Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fight them, without becoming them!

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

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

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

In after Baud. Damn.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

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

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

No Justins, No Peace

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

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

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

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

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Reader Interactions

132Comments

  3. 3.

    lollipopguild

    Never underestimate trump’s willingness to do something that takes attention away from his Russian connections.

  8. 8.

    Mnemosyne

    It’s okay, I’ve been assured that Trump isn’t a warmongering warmongerer like Hillary is, so clearly this is all fake news. Maureen Dowd told me so during the campaign!

  9. 9.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m not sure one planet is big enough to contain two nuclear-armed narcissists with terrible hair and pathetically obvious daddy complexes.

  10. 10.

    Mnemosyne

    @zzyzx:

    FWIW, Adam’s arms control wonk friend Cheryl Rofer seemed to think the West Coast of the US would be pretty much okay because of the distance between us and Korea.

  11. 11.

    lollipopguild

    @opiejeanne: Trump needs people to watch him going BOOM rather than trump’s people being arrested/indicted. If things get bad enough I can see him ordering an attack on North Korea.

  12. 12.

    zzyzx

    @Mnemosyne: It’s why I’m a 4-5 on the worry scale, not a 9. But there’s a “seemed to” and a “pretty much” in that post. Basically we’re assuming that our intelligence isn’t wrong and that’s enough to make me worry a little.

  18. 18.

    SFAW

    @opiejeanne:

    There was a mention yesterday that North Korea tends to act up around western holidays. Didn’t they announce a new test set for this weekend?

    Kim Il-Sung’s 105th birthday (well, technically, anniversary of his birth, I guess). The Easter thing is coincidental.

  19. 19.

    SiubhanDuinne

    In the finest Trump tradition of naming utterly unqualified people to head up key agencies, his choice to run the Selective Service — you know, the board that decides which of the flower of our youth will be conscripted to go to Korea or Afghanistan or wherever — is a man who has never served in any branch of the military. And judging by this account (HuffPo, via Digby) this Don Benton sounds like such a nice, friendly guy.

  20. 20.

    SFAW

    @opiejeanne:

    We’re on the east side, wondering the same thing but where to go? Yakima?

    I suggested to Mnemosyne that she move to Fresno, to get some good surfing.

  21. 21.

    zzyzx

    @opiejeanne: Yes it is. I was thinking Missoula. That has 2 mountain passes to stop the fallout and, well, who doesn’t love Montana?

    I’m not really doing it, but it’s a thought.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    @zzyzx:

    They reminded me that the Pacific Ocean is really, really big, and I felt better. Of course, I’m also pretty far south of where the action would be, so …

  30. 30.

    Chris

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m not sure one planet is big enough to contain two nuclear-armed narcissists with terrible hair and pathetically obvious daddy complexes.

    Both of them appear to have reached that conclusion as well!

  31. 31.

    Mike in NC

    The fabulous chocolate cake that Trump served Xi probably came from Publix (though they do make a very fine key lime pie).

  32. 32.

    Felonius Monk

    How about just a steel cage to-the-death summo wrestling match between the Orange Fartsicle and Kimmy Ugh. We can then all sit around and munch popcorn while we watch instead of being turned to glass in a narcissistic holocaust. And no matter the outcome. Either way the rest of humanity will be better off.

  33. 33.

    Frankensteinbeck

    And China tells both of them what to do. My only worry is that I’m not sure what China has paid Trump to do.

  37. 37.

    Tokyokie

    I really love Korean movies. Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, and Kim Jae-woon are probably my three favorite active film directors, and Song Kang-ho and Ha Jung-woo are probably my two favorite actors (although I guess Nakadai Tatsuya still shows up in movies, just none that I get the chance to see). I find even run-of-the-mill Korean films (and I go see every one that comes through town) much more interesting than the crap Hollywood churns out. (Another Fast and Furious movie? Wake me up when one of them has a smidgeon of the existential thrill of Bullitt. A live-action version of La belle et la bête? Think I’ll watch the Cocteau version, thank you very much.) Korean cinema may very well be the greatest pleasure in my life these days.

    And I’m going to be really, really pissed off if that monstrous, traitorous, loudmouthed, psychotic, crooked oaf in the White House destroys the Korean film industry along with the rest of the peninsula.

  38. 38.

    Chris

    @lollipopguild:

    @Mnemosyne: South Korea and Japan would catch the worst of it.

    Yeah, which I’m also worried about especially since the South Koreans sound like they weren’t consulted.

