Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Not all heroes wear capes.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. Do not congratulate. This is not business as usual.

Democrats are back in array!

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

We won’t go back.

The willow is too close to the house.

The revolution will be supervised.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Thursday Morning Open Thread

Thursday Morning Open Thread

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Soooo… last night, the blog was all like this…

cat slalom box

cat needs bigger clutter bunker

cat walks away from styro peanuts

… and we still got out-Sillied by the GOP…

***********
Apart from such minor embarrassments, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

132Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Speaking of minor embarrassments

    In “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey Of George Herbert Walker Bush,” author Jon Meacham quotes Bush as saying that Cheney and Rumsfeld were too hawkish and that their harsh stance damaged the reputation of the United States, the cable news network said.

    h/t LGM

  4. 4.

    MattF

    I think Carson has… issues. Cutting up people’s brains is one thing, but doing it professionally– I’d never even consider that.

  9. 9.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud:

    This whole endeavor now makes sense.

    You were there, man. Tell me those gifs don’t describe events better than words can!

  10. 10.

    PurpleGirl

    @MattF: Neurosurgeons do more than cut up brains. A neurosurgeon did the hemilaminectomy I had at L5-S1. I preferred a neurosurgeon to do that because of experience with small, fine structures and nerves.

  11. 11.

    Anne Laurie

    @Randy P:

    So he’s admitting that Cheney was Acting President 2001-2008?

    Nah, it’s just that his son — a fine young man! — was just too darned trusting for his own good. Like every parents whose rotten spawn gets picked up after a crime spree, it was all the fault of Bad Companions!

    And, of course, Darth Cheney is proud of being described as the “iron ass” ringleader, so all’s good in GOPville.

  17. 17.

    Schlemazel

    @Anne Laurie:
    I guess thats one way to look at it. I looked at it as “why the hell didn’t you warn your gin-soak, coke-addled son that those guys were noting but trouble & shouldn’t be trusted near power?”

    assholes that all make me wish there really were hell

  18. 18.

    PurpleGirl

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Just had a thought — Will the Discovery Channel people ask him to do a show for the Ancient Aliens series for them? Fits right in with their other presenters.

  19. 19.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @PurpleGirl: Nope, he doesn’t believe that aliens built the pyramids, Joseph did to store the grain. I think he belongs on “Drunk History”.

    ETA: Even Joe Scar thought that it’s puzzling that the Bible failed to mention the pyramids if they were used to store Joseph’s grain.

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Anne Laurie: Of his son’s role, Bush Sr told his biographer: “He’s my son, he did his best and I’m for him. It’s that simple an equation.”

  21. 21.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Schlemazel: Actually, I’m sure he did and it burned him to no end that the Nixonites he’d kept out of his admin showed up in W’s. And it was absolutely no secret at the time that GHWB didn’t approve of the Iraq adventure.

  22. 22.

    Schlemazel

    On the topic of Dr. Ben I saw a ‘dueling quotes’ post from him on FB. The top quote is how liberals hate him because he is a conservative, not like those people who suck on the government teat. The bottom quote is from his biography (do I even need to tell you the rest?) in which he explains how proud he was that by the time he reached 9th grade his mom was off all government assistance . . . except food stamps & they wouldn’t have made it without help.

    He is just another entitled asshole who thinks he made it on his own and everyone else is just a lazy loser.

  25. 25.

    David Koch

    Guess who thinks eGhazi is a valid issue for investigation?

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who declared during last month’s Democratic presidential debate that “the American people are sick and tired” of hearing about Hillary Clinton’s private email account, on Wednesday defended a federal probe into the matter and said it should continue.

    “You get 12 seconds to say these things,” Sanders told The Wall Street Journal, referring to his comments at the debate. “There’s an investigation going on right now. I did not say, ‘End the investigation.’ That’s silly. … Let the investigation proceed unimpeded.”

    ***
    In Wednesday’s interview, Sanders clarified that his comments were not meant to dismiss the controversy over Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. He said federal agencies examining Clinton’s emails have raised “valid questions,” such as whether the emails contained classified information.

