Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it’s a trap.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Motown is Joe-Town!

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

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

People are weird.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

You are here: Home / Music / Liar and a Traitor (Open Thread)

Reader Interactions

280Comments

  1. 1.

    smintheus

    Ryan has begun using the phrase “three buckets” to explain how Republicans now plan to reform healthcare. Pretty strange messaging. Three buckets of blood is about how much the average human body has.

  2. 2.

    debbie

    To repeat myself: I listen to NPR on headphones at work. Between British Intelligence telling Trump to stop lying about their involvement in any wiretapping; Trump not shaking Merkel’s hand; Trump’s pathetic, failed joke to Merkel that they shared being wiretapped by Obama; and Trump’s Irish quote that turned out to be Nigerian — this has turned out to be the first day since the election I’ve giggled all day long. My workmates noted how odd it was they hadn’t heard me swearing under my breath (sort of) in a very long time.

    And for those who missed the Nigerian St. Patrick’s Day “prayer,” here it is.

  9. 9.

    TenguPhule

    @smintheus: I swear he’s used that before, I think during 2012. It was underpants gnome level as he failed to explain where the money going into the buckets was supposed to come from.

  10. 10.

    TenguPhule

    And in keeping with the title, may every Republican in power be rewarded as a traitor deserves.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    @smintheus: Their messaging doesn’t matter. They either vote it into law or they don’t. If they do, then we do our best to hold them accountable for the results.

  13. 13.

    ? Martin

    Do Dropkick Murphys have any non-angry songs?

    Meanwhile in California, legislation going forward that will:

    1) Abolish the felony conviction checkbox from private employer job applications (currently removed from public applications)
    2) Require publicly funded colleges to provide access to abortion pills in student health centers
    3) Improve the ability for foster youth to get financial aid because of the unique financial arrangement they have with their guardians
    4) Potentially ban under 18 marriage entirely (currently require a parent approval). Arranged marriages seem to be the driving motivation to tighten the law.

  14. 14.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    The Irish (not Irish) thing is a bit like W’s “Fool me once…” bumble. Very small potatoes in light of his egregious and dangerous bumbling.

  15. 15.

    debbie

    Great song pick, Betty. I wasn’t familiar with it, but I hope it’s playing in every East Side bar in NYC tonight.

  21. 21.

    jl

    @smintheus: Ryan is still trying to peddle that nonsense after Cotton, correctly, blew it out of the water? If they had a real plan that could get through Congress, they would just just do it now. But they don’t have anything, so Ryan repeats the same nonsense. Ryan must be really out of ideas, and probably options, at this point.

    And it makes a hash of Spicey’s little show and tell that judged the merits of the legislation by comparing how high the stacks of paper are.

    Edit: Marshall called the spectacle ‘white privilege performance art’. I agree, except it is dangerous performance art that should be banned.

  22. 22.

    lamh36

    Evening peeps…Mahn…TGIF!

    Didn’t want to leave a long as comment, so I did a blog post instead.

    I.??AM.??TIRED!????

    Today ends my first week at the new job. My last day at the old job was this past Sunday. I was already scheduled to work that weekend, and I was trying to be nice and work that weekend even though I could have ended on that Friday before. I started the new job on Monday, so there was no lag time from working the weekend and starting the new work week…

    https://nellybellsplace.com/2017/03/17/first-week-at-new-job-done-done/

  23. 23.

    Yarrow

    Someone said earlier today that the House is going to vote on the healthcare bill next Thursday because it’s the anniversary of President Obama signing the ACA into law. They are so petty. We’ll see if Ryan can get the votes.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @Yarrow:

    Someone said earlier today that the House is going to vote on the healthcare bill next Thursday because it’s the anniversary of President Obama signing the ACA into law.

    I’ll believe they’re voting on it when the division of the House starts. The House Freedumb Caucus has said they’re still not happy with it- I guess it isn’t thorough enough at destroying Obamacare for their taste- and doing so requires votes from enough of them that they can block it. Unless there’s some epic arm twisting and/or amending between now and next Thursday, they aren’t going to have the votes to pass it. I don’t believe Ryan is going to bring it to the floor until his whip count says it’s going to pass. If there’s a vote and it’s shot down, he might as well resign; defeat on signature legislation like this would mean the effective end of his Speakership.

  27. 27.

    rikyrah

    The Spectator Index‏ @spectatorindex

    GERMANY: Foreign ministry official says Trump ‘uses rudeness to compensate for his weakness, like Putin’

  29. 29.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @jl:
    Ryan has only ever had one idea. He’s obsessed with it. ‘Take everything from the poor and give it to the rich.’ He’s no brain trust, either, so he can’t make it much more detailed than that. The guy is the picture of White Privilege, rich and powerful because his upper class family connections gave him jobs he never earned, telling everyone else to work harder, all while being praised for his awesomeness by other white guys who got rich the same way.

  30. 30.

    rikyrah

    uh huh

    A Reuters review found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida.

  31. 31.

    BlueDWarrior

    @TenguPhule: Yeah, but you know that describes most of Republican economic policy, the money gnomes cool in any blanks their policy has.

  32. 32.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @lamh36:

    Congrats on the new job; I hope it is satisfying. Now go get some deserved rest.

  34. 34.

    TriassicSands

    @debbie:

    Very telling that there’s no bucket for cost reductions. Wasn’t that their complaint about the ACA?

    That bucket is where all the cost-saving dead bodies go.

  35. 35.

    skerry

    MD Gov Hogan announced today that he is supporting a ban on fracking in the state. The bill has passed the House of Delegates and should now get through the Senate without any problems.

  37. 37.

    hovercraft

    @jl:
    Also too, the Irish chose to claim him as a long lost son, he was not foisted upon them.
    I don’t see anyone, looking at you Germany and Scotland, ready or willing to claim him as a native son. SAD !

  38. 38.

    rikyrah

    @lamh36:

    Glad to hear you got through the first week, ok, lamh.

    LOL at the plans for the weekend..I hear ya. You earned it.

    These are the kinds of weekends where you just don’t plan to leave the house. period.

