Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Second rate reporter says what?

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Infrastructure week. at last.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Bark louder, little dog.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

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Reader Interactions

124Comments

  1. 1.

    smintheus

    Wait; what?

    longtime ally of Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager: “Manafort not challenging Trump anymore. Mailing it in. Staff suicidal.”

  4. 4.

    Mnemosyne

    @smintheus:

    I think the Russians are going to back off their support of Trump: he’s clearly a loser now, and they tend to be pretty practical about this stuff.

    No idea what Wikileaks is going to do. If Assange is caught releasing fake or doctored documents, it will be the end of his credibility, but I’m not sure he knows that.

  5. 5.

    Peter H Desmond

    i just made an edit to the wikipedia article on Baqubah, using information from a Washington Post article. it looks like this:

    June 8, 2004. Army Captain Humayun Khan ran towards a taxi that was speedily approaching the guard post he was inspecting. Its driver detonated a bomb before the taxi could hit the post or a nearby mess hall, where hundreds of soldiers were eating breakfast. Khan was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.[10]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baqubah

  6. 6.

    redshirt

    I’m proud to announce my candidacy for

    Front Pager

    My platform is straightforward. I promise/vow/totally swear to
    1. Create Open Threads whenever it seems needed.
    2. Get folks out of FYWP moderation.
    3. Help make this blog more technically savvy.

  7. 7.

    The Dangerman

    Mailing it in. Staff suicidal.

    The music stops and the party’s over
    The money’s gone and your crowd is too
    Can’t break the chains that have kept you under
    Has Trump got the best of you?

    ETA: I’ve said it before but best live show I’ve ever seen is Living Colour; nothing else is all that close. Maybe Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. OK, it’s close.

  8. 8.

    Eric NNY

    Good, but Joey is a brilliant closet song by a master who never should have been forced to.

  10. 10.

    Dork

    My fear is not that the ordinary ‘necks in the sticks are going to “see” a “rigged election”. Whats their recourse? More bootlegged moonshine and boycotting gay florists? Instead, what will all those already-sketchy Sheriffs out West suddenly do if they believe that the Feds are illegitimate? If there’s widespread civil disobedience amongst the RWNJ sheriff depts, that could easily become an enormous disaster. Fed law being openly ignored, courts unable to function, Fed agents being arrested, shot, threatened…Fifedoms run by LE appearing in small counties?

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: He’s done now. He’s facing potential charges on 100s of counts of Identity Theft in the US. Not counting the cyber crime/cyber theft charges. He’s got no top cover from working with a consortium of actual news papers this time, which is what kept him from being indicted for the Manning leaks. If he ever leaves the Ecuadorian embassy or the Ecuadorians kick him out, he’s in a world of hurt.

  15. 15.

    sigaba

    Finally Team Trump catches a break…

    News organizations have also taken an interest, seeking to have a videotaped deposition of Mr. Trump released. Judge Curiel denied the request on Tuesday, finding that a transcript offers a “substantially accurate” representation of the proceeding. Mr. Trump’s lawyers had argued that the release of the videos could add to a “media frenzy” around the case and affect a jury.

  18. 18.

    hovercraft

    @Mnemosyne:
    The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not love me that much. Stone would bring back Corey, and he would bring in Jeffrey Lord. It would be an entire team of insane people, running the vilest campaign ever. Clinton would have the chance of a complete wipeout.

  20. 20.

    Truegster

    You can tell that Trump sleeps for more than the 5 hours that he claims – there’s about 8 hours every news cycle where he’s not stepping on his dick, so he must be unconscious.

  22. 22.

    Keith P.

    @smintheus: It does really seem like we are seeing the beginning of the most epic presidential meltdown ever. Part of me wonders if it’s too much, too soon, but at the same time, it is really amazing at how consistently shit news comes out of Team Trump.

  23. 23.

    Face

    I’d really love to know the answer to O’bizzle’s Q: just what would Don Dollah have to say, maim, kill, or fuck to get the leaders of the GOP to unsupport him? I proffer that there exists not an insult, injury, death, or sexual assault that would net him under 40% this election.

    So the next time you’re in Target or Costco, realize that 4 of every 10 peeps you see would vote for a man who rapes a married goat while trashing SEALs and gays, on a Sunday morning. Because Cleeks.

  25. 25.

    burnspbesq

    @Adam L Silverman:

    the Ecuadorians kick him out

    Not easy to see how that happens as long as Correa is in charge. If we or the Swedes had leverage, one assumes we or they would have used it by now.