    So much for promising not to go negative.

  28. 28.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud:

    Well, the first one suggests deliberate malfeasance.

    What, the gifs? Nah, a leap (of faith) was taken, and unforeseen consequences ensued. After much metaphorical pacing in circles, fussing about details, things reverted to new-normal and we all strolled off with our (styrofoam-glittered) tails held high…

  31. 31.

    Baud

    Fun days ahead.

    The Obama administration released early Thursday the full text of the highly anticipated Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, kicking off a 90-day period for congressional review.

  32. 32.

    PurpleGirl

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Well, it would be a way to balance theories about the pyramids. Carson could explain why he doesn’t think aliens built them. Also Discovery Channel has a number of shows about Biblical history. Carson’s theories would fit there too. A whole new place for him to grift.

  33. 33.

    bemused

    @MattF:

    W also hired Karl (we’re an empire now creating our own realities) Rove. W’s whole administration was loaded with war hawks that Bush Sr could have blamed for leading his boy astray.

  34. 34.

    DivaCowboy

    Does it make a difference that the pyramid quote dates back to a commencement speech in 1998?

  35. 35.

    Sherparick

    I keep wondering how you got the picture of Vivian Snowflake (white cat) doing her box ride down the stairs. She is normally curled up next to my wife as I depart for my morning commute.

  38. 38.

    Tenar Darell

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Yep. Bless his heart but oh hell yes. If he weren’t running I’d worry about that “poor confused neurosurgeon,” since he is I worry about the insanity he’s injecting into our national bloodstream. It’s crossing right into our brains!

    Wait, is he a new weird form of zombie? Like one that can talk, but they don’t make sense? The monotone, the speech pattern, the communicable nature of the ideas! Mind zombies I tell you, aiee!

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Speaking of neurosurgeons

    Ortíz became disoriented, and when he started vomiting his mother rushed him to the hospital, where neurosurgeon Soren Singel found the real culprit: a tapeworm larva lodged in his brain.

    Worse, it had embedded itself in a cyst that was stemming the flow of water to his brain, Singel told the Napa Valley Register.

    Singel drilled a hole above Ortiz’s eyebrow and fished out the worm and the cyst with a neuroendoscope equipped with a grasping tool. “The worm was still wiggling when we pulled it out,” Singel told the Register.:

  42. 42.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Ben Carson: Egyptian Pyramids Built For Grain Storage, Not By Aliens Or As Tombs

    The shock that has greeted this claim is just another reminder of how far out of the mainstream my childhood church was.

    I expect that shock from my other half; he has only a vague memory of the story of Joseph and Potiphar. He read the headline to me, and I rattled off the whole chain of “logic” that underlies the claim. (I did forget to mention that Joseph and Imhotep being the same person is a part of this, though.)

  45. 45.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    I;m still in Deutschland, 6 timezones from home. Either I’ve adapted to the time or my judgment is not to be trusted about this or anything else.
    I haven’t seen any election results because USA Today doesn’t make it to the Schwartzwald, but I see that the fun couple Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat failed to overcome the fallout from multiple scandals and lost their elections to replace themselves after being turned out of the MI Legislature for being canoodling, lying idiots. Good.

  46. 46.

    Frankensteinbeck

    As for the OP, Carson is so weird, one has to wonder about prion disease occasionally. Human brain tissue is dangerous stuff. Ask any cannibal. In this case, it’s just evangelical ‘everything in the entire world is contained in the bible’ crap.

    @Baud:
    I guess it’s time to find out if he sold us out and is worse than Bush.

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    HW is less entitled than his kids, but I’ve definitely noticed that the Bushes are true ‘aristocrats’. Their family is better than everyone else, true kings ordained by God. In HW’s sons it’s grown to outrageous proportions. At least W was friendly about thinking he was always right. Jeb:( gets angry and, to judge by the Schaivo incident, vengeful if someone so much as suggests he might be wrong. I’m sure it’s central to his flailing campaign.

  47. 47.

    qwerty42

    @Another Holocene Human:

    … And it was absolutely no secret at the time that GHWB didn’t approve of the Iraq adventure.