  39. 39.

    TriassicSands

    @lamh36:

    You know you could make a lot more money on the dole, don’t you?

    Get yourself a Cadillac and kick back. All the lefties do it.

  40. 40.

    jl

    @Frankensteinbeck: I think a lot of Trumpsters and GOPers are using the Trump Himself to push agendas of their own. I think that is certainly the case with the ‘Trump administration’ budget request, that his flunkies are openly saying they whipped up after supposedly trying to divine what Trump ‘meant’ with his many incoherent and contradictory statements during the campaign and since. Which I think is a lie, since I think no evidence they tried to do that at all, rather than whip up their own wish list.

    This would be a ‘If only the czar knew’ issue, except the czar is too ignorant and inattentive to know anything about it, and he doesn’t care about in the way normal people do. It’s a case where the czar is just as guilty as the corrupt flunkies who are doing what they want in his name.

    More I think about it, I have to wonder what the people who slapped together the absurd exec budget proposal thought they were doing. Senate GOP has already indicated they don’t like it (since they have to worry about honest elections, at least some of them do).

  41. 41.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @Yarrow:

    I’d be good with alcoholic posterboy Bannon taking out Ryan… enema of my enemy sort of thing.

  42. 42.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Yarrow:
    I can’t imagine how they’ll replace Ryan. Boehner had to delay his resignation to find somebody who could get enough votes to replace him, and the Teabaggers barely accepted Ryan. If we find out Ryan is an empty suit like Boehner who has no control over his caucus, well, we’ll just be finding out what was already true. It’s already clear he’s continuing Boehner’s insane, unprecedented obstructionist ‘Hastert Rule’ bullshit.

  43. 43.

    Feathers

    @Pogonip: I remember the first time I heard that term it really confused me. I had lived in Ireland as. A kid and I didn’t remember seeing any black people.

    There are probably a fair number in the cities now, my memories are from the early seventies.

  45. 45.

    XTPD

    Since this is an open thread: House of Pain’s sophomore and third albums don’t get nearly as much props as they deserve, and HoP noticeably improved with each release.

    To wit: The group’s eponymous debut was a solid Soul Assassins release, and while Everlast and Danny Boy aren’t GOAT material, their lyrics still hold up well 25 years later (although the second half is a noticeable drop in quality). For their second album, Same as It Ever Was, not only has Everlast’s voice gained a nice rasp, but the musical backing has changed from the blues-rock aesthetic of Cypress Hill to a more brutal jazz theme hinted at on Black Friday — only two songs on here (“It Ain’t a Crime” and the title track) are based around Southern funk/blues tracks, Lee Dorsey and James Brown respectively. And while Everlast’s subject matter is mostly continuous from his previous effort — albeit with a stronger emphasis on kicking your ass — the lyrics are more focused than on the previous album. Truth Crushed to Earth Shall Rise Again — released after Everlast’s conversion to Islam — also shows a growth in skill level as well as the inclusion of more introspective tracks; it helps that Divine Styler, who appears on about half of the album, is a more than capable sparring partner. And while I put Muggs in either my Top 10/15 hip-hop producers dead or alive, I definitely approve of the musical direction DJ Lethal & Everlast’s production took after Muggs’ departure (atmospheric British mid-’90s musical backing).

    Best tracks on Same as It Ever Was are “Over There Shit,” “Word Is Bond” and “Where I’m From; best tracks on Truth Crushed to EartH Shall Rise Again are “Heart Full of Sorrow,” “Fed Up,” and “Fed Up” (Remix).

  46. 46.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @jl:
    I think you’ve nailed it with Trump’s staff. We’re seeing classic monarchy court stuff going on. Trump is an irrational idiot who does not understand his own commands, so it’s all a game of who can convince him that their order was his idea.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @lamh36:
    After I gave 2 weeks notice at my last job was talking to the CEO one afternoon and he took a bit of exception to something I said. His comment was “I can still fire you.” I floored him by begging him to. He asked me why, “Because the company had a clause that you got one weeks pay for every year you were there unless you were being fired for theft.” I was in my 11th yr so that would have been 10 weeks pay. Not too shabby. He declined by the way. A bit chickenshit if you ask me.

  50. 50.

    satby

    @Feathers: as I was growing up, Black Irish referred to the dark haired, brown eyed Irish, like about half my family, including my mom. Now it’s also used to describe mixed race Irish descendants in the Caribbean. President Obama’s mom was of Irish descent, he’s legitimately Irish as well as African.

  51. 51.

    Roger Moore

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    The difference between Boehner and Ryan is that Boehner seemed to be primarily interested in maintaining his position. He was willing to bend this way and that to try to keep everyone happy, or at least insufficiently upset to get rid of him. The Boehner Rule was basically that he would never push hard on any issue that would piss off enough Republicans that they could throw him out. In contrast, Ryan has an obvious agenda that he’s been waiting to push since he first read Atlas Shrugged. On the one hand, that makes him more dangerous, because he’s an insane ideologue. On the other hand, it means he’s willing to risk alienating a chunk of his caucus to push his ideology, which may result in him losing his job a lot faster than Boehner lost his.

  52. 52.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @rikyrah:

    The Hill‏Verified account @thehill

    Trump holding “major” VA meeting at Mar-a-Lago without VA secretary

    It’s a typo. They meant a major VD meeting.

  53. 53.

    rikyrah

    ProPublica‏Verified account @ProPublica

    Scoop: Fired U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara Said to Have Been Investigating HHS Secretary Tom Price

  55. 55.

    Ian

    @West of the Rockies (been a while):
    How does one use that in conversation? For example: The Irish population in the United States is the largest Irish population in the world. Irish people tend to have larger cases of gingerism than non-Irish. The Irish have failed to make enough corn to feed the British, so the Irish deserve to eat their young. I am not trying to make snark or fun of the Irish, but rather point out the dual uses of Irish and ‘the Irish”

  56. 56.

    rikyrah

    Michael Hargrove‏ @MichaelHargrov1

    After today’s embarrassment, the World now knows that Merkel is it’s leader and the other guy has no leadership traits.