    Fun fact: back in the fifties, several West European governments were concerned about the possibility that America might be tempted to start a nuclear war, taking advantage of the fact that they had plenty of bases that were reasonably close to Russian soil while Russia had far fewer ones close to the U.S. – and that the U.S. might actually want to fight that war soon, before it lost that advantage (especially with both sides working hard on ICBM technology). Western Europe, unlike America, was well within range for the Russians, and would bear the brunt of the retaliation.

    Never happened, of course, because neither Ike nor JFK were lunatics. But why is that scenario suddenly occurring to me in the context of NK/U.S. relations and the fate of Japan/South Korea? Oh, no reason…

  39. 39.

    japa21

    Overheard while I was at physical therapy today. A patient and her therapist were discussing the state of the world. The therapist brought up North Korea. The therapist said, “We can’t trust that whacko”. The patient responded, “Right and that guy in NK isn’t much better.”

  41. 41.

    gratuitous

    I wonder if China’s president came away from Mar-A-Lago thinking, “Boy was I wrong about which one was the crazy one.”

  43. 43.

    Chris

    @Tokyokie:

    I rarely watch Korean movies, but happened on a Western-ish one set in 1930s Manchuria called “The Good, The Bad And The Weird” on Netflix a few years back and thoroughly enjoyed that one.

  44. 44.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mnemosyne: Since we’d be talking great-circle distances, it’s actually more the northern tier of states that is closest to North Korea. But Washington state is a bit closer than New England. The antipodal point of North Korea is somewhere in the ocean just off Argentina, so the further you are from there, the closer you are to the DPRK.

    I’m going to Florida this weekend, so I guess I’ll be almost as far from it as possible within the 50 states.

  47. 47.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chris: It was a plausible worry. There were factions within the US that were actively urging preventive nuclear war with the USSR.

  48. 48.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @japa21: Remember when some folks were using the phrase “No Drama Obama” as an insult? Ah, those were the days…

  50. 50.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Color me skeptical, this confrontation is coming after a week after the Xi visit and the Chines’ “Win-Win” strategy. I suspect some stage managed theator with NK were Kim get to count Coup agains the US and then a back down so Trump can wag big carriers arround.

  54. 54.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Josie:

    The sad thing is that, of the three, China is the only one I trust.

    Might be more accurate to say that of the three, China is one you distrust the least

  55. 55.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    That, plus the nuclear taboo wasn’t in place yet, at least not to the extent that it was today. The memory of nukes being used in war as if they were just another really big conventional bomb (twice) was still fresh in people’s minds.

  61. 61.

    Tokyokie

    @Chris: The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a Kim Jae-woon movie (featuring the great Song Kang-ho as the “Weird”), and I think it’s the best action movie of the last 15 years. The shootout at the ghost market is pretty much all done in simultaneous tracking shots, and I’ve never seen a continuity bust in the sequence. It’s astonishingly kinetic filmmaking, and I don’t know of a single Hollywood action director who could do something like that. (Simultaneous tracking shots literally require being able to think in four dimensions to avoid getting the other cameras and their tracks in the shot.) Kim’s follow-up to that is something called I Saw the Devil (starring Lee Byung-hun, who played the “Bad,” and Choi Min-sik, the actor in Oldboy), and it’s probably the most disturbing movie I’ve ever seen.

  63. 63.

    Marcopolo

    OT but @ 4 St Louis time I’ll be at a town hall for my D Congressman Clay. Not sure if it was the post cards/phone calls asking him to do one (can’t recall the last time one happened) or him seeing that D’s are getting mostly positive receptions that brought it about but he announce this out of the blue about 36 hours ago. I encourage everyone here to habitually call all their elected folks once a week about something–even if they are perfect in your eyes. Anyways, that leaves Senator Blunt as the coward which I have been reminding his staff of every day: “Has Senator Blunt scheduled a constituent town hall for the recess?” “No.” “What’s he afraid of? I’ll check back in tomorrow.” :)

    Have a good Easter Weekend all.

  64. 64.

    Tokyokie

    @raven: No, but I just looked it up, and hope to soon remedy that terrible oversight.

    Edit: I just put it in my Netflix queue, and it’s a good thing they still have it, because the DVD is out of print (and it never came out on BD), and costs north of $100! Thanks for the tip!

  67. 67.

    pamelabrown53

    @Chris: #27.
    New earworm: “I shot the sheriff but I didn’t shoot no deputy…”.
    If Trump were a consistent, strategic thinker I might be worried at his new found “wag the dog” militarism. While I totally expect much of the MSM to assist him on his “pivot” to neoconism, reality will out. Just not as soon as we like or need. Damage is being done on a daily accrual basis.