    Yeah, I recall the GHWB retainers doing what they could to stop it (James Baker, for one). Heck, even the Pope sent someone to try to stop it. But war criminals in the W administration (and their sycophants in the media) were all for it. What could go wrong?
    Dear Dog, the amount of horror that has flowed from that.

  50. 50.

    Sherparick

    Just Add Boom http://www.eschatonblog.com/2015/11/just-add-boom.html
    “Only about 13 months left to earn that Peace Prize.

    “The Pentagon is unable to account for more than $500 million in U.S. military aid given to Yemen, amid fears that the weaponry, aircraft and equipment is at risk of being seized by Iranian-backed rebels or al-Qaeda, according to U.S. officials.”

    As long as someone is killing someone, everybody wins.” The only respectable source of news on Yemen I find is Dan Larison’s blog. love it when we arm both sides in a war, or at least Lockheed Martin loves it. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/cluster-bombs-and-double-standards/

  52. 52.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    CAUTION: The following is a nature fact some people will find nightmare fuel.

    This is a Thing That Happens. Tapeworm larvae form cysts in their hosts, and humans pick them up from a variety of undercooked meats. There’s one kind – I forget which – that likes nervous tissue, and often burrows through your eyes. That one usually does damage so minor you don’t notice, but if caught at just the right time you can see it through the pupil. Every once in awhile a cyst forms in a very, very unfortunate place. There are a couple of species where the cysts are fatal and terrifying, but the really dangerous one you get off wolf fur and thus it’s seriously, seriously rare in humans.

  53. 53.

    Baud

    @Sherparick:

    Only about 13 months left to earn that Peace Prize.

    It makes me so happy to see liberals echo right-wing memes. We’re usually such a polarized country.

  55. 55.

    Gimlet

    Perhaps a statue of Baphomet.

    WASHINGTON — Starting in December, the likeness of former Vice President Dick Cheney will grace the U.S. Capitol, in accordance with a Senate tradition honoring former vice presidents.

    A Senate resolution was introduced recently”authorizing the use of Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center for the unveiling of the marble bust of Vice President Richard Cheney on December 3, 2015.”

  57. 57.

    MomSense

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    So it was out of character for HW to say something when it might have helped? Yup that sounds right.

    Wasn’t HW the person who suggested Cheney to W?
    Was that whole thing some sort of father to son lesson that went horribly wrong and broke the world?

  61. 61.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Punchy:

    I saw on TV that each of those pyramids cost $25,000 to build. Dick Clark said so.

    Rameses II probably claimed that if he’d had to pay all of those slaves it would have put him out of the pyramid business. Which would have angered RA, who put him on this earth to make pretend strikethrough(permanent monuments to his glory) grain bins.

  62. 62.

    Donut

    @Anne Laurie:

    I agree with your take there. Poppy is just engaging in some good ol’ fashioned white-washing of the Bush name, and a little mild revisionism, to boot, in order to help ¡El Jeb! shore up his flagging and increasingly quixotic presidential campaign.

  63. 63.

    Nate Dawg

    Husband got up, saw this thing about Ben Carson and the pyramids on his Facebook feed, said “what the fuck?”, then went back to bed.

    Probably won’t remember it tomorrow. Like Ben Carson’s future presidency, just a bad dream.

  64. 64.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    You know, there was a time when I was willing to consider the possibility that Trump was a wiseass trolling all of us. But not Carson. He’s just a stone idiot, all the way down.

  65. 65.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense:

    So it was out of character for HW to say something when it might have helped?

    Speaking as a father, I wouldn’t say a damn thing either. We raise ’em, we teach ’em everything we can, and then we let ’em go, and pray and hope and keep our fingers crossed. We also keep our mouths shut, because unsolicited advice is not only unwanted it is guaranteed to have the exact opposite effect than the one desired.

    It’s their world. We are lucky they let us in it at all.

  66. 66.