  57. 57.

    rikyrah

    is this really Tiger Beat on the Potomac?
    POLITICO Magazine‏Verified account @POLITICOMag

    Today, the leader of the free world is meeting with @realDonaldTrump at the White House:

  60. 60.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Frankensteinbeck: I can’t hear the words “brain trust” without hearing Pappy O’Daniels voice from O Brother Where Art Thou

    Do you have any new supervillain books coming out?

  61. 61.

    Mary G

    @rikyrah: Politico Magazine seems to be pretty much unrelated to Politico the website except for the name and ownership. They have a lot of well-reported and non-asskissing stories, which aren’t always slanted to the right.

  62. 62.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Frankensteinbeck: The overall situation reminds me of the Third Reich, except that Hitler set it up so his underlings would be fighting amongst themselves. The presumption was that he’d be level headed and could control things. The problem was that he was not, and became increasingly irrational as Germany’s military fortunes waned.

  63. 63.

    Jeffro

    Bruno Mars playing right now at my kid’s school dance…the Dropkicks could open for him, that’d be quite a party…

    “…don’t believe me, just watch!”

  64. 64.

    Gelfling 545

    @Feathers: My grandmother’s family were considered what were in the day called the black Irish -dark hsir and the non-nordic looks; probably descended from the Spanish.

  67. 67.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Roger Moore:
    I contest this theory. Boehner was not kicked out. He quit. The Tea Jerks could not kick him out, because you have to have a replacement to do that. There was no one to replace him with, and it took his hard lobbeying just to get Ryan in. I’m sure the Clown Caucus annoyed the Hell out of Boehner, but they only had power because Boehner abused his speakership to give them an effective veto. I think he did that because he was weak. If he allowed votes that were not solely Republican, Pelosi would have still been the most powerful person in the House.

  71. 71.

    qwerty42

    Great song pick, Betty. I wasn’t familiar with it, but I hope it’s playing in every East Side bar in NYC tonight.
    Jaysus.

  73. 73.

    ThresherK

    @kindness: How about Big Country and their use of the e-bow? They’d also been known to perform with pipers more than once in a while.

    (I know, Stuart Adamson was a Scot, not Irish. But still…)

  76. 76.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @smintheus:

    Three buckets of blood is about how much the average human body has.

    Yeah, and three buckets of shit is probably how much Ryan is full of it…

  77. 77.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Just One More Canuck:
    Yep. Penny’s fourth book, Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis, comes out beginning of May. A side book in her world, I Did Not Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence, came out in December. I expect to write Penny’s fifth and last book next, and then move on to stories of other characters in her world. At the moment, I am bedridden with a prodigious head cold caught because I overworked badly finishing Nemesis. Totally worth it. Cut three weeks off my schedule.

  78. 78.

    Gin & Tonic

    If anyone was interested in a follow-up to my posts in the late thread last night, here’s a picture to look at. I don’t think you need a medical degree to appreciate it.

  81. 81.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:
    No, this is the Imperial Russia version, where the infighting is not because the boss wants it, but because so many grifters see what an easy mark he is

  83. 83.

    Downpuppy

    The Murphys are at the House of Blues tonight. It’s about 4 miles away, so I can barely hear them.

  87. 87.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Roger Moore:
    Last I heard was that the movie people like serieses, and they want the book series complete before they make up their minds.

  88. 88.

    lamh36

    About that last weekend I worked, initially I told the new Supervisor that I was willing to work PRN, every other weekend. I was pretty sure that I’d not be working weekends at new job for a while until I was completely trained. So I could be nice and still get a little extra spending money for maybe 2 or 3 months. I mean I did have a new apartment to furnish.

    But they pissed me off a day after I gave my resignation, so I changed my mind and told them I no longer was interested in working PRN “at general hospital” (i.e. not for you jackasses).

    So I kept the last weekend for some extra bucks, and told change a status resignation to a COMPLETE resignation… served them right.

  89. 89.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @rikyrah:

    in seven Trump-branded faux-luxury towers in southern Florida.

    There.. .fix’d if for ya… to quote the truly great and sorely missed Hunter Thompson…

    The place fairly reeked of high-grade Formica and plastic palm trees

    I have NO doubt that one line tells you all you need to know about almost ANY Trump ‘luxury tower’ in the world… well… that and the golden showers they’re all supposed to come w/…

    Too bad Hunter is gone… can you imagine what he’d be writing w/ red meat like Trump to work w/?

  90. 90.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:
    No surprise. It’s not like Trump suddenly became incompetent when he got elected. There’s been money and power available to whoever secures the position as his nanny for a long time.

  91. 91.

    ThresherK

    @Gin & Tonic: I didn’t read what you posted last night, so I blithely clicked on the link. Some of us can’t get thru an episode of House without covering our eyes at least once, and should not have clicked on that pic.

  93. 93.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Mike in NC:

    All logged weekend “meetings” held at Mar-A-Lago are covers for taxpayer-funded lap dances.

    You have to wonder how much he’s billing Us, the People, for his little weekend getaways…

    He’s gotta make that mortgage somehow…

  99. 99.

    XTPD

    @Mary G: Politico the website is actually much better than it was during the VandeHei/Allen years. Nowadays most of the godawful material comes from Lowry and Shafer.

  101. 101.

    Sab

    I thought I didn’t much like punk. I have a hard time accepting it as music, but I am in my sixties. But I did like a lot of it pounding through the floor of my stepson bedrooms. I now realize it was the bagpipes that make it appealing. Without those it’s just angry. With themy it’s angry music.

  102. 102.

    hovercraft

    @Pogonip:

    Obama fever sweeps ancestral home
    May 19 2011

    Residents in US President Barack Obama’s ancestral home in Ireland queued for up to six hours to secure a “golden ticket” to see his homecoming.