  26. 26.

    smintheus

    @Keith P.: It’s worrying. Trump has set the bar so low that any replacement, were he to drop out, would be hailed as a savior and given a long political honeymoon…like the hapless Gerry Ford was, even while he was pardoning Nixon.

  27. 27.

    Dork

    @burnspbesq: Dont County Sheriffs provide security and protection to County courthouses? Dont they often bring the prisoners to the courthouse?

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @burnspbesq: Since the decision was made not to charge him in the Manning leaks, because it would have meant charging the consortium of news papers, I’m curious just how much pressure we brought to bear. Being involved in a hack and data dump with the stated goal of affecting the US election and doing so in a way that dumped a very large amount of personal identifying information where anyone can get there hands on it may change the amount of pressure the Obama Administration decides to put on Ecuador. Whether it would work or not, I have no idea.

  34. 34.

    aangus

    @Mnemosyne:

    That would be fun! :)

    edit. I heard today that he said (on Bteitliars) that if Hilary wins there would be a “Bloodbath”.

  35. 35.

    Keith P.

    @smintheus: For a month or so, I was worried that Trump was going to adopt that slightly less asshole-ish persona from his first teleprompter speech for a solid week or so, and the news anchors would be praising him through the roof for changing. Then he went back to the lunatic asshole after day 3 or so.

  39. 39.

    peach flavored shampoo

    NYT has an article stating that Trump is now proposing to spend double (!!!) what HRC is proposing for infrastructure. Is that going to be his new schtik, in which he finds out what people want, then proposes to spend/buy/acquire X-fold more than Clinton, where “X” is > 2 for everything…costs, availability, feasibility be dammed?

  43. 43.

    smintheus

    @Keith P.: Fortunately Trump is such an asshole and has such a persecution complex that he’s going to keep taking it as a point of pride that everybody’s saying he’s blown it.

  44. 44.

    hilts

    @smintheus:

    That’s a wonderful quote. If only Trump’s staff can remain this demoralized for another 90 plus days and Trump himself can continue to stay off message and drive more Republican politicians to follow Hanna and endorse Hillary.

  46. 46.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @sigaba: I’ll tell you what, these pivots are GREAT NEWS for JOHN MCCAIN!*

    *Not intended to be a factual statement

  48. 48.

    laura

    @Omnes Omnibus: nope, it’s from Joey.
    However, I went to High School in northern California and in 1975 the Friday night dance band Clover split up with the singer forming Huey Lewis and the news and the rest skeedadling off to England where they became The Attractions.
    (Insert Paul Harvey catch-phrase here.)

  49. 49.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: Right. I know the song. I should have caught it. But, conditioned by DougJ and my own inclinations, I go to EC and The Clash when lyrics come up around here. I, then, spiral out. It bit me in the ass this time. Oh, well.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He still has a lot of supporters among civil libertarians in the US. If nothing else, I would love to see Glenn Greenwald’s attempt at a public defense if Assange is caught faking documents and therefore putting his entire organization under suspicion of having lied the whole time.

  58. 58.

    Mike J

    Washington LD 30 is currently held by Republicans in both seats. There are still votes to count, but as of tonight, both Dem challengers lead. Either way, they’ll be in the general in November, but it’s better to be winning the primary than losing it.

  63. 63.

    gene108

    Why do people keep misspelling Khizr Khan’s last name? Half the time I see people use Kahn.

  67. 67.

    cmorenc

    @sigaba:

    Finally Team Trump catches a break…

    News organizations have also taken an interest, seeking to have a videotaped deposition of Mr. Trump released. Judge Curiel denied the request on Tuesday, finding that a transcript offers a “substantially accurate” representation of the proceeding. Mr. Trump’s lawyers had argued that the release of the videos could add to a “media frenzy” around the case and affect a jury.

    Actually, this is a soundly correct legal decision by Judge Curiel in the interests of not unfairly prejudicing the potential jury for Trump’s upcoming trial on the Trump U. civil fraud case (which will likely occur in November, but post-election). His concern was that snippets of Trump’s video deposition testimony would be used to make campaign attack ads against him and repeatedly run nation-wide. The prejudicial impact on the upcoming civil trial (which is after all why the video depositions were taken in the first place) outweighs the interests of the media and public to access the video versions of the Trump depositions pre-trial – especially when the written transcripts thereof are now publicly available.

    Judge Curiel is not cutting Trump any sort of special break here – he’s simply making the same sort of sound, just trial management decision he would for any other party to a case. Trump’s too big an arrogant idiot to understand this – but good judges are fair to arrogant bigoted idiots the same as they should be to people not afflicted with such personality flaws.