    PurpleGirl

    @Frankensteinbeck: Then there are those of us who like to watch TV shows like Monsters Inside Me which regularly features worms and creatures which invade the human body or those ER shows which also sometimes features stories of doctors finding worms inside a patient. While I usually look aside so as not to see the worm (or whatever) I find the investigation work fascinating to follow.

  67. 67.

    Germy Shoemangler

    The elder Bush said he feels Cheney changed after serving in his own cabinet – possibly due to the influence of his conservative daughter Liz and wife Lynne. “He just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with,” Bush said, speculating that 9/11 changed the Veep. “Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys who want to fight about everything, use force to get our way in the Middle East.”

    However, he also called Cheney “a good man,” and blamed his son for letting things get out of control. “The big mistake that was made was letting Cheney bring in kind of his own State Department,” Bush said. “I think they overdid that. But it’s not Cheney’s fault. It’s the president’s fault … The buck stops there.”

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/hw-bashes-cheney-and-w-for-empowering-him.html

  68. 68.

    MomSense

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    IRL for us ordinary people I agree. If the fate of the free world depended on it and you saddled him with the exact person you thought was destroying it, it would be reasonable to say something.

  70. 70.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I’m sure Carson is better at history and archeology because he’s an amateur. Just like politicians, professionals get confused by their research and experience.

  71. 71.

    Germy Shoemangler

    Invariably, when I order fish or beef at a restaurant (or enjoy it at home) I find a very thin, somewhat long, white stringy thing inside. In the past, I always assumed it was a vein, but then a few months ago I saw a news report that said these are actually…

    worms.

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense:

    you saddled him with the exact person you thought was destroying it,

    But he didn’t. W appointed Cheney to head up his VP search committee and after some time Cheney came to the conclusion that the best person for the job was… Himself. HW may have suggested Cheney to head up the search but I rather suspect the conversation went like

    “Hey Dad, do you think Cheney could help with this?” (the thought first being implanted by some evil nefarious villainous worm working for Darth Cheney)
    “Sure, I don’t see why not.”

  82. 82.

    Germy Shoemangler

    “I am distressed that he has spent apparently no time in study educating himself on the basic issues he would face during the course of the run for his presidency,” he writes. “I am 100% confident Carson could understand them very easily, which is precisely the reason I’m so bothered that he doesn’t. It goes to the seriousness with which he takes the job of running for president, and his personal work ethic at that job.” Leon Wolf, a diarist for the conservative RedState blog.

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    And a new website where they’re wildly over-promising on the benefits of the trade deal.

    I don’t know why the US does this with every trade deal. After 30 years of making the same exact promises on trade deals, one would think they would just skip the marketing campaign. It harms their credibility- it just adds to the anger when the promises don’t pan out, when nothing is enforced. We’re not going to seriously sanction any of these countries if they violate because any kind of serious sanction would be considered aggressive and hostile as far as our relations with that country and companies who operate in or trade with that country would object. Never have, never will.

  84. 84.

    Tenar Darell

    @Germy Shoemangler: Eww! Eww! Eww! Satisfied? My gross out quota is filled. Now, would you please stop Germy? (OK, that truly sounds weird to be asking someone on the webs whose first nym is “Germy” to stop talking about worms. LOL).

  86. 86.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Remember the incident that began all that “war on police” talk?

    Yeah, it was a staged suicide. Somebody figured out there were too many hands in the cookie jar and that they belonged to the sainted Lt Charles Joseph Gliniewicz.

    Lake County Major Crimes Task Force commander George Filenko, who led the two-month investigation into the 1 September death of Fox Lake police lieutenant Charles Joseph Gliniewicz, said the popular officer embezzled thousands of dollars from the Fox Lake Police Explorer program for seven years. He said Gliniewicz spent the money on things like mortgage payments, travel expenses, gym memberships and adult websites. Filenko said in total, the money pilfered by Gliniewicz was in the “five figures”.

    “We have determined this staged suicide was the end result of extensive criminal acts that Gliniewicz had been committing – in fact he was under increasing levels of personal stress from scrutiny of his management of the Fox Lake Police Explorer program,” Filenko said at a news conference announcing the investigation’s findings.