    Obama fever sweeps Ireland

    May 23, 2011 – 6 min – Uploaded by Channel 4 News
    Barack Obama receives rock concert adulation at a speech in Dublin as Ireland plays the …

    Barack Obama drinks Guinness and tells jokes in Moneygall pub on official visit to Ireland and UK

  103. 103.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Gelfling 545: The story goes that the Black Irish are the descendants of dark-eyed, dark-haired sailors from the Spanish Armada, who washed up on the Irish coast in 1588 after their ships were wrecked by storms while circumnavigating the British Isles anticlockwise attempting to return home.

    In my younger days of frequenting local Irish music & dancing I was occasionally pegged as a Black Irishman due to the (then-)dark hair & eyes. I regretfully informed any such folk that I had nothing Irish in me except the blarney I was born with & the Harp & Jameson I’d occasionally permit to navigate me alimentary canal. (Can’t abide Guinness outside barge range of St. Jamesgate.)

  104. 104.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Spanky:
    Thankfully, the first review of the ending included the phrase ‘Hgdstukvfyrdc’ and all reviews since have been similarly impressed. My editor might flag that sentence, but I did not finish the ending badly!

  105. 105.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    Wow… just… wow…

    Watching Merkel w/ Trump in the WH (on ABC Evening News) and when Merkel asks if Donald wants to shake hands for the cameras, Trump appears to DELIBERATELY IGNORE HER…

    RUDE…

    Trump not backing down on British spying claims… and now he’s throwing Napolitano under the bus… I know this has already been pointed out today but when you actually SEE IT w/ your own stinkin’ eyes…

    ETA: SAD!

  106. 106.

    Emerald

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Well drat! I used to review children’s lit for Kirkus (recently started a loooong hiatus but I’m still on their reviewer rolls) but I never got one of yours. Probably because I mostly did YA.

    Just looked you up on Amazon. Your stuff looks like fun! I always appreciate fantasy that isn’t the usual standard issue medieval stuff. Will have to look it up sometime once I recover from overexposure to chick lit. Right now I can’t face anything targeted to an audience of under age 40 or so, no matter how imaginative.

  107. 107.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    all about that ‘forgotten’ middle class

    Washington Post‏Verified account @ washingtonpost 3h3 hours ago
    More
    Trump administration rolls back protections for people in default on student loans

  109. 109.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    OMG… ABC News is saying Tillerson is talking about a PREEMPTORY STRIKE on N Korea…

    The S Koreans and Japanese must be shitting right now…

  110. 110.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Emerald:
    I’m small press, so I can’t get regular Kirkus reviews, only the paid-for kind. That’s just how it goes for us. I was going to say ‘Well, Quite Contrary is dark as Hell and very adult’, but the heroine IS 12, no matter what she goes through. Even my serious books have an element of childhood in them.

  111. 111.

    Jeffro

    @Downpuppy: They were at “Shamrockfest” here in DC last weekend…didn’t go this time around as “all you can drink” no longer has the appeal it used to…

  113. 113.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Frankensteinbeck: Excellent, and congratulations (on the books, not the cold) – I will look for them – my daughter enjoyed Supervillain (as did I).

  114. 114.

    Jeffro

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:

    OMG… ABC News is saying Tillerson is talking about a PREEMPTORY STRIKE on N Korea…

    The S Koreans and Japanese must be shitting right now…

    Around the Inauguration, I remember Trump saying that Obama had mentioned something to him about the North Koreans being a threat…I can see O handling this, even if it did require a preemptory strike (as I’m sure he would have worked through issues with China, South Korea, Japan, and others as much as possible, as far in advance as possible. Something tells me that maybe, just maybe, Trump might not have a whole lot of discussions going on behind the scenes with those folks in the past three months…

  118. 118.

    Emerald

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Ah. I did Kirkus Discovery for awhile some years ago. If you can get a good review out of that, as you seem to have done, you’re doing very well indeed. We are savages at that place.

    (Although I saved my savage reviews for bestselling authors if trashing them seemed necessary. Always tried not to trash the newbies. You can almost always find at least one thing good to say. Destroying people really isn’t necessary.)

  119. 119.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: We got the most votes last time. Add in everyone else who will be hurt by this administration, and we should dominate at least the next two election cycles. We’ll see what happens.

  120. 120.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Not if China doesn’t want it.

    I sincerely hope you’re right about that… and I have very little doubt that Trump’s potential gains or losses just might be the deciding factor here…

    At times, Trump comes across like a petty despot from the Middle Ages… King Donald III… and having nukes in the hands of someone like that isn’t very reassuring…

  121. 121.

    mai naem mobile

    If I was the CIA/NSA I would just make non consequential stuff up for Doot 45s briefing. This guy is nuts and does not need to know anything. I would be seriously telling him the President of Maguhbudania got overthrown by his brother in laws sisters husband and the US Navy is keeping an eye on it. He will probably nod his head and talk about what a beautiful country Maguhbudania is.
    .

  122. 122.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Baud: I sure as hell hope you’re right…

    I keep practicing saying ‘President Pelosi’… ya know, for AFTER Trump and then Pence are impeached…

  123. 123.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Emerald:
    Yeah, my publisher sprang for exactly one Kirkus for Sweet Dreams Are Made of Teeth. I was impressed by just how hard the reviewer was clearly looking for stuff to dislike, and instead had to say it was great.

    EDIT: Sadly, that’s also the book that does not sell. At all. Ever. Maybe it’s too weird?

  126. 126.

    Emerald

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Not if China doesn’t want it. Trump’s top priority is, has been, and shall be using the presidency to line his own pockets.

    This statement is, I think, right on. First time I’ve heaved a sigh of relief. I’ve been expecting this all day, since Tillerson said all options except diplomacy were on the table.

    We just know Twitler loves him some nukes, and I expected NK or Iran would be his first targets. But yeah, those trademarks in China ought to be enough to stop him–this time.

  128. 128.

    germy

    “You looked white as a ghost after that meeting yesterday,” one person said to Feinstein — referring to Feinstein and Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA)’s briefings with FBI Dir. James Comey on Wednesday. Comey declined to comply with a Senate Intelligence Committee request that he go on the record by Wednesday confirming or denying whether the FBI is currently investigating Pres. Donald Trump’s campaign and its connections to the Russian government.