  71. 71.

    Adam L Silverman

    @gene108: Because Americans are used to seeing Kahn. Either from Jewish Americans with that last name or the hot dogs. The actual name is the same for all of them going back to antiquity. Its a variation of the ancient Semitic kohane (pronounced koehayn), which means priest. That eventually becomes anglicized for Jews as Cohen or Kahn, though you also get Kahane (as in Meyer). As it goes east it becomes a title for chiefs and other leaders, hence the use of Khan by the dynasty that is now that of the Aga Khan in Pakistan and, of course, the great chiefs of the steppes such as Genghis (Chingis) Khan.

  73. 73.

    JordanRules

    What mechanisms do we have in place to make sure a Presidential candidate doesn’t have financial ties with folks that may put him and thus the country at risk?

    Also, does anybody have a good theory about how this cluster can possibly be unfucked? I mean unfucked in such a way that we don’t leave too much institutional and societal damage in our wake. We’ve had so many people note that the GOP can’t abandon Drumpf because of the fallout and we also regularly take into consideration what happens to his ‘supporters’ after a loss. Now the campaign (and that could mean, just him) is remixing all their desperate rantings into a ‘rigged and fraud’ chorus. What would be the best course of action for this country? What outcome would minimize the long term damage?

    The comment someone posted in an earlier thread from Gawker about what it can mean to call truly democratic election results into question was chilling to me. And then Adam chimed in about all the norms that have been blown up and how it’s hard to go back. Yeesh. Looking for the positive……maybe some folks will try really hard to find effective treatment extreme narcissism.

  75. 75.

    cmorenc

    The reason Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London is because they granted him political asylum due to threat of US extradition (in addition to Sweden wanting him on possible rape charges). Otherwise (than the granting of “political” asylum at the embassy), Ecuador would have been obliged to turn him over to the US since Ecuador has a bilateral extradition treaty with the US.

    At some point, Ecuador is going to need some sort of favor from the US that may induce them to revisit whether continuing to grant Assange political asylum in their embassy is in their interests.

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @sigaba: However, the main thing is that Drumpf’s motion for summary judgement was rejected. This will go to trial.

    He’s fucked.

  79. 79.

    RaflW

    @BR: The bit where he is in the middle of talking about a hypothetical of his wife being sexually harassed and he veers off to talk (incomprehensibly) about some plane crash he is watching just floored me. I just cannot imagine what it could be like to be on the campaign plane and try to brief The Dipnald about anything. And it is obvious that anyone who tried has given up.

    *The Dipnald = Dipshit + Donald, in case you were wondering. Which you might well were not.

    OK, I gotta go get some sleep.

  80. 80.

    trollhattan

    @laura:
    Clover gets credit for backing Elvis on “My Aim is True” and The Attractions were his band from that point forward.

    “Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired…”
    Just in time, that.

  83. 83.

    cmorenc

    @JordanRules:

    What mechanisms do we have in place to make sure a Presidential candidate doesn’t have financial ties with folks that may put him and thus the country at risk?

    That’s one of the key objectives the tradition of major-party presidential candidates releasing their tax returns is supposed to help resolve. Which reason is to me is the most likely the strongest reason Trump refuses to release his returns, although his lack of charitable giving or reflection on his true state of wealth may also be motivating reasons. But if there is material which reveals he’s in hoc to the Russians, that could be fatal to his candidacy beyond all the other shit he’s known to have stepped in during the campaign so far. The latter two reasons would merely be substantial embarrassments rather than conclusive deal-killers.

  86. 86.

    Peter H Desmond

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Malik-Shah I was sultan of the Seljuq Empire from 1072 to 1092. He was also called Şehinşah. So his name and full title can be translated King King-King. :-)

  90. 90.

    trollhattan

    Donny’s so fucked. I hope he knows it, because that makes this all worthwhile.

    Republican Meg Whitman, the Hewlett-Packard Co. executive who ran unsuccessfully for California governor in 2010, will vote for Hillary Clinton and raise money for her campaign, Whitman told The New York Times on Tuesday.

    Referring to Donald Trump as a “dishonest demagogue,” as she has previously, Whitman told the newspaper the Republican nominee had “undermined the character of the nation.”

    She said that while she does not agree with Clinton on many issues, she “would be a much better president than Donald Trump.”

    Whitman told the newspaper she would give to both Clinton’s campaign and to her super PACs.

    When you’ve lost the actual billionaires….

  91. 91.

    JordanRules

    @cmorenc: Agreed. Interesting to think about that tradition being disregarded and having nothing formal and required to fall back on, if that is the case.