  70. 70.

    Marcopolo

    @randy khan: which is ironic since every time I’ve heard some trumpeter talk about how we are at an all time low in U.S./Russia relations I think back to the Cuban missile crisis. And yeah, I know that was the USSR but same difference.

  71. 71.

    Yarrow

    Isn’t Pence supposed to be going to or in Seoul right now? Not sure if it’s a suicide mission or Trump waved his hand and said, “You handle the Korean stuff, Mike.”

  72. 72.

    SFAW

    @opiejeanne:
    Depends on how big the tsunami is, don’t it?

    Or did you mean that as a comment on Fresno itself? If so, then I guess I can understand (although I’ve never been there).

  74. 74.

    Roger Moore

    @Marcopolo:
    If you have to go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis to find a lower point in Russo-American relations, things are terrible. I’m not sure I believe it, though; I think it’s some inept Kabuki to make people think Trump isn’t Putin’s puppet.

  75. 75.

    Aleta

    In the Washington Post today, a poem by Jane Hirshfield

    On the Fifth Day

    On the fifth day

    the scientists who studied the rivers

    were forbidden to speak

    or to study the rivers.

    The scientists who studied the air

    were told not to speak of the air,

    and the ones who worked for the farmers

    were silenced,

    and the ones who worked for the bees.

    Someone, from deep in the Badlands,

    began posting facts.

    The facts were told not to speak

    and were taken away.

    The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.

    Now it was only the rivers

    that spoke of the rivers,

    and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

    while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees

    continued to move toward their fruit.

    The silence spoke loudly of silence,

    and the rivers kept speaking,

    of rivers, of boulders and air.

    Bound to gravity, earless and tongueless,

    the untested rivers kept speaking.

    Bus drivers, shelf stockers,

    code writers, machinists, accountants,

    lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

    They spoke, the fifth day,

    of silence.

    Jane Hirshfield

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/04/14/on-the-fifth-day/?tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.4182d39ad4e2#comments

  76. 76.

    Betty Cracker

    @Bill Arnold: It’s like my crazy, racist wingnut uncle is president, only with more gold plating. At least he hasn’t retweeted any “white genocide” assholes since he became president. At least, I don’t think he has. That was a thing during the campaign.

  77. 77.

    Zach

    The show of force in Okinawa today is offensive in addition to being dangerously provocative. Okinawans have recently voted against the American military presence there (and its expansion). Way to remind everyone that not only does the occupation prevent Okinawa from developing a sustainable economy and lead to countless incidents with Americans who are above the law, it also puts a giant bulls-eye on the island which, absent America’s need to project power in the West Pacific, would be pretty worthless militarily.

  78. 78.

    OldDave

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I’m going to Florida this weekend, so I guess I’ll be almost as far from it as possible within the 50 states.

    Unless (DP)NK has decided to ship a nuke equipped shipping container to the port of Palm Beach…

  79. 79.

    ? Martin

    @Mnemosyne: I’m not so sure. North Korea successfully put a satellite in a sufficiently precise orbit last year to suggest that they have the pieces in place to hit any location they want to. Their weak area has always been reliability – their failure rate is reminiscent of the US and USSR in the 50s. It’s be a bit of a hail-mary from them, as it’d be an unproven launch, but what would they have to lose?

    And that’s the problem with both Trump and Kim – they simply don’t respond to the negative incentives that have long kept us out of conflict.

  80. 80.

    mike in dc

    Worst case scenario–NK tests a nuke, Trump hits NK, NK retaliates and things escalate, Seoul practically destroyed, thousands of Americans in SK die, Japan gets nuked along with maybe an American base there, and then we turn everything north of the 38th parallel into hot glass. Millions dead. Which would be grounds not only for impeachment, but for a one-way trip to the Hague.

  81. 81.

    Gravenstone

    @Yarrow: Sunday, apparently. So waiting until after the big Saturday anniversary date in DPRK – and potential nuke test with possible Tomahawk retaliatory strikes to follow. In other words, don’t rely on Pence actually making it to Seoul on Sunday.

    /headdesk

  84. 84.

    Marcopolo

    @Roger Moore: no, what I was trying to get at was virtually everyone around and including trump apparently are totally ahistorical (presumably because they are so ignorant and ill-informed/educated) that they think the present is the worst relations have ever been when that is easily proven wrong (like by the missile crisis).