    “There are so many things [Trump] is doing that are unconstitutional,” a protester said. “How are we going to get him out?”

    “We have a lot of people looking at this,” Feinstein said. “I think he’s going to get himself out… I think that sending his sons to another country to make a financial deal for his company and then have that covered with government expenses. I believe that should not be allowed.”

    “We’re working on a bill that would do that now,” she said. “We’re working on a couple of bills that would deal with conflicts of interest.”

  129. 129.

    Emerald

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Oh I never actively look for stuff to dislike. Said stuff just presents itself. If it presents itself enough it requires comment.

    No, I look for stuff to like. However, I was one of the lesser savages, so there’s that.

  131. 131.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @germy: Where did you find that wording, about Feinstein?

    Actual footage? A transcript?

    I ask because I went looking for that yesterday and couldn’t find any of that moment…

    Please don’t tell me you made it up… it kinda does sound too good to be true…

  136. 136.

    p.a.

    @Baud:

    We haven’t had a counting problem.

    Yet. In the post-Crow era at least. But the current crowd, if the numbers look bad, who thinks they won’t stoop to that? Sessions at Justice, 30/31 governors, state chambers…

  137. 137.

    Villago Delenda Est

    OK, aside from the moral and legal problems associated with a preventative strike (namely that it is by definition a war of aggression), there’s the problem of OK, where are the nukes, where are the delivery means, and how will you know, with absolute certitude, that you’ve got them all, because playing with nukes ain’t like golfing at Mar-A-Lago. If you elect to do this with nuclear weapons, mind, there’s another layer of pariah on top of the one you’ve already established with conventional strikes of the preventative kind. Adam can probably go on for pages about all this, and might well do so tonight, but the bottom line is this is a step one does not take lightly. At all. As we have seen, the shitgibbon doesn’t know how to do anything not lightly.

  140. 140.

    efgoldman

    @TenguPhule:

    It was underpants gnome level as he failed to explain where the money going into the buckets was supposed to come from.

    A*s*t*e*r*i*s*k*s*, man. It’s all in the a*s*t*e*r*i*s*k*s.

  141. 141.

    p.a.

    Here’s something freaky that has nothing to do with politics.

    I know it was only about 12 in., but I’m glad I won’t meet it in the water. 300m years is a safe buffer!

  143. 143.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    as ever, believe when the votes come in, but this is not a sign of a party coalescing

    alking Points Memo‏Verified account @ TPM 7h7 hours ago
    More
    GOP Sen. Heller says he won’t vote for Obamacare repeal bill

    as of this moment, they’d need Sessions to break a tie, assuming it got to the Senate

  145. 145.

    debbie

    @Emerald:

    Question: I was in trade publishing back in the 1980s and 1990s. Is Kirkus still as influential as it was then? The only thing that children’s editors wanted more was a Newbery or Caldecott.

  147. 147.

    efgoldman

    @Yarrow:

    We’ll see if Ryan can get the votes.

    If he had the votes, he would have taken it to the floor the first week, as he said he would.

    ETA: Or what @Roger Moore: said

  149. 149.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Senate Judiciary Committee co-chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) held an impromptu question-and-answer session on Friday with protesters who gathered outside a fundraiser she held in Los Angeles.

    ah shit.

    A fundraiser – sounds like she’s going to run for another term. She turns 85 next year – I was hoping deep blue california would be rid of her once and for all and send someone who actually represents the progressive state; not this reactionary.

  151. 151.

    StringOnAStick

    @Gin & Tonic: A friend of mine did the same break at Christmas but managed to shatter much closer to the joint. She did it in FL and had to get back yo CO for surgery. The good news is she has healed really well, plate and all. Yours looks like you should get a similar result.

  152. 152.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: I did. They have the same hair. Are arguably sharing a brain. And I’m a little tired.

  155. 155.

    amk

    Just caught the clip of the press conference of the leader of the free world and the nutjob. Man, was he embarrassing.

  156. 156.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Fundraiser doesn’t necessarily mean for her, but then again, I always thought she’d leave the Senate feet first. She still has to go though the “jungle primary” but being an incumbent helps alot there. But, I’ll do what I did in the primary the last time she ran, vote for another Democrat.

  157. 157.

    raven

    @StringOnAStick: My wife broke hers on our Thanksgiving trip to the beach turning our two week vacation into 3 days. We had to come back to Georgia for the surgery but we do get the beach house back for the days we missed.

  159. 159.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @germy: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I found it right after I asked…

    Again… wow… just… wow…

    Trump’s hasn’t even been in office 2 full months and we’re at this stage…

    Wow… when this finally resolves, I hope he takes the GOP down w/ him for at least a couple of decades…

  161. 161.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @efgoldman:
    Look, I don’t want to assume he’s as wildly incompetent at being Speaker as Boehner until he proves it. This is Ryan’s big test. This bill is a wet dream for him. If he can’t pass it, we know for sure we’ll see endless flailing from him just like his predecessor.

  162. 162.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @efgoldman:

    If we find out Ryan is an empty suit…

    Ryan’s not an empty suit… he’s 50 lbs of shit in a 25 lb bag…

  170. 170.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:
    GOP voters are not going to abandon their party. This is about race to them, and the lines are starkly drawn. The demographic timer has already ticked far enough that they hold power only by gerrymandering and voter suppression. When that breaks they have nothing… but how long will that be? There’s no way to say.

  173. 173.

    efgoldman

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Isn’t that what Dolt 45’s doing as well?

    Not on purpose, I don’t think. He might not even be really aware that they’re doing it. After all. he’s not the sharpest bulb in the chandelier.

  176. 176.

    Mike in DC

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:
    Unless that pre-emptive strike involves an Ohio class SSBN emptying out its tubes, there’s no guarantee that a conventional attack would be effective enough to prevent the Norks from conducting at least a regional scale retaliatory response.

  180. 180.

    efgoldman

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I don’t think you need a medical degree to appreciate it.

    Holy shit! I’m not sure “appreciate” is the right word. Surgery, with screws n’plates n’stuff?