  87. 87.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I saw that in the news. Really an amazing and tragic story. Unfortunately, the news isn’t covering as much the false claims that were initially made, from what I’ve seen.

  90. 90.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: What false claims? Fear mongering? Over stating the facts? It has been pointed out, time and again, that killings of POs is down this year. But nobody hears that.

  91. 91.

    magurakurin

    @David Koch: Sanders is treading on thin ice here. Polling indicates that over 70% of Democrats are satisfied with Clinton’s answers regarding the emails. To many Democrats it is over, further discussion of it will most likely be viewed as partisan sniping. This isn’t a good point of attack for Sanders. I bet donuts to dollars (since donuts are cost more than a dollar now) that this is the work of Tad “three time loser” Devine. Perhaps the best we can hope for now is Clinton blowing him out in Iowa and also bagging a win in NH. The Sanders campaign will then probably face a relatively peaceful and quiet death sometime around the beginning of April when it becomes nearly impossible mathematical to get enough delegates and his money dries up completely. I’m all for Sanders pushing his message, but if he is going to parrot right wing attack points, fuck him. Crush his ass.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Sure they over-promise on domestic laws or policy but they do the same promises every time with trade deals- they can’t predict how such a complex set of rules and changes and economies and huge private and public sector actors will play out in and between all these countries. The specific job numbers they use are silly and insulting. The think tank they relied upon to come up with the numbers won’t even translate their economic predictions into “US jobs”- they got burned on that with NAFTA so they don’t promise “US jobs” anymore.

    They should admit the labor and environmental and consumer provisions are unenforceable and they should also admit that trade deals aren’t about labor and environmental and consumer protections. Trade deals are about lowering barriers to trade and all of those protections ARE barriers to trade.

  94. 94.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: As I said, he may have, I certainly wasn’t a witness to the conversation, but if HW is the father I think he is, than no.

  95. 95.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Baud: Now we can finally see the truth about how he sold out labor to his bankster running-dog masters on Wall Street:

    WASHINGTON — The Communist government in Vietnam has agreed to American terms to grant potentially far-reaching labor rights to the country’s workers, including the freedom to unionize and to strike, in return for expanded trade between the former adversaries, according to the newly released text of a vast Pacific trade agreement.

    /snark

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    Botsplainer

    Carson could singlehandedly crush the myth that doctors are brilliant in all things, and drive home the point that the skill set is closer to that of an electrician or a plumber, albeit with more lavish training.

    This being ‘Murka, what will probably transpire will be a “both sides” reworking of archaeological discipline and the understanding of 5 millennia of Egyptian writing because “he’s a brain surgeon, which means he is smart about things”.

  97. 97.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    There’s this debate on the ideological “the more free trade the better” side that really sums up the huge chasm between how these deals are presented publicly and how people who understand it talk about them. The free traders are currently debating what to do about “the low income people in rich countries” problem- those people don’t benefit from trade deals. There’s two sides to this debate- the free traders who want to tell them to just suck it up and take a hit for the team and the free traders who want to offer them some kind of domestic law mitigation or compensation. The thing is the basic truth is accepted- low income people in rich countries will be taking a hit. To me I’m like “really? them again“? I don’t know Baud, how many times can we hit these people before they don’t get back up again?

  98. 98.

    gene108

    @Tenar Darell:

    Yep. Bless his heart but oh hell yes. If he weren’t running I’d worry about that “poor confused neurosurgeon,” since he is I worry about the insanity he’s injecting into our national bloodstream. It’s crossing right into our brains!

    Wait, is he a new weird form of zombie? Like one that can talk, but they don’t make sense? The monotone, the speech pattern, the communicable nature of the ideas! Mind zombies I tell you, aiee!

    Ben is not a Zombie!!!

    I get tired of people saying this.

    ZOMBIES DO NOT NEED TO SLEEP!!!

    Ben sleeps. Ipso Facto Ben is not a zombie.

    Maybe some other form of undead that sleeps, sure, that’s possible, but NOT A ZOMBIE!!!

  101. 101.