    Or the simpler answer is just everything in regards to trump is the biggest, bestest, or even worstest evah.

  86. 86.

    Yarrow

    @Gravenstone: Yeah, no kidding. He’d have to be at least somewhat en route tomorrow to make it there. I guess the plane could divert if necessary. But if Japan is attacked…

    Fuck.

  88. 88.

    zzyzx

    @mike in dc: that’s not the worst case. The worst case involves China’s statement of “No matter who it is, if they let war break out on the peninsula, they must shoulder that historical culpability and pay the corresponding price for this,”

    What price is that exactly and who survives it?

  89. 89.

    ? Martin

    @mike in dc: You’re sort of assuming there that China and Japan along with others idly sit back and wag their finger at the US for destroying their nations and setting them back several more generations – and which of course the US won’t lift a finger to repair because that would interfere with our promised tax cuts.

    These are not the sort of actions that even allies shrug off as ‘well, you tried’.

  90. 90.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Anonymous at work: And you’re going to eat it whether you like it or not. A whole lot of it. For four years. Believe me!

  92. 92.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Marcopolo:

    I think with Trump it starts with your second paragraph: For him, everything is cast in superlatives (“Mar-a-Lago has the tallest, most beautiful chocolate cake” “Obama is the worst president this country ever had” “My doctor says I am the healthiest person ever to become President” “America for the past eight years was the worst laughingstock in the world” etc.) And then, because he has established these statements as his “truth,” he cannot conceive of any factual historical information that might contradict or disprove them.

  94. 94.

    Gelfling 545

    @Bill Arnold: This is a man who has a Breitbart alumnus as an advisor. He knows, and cares, less about reliable information sources than your old Republican auntie forwarding emails.

  95. 95.

    Brachiator

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    @Marcopolo:

    I think with Trump it starts with your second paragraph: For him, everything is cast in superlatives (“Mar-a-Lago has the tallest, most beautiful chocolate cake” “Obama is the worst president this country ever had” “My doctor says I am the healthiest person ever to become President” “America for the past eight years was the worst laughingstock in the world” etc.) And then, because he has established these statements as his “truth,” he cannot conceive of any factual historical information that might contradict or disprove them.

    Yes. You could also say that because he has established these statements as his “truth,” he actively rejects any factual historical information that might contradict or disprove them. And, as president, he can force his underlings to echo his falsehoods, demand useless investigations, and hint at the need for prosecutions to punish anyone who tries to contradict his assertions.

  96. 96.

    Tokyokie

    @Zach: The rest of Japan is NIMBY about U.S. bases, and they’re OK with virtually all the burden being loaded onto Okinawa. And it’s not like Okinawa can outvote the rest of the country.

  97. 97.

    Peale

    @SFAW: Yes. Its kind of a Spring tradition for the past decade. North Korea threatens to blow up the world around the time of its national holiday. Its like songkran with heavy water. We then respond with our war games with South Korea, which makes the North accuse us of planning an invasion, which we have to do because North Korea keeps threatening to blow up the world. The only difference this year is that we have a new president who may or may not decide that this holiday tradition is a sign of skimpiness and he’s going to change that to include an actual war this time. .

  103. 103.

    Mnemosyne

    @Vhh:

    True. I probably should have said “West Coast of the contiguous United States,” though that’s a bit long. ?

  105. 105.

    Iowa Old Lady

    There’s an article at TPM citing the NYT to the effect that Trump didn’t know how FISA warrants worked before he accused Obama of wiretapping him.

  107. 107.

    opiejeanne

    @SFAW: I’ve been to Fresno several times; it’s a comment on Fresno, aside from the improbability of a tsunami that size, and no, CA’s fault lines don’t work that way either.

    My kids were part of the entertainment during the Miss California pageant, which is held there every year; Saroyan’s home town.

  108. 108.

    efgoldman

    @El Caganer:

    Trump doesn’t care what happens to S. Korea or Japan.

    Shit, the fucker doesn’t care what happens to Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago or Detroit.

  110. 110.

    efgoldman

    @Bill Arnold:

    Does he realize that Drudge itself is unreliable?

    Any sentence about Tangelo Tumor, that begins “Does he realize…” or “Does he know…” the answer is always – ALWAYS! – “No fucking way!”

  111. 111.