  182. 182.

    sukabi

    @Gin & Tonic: good lord. You’re lucky you didn’t have to poke a bone back into your arm. Hopefully your doc will be able to screw you back together. ?

  184. 184.

    raven

    @Gin & Tonic: Yea man, it sucks but it should be ok. Wifey’s break was much closer to the joint and smacked out of place but she’s doing pretty well. She did all the therapy and is gaining the strength back. Are they going with a plate?

  186. 186.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:
    Sure, but his businesses would work the same for the same reason. If the boss is a senile dimwit, whoever is standing next to him is the REAL boss.

  187. 187.

    Gin & Tonic

    @efgoldman: Very likely. Couldn’t get an ortho consult today, so will know after my Monday 0800 appt. There doesn’t seem to be any other way to get those pieces together, though.

  188. 188.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Mike in DC: Yup… I’ve read a few too many articles of late that believed NK is preparing for war… and not every source is as bad as the Washington Times or Breitbart… some fairly respectable outlets are talking about this…

    Even if Trump DOESN’T lose his mind but keeps making provocative statements, what’s to stop Jong from nuking Japan or S Korea?

  191. 191.

    Chris

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I think as far as they’re concerned, Obama was the moment when it broke.

    The right wing blogosphere over the next eight years became slowly more and more saturated with people venting about the basic concept of democracy and that we should absolutely withhold the right to vote of [insert category here, the only common point being that they all vote for liberals]. The polite society version of this has been the now-incessant scolding that “we’re a REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY,” from the same people who spent the previous decade praising to the heavens Bush’s crusade to bring democracy to the world. Before 2008, they believed they were the majority, so they had no problem with the concept. After 2008, they know they’re not, and the entire party has pretty much committed itself to remaining in power no matter what.

    There’s a reason they picked Jeff Sessions of all people, a man whose record in Alabama consisted of harassing and trying to close down black voting, to be Attorney General. They’re going to do their damnedest to poll-tax and grandfather-clause the entire nation the way the South used to be, because they know they need it. The “silent majority” days are over.

  194. 194.

    raven

    @Gin & Tonic: I broke my left leg into 18 fragments and they didn’t put a plate in. My leg snapped if half just like Thiesmann’s except it wasn’t compound. (didn’t keep me out of the Army)

  195. 195.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @JPL: As bad as Bush was, he’s not THIS bad…

    I’d take Bush AND Cheney over this crowd any day of the week…

    At least they semi-understood how government’s supposed to work and weren’t out to smash the china shop completely…

    ETA: And Bush never had his head so far up Putin’s rear end he could practically peek out Vlad’s mouth either…

  196. 196.

    Gin & Tonic

    @sukabi: If anything was poking out they’d have had to do it right away, and I’d be stuck in Vermont. But when they manipulated that mess to try to align it and put a semi-hard splint on, that was pretty exciting.

  202. 202.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:

    what’s to stop Jong from nuking Japan or S Korea?

    Pro-tip, his first name is Jong Un, not just Jong. Koreans have two syllable names. It’s something that drove my wife crazy before she became a citizen and changed her name when Americans would just call her by the first syllable of her name.

  203. 203.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Baud: True…

    ***glances at watch***

    Give him a little time… couple of weeks should do it…

  205. 205.

    StringOnAStick

    @Gin & Tonic: You’ll need a plate in order to put things back together, but hers looked much worse. You’ll get a good result but you won’t be using that lift ticket voucher until next season, sorry!

  209. 209.

    sukabi

    @Gin & Tonic: pretty sure “exciting” isn’t the word(s) I’d be using… Good luck with your appt Monday. Hope they get that taken care of asap.

  210. 210.

    Ruckus

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:

    NK is preparing for war…

    Haven’t they been doing that for what 60+ yrs? They don’t seem to do anything else. Grow food, healthcare, infrastructure………. But artillery, guns and bullets, those they got.

  211. 211.

    raven

    @StringOnAStick: As I recall (it was 55 years ago) they talked more about the possibility of a rod than a plate for my leg. I do have harrington rods on my spine from when I broke my back.

  213. 213.

    mainmata

    @? Martin: CA has always been the modern model of Progressive legislation (except when it wasn’t, e.g. during Reagan). Wisconsin used to be another Progressive source but that has been destroyed. As long as the GOP trifecta remains, the US will basically revert to the Articles of Confederation and be fatally weakened as a country.

  214. 214.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    Here’s a shot of me with my uncle in the cast.

    “How my uncle got into that cast I’ll never know.”
    — G. Marx

  217. 217.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Chris:
    I basically agree. This has been building for decades. They are aware of the demographic timer in a way we are not, because we don’t feel scared every time we see a black person on the street. But when Obama got elected, that was the panic button. Even for the ones not racist enough to see a black guy in charge and assume he’s going to Get Whitey, that a black man even could be elected president puts them in an alien world where they know at the deepest levels they are not in charge anymore. Sessions was specifically chosen for voter suppression, because rigging the game is all they’ve got now. Hell, Trump lost by 3 MILLION votes. You think they don’t know that? But it’s not clear how much voter suppression they can pull off, and the moment it fails, it’s over. Their control is a mile wide and an inch deep. I wish I knew what effect Texas’s gerrymandering being overturned would have, for example.

  218. 218.

    efgoldman

    @Baud:

    Add in everyone else who will be hurt by this administration, and we should dominate at least the next two election cycles.

    Maybe.
    CBS interviewed people in GA who depend on Meals on Wheels. One lady said she’d voted for Shitgibbon, and she’d do so again.
    No accounting for idiocy.
    Oh, she was white. The black lady said no such thing.

  222. 222.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Ruckus: Technically, for the past 67 years, the Korean peninsula has been in a state of war. An armistice has existed since 1953, but no peace treaty has ever been negotiated, let alone signed and ratified, by any power. The main HQ in Seoul is still called the UN HQ, because the Korean War was a UN action (the Russians were boycotting the Security Council the day the rest of the SC declared Korea to be a UN action, so no veto).