    Linnaeus

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    The key here, however, is enforcement. It would be up to the US government, for example, to make a determination that Vietnam has not lived up to its commitments. I’m not sanguine about this prospect, given that there are powerful interests in this country that might not want to see labor standards enforced.

  102. 102.

    Baud

    @Kay: To my mostly ignorant mind, the strongest argument the ant-TPP people have is that we shouldn’t be entering into any more trade deals right now because the federal government has so far failed to implement other domestic and international policies to reflect the new trade reality. For example, we don’t have an international agreement on climate change or labor rights, and there is no way the current GOP would let that happen or enact domestic laws protecting those interests. So there should be a pause until we right the ship in these other areas.

    I think the “protect jobs” argument is harder because it leads to an open ended question of how far we go to protect jobs. My impression is that most people think, on average, that trade is a good thing that should be promoted.

    My two cents (which is probably worth only half as much).

  104. 104.

    Botsplainer

    @Kay:

    I’ve been shouting to the rooftops that Kentucky Dems need to shake the box and upend “tough choice” rhetoric and talk about tax code and fiscal restructuring. I’d love it if someone said “you notice how when conservative politicians from privileged backgrounds call for ‘tough choices’, those who feel the most pain are the working poor and impoverished, never the privileged? We need fundamental structural change in order to create and maintain our infrastructure AND human capital, as well as public investment in having a reserve for the unexpected. For 30 years, conservatives have been feeding us a set of lies – tax cuts generate economic success, gutting regulation stimulates markets, religious charity can meet needs adequately. This has been an abject failure, which is evident in crumbling roads, collapsing bridges, fracking quakes, chemical releases, mine collapses, huge income inequality and the economic gutting of the middle quintiles of the population. And as for Christian charity? It’s failure to address needs was what spurred the notion of public welfare to begin with.”

  105. 105.

    Linnaeus

    @Baud:

    I think the “protect jobs” argument is harder because it leads to an open ended question of how far we go to protect jobs. My impression is that most people think, on average, that trade is a good thing that should be promoted.

    IMHO, the ship has pretty much sailed on this issue – trade barriers (as they are usually defined) are the lowest they’ve ever been and that’s not going to change. That, in turn, means that arguments about protecting jobs are going to fall on deaf ears.

    By the same token, at least from what I’ve been reading by experts, the TPP will probably have little effect on jobs either way: it won’t have the negative effect that its critics are arguing, but neither will it have the beneficial effect that its supporters are arguing. The main goal from the US standpoint appears to be IP protections.

  106. 106.

    NotMax

    Silly man. Everyone knows the pyramids were mega abortion clinics, voter registration centers and razor sharpeners, not grain elevators.

    Beginning to suspect Carson may have practiced his surgical skills on himself. Multiple times.

  107. 107.

    Baud

    @Linnaeus:

    That’s my impression too. I’m glad we finally have the final agreement so at least we won’t have to rely on people’s speculation about what it does.

  108. 108.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Botsplainer:

    This being ‘Murka, what will probably transpire will be a “both sides” reworking of archaeological discipline and the understanding of 5 millennia of Egyptian writing because “he’s a brain surgeon, which means he is smart about things”.

    A large percentage of the population already believes the pyramids were built by space aliens. You know, that whole Star Gate and Promethus thing is based off of.

  109. 109.

    The Pale Scot

    @MattF:

    Cutting up people’s brains is one thing, but doing it professionally

    OMG! You mean Carson is a zombie like the ones in iZombie, don’t you?

    He’ll continue to be a coherent, thinking zombie as long as he access to BRAINS!

    Like Liv More gets a job at a coroner’s so as to have a steady supply of BRAINS! available.

    Carson became neurosurgeon. Just how many “Ben removed half my brain” people are there? What happened to all those removed “half brains” anyway?

    OMG! Carson is removing and eating half of the brain of Republicans! All of them!

    NOW so much is starting to make sense. I bet he can control them like a Voodoo Bokor.

    Zombie Bokor Carson is guiding the actions of a nation of zombie Republicans.

    What part of this ISN’T making sense.