    StringOnAStick

    I’ve actually felt a nuclear explosion. I was reminded of this yesterday listening to Terri Gross interview a guy who wrote a book about the Colorado River. In 1969 the US had something called “Project Plowshares”, a program to find peaceful uses for nuclear bomb technology, one of which was using a device as a fracking explosion underground near Rifle, CO to make natural gas easier to extract (Project Rulison – there’s an overpass there now on I-70, no explanatory plaque though). I remember feeling the earthquake generated by the blast while sitting in my 7th grade history class in Grand Junction. Compared to natural earthquakes I’ve felt, this one was short and sharp. Turns out the gas released underground was too radioactive to use in your kitchen; whocouldaknode? Fucking insane.

    Project Plowshares had all sorts of ideas, like doing an above ground blast to create landfill or reservoir space. Listening to a bit of the public service film describing how Rulison would work was one of those trips down Duck and Cover memory lane, and creepy as hell.

  112. 112.

    Steve in the ATL

    Ossoff voted for, calzone eaten, Balloon Juice perused, post hearing brief written–I think I’ll call it a day. Hopefully there will be just enough traffic that’s it’s 5 o’clock when I walk in through my door.

  114. 114.

    Marcopolo

    @StringOnAStick: look up “project chariot”…a plan to blow a harbor open on Alaska’s north slope using a string of nuclear explosions…think there is a book about it called “the firecracker boys.”

  115. 115.

    efgoldman

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Now is the time to make boom booms to take the focus off those ties.

    It will take the Villagers’ and congress’ focus away. It won’t make any difference to the investigating teams.

  116. 116.

    opiejeanne

    @StringOnAStick: Another peacetime use proposed for nuclear weapons was in building roads through the mountains. I remember hearing about it in 1970 and how disappointed the builders were that they’d have to stick to drilling and conventional explosives.

  117. 117.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @GrandJury:

    the only fuking thing that matters is that N. Korea can’t do anything to continental US.

    You must have missed the “surfing in Frenso, California” jokes. Frenso is is in the middle of the state. As to be expected from the beating cultural heart of the US west.

    Fresno, FELL the excitment.

  118. 118.

    raven

    @Tokyokie: The start of the film is the “Blue House Raid” by the NK’s. We went out and swept the mountains in pursuit of them after the shoot-out in Seoul. Crazy time.

  119. 119.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @Tokyokie: I am a fan of New World and the thriller I Saw The Devil. The latter one had the best execution of the bad guy ever!

  121. 121.

    Shell

    I’m twenty minutes outside New York City. Ive been having some pretty bad personal worries lately; today was thinking ‘Hmm, maybe North Korea will solve all that for me.”
    With my luck Ill just get caught up with the post-war Zombie Apocalypse.

  122. 122.

    Bill Arnold

    @efgoldman:

    Any sentence about Tangelo Tumor, that begins “Does he realize…” or “Does he know…” the answer is always – ALWAYS! – “No fucking way!”

    LOL. FWIW the original sentence was much longer and more complicated and analytical but got edited down for reasons.

  123. 123.

    Bill Arnold

    @GrandJury:

    You people have no clue how dangerous a situation this N. Korea thing is.

    [Ah never mind, you qualified it in an edit. Leaving rest of comment]
    What makes you believe this? (FWIW the way I look at these things is as crudely estimated probability distributions; he’s killed millions already in this style of thinking if also considering how the Syria/Russia/Trump(‘s military) scenarios could go wrong.)

  124. 124.

    ruemara

    @GrandJury: Who are you talking to? Many of us live in coastal areas that would be affected. You have people talking about how it would affect their families overseas. No one is joking about it cavalierly.

  127. 127.

    Juju

    @opiejeanne: if you’ve ever worked in the food service industry or food sales, or even eaten in a semi high end restaurant and ordered their version of the mousse layered chocolate cake, you’d recognize that piece of chocolate cake. Monarch foods used to sell one, as did Sysco foods. I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I very much doubt that cake was made on premise. My guess is it’s factory made and they put their own finishing touches on the slice. I’ve had cake like that before and it’s a big meh. I make better.

  129. 129.

    Doug R

    @Marcopolo: Heard there was a plan floated to replace the Panama canal by blowing up a channel from Lake Nicaragua to the Pacific ocean, possibly using nukes.
    Looks like they went with widening the Panama canal instead.

  131. 131.

    TenguPhule

    @GrandJury:

    I don’t think some of you understand how dangerous a situation this N. Korea thing is.

    Fuck off. I am well aware of North Korea and I am within estimated range of those fucking missiles. I’m also smack dab within range of no less then five major military bases.

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