    NK has been in a perpetual state of preparing for ending the armistice, just as you’ve said. Every year about this time they make noises because of the annual Team Spirit joint US/UN/ROK military exercise. This is nothing new. What is new is we’ve got utter incompetents running the show in DC.

  225. 225.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    LOL, Raven, I was funnin ya.

    Amazing how identifiable Chicagoland domestic architecture is. That could be anywhere in West Suburbia.

    Did you ever see that Sandra Bullock movie “While You Were Sleeping”? The exteriors were shot in LaGrange, but they were almost interchangeable with my memories of many streets in Oak Park.

  227. 227.

    Ruckus

    @raven:
    Had a guy worked for me back in the very late 70s. Decided to get a motorcycle and ride to work. One Saturday the bike, as he said turned left on him and he hit the center curb and vaulted over the bars and hit his leg on the top of the armco. Snapped his femur in half like a matchstick just below the hip and the only thing holding his leg on was his quad muscle. The got him to county, got his wife notified and had him in the hallway waiting for surgery when an intern walked up to them and asked them if they had insurance or money. When they said yes, he told them to get the hell out of there because at county they couldn’t spend any time fixing it, they’d just amputate. Got him to another hospital and they put a Ti rod through the hip into the femur, fixed all the muscles, arteries, veins, and nerves. When he woke up they asked him if he wanted traction or a full body cast for both his leg and broken back, which he hadn’t known about. A year later he was walking with a cane, a year after that he walked normally without any assistance.

  228. 228.

    Gin & Tonic

    @raven: Yeah, it subsides. I shattered my humerus about 16 years ago, and it’s just an event in my past. I didn’t even have narcotics for that.

  229. 229.

    mainmata

    @efgoldman: A preemptive strike on NK would have to be very sudden, extremely massive and essentially genocidal to that country since their WMD weapons are very deeply hidden. Otherwise, NK literally wipes out Seoul and a large number of Americans. More insane bullshit from the Trump Administration.

  231. 231.

    StringOnAStick

    @raven: The decision on what sort of hardware has to do with the size of the bone, how fragmented, etc. They do such cool things with the plate shapes now. I was at a party and a guy showed me what looked like a mini throwing star; he was a CNC machinist and it was a thin, perforated plate for skull fractures.

    A plate is usually needed for a break like gin and tonic’s because the tension from the lower arm’s muscles and tendons collapses the break and reverse telescopes it, so the plate is needed as a “spreader” and bone will fill in as needed as it heals. There should be good bone regrowth showing on an X-ray in 6 weeks post surgery.

  232. 232.

    raven

    @Ruckus: They offered me the choice between a year in traction or the full body cast and the rods. In 8 weeks I got up and walked out of that fucker but I’ve always felt really really really really lucky.

  234. 234.

    Ruckus

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    What is new is we’ve got utter incompetents running the show in DC.

    I think you are being way, way too fucking kind to this new administration. Utter incompetents would just run around with their hair on fire. These morons are setting fire to everything.

  235. 235.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Ruckus: This has to do w/ them setting up missiles in different parts of the country so’s they all can’t be taken out w/ one strike…

  236. 236.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    There are so many films that are set in/were shot on location in Chicago and the surrounding area, in which the architecture is almost another character!

  237. 237.

    raven

    @StringOnAStick: Yea, I was going to say that I’m sure things are different now. My wife had the micro-spine surgery and her doc said that what they did to my back in 1974 would be considered barbaric now. At the time the Emory Surgeons were doing a very advanced procedure.

  239. 239.

    Sab

    @Villago Delenda Est: My dad is a Korean War vet with dementia. I think I will put parenatal block on Fox because it seriously freaks my dad out when fox gets hyper. I cannot imagine how he would react to a real war. That sounds callous, but I have already watched real people I know go off to Iraq and Afghanistan, so no.

  240. 240.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @raven: Say what you will about his policies (especially those that directly affected you), it wasn’t amateur hour. Competent, but terribly misguided and wrongheaded.

  241. 241.

    raven

    @SiubhanDuinne: Villa Park is full of Sears homes.

    Did you know that there might be 80 Sears Catalog mail-order houses in Villa Park? Many people saw the kits offered by Sears during the 1920’s through the 1940’s as an opportunity to join the ranks of homeowners. A few weeks after the customer selected a home and placed the order, two railway boxcars that contained about 30,000 pieces of house – everything from doorknobs and carved stairways, to varnish and shingles – would arrive at the nearest train depot. In Villa Park, the drop off was at the Great Western railroad siding near the former Ovaltine factory.

  243. 243.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    That’s very cool. I remember those Sears houses but didn’t know of the concentration of them in VP.

  244. 244.

    Ruckus

    @raven:
    Any time it gets that bad you should always feel very, very lucky. It takes medicine, a good attitude and much fucking luck to be out that far and come back in one piece. I have a number of friends who are in wheel chairs because their luck wasn’t all that great. I once got knocked off the bike and as I was flying through the air I thought, “This is going to fucking hurt.” Then I landed. OK so far not that bad, then the truck hit me head on. My head, in case that wasn’t clear. Amazingly the guy helped me pick up the bike and I rode away. Of course I had enough adrenaline in my system that it took about 5 minutes to get to the point that I couldn’t move. Which was fine, I was home. I’ve been paying for that very few seconds of air time for decades. And I’m still not anywhere near as bad as that sounds or a lot of the vets I see regularly, or any number of people.
    Speaking of vets, did you see that the shitgibbon is having a meeting about the VA without the VA administrator? Want to bet that it won’t be a good meeting? Want to bet you get your wish about all the asshole vets who voted for his moronic fucking ass?

  246. 246.

    raven

    @Ruckus: When I broke my back I laid in Grady Hospital and watch the war in Vietnam end. There was another Nam vet on my ward and we watched the fall in a demerol haze. Later in my stay we got some herb somehow and the orderlies would push us over to the windows ad we’d get fucked up looking at Fulton County Stadium!

    I wonder who the fuck he’s meeting with?

