President Biden met today with the Prime Ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Today is the anniversary of the beginning, in 1941, of the Soviet Union’s deportation of citizens of those countries to Siberia and Kazakhstan after invading.
Adam suggested a larger group of countries, but these three, on this day, will send a message to Vladimir Putin.
[It should be noted that Estonia’s Prime Minister is female, though.]Open thread!
MisterForkbeard
Hm. Someone should get this “Adam” guy a job with the administration. :)
laura
Strength through competence.
Jeffery
Mother Russia wants her break away provinces back. Vlad will not be amused.
Old School
Will this count as a press conference for Biden? Or will we still be told he never holds them?
Just kidding – I know it won’t count.
Redshift
Just wanted to point out that Fred freakin’ Hiatt of WaPo is calling out Republicans as “anti-democracy forces”! ?
Are you listening, Manchin?
Leto
@laura: Competence through a genuine desire to help your fellow man, combined with practical/relevant experience in your given field.
Villago Delenda Est
Joe should give a shout-out to Vlad’s mini-me in Belarus.
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift: Say it, Fred. Say “fascist”. It’s what they are now.
Ken
Estonian has no grammatical gender and uses the same pronoun for “he” and “she”, though of course the English translator should have got the gender right.
I’m reminded of this recent examination of Google’s translation of Hungarian, which also has a single ungendered third-person singular pronoun. The machines have picked up English gender bias – the gender-neutral Hungarian phrases become “he builds, she cleans, he is a politician, she raises children”.
SFAW
@Ken:
I’m having a tough time getting it to translate “My hovercraft is full of eels.”
Benw
@MisterForkbeard:
You’re not fooling anyone, Adam! :)
Baud
DATE: June 13, 2021
FROM: POTUS
TO: SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS
RE: PUTIN SUMMIT
______________________________
MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
germy
The Dangerman
Adam/Baud 2024?
oatler.
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/10/biden_putin_nuclear_weapons
Raoul Paste
So US intelligence is reading this almost top 10,000 blog?
And Adam said he wasn’t an insider, that sly dog
Ken
@Baud: I was imagining something more dramatic. The POTUS is in a dimly-lit conference room with the entire Cabinet, the National Security Council, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There is much agitated whispered conversation and sweaty brows being mopped. Suddenly the doors open and a mysterious figure is silhouetted in the doorway. The POTUS says “Silverman…” in an awestruck tone, and a sense of palpable relief sweeps the room.
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s the communique from the NATO meeting. There’s a lot to it, some of which will show up in Biden’s meeting with Putin.
germy
Baud
@germy:
I thought she leaked it to The Intercept.
germy
@Baud:
You beat me to that joke by about five seconds.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: No moss growing under Baud’s typing fingers.
Ken
Am I the only one who hears “Reality Winner” and thinks for a moment it’s a racehorse, before remembering who she is?
Er, clarifying; the only one on Balloon Juice. I’m fairly sure 95% or more of the US population never heard of her.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Old School: The press today,..
Steeplejack
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Noted.
rikyrah
Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) tweeted at 10:20 AM on Mon, Jun 14, 2021:
Here’s Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell telling Hugh Hewitt that if Republicans retake the Senate in 2022, any Biden SCOTUS nominee is not only a no go in 2024, but also maybe even in 2023 too https://t.co/ze2pEH6dO9 https://t.co/4FhUZXPptc
(https://twitter.com/ZoeTillman/status/1404458817614663680?s=03)
narya
Chemical plant explosion in Rockton, IL; the blob is showing up on weather radar.
debbie
Was this a recently announced or surprise meeting, or has this been known all along?
debbie
@Ken:
No.
sab
@Baud: What happened to her is when some of is realized that the Intercept is not actually a news organization. Before that I was under the mistaken that it was a news organozation that had the bad judgment to associate with GG. Afterwards I realized that the GG association was a feature and the occassional news coming out through them was the bug.
SiubhanDuinne
Yup. “His Excellency Kaja Kallas” is an error I wouldn’t have expected from this White House. NBD, of course. I just hope Fox doesn’t notice — they’ll do a week of outage.
TomatoQueen
Go Waffle House (onions/possible paywall warning): Waffle House staff got teen server Timothy Harrison to his graduation – The Washington Post
Mike in NC
Email informed me that tickets to Trump’s 2nd Inauguration dated August 15th are selling for $1200. Get them while they’re hot!
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
LOL
SiubhanDuinne
@Ken:
Ha! I do the same thing, every time!
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
I hate these fucking people SO MUCH.
WaterGirl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It was a breach of protocol when so-called reporters became stenographers, but these people didn’t care then. And they don’t care about that now.
shorter: the press is a bunch of entitled self-absorbed whiners.
mrmoshpotato
@laura:
How nice it is to have those back!
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in NC: So many rubes that are still fleece-able.
Villago Delenda Est
@WaterGirl: Hence my nym.
stinger
Every single time.
elm
@Baud: Glem must be inconsolable about her release. Hopefully *ucker can cheer him up.
Betty
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Heavens, no! How did this happen? Heads must roll!
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP
Ken
Only if the reporters take their complaints to the queen and she pulls out some special reserve power. It would probably be one that hasn’t been invoked since the twelfth century so Parliament never got around to restricting it, or forgot to cover this particular case — like the (disputed) claim that the Duke of Cornwall can legally set off nuclear bombs.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ken: How can there be a Medieval precedent for starting a nuclear war? Richard the Lionhearted was using The Bomb on the Saracines or something?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It sure fits into the thesis that the White House press poll thinks they are part of the elite because the President talks at them time to time.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Steeplejack: Yes, DougJ was on about this on twitter. Just… damn.
Gravenstone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Holy Hand grenade of Antioch!
Nora Lenderbee
@Ken:
No, you’re not alone.
CaseyL
@Ken: Along with Zephyr Truthout, truly horrible names to saddle one’s kids with.
Steeplejack
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Just thought the Matt Negrin add-on was funny.
Ken
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Apparently it’s because the Duchy of Cornwall was exempted from various laws over a century ago. I don’t understand it, and a lot of people that have looked at the analysis say it’s nonsense.
Geminid
@CaseyL: Actually, it’s Zephyr Teachout. Teachout ran as the “progressive” candidate in the Democratic primary for N.Y. Attorney General in 2018, and lost to Letitia James.
CaseyL
@Geminid: Oops; you’re right. Still not a good name.
Tehanu
Just wondering, when do they eat lunch?
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Redshift: regime change against rona romney mc daniel.