  110. 110.

    ET

    @Baud: I saw this was coming out and you beat me to it. Supposedly it goes after Cheney a bit for acting to independently and being too hard line but the article I was reading pulled a quote on Rummy that was great – “I think he served the president badly. I don’t like what he did, and I think it hurt the president having his iron-ass view of everything,”

  114. 114.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    No one is arguing to “protect jobs”. The President presents the opposition argument like that but he knows better, because he was once a fair trader. Fair trade people actually have a nuanced and informed argument that includes what you talked about- how they cannot continue to make everyone who makes less than 40k a year take every single hit without some kind of major planning and coherent scheme.

    Baud, the White House worked full-out for a year on this trade deal. Is it really unreasonable to ask that the President get something from Republicans in return? Republicans want this. That’s why nearly the entire support was on the GOP side. It isn’t comparable to the health care law, at all. This was a private sector/GOP priority. All the under 40k crowd get in return is funding the same retraining plan Democrats have offered for 30 years? It’s a huge group of people. The vast majority of people in this county make 40k or less.

    The only way they could make it worse is to go on a tour where they lecture people on “upskilling”. They should send Arne Duncan out again, to drone on and on about the “skills gap”- another in the long list of things he knows nothing about. He’s absolutely loathed outside of DC. I guess that’s why he’s the administration face of “retraining”.

    Scott Walker couldn’t even stay in a GOP primary lecturing working people on how they have to “upskill”. They really think this is a good political approach?

  115. 115.

    Kay

    @Botsplainer:

    I agree 100%. I watched a forum that the Facebook CEO held on “the middle class” which was actually quite good- she asked very good questions. The panel was three former US Treasury secretaries- 2 under Democrats- Clinton/Obama, 1 under Bush. It was truly alarming because they have nothing. They didn’t answer the questions, and it wasn’t “dodging”- they just have nothing. Paulson would rouse himself occasionally to defend his free market ideology, but clearly his heart wasn’t in it. They really may as well have said “we don’t know what to do, so we’ll just let the chips fall”.

  118. 118.

    Felonius Monk

    @Botsplainer:

    because “he’s a brain surgeon, which means he is smart about things”.

    I guess that instead of saying “It’s not rocket science”, we must say “It’s not brain surgery”.

  124. 124.

    kindness

    I have a question.

    Anyone here with links to any Egyptian Twitter accounts? What are they saying today?

  125. 125.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    There’s a whole group of liberal free traders who have decided the best defense is offense- they turn it around to “do you want workers in Vietnam to make less?” I mean, come on. This is not responsive to their concerns. Bullying them into “admitting” they make more than 11 dollars a week so therefore should stop whining and pull for team World Worker just isn’t helpful. How about addressing their real and immediate concerns instead of shutting them down?

  126. 126.

    D58826

    @ET: Hmmmmmmm. Cabinet officers serve at the pleasure of the President. If W was pleased with Rummy (until 2005) then everyone knows where the buck stops (yes I know it’s Obama’s fault). The VP has almost no role other than what the President delegates to him. Since Chaney had his own policy shop and was going around the government sticking his nose in things it is because W either authorized it of was to sleepy to notice what was happening. Maybe W is like like Col. Blake in MASH who signed anything Radar stuck under his nose. Either way the responsibility falls on W. Remember he was the DECIDER!!

  128. 128.

    burnspbesq

    @Kay:

    U.S. Trade Rep’s website has been FUBAR for most of the morning. Had to go to New Zealand to find the full text.

  130. 130.

    VidaLoca

    @Kay:

    To me I’m like “really? them again“? I don’t know Baud, how many times can we hit these people before they don’t get back up again?

    If you’re among the “we” you’re referring to (and to be clear, I’m making this point rhetorically, I don’t think you are) I think I see the beginning of a problem right there.

    @Baud:

    I think the “protect jobs” argument is harder because it leads to an open ended question of how far we go to protect jobs. My impression is that most people think, on average, that trade is a good thing that should be promoted.

    The argument is easier or harder depending on whether it’s your job that’s being protected or cut.

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