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    What BJ could use is a link to a calendar with posters’ and commenters’ birthdays, up in the Quick Links listing.

  98. 98.

    eldorado

    tragically underrated band. not sure exactly why they didn’t break through big other than the vagaries of the music biz at the turn of the millennium. johnette can bring the vocals.

  99. 99.

    RaflW

    @Greg: The Tea Party shite who was US House Rep for most of farm-country Kansas lost in the GOP primary tonight, too. Saw a brief blurb that something like 15 GOPer state reps lost their primaries as well, if so the report said there will be enough moderate Repubs in the State House to join with KS Dems to overturn Brownbacks most odious tax crap. There is some small ray of hope for that benighted state…

  101. 101.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @JordanRules: There is a tradition (not a legal requirement) that any President’s investments/business concerns be put in a “blind trust” that he has no influence over. The idea being to avoid any appearance that his policy actions as chief executive would result in personal gain.

  104. 104.

    normal liberal

    @Mnemosyne:
    Unrelated, but have you seen ads for the Bloomingdale’s Hamilton online “pop-up shop?” Mostly shirts and hats. Seems rather behind the curve, but then it is Bloomingdale’s.

  108. 108.

    Miss Bianca

    @eldorado: Johnette is also a heck of a bass player. I read about her in Bass Player magazine and that got me interested in the band. Oh, and hearing “Joey” on the radio, of course… ; )

  109. 109.

    Soylent Green

    @JordanRules: People blow a lot of hot air (aka balloon juice) on the Internet. We do it here, they do it over there (although they attain much higher temperatures). I’m confident that virtually all of Trump’s most strident followers are harmless keyboard commandos. After he goes down we will have a fairly orderly transition and there won’t be any mass uprising, just a lot of impotent yapping. I’m worried only about a handful of armed lunatics who might lose their marbles.

  110. 110.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: Also all Cabinet appointees and, IIRC, Federal Judicial appointees too. Rumsfeld refused to do this while he was SecDef and as a result spent a lot of time not running meeting at the DOD because he had to go stand in the hall because of his conflicts of interest.

  112. 112.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Miss Bianca: And she had to teach herself to do it because they didn’t have a bass player. She was originally a guitar player. And she’s indicated that where you sing in relation to playing the guitar is different than when playing the bass, which makes her have to concentrate when performing instead of just letting the singing happen. She’s an interesting one.

  113. 113.

    NotMax

    @Greg

    IIRC, he was on the receiving end of Koch brothers money, so it is doubly sweet.

    (And being in the House for only one two-year term is not enough to qualify for a pension, so make that triply sweet.)

  116. 116.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: My understanding is that in those cases, it is a legal requirement that they do so. The President and VP are not required by law, but traditionally have behaved as if they were.

  118. 118.

    James E Powell

    @RaflW:

    That story never gets enough play. Everyone should know that the stuff the RW is selling just does not work.

  119. 119.

    J R in WV

    @Face:

    Where did you hear that the goat was married? Because I would have to see the paperwork to believe that he was with a Married Goat. Now, a single goat, that’s not unbelievable. I have friends that keep a dairy full of goats, and they are, hmmm, not abstemious with each other.

    But none of those prize-winning dairy goats are married – that would spoil the mixing and matching of inheritance lines for improving the herd of goats.

    No, I would have to see the marriage papers for that goat to believe he screwed around with a married goat.

  120. 120.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @NotMax: More than that IMHO we need a location roster. I’m sick of tearing my hair out every time someone posts, “Well, over here, everything is…” & I have no fucking clue whether “here” is Peoria or Petropavlovsk or Patagonia. Or fucking Pluto for that matter.

    (FTR I post from Baltimore MD when I’m not on travel.)

  121. 121.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    Oh, thank you, NotMax! That’s wonderful — never saw it before. Great stuff. (A very happy birthday to Omnes as well. And I think there’s at least one other Juicer with an August 3rd birthday — Corner Stone, maybe?)

  122. 122.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: I can tell you from experience that it is, in fact, different to sing while playing bass than while playing guitar. You’ll notice there are relatively few lead singer/bass players…

  123. 123.

    Bill in Section 147

    @peach flavored shampoo: He will begin using “New and Improved!” “Stronger Formula!”
    “Prescription Strength” “It Has What Plant’s Crave” regularly as modifiers in his tweets.

  124. 124.

    The Lodger

    @NotMax: Happy birthday to Omnes and SiubhanDuinne!
    (So does Paul McCartney own the rights to both Happy Birthday and the Beatles version? The antitrust implications must be yuge!)

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