  247. 247.

    raven

    @Ruckus: Sounds like gah may have been wrong.

    WASHINGTON — President Trump held his first face-to-face meeting with representatives from prominent veterans groups on Friday, a step that community advocates called a productive and critical step in advancing the White House’s promises to veterans.

    The hour-long meeting with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and senior White House staff covered issues including medical care access for veterans, accountability for VA employees, veterans caregiver programs and the president’s campaign pledges to make veterans services more efficient.

  248. 248.

    Ruckus

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:
    We’ve done that a few times, placed missiles in many strategic areas for the same reasons. We also placed them on subs, which makes it even a bit more difficult. We still managed to grow food and all that other stuff for many of us, until the last 30 yrs or so. I wonder what caused that change? Hmmmm what could it be……. Don’t tell me, let me guess……. I know! FUCKING REPUBLICANS.

  249. 249.

    Aleta

    @Gin & Tonic: I missed last night; I’m so sorry you have to go through this! The pain must be severe. Looking at the image … would that be your wrist and hand that is messed up? I see the forearm, but … Sending best wishes. Hoping for best outcome.

  251. 251.

    Aleta

    @Gin & Tonic: Oh wait, I see, it’s a break in the radius or ulna. Yikes. Looks complicated and nasty. A bad landing?
    ETA (Looked agin, figuring it out) God. How painful that must be. Very sorry.

  252. 252.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @raven:
    I assume that, like usual, Trump and Pence flat-out lied and told vets he would get them more, even though his budget gives them much less.

    EDIT – Pence is actually very good at this. He’s not smart enough to improvise. He looks you straight in the eyes and repeats the party-approved message, no matter how obvious a lie it is.

  256. 256.

    Ruckus

    @raven:
    I’ll believe I’m not fucked to the bone when I see it. In my experience most of the problems I see with the VA is a number of vets have no clue how things work, yelling at a nurse about why she doesn’t have his meds, when he doesn’t have an appointment, hasn’t seen a doc, nothing has been prescribed, and all meds are distributed by the pharmacy, unless they are administered during an appointment. Situations like that and that there are just too many vets for the amount of money that congress gives the VA.
    ETA And with all of that they still do a damn good job.

  257. 257.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @raven: I wouldn’t trust Donald to dig a latrine without adult supervision in the form of at least an E-5.

  263. 263.

    efgoldman

    @Mike in DC:

    there’s no guarantee that a conventional attack would be effective enough to prevent the Norks from conducting at least a regional scale retaliatory response.

    And I’m sure Nectarine Nettle has no idea that Seoul is within easy artillery shot shot of the NoLo border, and would get leveled. I’m not sure Unsexy Rexy realizes it either.

  264. 264.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @raven: The only Spec rank left is SP4. Once you go to E-5, you wear stripes.

    If the billet to be filled is a leadership slot at E-4, they’ll make the troop a corporal.

  265. 265.

    Ruckus

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    I’d say that the donald would be the kind of boot that would be digging six foot holes in sand and then filling them back in until that 1/2 watt bulb that is his brain finally went on and figured out that he was wrong. Maybe take a while, 2-3 yrs for him. Meanwhile those Marine MPs with the side arms watching him would get to go off and on duty, drinking and having a good time, laughing at his fucking stupid ass day in and day out.

  266. 266.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Villago Delenda Est: I had a driver who was a corporal. The prior LT in my job had really liked the guy (he was great BTW). The guy hadn’t done anything to deserve a decoration, so he engineered the corporal promotion.

  267. 267.

    Bill Arnold

    @West of the Rockies (been a while):

    I’d be good with alcoholic posterboy Bannon taking out Ryan… enema of my enemy sort of thing.

    I do not understand why Trump allows himself to be manipulated by an often-drunken self-styled Mentat[1]. What gives? Does Trump have no self respect? Bannon (I believe) would cross Trump in an instant in a trade to near certainly achieve his broader goals. And he’s said in the past that (very loosely paraphrased) Trump is a useful low-information patsy.
    [1] Dunno if Bannon has made any such or similar claims, but it’s a role he’s gleefully taken up. Not belittling his talents, just continuously befuddled by apparent dominant direction of the power in the Bannon-Trump relationship.

  268. 268.

    Aleta

    @Gin & Tonic: Reading through, I see it was skiing, in Vermont. I was skiing yesterday too. At least it was an incredibly beautiful day. I hope you had some good time before this happened.

  269. 269.

    Ruckus

    @Bill Arnold:

    What gives? Does Trump have no self respect?

    Do you really have to ask that question after the last couple of years? Let alone his entire life.
    Why do you think he has to have the spotlight on him and him alone 100% of the time, he doesn’t like the dark?

  275. 275.

    Emerald

    @debbie:

    Sorry it took me so long to answer your question. Was watching Rachel and Lawrence (Ari tonight). Certainly big awards are the most influential. You can splash those all over your front cover. Pull quotes from reviews generally go on the back cover, and it takes a year or two for those to appear because the book has to go into its second printing before that can happen.

    Kirkus is the oldest publishing mag–started sometime in the 30s–and has always been considered the toughest, so a good review from us is time to break out the champagne. However, we almost went out of business about six or seven years ago and were told that we were folding, when the owner of the Indiana Pacers basketball team bought us at the last minute. Seems he’s a book lover. I only see things from the inside, so I really don’t know what the perceptions are out there in the real world where books get bought and sold.

    Of course, any good review is going to be highlighted by the publisher. It’s really only insiders who know how brutal we can be (well, not me, usually!)

  278. 278.

    The Lodger

    @Sab: It’s scary to think that the addition of bagpipes would actually make something more musical.

  279. 279.

    efgoldman

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I wouldn’t trust Donald to dig a latrine

    I’d like to see him try. The physical stress alone would likely kill him; not to mention, a DI yelling at him would be comedy gold.

  280. 280.

    efgoldman

    @Bill Arnold:

    What gives? Does Trump have no self respect?

    Ever see the Disney cartoon version of Robin Hood? President Bannonazi is the snake. Only fat, drunk, and unkempt.

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