for a bit.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“The Caribbean is my life, but I don’t understand why this shower is in the garden…”
Matt McIrvin
@mvr: It seems like with e-books, there’s really complete coverage of contemporary fiction and popular nonfiction, and Project Gutenberg has been great at digitizing huge loads of stuff that is old enough to be public domain… but in between, there’s this vast gap, and the attempts to deal with it (like the Internet Archive) can run into serious difficulties with copyright.
Kent
No shit. In 5 years or so of the show, I don’t think they ever did a single remodel in East Waco or Bellmead. Maybe they did, I wasn’t really a big fan or anything. But there are whole swaths of Waco that pretty much got forgotten because they are too Black or Hispanic for TV I think.
BC in Illinois
@germy:
One nice part of this invitation — which has apparently been accepted — is that those who go to church with the Bidens, won’t be able to be at the Trump farewell military send-off.
GOP Leaders skip Trump Sendoff for Church with Bidens
Subsole
@Kent: Yep. That rising tide is definitely not lifting every boat.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s been very good for a lot of folks who needed it. But it’s basically gentrification on a citywide scale.
Hell, Magnolia is slowly putting Health Camp out of business. Which, y’know, really sucks. And is a pretty good microcosm of the whole process.
I dunno. Maybe I’m just getting old and grumpy.
hueyplong
@BC in Illinois: It’s why they jumped at the Biden invitation.
He’s done the two GOPers a solid and now they owe him one.
BC in Illinois
@BC in Illinois:
And apparently Pence will not be there to say good-bye to Trump:
Michael Cain
@mvr:
Given the state of contemporary computer storage (vast and cheap), it’s only a matter of desire (and possibly ignoring copyright law but in ways that you will never get caught and it’s unlikely the copyright holder will be deprived of money). A rig to let you photograph the pages at reasonable resolution and convert that collection of pictures into a PDF is straightforward.
Several years ago I met a student at a local university who had built that sort of rig. At the beginning of every quarter he bought the required texts. Then he spent a Saturday or Sunday afternoon with the photography rig and effectively scanned all of those books. He carried the PDFs around on his laptop instead of carrying 30 pounds of paper books. At the end of the quarter he tossed the files. He told an amusing story about a class where the professor said, “Now, all of you need to turn to page 130 in Wilson.” Wilson was the author of one of the several texts that were on the required list, but which had not been mentioned up to that point. He opened the file, scrolled to page 130, and waited. In the meantime, all the other students were rummaging through their backpacks hoping that, no matter how unlikely, they had stuffed the Wilson text in there by accident.
burnspbesq
@Mike in NC:
Wait until the company’s liability insurers deny coverage for damages claimed by Dominion. Then you’ll really hear him squeal.
Michael Cain
@Michael Cain:
Just adding to my previous comment, a page scanned at reasonable resolution with moderate compression applied will come in at under a megabyte on average. So a gigabyte is 1,000 pages and a terabyte is 1,000,000 pages. I note that today Amazon will sell me a four terabyte USB drive for less than $100.
burnspbesq
@citizen dave:
You wanna be sedated?
mvr
I may have the money, but there is no way I have the time for the scanning. I do give the the electronic archive @Matt McIrvin mentions above.
I have some electronic books as well. And they aren’t bad but I prefer paper and am in fact better at finding what I want in paper texts than I am in electronic texts, even with word search and the like.
Jinchi
@burnspbesq:@Mike in NC:
Among all the grifters in Trump’s orbit, there have to be a few who hired out their services to solicit pardons from Trump and now have a significant number of blackmailable clients who will be left empty-handed.
burnspbesq
@SiubhanDuinne:
Somehow, it’s unsurprising that an owner who once paid over a billion dollars to settle with the SEC would have a due diligence fail on a key hire.
Downpuppy
@RandomMonster: Cipollone, but he’s kind of busy and has been balking lately & warning staff about illegal orders.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There’s no Trump hotel in LA.
ETA: He has a shitty golf course on the coast in PV.
hueyplong
@burnspbesq: He’ll get that reservation of rights letter the day after he makes a claim for a defense.
CatFacts
@Michael Cain:
These days you don’t even need a photography rig to scan books. An Ipad with a dedicated book-scanning app like Abbyy Finescanner does perfectly well for everyday use.
Brachiator
@The Thin Black Duke:
Great essay. Sums things up nicely.
The person most able to take Trump down was Trump himself.
Damn near poetic.
Michael Cain
@mvr:
Yeah, for a number of activities I was more limited by screen real-estate than by anything else. Two (or very occasionally three) books or papers on the desk opened to the place I need them plus a couple of good-sized windows where I’m writing code or text. I need a computer desktop that’s comparable in size to a physical desktop, with the same kind of contrast :^)
Kent
There are students who do this for a business, and then sell all the .pdfs to their classmates who don’t want to pay $150 for each paper textbook.
The easier way to do is to just chop the binding off the book and then you can sheet-feed the loose pages into a more ordinary scanner like the Fujitsu snap scanner which I own.
Miss Bianca
@hueyplong: I’m starting to get the strong impression that maybe Joe Biden is a savvier politician than I am.
Although I am still rooting for McConnell and McCarthy to burst into flames as they cross the church threshold.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Baud: Hey Baud,
I’ve got one. Click my nym.
Ruckus
@Kent:
No. No it’s not.